![]() ![]() Hitler viewed the Jews as racial polluters, a cancer on German society in what has been termed by Holocaust survivor and historian Saul Friedländer “redemptive anti-Semitism,” focused on redeeming Germany from its ills and ridding it of a cancer on the body politic. After World War I the Allies denied Germany colonies in Africa, so Hitler sought to expand German territory and secure food and resources-scarce during World War I-in Europe itself. Hitler’s worldview revolved around two concepts: territorial expansion (that is, greater Lebensraum-“living space”-for the German people) and racial supremacy. Ultimately, the logic of Nazi racial anti-Semitism led to annihilation. Religious anti-Semitism could be resolved by conversion, political anti-Semitism by expulsion. The Nazis portrayed the Jews as a race and not as a religious group. Nazi racial ideology characterized the Jews as Untermenschen (German: “subhumans”). To this the Nazis added a further dimension: racial anti-Semitism. Nazi anti-Semitism was rooted in religious anti-Semitism and enhanced by political anti-Semitism. As early as 1919 Adolf Hitler had written, “Rational anti-Semitism, however, must lead to systematic legal opposition.…Its final objective must unswervingly be the removal of the Jews altogether.” In Mein Kampf (“My Struggle” 1925–27), Hitler further developed the idea of the Jews as an evil race struggling for world domination. Nazi anti-Semitism and the origins of the Holocaustĭiscover how the Jews were discriminated, excluded and systematically disposed of their rights during Hitler's Reich See all videos for this articleĮven before the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, they had made no secret of their anti-Semitism. This word was chosen because in the ultimate manifestation of the Nazi killing program-the extermination camps-the bodies of the victims were consumed whole in crematoria and open fires. The word Holocaust is derived from the Greek holokauston, a translation of the Hebrew word ʿolah, meaning a burnt sacrifice offered whole to God. In part she showed how Germany fought two wars simultaneously: World War II and the racial war against the Jews. Dawidowicz, who entitled her book on the Holocaust The War Against the Jews. More particular terms also were used by Raul Hilberg, who called his pioneering work The Destruction of the European Jews, and Lucy S. Less universal and more particular, Shoʾah emphasizes the annihilation of the Jews, not the totality of Nazi victims. It is also preferred by people who speak Hebrew and by those who want to be more particular about the Jewish experience or who are uncomfortable with the religious connotations of the word Holocaust. Shoʾah (“Catastrophe”) is the term preferred by Israelis and the French, most especially after Claude Lanzmann’s masterful 1985 motion picture documentary of that title. The Germans called this “the final solution to the Jewish question.” Yiddish-speaking Jews and survivors in the years immediately following their liberation called the murder of the Jews the Ḥurban, the word used to describe the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 bce and the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 ce. Holocaust, Hebrew Shoʾah (“Catastrophe”), Yiddish and Hebrew Ḥurban (“Destruction”), the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. SpaceNext50 Britannica presents SpaceNext50, From the race to the Moon to space stewardship, we explore a wide range of subjects that feed our curiosity about space!.Learn about the major environmental problems facing our planet and what can be done about them! Saving Earth Britannica Presents Earth’s To-Do List for the 21st Century.Britannica Beyond We’ve created a new place where questions are at the center of learning. ![]()
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