The Shoah: an argumentative essay on the extermination of the Jews during the Second World War. Reflections and thoughts on the Shoah.
Theme on the Shoah
Shoah is a Hebrew word that means total destruction, catastrophe. More precisely, this term indicates the systematic and planned destruction of the Jewish population that occurred between the end of the thirties and 1945. Undoubtedly, a term that is used together with the word Shoah is holocaust , which originally indicated a religious sacrifice in which the body of the animal was entirely burned; subsequently the term was associated precisely with the Shoah .
To be more precise, the period of history referred to is the one that goes from January 30, 1933, when Hitler became German chancellor, until the end of the war, on May 8, 1945.
The question of how many Jewish victims there were is very difficult to answer; at the time, no precise counts were kept, or perhaps they were made to disappear, but according to recent research, the Jewish losses were between 5.5 and 6 million. It should not be forgotten, however, that it was not only the Jews who were persecuted; among the groups sought were gypsies, Serbs, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Germans opposed to Nazism , partisans and resistance fighters , criminals, Slavs, the mentally ill, the disabled and beggars.
The places where these murders were committed were the extermination camps, places where the deportees were burned and buried in mass graves. When speaking, or rather writing about this subject, everyone will remember Auschwitz. It is a complex of camps, in German-occupied Poland, consisting of a concentration camp Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II (Birkenau) and the labor camp Auschwitz III (Monowitz). In this complex, between 1.1 and 1.3 million people were killed, 90% of whom were Jews. When speaking about Nazism, the Holocaust and extermination camps, racism must be mentioned . Racism is the term used to indicate theories and behaviors based on the belief that cultural manifestations and historical events of men depend on the race to which they belong and that there is a race that has dominion over all humanity.
Based on racism, racial laws were also enacted : the law on German citizenship and the law for the defense of German blood and honor, the central point of anti-Jewish behavior. The first was enacted on September 15, 1935 and declared that Jews were not citizens but subjects of the Reich. The second, enacted on November 14 of the same year, prohibited mixed marriages and any other behavior that could contaminate the Aryan race. These two laws, called the Nuremberg laws , had an enormous weight: Jews were expelled from public offices, from public administration, from the press… The same concepts were also applied to races considered inferior.
The architect of all this was Adolf Hitler (born in Braunau on April 20, 1889), a German with great political aspirations. If we want to put an end to this tragic event, we can place it with the Nuremberg trials , which took place on November 20, 1945, in which all the surviving leaders of the Third Reich were tried. The defendants were more than twenty-one and were accused of crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes.The sentence was passed on October 1, 1946, and the execution took place on the night of October 16.
Certainly we cannot say that the effect of this catastrophe has not reached our times and that racism no longer exists. And it is certain that racism is a plant difficult to eradicate: if we take the example of the black Americans deported in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we know that the American Red Cross kept “black” blood separate from “white” blood even during the Second World War .
Conclusion
In conclusion, the Shoah and racism in general are two brutal phenomena that must not be forgotten; this is why the day of remembrance was established, which in Italy is celebrated on 27 January every year, the date on which the Auschwitz extermination camp was liberated in 1945 .
An extra help for your themes
Being able to write a good essay in Middle and High School is essential to be able to communicate effectively, develop your cognitive skills, prepare for the world of university and work, improve your creativity. Knowing how to write well, in fact, tells a lot about yourself and for this reason it is important to know how to do it in the best way. Here are some tools that can be useful to you:
