The Second World War brought not only unimaginable death and destruction, but its aftermath also engendered two unprecedented issues facing humanity. The first use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the ultimate nightmare into the realm of reality. It had become possible for humanity to exterminate itself. The second existential issue was the Holocaust. What was humanity if it could inflict such horror on itself? Millions of non-combatant men, women and children had been caught up in a scouring process that ingested communities large and small in a deadly network of railways leading to death camps. How could such an unthinkable atrocity have happened?
Attention quickly focused on the hotspots of antisemitism in pre-First World War Europe. While no part of Europe was free of it – and of racism in general – the most toxic area stretched from (in today’s terms) Moldova, western Ukraine, eastern Poland and Lithuania. At the time, much of the area was divided between the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires.
Your organisation does not have access to this article.
Sign up today to give your students the edge they need to achieve their best grades with subject expertise
Subscribe
