The Five Stages That Led to the Holocaust

The Holocaust can be understood as a destruction process, meaning that this procedure unfolded unknowingly step by step, and did not have a definite plan. Nonetheless, one can argue that we can trace the chronological order of the events of the destruction of the Jewish population and other minorities through a process of defining, expropriating, concentrating and lastly the killings.

The first stage of the Holocaust was the process of definind a Jew. Jews were defined as the “other” through legalized discrimination such as the Nuremberg Laws alongside other false sterotypes.

The Nuremberg Laws were one of the first ways the Nazi government attempted to defined who was a Jew and who was not a Jew.This played a crucial and pivotal role in the development that which lead to their decimation. At the Nazi Party Day of September 15th 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were approved and acepted by the Reichstag (parliament). There were essentially two laws and a decree which was adopted in late November almost more than a month after the first set of laws were put into place that are of importance here.

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The use of propaganda through: Cartoons, books, movies, and posters that always portrayed Jews as different from and inferior to the Aryans.

Once these individuals are labeled as Jews, they were separated from common society. This was made possible through law, social parties and the overall economy. Through laws put in place, the Jews were forbidden to attend any German schools or universities. Jews were not allowed into the public parks or movie theatres.

As a way to teach and inforce these laws, all of the German youth were obliged to join the Hitler Youth Movement, the youth organisation of the Nazi Party in Germany and the Jewish youth were excluded from joining. Jews and Aryan Germans were not allowed to join the same clubs or even sometimes be in the same area as one another. Many Germans quickly began to stop associating themselves with Jews. The Jews were being excluded from civil service as all Jewish businesses were being taken over and run by Germans. Doctor and lawyer licenses were taken away from the Jews. Which made it less likely for Germans to interact with Jews in their daily life.

Jews are encouraged to migrate from Germany. As the Nazis began to invade and occupy countries and enforce their racial laws. The Jews in these territories attempted to emigrate outside of the Third Reich. Through discriminatory laws: Many Jews, especially artists and academics, left Germany when they were no longer allowed to work in the universities. Through the new immigration laws the Jews were permitted to obtain an exit visa only if they agreed to leave their valuables and property behind. Another cause for emigration was the basic fear the Jews had from the Nazis. An event such as the Kristallnacht encouraged many Jews to leave the area and their belongings.

Jews were forcibly removed from their homes and placed into segregated sections of Eastern European cities that are known as ghettos. Ghettos were crowded and filthy walled-off section of a city where Jews were forced to live. Jews were forced to stay in the getto unless they had permission from Nazi officials to leave. Families were forced to share exceptionally small apartments with limited access to proper waste disposal.

Jews were deported and transported from the ghettos into concentration, labour and death camps. In 1933 the first first concentration camp was built as a place to host the communists and other opponents of the Nazi Regime Party. These camps soon became the place where they could imprison and enforce labour upon Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals, as well as prisoners or war. This quickly lead to the camps becoming death camps which are also called extermination camps, that are designed for the main purpose of killing large numbers of Jews as quickly and efficiently as possible.