The Holocaust was a tragically defining episode of the 20th century that engulfed the Jewish people and other victimsof the Nazis and their collaborators. It was a crisis for European civilisation and a universal catastrophe for humanity

that even today, challenges the foundations of civilisation. Stockholm Declaration

To try and absorb the enormity of the Holocaust, it is a good idea to learn about the story of one Jewish person and hisfamily and find out what happened to them, and to the town, or city that he came from. Who, if any survived? and whathappened to them after the war?

BEFORE THE HOLOCAUSTWhen studying the Holocaust, it is important to be aware of the cultural richness and diversity of Jewish life in Europebefore the world wars and especially the interwar period before the Holocaust. There was a marked difference in thelifestyle of Jewish communities in Eastern and Western Europe. The Jews of eastern Poland, Russia, and Lithuania weremainly orthodox, religious Jews who adhered strictly to religious and cultural practices, whose lives revolved around theJewish calendar and whose first language was Yiddish. In eastern Europe, there were great centres of Jewish learning andYiddish culture. These thriving orthodox communities burgeoned with hundreds of organisations, Yiddish newspapers,political parties, music, theatre and academic institutions. By contrast, the Jews of Western Europe in cities such as Paris,Berlin and Amsterdam for example, lived a more assimilated existence. Although a great many adhered to Jewish orthodoxobservance, the majority were quite secular and assimilated in their lifestyle and their first language was French, Germanor Dutch. They dressed like everyone else, they participated in all areas of life from Academia to the Arts and by the endof the 1930’s many did not think of themselves particularly as Jews, more as French, German or Dutch citizens.

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Jews of Eastern Europe, 1930s, Yad VashemJews of Western Europe, Silberstein family, Berlin, 1937

Reproduced by kind permission of the Memorial and EducationalSite House of the Wannsee Conference, Berlin

THE HOLOCAUST IN EUROPE

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All of this changed with the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany and the rise of the Nazi party in 1933.Hitler made it clear that his aim was to rid Germany of its Jews, and eventually to eliminate the Jews from the whole of Europeand ultimately, the entire world.

HUMILIATIONThe Holocaust did not begin with gas chambers and crematoria. It began in Germany with humiliation, discrimination, tauntsand whispers. Nazi propaganda was designed to imply that Jews were inferior or “lesser humans” and were not to be trusted.Germans were encouraged to boycott Jewish businesses and Jewish professionals, they were urged to sack Jewish employeesand universities were asked to restrict the number of Jewish students and academic staff and eventually to ban them altogether.Jewish property and bank accounts were confiscated by the Nazis. New laws and restrictions were enforced daily: Jews wereno longer allowed to travel on public transport, appear in public spaces such as parks, theatres or sports centres and in somecases, not even allowed to walk on the pavement! In a short space of time Jews were gradually eliminated from all spheresGerman society.

Initially, the Nazis intended to expel the Jews from Germany but extended this policy to the German occupied lands of Austriawith the Anschluss in 1938, and to Czechoslovakia with the acquisition of the Sudetenland and Czech lands in 1939. Withthe invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, which heralded the outbreak of World War 11, the policy of expulsion changedand the intention to get rid of the Jews of Europe altogether, began to gather momentum.

IDENTIFICATION and SEGREGATIONBy the mid 1940s, Germany had extended its power throughout most of Europe, persecuting Jews in all countries that cameunder its control. Jews were identified by badges they were forced to wear, yellow Stars of David in most occupied countriesand white armbands with blue stars in Poland. The Jews were very soon segregated from the rest of the population and forcedinto ghettos. These were usually poor or run-down areas of a town or city near a railway line. Thousands of Jews weresqueezed into cramped areas that could not possibly accommodate the numbers, often without running water or connection toa sewage system. As a result of these conditions, more than one and a half million Jews died in the ghettos from cold,starvation and disease. It suited the Nazis very well if Jews were shown to have died from ‘natural causes’.

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Boycott Jewish shops, USHMM

Pedestrian walkway in the Lodz Ghetto

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CONCENTRATIONThere were more than 1200 concentration camps established throughout Nazi-occupied Europe to which vast numbers ofJews were deported. In the camps the Jews were subjected to very harsh conditions, maltreatment, starvation and brutality.A great number of concentration camps were also slave labour camps and six were specifically dedicated as death campsor killing centres.

MURDERIn June 1941 Germany invaded Eastern Poland and parts of Russia in Operation Barbarossa. The army was followed bykilling squads or Einsatzgruppen which rounded up Jews in these eastern territories and shot them to death in forests,cemeteries, ravines or into pits which the victims had to dig themselves. More than one and a half million Jews weremurdered by the Einsatzgruppen in these killing sites where Gypsies, communists and others were also killed. Thepsychological trauma suffered by some of the killers involved in face-to-face killings, prompted the Nazis to find a moreefficient solution to the elimination of the Jewish people – death by poison gas.

Six death camps were established on Polish soil – out of sight of the German people. Between March 1942 and August1943 three death camps were built at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, known as “Operation Reinhard”, where some1,700,000 Jews were murdered in gas chambers. Corpses were burnt to eliminate all evidence of the murders and thesethree camps along with Chelmno, were dismantled on completion of their ‘function’ and all traces of their existence wasdestroyed. The lands they had occupied were planted with forests and grasslands. Majdanek and Auschwitz continued tofunction as slave labour camps as well as death camps. Majdanek was liberated by the Soviets in June 1944. In Auschwitz-Birkenau 1, 100,000 Jews were murdered. It was liberated by the Soviet army on 27 January 1945 where they found 7,650prisoners alive.

As victory for the Allies seemed imminent, the Nazis forced thousands of concentration camp prisoners to undertake DeathMarches back towards Germany. They were so weakened and in such poor health that thousands could not withstand theordeal and collapsed and died or were shot on the spot.

It is estimated that approximately ten million Jews lived in what became Nazi occupied Europe. By the end of the war in1945, only 3.2 million Jews had survived the Holocaust. There were also millions of other victims of Nazi atrocities.

RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONSThroughout the war, there were hundreds of non-Jewish individuals who risked their lives to save Jews. The Righteouscome from all levels of society, from different backgrounds, ages, religions and ethnic groups. They are individuals,families, groups of friends or members of organised efforts such as the Dutch Resistance, the village of Le Chambon surLignon in France, or Zegota (the Council for Aid to Jews) in Poland. They include well known efforts, such as that ofbusinessman Oskar Schindler, to assistance by diplomats such as the Swedish consul Raoul Wallenberg in Hungary or theJapanese official Sempo Sugihara in Lithuania, who saved several thousand Jews. Many Jews who survived Nazi rule andoccupation in Europe between 1939 and 1945 owe their survival to Righteous Among the Nations.

OTHER VICTIMSThe Holocaust was a systematic programme to annihilate the Jews of Europe by the Nazis and their collaborators. Twothirds of European Jews were murdered as well as other victims of Nazi atrocities. They were: People with Disabilities,Poles, Slavs, black and ethnic minorities, Gypsies (Roma/Sinti), Homosexuals, Political, and Christian opponents.

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HUMILIATION IDENTIFICATION SEGREGATION CONCENTRATION MURDER

Holocaust Timeline Wallchart and Teacher’s HandbookA linear overview of the main events thattook place during the years of the Holocaust1933-1945.Recommended as a comprehensiveteaching tool produced by HETI.

Contact the HETI office for details:Tel: 01 6690593 Email: info@hetireland.org

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Nuremberg War Trials begin

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