THE HOLOCAUST STORY

ATTEMPTS TO ESCAPE

This is the MS. St. Louis, it journeyed across the Atlantic Ocean from Europe to Cuba. When the St. Louis arrived in Havana harbor on May 27, the Cuban government admitted 28 passengers: 22 of them were Jewish and had valid US visas; the remaining six-four Spanish citizens and two Cuban nationals--had valid entry documents. One further passenger, after attempting to commit suicide, was evacuated to a hospital in Havana. The remaining 908 passengers (one passenger had died of natural causes en route)--including one non-refugee, a Hungarian Jewish businessman-had been awaiting entry visas and carried only Cuban transit visas issued by Gonzales. 743 had been waiting to receive US visas. The Cuban government refused to admit them or to allow them to disembark from the ship.

FORCED RESETTLEMENT

The Jews were able to escape in the beginning, only if they were wiling to give up almost everything that they owned.

THE GHETTO.

THE GHETTOS

• ON SEPTEMBER 1, 1939, GERMANY INVADED POLAND.
• Judenrat - a Jew put in charge of a certain Jewish community by the nazis
• The ghettos were used to contain the Jews and separate them from the rest of Germany
• The ghettos was usually a poor distract sectioned off by the nazis
• Survival in the ghettos mainly consisted of obtaining food and not getting sick.

THE GHETTOS CONT.

• The ghettos were located mostly in Eastern Europe
• Not many ghettos were located in Western Europe because of less cities.

WARSAW

In response to the deportations, on July 28, 1942, several Jewish underground organizations created an armed self-defense unit known as the Jewish Combat Organization(Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa; ZOB). Rough estimates put the size of the ZOB at its formation at around 200 members.

A group of Jewish fighters, armed with pistols, infiltrated a column of Jews being forced to the Umschlagplatz (transfer point) and, at a prearranged signal, broke ranks and fought their German escorts.

ZOB commander Mordecai Anielewicz commanded the Jewish fighters in the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Armed with pistols, grenades (many of them homemade), and a few automatic weapons and rifles, the ZOB fighters stunned the Germans and their auxiliaries on the first day of fighting, forcing the German forces to retreat outside the ghetto wall.
The Germans had planned to liquidate the Warsaw ghetto in three days, but the ghetto fighters held out for more than a month. Even after the end of the uprising on May 16, 1943, individual Jews hiding out in the ruins of the ghetto continued to attack the patrols of the Germans and their auxiliaries. The Warsaw ghetto uprising was the largest, symbolically most important Jewish uprising, and the first urban uprising, in German-occupied Europe. The resistance in Warsaw inspired other uprisings in ghettos and killing centers.

THE FINAL SOLUTION

Heydrich convened the Wannsee Conference (1) to inform and secure support from government ministries and other interested agencies relevant to the implementation of the “Final Solution,”

The "Final Solution" was the code name for the systematic, deliberate, physical annihilation of the European Jews. At some still undetermined time in 1941, Hitler authorized this European-wide scheme for mass murder.

TOOLS OF THE FINAL SOLUTION

Operation Reinhard (Einsatz Reinhard) became the code name for the German plan to murder the approximately two million Jews residing in Generalgouvernement (Government General).

Einsatzgruppen (in this context, mobile killing units) were squads composed primarily of German SS and police personnel. Under the command of the German Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei; Sipo) and Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst; SD) officers, the Einsatzgruppen had among their tasks the murder of those perceived to be racial or political enemies found behind German combat lines in the occupied Soviet Union.

The so-called "Euthanasia" program was National Socialist Germany's first program of mass murder, predating the holocaust,The effort represented one of many radical eugenic measures which aimed to restore the racial "integrity" of the German nation.

"euthanasia" usually refers to the inducement of a painless death for a chronically or terminally ill individual who would otherwise suffer.

THE CAMPS

Concentration camps - prison camps which held any one that the nazis deemed necessary, the main point of these camps wasn't to kill, but instead to obtain free labor for nazi projects.

Extermination camps - camps similar to other camps, the difference with these camps were equipped with the facilities required for mass murder. (Ex. Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Majdanek.

Auschwitz

Auschwitz - a series of camps located in Poland, that was the site of the largest extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

THE EXPERIMENTS

• Zyklon B had its trail tests here. (this is the gas used in the chambers)
• Medical experiments preformed by dr. Mengele mostly on twins
• Other experiments included the process of sterilization

SURVIVAL

One survivor told of when he was a waiter for an nazi officer, he told the cook that the officers girlfriend would be staying for a while and to prepare two meals. The man then delivered only one meal and ate the other himself

Other survivors tell of eating snow to remain hydrated.

JEWISH

Prisoners at Sobibor organized a resistance group in the late spring of 1943. After considering several options for escape and augmented in numbers and military training skills by the arrival of a number of former Soviet-Jewish prisoners of war from the Minsk ghetto in late September, the prisoners opted for an uprising, following the liquidation of key German camp officials. On October 14, 1943, with approximately 600 prisoners left in the camp, those who knew the plan for the uprising initiated the operation. The prisoners succeeded in killing nearly a dozen German personnel and Trawniki-trained guards.

On October 7, 1944, prisoners assigned to Crematorium IV at the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center rebel after learning that they were going to be killed.

On August 2, 1943, the Committee launched their revolt. The prisoners seized weapons from the SS storeroom, attacked the German and Ukrainian guards, and set some of the buildings ablaze. Unconcerned with their own safety, the resistance leaders fought bravely to aid the escape of the inmates. Under gunfire from the watchtowers, many prisoners broke through the camp’s barbed-wire fences.

Between 1943 and 1945, a group of Jewish men and women from Palestine who had volunteered to join the British army parachuted into German-occupied Europe. Their mission was to organize resistance to the Germans and aid in the rescue of Allied personnel. Of the 250 original volunteers, 110 underwent training. Thirty-two eventually parachuted into Europe and five infiltrated the target countries by other routes.