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Horrors of the Holocaust

It is a story of enduring horror and sorrow, where six million Jews were annihilated. But in the words of the Holocaust survivor Abel Herzberg, “There were not six million Jews murdered; there was one murder, six million times”. Time may have passed but the emotional scars remain

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The arrival of Hungarian Jews to Birkenau station in Auschwitz-Birkenau, in German-occupied Poland, June 1944. Between May 2 and July 9, more than 430,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz
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The recent controversy in the USA over the selection of President-elect Donald Trump by Time Magazine as its ‘Person of the Year’ has seen critics drawing comparisons with a similar selection in the past featuring Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as the Man of the Year in 1938. Though one would not wish to get entangled in the current political debate, one recalls another controversial figure chosen by Time on the cover of its weekly in October 1943, Heinrich Himmler described by the cover as ‘the Police Chief of Nazi Europe’ with a chilling quote, ‘The dead do not speak’.

Heinrich Himmler was the chief architect of a sinister program designed by the Nazis (members of ‘Nationalsozialistishe Deutsche Arbeiterpartei’ ‘National Socialist German Worker’s Party’) to wipe out the entire Jewish population of Europe through planned detention of Jews in Nazi concentration camps where after initial torture and starvation, they were killed by ingeniously evil methods of mass extermination. The entire operation was later termed as ‘The Holocaust’ (Greek Holokauston referring to the sacrifice of an animal by fire) in the 1950s while the Jews used the Hebrew word, ‘Ha Shoah’ meaning ‘The Catastrophe’ to describe one of the world’s biggest and most systematic pogroms aimed at cleansing Europe of Jews and other minorities. The Holocaust which was termed as the ‘Final Solution (for the Jewish Problem)’ by the Nazis ended in the death of 60 lakh Jews including 11 lakh children. It sought to draw legitimacy from a popular but warped theory of population control called ‘Eugenics’ (Greek ~ Eu – well genos ~ born) which called for the promotion of breeding between people of ‘desired genetic traits’ (read ‘White Aryans’) with the limitation of breeding between people with ‘undesirable genetic traits’ (read Jews and other ethno-religious minorities) through sterilisation. Eugenics for the Nazis became the ‘social philosophy’ for creation of an ideal race of Aryans with the elimination of the ‘lesser races’ through mass murders approved by Hitler and executed by Himmler and his associates.

The Nazis began the prosecution of Jews as soon as they assumed power in 1933 with a call for the boycott of Jewish businesses with posters in German pronouncing ‘Die Juden sind unser Unglück’ meaning ‘The Jews are our bad luck’; thus encouraging state-sponsored hate crimes against the community. The Nazis stepped up the persecution by bringing in the ‘Nuremberg Laws’ which barred Jews from holding public offices and mixing with other Germans. The Nuremberg Laws became a precedent for further anti-Jew legislation and anti-Semitic policies in the coming years. Unsurprisingly, violent activities against Jews began and culminated into what has been termed as the ‘Kristallnacht’ or ‘The Night of the broken glass’.

The Kristallnacht refers to a series of Nazi groups vandalizing of Jewish synagogues and business establishments on the nights of 9 and 10 November 1938 across Germany. The name refers to the volume of broken glass generated on the streets of the country.  

After the Kristallnacht, in 1939, the Nazis began a policy of systematic segregation of Jews in walled colonies called ghettoes all over Nazi-occupied Europe. The ghettoes were created to terrify Jews as well as facilitate their deportation to concentration camps for the Final Solution. Jews were also made to register their properties and wear a yellow ‘Star of David’ emblem on their arms for easier identification. The largest ghettoes came up in Poland during the World War II with the one in Warsaw having a population of 4.45 lakh Jewish inhabitants.

Initially, the ghettoes were designated as segregation colonies, open to the outside world but later all of them were designated ‘closed’ to outside movements with severe restriction on the movements of the residents. More importantly, the ghettoes were ultimately ‘liquidated’ with the deportation of its residents to faraway concentration camps in crowded trains with the ultimate aim of killing them. Many did not survive the journey and a very few survived the concentration camps. Though most ghettoes were defenceless, the Warsaw ghetto saw an uprising in April 1943 when its residents fought back and held the ghetto against the Nazi regime for 28 days.

The other monstrosity of the Nazi regime was the establishment of concentration camps as soon as they acquired power in 1933. The concentration camps (German ~ Konzentrationslager) the first of which was established at Dachau in 1933, were initially established by the Interior Ministry to house political opponents and torture them. In 1934, Himmler’s Schutzstaffel or the SS took full control of the concentration camps and began deporting Jews and other undesirable racial and ethnic groups to them; after the Kristallnacht about 15,000 Jews were deported to concentration camps. Though the term ‘concentration camp’ was earlier used in the Western world, e.g.  in America for limiting ‘Native Americans’ and the British in the Second Boer War, the SS under Himmler turned them in ‘extermination camps’ by starving, torturing and killing off its inhabitants during the Holocaust. According to Jewish sources, the Nazis ran about 15,000 concentration camps spread across Germany, Poland, France, Austria and Italy. Though the concentration camps in Eastern Europe had a mix of Romani gypsies, Poles, Serbs and other ethno-religious minorities, the largest group of prisoners were Polish Jews and Russian Prisoners of War held without any trial or judicial supervision.

The most notorious of the concentration camps came up at Auschwitz in modern Poland in May 1940; its second part was set up with an enlarged capacity in October 1941 at Auschwitz-Birkenau and became the biggest extermination camp during the WWII with the killing of 1.1 million Jewish occupants in its gas chambers. Many others died from the combined effects of starvation, forced labour and diseases or individual executions. Many dangerous medical experiments were conducted on the occupants against their will. Finally, as the Soviet armies approached Auschwitz in January 1945, the SS marched off its remaining occupants on a death march. Auschwitz-Birkenau’s horrors rankled the conscience of the world when it was finally liberated on 27 January 1945, a day which is today commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Glimpses of the Holocaust through The Diary of a Young Girl

The Nazis were not content prosecuting Jews only in the German-controlled territories of Europe but also in newly acquired areas in the later part of the WWII like the Netherlands which was occupied in 1942, both for its Dutch population which was perceived by Hitler as ‘pure Aryan’ and as building a secure base for the German Airforce, the Luftwaffe  to aid its attack on Britain.

Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt in 1929 in a German-Jewish family. The Franks soon emigrated to the Netherlands when she was four years old to escape the Nazi prosecution. They stayed in Amsterdam where Anne’s father, Otto Frank began a company called Opekta. In 1941, as Nazis began circling Amsterdam, the Franks transferred the control to of the company to non-Jews to disguise its ‘Non-Aryan’ nature; they went into hiding from July 1942 in the rear rooms of the premises of Opekta. Anne Frank then began writing a ‘secret diary’ which recorded the events around her from 1942 till August 1944 when the family was ‘discovered’ and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In Auschwitz, Otto was separated from his wife, Edith and his two daughters, Anne Frank and Margot. He was the only survivor from the family to emerge from the nightmare when Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet army on 27 January 1945. He returned traumatised to Amsterdam to find that Anne Frank’s diary had survived, thanks to the efforts of a Dutch helper of the Frank family. The traumatised father decided to publish the diary’s contents, first in its original form in Dutch in 1947, and later its English version as The Diary of a Young Girl or Anne Frank’s Diary in 1952. The diary’s moving and poignant contents which talk of ‘hope’ for a better future after the war would end has seen the book being translated in 60 languages for a worldwide readership. Apart from routine musings on her family, Anne Frank expressed her various hopes and aspirations; in one of her last musings, she expressed the hope of being a journalist in the future as ‘writing helps me forget my cares and sorrows.’ But, she also expresses a natural teen nervousness musing ‘But, and that’s a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?’

Her last entry was on 1 August 1944 as the Franks were finally arrested by the Gestapo or German secret police on 4 August 1944 on an anonymous tipoff. The ladies of the Frank family were separated from Otto at Auschwitz-Birkenau in September 1944; the Frank sisters were later separated from their mother, Edith and sent to the Berge-Belsen concentration camp in October 1944. The Berge-Belsen camp saw a raging typhoid epidemic due to its unhygienic conditions in January-February 1945 when it is believed that the Frank sisters died of it, with Margot dying earlier at the age of eighteen and Anne at the tender age of fifteen. The sisters had lost all hopes of survival and were further disheartened as they thought their parents were long dead. However, unknown to them, Otto survived the ordeal and brought their heart-rending tale to light after his liberation from Auschwitz-Birkenau.  

DECODING HISTORY

History is a subject that merits discussions and debates beyond the confines of a classroom. Its purpose is to create a sense of inquiry and engage us in conversations and explorations of the past. Because that is what defines our present. Decoding History is a weekly Saturday page where we explore an event in World and Indian history for answers to questions about the past that may lead us straight across the boundaries of nations, empires, and civilizations. It is a page to educate and familiarise teens and adults with historical events that continue to hold relevance at a personal, national and global level.

The humanitarian crisis across time

The Syrian crisis has been in the news since March 2011 when the Syrian government led by President Bashar al Assad cracked down on a set of democratic protesters inspired by the Arab Spring. The crackdown resulted in the consolidated revolt by disgruntled armed militia and armed civilians soon turning into a civil war complicated by the rising of the ISIS.

The American support to the move to unseat Assad led to bombings of civilian areas resulting in mass killing of about 4.75 lakh Syrians by various agencies both government and opposition. The Syrian crisis’ religious animosity has furthermore complicated the picture with the ISIS killing many on religious differences.

The crisis has thus led to a mass exodus of millions of refugees into neighbouring countries like Iraq, Jordan as well as Europe. The humanitarian crisis engulfs various aspects similar to the Holocaust of the WWII.

It happened before....

During the WWI, the Ottomans exterminated 1.5 million Armenian citizens in a systematic genocide beginning in April 1915. The Ottoman army employed means similar to that of the Nazis with detention, starvation followed by murder of this ethnic minority in its vast empire. The genocide targeted able-bodied males first followed by females and children.

The detentees were also taken on death marches across the Syrian desert where many perished. The modern state of Turkey, the successor to the Ottoman Empire denies the use of the term ‘genocide’ or ‘Holocaust’ however this lesser known genocide shared many features of the Nazi Holocaust. Unlike the perpetrators of the Jewish Holocaust, the perpetrators of the Armenian Holocaust were never brought to justice.

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