How can something like the Holocaust happen?

Many speculate on how an advanced country like Germany in the 20^th century could’ve conceived such an atrocious event as the Holocaust where an estimated 11 million people were eradicated in a nonsensical genocide.  One of the main explanations on why Hitler’s vision of a world without Jews started to become a reality was because of the simplification of differences, Good vs. Bad and Right vs. Wrong.  

Propaganda played a critical role in creating this anti-Semitism philosophy, the use of this tactic created fear which led to anger and eventually to hate. These ideologies become quite rooted in the people of Germany; Propaganda went as far as creating Children’s books such as The Poisonous Mushroom by Julius Streicher's Der Stürmer-Verlag which fortified anti-Semitism ideas. Like many other propaganda products The Poisonous Mushroom  took full advantage of using Jewish Stereotypes like “The Jewish nose is crooked at its tip” to try and illustrate how different and alien the Jews were. In addition the title itself The Poisonous Mushroom portrays Jews as a poison, a fungi spreading. The Nazis pointing out these stereotypes was an effective way to alienate them from the rest of the population and further contribute to the rise of anti-Semitism.

                The elimination of Jews and other minorities became an actuality not only because the Nazi’s put forth tremendous effort in the genocide but also because there was no opposition to the Nazi regime. The many bystanders of the Holocaust did not intervene for several reasons such as: they feared the consequences, many believed in the anti-Semitism ideas, but many did not speak out because they were not the victims therefore it was not their place to get involved. This is clearly demonstrated in the Poem First They Came by Martin Niemoller who was eventually thrown into a concentration camp. The poem expresses how even though the minorities were being persecuted he was not one of them, they were different, “I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;” But the continuing silence of the bystanders only allowed the Nazis to continue the crimes, “Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.”, shows that ignoring the atrocities did not exclude him from them.

                Unconceivable events such as the Holocaust continue to take place today which only further confirms the fact that differences whether it is race, religion, or social status, continues to cause conflicts. The Rwanda Genocide was a most recent event where nearly 800,000 people were murdered because of social differences between the Tutsis and the Hutus.  The artifact is an interview of a Rwandan Genocide survivor: Immaculee Illibagiza who recalls the horrors of the event where the minority Tutsis was “slaughtered in their tracks”. Like the Holocaust the Rwandan genocide was caused by one group thinking it was superior over the other which led to tension and eventually mass murder.