What was the Holocaust?

Essay by VolcomStudJunior High, 7th gradeA+, February 2004

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What was the Holocaust? The Holocaust was the mass murder of 6 million Jews during World War II (1939-1945). This was one of the most tragic times in mankind. The Nazis isolated the Jews from the rest of the world and would late mark them for total annihilation. The Nazi's racial definition was anyone who had Jewish blood. So it was even someone with one Jewish grandparent, and so they were to be killed. The Nazis just rounded up the Jews in the countries they had occupied during World War II. The reason the Holocaust happened was not a good one. It happened because of Hitler's racial beliefs against the Jewish. Hitler promoted prejudice, which turned to hate and the persecution of an ethnic group, the Jews. Men, women, and children died horrible deaths just because they were Jewish.

Their everyday life was not easy for them at all.

At first just some of their rights were taken away. The Germans would also treat them like crap, they would make them scrub the streets with toothbrushes and the Germans would destroy Jewish owned stores and their houses. A survivor of this nightmare, writer Elie Wiesel said, "Not all victims were Jewish, but all Jews were victims." Then it got bigger they were relocated to ghettos. The Jews were forced out of their home and move with what ever they could carry and what ever was left behind the Germans would take. Fences that had barbed wires and guards surrounded the ghettos. Ghetto life was hunger, squalor, disease, and despair. Fifteen people might live in apartment meant for four. Food was denied to people who already had their 1,100 calories a day. Dead bodies were left on streets everywhere in the ghetto. To the Nazis the ghettos were viewed as...