Persecution on Jews

Outline of the main periods of persecutions

For the reason of food shortage, Joseph and his brothers went to Egypt where they settled. In the time the Egyptian
Pharaoh saw the growth of number in Jewish population and fear there would be rebellion or some kind of action against the
government. Also they were worried that they might help Egypt's enemies. Therefore, Egyptians decided to kill all the boys. At
that time a boy named Moses was born. At that moment, the Pharaoh ordered all newborn Hebrew boys to be killed, so Moses'
mother hid him in a basket and throw into the Nile River and he ended up being adopted into the Egyptian royal family. Moses
led the Hebrew people out of Egypt heading towards the Promised land. He led the people across the Red Sea. When the
Egyptian army attempted to follow, the water drowns all of them. However it took more than 40 years in the mountain and
Moses died before reaching the Promised land. , During the 40 years, Moses received the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai.
The rules are important for Judaism and Christianity. This period was called the Exodus. After that the Jews lived in the Promised
land ruled by Judges and by Kings.

The persecutions came back again when the Jews were defeated by the Babylonians and making them moved into
Babylon. This time a man named Haman in the government designed a plot to kill all of the Jews living in ancient Persia. Haman
attempts to convince Ahasuerus, the king of Persia to kill all the Jews in the lands he ruled. The plot was unsuccessful, and
stopped by Queen Esther, the king's wife, who herself is a Jew. After they lived happily for a while under Roman rule, but in 70
AD Emperor Claudius expelled all the Jews out of the Roman Empire. This was the second diaspora, they have live on the side of
the empire. This didn’t stop in the following 1500 years there were persecutions in almost every country they live in. Including
the crusades and the time when they were expelled from England in 1274. The worst period came in the 1900s- The Holocaust.

What is different about the Holocaust?

The Holocaust was different from the other time period of Jewish persecution in fact more than 6 million Jews were killed
in a very short period of time using lots of different methods from the inventions due to the Industrial revolution and the
discovery of science and many other technologies. This was a genocide meaning a whole group of people to be kill. Many Jews
were rounded up, put in ghettos, forced to work in concentration camps and killed in gas chambers in about an hour. Ghetto
means the Jewish area where they lived in a European town.

Data on how many Jews were killed : Jews (5.1–6 million killed), including: Polish Jews (3-3.5 million), Other Poles (1.8–1.9
million killed), Political enemies (1-1.5 million killed), Gypsies (200,000–800,000 killed), Disabled people (200,000–250,000
killed), and Homosexuals (2200–25,000 killed). Many of the killings were carried out in public, but no one stop them.

This was a systematic and mathematical planned activity to kill the Jews. This was led by a person called Adolf Hitler. Jews were
rounded up by the thousands and crammed into trains that took them to concentration camps as well as death camps. They
were forced to work to death without food or education. Some Jews were burned, buried, shot alive. Also some of them was
beaten, torture or stabbed until they died. Laws were passed to kill the Jews. In 1935 the "Law for the Protection of German
Blood and Honor" was passed, no marriage could happen between any Jewish people and non Jews. Also the "Reich Citizenship
Law" was passed. It said all Jews, even quarter or half-Jews, were no longer citizens. This removes all their political rights. Jews
were banned from professional job and receiving higher education nor politics. The Germans started Nazi human medical
experiments on the Jews as well. They were forced to participate. Most of them died as a result or permanent disability.

After the invasion of Poland in 1940, the German established ghettos for the Jews. One of the biggest one is the Warsaw Ghetto.
The conditions in the ghetto were awful and many people were died because of hunger. There were not enough food and money
among the people. People were just dying on the streets. The living area was cramped with diseases spreading quickly. There
was no heat, light or running water. Food was almost impossible to buy.

As the number of Jews increase, the Nazi have to think of a new way to persecute the Jews quickly. So they started to use gas
chamber. This worked by having many people in a tiny sealed room at once with locked door so they could never escape and fill
the room with gas from the roof. After few hours, they would all be dead. They were designed to hold 2000 people at once.
How do Jews respond to the Holocaust?

The Jews were split into three different categories on this question. Most of them think the Holocaust is theodicy, to justify the
existence of God in the light of evil, why didn’t God stop it? They still believe in God.
Group 1- It was God’s punishment for their wrong things or sin or crime they did
Group 2- God was there with them, but it was done by evil men- part of free will
Group 3- it happened for a purpose- that some good would come out from it
Example on how the Jews thinks
"I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining.
I believe in love, even when I don't feel it.
I believe in God, even when there is silence." These were words scratched on the walls of a cellar by a Jew hiding from Nazi.

However some of the Jews believed that God had “abandoned” them during the Holocaust. God did nothing to stop, many
innocent Jews were killed in 10 years. They believed this because they were not living in their promised land.
In 1948, the UN agreed to the founding of a new state for the Jewish people, after 1800 years of leaving their home land they
were returned back to the Promised land. However this caused lots of conflicts between the Arabs (Muslim) and the Jews. Wars
had been going on for years. The Palestinians who used to live there were forced out of their homes and have to live in camps.

I agree that nothing like the Holocaust could ever happen again in human history.

Human will learn from the past that killing a massive amount of people is really bad and go against god’s will. Every one
should be treated normally, no matter of their skin color, hair color or what kind of languages they speak. The Jews were back to
the Promised land and they have a big army with U.S support. Therefore Israel (the new state) has nuclear power.
The people now have a better education and knew what happen at the Holocaust was terrible. If this ever happens again, from
the technologies we now have and the commutation network, it will spread out easily and many people will know about what
happen in concentration camps. So they will not fall into traps by the Nazis.

This kind of thing might happen again to a different group of people such as Bosnia to Muslims. Many people still
remember what happen in the past. The future lives of the Jews will not be smooth as anti- Semitism still existed.