Sean Sheehan - Auschwitz

An eyewitness describes how French Jewish children were forced onto trains. About 4,000 of these children died at Auschwitz:

Most of them couldnt even carry their little suitcases And the morning of the deportation when we tried to take them downstairs they screamed and kicked The gendarmes came upstairs and with a lot of difficulty they made them. One or two of the gendarmes seemed a little bit sad to see this horrible show.

E-book published in 2012 by Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc., in association with Arcturus Publishing Limited, 26/27 Bickels Yard, 151-153 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3HA. Britannica, Encyclopdia Britannica, and the Thistle logo are registered trademarks of Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc.

ISBN 978-1-61535-627-0 (e-book)

This edition first published in 2010 by Arcturus Publishing
Distributed by Black Rabbit Books
P.O. Box 3263
Mankato
Minnesota MN 56002

Copyright 2010 Arcturus Publishing Limited

The right of Sean Sheehan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.

Series concept: Alex Woolf
Editors: Sean Connolly and Alex Woolf
Designer: Phipps Design
Picture research: Alex Woolf

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sheehan, Sean, 1951
Auschwitz / by Sean Sheehan.
p. cm. -- (A place in history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Auschwitz (Concentration camp)--Juvenile literature. 2.
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Juvenile literature. 3. Jews-
Persecutions--Europe--Juvenile literature. I. Title.
D805.5.A96S54 2011
940.53'1853858--dc22

2010014147

Picture credits:
Arcturus: 16 (LMS).
Corbis: cover background (Bettmann), 67 (Sygma), 11 (Bettmann), 14 (Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters), 15 (Bettmann), 17 (Wiener Library/epa), 19 (dpa), 20 (Bettmann), 22 (Frank Leonhardt/epa), 23 (Michael St Maur Sheil), 25 (Carmen Redondo), 26 (Michael St Maur Sheil), 28 (David Sutherland), 30 (Bettmann), 35 (dpa), 36 (Benjamin Lowy), 37 (dpa), 40 (Auschwitz Museum/Reuters), 41 (Auschwitz Museum/Reuters), 43 (Michael St Maur Sheil).
Getty Images: cover foreground (Galerie Bilderwelt/Hulton Archive),
8 (New York Times Co/Hulton Archive), 9 (Hulton Archive), 12 (Galerie Bilderwelt/Hulton Archive), 13 (Hulton Archive), 18 (Galerie Bilderwelt/Hulton Archive), 21 (Galerie Bilderwelt/Hulton Archive), 24 (Imagno/Hulton Archive), 27 (Galerie Bilderwelt/Hulton Archive), 29 (Julian Herbert), 31 (Roger Viollet), 32 (Hulton Archive), 33 (Galerie Bilderwelt/Hulton Archive), 38 (Galerie Bilderwelt/Hulton Archive), 39 (Janek Skarzynski/AFP).

Cover pictures:
Foreground: Jewish children, survivors of Auschwitz.
Background: The entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

Every attempt has been made to clear copyright. Should there be any inadvertent omission, please apply to the copyright holder for rectification.

SL001438US Supplier 03 Date 0510

I am completely normal. Even while I was carrying out the task of extermination I led a normal family life From our entire training the thought of refusing an order just didnt enter ones head, regardless of what kind of an order it was I guess you cannot understand our world. I naturally had to obey orders.

Rudolf Hoess, camp commandant at Auschwitz

O n March 27, 1942, a train departed from Drancy, just north of Paris, for a place called Auschwitz in Poland. It was not an ordinary train and nor were its passengers. The train was the first to carry people from France to a Nazi death camp. In all, some 65,000 people, mainly French Jews, would be taken on trains to Auschwitz; most of them would be gassed to death there.

The first people to depart from Drancy were Jewish refugees who had fled from eastern Europe, hoping to find safety in France. They were fleeing from a Nazi Germany that regarded Jews as not worthy of life. Germany had conquered France in 1940 and a special French force had been established to round up all Jews in the country. They were then held at a detention camp at Drancy until transport to Auschwitz could be arranged.

The first train continued on to Compigne, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of Paris, where a further 558 French Jewish men were marched onto the train. Arriving at Auschwitz, the men were driven into barracks in the newly built death camp. Unlike their wives and children, who over the coming months would be gassed within hours of reaching Auschwitz, the men were worked to death as slave labor. All but a few were dead within five months.

Later, trains arrived pulling cattle cars packed with Jewish men, women, and children, including the sick, the elderly, and babies. They were forced together, often with no food, water, or toilet facilities, and with barely enough air for the two-day journey that ended at Auschwitz.

Nearly 13,000 Jews, including more than 4,000 children, were rounded up in and around Paris over two days in July 1942, and sent to Auschwitz. Some of the children are pictured here.

M ore than a million people were killed at the Auschwitz death camp. Auschwitz was the largest of a network of death camps situated in Nazi-occupied Poland between 1942 and 1945. Altogether it is estimated that six million Jews were murdered in these camps and elsewherearound two-thirds of all the Jews in Europe. This systematic attempt to exterminate an entire people is known as the Holocaust.

The road to Auschwitz and the Holocaust began a quarter century earlier in Germany in 1918. After World War I (191418), Germanys economy was very weak and many Germans felt humiliated by their countrys defeat. Political parties offered different solutions. Right-wing groups, growing in popularity, blamed Jews for Germanys troubles, offering people a scapegoat. Anti-Semitism, a prejudice against Jews, was common across Europe at that time. In 1919 a young anti-Semite named Adolf Hitler joined a small right-wing group, the German Workers Party. By 1921 he was its leader and the group had become the Nazi Party.

Nazi troops hold anti-Semitic placards in front of a locked storefront during a boycott of German Jewish businesses in Berlin, Germany. One of the signs reads: Germans Defend Yourselves! Dont buy from the Jews!

By 1933, in a parliament where no single party had a clear majority to rule the country, Hitler had built up enough support to be offered the job of Chancellor. Hitler used his position to pass a law that gave him the powers of a dictator. The Nazi Party was now in control of Germany and could pass whatever laws it wished.

In 1933 all Jewish civil servants lost their jobs and there were public burnings of books written by Jews. The following year saw Jewish actors and musicians banned from performing and Jewish law students were barred from taking their exams. More anti-Semitic laws were passed and in 1935 Jews lost their German citizenship.