Historical Description of the Holocaust and Labor Camps Essay Example

Mass murder was also carried out in Lithuania, Eastern Poland, Estonia, and Latvia. Over 1.2 million of the Jewish population were been killed by 1942 by the killing groups. At the beginning of 1942, officials that held top positions in the German government conducted a meeting to deliberate on how to coordinate various branches to exterminate Jews in a broad scale. Nazis also killed other ethnic groups, but Jews received “special treatment”, where they were killed them with poisonous gas (Spiegelman 21).

Central characteristics of the Auschwitz that Vladek experienced

Vladek experienced some of the central characteristics of Auschwitz, which include racial prejudice. When he was in the camp, he adopted the life at Auschwitz. “The camp was overcrowded with little food” (Spiegelman, 21). Vladek used to eat half of the food and saved the rest to eat in the course of the day. Thus, even if there was a lot of hardship in the concentration camp, he learned how to survive.

Comparison to Dachau

Similarly, Dachau camp held prisoners due to different reasons and immediately after it was set up the number of Jews prisoners was small but it rose with time. The prisoners were forced to do hard work, and they faced severe suffering. The camps had two sections which include crematoria and camp area. The camp provided almost no food to the prisoners, and this caused many deaths. Overcrowding and pathetic sanitary conditions led to typhus epidemics, and this further weakened the prisoners. Art and comic books convey this information which reflects the history of Holocaust.

Extent of Vladek's story typical of what Jews experienced during the Holocaust

Vladeks story is typical to that of Jews in that

prisoners were isolated from the society and were put in concentration camps. On the other hand, Vladek’s story is not typical to what Jews experienced in that they were provided with little food, but Jews were given no food. Mass graves were used to bury the Jews who were put to death (Spiegelman 27).

A sense of what caused Holocaust

Holocaust represents the time from January 30, 1933, the period when Adolf Hitler became the chancellor of the German up to the official end of war in Europe May 8, 1945 (Adler 105). It is during this time when Hitler was the chancellor that Jews in Europe were subjected to very harsh persecution that eventually led to the murder of 6000,000 Jews that were victims of the German’s deliberate as well systematic attempt of annihilating the entire Jewish population of Europe by plan referred by Hitler ‘Final Solution’ (Spiegelman, 24). One of the likely causes of this is the result of German defeat in World War 1 that made it humiliated by Versailles treaty that reduced its prewar territory. The Republic suffered from economic instability that deteriorated at the time of the worldwide depression during the time of New York stock market crash in 1929.

This resulted in massive inflation coupled with high rates of unemployment. Subsequently, the Nazi party led by Hitler took advantage of the political unrest in the country thus gaining electoral foothold thereby inciting clashes within communist in addition to conducting a vicious propaganda campaign against the political opponents. This led to the ultimate killing of democracy as well as the rise of the dictatorship regime whose intention was to do away with the

Jewish people who were considered as coward and lazy and the cause of all the existing challenges in German.

At the end of the war, 50,000 to 100,000 survivors of the Jewish lived in three occupation zones including the American, British, and Soviet (Spiegelman, 38). In one year time, the figure grew to 200,000 with the American zone of occupation having more that 90 percent of displaced Jewish who could not return home due to the horrible memories of the happenings of the Holocaust. After languishing in displaced camps, emigration was arranged to Palestine, Israel, United States, South America as well as other countries resulting in the world to react to the Holocaust.

Spiegelman wanted to pass information in a manner that is well understood in addition to protecting the dignity of the human beings. Some of the actions that took place in those days in German are beyond human senses and can only be equated to animals. Again to avoid further misunderstanding of the historical context it is better to choose animals as metaphors letting the readers interpret to themselves.

They convey the loss of human values and integrity while the world is just watching people be killed mercilessly in a manner that is beyond human understanding. Only inhuman people can make such killing as witnessed by the Jewish people during Holocaust.