Children in the Holocaust

Children in the Holocaust 

During the Holocaust the Nazis saw Jewish children as the next Jewish generation so they didn’t care how old were them, they just killed them. They separated children according to their age. There were 3 groups the first one was from infants and toddlers up to age 6, the second one was young children ages 7 to 12 and the third one was adolescents from 13 to 18 years old. Their respective changes for survival and their ability to perform physical labor varied enormously by age.

The destiny of Jewish children was also categorized in the following way: 1) children killed when they arrived in killing centers; 2) children killed immediately after birth or in institutions; 3) children born in ghettos and camps who survived because prisoners hid them; 4) children, usually over age 12, who were used as laborers and as subjects of medical experiments; and 5) those children killed during reprisal operations or so-called anti-partisan operations.

The methods of children's euthanasia were developed between February and May 1939. First, the Nazi officials registered their potential victims. Thus, registration forms, called Meldebogen, collected data from midwifes and doctors reporting all infants born with specific medical conditions. The first killings of children in special wards by overdoses of poison and medicaments already occurred in October 1939. Disobedient parents who attempted to remove their children from the killing wards were rarely able to succeed.

The killing of disabled children marked the beginning of the euthanasia program and continued throughout the war. Although it is impossible to calculate the number of children killed in these special children's wards during World War II. They also invented a program to kill every German child that was born with a disease, deformation or even a physical problem. Because they said that they were the next generation of the Nazi regime so if they were born with some defect they wouldn’t be able to continue with the regime.

But in the other hand we have the Jewish children that lived in the ghettos, Jewish children died from starvation and contact as well as privation of acceptable clothing and shelter. The German authorities were indifferent to this figure death because they considered most of the younger ghetto children to be unproductive and later “useless eaters.” Because children were generally too young to be installed at forced labor, German authorities generally selected them, along with the elderly, ill, and disabled, for the first expulsions to killing centers, or as the first victims led to mass graves to be shot.

A few Jewish children survived by hiding and participating in the underground partisan resistance, as runners, messengers, and smugglers, but because nobody ever talked about that there is nothing to that secures it completely.

Germans were really cruel with children as we already talk they killed them for many reasons, and in many ways. They not only killed Jewish kids they also killed German kids because of their diseases. I think in that time Germans became really cruel specially with kids in the case of Jewish kids I think that they shouldn’t have killed them because they were the next Jewish generation they could just told them that they need to forget about their religion and start behaving like a German. And in the case of Germans kids I think that is completely ridiculous to kill them just because they thought that if they had any disease or difficulties they couldn’t continue with the regime because they could help them with the doctors that worked for the Nazis.

Written by: Eileen Gallagher

Communism

Did the economy was a big problem during the XX century?

Communism is a political and economic philosophy also known as Marxism. This ideology creates classless, moneyless and stateless orders. Before the Russian Revolution of 1917 “Socialism” and “Communism” were synonyms.

They both referred to economic systems in which the government owns the means of production. But this changed when Vladimir Lenin led the Russian Revolution. Lenin believed a communist society would need one-party rule to quell chaos in the country and control the economy. (Huebsch, 2009)

Although attempts have been made to create communist societies, true communism has essentially died. But some countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, China, etc. are still based on this ideology as we can see in this reference:

"Marxism taught me what society was. I was like a blindfolded man in a forest, who doesn't even know where north or south is. If you don't eventually come to truly understand the history of the class struggle, or at least have a clear idea that society is divided between the rich and the poor, and that some people subjugate and exploit other people, you're lost in a forest, not knowing anything."

Cuban revolutionary and Marxist-Leninist politician Fidel Castro on discovering Marxism, 2009.


Perspectives on public goods and property rights are a fundamental part of communist theory. All economic decisions were planned by the state. In this case the government owned the Private properties because it supported collective ownership. As a reaction of the immense power of the state, small business were almost nonexistent in a communist society. All private property over the means of production has disappeared. The factories, lands, trade, construction, transportation, communication and information all were owned and controlled by the state.

Even though they had a very strict government we can see impressive economic achievements. During communism some fields of knowledge and technology advanced considerably. But the biggest problem that appeared was the social ones. People were unhappy and with this people stopped giving their best and began doing it for an obligation and not because they wanted to make Russia a better country.

Written by: Micaela Espinosa

The insatiable Mussolini

The influenced Benito Mussolini

We have often heard of Hitler, the terror of the Germans, but how often have you heard about other leaders, about different countries with different ideologies. In Italy it was the ideology of fascism, is in favor of the idea of ​​a nation against the individual, it takes a leader as a person in which power is concentrated, and also takes advantage of the sentiments d the nation, so to act in a violent way, fascism also tries to suppress the class struggle. The most representative of the fascist leader, an ally of Adolf Hitler, Nazism, Benito Mussolini.

An Italian politician, was the son of a humble family, his father's blacksmith and his mother a teacher. Benito course studies teacher until he was finally professor. Later he began to have many problems with the authorities, so he was expelled from Switzerland and Austria. When he tried to approach the policy move closer to the socialist party. was appointed secretary of the provincial federation of Forli and soon became editor of the weekly "La Lotta di Classe" which means the class struggle. Later, he wanted to capitalize on the dissatisfaction that gripped Italian society after the end of the war by calling on the fight against the leftist parties, then created the "fasci di combattimento" armed groups that were formed agitation the initial germ of the Fascist Party.

Time later it was the assassination of a Socialist deputy, Giacomo Matteotti, so Mussolini went to the power and destroyed any opposition, finaly he transformed his government into a dictatorship. Supported by a large segment of the population, he invested a lot in infrastructure and regained old expansionist projects. After Hitler came to power in Germany, was approaching the Nazis, and after the first German victories in World War II, he judged final, declared war on the Allies. And so finally Italy entering the WWII.

During the Second World War, Mussolini resisted a long time to participate in it, and make alliances, Hitler wanted to Mussolini get into war on the side of Germany, but he resisted, other leaders like Roosevelt asked Mussolini to stay neutral. Finally Mussolini saw that the war was already decided in favor of Germany, so that makes Italy enters the war.

In my opinion Mussolini was not too bad leader, he could have achieved great deeds during his government. Benito Mussolini didn´t do everything wrong, for example he invested a lot in infrastructure and regained old expansionist, wanted to make a lot of work to improve Italy, even tough he spend a lot in infrastructure it was a great job he did, and also during the World War II he didn´t want to get in it , and he didn´t wanted to be in the side of any country because that would bring a lot of problems to Italy. Mussolini was very intelligent to do that and stay neutral, but he was influenced by Adolf Hitler, leader of Nazism, and decided to go to war. In my opinion Mussolini had not been a bad leader if he had not been influenced by Hitler.

Written by: Rafaela Hermoza

Women in the Holocaust?

Jewish Women in the Holocaust

As we all know the Nazis field was a system that originally began as a system of repression, directed against the political opponents. During the first years of the Third Reich, the Nazi were imprisoning mainly Communists and Socialists. But what we don’t know is how where women treated in this article were going to explain how women were treated, what they went through and what were their expectations and thoughts about the Holocaust. 

At the beginnings of 1935 the regime started to imprison whoever was indicated like racial or biological inferiority, specially the Jews.

The Nazi regime treated all Jewish people the same, so the world could say that the Jewish women’s suffered as much as the Jewish men. The Nazis had a special concentration camp for women. The largest camp was Ravensbrück, which opened in May 1939.

Originally, the Nazis only recruited Jewish men but over the years, they decided that all Jewish people should be exterminated. The Jews were divided by age, class, gender and origin. Women were forced to perform humiliating tasks such cleaning streets in their   underwear and being forced to undress in front of groups of German soldiers. The difference with Jewish men’s treatment was that women suffered sexual harassment and although it was taboo for a German to have sexual relations with a Jewish in the concentration camps; rapes also became really common. 

But the most terrible thing was what Jewish pregnant women suffered during the Holocaust. They were often victims of many brutal medical experiments. One of the cruelest experiment the Nazi “doctors” did was to women who just gave birth to their babies: they taped their breast together so they won’t be able to breastfeed the babies. The purpose was to show the strength of the mother and the baby, this experiment most of the time made many children die from starving. Painful experiments were planned to try them in women and obviously pregnant women were often the first to be selected. Pregnant women or with infant kids, were selected for immediate killing or to making them suffer a lot. They were sent to the gas chambers, because they were unable to do hard slavery work.
If a woman was still in the early months of pregnancy, she might escape detection and be selected for slave labor. If somehow they managed to survive and delivered the baby secretly in the camp, the woman and the child were in risk of immediate death. That’s why many women started aborting, to avoid having themselves and the newborn babies sent to the gas chambers. 

Jewish women that lived in the holocaust were great human beings, because they had to support the humiliation, abuse, not only physical but also mental, mistreatment and worse than everything; to see their children and love ones being killed. Many of them knew what was going too happened to them. But they just kept on going, sometimes to prove to their children that everything was going to be great, after the war was over. Or maybe to trick their minds, instead of being worried about their future. 

Ultimately these women kept on dreaming that, maybe one day the nightmare would end. Unfortunately for many of them it didn’t end as they expected and just a few of them were able to finally get out of that horrific situation.

Written by: Eileen Gallagher

Real beauty

International Beauty Contest

The International Pageant of Pulchritude, best know as the "International beauty contest", was first established at the year 1926.The last contest that was done in the United States was in the year 1931. But other "Miss Universe" events continued until the year 1935 in Belgium. As we all know, now a days we have a "Miss universe contest" every year, it is based on the Pageant of Pulchritude, of course with some differences, but the main idea is to show that women are not just beautiful physically, women are beautiful in every way.

How does it started? Well in the year 1920 a promotor of a company in Galveston (texas), United States decided that they needed more tourists and created a event called "Splash day", this event featured a "bathing girl revue" and this girl would be the center of attention; this was a little contest that was established on the island. But after this event occurred it was selected to be outside the island and then it became bigger and bigger,it had some changes and then it was an international contest. 

The contest that was held in the United States was discontinued in 1932 because of the Great Depression. But "Miss Universe" contests were  held in Belgium in 1932 and 1935. After 1935, this international competition was "over" for the people that lived in that period, but in 1952 it reappeared and now it continues until the modern Miss Universe contest in California.

Every country that participated had to do an internal contest with the same rules and the same structure, there they got their "Miss" and then she went to the competition for the "Miss Universe" title.

The first winner was Catherine Moylan from texas, United States; but from the year 1929 they started to call the winner "Miss Universe" because of the many countries that participated. So the first "Miss Universe" was Lisl Goldarbeiter form Austria, this was the first time someone from another country won, because since 1926 until 1928 the winners were from the United States. In the last year, !935 the winner was Carlota Wassef from Egypt.


In conclusion, I personally think that this international contest that was originated in this hard period of time is very important because now a days we know that every year that contest occurs and it has been a tradition; in other words it aported something to the actual whorl that now it important. And also is necessary to remember that in the 20th century women were a little better in consideration, but still they weren't important for the society. Although by creating this contest women start to be a more important every time because they showed that women and men are the same, and what they wanted to emphasize the fact that women are beautiful not only physically but in every way, just the fact of being a woman is a gift from God.


Written by: Paula Guardia

Wall Street crash

The great depression of 1929

The United States lived a clear situation of economic growth. There were many growing businesses. It was the golden age of advertising. The economy grew and the stock gave great benefits. This apparent prosperity, ended with the international economic crisis, which began in October 1929 with the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange. One of the causes that led to this financial crisis was the overproduction and inflation of credit, in addition the misdistribution of wealth people made in the twenties and the extensive speculation in the market.

October 24^th of 1921 was a fateful day in the history of the world. The strength of America’s economy came to an end. The value of shares on the American Stock market collapsed.This was the start of an economic crisis that devastated the world; it was "the biggest financial crisis of the 20th century". The American loans to Europe were cut; this made many European businesses go bankrupt. The depression began with the Wall Street crash. This brought a dramatic slump in the USA.


This Financial crisis that America was having during the 20^th century didn’t only affect the country byitself but also the whole world. It affected not only the economic aspect but the political and social aspect too. The world’s economy depended on the USA and with the collapsing of the American Stock Market the world economy collapsed as well. The Depression hit hardest those nations that were most deeply indebted to the United States like Germany, Great Britain, etc. In the other hand the depression was a piece of luck for Adolf Hitler. As consequence people started losing faith in democracy and started turning to the two parties, Nazism and Communism. The depression contributed by raising him to power.

The number of unemployed people reached was about 13 million and many people were living in a primitive condition. This led to many poor families being forced into homelessness, poverty and starvation. Businesses and industry were also affected. Having lost much of their own capital many businesses started cutting back their workers' hours.

The U.S. economy broke down and entered the Great Depression during the presidency of Herbert Hoover. People blamed him for the Great Depression. During the 1932 presidential election Franklin Roosevelt won the elections. The first thing he did was to close all the banks and only let them reopen once they were stabilized. Next, Roosevelt began to establish programs that became known as the New Deal. Some of these problems helped farmers and civil by hiring people for various projects.

President Roosevelt was a hero. He did know what to do, establishing the country after it crisis. The New Deal programs eased the sufferings of the Great Depression; however, the U.S. economy was still extremely bad by the end of the 1930s. The economical crisis improved after World War II because both people and industry became essential to the war effort. The most important thing was how the Americans managed to overcome the difficulties they were going through and even though, they had still remained one of the most important countries of our time.

Written by: Micaela Espinosa

A dark mistery

The leader of terror, Adolf Hitler

We all know or we have heard about nazism, an ideology that has passed through Germany in the twentieth century, and it's leader, one of the better known and hated people of the twentieth century. The cause of the deaths of millions of people, the death of 60 million people, including adults, children and youth. On the other hand it is also best known for being the cause of World War II, the Austrian Adolf Hitler.

Leader of Nazi Germany. Born in Bohemia, 1889 and died in Berlin, 1945. The son of an Austrian customs, his childhood was spent in Linz and his youth in Vienna. The formation of Adolf Hitler was self-limited, it means that he couldn´t have a good education. In Vienna, his youth, failed in his vocation as a painter, so he become a vagrant and saw its racial prejudice at the sight of a cosmopolitan city.

Adolf Hitler fled the Austria-Hungary Empire to avoid military service, took refuge in Munich and joined the German army during WWI. The defeat of World War 1 made him go into politics. Later he return to Munich, Hitler joined a small far-right party, which soon became the main leader. Hitler's foreign policy was the reconstitution of Germany, was based on diverting attention from internal conflict to an aggressive foreign action. He aligned himself with the Italian fascist dictatorship. After the death of Hindenburg, Hitler appointed himself as "Führer", it means that he become the leader of Germany and was sworn in by the army.

With the Nazis in power, suffered many changes, many know that time as a period of suffering, a period in which all people suffer, but the Nazis had a positive side, the economy. When the Nazi party took power, 1933, Germany had recovered economically because of the Treaty of Versailles, but the economy still remained low, and foreign trade of Germany was affected by the 29 crisis of the United States of America. With the Nazi party in power that changed, it started an excellent standards of living for the working class and middle class. Began work to roads and buildings ostentatious.

Hitler intervened in the state, made a great change in the economy. He decided to create state-owned services such as setting price controls and regulating all activities of private enterprises, so that German employers had to follow government directives in order to preserve their property and wealth, because otherwise they could also be considered opponents and suffer the respective regime repression.

In my opinion Hitler did terrible things during his time at the government, millions of people abuse and even death caused by the abuse, psychological abuse and there was quite physical abuse of adults and children, but also must rescue the strengths that each person had in their government, although Adolf Hitler was the political center, did a great economic change, a change in which Germany could recover from a terrible crisis in which it was situated, a crisis that Germany was suffering and Adolf Hitler make Germany recover from that.

Written by: Rafaela Hermoza

Coco Chanel

"A girl must be two things: classy and fabulous"

Coco Chanel was a haute couture revolutionary, she changed the way women dressed in the 1920s and again in the early 1960s. She is a very important character in the fashion world, responsible for decades of innovation. Coco spent her entire life building a fashion empire on her talent and intuition for what women wanted to wear. She left a monumental impact on the fashion industry.

Gabrielle Bonheur " Coco" Chanel was born on august 19th of 1883 in France. Her mother died when she was 12 and she stay with her father only. She had a hard life and then she was singer in cafes for a short period of time and there she got the nickname "Coco" by local soldiers that went to see her.   She started a relationship with a wealthy English Industrialist called Arthur Edward 'Boy' Capel for 9 years, until she married in 1918. In the year 1919 something terrible happened, Capel died in a car accident. 

While she was in a relationship with Capel she got her first boutiques in 1910. By he 1920s Maison Chanel was established in Paris, Chanel become an important style icon with her amazing haircut and her active personality.

Her designs were unique and they broke up with the normal pattern of designs that women usually wore. In 1922, she launched the fragrance Chanel #5, which is still popular in this days. Two years later, Pierre Wertheimer became her business partner and then her lover. The Wertheimers now a days control the perfume company.

In the year 1925, Coco created her signature cardigan jacket, and in the next year she continued with her success with the little black dress. After that both items continued to be part of every Chanel collection. During her life, Coco also designed costumes for the stage, like Cocteau's 'Antigone' in 1923 and 'Oedipus Rex'. In 1969 when the interwar period had already passed, a broadway musical of Coco's life was showed, As we can see she was still very popular at that time. Also there has been 3 films of this amazing woman, the first one was called "Chanel Solitarire" in 1981, then "Coco Chanel" in 2008 and finally in 2009 "Coco before Chanel".

She worked until her death, continuing with her particular style and unique personality; Coco rested in peace in January 10th, 1971. But after her death, since 1982 until today, Karl Lagerfeld become the new designer of Chanel's fashion house, he wanted to continue and show generation by generation what Coco Chanel brought to the fashion world.

I think that Coco Chanel was a woman with a lo of courage, she broke up with the common styles and just created her unique one; even thou she had a hard life and including the fact that in that period of time women weren't equal as men, she rouse up and succeed with her personal ideas. According to me she is an example because now a days we can see that people know about her, and it is a clear example of ho omen could succeed even they hadn't any support from the society.

Written by: Paula Guardia

Quotes

"Fashion fades, only styles remains the same".

- Coco Chanel

"There could be no issue between the Church and the State. The Church, as such, has nothing to do with political affairs. On the other hand, the State has nothing to do with the faith or inner organization of the Church"

- Adolf Hitler

"All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state"
-Benito Mussolini