My Academic Writing Sample # 1
The following are some excerpts from my academic writing. I am currently studying at Ashford University Online (their campus is in Clinton, Iowa and I will be going there next summer to participate in the graduation ceremonies) for my Bachelor of Arts in History. My GPA is currently 3.82 and I am going to graduate Magna Cum Laude (the second highest honors for a college graduate). ** Please do not take any of these samples because it is academic in nature and therefore I do not know why anyone would want to steal or even think about plagiarizing my work.
This paper was written for my World Civilizations II class and the final topic was 'The Holocaust'.
What was the Holocaust?
The Holocaust was the “…systematic and state-sponsored murder of the Jews” (Berenbaum, 2010) by the Nazis during the Second World War (1939-1945). Germany’s Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, wanted to eliminate the Jews, whom he saw as the cause of Germany’s post-WWI suffering. Despite the fact that the Jews were the primary victims, there were secondary victims; people who were systematically murdered because they did not fit Hitler’s idea of the ‘perfect’ German or ‘Aryan’ race. These groups included the elderly, disabled, Jews, Poles, Roma (Gypsies), political opponents, Communists, etc..
Most of the victims of the Holocaust were murdered in concentration camps, located in Poland, and specifically created for this purpose, in special gas chambers. “Holocaust” is a word of Greek origin which means “…sacrifice by fire” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2010). It truly was that, in every sense for the victims, who were incinerated to death.
Who were the major perpetrators of the Holocaust?
Nazi Germany was the instigators and perpetrators of the Holocaust. Nothing like it has been seen either before or since. Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) came to power in 1933, but his beliefs in the “…Aryan supremacy and inferiority of Jews” (Bentley, Ziegler, & Streets, 2008, p. 581) were set while he was a young man still living in Austria, in homeless shelters. These ideas became his anthem for a way of life. When he came to power, as chancellor of Germany, in 1933, he was able to begin to put some of these beliefs to work in his ideologies and practices.
His reign of terror on the Jews began simply enough by “…boycotting Jewish stores and products” (Berenbaum, 2010); then it moved on to barring Jews from specific occupations and finally to executions. Before the Holocaust, by two years at least, the Nazis were beginning to exterminate those considered “unfit”, mainly mentally and physically disabled patients.