Holocaust Survivors and Remembrance Project: "Forget You Not".

.

I Survived

the 20th Century Holocaust

.

"Forget You Not"™:
H o l o c a u s t   S u r v i v o r s   a n d   R e m e m b r a n c e   P r o j e c t
- Part I -
Forget-You-NotForget-You-Not
T A B L E   O F   C O N T E N T S
iSurvived.org >
I am my brother's
                                                          keeper
< ForgetYouNot.org >

 Innocent Victims of the Holocaust

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



I. Holocaust Background Information: An Introduction


Explaining the
                                            Holocaust ...

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

A transport to
                                                        Treblinka

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

Perpetrators
..
Einsatzgruppe
                                              D
.A member of Einsatzgruppe D
prepares to shot an Ukrainian Jew.  

At Buchenwald
.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.)
.

Einsatzgruppen in
                                              Action.
The Einsatzgruppen -- Mobile Killing Units
Einsatzgruppen Map


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

Nazification of
                                                Germany

 

Nazi Era

 

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

 

German Boycott

Marked Jewish
                                                        Store

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>  


Anti-Jewish signs
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



Anti-Jewish
                                                propaganda
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
 

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



1935 German
                                                Anti-Jewish rally
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



Self-insulting
                                              sign carried by a Jew

 

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



Jewish
                                              children humiliated in the
                                              schools
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.

Humiliation of
                                              Jews, Vienna, 1938


Picture I


Humiliation
                                              of Jews, Vienna (1938)
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



Vienna, Austria, 1938
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

A Nazi
                                                          "parade"
                                                          of the Jews
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>

Jews Forced to
                                                          Carry
                                                          Anti-Semitic
                                                          Signs
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>

Jews Forced to Carry
                                                          Anti-Semitic
                                                          Signs
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.

.

Public
                                                          Humiliation of
                                                          Polish 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>

.

Public
                                                          Humiliation of
                                                          Polish Jews
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>

.

Humiliation of
                                                          Jews
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
                                                          being
                                                          humiliated
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>
.

.

Nazi book burning
+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
Kristallnacht ("The Night of Broken Glass")
Night of Nov. 9 -10, 1938.
1st Kindertransport
The very first
Kindertransport (Children's Transport)
Dec.1, 1938
-- ©KTA




Oldenburg Synagogue, Nov.
                                                          10, 1938

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>


Frankfurt
                                                          Synagogue on
                                                          Fire

Text


The Great Synagogue of Frankfurt, Germany
Set on on Fire
(November 11, 1938)
Photo Credit:
<bobi.net/helabo/projekte/antisem.htm>


Kristallnacht
                                                          Pogrom: Jews
                                                          arrested
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
                                                          during pogrom
.Nazi vandalization of Jewish owned businesses
during the pogrom of Nov. 9-10, 1938
.

.
  

 

  
 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

.

Jude Star

Jewish
                                                          Victims of the
                                                          Holocaust

[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 

.Star of David,
                                              Holocaust

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

To be taken
                                            away...

Deportation

Hungarian Jews waiting to be taken away...
Photo Credit: László Karsai, Ph.D.
.

Deportation of Jews (1942) from Drohobycz, Poland 
Photo Credit: Yad Vashem

Germany of 1942


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
      Deportation of Jews...
.

Deportation...
   To the Death Camps...  

Majdanek crematoria
... 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. Child 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.

Children of
                                            the Holocaust

Holocaust transport
                                              child
 

 

"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
 ..
At
                                                      Birkenau to the
                                                      gas chamber
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.


.


My God!
.


Children of the Holocaust


Some of the very few children that survived imprisonment in Birkenau. [Photo Archive: Yad Vashem]

Deportation of
                                              children at Chelmno.
Jewish children arriving at Chelmno Concentration Camp from Lodz Ghetto

Children of the
                                              Holocaust

Ravensbrück
                                            children

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>

Child

 

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.

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

Mengele
Meet the Infamous
Dr. Joseph Mengele



Nazi Doctors
  • 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>

    Dr. Mengele at
                                                      Auschwitz
    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

Zyclon-B


.A Romani ("Gypsy") in
a Nazi medical experiment

Uncovering Lost Path of Dr. Aribert Heim, a Most Wanted Nazi Doctor in Egypt

 

 .

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

Map of Romani
                                                Persecution
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>
Rounding-up Romanies
                                              ("Gypsies"), May
                                              1940

Gypsies in Auschwitz
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]

A Romani Holocaust
                                                          victim
Settela Steinbach, a Romani girl,peering from a transport cattle wagon on its way to Auschwitz, 1943.

Gypsies
                                                          of the
                                                          Holocaust
Gypsy
                                                          Girl

A Romani being
                                                searched
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 Camp for
                                                Gypsies

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]

 

Gypsies

 

Gypsy women
                                              and children

Romani ("Gypsy") women and children interned in the Rivesaltes transit camp. France, spring 1942. [Courtesy USHMM]

§ August 2, Each Year §
Romani Extermination
Remembrance Day
..
 
 
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

Euthanasia
                                                          Centers


Handicapped Victims


At Hadamar


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


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

"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."  
.

 .

Holocaust horrors

.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>

.
.

  • The German Occupation of Europe
    Hitler with Generals
                                                      in 1941
    Hitler with his Generals in 1941
    Planning for the Attack Against the Soviet Union


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

    .
    • The Holocaust in Grece (from USHMM)
      Deportation of
                                                  Jews of Ioaninna,
                                                  Greece, to
                                                  Auschwitz-Birkenau



       Menorah (Greece)

      • 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>


      Jewish deportations
                                                in Greece
      Jewish deportations
                                                in Greece


      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>
      .
H

 

U

 

N

 

G

 

A

 

R

 

Y

 


The Holocaust in Hungary --a Willing Participant and Ally of Nazi Germany
.
Horthy with Hitler
                                                      in 1938
.Horthy (the Hungarian head of State, 1920-1944) with Hitler in 1938.

H

 

U

 

N

 

G

 

A

 

R

 

Y


Rounding up
                                                          the Hungarian
                                                          Jews in
                                                          Budapest,
                                                          October 1944
The SS Rounding up the Hungarian Jews of Budapest, October, 1944, at the Delight of non-Jewish Civilians
Line up the
                                                          Hungarian Jews
                                                          in Budapest,
                                                          October 1944


Holocaust in
                                                        Hungary
Holocaust in
                                                        Hungary
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

.

Holocaust in
                                                        Hungary
Holocaust in
                                                        Hungary
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.

.

.
  • Italy and the Holocaust
    Mussolini and
                                                          Hitler
    Hitler with
                                                          Mussolini
    Mussolini with
                                                          Hitler in open
                                                          car

    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.

  • 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

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    O
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    O
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    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 deported
                                                          during the
                                                          Holocaust
                                                          years
    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
                                                          Amsterdam,
                                                          1942.

    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.

    Dutch Jews
                                                          deported
    <friends-partners.org/partners/beyond-the-pale/eng_captions/52-3.html>
     

    Amsterdam under
                                                  Nazi occupation
    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.


    .

     

N
A
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I


N
O
R
W
A
Y

Norway During the Holocaust Years
H

O

L

O

C

A

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T
Nazi Norway
Holocaust in Norway

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
.

Nazi Poland

 


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
.

Jeiwish Poles
Jewish Poles being rounded up 
(USHMM Photo Archive ) <holocaust.cz/cz2/history/jew/general/general7> +

.

. 

.

First
                                                        deportation of
                                                        Jews from
                                                        Krakow, Poland

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>

Deportations to
                                              Treblinka

P

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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

.

Civilian
                                            Poles executed
A village execution of Jewish Poles by a German squad
Dokumentationarchiv des Oesterreicheischen Widerstandes -- <britannica.com/eb/art-58217>
.
.

The Holocaust in Romania

Romanian Jews
                                                      being rounded up
                                                      in Bucharest.
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.]
 
To Transnistria
Deportation of Romanian Jews
from Gura Humorului (Romania) to Transnistria
Hitler with Antonescu
Hitler [left] greets the Romanian Marshal Antonescu
during Antonescu's State visit to Germany. (Jan. 2, 1943)

.

.

.Spain During the Holocaust Years
Generalissimo Francisco
                                            Franco
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>

 The Holocaust In Yugoslavia:

.


   

 .

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>
Selection of
                                            slave labor workers at
                                            Birkenau
Hungarian Jewish women are selected for slave labor in Birkenau, Summer 1944.
(Courtesy of the Archives of Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum)
Forced Slave Labor
                                            (men)
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

KL Auschwitz
                                                II-Birkenau. Prisoners
                                                laboring
Prisoners laboring
At Birkenau (SS Photo 1943)
Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Archives

Forced Slave
                                                        Labor (women)
at the
Bergen-Belsen Camp


Ravensbrueck
                                            slave labor

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)
.
Slave workers at
                                              liberation
Liberated Slave Workers
(April 1945)
Slave work at
                                            Flossenburg
Prisoners at Work in the Quarry of the Flossenburg Concentration Camp.
[Photograph from Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie]

At Buchenwald slave
                                              labor
.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

.

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

.

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>

.


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.

  .

Kosice Ghetto,
                                              Czechoslovakia

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]

.


Transport of
                                                    Jews from Lodz to
                                                    Chelmo
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]
.
Lodz Ghetto

[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.
.

 



Captured Jews
                                                    in the Warsaw Ghetto
                                                    Uprising
Captured Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
[Photo Credit: Encyclopaedia Britannica]
.

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
SS officers walking through the destroyed Ghetto after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
.

The Warsaw
                                                      Ghetto

<lorenz.ist.org/fba/document/holocaust.html>

  • The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

    Warsaw Ghetto
    Captured during the Uprising


    Polish Jews
                                                          rounded-up in
                                                          Warsaw Ghetto
    Polish Jews rounded-up in Warsaw Ghetto.

    BBC: <news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/country_profiles/1054724.stm>



Survivors at Wobbelin

  

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


Major Nazi
                                              Concentration Camps

<martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/holocaust.html>






.

Auschwitz

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 ]

.

Auschwitz women
                                                      selected for slave
                                                      labor.
Hungarian Jewish women selected for slave labor at Birkenau.


Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Complex --The Largest Nazi Concentration Camp

Auschwitz -- Birkenau
from Jewish Virtual Library
.
Auschwitz
.

Auschwitz
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)
The Auschwitz
                                              Complex
Auschwitz I --Concentration Camp; Birkenau (Auschwitz II) --Extermination Camp
(Credit: Dutch Holocaust website <cympm.com> of Hans Vanderwerff and Sion Soeters.)

BIRKENAU DETAILED MAP
Birkenau Map


Deportation of Jews
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 very busy
                                            place: Birkenau-Auschwitz in
                                            1944
.A new Jewish transport that just arrived at Birkenau-Auschwitz in 1944
Crematorium II (Krema II) can be seen in the rear at right.
.
Selected at
                                            Birkenau for the gas
                                            chamber
.At Birkenau Selected, Upon Arrival, For the Gas Chamber
(Their only "crime" was the they were born Jewish.)

 

Electric fence

  

 


Meet the infamous
SS Maria Mandel .

Krema IV, AuschwitzCrematorium IV (Krema IV) in Birkenau-Auschwitz. The gas chambers are in the back; in the foreground, the morgue and the crematorium.
.


BELZEC

Belzec Memorial
                                                          Plaque


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.
Belzec Death Camp. 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>

.


Belzec Death
                                                    camp
Photo: A new arrival of Jews at Belzec Death Camp  
Photo Credit: <clas.ufl.edu/llc/Sommerschule/Myers.htm>
 

  • Berga Concentration Camp, Weimar, Germany
  • Corpses at
                                                        Bergen-Belsen
    .Bergen-Belsen on April 15, 1945.
    <kz-zuege.de/kapitel_05.htm>

    Bergen-Belsen
                                                          Death Camp
    One of the Very Few Survivors
    of the Bergen-Belsen Death Camp

    .
  • Bogdanovka
    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
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, June 1944


Buchenwald's main camp taken secretly by detainee Georges Angéli in June, 1944. [spegel.de]

Buchenwald at
                                                  liberation
<secondeguerre.net/hisetpo/bh/hp_campsconext.html>
Survivors at
                                                  Buchenwald
<kriegsende.ard.de/pages_magnifier/0,3273,OID1145578_CON1157224_POS3,00.html>

Buchenwald at liberation
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.

.
Sobibor Death Camp
Sobibor Death Camp
Sobibor Memorial Plaque
.
..
Polish Jews humiliated before sent to
                              Treblinka
<historyplace.com/pointsofview/goldhagen.htm>

A transport to Treblinka
In Treblika
A 1942 Transport to Treblinka Death Camp
<<<--- <.mdr.de/kultur/film/2442064.html>
Arrival in Treblinka

 

Deportations
                                                        to 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
.

The Execution
Mother with 2 children
To be gassed
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
The Wannsee List
.Minutes of the Wannsee Conference

   

 

"I myself never shot a single Jew;
I only gassed them..."
Erich Gnewuch


.

Doctors' Trial

Polish survivor Jadwiga Dzido shows her scarred leg to the court, while expert witness Dr. Alexander explains the nature of the medical experiment performed on her in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Dzido and Alexander were appearing as witnesses at the Doctors Trial.


..

Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials [Harvard University Law Library]
(Repository of some one million Trial pages)

Two United States Historic Photographs:
.Dwight D. Eisenhower with other US Officers at Ohrdruf, a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp, After Liberation
Eisenhower at Ohrdruf

Eisenhower at Ohrdruf

 

Fortunoff
                                                        Holocaust
                                                        Archive

A collection of over 4,300 videotaped interviews with witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust that is part of

Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.

Holocaust
                                                    Pictorial


.

.15. Nazi Plundering
Nazi Art Loot
A painting by the French impressionist Edouard Manet, titled "Wintergarden", discovered in the vault at Merkers. April 25, 1945 [+Enlarge Picture]
European Center of Military History - Belgium

  Documentation from the United States National Archives and Records Administration (NARA):  

Nazi Plunder
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander,
accompanied by General Omar Bradley and Lt. Gen. George Patton, Jr., inspects stolen art treasures.

.

.
Rape of Europa during
                                              the Holocaust years.

THE RAPE OF EUROPA tells the epic story of the systematic theft, deliberate destruction and miraculous survival of Europe's art treasures during the Third Reich and World War II. In a journey through seven countries, the film takes viewers into the violent whirlwind of fanaticism, greed, and warfare that threatened to wipe out the artistic heritage of Europe. For twelve long years, the Nazis looted and destroyed art on a scale unprecedented in history. But heroic young art historians and curators from America and across Europe fought back with an extraordinary campaign to rescue and return the millions of lost, hidden and stolen treasures. Now, more than sixty years later, the legacy of this tragic history continues to play out as families of looted collectors recover major works of art, conservators repair battle damage, and nations fight over the fate of ill-gotten spoils of war.

 

 



All of the suffering and loss will be meaningless if we do not comprehend what took place and then act to insure that it will not happen again. Even today we live with the hate and mistrust that comes with prejudice and ignorance. We must continue to educate those who promote hatred and intolerance -- in our neighborhoods, in our nation, in our world. --Florida Holocaust Museum

.

.

"Forget You Not" Project
If you have been distressed by this rather mild account of the Holocaust,
we are not in the least sorry....
.(Paraphrasing the legendary Edward R. Murrow reporting from Buchenwald)

.

 


The Gates to Hell
The Gates to Hell:
The infamous and cynical sign "ARBEIT  MACHT  FREI," in translation "WORK  MAKES  ONE  FREE" in actuality meant to the Nazis "EXTERMINATION  THROUGH  WORK."

At Birkenau,
                                                          women with
                                                          children
                                                          selected for
                                                          gas chambers.
Hungarian Jewish women with children, upon arrival at Birkenau,
selected straight for the gas chambers.

The Hell
                                                          on Earth

The smoke and the ashes of Hell descended on Earth.
(Members of the Sonderkommando at Birkenau
burning corpses on pyres in pits in 1944.)
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Flame of Remembrance
GENERAL  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS:

I.

Holocaust Background Information

II.

Heroes and Heroines of the Holocaust

III.

Faces and Voices of Holocaust Survivors

IV.

Holocaust Studies and Related Topics

V.

The Holocaust Argumentative Page

VI.

Holocaust Selected Readings, Photos, and Items of Interest

VII.

Holocaust Selected Books

VIII.

Descendants of the Holocaust

IX.

Holocaust Related News

X.

Holocaust Memorial Drives



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Suggestions for further material to be included in here are welcome.

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Holocaust Remembrance, Sanctuary, and Beyond ...
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