In Europe, Jews lived in about every country with almost nine million scattered around. Some of the Jews were rich but many were poor. They also had their own language. They called it Yiddish. This was the language they used to speak to each other without anyone else knowing. Yiddish was a combination of two elements of German and Hebrew. The Jews had many jobs that included being farmers, seamstress, accountants, factory hands, tailors, teachers and doctors.By the end of the war, one out of three Jews survived. They were treated badly even before the holocaust began. …show more content…
The holocaust started when Adolf Hitler began to rule over Germany.
Why would anyone want to make him a ruler? He made himself look like a good guy in front of groups of people and in photos, and when he was ruler he started to make these really strict rules for the Jews. He didn’t like anyone who had brown skin or eyes. He liked blue eyes and white skin. Hitler gave all the Jews yellow stars so then everyone would know who was Jewish and who was not. Hitler made the Jews walk everywhere. They couldn’t take a car or use any other transportation except bikes. Hitler only let them come out of their houses at a certain time and made them live in certain areas. He took away their bikes and made them go to stores and jobs at specific times. The Jews couldn’t go to the schools they wanted to attend
. Then it started to get bad. The Jews were being sent to concentration camps so the Jews, soon after, had to go into hiding. When the Germans took them to a concentration camp many Jew worked until they died. There was a right path and a left path. One path took you to a place where you would be worked to death, the other was a path to immediate death. You only went there because you were either too sick, old or young. The Germans got them to the concentration camps by putting them on a train and sending them off. The trains were very crowded, so some of the Jews were dead before they even got there. So the Germans threw the dead bodies off the train. While many Jews were taken away, some were in hiding afraid to come out. They hid in the houses of friends, neighbors, and very generous people, or hid near their houses in secret rooms . The Jews who had to hide in a place away from their home had to get their own water and food and couldn’t take a bath or a shower. They had to wear their same clothes everyday. They smelled which made it easier for the Germans to find them.
At the concentration camp, the Jews had to sleep in a box like room that was very small. The room had no space so they were stacked on top of each other. They also had to wear a special type of clothing. They would wear this clothing in the morning, night, and afternoon. After a while the Germans found more and more of the Jews, and they were dying fast getting sick and injured. They got so skinny that they looked like a stack of bones because they ate only a bit a day. They also had a hospital for them if they got injured or needed a medicine for an illness. The holocaust lasted from 1933 to 1945.
The British and Americans came to defeat Germany. When the Allies were about to overpowered the Germans and went to gather all of the Jews, the German took Jews with them while they were trying to get away from the Americans. They would leave their camp and start walking while the Germans rode in cars and if a Jew couldn’t go on and walk anymore the Germans would shoot them and leave their bodies. After saving many of the Jews that were still alive the Jews were afraid to move back into their old homes, and most of the Jews became homeless. The Jews had a very horrible start and end. Some of the Jews lived to tell about their life stories. Some of the survivors are people like a women named Trude Silman who escaped by train and a man named Heinz Skyte who lived in Germany but left before the holocaust even started. There were many more with amazing stories of how they escaped or how they survived the concentration camps. The Jews had a rough time before and after the holocaust. They had to stay hidden from the Germans and tried to stay alive in the concentration camp and then they were homeless after the war. Adolf Hitler was a very cruel man who had no heart for the Jews, but luckily the British and U.S. saved them from even greater disaster.