During the Second World War, the Nazis sought to murder the entire Jewish population and to destroy their culture. Although the Jews of Europe were the Nazis’ main target, many millions of other people were imprisoned, enslaved and murdered. The Nazis did not act alone, they were supported and assisted by people from within the countries they occupied across Europe. These events are now called the Holocaust and some of the shocking facts can be found below:
- The holocaust began in 1933 when Hitler rose to power and ended in 1945
- 11 million people were killed during the holocaust – 1.1 million of these were children and 6 million were Jews although the latest research carried out at Washington’s Holocaust Memorial Museum suggest the figure is actually 15 – 20 million
- Two thirds of Jewish people living in Europe at the time of WW2 were killed by the Nazis
- After the start of WW” the Nazis ordered Jews to wear the Yellow Star of David on their clothes to make them easy to identify
- Auschwitz and Birkenau were liberated on the 27th January 1945
- On September 15th 1935 Jewish people living in Germany were excluded from public life, stripped of their citizenship and their right to marry a German
- The entrance gate to Auschwitz is inscribed with the message Arbeit Macht Frei which translates to work sets you fee
- Auschwitz has been turned into a museum to ensure that the atrocities that occurred were never forgotten. There are display cases of luggage, glasses, shoes, artificial limbs, human hair and more. More than 500,000 people visit the site each year.
- Anne Frank died in Bergen Belsen just weeks before the camp was liberated
- The exact number of camps established between 1933 and 1945 by the Nazis is unclear but numbers range from 1,000-20,000
- October 1939 Germans first began killing the impaired
- 8th December 1941 – Chelmno – the first killing centre began operation
- Up to 6,000 people a day could be killed at Auschwitz
- The first commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoss was tried following the end of the war and sentenced to death by hanging at the place he had ordered the death of so many others
- Oscar Schindler saved more than 1200 Jews during the Holocaust at a personal cost to himself of millions
- The longest transport of prisoners to a death camp was 18 days and not one person survived the journey
- To get prisoners into the gas chambers they were told that they would be washed and disinfected
- The first concentration camp was Dachau
- Six camps served as the main killing camps – Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Majdanek, Chelmno, Sobibor and Belzec
- At the entrance to each death camp a selection process to place to decide who would be sent immediately to the gas chambers and who would be used as labour – pregnant women, small children, the elderly and the sick or handicapped were immediately sentenced to death
- When the gas chamber at Auschwitz was full it only took 20 mins to kill everyone inside
- When prisoners were first liberated from the camps many died within the first week of freedom often due to the sudden change in their diet that their bodies were not used to