Last week saw the 60th anniversary of the freeing of Auschwitz, which lead to the end of the Holocaust. It started off as boycotts of Jewish shops and 7 years later 6 million dead.

Hitler was an angry man when he came into power. He had it in for Jewish people all though his 10 year campaign to get into power. He always blamed the Jews for Germany’s defeat in the 1st World War and the subsequent economic hardships and he wasn’t shy to make his feelings known. Not only did he despise the Jews, he also put forward some racial theories, painting the picture of a fair skin, blond haired, blue eyed German as the supreme form of human…the master race…Aryan.

The process of ostracizing the Jewish people was pretty methodical and I suppose well thought out, as are most German things. Jewish people made up 1mil of Germany’s 55 million population, how the 1 mil can influence the war etc. is beyond me, but anyway…

So it began…

Boycotting of Jewish owned shops, then a seemingly never-ending series of laws and decrees culminating in the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 which resulted in German Jews being deprived from their German Citizenship and forbade intermarriage with non-Jews…(South Africans does this sound familiar?). It was ridiculous, they were removed from schools, banned from professions, excluded from the military service it even went as far as them not being allowed to share a park bench with a non-Jew. At this same time, there was smear campaign underway orchestrated by Minister Joseph Goebbels. The aim of this campaign was to portray Jews as enemies of Germans. This message could be heard on the radio stations, it could be read on posters, in newspapers, hell state sanctioned anti-Semitism was the norm in Germany.

But the day that set the Nazi holocaust machine in motion was the 9th/10th November 1938, a night termed by many as “The night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht)”. On this night 17 year old Herscel Grynszpan shot and killed Ernst vom Rath, a German embassy official in Paris. This killing was in retaliation for the harsh treatment dealt to his parent at the hands of Nazis. This was just the excuse the Germans were waiting for to set into motion the Nazi killing machine. 90 Jews killed, 500 synagogues burnt, jewish shops and businesses vandalized, 25 000 Jewish men hauled off to concentration camps.

The Jews tried to flee Germany, but no country would accept them, States and Cuba, said sorry for you (y they didn’t try Africa who knows, oh wait I know…too many nig ga’s J) so back to Europe they returned.

But they would not be safe there. In September 1939 the Fuhrer (supreme leader) set the German machine upon the world. German troops somped into Poland, home to over 3 million Jews. The Jews were forced into Gethos to await their fate. Plenty of them died a slow and painful death from hunger and disease. Enter Heinrich Himmler. Himmler was the leader of the Nazi SS, Hitler’s most trusted and loyal organization, composed of fanatical young men considered racially pure according to Nazi standards. Anyway…in 1940, Himmler ordered the construction of a concentration camp near Osweim, infamously named Auschwitz. The initial purpose of the camp was to hold the Polish prisoners who were to be used as slave labour at German-run factories to be built nearby. Whilst this was going on, Hitler was carrying on merrily on his way conquering Europe. His biggest gamble came in 1941 when he decided to take on the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union lived about 3 million Jews in isolated little villages known as Shtetls. The modus operandi was that the invading armies would lead the charge trying to take over the country, and in hot pursuit would be 4 SS special action units known as Einsatzgruppen, whose job was to systematically round up and shoot the inhabitants of these Shtetls. The driving force behind the team leaders of the 4 SS units was a little competition they had going to see who could amass the most Jewish murders. Back in Germany, Himmler summoned Rudolf Hoss to Berlin, informing him that the Fuhrer had ordered the final solution to the Jewish question (Judenfrage as it was termed). So off trots Commandant Hoss, to the site where Auschwitz II was being built. Auschwitz II was a larger camp which was to house 4 large gas chambers, designed to be used for mass extermination. Whilst this camp was being constructed, the German army in Russia was using experimental mobile gas to exterminate Jews in special trucks that had been converted into protable gas chambers. How’s this for insane, the Germans would put Jews in an airtight truck and feed exhaust fumes into the truck from the trucks engine. After a while they found this method impractical because you could only kill 50 Jews at a time…at a push!

In 1942 the machine was in full swing, Jews all over Europe were being sought and deported to occupied Poland, where they were being gassed in new extermination centres at Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau. How’s this for a small request…”I ask nothing of the Jews except that they should disappear” these were the words of the Governor of Poland Hans Frank. 2 million Jews were on the way to the chamber. Every detail of the execution was planned. The trains to transport them, the Jews were lied to, they were told that their stop was a transit stop, their clothes were being disinfected and they were all going to be sent for a good shower. The males and the females were split up. They were de-robed, hair cut and marched along a narrow path nicknamed by the SS as Himmelstrasse….the road to Heaven. At the end of this road was a tiled bathhouse when everyone was inside this bathhouse, the door was slammed shut creating an airtight seal. Carbon monoxide, fed from a diesel engine was then pumped into this chamber. Carbon monoxide was then altered to Zyklon B (prussic acid) pellets combined with cyanide. Guess who had the task of removing the bodies, remove gold fillings and search the orifices of the deceased for hidden valuables? Yip u guessed it, special units of Jewish slaves. But wait there’s more, the Jewish people that were being railed to their deaths were charged for the train ride, under the pretence that they were being relocated to other parts of Europe. After they arrived at the death camps, the prisoners were asked to sign post cards to send back to their families telling them how well they were etc. and that they awaited their arrival.

Getting people onto these trains was not too much of a hassle because firstly there were the postcards and secondly, the ghettos were so horrendous that many left willingly even if it was to be placed in work camps. Once the trains arrived, a selection process was conducted on the prisoners. The young and healthy were allowed to live and become slaves the rest were marched down the ‘road to heaven’.

These camps were for a large part a secret, but in 1942, word started spreading about these camps, the English were the first to speak then there were demonstrations by Jewish-Americans in 1943. But this resulted in inaction. A War Refugee Board resulted from the increased pressure on Fraklin D Roosevelt. This WRB helped save many Jewish people from the death camps in 1944.

The biggest inroad into these death camps came when 2 people escaped from the camp and wrote a detailed report of the camp, which was then forwarded to the Vatican. The Germans tried to squash these claims by inviting the Red Cross to visit a high class ghetto which was obviously a farce. Happy little Ghetto, stores, café’s banks, classrooms…as soon as the Red Cross had left, cheers to the inhabitants of the Ghettos.

The Jewish people did show some resistance. The most notable being a 28 day stand off inside a Warsaw ghetto where 730 Jews battled 2000 SS soldiers. In Treblinka there was a revolt in 1943 which resulted in Himmler ordering the dismantling of the camp, next was Sobibor, where inmates killed 11 SS men, 300 escaped, 250 were hunted down like dogs, 50 survived, Sobibor was also closed. All over the world, many non-Jews were helping Jewish folk by providing shelter for them and helping them to safety. Denmark saved its entire Jewish population by transporting them to safety by sea. Italy and Bulgaria refused to cooperate with Germany’s deportation requests.

In 1944, the war turned against Hitler, The Fuhrer was losing grip, the allies were annihilating his troops on all fronts, but the killing camps carried on as is. Actually it was almost like the SS had lost focus on the war, instead of using trucks for the war, they were using them to transport Jews to Auschwitz. The killings and cremations carried on at an un-precedented pace roughly 9000 a day. On 24 July 1944 the first camp, Majdanek was liberated. As the troops neared, Himmler ordered the detruction of all the gas chambers. The Reich was crumbling, death marches were used as a replacement for the gas chambers. On the 27 Jan 1945 the Soviet troops reached Auschwitz. It was only then that the full extent of the Nazi regime became apparent to the British and the Americans.

On the 30th April 1995, Hitler was surrounded by soviet troops. He realized that he was no longer the Fuhrer he had thought he was, upon this revelation he took his own life.

Birthdays
31st Jan Refilwe RamoG

I am out of here peeps have a wikkid weekend.

Y