EXTRACTS FROM "SMOKE AND ASHES"

EXCERTS FROM SMOKE AND ASHES

It is almost impossible to imagine today, but Hitler had the ability to make people laugh, cry, get angry the man with the penetrating blue eyes and small moustache could get anyone to do anything he wanted. He had an amazing effect.

Born on 20^th April, he was on the cusp of Aries and Taurus, a magnetic man with a showbiz air about him, entertaining, masterful and totally dangerous. He who had once looked into Hitlers eyes, he ho has once heard him, will never get away from him again. Within a year of Hitler becoming chancellor, he had absolute power and the Nazi party ran the country.

It is likely that Hitler wanted the Jews exterminated from the start but it had to be done secretly and gradually. The one thing that could stop it was the law and that had to be changed. Within 2 months, the emergency degree had passed. For Protection of the People and the State, All Civil Rights Free Speech Freedom of the Press The Right to Assemble The Privacy of mails to be suspended. Hitler never wained about the laws and the rights of the people again.

Anyone who opposed them were locked up in the first concentration camp, dachau. No charges, no evidence, no warrant were needed. Some were even killed resisting arrest.

Throughout Germany, Jews were attacked, beaten and killed. Shops were broken into. The world boycotted German goods. It didnt do much, except to get the Germans angry. On April 7^th 1933, the first anti-jewish law was passed. It was called the Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service referred to as the Ayran law. A non-aryan was a jew or anyone with Jewish parents or grandparents.

On May 1^st, Berlin students burned 70,000 tons of books because they were by Jews or undesirables. In September 1935, more laws were passed:-

1) was that marriages between Jews and Germans or related blood were forbidden. Marriages performed despite this law are invalid, even if performed abroad to avoid laws.

2) was sexual relationships between Jews and Germans are forbidden.

3) Jews may not employ in their households female citizens of Germans under 45.

4) Jews are not permitted to display the Germain flag or national colors.

5) A Jew cannot be a citizen of the Reich. 6) Signs saying Jews not wanted here or Jews are our misfortune appeared outside cities and towns. They were forced out of homes, towns etc that they had lived in for generations.

There was 17,000 Jews expelled from Germany and dumped in a small town across the Polish border. Because Poland didnt want them at first, they were forced to live in filthy manure covered stables. This was used as an excuse to unleash a giant pogrom against Jews and Jews property. It was to be called Crystal Night or Night of the Broken Glass This was on the 9^th or 10^th November 1938.

Another 1000 Jews were killed throughout the country, over 30,000 Jewish males went to concentration camps almost the entire male Jewish population between 18 and 65. At least 1,118 synagogues were burned or damaged, 815 shops, 29 department stores and 171 houses but the figure was higher than that. The Nazis were not finished, law after law was issued against the Jews. All valuables were to be handed over to the Reich. They were not allowed to have radios, pets, use telephones, go to the barbers, buy rationed food, go to school, use swimming pools. In September 1941, all children had to wear the Jewish Star, the first time since the middle ages, a badge appeared as the mark of shame.

They couldnt leave their homes or their country, they were trapped. Jews had been in Poland since 1300, they made up a good deal of the population. There were teachers, merchants, shoemakers, musicians, business men, mothers, fathers, children, like anyone else. Their culture was rich, complex and vitrant. The Nazis brought a stop to all that forever. There was probably three reasons why the Germans set up the ghettos, began the mass murders and later established the death camps.

1) Obviously because all the European Jews were there nearly 5 million.

2) The land was vast. Apart from cities, most of them lived in the forest areas, cut off from each other and allowed the Germans the element of surprise. They could also hide what they were doing from the outside world.

3) Anti-semitism was all over Europe and parts were put under German control General Government. Poland got it worse.

There was a special viciousness for the Jews of Poland. Looting, vandalisms, sadistic cruelty, torture and murder began immediately. Jews were taken off the streets, taken to dig ditches and sometimes never seen again. Soldiers cut off the Jews beards with bayonets or pulled them out by the roots. Medical examinations were performed on women. They used Jews as target practise, 5,000 Jews were killed in the first 2 months of the takeover of Poland.

Heydrich ordered all Jews to be uprooted and put into ghettos. Many died on route from hunger, exhaustion or murder. The first one set up in Lodz, Poland. The ghettos were then to be cleared of Jews. Uebelhoer said Our final objective must be to burn out this plague boil completely

Ghettos were in the worst areas of the towns. The Lodz ghetto was little over 1.5 miles sq. approx 150,000 Jews lived there, 7.8 to a room. In Vilna ghetto, 25,000 people lived in 72 buildings on 5 streets. Each person had about 7ft to call

their own the size of a grave. The Warsaw ghetto, approx 1.6 sq miles, held between 400,000 and 600,000 Jews, more than the entire population of Vermont, 8-10 people in a room, which went up to 14 when the ghetto area was reduced.

Most ghettos were surrounded by a wall or a fence or as in Cracow, gravestones. They had to work a 10-12 hour day, anything that came along. Starvation was deliberate by the Nazis and food changed from day to day. At best 1000 calories, at worse 350 a day. An adult sitting at a desk needs 2,000, a 13 year old needs 3000, a baby 1200. Bodies lose weight quickly, it melts away. Death is near and painful. Ration for one week could be as follows:-

Bread 14 oz, Meat 4.5oz, Sugar 1.75 oz, Fat 0.09 oz.

In Warsaw, the first year of the ghetto, 1940, 90 people died of starvation. In 1941, at its height, 500 per week. Let the Nazis own figures show in the Warsaw ghetto, in the first 8 months of 1941.

Jan 898 Feb 1,023 Mar 1,608 April 2,061

May 3,821 June 4,290 July 5,550 Aug 5,560

THE COLD

January temperatures in Poland were 20 degrees below zero. With no food, they had no warmth or clothes either. The Nazis took everything. Buildings were torn down, clothes they had were stuffed with paper to keep warm. Children were worse with no shoes, bare knees. One child wrote I am hungry, I am cold, when I grow up I want to become a German then I wont be cold and Hungry

DISEASE

Disease was riff in the ghettos, with no toilets, washing facilities, some died of natural causes heart disease, cancer, colds but then typhus took over. 1941 saw 16,000 people die of typhus but the true figures was nearer 100,000 as the Germans hated illness and many disappeared.

THE STREETS

Jews were brought from other places, Austria, Holland, France, Greece and put in the ghettos until the Final Solution was brought into practise. Someone visiting the Warsaw ghetto described what he saw:- There were still living people but apart from their skin, eyes and voices, there was nothing human left. Everywhere there was hunger, misery, decomposing bodies, dying children and desperate people

SPECIAL ACTION GROUPS

These were mobile firing squads, made up of men specially trained for their task. Men, women and children were rounded up in one place a square or a cemetery they were slaughtered, machine gunned or killed by hand grenade. Children in orphanages, old peoples homes, sick were all shot. Many were taken to nearby woods and executed. The marching distance from collection point to ditches averaged 3 miles. In Roskiskis, 3,208 had to be transported nearly 4 miles to be executed. Mobile vans were used to gas these people. It was estimated that 2 million Jews were killed by these Special Action Groups.