Thursday, November 12, 2009
What was the Holocaust?
What was the Holocaust? "Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." It was the killing of Jews and many others by the Nazis. The Nazis were a group formed by a man named Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler and his group were known as the National Socialist Party, or Nazis. The Nazis came together in 1920. Adolf rose to power and took the Nazis with him. He was not considered a nice person because if he didn't like someone he wanted them dead. He really didn't like the Jews or anybody who wasn't of Aryan race. He believed that they were all trying to take over Germany. So he ordered to have their freedom taken away little at a time. He made the Jews wear the star of David on their clothes. He took away their transportation and shut down their shops. Eventually Hitler started to take them away from their homes and put them in ghettos and concentration camps. Ghettos were where they lived with a lot of other people until they were sent away or killed. Concentration camps were places where the Nazis sent the prisoners. The prisoners had to shave their heads and traded in their names for numbers. They were built all over Europe. The prisoners were poorly fed and so they were basically just bones. Almost six million Jews were killed. That's including men, women, and children of all ages. Sometimes when we think back to those times we are glad that it wasn't us but then we realize that if that wouldn't have happened then we wouldn't have learned from the mistakes that were made. So even though the Holocaust may seem like a bad thing it is history and as painful as it may be it deserves to be remembered in anyway possible.
Here are some pics of Holocaust memories
<-----Two brothers seated for their family photo later they were sent to Majdanek camp. Kovno, Lithuania, February 1944.
<------- A Hungarian Jewish family seated for their family photo. Later they were all killed at Auschwitz.
Three children with their babysitter. Two of the children were later killed in the Holocaust ------------->
Two sisters and a brother. One of these sisters and the other members of the family did not survive ------------>
<-------Two cousins who survived the Holocaust by being smuggled out of the camp.
All pictures courtesy of www.ushmm.org
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