The first way Hitler controlled the Jews was social. Hitler created his army by turning many people against the Jews. In his work Mein Kampf , Hitler describes a young Jewish boy as evil and satanic. “With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait….” (Source 1) Hitler believed the Jews to be an impure race and spread this fallacy throughout his army of men. In the Nazi propaganda, it states, “The Jew is the cause and the beneficiary of our misery.” This pamphlet also includes that the reason the Germans lost the Great War was because of the Jews. Hitler led his army to believe they were the cause of more than just the loss of the war, but also the cause of numerous other issues the country was experiencing. “He has corrupted our race, fouled our morals, undermined our customs, and broken our power.” (Source 2) The second way Hitler controlled the Jews was by fear. Many were afraid to respond to the Nazi’s actions because of the fear they instilled of being persecuted. The Nazi’s main goal was to rid Europe of anyone they determined to be racially or biologically inferior. “…in a negative sense by the extermination of all racially and biologically inferior elements and by the radical removal of all incorrigible political opposition that refuses on principle to acknowledge the philosophical basis of the Nazi State and its essential institutions.”(Source 3) During Kristallnacht, the soldiers were given instructions to ransack Jewish properties and arrest them to be taken to concentration camps. One of the instructions says that only young male Jews are to be arrested, and especially the wealthy ones. (Source 8) The people also did not rise up against the Nazi’s …show more content…
During the Holocaust, the Jews were kept and tortured by Nazi soldiers in concentration camps, also known as death camps because very few came out alive. “Physical punishment consisted of whipping, frequent kicking (abdomen or groin), slaps in the face, shooting, or wounding with the bayonet.” (Source 4) These actions were also met with mental and emotional abuse, “…prisoners were forced to stare for hours into glaring lights, to kneel for hours, and so on.”(Source 4) It was also ensured that the prisoners were not strong enough to fight back because they starved them. Prisoners were given Ghetto ration cards that entitled them to 300 calories per day. (Source 6) “It was calculated that the officially supplied rations did not cover even 10 percent of the normal daily requirements.” (Source 9) Fred Baron wrote of his time spent in the Auschwitz concentration camps. Baron said