By Bobby Gagnon 12/16/2011

 “I realized that most people were not aware of any other Holocaust victims except Jews.”  Of the 11 million people killed during the Holocaust, six million were Polish citizens.  Three million were Polish Jews and another three million were Polish Christians and Catholics.

 Hundreds of thousands of other victims such as gypsies, Jehovah’s witnesses, disabled and mentally ill were killed.  The disabled and mentally ill were sent directly to be executed.  Non-Jewish victims were killed like they were a Jew.

 The rise of Nazi government aimed to make Germany “clean of Jews”.  By 1938, about 150,000 German Jews had already fled the country.  After Germany seized Austria in March 1938, an additional 185,000 Jews were brought under Nazi rule. Many Jews were unable to find countries willing to take them in.

 Born on March 16, 1911, in Gunzburg.  In 1937, Mengele joined the Nazi Party.  Josef Mengele was an SS physician, infamous for his inhumane medical experimentation upon prisoners at Auschwitz.

 In 1935, Mengele earned a Ph.D. in physical anthropology.  In the concentration camps, he was responsible for the selection of those fit to work and those destined for gassing.  Mengele also carried out human experiments on camp inmates.

 The German Nazis destroyed Jewish houses and businesses.  In two days, over 250 synagogues were burned, over 7,000 Jewish businesses were trashed and looted.  Dozens of Jewish people were killed, and Jewish cemeteries, hospitals, schools, and homes were looted while police and firemen stood by.

 In Kiev, the Nazis murdered approximately 100,000 people in a ravine named Babi Yar.  The killing began with a large group on September 29-30, 1941, but continued for months.  The Soviet army liberated Kiev on November 1943.

 Between July and September 1942, the German officials deported or murdered around 300,000 Jews.  The Germans and their auxiliaries murdered more than 10,000 Jews in the Warsaw ghetto during the deportation operations.  The German authorities granted only 35,000 Jews permission to remain in the ghetto, while more than 20,000 Jews remained in the ghetto in hiding.

 Kindertransport was a rescue operation to save the children from the holocaust.  Kindertransport saved 10,000 children from the Nazi death camps.  The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, and farms. Most of the rescued children survived the war.

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 Google  United states historic memorial museum  About.com