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The date is September 1, 1939, the place is Poland, the event is the start of World War II and the Holocaust, the number is 6 million.   Hitler and his henchmen wiped out 6 million Jews and millions of other people during the Holocaust.  Think about the number 6 million people for a minute,   that is almost the entire population of NY City.  He also killed 5 million other groups of people such as homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Poles, Catholics and Gypsies(Romany).  He killed anyone that he hated. The people that he hated NEVER did anything bad to him. He hated them for one reason, because they were different than he was. He hated the Jews the most. Hated them just because they were Jewish. After World War I and before the start of World War II, Germany (and the rest of the world) were in a bad economic depression and he blamed the Jews for causing that depression. The Jews did not cause it. He blamed them for having businesses and being successful at what they did. The Jews strived to make a good life for themselves and that is what they did. Anybody with a bit of determination and a lot of hard work can be successful, if they try. So while Germany was in a depression, Hitler came to power and offered the people of Germany prosperity. He brainwashed them into thinking that the Jews were the cause of their hardships. Unfortunately, most of them believed him. Could you imagine someone saying that all the Christians, Muslims, etc. have to be wiped off the face of the earth just because of what you believe in? Hitler wanted a master race. One type of people.  He wiped out a total of 11 million innocent people  from the face of the earth.    Over 1 million children were wiped out also. Some people say it never happened.  Those who say that, are burying their heads or totally out of their minds.  The Holocaust DID happen and was the horror of the 20th century and actually the horror of all of mankind.  You see, my father in law is living proof that the Holocaust did happen.  He has a tattoo of numbers on his arm (#13935 which was given to him in the Gros Rosen concentration camp in 1944) that will always make him remember what the Nazi's did to him and his family.  The Nazi's wiped out 2/3 of the Jewish population of Europe.  My father in law was one of the luckier ones, he survived. The Nazi's killed his parents and some of his siblings and other members of his family in the concentration camps.  I cannot imagine the horror of being taken away from my home, my family,  my husband, my children, never to see any of them again.  To be tortured and then put to death.  It is unimaginable unless you were there. This summer (Summer of 2000) my mother visited Poland and the Auschwitz concentration camp. She couldn't believe her eyes. She said what we see in the movies and on TV is nothing campared to actually being there. Parts of the camp are gone because when the Allies were liberating the camps, the Nazi's tried to get rid of the traces of their autrocities. Auschwitz is a museum now. It is maintained by the Polish Government. My mother told me that everyone there was crying as they were looking at the displays and walking around in the barracks, and yes, they let them in what is left of the gas chambers and crematorium. Some of the displays that she saw were piles and piles of shoes and human hair. Anything that was worth any value was shipped back to Germany for the Nazi's to use. Anything that wasn't worth any value was destroyed. The barracks consisted of wooden shelves, 3 or 4 tiers with at least 6 people packed to a tier. Sometimes they had to sleep one on top of another. There were no blankets, no pillows, no sheets, no matresses. Just wood to lie on. There were also no bathroom facilities in these barracks. The people were given very little food to eat, if you can call what they gave them food. They would give them a small piece of bread and maybe a cup of watery soup. Many people starved to death in Aushwitz and the other camps. The prisoners were transported by train or in actuality cattle cars. They packed them in like sardines, in the dark and with one tiny little window at the top of the train car. Many people died on the way to the camps because there was no food or water, barely any air to breathe or sanitary facilities on board. Sometimes it took days to reach the destination. The living would be cramped in with people that died along the way. People relieved themselves where they stood. It was just a nightmare. Click here to read my father in law's story. A Survivor's Story

There was a man during The Holocaust that was a savior, his name was Oskar Schindler (1908-1974).  He helped save 1200  Jewish men, women and children from the Nazi death camps.  This man risked everything he had to try and save a group of people from death. He owned a factory and had Jewish people work for him telling the Nazi's that he "needed" them.  He bribed government officials to get the people to work for him.  He did anything he could to save their lives. He was truly a remarkable man.  He is buried in Jerusalem.

Another savior of the Holocaust is Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish businessman who saved 100,000 Jews.  He issued protective passports that provided Swedish protection for these people. After the war, when the Russians occupied Hungary, Wallenberg dissappeard. Nobody knows what happened to him. A tree in his memory was planted at Yad Vashem in Israel.

Here is a list of the estimated Jewish losses:
 
 
 

Source:  Yad Vashem

The atrocities that the Nazi's committed against people are totally unbelievable.  They gassed innocent men, women and children.  Used people in their horrific experiments.  They told these innocent people that they were going to take a shower.  They made them strip naked and locked them in a big chamber and gassed them to death.  Then they either buried  them in mass graves or  they were cremated in the ovens.    When they were trying to save gas and expenses they were burned alive. If they weren't gassed or shot to death, they starved or died of a terrible illness such as typhus. People of all ages; babies, toddlers, the elderly, the sick.  The Nazi's did not care.   They had to get rid of all the Jews of the world in their Final Solution.

There were many concentration camps scattered around Europe:

Aktion Reinhard
   Belzec
   Sobibor
   Treblinka

Auchwitz--The infamous Holocaust death camp

Bergen-Belsen

Buchenwald
   Mittelbau Dora

Chelmno

Dachau

Flossenburg

Gros Rosen

Maidanek (Majdanek)

Mauthausen

Natzweiler

Nordhausen

Neuengamme

Ravensbruck

Sachsenhausen

Sobibor

Stutthoff

Theresienstadt

Vught
 
 

On October 18, 1945, the chief prosecutors lodged an indictment with the tribunal charging 24 individuals with a variety of crimes and atrocities, including the deliberate instigation of aggressive wars, extermination of racial and religious groups, murder and mistreatment of prisoners of war, and the murder, mistreatment, and deportation to slave labor of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of countries occupied by Germany during the war.

Among the accused were the Nationalist Socialist leaders Hermann Göring and Rudolf Hess, the diplomat Joachim von Ribbentrop, the munitions maker Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, and 18 other military leaders and civilian officials. Seven organizations that formed part of the basic structure of the Nazi government were also charged as criminal. These organizations included the SS (Schutzstaffel, German for "Defense Corps"), the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei, "Secret State Police"), the SA (Sturmabteilung, "Storm Troops"), and the General Staff and High Command of the German armed forces.

The trial began on November 20, 1945. Much of the evidence submitted by the prosecution consisted of original military, diplomatic, and other government documents that fell into the hands of the Allied forces after the collapse of the German government.

Conclusions of the First Trial

The judgment of the International Military Tribunal was handed down on September 30-October 1, 1946. Among notable features of the decision was the conclusion, in accordance with the London Agreement, that to plan or instigate an aggressive war is a crime under the principles of international law. The tribunal rejected the contention of the defense that such acts had not previously been defined as crimes under international law and that therefore the condemnation of the defendants would violate the principle of justice prohibiting ex post facto punishments. It also rejected the contention of a number of the defendants that they were not legally responsible for their acts because they performed the acts under the orders of superior authority, stating that "the true test … is not the existence of the order but whether moral choice (in executing it) was in fact possible."

With respect to war crimes and crimes against humanity, the tribunal found overwhelming evidence of a systematic rule of violence, brutality, and terrorism by the German government in the territories occupied by its forces. Millions of persons were destroyed in concentration camps, many of which were equipped with gas chambers for the extermination of Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and members of other ethnic or religious groups. Under the slave-labor policy of the German government, at least 5 million persons had been forcibly deported from their homes to Germany. Many of them died because of inhuman treatment. The tribunal also found that atrocities had been committed on a large scale and as a matter of official policy.

Of the seven indicted organizations, the tribunal declared criminal the Leadership Corps of the National Socialist Party, the SS, the SD (Sicherheitsdienst, German for "Security Service"), and the Gestapo.

Twelve defendants were sentenced to death by hanging, seven received prison terms ranging from ten years to life, and three, including the German politician and diplomat Franz von Papen and the president of the German Central Bank Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, were acquitted. Those who had been condemned to death were executed on October 16, 1946. Göring committed suicide in prison a few hours before he was to be executed.

Subsequent Trials

After the conclusion of the first Nürnberg trial, 12 more trials were held under the authority of Control Council Law No. 10, which closely resembled the London Agreement but provided the war crimes trials in each of the four zones of occupied Germany.

About 185 individuals were indicted in the 12 cases. Those indicted included doctors who had conducted medical experiments on concentration camp inmates and prisoners of war, judges who had committed murder and other crimes under the guise of the judicial process, and industrialists who had participated in the looting of occupied countries and in the forced-labor program. Other persons indicted included SS officials, who had headed the concentration camps, administered the Nazi racial laws, and carried out the extermination of Jews and other groups in the eastern territories overrun by the German army; and high military and civilian officials who bore responsibility for these and other criminal acts and policies of the Third Reich. A number of doctors and SS leaders were condemned to death by hanging, and approximately 120 other defendants were given prison sentences of various durations; 35 defendants were acquitted.
 
 

We as humanity, must NEVER  forget and NEVER let something like that happen again.  To kill innocent human beings just for believing in something different than you is horrible.  We have to stop prejudice and racism in this world.  You may say to yourself that one or two people or even ten cannot put a stop to it.  You are right, one or two people cannot, but if we all band together, each of us doing our part then we can put a stop to it.  Racism is a terrible disease that spreads like a cancer and MUST be eliminated in this world.  If you see a person, do not judge them on the color of their skin or what they believe in.  Judge them by what is in their heart. Everyone must be educated about the horrors of racism and bigotry. Please do not teach your children to hate. If the world was made up of all the same type of people, if we all had the same hair color, eye color, skin color, same beliefs, the world would be quite boring.  Each of us are different and unique in our own way, but we have one thing in common.  We are all human beings.  We are all flowers in life's garden.
 
 

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