The Holocaust Memories

This paper will examine and analyze the turning points in the construction of Jewish memory and the identity in Israel as influenced by and based on the events of the Holocaust.

It all started by the French administration being replaced from Jewish to German. On July 16, 1942 4,500 French police began the mass arrest of Jews. Jews from France, Germany, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia were arrested. The detained were taken to the Winter Stadium called the Velodrome D’Hiver. They were kept in terrible conditions with no food, water or sanitary facilities. After all the arrest S ome Jews were deported to the concentration camps of Pithiviers, Beaune-la-Rolande and Auschwitz. Most of the people deported were sent to Auschwitz and murdered. Every two or three days about 1,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz. By the end of September 1942 near 38,000 Jews had been sent to Auschwitz from France (Vashem).

The year is 1998, not only was I, Carleigh Irgens, born August 21 in Miles City, Montana but some other big and exciting things happened! Three of the most important events were, The Holocaust History Project was founded, John Gacy; The Clown Killer was convicted of killing young boys and even the death of Paul McCartney’s wife, Linda McCartney.

People such as bystanders stood by all around the world and watched as the innocent were killed.

The Holocaust was a terrifying time, it brought to light how important it was to fight for each other. Men and women either sat and stayed quiet out of fear or they got up and fought for what they believed in no matter the cost. These brave souls risked their lives and the lives of their families to save those prosecuted by the Nazis. They weren’t afraid to stand up to the Nazis. Some hid Jews in their homes, other snuck into ghettos and other places to help people in need. Some even falsified documents in order to help Jews escape. Individuals like these stand out in history for showing that standing up to oppressors can be done, and that it is the right thing to do as a part of the human race.

As the situation worsened, many Jewish families tried to leave Germany. Those who could not would eventually begin to be ‘exiled’ or ‘deported’ from German cities. These families were sent to concentration camps where they would be tortured, killed, beaten, or worked to death. These camps, also called ‘work camps,’ would hold thousands of Jews within their walls along with the many gas chambers, crematoriums, and gravesites. Once there, the prisoners would be stripped of all remaining freedom. Their captors decided every moment of the lives within the fences, even holding the power of life or death.

This was all under the anger from propaganda and the killing of a German official by the hands of a Jewish teen. The next morning (November 10, 1938) over 30,000 German Jews were arrested under the crime of being Jewish and were sent to concentration camps (Dachau, Auschwitz etc.) around the country other countries that Germany had taken over (Poland, France etc.). Life in concentration camps was known as living in Hell on Earth. The prisoners were robbed of their identity and given a number instead. Everyday they were counted about three times and they were massacred sometimes one at a time and sometimes hundreds together. The prisoners were starved, dehydrated and forced to work until the died. They received very small rations for breakfast, usually no lunch, and a watery soup for dinner if they were lucky enough to get one. They were forced to work from before sunrise to after sunset. They were forced to carry the dead bodies into the cremation ovens, to have them cremated into nothing but ash. They were all forced into a room at night with about a hundred or more people to sleep in uncomfortable places. If they somehow were sick (lack of sanitation), they were taken to a hospital in the camp were experiments were conducted on them by the ‘doctors’. In these concentration camp about 6-11 million Jews, Poles, Gypsies, and other minority groups were killed.

World War II is believed to have resulted from many causes; however Hitler’s rise to power is assumed to have had a significant impact on the outbreak. Adolf Hitler was leader of the Nazi party, and his efforts to transform Germany’s society into one based on race resulted in Holocaust and world war. Using his position as Chancellor Hitler created a legal dictatorship. Not anyone could have seized power in Germany at that time. During Germany’s economic crisis, Hitler used his personal traits and propaganda to gain support and rise to power. This can be seen through Hitler’s beliefs and ideologies, the conditions in Germany, his personal traits and his use of propaganda.

From March of 1933 to May of 1945, Jews were apprehended and sent to these camps. There, the weak were killed and the fit were put into slave labor. The camps were filthy and disease was not uncommon. The guards acted atrociously, beating people for no apparent reason. Those who attempted to escape faced dire consequences. Over the span of twelve years, 15,000 camps were built and over six million Jews were murdered. How did we find out about this? Thank World War II for that.

My heart stopped and my mouth became dry as I knocked over a chair and it fell onto the floor : this could be it, they’d find us and we’d all be dead. It wasn’t the best of times. Frankly it was the worst of times. I had a normal childhood. Our family had lived in Frankfurt, Germany from my birth in 1929 until 1933. My father, Otto Frank, decided to move us to the Netherlands in 1933 because of the rise of anti - semitism (biography.com). There, I attended a montessori school and had many friends, I was also “an inquisitive and bright student” (biography.com). Life changed for me when the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940: I was forced to attend a Jewish lyceum and my father’s business was signed over to a non-Jew (People of the Holocaust). In 1942, my father converted an attic in his company warehouse in case we needed to go into hiding. And we did, that same summer. My race and I were strenuously condemned during my lifetime, and my loneliness became overbearing. Fortunately, I was able to counteract the adversities I have faced during my lifetime by relentless optimism as well as confiding to my diary.

The Holocaust was the organized, bureaucratic pursuit and killing of about 6 million Jews by the Nazi rule and its followers. The Nazis, who rose to power in Germany in January 1933, thought that Aryan Germans were superior and that the Jews were inferior, and were an “ethnic threat” to the German society. During the Holocaust, the Nazis targeted the disabled, Gypsies and Slavic people because of their, “racial inferiority”. Some groups were victimized on moral, political, and social grounds; among them were Socialists, Communists, and homosexuals.

The Holocaust will never be forgotten and it should never be forgotten. There are many people out in the world that lost family members and friends through the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a very brutal and stressful time for anyone that had to experience it. There are people out in the world that are still alive from the Holocaust and they tell stories about what they had to do and also what they had to deal with during the Holocaust. People may think that it is dumb to not forget about the Holocaust and we should all forget about it so we can move on from it but we need to know what happened so that whatever happened in the Holocaust could never happen to us.

While the battles of World War II were beyond harsh, they were the least appalling of the war’s events. In reality, the most horrific aspect of the war was the Holocaust. The Holocaust was characterized by the mistreatment, discrimination, and outright torture of people the Germans saw as socially nonconforming. The Jewish and Roma people were the primary targets of the Holocaust, but others suffered as well. They were forced into concentration camps, in which they were worked to death or brutally slaughtered via gassing and other means. The following are the stories of some of the victims - and survivors - of this tragic event.

The Holocaust was a genocide during World War II that caused millions of people to die. The Holocaust was the event where Nazi Germany killed millions of people that they did not seem to be a part of the Nazi’s Master Race. Adolf Hitler was the leader of Germany at the time and was a major supporter of their attempt at creating the Master Race and eliminating those whom he did not see being a part of his Master Race. Adolf Hitler and Germany caused one of the largest death tolls and most well known genocide in history, which is known now as the holocaust.

Literature shows us man's willingness to dehumanize other humans. This can be seen from the horrors of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel, Eugene Black, Iby Knill, and Jakob W. are a few of the survivors to tell their stories of heartbreak. Even though humans have made intellectual advances, some still view dehumanization as an order to benefit themselves and to get ahead of another race or religion. Dehumanization is one of the worst problems faced today in America and other countries around the globe.