Holocaust Blog

Genocide, the word has nothing but negative connotations to it, but it has been a part of history for as long as we can remember. Genocide along with all its atrocity is a topic that is avoided but also very difficult to grasp. Why? How does all of this take place and how are humans capable of doing such evil and harming other lives for their own pleasure? We will never be able to understand this concept unless we are given power to manipulate people’s lives but we have some proof as to how these manipulations come about. Before the Holocaust, one of the most gruesome genocides known to mankind, a lot of propaganda surrounding certain ethnicities and stereotypes came about in the world especially Germany. Propaganda is made to specifically change or to go against a certain aspect of culture. The propaganda that was taking place in the 1930’s in Germany was focused on anti-semitism.

All of this propaganda was very strategically planned and worked very well because of that. The picture above shows a children’s book, “The Poisonous Mushroom” that was published during the 1930’s in Germany clearing expressing it’s antisemitism views. This children’s book shows how they targeted Germany’s youth, as children are fed whatever they are told and the hatred that they instil in them in their childhood might always remain a part of them. This is, I think one of the most important and effective cause of the Holocaust. The whole concept of starting to brainwash a child when they are so young and bringing them to act upon their hatred is not a very hard task at all.

This artifact is crucial in understanding how this manipulation in children worked. When we are young and told to stay away from something that is supposedly dangerous for us, we never forget it, “stay away from stranger” or “don't’ eat anything a stranger gives you”, the classic morals that stay with us for the rest of our lives. Young children were affected by these ideas as these posters and books portrayed the Jews to be evil and harmful and it is only but human instinct but to avoid anything that we feel is a possible threat to us or our the people around us. German propaganda posters also took on this job and did it very well which leads into the next major contribution to the Holocaust, Hitler Youth. (http://histclo.com/youth/youth/org/nat/hitler/hitler.htm)

The basic idea of Hitler Youth was to build upon the propaganda and get young teenage boys and girls to train for genocide and how they could exert their hatred in violence. The Nazi party put up camps where they would train these kids until they were deemed fit to join the Nazi party and become a follower of Hitler. This was all plausible as Germany was just coming out of WW1 at this time, the damage that the citizens of Germany took along with the war reparations was a lot to balance. Germany was not only angry but very unstable. The general state of mind would've been to blame someone for the great hit the country had taken and when Hitler came into power, he really played around with that idea. He sympathized with people and told them he would support them, which was all citizens needed to be sold.This whole concept of brainwashing citizens and then using them for your personal gain is the infrastructure of how the Holocaust came about.