Overall, nearly 11 million people died in the holocaust. 6 million Jews alone were killed and 5 million others, including the old, the disabled, the Polish, and Gyspies were also murdered.
The Holocaust
The Holocaust is know as Hitler and the Nazi's "final solution". Mass murder experiments had been practiced in the concentration camp in Auschwitz since June of 1941. More camps were established in late 1941 and people who were considered to be the least useful, like the sick, the old, and the very young, were transported to these killing centers. From 1942-1945, Jews and other groups were deported to concentration camps in Poland, Germany, and countries allied with Germany. These mass killings were trying to be concealed, but eventually people started to notice, and the action of the Nazis were even reported to the Allied officials. At Auschwitz alone, almost 2 million people were killed. Even though the Holocaust is long over, the legacy still remains with everyone to this day.
"We lay in a world of death and phantoms. The last trace of civilization had vanished around and inside us. The work of bestial degradation, begun by the victorious Germans, had been carried to conclusion by the Germans in defeat"
- Italian-Jewish Author Primo Levi from his book Survival in Auschwitz |
“Who has inflicted this upon us? Who has made us Jews different from all other people? Who has allowed us to suffer so terribly up till now? It is God that has made us as we are, but it will be God, too, who will raise us up again. If we bear all this suffering and if there are still Jews left, when it is over, then Jews, instead of being doomed, will be held up as an example. Who knows, it might even be our religion from which the world and all peoples learn good, and for that reason and that reason alone do we have to suffer now. We can never become just Netherlanders, or just English, or representatives of any country for that matter; we will always remain Jews, but we want to, too.”
- Anne Frank |
"It also gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware the people around us are of what is really happening to them."
- Adolf Hitler |