Introduction:
In the following pages you will find the history of the Holocaust that led people to desire a Jewish state. Throughout history, Jews were chased by many nations, but the worst of these persecutions was Holocaust that was led by Hitler and the Nazi party. In this time of history more Jews were murdered then in any other event in history. 6,000,000 Jews.
Holocaust History:
The Holocaust began officially in 1939, when Adolph Hitler, formerly a lowly German soldier, rose to power with his daring new ideas. No one is quite sure why, but Hitler aspired to create the perfect world, with his perfect people, the Aryans, who were the blonde-haired, blue-eyed human prototype. He created the Nazi party to achieve his ends, and wrote several books during a short sojourn in a German prison for starting riots and such. Strangely enough, Hitler himself was a man of small stature with brown hair and a mustache – he did not fit the Aryan prototype at all. To raise himself in the eyes of his followers, whenever he spoke in public he would stand next to people shorter and uglier than himself.
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Hitler was
a phenomenal speaker. It was this talent that he used to capture the
attention and eventually the loyalty of the larger part of the German
nation. Hitler played upon the fears and hatred of an anti-Semitic
people, before anti-Semitism became a concept. He gave the Germans a
scapegoat on which to blame their crushing defeat during World War I – the
Jews. It didn’t matter that the Jews were in no way responsible for the
loss of the Germans; hatred for the Jews was already ingrained in them by
hundreds of years of preaching from the Church, and it was
a simple matter to get people to believe that if something went wrong in the world, the Jews were responsible for it. How were Jews responsible, according to Hitler? They were rich, when many Germans were poor. He played upon a Jewish characterization, the big nose, and claimed that as it was bloated and twisted, as are the thoughts of Jews- a saying that has no foundation in reality.
The actual horrors beset upon the Jews of
began before deportation to concentration camps. Jews were persecuted
everywhere; any business owned by a Jew was boycotted and taken away.
Jewish children were forbidden from going to school, and in the streets Jews
were attacked. An example of such is Kristalnacht, the famous Night of
Glass, named after the many glass windows of Jewish shops that were broken
during a riot. Jews were required to 
wear a yellow star on their clothes so
that they could be identified anywhere. They were moved to small, enclosed
neighborhoods called ghettos,
and were
confined there under horrifying circumstances.
Some countries
such as Denmark protested this treatment
of human beings, but most European countries did not. When the emptying of the ghettos, the deportation to “unknown, better locations” began, almost all of Europe had been taken over by the Nazis, and there was no stopping them. The deportation vehicles were cattle cars, built for transporting sheep and cows, and were instead used to transport hundreds of human lives. In a car that should have carried only thirty people, instead there were a hundred. Traveling to the concentration camps took months. Many people died before they even reached the concentration camps.
Once they had arrived, all of their possessions were taken from them. They were divided into groups of gender. Those were then separated into two groups – those who would remain to do menial work for the Germans, and those who would be sent straight to the gas chambers to die. Some of the bodies were then used to create soap for washing and other products, but most were burned in huge ovens.
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The countries across the Atlantic did not believe that a holocaust was indeed going on – they simply refused to accept the truth. Perhaps if they had believed sooner, many more lives could have been saved. And even as the war was fought, the Americans purposefully did not bomb the railroad tracks that led to the various concentration camps, and even after the war began the Nazis continued to transport Jews to the concentration camps.
A dictionary definition of the word holocaust: great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life (especially by fire). The Jews, though certainly the largest group prosecuted during the six years of the Holocaust, were not the only ones. Gypsies and homosexuals were also deported to concentration camps. This was all part of the Aryan purge of the filth of the world. In their minds, Germans were the highest of beings, after them came other peoples, and Jews and other
“deformed” people were not even human, they were below human. They were below animals. This is how the Nazis justified the cruel destruction of an entire nation.
The Holocaust progressed, and six million Jewish lives were destroyed in the gas chambers and death pits of the concentration camps, many of which were situated in Poland, who welcomed the Germans with open arms. The most famous of camps, Auschwitz, is located in Poland.
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People who
escaped from the Nazis made up pockets of resistance that somehow survived in
the forests. Some escaped from Europe altogether and went to America, and
a few even came to Israel, where at some point they were turned away by the
British, who were in control of Palestine, as Israel was known then.
Print on back of sweater from trip to Poland
More than the recorded six million were lost in pogroms that happened all over Europe, and many Jewish children who were hidden among Christian families and various churches and monasteries were lost to their Jewish heritage forever. Not all Europeans were cruel to the Jews – there were many who hid Jews at the risk of their own lives, and are commemorated
in Israel in Yad Vashem, the Holocaust commemoration center in Jerusalem, along with all the names of Jewish victims known to us.
Toward the end of the war, when it was clear that Germany had lost, Hitler quietly shot himself. Germany was liberated from Nazi rule in 1945 by America and Russia. Nazi officers were put to trial, and so ended the Holocaust, although the impact of the incident still echoes inside our souls.
The Return To Auschwitz
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I remember only this:
The rattling of the wheels
The iron tracks menacing
menacing
menacing...
I knew just this:
I will not die
Until I see them again:
Quiet,
Rusty,
Covered in grass
So I came:
And they were quiet,
Rusty,
Covered in grass--
Oh, so many flowers!
-Translation by Adina Ginsburg.
Avner Trineen, who was born in 1928 and lived in Israel during the Holocaust, is the author of the poem. The poem shows the feelings of one who lived through and survived the holocaust.
The first verse tells
us that many of the survivors blocked out the most horrifying memories but
remembered their feelings during a specific horror- in this case, the loading
of the Jews on to the trains that led them to the concentration camps. The
teller of the poem is terrified of the unknown- where are they taking him, what
is going to happen, where is his family, his friends? The repetition of the
word menacing expresses these feelings.
The second verse shows the stubbornness of the Jewish nation. Throughout our history, other nations have always tried to eliminate us. It started with the Egyptians and continued with the Greek and Roman empires. Later on in history, during the crusades, the three major Jewish communities- Shphira, Vermiza and Magentzah were destroyed. During the Spanish inquisition, the Jews of Spain were given three choices- leave, convert or die. But the Jews lived on. The Germans also tried to eliminate the Jews, but as Jews were taught through the lesson of history- they fought with determination to stay alive and by living, showing vengeance. The repetition of the word I shows how important each individual that survived the Holocaust is. Many of the survivors feel that they cannot return to the horrors of Europe, when others feel that they have the responsibility of passing the story on to the next generation. This is expressed with the words until I see them again...
The third verse tells us the facts that happened after the Holocaust.
It is in human nature to forget terrible memories. When the Holocaust ended
people hurried to forget the horrors and go on with their lives, as if nothing
had happened. Many survivors who searched for an attentive ear couldn't find
one. The concentration camps became parks where children play without knowing
what had occurred under the grass of their parks. Even though the Holocaust
isn't a pleasant memory, for the greater good of humankind we should never
forget what has happened.
Sources:
http://www.teachers.org.il/data/zeevi/files/9840/2116.htm
All images are from my brother’s trip to Poland, summer 2003.
Links:
A shocking story that happened just last week- prince Harry had gone to a costume party dressed in a Nazi uniform. Learn more at:
Connect to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem