Holocaust -- Ally, Jordan, & Ashly

The Holocaust was one of the worst genocides in history.

("Selection" on the Judenrampe,Auschwitz, May/June 1944. To be sent to the right meant slave labor; to the left, the gas chambers. This image shows the arrival of Hungarian Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia , many of them from the Berehov ghetto.)

The Holocaust started in Europe during World War II. It was genocide of the European Jews. They were tortured and killed because they were Jewish, homosexuals, gypsies, etc... These people where put into ghettos where a lot of them died due to bad conditions such as over-crowding. They were later transferred to concentration camps where they were to work until they died or until they were too tired out to take anymore and then they were burned alive or used for testing in labs. Concentration camps were later changed to extermination camps where the prisoners were killed just for the fun for the soldiers running the camps.

(Members of the Sonderkommando burn corpses in Auschwitz II-Birkenau firepit)

The people involved where the Nazi’s and people who were not of the “Aryan” race. While in concentration camps each person had a different colored triangle with a letter on it or a certain color that they had to wear for identification as to why they were there. Some of the victims were the Jews, Gypsies, people with physical or mental disabilities, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. These victims were selected just because they were disliked by Hitler and the other Germans and supposedly polluted the mind of the Germans. At the time Hitler was in control. Hitler is the one who issued the Nuremburg laws. These laws were for the racial discrimination of Jews and they took away Jew’s human rights such as the right to hold office, they could not marry non-Jews. Also, they took away their German citizenship if they did not have “German blood.” Jews where also not allowed to fly the National flag.

(A group of Gypsy prisoners, awaiting instructions from their German captors, sit in an open area near the fence in the Belzec concentration camp.)

These people were tortured and killed because they were Jewish, gypsies, homosexuals, or just weren’t of the “Aryan race.” Millions had died during the holocaust. Babies were used as target practice for machine guns, others were burned alive, and for many their bodies just couldn’t handle the lack of food and abuse that their body had been taking. Jews and others were put to death jus because of what they believed in. A total of about 11 million people where murdered in concentration camps, 6 million of them being Jews. The Jews were the main victims of the Holocaust because they were hated the most by the Nazis due to Hitler blaming them for Germany’s defeat in World War I. He believed that the German army was not beaten fairly because it had been betrayed by the Jews, which he called the "evil partners" of the Allies. Hitler thought that the rich merchants and the bankers, which were mostly Jews, had given all of Germany’s secrets away. Because of this, Hitler hated and helped convince others to hate the Jews.

(A child dying in the streets of the crowded Warsaw Ghetto, where hunger and disease killed 43,000 in 1941 alone.)

This event occurred during World War II after Hitler took control and made everyone believe that the Jews were the reason for Germany’s defeat in WWI. This event took 6 million Jews and about 5 million of other people who were killed just because they weren’t liked just because they were different. Of all the people put through this hell only about 250,000 people survived.

(Corpses in Auschwitz)

Results that occurred from this event included the death of millions of people, which affected populations all over Europe. After the war the Allies established an International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany, to prosecute the surviving Nazi leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity. At the more popular of the war crime trials, 22 of the top leaders of Nazi Germany were found guilty, and 12 were put to death. Also, military and civilian courts in many countries had hundreds of trials. The occupation governments set up by the Allies in Germany removed thousands of Nazis from their positions throughout Germany. In Germany only, almost 90,000 war crime cases were opened. Later, a United Nations resolution established crimes against humanity as a crime under international law with no limitation period for the prosecution of those accused of such crimes, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

(Starving prisoners in Mauthausen camp, Ebensee, Austria, liberated by the U.S. 80th Infantry Division on May 7, 1945.)

“The most fitting tribute we can pay the victims of the Holocaust is to NEVER let the world forget that it happened. . .”

- - Ally Balboni, Jordan Giard, Ashly Arnesen