Holocaust and Post WWII Concern with Human Rights

The Holocaust is an important event in history to remember all over the world due to the violations with Germany and other governments imposed on the Jewish population in Europe. Countries’ governments like the United States and France, did not seem to stand up against the German army but rather they avoided getting into conflict with the Germans. The concern with human rights post WWII was that the governments didn’t care and that there was nothing to rectify what happened. There were several human rights violations against the targeted Jewish population.

What makes the Holocaust such an important topic when speaking about human rights is that the Holocaust shows how much the world disregarded human rights during that time. It let itself disregard the human rights of a population and what repercussions came about ignoring them were devastating. During the Nazi occupation of Germany and its surrounding countries, the Jewish population had virtually no human rights as the government convinced the people that Jewish people were destroying the country. Even as citizens of a certain country like in France or Poland, as the German government began taking over, they no longer cared that they were citizens, they were just seen as Jewish and . The French government allowed for the Nazis to come and take over part of the government. They allowed for the French people and the French police to help round up the Jewish population to be sent off to the concentration camps. Basically, the French turned against the Jewish and turned a blind eye to what was happening to them after they were deported to the camps.

The Holocaust doesn’t just signify one or two violations of human rights but several violations to a specific population. The Memorial de la Shoah, was very depressing to say the least. Millions of Jewish people were killed in extermination camps via gas chambers, others from experimentation, others from beatings, starvation and several other things. One of the quotes that stated clearly what the Jews were forced to do: “A Jewish deportee was not there to work or die, but to work and die.” They were rounded up and basically worked until they died with very little clothing in the cold, beatings and a lack of food, it was not a surprise that millions of Jews died via working to death. No one should ever have to go through what the Jewish people had to during this period in time. Clearly, this is a violation of several basic human rights.

Human rights are a very important concept and to overlook the Holocaust would be ridiculous. There were so many violations and it was important after WWII to make sure that these violations didn’t happen again and that there was a consensus to what pertains to the rights of a human. From the Holocaust we can see what basic human rights were violated, like the right to life, food, water, shelter. There needed to be protection for what people went through and post WWII, the concern with human rights and the protection of these rights are very high.