Holocaust



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 * 1) -The history of anti-semitism in Europe stretches back far before the Holocaust and took on three forms
 * 2) -The original roots of this hatred is religion-based.
 * 3) -Early Christian writings charge Jews with the crime of deicide, ignoring the facts that the Gospels were written over 60 years after the fact and by men who wanted to gain favor with the Romans, consequently blaming the Jews for the killing of the Christian messiah.
 * 4) -The second form, taking place during the Middle Ages, grew in its oppression by actively seeking conversion of the Jews.
 * 5) -Adding to the accusation of deicide came the charge of Blood Libel, a widespread belief that Jews killed Gentile children and used their blood for Matsuh.
 * 6) -It was not until the late nineteenth century where the third stage, racial anti-semitism, began to develop. Following the popular concept of social-darwinism, the Jews began to be looked at not as followers of a religion but as an inferior race.
 * 7) -the Jew was seen as a threat which needed to be eradicated.
 * 8) -Adding to this was post-war inflation which wiped out the middle class who had their money in savings, leaving those who sold products, many being Jewish, less affected. This financial gap only exacerbated the situation for the Jews of the Weimar Republic.
 * 9) -Like the Young-Turk idea of Pan-Turanism, Turkey for the Turks, Hitler adhered to the idea of Lebensraum, living space for Aryans.
 * 10) -This living space, in his eyes, was polluted by the genetically unfit, namely Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and the mentally deficient.
 * 11) -With his election in 1933, anti-semitism officially found its way into German politics.
 * 12) -This began first with legal attacks on Jewry such as the Nuremberg Laws that officially defined who was a Jew, and in doing so gave rise to a bureaucracy that began searching into family histories.
 * 13) -This legal attack on Jews took a sharp turn on the November 9, 1938, by a move known as Krystallnacht or “Night of Broken Glass.”
 * 14) -This was not only the first openly violent attack on German Jewry but there was no punishment or repercussion by the German government for those who took part in the assault.
 * 15) -The Holocaust had premeditated systems of isolation and destruction.