Review of Holocaust
Widely regarded as the worst event in human history, the massive German extermination campaign of the early 1940s, known as the final solution, is likely one of the most studied aspects of the Second World War. To a very select few, the Holocaust remains all too real. Over 6 million Jews were enslaved, tortured, and then executed for having committed no crime worse than being born Jewish. By the thousands, men, women, and children were interned, some to become slaves for manual labor, others to become fuel for furnaces that heated water or barracks. Many never made it as far as the death camps, though. Throughout the Nazi advance into Russia, German SS units and Police Battalions often lagged behind the main German force, left in Jewish or Communist villages to carry out its en masse slaughtering. Pits dug specially for the burial of hundreds of victims were filled within minutes by the bodies of innocent men, women, boys, and girls. Some dead and some still breathing, the pits were filled again by the Germans to cover up the terrible deeds they had just perpetrated. For nearly six years, the German military succeeded in capturing and killing nearly an entire race while Allied forces did little to stop them. “The shocking truth about the extermination camps exceeds the average person's imagination by far. ” And, the honesty of it is, that in hindsight it is strongly thought that all of this could have prevented. Instead, the rise to power of Hitler, the introduction of his policies, and, ultimately, the millions dead, were simply an underestimation of a very powerful man. Throughout Germany and Eastern Europe, the Wehrmacht began constructing concentration camps to house the trainloads of deportees that had been captured at villages throughout the Eastern Front.