Not Only The Jews Essay Research Paper

Not Only The Jews Essay, Research Paper

We often hear about WWII and the 6 million Jews who perished as well. However, the millions of other victims are often overlooked and need to be given there consideration. Are the Jews Central to the holocaust. Was there really other people discriminated as much. The first research in the late 1940 s and early 1950s focused on the Jewishness of the Holocaust. Modern research has begun to deal with the suddering of other victims of the Nazi genocide. For example, homosexuals, Gypsies, prisoners of war, Russians, poles, Catholic priests, Jehovah s Witnesses and other were more or less systematically murdered as the Holocaust continued. By the end of the war, as many as 6 million of these people had been killed, along with between 5 to 6 million Jews.

Roma (Gypsies) were among the groups singled out on racial grounds for persecution by the Nazi regime and most of its allies. The Nazis judged Roma to be “racially inferior,” and the fate of Roma in some ways paralleled that of the Jews. Roma were subjected to internment, forced labor, and massacre. They were also subject to deportation to extermination camps.Mobile killing units killed tens of thousands of Roma in the German-occupied eastern territories. Further, thousands were killed in the Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka extermination camps. The Nazis also incarcerated thousands of Roma in the Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen, and Ravensbrueck concentration camps.

There were nonetheless several deportations of Roma. About 2,500 Roma were deported to Poland in April and May 1940. Most of them were starved and worked to death. Those who fell sick or became crippled were shot. Another 5,000 Roma were deported to Lodz, where they were held in a separate area within the Lodz ghetto. Those who survived the horrible conditions in the Lodz ghetto were later deported from the ghetto to the Chelmno extermination camp, where they were killed in gas vans. Roma in Germany were deported to Auschwitz, where a special camp was designated for them in Auschwitz.”Gypsy family camp.” Entire families were incarcerated together. Twins and dwarves, however, were separated out and subjected to medical experiments under SS Captain Dr. Josef Mengele. Nazi physicians also used Romani prisoners in medical experiments at the Ravensbrueck, Natzweiler-Struthof, and Sachsenhausen camps.

In German-occupied areas of Europe, the fate of Roma varied from country to country, depending on local circumstances. The Nazis generally interned Roma and later transported them to Germany or Poland for use as forced laborers or to be killed. Many Roma from Poland, the Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, Yugoslavia, and Albania were shot or were deported to extermination camps and killed. In the Baltic states and the German-occupied areas of the Soviet Union, mobile killing units killed Roma at the same time that they killed Jews and Communist leaders. Thousands of Romani men, women, and children were killed in these actions. Many Roma were shot along with Jews at Babi Yar, near Kiev, for example.

The “Gypsy family camp” at Auschwitz was riddled with epidemics–typhus, smallpox, and dysentery–which severely reduced the camp population. In May 1944, the Germans decided to liquidate the camp. As the SS surrounded the camp, they were met by Roma armed with iron pipes and the like. The Germans retreated and postponed the liquidation. Later that same month, the SS transferred about 1,500 Roma who were still capable of work out of the family camp. Almost 1,500 more were transferred in August. The remaining Roma, about 3,000, were killed. At least 19,000 of the 23,000 Roma sent to Auschwitz died there.

It is not known precisely how many Roma were killed in the Holocaust. While exact figures or percentages cannot be ascertained, people estimate that the Germans and their allies killed between 25 and 50 percent of all European Roma. Of the approximately one million Roma living in Europe before the war, up to 220,000 were killed. After the war, discrimination against Roma continued as the Federal Republic of Germany decided that all measures taken against Roma before 1943 were legitimate policies of state and were not subject to restitution.

Historians in Germany argue about how universal the historical character of national socialism was. One conservative faction would like to view the communist system as responsible for fascism. Because Marxism was

victorious in Russia, the Fascist parties were able to win in Italy and Germany. This speculation claims that the destruction of social class distinctions by the Bolsheviks prepared the way for racial murders of the Nazis. The extermination of the Jews is presented as a distorted copy of a previous model, rather

than as a unique occurrence. Other social scientists have protested against viewing Nazi crimes in such a relativistic way. They see an aura of normality being created and fear that the basic anti fascist consensus in the Federal republic might end. They are also apprehensive about the analogy to current politics and warn against a restoration by means of history.

Extermination or Reeducation. The concentration camp was one

weapon in the campaign to bring state and society into conformity with fascism. If physical extermination formed the most frightful in