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and Remembrance Projectpreserving the past to protect the future ...
.
Holocaust Survivors
and Remembrance ProjectWhat is the Holocaust?
Tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews are forced to leave their homes,
and move into specially designated ghetto areas. (Atlas; 1944)
.A roundup of Jews
.Deportation of Jews from Kovno Ghetto to Auschwitz
(October 26, 1943. Photo by George Kadish).
A newly arrival of Hungarian Jews at Birkenau (Auschwitz II) in 1944.
The crematorium II (with the long chimney) is seen in the back at right.
[Courtesy of Yad Vashem Archives.].
Survivors of Auschwitz at Liberation .
.
April 12, 1945: Nordhausen Concentration Camp,
where 20,000 inmates were believed to have died.
The
road to Auschwitz
was built by hate, World
War II (WWII), initiated by Hitler's
Nazi Germany
in 1939, killed some 67 million people (according to
Franklin & Eleanor
Roosevelt Institute)
out of which some 27 million were
Soviet citizens. . . . Nazi's Holocaust
emerged from a Persecutory Campaign initiated by Hitler's
Nazi Germany against the ethnically undesirable people with
the primary focus on the Jews. That persecutory campaign,
during the war years, evolved and transformed into a
distinctive genocidal component of WWII whose objective was
the total annihilation of Hitler's perceived "undesirables"
that were targeted for what they were rather than for what
they did or believed in. The so-called "world Jewry," in
Nazis' parlance, became Nazis' primary fixation towards
total eradication. One of the
most noticeable and dramatic action taken against
the Jewish citizens of Germany and Austria during
that time (that for many observers was the first
hint of what was yet to come) was the nationwide
pogrom
in the night of Nov. 9-10, 1938 known as the
Kristallnacht
or "The
Night of Broken Glass"
pogrom. The
burning of the
synagogue in
Ober Ramstadt
during
Kristallnacht.
The local
fire-department
prevented the
fire from
spreading to a
nearby home,
but made no
attempt to
intervene in
the synagogue
fire.
[Trudy
Isenberg
Collection,
USHMM
Archive] . Also
it should be noted that soon
after Hitler's appointment as
chancellor in January 1933, the
first concentration camps
(Konzentrationslager; KL or KZ)
were established. Those camps
however, as the one at
Oranienburg (photo
at left)
were initially for political
prisoners. Later on from 1939,
all those camps of the so-called
"subversive elements" (that
included hard-core criminals as
well) evolved and expanded
considerably as the nature of the
detainees changed completely:
the new arrivals contain
now, in ever larger numbers,
people who were detained and
imprisoned not because of what
they did or believe it, but
because of who they were
--the Jews, "Kapo
August Adam of
Mauthausen picked out
the professors, lawyers,
priests and magistrates
and cynically asked
them: "Are you a lawyer?
A professor? Good!
Do you see this green
triangle? This means I
am a killer. I have five
convictions on my
record: one for
manslaughter and four
for robbery. Well, here
I am in command. The
world has turned upside
down, did you get
that?" From
Vicenzo and Luigi
Pappalettera book:
"The Brutes Have the Floor." A
member of the German SS
supervises the boarding
of Jews onto trains
during a deportation
action in the Krakow
ghetto. Krakow, Poland,
1941-1942. Now,
during that period of
time, . . . . . . . . As
trainloads of Jews arrived from all over
Europe, many were gassed to death in
specially designed chambers (disguised as
shower facilities), or shot by firing
squads. The rest were forced to work
under the most terrible conditions, which
ultimately led to death by starvation or
execution. . . And
The Mass Killings ...
Behind
the advances of
the German army
during the war
were four
Einsatzgruppen
--special
German commando
units. Each
consisted of
500 to 1,000
men. Their job
was to follow
behind the
German army,
round up all
the Jews in the
newly conquered
towns, and kill
them. The Jews
would be herded
to the
outskirts of
town, often to
anti-tank
trenches.
Sometimes the
Jews would be
forced to dig
their own
graves. The
Nazis would
line them up,
and force the
Jews to
undress.
Then,
they would
shoot them over
the trenches.
[Picture
1
and
Picture
2
herein,
NOT
SUITABLE FOR
MINORS.]
In one incident
lasting 3 days,
over 52,000 men
women and
children were
killed outside
of Kiev, in the
Babi Yar
forest.
[Picture
below.]
. . . [ Not
suitable for
minors.
===> <===
Not
suitable for
minors.
] . . . Confronting
the Remnants of the
Holocaust . . . During
those genocidal years, in Nazi-occupied
Europe of some nine (9) million Jews
(as derived from the population census of
the Wannsee
Protocol)***,
some six (6) million of them
were murdered with the rest being deprived
of liberty, human dignity and forced
evacuation from their homes and
businesses.
.
but paved with
indifference.
Sir
Ian Kershaw
[Photo
Credit: USHMM]
<zwoje-scrolls.com/shoah/wghetto.html>
<historyplace.com/worldwar2/ww2-pix/austria.jpg>
.
[Lódz Ghetto]
In the prewar
years (1933-1939),
the unfolding Jewish Persecutory Program (that was to become
the starting
point of the
emerging Holocaust) began markedly noticeable to the outside
world after Adolph Hitler
became the German Chancellor (in January 1933) with the
systematic and planned persecution of Jews and their
businesses (through the passing of various Anti-Jewish
Laws and
with the implementation of the so-called Aryanization/Arisierung
program), and which evolved with their deprivation of
liberty (by round up, forced evacuation and eventual
deportation).
[See
also in here
from the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum, Anti-Jewish
Legislation in Prewar
Germany.]
.1935
Germany: Jews Are Not Wanted Here in
Behringersdorf
Photo
Credit: The Potter Collection
<holocaustchronicle.org/StaticPages/85.html>
.
[See
in here
the historical Note from Yad Vashem
"On
the fate of Jewish refugees from Germany and
Austria from 1933 to the outbreak of World War
II in 1939."]
.The
next store, presumably
owned by "Aryans,"
remains untouched,
<holocaustchronicle.org/StaticPages/143.html>
<holocaustchronicle.org/StaticPages/121.html>
.
.Jews
forced to scrub a street in Nazi
occupied Austria.
Beginning of
the Nazi
Holocaust
...
<ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/kristallnacht/frame.htm>
The
Great Synagogue of
Essen, Germany, set on
fire during the
Kristallnacht.
<dhm.de/lemo/objekte/pict/644_1/index.jpg>
<interpres.wordpress.com/category/moder-jord-%25C2%25B0-fn/krig-terror-og-fascisme/>
That tumultuous period of massive
hostility towards Jews was the
prelude of what would come (to be
known as the Holocaust)
and, it can be said to be
characterized
.Photo
Credit:
DIZ Muenchen GMBH, Sueddeutscher
Verlag Bilderdienst and
USHMM.
by a large margin. (Upon arrival
of the Jewish population in those
Nazi concentration camps, the
most anti-Semitic hard-core
criminals that were there were
"promoted" by the Nazis to the
position of "Kapo"
as supervisors.)
[For
more information on the first
concentration camps in Nazi
Germany, see this
from USHMM.]
During
the War years (1939-1945) that had followed, the Jewish
Persecutory Program developed and transformed into a
genocidal Persecutory and Victimization Program
--the Holocaust, with a machinery set in place
primarily for the complete destruction of the entire
European Jewry.
.
In
1942, following the notorious
Wannsee
Conference,
the implementation of the so-called "Final
Solution" of the Jewish Problem began,
full speed, in Sobibor, Treblinka, Belzec,
Auschwitz-Birkenau and other concentration
camps.
.
(Photo
by George Kadish)
The
deported Jews were either
selected for work or for
immediate gassing.
In the background: a group of
people on their way towards gas
chamber No. II.
holocaust-education.dk/lejre/udryddelseslejre.asp
Germany, between 1940 and
1942.
<ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005180>
More
Images from the Holocaust and its Tragic
Legacy
.
..
Forced Slave Labor
.Fromt
Majdanek Concentration
Camp
and
Women's
Slave Labor at
Ravensbruck
Concentration
Camp
The
"Bloody Wednesday" of
November 3, 1943
Polish Jews of
Lublin marching
to their death
on "bloody
Wednesday"
November 3,
1943
--the
largest mass
execution
carried out at
any of the
concentration
camps in the
history of the
Holocaust
<scrapbookpages.com/Poland/Majdanek/Majdanek06.html>
And
the SS Firing Squads
...
Photo
Credit: Yad Vashem --The
Holocaust Martyrs' and
Heroes' Remembrance
Authority
EINSATZ
GRUPPEN: THE KILLING
SQUADS
<israelnewsagency.com/babiyarholocaustmemorialnazimassacre480921.html>
.
The
victims
of the
"master
race"
were
crowded
into
these
unspeakably
filthy
huts.
Dead and
dying
prisoners
can be
seen
lying
on the
ground
in
this
picture.
[PHOTO
CREDIT: Pfc.
Bertram
Sanders,
cameraman of US
103rd Infantry
Division]
<nuspel.org/holo4.gif>
<nuspel.org/holocaust.html>
Buchenwald
KZ, Germany, April 11,
1945
Camp inmates after their
liberation by elements
of the U.S. 6th Armored
Division
<users.skynet.be/jeeper/page124.html>
<olam.cz/holocaust/grafika/foto/zivemr.jpg>
"Dead men will have indeed
died in vain if live men refuse
to look at them."
LIFE
magazine, May 7, 1945.
.Photo
Credit: Yad Vashem --The
Holocaust Martyrs' and
Heroes' Remembrance
Authority.
A British Army bulldozer pushes
bodies into a mass grave at
Bergen-Belsen.
19 April 1945.
.
A
Mass Grave of Hungarian Jews
<bgcs.k12.oh.us/aces/holocaust%20webquest.htm>
Klooga, Estonia,
1944.
[Photo
Credit: Beit Lohamei
Haghettaot]
<ushmm.org/wlc/media_ph.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005151&MediaId=522>
.Buchenwald
at liberation by the US
Army
<answers.com/topic/naziconcentrationcamp-gif>
.
"A
thousand years will pass and the
guilt of Germany will not be
erased."
Hans
Frank [Governor of occupied
Poland], convicted of major
Nazi war criminal at
Nuremberg.
(October
16, 1946.)
Jews
deported to death camps
selected straight for the gas
chamber.
By 1945, in Nazi-occupied Europe, 2/3 of
its Jewish population
--men, women and children-- were
murdered.
That
is, two out of every three Jews had been
killed.
***
NOTE: The Wannsee
Conference
census estimating the existence of eleven (11)
million European Jews included all of the
neutral countries (Spain, Portugal, UK, Ireland,
Sweden, Turkey --the European part, and
Switzerland) and, as well, the unoccupied
territories of France and Soviet Union. The
combined Jewish population of those parts of
Europe was estimated to be at some two (2)
million and thus, it needs to be subtracted from
the total Wannsee
figure.
.
The Holocaust ended with the end of WWII when Hitler's
Nazi Germany was defeated by the three major campaigns
of the Allies in their finest and most costly triumphs of
modern History.
.
at Yalta Conference in February
1945.
(Primary
credit goes to the Great Britain --under the
incomparable Winston Churchill,
the Soviet Union --under the ruthless and larger
than life dictator Joseph Stalin,
and
the United States --under Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
the only U.S. President to be reelected three
times).
Asides from the Nazis' primary fixation --that of total eradication of the Jews, another ethnically undesirable people set by the Nazi machine for total annihilation were the European Romanies (Roma/Sinti) better known by their derogatory name as "Gypsies." It is estimated that some one-half million of them were murdered during the same genocidal period representing some 50% of their total European population.
By 1945, one out of every two European "Gypsies" had been killed. Apart from their primary targets --the Jews and the Romanies ("Gypsies"), Hitler's Nazi regime had also envisioned the elimination of all Poles and eventually all Slavs (under the so-called General Plan Ost that called for the removal of native populations from the Eastern Europe and resettlement with Germans) if the Nazi's Third Reich would have lasted, as envisioned, 1000 years. However, that never materialized as the Third Reich lasted only 12 horrendous years (1933-1945).
During the War years (1939-1945) that constituted also the Holocaust murderous years, some three (3) million non-Jewish Poles were also killed, but they were killed not because of their ethnicity, religion or creed, but rather because they were viewed as subversive, threatening, or particularly dangerous to the Nazi regime. (Examples of such Poles that were killed by the Nazis were the elite of the Polish people, their political, civic, and spiritual leaders, members of the intelligentsia, cultural and scientific figures, as well as members of the resistance movement, officers, and so on.) Thus, in this respect, that Polish victimization campaign was a campaign of the War and not of the Holocaust and, as such, those Polish victims need be considered as casualties of the War and not of the Holocaust. That distinction and differentiation is paramount in defining and understanding the Nazi Holocaust (written always with capital letter to be distinguished from any other genocidal event or holocaust parlance).
The Holocaust should never ever be confused with the various killings of World War II that was a part of, nor be blurred with other atrocities and brutalities of the War.
A Survivor of Bergen-Belsen Death Camp. The Holocaust was an unique and distinct massive, persevering, persecutory and victimization genocidal event of World War II, prosecuted by the Nazi Germany, that was based primarily on race and ethnicity with the sole purpose and goal of "purifying" the European races from the perceived "undesirables," and as such, it needs to be separated from all other killings and brutalities associated with the War.
From immemorial times, each society had their own "undesirables" (most notable, the hard-core criminals, and those holding a particular creed, belief, or political view deemed to pose a threat to the society) and, that component clearly existed within the Nazi Germany. But those particular types of victims of the Nazi Germany (such as the Communists, religious and political opponents, or Jehovah's Witnesses) should never ever be associated nor incorporated with the true victims and survivors of the Holocaust. That is because those groups of people became victims of the Nazi Germany not because of who they were, but because of what they did or believed in. It is therefore important to note that not all victims of the Nazi Germany were victims of the Holocust and, that the Nazi victimization program extended well outside the boundaries of the Holocaust.
.The cleansing of Europe from racially and ethnically "inferior or degenerate breeds" was an essential ingredient in the formulation of a new Europe as envisioned by the Nazi regime. In the so-called "Final Solution" of the Jewish Problem, the rapid killings of all European Jewry was at the core and center stage of the entire Nazi mass murder process. After all it was argued, this unprecedented "solution" was needed --as a public health campaign-- for the betterment of the world in the pursuit of creating a new "pure" (aka Aryan) "super" race.
Survivors of the Ebensee Camp,
one of sub-camps of the Mauthausen-Gusen Concentration Camp.
Consistent with the creation of a "pure" superior race, the Nazi regime had targeted in addition those with various incurable mental and physical disabilities killing some 300,000 patients in various hospitals and asylums under the so-called T-4 Euthanasia program. That race "purification" program must also be included as part of the Holocaust.
In the name of perceived race "purification," the homosexuals were also targeted for complete annihilation and thus, they need to be included into what we call the Holocaust. (It is important to stress in here, for that complex category of Holocaust victims, that even if the Genetic Biology
ultimately will determine that the homosexuality is not derived from a genetic condition but rather from a lifestyle condition, the Nazis --for sure-- considered them as "carrying" hereditary genes of homosexuality that needed to be rooted out. Indeed, in their campaign against the homosexuals, Nazis relentlessly pursued not only their current homosexuals, but also their family hereditary traits. That Nazi pursuit was directed primarily towards the male homosexuals as the female homosexuals were, by in large, ignored and tolerated. That duality in the Nazi policy between the male and female homosexuality has had its primary roots in the Christian religion where the sodomy has always been regarded as an absolute sin.)
To recapitulate, the Jewish Holocaust (known also as the Shoah), the Romani (Roma/Sinti) or the "Gypsy" Holocaust (known also as the Porrajmos), the Psychiatric/Eugenic Holocaust (known also as the so-called T4 Holocaust of the disabled), and the Gay Holocaust, were the only components of what is known as the Nazi Holocaust.
Jewish women and children at Birkenau marching towards the gas chambers.
[Yad Vashem -- The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.]
In a nutshell thus, the Holocaust (that developed from its prewar Nazi Persecutory Campaign of the "undesirables") was a machinery set in place by the Nazi regime of cleansing the European races from all the perceived "inferior and degenerate breeds" that the Jews, the Romanies/Gypsies, the mentally and physically disabled, and the Homosexuals were considered to be. That was the "line" of the Holocaust that was a clear and unmistakable "line" that needs not be confused or blurred with any other murderous "line" of World War II.
As a historic event, the Nazi Holocaust is of enormous complexity:
- How could such an event ever take place?
- How could a most cultured nation in the center of Europe be responsible for such mass atrocities that are defying human comprehension?
- How could the average mass German population embraced and supported with such zeal Hitler, the Nazis, and the Third Reich?
- How and Why was democracy lost in Germany in 1933?
How a mighty country such as The United States of America that was founded through its July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence that begins with this fundamental proposition,
.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"
.could have closed its eyes on the Holocaust for so long, is a perplexing question for the ages, as the deprivation of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" were at the core and center stage of the entire machinery of the Holocaust. Arguably, the simple answer to this is that no national security interest was involved and thus, no compelling interest existed to intervene. That may be so, if only we could divorce ourselves from the conscience of humanity.
SS Photo:
Killing of Jews in Kovno by Lithuanian Nationalists Under the Eyes of the SS. (June 1941.) When the SS mobile killing units reached Kovno in the first few days of the war against the Soviet Union, they persuaded the anti-communist partisan leader Klimatis to turn his forces against the Jews, to demonstrate that "the liberated population had resorted to the most severe measures against the ... Jewish enemy."
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How the great majority of ordinary European people stood by --at best-- in apathy during the Nazi's racial and ethnical cleansing, and --at worst-- taking an active role in it, is a most profound and troublesome question that cannot escape our attention when looking at the present or at the future.
The humanity should never ever be allowed to be buried by evil forces and blind ambitions. Next time --if not on guard-- another mass group or groups of people could be targeted for their complete annihilation. As the late Simon Wiesenthal so eloquently put it, "It is not a written law that the next victims must be Jews."
Let this be the great lesson of the Nazi Holocaust that humanity, at all cost, must always be present, preserved, and remain within us. Hate and blind ambitions should never ever be allowed to overcome and poison our judgments and deeds.
Never again the humanity should be absent from a society's deeds and moral judgments. The Creator endowed us with a most precious commodity --the humanity, vested in compassion and tolerance towards others, and this --in fact-- is what separates us, humans, from the rest, in the vast Kingdom of the Living.
The massive human, spiritual, and intellectual destruction that the Nazi Holocaust has brought is beyond quantification. The human talent lost during the Holocaust is impossible to be quantified as we can only ponder how many of the caliber of Jonas Salk were lost and thus, how many cures of various deadly diseases could have been found long time ago. To this if we add the potential loses in other sciences and the arts, the total loss could be staggering and arguably irreplaceable. It is a sobering reflection that cannot escape our thoughts.
Selected Links:
On the Origin of the Word 'Holocaust' and Its Current UsageEditor's Critical Assessment
On the Current Mainstream Definitions of the HolocaustTaking Exception to Dr. Stephen Feinstein's Teachings of the Holocaust
