A Broken World

   The literary meaning of the word “holocaust” is mass killing or burning of animals. However, if you say the Holocaust, it means the massacre of Jewish people that was led by nazis. Especially, Auschwits of Poland was a concentration camp that was reported that more than 6,000,000 people were killed. This showed how violent a creature called human could be.

   This started by one dictator. ONE.This one German dictator, showed the maximum violence of human race. It is obvious that he hated Jews to death. But why he started hating Jews are quite controversial. Some say it is because they grabbed basically most of the German economics, and some say that Hitler saw his mother having an affair with a Jew, and so on.

But the question is, specifically what  incident infuriated him and stimulated him into this disgusting massacre? I was surfing, and I found out that Hitler was actually a Christian. Why would a Christian kill so many people? I just can’t understand.

This is kind of out of topic, but when I went to get interviewed for my application in boardingschools, one of the questions was to name one person I want to meet and one question I want to ask to that person. I said, ”I would want to meet Hitler and ask seriously, what in the world caused you to  commit such a devil’s act?” I really did.

Hey Hitler, what made you do this? I really can’t understand. I just get angry whenever I think about the Holocaust.

Rachel Y

E Block 

Some denied that the Holocaust happened. The deniers said that the Nazi Germans did not kill six million Jews. They also say that the killing of Jews in the gas chambers was a myth and the reason Jews died was because of wartime privations.

The deniers say that the death of the Jews had nothing to do with genocide: systematic persecution or mass murder.

 Some even say that Hitler was the closest friend of the Jews in Germany, and that Hitler tried his best to protect them. Deniers say that the Jews were lying and that the true victims were actually the Nazis. They also claimed that the Jews only tried to gain political and economic advantage by making this lie about the holocaust.

This is hard to believe because about a million Jews on the Eastern Front were shot in the large pits and the isolated places during 1941-42. There are a lot of documents and evidences of the death of the Jews in the Holocaust. However, deniers argued that they were all forged.

It’s hard to believe that what the deniers claimed was true. For one thing, the most reliable evidence is the diary of Anne Frank. This diary tells the story of a Jewish girl who experiences the Nazi persecution in Holland; what happens to her and her family. The investigators compared Anne’s handwriting to every other samples of her writing and it was proven to be of the same person. This showed that the diary was truly evidence from the World War Two. Deniers still try to persuade that Anne Frank’s diary was a fraud by saying that the diary was written in green ball point pen, a pen that was not available in that time.

 

However, Judge Gray looked at the documentary evidences and said that there was not doubt they were real and the gas chambers existed and the mass murder had happened.

He also said that the deniers’ arguments were “perverse and egregious”.

I agreed with Judge Gray after I saw these three videos which showed the victims of the holocaust.

 

By Lisa E pd

 

 

League of Nations was formed to prevent something like world war one from happening again. Sounds good doesn’t it? Sounds like a group of people with good intentions finally put their powers together for the better. Right? In my opinion the countries did try to put their powers together and prevent any other wars, but at the time of the great depression it is understandable that each country will have more greed towards strengthening and reviving ones country rather than someone else’s. I mean if you had a choice to kill yourself or kill this other person you just knew who would it be? Of course the other person. But when something as big as the league of nations is set and when you agree to join something that important it is more than important that you are responsible and contribute to it 100%. Obviously the countries that made up the league of nations did not contribute 100%.Thus we could say in the end the League of Nations consisted of many countries did not care too much about maintaining “world” peace.

When Manchuria was invaded by Japan, why didn’t the
League of Nations do anything about it? In the textbook it says that the League of Nations had tried to stop
Japan but they didn’t have enough power. I think this is a lie, as the
League of Nations consisted of many countries. Japan itself would not have been able to over power the League of Nations, had the
League of Nations really put forth its powers. As the League of Nations had failed with Japan it was more than obvious to other countries that the
League of Nations was very weak. Mussolini saw that the League of Nations was in fact not as powerful as it seemed and he attacked
Ethiopia. When Ethiopia requested help from the League of Nations, the League of Nations responded by simply telling
Italy to stop but they did not put forth any armies or other forces. Now more than obvious that the League of Nations is week, Germany started to go against the
League of Nations and started to enlarge the army size. Once again the
League of Nations did not do anything. At that time if the countries in the
League of Nations had put their differences aside and worked for world peace then maybe world war two could have been prevented and the millions of people who lost their lives would still be here.

While Ilwon and I were giving a presentation last week about the World War II occurring on the Pacific between the Japanese and the Allies, Mr. Burell gave short information about the Japanese living in America being sent to the internment camps. We didn’t get to talk about it much at that time, but I got interested to it, and wanted to know more about it.
After the Japanese attack at the Pearl Harbor, the U.S.’s president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, signed the Executive Order 9066, with the ardent support by the citizens who had anti-Japanese sentiment. This executive order was to send the Americans of Japanese heritage to the internment camps, or the “relocation centers,” that were in California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas. As a result, approximately 120,000 Americans of Japanese heritage were sent to one of the 8 camps around the U.S.

This is a picture of one of the internment camps for American Japanese.

The lives of the Japanese in the internment camps were pretty bad. These camps were pretty much overcrowded and the Japanese were treated very poorly; they were provided not enough food and they had to sleep with whatever they had. Also, the leadership positions within the camps were only given to the Nisei, or the American-born Japanese.

This is a video showing how American Japanese were treated during the World War II in the internment camps. You can see that many people have died because of disease and lack of space and food.

Later, the U.S. allowed the Japanese in the camps to leave, but only if they decided to go to the U.S. Army. This suggestion was not so much attractive to the Japanese, so only about 1,200 people decided to do so.
In 1944, after two and a half years since the executive order was signed, President Franklin D. Roosevelt finally abolished the order. Later in 1968, the U.S. government started to give compensations of $20,000 to each of the surviving victim of the Executive Order 9066. At that time, about 60,000 victims were still alive and were given the $20,000 compensation money.

From this week’s presentation, I could actually learn something new stuff about the Cold War. I have heard of this before from people around me like my brother. That time, I did not get it, how it was called a war and did not have any fight between the countries. But after learning this whole historys, such as about world war 1 and 2, how the United States gained a lot of power, that it resulted becoming the most powerful country in the world. It had atomic bombs, that could destroy other countries.

The Cold War was basically about the fighting between communist and capitalst, between the United States and Soviet Union which was led by Stalin. No weapon was used in this battle, it was basically war in mental way. Even though US’s force was right next to Soviet Union’s army, S.U. could not do anything about it since US has a athomic bomb, that could be fired over many countries and destroy the catpital of Soviet Union. It ended without any war in 1991 when I was bored. I got confused with how it ended, and I am still confused, if I could find out, that would be fun to learn.

I guess everyone knows what the Holocaust is, and what had happend in the Holocaust. People were treated as they weren’t human. About 6 million people died because of one dictator. Why did Hitler kill millions of people? Lets find out.

On the left, you can see a picture of Jews lying in a pile. This was a scene you could see after the Jews were killed. After the corpses were piled together, they were buried. When they finally had no space to burry the dead bodies anymore, they were burned.

In history class I have learnt that Jews were hated, not only by Hitler, but also long before the World War too. For example, in the Renaissance time period, Jews were hated because they had a different religion. Christians blamed them for killing Jesus, which wasn’t true. During the Renaissance time period, Jews couldn’t get any job, except working at the bank. Only the Jews could have this job, because Christians weren’t allowed to lend money to other people. It was against their rule.

As everyone knows, Jews were blamed after World War l and during the World War ll. I thought that Jews were blamed because Germany needed something to blame on, and Jews were there to be blamed on. However this wasn’t the only reason. Maybe the fact that Hitler was a Christian explains some things. He must have disliked the people who had a different religion. But if this is so, I don’t get why he killed so many people even though he is Christian. This question is not only dedicated to Hitler, but also the popes and other people who are famous for killing people although they are Christian. In their bible, it says that killing is bad. Then why did they kill people? They just could have talked to them. I really don’t understand.

When I compare these two time periods, they are very similar. During the Renaissance, popes sent Crusaders to the Middle East to fight against the Jews. Popes hated the Jews at that time. They killed many people too. After many years, Hitler did the similar things. He killed lots and lots of Jewish people. In my opinion, these two events are similar.

This is why history is fun. You can compare new things of what you have learned to old things! I think I am really starting to like History

In my presentation, there was about atomic bomb in Japan. And also, in someone else’s presentation, it said about it. While I was reading the part where it said about atomic bomb, I wasn’t surprised because I knew about since 4th grade.

One single weapon has swept whole city in Japan. The interesting part was where someone’s video. In this video, the one scientist said “I am not worried about people who are dead from this bomb, but people who survived after this.” And I strongly agree to this. People, who did survive after this disaster, have to live they way they are for rest of their lives.

Was this the only way for US to show their power? They sacrificed Hiroshima just to test their new technology weapon. After this weapon, other countries started to make one too, and today there are only few countries are allow having nuclear bomb, and Korea is not one of them.

As history change, nuclear weapon changed as well. I believe that the strength of bomb has increased one million times stronger. In other words, if this bomb hits Seoul, 62 million people will die. Also, the whole city Seoul will be left in wasteland, and also, Yongsan and US military base will also melt by the bomb. Next, the radiation is another big problem. But this is too complex for me to understand.

As everything around the world change, things get unsafe. After the news that North Korea is testing their nuclear bomb, it was big attack to South Koreans. And many people are asking if there is possibility of war. I think new weapon is most scary thing in this world. Because like militarism, strong military wins the war.

Atomic bomb, and now what’s next?

Atomic Bomb…

While learning about Hitler and the history during World War II, I learned that Jewish people had been the target of hatred for so long. Just a few questions that came up to my mind were: why it had to be the Jews, why they got rid of them so cruelly, and how a human being could possibly do that to another human being. Even before the killing–Holocast, Jewish had been isolated from the Europeans. Daily, the Jewish people were killed and tortured so many different ways. They were prevented through law to hold office, they had to wear yellow stars on the left side of their clothing to tell others they were Jewish, and were kicked out to whatever country they were forced to.

One of the most shocking things for me to learn was the camps (concentration camps and extermination camps) set up by the Nazis to slave people and kill them. These camps came through after Hitler’s “Final Decision” or massive genocide. Not only were the Jewish the target, but also different races, disabled people, and even homosexuals. The peole there (especially the Jews) were killed by the Aryans, or the “master race”. Horrible conditions were one problem,mass exterminations were the big problems. The specialized extermination camps in Chelmo/Poland were an example for killing so many people that they buried the dead bodies in pits and burned them. These mass graves were included in one of the ways of how 6 million Jews died during this time. Just for believing that religion these many people sacrificed themselves. There may have been a choice to say they weren’t Jewish, but their looks and their faith weren’t something they could hide easily. So many Europeans followed their leader’s thoughts and hated the Jewish. However, there were the few people who were against Hitler and helped the Jewish people hide. Raoul Wallenberg was an example.

As a believer myself, like always, I get to wonder about myself in that time. If I were in that situation, would I have been able to go through all that pain. Would anybody right now be able to proudly say their religion and sacrifice themselves? (Although I do think that the sacrifice wasn’t a choice.) As history kept going, the Jewish lost more and more power in the economy. Is religion a sin? That’s the question I can’t find an answer to.