Never Again

     


   In Naimarks "Fires of Hatred," he talks about both genocide and ethnic cleansing. So far in what I have read, it has been very honest and very straight to the point. In order to go further into the subject of the Holocaust we must know what genocide and ethnic cleansing means. Although they are similar in nature, they mean two different things. Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. On the other hand, ethnic cleansing is the process of eliminating unwanted ethnic or religious groups and wiping out their entire ethnic background such as; music, food, religion, dances, and anything that has to do with that particular race. The Holocaust was more of a genocide and a mass murder of a particular group, the Jews. It did not matter where they lived, Hitler wanted them all gone, because he looked at them as an inferior race and a disease. On page 59 in his book, Naimark makes a reference to Hitler's Mein Kampf, saying that the Jews were disease-carrying lice, vermin, bed bugs, or fleas that had to be exterminated lest they infect the healthy body of German society. He also states that they were tumors that had to be cut out. Hitler thought that if this did not happen, all of Europe would die of "the Jewish disease."

        I thankfully do not have too many real life examples of experiencing anything like genocide or ethnic cleansing, but I did however visit the Holocaust museum on my trip to Washington D.C. and it was very moving and one of the most powerful things I have ever walked through in my entire life. The museum had a number of artifacts that came straight from the Holocaust such as some of the boxcars the Jews were transported in, raggedy shoes from the Jews that lived in the camps, some of the uniforms the Nazis made the Jews wear, and they even had one of the furnaces that was at Auschwitz. The whole experience was very powerful and I am glad I got to visually see some of the images.

       While looking for articles to connect with this chapter in this book, I found one that focused solely on the Jewish children during the time of the Holocaust. The article goes on to state how vulnerable children were during this period of time and how much of a disadvantage they were especially at. Since the Nazis did not see them as being productive and were generally too young to be forced to labor, they just killed them off whenever they got to the camps. They also looked at them as unproductive and wastes of space. They were always the first ones killed off at these kill sites. Here is the article in case you want to read it


http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005142