Tabatha Yeatts - Wiesel, Wiesenthal, Klarsfeld. The Holocaust Survivors

The Holocaust was the widespread slaughter of more than 11 million peopleincluding 6 million Jewsby the Nazis.

Two out of every three Jews in Europe died in the Holocaust. Those who survived the concentration and death camps faced a world in which their homes, families, and way of life were completely destroyed. Author Tabatha Yeatts uses eyewitness accounts to explain what life was like for those who survived. Special attention is given to those who hunted down Nazi war criminals, as well as others who made sure the world will never forget the horrible lessons learned from the Holocaust.

...covered intelligently...

...useful for report writing...

Tabatha Yeatts specializes in writing for young peoplebooks, articles, poems, short storiesalthough she has also written for adults.

The Holocaust was the planned destruction of approximately 6 million Jews by the Nazis and their followers in Europe between 1933 and 1945. The German government, which was run by the National Socialist (Nazi) party, decided to annihilate all the Jews in Europe. The Nazis called their plan for Jewish annihilation the final solution.

Five million Gypsies (also known as Roma), East Europeans, Communists, Jehovahs Witnesses, people with illnesses or disabilities, homosexuals, and political prisoners were also murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Millions of other people were imprisoned and used for slave labor. These victims were professors, children, artists, business owners, grandparents, priestspeople from all walks of life. They were killed because the Nazis, who were headed by German fhrer (leader) Adolf Hitler, thought that law, justice, and rules of decent human behavior did not apply to everyone. People who were different from them were considered to be threatening and inferior.

Germany was part of the losing side in World War I (19141918) and was very poor economically afterward. The winning countries created the Treaty of Versailles, which forced Germany to pay war damages that amounted to billions of dollars. When the Great Depression of 1929 hit, the German people faced even more economic hardships. In this shaky condition, the German public welcomed Hitler.

Adolf Hitler did not possess the compassion, integrity, and wisdom that are the qualities of a truly great leader. What he did have was charisma, persuasiveness, and a desperate country that was vulnerable to his magnetism and looking for scapegoats. Hitler told the Germans they were superior people and that the Jews were responsible for Germanys problems. Although Germany was known for being an educated, cultured country, and a hundred thousand Jews had fought for Germany in World War I, most non-Jewish Germans did not stand by their fellow citizens.

Hitler became chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, through a democratic election. He then decided that democracy was no longer needed and expelled other political parties, imprisoned people who opposed him, held public book burnings, and ruled as a dictator. Hitler called his administration the Third Reich, meaning the third German empire, and he said it would last a thousand years. The First Reich that Hitler refers to was the Holy Roman Empire (9621806), and the Second Reich was the Bismarck Empire that began in 1871 and ended with Germanys defeat in the first World War (19141918).

Hitler thought the most important thing about people was not who they were as individuals, but what religion they practiced or what skin color they possessed. He wanted to have German Aryans rule everybody else in the world. Although the word Aryan originally referred to a person who speaks an Indo-European language, Hitler and his Nazi regime used Aryan to mean a Caucasian Gentile. They idealized people who were tall, blond, and blue-eyed and demonized people who were not, in spite of the fact that Hitler himself was short and had dark hair and eyes. Hitler believed that Aryans were responsible for all of humanitys accomplishments. He wanted to rid the world of Jews because he thought they would bring down Aryans.

On September 15, 1935, Hitler published the Nuremberg Laws, which denied Jews their rights and citizenship. When a government promotes injustice and crime against a group, the situation is ripe for genocide. Genocide is the killing of a race of people. On November 8, 1938, a Jewish teenager named Herschel Grynszpan shot a German official in Paris. Grynszpan was distraught about his Polish parents deportation. The Nazis saw this murder as the perfect excuse to persecute all the Jews in Germany. On November 9, 1938, the Nazis burned synagogues, broke into homes and stores, and beat Jews in the street. Because of the many windows smashed by rampaging Nazis, this incident was called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). Kristallnacht marked what many people consider to be the beginning of the Holocaust.

Germany also took over Austria in March 1938. Anti-Semitism, or prejudice against Jews, was strong in Austria, so Hitlers ideas were not met with much resistance there. In the years to come, more than 50 percent of the Nazi officers who worked in the death camps were Austrian. Beginning in 1939 extending through 1940, Germany invaded Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary became allied with the Nazis in 1940. Jews in these countries experienced similar dangers from Nazis that Jews in Germany were facing. For Jews who wanted to escape, there were fewer and fewer places to go.

World War II began on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, causing Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany. That same year Hitler ordered that people who were mentally or physically disabled be murdered. The Nazis created six death camps in Poland in 1940 and began deporting Polish Jews to them. These camps were Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno, Majdanek, and Belzec. In the occupied countries the Nazis forced Jews into ghettos, which were crowded, enclosed slums where hunger and disease ran rampant. From there, people were taken to concentration camps, where they were forced to do labor in horrible conditions or immediately killed. In the death camps Jews, along with Gypsies and others, were murdered in huge numbers in gas chambers.

This map shows Europe in August 1940. By this time, the Germans had occupied Poland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

When people reached the concentration camps, they would quickly be divided into groups of those who would die and those who would do forced labor, although the new arrivals were not told why they were being sent in different directions. Children, pregnant women, the elderly, and the sick were sent to the side that would be killed. Mothers often accompanied their children, although sometimes they were forced to separate. Family members might suspect but not be sure what had happened to their children, sisters, brothers, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. Some people were chosen for medical experimentation, and they were kept alive so doctors such as Auschwitzs Dr. Josef Mengele could conduct painful, disfiguring, even deadly scientific experiments.