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HTMLText_55955ADE_DB73_B305_41E8_9D7E75EA5053_mobile.html = On August 14, 1941, the United States and Great Britain jointly issued the "Atlantic Charter" describing the goal of the Allied powers for the post-war world. To the Nazis this was a clear indication that the US was abandoning neutrality and preparing to enter the war. Their European conflict was about to become a true world war.
On January 20, 1942, at the Wannsee conference held in Berlin with the participation of senior Nazi officials, means were discussed to efficiently carry-out the destruction of the Jewish people in Europe. The plan presented at Wannsee designated more than 11 million Jews for extermination, including those in Germany, the annexed and the occupied lands, neutral countries and free countries.
The plan for what was euphemistically called "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question" leaned heavily on deception. A sophisticated propaganda machine emphasized the characterizations in the Nuremberg Laws portraying Jews as subhuman. The populace was carefully conditioned to accept the notion of the Jews being “parasites” and “vermin”. The next step was to encourage the extermination of the “vermin”. Deception in language was crucial to the secrecy and acceptance of the "final solution". A mother was not shot in the back as she tried in vain to protect her child, rather it was called a "cleansing operation", or "appropriate treatment" was taken, or the women and children were being “resettled in the East.
Not even the hellish train ride was preparation for what the arrivals would meet on the platform at the camps.
"Raus! Raus! Out! Out! Fast! Fast! Fast! Fast! My mother’s hand slipped away, my brother and sister were crying. My father had disappeared. And we walked down the ramp. I saw smoke. People in striped uniforms, with no hair, I thought I was in an insane asylum. And then this tall, handsome SS - Dr. Mengele - sent me to one side and my mother and sister and brother to the other side. I never saw them again."
"I was told to go to the left and I felt my mother’s hand slip loose from mine as she went with my little brother to the right. I saw them as I walked – she kind of waved to say as if to say: 'Go, my child. I'll see you later.' I never saw them again."
"Such confusion! People crying and screaming. Orders yelled at you in German. Dogs barking. Shots. 3000 people all at once crying out. And in the background is a band playing. It was pandemonium. It was another world. All around you barbed wire as far as the eye could see. I went to a barracks and my family went in the other direction. Later someone pointed to the chimney from the crematorium and said 'You see that smoke? There goes your mother and father.’ How could a person believe that?"
The concentration camp constituted an unmitigated state of entrapment. Life for the inmate was like being hooked on a leash that reached from the role call grounds to the work detail to the barracks, which detours only to the ditches or the gas chamber. From the bunk the inmate slept on, the line of daily rations, to the route he took to the latrine- all were charted out for him. There was literally no leeway.
What began with the deprivation of citizen's rights, followed by eviction, isolation, and deportation, ended in the stripping of clothes, the shearing of hair and – finally either a number on the call grounds or a fistful of ashes.
Trains
In the spring of 1942, rhe systematic persecution of the Jews began. Jews were assembled in the ghettos and marched to railways stations, loaded into sealed cattle cars and shipped to extermination camps. In 1943, the transports were directed mainly to concentration camps at Maidanek and Auschwitz.
Auschwitz became the death capital of Europe - all roads seemed to lead there. Trains rolled into its macabre station from almost every major European city: Brussels, Amsterdam, Łódź, Budapest, Cracow, Warsaw, Marseilles, Paris. Auschwitz was one of six camps established for the purpose of killing Jews. Treblinka, Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, and Madanek, all in Poland were built in 1942. Unlike the others Auschwitz was also a "concentration camp" for prisoners of the Reich, and a labor camp complete with a factory built by Jewish slave laborers who were expendable. The project was financed by private industry.
"… My mother held onto my hand and my brother. My aunt was with us and my father too. They packed us into that car. The doors slammed shut. I remember the sound of the latch. And then the blackness. No light. No air. I was little and I couldn't get to that tiny window up high. For three days I couldn't catch my breath. I don't know what happened to my aunt or father. I hung onto my mother until Auschwitz. Then she was gone. My brother too. There was nothing left of my life."
"Thirty cattle cars pulled out of the station. And then the agonizing thirst of the children made them cry and the mothers were moaning. I thought I would go crazy from that. The sweat and the urine- people crushing each other with their weight. Children were dying in that car..."
“I don't know how we survived that train ride. You couldn't sit down, you couldn't move. There was a bucket for a toilet somewhere. No food. No water. And the stench was unbearable. People were crying, moaning, screaming. Children - babies! My God. How did we endure that?"
Spiritual Resistance
In spite of the unprecedented hardships, ghetto residents pulled their scant resources together; They opened up makeshift schools, kept up religious observances, played concerts, read poetry in literary clubs, wrote and performed plays, wrote underground newspapers, and gathered the history of the ghetto, chronicling daily events.
A welfare system to provide medical aid and housing for the elderly and the sick was established, and a soup kitchen supplied meals for the most impoverished. Charity was collected for those in dire need. Orphanages gave shelter to the growing number of children who had lost their parents.
"The enemy lost," Elie Wiesel has stated, "he did not succeed in reducing all of his prisoners to an animal state. In the camps and ghettos there were men and women who prayed, women who taught, doctors who healed, poets who sang and made others sing, there were warriors who fought."
Deportations from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka, a Nazi death camp, began in the summer of 1942 and reduced the population from 350,000 to around 60,000 Jews. As the next round of deportations started, young fighters planned their armed resistance.
On April 19, 1943 Mordechai Anielewicz led his group of young fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - the single largest Jewish armed resistance against Nazis during the Holocaust.
Armed with a few pistols and grenades, they battled the Germans who were well armed with heavy artillery, machines and flamethrowers. These resistance fighters held out for four weeks - longer than many countries that were defeated by the German army. To end the rebellion, the Nazi forces burned the Warsaw ghetto to the ground.
Armed Resistance
The Jewish response to the deportations was a call to armed resistance. In Vilna and Bialystock, in Krakow and in Warsaw, as in tens of other ghettos, youth movements took up arms to confront the persecutor. Even in the hellish conditions of Treblinka, Sobibor, and Auschwitz, armed resistance was staged against the SS.
Jews became partisan fighters in the forests of Eastern Europe. In some places they were accepted by other partisan fighters, in others the will to fight against Nazi occupation proved less motivation than did hatred of their Jewish fellow-countrymen. The story of the Kraków Jewish youth underground reveals treachery on the part of the Polish underground against the Jewish fighters.
German Rescuers
Some Germans, with remarkable foresight, began to aid Jews before it became clear just how pervasive and murderous the persecution would become. Others began to help only when they witnessed or became aware of the atrocities. Everyone knew that it was very dangerous to openly oppose the Nazis. Even people who only defended the dignity of Jewish neighbors or refused to break social or economic ties with them ran the risk of being considered enemies of the state. They knew that helping Jews would brand them as traitors in the minds of many of their neighbors. Arrests and imprisonment were real possibilities.
Rescuers Motivated By Religion
There were some people during the holocaust who were motivated by the highest moral ethical ideals found in their religious traditions. Many Christian rescuers, for example, believed that by helping the oppressed they were following the clear teachings found in the gospels. In a similar way, Albanian Muslim rescuers of Jews saw in the BESA tradition of "keeping the promise" both a cultural concept and a religious obligation. Of course, religious reasons for rescue overlapped with other motivations as well. After all, there were many deeply religious people who did not become rescuers and other rescuers who did not cite religion.
Rescuers in Official Positions
People whose jobs put them in a position to offer aid were some of the most effective rescuers. Notable among these were diplomats representing other nations in areas where Jews were under severe threat. Righteous diplomats were able to save tens of thousands of Jews by helping them to obtain visas that enabled them to escape. Although there was some risk to the diplomats from Nazi retaliation, the greater threat came from their own governments. Several were dismissed and lost their careers because superiors had denied them permission to extend aid, yet they did so anyway. Others were able to use different types of positions even within the German government or military to secretly help Jews and for these people, discovery of their activities often lead to imprisonment or execution.
Rescuers and Rescue from Abroad
For the most part, the world did not consider the Nazi persecution of Jews to be a matter of high importance. Almost no nations opened their doors to admit significant numbers of Jewish refugees. When countries issued statements of protest against Nazi antisemitism, they did not back them up with specific, concrete action. This level of indifference did not apply to everyone though. There were people and groups from outside continental Europe that were even willing to enter Nazi territory specifically to bring help to endangered Jews. Through outside helpers rescue efforts, such as the Kindertransports, were able to save tens of thousands of Jews, though they often had to contend with less than helpful governments back home.
Collective Acts of Rescue
Most rescuers had to act on their own. Individual rescuers, acting in secret, were able to provide much needed, and appreciated, help to small numbers of Jews. Sometimes, however, rescuers were able to recruit others to the cause, forming small, often informal, networks of rescue and were able to help a large number of people. In even rarer cases, rescuers were able to act collectively to save thousands of Jews as a part of a larger national resistance movements that opposed Nazi occupation or influence in many other ways as well.
An unprecedented rescue effort was undertaken by the Danish people. Ordinary people banned together to carry out acts of sabotage and used strikes, resistance and underground publications against the Nazi forces. Using small row boats and larger fishing vessels, Jews were ferried across to neutral Sweden.
The Danish resistance hid and smuggled approximately 7200 Jews to safety. Thousands of people from all walks of life had to cooperate to make this happen.
All arrivals were stripped of possessions and clothing. Naked, they were inspected by the SS (corps of the Nazi elite, who controlled the camps). The young and able-bodied were sent to camp for slave labor. They will survive a few agonizing months. The weak, children and the elderly, were sent to the gas chambers within an hour of arrival.
Those who remained alive lived on borrowed time. "I looked around and thought: 'even if you were a bird you couldn't fly out of here,' because all around you was barbed wire, everywhere, barbed wire."
"We were constantly hungry. And they worked us to death, until we couldn't stand up anymore. People died of starvation, of exhaustion, or exposure, or just gave up."
"We were packed into these shelves. You can't call them bunks or beds. They were wooden shelves. Four to a shelf. If one of us wanted to turn over in the night, all four had to turn. The stench was unbelievable. We all walked around hungry, in a fog because of starvation and illness. It was like a dream."
"You could sleep with this cup as your pillow. If you lost it, or it was stolen, you couldn't survive. That cup. You ate from it. You drank from it. You used it for whatever was necessary."
The Center was built by people who believed in the power of knowledge. As victims and witnesses to the Holocaust, they felt a deep responsibility to teach future generations about the ultimate cost of prejudice and blind nationalism. It is not enough to know the names and dates and places of tragedies; we must also remember the reasons that these tragedies occur.
Although we daily remember the lives of the millions who were lost, this Center is not built just as a place of mourning. It is here to inspire each of us to be compassionate and accepting of others, to be responsible and respectful members of a diverse community, and to accept our individual responsibility to protect the rights of others as fervently as we protect our own.
There is no continent without ethnic conflict and no community where there is not distrust. We know that the future of Humanity depends on understanding these deep-rooted challenges, and working together to create a future where Everyone is safe and is welcome.
"Whoever forgets, becomes the executioner's accomplice."
Elie Wiesel.
This Memorial Exhibit is dedicated to learning about the lives of the victims, the death of the victims. The Holocaust is past, but the conditions and society which spawned it and executed it, are present.
To examine the past is to learn from it, to gain insight into our own condition in order to understand present threats to our freedoms, our human rights, our dignity and our lives. “in history precedent invites repetition”, noted Elie Wiesel.
Threatening Jews, Stifling Political Opposition
World War II
On September 1, 1939, the day marking the outbreak of World War II, the German army attacked Poland and, within three weeks, conquered it. Between April and June 1940, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxenbourg, and France fell to the Nazi military machine. Within three months of its initial attack on the Soviet union on June 22, 1941, the German army had conquered extensive areas, reaching the outskirts of Moscow.
Humiliation
The Nazi decrees against Jews rushed one after the other.
Jewish property was confiscated; curfews were imposed on Jewish activity; Jews were forbidden employment and forced to register for slave labor; they lost the protection of civil law and were subjected to the whims of torturers; Jews were subject to public humiliation, from scrubbing streets with their bare hands to wearing discriminatory badges.
Labor
The ghettos became a reservoir of expendable labor to serve the German military and German industry. Trucks rolled into the ghetto to the appointed places of assembly where they would load the trucks and haul the laborers to tasks outside the ghetto.
At times a labor detail outside the ghetto provided the opportunity to find an extra scrap of food to be smuggled back into the ghetto to feed a hungry child. Though smuggling was punishable by death, it was also the only means to keep from starving.
Ghettoization
Then came one of the most devastating decrees: Jews had to leave their homes to be imprisoned in ghettos. "We were given orders that we had one hour to pack one suitcase and leave our home. We marched through the streets and some children laughed and threw stones at us. I remember my mother didn't want to go. Her great grandfather had built that house."
In towns and cities throughout Nazi – occupied Europe, sad processions could be seen trudging along the streets – mothers, fathers and little children carrying bundles and pulling carts piled high with the necessities of life. From behind the curtain covered windows, neighbors watched the Jewish families driven to the enclosed ghettos.
"… ( the ghetto in Lodz) was a completely enclosed area, with no access to the outside world. There was a sentry every hundred feet and you could get shot by trying to come close to the wires that encircled the ghetto…"
Hunger
"Within days there were horrible odors. Our food was rationed. We lived under terrible conditions - one toilet for about 12 people, almost no running water and very little food. We would stand in lines for potatoes or turnips or some sort of vegetables. First my brother would stand, then my other brother, then I would stand. Round the clock, just for a handful of potatoes to make some awful soup."
"People began to get sick right away, no sanitary facilities, not enough food. And dead bodies everywhere—in the streets, on the sidewalks. We would just walk around them. They became routine, normal. The stench was unbelievable. Just crowds of people milling around."
Summons:
To the inhabitants of the Jewish quarter:
In accordance with the ruling of authorities of July 22nd, 1942, all who are not employed in institutions and enterprises are subject to resettlement. Forced resettlement will be continued without pause. I call, again, on the population subject to resettlement, to voluntarily appear on the Loading Square while I extend for three days, 2, 3, and 4th August, the distribution of 3 kg of bread and 1 kg of marmalade to each person appearing voluntarily.
Families coming voluntarily will not be separated.
Gathering point for volunteers:
Dzika Street No. 3 - Stawki 27
Warsaw, August 1, 1942
Print shop J. Rachman, Eisgrubenstr. 8
Among the first acts of the Nazi regime was to establish a concentration camp at Dachau for the imprisonment of political opponents and Jews. Jews were removed from civil service positions and excluded from cultural activities.
On April 1, 1933, the Nazis proclaimed a boycott of Jewish businesses enforced by brown-shirted stormtroopers. The purpose was to stifle criticism both inside and outside Germany. It was made clear in official Nazi statements that the safety of German Jews was dependent upon the activities of Jews throughout the world.
The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 instituted racism as part of Germany's legal code. According to those laws, a Jew with anyone who had one or two grandparents "of the Jewish race." The race of the grandparents was determined by membership in a "Jewish religious community."
Unlike the persecution of the middle ages, Nazi persecution of the Jews was "racially” determined. Conversion could provide no measure of safety, because Jews were persecuted for what they were, not for their practices or beliefs.
• Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, April 7, 1933.
• Law regarding admission to the bar, April 7, 1933
• Law against the overcrowding of German schools, April 25, 1933
• Decree forbidding Jews from public streets on certain days, December 3, 1938
• Decree for compulsory sale of Jewish property, December 3, 1938
Jews lost jobs in the civil service, were forbidden to practice law, pharmacy, medicine. Jewish children were excluded from schools and, later, Jewish schools were closed as well. The police enforced and, the courts ruled, on the removal of Jews. Businessmen complied with the laws by firing Jewish employees. Jewish stores were closed.
The Nuremberg Laws provided a legal pretext for the confiscation of Jewish property known as "Aryanization." The capital obtained by these means was used to build up Germany's military industry. Unfortunately, the dispossession of Jewish property impeded the emigration of Jews from Germany because the potential host countries were reluctant to accept indigent refugees.
Transition to Mass Murder
Before the war, Nazi's used social isolation, economic deprivation, and political discrimination to try to coerce the Jews into leaving the German Reich. This plan was only partly successful. The invasion of Poland in September of 1939 created new possibilities. The Nazis began population transfers in the conquered territories designed to implement their racial ideology. They intended to expand the living space of the German people and to reduce Poland into a permanent slave state. They executed many of Poland’s intellectual, cultural, and religious leaders and began planning to forcibly expel the entire Jewish population. Concentrating the Jews into Ghettos was a temporary measure designed to facilitate this process. These plans fell through, however, when Germany failed to achieve rapid victory over Great Britain. By the spring of 1941, the Nazis were still seeking a permanent solution to what they considered the “Jewish Problem”.
In the wake of the Nazi invasion of Soviet Russia in June, 1941, four Einsatzgruppen, "mobile killing units," were responsible for a campaign of murder against political opponents and Jews. It is estimated that between June and December 1941 alone 500,000 Jews were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen and the local population they employed to help in the task. However, these mass killings still did not meet the objectives to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe.
The German invasion of the Soviet union on June 22, 1941 opened the door for a dramatic radicalization of Nazi policies. Hitler informed his military leaders that this would be a war of annihilation between two opposing worldviews. He characterized Soviet communism as "Jewish Bolshevism" and authorized wholesale executions of captured political commissars without regard for international law.
Instructions issued to the troops on June 4 stated, "this struggle demands ruthless and energetic measures against Bolshevist agitators, gurellias, saboteurs, Jews, and complete elimination of any active or passive resistance."
At first, the Einsatzgruppen targeted Jewish men, but by late summer and early fall, the shootings expanded to include women and children as well. This transition to mass murder has become known as the "Holocaust by Bullets" and represents the beginning stage of the Final Solution. By the spring of 1943, at least 1.25 million Jews were murdered by the Einzsatgruppen and their helpers by shootings and through the use of specially constructed gas vans.
The goal that Einsatzkommando 2 had in mind from the beginning was a radical solution to the Jewish problem through the execution of all Jews." Rudolf Lange, January 1942 Einsatzkommando 2.
One of the main goals of the Nazi movement was to establish and strengthen the "volksgemeinschaft", a close-knit community based on German blood. According to the Nazi Party Platform of 1920, race was the determining factor in deciding who could belong to the nation. Point four stated, "only a racial comrade can be a citizen. Only a person on German blood, regardless of religious denomination, can be a racial comrade. No Jew, therefore, can be a racial comrade."
Political and social unity took precedence over differences of class and personal opinion. The unified will of the people was embodied in the person of the Führer and implemented through his leadership. This idea, known as the "führerprinzip", invested Adolf Hitler with virtually unlimited authority. "The authority of the führer is complete and all-embracing; it unites in itself all the means of political direction; it extends into all fields of national life; it embraces the entire people, which is bound to the Führer in loyalty and obedience." Ernst Rudolf Huber, Congressional Law of the Greater German Reich 1939). Dissenters were considered enemies of the people and were subject to intimidation and imprisonment in concentration camps.
National Socialism placed such a high value on the role of Adolf Hitler as the leader that it was necessary to create propaganda to elevate his status and to keep his words and his image continually before the People.
National Socialism Transformed Germany
Ominous Times: The Rise of Hitler and the Nazis
Two Thousand Years of Jewish Life
The progressive atmosphere in Eastern Europe enabled the Jewish communities to flourish. State-sponsored Yiddish and Hebrew schools, which taught both religious and secular subjects, were established. World-recognized Yeshivot prospered.
A wide spectrum of Jewish political parties, youth movements and trade unions were formed. Yiddish writers fostered a literary renaissance that matched the literary experiments of Germany and France. Yiddish theater and film emerged as distinct expressions of Eastern European culture.
Learning, worship, community, family, and charity continued to be the mainstays of Jewish life, as they had been for generations. Even the poorest 'shtetl' (town) maintained a system of social and economic support for orphans, beggars, teachers, and the sick. Jewish children were raised in an environment steeped in tradition. The diverse community had ample room for both the secular Zionist dreaming a pioneer’s dream of draining the swamplands of Palestine, and the bearded Rebbe walking in the shtetl mud, feeling instead the stones of Jerusalem beneath his feet.
This Memorial Exhibit is dedicated to learning about the lives of the victims, the death of the victims. The Holocaust is past, but the conditions and society which spawned it and executed it, are present.
To examine the past is to learn from it, to gain insight into our own condition in order to understand present threats to our freedoms, our human rights, our dignity and our lives. “in history precedent invites repetition”, noted Elie Wiesel.
Two Thousand Years of Jewish Life
Jewish communities had been part of European life for over 2000 years. As diverse as they were, the Jews of Europe were linked by their adherence to the law of the Bible, worship, common history, tradition and values.
The Jewish communities established synagogues, schools and charitable organizations. Persecution heightened the community’s attitude of perseverance and ingenuity in coping with intolerant edicts. In the course of time, the Jewish leadership learned the wisdom of silence and the art of supplication; when to wait out a storm and when to flee for a safe haven.
The Napoleonic reign brought emancipation to the Jews of Europe, 1806-1809, endowing them with liberties and economic opportunities hitherto unknown. Not unlike the Napoleonic reign, the period after World War I, 1918, was one of optimism for the Jews of Europe. Their hopes rested in part on three acts of international diplomacy: The establishment of the League of Nations, the Minorities Treaties of the Treaty of Versailles, and the Balfour Declaration to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. During this time Jews played active and prominent roles in many facets of public life and began to consider themselves as citizens of the countries in which they lived.
In particular, the Jews of Germany reciprocated with loyalty and patriotism to the country which had given them democratic rights and permitted them to participate in commerce, politics, medicine, science, art and education. German Jews brought honor to their country by excelling in these fields, enhancing German culture. In Germany Jews felt like they had found a home. They regarded themselves as Germans of the Mosaic faith.
The Nazi movement grew out of the disillusionment that prevailed in Germany after its defeat in World War I. The Treaty of Versailles at the end of the war contained provisions that most Germans considered unfair. Like many of the new political parties in Germany, the Nazis bitterly opposed the terms of the treaty. They also rejected the enlightenment ideals of human rights and constitutional democracy, embracing antisemitism and racism as core values. The Nazis were a small, fringe movement through most of the 1920s but economic collapse at the end of the decade gave them the opportunity to build their popularity.
The great depression of 1929 had a devastating effect on the world economy. Germany suffered financial ruin. Many Germans thought that only a strong leader, and unhindered by democratic restrictions, could deliver the nation from its problems. Despite their knowledge of his extreme anti-Jewish platform, the German electorate increasingly voted for Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party. By July 1932, the Nazis were the single largest party in the Reichstag (Parliament). Hitler's supporters were convinced that he could restore honor, pride and order to Germany.
Soon after he became Chancellor, Hitler consolidated his power and discarded the Democratic Constitution, gaining dictatorial power of the country. Widespread acceptance of his policies and the German peoples’ faith in his power made Hitler’s reign possible.
The Holocaust, or the murder of nearly 6 million Jews in Europe between 1933 and 1945, was a highly organized process of systematic annihilation. The victims of the Holocaust were men, women and 1.5 million children. The perpetrators were unique in human history. They were citizens of a civilized nation, many of them products of high culture, with advanced degrees. They were the perpetrators. They were church-going Christians. Yet they were the perpetrators. They were dedicated to their careers in business, medicine, education, law. Yet they were the perpetrators. They were “normal”, as we are. Should we be disturbed by this comparison? Are we different than the average citizens of Germany, who participated in the “Final Solution” to the “Jewish Question?”
Whoever forgets, becomes the executioner’s accomplice.” Elie Wiesel.
The Center was built by people who believed in the power of knowledge. As victims and witnesses to the Holocaust, they felt a deep responsibility to teach future generations about the ultimate cost of prejudice and blind nationalism. It is not enough to know the names and dates and places of tragedies; we must also remember the reasons that these tragedies occur.
Although we daily remember the lives of the millions who were lost, this Center is not built just as a place of mourning. It is here to inspire each of us to be compassionate and accepting of others, to be responsible and respectful members of a diverse community, and to accept our individual responsibility to protect the rights of others as fervently as we protect our own.
There is no continent without ethnic conflict and no community where there is not distrust. We know that the future of Humanity depends on understanding these deep-rooted challenges, and working together to create a future where Everyone is safe and is welcome.
Two Thousand Years of Jewish Life
The progressive atmosphere in Eastern Europe enabled the Jewish communities to flourish. State-sponsored Yiddish and Hebrew schools, which taught both religious and secular subjects, were established. World-recognized Yeshivot prospered.
A wide spectrum of Jewish political parties, youth movements and trade unions were formed. Yiddish writers fostered a literary renaissance that matched the literary experiments of Germany and France. Yiddish theater and film emerged as distinct expressions of Eastern European culture.
Learning, worship, community, family, and charity continued to be the mainstays of Jewish life, as they had been for generations. Even the poorest 'shtetl' (town) maintained a system of social and economic support for orphans, beggars, teachers, and the sick. Jewish children were raised in an environment steeped in tradition. The diverse community had ample room for both the secular Zionist dreaming a pioneer’s dream of draining the swamplands of Palestine, and the bearded Rebbe walking in the shtetl mud, feeling instead the stones of Jerusalem beneath his feet.
Two Thousand Years of Jewish Life
Jewish communities had been part of European life for over 2000 years. As diverse as they were, the Jews of Europe were linked by their adherence to the law of the Bible, worship, common history, tradition and values.
The Jewish communities established synagogues, schools and charitable organizations. Persecution heightened the community’s attitude of perseverance and ingenuity in coping with intolerant edicts. In the course of time, the Jewish leadership learned the wisdom of silence and the art of supplication; when to wait out a storm and when to flee for a safe haven.
The Napoleonic reign brought emancipation to the Jews of Europe, 1806-1809, endowing them with liberties and economic opportunities hitherto unknown. Not unlike the Napoleonic reign, the period after World War I, 1918, was one of optimism for the Jews of Europe. Their hopes rested in part on three acts of international diplomacy: The establishment of the League of Nations, the Minorities Treaties of the Treaty of Versailles, and the Balfour Declaration to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. During this time Jews played active and prominent roles in many facets of public life and began to consider themselves as citizens of the countries in which they lived.
In particular, the Jews of Germany reciprocated with loyalty and patriotism to the country which had given them democratic rights and permitted them to participate in commerce, politics, medicine, science, art and education. German Jews brought honor to their country by excelling in these fields, enhancing German culture. In Germany Jews felt like they had found a home. They regarded themselves as Germans of the Mosaic faith.
The Holocaust, or the murder of nearly 6 million Jews in Europe between 1933 and 1945, was a highly organized process of systematic annihilation. The victims of the Holocaust were men, women and 1.5 million children. The perpetrators were unique in human history. They were citizens of a civilized nation, many of them products of high culture, with advanced degrees. They were the perpetrators. They were church-going Christians. Yet they were the perpetrators. They were dedicated to their careers in business, medicine, education, law. Yet they were the perpetrators. They were “normal”, as we are. Should we be disturbed by this comparison? Are we different than the average citizens of Germany, who participated in the “Final Solution” to the “Jewish Question?”
One of the main goals of the Nazi movement was to establish and strengthen the "volksgemeinschaft", a close-knit community based on German blood. According to the Nazi Party Platform of 1920, race was the determining factor in deciding who could belong to the nation. Point four stated, "only a racial comrade can be a citizen. Only a person on German blood, regardless of religious denomination, can be a racial comrade. No Jew, therefore, can be a racial comrade."
Political and social unity took precedence over differences of class and personal opinion. The unified will of the people was embodied in the person of the Führer and implemented through his leadership. This idea, known as the "führerprinzip", invested Adolf Hitler with virtually unlimited authority. "The authority of the führer is complete and all-embracing; it unites in itself all the means of political direction; it extends into all fields of national life; it embraces the entire people, which is bound to the Führer in loyalty and obedience." Ernst Rudolf Huber, Congressional Law of the Greater German Reich 1939). Dissenters were considered enemies of the people and were subject to intimidation and imprisonment in concentration camps.
National Socialism placed such a high value on the role of Adolf Hitler as the leader that it was necessary to create propaganda to elevate his status and to keep his words and his image continually before the People.
National Socialism Transformed Germany
Ominous Times: The Rise of Hitler and the Nazis
The Nazi movement grew out of the disillusionment that prevailed in Germany after its defeat in World War I. The Treaty of Versailles at the end of the war contained provisions that most Germans considered unfair. Like many of the new political parties in Germany, the Nazis bitterly opposed the terms of the treaty. They also rejected the enlightenment ideals of human rights and constitutional democracy, embracing antisemitism and racism as core values. The Nazis were a small, fringe movement through most of the 1920s but economic collapse at the end of the decade gave them the opportunity to build their popularity.
The great depression of 1929 had a devastating effect on the world economy. Germany suffered financial ruin. Many Germans thought that only a strong leader, and unhindered by democratic restrictions, could deliver the nation from its problems. Despite their knowledge of his extreme anti-Jewish platform, the German electorate increasingly voted for Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party. By July 1932, the Nazis were the single largest party in the Reichstag (Parliament). Hitler's supporters were convinced that he could restore honor, pride and order to Germany.
Soon after he became Chancellor, Hitler consolidated his power and discarded the Democratic Constitution, gaining dictatorial power of the country. Widespread acceptance of his policies and the German peoples’ faith in his power made Hitler’s reign possible.
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DONATE
Reflecting on the past to create a better future.
To commemorate the Holocaust Center's 30th anniversary in 2016, the Center hosted a program series titled "I Remember: Reflections of Eyewitnesses to the Holocaust" featuring local Holocaust Survivors. The video to the left features the story of Tess Goldberg Wise, founder of the Holocaust Center.
Your generous gift today will help us continue educating people about the important history and lessons of the Holocaust in order to create a more just, caring and inclusive community free of all forms of hate and bigotry.
The Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization regulated by the Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services pursuant to the Florida Solicitation of Charitable Contributions Act. Our Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services Registration Number is CH-204. A COPY OF THE OFFICIAL REGISTRATION AND FINANCIAL INFORMATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE DIVISION OF CONSUMER SERVICES BY CALLING TOLL-FREE (800-435-7352) WITHIN THE STATE. REGISTRATION DOES NOT IMPLY ENDORSEMENT, APPROVAL, OR RECOMMENDATION BY THE STATE.
An audited financial report is available from the Holocaust Center upon request and can be found online here at http://bit.ly/1pNHcD6.
___
DONATE
Reflecting on the past to create a better future.
To commemorate the Holocaust Center's 30th anniversary in 2016, the Center hosted a program series titled "I Remember: Reflections of Eyewitnesses to the Holocaust" featuring local Holocaust Survivors. The video to the left features the story of Tess Goldberg Wise, founder of the Holocaust Center.
Your generous gift today will help us continue educating people about the important history and lessons of the Holocaust in order to create a more just, caring and inclusive community free of all forms of hate and bigotry.
The Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization regulated by the Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services pursuant to the Florida Solicitation of Charitable Contributions Act. Our Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services Registration Number is CH-204. A COPY OF THE OFFICIAL REGISTRATION AND FINANCIAL INFORMATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE DIVISION OF CONSUMER SERVICES BY CALLING TOLL-FREE (800-435-7352) WITHIN THE STATE. REGISTRATION DOES NOT IMPLY ENDORSEMENT, APPROVAL, OR RECOMMENDATION BY THE STATE.
An audited financial report is available from the Holocaust Center upon request and can be found online here at http://bit.ly/1pNHcD6.
In 1994 the state legislature mandated that Holocaust education must be taught in Florida public schools. As one of only 27 members of the Florida Department of Education’s Task Force on Holocaust Education, it is our responsibility to provide educational resources to a 13-county area, including instructional materials, best practices and professional development. During the 2018-19 school year over 25,000 students from area public and private schools and home school groups visited the Holocaust Center or participated in an in-school presentation by a member of the Center’s education team.
Education, particularly character education aimed at helping local students develop empathy, social responsibility and moral leadership in our racially and culturally diverse community is a primary focus of the Center’s efforts. Perhaps our most remarkable programming to date has been the growth our highly acclaimed UpStanders: Stand Up To Bullying initiative that was launched in 2010. Since its inception, this bullying prevention program, based in Holocaust education, has impacted over 34,000 students in 89 school cohorts in 4 districts. When Mayor Dyer decided to launch his Stand Up Orlando campaign against bullying in 2014, he provided the funding to bring our UpStanders program to all 9 of Orlando’s public middle schools. This specific partnership with Mayor Dyer, OCPS and the Holocaust Center remained in place for 4 years.
Our Center is one of the oldest facilities of its kind in the nation. It is a nonprofit organization supported by tax-exempt donations and is open to the public free of charge.
In 1994 the state legislature mandated that Holocaust education must be taught in Florida public schools. As one of only 27 members of the Florida Department of Education’s Task Force on Holocaust Education, it is our responsibility to provide educational resources to a 13-county area, including instructional materials, best practices and professional development. During the 2018-19 school year over 25,000 students from area public and private schools and home school groups visited the Holocaust Center or participated in an in-school presentation by a member of the Center’s education team.
Education, particularly character education aimed at helping local students develop empathy, social responsibility and moral leadership in our racially and culturally diverse community is a primary focus of the Center’s efforts. Perhaps our most remarkable programming to date has been the growth our highly acclaimed UpStanders: Stand Up To Bullying initiative that was launched in 2010. Since its inception, this bullying prevention program, based in Holocaust education, has impacted over 34,000 students in 89 school cohorts in 4 districts. When Mayor Dyer decided to launch his Stand Up Orlando campaign against bullying in 2014, he provided the funding to bring our UpStanders program to all 9 of Orlando’s public middle schools. This specific partnership with Mayor Dyer, OCPS and the Holocaust Center remained in place for 4 years.
Our Center is one of the oldest facilities of its kind in the nation. It is a nonprofit organization supported by tax-exempt donations and is open to the public free of charge.
As a nationally and internationally recognized facility, we build inclusive communities by creating experiences through exhibits, programs, initiatives, and education using lessons from the Holocaust.
The Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center of FL was founded in 1981 as the Holocaust Project of Valencia Community College by Tess Wise, a local Holocaust Survivor from Poland. The Holocaust Project included a broad cross-section of community leaders and organizations that joined together to plan a two-day conference on the Holocaust at a time when Holocaust research and education was in its infancy and Holocaust Survivors were only beginning to tell their stories publicly. Tess believed that by studying the historic, social, moral and ethical lessons of the Holocaust, history would never be allowed to repeat itself. Over 600 people participated in the weekend events. In 1983 a similar conference was held on Terrorism because Tess understood that Hitler and the Nazi party were the very definition of terrorists.
In 1982 the Holocaust Project leadership changed its name and moved from Valencia’s campus to offices in the Jewish Community Center in Maitland. In 1983 it became an independent 501c3 organization with the Rev. Dr. Earl Scarbeary as its first president. Tess served as the volunteer executive director, a position she held for more than 20 years.
In 1986 we opened the doors to our current Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center of Florida, the first Holocaust museum in the Southeast, predating the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC by 7 years.
Since the beginning the Center’s leadership has been dedicated building a respectful and inclusive community where diversity is celebrated. Our mission, as stated above, has remained unchanged. Tess was a visionary who fundamentally understood that we needed to be more than a history museum and memorial to Hitler’s victims. She believed that the lessons of the Holocaust provided a lens through which we could understand contemporary social and human rights issues. We regularly draw connections to and from the Holocaust. For instance, German exclusionary laws that prohibited Jewish children from attending school and swimming in public pools give rise to the examination of Jim Crow laws that outlawed the same. The history and lessons of the Holocaust provide a solid background for us to explore the immigration and refugee crisis, the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur, the human rights crisis in Syria, and the long list of “phobias” and “isms.”
As a nationally and internationally recognized facility, we build inclusive communities by creating experiences through exhibits, programs, initiatives, and education using lessons from the Holocaust.
The Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center of FL was founded in 1981 as the Holocaust Project of Valencia Community College by Tess Wise, a local Holocaust Survivor from Poland. The Holocaust Project included a broad cross-section of community leaders and organizations that joined together to plan a two-day conference on the Holocaust at a time when Holocaust research and education was in its infancy and Holocaust Survivors were only beginning to tell their stories publicly. Tess believed that by studying the historic, social, moral and ethical lessons of the Holocaust, history would never be allowed to repeat itself. Over 600 people participated in the weekend events. In 1983 a similar conference was held on Terrorism because Tess understood that Hitler and the Nazi party were the very definition of terrorists.
In 1982 the Holocaust Project leadership changed its name and moved from Valencia’s campus to offices in the Jewish Community Center in Maitland. In 1983 it became an independent 501c3 organization with the Rev. Dr. Earl Scarbeary as its first president. Tess served as the volunteer executive director, a position she held for more than 20 years.
In 1986 we opened the doors to our current Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center of Florida, the first Holocaust museum in the Southeast, predating the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC by 7 years.
Since the beginning the Center’s leadership has been dedicated building a respectful and inclusive community where diversity is celebrated. Our mission, as stated above, has remained unchanged. Tess was a visionary who fundamentally understood that we needed to be more than a history museum and memorial to Hitler’s victims. She believed that the lessons of the Holocaust provided a lens through which we could understand contemporary social and human rights issues. We regularly draw connections to and from the Holocaust. For instance, German exclusionary laws that prohibited Jewish children from attending school and swimming in public pools give rise to the examination of Jim Crow laws that outlawed the same. The history and lessons of the Holocaust provide a solid background for us to explore the immigration and refugee crisis, the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur, the human rights crisis in Syria, and the long list of “phobias” and “isms.”
By the end of the war, the liberators of the camps found just a small vestige of the Jewish population.
"When the British came into Bergen Belsen, there were bodies everywhere. And parts of bodies. Strewn all over the camp. The stench, rats, lice and mud were unbelievable. We were forced to pick up those bodies and throw them into the mass graves. Sometimes the bodies fell apart in our hands. I'll never forget that. When the British came, the whole unit went berserk."
The meeting of the survivors with their liberators is a moment that lingers on the other side of time. This unique meeting surges with joy and anguish - relief at being alive mingled with immeasurable sadness and the sense of endless mourning. The realization of the irretrievable loss of family, friends, home, and the sheer waste of life's time came painfully alive.
German men and women of the town were ordered through the camp to attend the burials of the inmates of Wobbelin concentration camp, who had been starved and beaten to death. Photographed by a local liberator, of the 28th infantry Regiment, of the eighth infantry division on May 3, 1945.
In the aftermath of the distraction, the survivors, joined by 170,000 remnants returning from refuge in the Soviet Union, took part in the mass exit towards the west with the goal of reaching Palestine and other countries. As a result of the British policy forbidden Jewish immigration into Palestine, Cyprus became a holding ground for those seeking refuge in their ancient homeland. The survivors found themselves once again behind barbed wire. But the spirit of perseverance honed against unimaginable devastation - prevailed in this new struggle.
In the DP camps, survivors wearing baggy garments on their emaciated bodies, reentered civilization. It was there that the survivors began to turn despair into hope and bitterness into creativity. A new life began to take shape. New families were formed. An upsurge of creative activity with a new kind of artistic sensibility, one that holds, within every promise of the future, the shadows of the past. The majority of the survivors went on to Palestine to fight for Jewish homeland. Israel became a reality. The rest settled in new homelands, the USA, Australia, Canada.
In the fateful years of the Nazi hold on Europe, some 6 million of Europe's 9 million Jews were slaughtered - between four and 4.5 million in the camps, and the remainder in mass executions by the Einsatzgruppen and through starvation and disease in the ghettos, trains and transit camps.
As the Allies were closing in on Germany and German-held territory, Nazi officials instituted evacuations from the camps - death marches. During these marches, Jews died of starvation, frost and shooting when they lacked the strength to continue. Non-Jewish inmates of concentration camps also became victims of death marches. However, Jews died in greater numbers because they had suffered starvation, disease and brutal treatment and in the camps.
Prisoners were marched, forced to run, poorly clothed, some without shoes, with minimal rations. Their destinations were camps in Germany. If a prisoner stopped, collapsed, slowed down or faltered, he or she was shot. Groups of prisoners were forced to follow the columns of misery with wagons picking up the dead and burying them. "We had to pick up the dead bodies and put them on the wagons. When the wagons were full, we had to bury them and start picking up bodies again." (A Survivor)
"I reached down to lift up the body to put it in the grave and the man called my name. He was from my town. I offered to help carry him. The SS man put his gun to my head and said we would both be buried. I buried him. I'll never forget his face."
Even as the war machine was grinding to a halt, its rollers kept trampling life.
The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 instituted racism as part of Germany's legal code. According to those laws, a Jew with anyone who had one or two grandparents "of the Jewish race." The race of the grandparents was determined by membership in a "Jewish religious community."
Unlike the persecution of the middle ages, Nazi persecution of the Jews was "racially” determined. Conversion could provide no measure of safety, because Jews were persecuted for what they were, not for their practices or beliefs.
• Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, April 7, 1933.
• Law regarding admission to the bar, April 7, 1933
• Law against the overcrowding of German schools, April 25, 1933
• Decree forbidding Jews from public streets on certain days, December 3, 1938
• Decree for compulsory sale of Jewish property, December 3, 1938
Jews lost jobs in the civil service, were forbidden to practice law, pharmacy, medicine. Jewish children were excluded from schools and, later, Jewish schools were closed as well. The police enforced and, the courts ruled, on the removal of Jews. Businessmen complied with the laws by firing Jewish employees. Jewish stores were closed.
The Nuremberg Laws provided a legal pretext for the confiscation of Jewish property known as "Aryanization." The capital obtained by these means was used to build up Germany's military industry. Unfortunately, the dispossession of Jewish property impeded the emigration of Jews from Germany because the potential host countries were reluctant to accept indigent refugees.
The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 instituted racism as part of Germany's legal code. According to those laws, a Jew with anyone who had one or two grandparents "of the Jewish race." The race of the grandparents was determined by membership in a "Jewish religious community."
Unlike the persecution of the middle ages, Nazi persecution of the Jews was "racially” determined. Conversion could provide no measure of safety, because Jews were persecuted for what they were, not for their practices or beliefs.
• Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, April 7, 1933.
• Law regarding admission to the bar, April 7, 1933
• Law against the overcrowding of German schools, April 25, 1933
• Decree forbidding Jews from public streets on certain days, December 3, 1938
• Decree for compulsory sale of Jewish property, December 3, 1938
Jews lost jobs in the civil service, were forbidden to practice law, pharmacy, medicine. Jewish children were excluded from schools and, later, Jewish schools were closed as well. The police enforced and, the courts ruled, on the removal of Jews. Businessmen complied with the laws by firing Jewish employees. Jewish stores were closed.
The Nuremberg Laws provided a legal pretext for the confiscation of Jewish property known as "Aryanization." The capital obtained by these means was used to build up Germany's military industry. Unfortunately, the dispossession of Jewish property impeded the emigration of Jews from Germany because the potential host countries were reluctant to accept indigent refugees.
Threatening Jews, Stifling Political Opposition
Among the first acts of the Nazi regime was to establish a concentration camp at Dachau for the imprisonment of political opponents and Jews. Jews were removed from civil service positions and excluded from cultural activities.
On April 1, 1933, the Nazis proclaimed a boycott of Jewish businesses enforced by brown-shirted stormtroopers. The purpose was to stifle criticism both inside and outside Germany. It was made clear in official Nazi statements that the safety of German Jews was dependent upon the activities of Jews throughout the world.
World War II
On September 1, 1939, the day marking the outbreak of World War II, the German army attacked Poland and, within three weeks, conquered it. Between April and June 1940, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxenbourg, and France fell to the Nazi military machine. Within three months of its initial attack on the Soviet union on June 22, 1941, the German army had conquered extensive areas, reaching the outskirts of Moscow.
Humiliation
The Nazi decrees against Jews rushed one after the other.
Jewish property was confiscated; curfews were imposed on Jewish activity; Jews were forbidden employment and forced to register for slave labor; they lost the protection of civil law and were subjected to the whims of torturers; Jews were subject to public humiliation, from scrubbing streets with their bare hands to wearing discriminatory badges.
Labor
The ghettos became a reservoir of expendable labor to serve the German military and German industry. Trucks rolled into the ghetto to the appointed places of assembly where they would load the trucks and haul the laborers to tasks outside the ghetto.
At times a labor detail outside the ghetto provided the opportunity to find an extra scrap of food to be smuggled back into the ghetto to feed a hungry child. Though smuggling was punishable by death, it was also the only means to keep from starving.
Ghettoization
Then came one of the most devastating decrees: Jews had to leave their homes to be imprisoned in ghettos. "We were given orders that we had one hour to pack one suitcase and leave our home. We marched through the streets and some children laughed and threw stones at us. I remember my mother didn't want to go. Her great grandfather had built that house."
In towns and cities throughout Nazi – occupied Europe, sad processions could be seen trudging along the streets – mothers, fathers and little children carrying bundles and pulling carts piled high with the necessities of life. From behind the curtain covered windows, neighbors watched the Jewish families driven to the enclosed ghettos.
"… ( the ghetto in Lodz) was a completely enclosed area, with no access to the outside world. There was a sentry every hundred feet and you could get shot by trying to come close to the wires that encircled the ghetto…"
Hunger
"Within days there were horrible odors. Our food was rationed. We lived under terrible conditions - one toilet for about 12 people, almost no running water and very little food. We would stand in lines for potatoes or turnips or some sort of vegetables. First my brother would stand, then my other brother, then I would stand. Round the clock, just for a handful of potatoes to make some awful soup."
"People began to get sick right away, no sanitary facilities, not enough food. And dead bodies everywhere—in the streets, on the sidewalks. We would just walk around them. They became routine, normal. The stench was unbelievable. Just crowds of people milling around."
Summons:
To the inhabitants of the Jewish quarter:
In accordance with the ruling of authorities of July 22nd, 1942, all who are not employed in institutions and enterprises are subject to resettlement. Forced resettlement will be continued without pause. I call, again, on the population subject to resettlement, to voluntarily appear on the Loading Square while I extend for three days, 2, 3, and 4th August, the distribution of 3 kg of bread and 1 kg of marmalade to each person appearing voluntarily.
Families coming voluntarily will not be separated.
Gathering point for volunteers:
Dzika Street No. 3 - Stawki 27
Warsaw, August 1, 1942
Print shop J. Rachman, Eisgrubenstr. 8
Plan Your Visit
A Unique Museum in Orlando
A visit to the Holocaust Center is transformative.
It leaves each individual, young or old, with this question: “What can I do today to make a difference?”
We invite you to experience our permanent and traveling exhibits that will get you thinking about the small, but powerful changes you can make within yourself and our community.
Visit the museum free of charge.
Plan Your Visit
A Unique Museum in Orlando
A visit to the Holocaust Center is transformative.
It leaves each individual, young or old, with this question: “What can I do today to make a difference?”
We invite you to experience our permanent and traveling exhibits that will get you thinking about the small, but powerful changes you can make within yourself and our community.
Visit the museum free of charge.
Guided Tours
Subtitle
The museum offers a self-guided experience, but our staff is available and ready to answer your questions.
You are welcome to schedule a docent-led visit. Email us with your requested day and time, and we will get back with you as quickly as possible.
Guided audio tours are available in both English and Spanish and can be downloaded by clicking below:
Guided Tours
Subtitle
The museum offers a self-guided experience, but our staff is available and ready to answer your questions.
You are welcome to schedule a docent-led visit. Email us with your requested day and time, and we will get back with you as quickly as possible.
Guided audio tours are available in both English and Spanish and can be downloaded by clicking below:
Transition to Mass Murder
Before the war, Nazi's used social isolation, economic deprivation, and political discrimination to try to coerce the Jews into leaving the German Reich. This plan was only partly successful. The invasion of Poland in September of 1939 created new possibilities. The Nazis began population transfers in the conquered territories designed to implement their racial ideology. They intended to expand the living space of the German people and to reduce Poland into a permanent slave state. They executed many of Poland’s intellectual, cultural, and religious leaders and began planning to forcibly expel the entire Jewish population. Concentrating the Jews into Ghettos was a temporary measure designed to facilitate this process. These plans fell through, however, when Germany failed to achieve rapid victory over Great Britain. By the spring of 1941, the Nazis were still seeking a permanent solution to what they considered the “Jewish Problem”.
In the wake of the Nazi invasion of Soviet Russia in June, 1941, four Einsatzgruppen, "mobile killing units," were responsible for a campaign of murder against political opponents and Jews. It is estimated that between June and December 1941 alone 500,000 Jews were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen and the local population they employed to help in the task. However, these mass killings still did not meet the objectives to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe.
The German invasion of the Soviet union on June 22, 1941 opened the door for a dramatic radicalization of Nazi policies. Hitler informed his military leaders that this would be a war of annihilation between two opposing worldviews. He characterized Soviet communism as "Jewish Bolshevism" and authorized wholesale executions of captured political commissars without regard for international law.
Instructions issued to the troops on June 4 stated, "this struggle demands ruthless and energetic measures against Bolshevist agitators, gurellias, saboteurs, Jews, and complete elimination of any active or passive resistance."
At first, the Einsatzgruppen targeted Jewish men, but by late summer and early fall, the shootings expanded to include women and children as well. This transition to mass murder has become known as the "Holocaust by Bullets" and represents the beginning stage of the Final Solution. By the spring of 1943, at least 1.25 million Jews were murdered by the Einzsatgruppen and their helpers by shootings and through the use of specially constructed gas vans.
The goal that Einsatzkommando 2 had in mind from the beginning was a radical solution to the Jewish problem through the execution of all Jews." Rudolf Lange, January 1942 Einsatzkommando 2.
Not even the hellish train ride was preparation for what the arrivals would meet on the platform at the camps.
"Raus! Raus! Out! Out! Fast! Fast! Fast! Fast! My mother’s hand slipped away, my brother and sister were crying. My father had disappeared. And we walked down the ramp. I saw smoke. People in striped uniforms, with no hair, I thought I was in an insane asylum. And then this tall, handsome SS - Dr. Mengele - sent me to one side and my mother and sister and brother to the other side. I never saw them again."
"I was told to go to the left and I felt my mother’s hand slip loose from mine as she went with my little brother to the right. I saw them as I walked – she kind of waved to say as if to say: 'Go, my child. I'll see you later.' I never saw them again."
"Such confusion! People crying and screaming. Orders yelled at you in German. Dogs barking. Shots. 3000 people all at once crying out. And in the background is a band playing. It was pandemonium. It was another world. All around you barbed wire as far as the eye could see. I went to a barracks and my family went in the other direction. Later someone pointed to the chimney from the crematorium and said 'You see that smoke? There goes your mother and father.’ How could a person believe that?"
The concentration camp constituted an unmitigated state of entrapment. Life for the inmate was like being hooked on a leash that reached from the role call grounds to the work detail to the barracks, which detours only to the ditches or the gas chamber. From the bunk the inmate slept on, the line of daily rations, to the route he took to the latrine- all were charted out for him. There was literally no leeway.
What began with the deprivation of citizen's rights, followed by eviction, isolation, and deportation, ended in the stripping of clothes, the shearing of hair and – finally either a number on the call grounds or a fistful of ashes.
Spiritual Resistance
In spite of the unprecedented hardships, ghetto residents pulled their scant resources together; They opened up makeshift schools, kept up religious observances, played concerts, read poetry in literary clubs, wrote and performed plays, wrote underground newspapers, and gathered the history of the ghetto, chronicling daily events.
A welfare system to provide medical aid and housing for the elderly and the sick was established, and a soup kitchen supplied meals for the most impoverished. Charity was collected for those in dire need. Orphanages gave shelter to the growing number of children who had lost their parents.
"The enemy lost," Elie Wiesel has stated, "he did not succeed in reducing all of his prisoners to an animal state. In the camps and ghettos there were men and women who prayed, women who taught, doctors who healed, poets who sang and made others sing, there were warriors who fought."
Deportations from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka, a Nazi death camp, began in the summer of 1942 and reduced the population from 350,000 to around 60,000 Jews. As the next round of deportations started, young fighters planned their armed resistance.
On April 19, 1943 Mordechai Anielewicz led his group of young fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - the single largest Jewish armed resistance against Nazis during the Holocaust.
Armed with a few pistols and grenades, they battled the Germans who were well armed with heavy artillery, machines and flamethrowers. These resistance fighters held out for four weeks - longer than many countries that were defeated by the German army. To end the rebellion, the Nazi forces burned the Warsaw ghetto to the ground.
Armed Resistance
The Jewish response to the deportations was a call to armed resistance. In Vilna and Bialystock, in Krakow and in Warsaw, as in tens of other ghettos, youth movements took up arms to confront the persecutor. Even in the hellish conditions of Treblinka, Sobibor, and Auschwitz, armed resistance was staged against the SS.
Jews became partisan fighters in the forests of Eastern Europe. In some places they were accepted by other partisan fighters, in others the will to fight against Nazi occupation proved less motivation than did hatred of their Jewish fellow-countrymen. The story of the Kraków Jewish youth underground reveals treachery on the part of the Polish underground against the Jewish fighters.
German Rescuers
Some Germans, with remarkable foresight, began to aid Jews before it became clear just how pervasive and murderous the persecution would become. Others began to help only when they witnessed or became aware of the atrocities. Everyone knew that it was very dangerous to openly oppose the Nazis. Even people who only defended the dignity of Jewish neighbors or refused to break social or economic ties with them ran the risk of being considered enemies of the state. They knew that helping Jews would brand them as traitors in the minds of many of their neighbors. Arrests and imprisonment were real possibilities.
Rescuers Motivated By Religion
There were some people during the holocaust who were motivated by the highest moral ethical ideals found in their religious traditions. Many Christian rescuers, for example, believed that by helping the oppressed they were following the clear teachings found in the gospels. In a similar way, Albanian Muslim rescuers of Jews saw in the BESA tradition of "keeping the promise" both a cultural concept and a religious obligation. Of course, religious reasons for rescue overlapped with other motivations as well. After all, there were many deeply religious people who did not become rescuers and other rescuers who did not cite religion.
Rescuers in Official Positions
People whose jobs put them in a position to offer aid were some of the most effective rescuers. Notable among these were diplomats representing other nations in areas where Jews were under severe threat. Righteous diplomats were able to save tens of thousands of Jews by helping them to obtain visas that enabled them to escape. Although there was some risk to the diplomats from Nazi retaliation, the greater threat came from their own governments. Several were dismissed and lost their careers because superiors had denied them permission to extend aid, yet they did so anyway. Others were able to use different types of positions even within the German government or military to secretly help Jews and for these people, discovery of their activities often lead to imprisonment or execution.
Rescuers and Rescue from Abroad
For the most part, the world did not consider the Nazi persecution of Jews to be a matter of high importance. Almost no nations opened their doors to admit significant numbers of Jewish refugees. When countries issued statements of protest against Nazi antisemitism, they did not back them up with specific, concrete action. This level of indifference did not apply to everyone though. There were people and groups from outside continental Europe that were even willing to enter Nazi territory specifically to bring help to endangered Jews. Through outside helpers rescue efforts, such as the Kindertransports, were able to save tens of thousands of Jews, though they often had to contend with less than helpful governments back home.
Collective Acts of Rescue
Most rescuers had to act on their own. Individual rescuers, acting in secret, were able to provide much needed, and appreciated, help to small numbers of Jews. Sometimes, however, rescuers were able to recruit others to the cause, forming small, often informal, networks of rescue and were able to help a large number of people. In even rarer cases, rescuers were able to act collectively to save thousands of Jews as a part of a larger national resistance movements that opposed Nazi occupation or influence in many other ways as well.
An unprecedented rescue effort was undertaken by the Danish people. Ordinary people banned together to carry out acts of sabotage and used strikes, resistance and underground publications against the Nazi forces. Using small row boats and larger fishing vessels, Jews were ferried across to neutral Sweden.
The Danish resistance hid and smuggled approximately 7200 Jews to safety. Thousands of people from all walks of life had to cooperate to make this happen.
All arrivals were stripped of possessions and clothing. Naked, they were inspected by the SS (corps of the Nazi elite, who controlled the camps). The young and able-bodied were sent to camp for slave labor. They will survive a few agonizing months. The weak, children and the elderly, were sent to the gas chambers within an hour of arrival.
Those who remained alive lived on borrowed time. "I looked around and thought: 'even if you were a bird you couldn't fly out of here,' because all around you was barbed wire, everywhere, barbed wire."
"We were constantly hungry. And they worked us to death, until we couldn't stand up anymore. People died of starvation, of exhaustion, or exposure, or just gave up."
"We were packed into these shelves. You can't call them bunks or beds. They were wooden shelves. Four to a shelf. If one of us wanted to turn over in the night, all four had to turn. The stench was unbelievable. We all walked around hungry, in a fog because of starvation and illness. It was like a dream."
"You could sleep with this cup as your pillow. If you lost it, or it was stolen, you couldn't survive. That cup. You ate from it. You drank from it. You used it for whatever was necessary."
By the end of the war, the liberators of the camps found just a small vestige of the Jewish population.
"When the British came into Bergen Belsen, there were bodies everywhere. And parts of bodies. Strewn all over the camp. The stench, rats, lice and mud were unbelievable. We were forced to pick up those bodies and throw them into the mass graves. Sometimes the bodies fell apart in our hands. I'll never forget that. When the British came, the whole unit went berserk."
The meeting of the survivors with their liberators is a moment that lingers on the other side of time. This unique meeting surges with joy and anguish - relief at being alive mingled with immeasurable sadness and the sense of endless mourning. The realization of the irretrievable loss of family, friends, home, and the sheer waste of life's time came painfully alive.
German men and women of the town were ordered through the camp to attend the burials of the inmates of Wobbelin concentration camp, who had been starved and beaten to death. Photographed by a local liberator, of the 28th infantry Regiment, of the eighth infantry division on May 3, 1945.
In the aftermath of the distraction, the survivors, joined by 170,000 remnants returning from refuge in the Soviet Union, took part in the mass exit towards the west with the goal of reaching Palestine and other countries. As a result of the British policy forbidden Jewish immigration into Palestine, Cyprus became a holding ground for those seeking refuge in their ancient homeland. The survivors found themselves once again behind barbed wire. But the spirit of perseverance honed against unimaginable devastation - prevailed in this new struggle.
In the DP camps, survivors wearing baggy garments on their emaciated bodies, reentered civilization. It was there that the survivors began to turn despair into hope and bitterness into creativity. A new life began to take shape. New families were formed. An upsurge of creative activity with a new kind of artistic sensibility, one that holds, within every promise of the future, the shadows of the past. The majority of the survivors went on to Palestine to fight for Jewish homeland. Israel became a reality. The rest settled in new homelands, the USA, Australia, Canada.
On August 14, 1941, the United States and Great Britain jointly issued the "Atlantic Charter" describing the goal of the Allied powers for the post-war world. To the Nazis this was a clear indication that the US was abandoning neutrality and preparing to enter the war. Their European conflict was about to become a true world war.
On January 20, 1942, at the Wannsee conference held in Berlin with the participation of senior Nazi officials, means were discussed to efficiently carry-out the destruction of the Jewish people in Europe. The plan presented at Wannsee designated more than 11 million Jews for extermination, including those in Germany, the annexed and the occupied lands, neutral countries and free countries.
The plan for what was euphemistically called "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question" leaned heavily on deception. A sophisticated propaganda machine emphasized the characterizations in the Nuremberg Laws portraying Jews as subhuman. The populace was carefully conditioned to accept the notion of the Jews being “parasites” and “vermin”. The next step was to encourage the extermination of the “vermin”. Deception in language was crucial to the secrecy and acceptance of the "final solution". A mother was not shot in the back as she tried in vain to protect her child, rather it was called a "cleansing operation", or "appropriate treatment" was taken, or the women and children were being “resettled in the East.``
In the fateful years of the Nazi hold on Europe, some 6 million of Europe's 9 million Jews were slaughtered - between four and 4.5 million in the camps, and the remainder in mass executions by the Einsatzgruppen and through starvation and disease in the ghettos, trains and transit camps.
As the Allies were closing in on Germany and German-held territory, Nazi officials instituted evacuations from the camps - death marches. During these marches, Jews died of starvation, frost and shooting when they lacked the strength to continue. Non-Jewish inmates of concentration camps also became victims of death marches. However, Jews died in greater numbers because they had suffered starvation, disease and brutal treatment and in the camps.
Prisoners were marched, forced to run, poorly clothed, some without shoes, with minimal rations. Their destinations were camps in Germany. If a prisoner stopped, collapsed, slowed down or faltered, he or she was shot. Groups of prisoners were forced to follow the columns of misery with wagons picking up the dead and burying them. "We had to pick up the dead bodies and put them on the wagons. When the wagons were full, we had to bury them and start picking up bodies again." (A Survivor)
"I reached down to lift up the body to put it in the grave and the man called my name. He was from my town. I offered to help carry him. The SS man put his gun to my head and said we would both be buried. I buried him. I'll never forget his face."
Even as the war machine was grinding to a halt, its rollers kept trampling life.
Trains
In the spring of 1942, rhe systematic persecution of the Jews began. Jews were assembled in the ghettos and marched to railways stations, loaded into sealed cattle cars and shipped to extermination camps. In 1943, the transports were directed mainly to concentration camps at Maidanek and Auschwitz.
Auschwitz became the death capital of Europe - all roads seemed to lead there. Trains rolled into its macabre station from almost every major European city: Brussels, Amsterdam, Łódź, Budapest, Cracow, Warsaw, Marseilles, Paris. Auschwitz was one of six camps established for the purpose of killing Jews. Treblinka, Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, and Madanek, all in Poland were built in 1942. Unlike the others Auschwitz was also a "concentration camp" for prisoners of the Reich, and a labor camp complete with a factory built by Jewish slave laborers who were expendable. The project was financed by private industry.
"… My mother held onto my hand and my brother. My aunt was with us and my father too. They packed us into that car. The doors slammed shut. I remember the sound of the latch. And then the blackness. No light. No air. I was little and I couldn't get to that tiny window up high. For three days I couldn't catch my breath. I don't know what happened to my aunt or father. I hung onto my mother until Auschwitz. Then she was gone. My brother too. There was nothing left of my life."
"Thirty cattle cars pulled out of the station. And then the agonizing thirst of the children made them cry and the mothers were moaning. I thought I would go crazy from that. The sweat and the urine- people crushing each other with their weight. Children were dying in that car..."
“I don't know how we survived that train ride. You couldn't sit down, you couldn't move. There was a bucket for a toilet somewhere. No food. No water. And the stench was unbearable. People were crying, moaning, screaming. Children - babies! My God. How did we endure that?"
As a nationally and internationally recognized facility, we build inclusive communities by creating experiences through exhibits, programs, initiatives, and education using lessons from the Holocaust.
The Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center of FL was founded in 1981 as the Holocaust Project of Valencia Community College by Tess Wise, a local Holocaust Survivor from Poland. The Holocaust Project included a broad cross-section of community leaders and organizations that joined together to plan a two-day conference on the Holocaust at a time when Holocaust research and education was in its infancy and Holocaust Survivors were only beginning to tell their stories publicly. Tess believed that by studying the historic, social, moral and ethical lessons of the Holocaust, history would never be allowed to repeat itself. Over 600 people participated in the weekend events. In 1983 a similar conference was held on Terrorism because Tess understood that Hitler and the Nazi party were the very definition of terrorists.
In 1982 the Holocaust Project leadership changed its name and moved from Valencia’s campus to offices in the Jewish Community Center in Maitland. In 1983 it became an independent 501c3 organization with the Rev. Dr. Earl Scarbeary as its first president. Tess served as the volunteer executive director, a position she held for more than 20 years.
In 1986 we opened the doors to our current Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center of Florida, the first Holocaust museum in the Southeast, predating the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC by 7 years.
Since the beginning the Center’s leadership has been dedicated building a respectful and inclusive community where diversity is celebrated. Our mission, as stated above, has remained unchanged. Tess was a visionary who fundamentally understood that we needed to be more than a history museum and memorial to Hitler’s victims. She believed that the lessons of the Holocaust provided a lens through which we could understand contemporary social and human rights issues. We regularly draw connections to and from the Holocaust. For instance, German exclusionary laws that prohibited Jewish children from attending school and swimming in public pools give rise to the examination of Jim Crow laws that outlawed the same. The history and lessons of the Holocaust provide a solid background for us to explore the immigration and refugee crisis, the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur, the human rights crisis in Syria, and the long list of “phobias” and “isms.”
In 1994 the state legislature mandated that Holocaust education must be taught in Florida public schools. As one of only 27 members of the Florida Department of Education’s Task Force on Holocaust Education, it is our responsibility to provide educational resources to a 13-county area, including instructional materials, best practices and professional development. During the 2018-19 school year over 25,000 students from area public and private schools and home school groups visited the Holocaust Center or participated in an in-school presentation by a member of the Center’s education team.
Education, particularly character education aimed at helping local students develop empathy, social responsibility and moral leadership in our racially and culturally diverse community is a primary focus of the Center’s efforts. Perhaps our most remarkable programming to date has been the growth our highly acclaimed UpStanders: Stand Up To Bullying initiative that was launched in 2010. Since its inception, this bullying prevention program, based in Holocaust education, has impacted over 34,000 students in 89 school cohorts in 4 districts. When Mayor Dyer decided to launch his Stand Up Orlando campaign against bullying in 2014, he provided the funding to bring our UpStanders program to all 9 of Orlando’s public middle schools. This specific partnership with Mayor Dyer, OCPS and the Holocaust Center remained in place for 4 years.
Our Center is one of the oldest facilities of its kind in the nation. It is a nonprofit organization supported by tax-exempt donations and is open to the public free of charge.