Gunshots fired, glass shattered, blood everywhere, cattle cars, concentration camps, gas chambers, deaths. What happened to the Jews of Hungary at Auschwitz? In the 1940s Hungary put anti-Jewish laws into place. These laws required Jews to be separate from other people. They went as far as not allowing Jews to go to the same school with other people and not letting Jews get married to other people. As of 1941 the Jewish population in Hungary was 825,000. Germany wanted Hungary to deport Hungarian Jews however Hungary refused due to political reasons. By 1944 German forces occupied Hungary. In May 1944 the Nazi’s were rounding up the Hungarian Jews to put them on trains and deport them to concentration camps. The Jewish population in Hungary decreased to 255,000 in 1944. In 1942 Auschwitz became the largest site for the murder of Jews and more than 1.1 million men, women, and children lost their lives here-most were Jews. Adolf Eichmann was the one who was in charge of the deportation of Hungarian Jews. Between May 14 and July 9, approximately 440,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The SS administration was trying to prepare for the arrival of a mass amount of Hungarian Jews. They wanted to expand the extermination machinery (Braham). They wanted to be able to kill Jews faster than their normal pace. How could they be so cruel and cold hearted to want to kill Hungarian Jews? They were reinforced and “experts” were called in to oversee the operations (Braham). The “experts” were Karl Hocker, Rudolf Hoss, Otto Moll, and Richard Bar (Braham). What they did was they increased the groups of prisoners responsible for working the gas chambers (Braham). Moll renovated the crematoriums (Braham). The crew made fu...
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...ny. If there was a single action I can demonstrate about what learning about the Holocaust means to me is to keep researching about it and learn more about the experiences of the Jews and how I would feel if that was me in their situation. I would look up a list of some of the Hungarian Jews that have also been a part of the Holocaust. The Holocaust means to me a lot because I feel lucky that I am not in the same trouble as the Jews in the 1930s were.
Works Cited
Braham, Randolf L. "Hungarian Jews: Prepatory Work in Auschwitz." Gutman, Yisrael and Michael Berenbaum. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. n.d. 462-463.
"1944." Czech, Danuta. Auchsiwtz Chronicle 1939-1945: From the Archives of the Auschwitz Memorial and the German Federal Archives. 1989.
Grossman, Clara. Clara Grossman Audio Testimony Midwest Center for Holocaust Education. 26 August 1999. Audio.
Shields, Jacqueline. "Concentration Camps: The Sonderkommando ." 2014. Jewish Virtual Library. 20 March 2014 .
Many groups had great power and influence around the world during the Holocaust. How this influence was used or not used helped shape experiences, often horrific, for many European Jews. In Hungary, toward the end of the Holocaust not only did the international institutions become silent bystanders, but their very own neighbors turned their back on their fellow citizens knowing what atrocities awaited their arrival at Auschwitz. The brutality started close to home when fellow Hungarians, in a combined effort with the city government, railroad officials, and law-enforcement agencies coordinated a swift transport of 400,000 Jews to their almost certain death. “In March 1944, the Germans occupied Hungary and in April, they forced the Jews into ghettos.
Imagine the worst torture possible. Now imagine the same thing only ten times worse; In Auschwitz that is exactly what it was like. During the time of the Holocaust thousands of Jewish people were sent to this very concentration camp which consisted of three camps put into one. Here they had one camp; Auschwitz I; the main camp, Auschwitz II; Birkenau, and last is Auschwitz III; Monowitz. Each camp was responsible for a different part but all were after the same thing; elimination of the Jewish race. In these camps they had cruel punishments, harsh housing, and they had Nazi guards watching them and killing them on a daily basis.
"Jewish Resistance". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d. Web. 19 May 2014.
Epstein shows the process that the majority of Jews were being put through, such as the medical examinations, medical experimentations, gas chambers and crematoriums. Medical examinations were used to determine if the Jews were healthy enough to work. Dr. Mengele used the Jews as “lab rats” and performed many experiments such as a myriad of drug testing and different surgeries. The gas chamber was a room where Jews were poisoned to death with a preparation of prussic acid, called Cyclo...
“The United States and the Holocaust.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 10 June 2013. Web. 10 Feb. 2014.
Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz. New York: Classic House, 2008. Print.
They were stripped of their political rights and taken from their homes and friends with limited to no warning and uncertain what was next to come. An abundance of people were forced to one of the thousands of concentrations camps where they were separated from their families and directed to either a labor camp, where many would suffer, or to a death camp, where were they would unfortunately be executed immediately. In 1933, Hitler finally was named Chancellor of Germany and began to organize what he called the “Final Solution” (Balson). He and his Nazi party believed Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and the mentally ill were violating racial purity in Europe and devised a way to slowly kill them off and remove them from Germany and the rest of the world (Balson). Many people know and understand the events occurring during the Holocaust, but they probably don’t realize there was a plethora of steps in setting up concentration camps, persecuting the targeted groups, and keeping Hitler’s and the Nazis’ intentions a secret.
Tent, James F. In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Nazi Persecution of Jewish-Christian Germans. Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2003.
Ofer, Dalia, and Lenore J. Weitzman. Women in the Holocaust. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. 1. Print.
1. Gutman, Yisrael. “Nazi Doctors.” Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Indiana University Press: 1994. 301-316
Dwork, Deborah, and R. J. Van Pelt. Holocaust: a History. New York: Norton, 2002. Print.
"A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust-Victims." A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust-Victims. University of South Florida. Web. 19 May 2014.
...throughout Europe as they did in Auschwitz and Majdanek. These horror stories are only a few out of the hundreds of camps that the Nazis built during World War Two. The Holocaust was a devastating event for the Jewish population as well as many other minorities in Europe. The Holocaust was the largest genocide that has ever occurred. Horrific things went on in Auschwitz and Majdenek that wiped out approximately 1,378,000 people combined. This death toll is extremely high compared to smaller camps. These camps were some of the largest concentration/death camps that existed during the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a tragic time where millions of people considered undesirable to the Nazis were detained, forced to work in the harshest of conditions, starved to death, or brutally murdered.“The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed.” –Stephen Ambrose
... I 1944 [Over Warsaw - Warsaw Thermopylae 1939 and 1944], Warsaw: Fundacja Wystawa Warszawa Walczy 1939-1945, 2000.