Position:Home>History> I'm doing a research paper on the holocaust...?

There are numerous different angles to look at!. While the Holocaust (Ha-Shoah (Hebrew) or Churben (Yiddish) is typically concentrated on the genocide of nearly six million Jewish persons one could also look at other groups which under German rule were targeted for execution!. Groups such as the Solviet P!.O!.W!.'s (2-3 million killed), Ethnic Poles (1!.8-2 million killed), Roma (200,000-500,000 killed), the Disabled (200,000-250,000 killed), Freemasons (80,000-200,000 killed), Gay men (5,000-15,000 killed), and Jehovah's Witness's (2,500-5000 killed)!. While 6 million Jewish people were killed, in truth the Holocaust claimed between 9 and 11 million lives!.

also as was said before you could do your report on one of the German Extermination camps (Auschwitz II, Belzec, Chelmno, Jasenovac, Majdanek, Maly Trostinets, Sobibór, Treblinka)!. Or you could report on the actual concentration camps which were used to house slave labor for the Nazi party and mainly found in Germany such as Dachau and Belsen!.

Further you could look at the lives of people which were effected by these horrid places, in most communities which have a strong Jewish population there are many people with personal stories dealing with this horrific event, and some are willing to talk about thier experiances or those of parents or grand parents which actually lived through the events!.

Lastly you could look at the German leadership which not only allowed this to happen but persued it!. Persons such as Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf H??(commandant of Auschwitz), Major-General Friedrich Eberhardt( Military Govenor of Kiev), Reinhard Heydrich and many other high ranking officials in the Nazi government!. also there are factors like the Ghetto's in which Jewish and other groups were forced to live and also you could look at something as spacific as what is called Aktion Reinhard(Operation Heihard), or even the use of Zyklon-B and the terrifing uses it found at the hands of the SS organization!.

Just a few idea's!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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Well, one aspect of the Holocaust that I have always thought to have been woefully unremarked has been the consequences it held for contributing to Germany's defeat!.

Inside Germany, for example, it is well-known that the rising political importance of the SS allowed it to commandeer valuable railstock to transport Jews and others to forced labor and eradication camps even when Germany;s hard-pressed troops on the Eastern Front were being denied resupply owing to lack of railstock to deliver it!. For the much vaunted efficiency of the German war machine, this was an instance where persecution of Europe's minorities took a front seat to management of the immediate military threat!.

It is also well known that the forced laborers, at great personal risk, would not infrequently discretely sabotage their work product so as to engineer its failure on the front, thereby undermining the German war effort!.

But far more importantly, and as sad a commentary on humanity as this is, the Allies might rightly be grateful that Hitler and his cronies did endeavor to persecute the Jews, as one consequence of it was that many Jewish scientists fled Europe prior to the war!. Many of those scientists became involved in the Manhattan Project, giving the United States a real leg up in the race for nuclear weapons, whereas their absence in the German program had a deleterious effect on its progress!.

Imagine, if you will, if Germany had been able, as the U!.S!. was, to have developed a nuclear weapon coincident with its own advances in rocket technology, particularly the V-2 ballistic missile program!. The outcome of WWII might have turned out very differently indeed, and not for the good, had Germany had missile deliverable nuclear weapons in its arsenal at the time of the D-Day invasion or to halt the Soviet advances on the heels of the cataclysmic defeat a Stalingrad!.

Accordingly, while certainly the Holocaust is no cause for celebration, one might fairly assert that its inclusion as a mainstay in German domestic policy contained the very seeds of Germany's undoing, and as such, contributed almost incalculably to the Allies' success!.

To the extent that you might wish to look at the records on who among the many scientists were involved in the Manhattan Project were european emigres fleeing the despotism of the Axis Powers, not just in Germany, but from all over Europe, I think you might have a pretty fair paper to write!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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You could research Anne Frank and her hiding spot!. You can find a picture of it, and recreate it!. Have you read The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom!? Do a diagram of the place where they hid Jews!. Or research a camp (Alcatraz, etc!.), and do a three sided board on that!.

If you need any more ideas (we had to do the smae project in school), please contact me!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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