What historical event fascinates you the most?

What historical event fascinates you the most?

DAILY WRITING PROMPT:

What historical event fascinates me the most?

The Holocaust – World War Two, Nazi Germany – 30th Jan 1933 – 8th May 1945.

Let’s start with a bit of background information.

The Holocaust is the deliberate and state-sanctioned genocide of six million Jewish people and an estimated five million murders of prisoners of war from Romany, people who were Jehovah Witnesses, homosexuals, the mentally ill and other victims that were deemed not of pure aryan race. The genocide was carried out by Hitler and his reign over Nazi Germany just before and at the height of World War Two.

These systematic murders would take place via mass shootings and sending prisoners to concerntration camps to either be executed by gas, amongst other things or made to do forced labour. The concerntration camps were Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor and Chlelmno. Towards the end of the war and due to Nazi Germany failing to win, these camps would turn into extermination camps. The Nazis tried to get rid of as much evidence of the camps as they could, which also meant killing as many prisoners as they could at a quick rate.

Prisoner’s were also subjected to forced manual labour, starvation, illness, torture, being experimented on for medical research, extremely poor living conditions and most highly death by execution or by the gas chambers.

The Holocaust fascinates me because it is such an extreme atrocity against human life. Such an unimaginable event that sadly happened and was allowed to happen in our history. This extremely tragic event makes me question what human beings are capable of? It makes me question how a human or human beings can do something so evil to other human beings? And how was it allowed to happen by the people in power and supported by the community and country? And largely, will it happen again in history? Maybe not in my time, maybe it will many many years later. However it’s not the first time in history the genocide of a population and groups of people has happened. The Armenian Genocide 1915-1916, Bosnia and Herzegovina Genocide 1992-1995, Cambodian Genocide 1975-1979 and East Timor Genocide 1975 are just a few to name from the list in history.

The Holocaust brings up all of these questions and makes you deep dive into the human psyche, the history of nations and shows you what makes people do the things they do, even if it is the most extreme and inhumane act they could carry out.

On the other side, are the stories of the persecuted and the survivors of the Holocaust.

The stories of the survivors are so compelling. It shows the true strength of what someone can endure and survive. It is so important to listen to their stories to understand the true history of what happened and to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

The Holocaust teaches us a lot about life, humanity and history. From all sides, we can learn a lot from it happening, especially to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I am also truly touched by the survivors and their stories and history and the history of their fellow fallen. I pay my respects to them all and for what they endured for the life we all live today.