The Holocaust

“ In Germany, first they came for the Communists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for me…and by that time no one was left to speak up.” Pastor Martin Niemoller

At the end of the war, the cruelty of the Nazis was revealed to the world In Canada, few people knew about the Concentration Camps or what had happened in them During the final months of the war, Allied armies had liberated 1000’s of Jews from the camps…amidst unspeakable horror They found stacks of bodies and mass graves Gas chambers and ovens for cremation Skeletal survivors

Millions had been imprisoned, tortured and executed by the Nazis, including – political prisoners, Communists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Poles, POW’s …. But mostly Jews The Nazis wanted to exterminate the Jews of Europe and the world “anti-semitism” was one of the founding policies of the Nazi Party, and Hitler held the Jews responsible for Germany’s economic problems

The persecution of the Jews, begun in 1933 with the rise of Hitler to Chancellor of Germany, entered a new phase at the beginning of the war 3 million Jews fell into the hands of the Nazis with the invasion of Poland….300,000 would survive…. 100,000’s of Jews were taken in Denmark, Norway, Holland, France and Germany Jews were kicked out of their homes and moved into “ghettos”…and often families were forced to share apts. in terrible conditions

The Nazis forced the Jews to wear the yellow Star of David, carry ID papers and even work for the Nazi regime They were forced out of their jobs and food was so rationed that 1000’s died of starvation When the “Wehrmacht” invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the Nazis intensified their methods vs. “the Jewish problem” Created the “Schuzstaffel” (SS) – police Massive executions of Russian Jews in the winter of 1941-42 – they were forced to dig their own graves and then shot

January 1942 – the leaders of the SS met at Wannsee (near Berlin) to put into place their new policy called “Endlosung”…or, “The Final Solution”…. which was the secret extermination of all 11 million Jews in Europe After Wannsee, the Nazis sped up construction of gas chambers in the concentration camps “ghetto jews” were transferred to camps like Dachau, Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen...

The camps were run by special “death squad” units of the SS The sick, elderly, disabled, children and those unable to work were “gassed” in chambers disguised as showers At Auschwitz, 2000 could be killed at a time Many Jews, like those in the Warsaw ghetto in Poland, fought back against the Nazis for months before being sent to camps 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust…. 1 million survived the camps