Jewish Holocaust: Hate & Indifference

The Holocaust was the unlawful and inhumane slaughter of 11 million people. Six million of them were of Jewish descent (The Holocaust) t They were often sent to concentration camps before being killed in gas chambers. One of the most famous camps was Auschwitz, which was located in Germany. Avery famous quote from historian lan Kershaw states that “The road to Auschwitz was built with hate, but paved with indifference” I agree with this quote, and in this essay, I will provide concrete facts that show that the German population, as well as some of Europe, used both hate and indifference to persecute the Jews.

The first part of Kershaw’s quote talks about hate. First, the word hate must be defined. The Merriam—Webster definition of hate is “a very strong feeling ofdislike” (Merriam7Webster). The hate came mostly from the German Nazi party, whose “final solution” was to exterminate the entire Jewish population.

The first example of hatred came back in 1935.

In this year, the Nazi party introduced the “Nuremberg Race Laws”, which prevented Jewish and German people having relationships with each other, Other laws, prevented Jewish people from owning valuables and from allowing Jewish people to buy from stores not owned by Jewish people (Nuremberg Race Laws) These laws show hate through persecution which is what the Jewish people faced a lot of during the reign of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. Hitler and his party did show that they did not like the Jews, first by persecuting them, second by trying to exterminate them.

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They pulled the biggest hate crime possible, they said that you are unfit to live just because of your religion, The second pan of the quote deals with indifference. It says that the Germans and Europe were indifferent to the Jews, Indifference means ” a lock ofinterest in or concern about something” (Merriam Webster).

Did the Germans really not care about the Jewish people? The answer is yes This is a result of the propaganda and advertisement that the Nazi patty used. Propaganda is an advertisement that is designed to sway someone in a particular direction. In this case, it was to make people feel indifferent to the Jewish people In order to achieve this, Hitler had to have some control of the media. After he had established a dictatorship in 1933, he began censoring everything that was considered “negative” to the Nazi party and their image (Nazi Propaganda). He also put very powerful advertisements that showed prejudiced portrayals of the Jewish people indifference did not only come from the Nazi party howeverr During World War II, the country of Hungary, saw a 12% decrease in population, In Budapest, the biggest city in Hungary, it lost 80% of its Jewish population.

That basically means that everyone that was killed in Hungary after the Holocaust was Jewish (Kovacs). This is because, Hungary was one of the first countries to agree with the Nazi policy, and they allowed Germany to take their Jewish population without a fight That is the true definition of indifference The Hungarians did really not care about their Jewish population, and as a result, they sent most of them to Auschwitz or some other concentration camp, which resulted in their deaths. To fully understand this quote, we must fully understand any other words that are not clear, like paved. Paved means “to cover (something) with a material (such as stone, tar, or concrete) that forms a hard, level surface for walking, driving, etc” (Merriam Webster). In my opinion, the entire holocaust, was hate. However, what Kershaw is saying is that the holocaust was hate, but it was covered up with indifference.

That is what Hitler wanted to show people, he only them to see the indifference and not the hate underneath. He did this successfully at the Olympic games, and this is why the world did not suspect anything until he had started executing his “final solution“ When the liberators from the countries of the USSR, United States and Great Britain came, they were shocked to see the conditions that those persecuted were going through. In conclusion, Auschwitz can be summed up with one quote by Ian Kershaw that says “The road [to Auschwitz] was built by hate, but paved with indifference.” This quote is true because the German population used both hate and indifference to try to get rid of the Jewish people, They did this in a variety of ways, mainly through propaganda and laws. However, some of Europe did help them by offering them their Jewish population to the Nazi’s, which is a strong showing of indifference. In the end, Kershaw is saying that hate was covered by indifference, and the world did not see the hate until 11 million people, 6 million of them Jewish were killed unlawfully.