The Holocaust

A Hungarian gendarme checks a woman entering the Munkács ghetto Some of Hitler’s Officials…

Herman Goering was a Nazi military leader, Commander of the Luftwaffe, President of the Reichstag, Prime Minister of Prussia and Hitler's designated successor.

As head of the SS, Chief of the German Police and later the Minister of the Interior, was one of the most powerful men in the Third Reich. Dr. Paul Josef Goebbels was the Reich Minister of Propaganda. At the end of the war, a devoted Goebbels stayed in Berlin with Hitler and killed himself, along with his wife Magda and their six young children.

Josef Mengele initially gained notoriety for being one of the SS physicians who supervised the selection of arriving transports of prisoners, determining who was to be killed and who was to become a forced laborer, but is far more infamous for performing grisly human experiments on camp inmates, for which Mengele was called the “Angel of Death.” Jews in Prewar Europe

In 1933, approximately 9.5 million Jews lived in Europe, comprising 1.7% of the total European population. This number represented more than 60 percent of the world's Jewish population at that time, estimated at 15.3 million.

The majority of Jews in prewar Europe resided in eastern Europe. The largest Jewish communities in this area were in Poland, with about 3,000,000 Jews (9.5%); the European part of the Soviet Union, with 2,525,000 (3.4%); and Romania, with 756,000 (4.2%).

In prewar central Europe, the largest Jewish community was in Germany with about 500,000 members (0.75% of the total German population).

Three generations of a Jewish family pose for a group photograph. Vilna, 1938-39. Jews Targeted -Holocaust – the systematic murder of 11 million people in Europe, more than half of whom were Jews. -anti-Semitism, or hatred of Jews, had a long history in many European countries -1935, Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their German citizenship, jobs, & property -Jews had to wear a bright yellow Star of David attached to their clothing.

Pictured here are two children wearing the Jewish badge in the Kovno Ghetto in Feb 1944. On March 27, 1944, the Germans mounted a Children’s Aktion, entering the ghetto when parents were at work and taking about 2,000 of the children and elderly to be killed. (This was part of Nazi euthanasia.) German Students Burning Jewish books because the Nuremberg laws stated all Jewish Literature should be burned. May 10, 1933 Kristallnacht -November 9 – 10 became known as Kristallnacht, or “Night of Broken Glass” -Nazi storm troopers attacked Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues -around 100 Jews were killed and hundreds more were injured -about 30,000 Jews were arrested & hundred s of synagogues were burned A Flood of Refugees -Jews that fled had trouble finding nations to accept them. -The U.S. accepted only “persons of exceptional merit.” Albert Einstein, for example -Roosevelt sympathized with the Jews, but would not “do anything which would conceivably hurt the future of present American citizens.”

Muralist Ben Shahn depicts the 1933 emigration of Albert Einstein and thousands of other Jews to America to escape Nazi terrorism. The Condemned -Hitler announced his “Final Solution:” his desire to rid Europe of all Jews -included genocide, or the deliberate & systematic killing of an entire population -Hitler believed Aryans were the “master race” that must be preserved -anyone considered to be unworthy, or “enemies of the state,” were targeted -Hitler’s SS rounded up Jews – men, women, children, and babies – & shot on spot A German policeman checks the identification papers of Jews in the ghetto.

Jews being rounded up in Russia, July 1941 Forced Relocation -Jews ordered into ghettos – segregated Jewish areas in certain Polish cities -some Jews resisted -published and distributed underground newspapers -schools set up to educate Jewish children -theater and music groups continued to operate Wedding rings taken from concentration camp inmates In 1941, a year before deportations from the reached their height, ghetto leaders made brave attempts to retain a certain sense of normalcy, and to provide for the physical and emotional needs of the ghetto's children. The care center seen here, and others like it, were vital because they provided children with food and the perception of safe havens. Care centers were possible because a Nazi ban on public and private "gatherings" was rescinded early in 1941. Elementary-school instruction also was allowed. The "normalcy" was illusory, however, and conditions faced by Warsaw's children would shortly be insufferable. Children eating in the ghetto streets. Warsaw, Poland, between 1940 and 1943.

Jews Captured by the SS during the Thea Borzuk Slawner poses with her mother on the occasion of her second birthday party, which was celebrated behind the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto. Despite living in appalling conditions, Warsaw's Jews spared no effort to retain their humanity. Religious and family celebrations became symbols of Jewish resistance. Thea and her mother escaped the ghetto just prior to the 1943 uprising. They survived the war, living among gentiles under assumed names.

As appalling as conditions were in the Warsaw Ghetto, some of the city's Jews survived, often by hiding outside the ghetto in the homes of gentiles who were willing to conceal them. Here, Jacob, David, and Shalom Gutgeld pose with their Aunt Janke. Janke managed to get the three boys out of the ghetto, hiding them in the small apartment of a couple named the Roslans. Jacob and David survived , but Shalom died of scarlet fever. Concentration Camps -Jews dragged from their homes and herded onto trains or trucks for shipment to concentration camps -families often separated -cycle of hunger, humiliation, and work that often ended in death -overcrowded wooden barracks; hunger, rats, and fleas -worked from dawn to dusk, 7 days a week, until they collapsed -Those too weak to work were killed.

“The brute Schmidt was our guard; he beat and kicked us if he thought we were not working fast enough. He ordered his victims to lie down and gave them 25 lashes with a whip, ordering them to count out loud. If the victim made a mistake, he was given 50 lashes…Thirty or 40 of us were shot every day. A doctor usually prepared a daily list of the weakest men. During the lunch break they were taken to a nearby grave and shot. They were replaced the following morning by new arrivals from the transport of the day…It was a miracle if anyone survived for five or six months in Belzec.”

~Rudolf Reder, quoted in The Holocuast Rudolf Reder was one of only two Jews to survive the camp at Belzec, Poland. Children taken from Eastern Europe and imprisoned in Auschwitz look out from behind the barbed-wire fence in July 1944. Mass Exterminations -Final Solution reached its final stage in early 1942. -poison gas would be used to kill victims -as many as 12,000 people could be killed in one day -Auschwitz was largest death camp -SS doctors separated those strong enough to work from those who would die that day. -victims poisoned with cyanide gas that spewed from vents in the walls -Nazis built huge crematoriums to burn bodies -some prisoners were shot, hanged, or injected with poison -others died from horrible medical experiments carried out by camp doctors -some doctors tested methods of sterilization in their search for ways to improve the “master race”

Women and children on the Birkenau arrival platform known as the “ramp.” The Jews were removed from the deportation trains onto the ramp where they faced a selection process- some were sent immediately to their deaths, while others were sent to slave labor. Women and children being taken through sector B II of the camp to Crematoria V and VI. In Birkenau, elderly women and children were almost always immediately sent to their deaths in the gas chambers as they were deemed "unfit for work." Among the last victims of Bergen-Belsen in the spring of 1945 were 15-year-old Anne Frank (pictured) and her sister, Margot. Arriving from Auschwitz in October 1944, the sisters clung to each other and struggled to survive in the midst of the increasingly deteriorating conditions of the camp. Typhus claimed Margot first, and a frail Anne died of the disease a few days after. In January 1945 the Red Army liberated the deadliest of the Third Reich's death camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau, where an estimated 1.1 million had died, most of them in the camp's gas chambers. These children were among the few who survived imprisonment in Birkenau. These children at Auschwitz, liberated by the Soviet Army on January 27, 1945, show their tattooed arms to the photographer. Everyone imprisoned in Auschwitz had his or her arm tattooed with an identification number. This served two purposes. First, it allowed camp officials to keep track of the thousands of prisoners in the camp. Second, making the inmates into nameless units served to dehumanize them, both crushing the spirit of the prisoners and making it easier for their guards to avoid facing the humanity of their charges. General Dwight Eisenhower and other high-ranking U.S. Army officers view the bodies of prisoners who were killed during the evacuation of Ohrdruf. Ohrdruf, Germany April 12, 1945. The Survivors -estimated 6 million Jews died during the Holocaust -some Jews had help from others -some Jews survived the horrors of the concentration camps

“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in the camp, which has turned my life into one long night….Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my god and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.” ~Night, Elie Wiesel