Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By simmons on September 28, 2015

The Holocaust is woven into the very existence of those who lived during that time some seven decades ago. Today, young peoples knowledge of this horrific chapter of history is limited by educators choices in planning their classroom curriculum. Although the mandate of Never Again has proved difficult to achieve, the lessons of the Holocaust remain relevant and significant in the lives of youth, including the dangers of silence, the consequences of indifference, and the responsibility to protect the vulnerable.Through programs and curriculum, ADL helps educators bring these lessons to life for students.

ADL Holocaust Programs

Nearly 70 years after the end of World War II, awareness of the Holocaust is alarmingly low in many parts of the world. Even more disturbing is the percentage of people who have heard of the Holocaust but think it is either a myth or that the number of Jews who died has been greatly exaggerated. Learn more about this and other interesting facts found in the ADL GLobal 100 Index- a groundbreaking survey of 100 countries and the anti-Semitic attitudes around the world.

Read the Global Study

Echoes and Reflections provides middle and high school teachers with print and online resources that address academic standards in a comprehensive curriculum. The program integrates visual history testimony from Holocaust survivors and other witnesses and primary source materials into conveniently packaged lessons.

About Echoes and Reflections Resources

The 8th Annual Charlotte and Jacques Wolf Educators Conference on Echoes and Reflections was held July 13-17, 2015. Twenty-three educators convened from across the United States for a week of in-depth training on integrating Echoes and Reflections resources into their classrooms. Participants learned from Holocaust and genocide experts, survivors and other witnesses, and from one another

Learnabout Echoes and Reflections

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Education & Outreach HOLOCAUST EDUCATION

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Posted By simmons on September 28, 2015

Did you know that the following article was an elaborate hoax perpetrated by the Zionist elites who control the world? 99 subhuman Jews in the row, 99 subhuman Jews! Shoot one down, kick it around, 98 subhuman Jews in the row!

~ Concentration camp worker on holocaust

~ Adolf Eichmann at the Nuremberg Trials

The Holocaust is an important mathematical structure in political algebraic topology and physics. It is the colimit in the category of fields of infinite tragic characteristic with natural logical morphisms, as is the nineleven in the category of fields of infinite tragic attributes with unnatural quantum functions.

A holocaust as displayed by in a three-dimensional field with Legos.

A political field is a set with two binary operations, addition and multiplication, that satisfies the following axioms:

A topological political field has also a topological structure. This determines open and closed issues on the political field. Multiplication is of course a continuous map under this topology.

Some political fields have a tragic characteristic, which is the smallest negative element n of the tragic numbers such that when acting upon the political field, 0 is attained. Political fields of finite tragic characteristic include the Schiavo field, the Chandra-Levy field, the Elysian field, the Natalee Holloway field, and the Phillip-Bustert field. Some political fields have no non-trivial nilpotent elements under tragedy. No action will reduce the open issues in these fields to 0. Such political fields have infinite tragic characteristic.

Classic political fields of infinite tragic characteristic include the Orwell field and the Alderaan field. In 1905, Bertrand Russell proved the existence of a universal political field of tragic infinite characteristic. However, it was not until 1941 that Wilhelm Sss, a German politicomathematician, explicitly constructed this field, which was later termed the Holocaust. Sss constructed the Holocaust using J-transport theory, which allows one to concentrate certain difficult degenerate maps into nilpotent elements.

The most important feature of the Holocaust is that it is universal for all political fields of infinite tragic characteristic. This is a priori a simple property from its definition as a colimit. However there appear to be no natural maps from any open issue in any other political field into the Holocaust. It was conjectured by American politicomathematician Asimov that it is impossible to construct a comparison of an open issue in any political field to the Holocaust. Many attempts to disprove this conjecture have failed, including attempts by politicomathematicians Santorum and Durbin, who respectively attempted to compare the Phillip-Bustert field and the Gitmo field to the Holocaust.

Most applications of the Holocaust depend upon the Asimov Conjecture. In this way, the Asimov Conjecture plays the same role in political field theory that the Riemann hypothesis plays in number theory.

Much work in the early 2000s has focused on the connection between the Asimov Conjecture and the Axiom of Choice. Many politicomathematicians, trying to extend earlier work of Paul Cohen, have tried to show that the Stewart Conjecture is incompatible with the Axiom of Choice. Most of the work in this field focuses on Ab-Torsion using elliptical maps. Still, despite years of work by the politicomathematicians Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson, no natural maps between Ab-Torsion groups and the Holocaust have been discovered.

Teaching kids about the Holocaust.

All Jews loved the holocaust. All of them.

Speculation is still open as to whether the Asimov Conjecture will be proven. If it can be successfully proven, then the energy focused on trying to construct a comparison between an open issue and the Holocaust will have been wasted. Current efforts are focused on the discovery of a hypothetical particle, the Joo particle, and a hypothetical second particle, the Nutsy particle. It is hypothesized that if the two particles should collide, then a very energetic reaction should take place.

This image shows (or resembles) a symbol that was used by the National Socialist (NSDAP/Nazi) government of Germany or an organization closely associated to it, or another party which has been banned by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany.

The use of insignia of organizations that have been banned in Germany (like the Nazi swastika or the arrow cross) may also be illegal in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, France, Brazil, Israel, Canada and other countries, depending on context. In Germany, the applicable law is paragraph 86a of the criminal code (StGB), in Poland Art. 256 of the criminal code (Dz.U. 1997 nr 88 poz. 553).

Therefore, if you are in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, France, Brazil, Israel, or Canada, fuck off, you're not allowed to read this or the government will get you.

Seriously. GTFO. This article might just call you a god-damn ni-*gets arrested*

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Holocaust - Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia

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Posted By simmons on September 28, 2015

CALIFORNIA | LOCAL

April 26, 2014 | By Elaine Woo, Los Angeles Times

Daniel Anker, an award-winning documentarian who used film to reexamine complex historical events, including Hollywood's portrayal of the Holocaust and a life-saving sled-dog run in Alaska, died Monday in New York. He was 50. The cause was pneumonia, a complication of his lymphoma, said his wife, Donna Santman. Anker made more than a dozen films during a 25-year career, including "Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust" (2004), "Music from the Inside Out" (2004) and "Scottsboro, An American Tragedy" (2000)

ENTERTAINMENT

March 13, 2014 | By Carolyn Kellogg

Ayelet Waldman's "Love and Treasure" (Alfred A. Knopf, $26.95, April 1) is a triptych novel that follows the lives of American and Hungarian Jews across the 20th century. A story of relationships, art and loss, it moves among a granddaughter trying to solve a puzzle, feminists in Budapest between the wars and European Holocaust survivors headed to Palestine. "When my book was being auctioned in Britain, one of the people who didn't bid on it said, 'This book is too Zionist for us.' And then my Israeli publisher, who did end up buying it, was like, 'Man, this is a really anti-Zionist book.' I got those responses the same day," Waldman says via Skype.

CALIFORNIA | LOCAL

March 12, 2014 | Frederick N. Rasmussen

Leo Bretholz, a Holocaust survivor who became a major voice in the campaign to gain reparations from companies that transported victims to concentration camps during World War II, died in his sleep Saturday at his home in Pikesville, Md. He was 93. Bretholz played a leading role in a campaign to require SNCF, the French railway system that historians have said conveyed 76,000 people to Nazi camps, to pay reparations to U.S. Holocaust survivors....

ENTERTAINMENT

March 5, 2014 | By Mike Boehm

Dismayed at how German authorities have handled a ballyhooed seizure of suspected Nazi-looted art, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor from New York City is suing them for the return of a painting he says was stolen in the late 1930s from his great uncle in Germany. David Toren's suit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., alleges that the Federal Republic of Germany and the Free State of Bavaria have "perpetuate[d] the persecution of Nazi victims" by not expeditiously returning artworks they seized in 2012 from Cornelius Gurlitt, the elderly son of an art expert who was known for acquiring looted art for Adolf Hitler.

OPINION

February 26, 2014

Re "Among the oldest Holocaust survivors," Obituary, Feb. 24 Thank you for reporting on the passing of Alice Herz-Sommer, one of the oldest Holocaust survivors. I knew nothing about Herz-Sommer before seeing the Academy Award-nominated documentary," The Lady in Number Six. " I left the theater with tears in my eyes but with my heart inspired and uplifted by this remarkable woman. Despite circumstances that no human being should be forced to endure, her spirit still soared.

ENTERTAINMENT

February 26, 2014 | By Steven Zeitchik

Among the 25 or so awards to be handed out at Sunday's Oscars will be the prize for documentary short. One of the less recognized categories at the annual ceremony, the doc short field this year contains a certain newsworthiness because of the inclusion of one nominee, "The Lady in Number 6," about Alice-Herz Sommer, a pianist who was known for years as the oldest living Holocaust survivor. Herz-Sommer died several days ago at the age of 110, thrusting into the headlines a film and category few might have otherwise talked about.

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Articles about Holocaust - latimes

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Posted By simmons on September 28, 2015

The Source

Source Homel Introduction l Connecting to Illinoisl Places to Go Primary Sources to See

TPS EIU Staff Pick l Primary Sources in the Classrooml loc.govl PDF with Images

This publication is created to be a source of information and inspiration for teachers as they incorporate Library of Congress digitized primary sources and resources into instruction by Teaching with Primary Sources at Eastern Illinois University.

Children during the Holocaust Introduction

Children are extremely vulnerable during times of war. During the holocaust, Nazis considered Jewish youth useless because young children were unable to perform hard labor. The exact number murdered by the Nazis is unknown but it is estimated that 1.5 million Jewish children were killed, victims of genocide.1

As Jewish families were sent to Nazi concentration camps, the survival of small children was nearly non-existent. Most were sent straight to gas chambers or shot in front of ditches dug for mass graves. Older children survived by being forced into hard labor, and babies born in camps were killed immediately. Some children were selected for medical experiments, especially twins. When Auschwitz was liberated in 1945, only 451 children were found among the 9,000 survivors.2

There were different ways that Jewish children were able to survive the Holocaust. Many went into hiding, which meant having to disappear living in difficult conditions. Staying quiet and not moving for hours at a time was difficult for small children. Under floor boards, in sewers and up in haylofts were a few of the places chosen to hide Jewish children. Many of these children didn't play outside or even see sunshine for years. The efforts of Kindertransport brought Jewish children from Nazi occupied countries to England, but children had to separate from their parents and live with a host family with different traditions and customs. Jewish children with "Aryan" features were able to hide in plain sight. Bearing counterfeit documents, these children were often able to travel outside or even attend school while still in hiding. They had to immerse themselves in a new life that came with a new religion, name and history to learn. This was easier for young children but older children had to forget their religious customs, name and Jewish family. They had to hide their Jewish heritage from classmates and friends, because even a suggestion that they were Jewish could put them and their host families in danger. Afraid of becoming comfortable and losing a connection to their past, many of these children became isolated. Finding Christian families to take a Jewish child was difficult and families took responsibility for these children not knowing if their parents would survive to reclaim them.

The end of the war was only a continuance of the suffering for Jewish children and their families. Parents could search for years trying to locate their children. If the children were found it wasn't always a happy experience, as children sent into hiding very young often didn't remember their parents. The people they grew up with were family to them. Some rescuers became attached and did not want to return the children to their Jewish parents but most often, parents never reunited with their children. Death in concentration camps claimed the lives of many Jewish parents.

Connecting to Illinois

Claiming the right of free speech, members of the National Socialist Party of America planned to march in Skokie, Illinois in 1977. Claiming the right to not live in fear, the Jewish citizens of Skokie planned to stop them. Skokie is a northern suburb of Chicago and after World War II many Jewish families settled there. They came for the freedom to never be persecuted again and brought with them horrific memories of the Holocaust. It had been 32 years since the end of World War II and while not forgetting, many Jews had moved on and felt safe in the United States. Skokie's population in the 1970s was about 70,000 and of these citizens about 40,000 were Jewish and 5,000 were Holocaust survivors.3

Skokie gained national attention when Frank Collin, a Nazi, and members of the National Socialist Party of America began terrorizing the village. Skokie was not the Nazi's first venue of choice. Collin and his Nazi sympathizers wanted to rally at Chicago's Marquette Park but the Chicago Park District denied his request. Collin knew fighting this decision could take years so he began looking at areas outside of Chicago. Skokie seemed logical because of the large Jewish population, the group the Nazi's despised. The media would cover every aspect of the fight to march and any press was good press for the Nazis. Additionally, fighting a village for the right to march would be easier than fighting the city of Chicago. Holocaust survivors shared few details and rarely spoke of the torture endured at the hands of the Nazis, but if they were going to fight Frank Collin and his group they would need to break their silence and tell the world their story.

The battle began in court. The lower courts in Illinois upheld Skokie's right to not allow the march in their village. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) represented the neo-Nazis from the state courts all the way to the United States Supreme Court. The ACLU did not represent the Nazi's message, but their right to present that message. If someone did not want to hear or see the Nazi marches, they had the right to not attend. Because of their representation of the group, the ACLU lost thousands of members. Lawyers for Skokie also warned of uncontrollable violence if the march was allowed to take place.

After a year long battle, the decision was based on the United States Supreme Court decision. The court ruled that the village of Skokie deprived Frank Colin and the National Socialist Party of America's First Amendment right by not allowing them to march. The Nazi's right to rally was upheld and they had the right to state their beliefs no matter how reprehensive. Just as the group won their case to march in Skokie, they declined. They pursued Marquette Park and were able to rally there, behind a grove of trees where it was hard to be seen or heard.4

Places to Go & Primary Sources to See

Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center

When neo-Nazis threatened to march in Skokie in the late 1970s, Holocaust survivors around the world were shocked. They realized that despite their desire to leave the past behind, they could no longer remain silent. In the wake of these attempted marches, Chicago-area survivors joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois. The group focused on combating hate with education.

The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center is dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Holocaust by honoring the memories of those who were lost and by teaching universal lessons that combat hatred, prejudice and indifference. The museum fulfills its mission through the exhibition, preservation and interpretation of its collections and through education programs and initiatives that foster the promotion of human rights and the elimination of genocide. Since 1981, the organization has educated school and community groups through its speakers' bureau and existing museum. About 30,000 students visited the original site in Skokie in 2005. The new facility located just west of the Edens Expressway, will serve more than 250,000 annual visitors, reading a significant portion of the nearly 2.5 million Illinois school children.

TPS EIU Staff Pick

Before 1944 there was no single word to describe the inhumane treatment the Nazis inflicted on Jews. Seeking to describe these acts, Raphael Lamkin, a Jewish lawyer who escaped Nazi Poland formed the word genocide. Geno is the Greek word for race or tribe and cide is the Latin word for killing.7 Genocide is defined at Dictionary.com as the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political or cultural group. In 1945, the International Military Tribunal, held in Nuremberg, Germany, charged top Nazis with "crimes against humanity." The word genocide was used as a descriptive but not legal term.5 After the Holocaust, many governments declared that never again would another genocide occur, yet today genocide continues to take place all over the world.

On December 9, 1948, the United Nations approved the convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crimes of Genocide.5 This convention established "genocide" as: any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy; in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious groups as such; (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group condition of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.5

The law was in place, but the first conviction of genocide did not occur until September 2, 1998.6 Jean-Paul Akayesu, the mayor of Taba, participated and encouraged the mass killing of the Tutsi population during the Rwandan genocide. Like the Nazis in Germany blamed Jews, the Hutu people blamed Rwanda's growing social and economic problems on the minority Tutsi people. The use of propaganda against the Tutsi people began and violence escalated when the plane of President Habyarimana, a Hutu, was shot down on April 6, 1994.7Anyone suspected of being Tutsi was killed, entire families were murdered and women were brutally raped. It is estimated that 200,000 people participated in the genocide and 800,000 men, women and children were killed.7 Foreign nations refused to acknowledge the genocide. Eventually, Jean-Paul Akayesu was captured and put on trial in 1997 and found guilty, he is serving a life sentence for his participation in the genocide against the Tutsi people.

A region the size of France, Darfur is home to about six million people from nearly 100 tribes.8 The people are mostly African farmers or Arab nomads. A coup in 1989, by General Omar Bashir, a supporter of the Arab nomads brought the National Islamic Front to power and made him president of Sudan. Tension rose between the nomads and farmers concerning land rights. In 2003, rebels pressed the issue of the shrinking area for farms and the failure of the Sudan government to protect farmers. The government's answer was to release Arab militia known as Janjaweed who destroyed over 400 villages forcing millions of African farmers to flee their homes.8

The Sudanese government refuses to stop the activities of the Janjaweed. They are allowed to murder, rape and pillage the African farmers. This ongoing genocide has claimed 400,000 lives and displaced over 2,500,000 people.8 It is estimated that more than 100 people die each day and 5000 die each month.8

In 2005, the International Criminal Court (ICC) began an investigation into human rights violations in Darfur. The Sudan government refused to cooperate with the investigation. On March 4, 2009, President Omar al Bashir became the first sitting president indicted by the ICC for directing a campaign of mass killings, rape and pillage against Darfur citizens.8 Despite an arrest warrant, Bashir was re-elected as president in April 2010.10

Genocide often goes unrecognized until the death roll rises. Gregory Stanton, founder of Genocide Watch, says that genocide follows eight different steps; classification, symbolization, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, extermination and denial.9 Station goes on to state, "In the past century alone, there have been 55 genocides, leaving 70 million people dead."9The world must learn to recognized these steps before the hatred takes even one life. The act of genocide leaves families torn, children orphaned and devastation beyond repair.

Primary Sources in the Classroom

The Teacher's PageThe Library of Congress offers classroom materials and professional development to help teachers effectively use primary sources from the Library's vast digital collection sin their teaching.

Presentations and Activities

Immigration. Observe the building of the nation. How have immigrants shaped this land? The table for Polish/Russian immigrants has a subtitle Decades of Disaster describing the struggles of Jews during the rise of the Nazi party and how Jewish Americans tried to help.

LOC.gov

American Memory.American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity. These materials from the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions, chronicle historical events, people, places and ideas that continue to shape America, serving the public as a resource for education and lifelong learning.

The Hannah Arendt Papers at the Library of Congress. The papers of the author, educator, and political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) are one of the principle sources for the study of modern intellectual life. The Adolf Eichmann file deals with what was perhaps Arendt's best-known and most controversial work, Eichmann in Jerusalem. Arendt's conclusions about the nature and character of totalarian rule in Nazi Germany, and her interpretation of the Jewish response to the Holocaust, prompted strenuous and often emotional debates.

American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940. This collection contains 2900 biographical interviews obtained during the Depression years of 1936-1940. Writers contributed to this project through an employment program of the Works Progress Administration. The writerschronicled interviews with Americans asked to recall significant events in their lives. The Holocaust is not mentioned specifically but there are many oral histories about Jewish life and opinions on Germany and Adolf Hitler.

America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA-OWI, 1935-1945. The black-and-white photographs of the Farm Security Administration Office of War Information collection are a landmark in the history of documentary photography. The images show Americans at home, at work, and at lay, with an emphasis on rural and small-town life and the adverse effects of the Great Depression. Images pertaining to the war effort and defeating Nazi Germany and images from the Nazi saboteur trial are found in this collection.

Prints and Photographs. The collection of the Prints and Photographs Division include photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters, architectural and engineering drawings.

Posters: Artist Posters. The online Artist Posters consists of a small but growing proportion of the more than 85,000 posters in the Artist Poster filing series. This series highlights the work of poster artist, both identified and anonymous. It includes posters from the nineteenth century to the present day, from the United States and other countries. German propaganda posters with Hitler slogans for his presidential run and the dangers of the Jews to the Aryan nation are found in this collection.

Miscellaneous Items in High Demand. The "Miscellaneous Items" category consist of more than 80,000 descriptions of individual images from a variety of the Prints & Photographs Division's photographic, print, drawing, and architectural holdings. Photographs dealing with concentration camps show the disturbing reality of the life in these camps and could be too graphic for some students.

Webcasts. Streaming video presentations on all sorts of subjects form book talks by authors, scientific breakthroughs in preservation, and historical footage from the dawn of film.

Holocaust Cantata. The Master Choral of Washington, in partnership with the Library of Congress Veterans History Project, presented the "Holocaust Cantata: Songs from the Camps", a work based on the songs and letters written by Nazi concentration camp prisoners. The cantata, composed and conducted by Donald McCullough, stands as a tribute to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust.

Breaking the Holocaust Silence: A Hidden Hasidic Text of 1947. Gerson Greenberg delivered the 10th Annual Myron M. Weistein Memorial Lecture on the Hebraic Book.

Women Against Tyranny: Poems of the Resistance During the Holocaust. Davi Walders speaks about her book "Women Against Tyranny: Poems of the Resistance During the Holocaust.

Emissary of the Doomed. The little-known story of one man's attempt to save the Jews of Hungary.

Ibsen and Hitler: The Playwright, the Plagiarist and the Plot for the Third Reich. In "Ibsen and Hitler", Steven Sage discusses three Ibsen plays, "An Enemy of the People", "The Master Builder", and "Emperor and Galilean", which may have inspired Hitler's writings, speeches and thinking, and quite possibly some of his actions. When Hitler read Ibsen in 1908, he was swayed by a German literary cult then current, which held certain Ibsen dramas to be "prophecy". Through the years, Sage argues, Hitler paraphrased lines from the plays "and restaged highlights of their plots while assigning himself the starring role in this grand drama."

Exhibitions. Discover exhibitions that bring the world's largest collection of knowledge, culture and creativity to life through dynamic displays of artifacts enhanced by interactivity.

Herblock!: Psychopathic Ward. Herb Block attacked the isolationist policy of the United States government long before Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941, because he understood that the fascists in Europe were an international issue. Block's cartoons attacking Francisco Franco in Spain, Benito Mussolini in Italy, and Adolf Hitler in Germany demonstrated his matured style, with his deliberate and assured use of ink brush and pencil. The Depression and the war in Europe politicized Block, and he developed opinions that, at times, were at odds with those of his publishers.

Herblock's History: Political Cartoons from the Crash to the Millennium. Through his cartoons, Block warns of the danger represented by fascist political gains in Europe and Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany at the headof the Nazi party. During the 1930s and 1940s, Herb Block was an early supporter of aid to England and to European allies faced with Nazi aggression. He cited Nazi outrages, giving them graphic form and visual power. He drew metaphors for the resilience of the human spirit, the inhumanity of war, and the duplicity of dictators.

Citations

1.United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,Children During the Holocaust, Accessed 9.13.12

2. Jewish Virtual Library,Hidden Children and the Holocaust, Accessed 9.13.12

3. The Huffington Post,Remembering the Nazis in Skokie, by Geoffrey R. Stone, April 19, 2009, Accessed 9.17.12

4. Illinois Periodicals Online,Nazi march, What's it all about?, by Ed McManus, November 1978, Issue 13, Accessed 9.17.12

5. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,What is Genocide?, Accessed 9.18.12

6. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,Rwanda: The First Conviction for Genocide, Accessed 9.18.12

7. United Human Rights Council,Genocide in Rwanda, Accessed 9.18.12

8. United Human Rights Council,Genocide in Darfur, Accessed 9.20.12

9. Genocide Watch,Genocide, unlike hurricanes, are predictable, says world expert, and Iran is following the pattern, by MItch Ginsburg, The Times of Israel, September 18, 2012

10. British Broadcasting System,Profile: Sudan's Omar al Bashir,December 5, 2011, Accessed 9.21.12

Continued here:
The Holocaust

Category: Jewish American Heritage Month | Comments Off on The Holocaust
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Posted By simmons on September 28, 2015

Holocaust

Virtually unexplored until recently, sexualized violence in the Holocaust took many forms, faces, and insidious paths. Among the more than 6 million Jews killed were an unknown number of women, probably thousands, who were rapedin camps, in hiding, in ghettos. The perpetrators were Nazis, fellow Jews, and those who hid Jews. There are few records of this particular form of suffering for many reasons, including no records being kept of rape, that few women survived, and that Nazis were specifically forbidden from sexually touching Jewish women because of race defilement laws called Rassenchandehence, some scholars have been loath to believe sexualized violence was extensive.

But individuals didnt always follow the higher ranks, secretly raping Jewish women against policyin camps, in private slavery in their homes, and in brothels set up for fellow prisoners. And we know this form of violence was rampant from testimonies of survivors and their relatives, as told in the 2010 book Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During the Holocaust, edited by Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saidel (referred to below as Sexual Violence).

With the launch of their book, Hedgepeth and Saidel experienced much pushback from scholars. As in any other conflict, survivors of sexualized violence and their family members often experience shame, keeping their stories with them to the grave. Faced with horrors on a scale not experienced by humanity before, Holocaust rape survivors have specifically said they felt that what theyd suffered was too small to mention in that context.

Some of the inmates at the Ravensbrck concentration camp for women in Germany.

Its not just the women who downplayed their sexual exploitationscholars have often relegated these stories to footnotes, choosing to tone down these experiences, whether because of shame that their mothers, grandmothers, or whoever close to them were raped, or because they chose instead to focus on stories of triumph and hope. Some scholars have been reluctant to use victim testimonies in their construction of Holocaust history, favoring official documents. This is problematic because Nazi documentation on rape is scarce or nonexistent. Also, the shame of Jews raping Jewish women in the camps or ghettos may have been a difficult truth to accept within the community.

Another way that women suffering sexualized violence during the Holocaust has been erased is through a heroic retelling of events: Historians have been eager to emphasize the ways in which women resisted rape and held onto their dignityexhibiting moral, heroic, or noble behavior. Survivors may feel pressured to present their experiences through the lens of heroism.

With the information gleaned from thousands of testimonies from the Shoah Foundation and elsewhere of Jewish and non-Jewish survivors in one book, the evidence is clear: As in nearly all conflicts throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, women suffered sexualized violence in horrific, complex ways in the Holocaust.

Unlike in other genocides in the 20th century, sexualized violence was not used during the Holocaust as a sanctioned strategy from above. It was, however, employed deliberately and haphazardly, with horrendous results.

To subjugate: In their quest to annihilate the Jewish people, Nazis subjugated them through starvation and slave labor. But Jewish women were subjugated on a sexually violent level as well: raped, sexually humiliated, and destroyed bodily.

For ethnic cleansing: The U.N. defines ethnic cleansing as a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas. The Holocaust was an effort to completely annihilate the Jewish people. We are using the term ethnic cleansing here to denote that sexualized violence was used to prevent the propagation of Jews and other groups of people. Ethnic cleansing not only makes women subject to outright murder, but also controls the threat of their bodies as the means of reproduction. For instance, women have been raped in order to occupy "inferior" wombs with "superior" sperm, or forced to have abortions or sterilizations (as have men of "inferior" groups) in order to end future reproduction. In some conflicts, women are also subject to the sex-specific political torture of forcing them to bear the child of their torturer in order to break their will. In the Holocaust, forced sterilizations and abortions, as well as heinous "medical" experiments, prevented Jews and Sinti-Roma (or Gypsies) from later having children.

To wield power: Some women were forced to accept rape as payment for receiving food or shelter, or to save their children, in the camps and ghettos under Nazi control. This was also used as a tool when women were in hiding to bring silence through humiliation and fear. Nazis; their collaborators; Kapos (prisoners in charge of prisoners); male prisoners (Jewish and non-Jewish) who had more food or privileges than the women; members of a Judenrat (Nazi-appointed council that governed a ghetto) all wielded power over women through various forms of sexualized violence.

To humiliate: Women were forced to strip in front of soldiers, stand naked for hours, even days, or wait naked in lines for disinfection, or were whipped naked or made to dance naked. One of the biggest humiliations for a woman was having her hair shaved, not only from her head but from all over her body. Rape sometimes took place in front of relatives in forced home invasions, or fellow camp prisoners. In one "show" in Auschwitz-Birkenau, German soldiers raped 20 Jewish women in front of a labor group, who were supposed to stand and applaud, writes Helene Sinnreich in Sexual Violence. According to the testimony of one witness survivor, one of the women who were raped was from his hometown; she later committed suicide.

Despite the many testimonies from Jewish and non-Jewish survivors that mention the prevalence of rape and the threat of sexualized violence, it is likely impossible to come up with any plausible numbers. The scale of the Holocaust was so immense, and the atrocities so widespread, that we can only recount individual acts and statements like this one, in Sexual Violence, from a Warsaw doctor: One continually hears of the raping of Jewish girls in Warsaw. Continual, terrifying, and obliteratingsexualized violence must be recognized as a tornado force in the Holocaust without quantification.

Women were expected to prevent rape; hence they were often blamed for what happened to them. It was considered their fault. They were thought of as loose, immoral. This is yet another reason for the decades of silence.

Families and/or societies ostracized or stigmatized victims of sexualized violence after the Holocaust, as after many conflicts in which women's bodies have been part of the battleground. So-called pretty women who survived were suspected of having done so by granting sexual favors, and sometimes were stigmatized even though they were not victims of sexualized violence. Sometimes people or even communities tried to identify ways in which a woman's actions contributed to her own sexual assault, rather than offering to help rebuild her life. Some raped women felt they couldn't marry; others were shunned.

This testimony from survivor Sara M. comes from the USC Shoah Foundation (interview 29016). Sara M. was raped at the Ravensbrck concentration camp. A woman took her from her barracks, gave her candy, and left her in a room:

Much of the sexualized violence during the Holocaust was committed outside the camps. The following is a testimony from survivor Golda Wasserman, who witnessed girls being raped and sent back to the Tulchin ghetto in the Ukraine, in 1942, from Holocaust in the Ukraine, edited by Boris Zabarko:

"Selection was carried out every 15 to 20 days. It is impossible to describe what was happening in the ghettothe desperate screams of the girls, the pleas of their parents. Some girls tried to run away along the road. The Fascists shot them in the back. Only a few managed to hide in the villages, pretending to be locals, or were saved by the partisans after long wanderings in the forests. I belonged to the latter group. Among 25 other girls, I was picked to be sent to 'work.'"

Although no official precedents were set at the 1945-1946 trials at Nuremberg--its charter did not explicitly refer to rape or sexualized violence--the possibility of prosecuting sexual violence as a war crime was present, argues Anne-Marie de Brouwer, the author of Supranational Criminal Prosecution of Sexual Violence. She writes that sexual violence could have been prosecuted under other inhumane acts and other headings already recognized by international law.

(Lauren Wolfe/published on February 8, 2012)

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Posted By simmons on September 28, 2015

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As suggested by its Greek origin (holos "whole", and kaustos "burnt") the word designates an offering entirely consumed by fire, in use among the Jews and some pagan nations of antiquity. As employed in the Vulgate, it corresponds to two Hebrew terms: (1) to holah, literally: "that which goes up", either to the altar to be sacrificed, or to heaven in the sacrificial flame; (2) Kalil, literally: "entire", "perfect", which, as a sacrificial term, is usually a descriptive synonym of holah, and denotes an offering consumed wholly on the altar . At whatever time and by whomsoever offered , holocausts were naturally regarded as the highest, because the most complete, outward expression of man's reverence to God. It is, indeed, true that certain passages of the prophets of Israel have been construed by modern critics into an utter rejection of the offering of sacrifices, the holocausts included; but this position is the outcome of a partial view of the evidence, of the misconception of an attack on abuses as an attack on the institution which they had infected. For details concerning this point, and for a discussion of the place which the same scholars assign to the holah (holocaust) in their theory of the development of the sacrificial system among the Hebrews , see SACRIFICE. The following is a concise statement of the Mosaic Law as contained chiefly in what critics commonly call the Priests' Code, concerning whole burnt-offerings .

Only animals could be offered in holocaust; for human victims, which were sacrificed by the Chanaanites and by other peoples, were positively excluded from the legitimate worship of Yahweh (cf. Leviticus 18:21; 20:2-5; Deuteronomy 12:31; etc.). In general, the victims had to be taken either from the herd (young bullocks) or from the flock (sheep or goats); and, to be acceptable, the animal was required to be a male, as the more valuable, and without blemish, as only then worthy of God (Leviticus 1:2, 3, 5, 10; 22:17 sqq.). In certain cases, however, birds (only turtle-doves or young pigeons) were offered in holocaust (Leviticus 1:14; etc.); these birds were usually allowed to the poor as a substitute for the larger and more expensive animals (Leviticus 5:7; 12:8; 14:22), and were even directly prescribed in some cases of ceremonial uncleanness (Leviticus 15:14, 15, 29, 30). Game and fishes, which were sacrificed in some pagan worships of Western Asia, were not objects of sacrifice in the Mosaic Law.

The principle rites to be carried out in the offering of holocausts, were (1) on the part of the offerer, that he should bring the animal to the door of the tabernacle, impose his hands on its head, slay it to the north of the altar , flay and cut up its carcass, and wash its entrails and legs; (2) on the part of the priest, that he should receive the blood of the victim, sprinkle it about the altar, and burn the offering. In the case of an offering of birds, it was the priest who killed the victims and flung aside as unsuitable their crop and feathers (Leviticus 1). In public sacrifices, it was also the priest's duty to slay the victims, being assisted on occasions by the Levites. The inspection of the entrails, which played a most important part in the sacrifices of several ancient people, notably of the Phoenicians, had no place in the Mosaic ritual.

Among the Hebrews , holocausts were of two general kinds, according as their offering was prescribed by the Law or the result of private vow or devotion. The obligatory holocausts were (1) the daily burnt-offering of a lamb; this holocaust was made twice a day (at the third and ninth hour), and accompanied by a cereal oblation and a libation of wine (Exodus 29:38-42; Numbers 28:3-8); (2) the sabbath burnt-offering , which included the double amount of all the elements of the ordinary daily holocaust (Numbers 28:9, 10); (3) the festal burnt-offering, celebrated at the New Moon, the Pasch, on the Feast of Trumpets , the day of Atonement , and the Feast of Tabernacles, on which occasions the number of the victims and the quantity of the other offerings were considerably increased; (4) the holocausts prescribed for the consecration of a priest (Exodus 29:15 sqq.; Leviticus 8:18; 9:12), at the purification of women (Leviticus 12:6-8), at the cleansing of lepers (Leviticus 14:19, 20), at the purgation of ceremonial uncleanness (Leviticus 15:15, 30), and finally in connection with the Nazarite vow (Numbers 6:11, 16). In the voluntary burnt-offerings the number of the victims was left to the liberality or to the wealth of the offerer (cf. 1 Kings 3:4; 1 Chronicles 29:21, etc., for very large voluntary holocausts), and the victims might be supplied by the Gentiles, a permission of which Augustus actually availed himself, according to Philo (Legatio ad Caium, xl).

The following are the principal purposes of the whole burnt-offerings prescribed by the Mosaic Law: (1) By the total surrender and destruction of victims valuable, pure, innocent, and most nearly connected with man, holocausts vividly recalled to the Hebrews of old the supreme dominion of God over His creatures, and suggested to them the sentiments of inner purity and entire self-surrender to the Divine Majesty, without which even those most excellent sacrifices could not be of any account before the Almighty Beholder of the secrets of the heart. (2) In offering holocausts with the proper dispositions worshippers could feel assured of acceptance with God, Who then looked upon the victims as a means of atonement for their sins (Leviticus 1:4), as a well-pleasing sacrifice on their behalf (Leviticus 1:3, 9), and as a cleansing from whatever defilement might have prevented them from appearing worthily before Him (Leviticus 14:20). (3) The holocausts of the Old Law foreshadowed the great and perfect sacrifice which Jesus, the High Priest of the New Law and the true Lamb of God, was to offer in fulfillment of all the bloody sacrifices of the first covenant (Hebrews 9:12, sqq.; etc.).

Cath. Authors: Haneberg, Die religioesen Alterthuemer der Bibel, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1869); Schoepfer, Geschichte des A. T. 2nd. ed., (Brixen, 1895); Larange, Etudes sur les Religions Semitiques, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1905). Non-Cath. authors: Kurtz, Sacrificial Worship of the Old Testament, tr. (Edinburgh, 1863); Edersheim, The Temple and its Services (London, 1874); Riehm, Alttestamentliche Theologie (Halle, 1889); Nowack, Hebraeische Archaeologie (Freiburg, 1894); Schultz, Old Testament Theology, tr. (Edinburgh, 1898); Kent, Israel's Laws and Legal Precedents (New York, 1907); Benzinger, Hebraeische Archaeologie, 2nd. ed. (Freiburg, 1907). See also bibliography to Sacrifice.

APA citation. Gigot, F. (1910). Holocaust. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07396b.htm

MLA citation. Gigot, Francis. "Holocaust." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 7. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07396b.htm>.

Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Donald D. Ross.

Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. June 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.

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Posted By admin on September 27, 2015

The Jews as a nation. By Eli Barnavi

The following article summarizes the origins of and general reactions to Jewish nationalism. It is reprinted with permission from A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People, published by Schocken Books.

The roots of Zionism lay in Eastern Europe, notably within the confines of the Russian Empire. It was there, towards the end of the 19th century, that the largest and, in many ways, the most dynamic of Jewish communities was locatedthough it was also the most troubled. Conceived by czarist autocracy as a major obstacle to its drive to transform the population into a uniform and malleable society, Russian Jewry was subjected to extremely severe pressure to change its customs, culture, and religion. The Jews, for the most part, tended to bear with the laws that regulated their daily lives and cumulatively humiliated and impoverished them. But when wholesale expulsions from certain areas and successive waves of physical attack were added to the longfamiliar misery, life under Russian rule in the 1880s began to be judged intolerable.

The Jewish predicament precipitated several reactions, all with a view to finding a lasting solution: a vast movement of emigration, chiefly to the west; the radicalization and politicization of great numbers of young Jewish people, many bending their energies to the overthrow of autocracy; and, among the increasingly secular intelligentsia, a rise in modern nationalist consciousness. It was the latter tendencyZionismthat bore the most radical implications and was to have the most remarkable results.

The Zionist analysis of the nations afflictions and its prescription for relief consisted of four interconnected theses. First, the fundamental vulnerability of the Jews to persecution and humiliationrequired total, drastic, and collective treatment. Second, reform and rehabilitationcultural, no less than social and politicalmust be the work of the Jews themselves, i.e., they had to engineer their own emancipation. Third, only a territorial solution would serve; in other words, that establishing themselves as the majority population in a given territory was the only way to normalize their status and their relations with other peoples and polities. Fourth, only in a land of their own would they accomplish the full, essentially secular, revival of Jewish culture and of the Hebrew language.

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Eli Barnavi is the Director of the Morris Curiel Center for International Studies and a Professor of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University

The following article summarizes the origins of and general reactions to Jewish nationalism. It is reprinted with permission from A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People, published by Schocken Books.

The roots of Zionism lay in Eastern Europe, notably within the confines of the Russian Empire. It was there, towards the end of the 19th century, that the largest and, in many ways, the most dynamic of Jewish communities was locatedthough it was also the most troubled. Conceived by czarist autocracy as a major obstacle to its drive to transform the population into a uniform and malleable society, Russian Jewry was subjected to extremely severe pressure to change its customs, culture, and religion. The Jews, for the most part, tended to bear with the laws that regulated their daily lives and cumulatively humiliated and impoverished them. But when wholesale expulsions from certain areas and successive waves of physical attack were added to the longfamiliar misery, life under Russian rule in the 1880s began to be judged intolerable.

The Jewish predicament precipitated several reactions, all with a view to finding a lasting solution: a vast movement of emigration, chiefly to the west; the radicalization and politicization of great numbers of young Jewish people, many bending their energies to the overthrow of autocracy; and, among the increasingly secular intelligentsia, a rise in modern nationalist consciousness. It was the latter tendencyZionismthat bore the most radical implications and was to have the most remarkable results.

The Zionist analysis of the nations afflictions and its prescription for relief consisted of four interconnected theses. First, the fundamental vulnerability of the Jews to persecution and humiliationrequired total, drastic, and collective treatment. Second, reform and rehabilitationcultural, no less than social and politicalmust be the work of the Jews themselves, i.e., they had to engineer their own emancipation. Third, only a territorial solution would serve; in other words, that establishing themselves as the majority population in a given territory was the only way to normalize their status and their relations with other peoples and polities. Fourth, only in a land of their own would they accomplish the full, essentially secular, revival of Jewish culture and of the Hebrew language.

These exceedingly radical theses brought the Zionists into endless conflict with an array of hostile forces, both Jewish and non-Jewish. On the one hand, Zionism implied a disbelief in the promise of civil emancipation and a certain contempt for Jews whose fervent wish was assimilation into their immediate environment. On the other hand, by offering a secular alternative to tradition, Zionism challenged religious orthodoxy as wellalthough, given the orthodox view of Jewry as a nation, the two had something in common after all. The Zionists were thus condemned from the outset to being a minority among the Jews and lacking the support that national movements normally receive from the people to whose liberation their efforts are directed.

The other struggle which the Zionists had to face resulted from their political and territorial aims. They had to fight for international recognition and for acceptance as a factor of consequence, however small, by the relevant powers. In the course of time they have had to contend with the political and, eventually, armed hostility of the inhabitants and neighbors of the particular territory where virtually all Zionists desired to reestablish the Jewish people as a free nation: Palestine, or in Hebrew, Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.

They were more successful in the broader international arena than on the local front. Ottoman opposition hobbled the movement almost totally in its early years, and the violent opposition mounted by Arab states and peoples has to this day shaped the physical and political landscape in which Zionism has implemented its ideals. In the final analysis, it is nonetheless the reluctance of the majority of Jews worldwide to subscribe to its program in practice that has presented the strongest challenge to Zionism, and has proved the greatest obstacle to its ultimate triumph.

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Posted By admin on September 27, 2015

You are looking at The Dead Sea on the Map of Israel. Drag the map or move it with the arrows to locate other places of interest. Then click on the balloon.

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Posted By admin on September 26, 2015

Thank you for your feedback! The new QuickFacts Beta 2.0 delivers the following improvements: Search by zip code, improved table display, browse more data feature, download data, and more. People QuickFacts Carroll County Maryland Population, 2014 estimate 167,830 5,976,407 Population, 2010 (April 1) estimates base 167,138 5,773,785 Population, percent change - April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2014 0.4% 3.5% Population, 2010 167,134 5,773,552 Persons under 5 years, percent, 2014 4.9% 6.2% Persons under 18 years, percent, 2014 22.5% 22.6% Persons 65 years and over, percent, 2014 15.3% 13.8% Female persons, percent, 2014 50.6% 51.5% White alone, percent, 2014 (a) 92.8% 60.1% Black or African American alone, percent, 2014 (a) 3.6% 30.3% American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent, 2014 (a) 0.2% 0.6% Asian alone, percent, 2014 (a) 1.7% 6.4% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, percent, 2014 (a) Z 0.1% Two or More Races, percent, 2014 1.6% 2.6% Hispanic or Latino, percent, 2014 (b) 3.0% 9.3% White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, percent, 2014 90.2% 52.6% Living in same house 1 year & over, percent, 2009-2013 93.4% 86.7% Foreign born persons, percent, 2009-2013 3.5% 14.0% Language other than English spoken at home, pct age 5+, 2009-2013 4.9% 16.7% High school graduate or higher, percent of persons age 25+, 2009-2013 91.5% 88.7% Bachelor's degree or higher, percent of persons age 25+, 2009-2013 32.7% 36.8% Veterans, 2009-2013 13,155 427,068 Mean travel time to work (minutes), workers age 16+, 2009-2013 34.8 32.0 Housing units, 2014 63,150 2,422,194 Homeownership rate, 2009-2013 82.2% 67.6% Housing units in multi-unit structures, percent, 2009-2013 11.5% 25.5% Median value of owner-occupied housing units, 2009-2013 $325,900 $292,700 Households, 2009-2013 59,909 2,146,240 Persons per household, 2009-2013 2.73 2.65 Per capita money income in past 12 months (2013 dollars), 2009-2013 $36,153 $36,354 Median household income, 2009-2013 $84,790 $73,538 Persons below poverty level, percent, 2009-2013 5.6% 9.8% Business QuickFacts Carroll County Maryland Private nonfarm establishments, 2013 4,255 135,4211 Private nonfarm employment, 2013 49,243 2,182,2601 Private nonfarm employment, percent change, 2012-2013 1.1% 1.4%1 Nonemployer establishments, 2013 11,771 456,511 Total number of firms, 2007 15,984 528,112 Black-owned firms, percent, 2007 2.1% 19.3% American Indian- and Alaska Native-owned firms, percent, 2007 0.5% 0.6% Asian-owned firms, percent, 2007 1.6% 6.8% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander-owned firms, percent, 2007 F 0.1% Hispanic-owned firms, percent, 2007 2.2% 4.9% Women-owned firms, percent, 2007 27.2% 32.6% Manufacturers shipments, 2007 ($1000) 1,095,101 41,456,097 Merchant wholesaler sales, 2007 ($1000) 556,104 51,276,797 Retail sales, 2007 ($1000) 2,141,774 75,664,186 Retail sales per capita, 2007 $12,645 $13,429 Accommodation and food services sales, 2007 ($1000) 203,808 10,758,428 Building permits, 2014 355 16,331

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Posted By admin on September 26, 2015

The Holocaust (also called Ha-Shoah in Hebrew) refers to the period from January 30, 1933 - when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany - to May 8, 1945, when the war in Europe officially ended. During this time, Jews in Europe were subjected to progressively harsher persecution that ultimately led to the murder of 6,000,000 Jews (1.5 million of these being children) and the destruction of 5,000 Jewish communities. These deaths represented two-thirds of European Jewry and one-third of all world Jewry.

The Jews who died were not casualties of the fighting that ravaged Europe during World War II. Rather, they were the victims of Germany's deliberate and systematic attempt to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe, a plan Hitler called the Final Solution (Endlosung).

After its defeat in World War I, Germany was humiliated by the Versailles Treaty, which reduced its prewar territory, drastically reduced its armed forces, demanded the recognition of its guilt for the war, and stipulated it pay reparations to the allied powers. With the German Empire destroyed, a new parliamentary government called the Weimar Republic was formed. The republic suffered from economic instability, which grew worse during the worldwide depression after the New York stock market crash in 1929. Massive inflation followed by very high unemployment heightened existing class and political differences and began to undermine the government.

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party, was named chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg after the Nazi party won a significant percentage of the vote in the elections of 1932. The Nazi Party had taken advantage of the political unrest in Germany to gain an electoral foothold. The Nazis incited clashes with the communists and conducted a vicious propaganda campaign against its political opponents - the weak Weimar government and the Jews whom the Nazis blamed for Germany's ills.

A major tool of the Nazis' propaganda assault was the weekly Nazi newspaper Der Strmer (The Attacker). At the bottom of the front page of each issue, in bold letters, the paper proclaimed, "The Jews are our misfortune!" Der Strmer also regularly featured cartoons of Jews in which they were caricatured as hooked-nosed and apelike. The influence of the newspaper was far-reaching: by 1938 about a half million copies were distributed weekly.

Soon after he became chancellor, Hitler called for new elections in an effort to get full control of the Reichstag, the German parliament, for the Nazis. The Nazis used the government apparatus to terrorize the other parties. They arrested their leaders and banned their political meetings. Then, in the midst of the election campaign, on February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building burned. A Dutchman named Marinus van der Lubbe was arrested for the crime, and he swore he had acted alone. Although many suspected the Nazis were ultimately responsible for the act, the Nazis managed to blame the Communists, thus turning more votes their way.

The fire signaled the demise of German democracy. On the next day, the government, under the pretense of controlling the Communists, abolished individual rights and protections: freedom of the press, assembly, and expression were nullified, as well as the right to privacy. When the elections were held on March 5, the Nazis received nearly 44 percent of the vote, and with 8 percent offered by the Conservatives, won a majority in the government.

The Nazis moved swiftly to consolidate their power into a dictatorship. On March 23, the Enabling Act was passed. It sanctioned Hitlers dictatorial efforts and legally enabled him to pursue them further. The Nazis marshaled their formidable propaganda machine to silence their critics. They also developed a sophisticated police and military force.

The Sturmabteilung (S.A., Storm Troopers), a grassroots organization, helped Hitler undermine the German democracy. The Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei, Secret State Police), a force recruited from professional police officers, was given complete freedom to arrest anyone after February 28. The Schutzstaffel (SS, Protection Squad) served as Hitlers personal bodyguard and eventually controlled the concentration camps and the Gestapo. The Sicherheitsdienst des ReichsfhrersSS (S.D., Security Service of the SS) functioned as the Nazis' intelligence service, uncovering enemies and keeping them under surveillance.

With this police infrastructure in place, opponents of the Nazis were terrorized, beaten, or sent to one of the concentration camps the Germans built to incarcerate them. Dachau, just outside of Munich, was the first such camp built for political prisoners. Dachau's purpose changed over time and eventually became another brutal concentration camp for Jews.

By the end of 1934 Hitler was in absolute control of Germany, and his campaign against the Jews in full swing. The Nazis claimed the Jews corrupted pure German culture with their "foreign" and "mongrel" influence. They portrayed the Jews as evil and cowardly, and Germans as hardworking, courageous, and honest. The Jews, the Nazis claimed, who were heavily represented in finance, commerce, the press, literature, theater, and the arts, had weakened Germany's economy and culture. The massive government-supported propaganda machine created a racial anti-Semitism, which was different from the longstanding anti-Semitic tradition of the Christian churches.

The superior race was the "Aryans," the Germans. The word Aryan, "derived from the study of linguistics, which started in the eighteenth century and at some point determined that the Indo-Germanic (also known as Aryan) languages were superior in their structures, variety, and vocabulary to the Semitic languages that had evolved in the Near East. This judgment led to a certain conjecture about the character of the peoples who spoke these languages; the conclusion was that the 'Aryan' peoples were likewise superior to the 'Semitic' ones" (Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 36).

The Nazis then combined their racial theories with the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin to justify their treatment of the Jews. The Germans, as the strongest and fittest, were destined to rule, while the weak and racially adulterated Jews were doomed to extinction. Hitler began to restrict the Jews with legislation and terror, which entailed burning books written by Jews, removing Jews from their professions and public schools, confiscating their businesses and property and excluding them from public events. The most infamous of the anti-Jewish legislation were the Nuremberg Laws, enacted on September 15, 1935. They formed the legal basis for the Jews' exclusion from German society and the progressively restrictive Jewish policies of the Germans.

Many Jews attempted to flee Germany, and thousands succeeded by immigrating to such countries as Belgium, Czechoslovakia, England, France and Holland. It was much more difficult to get out of Europe. Jews encountered stiff immigration quotas in most of the world's countries. Even if they obtained the necessary documents, they often had to wait months or years before leaving. Many families out of desperation sent their children first.

In July 1938, representatives of 32 countries met in the French town of Evian to discuss the refugee and immigration problems created by the Nazis in Germany. Nothing substantial was done or decided at the Evian Conference, and it became apparent to Hitler that no one wanted the Jews and that he would not meet resistance in instituting his Jewish policies. By the autumn of 1941, Europe was in effect sealed to most legal emigration. The Jews were trapped.

On November 9-10, 1938, the attacks on the Jews became violent. Hershel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Jewish boy distraught at the deportation of his family, shot Ernst vom Rath, the third secretary in the German Embassy in Paris, who died on November 9. Nazi hooligans used this assassination as the pretext for instigating a night of destruction that is now known as Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass). They looted and destroyed Jewish homes and businesses and burned synagogues. Many Jews were beaten and killed; 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, beginning World War II. Soon after, in 1940, the Nazis began establishing ghettos for the Jews of Poland. More than 10 percent of the Polish population was Jewish, numbering about three million. Jews were forcibly deported from their homes to live in crowded ghettos, isolated from the rest of society.

This concentration of the Jewish population later aided the Nazis in their deportation of the Jews to the death camps. The ghettos lacked the necessary food, water, space, and sanitary facilities required by so many people living within their constricted boundaries. Many died of deprivation and starvation.

In June 1941 Germany attacked the Soviet Union and began the "Final Solution." Four mobile killing groups were formed called Einsatzgruppen A, B, C and D. Each group contained several commando units. The Einsatzgruppen gathered Jews town by town, marched them to huge pits dug earlier, stripped them, lined them up, and shot them with automatic weapons. The dead and dying would fall into the pits to be buried in mass graves. In the infamous Babi Yar massacre, near Kiev, 30,000-35,000 Jews were killed in two days. In addition to their operations in the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen conducted mass murder in eastern Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. It is estimated that by the end of 1942, the Einsatzgruppen had murdered more than 1.3 million Jews.

On January 20, 1942, several top officials of the German government met to officially coordinate the military and civilian administrative branches of the Nazi system to organize a system of mass murder of the Jews. This meeting, called the Wannsee Conference, "marked the beinning of the full-scale, comprehensive extermination operation [of the Jews] and laid the foundations for its organization, which started immediately after the conference ended" (Yahil, The Holocaust, p. 318).

While the Nazis murdered other national and ethnic groups, such as a number of Soviet prisoners of war, Polish intellectuals, and gypsies, only the Jews were marked for systematic and total annihilation. Jews were singled out for "Special Treatment" (Sonderbehandlung), which meant that Jewish men, women and children were to be methodically killed with poisonous gas. In the exacting records kept at the Auschwitz death camp, the cause of death of Jews who had been gassed was indicated by "SB," the first letters of the two words that form the German term for "Special Treatment."

By the spring of 1942, the Nazis had established six killing centers (death camps) in Poland: Chelmno (Kulmhof), Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Maidanek and Auschwitz. All were located near railway lines so that Jews could be easily transported daily. A vast system of camps (called Lagersystem) supported the death camps. The purpose of these camps varied: some were slave labor camps, some transit camps, others concentration camps and their subcamps, and still others the notorious death camps. Some camps combined all of these functions or a few of them. All the camps were intolerably brutal.

The major concentration camps were Ravensbruck, Neuengamme, Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen, Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald, Theresienstadt, Flossenburg, Natzweiler-Struthof, Dachau, Mauthausen, Stutthof, and Dora/Nordhausen.

In nearly every country overrun by the Nazis, the Jews were forced to wear badges marking them as Jews, they were rounded up into ghettos or concentration camps and then gradually transported to the killing centers. The death camps were essentially factories for murdering Jews. The Germans shipped thousands of Jews to them each day. Within a few hours of their arrival, the Jews had been stripped of their possessions and valuables, gassed to death, and their bodies burned in specially designed crematoriums. Approximately 3.5 million Jews were murdered in these death camps.

Many healthy, young strong Jews were not killed immediately. The Germans' war effort and the Final Solution required a great deal of manpower, so the Germans reserved large pools of Jews for slave labor. These people, imprisoned in concentration and labor camps, were forced to work in German munitions and other factories, such as I.G. Farben and Krupps, and wherever the Nazis needed laborers. They were worked from dawn until dark without adequate food and shelter. Thousands perished, literally worked to death by the Germans and their collaborators.

In the last months of Hitlers Reich, as the German armies retreated, the Nazis began marching the prisoners still alive in the concentration camps to the territory they still controlled. The Germans forced the starving and sick Jews to walk hundreds of miles. Most died or were shot along the way. About a quarter of a million Jews died on the death marches.

The Germans' overwhelming repression and the presence of many collaborators in the various local populations severely limited the ability of the Jews to resist. Jewish resistance did occur, however, in several forms. Staying alive, clean, and observing Jewish religious traditions constituted resistance under the dehumanizing conditions imposed by the Nazis. Other forms of resistance involved escape attempts from the ghettos and camps. Many who succeeded in escaping the ghettos lived in the forests and mountains in family camps and in fighting partisan units. Once free, though, the Jews had to contend with local residents and partisan groups who were often openly hostile. Jews also staged armed revolts in the ghettos of Vilna, Bialystok, Bedzin-Sosnowiec, Cracow, and Warsaw.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the largest ghetto revolt. Massive deportations (or Aktions) had been held in the ghetto from July to September 1942, emptying the ghetto of the majority of Jews imprisoned there. When the Germans entered the ghetto again in January 1943 to remove several thousand more, small unorganized groups of Jews attacked them. After four days, the Germans withdrew from the ghetto, having deported far fewer people than they had intended. The Nazis reentered the ghetto on April 19, 1943, the eve of Passover, to evacuate the remaining Jews and close the ghetto. The Jews, using homemade bombs and stolen or bartered weapons, resisted and withstood the Germans for 27 days. They fought from bunkers and sewers and evaded capture until the Germans burned the ghetto building by building. By May 16 the ghetto was in ruins and the uprising crushed.

Jews also revolted in the death camps of Sobibor, Treblinka and Auschwitz. All of these acts of resistance were largely unsuccessful in the face of the superior German forces, but they were very important spiritually, giving the Jews hope that one day the Nazis would be defeated.

The camps were liberated gradually, as the Allies advanced on the German army. For example, Maidanek (near Lublin, Poland) was liberated by Soviet forces in July 1944, Auschwitz in January 1945 by the Soviets, Bergen-Belsen (near Hanover, Germany) by the British in April 1945, and Dachau by the Americans in April 1945.

At the end of the war, between 50,000 and 100,000 Jewish survivors were living in three zones of occupation: American, British and Soviet. Within a year, that figure grew to about 200,000. The American zone of occupation contained more than 90 percent of the Jewish displaced persons (DPs). The Jewish DPs would not and could not return to their homes, which brought back such horrible memories and still held the threat of danger from anti-Semitic neighbors. Thus, they languished in DP camps until emigration could be arranged to Palestine, and later Israel, the United States, South America and other countries. The last DP camp closed in 1957 (David S. Wyman, "The United States," in David S. Wyman, ed., The World Reacts to the Holocaust, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, pp. 70710).

Below are figures for the number of Jews murdered in each country that came under German domination. They are estimates, as are all figures relating to Holocaust victims. The numbers given here for Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania are based on their territorial borders before the 1938 Munich agreement. The total number of six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, which emerged from the Nuremberg trials, is also an estimate. Numbers have ranged between five and seven million killed.

Africa

526

Hungary

305,000

Albania

200

Italy

8,000

Austria

65,000

Latvia

85,000

Belgium

24,387

Lithuania

135,000

Czechoslovakia

277,000

Luxembourg

700

Denmark

77

Netherlands

106,000

Estonia

4,000

Norway

728

France

83,000

Poland

3,001,000

Germany

160,000

Romania

364,632

Greece

71,301

Soviet Union

1,500,000

Yugoslavia

67,122

TOTAL: 6,258,673

Sources: Holocaust Memorial Center 6602 West Maple Road West Bloomfield, MI 48322 Tel. (248)6610840 Fax. (248)6614204 info@holocaustcenter.org; http://www.holocaustcenter.org

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An Introductory History of the Holocaust | Jewish Virtual Library

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