Essential Question

Essential Question: How can something like the Holocaust happen?

The Holocaust was an example of a large scale genocide that stemmed from a psychological situation as well as differences between race, culture, or background.  People will justify their actions, and not care about the moral consequences. The psychological Stanford Prison Study run by Zimbardo shows that when rules are removed, in a moral “free-for-all” guards will act cruelly against prisoners and people with authority will tend to abuse power.  The psychological study had to be stopped early because it became morally corrupt so quickly. Researchers concluded that the situation, instead of the personalities of the participants, caused the behavior.  This is one reason behind why the ordinary German and Polish people, when placed in questionable situations like becoming the guards of the prison camps, did not help the Jews.  In fact, the recent Iraqi prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib are an example of how instead of a situation where there are a “few bad apples that spoil a barrel”, good people can be led to do bad things.

Genocide still happens today, as is evidenced in the Cambodian genocide. Like the Holocaust, the government that was in control blamed a minority group- in this case, intellectuals and the religious. The government, the Khmer Rouge, used the idea that they needed to rid Cambodia of outside influence to justify the killing of two million people. This is similar to the holocaust, where Hitler blamed the loss of WWI on the Jewish population and other minorities, and decided to purge them from Germany, first by the Nuremburg laws, and finally by the creation of death camps. Hitler was able to achieve his goal by not only being very systematic, but by getting people to support and believe in the same values as him. By using propaganda, the Jewish and other minority groups like homosexuals and gypsies were portrayed as an “alien race”, and enhanced already present negative stereotypes against the Jews.  The book The Poisonous Mushroom blatantly establishes these ideas to children, who are brought up in an environment where anti-Semitism is prevalent. These children were also required to participate in youth programs such as Hitler youth, which were made with the purpose of instilling Nazi ideals and removing class consciousness. Activities like youth rallies were created to show the undying support for Hitler and firmly root ideas in their minds. By teaching the ideas of racial superiority and inferior races were sub-human to children at young ages; it removed the concept that exterminating those that did not fit the Aryan mold was morally corrupt.   The racial and social class differences between people were the perfect reason for people to justify their murder of faceless millions.