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Lesley Tucker Ms. Caruso ENG 1102 16 February 2012

Historical Inquiry Paper In the dictionary, the word holocaust is defined as destruction or slaughter on a mass scale. Instability was created in Europe after World War II, which made way for the next international conflict, World War II. Although WWII was two decades after, it proved to be even more destructive and shattering. Adolf Hitler, along with his Nazi Party, reinforced the country and contracted treaties with Japan and Italy. On September 1939, Hitler overran Poland, which drove France and Great Britain to declare war on Germany. The next six years would claim more lives and destroy more than any war before, and would come to be known in history as the Holocaust. Approximately six million Jews were murdered in Germanys methodical and deliberate attempt to rid Europe of its entire Jewish population. This massacre, the Holocaust, began in 1941 and ended in 1945, and was led by Adolf Hitler. One significant memory of the Holocaust is the concentration camps, where many Jewish people met their fate. Unimaginable things like gas chambers and crematoriums were put in the camps to aid in the massacre of the Jews. Gas chambers were used to rid the camps of the prisoners that were found to be too weak. The prisoners were told that they would be taking a simple shower, but that was a lie. Instead, they were gassed to death with the poisonous gas, Zyklon-B, which was originally used for pest control. The crematoriums were used to get rid of the corpses left behind from the gas chambers,

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and even to burn prisoners alive. The Holocaust was a long and incredibly harsh time for the Jewish people, but when Hitler committed suicide on April 30th, 1945, Allied troops demanded that German soldiers on all fronts surrender, and the Jewish people finally caught a glimpse of hope. By now, most survivors of the Holocaust have passed away, but their stories will live through their future generations.