Holocaust

“Rumblings of Danger”; “The Holocaust as Literary Inspiration”

Comparing the horrors, suffering and extermination of Jewish people during the WWII with any other event would be unfair and in reality there is nothing that we can compare to. It is simply too difficult. I am originally from Kosovo, a province that used to be part of former Yugoslavia. In 1990s that region of the Balkans was involved in major wars between different ethnic and religious groups. Serbian regime, led by Slobodan Milosevic seemed determined in one way or another to clean that region from entire ethnic groups in order to create a pure slavo-orthodox race, that of Serbian race. Unlike in Hitler’s case, the world acted before they could make another mistake and allow another holocaust right before the turn of the new millennium. Now, if the world did not act and stopped Milosevic from achieving his goals, we would certainly have another major genocide of millions of innocent Bosnians, Muslims and Albanians perished in front of the world’s eyes.

I am not trying to compare Jewish situation with that of Yugoslavia by any means but what I am trying to do is recognize the difficulties and sufferings that small ethnic groups go through just because they are different, have different religions and speak different languages. Jewish sufferings and tortures have a long history. Christian nations in the early years of existence accused Jews of killing the Christ and people that are evil. They hated Jews so much that Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism said “they are the Christian’s most vicious enemy, second only to Satan himself”. (The roots, pp 9). European countries were expelling Jews from their countries all the time, or they made them live in what they called “the ghettos”, away from their citizens and in constant fear and torture.

During the early age of Christianity and all the way up to 1870s, Jewish problem was considered a religious issue, and for years Christians have tried to force them to change their religious beliefs, to change their culture and accept Christianity. They believed that it was easy and all they had to do was change and that is it. But hundreds of years have gone and the problem still persisted, Jewish people were not changing their religion, they did not change their culture nor did they accepted Christianity. A major breakthrough occurred in 1873, when for the first time the word “anti-Semitism” was used by Wilhelm Marr in his popular book called The Triumph of Jewry Over Germanism. From that moment on Jewish issue was not an issue of religion and something that could be changed, but it was rather a race issue and they could not change because it was in their blood. Germany, just like any other major European country was anti-Semitic and tortured them for thousands of years. Anti-Semitic problem in Germany reached its climax after the WWI and the defeat of the Germans. The country was plagued in economic depression, resentment against the world, their territory was carved up by Allied superpowers, and people started to blame Jews for the defeat and the economic troubles. Hitler’s arrival on the political stage of Germany and his hatred against the Jews gave another meaning to the already troubled situation of Jews. Throughout the country, Hitler professed his ideals and beliefs set in his book Mein Kampf and the problems that Jews brought to Germany. He blamed them for unemployment in Germany, for the loss of WWI, for economic problems, and he was obsessed with pure Aryan race of Germany, which was the only race that had the right to exist. Hitler called the Jew a “vermin”, a “parasite”, a disease that had to be eradicated from the face of the earth. Once he took the total control of Germany, his first plan was to set up concentration camps and to start his long awaited plan of extermination of Jews. Thousands of innocent men, women and children that belonged to Jewish race were transported by trains to different concentration camps such as Birkenau, Auschwitz etc. They were tortured, massacred and cremated in the most inhuman way that the world has ever seen. Major powers new about it but decided to not take any actions to stop this unimaginable catastrophe of the twentieth century. Perhaps they all deep inside them wanted to see the annihilation of Jewish race, perhaps they all wanted in some way or another to get rid of Jews, perhaps deep inside them they were happy that Jews were being exterminated, in the end they all hated Jews in one form or another so why act and do something about it. It was a human failure to act and protect another human being of their own.

Tortures, massacres, hunger, human humiliation and degradation, mass murders, cremation of thousands of people and the killing of people 2 to 3 times can not even be described