"THE HOLOCAUST, A WARNING OF HISTORY"-Erasmus RED

Terrible events took place during World War II. More than 35 million people, military and civilians, died during this second great conflagration of the century just ended. Of these, 6 million were Jews, adults and children, killed just because they were of Jewish origin.

Ce este holocaustul?

Termenul de Holocaust s-a impus în cultura istorică europeană şi nord americană abia la sfârşitul anilor 1970, când, în mod convenţional, cei mai mulţi dintre istorici au decis să folosească acest termen pentru a desemna distrugerea evreilor europeni. De origine greacă, holocauston, cu trimitere la arderea integrală a unui animal sacrificat, termenul este astăzi, în general, lipsit de valenţe religioase.

In January 1933, after a close political struggle spanning 10 years,

Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. Throughout this decade,

Hitler had constantly blamed the Jews, whom he made responsible for the defeat of Germany in the First World War, as well as for the economic difficulties that the German nation was facing, many of which appeared on the background of this defeat. Despite the contribution and integration their place in German society, starting in

1933 the Jews weregradually excluded through a long series of lawsand decrees, which culminated in the Racial Laws ofNuremberg

from 1935, laws that stripped them of their citizenshipGerman and they forbade them to marry people havinganother ethnicity and religion than the Jewish one.

Jews were also excluded from state schools, they were denied access to state-paid positions, the satisfaction of military service, reaching the point of being forbidden to sit on the same bench with a non-Jew or to occupy a place in the means of transport. public transport.

While he despised the Jews, he also considered them an enormous threat and claimed that the Jews wanted to rule the world and control other peoples. His ideas about the sinister and menacing "Jew" came from the anti-Jewish Christian tradition, where it was claimed that the Jews killed Jesus. In order to keep the white Aryan "race" pure, Germans had to avoid contact with Jews at all costs.

Hitler thus intended to accuse the Jews of triggering the new war that he himself would cause in a very short time. The war began in September 1939, with the entry of German troops into Poland, a country where more than 3 million Jews lived. After the swift defeat of Poland, the Jews of that country were rounded up and forced to live in the newly established ghettos of Lodz, Krakow, and Warsaw, awaiting future decisions the

Nazis would make regarding their fate. In the overcrowded ghettos, fenced off and guarded by SS troops,

Hitler's most loyal and trusted organization of young fanatics, considered racially flawless (according to Nazi standards), thousands of Jews have perished from hunger, cold and diseases, in miserable living conditions.

Beginning in the spring of 1942, Auschwitz-Birkenau was a combination labor camp and extermination camp.

About forty forced labor camps were built around Auschwitz and many German firms profited from this cheap labor. When the trains arrived at the camp, the Jews had no idea what was about to happen.

Everything was chaotic, SS soldiers giving orders, dogs barking, and SSdesignated prisoners trying to unload the trains as quickly as possible. The elderly, children and the sick were sent directly to the gas chambers. The rest of the prisoners went through a selection process, where SS doctors determined which people were fit for work, sending the others to the gas chambers.

From January to May 1945, concentration and forced labor camps throughout Germany, occupied Poland, and Austria were liberated by Soviet, British, and American troops.

Even though, at that time, the world already knew that millions of Jews died in "human slaughterhouses", the terrible situation in the liberated camps shocked people all over the world.

• Hédi Fried – Holocaust survivor

• „ When misfortunes happen to us, no one can help us. In order to move forward we must find solace in our own soul. Something must be born there to give us strength to fight on."

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, in any form or any means, without permission in writing from the authors.

,,The European Commission is not responsible for any uploaded or submitted content. The content reflects the views only of the European Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein”