I learned about the Holocaust in Middle school, but not very in depth. I have also been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, which was one of the most touching events I have experienced. This was a few years ago, so my understanding after reading chapter fifteen, and checking out the maps, changed and deepened the way I looked at the Holocaust. In 1933, the Jewish population in Europe was some over nine million. The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jews and millions of others by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II. These mass killings started in June of 1941 with the shooting of Jewish civilians during the German invasion of the Soviet Union. At the end of 1941, the Germans began deporting Jews to killing
…show more content…
The Germans had to end up resorting to conscription. This brought a million and a half young men. Nevertheless, this recruitment still did not satisfy German requirements. The western workers had to be paid, fed and housed, and the charge on the German war economy grew. Out of the 5,160,000 Soviet soldiers captured during the war, 3,300,000 died by neglect or murder at German hands. In May of 1944 only 875,000 were recorded as ‘working’. Most worked in slave conditions, as well as the 2.8 million Russian civilians. They were originally invited to ‘volunteer’, and soon found themselves treated very badly. The SS also became a major part of enslavement. The leader, Heinrich Himmler, outlined the principles saying ‘It is a matter of total indifference to me how the Russians, how the Czechs fare. . . . Whether the other peoples live in plenty, whether they croak from hunger, interests me only to the extent that we need them as slaves for our culture; otherwise it does not interest me.’ Something I did not know was despite the fear of most Europeans, some brave soles risked their lives to help. In the fall of 1943, Danish resistance movement ferried almost all of Denmark’s Jewish population to Sweden. In other countries, churches, orphanages, and families hid Jews.These acts of kindness, only saved a very small percent of those
The Germans had to end up resorting to conscription. This brought a million and a half young men. Nevertheless, this recruitment still did not satisfy German requirements. The western workers had to be paid, fed and housed, and the charge on the German war economy grew. Out of the 5,160,000 Soviet soldiers captured during the war, 3,300,000 died by neglect or murder at German hands. In May of 1944 only 875,000 were recorded as ‘working’. Most worked in slave conditions, as well as the 2.8 million Russian civilians. They were originally invited to ‘volunteer’, and soon found themselves treated very badly. The SS also became a major part of enslavement. The leader, Heinrich Himmler, outlined the principles saying ‘It is a matter of total indifference to me how the Russians, how the Czechs fare. . . . Whether the other peoples live in plenty, whether they croak from hunger, interests me only to the extent that we need them as slaves for our culture; otherwise it does not interest me.’ Something I did not know was despite the fear of most Europeans, some brave soles risked their lives to help. In the fall of 1943, Danish resistance movement ferried almost all of Denmark’s Jewish population to Sweden. In other countries, churches, orphanages, and families hid Jews.These acts of kindness, only saved a very small percent of those