Name: Nguyn Hong Ho

Class: 11E19
Course: Intercultural Communication I

The Holocaust - From prejudice to racism

As prejudice and racism have caused enormous suffering across history, it is very
important to try to understand how they work. Prejudice and racism both refer to a
negative view of one group of people based solely on their membership in that
group. Racism is a specific form of prejudice, involving prejudicial attitudes or
behavior towards members of an ethnic group. The definition of race is somewhat
variable but commonly refers to an ethnic group originating on a specific
continent, such as people of African, European or Asian descent. Under the light of
intercultural communication, the writer of this essay had a chance to verify one of
the suspicions remaining since being a child the causes of the Holocaust, or the
Jews genocide in the Second World War.
To understand about the Holocaust, everyone should watch the movie The Pianist.
In 2002, The Pianist, which was adopted from autobiographical book having same
name by the pianist and composer Wadysaw Szpilman, was released.
Immediately, it met with significant critical praise and received multiple awards
and nominations. The plot of the movie is about Wladyaw Szpilman, an aspiring
Polish pianist whose entire family are Jews. Shipped off to concentration camps
bound for death, Wladysaw's musical renown intervenes and an influential friend
in the Jewish police pulls him away from the boarding line. His fortune, however,
is exchanged for his division from the remainder of the family. Living in fear and
survival guilt, he encounters many near-death experiences and must rely on the

courage of others to stay alive. Enthralled by the pianist's ability, one such model
was Nazi Captain Wilm Hosenfeld who fed and kept his existence a secret. The
Second World War eventually broke down and The Pianist's main character would
become a successful musician. To a 10 year-old child, what happened in that movie
was really shock and horrible, how the Nazi could do that to the Jews without fear
or suffer, why they did that..., all is unknowned. When that child got older and had
more interest in book and history, he knew that it had been the consequence of
racism.
Prejudice is prejudgment, or forming an opinion before becoming aware of the
relevant facts of a case. According to Dovidio and Gaertner (2010), it can refers to
a positive or negative evaluation of another person based on their perceived group
membership or unfounded beliefs [1] and may include "any unreasonable attitude
that is unusually resistant to rational influence" (Rosnow, 1972)[2]. Racism is
believed by Schaefer (2008)[3] and Newman (2012)[4] to consist of both prejudice
and discrimination based in social perceptions of biological differences between
people. It often takes the form of social actions, practices or beliefs, or political
systems that consider different races to be ranked as inherently superior or inferior
to each other, based on presumed shared inheritable traits, abilities, or qualities. It
may also hold that members of different races should be treated differently,
normally negatively.
The Holocaust itself is an extreme act of the hostility to the Jews by German.
Derived from the Greek holkaustos: hlos, "whole" and kausts,
"burnt (Dawidowicz, 1975, p. Xxxvii)[5], the Holocaust was a genocide in which
approximately six million Jews were killed by the Nazi regime and its
collaborators. According to the article The Holocaust: Definition and Preliminary

Discussion[6], from 1941 to 1945, Jews were targeted and murdered in a genocide,
the largest in modern history, and part of a broader aggregate of acts of oppression
and killings of various ethnic and political groups in Europe by the Nazis.
What are the causes of the Jews persecution? It may seems that the Jews,
unfortunately, have been victims of a series of prejudices that have existed for
thousand years, the spitting of theory and the envy of a defeated country (in other
word, the stereotypes appearing here are religion, race and social class, especially
in Germany).
Religion is the first cause of those prejudices. Althought John Bowker (1997)
stated [7], there are many differences (and conflicts) between Jewish and
Christianity. For example, the Jews dont believe Jesus is Messiah while the
Christans strongly have faith in it. Another fact is that the expansion of Christianity
in the Roman Empire made other small religions smaller or even disappear.
Theodosius I's edict of Thessalonica in 380 made public expression of the ancient
cults illegal, bringing ancient religious toleration formally to an end [8]. Jewish is
not Christianity, so it was considered to be pagan and the Jews were persecuted for
not assimilating. This was only the first misery leading to the Holocaust.
Another cause of the Holocaust is the theory about the master race - a concept of
Nazi ideology in which the Aryan race is a master race, superior to all other races,
that a nation is the highest creation of a race, and great nations were the creation of
great races (bermensch Uppermen). The weakest nations, as Hitler said[9],
were those of impure or mongrel races, because they have divided, quarrelling, and
therefore weak cultures. Worst of all were seen to be the parasitic Untermensch
(Subhumans), mainly Jews. According to Nazism, it is an obvious mistake to

permit or encourage multilingualism and multiculturalism within a nation.

Fundamental to the Nazi goal was the unification of all German-speaking peoples,
divided into different Nation States. Hitler claimed that nations that could not
defend their territory did not deserve it. Slave races, he thought of as less-worthy to
exist than "master races." In particular, if a master race should require room to live,
such a race should have the right to displace the inferior indigenous races.
Accidentally, the master race theory was the result of two factor - Social-Darwinist
Ideology and Feeling of Revenge after the First World War[10].
The last nail to the coffin is the reality of Germanys economy, society after 1918.
Warfare meant that Germany could not import or export industrial goods and
severely limited trade. Resources and food were diverted to the war. As a result of
the war, by 1919 Germany was no longer the second most economically advanced
nation in the world. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles ordered that Germany had
to pay huge sums in reparations to the Allies. In 1921, as Germany could not pay,
French and Belgian troops invaded and occupied the Ruhr to take goods and raw
materials. During 1923 Germany printed more money to pay striking workers.
Hyperinflation resulted, wiping out the value of savings[11]. After the war,
Germany was poor, most of its citizens were poor too. But lets see the position of
the Jews in the description about the "phenomenal rise of German Jewry" in his
book My Life as a German Jew: ...Seen from the economic point of view, no
Jewish minority in any other country, not even that in America could possibly
compete with the German Jews. They were involved in large scale banking, a
situation unparallelled elsewhere, and, by way of high finance, they had also
penetrated German industry. A considerable portion of the wholesale trade was
Jewish. They controlled even such branches of industry which is in general not in
Jewish hands. Examples are shipping or the electrical industry, and names such as

Ballin and Rathenau do confirm this statement. I hardly know of any other branch
of emancipated Jewry in Europe or the American continent that was as deeply
rooted in the general economy as was German Jewry. [12]Simply, when the
master race theory was accepted, how could the people who call themselves
bermensch permit the fact that the Untermensch had higher position in society
and economy than theirs?
By learning about stereotyping, prejudice and racism, can students better
understand why the Holocaust could happen. It can also be understood that
prejudice and racism are the result of cultural differences in communication, which
are unavoidable when there is interaction among cultures.
REFERENCE
1. Dovidio, J. F., & Gaertner. S. L. (2010). The Handbook of Social
Psychology. New York.
2. Rosnow, R. L. (1972). Poultry and Prejudice. Psychologist Today .
3. Schaefer, R. T. (2008). Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity and Society.
4. Newman, D. M. (2012). Sociology: Exploring the architecture of everyday
life.
5. Dawidowicz, L. (1975). The War Against the Jews.
6. The Holocaust: Definition and Preliminary Discussion. (n.d.). Retrieved 12
10, 2014, from Yad Vashem:
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/resource_center/the_holocaust.a
sp
7. Bowker, J. (1997). World Religions: The Great Faiths Explored &
Explained. London.

8. Ehler, Sidney Zdeneck; Morrall, John B. (1967). Church and State Through
the Centuries: A Collection of Historic Documents with Commentaries.
9. Hitler, A. (1924). Mein Kampf.
10.Hng, P. V. (2007, 01 04). T hc thuyt bnh hon n Swastika ca qu
d. Retrieved 12 10, 2014, from Vietsciences:
http://vietsciences.free.fr/lichsu/swastika2.htm
11. Turroni, C. B. (1937). The Economics of Inflation .
12.Goldmann, N. (1980). My Life as a German Jew.