The Role Of Holocaust Survivors After World War II

According to the texts and eyewitness accounts, the Holocaust had horrendous effects on the people who lived through it. During this time Jews were being rounded up and put into concentration camps by order of the German government. Writings and testimonies from survivors of the Holocaust are around even to this day. According to these sources, Holocaust survivors suffered tremendously since they were treated as less than human , they lost loved ones, and were constantly abused.

In studying the rescuers and aid to Jews during the Holocaust, there are few, if any, factors that prove to universally explain why people decided to help. These people defied most demographics; class, country, religion, and even included anti-Semites, though economic and practical determinations were involved so much as one’s ability to help is determined by economic/practical restraints. Even so, most, if not all, of these people did have the propensity for helping and service to other prior to helping Jews of the Holocaust. Nechama Tec and later Perry Lendon found this to be true, showing that in these people was an instinct to help, regardless of their feelings towards Jews. This characteristic coincided with independent, self-reliant people who felt less attached to social demands and saw helping as a fact rather than heroic act.

It was extremely difficult for survivors to rebuild their lives back in their home town. This is because “Jewish communities no longer existed in much of europe”(United States Holocaust Museum). And when the survivors tried to return to their houses most “just didn't feel welcome”(United States Holocaust Museum); “ they found that in many cases, their homes had been looted or taken over by others”(United States Holocaust Museum). On top of their houses often being stolen from their possession, there had been “anti-Jewish riots [that] broke out in several Polish cities” (Levine). Struggling with PTSD and attempting to find their lost relatives and friends that were more times than not killed in the holocaust, survivors really did not have a place to call

Also included were the host families themselves, who took the frightened children into their homes and showered them with affection, love, and patience. Tens of thousands of children survived the Holocaust by living under new identities for lengthy periods of time with adoptive parents, or in institutions, such as religious orphanages, many of these stories also appeared in the Hidden Child bulletins over the years. In the Eastern side of Europe “the Germans executed not only the people who sheltered Jews, but their entire family as well” (The Holocaust). Western Europe was much more lenient, but many of the righteous individuals were incarcerated in camps or murdered randomly here too. Anyone who assisted in helping Jews “lived under constant fear of being caught; there was always the danger of denunciation by neighbors or collaborators” (The Holocaust). Jews were hidden in rescuers’ homes and property, they were provided false papers and identities, and were smuggled out of ghettos and concentration camps. As the entire race of Jews was being destroyed, a trace of hope and strength arose as the Righteous Gentiles sheltered Jews from the whole world that was against them.

Elizabeth Feldman –de Jang and Nathan Nothman are both survivors of the Holocaust, but just like every individual survivor, they share different stories. One of the few things that may unite them is the specific fact that they are both Jewish and despite all odds, they managed to survive and share their stories.

Holocaust survivors after the war, were not completely done with the suffering. Most lost their homes, belongings, and family to the germans. So when they were released from the camps exhausted and confused, what did they do? Well, most of them moved away or tried to return to their homes. Anywhere they could go to escape the germans, they went. Even after the war was over, anti-semitism still lingered in europe. Despite being mass-liberated, there continued to be violent protests and threats towards jews.

With the liberation of the concentration camps at the end of WWII, the issue at hand was what to do with the Jewish peoples with no place to go.

On September 1, 1939 war broke out after Germany invaded Poland. The harsh act led to many more invasions and battles. During the holocaust, Germany moved Jews by the thousands to concentration camps all throughout Germany. These camps tortured Jews in different ways such as gas chambers, hanged them, and burned them alive in large groups. In total, Hitler and his followers killed 11 million people. 6 million of them Jewish and 1 million children(Wikipedia). Jews were trying to flee from the country. Some were able to aboard the SS St. Louis. Captain, Gustav Schröder stepped up to get refugees to safety in another country. This was one of many ways Jews escaped the country.

Towards the end of World War II ally powers began to come across concentration camps which housed what the Nazi’s deemed the “undesirables” mainly people of the Jewish faith, gypsies, Russians, polish, the mentally disabled, and the physically impaired. What happened in these camps is one of the most appalling events in world history which would become to be known as the Holocaust. Approximately eleven million people died in the Holocaust due to malnourishment, slave labor, extermination, and medical experimentation (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). These were so heinous that allied powers took the Nazi members to international court for crimes against humanity, which became to be known as the Nuremburg Trials (Duhaime's Law Dictionary).

The Holocaust was a hard and perilous time for many. Many people risked their lives to help others. If rescuers were discovered, they would face the same fate as the people they were hiding or rescuing. Rescue efforts during The Holocaust, teaches lessons of hope, love for others, and serving people during difficult times.

I’ve seen many people die over the spain of my time here. Boxed into trains like roddents with no rights, no voice. It was another reguglar day here in the ghetto daily deportations, daily check ups at the factories. I Dan a worker here at the factory fear the day when I am no longer able to work for these, these devils. The word around here is that when theyre done with your you’re shipped out to a camp to die. Many say theyre ready to fight back against the Nazi’s i will never speak of them as soldiers because soldiers fight for their country not prison the ones that live here.

Victims of The Holocaust – After Hitler’s rule, millions of Jews were left stranded and not knowing what to do. When Jews tried to move back though, many got murdered. This forced them to move somewhere else. The Allied Powers came in to help the Jews and gave many of the Jews a home, some food and water, and even gave some Jews an education. Later on, the Allied Powers also helped the Jews get away from British control (Yad

To get rid of the bodies the staff killed in the gas chambers, the Nazis used crematories to burn them (The Holocaust). At the Dachau concentration camp, the Nazis stuffed twenty-eight railway cars with dead bodies to limit the amount of evidence the Allies could use against them in court. In the country of Romania, the citizens killed the Jewish people themselves. The Jewish people were desperate for help. They had few resources, few allies, impossible choices, and few people came to their rescue. In Denmark, Jews were protected by the Danish and sent to Sweden for more protection. People like Oskar Schindler came to the Jews aid. Oskar protected his Jewish employees, by providing places to hide, food, and shelter. The Allies made no military

During your lifetime, have you ever wanted to bring someone to justice for something bad that they had done? The Nuremberg Trials were a series of trials held between 1945 and 1949 in which the Allies prosecuted German military leaders, political officials, industrialists, and financiers for the crimes they had committed during World War II. The Nazis who participated in doing those terrible things to the Jews were brought to justice. Most of them were executed for the sickening crimes they commited. The Nuremberg Trials were a significant aspect of the Holocaust because this event was held for the purpose of bringing Nazi war criminals to justice.

On 8th August, 1945, shortly after the end of World War II in May of 1945, the Allied governments entered into a joint agreement establishing the International Military Tribunal for the purpose of trying those responsible for the war atrocities. Whereas some 5,000 Nazi’s were charged with war crimes, the Nuremberg trials were designed specifically to prosecute high ranking Nazi officials with whom the authority for the commission of heinous atrocities rested.