Question: How were the Jewish people dehumanized by Adolf Hilter's and his plan to create the perfect Aryan race during World War II within the concentration camps?
World War II was the first war to have mass media as a means to fund war efforts. Since citizens were encouraged to contribute, gaining their support was crucial to winning. Unfortunately, this process left many, particularly Jewish people, at a disadvantage, who were dehumanized during and after World War II through the use of such techniques as concentration camps.
Concentration camps were used by Adolf Hitler in order to exterminate the people who did not fit his criteria of the “Aryan race,” consisting of blonde, blue-eyed, and pale-skinned people. While in the concentration camps, Jewish people suffered many atrocities. In an interview, Eugene Black, a Holocaust survivor, described the inhumane things he endured. “And we were given our uniform, we were given, registered, my number became 55546. I lost my identity, my name, I lost everything within a very very short while.”[1] They were stripped of rights, isolated from neighbors, displaced to ghettos, required to wear Jewish stars, and herded into crowded ghettos where overwork, disease, and starvation marked the days.[2] Black explained that, in the camps, “[s]anitation didn’t existed. Of course by that time we became very very lousy. We had lice crawling all over us.”[3] Anyone living in the concentration camps was stripped of their human dignity. Jewish people were forced to be the “human material” in experiments.[4] Anatomist Dr. August Hirt, director of the Institute for Anatomy and SS-Hauptsturmführer, from 1941 until 1944, experimented on Natzweiler concentration camp inmates.[5] In doing so, Hitler was able to present them as subhuman to the rest of the world. World War II was fueled by Adolf Hitler in order to gain land for the ultimate race for which he intended to wipe out the Jewish and any other marginalized peoples. [1] "Eugene's Story, Chapter 3,” Holocaust Learning, 2010, Accessed April 6, 2015, http://holocaustlearning.org/uploads/pdf/Eugene_chapter_3.pdf. [2] Lawrence N. Powell, “The Holocaust and History: Introduction to the Survivors' Stories,” Holocaust Survivors, 1999, Accessed April 7, 2015, http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org/data.show.php?di=record&da=texts&ke=6. [3] "Eugene's Story, Chapter 5,” Holocaust Learning, 2010, Accessed April 6, 2015, http://holocaustlearning.org/uploads/pdf/Eugene_chapter_5.pdf. [4]Gerhard Baader, Susan E. Lederer, Morris Low, Florian Schmaltz, and Alexander V. Schwerin, "Pathways to Human Experimentation, 1933-1945: Germany, Japan, and the United States,” Osiris 20:205-31, Accessed April 8, 2015, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3655257. [5] Ronald Paul Hill and Elizabeth Hirschman, "Human Rights Abuses by the Third Reich: New Evidence from the Nazi Concentration Camp Buchenwald,” Human Rights Quarterly 18, no. 4, 848-67, Accessed April 7, 2015, http://www.jstor.org/stable/762597. |
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Bibliography
Baader, Gerhard, Susan E. Lederer, Morris Low, Florian Schmaltz, and Alexander V. Schwerin. "Pathways to Human Experimentation, 1933-1945: Germany, Japan, and the United States." Osiris 20:205-31. Accessed April 8, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3655257.
"Eugene Black | Slave Labourer and Camp Survivor." Eugene Black, Holocaust Survivor. 2010. Accessed April 7, 2015.
http://holocaustlearning.org/survivors/eugene-black.
Hill, Ronald Paul, and Elizabeth Hirschman. "Human Rights Abuses by the Third Reich: New Evidence from the Nazi Concentration Camp Buchenwald." Human Rights Quarterly 18, no. 4, 848-67. Accessed April 7, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/762597.
Powell, Lawrence N. "The Holocaust and History: Introduction to the Survivors' Stories." Holocaust Survivors. 1999. Accessed April 7, 2015.
http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org/data.show.php?di=record&da=texts&ke=6.
Baader, Gerhard, Susan E. Lederer, Morris Low, Florian Schmaltz, and Alexander V. Schwerin. "Pathways to Human Experimentation, 1933-1945: Germany, Japan, and the United States." Osiris 20:205-31. Accessed April 8, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3655257.
"Eugene Black | Slave Labourer and Camp Survivor." Eugene Black, Holocaust Survivor. 2010. Accessed April 7, 2015.
http://holocaustlearning.org/survivors/eugene-black.
Hill, Ronald Paul, and Elizabeth Hirschman. "Human Rights Abuses by the Third Reich: New Evidence from the Nazi Concentration Camp Buchenwald." Human Rights Quarterly 18, no. 4, 848-67. Accessed April 7, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/762597.
Powell, Lawrence N. "The Holocaust and History: Introduction to the Survivors' Stories." Holocaust Survivors. 1999. Accessed April 7, 2015.
http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org/data.show.php?di=record&da=texts&ke=6.