1. Identify, explain, & place in historical context [Pick ONE]: 1)Warsaw Uprising 2)Death Marches 3)Nero Order Chapter 8: Death Throes & Killing Frenzies 1944 & 1945 [205-219] “Big Picture” Questions : 1) In what specific ways did Hitler keep his promise to bring down with Germany “a world in flames”? 2) How & why did the last stages of the war bring Germany retreat, defeat, & collapse? 3) How was the year 1944 a definite turning point for Germany in the war? Specific events & military operations? 4) What happened to inmates of the camps in 1944-1945, specifically the Hungarian Jews? What were the death marches?

3. Hungarian Jews arriving at Birkenau platform (May 1944)

4. Hungarian Jews walk toward the gas chambers (1944) Hungarian women selected for work (1944)

5. Liberation of Eastern Camps [Red Army] 1)Majdanek(July 23, 1944) 2)Belzec & Sobibor (July 1944) [closed since 1943] 3)Treblinka(July 25, 1944) [extermination camp closed] 4)Auschwitz(January 27, 1945) 5)Gross Rosen(February 1945) 6)Stutthof(May 10, 1945) 7)Sachsenhausen(April 1945) 8)Ravensbrueck(April 1945) Liberation of Western Camps [Americans & British] 1)Buchenwald(April 11, 1945) 2)Bergen-Belsen(April 15, 1945) 3)Dachau(April 29, 1945) 4)Theresienstadt(May 7, 1945) 5)Mauthausen(May 8, 1945)

6. 100,000 Jews remained living in camps (April –May 1945) 1)95% of Jews who fell into the hands of the SS were already dead 2)Surviving Jews represented less than 1% of total Displaced Persons (DPs) Why were 100,000 Jews still alive at the end of the war? 1)Some SS officers walked away, saved themselves 2)Rapid Allied advances frustrated last minute extermination 3)Active resistance of inmates in several camps 4)Relief organizations saved some inmates at end of war (e.g., Swedish Red Cross) 5)Inmates who survived: tough, resourceful, enormous will to live, survival instinct and/or were lucky In the course of my travels into liberated territory I have never seen a more abominable sight than Majdanek near Lublin, Hitler’s notorious Vernichtungslager, where more than half a million European men, women, and children were massacred…This is not a concentration camp; it is a gigantic murder plant... Save for the 1,000 living corpses the Red Army found alive when it entered, no inmate escaped alive. Yet full trains daily brought thousands from all parts of Europe to be coldly, brutally massacred. Time (August 21, 1944) Roman Karman

7. Descriptions of the “death marches” by Auschwitz survivors: 1)When the Russians began to come close to Auschwitz the Germans began marching all prisoners who could walk right into Germany. It was January 1945 and we walked through the night in the cold and snow. We slept as we walked. We were five in a row and the man in the middle slept; then we would rotate and give someone else a chance to be carried. 2) Everywhere confusion was at its height. Then, before midnight, the order to march was given. It was an exhilarating moment. Outside it was snowing and very cold. Some 20,000 prisoners formed up in a long march column and, flanked by SS guards, set out into the night. The snow crunched under our feet, a cold wind blew in our faces. We talked about nothing except where they were taking us and what they intended to do with us….The physically weak and sick lasted only a few hours. Anyone too exhausted to go on was shot by the guards.

8. You who live safe in your warm houses, You who find, returning in the evening, Hot food and friendly faces: Consider if this is a man Who works in the mud Who does not know peace Who fights for a scrap of bread Who dies for a yes or a no. Consider if this is a woman, Without hair and without name With no more strength to remember, Her eyes empty and her womb cold Like a frog in winter. Meditate that this came about: I command these words to you. Carve them in your hearts At home, in the street, Going to bed, rising; Repeat them to your children, Or may your house fall apart, May illness impede you, May your children turn their faces from you Primo Levi (1919-1987) Primo Levi spent almost a year at Auschwitz (Feb. 1944 to Jan. 1945) until it was liberated by the Red Army. Of 650 Italian Jews in his shipment, only 20 survived. This poem, by Levi, was written in early 1946.

9. The Grey Zone (2001) In number one's crematorium's gas chamber 3,000 dead bodies were piled up. The Sonderkommando had already begun to untangle the lattice of flesh... The chief of the gas chamber kommando almost tore the hinges off the door to my room as he arrived out of breath, his eyes wide with fear or surprise. "Doctor," he said, "come quickly. We just found a girl alive at the bottom of a pile of corpses". I grabbed my instrument case, which was always ready, and dashed to the gas chamber. Against the wall, near the entrance to the immense room, half covered with other bodies, I saw a girl in the throes of a death rattle, her body seized with convulsions. The gas kommando men around me were in a state of panic. Nothing like this had ever happened in the course of their horrible career. Miklós Nyiszli (1901-1956), Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account (1960)