"In a world of absurdity, we must invent reason..."  Elie Wiessel

I. Holocaust Background Information: An Introduction

Whenever a study of the Nazis is undertaken, there is one burning question that emerges: How could a cultured nation, at the heart of Europe, be responsible for acts so horrible, so inhuman? .
1. Overviews of the Nazi Holocaust	Arrival at Treblinka, in Nazi Occupied Poland		2. Timeline and Chronology of the Nazi Holocaust
3. Notable Events Preluding the Holocaust	4. The Jewish Holocaust (the Shoah) 1939-1945		5. The Children of the Holocaust
6. The Infamous Medical Experiments	7. European Romanies/"Gypsies", Victims of the Holocaust --the Porrajmos		8. The Handicapped, Part of the Final Solution
9. Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals	10. Nazi Holocaust in the Occupied Europe Austria Belgium Czechoslovakia and Slovenia Denmark Estonia France Finland Grece Hungary Italy Luxemburg Macedonia The Netherlands Norway Poland Romania Spain Sweden Switzerland Yugoslavia		11. Forced Slave Labor
12. The Nazi Ghettos Lodz Terezin Warsaw Ghetto	13. The Concentration and Extermination Camps Auschwitz/Birkenau Belzec Berga Bergen-Belsen Bogdanovka Buchenwald Chelmno Dachau Flossenbürg Gardelegen Gusen Lublin-Majdanek Mauthausen Mittelbau Dora Neuengamme Ravensbrück Stutthof Sachsenhausen Sobibor Trawniki Treblinka		14. Holocaust Revealed Through Original, Primary Evidence "I myself never shot a single Jew; I only gassed them..." --Erich Gnewuch   15. Nazi Plundering
"Those of you who may survive, bear witness, let the world know what has happened here." -- Aleksander Aronowich Pechersky (leader of the Sobibor revolt, seconds before the outbreak)
.	.	.	.

 

1. Overviews of The Nazi Holocaust --this Ultimate Example of Man's Inhumanity to Man

"Though not all victims were Jews, all Jews were victims." --Elie Wiesel

Editor's Introductory Definition of the Holocaust Overview of The Third Reich Summary of the Holocaust Five Basic Facts on the Holocaust The Holocaust FactFile The Nazi Racial State by Peter Longerich History of the Holocaust --An Introduction A Historical Overview of the Holocaust From Knesset (The Israel's Parliament Historical Overview of the Holocaust Official Website of the State of Israel The Holocaust by H.E.A.R.T. Mapping the Holocaust World War II and the Holocaust NOTE: This page contains graphic images of extreme brutality, cruelty, and unspeakable horrors. Hitler's Plans for Eastern Europe An Introduction to the Einsatzgruppen The Einsatzgruppen --The Killing Squads The Einsatzgruppen -- Mobile Killing Units Einsatzgruppen Action The SS Einsatzgruppen Mobile Killing Units --the Einsatzgruppen The Mobile Killing Squads The Nizkor Project Ben S. Austin's Holocaust Page Mr. Heitmann's Holocaust Page The Wannsee Conference and the "Final Solution" Labour as a Method of Extermination ..	.A member of Einsatzgruppe D prepares to shot an Ukrainian Jew.	.The hanging punishment of prisoners at Buchenwald. (The SS officer is Buchenwald's chief warden, Martin Sommer known as the Hangman of Buchenwald. He was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of prisoners.).
	From Yad Vashem -- The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority: The Holocaust: Definition and Preliminary Discussion Some Factual Statements About the Holocaust Synopsis of Some Factual Statements from New England Holocaust Memorial, Boston, Mass., USA
	. The Einsatzgruppen -- Mobile Killing Units

2. Timeline and Chronology of the Nazi Victimization Process Culminating with the Holocaust

A Timeline of the Nazi Era, 1933-1945 Persecution and Genocide Under the Nazis 1933 - 1945 From Persecution to Genocide by Professor David Cesarani A Timeline of the Holocaust A Chronology of Events that Led to the Holocaust From PBS, USA: A Timeline of Nazi Abuses The Nuremberg Laws (1935) The Holocaust Timeline The Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies Detailed Time Line of the Holocaust: Day by Day, Year by Year Adolf Hitler's Timeline Holocaust in the Context of Both American and World History

 

3. Notable Events Marking the Beginning of the Holocaust:

Through an orchestrated policy of both social and economic discrimination, Jews were increasingly dehumanized and isolated from the mainstream German community. As book-burning, Aryanization of Jewish-owned businesses and public humiliation became more common, this victimization of their Jewish neighbors was viewed by the general population with complacency or even approval.  On November 9, 1938, Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) began. A supposedly spontaneous demonstration by German citizens, it was in fact carefully planned Pogrom (Action against Jews) and resulted in the destruction of more than one thousand synagogues and 7,000 Jewish owned businesses, and the arrest of 30,000 Jews. It is generally considered to mark the beginning of the Holocaust. --Florida Holocaust Museum

Picture A Picture B	ANTI-JEWISH LEGISLATION IN PREWAR GERMANY   A). Enforcing the German Boycott During the April 1933 boycott, two SA members guard the entrance to a Jewish-owned leather-goods shop. The sign reads "No respectable German shops here!"    B). All Jewish Stores are being marked in the Nazi Germany. Additional Source: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum   <jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/boycott1933.html>
	C). Anti-Jewish boycott signs   SA storm troopers pasting anti-Jewish boycott signs on a kiosk, Berlin, April 1933.   Photo Credit: BPK   <www.holocaust-education.de/?site=pr_import_A007&lp=en>
Picture C
	D). SA pickets distribute boycott pamphlets to German pedestrians. The sign held by one of them reads: "Attention Germans. These Jews (Five and Dime Stores) are the parasites and gravediggers of German craftsmen. They pay starvation wages to German workers. The chief owner is the Jew, Nathan Schmidt." Photo Courtesy: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Picture D
	Anti- Jewish Boycott, Dresden, Germany (1933) E). SA members force a Jewish merchant to wear a boycott sign around his neck and have his picture taken in front of his store,     The sign reads: "Germans Defend Yourselves - Do not buy from Jews!" Photo Credit: Peter Richard; Sächsische Landesbibliothek,    Deutsche Fotothek, Archive no. 256039
Picture E
	F). A German mass rally in 1935 featuring Anti-Semitic speeches and slogans stating: "The Jews are our Misfortune" and "Women and Girls, the Jews are Your Ruin." <historyplace.com/pointsofview/goldhagen.htm>
Picture F
	G). Jewish lawyer carrying self-Insulting sign "I will not complain to the police again."    NOTE: A new German law invoked a clause to all Jewish businesses stating that any contract involving a Jew would be terminated if the man became incapacitated due to illness. The German court then ruled that his racial characteristics of being a Jew were considered the same as illness and therefore his contract was no longer valid. From Yad Vashem Photo Archives.
Picture G
	H). Humiliation of Jewish Children in the Schools 1935: Jewish students are made fun of by their class. The writing on the blackboard says, "The Jew is our greatest enemy! Beware of the Jew!".   Source: The Pictorial History of the Holocaust, Edited by Yitzhak Arad, Macmillan Publishing Company, NY, 1990, p.37.    <members.aol.com/dhs11/remember.html>
Picture H
I). Writing on the Wall. Vienna, 1938. A young boy is forced to paint "Jew" on the wall of his father's store. Photo Credit: AKG.
	Picture I
	J). Humiliation of Jews, Vienna (March 1938) After the incorporation of Austria, offenses against Jews began there. Jews are forced to scrub the sidewalks,   Courtesy: Documentation Archives   of the Austrian Resistance Foundation, Vienna.
Picture J
	K). In Vienna, Austria of 1938: Shortly after the German annexation of Austria, Nazi Storm Troopers stand guard outside a Jewish-owned business. Graffiti painted on the window states: "You Jewish pig may your hands rot off!" Vienna, Austria, March 1938. Courtesy: USHMM
Picture K
Public Campaigns of Humiliating Jews: .
Jews Forced To Carry Anti-Jewish Signs In Nazi Germany, Jews are being paraded, ridiculed, and spitted on as other German bystanders watch the spectacle. (Nov. 1938). Dr. Andreas Angerstorfer: Jüdische Gemeinde Regensburg -- Die Geschichte bis zum <jg-regensburg.de/Geschichte2.html> Jewish businessmen are forced to march on Bruehl Strasse, one of the main commercial streets in central Leipzig, carrying signs that read, "Don't buy from Jews. Shop in German businesses!" 1935. Photo credit: William Blye Collection, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives <fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/gallery/20210.htm> From Yad Vashem Archives -- The Holocaust Remembrance Authority Public Humiliation of Polish Jews After Germany invades Poland in September, 1939, German soldiers enjoyed the public humiliation of Polish Jews. Humiliation was a part of the psychological warfare that Nazis used against Jews. . One Jew is forced to cut the beard of another under German supervision as the local population of Tomaszow Mazowiecki, Poland, watches with delight. Photo Credit: Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives. <fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/gallery/50978.htm> . A German soldier is having fun cutting the beard of an elderly Jew in Poland. Photo credit: The Pictorial History of the Holocaust, Yitzak Arad, Ed., Macmillan Publ. Co., N.Y., 1990, p. 78, <fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/gallery/Sh09.htm> . In Poland, a soldier tutors two Jewish men on how to give the Nazi salute correctly. Photo credit: Meczenstwo Walka, Zaglada Zydów Polsce 1939-1945. Poland. No. 37. <fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/gallery/p037.htm> . Jews of Minsk Mazowiecki, Poland, forced to ride on each other to "compete" in running in the Market Square. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Editor: Israel Gutman, Yad Vashem, 1990, Volume III, Pp. 711-713 <zchor.org/minsk.htm> . . +Enlarge this Image   May 10,1933: Nazis burning "un-German" books Some of the authors whose books were in the flames: Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, and Alfred Kerr were consigned to flames in a book burning ceremony in Berlin. The promotion of "Aryan" culture and the suppression of other forms of artistic production was yet another Nazi effort to "purify" Germany. Other writers included on the blacklists were American authors Ernest Hemingway and Helen Keller as well as Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Jack London, Thomas Mann, Upton Sinclair, H.G. Wells, and many others. Kristallnacht ("The Night of Broken Glass") Night of Nov. 9 -10, 1938. The very first Kindertransport (Children's Transport) Dec.1, 1938 -- ©KTA Oldenburg Synagogue Destroyed (November 10, 1938) The synagogue in Oldenburg the morning after the Kristallnacht pogrom. Photo Credit: Gustav Meyer; Copyright: Private Collection of Magdalene Meyer, Oldenburg <www.holocaust-education.de/?site=pr_import_A007&lp=en> The Great Synagogue of Frankfurt, Germany Set on on Fire (November 11, 1938) Photo Credit: <bobi.net/helabo/projekte/antisem.htm> Kristallnacht: A National Pogrom, Nov. 9-10, 1938 . Arrest of Jews After Kristallnacht After the Kristallnacht (Nov. 10, 1938), the SS dragged Jews through the streets as local Germans ridiculed them with anti-Semitic slogans. Jews were first brought to the synagogue and then transported to Dachau concentration camp. Source: Simon Wiesenthal Multimedia Learning Center   <motlc.wiesenthal.com/gallery/pg01/pg2/pg01283.html>   .Nazi vandalization of Jewish owned businesses during the pogrom of Nov. 9-10, 1938 . .

• Voyage of the S.S. St. Louis
  
  • The Tragedy of the S.S. St. Louis
    
  • The S.S. St. Louis after 60 Years
    
• Decisions Taken at the Evian Conference on Jewish Refugees (July 14, 1938)
  
  • The Evian Conference: Hitler's Green Light for Genocide
    
  • The Sinking of the Struma  

  

 

  
 4. The Jewish Holocaust (the Shoah) 1939-1945

"Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews..." --Adolf Hitler --1922

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[Photo Credit: www.um.oswiecim.pl/anniversary]  + ENLARGE PICTURE

The Final Solution Early attempts to remove Jews from Nazi occupied Europe included a plan for resettlement into a "reservation" in the Lublin-Nisko region of southeast Poland. The first transport to this area took place on October 26, 1939, when 600 Jews from Czechoslovakia were relocated. The final deportation took place in early February of 1940. An estimated 78,000 Jews were deported to this "reservation" where there was little or no accommodation for their needs. As a result, thousands died in the winter of 1939-1940. The program was discontinued due to the lack of rail transport and administrative support. In the summer of 1940, the Nazis began considering a plan to remove all Jews from the continent and relocate them on the French controlled island of Madagascar. The plan was contingent on the Nazi's ability to have access to a large fleet of ships, which it intended to acquire through victory over Great Britain. It was abandoned when it seemed clear that a timely defeat of Britain was unlikely. As the Nazis used Einsatzgruppen to carry out various Aktionen [special operations] against Jews and other "undesirables" in the East, neither the army nor the local populations voiced any protest. By the end of 1941, almost 400,000 Jews had been murdered as a result of this program. It appeared that the Jewish question could be answered by direct action instead of by emigration or deportation. However, concern developed among the Nazi hierarchy that the murders were providing to be too stressful for their men, and a more efficient program was needed. On July 31, 1941 Reinhard Heydrich received authorization from Herman Goering directing the SS to prepare a "complete solution" to the Jewish problem. Heydrich subsequently convened the conference at Wannsee to formalize the plans for that solution. Florida Holocaust Museum

. It began with a simple boycott of Jewish shops and ended in the gas chambers at Auschwitz as Adolf Hitler and his Nazi followers attempted to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe. A History of the Jewish Holocaust

Hungarian Jews waiting to be taken away... Photo Credit: László Karsai, Ph.D. .	Deportation of Jews (1942) from Drohobycz, Poland  Photo Credit: Yad Vashem
	The Jews in Prewar Nazi Germany Chronology of Jewish Persecution,1932-1945 From Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs: A Select Chronology of the Holocaust A Timeline of Jewish Deportations From Yad Vashem: About the Jewish Holocaust or Shoah From Jewish Virtual Library: The Holocaust A Brief History of the Jewish Holocaust From the United Human Rights Council: A History of the Jewish Holocaust Aktion Reinhard (Operation Reinhard) "Operation Reinhard": The Extermination Camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka Case Study: The Jewish Holocaust, 1933-45 How did the Jews in Nazi Germany Respond to their Persecution Before the War? A Jewish Holocaust Chronology Explanatory Timeline on the Destruction of European Jewry The Wannsee Conference and the "Final Solution" Deportations Collaboration Persecution of Jews in Occupied Countries Austria Belgium Denmark    France Greece Hungary Italy The Netherlands Poland Romania Slovakia Soviet Union Jewish Resistance in the Holocaust One of the Many Pictures that Speaks Volumes... Some of Jewish Holocaust Web Sites Jewish Holocaust Resources Holocaust and Jewish Studies Sites Statistical Data of the Number of Jews Killed During the Holocaust Estimated Jewish Killing by Country Statistics: The Destruction of the European Jews by Raul Hilberg Statistics on the Holocaust Holocaust Remembrance Day
In 1942 Germany, Jews are being rounded up for deportation. <bobi.net/helabo/projekte/antisem.htm> .
Jews carried whatever personal belongings they could as they left in mass deportations from Plonsk, a town 50 miles northwest of Warsaw, Poland. (Photo credit: Meczenstwo Walka, Zaglada Zydów Polsce 1939-1945. No.65.) .       Deportation of Jews... .
To the Death Camps...	... And to the crematoria with piles of remains with ashes and human bones. (From the crematoria at Majdanek, extermination camp.)
Between mid-1941 and early 1942 the Nazi's formalized their plan for the annihilation of the Jews. "The Final Solution of the Jewish Question" was the code name given by the German bureaucracy to this genocide. This was to be accomplished through deportation, ghettoization, "special operations (Aktions)," the work of the Einsatzkommandos, and mass-murder in the killing fields of the occupied East and Soviet Union as well as at specially designed killing centers. --Florida Holocaust Museum

 

   

5.  The Children of the Holocaust: Does human evil have limits?
."Never before in history had children been singled out for destruction for no other reason than having been born."
Dr. Paldiel Mordecai, Yad Vashem.

	"We came to the question: what to do with the women and children? I decided to find a clear solution here as well. I did not consider myself justified to exterminate the men -- that is, to kill them or have them killed -- and allow the avengers of our sons and grandsons in the form of their childreen to grow up. The difficult decision had to be taken to make this people disappear from the earth." Heinrich Himmler, October 1943  ...
Although the Nazi plan for the murder of all Jews was introduced in each occupied country at different times, the steps in this ruthless scheme were essentially the same. The mass annihilation was always preceded by a carefully coordinated sequence: violation of human rights, expropriation of property, removal from employment and ejection to designated areas, usually sealed ghettos or transitory camps. Everywhere, throughout this tragic period, Jewish children were confronted by overpowering, destructive forces.
.. Slave women of the Holocaust Two Hungarian brothers on the"Death Ramp" at Birkenau (Auschwitz II), shortly before they were escorted to the gas chamber.

From U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: The Children Children and the Holocaust: An Overview Memorial Album (with a Selected Eulogy) Honoring Some 1.5 million Children Under 12 That Never Returned ... Biographies of a Few Children of the Holocaust An Eulogy to the Children ... The Children VS. The Holocaust Deaf Children Victims The "Lebensborn" --A Most Secret Nazi Project The Lebensborn -- Nazis' Infamous Program for the "Master Race" Meet Eight Grownups, Products of the Lebensborn Program Nazi Genocide: The Children of the Holocaust Children and the Holocaust Children of the Holocaust Era The Holocaust Children .		.
		Some of the very few children that survived imprisonment in Birkenau. [Photo Archive: Yad Vashem] Jewish children arriving at Chelmno Concentration Camp from Lodz Ghetto
		These emaciated children survived the Ravensbrück, Germany, concentration camp. Though Ravensbrück imprisoned mostly women, it also included a children's camp at Uckermark and a separate section for men. In December 1944 and January 1945, Uckermark was recognized as a selection and extermination camp for Ravensbrück. At the end of January 1945, a large selection took place; old, sick, or weak women were taken to Uckermark and murdered, many by gassing. These selections continued into spring, leading to the deaths of at least 5000 women. Photo Credit: Musée de la Resistance Nationale
	<vaniercollege.qc.ca/events/holocaust04/children10.html>

Picture (with a Selected Poem) of a Small Boy Captured During the 1943 Warsaw Revolt

6. The Infamous Medical Experiments: Does human evil have limits?

During World War II, Nazi doctors conducted as many as 30 different types of experiments on concentration-camp inmates. They performed these studies without the consent of the victims, who suffered indescribable pain, mutilation, permanent disability, or in many cases death as a result. At the Nuremberg "doctor's trial," which brought 23 German doctors to trial immediately after the war, prosecutors found 15 defendants guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity; seven were hung. Some of the most notorious experiments are presented herein.

A Synopsis of the Medical Experiments of Nazi Doctors An Explicit Enumeraration of the Medical Experiments Performed by the Nazi Doctors A List of Nazi Medical Experiments Medical Experiments at Auschwitz Hitler Signs an Order Authorizing Involuntary Euthanasia in Germany, October 1939 Sterilization of Jewish Workers The Mentally and Physically Handicapped: Victims of the Nazi Era The Ethics Of Using Medical Data From Nazi Experiments Nazi doctors conducted dozens of medical and other experiments on concentration-camp inmates, who often died as a direct result of the studies. Starved boys at Ebensee concentration camp. This was one of largest camps with around 60,000 prisoners. They were used as live guinea pigs for "scientific" medical experiments. Some 2,000 died a week. [BBC] <<<--- "We…shall be compelled to destroy a third of the population in the adjacent lands. We can achieve this by systematic undernourishment which in the end gives a better result than machine guns do. Physically breaking them will be more effective especially among the young." --German Officer Gerd Von Rundstedt, 1942. <utexas.edu/features/archive/2005/holocaust.html>   <pbs.org/wgbh/nova/holocaust/experiintro2.html>

During the Third Reich, in a step by step process, the Nazi doctors went from racial theory, to sterilization of the unfit, to euthansia, and eventually arrived at the Final Solution of the Jewish question --genocide. The doctors were integrally involved with these decisions in every way, from racial laws and diagnoses to selections and unethical experimentation. Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race (An Online Exhibition from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) Our starting point is not the individual: We do not subscribe to the view that one should feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, or clothe the naked... Our objectives are different: We must have a healthy people in order to prevail in the world. Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, 1938
Meet the Infamous Dr. Joseph Mengele	Dr. Josef Mengele -- the Angel of Death Dr Josef Mengele, known as the Angel of Death, was a Nazi German SS officer and a physician in Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp. He gained notoriety chiefly 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, and for performing human experiments of dubious scientific value on camp inmates including attempts to change eye color by injecting chemicals into children's eyes, various amputations of limbs, and shock treatments. Most of those Mengele experimented on died, either due to the experiments or later infections. On several occasions, he killed subjects simply to be able to dissect them afterwards. -- <evilscale.com/evilscale/vote.aspx?nomineeid=92> Meet the Notorious Dr. Joseph Mengele Selection of inmates at Auschwitz. Mengele is in foreground at far right with cigarette in hand Some four hundred thousand souls --babies, small children, young girls, mothers, fathers, and grandparents-- weree casually waved by Dr. Mengele to the left-hand side with a simple flick of his cane clasped in a gloved hand. When it was reported that one block was infected with lice, Dr. Mengele solved the problem by gassing all the 750 women assigned to it. Mengele did a number of medical experiments of unspeakable horror at Auschwitz, using twins. These twins as young as five years of age were usually murdered after the experiment was over and their bodies dissected. <shoah.dk/Pics/new_page_6.htm> A Synopsis of Dr. Mengele's Infamous Medical Experiments Mengele's Children: The Twins of Auschwitz Josef Mengele and Experimentation on Human Twins at Auschwitz
.A Romani ("Gypsy") in a Nazi medical experiment	Nazi Doctors --The Angels of Death SS Physicians of Auschwitz Medical Experiments of the Holocaust and Nazi Medicine Nazi Medical Experimentation: "Never Again" Zyklon-B as an Instrument of Extermination Medical Experimentation at Auschwitz       Children subjected to medical experiments in Auschwitz <shamash.org/holocaust/photos> Medical Experimentation Dachau Low-Temperature Medical Experiments Dachau High Altitude Medical Experiments Dachau Starvation Experiment Victim Cruelties at KZ Gusen Camps List of persons murdered by German medical doctors between 1939 and 1948 The Doctors Trial Exhibits (from the Medical Case Subsequent to the Nuremberg proceedings)
Uncovering Lost Path of Dr. Aribert Heim, a Most Wanted Nazi Doctor in Egypt

 

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7. European Romanies/Roma/Sinti (commonly referred as "Gypsies"), victims of the Holocaust --the Porajmos

In 1933, after Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, the Nazis introduced a law to legalize eugenic sterilization, to control population growth among "Gypsies and most of the Germans of black colour." In 1939, the Nazi's Office of Racial Hygiene issued a statement saying "All Gypsies should be treated as hereditarily sick [...] the aim should therefore be the elimination --without hesitation-- of this defective element in the population." --- <incentraleurope.radio.cz/ice/issue/62886> "It was the wish of the all-powerful Reichsführer Adolf Hitler to have the Gypsies disappear from the face of the earth" (SS Officer Percy Broad, Auschwitz Political Division)

Rounding-up Romanies ("Gypsies") for Deporatation, Asperg, Germany, May 22, 1940. Source: Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive) <commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_R_165_Bild-244-47,_Asperg,_Deportation_von_Sinti_und_Roma.jpg>

A Romani female at Auschwitz, name unknown, prisoner no. Z-63598, imprisoned October 1, 1943. The letter 'Z' stands for 'Zigeuner' or "Gypsy." [Auschwitz Memorial Archives] Genocide of the Romanies in the Holocaust by Ian Hancock, Ph.D. The Forgotten Victims of the Holocaust: Porrajmos Sinti & Roma: Victims of the Nazi Era Sinti And Roma ("Gypsies") Victims of the Nazi Era Romani (Roma/Sinti) --Victims of the Holocaust Genocide of European Roma ("Gypsies"), 1939-1945 The Czech Gypsies During the Nazi Occupation Some Basic Information about the Roma Population in the Czech Republic "Gypsies" in Auschwitz Gypsies (Roma) in the Holocaust Liquidation of the Romani ("Gypsy ") Camp in Birkenau Identification pictures of a Romani ("Gypsy") woman interned in the Auschwitz camp. (ca. 1944) Romanies ("Gypsies") and the Porajmos: A Holocaust Timeline Genocide of the Roma i n the Holocaust Roma ("Gypsies") and the Holocaust "Gypsies" Refuse to be Forgotten Hidden Victims: The Unknown Assault on Europe's "Gypsies" Himmler: the Mastermind Behind the Atrocitieof "Gypsies" A Brief Romani Holocaust Chronology ID Auschwitz picture, left, courtesy of: Federation Nationale des Deportes et Internes Resistants et Patriots and USHMM Settela Steinbach, a Romani girl,peering from a transport cattle wagon on its way to Auschwitz, 1943.
	A Romani ("Gypsy") being searched. His disheveled appearance suggests that he was forced to pull his pants down to prove that he was not a Jew. (Poland around 1940.) [United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]
	Marzahn, the first internment camp for "Gypsies" (Roma/Sinti) in the Third Reich. Germany. Marzahn camp was situated near a sewage dump and cemetery, and contagious diseases flourished. 1936. [Courtesy Landesarchiv Berlin]
	Romani ("Gypsy") women and children interned in the Rivesaltes transit camp. France, spring 1942. [Courtesy USHMM] "Gypsies": Forgotten Victims of the Holocaust The Deportation of "Gypsies" to Transnistria (From Yad Vashem) On the Deportation of the Roma ("Gypsies") and Their Treatment in Transnistia (From the Final Report of November 11, 2004, of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania)

§ August 2, Each Year § Romani Extermination Remembrance Day	Modern History Sourcebook: "Gypsies" in Auschwitz Roma and Sinti ("Gypsies") Collection (Courtesy of Professor Ian Hancock, University of Texas at Austin, and CHGS) Extermination of Roma & Sinti Exhibit Comprehensive List of websites with "Gypsies" (Roma) in the Holocaust Books on the Romani Holocaust
..
Photo Memorial Album (with a selected Poem) Honoring Romanies ("Gypsies") That Have Perished in the Holocaust   .

   

 .

8. The Handicapped and the Dissabled, Part of the Final Solution

According to the racial rules of the Nazi regime in Germany, the worthiness of a human being to be allowed to reproduce or even to exist could be determined by measurable racial characteristics. First by means of sterilization, and later through mass-murder, the Nazi regime practiced this "racial science" (through its T-4 program) to assure the purity of the Aryan race as well as to gauge the world's reaction to genocide. -- Florida Holocaust Museum

	Cemetery at Hadamar,Germany, where victims of "euthanasia" at the Hadamar "euthanasia" killing center were buried. (Photo April 1945)

• The Nazi Treatment of the Handicaped from 1933 to 1945
  
  • Euthanasia (The "Good Death") Program
    
    • T4 Euthanasia Program
      by Michael Berenbaum, Ph.D.
      
    • The T-4 Euthanasia Program
      
    • Nazi Euthanasia
      
    • The Euthanasia Program
      
    • The "Euthanasia" of People with Disabilities in Nazi Germany: Harbinger of the "Final Solution"
      
    • Nurses' Participation in the "Euthanasia" Program of Nazi Germany
      
    • Psychiatrists: The Men Behind Hitler
      
  • Nazi Persecution of the Disabled: Murder of "The Unfit"
    
    • The Murder of the Handicapped
      
    • Some Documents on the Nazi Extermination
      of People with Mental Disabilities
      
    • Hadamar: Committed to Hadamar Hospital
      
    • Nazi 'euthanasia' children buried in Vienna, Austria
      

      More than 800 children, mainly mentally and physically disabled, perished in the Spiegelgrund Children's Hospital in Vienna during the Nazi regime.

      
      
  • 
    
  • The Deaf Holocaust: Deaf People and the Nazi Germany
    
• Jews as Victims of Nazi Euthanasia
  
  

 

 .. 9. Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals (USHMM Exhibit)

"Just as we today have gone back to the ancient Germanic view of the question of marriage mixing different races, so too in our judgment of homosexuality a symptom of degeneracy that could destroy our race, we must return to the guiding Nordic principle: extermination."

Heinrich Himmler, 1935.

From: "Exhibit Unmasking the Nazi Persecution of Gays" Homosexuals, whose "degeneracy" Nazis believed would taint the Aryan German race, suffered horrors equal to Jews and Romanies before and during World War II: arrest, imprisonment, torture, castration, murder. .

Heydrich Himmler, 1938.

"We must exterminate these people, root and branch…  We can't permit such danger to the country; the homosexuals must be entirely eliminated."   .

• Homosexuals: Victims of the Holocaust
  
• "One Day They Were Simply Gone" -- The Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals
  
• Nazi Policy Towards Homosexuals
  
• An Historical Account of Homosexuals and the Holocaust
  
• Some First Hand Revelations on the Gay During the Holocaust
  
  

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.10. Nazi Holocaust in the German-Occupied Europe

The Jews of Central and Western Europe saw themselves as an integral part of society. Yet, the Nazi occupation created a reality where the Jews were cut off from society in their countries of residence, thus casting the initial acts of persecution upon the Jews. Following the occupation, the Jews of France, the Netherlands, and other countries were subjected to discriminatory legislation that revoked their citizenship and banished them from economic life. Consequently, the Jews had to reorganize themselves separately in order to function as a self-sufficient group. In the course of time, the Jews in these countries, like those in Germany itself, were forced to wear the yellow star or the equivalent of such. Ultimately, Nazi policy became more extreme and Jews of Central and Western Europe were deported to death camps in Eastern Europe. --Yad Vashem Resource Center, <yad-vashem.org.il/odot/prog/index_before_change_table.asp?gate=2-22&type_id=22>

Throughout German-occupied Europe, the Germans arrested those who resisted their domination and those they judged to be racially inferior or politically unacceptable. People arrested for resisting German rule were mostly sent to forced-labor or concentration camps. The Germans deported Jews from all over occupied Europe to extermination camps in Poland, where they were systematically killed, and also to concentration camps, where they were used for forced labor. Transit camps such as Westerbork, Gurs, Mechelen, and Drancy in western Europe and concentration camps like Bolzano and Fossoli di Carpi in Italy were used as collection centers for Jews, who were then deported by rail to the extermination camps. According to SS reports, there were more than 700,000 prisoners registered in the concentration camps in January 1945. --Jewish Virtual Library, <jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/campmap.html> .

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• The German Occupation of Europe
  
  • Austria During the Holocaust Years
    
    
  • The Holocaust in Belgium
    

    Between 1942 and 1944, some 28 convoys of 25,257 prisoners were shipped from Malines to Auschwitz. Two-thirds of them died upon arrival. Of the other third, only 1,207 prisoners survived under inhuman captivity conditions.

    • Belgium During the Holocaust Years
      
    • The Breendonk Internment Camp
      
      
      

  • The partition of Czechoslovakia at the Munich Conference presided by Hitler

    Czechoslovakia and Slovenia During the Holocaust Years Conditions for the Jews in Czechoslovakia During the Nazi Era

    
    

  Hitler with his Generals in 1941 Planning for the Attack Against the Soviet Union

  
  
  • The Holocaust and Denmark --A Country of Blessed Memory
    

    This is one of the great untold stories of World War II: In 1943, in the German occupied Denmark, the Danes found out that all 7,500 Danish Jews were about to be rounded up and deported to German death camps. The Danish people made their own decision: it's not going to happen ...

    
    
    
  • Estonia and the Holocaust
    
    • Estonia During the Holocaust Years
      
    • The Destruction of Estonian Jewry During the Holocaust
      
      
  • France During the Holocaust Years
    

    Jewish Deportation in France During the Holocaust Years France's Collaboration with the Nazis <<<=== Picture Left (Paris, France; c. May 1941): Foreign Jews arrested in Paris at the Austerlitz train station before deportation to the French-administered internment camps Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande in the Loire region. [Courtesy: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]

    
    .
    

  Finland During World War II Finland was allied to Germany for one reason only: to fight against the Soviet occupation of a large part of their country. Around 2,000 Jews lived in Finland, and the Finns had no intention to surrender them to the Germans. Probably due to the very small number of Jews, the Germans refrained from pushing the issue in the face of Finnish opposition. All Finnish Jews survived the war. --The Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies    <holocaust-education.dk/holocaust/deportationer.asp> The Jews of Finland .The Jews of Finland found themselves in a bizarre situation with the outbreak of World War II. Despite the Nazis' war on Europe's Jews, Finland's alliance with Germany caused over 300 Finnish Jews to fight alongside German soldiers on the Eastern Front, while Jewish women served in the country's civil defense corps. .Finland's Jewish community numbered only about 2000 (including almost 300 refugees from Germany and Austria), and antisemitism was practically nonexistent in the country. Finnish Jews had full rights as equal citizens. Most of the refugees were housed in labor camps, where they lived in barracks. .When Heinrich Himmler broached the subject of Finnish Jews, the country's prime minister, Johann Wilhelm Rangell, curtly replied that Finland had no "Jewish problem." Valuing Finland's military cooperation against the Soviet Union, the Nazis applied no further pressure. .In the autumn of 1942, however, eight Jewish refugees were handed over to the Gestapo. Transported to the extermination camp at Auschwitz, Poland, all but one of the refugees perished. Lengthy negotiations with the Swedish government secured the transfer of 160 other refugees to that neutral country. The remaining refugees, along with almost all Jewish-Finnish citizens, survived the war--except for a few Jewish soldiers who died in battle fighting for the German cause. <holocaustchronicle.org/StaticPages/281.html>

  Carl Mannerheim, Adolf Hitler and Risto Ryti on June 6, 1942.

  
  .
  • The Holocaust in Grece (from USHMM)
    

    		Even though deportations did not start until March of 1943, Greece lost at least 81 percent of its Jewish population during the Holocaust. Between 60,000 and 70,000 Greek Jews perished, most of them at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only 5,000 Jews presently live in Greece, mostly in Athens and Thessaloniki. Deportation of Jews of Ioaninna, Greece, on March 25, 1943, to Auschwitz-Birkenau <====== Ioaninna Deportation Photographs <kkjsm.org/holocaust/more_pictures.html>
    		Photos Left: Jewish Deportations in Thrace, March 1943 (Jewish Museum of Greece) and (Yad Vashem Archives)
    <yadvashem.org/Odot/prog/image_into.asp?id=951&lang=EN&type_id=&addr=/IMAGE_TYPE/951.JPG>

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H   U   N   G   A   R   Y	The Holocaust in Hungary --a Willing Participant and Ally of Nazi Germany . .Horthy (the Hungarian head of State, 1920-1944) with Hitler in 1938.	H   U   N   G   A   R   Y
	The SS Rounding up the Hungarian Jews of Budapest, October, 1944, at the Delight of non-Jewish Civilians From USHMM: Hungary After the German Occupation The Destruction of the Jews of Hungary The Holocaust and Hungarian Jewry A Community Destroyed: 60 Years Since the Annihilation of Hungarian Jewry by Professor Israel Gutman and Dr. Robert Rozett Hungarian Nazis (Arrow Cross Party) The Auschwitz Album:The Story of a Transport (Unique Documentation of a Hungarian Jewish Transport to Birkenau) Oliver Lustig's Text Presentation of Selected Photos From the Auschwitz Album Guards check the identification papers of women entering the ghetto in Munkacs, in a part of Czechoslovakia annexed by Hungary in 1938. Czechoslovakia, 1944. Photo Credit: Beit Lohamei Haghettaot Deportation of Hungarian Jews. Koszeg, Hungary, May 1944. Photo Credit: Magyar Nemzeti Muzeum Torteneti Fenykeptar . Members of the fascist Arrow Cross Party arrest Jews. Budapest, Hungary, October-December 1944. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Arrow Cross Party members execute Jews along the banks of the Danube River. Budapest, Hungary, 1944. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md., USA.
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• Italy and the Holocaust
  

  From Yad Vashem: The Holocaust in Italy -- A Curriculum From USHMM (Encyclopedia of the Holocaust): Italy Fascist Italy Italian Camps During the Holocaust <<<=== Picture Left (1943): Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler stand together on an reviewing stand during an official visit to the occupied Yugoslavia.      Mussolini and Hitler ride in an open car through the streets of Munich during the Italian dictator's visit to Germany

   

• The Holocaust in Luxembourg (from USHMM)
  

  Only 36 Jews from Luxembourg are known to have survived the Nazi camps.

  Estimates of the total number of Luxembourg Jews murdered during the Holocaust range from 1,000 to 2,500. These figures include those killed in Nazi camps, in Luxembourg, or after deportation from France.

  • Another Description of the Holocaust in Luxembourg
    .
    
• The Holocaust in Macedonia: Deportation of Monastir Jewry
  
  
• Introductory Note on "The Destruction of the Jews of The Netherlands"
  

  T H E N E T H E R L A N D S A N D T H E H O L O C A U S T

  On May 10, 1940, German troops invaded The Netherlands. Five days later, Dutch forces surrendered and the German occupation of The Netherlands officially began. Five years later, The Netherlands would be liberated. The persecution and the destruction of the Jews during those five years was enormous indeed. Dutch Jews are marched under heavy guard to the Amersfoot Internment Camp in 1942. [Photo credit: Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie] <historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-dutch.htm> Anti-Semitic Graffiti in the Amsterdam of 1942. <lib.usc.edu/~anthonya/holo.htm> . A railway station in Amsterdam Dutch Jews being led to the trains that will take them to a transit camp. Between July 1942 and September 1944, 115,000 people were deported, mainly to Auschwitz and Sobibor. Almost all were killed. <friends-partners.org/partners/beyond-the-pale/eng_captions/52-3.html> The Netherlands During the Holocaust Dutch Jewish school children wearing their yellow stars. <holocaust.com.au/mm/children.htm>   Dutch Jewish men rounded up by German soldiers at the height of theNazi terror in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. <project-roots.com/warmemories.html> 70% of the Jews in Holland perished in the Holocaust. This 70% figure represents the highest loss in any country occupied by the Germans in western Europe. Deportations from The Netherlands The Holocaust and the Camps in The Netherlands: Polizeiliches Durchgangslager Amersfoort (PDA) Concentration Camp near Amsterdam, The Netherlands The guards of the PDA concentration camp were notorious for their harsh treatment of Jews and Communists. Dutch Jews wearing prison uniforms marked with a yellow star and the letter "N", for Netherlands, stand at attention during a roll call at Buchenwald concentration camp in February 28, 1941. [Nationale Mahn- und Gedenkstatte Buchenwald] Vught Concentration Camp The Westerbork Transit Camp 1942 Deportation of Dutch Jews to Westerbork concentration camp. [Photograph from the Lydia Chagoll Collection.] . Jews from the Dutch concentration camp Westerbork being deported to extermination camps in Poland. [USHMM #18197g] More than 100,000 Jews in the Netherlands were deported to death camps from Westerbork camp. More on the Westerbork Camp Transit Camps in the Netherlands Location of Camps in the Netherlands .

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N A Z I N O R W A Y	Norway During the Holocaust Years		H O L O C A U S T
	On a Jewish-owned shop, Norwegian fascists painted the slogan: "Palestine is calling. Jews are not tolerated in Norway."	Antisemitic graffiti on the window of a Jewish-owned store.
	Norway, after April 1940.
	United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

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		The Anti-Semitic Poland and the Holocaust The Catholic Church in Poland and the Holocaust, 1939 - 1945 An examination of the behavior of the Polish Church leaders in Occupied Poland. -- from Yad Vashem The Holocaust in Poland: On the Extermination of Jews in Poland  Nazi German Camps on Polish Soil During World War II     Aktion Reinhard (Operation Reinhard) From Yad Vashem: Aktion Reinhard "Operation Reinhard": The Extermination Camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka The Jews of Tarnow, Poland During the Holocaust .	Jewish Poles being rounded up  (USHMM Photo Archive ) <holocaust.cz/cz2/history/jew/general/general7> +	.	.
		.
		The first deportation of Jews from Krakow, 30 May -- 8 June 1942. They were shipped in cattle trucks to Belzec death camp in Eastern Poland, where 500,000 died or were killed until the camp was decommissioned in March 1943. (The Ghetto wall is in background.) <birdbattlefieldtours.com/sub_holocaust.htm>		P O L A N D
			Under guard, Jewish men, women, and children board trains during deportation from Siedlce to the Treblinka extermination camp. Siedlce, Poland, August 1942.
			-- Dokumentationsarchiv des Oesterreichischen Widerstandes
		.
		A village execution of Jewish Poles by a German squad Dokumentationarchiv des Oesterreicheischen Widerstandes -- <britannica.com/eb/art-58217> .

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The Holocaust in Romania
In Bucharest, Romania, at I.C. Bratianu Street, Nr. 157, Jews are being rounded up by the Romanian soldiers under the Antonescu regime. [Archive, Center for the Study of the History of Romanian Jewry, Bucharest.]
Deportation of Romanian Jews from Gura Humorului (Romania) to Transnistria	From Yad Vashem: The Holocaust in Romania From U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Romania and the Holocaust Romania and the Holocaust: At the Mercy of the Third Reich The Killings in Transnistria "The Romanian Auschwitz" --Transnistria: The Giant Forgotten Cemetery    Bogdanovka	Hitler [left] greets the Romanian Marshal Antonescu during Antonescu's State visit to Germany. (Jan. 2, 1943)
The Bucharest Pogrom: January 21 - 23, 1941		The "Death" Train, Iasi (Jassy), Romania (June 1941) The Iasi Pogrom: The First Stage of the Physical Destruction of Romanian Jewry
An Historical Account of the Holocaust in Transnistria Druker's List -- My Lost Tribe (Diagrammatic Evidence of Annihilation of Romanian Jews in Moghilev, Transnistria)
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.Spain During the Holocaust Years

Generalissimo Francisco Franco, Spain and the Holocaust

Although Spain's head of state, Generalissimo Francisco Franco, sympathized with the Axis powers, his political policies saved an estimated 17,000 Jews from death camps. Franco refused to enter the war. Instead, he declared Spain a "nonbelligerent," and during the latter half of the war changed the country's status to "neutral."    Franco frustrated the SS by declaring descendants of Sephardic Jews eligible for Spanish citizenship, and thus entitled to asylum in Spanish embassies. Spain consequently became a main avenue of escape for Europe's Jews. Some hoped to find asylum within the country, but most intended to embark from Spanish ports for sanctuary overseas.    The fall of France in 1940 unleashed a flood of refugees seeking entry into Spain. Initially, the Spanish government willingly granted transit visas, but then authorities became more hesitant to open frontiers. Still, many refugees slipped across the northern border illegally, trekking over hazardous mountain routes. By the summer of 1942, Jewish aid organizations helped an estimated 7500 pass through Spain to continue their journeys.    Spanish authorities worked to discourage refugees from remaining in the country, and established internment camps for those who did. When border crossings increased again in 1943, refugees were permitted to live in Spanish cities.

The Holocaust Chronicle, page 331 <holocaustchronicle.org/staticpages/331.html>

• Sweden and the Holocaust
  
  .

  Switzerland: The Sinister Face of 'Neutrality' Switzerland During the Holocaust:  Really Neutral or Just Cowardly?  When they engaged in business with Germany ... When they became the bankers for the Reich ... When they turned away Jews by the thousands ... or, When they thought up the national reduction ... .

  From the Eizenstat Report:    "Switzerland was a critical trading partner of Nazi Germany. Its exports of ball bearings to Germany were vitally important during the war, and for a time Switzerland supplied Germany with 40 percent of its iron ore until other European sources reduced that dependency." .

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11. Forced Slave Labor: Those who did not go to their immediate death, went to "slow death" through forced labor.
Many of the most respected German corporations had no scruples about using concentration camp labor. A company's decision to use slave labor was voluntary. By the end of 1944, one half a million ghetto and concentration camp inmates were chained to hundreds of corporations. By 1943, almost every major private corporation was complicit. <tfn.net/holocaust/online/one.htm>	The Jews "lived" on starvation rations. A daily ration was: a piece of black bread, about as thick as your thumb; some margarine about the size of three sticks of chewing gum; and a small cup of something that was supposed to be soup. Every once in a while there was something floating around in it. <aish.com/holocaust/overview/The_Labor_Camps.asp>
	Hungarian Jewish women are selected for slave labor in Birkenau, Summer 1944. (Courtesy of the Archives of Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum)
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Prisoners laboring At Birkenau (SS Photo 1943) Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Archives	at the Bergen-Belsen Camp An Overview of the Forced Labor from USHMM Forced Labor During the Holocaust The Slave Labor Program Pictures of Slave Labor from Various Concentration Camps (Yad Vashem Archives) Female prisoners at forced labor digging trenches at the Ravensbrueck concentration camp. This photograph is from the SS-Propaganda-Album des Frauen-KZ-Ravensbrueck 1940-1941. (Courtesy United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) .
Liberated Slave Workers (April 1945)	Prisoners at Work in the Quarry of the Flossenburg Concentration Camp. [Photograph from Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie]
.Detainees doing construction work at Buchenwald in 1938. This photograph was taken by a camp administrator. [spiegel.de]
The Nazis regarded the slave laborer as an easily replaceable product, not as a capital investment. If a Jew died on the job, there were many more Jews who could fill the empty spaces. The linked article discusses how the forced labor practices benefited the largest and most famous companies in Germany. ---  Forced Labor <jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/ravelabpic.html>

   

  12. The Nazi Ghettos: The Ghettoization of European Jewry

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Hundreds and thousands of Jews were confined in ghettos throughout Europe as the Nazis sought to contain the Jewish population in preparation for the Final Solution. While Ghetto inhabitants tried to sustain a certain degree of normalcy in their lives, (through cultural and social activities) living conditions were terrible, and thousands died from hunger and disease. --Florida Holocaust Museum

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The Daily Struggle for Survival in the Ghettos

Individual Jews and the society as a whole struggled to maintain some quality of life even under the most difficult circumstances. In Eastern Europe, this was known as Iberleben --which is Yiddish for survival. Many Jews tried to survive by holding on to jobs beneficial to the Nazi regime. This concept of 'rescue by labor' was perceived as something that could keep people alive for a while. It also gave these Jews a minimal livelihood, but this was always dependent on the willingness of the German authorities. At the same time the Jews in the ghettos were contending with physical difficulties such as starvation. They combatted this by smuggling in food and medicine to the ghetto. --Source: Yad Vashem -- <yad-vashem.org.il/odot/prog/index_before_change_table.asp?gate=2-49>

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Bialystok, Brody, Czestochowa, Grodno, Jaworow, Kielce, Kolomyja, Krakow, Krasnystaw, Lodz, Lubartow, Lublin, Lvov, Miedzyrzec Podlaski, Minsk, Piotrkow Trybunalski, Przemysl, Radom, Radomsko, Rawa Ruska, Rzeszow, Siedlce Tarnow, Tomaszow Mazowiecki, Vilnius, Warszawa (Warsaw), Zamosc, Zwolen.

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	Jews being brought to Kosice, Czechoslovakia from surrounding villages on April 17, 1944. Deportations to Auschwitz began on May 15; the final transport of Jews from Kosice was sent on June 3, 1944. [Yad Vashem Archive]

• The Ghettos
  
• The Ghettos of Poland
  
• Bialystok Ghetto
  
• Ghetto Bochnia
  
• Czestochowa Ghetto
  
• Kielce Ghetto
  
  
• 
  The Kovno and its Ghetto (Lith., Kaunas; Pol., Kowno; Ger., Kauen )
  
  • More on the Kovno Ghetto
    
  • The Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto
    
• Krakow Ghetto
  
  
  

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Jews from the Lodz ghetto are loaded onto freight trains for deportation to the Chelmno extermination camp. Lodz, Poland, between 1942 and 1944. [National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia, USA] . [Yad Vashem Archives # 40AO4] The Lodz Ghetto This is a photograph of children standing behind the ghetto fence in Lodz, Poland, on August 15, 1944. From January to May, 1942, 55,000 Jews were sent to their deaths in Chelmno death camp. From September 1942 until May 1944 there were no more deportations. After May, the deportations to Chelmno were renewed. In early August, the Nazis rerouted the deportations to Auschwitz. By August 30, 1944 about 70,000 Jews from Lodz were sent to Auschwitz. The Lodz Ghetto (from PolishJew.org) More on the Lodz Ghetto .

 

• The Minsk Ghetto
  
• Siedlce Ghetto
  
• Tarnow Ghetto
  .
• Terezin Revealed
  

  Terezin --the "Model" Nazi Ghetto

  • Terezin (Terezienstadt): The "Model" Ghetto
    
    • Theresienstadt: The "Model" Nazi Ghetto
      --Nazi's Germany Most Diabolic Lie
      
    • Terezin and the Children
      
      
      
  • Theresienstadt (Czech, Terezin)
    
    • Deportations to Theresienstadt
      
    • Another Look at Terezin Concentration Camp
      
  • A Visit to Terezin
    
  • Pictures from Terezin
    
    • More Pictures from Terezin Concentration Camp
      
• Tomaszow Mazowiecki Ghetto
  
  

Warsaw Ghetto More on The Warsaw Ghetto Captured Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising [Photo Credit: Encyclopaedia Britannica] . SS officers walking through the destroyed Ghetto after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. . <lorenz.ist.org/fba/document/holocaust.html> Map of the Warsaw Ghetto Street Scenes in the Warsaw Ghetto The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Captured during the Uprising Polish Jews rounded-up in Warsaw Ghetto. BBC: <news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/country_profiles/1054724.stm>

	Wöbbelin Camp, (near the city of Ludwigslust, Germany)
Survivors, near to their death, at Wöbbelin -- <frihed.natmus.dk/rundvisninger/kz3.htm>

13. .The Concentration and Extermination Camps

There were 11 major Concentration Camps:	Dachau    Sachsenhausen   Ravensbruck   Buchenwald   Flossenburg Neungamme   Gross Rosen   Natzweiler   Mauthausen   Stutthof   Dora / Nordhausen
There were 4 main Killing Centres:	Belzec   Chelmno   Sobibor   Treblinka
There were 2 main Labor / Extermination Camps:	Auschwitz/ Birkenau   Majdanek (KZ Lublin)
There were 2 main Holding Centres:	Bergen-Belsen   Theresienstadt (Terezin)
There were hundreds of Labor Camps:	Over 400 Labor Camps only in the occupied Poland, such as Poniatowa, Trawniki, Budzyn, Plaszow

<martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/holocaust.html>

• A Detailed Map of Eastern Europe, indicating locations of major Nazi concentration and death camps.
  Cartography by Jen Rosenberg. Base map courtesy the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
  
• An Overview of the Nazi Concentration and Death Camps
  
• The Killing and Atrocity Ceners --The Nazi Concentration Camps
  
• Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps 1933-1945
  
  

• A Chronological History of the Nazi Concentration and Death Camps Gates to Hell: Nazi KZ Camps

Concentration Camps, 1933-1939	Concentration Camps, 1942-1945	Concentration Camps and Subcamps	Nazi Camps
Statistics: On Concentration Camps Run by the Nazis in Germany, Poland, Austria, Europe & the Soviet-Baltic States History of Camps: Nazi Commandants & Staff of the Killing Centers

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Auschwitz was never conceived as a place to kill Jews. It developed in step with fundamental Nazi values, constantly changing in response to new 'needs' as the German war effort ebbed and flowed. The Auschwitz complex served as a concentration camp and an industrial centre for the exploitation of brutal slave labour --but it was the perpetration of genocide that became, in the end, its pre-eminent purpose. [BBC ] .
Hungarian Jewish women selected for slave labor at Birkenau. Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Complex --The Largest Nazi Concentration Camp Auschwitz -- Birkenau from Jewish Virtual Library . A General Description The Basics A Chronology .
View of the electrified fence and main entrance to the Auschwitz I concentration camp. [1945 Picture credit: Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes in Poland.] -- USHMM # 50689 The Auschwitz Complex: Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II (Birkenau), Auschwitz III (Monowitz) Auschwitz I --Concentration Camp; Birkenau (Auschwitz II) --Extermination Camp (Credit: Dutch Holocaust website <cympm.com> of Hans Vanderwerff and Sion Soeters.) BIRKENAU DETAILED MAP
	Life and Death Selection at Birkenau

Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia get off the deportation train and assemble on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
[From Yad Vashem --The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.]
<kcl.ac.uk/depsta/iss/library/speccoll/bomarch/bomaug06.html>

..

.A new Jewish transport that just arrived at Birkenau-Auschwitz in 1944 Crematorium II (Krema II) can be seen in the rear at right. .

.At Birkenau Selected, Upon Arrival, For the Gas Chamber (Their only "crime" was the they were born Jewish.)

Auschwitz-Birkenau: "The Death Factory" Auschwitz-Birkenau: A Quick History of a Man-Made Hell Foreword by Henry Friedlander to the book "People in Auschwitz" by Hermann Langbein The Evolution of Tattooing in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp Complex A Visit to Auschwitz I Concentration Camp A Visit to Auschwitz II or Birkenau Death Camp Selected Photos from the Auschwitz Album with Commentary by Oliver Lustig [Just arrived in the Birkenau-Auschwitz Death Camp] [Their only "crime" was that they were Jewish b o r n.]..		Meet the infamous SS Maria Mandel .
		Crematorium IV (Krema IV) in Birkenau-Auschwitz. The gas chambers are in the back; in the foreground, the morgue and the crematorium.

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BELZEC Belzec, one of the Nazis death camps associated with Action Reinhard, was opened in November 1941. Belzec was in the southeast corner of Poland, and like Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka and Sobibor, was in a remote sight, away from prying eyes. Belzec began its murders in March 1942 and it closed in December 1942. Belzec was responsible for up to 600,000 deaths in the Holocaust. .The original camp at Belzec has been a labour camp and had been opened in 1940. Labourers held here and local Jews were used to convert the camp into a death camp. The first commander of Belzec death camp was Christian Wirth, a SS officer. . Initially at Belzec there were three gas chambers in use. This was later increased to six to cope with the increased human traffic that was being sent to the camp. Unlike Auschwitz, which covered a large area, Belzec was reasonably small. A rail spur led directly to the camp. One part of the camp was used to store the clothes and valuables taken from the victims sent there. Another separate part of the camp held the gas chambers and burial pits. The two sections were connected by what was known as "The Tube" --a narrow passageway topped with barbed wire. Branches, taken off nearby trees, were interwoven into the barbed wire to screen it off from the camp's other section. . Wirth ensured that the guards there worked effectively. When a train arrived at Belzec, it would usually have 2000 to 2,500 Jews in the trucks. When they had disembarked from the trucks, the Jews were split into two to three groups. They were then made to enter the camp. Having been told that they needed to shower before starting labour duties, the Jews were forced through "The Tube" and then to the gas chambers. The process of mass murder took about 30 minutes --Belzec used carbon monoxide gas piped in from a diesel engine. Other Jewish prisoners -- the Sonderkommando-- were made to clear the gas chamber of bodies and to extract gold teeth etc. Other teams of Jews were used to tidy and sort the huts where the victims had taken off their clothes etc. It took about three hours to kill and then clean up one trainload of Jews. . When the number of gas chambers at Belzec was doubled, a whole trainload of Jews could be split in two and then "processed" (Wirth). The six gas chambers could take 1,200 Jews; the three-hour process was greatly reduced in time. However, as more were being murdered at one time, the SS needed more Jews to work as Sonderkommandos. At Belzec, in the second stage of its existence with six gas chambers, there were 1000 Sonderkommado. Those still alive when the camp stopped being used were sent to Sobibor to be murdered. . As with all the death camps, exact figures of deaths are impossible to acquire. Many documents of what went on at Belzec were either destroyed at the camp or sent to Berlin where they were also lost. It is thought that 600,000 Jews were murdered at Belzec along with 12,000 Romanies (Gypsies). . When it stopped operating in December 1942, the area where Belzec had been was ploughed over and turned into a farm. <.historylearningsite.co.uk/belzec.htm> . Photo: A new arrival of Jews at Belzec Death Camp   Photo Credit: <clas.ufl.edu/llc/Sommerschule/Myers.htm>   Belzec Concentration Camp Extermination Camp Belzec Belzec Death Camp Belzec Roll of Remembrance

• Berga Concentration Camp, Weimar, Germany
  
  • Some 350 American POWs identified by the Nazis as Jews or Jew-looking sent to Berga
    
  • Holocaust GI soldiers recall capture, liberation
    
  • The Berga Camp story
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• .Bergen-Belsen on April 15, 1945. <kz-zuege.de/kapitel_05.htm> One of the Very Few Survivors of the Bergen-Belsen Death Camp Bergen-Belsen Death Camp Encyclopedia of the Holocaust: Bergen-Belsen Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp Bergen-Belsen in Pictures at Liberation (with a Camp Map and the Gravestone of Anne Frank)

  .
  
• Bogdanovka
  

  (in Romanian, Bogdanovca), camp located on the Bug River, in the village of Bogdanovka in Transnistia. It was established in October 1941 by the Romanian occupation authorities. By December 1, 1941, over 54,000 Jews from Bessarabia and Odessa were imprisoned in the camp. In mid-December, typhus broke out in Bogdanovka. At that point, the Romanians and Germans decided to destroy the entire camp population. The extermination began on December 21. Romanian soldiers and police, Ukrainian police, and local civilians took part, under the command of the local Ukrainian police chief. Approximately 5,000 sick and handicapped prisoners were locked into two stables which were then burnt down. The rest of the prisoners were marched in groups of 300--400 to the river. They were forced to remove their clothing and kneel. Then they were shot or hit with hand grenades. The killing continued for four days, during which 30,000 Jews were murdered. The killing was stopped temporarily on Christmas Eve, while the remaining Jews were left outside, freezing and waiting to die. The massacre began again on December 28; 11,000 Jews were killed by December 31. Two hundred were kept alive to burn the bodies, after which most of them were either killed or died from exposure. [Source: Yad Vashem]

  
  .
  

A New Arrival of Jews at Buchenwald <www.gesch.med.uni-erlangen.de/gewissen/ausstell/hinter/text_02.htm> (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) Buchenwald's main camp taken secretly by detainee Georges Angéli in June, 1944. [spegel.de] <secondeguerre.net/hisetpo/bh/hp_campsconext.html> <kriegsende.ard.de/pages_magnifier/0,3273,OID1145578_CON1157224_POS3,00.html> .Buchenwald Buchenwald from US Holocaust Memorial Museum Ohrdruf Camp, a subcamp of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp --the first Nazi camp liberated by U.S. troops Margaret Bourke-White's photo for Life magazine at Buchenwald, 1945 Margaret Bourke-White was with General Patton's third amy when they reached Buchenwald on the outskirts of Weimar. Patton was so incensed by what he saw that he ordered his police to get a thousand civilians to make them see with their own eyes what their leaders had done. The MPs were so enraged they brought back 2,000. Bourke-White said, "I saw and photographed the piles of naked, lifeless bodies, the human skeletons in furnaces, the living skeletons who would die the next day... and tattoed skin for lampshades. Using the camera was almost a relief. It interposed a slight barrier between myself and the horror in front of me." LIFE published in their May 7, 1945 issue many photographs of these atrocities, saying, "Dead men will have indeed died in vain if live men refuse to look at them." . <www.uiowa.edu/policult/politicalphotos/holocaust2.html> Buchenwald at Liberation, April 1945.

•  "Operation Reinhard":
  The Extermination Camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka
  .
  

  Jewish deportees from the Lodz Ghetto arrive in Chelmno Extermination Camp.

• Chelmno - Death Camp for Total Extermination
  
  • Chelmno
    
  • Extermination Camp Chelmno - Kulmhof .
   

  Dachau Slave Laborers at Dachau, 1938 <kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/englisch/content/history/arbeipic.htm> Prisoners at Dachau A Dachau Survivor Dachau Dachau --the First Nazi Concentration Camp   Timeline of Dachau The Dachau Gas Chambers The History of Dachau "Dachau -- the significance of this name will never be erased from German history. It stands for all concentration camps which the Nazis established in their territory." (Eugen Kogon) -- Dachau Inmates at Liberation -- <mmonceaux.free.fr/16956.jpg> ...   .Kaufering, A Network of Subsidiary Camps of the Dachau Concentration Camp Photo Credit: US National Archives and Records Administration Digging for Making a New Mass Grave in the Landsberg Camp (part of the Dachau Network) Photo Credit: Pfc. Bertram Sanders, cameraman, US Army, 103rd Division .

  .

  • Flossenbürg Concentration Camp
    
    • More on Flossenbürg
      
  • Gardelegen, Germany
    
    • Gardelegen Massacre, 13 April 1945
      
      • A Witness to Nazi Death Camp Horror
        .

  .Gusen Prisoners at Gusen -- <gusen.org> Gassings at KZ Gusen Cruelties at KZ Gusen Camps Gusen at Liberation, May 1945. KZ Gusen II: The "Hell of Hells" The Jews belonged to the lowest group in the KZ Gusen hierarchy. They had to do the worst jobs and often survived just for a few working-days in that "Hell of Hells." The inmates lacked housing, food and clothing, as well as drinking water in the KZ Gusen II. The only water was pumped in from the nearby Danube River and it was suicidal to drink it. In winter 1944/45 so many transports came to KZ Gusen II via its direct railway-connections, that the SS decided to exterminate the transportees, who were possibly from KZ Auschwitz, by keeping them inside the railway-cars at below zero temperatures. In a matter of a days all of them were frozen to death on the rails between St.Georgen and KZ Gusen II Station. "As a resident of many camps, I can say that Guzen was the worst. This is not to say that the conditions at the other camps were not dreadful. Compared to Guzen, however, one might almost say that those camps were paradises. The proof of this might be that Guzen was one of the least known camps. This was not because it was smaller than the others - it might even have been the largest. It was unknown simply because very few of the tens of thousand of prisoners sent there remained alive to tell the story of its horrors." --Rabbi RAV YECHEZKEL HARFENES -- <gusen.org> .

  .

  Lublin-Majdanek Death Camp Majdanek Concentration Camp   Lublin Ghetto Jews from Lublin Ghetto in 1942 being hustled to the trains to be sent to Sobibor death camp. <jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Lublin5.html> . Majdanek, one of six Nazi Extermination Centers in Poland More on Majdanek Concentration Camp A scene of horror at the extermination camp of Majdanek: possibly in a desperate attempt to cover their tracks, the SS burned corpses of victims. [shamash.org/holocaust/photos] Prisoners at forced labor in Majdanek. <holocaust-uddannelse.dk/lejre/majdanek.asp>

  .

   

  The prisoners of Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp climb the infamous Stairs of Death with heavy stones on their backs. <answers.com/topic/mauthausen-gusen-concentration-camp> . Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Upper Austria Ebensee (Austria), sub-camp of Mauthausen More on Ebensee Mittelbau Dora Concentration Camp, Nordhausen, Germany (Warning: Contains Graphic Photos)  "This is what hell must be like" --French survivor Jean Mialet  An American soldier and medical officer view the bodies of prisoners lying on the ground in a barracks in the Nordhausen concentration camp. --US Holocaust Memorial Museum Natzweiler-Struthof Concentration Camp Mauthausen Pile of Corpses at Liberation

  .
  

• Neuengamme (Germany) Concentration Camp

  Prisoners at forced labor in the Neuengamme concentration camp building the Dove-Elbe canal. (1941 - 1942) (The Kapos wear white and black armbands in the 1st picture above.)

  [Photographs from the KZ-Gedenkstatte Neuengamme, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives] <history1900s.about.com/library/holocaust/blneuen1.htm> <history1900s.about.com/library/holocaust/blneuen9.htm>

   

• Nordhausen Concentration Camp
  (A Sub-camp of Dora-Mittelbau)
  
  • Nordhausen (Dora-Mittelbau)
    
  • Nordhausen Nazi Death Camp as
    Remembered by the American GIs
    .

  Ravensbrück Women's Concentration Camp Ravensbrück Medical Experiments in the Women's Concentration Camp The Hell of Ravensbrück... More on Ravensbrück Nurse-Perpetrators of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp Ravensbrück KL Photographs from the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp

   

• Ohrdruf Camp (subcamp of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp)
  --the first Nazi camp liberated by U.S. troops
  
  
• Gross-Rosen Concentration Camp
  (established in 1940 as a subcamp of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp)
  .
  
  

  Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp --Oranienburg (Germany) Just outside the city limits stands a reminder of the darkest days of Berlin's history: Sachsenhausen. Built in 1936 by slave laborers from other early camps, Berlin's concentration camp became a model of the designed efficiency for all those to follow, and by the end of WWII, over 50,000 people had lost their lives to the Nazi death machine. Sachsenhausen was more than just a camp: it was a school of brutality training guards for positions at all other camps.

  Homosexual prisoners at Sachsenhausen.

  .
  

.

Sobibor Death Camp

.

• Sobibor - The Death Camp
  

  (Sign for the train station at Sobibor)

  • Sobibor (Poland)
    
    • Sobibor Chronology
      
  • More on Sobibor
    
  • Escape Under Fire: The Sobibor Uprising of October 14, 1943
    
    • Sobibor -- The Forgotten Revolt
      
  • Jewish Prisoner Uprisings in The Sobibor And Treblinka Extermination Camps
    
    
• Stutthof (Sztutowo) Camp
  
  • Stutthof - Sztutowo (Poland)
    .
• Trawniki SS Camp
  

..

<historyplace.com/pointsofview/goldhagen.htm>

	Treblinka (from USHMM) Treblinka and the Holocaust The Treblinka Extermination Camp Treblinka as an Extermination rather than Concentration Camp Treblinka from PBS We Remember Treblinka! Map of Treblinka Miniature Models of Treblinka Hundreds of Lives Lost in Treblinka Uprising Treblinka Roll of Remembrance Two Photos: Loading Boxcars for Treblinka Visiting Treblinka .
A 1942 Transport to Treblinka Death Camp	<<<--- <.mdr.de/kultur/film/2442064.html>	Arrival in Treblinka
Jews from Przyrow are deported to the Treblinka extermination camp. Czestochowa, Poland, September-October 1942. [Photo Credit: USHMM] .
More Photos (from USHMM) of Deportations of Jews to Treblinka .

• More Description on Holocaust Camps:
  Aktion Reinhard |||| Bergen-Belsen |||| Buchenwald (with Mittelbau Dora) ||||
  Dachau ||||| Maidanek ||||| Mauthausen |||| Nordhausen ||| Westerbork
  
• Comprehensive List of All Holocaust Concentration Camps
  
• SS Personnel Serving in Various Concentration Camps
   

  Typical identification pictures of Auschwitz inmates. [National Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau]

  

  .

  14. Holocaust Revealed Through Original, Primary Documents and Eyewitness Testimonies

Ukrainian Jews assembled for mass execution		Hungarian women and children to be gassed in Auschwitz after having been deemed unfit for work

The Wannsee List .Minutes of the Wannsee Conference

• Shoah (Holocaust): Primary Documents
  
  • From Yad Vashem: Documents of the Holocaust
    
  • A Comprehensive List of Primary Holocaust Documents
    
  • Additional Holocaust Documents
    
• JewishGen's Holocaust Database
  
• Defendants in the Major War Figures Trial
  
• Convicting the Nazis on their Own Evidence
  Comprehensive Index:
  - The Nazis / Nuremberg War Crimes Trial - Testimony / Documents and Other sources
  

  "A thousand years will pass and the guilt of Germany will not be erased." --Oct 16, 1946.
  Hans Frank [Governor of occupied Poland], convicted of major Nazi war criminal at Nuremberg.

  • Testimony at the Nuremberg Trial of Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz

• The Auschwitz Trials
  
• Auschwitz Concentration Camp
  by SS Pery Broad --Member of the SS Personnel in Auschwitz Concentration Camp
  
• First-Hand Documents of the Holocaust in Poland from Yad Vashem
  
• Nazi's Euthanasia files are made public
  
• Legendary American Reporter Edward R. Murrow Describes Buchenwald
  (when he entered the camp after liberation)
  
• United States War Refugee Board Receives Report on Final Solution
  
• The "Captured German Records" Holocaust Collection
  
• German/Austrian Holocaust Related Databases on the Web
  
• Photographs Documenting the Holocaust in Hungary
  
• Heinrich Himmler' Speech of October 4, 1943
  
• Large Theresienstadt documentation, 1943-1945
  
• More Theresienstadt Ghetto Documents
  
• Minutes of the Wannsee Conference
  
• The Execution of Children and Women
  
• Photographs Documenting the Holocaust in Hungary
  by László Karsai, Ph.D.
  
• The Hadamar Trial. Trial of Alfons Klein and Six Others. United Nations War Crimes Commission, 1947
  
  • A Tour of the Infamous Hadamar Killing Center
    
• Eyewitness Accounts: Description of Concentration Camps
  
• Diary of Dr. Johann Paul Kremer
  
• Testimony of Saraleh Batscha (née Mondula) of Cluj, Transylvania (now, part of Romania) of the life in Auschwitz
  
• Photographs from Belsen Concentration Camp: Victims, Perpetrators, Liberators
  
• Excerpts From Testimonies of SS Men, with Sources
  
• Primary Documents:
  Nazi Extermination of People with Mental Disabilities
  
• Documentation of The Mass Murder of Lithuanian Jewry by the SS Einsatzgruppen -- "Action Groups"
  from a Secret Reich Letter
  
• The Jaeger Report: A Chronicle of Nazi Mass Murder:
  One Unit, One Area, Five Months - and 137,000 Victims
  
• Letter from SS-Sturmbannfuehrer Jahrling to SS-General Kammler where
  the cremating capacity of the five Auschwitz crematoriums is specified as 4,756 per 24 working hours