Around
one million children’s lives were taken during the horrific events that took
place during the Holocaust. Young, innocent kids, with potential of bright
futures, had their lives stripped from them with no real cause at hand. The Nazi’s
of 1945 took terrorizing to a whole new extreme that would never be accepted in
today’s society. However, were they really the ones to blame for the cruel
series of events against the Jews? Did this time period actually entail
everything that has been said of it? Yes: the events of the Holocaust were
alarming to many and should be considered a historically important time period.
They cannot and should not be called a “hoax.”
The Holocaust is known as the total of all
anti-Jewish action shown by the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945. Many
journals, articles, and personal interviews with survivors show that it was a
very traumatizing experience for those involved. However, a great amount of the
population throughout the world today believe that everything about it was a
hoax. Holocaust denial is a way of attempting to negate the clearly established
facts of the Nazi genocide of European Jewry (Yelland, 551). They have taken
issues, twisted them around, and gotten people to believe that many aspects
related to the Holocaust are fake.
Citizens are using this as a form of propaganda to reduce the public
sympathy towards the Jews, to undermine the legitimacy
of the State of Israel (believed to be created in compensation for Jew
suffering), and to draw attention to particular issues or viewpoints. While Americans
are subject to the freedom of speech and can say whatever they please, denying
and convincing people that this traumatizing event was not real is immature and
unacceptable.
Believers of the Holocaust fraud say
that the gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp never actually existed. They
say that there are no autopsy reports of any Nazi gassing victims from any
western doctors. The argument was made that while there were thousands of
corpses available in the concentration camps by the end of the war, and while
up to 1,000 autopsies were performed “none showed any evidence of death by
poison gas or poison.” However, with much evidence, the gas chambers were a
real tool and caused the death of many Jews imprisoned in the German camps. How
do we know that the Germans did indeed use the gas chamber method? For one,
many written documents have been provided as evidence against this scam. This
includes items such as orders for Zyklon-B gas, and blueprints/ orders for
building materials for the crematories. Another important aspect when proving
they were real are the eyewitness testimonies given by not only diaries of
survivors, but the confession of guards and commanders stationed at these
camps. One of the most horrifying testimonies came from an SS officer Kurt
Gerstein, who gave an account from when he visited the death camps Treblinka
and Belzec in August of 1942. During this visit he was a witness to the mass
gassing of men, women, and children. While he knew what was going on there, he
was still shocked by what he had seen. Gurstein stated, was
one of the handful of people who had seen every corner of the establishment,
and certainly only one to have visited it not as an enemy of this gang of
murderers and not agree…” This was only one of many first person experiences
shared about the tragic deaths of many through the gas chambers. If the written
documents and eyewitness testimonies aren’t enough, there are also many
photographs of not only the camps, but the “secret photos” taken of the burning
bodies and smuggled out of Auscwhitz to top it off, and prove the gas chambers
played a tremendous role in the death of many Jews during the Holocaust.
Believers of the “Holocaust Hoax” also
try to make their argument seem valid by throwing the United States under the
bus, and stating that cremation is not bad, and is used on a daily basis in
America. While crematory is a common method of saving your loved ones, it is
not used in the same form today that it was during the Holocaust. In today’s
society, cremation is used as a more convenient way of keeping a precious
person close to you no matter what the circumstance. It can be kept close to one’s
heart, and also kept very sacred. The Crematoriums located in the concentration
camps could rotate around 1,440 corpses within 24 hours (Caldwell, 13). There
was no “savoring” during this process. They argue that cremation is the number
one most recommended way to dispose of corpses, in order to prevent the spread
of many contagious diseases through ground water. Yet, if these innocent people
were not put through the gas chamber and murdered against their own will, there
would be no need to dispose this extreme amount of corpses “efficiently.
Another argument made as to why it should be
considered a fraud, was that there was an “enormous amount of holocaust survivors.”
They argue that the numbers are well into the hundreds and thousands even sixty
years after the war. Why would there be that large of an amount of holocaust
survivors if the Nazis were going into it with the thought process of solely, “exterminating
the Jews?” This train of thought is where many people in the world today go
wrong. As of the year 2003, there were 1,092,000 holocaust survivors still
alive and well throughout the world (Gutwein, 37). When the Nazi’s first
transferred all of the Jews to these petrifying concentration camps, their goal
was to “herd them like sheep” and keep them out of the way of the Germans
society. As time went on, the conditions of these camps just grew worse and
worse. The gassing chambers were being built, and the Nazi’s turned this into
what some may call a “playing game.” While they may not have intended to
exterminate the Jews from the beginning, the outcome of the camps was used for
one purpose- and one purpose only. For the ones fortunate enough to make it out
alive, their lives would never be the same from that point on. They were beaten
and tortured to the point that getting sent to the gas chamber sounded more
pleasing than being alive (Rosenfel, 83). This became the Nazi’s goal, to make
sure that the Jews were in misery, and they did whatever it took to make them
feel this way. In an interview with Theodore
Hass (holocaust survivor) he talks about the steps taken by the Nazis to de-humanize
people and make them feel hopeless:
“If you had treated an animal in Germany the way we
were treated, you would have been jailed. For example, a guard or a group of
them would single out prisoner and beat him with canes or a club. Sometimes
to further terrorize a prisoner, the guards would form a circle around a
prisoner and beat him unconscious. There were cases of a prisoner being told to
report to the Revier (“Hospital”) and being forced to drink a quart of casor
oil. Believe me, this is a lousy, painful, wretched way to die. You developextreme
diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, and sever dehydration. If the Nazis wanted you to
live and suffer more, they would take measures to rehydrate to victim” (Zelman,
para. 7).
That
is just one answer, from one interview out of many people declaring the pain
and agony they felt while being imprisoned in these camps. While they may have
made it out of the camps alive, they were tortured then and are still tortured
today with the memories of the pain and sorrow they went through at that point
in their lives.
There is plenty of evidence
available to any person who wants to find it, showing why the Holocaust
happened, and why it was very important to history. Some do not agree with this
and like to believe that everything about the Holocaust is very deceiving. It
may be hard to believe that some humans would find it acceptable to torture
other humans for no apparent reason. Gas chambers, crematories, and all the
stories of the trials these Jews were put through could be a very difficult
concept to grasp. No person today would like to think that any other human
would get to a point in life where they feel that it is adequate to put someone
through that much torment- for no apparent reason at all. However, there was a time period in this world
that doing this was made acceptable. Every event associated with the holocaust
were very much real, and changed the lives of many people, then and now. The
Holocaust should never be looked
over or labeled a “hoax:”. It has a very significant and unwavering place in
history, and will live in people’s hearts and minds forever.
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