There are two kinds of stories that have come out of the Holocaust: one is the horror story of the families that were separated and never saw each other again, and the other is the heroic story of brave individuals who either escaped the camps or risked their lives to save others from death. It is thanks to these individuals that we have so many primary sources documenting the Holocaust, which was more than enough to convict the Nazis during the Nuremburg trials. The Nazis did everything they could to communicate verbally instead of through written documents to prevent any evidence of their actions from surfacing. They destroyed most of the documents by the end of the war, but were ultimately unsuccessful in keeping the world in the dark about …show more content…
In addition, the Working Group was an organization dedicated to stopping the deportation of Jews and documenting everything that was happening to them. Even though many people survived the Holocaust and there is written evidence of the events occurring, there are still people in the world who deny that it ever took place.
The Ringelblum Archives, also known as the Oneg Shabbat Archives, were one of the most important primary source documents of the Holocaust. Born in Buczacz, Poland in 1900, Emanuel Ringelblum worked for the Joint Distribution Committee (“Emanuel”). The JDC is a humanitarian organization whose mission is help poor Jewish communities and revitalize them (“About”). After the 1939 German invasion of Poland, he created soup kitchens and welfare programs for the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto (“Emanuel”). Ringelblum began creating the Oneg Shabbat Archives from testimonies by Jews who had come to get help from the aid organizations such as the JDC (“Emanuel”). His actions were prophetic because he understood that something extraordinary was happening to the Jews, and he began collecting as much information
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Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba were both Slovak Jews who escaped Auschwitz on April 7, 1944 after spending two years there (Wetzler 1). They immediately published their report in multiple languages with the help of the Jewish council in Slovakia, with the goal of warning the world about the concentration camps. (Wetzler 1). The deportation of Hungarian Jews began soon after the report was published, and 440,000 were sent to Auschwitz within two months (Wetzler 1). The report first described Wetzler’s account of the camp. He said that the prisoners all had a number tattooed on their left wrist, and each of them wore a uniform with a different colored triangle representing what type of person they were (Wetzler 3). For example, green meant criminal, pink meant homosexual, red meant political prisoner, and Jews were marked with a second upside down triangle to represent the Star of David (Wetzler 3). The entrance of the camp had a sign that translates to “Work will set you free”, and the prisoners were forced to memorize a song about how they must all perform labor at the same pace (Wetzler 3). This was part of the brainwashing that the Nazis did in order to pacify the population of prisoners. They were meant to think that by pleasing the guards through hard labor, they would be set free, but this was a
Not even the most powerful Germans could keep up with the deaths of so many people, and to this day there is no single wartime document that contains the numbers of all the deaths during the Holocaust. Although people always look at the numbers of people that were directly killed throughout the Holocaust, there were so many more that were affected because of lost family. Assuming that 11 million people died in the Holocaust, and half of those people had a family of 3, 16.5 million people were affected by the Holocaust. Throughout the books and documentaries that we have watched, these key factors of hate and intolerance are overcome. The cause of the Holocaust was hate and intolerance, and many people fighting against it overcame this hate
Unfortunately, only a few could be found, and put on trial. Others went on with their lives, enjoying what they had deprived so many others of. Some even continued their profession of being family doctors all around Germany, and many still have the same Anti-Semitic views they had before when they were professional killers. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Henson, Cary “Medical ethics and nazi legacy” Jonathan Mann, Volume 8, Page 332-358 January 1, 1993 Gutman Israel, “Encyclopedia of the Holocaust” New York, Simon and Schuster, 1995 Microsoft Encarta 1998, Nuremberg Trials Snyder, Dr. Louis L. Encyclopedia of the Third Reich.
"Tattoos and Numbers: The System of Identifying Prisoners at Auschwitz." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Accessed on 15 Mar. 2011.
Holocaust Facts The Holocaust has many reasons for it. Some peoples’ questions are never answered about the Holocaust, and some answers are. The Holocaust killed over 6 million Jews (Byers.p.10.) Over 1.5 million children (Byers, p. 10). They were all sent to concentration camps to do hard labor work.
The camp first started as a slave labor camp and the inscription above the gate as one entered the camp read, “Arbeit Macht Frei,” or “Work Makes You Free.” In the beginning of the camps opening many detainees worked to support World War II for the manufacturing of rubber products and ammunitions for the war. As the war progressed and as Auschwitz was near the rail lines more and more prisoners were sent there. Just as the Gulag started as a camp for political prisoners, Auschwitz did and then became a place for human extermination. Unlike the Gulag where most men and women worked under horrific conditions, at Auschwitz the individuals were quickly split into two groups; ones who were fit to work and the others who could not.
As early as age thirteen, we start learning about the Holocaust in classrooms and in textbooks. We learn that in the 1940s, the German Nazi party (led by Adolph Hitler) intentionally performed a mass genocide in order to try to breed a perfect population of human beings. Jews were the first peoples to be put into ghettos and eventually sent by train to concentration camps like Auschwitz and Buchenwald. At these places, each person was separated from their families and given a number. In essence, these people were no longer people at all; they were machines. An estimation of six million deaths resulting from the Holocaust has been recorded and is mourned by descendants of these people every day. There are, however, some individuals who claim that this horrific event never took place.
...ering again. When the news got out about the events of the Holocaust most Germans claimed they where vaguely aware about the death camps. Claiming they where misinformed about the camps, but Hitler had a 93% vote for his actions by Germany. These actions didn’t go unnoticed after all had settled after WWII the search for German officers to be charged with war crimes had started the people didn’t want the actions of the people who tortured, killed, and slaughtered them to walk away free. Many of the German SS officers where arrested for war crimes and sentenced but few escaped. In my opinion Hitler made the Jewish people stronger they ended up conquering and moving past this hard time. There are many holocaust museums and monuments symbolizing what the Jews and other people went through. In my mind the holocaust has to be the most brutal and vile event in history.
One of the best sources of information about the Holocaust is from someone who survived it, and we were lucky enough to hear 103 year-old Marko Feingold speak in Salzburg, Austria. The theme of his story was faith, and that eventually good people will be rewarded for their actions. I found an interview with him from 2012 where he describes his story in more detail. Marko was born in Vienna and moved with his brother to Italy in 1932, but was arrested by the Nazis in 1938 while he was visiting his family (Treves-Tchelet). He was weakened by the hard labor and was deemed unfit for work (Treves-Tchelet). He would have been killed by the gas chambers, but the chambers were not built yet and he had to get sent to Dachau and eventually to Buchenwald
For many years, people time and time again denied the happenings of the Holocaust or partially understood what was happening. Even in today’s world, when one hears the word ‘Holocaust’, they immediately picture the Nazi’s persecution upon millions of innocent Jews, but this is not entirely correct. This is because Jews
...s of the Holocaust, the Allies held the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46, which made the horrifying actions of the Nazis known all over. The Ally forces pressured Germany to create a homeland for those who suffered through the Holocaust. Over the decades that followed, ordinary Germans struggled with the Holocaust’s bitter legacy, as survivors and the families of victims tried to regain their property and wealth that was taking away during the Holocaust. In 1953, the German government made payments to individual Jews and to the Jewish people as a way of apologizing for the crimes which were committed by the German people.
In the Holocaust millions of Jews lost their lives because of simply who they were. Many however hid and survived this dark event in history. It was the year 1933 and WW11 roared on, some saw it as a war against countries but eventually everything dark and ugly came to the light. Adolf Hitler was the chancellor of Germany and had obtained great popularity with the German people. While beginning to attack nations he was also trying to destroy all Jews in a horrific mass genocide. Creating concentration camps and taking all that the Jews owned he began to round up these human beings as if they were cattle. The stories account for them as being kidnapped at midnight to being tricked into going to their death thinking they were going for a better life. Not all stories ended in despair, there were many who managed to outsmart the Nazis and their allies. Many hid from them, blended in or fled to safe countries. Even under all the pain and horror many prevailed and won the prize of life. People, no matter who will fight to live no matter what the circumstance. These are the stories of those fortunate survivors who hid, fled, lived to tell their perilous account of the holocaust.
The Holocaust is one of the worst events that has occurred in history where over 6 million jewish people were brutally murdered. There are many facts and first hand accounts of what took place during those times. Many diaries were kept and pictures taken that capture the horrific events that took place. There are others accounts though that claim the Holocaust never happened and that no one died.
For the past half century, the world has blamed Nazi Germany for the horrible acts that took place during World War II and for the deaths of millions of Holocaust victims. Dozens of Germans, including major Nazi leaders, doctors and lawyers were brought to trial at the end of World War II when they were accused of committing inhumane and immoral acts during the war and their cases were supposed to be brought to justice, however, justice was not served. The Nuremberg Trials were not fair trials for the German defendants because their crimes were not illegal when they were committed, only a handful of Germans were brought to trial, many of the defendants were brainwashed and not responsible for their actions, the court was biased, and the penalties
In these camps that these people were sent to, the Germans identified each respective group with a triangular patch sewn onto the people’s clothes. Each patch would have a color, denoting each person into their respective groups. There were also letters placed onto the patches which showed the country of origin of each person.
There’s a lot to know about the holocaust. The biggest DISCREPENCY was what happened to the Nazi soldiers who were involved in the holocaust? “It was entitled the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, which tried the most important leaders of Nazi Germany,” ("Nuremberg Trials Project -- Introduction"). The Nuremberg Trials had a huge effect on the aftermath of World War II. This was the solution to punish the war criminals for what they’ve done. While it didn't get everyone tried, it got a very large portion of the higher ups of the Nazi regime. The Nuremberg Trials was a great precedent to be looked at and has created a bond between the Great Nations of the United States, the British, Soviet Union and the French.