Holocaust

Invasion of Poland

The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign or 1939 Defensive War (Polish: Kampania wrześniowa or Wojna obronna 1939 roku) in Poland and the Poland Campaign (German: Polenfeldzug) in Germany, was an invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and a small Slovak contingent that marked the start of World War II. The invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and ended 6 October 1939 with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland.

The day after the Gleiwitz incident, German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west. As the Germans advanced, Polish forces withdrew from their forward bases of operation close to the Polish-German border to more established lines of defence to the east. After the mid-September Polish defeat in the Battle of the Bzura, the Germans gained an undisputed advantage. Polish forces then withdrew to the southeast where they prepared for a long defence of the Romanian Bridgehead and awaited expected French and British support and relief.

standing in place until he was either found or the reason for his absence discovered, even if it took hours, regardless of the weather conditions. After roll call, there were individual and collective punishments, depending on what had happened during the day, and after these, the prisoners were allowed to retire to their blocks for the night to receive their bread rations and water. Curfew was two or three hours later, the prisoners sleeping in long rows of wooden bunks, lying in and on their clothes and shoes to prevent them from being stolen.[28]

German doctors performed a wide variety of experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz. SS doctors tested the efficacy of X-rays as a sterilization device by administering large doses to female prisoners. Prof. Dr. Carl Clauberg injected chemicals into women's uteruses in an effort to glue them shut. Bayer, then a subsidiary of IG Farben, bought prisoners to use as guinea pigs for testing new drugs.[29]

The most infamous doctor at Auschwitz was Josef Mengele, known as the "Angel of Death". Particularly interested in research on identical twins, Mengele performed cruel experiments on them, such as inducing diseases in one twin and killing the other when the first died to perform comparative autopsies. He also took a special interest in dwarves, injecting twins, dwarves and other prisoners with gangrene to "study" the effects.[30]

Auschwitz camp photos of Witold Pilecki, 1941

Information regarding Auschwitz was available to the Allies during the years 1940-1943 by accurate and frequent reports of Polish Army Captain Witold Pilecki. Pilecki was the only known person to volunteer to be imprisoned at Auschwitz concentration camp, spending 945 days at Auschwitz not only actively gathering evidence of genocide and supplying it to the British in London by Polish resistance movement organization Home Army but also organizing resistance structures at the camp known as ZOW, ZwiÄ…zek Organizacji Wojskowej.[31] His first report was smuggled outside in November 1940. He eventually escaped on April 27, 1943, but his personal report of mass killings was dismissed as exaggeration by the Allies, as were his previous ones.[32]

The attitude of the Allies changed with receipt of the very detailed Vrba-Wetzler report, compiled by two Jewish prisoners, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, who escaped on April 7, 1944, and which finally convinced Allied leaders of the truth about Auschwitz. Details from the Vrba-Wetzler report were broadcast on June 15, 1944 by the BBC, and on June 20 by The New York Times, causing the Allies to put pressure on the Hungarian government to stop the mass deportation of Jews to the camp.[33]

Starting with a plea from the Slovakian rabbi Weissmandl in May 1944, there was a growing campaign to persuade the Allies to bomb Auschwitz or the railway lines leading to it. At one point Winston Churchill ordered that such a plan be prepared, but he was told that bombing the camp would most likely kill prisoners without disrupting the killing operation, and that bombing the railway lines was not technically feasible. The debate over what could have been done, or what should have been attempted even if success was unlikely, has continued ever since.

By 1943, resistance organizations had developed in the camp. These organizations helped a few prisoners escape; these escapees took with them news of exterminations, such as the killing of hundreds of thousands of Jews transported from Hungary between May and July 1944. On October 7, 1944, the Jewish Sonderkommandos (those inmates kept separate from the main camp and put to work in the gas chambers and crematoria) of Birkenau Kommando III staged an uprising. They attacked the SS with makeshift weapons: stones, axes, hammers, other work tools and homemade grenades. They caught the SS guards by surprise, overpowered them and blew up the Crematorium IV, using explosives smuggled in from a weapons factory by female inmates. At this stage they were joined by the Birkenau Kommando I of the Crematorium II, which also overpowered their guards and broke out of the compound. Hundreds of prisoners escaped, but were all soon captured and, along with an additional group who participated in the revolt, executed.[34]

There were also plans for a general uprising in Auschwitz, coordinated with an Allied air raid and a Polish resistance (Armia Krajowa, Home Army) attack from the outside.[32] That plan was authored by Polish resistance fighter, Witold Pilecki, who organized in Auschwitz an underground Union of Military Organization - (ZwiÄ…zek Organizacji Wojskowej, ZOW). Pilecki and ZOW hoped that the Allies would drop arms or troops into the camp (most likely the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade, based in Britain), and that the Home Army would organize an assault on the camp from outside. By 1943, however, he realized that the Allies had no such plans. Meanwhile, the Gestapo redoubled its efforts to ferret out ZOW members, succeeding in killing many of them. Pilecki decided to break out of

Answer 1

In the Shoah, commonly known as the Holocaust, the Nazis built huge technical installations, which had the only purpose to kill men and women mainly of Jewish faith in huge daily numbers. In this way over half of the 6,000,000 people were killed.

Sadly, what we can learn from, is, that mankind is far more cruel then any animal ever could be.

Answer 2

Many things can be learned from this terrible tragedy. But some of the most important things that can be learned from it is that we are all different and we must accept those differences in others.

Answer 3

We as a people should learn that we should never ever discriminate against any person because of their race, religion or believes. Never should we discriminate against handicapped or gays and lesbians. That we should respect them and not harm them physically and mentally. And above all human life should be respected. We as people should recognize that no leader should never want death to so many people for any reason. We should never that many in the world would be against and there will be people who will fight so this does not happen again. We should also learn that it could happen to any of us because we are all different. Even Caucasians could be discriminated if someone doesn't like your background, your heritage. So respect life and help preserve it.

Answer 4

So that we can see how much damaged was caused, and so history does not repeat itself. God bless all who died in this tragedy, and let us pray it never happens again.

The math is rounded out but the answer is 1712.
Assume 7.5 million died in the camps (that is a conservative number).
Assume that the Concentration Camp period last from 1933 to 1945 (12years) and calculate 7.5 million divided by 12 years is 625,000 per year. Calculate 625,000 divided by 365 (days per year) and viola, 1712.
Sure, we forgot leap year and we rely on differeing estimates and assumptions but the answer is close. It seems like that comes to a 9/11 attack every other day and no one noticed. That may have been the real problem of the Holocaust, no one noticed.

*EDIT* The answer above is merely an average. Looking at individual camps, the answer to this question is often far more than 1712 people a day. Auschwitz-Birkenau alone had the capacity to and did murder and cremate up to 20,000 people a day. Where does the figure of 7.5 come from?

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In a sense the question isn't very meaningful. It appears to assume that mass killings in concentration camps were an ongoing routine and makes no distinction between the period 1933-late 1941 and the Holocaust. One also needs to distinguish between 'ordinary' concentration camps and extermination camps.

The numbers killed in camps accelerated rapidly, especially from late 1941 on.

There are many reasons:

Jews were generally well mannered, law abiding citizens.

The first and foremost being that unlike some events in history, there is not one defining moment that what was happening, or going to happen, really became clear. Over the course of many years, small steps were taken, and each one involved deceit. Many under the guise of doing things good for the Jewish society/people.

After being socially outcast, demorialized and literally beaten upon, in all ways, over the course of several years, while the Nazi regeme itself was gaining more and more power itself and over others, they were a rather downtrodden group. So when the government says, prepare to be relocated, for your own safety (so we can protect you from those buring your houses down for example), you may tend to believe it. At least want to. The relocation centers were extermination camps...but they weren't called that...sometimes because of how hard it is to deal with, they still aren't!

Any resisitance at any point was met with severe action - certain death - public ridicule and execution - for the one doing it...and most likely his family and friends. And maybe just for good measure...any instance of it required say 50 others to be executed openly as punishment for the group...that has the effect of not just dispelling people trying...but even making some turn them in out of fear.

And consider the US experience similar: The Balck activists gave the while bigots even more of a reason to hate...fear of theose lawless acts...buring of cities, etc. To them it just proved that the people were "animals". The great Martin Luther King (like Ghandi), showed a non violent approach helped disable the adversaries arguments. (However, the Jews were dealing with Nazi's at their height of power and had no MLK stepping up).

Remember, were talking about resisting...that is organizig and fighting...the well armed and trained Nazi powers in their already well occupied and controlled lands...something that would seem futile, even impossible...even when tried by well trained and supplied military forces - some even defending their own homelands with the support of everyone and thing there...was generally unsuccesful.

Just like people today try and make sense of this nonsencial situation....and compassionate people cannot come to terms with what happened....while it was happening...while the unbelievable was happening...it was yet harder to understand. People simply did not know - nor could they possibly be expected to believe - what lay ahead - even for themselves. The government hid (and denied any inference of) it's actions...

Once people are starved, and gone through years of hardship, their will to fight is broken...the promise of a potato in the "soup" that evening is enough to get submission...it takes energy to mobilize.

Answer 2 ?

I want to congratulate the author of what is above, which explains in detail the process used by the Nazis to submit human beings.

There was a time when some Jewish (Ben Gurion) claimed that the victims of the Shoah "deserved" their faith for not having resisted. The idea had its popularity among the Jews in the years of creation of Israel.

I feel annoyed by that question, by implying they could have a responsability, it can sound like a denial of the fact that the people who died in the death camps were the victims.

An answer could be another question : What would you do if men with guns threaten your life and your families' ?

To resist is easier to say than to do. Especially for a Jew in Europe in the 40's. Some had resisted in Eastern Europe (Warsaw Ghetto, in Czecoslovicia, in Hungary ...), but those resistances were wipped up.