Discovery of the Holocaust

Discovery of the Holocaust

Near the end of the war allied troops discovered the concentration camps set up by the Nazis. At these camps Jews worked for the German war effort. In some cases they were used in German medical experiments as guinea pigs. At Auschwitz over 6,000 Jews were gassed per day. By the end of the war Hitler had killed over 1/3 of the Jews in Europe, approx. 6 million people.

Nuremburg Laws

The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were antisemitic laws in Nazi Germany introduced at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. After the takeover of power in 1933 by Hitler, Nazism became an official ideology incorporating scientific racism and antisemitism. There was a rapid growth in German legislation directed at Jews, such as the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service which banned "non-Aryans" from the civil-service.

The lack of a clear legal method of defining who was Jewish had, however, allowed some Jews to escape some forms of discrimination aimed at them. The enactment of laws identifying who was Jewish made it easier for the Nazis to enforce legislation restricting the basic rights of German Jews.

The Nuremberg Laws classified people with four German grandparents as "German or kindred blood", while people were classified as Jews if they descended from three or four Jewish grandparents.

Background

The persecution and genocide were carried out in stages. Various legislation to remove the Jews from civil society, predominantly the Nuremberg Laws, was enacted in Nazi Germany years before the outbreak of World War II.

Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labor until they died of exhaustion or disease.

The Third Reich required Jews and Romani to be confined in overcrowded ghettos before being transported by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority of them were systematically killed in gas chambers.

Who knew?

Most historians claim that the civilian population was unaware of the atrocities that were carried out, especially in the extermination camps, which were located outside of Germany in Nazi-occupied Europe.

The historian Robert Gellately, however, claims that the government openly announced the conspiracy through the media, and that civilians were aware of its every aspect except for the use of gas chambers

Significant historical evidence points to the idea that the vast majority of Holocaust victims, prior to their deportation to concentration camps, were either unaware of the fate that awaited them, or were in disbelief; they honestly believed that they were to be resettled.

June–July 1944. Rudolf Verba (right) escaped from Auschwitz on April 7, 1944, bringing the first credible news to the world of the mass murder that was taking place there. Arnost Rosin (left), escaped on May 27, 1944.

German children read an anti-Jewish propaganda book titled DER GIFTPILZ ( "The Poisonous Mushroom"). The girl on the left holds a companion volume, the translated title of which is "Trust No Fox." Germany, ca. 1938.

Propaganda

- Movies depicting Concentration Camps in a good light.

Holocaust Map of Concentration Camps

Naked Jewish women, some of whom are holding infants, wait in a line before their execution by Ukrainian auxilliary police. Source: Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes, Warsaw, Poland.

U.S. troops watch a passing cart laden with corpses leave the Dachau concentration camp, intended for burial. Allied authorities required local farmers to drive their loaded carts through the town of Dachau as education for the

inhabitants.

Children subjected to medical experiments in Auschwitz. Source: The Pictorial History of the Holocaust, Edited by Yitzhak Arad, Macmillan Publishing

Company, New York, 1990.

High-altitude medical experiments in Dachau. In order to test the probable endurance of pilots who have to eject from their planes, SS doctors exposed prisoners to high-altitude conditions simulated in a chamber. Many victims died during such experiments. In order for the simulation to be as realistic as

possible, prisoners were hung by parachute straps.

Auschwitz SS doctors, led by the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele, performed different medical experiments on Jewish inmates. Common were the sterilizations of young Jewish men and women at the prime of their fertile lives. Crude methods of local anesthesia were used during experiments on their sexual organs, while young girls and boys were forced to watch the procedures. Several of these victims survived the ordeal and lived to tell their story.

Other medical experiments were performed to test human resistance to freezing temperatures and human endurance under the most severe conditions.

Medical Experiments on Jews