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Nick Hancock
Professor Wertz-Orbaugh
UWRT 1102-003
26 October 2015
The Unknown Details of the Holocaust
The Holocaust was described as an extreme form of genocide. Genocide is a planned
attempt to physically kill every single member of the targeted ethnic, national or racial group.
Such acts of genocide killed approximately 6 million Jews in a span of 12 years. Throughout the
article, the author describes why such actions of genocide were taken, how they were executed,
and what led to all of these actions taking place from the beginning.
It all had to start somehow. The Holocaust did not just happen on the spur of a moment,
and then no one tried to stop it. The way that the Holocaust all started was best described when
the author stated, The Holocaust did not happen suddenly, it was the end of a long process of
anti-Semitism. The Nazis had come to power in 1933,and used propaganda and terror to enforce
their anti-Semitic policies. Laws were passed by the Nazis called the Nuremburg Laws. These
laws took away all the human rights of Jews. They were not allowed to go to German schools or
universities, use sporting facilities, sit on park benches or run businesses. If they left Germany,
their property was taken away. These events hold great significance, as they allowed Hitler to
make the orders he made later on. This relates to my inquiry question, as I know the full
background as to how all these events were really triggered. These events, as previously stated,
were not just at the beginning of the killings. These events began to take place when these laws
were passed in order for Hitler and the Nazis to have such control over the Jews and their lives.

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To me, this matters because no one should be able to control you as the Nazis and Hitler
controlled the Jews. These laws were unjust and outright wrong.
The Nazis believed they had reason to kill the Jews. This reasoning was best explained
when the author stated, The Nazis believed that exterminating the Jews was justified because
the Jews were not only a low and evil race, but were affecting the lives of the Germans
negatively. Hitler and his Nazis blamed them for all of the social and economic problems in
Germany. As the pure Aryan race, it was therefore their right and obligation to get rid of the
Jews. Anti-Semitism was a large part of the Nazis ideologies. Hitler wanted to exterminate all
Jews. This quote is very helpful in explaining just why the Nazis did what they did. The Nazis
believed that the Jews were affecting the lives of the Germans negatively, and for that, they must
be killed. This is vital to my inquiry question as it allows me to answer the question as to what
triggered these events to occur. Such desire to kill the Jews came from the Nazis believing that
the Jews negatively affected their lives and that they were of the pure Aryan race.
Hitler and the Nazis showed that they put a vast amount of thought and strategizing into
the killing of the Jews. This was shown as the author stated, At first, men, women and children
were rounded up and shot by firing squads into mass graves. But, shooting by firing squads was
inefficient and too personal for the Nazi killers. Special death camps were therefore constructed.
The victims were crowded into cattle trucks and taken into these camps. Victims were ordered to
undress and were forced into gas chambers that were disguised as shower rooms. They were
locked, inside and poisonous gas was released into the room. They died within fifteen minutes.
This relates to my inquiry question as it describes how these victims were physically and
mentally harmed and the reasoning behind such acts. It basically seems as if this mass killing
was being run as a business to have the employees (soldiers) efficiently make the most product

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(dead bodies). Such crimes matter to me because no one will know how those Jews could have
impacted this world for the better, and instead, their lives were taken from them.
The Holocaust was a vicious act of genocide. The details of what, why, and how the
Holocaust occurred are detrimental in understanding this significant event in the worlds history.
Such crimes probably would not have ever occurred if the laws were not passed, if the Nazis and
Hitler did not feel as if Germans were negatively affected, and if there was not a strategic plan to
begin such acts.

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Works Cited
"How and Why Did the Holocaust Happen?" Www.sahistory.org. South African History Online, n.d.
Web. 23 Oct. 2015.