Human rights abuses in Germany during holocaust

1. Holocaust
Why can’t we live together?

2. Introduction
► Is man really a social being?
► Human dignity is violated in the name of
having superior race and ethnicity
► Many abuses and atrocities are committed in
the name of expanding or showing the
superiority of a group.

3. •Most groups believe that their problems
could be solved by eliminating the
other groups, to prevent such,
understanding the history of the
holocaust can help in avoiding genocide
in the future

4. Epistemology of Holocaust
►Holocaust is a word derived from the Greek word “holokauston”
►the Greek word is a translation of the Hebrew word Olah meaning
“a brunt sacrifice offered whole to God.”
►This argument further holds that choose of word came because
the bodies of victims of Nazi were wholly consumed in cremation
and open fire

5. •Most groups believe that their problems
could be solved by eliminating the
other groups, to prevent such,
understanding the history of the
holocaust can help in avoiding genocide
in the future

6. ►Holocaust in this context, as the
systematic state-sponsored killing of six
million Jewish men, women and
children and others which History.com
(2009) that others were Gypsies and
homosexuals by Nazi Germany and its
collaborators during the World War II.

7. ►The German referred to the holocaust
as “the final solution to the Jewish
question”

8. Background to Holocaust/ Rationales
►Housden (2007) argued that before
Hitler assumed power that there were
less than one percent of the German
population and the German Jews were
well educated, respectable citizens and
worked in most professional fields such
as banking, medicine, and law.

9. Background to Holocaust/ Rationales
►The German Jews were at that time
accorded equal legal rights by the
constitutions of the German Empire and
the Weimar Republic despite the equal
rights but the anti-Jewish feelings made it
impossible for the Jewish to occupy
traditionally elite Institutions like the
Prussian Civil Service or Officer Crops.

10. Background to Holocaust/ Rationales
►The stigmatation of the Jewish people was
not Halter’s idea.
►According to History.com (2009) that before
holocaust there were evident of hostility.
►For instance, Martin Luther founder of the
Protestants churches what can be termed to be
hate speech.
►Then followed by the pagans in German because
of their Christian heritage.

11. Background to Holocaust/ Rationales
►The stigmatation of the Jewish people was
not Halter’s idea.
►The root of Hitter’s anti-Semitism was unclear
(History.com, 2009).
►It can be traced that Hitler blamed the Jews
counterpart for the country’s defeat in 1918.
►After the war, Hitler joined the National German
Worker’s party, which later became the National
Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP), known to

12. Background to Holocaust/ Rationales
►After the war, Hitler joined the National
German Worker’s party, which later became
the National Socialist German Worker’s Party
(NSDAP), known to English Speakers as the
Nazis.

13. Background to Holocaust/ Rationales
►The anti-Semitism was propagated through
educational system, Press and a movie titled “Der
ewige Jude (“The Eternal/Wandering Jew”) that
gave the image that the Jewish people were not
human beings but pets which had to be
exterminated since that the killing of Jesus was
not a crime but a necessity (Welch 1994; p.143).

14. Background to Holocaust/ Rationales
►The origin of the anti-Semitism can be further be rooted
in 1923, when Hitler was imprisoned for treason in the
Beer Hall Putsch (History.com. 2009).
►Hitler wrote a memoir and propaganda tract “Mein
Kampf” (my struggle), in which he predicted a general
European war that would result in “the extermination of
the Jewish race in Germany” but Welch (1994) argued
that exterminated were not the Jews but “unhealthy”
Germans (p.137) through sterilization of people suffering
from inherited diseases.

15. Background to Holocaust/ Rationales
►According to Rothney and Findley (2002) that the book
“Mein Kampf” lead to Hitler successful objectives.
►Hitler was a “social Darwinist” who believed that among
species there is a survival of the fittest.
►Hitter was obsessed by the superiority of the “pure”
German race, which he called “Ayan”, and with the need
for “Lebensraum”, or a living space in the east for that
race to expand especially from the Soviet Union that
were regarded as the “racially inferior race.

16. Background to Holocaust/ Rationales
►After his released from prison, Hitter took advantage of
the weakness of his rivals and promoted his party status.
►He was named chancellor of the Germans on January 20,
1933 and after the death of president Paul van
Hindenburg, Hitter anointed himself as “fuhrer”,
becoming Germany’s supreme ruler.
►After the Nazi electoral victory in March 1933, the Nazi
group went on a rampage, assaulting Jews, damaging
their properties and demanding a” Jewish free” economy
(Welch 1994, p. 137).

17. Background to Holocaust/ Rationales
►The official move against the Jewish people was
the announcement made by Hitler on September
1935 on further batch of anti-Jewish legislation
(appendix 1.0 from Modern European History
P.138-141).
►Holoculst can be said to have started after
German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941
and then implemented on 20 January1942 after the
Wannsee Conference (Welch, 1994).

18. Background to Holocaust/ Rationales
►The war could have been aviated as U.S. War
Department refused to divert planes conducting
raids near Auschwitz to bomb the gas chambers
and the railway lines leading to the death camp
(Keylor, 2010, p. 177).

19. Background to Holocaust /Rationales
►At the end, twenty-two top Nazi leaders in the
city of Bavarian city of Nuremberg from November
1945 to September 1946 were some sentenced to
ten years imprisonment and some to death but
three who were saved contributed a new term to
vocabulary of international law: “crimes against
humanity”.