The Holocaust – The genocide that was aimed at the Jewish Community residing in Europe. An event that annihilated more than six million Jews in less than twenty-four months. The catastrophic happening was carried out under the Nazi Regiment during World War 2, during which Adolf Hitler had succumbed to power. This horrific act of antisemitism is beyond anyone’s wildest of nightmares and therefore this article will only cover some bits and pieces of one of the greatest tragedies that occurred in the history of mankind.
The Nazi Regiment
The Nazi Regiment is where antisemitism exponentially grew that eventually lead to the Holocaust. Adolf Hitler is known to be one of the most powerful and cruel dictators of all time, was an Austrian born German Patriot who is known to have ruled Germany with an iron fist during World War 2. Although the origins of his despise towards the Jewish Community is left unknown, many theories and stories suggest that he along with many other Germans accused the Jews of having betrayed and backstabbed Germany during World War 1. Some stories also suggest that many also blame them for the deterioration in the Economic and Social Status of Germany right after World War 1. Life became more than insufferable for the Jewish Community as Hitler rose to power.
Concentration Camps
There were six major camps that were stationed in and around Poland while a few smaller camps were in the northern part of Germany. Auschwitz was the biggest and the most dreadful of them all as it was the epitome of barbaric mass murders. More than one million lives were lost due to starvation, medical treatments, gas chambers and self-electrification.
- Starvation- Prisoners were served cold soup and bread every day and yet had to be lucky to get some food. Many starved to death as their pile of work was indirectly proportional to the nutrition that they received.
- Barracks- As many as 1200 cold, starving and weak prisoners were held in each barrack that was originally designed to hold a maximum of 700 people. Many died of exhaustion while others died from claustrophobia.
- Medical Treatments- A couple of hundred people were used as guinea pigs as they were injected with substances that are yet unknown. They were time and again, week after week, day after day, injected with various types of liquids that eventually deteriorated their bodies. Extreme fever and a state of paralysis were some of the common side effects of those painful drugs.
- Gas Chambers- The most painful and barbarous deaths occurred in Gas Chambers. An average of six thousand innocent pupils were pushed into the Gas Chambers where they were filled with a gas known as Zyklon B that ruptured the respiratory system forcing them to scramble for air. They were jam-packed into those chambers to the very limb leaving no room for any movement, leaving them claustrophobic while being prey to one of the deadliest gases. Many Auschwitz survivors claim to have heard yelling and screaming for not more than six minutes after which there was dead silence. Some also claimed to have heard the Nazis say “remember where you have hung your clothes” to the prisoners right before they were assassinated. The dead bodies were then taken out of the Gas Chambers and were piled on top of one another and were then cremated all at once. There were many times where the crematories were not able to bear the load of the number of bodies being sent in and therefore many of the corpses were set on fire right outside the Gas Chambers. It was axiomatically one of the most horrific times in the history of mankind.
- Self-Electrification-This method was one of the easier methods that many chose in order to die a less painful death. Auschwitz had electrical fencing that was six feet in height that was loaded with five thousand volts of current. Many of the captivated committed suicide by simply holding on to those wires for less than sixty seconds.
The Angel of Death
Auschwitz, being the largest of all the six concentration camps which played host to a heinous criminal – Dr. Josef Mengele, or more commonly known as the Angel of Death. Dr. Mengele had been stationed in the extermination barracks from 1943-1945. He was responsible for the ‘Selection Process’ and Human Experimentation.
- Selection Process- This process was one last glimpse of hope that was given to the people once they had deboarded the train. Dr. Mengele was in charge of handpicking each and every single individual and having them sent straight to the chambers to die or to the barracks to be enslaved. Those who were selected to live a day longer had their hair shaved and their clothes changed into blue and white striped pyjamas.
- Human Experimentation- Mengele and his team were in search of mainly twins and siblings on which they used to carry out numerous tests. Their medical charts were drawn up to which each twin or sibling was compared to the other on physicalities such as their height, weight, and their reactions to the drugs. Their charts were studied in great depth and were time and again to juxtapose with other sets of data gathered from different siblings. Many young adults fell severely ill and were supposedly given only a few days to live until their digestive, respiratory or nervous systems failed.
The Death March
The Saal-Schutz guards, more commonly known as the SS guards, were the soldiers stationed in the camps of death. The year 1945 marked the fall of Nazi Germany and as the Soviet Union army approached Auschwitz, the SS guards started to evacuate the camp and compelled the prisoners to march to various other deaths camps stationed across Poland and North Germany. The long journey started on January 17, 1945, where prisoners were forced into long columns and directed towards the west which was still under the control of Germany. Only those in good health were forced to participate and those who fell were shot and left behind. These death marches occurred in extreme winters that killed up to 15,000 prisoners. Those left behind were forced into cargo containers and were shipped further into the Reich, where they were relocated to various camps still under German control.
Liberation
The year 1945 gave a glimpse of hope to the Jewish Community of being recognised and treated as humans again. The Soviet Union, the United States of America and the United Kingdom liberated camps such as Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen respectively. However, liberating Auschwitz was not in the agenda of the Soviet Union soldiers as they had no idea that it existed. Soviet soldier Ivan Martynushkin claimed that they knew nothing and had discovered the death camp while progressing towards Oświęcim, a town in Poland. The soldier recalled seeing the inmates behind barbed wires and had then marched into the land of ashes. They saw tons of belongings dumped in one warehouse while right next to it were their owners emancipated and weak to even lift a limb. Thousands were left behind by the SS guards out of which only 7,500 inmates managed to breathe the air of liberation.
The Survivors
There are many survivors who have, who, like any other hero, have lived to tell the tale. Eva Moses Kor was one of the many Auschwitz survivors who told her story of the horrors she faced. She was born in 1934, in Transylvania, Romania and was only nine years of age when she was shoved into a train compartment with her twin sister, father, and mother. The sisters lost sight of their father the minute they got off the train and their mother was dragged away from them by Nazi soldiers. Dr. Mengele was informed about the twins, and they had soon been escorted to a room where they were dressed as the rest. Eva and her sister Mariam were subjects to various tests and experiments where they were injected with deadly substances thrice a week and on the rest of the days, had their blood taken out for further scientific examinations. Eva claimed to have her arms tied tight around a chair while these needles were placed in her body and claimed to have been given only two weeks to live by Dr. Mengele. Eva and Mariam survived to see the liberation by the Soviet Union in 1945, but many years later, Mariam got diagnosed with kidney failure and later pancreatic cancer that was caused by the drugs injected in her. She passed away in 1991 while Eva lived longer to tell the tale until she passed away in 2019.
Rudolf Höss: The Auschwitz Mastermind
The wickedly evil and vile SS soldier Rudolf Höss who served as a commandant for more than four years was put to trial by Poland’s Supreme National Tribunal. Before his execution, Höss expressed great regret for his heinous crimes. He was hanged in 1947, near the Gestapo quarters at Auschwitz, which was Poland’s last public execution.
Anne Frank
Numerous books and films have been made about the Holocaust from having taken inspiration from books such as ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ and ‘Where is Anne Frank’. She was a young girl, born in Frankfurt, Germany, who was a victim of the genocide. While she and her family of seven hid in a “Secret Annex” in Amsterdam, Anne Frank maintained a diary that encompassed stories from her daily life. Her family was then dragged to the Bergen-Belsen extermination camp where all the members of her family were separated and executed except for her father Otto Frank, who was liberated in Auschwitz, by the Soviet Union in 1945. Upon revisiting the “Secret Annex”, he found Anne Frank’s Diary and decided to publish it as ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’.
Despite the very many attempts by 8,400 Saal-Schutz guards and the Nazi soldiers, to wipe out the existence of the Jewish Community in Europe, fifteen percent of them survived and according to survivor Szmul Icek, have taught their grandchildren in a way they would understand what happened. There are only 15.7 million Jews left in the world while 45.3% reside in the ‘Promised Land’ known as Israel.