How?- Maddy Stutt 809

All throughout my times reading books about world war two your find out about many sick, disgusting things that are done to people. I learned while doing research on the roles of children in the war for my picture books about Nazi doctors who used many Jewish twins as products of grusome science experiments, that just about served no purpose and are disgusting beyond belief. In Maus, we read about soldiers hitting children against walls, so that when they were dead they would no longer be crying. In Maus Spiegelman also describes the Crematorium and how the Nazis burned people alive. I've also read about the Gas Chambers in all the books, and how they sprayed people with various suffocating deadly gasses to kill them. We consider these horrors as done by 'The Nazis.' A thing. But it hit me that each experiment is run, and each body is thrown into flames, and each child is smashed by a person. An individual person. Together they may form the monstrous group that we that together commit millions of crimes like those, yet each individual crime was done by one person or a few people. It makes me wonder HOW? How in the world can a person like one of us sink THAT low?

In my last post I briefly mentioned the idea that it may have been out of selfishness. People knew that in some cases for a young man to not fight for the Nazi's may be to put his family in danger. Sometimes I think it may have been because these people just wanted to make all their troubles go away, so they just lied to themselves. Some of them wanted to believe that the Jews and Gypsies and others truly were animals and deserved all the things done to them, because that was easier than all other options. Others, were just monsters, people like Hitler, who appeared human, but on the inside cannot be called humane. To me, even those who are doing it out of lying to themselves, there comes a time when a line has to be drawn. When the people who tell themselves that the Jews are not truly humans, but animals, have to see that even if they were 'animals' such violence wouldn't be acceptable for anything or anyone, 'animal' or human. In addition, there has to come a time where as a human being you have to stop and realize that for your own good you cannot continue doing such horrible things to any being, even if it means putting something at risk.

It's so confusing and horrifying to me how little of a conscience these people had. The idea of racism, being homophobic, and the ideology behind the Nazi party is something I truly cannot even begin to try and understand. It's like why would you ever not like someone because of a label they're given? And it's so wrong to say 'I don't like them,' point a finger, and convince everyone else killing them is alright. I believe that there are very few people who truly deserve to die, and no race or religion will ever satisfy the needs of truly deserving to die. People are not defined by race, religion, beliefs, looks, or anything like that. No group can be defined as one thing. Every person has the right to be defined for who they are and the way they individually act without being judged. The Jewish people weren't given that right. So many things happened in that war that were wrong, and I cannot even begin to list them, but not why, just HOW did people do such terrible things and tell themselves it was alright. As a very small baby no one knows all the horrible ideas of violence and racism, we all had the same beliefs which basically was no beliefs, so what went wrong in the years of there lives in which they lost whatever sense of right and wrong they could have had? How could they have stooped so low as to be able to physically and most importantly mentally live with themselves as Nazi's in the war?