The Holocaust: The Rise Of Anti-Semitism

The Holocaust was the genocide of Jewish people from 1941 to 1945 under the Nazi-German regime. The Holocaust was the product of a very long history of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism did not begin with the Nazi 's. Jews have been the target of persecution for a very long time and the roots of anti-Semitism dig deep. That being said, anti-Semitism did become more wide spread after Hitler came to power in 1933. Hitler 's goal was to create a pure Aryan race and the could not be done with Jewish or Polish people around. The course of the Holocaust and Nazi occupation of Poland came shortly after Hitlers rise to power. The Holocaust began with the invasion of Poland in 1939 which was the beginning to WWII. The German occupation of Poland lasted from 1939 to 1944. During this time Jews were isolated and sent to live in ghettos, their rights were stripped away, and …show more content…
After Hitler came to power in 1933 there was a sequence of events that were ultimately the precursors to the Holocaust. Kristallnact was one of these events. After Kristallnact, “The Night of Broken Glass” where thousand of Jewish synagogues and Jewish businesses were destroyed, Jews saw the writing on the wall and many of them fled the country. As Crowe explains, Kristallnacht was “an anti-Semitic reign of terror that forever transformed Nazi policy towards the Jews” (145). Another precursor to the Holocaust was Hitler 's invasion of the Sudetenland and take over of the rest of Czechoslovakia. After he took over Czechoslovakia it was clear that Poland was going to be his next target. His invasion of Poland was enabled by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a secret Nazi-Soviet pact of non aggression. This pact was signed on August 23rd 1939, just a week before Germany invaded Poland. The pact allowed Germany to attack Poland, and Poland was divided in half between Germany and the Soviet