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Dictionary of Gross Human Rights Violations

Holocaust

The Holocaust was the genocide of the Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and other groups perpetrated by Nazi Germany during the Second World War (1939-1945). Death estimates vary but about six million Jews, 220 000 Roma, 500 000, Serbs (killed by the Croat Ustase), and six million Poles (about half of which were Jewish) were systematically killed by the Nazi regime. Other groups that were persecuted and/or interned in concentration camps include Slavs, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Free Masons, Eastern (Orthodox) Christians, Communists and other political dissidents, and the mentally and physically challenged.

What made the Holocaust unique, relative to other genocides, was its sheer industrial scale. This was also one of its most horrifying components: the harnessing of aspects of modernity, such as technology, bureaucracy, and social psychology, in the service of mass murder. By examining the incremental progression of the Holocaust we can learn how societies can reach such horrible extremes, and how genocide might be prevented in the future. Even before the rise of the Nazi ideology, Germany (as well as other countries) was a society that was wracked by anti-Semitism and hateful propaganda against Jews. This laid the groundwork for the persecution and genocide that was to come. Before any mass killing of Jews occurred the German government implemented a whole series of discriminatory laws restricting such things as Jewish employment rights (Jews were fired from government and unionised positions) and marriage rights (marriages between Jews and other Germans were forbidden).

The level of persecution and intimidation of the Jews increased in the years leading up to the war, and eventually, (during the war) Jews were forced to live in overcrowded ghettos, and then sent to “concentration” camps. Jews were also relentless dehumanised, and deemed to be a “problem” or a disease rather than human beings. The killing of Jews began in a relatively disorganised and 'inefficient' manner with executions (shootings) by SS and police units.

On January 22, 1942 SS officials met with other bureaucrats at Wannsee (Berlin) in order to devise a plan for the “final solution” to annihilate the Jews. The implementation of this plan involved moving all Jews by railcar to camps where they would be killed en masse through the use of poison gas. Their bodies were then to be cremated. The camps were places of appalling cruelty were prisoners lived under horrible conditions and were subjected to torturous medical experiments. This plan was implemented by many specialised bureaucrats, each who had a role to play. This enabled a kind of disassociation of guilt as individuals felt that they were only “doing their job” and were not responsible for the totality of the evils being perpetrated. The industrial nature of the Holocaust also allowed the perpetrators to maintain a psychological distance from their victims (this was not possible in the earlier executions).

After the war, the principle perpetrators of the Holocaust were tried at the Nuremberg Tribunal where most of them were found guilty of crimes against humanity and either executed or imprisoned.

To this day the Holocaust serves not only as a reminder of the dangers of anti-Semitism and other forms of dehumanising discrimination, but also as a monument to the capacity of seemingly ordinary people to commit extraordinarily evil acts.

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