Persecution Of Jews In Nazi Germany

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Dehumanization of the Jews in Nazi Germany
¡§ The world is too dangerous to live in, not because of the people who do evil, But because of the people who sit and let it happen.¡¨ -Albert Einstein.
The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and attempted annihilation of the European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. According to Frank Chalk from the Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies , ¡§Genocide is a form of one sided mass killings in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and members are defined by the perpetrator usually on the basis of whatever they share, national, ethnic, racial, religious, political, geographical, ideological...¡¨. Genocide is always a conscious choice and policy. It is never an accident of history. Before the Holocaust could occur, the Nazi¡¦s had to be able to systematically dehumanize the Jews.
Propaganda was an important weapon in getting other Germans to accept the way the Jews would be treated. ¡§Propaganda, Propaganda, Propaganda. All that matters is Propaganda!¡¨ ( Ross 1993, 16) Adolf Hitler is supposed to have said this after he had failed to seize power in Germany. And he was right. Propaganda, a war of words and pictures, is said to be ¡§The fight for mankind.¡¨ ( Ross 1993, 9) Propaganda¡¦s aim is to persuade people to reach a conclusion without examining the evidence carefully. There is a disregard for truth in which people will go to all lengths to make one side ¡¥right¡¦ and triumphant and the other side blackened and disgraced as the enemy. Effective propaganda was one of a number of steps taken in the systematic dehumanization, persecution and finally annihilation of the Jews.
Anti-Semitism had been present in Germany and Europe for many years, but increased dramatically under the Nazis. The state of Germany after World War One was poor. The country was in a shambles, politically and econom...