JEWISH HOLOCAUST

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THIS IS A SITE ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST DURING WORLD WAR 2, SOME THINGS YOU MAY FIND DISTURBING BUT WE ALL NEED TO KNOW WHAT WENT ON IN GERMANY AND POLAND

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DIRECTIVE NO 1 FOR THE CONDUCT OF WAR

 

1)                Since the situation on Germanys Eastern frontier has become intolerable and all political possibilities of peaceful settlement have been eshausted, I have decided upon a solution by force.

2)                The attack on Poland will be undertaken in accordance with the preparations made for Case White with such variations as may be necessitated by the build-up of the Army which is now virtually complete.

The allocation of tanks and the purpose of the operation remain unchanged.

Date of attack 1st September 1939.

This time also applies to operations at Gdynia, in the Bay of Danzig and at the Dirschau bridge.

3)                In the west it is important to leave the responsibility for opening hostilities

Unmistakably to England and France. Minor violations of the frontier will be dealt with, for the time being, purely as local incidents.

The assurances of neutrality given by us to Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland are to be meticulously observed.

The Western frontier of Germany will not be crossed by land at any point without my explicit orders.

This applies also to all acts of warfare at sea or to acts which might be regarded as such.

The defensive activity of the Air Force will be restricted for the time being to the firm repulse of enemy air attacks on the frontiers of the Reich. In taking action against individual aircraft or small formations, care will be taken to respect the frontiers of neutral countries as far as possible. Only if considerable forces of French or British bombers are employed against German territory across neutral areas will the Air Force be permitted to go into defensive action over neutral soil.

It is particularly important that any infringement of the neutrality of other states by our Western enemies be immediately reported to the High Command of the Armed Forces.

4)                Should England and France open hostilities against Germany, it will be the Duty of the Armed Forces operating in the West, while conserving their strength as much as possible, to maintain conditions for the successful conclusion of operations against Poland. Within these limits enemy forces and war potential will be damaged as much as possible. The right to order offensive operations is reserved absolutely to me.

The Army will occupy the West Wall and will take steps to secure it from being outflanked in the north, through the violation by the Western powers of Belgium or Dutch territory. Should French forces invade Luxemberg the bridges on the frontier may be blown up.

The Navy will operate against merchant shipping, with England as the focal point. In order to increase the effect, the declaration of danger zones may be expected. The Naval High Command will report on the areas which it is desirable to classify as danger zones and on their extent. The text of a public declaration in this matter is to be drawn up in collaboration with the Foreign Office and to be submitted to me for approval through the High Command of the Armed Forces.

The Baltic Sea is to be secured against enemy intrusion. Commander-in-Chief Navy will decide whether the entrances to the Baltic should be mined for this purpose.

The Air Force is, first of all, to prevent action by the French and English Air Forces against the German Army and German territory.

In operation against England the task of the Air Force is to take measures to dislocate English imports, the armaments industry and the transport of troops to France. Any favourable opportunity of an effective attack on concentrated units of the English Navy, particularly on battleships or aircraft carriers, will be exploited.

The decision regarding attacks on London reserved to me.

Attacks on the English homeland are to be prepared, bearing in mind that inconclusive results with insufficient forces are to be avoided in all circumstances.

                                                    Signed

                                                            Adolf Hitler

          

 ENDLOSUNG, DIE (THE FINAL SOLUTION)

 

        The cover name of Hitlers plan to destroy all the Jews in Europe. Although estimates vary, about 6 million Jews were annihilated during WW11 by officials of the Nazi regime.

        In Mein Keimpf Hitler called the Jews destroyers of civilization and urged a drastic solution of the long conflict between German Nordics and Jews. When he won political power in 1933, he immediately began an active program to purge the Third Reich of Jewish influence. As the process of Gleichsltung or co-ordination proceeded, Jews were driven from public life and were reduced to the status of second class citizens, the process moved from exclusion to persecution, then to expulsion and ultimately annihilation. Every Nazi aggression in Europe diminished the possibility of Jewish escape or resistance.

        The year 1941 marked a turning point in the anti-Jewish campaign. The invasion of the Soviet Union on 22nd June unleashed Hitlers sense of destruction. Enmeshed in total war, he saw Jews in the way of victory. Several million Jews were incarcerated in Polish ghettos. Emigration was costly. A project initiated in 1940 to expel the Jews to Africa had failed. Hitler decided on a drastic move. At this time the idea of a final solution or what he called a territorial solution began to form in his mind. The plan called for the complete elimination of European Jewry. Hitlers idea would be implemented at long last.

        At the Wannsee Conference held in January 1942, the course of action was completed. In the course of the execution of the Final Solution, Europe would be stripped of Jews.

        Responsibility for the project was placed in the hands of Himmler and his assistants in the Gestapo. Under their guidance the nazi apparatus went into action. The extermination camps of Poland began to operate at full blast. Jews inside Germany, already under legal and economic restrictions were rounded up and sent to labour camps regarded as way stations to death camps. The action was disguised as resettlement and deception was used to lead doomed Jews to the gas chambers. Most were killed, although some managed to save their lives despite incredible bad conditions in Nazi founded ghettos.

        The campaign spread from the ghettos of Poland to virtually every nation in Nazi- controlled Europe, each country reacted in its own way, depending upon its special history, traditions and attitudes towards Jews and upon the strength of the Nazi pressure. Most of the Jewish citizens of Poland, the Netherlands, Greece and Czechoslavakia were killed in the gas chambers. About half the Jews in Romania and Hungary perished. Most Jews managed to survive in Denmark and Bulgaria, where the local population offered them protection and escape possibilities.

        The campaign of destruction were unprecedented. There had been violence against Jews throughout history but never in comparison with the ENDLDSUNG in dimensions and total configuration. The uniqueness of the phenomenon required the coinage of a new word, genocide, to describe it.

ZYKLON-B

        A poison gas used in the chambers of the extermination camps. Inmates or new arrivals in the camps were brought to what they believed to be shower baths. Amethyst-blue crystals of hydrogen cyanide were dropped through the vents of the chambers to form hydro cyanic or prussic acid fumes. Then the vents were sealed, the special process of Zyklon-B was originally patented by I.G. Farben as a strong disinfectant. The process was similar to that first used in 1782 from the substance known as Prussian blue. The material was formed by decomposing chemicals in almonds and other vegetable substances. Rights to manufacture the gas crystals were acquired by Trch and Stabenow of hamburg and Desesch of Frankfurt am Main which supplied tons of Zyklon-B for the camps,.

 

                                THE FINAL SOLUTION

        At first plans to send all Jews to Madagascar was considered. But it was dropped because there was too many of them, by the time they had invaded everywhere, Germany estimated that 11 million Jews would need to be moved. The camps, ghettos and the Special Action groups were not the answer. Something had to be arranged.

        In Auschwitz in 1941, 250 hospital patients and 600 Russian prisoners were forced into a sealed room and a poison gas called Zyklon-B was used. It was a success in killing so many in one go. The Death Centre at Auschwitz began and was completed in 1942.

        At Chelmno in 1941, the mobile vans were used on a daily basis. The plans for the Final Solution of the Jewish question had begun. Reinhard Heydrick was mainly responsible for this. He had been thrown out of the Navy and so joined the SS. He worked his way up to become the man in charge of security in the Third Reich. He was tall, slim, blond with deep set eyes. He deserved his nickname of the Blond Beast His Gestapo and security were feared everywhere, even by Germans, Himmler gave him complete authority to carry out Hitlers Final Solution. Hitler himself called Heydrick The Man with the Iron Heart

        His car was bombed in Prague in May 1942 and he died shortly after. In retaliation, a small town called Lidice was chosen and men and boys shot, women and children sent to camps. Its name was erased from the German map. In honor of Heydrick, the extermination of the Jews in Poland was given the name Operation Reinhard

OTHER VICTIMS

        Any group they found inferior to them were treated with the greatest brutality. Only Jews were to be wiped off the face of the earth but 4 other groups were also marked for Special treatment The sick, gypsies, Polish leading classes and Russian prisoners.

 

Hitler called for the start of operation T4 on September 1st 1939, incurably sick were to be killed calling them life unworthy of life It was carried out as follows:-

The senile.

The mentally retarded

All Jews in mental hospitals

Anyone in hospital or mental asylums for 5 years.

Deformed newborn babies.

Epileptics.

Invalids unable to work.

Incurable diseases that stopped work.

        For the purity of Aryan blood these had to die. Some were starved others given lethal injections. But also the mobile gas vans were used. After the patient had died a letter was sent to their families saying that they had died of heart failure. The bodies were cremated. But because of protest from people and eventually from the church, Hitler ordered it stopped in 1941. 90,000 had been killed and evidence states that it would have begun again after Germany had won the war.

GYPSIES

        These were considered a menace and they were forced with same restrictions as the Jews. They were also settled in ghettos like the Jews. Thousands were sent to the gas chambers. Between 300,000 and 500,000 were killed by the nazis.

POLISH LEADING CLASSES

        Nazis believed that some people were beneath the true human level. They called them untermenschen-sub human. They would be allowed to live but only as slave labour. All Slavic people were included:- poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Ukrainians, and Russians,

        Poland was the biggest land mass and they thought that after Germany had won the war, Russia and other countries would follow in what they controlled. All the creative and educated were rounded up, sent to the concentration camps and either died of camp conditions or were shot. Over 3 million non-Jewish people were killed and over 1 million were educated.

RUSSIAN PRISONERS OF WAR

        These were selected for two reasons 1) They were sub-human and 2) They came from a communist country and this was a synonym for Judaism to the Nazis, In May 1944, the German army estimated that it had captured 5-16 million Russian prisoners. Only 1,871,000 were still alive, 473,000 were killed and 67,000 escaped. That yields about 3 million as dead. Most were kept in large cages, open pens, surrounded by fences and barbed wire, they were also used as guinea pigs for medical experiments.

                                DEPORTATIONS

ROUNDUPS

        On August 11th, 1942, the SS, SD and Mounted Police fell like a pack of savages on the Jewish quarter. At the time about 10,000 people lived in this Zamosc area. In a winkling of an eye, 3000 men, women and children were picked up and deported to an unknown destination. They were all sorts of lies and tricks to mislead people and get them to go peacefully. The nazis called it resettlement to the east. Conditions would be better, more food, improved housing and doctors. The lies and deception took an endless variations. But it did not all go smoothly, some Jews did not believe the lies and hid from the nazis. The only way round this was to mount surprise attacks. One Zamosc resident recalled The spectacle the ghetto presented after the attack drove the survivors mad, bodies everywhere, in the streets, in the courtyards, inside the houses, babies thrown from third and fourth floors lay crushed on the sidewalks. The Jews themselves had to bury the dead.

THE TRAINS

        Himmler considered the trains carrying the deportees more important than other trains. This involved the co-ordination of hundreds of thousands of miles of railway track, thousands of railway cars, tight schedules and manpower. Himmler wanted to be informed of every movement, how many Jews have been removed and how many are left at that point. They travelled in freight cars, officially they held 8 horses or 40 soldiers, 120 to 130 Jews were packed into each one. Doors were shut and sealed, there was no room to sit down or lie down. There was no food, no water and no heat if it was cold. Many froze to death before they arrived at the camps. In summer heat and suffocating ended lives, trains came from all over Europe, one after another.

                                        THE CAMPS

ARRIVAL

        When the doors were open, SS men with whips and wild Alsatians swarmed. Families were torn apart, they formed two columns, men on one side, women and children on the other. One by one filed past two doctors. Those who were fit were sent to the camp, the others were sent to the extermination plants. Dr Mengele didnt flicker an eyelash but just pointed his finger this way and that. Life or death determined by the point of a finger. But how lucky were the ones who lived. Their first sight of Auschwitz were corpses strewn all over the road, bodies were hanging from barbed wire fences. Shots sounded, blazing flames shot into the sky, starving skeletons fell down in front of them.

THE IMPOSSIBLE

        It is basically impossible to write about the camps, only one who has been and survived can tell. Hunger, cold, fear, pain are only words used by freemen in a normal world. In the camps it had a new meaning. To toil in a wind all day, temperatures below freezing, only wearing a shirt, underpants, cloth trousers, the hunger being a day, an hour closer to death.

        Not only did they kill by gas, working them to death, torture and starvation but in the filth they were surrounded by sickness and disease. Surviving another day was only by chance, an accident. They may be one of the days quota to be shot or beaten to death for no reason, used as target practise or collapse that meant instant death. What happened in the camps is beyond the human imagination, to describe.

        But they were real, they did exist. Millions died in them, others barely survived.

PURPOSES

        The first concentration camps just held prisoners from all races. Each inmate was given a number and a color-coded triangle was worn. Political prisoners wore red, socials-black, homosexuals-pink, Jehovahs witnesses-purple, habitual-green, Jews-yellow.

        As the camps overflowed, new ones had to be built. Many of the main camps had smaller ones attached to them, some even worse than the larger camps. Dachau had 108, Buchenwald had 133, by 1942 there were 16 main camps and hundreds of smaller ones.

DEATH CAMPS

        People werent just gassed, there were mass shootings, sadism and brutality alone that took lives. There were 400 deaths a day in Auschwitz one December and January.

        The Final Solution drawn up in 42 but it had started way back in December 41. With the advice of Christian Wirth and Victor Brack, six camps became killing centres. All used gas, either piped in by vans or Zyklon_B. They went into operation, all in Poland, in this order:-

CHELMNO          DEC 1941

AUSCHWITZ               FEB 1942

BELZAC                     MAR 1942

SOBIBOR                   APRIL 1942

TREBLINKA                  JULY 1942

MAIDENAK         SEPT 1942

 

ARRIVAL TO DISPOSAL

        Arrival platforms were set up so no-one knew what was going to happen. They were hidden by trees and people were given the impression that they were at a transit camp. In the gas chambers it resembled shower units with dummy shower heads, the sequence of events were short, simple and quick. The trains were emptied, baggage put in piles and the selection made. Sometimes no selections were made and all were gassed. The victims were moved on, told to undress. Willingly or not, they were put in the chambers, sealed in and gassed.

        The Jews that did live, had to take the bodies from the rooms, remove any jewellery or gold teeth, cut off womens hair, then with their bare hands remove them to the pits. At first they were buried, later they were burnt. In Auschwitz and Buchenwald, large ovens were designed to cremate them. Then these Jews were killed and others took their place.

TRUCKS TO DECEIVE

        Signs were put up in different languages. At Chelmno, they read To the Physician and To the Washroom At Belzac they said Washing and Inhalation Equipment Numbered hooks were fixed to the wall in Auschwitz.

        At Treblinka, there were the most complex devises of deception. The arrival point looked like a train station complete with dock, waiting room, ticket counter. The cripples, old, invalid were sent to a building with a Red Cross flag flying and a sign Infirmary They entered a waiting room with chairs, went through another door to the outside, were shot in the neck and thrown in a ditch.

        A star of David was painted on the first wall housing the gas chambers. The heavy curtain bore the Hebrew inscription This is the Gate through which the righteous shall enter They even gave the victims towels and soap. The guards would call them Sir or madam and tell them it was a health measure. When they had finished there would be a bowl of soup and a drink for them all. Deceived they all walked calmly to their deaths.

        Jew of Poland and east Europe were handled differently. They  were violently rushed from trains, beaten, whipped, shouted at and a lot knew and suspected death. But the result was the same. Death and it took about 45 minutes to work.

THE NUMBERS.

        The exact numbers killed at each camp will never be known. The SS did not record the individuals who went straight from the train to the gas chambers. The approximate number killed at each camp is given in the following:-

        CAMP                                VICTIMS                    SURVIVORS

 

CHELMNO                          360,000                                          3

BELZAC                             600,000                                           2

SOBIBOR                           250,00                                             64

TREBLINKA                       

800,000                          UNDER 40

MAIDENEK                

500,000                          UNDER 600

AUSCHWITZ                     

 2,000,000                        SEVERAL

                                      THOUSAND

(IT WAS AN ORDINARY CAMP AS WELL)

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