Reading Response to Berlin Boxing Club by Robert Sharenow (#2)

       The Berlin Boxing Club by Robert Sharenow shows how lots of propaganda can convince people to do terrible things.  During World War II, a young Jewish boy, with Aryan looks, who lives in Berlin, Germany learns to box.  Boxing was considered the superior sport of the 'true' German race.  The boy, Karl, got by with boxing for about 5 years, but when he faced his former nemesis in the junior championship tournament and started to beat him hard, someone tipped off the judges about his race.  He was disqualified from the tournament and his dreams were crushed.  He thought that if he could become a professional boxer that the Nazis might see how Jew aren't that bad.  This little anecdote shows how serious the Germans during WWII about segregating the Jews and Gypsies from the Aryans.  They wouldn't even let a German looking, Jewish boy fight an Aryan.  Adolf Hitler used propaganda to help convince people to get rid of the Jews and Gypsies.  He targeted the youth in a lot of ways that most people don't know about.  He started a club, Hitler Youth Club, that was a little like boy scouts.  The club gave its members swastika pins and belt buckles to wear to school to 'advertise'.  Karl wanted more than anything to be part of that club, but his father wouldn't hear of it.  Hitler also targeted parents because if parents had a certain political view, than their children would most likely share that political view.  Then kids would also share that same hatred toward the Jews at school.  They would torment the Jewish kids.  Karl's little sister who had more Jewish appearances got rotten apples and eggs thrown at her.  She was a little girl who felt unwanted and unloved.
        Germany was not proud of their getting rid of the Jews.  When they hosted the Olympics during that time period they replaced signs saying no Jews with signs advertising the Olympics.  They didn't want the rest of the world to know what was really going on.  They wanted to keep their dirty little secret.  I think what the Nazis did was sick but I also think that Hitler was a very smart man.  He knew that kids like stuff to show off.  How about make a pin to wear that will no only pressure Germans to join, but present the Jews and Gypsies nice and clear.  Signs are also necessary to help remind people what is right and what is wrong.  Everywhere people posted signs saying, "No Jew and No Gypsies."  The final step that Hitler executed was making the rules of society, laws.  It became the law that no Aryan could have a relationship with a Jew.  Jews were kicked out of their non-Jewish schools and lost all of their non-Jewish friends.  So now Aryans weren't just tormenting the Jews because of fear of public shunning, but now they were doing it because it was the law.  Hitler knew that propaganda brought people together.  People want something to be a part of.  They want to have friends that believe the same things they do and go to the same places that they do.  This is how Hitler convinced so many people to do such terrible things. Propaganda.