Brief historical background on anti-semitism and the Holocaust

Brief Historical Background on Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust
The Holocaust was the systematic, planned destruction of the Jewish people during the year 1933-1945. Six million Jews, one-third of the world's Jewish population, were annihilated by the Nazis. Millions of other people those who opposed the Nazis, those who didn't fit the "Aryan myth" of a perfect race, and those who endangered their lives by harboring Jews were also destroyed.
Nazi policies of expulsion and annihilation of the Jews were built on centuries of discrimination. Edicts of canon law and policies of other governments imposed severe restrictions on the Jews. At first, there was the period of conversion which meant "You cannot live among us as Jews." As early as 321, Roman emperors and theologians withdrew ancient privileges to the Jews if they did not convert to Christianity. For example, Jews were excluded from high office or from military careers. Rabbis were prohibited from performing religious responsibilities.
By the Middle Ages, the policy of expulsion was enforced in many countries. This meant, "You cannot live among us." Cannon policy stated that Jews were the enemies of the Church. As a result, Jews were expelled in the 11th century from such places as Rouen and Orleans in France and in the late 13th century from England.
Organized massacres of Jews took place in German and French towns in 1096. By 1215, there was a church law requiring Jews to wear a special mark. In German countries, Jews sewed a disk or badge to their clothing. In 1492, Jews who had not converted were expelled from Spain. By 1550, Jews were forced to live in ghettos in many countries. Some of the most violent pogroms against the Jews were organized by Chmielnicki in 1648 in Poland.
During the 18th century, the period of enlightenment, Judaism was often referred to as a "superstition" that had to be removed. Posters called "broadsheets" in Germany and England pictured Jews as the devil or indulging in forbidden foods.
In the 19th century, there was a revival of fierce discrimination against the Jews. German peasants rioted against them. A wave of pogroms took place in more than 160 towns in Russia in 1881. Spurious literature, the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," was published in 1905 by the Czarist secret police. This pamphlet proclaimed that Jews had an international network to control the world.
Twentieth century Europe, however, brought forth the most virulent discrimination against the Jews. Immediately following World War I, Simon Petliura organized the pogroms in more than 500 places between Russia and Poland, claiming that the Jews were allies of the Bolsheviks. The Nazis, then, had precedents for the "Final Solution," or annihilation, of the Jews. This meant, "You cannot live."
In state-sponsored legal decrees, the "Final Solution" became Nazi government policy. Not all victims were Jews, but the "Final Solution" meant that all Jews were victims.

Dachau, the first concentration camp, was opened in 1933 for political prisoners. The first gassings and mass murders killed Germans who were victims of the myth of Aryan supremacy because they were infirm, mentally retarded, or emotionally disturbed. Russian prisoners of war were the first victims in the death block in Auschwitz, built in 1942. Genocidal acts were committed against the gypsies. Also, Many members of the Polish intelligentsia were killed, and Polish children were taken from their parents all in an effort to make the Polish people permanently subservient to the Nazis.
The Holocaust was to culminate in a massive industry of death camps and slave labor camps places such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno, Maidanek, and Belzec in which virtually all who entered were murdered. However, the Holocaust did not begin with bold or even unusually brutality. It began gradually with discrimination, segregation, isolation, and economic strangulation. Anti-Semitic acts were endorsed by the state, making the victims feel insecure and unwelcome.
By 1935, two years after Hitler came to power, the German government introduced systematic legislation defining Jews and segregating them from Aryan, or pure German, society. Aryans were considered worthy while other peoples were "destined to servitude." The Jews, the gypsies, the mentally retarded, the infirm, and the elderly were considered unworthy of life.
The Nuremberg legislation of 1935 defined the Jews as a racial group on the basis of the religious identity of their grandparents, without regard to the religion they practiced, the identity they affirmed, or the views they held. The Jews were called "vermin to be exterminated." Between 1935 and 1939, Jews were removed from the civil service, courts and commerce, and schools and universities. Jews could not employ Aryans in their homes. Jewish doctors could only care for the Jews.
Following Nuremberg legislation, the persecution of the Jews intensified. At the Evian Conference, in 1938, delegates of 32 nations agreed not to open their boundaries for Jewish immigration. On November 9, 1938, 191 synagogues in Germany and Austria were burned, thousands of Jewish businesses were looted, and 20,000 Jews were arrested. So great was the destruction that this evening was called Kristallnacht, the "Night of the Broken Glass."
The Germany army advanced on both Western and Eastern fronts. War only quickened the pace and the scale of the killings. The Nazis increased their use of force and violence after a country surrendered and its people were subdued. In 1940 and 1941, mobile killing unties known as Einzatzgruppen followed the invading Nazi armies eastward and killed millions of Jews by rounding them up, bringing them to the edge of a city or town, and shooting them one at a time.
More than 1,500,000 Jews were killed in this process, as were thousands of Soviet political leaders, intellectuals and scholars, teachers, journalists and writers, all without charges or a trial. They became victims of a disciplined killing process that used the confusion of the immediate post-invasion period to eliminate whole families and entire villages.
The scope broadened as Nazi officials wondered if they could find a better way of killing people. In January 1942, nazi officials outlined plans for mass extermination of Jews

by gassing. Some existing concentration camps were enlarged, while others were newly constructed, often near major railroad intersections in Poland and Germany.
The Nazis deported to the camps Jews, gypsies, and a host of other people they deemed undesirable. Some worked as slave laborers and others were maintained as prisoners, but most were killed immediately in gas chambers. At the height of this campaign, 10,000 people were killed each day at Auschwitz, and the numbers killed at other death camps were not far behind.
Some people tried to resist the Nazis. In uprisings in ghettos such as the Warsaw Ghetto and even in the extermination camps, Jews resisted not because they expected to win, because in doing so they affirmed their honor and dignity. They resisted in hundreds of small ways such as practicing their faith, teaching the young, and remaining humane and compassionate. Some even resisted by resorting to arms.
Many Jews tried to evade the Nazis by hiding. It was often difficult to find a place to hide because a family that hid Jews could be killed. Some brave and noble individuals the citizens of the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in France, the German industrialist Oskar Schindler in Poland, and many Danish people defied the Nazis by providing shelter to the victims.
Thousands of other ordinary men and women saved individuals and families they often didn't even know while putting themselves and their own families at great risk. These valiant people were few in comparison to the many more who turned their backs and closed their eyes. Indifference, complacency, and collaboration were more prevalent than was resistance throughout occupied Europe.
When Allied soldiers liberated the concentration camps, they found a starving remnant of the people chosen by the Nazis for destruction. Emaciated skeletons were evidence of people who suffered from malnutrition. Six million Jews had been killed, while only a few hundred thousand European Jews remained. Millions of other innocent victims men, women, children, gypsies, Poles, Slavs, and Jehovah Witnesses also had been killed as the Nazis pursued two policies: implementing a "Final Solution" to eliminate the Jews, and establishing racial perfection in the world by eliminating or making subservient all the "inferior" peoples of Europe. (Source: "Foundations of the Holocaust," Yad Vashem)