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Essay Subject: Discusses scope of Nazi genocide.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Discusses scope of Nazi genocide. Hitler's rise to power and his policies toward the Jews; Wannsee Conference. Medical experiments in the Camps. Nazi biomedical politics. Understanding genocide. Cites visit to Museum of Tolerance and two poems by Terezin ghetto children. Genocide of other societies. Argues that moral and historical education are the only ways to avoide genocide. Paper Introduction: The Holocaust was the persecution and systematic killing of 6,000,000 European Jews by Nazi Germany during World War II. The original plan to simply remove the Jews from Germany and the lands Germany conquered were changed to include the "Final Solution" in which the murder to the Jews was carried out. One of the most horrifying aspects of the living death of the concentration camps was the use of the victims in brutal medical experiments performed by German doctors who served in the army or were Nazi Party members. The study of the facts about the Holocaust, the visit to the Museum of Tolerance, and reading poems by children who were interned in the Terezín ghetto and who died there or in the death camps have expanded my understanding of the Holocaust itself and of genocide in general, which has happened so many times in history. These experiences and the infor Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. The fact thatthese terrible realizations were made by children and that they somehow hadsufficient hope--even the merest thread--to allow them to communicate theirfeelings makes them some of the most deeply felt and moving poems ever. 2nd ed. In every nation that Hitler conquered after that the Jews weredeported to concentration camps. Ed. Of course, even though the Nazis attempted tofool people, those who are photographed on the transport trains and incamps did not have any illusions about what could happen to them. The doctorsworked in the expectation that the patients would die in the experiments--and most of them did. The Nazi Holocaust. Horrible as it is to say, even if they had someone else do theactual work of killing and torture they still had to observe the processand the results if they hoped to gain knowledge from these terribleactions. At the infamous Wannsee Conference held in January 1942 a group ofNazi officers was called upon to "coordinate the activities of all thebodies and organizations whose participation would be needed" for the"Final Solution" of the so-called "Jewish Question" and some of the besteducated and most cultivated leaders of the Army "calmly and deliberatelylistened to plans for the annihilation of an entire people" (Landau 167-68). Among the horrors of the experimental programs carried out in thevarious camps were the study of individual execution as injections ofphenol or gasoline were given, under the guise of medical treatment, andsimilar researches into modes of killing that could be disguised as naturaldeaths (including the use of biological means such as inducing septicemia). But itis shocking in every person who participated.Understanding Genocide Many activities -- reading, the visit to the Museum of Tolerance, andthe reading of poems -- have contributed to my understanding of genocide.The readings help to supply an idea of the scope and the nature of thehorrors perpetrated against ordinary human beings in these terrible masscrimes. and studies of therelationship between high doses of radiation and sterility. In his rise to power Adolf Hitler constantlystressed his claim that the Jews were to blame for many of Europe'sproblems, which they conspired to bring about, and that they were aninferior race that had no place in German society with the superior Aryans. Fanatical leaders know this and they know that "humankindis, [as] the Holocaust shows us, alarmingly prone--especially in thetwentieth century--to replace personal ethical standards with collectiveones that appear to exempt the individual from accountability" (Landau 7-8). German medicine, despite its greatsophistication rapidly became enmeshed with Nazi policies after 1933.Other professions--including the judiciary, legal professions, and theuniversities--did the same. The simple principle of treating people as onewishes o be treated and the basics of nearly every system of morality inthe world should guard against such crimes. This is true both in terms of the numberof times this horrible crime has been committed and the numbers of peoplewho have been killed by various factions in different times and places.Gilbert notes in his book on the Holocaust that after a while it allbecomes too much to take in. The latter method proved inefficient since the truckscould kill no more than 5 people at a time and the mass shootings managedto eliminate thousands quite quickly. And for anyone whose thoughts turn to her orhis own safety--because of not being a Jew or a Native American or aCambodian living under Pol Pot--the best thing to do is to go back andstart again. These trends institutionalized the idea of innate theinferiority of some individuals and some races as well as allowing thenotion of "rational utility [to] displace moral, ethical, and religiousvalues" (Barondess 1658). At thedeath camps the SS "turned murder into a streamlined, cost-effective andlabour-efficient industry" and managed the 'work' so that SS participationwas "reduced to an absolutely tolerable minimum" by having Jewish slavelaborers carry out all the tasks of disposal (Landau 176). 2nd ed. Thesix death camps (which does not include the other labor and internmentcamps) were located in Poland at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Chelmno, Belzec,Sobibor, and Majdanek. Interestingly, however,the doctors who participated in the medical experiments necessarily had tobe very immediately involved with the people they were torturing andkilling. Millions of other people,including "homosexuals, communists, gypsies, Slavs, and prisoners of war,"were also killed by the Nazis but their primary focus was on eliminatingthe Jews (Barondess 1658). But the museum visit had a different kind of impact by adding ahighly visual layer to the experience. Yet theystill retain the slenderest thread of hope. Online. But people set them asidebecause they are frightened by the unknown and afraid of losing what theyhave. But if leaders know this the same thing can be understood by thosewho are led. The original plan tosimply remove the Jews from Germany and the lands Germany conquered werechanged to include the "Final Solution" in which the murder to the Jews wascarried out. In Yessentuki, to name only onehorrible example, 2, people were killed in a single day. The circumstances vary fromone genocidal episode to the next but the slight hope of the individual whowants to fool herself that the train is going to take her to nothing worsethan a new farming region or the hope of the one who flees before the bombsis both the most saddening and the most heartening aspect of the museum'sdisplays. Once medicine became a state-controlled profession after 1933 physicians contributed to the regimesundertaking "in large numbers and to a degree that made much of whatfollowed possible" (Barondess 1657). It is possible to imagine one's much youngerself and wonder what reaction she would have had to the situation in theghetto. Among the notions that had gainedrespectability in German medicine were the idea of eugenics and racialhygiene. Somewhere, at some time, someone wanted to kill a fewthousand people just like you and, undoubtedly, did so.Conclusion The most important thing that one learns from studying all theterrible waves of genocide that have swept over various societies is thatin every instance the killers believe that they were justified. The study of the facts about the Holocaust, the visit tothe Museum of Tolerance, and reading poems by children who were interned inthe Terezín ghetto and who died there or in the death camps have expandedmy understanding of the Holocaust itself and of genocide in general, whichhas happened so many times in history. But preexisting forces had prepared thebiomedical sciences for the Nazi policies. This does not refer so much to thesight of horrors and suffering people but to the vision of the ordinaryfaces of people who have no knowledge at the time they were photographed ofwhat would happen to them. The first effort of Nazi biomedical politics was the sterilizationprogram, which required the surgical sterilization of about 5 , peopleper year including the feebleminded, congenitally blind and deaf, andseverely alcoholic. Eugenics was the "modification of natural selection throughselective breeding for the improvement of humankind" and racial hygienefavored euthanasia and sterilization to rid the race of unwanted weaknesses(Barondess 1657). The lack of knowledge ofthese mass killings, as well as the failure to understand their rootcauses, leaves everyone vulnerable to yet another episode of moralbreakdown and terror. The next major effort was the euthanasia program inwhich those judged "incurably sick by medical examination" were gassed andcremated--a rehearsal for the Holocaust (Barondess 1658). As we have seen, the scope of genocide is far greater than theindividual can imagine unaided. Ed. But, he says, the important thing to rememberis that "however much the mind may tire at such statistics, or simply fail--for the sake of sanity--to grasp their enormity, they represent realpeople" (Gilbert 66). It is also possible to stare at the face of a woman with herchildren who is being forced onto a train and imagine your mother oryourself in this position. Of all the types of learning experience those thatdo the best job of making just this point are the ones, like the Museum ofTolerance visit and the reading of the children's poems, that force one'sattention to the individual. Until Hitler invaded Russia in June 1941 the Jews in the occupiedcountries had been "subjected to persecution, humiliation, expulsion andrandom killing" but after that date the Nazis began "the deliberate attemptto destroy all Jewish lives over a vast region of Europe" (Gilbert 62).The Einsatzgruppen (or Operational Squads) that followed after the Germanarmy filled mass graves with people they executed and also used mobileunits to gas them. A better knowledge of history, a better comprehension of otherpeoples, and a solid understanding that there is no morality unless itapplies everywhere and to everyone are the aspects of the educationalprogram that stands a chance against future genocidal impulses. Other experiments included injecting patients with typhus to test cures,studying the effects of rapid decompression and immersion in freezingwater, experimental bone, muscle, and joint transplants. The account of the last butterflyin the first poem acknowledges that this was truly a place of death, andthe grim emotional landscape of suffering described in "Terezín" is a cryfrom the heart over the dehumanizing horror of the place. The biggest effort that has to be made is to ensure a propereducation in both history and in ethics and morality. "Medicine against Society: Lessons from the Third Reich." Journal of the American Medial Association 276 (1996): 1657- 61.Gilbert, Martin. Part of the explanation lies in the nature of German medical trainingover the previous decades. The twins studies "were remarkable fortheir inhumanity" and included tests in which one twin was injected withtyphus and, when he died, the second was killed so that their organs couldbe compared (Barondess 1659). And in every case they persuade themselves thatthis fearful 'other' that they are about to kill is, somehow, less humanthan themselves. New York: Universe, 2 .I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children's Drawings and Poems from Terezín Concentration Camp, 1942-1944. The medicalprofession participated in the design and execution of this program at thehighest level and the same was to be true of the Holocaust where doctors"served not only as an instrument of Nazi mass murder, but were involved inthe ideological theorizing and in the planning, initiation, administration,and operation of the killing programs" (Barondess 166 ). Of theseat least 1.5 million were shot by the killing squads in the Soviet Union,nearly 1 million died in the "unimaginable squalor of the ghettos and inthe brutal conditions of concentration, transit and labour camps," and tensof thousands died in numerous other situations--but the remainder weremurdered in the killing factories that were the death camps (Landau 18 ).Medical Experiments in the Camps One of the worst aspects of the destruction of the Jews was theinvolvement of so many members of the medical profession in hideousexperiments that amounted to the worst kinds of torture imaginable. At first Hitler had only promised to somehow produce "a thoroughsolution [in] the removal of the Jews from the midst of our people" (quotedin Gilbert 31). Chicago: Dee, 1994.The ButterflyThe last, the very last,So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.Perhaps if the sun's tears would singagainst a white stone.Such, such a yellowIs carried lightly way up high.It went away I'm sure because it wished tokiss the world good-bye.For seven weeks I've lived in here,Penned up inside this ghetto.But I have found what I love here.The dandelions call to meAnd the white chestnut branches in the court.Only I never saw another butterfly.That butterfly was the last one.Butterflies don't live here,in the ghetto.TerezínThe heaviest wheel rolls across our foreheadsTo bury itself deep somewhereinside our memories.We've suffered here more than enough,Here in this clot of grief and shame,Wanting a badge of blindnessTo be a proof for their own children.A fourth year of waiting, like standing above a swampFrom which any moment might gush forth a spring.Meanwhile, the rivers flow another way,Another way,Not letting you die, not letting you live.And the cannons don't scream and the guns don't barkAnd you don't see blood here.Nothing, only silent hunger.Children steal the bread here and ask and ask and askAnd all would wish to sleep, keep silent, andjust go to sleep again...The heaviest wheel rolls across our foreheadsTo bury itself deep somewhere inside our memories.Poems from:I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children's Drawings and Poems from TerezínConcentration Camp, 1942-1944. The Holocaust was the persecution and systematic killing of 6, , European Jews by Nazi Germany during World War II. Jews in Germany and the annexed nation of Austria wererounded up and placed in slave labor camps. This breakdown of moral and ethicalstandards seems all the more remarkable in medical professionals. This idea appealed to the ancient prejudice and hatred felt toward Jewsand once the party achieved power in 1933 they began to persecute them. Peoplecome to believe in the righteousness of their causes through various means--government propaganda, ancient grudges, fears, and 'enlightened'distortions of science. http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/arts/litVicti.htmLandau, Ronnie S. Hana Volavkova, New York:Schocken, 1993. One question that this raises is how could doctors, who aresupposedly trained to help and to avoid hurting people, perpetrate thesecrimes? One of the most horrifying aspects of the living death of theconcentration camps was the use of the victims in brutal medicalexperiments performed by German doctors who served in the army or were NaziParty members. Never Again: A History of the Holocaust. These experiences and theinformation acquired suggest that moral and historical education are theonly ways to avoid the repetition of genocide.The Holocaust The Holocaust was the murder of 6, , Jews by Germany's NationalSocialist, or Nazi, regime during World War II. The strange ideas taught in the medical schools and the generalsocial belief in inferior peoples certainly had some effect on the choicesof these doctors. Online.http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/arts/litVicti.htm Perhaps the most infamous experiments were thosecarried out at Auschwitz by Dr. Joseph Mengele on twins, dwarfs, andpersons with congenital defects. Works CitedBarondess, Jeremiah A. The SS (Schutzstaffeln, or Guard Troops) was given total control overthe program. Bylaw the Jews were not allowed to attend school or to work in most jobs, andat the same time the Nazis organized a huge propaganda campaign depictingthem as "parasitic, scheming, manipulative and venomous" and, basically, asless-than-human beings that would continue to infect the Aryan race if theywere not removed from Europe (Landau 59). In the end the Nazis exterminated at least 6 million Jews. Their plans consisted of an astonishing organized effort inwhich trains carried deported Jews from all over Europe to central pointsand then distributed them to the slave-labor and death camps where themobile gassing units were replaced by large, efficient gas chambers. Hana Volavkova, New York: Schocken, 1993. But, like everyone else involved in the death camps atany level, they had to make a personal decision to condone or activelycarry out these hideous tortures. The Germansunderstood that, no matter how well-indoctrinated the SS members may havebeen about the 'sub-human' status of the Jewish victims, it was stilldifficult for them to be exposed to so much death. Even the brief poems that I read, "The Butterfly" and "Terezín"by inmates of the Terezín ghetto, had this strain of hope mingled withincredible sadness and a realistic view of the possible outcome of beingmade to live in such a terrible place. It is astonishing aswe are shown one horrible genocide after another how many times this crimehas happened even within the last 1 years. Then after Hitler started thewar in 1939 with the attack on Poland the Jews of that nation were placedin prison-like ghettoes in the major cities and left to starve and die ofdisease. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.