" The Holocaust is something that we should all learn about so that we never let such a terrible crime against mankind happen again." (The Holocaust a Tragic Legacy, 1997)

As Hugo Gryn told Martin Gilbert, its (The Holocaust) occurrence relied only "upon the indifference of bystanders in every  land." (L'CHAIM:, 1998)

I have always known about the Holocaust, having been raised Jewish (my father was Jewish), and had always wondered what I would have done if I had been there.  I realize now, after doing this paper for a class, that many people didn't know that the movie "Sheindler's List" was based on real events and that Hitler was responsible for the deaths of 11 million people.  One thing I learned from doing this paper is that 5 million were NON-JEWS.

It could have been YOU and YOUR FAMILY!

    This is what HATE can do and did!

What was the Holocaust?

The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European civilians and  Jewry ( two-thirds of the total European Jewish population), by the Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945.   In 1933 approximately nine million Jews lived in the 21 countries of Europe that would be occupied by Germany during World War II. By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been killed. Jews were the primary victims -- six million were murdered; Roma (Gypsies), the handicapped and Poles were also targeted for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic or national reasons. Millions more, including Soviet prisoners of war, political dissidents, homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi tyranny. " (Museum, 1998)
The Holocaust was the extermination of people not for who they were but for what they were.  Of the 11 million people who were murdered by the Nazis, 5 million were not Jews.

There were very few dark-skinned people of African descent in Germany, but the offsprings from any type of relationship between them and a white German was referred to as "Rhineland Bastards" or the "Black Disgrace".  The Nazis set up a secret group, Commission Number 3, to organize the sterilization of these "Rhineland Bastards" to keep intact the purity of the Aryan race.  Children believed to be of black decent were picked up without parental consent and put before the Commission.  If the Commission decided they were of black decent they were taken immediately to a hospital and sterilized.   About 400 children were medically sterilized -- many times without their parents' knowledge. (Schwartz, 1997)
 

 Why did the Nazis want to kill large numbers of innocent people?

The Nazis believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that there was a struggle for survival between them and "inferior races." Jews, Poles, Russians, and others.   Roma (Gypsies) and the handicapped were seen as a serious biological threat to the purity of the "German (Aryan) Race" and therefore had to be "exterminated." The Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and Free Masons were persecuted, imprisoned and often killed on political and behavioral  grounds.  Sometimes the reasons were not very clear.  Millions of Soviet Prisoners of War perished from starvation, disease and forced labor or were killed for racial political reasons.
Nazis blamed the Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I, for its economic problems and for the spread of Communist parties throughout Europe. (Museum, 1998)
 

What would you have done?

First just imagine who you are, all you had to do was not agree with what Hitler stood for and you were in danger of his cruelty.  I am going to take you through the steps of the Holocaust so no matter who you are or what you are or what you believe, pretend right now you were one of the 11 million victims of the Holocaust.

JANUARY 30, 1933
Appointment of Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor (Prime Minister).

FEBRUARY 28, 1933 - Hitler moved quickly to end German democracy.
German government takes away freedom of speech, assembly, press, and freedom from invasion
of privacy (mail, telephone, telegraph) and from house search without warrant.  Special security forces, the Special State Police ( the Gestapo), the Storm Troopers (S. A.) and the Security Police (S. S.) murdered or arrested leaders of opposition political parties. ( Legacy, 1997)

MARCH 20, 1933
First concentration camp opens at Dachau, Germany, for political opponents of the regime.
Dachau is situated on the site of an old munitions factory just outside the village of Dachau. Many of the prisoners held there were forced to work in German factories in nearby Muenchen (Munich) while others were used as human guinea pigs in experiments run by Dr. Rascher.( Legacy, 1997)

APRIL 1, 1933
Nationwide boycott of Jewish-owned businesses in Germany is carried out under Nazi leadership.

APRIL 7, 1933
Law excludes "non-Aryans" from government employment; Jewish civil servants, including university professors and schoolteachers, are fired in Germany.

MAY 10, 1933
Books written by Jews, political opponents of Nazis, and many others are burned during huge public rallies across Germany.

JULY 14, 1933
Law passed in Germany permitting the forced sterilization of Gypsies, the mentally and physically disabled, African-Germans, and others considered "inferior".

OCTOBER 1934
First major wave of arrests of homosexuals occurs throughout Germany, continuing into November.

APRIL 1935
Jehovah's Witnesses are banned from all civil service jobs and are arrested throughout Germany.

AUGUST 1, 1935
Juden Verboten ("NO JEWS") signs appear everywhere forbidding Jews from public facilities, stores and restaurants.

SEPTEMBER 15, 1935
Basic anti-Jewish racist legislation passed at Nuremberg .  These  laws were designed (a) to clarify the requirements of citizenship in the Third Reich, (b) to assure the purity of German blood and German honor and (b) to clarify the position of Jews in the Reich.

MARCH 3, 1936
Jewish doctors no longer permitted to practice in government institutions in Germany.

MARCH 7, 1936
Jews no longer have the right to participate in German elections.

AUGUST 1, 1936
Olympic Games open in Berlin, Germany. Anti-Jewish signs are removed until the Games are over. Jews are not allowed to participate.

JULY 16, 1937
Buchenwald concentration camp opened.

NOVEMBER 16, 1937
Passports for Jews are limited.

JULY 6-15, 1938
Representatives from thirty-two countries meet at Evian, France to discuss refugee policies. Most of the countries refuse to let in more Jewish refugees.

OCTOBER 1938
Confiscation of property of German Jews begins.

OCTOBER 28, 1938
Over 17,000 Jews of Polish citizenship expelled from Germany to Zbaszyn on Polish border.

NOVEMBER 9-10, 1938
"Kristallnacht" Anti-Jewish riots in Germany and Austria. Some 300,000 Jews arrested, 191 synagogues destroyed, 7,500 shops looted

NOVEMBER 12, 1938
German Jews forced to pay 1 billion Reichsmarks for damages of Kristallnacht.

NOVEMBER 15, 1938
All Jewish children are expelled from public schools.

JUNE 1939
Cuba and the United States refuse to accept Jewish refugees aboard the ship S.S. St. Louis, which is forced to return to Europe.

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939
German army invades Poland - beginning of World War II.

SEPTEMBER 3, 1939
Britain and France declare war on Germany

OCTOBER 1939
Hitler extends power of doctors to kill institutionalized mentally and physically disabled persons in the "euthanasia" program.

NOVEMBER 23, 1939
Distinctive identifying armband made obligatory for all Jews in Central Poland.

NOVEMBER 28, 1939
Directive by Hans Frank to establish Judenrats (Jewish Councils) in General Government. First Polish Ghetto established in Piotrkow.

APRIL 27, 1940
Himmler directive to establish a concentration camp at Auschwitz   (Also served as a death camp where more than 1.25 million were killed - 9 out of 10 were Jews).

NOVEMBER 15, 1940
Warsaw Ghetto sealed off.

JULY 31, 1941
Heydrich appointed by Goering to carry out the "Final Solution". (The answer to the Jewish problem)  Final plans drafted in January, 1942.

SEPTEMBER 28-29, 1941
Nearly 34,000 jews are murdered by "Einsatzgruppen", mobile killing squads, at Babi Yar near Kiev (Ukraine).

OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 1941
First group of German and Austrian Jews are deported to ghettos in eastern Europe.

OCTOBER 10, 1941
Establishment of Theresienstat Ghetto in Czechoslovakia.

OCTOBER 23, 1941
Massacre of 19,000 Odessa Jews.

DECEMBER 7, 1941
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

DECEMBER 8, 1941
Chelmno extermination camp opened near Lodz; by April 1943, 360,000 Jews had been murdered there.

JANUARY 20, 1942
Wannsee Conference. Here the details of the plan for the Final Solution, to exterminate eleven million European Jews, were drafted.

MARCH 1, 1942
Extermination begins at Sobibor. By October 1943, 250,000 Jews had been murdered there.

MARCH 17, 1942
Extermination begins at Belzec. By the end of 1942, 600,000 Jews had been murdered there.

MARCH 26, 1942
Deportation of 60,000 Slovakian Jews, some to Auschwitz, others to Majdanek.

JUNE 1, 1942
Jews in France and Holland required to wear identifying stars.

JUNE 1, 1942
Treblinka extermination camp opened; 700,000 Jews murdered there by August 1943.

22 JULY
Beginning of the large-scale "Aktion" in the Warsaw Ghetto. By September 13th, 300,000 Jews had been deported to Treblinka.

10-29 AUGUST
"Aktion" in Lwow Ghetto. 40,000 Jews deported to extermination camps.

OCTOBER 4, 1942
All Jews still in concentration camps in germany are sent to death camp at Auschwitz.

FEBRUARY 5-12, 1943
"Aktion" in Bialystok Ghetto; 1,000 Jews killed on the spot; 10,000 deported to Treblinka.

OCTOBER 2, 1943
Order for the expulsion of Danish Jews: thanks to the rescue operations by the Danish underground. some 7,000 Jews were evacuated to Sweden: only 475 were captured by the Germans.

MAY 15, 1944
Deportation of 430,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz begins.

JULY 24, 1944
Russians liberate Maidanek death camp.

OCTOBER 31, 1944
14,000 Jews transported from Slovakia to Auschwitz

EARLY 1945
Soviet Troops advanced.  Death march from Auschwitz.
 
 MAY 1945
Hitler is defeated and World War II ends in Europe
 
 
 One thing the Holocaust shows is the strength of the human spirit.  "It is incomprehensible how life truly was for those in the camps, the day in, day out, monotony of horror that grew into weeks, months, and even years.  The fact that there were survivors shows that there is something in us that cannot be taken away no matter what, and that is a true testament to the human spirit." (Legacy, 1997)
 
 A Survivor's Prayer
                  CITED WORKS  Please check out these sites, there is so much about the Holocaust and the survivors.