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Important Facts About . . .

The Holocaust

The Holocaust began in January 1933 when Hitler came to power and technically ended on May 8, 1945 (VE Day).
Between 1933 and 1945, more than 11 million men, women, and children were murdered in the Holocaust. Approximately six million of these were Jews.
Over 1.1 million children died during the Holocaust.
Young children were particularly targeted by the Nazis to be murdered during the Holocaust. They posed a particular threat because if they lived, they would grow up to parent a new generation of Jews. Many children suffocated in the crowded cattle cars in the way to the camps. Those who survived were immediately taken to the gas chambers.

The Holocaust would not have been possible without mass transportation

The majority of people who were deported to labor and death camps were transported in cattle wagons. These wagons did not have water, food, a toilet, or ventilation. Sometimes there were not enough cars for a major transport, so victims waited at a switching yard, often with standing room only, for several days. The longest transport of the war took 18 days. When the transport doors were open, everyone was already dead.
The most intensive Holocaust killing took place in September 1941 at the Babi Yar Ravine just outside of Kiev, Ukraine, where more than 33,000 Jews were killed in just two days. Jews were forced to undress and walk to the ravine’s edge. When German troops shot them, they fell into the abyss. The Nazis then pushed the wall of the ravine over, burying the dead and the living. Police grabbed children and threw them into the ravine as well.
Carbon monoxide was originally used in gas chambers. Later, the insecticide Zyklon B was developed to kill inmates. Once the inmates were in the chamber, the doors were screwed shut and pellets of Zyklong B were dropped into vents in the side of the walls, releasing toxic gas. SS doctor Joann Kremmler reported that victims would scream and fight for their lives. Victims were found half-squatting in the standing room only chambers, with blood coming out their ears and foam out of their mouths.
In 1946, two partners in a leading pest control company, Tesch and Stabenow (Testa), were tried before a British military court on charges of genocide. It was argued that the accused must have realized that the massive supply of Zyklon B they provided to concentration camps was far above the quantity required for delousing. They were convicted and hanged.

Auschwitz was the largest of the German concentration camps

Over one million people were murdered at the Auschwitz complex, more than at any other place. The Auschwitz complex included three large camps: Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Monowitz.
Prisoners, mainly Jews, called Sonderkommando were forced to bury corpses or burn them in ovens. Because the Nazis did not want eyewitnesses, most Sonderkommandos were regularly gassed, and fewer than 20 of the several thousand survived. Some Sonderkommandos buried their testimony in jars before their deaths. Ironically, the Sonderkommandos were dependent on continued shipment of Jews to the concentration camps for staying alive.
The “Final Solution” was constructed during the Wannsee Conference in January 1942. Fourteen high-ranking Nazis met in Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin, and presented a program to deport all Jews to Poland where the SS would kill them.
Kristallnacht or “Night of Broken Glass” occurred throughout Germany and Austria on November 9, 1938, when the Nazis viciously attacked Jewish communities. The Nazis destroyed, looted, and burned over 1,000 synagogues and destroyed over 7,000 businesses. They also ruined Jewish hospitals, schools, cemeteries, and homes. When it was over, 96 Jews were dead and 30,000 arrested.
In the initial stages of the destruction of European Jews, the Nazis forced Jews into ghettos and instigated a policy of planned, indirect annihilation by denying them the basic means of survival. In the Warsaw ghetto in Poland, the largest ghetto, about 1% of the population died each month.
An estimated 1/3 of all Jewish people alive at that time were murdered in the Holocaust.
In his memoirs, Rudolph Hess described the process of tricking the Jews into entering the gas chambers. To avoid panic, they were told they had to undress to be washed and disinfected. The Nazi guards used a “Special Detachment Team” (other Jewish prisoners) to help keep an air of calm and to assist those who were reluctant to undress. Children often cried, but after members of the Special Detachment team comforted them, they entered the gas chambers, playing or joking with one another, often still carrying their toys.

The term “Holocaust” originally was a Bible word for “burnt offerings”

The word “Holocaust” is from the Greek holo “whole” + kaustos “burnt.” It refers to an animal sacrifice in which the entire animal is burned. It is also known as the Shoah, which is Hebrew for “destruction.” The terms “Shoah” and “Final Solution” always refer to the Nazi extermination of the Jews and “the Holocaust” refers to the overall genocide caused by the Nazis, while the general term “holocaust” can refer to the mass killing of any group by any government.
The term “holocaust” became a household word in America when in 1978 NBC television aired the miniseries titled Holocaust. However, Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel called the miniseries, “untrue and offensive.” Wiesel objected to what he thought were historical inaccuracies, German and Jewish stereotypes, “too much drama and not enough documentary.” He also argued that television was an inappropriate medium to portray the holocaust.
Approximately 220,000-500,000 Romanies (Gypsies) were killed during the Holocaust.
Unlike other genocides in which victims are often able to escape death by converting to another religion, those of Jewish descent could be spared only if their grandparents had converted to Christianity before January 18, 1871 (the founding of the German Empire).
Of the nine million Jews who lived in Europe before the Holocaust, an estimated 2/3 were murdered. Millions of others, including those who were disabled, political and religious opponents to Hitler, Romanies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals, were also murdered.
Those who survived Dr. Josef Mengele’s experiments were almost always murdered and dissected. Many children were maimed or paralyzed and hundreds died. He was known by children as “Onkel Mengele” and would bring them candy and toys before personally killing them. He later died in a drowning accident in Brazil in 1979.
Twins fascinated Nazi doctor Josef Mengele (known as the “Angel of Death”). According to one witness, he sewed together a set of twins named Guido and Ina, who were about 4 years old, from the back in an attempt to create Siamese twins. Their parents were able to get some morphine and kill them to end their suffering.
Hitler introduced the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, which made it illegal for Germans to marry or have sex with Jews. It also deprived Jews of their German citizenship and most of their civil rights.
The 1940 Nazi pseudo-documentary The Eternal Jew attempted to justify the extermination of Jews from Europe. The movie claimed that Jews were genetically destined to be wandering cultural parasites.
On November 11, 1938, Germany enacted the “Regulations Against Jews’ Possession of Weapons,” which made it illegal for Jews to carry firearms or other weapons.

Zyklon-B was originally created as an insecticide

Gas in the chambers during the Holocaust entered the lower layers of air first and then rose slowly toward the ceiling, which forced victims to trample one another in an attempt to breathe. Stronger victims were often found on top of the pile of bodies.
Muselmann (German for “Muslim”) was slang for concentration camp victims who gave up any hope of survival. They would squat with their legs tucked in an “Oriental” fashion, with their shoulders curved and their head dropped and overcome by despair. Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi stated that if he could “enclose all the evil of our time in one image, I would choose this image.”
Hitler was able to build a network of over 1,000 concentration camps in several ways. First, he established a legal basis for acts of brutal inhumanity by creating the Enabling Act, which allowed him to do whatever he wanted. Second, he used propaganda and media to dehumanize Jewish people and, finally, he used a system of brutality to terrorize the people into submission.
Approximately 100,000 Jews died during “death marches.”
The first concentration camp was Dachau. The first arrivals to Dachau were political opponents of Hitler who were placed there in protective custody, including communists, socialists, and political Catholics. Later, it was used as an extermination camp for Jews.