The Holocaust
I chose to write about the Holocaust and how people took stands and were found and killed afterwards… The Nazis were the perpetrators of the holocaust and were also Hitler's followers. The Holocaust is also known as the Shoah. It was a genocide in which Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany and its collaborators killed about six million Jews in the 1930s and 1940.
Prior to 1938 the Nazis politically took civil rights away from Jewish people. They were not allowed to own businesses and they couldn’t hold civil-service posts. Jewish authored books were removed from libraries and burned. The Nuremberg laws, passed in September of 1935, decreed that only Aryans could be full German citizens, and it became illegal for Aryans and Jews to marry.
The …show more content…
non-violent harassment of Jews changed after a 17-year-old Polish Jew named Herschel Grynszpan shot a German Diplomat, Ernst Vom Rath in Paris. Ernst Vom Rath later died from his injuries. Herschel shot Ernst Vom Rath because the Nazis exiled his parents from their family home in Hanover Germany and were made to live in Poland. One of the Nazi leaders Joseph Goebbels used Vom Rath’s death to agitate and increase anti-Semitic sentiment in Germany.
On the night of November 9th and into the next day Nazi mobs vandalized synagogues, Jewish homes,schools, businesses, hospitals, and cemeteries. It was called Kristallnacht, or the night of broken glass. German police officers and firemen were ordered to do nothing unless it would harm German property. The Nazis fined the German-Jewish community $400 million dollars for the damage. 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps following the night of Kristallnacht.
A group of scientists and lawyers working in Paris led by Boris Vilde began publishing a newspaper calling on the French people to resist the German occupation. The Musee de L’Homme group was infiltrated by a supporter of the Vichy government after all the people that were working on the newspaper were arrested and killed. One member of the group, Valentin Feldman, shouted during the execution: “Imbeciles, it’s for you, too that I die.”
The French Communists, Socialists, and former French army were forced to hide in the forests away from towns and cities because the Nazis were arresting them. They formed many French resistance groups and started printing Anti-Nazi papers to get the French people to resist occupation of the Nazis. The Nazis arrested and killed three of the main leaders of the French Resistance after being tortured for information. They were Jean Moulin, Pierre Brossolette, and Charles Delestraint. The Nazis also started punishing the townspeople that were near attacks against the Nazi Army. Many of the French Resistance groups were able to slow down the Nazi Army from getting to the Normandy Beach during D-Day with the help of coded messages sent from Britain.
Hugh O’Flaherty was an Irish Catholic priest who saved about 4,000 Allied soldiers and Jews in Rome during World War II. Despite the Nazis desperately wanting to kill him, the Vatican prevented them. He survived an assassination attempt and saved the majority of Jews in Rome. He died in 1963.
In the summer of 1942 in the Polish town of Markowa the Jews were rounded up and shot and buried in an animal cemetery.
Those that managed to escape and hide returned to the small farms in the area to ask for help. Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma were asked to help the Szall family and two Jewish sisters, Golda and Layka Goldman. The Ulma family took them in and helped them until a neighbor informed the Nazis that they were helping the Jews because he wanted their land. The German police came in March of 1944 and shot the Ulma family which included four children and Wiktoria was seven months pregnant. They also killed the two Jewish families they were …show more content…
helping.
The country of Denmark was the only country that was able to save their Jewish population. They did not have the resources to go to war with Germany but they negotiated with the Nazis to keep the Jews safe for a few years into the occupation. After strikes and acts of sabotage that began to cause unrest. The Germans threatened Denmark with court martials and martial law. The Danish government resigned in protest. The Danes viewed the Jewish people as Danes first and when they were informed of Jewish arrests being planned in Berlin, they used ships to transport the seven thousand Jews to Sweden. The Nazis seemed to look the other way when it came to Denmark because they didn’t have some of the raw materials they needed to win the war. They also had help from one of the Nazi Diplomats named George Ferdinand Duckwitz who helped them because he was tired of the way Nazis were being so violent and bloodthirsty.
Chiune Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat, serving as Vice Consul for the Japanese Empire in Lithuania. He helped 6,000 Jews leave the country by giving them transit visas so they could travel to Japan. Many times he ignored the requirements of getting a transit visas so they could be in safety. Given that he was a Vice Consul, this was an extraordinary act of disobedience. He would spend 18-20 hours a day writing the travel visas by hand until September 4 when he had to leave his post before the consulate was closed. By that time, he had given thousands of visas to Jews. He then died in 1986.
Giorgio Perlasca was an Italian who helped save thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust by issuing them fake passports to travel to nearby countries. He also sheltered thousands of Hungarian Jews while they were waiting for their fake passports. It is estimated that he saved 5,000 Jews from the Holocaust. He died in 1992.
Aristides de Sousa Mendes was a Portuguese Diplomat who ignored and defied the orders of his own government for the safety of the war refugees fleeing from invading German military forces in the early years of World War II.
Between June 16 and June 23 1940, he frantically issued Portuguese visas free of charge, to over 30,000 refugees seeking escape from Hitler, 12,000 whom were Jews. He worked in the Portuguese consulate in Bordeaux, France, where despite explicit orders not to give “foreigners of indefinite or contested nationality; the stateless; or Jews expelled from their countries of origin”. He sporadically began printing Portuguese visas illegally as early as 1939. Between June 16 and June 23, he began frantically issuing visas to refugees waiting in line. De Sousa Mendes travelled to the border town of Irun on June 23, where he personally raised the gate to allow disputed passages into Spain to occur. It was at this point when the Ambassador Teotónio Pereira noticed and had de Sousa Mendes arrested and eventually died by starvation in
1954.
Irena Sendler a Polish Catholic Social worker was sent into the Warsaw Ghetto to make sure that a Typhus outbreak didn’t get transmitted outside. She was a member of the Polish underground and she started helping children escape the Ghetto. She used boxes, suitcases and trolleys to get them out safely all under the pretext of sanitary inspections. She was providing them with false documents and sheltering them in group children’s homes outside the ghetto. She was imprisoned and tortured by the Nazis but she still continued to help the Jewish children in Warsaw. She lived a long life and died in 2008.
Frank Foley was a British secret service agent who saved 10,000 Jews from the Holocaust. He was a passport control officer that helped Jews escape from Nazi Germany. He had no diplomatic immunity and could have been arrested but he kept issuing visas and passports to Britain or Palestine, which was then controlled by the British. He even went into internment camps to get Jews out and hiding them in his home. He survived the war and died in 1958.
A swedish humanitarian Raoul Wallenberg, rescued almost 100,000 Jews from the Holocaust. He issued fake passports and protective passports which identified the bearers as Swedish subjects awaiting repatriation and prevented their deportation. These documents looked official and were accepted by German and Hungarian authorities. Wallenberg also rented thirty-two buildings in Budapest and declared them to be extraterritorial and protected by diplomatic immunity. He would put large Swedish flags in front of the buildings and put signs that said “The Swedish Library,” and “The Swedish Research Institute” on the front doors. He housed almost 10,000 Jews at one time. Wallenberg negotiated or Bribed the remaining Germans before the Russians occupied Budapest to allow the Jews to stay instead of having to go on a death march.
In conclusion, I think that we should remember these people and stop discrimination and bullying of groups or individuals because it could possibly lead to something similar to a war or The Holocaust. When we remember what happened we can find the courage to do what we feel is right like the individuals mentioned in this paper(s).
Prior to 1938 the Nazis politically took civil rights away from Jewish people. They were not allowed to own businesses and they couldn’t hold civil-service posts. Jewish authored books were removed from libraries and burned. The Nuremberg laws, passed in September of 1935, decreed that only Aryans could be full German citizens, and it became illegal for Aryans and Jews to marry.
The …show more content…
non-violent harassment of Jews changed after a 17-year-old Polish Jew named Herschel Grynszpan shot a German Diplomat, Ernst Vom Rath in Paris. Ernst Vom Rath later died from his injuries. Herschel shot Ernst Vom Rath because the Nazis exiled his parents from their family home in Hanover Germany and were made to live in Poland. One of the Nazi leaders Joseph Goebbels used Vom Rath’s death to agitate and increase anti-Semitic sentiment in Germany.
On the night of November 9th and into the next day Nazi mobs vandalized synagogues, Jewish homes,schools, businesses, hospitals, and cemeteries. It was called Kristallnacht, or the night of broken glass. German police officers and firemen were ordered to do nothing unless it would harm German property. The Nazis fined the German-Jewish community $400 million dollars for the damage. 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps following the night of Kristallnacht.
A group of scientists and lawyers working in Paris led by Boris Vilde began publishing a newspaper calling on the French people to resist the German occupation. The Musee de L’Homme group was infiltrated by a supporter of the Vichy government after all the people that were working on the newspaper were arrested and killed. One member of the group, Valentin Feldman, shouted during the execution: “Imbeciles, it’s for you, too that I die.”
The French Communists, Socialists, and former French army were forced to hide in the forests away from towns and cities because the Nazis were arresting them. They formed many French resistance groups and started printing Anti-Nazi papers to get the French people to resist occupation of the Nazis. The Nazis arrested and killed three of the main leaders of the French Resistance after being tortured for information. They were Jean Moulin, Pierre Brossolette, and Charles Delestraint. The Nazis also started punishing the townspeople that were near attacks against the Nazi Army. Many of the French Resistance groups were able to slow down the Nazi Army from getting to the Normandy Beach during D-Day with the help of coded messages sent from Britain.
Hugh O’Flaherty was an Irish Catholic priest who saved about 4,000 Allied soldiers and Jews in Rome during World War II. Despite the Nazis desperately wanting to kill him, the Vatican prevented them. He survived an assassination attempt and saved the majority of Jews in Rome. He died in 1963.
In the summer of 1942 in the Polish town of Markowa the Jews were rounded up and shot and buried in an animal cemetery.
Those that managed to escape and hide returned to the small farms in the area to ask for help. Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma were asked to help the Szall family and two Jewish sisters, Golda and Layka Goldman. The Ulma family took them in and helped them until a neighbor informed the Nazis that they were helping the Jews because he wanted their land. The German police came in March of 1944 and shot the Ulma family which included four children and Wiktoria was seven months pregnant. They also killed the two Jewish families they were …show more content…
helping.
The country of Denmark was the only country that was able to save their Jewish population. They did not have the resources to go to war with Germany but they negotiated with the Nazis to keep the Jews safe for a few years into the occupation. After strikes and acts of sabotage that began to cause unrest. The Germans threatened Denmark with court martials and martial law. The Danish government resigned in protest. The Danes viewed the Jewish people as Danes first and when they were informed of Jewish arrests being planned in Berlin, they used ships to transport the seven thousand Jews to Sweden. The Nazis seemed to look the other way when it came to Denmark because they didn’t have some of the raw materials they needed to win the war. They also had help from one of the Nazi Diplomats named George Ferdinand Duckwitz who helped them because he was tired of the way Nazis were being so violent and bloodthirsty.
Chiune Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat, serving as Vice Consul for the Japanese Empire in Lithuania. He helped 6,000 Jews leave the country by giving them transit visas so they could travel to Japan. Many times he ignored the requirements of getting a transit visas so they could be in safety. Given that he was a Vice Consul, this was an extraordinary act of disobedience. He would spend 18-20 hours a day writing the travel visas by hand until September 4 when he had to leave his post before the consulate was closed. By that time, he had given thousands of visas to Jews. He then died in 1986.
Giorgio Perlasca was an Italian who helped save thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust by issuing them fake passports to travel to nearby countries. He also sheltered thousands of Hungarian Jews while they were waiting for their fake passports. It is estimated that he saved 5,000 Jews from the Holocaust. He died in 1992.
Aristides de Sousa Mendes was a Portuguese Diplomat who ignored and defied the orders of his own government for the safety of the war refugees fleeing from invading German military forces in the early years of World War II.
Between June 16 and June 23 1940, he frantically issued Portuguese visas free of charge, to over 30,000 refugees seeking escape from Hitler, 12,000 whom were Jews. He worked in the Portuguese consulate in Bordeaux, France, where despite explicit orders not to give “foreigners of indefinite or contested nationality; the stateless; or Jews expelled from their countries of origin”. He sporadically began printing Portuguese visas illegally as early as 1939. Between June 16 and June 23, he began frantically issuing visas to refugees waiting in line. De Sousa Mendes travelled to the border town of Irun on June 23, where he personally raised the gate to allow disputed passages into Spain to occur. It was at this point when the Ambassador Teotónio Pereira noticed and had de Sousa Mendes arrested and eventually died by starvation in
1954.
Irena Sendler a Polish Catholic Social worker was sent into the Warsaw Ghetto to make sure that a Typhus outbreak didn’t get transmitted outside. She was a member of the Polish underground and she started helping children escape the Ghetto. She used boxes, suitcases and trolleys to get them out safely all under the pretext of sanitary inspections. She was providing them with false documents and sheltering them in group children’s homes outside the ghetto. She was imprisoned and tortured by the Nazis but she still continued to help the Jewish children in Warsaw. She lived a long life and died in 2008.
Frank Foley was a British secret service agent who saved 10,000 Jews from the Holocaust. He was a passport control officer that helped Jews escape from Nazi Germany. He had no diplomatic immunity and could have been arrested but he kept issuing visas and passports to Britain or Palestine, which was then controlled by the British. He even went into internment camps to get Jews out and hiding them in his home. He survived the war and died in 1958.
A swedish humanitarian Raoul Wallenberg, rescued almost 100,000 Jews from the Holocaust. He issued fake passports and protective passports which identified the bearers as Swedish subjects awaiting repatriation and prevented their deportation. These documents looked official and were accepted by German and Hungarian authorities. Wallenberg also rented thirty-two buildings in Budapest and declared them to be extraterritorial and protected by diplomatic immunity. He would put large Swedish flags in front of the buildings and put signs that said “The Swedish Library,” and “The Swedish Research Institute” on the front doors. He housed almost 10,000 Jews at one time. Wallenberg negotiated or Bribed the remaining Germans before the Russians occupied Budapest to allow the Jews to stay instead of having to go on a death march.
In conclusion, I think that we should remember these people and stop discrimination and bullying of groups or individuals because it could possibly lead to something similar to a war or The Holocaust. When we remember what happened we can find the courage to do what we feel is right like the individuals mentioned in this paper(s).