Essay On Witch Hunt

A witch hunt occurs when a person or group is hunted due to accusations targeting them. Personally when hearing about this topic I was highly interested in not only what counted as a witch hunt, but what events in history could be considered as witch hunts. During world war 2 a horrific event was taking place in Europe known as the Holocaust. Families were being stripped of their rights as human beings and harassed simply for being Jewish, gay, having disabilities, etc. These people were not only stripped of their rights but stripped of their humanity. The sufferers of the Holocaust during world war 2 were dehumanized.

The dehumanization of people in the Holocaust lead to a witch hunt. Jews, disabled people, gypsies, gays, and many more were targeted during the Holocaust. They were seen as less than human and were alienated from everyone else. Jews for example were …show more content…
Much earlier in history a town called Salem dealt with a similar issue. The town was undergoing an issue in which the people were being accused of witchcraft. Innocent citizens were being named witches by young girls in an attempt to cover up their own witchcraft. The Salem witch trials actually relate to the holocaust in a lot of ways. Just like in the witch trials, Hitler became a man of power with a platform to have his voice and opinions heard, as did the girls of Salem. He used this power to convince those around him of his ideas and beliefs that Jews were evil, as did the girls who used duplicity in court to get people to believe that many townspeople were witches. I think these events both occurred due to the citizens themselves. In the witch trials the citizens decided to rely on the story telling of young girls to guide their thinking which when we look back on now was clearly a mistake. During the Holocaust, if the citizens in Europe did not unfairly criticize the Jews, Hitler would have never had a chance to rise to power in the first