The work of bestial degradation, begun by the victorious Germans, had been carried to conclusion by the Germans in defeat. The wounds of the Holocaust—known in Hebrew as Shoah, or catastrophe—were slow to heal. Survivors of the camps found it nearly impossible to return home, as in many cases they had lost their families and been denounced by their non-Jewish neighbors. As a result, the late s saw an unprecedented number of refugees, POWs and other displaced populations moving across Europe.
In an effort to punish the villains of the Holocaust, the Allies held the Nuremberg Trials of , which brought Nazi atrocities to horrifying light. Increasing pressure on the Allied powers to create a homeland for Jewish survivors of the Holocaust would lead to a mandate for the creation of Israel in But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Auschwitz, also known as Auschwitz-Birkenau, opened in and was the largest of the Nazi concentration and death camps.
Located in southern Poland, Auschwitz initially served as a detention center for political prisoners. However, it evolved into a network of camps where Facing economic, social, and political oppression, thousands of German Jews wanted to flee the Third Reich but found few countries willing to accept them. Auschwitz was the largest and deadliest of six dedicated extermination camps where hundreds of thousands of people were tortured and murdered during World War II and the Holocaust under the orders of Nazi dictator, Adolf Hitler.
As one of the greatest tragedies Eighty-eight pounds of eyeglasses. Hundreds of prosthetic limbs. Twelve thousand pots and pans. Forty-four thousand pairs of shoes. In fewer than four years, more than 1. People were crammed into cattle cars with little food or toilets and transported to Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland. Upon arriving, they were Mindu Hornick, 13, peered through a crack in the door of her stopped cattle car and read a name: Auschwitz. Heinrich Himmler , a Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, opened in , shortly after Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany.
Located in southern Germany, Dachau was initially a camp for political prisoners; however, it eventually evolved into a death camp where countless Live TV. This Day In History. These were special killing units charged with the task of killing communist officials, partisans, and Jewish men between the ages of 15 and Their actions were officially intended to prevent resistance.
From August onwards, however, the Einsatzgruppen frequently also killed old people, women, and children. Their murders could hardly be considered 'retaliations'.
The Jews in the Occupied Territories were usually ordered to report to a central point, often on the pretext of deportation, or they were rounded up during raids. Then the Nazis would then take them to a remote place where they were executed. In alone, close to , Soviet Jews were murdered in this way.
Historians disagree about the moment when Hitler decided that all European Jews should be killed. A signed order to do so does not exist. However, based on other sources and events, there is a strong likelihood that the decision was made somewhere in the second half of Mass murder seems an extreme alternative to the previous plans for deportation. The war made it impossible to deport Jews to Madagascar, and the plan to push the Jews back further to the east could not be carried out because the victory over the Soviet Union was not forthcoming.
During the Wannsee Conference, on 20 January , Nazi officials discussed the execution of the planned murder of the eleven million Jews living in Europe. In late , the Nazis began preparing for the murder of more than two million Jews living in the General Government, the occupied part of Poland.
The Nazis also experimented with mass murder in other occupied and annexed areas of Eastern Europe. In Chelmno, they introduced the use of gas to kill Polish Jews. Here, the victims were murdered in gas chambers with diesel engine exhaust fumes immediately upon arrival. The only purpose of the extermination camps was to kill people. Only a small number of Jews were kept alive to help with the killing process.
In November , Aktion Reinhard was terminated. The camps were disassembled and the bodies of the victims were excavated and burned. The Nazis then planted trees on the grounds to wipe out their crimes. At least 1. In the middle of , the Germans began deporting Jews from the occupied territories in Western Europe. The decision-making process and dynamics differed from one country to the next, as did the numbers of victims.
There are several reasons for this difference. The Jews were crammed in overcrowded cattle wagons and transported to Eastern Europe. Most of them ended up at Auschwitz-Birkenau, but there were other concentration or extermination camps. Out of the , Dutch Jews who were murdered, 34, were killed in Sobibor. Auschwitz-Birkenau was both a labour camp and an extermination camp. And so, upon arrival, the Jews were selected according to their age, health, and ability to work. Those who were not fit enough were gassed immediately.
The others had to do forced labour under barbaric conditions. The work was extremely hard, the little food was of poor quality, hygiene was poor, and Jews were often maltreated. Jews were brought in from other occupied parts of Europe.
In and , deportations started from the occupied regions in Italy, Hungary, Greece, and the Balkans. Only when the Allies were drawing near, by end of , did the persecution of the Jews slowly come to a halt. In the last months of the war, thousands of Jews and other prisoners died during the 'death marches' after the Germans had evacuated the concentration camps to prevent the prisoners from falling into the hands of the Allied troops.
Even after liberation, people still died of malnutrition, disease, and exhaustion. The Nazis did not just kill Jews during the war. Their political opponents, Jehovah's Witnesses, the handicapped, homosexuals, Slavs, and Roma and Sinti were also murdered on a large scale.
Nevertheless, the murder of the European Jews takes a special place. Numerically speaking, they were the largest group of victims. Moreover, the Nazis set out to exterminate the entire Jewish people. The only other group they intended to wipe out as a whole were the Roma and Sinti, although the Nazis were slightly less fanatical in their persecution.
They murdered The Roma and Sinti call this massacre porajmos , 'the devouring'. Mass killings of Jews became commonplace following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, Death squads called Einsatzgruppen, formed at the order of Reinhard Heydrich, director of the Reich Main Security Office at the time, were tasked with murdering Jewish civilians and Communist Party officials with the help of local citizens. Historians estimate that between June and May , these roaming death squads killed over 1 million Jews.
Industrial-scale murder of Jews, known as the Final Solution, was approved by the senior Nazi leadership on January 20, at the Wannsee Conference, held just outside Berlin. At the meeting, called by Heydrich, he presented the plan to transport Jews from Eastern and Western Europe to extermination camps located in Poland.
While the fall of the Nazi regime and its surrender on May 8, is usually the date given as the end of the Holocaust — it did not mark the end of organized killings of Jews in Europe. Hundreds of Jews were killed across Poland by Polish locals after the war had ended. In the most of infamous of these events, on July 4, , over 40 Jews were killed in the Polish city of Kielce, in a massacre incited by Polish communist authorities with elements among the local population participating.
This article was originally published in February
0コメント