Joseph Stalin (Ioseb Dzhughashvili 1878-1953) was the leader of the USSR (Russia) from 1924 to 1953. After World War 2, he wanted to spread Communism across Europe but was opposed by the US and Europe during the "Cold War".

He was considered ruthless in his treatment of his political enemies, especially during the period in which he shared power with the first Soviet leader, Vladimir Lenin. Many were shot, imprisoned, or sent to brutal work camps.

'Stalin' is the Russian word for steel, and was the pseudonym adopted by Jughashvili (spelled variously) when he was a young revolutionary in Tsarist Russia. Stalin was not a Russian. He was born in the province of Georgia, part of the Russian Empire, and actually studied for the priesthood before being expelled because of his Marxist views. Entering a seminary and studying for the Orthodox priesthood was one of the few ways the son of poor peasants could get an education in the 19th Century Russian Empire.

Life of Joseph Stalin

Dzhugashvili was raised by his mother because his father was an alcoholic. He was expected to become a shoemaker but had greater aspirations. A smallish child, he was teased by other children after smallpox left his face scarred. He began fighting and became a street tough. He joined a Georgian independence group called "Messame Dassy", and after being expelled from the seminary, he wrote for a socialist newspaper. Stalin was imprisoned or exiled several more times after supporting Bolshevik guerrillas in 1905. He became an editor of the newspaper Pravda in 1912, adopting the name Stalin as a nom de plume.

He was released from Siberia with prisoners conscripted for World War I. After the abdication of the Tsar in 1917, Stalin, Lenin, and the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution. After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin, Grigori Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev ran the USSR for a couple years until Stalin had them expelled from the Communist Party. He allied himself with Nikolai Bukharin but soon got rid of him too. Eventually he took on dictatorial powers when he had eliminated all of the old Bolsheviks from the new Communist Party and had most important Party positions filled with people loyal to him.

His enemies and rivals were subjected to the same treatment he had received from the Tsarist authorities. During World War II, he received concessions from the other Allies to keep the USSR in the war. World War II established the Soviet Union as a world power, and afterward as a superpower with a large military and nuclear weapons. The control of Russia and the other republics under the Communist party allowed Stalin and his successors to dominate Eastern Europe for most of the late 20th Century.

Joseph Djugashvilli. The Man of Steel, Stalin became Communist Dictator of the Soviet Union in 1924 & remained so, all powerful until his death in 1953. He was a despot and murdered countless millions in the Soviet Union & dependant states. By any fair view Stalin has to be seen as the instigator of the Cold War. Stalin personifies autocratic, totalitarian rule.

He wasn't afraid of Stalin. Lenin could have easily had Stalin executed anytime from 1917 through his death. Lenin believed, according to his testament, that Stalin would destroy the "world revolution" and believed that if given the power Lenin held during his tenure, Stalin would abuse it. The Central Committee ignored Lenin's testament, and by 1938, the majority of the members of the Central Committee deeply regretted doing so.

Lenin found Stalin too power-hungry and greedy to be the ruler of the largest country in the world, but never stated he feared Stalin.

The official cause of death was cerebral hemorrhage.

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On his death certificate, the cause of death is stated as a Cerebral Hemorrhage, internal bleeding to the head. However, at the time of his death, Stalin was in very good health, and Doctors were unable to configure what could have triggered this. After Stalin's death, Nikita Kruschev released classified NKVD documents, which stated that Stalin was not in-fact killed by a Cerebral Hemorrhage, but rather an overdoes of Warfarin, which is Rat Poison, which thins the Blood. His Liver was immensely swollen as he laid on his sofa, if was visible through the back under the Rib-cage. Doctors stated in was a Cerebral Hemorrhage, in fear that if they announced it was poison, the Beria would have them shot. If you read Stalin's medical record online, then it becomes clear. It is heavily suspected he was poisoned by the NKVD Chief Lavrenty Beria, in order to prevent a possible next purge, and to out gain him in power, which he did do, until he was eventually executed in December of 1953.
The cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage (a stroke).

However, scientists in 2009 found that he had rat poison in his system, which causes a stroke.

This is a question that the children of the future will be asking if we do nothing to change it. The people who participated in the Holocaust are dying off, and people want to stop teaching kids about it. If we completely erase memory of the Holocaust, we leave room for history to repeat itself. We have to learn from the mistakes of mankind. If we do not, we could end up in a world of violence and destruction.

So, my answer to your question is yes. The Holocaust did happen, and it should be remembered. When you read this, I hope that you post many, many questions about the Holocaust so that the people on this site will forever remember this terrible part of our past.

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Yes it absolutley did we had people who are alive now who went through it. Personal accounts by survivors of the Holocaust are powerful. They connect us, person to person, with an era in history that is difficult, yet necessary, to comprehend. Survivor testimony translates the countless unimaginable victims into a single person's feelings and thoughts.

There are 350,000 survivors of the Holocaust alive today... There are 350,000 experts who just want to be useful with the remainder of their lives. Please listen to the words and the echoes and the ghosts. And please teach this in your schools.

--Steven Spielberg, Academy Award acceptance speech

Inner Exile: Life in Hiding

Some victims found that they were in danger from Nazi persecution too late to leave their countries. Others thought the Nazi dictatorship could never survive. For many, Nazi racial policy was too irrational to even comprehend. Many Jews felt that they were as much German, Dutch, French, or Polish as anyone else in their communities.

Life in hiding from the Nazis was a daily struggle. Those hidden lived in constant terror of being discovered. People in hiding were discovered frequently. The consequences of being found for hiders and those hiding them were grave, often resulting in brutal death at the hands of special police squads.

My parents, my brother, and I ran through the kitchen into the pantry outside. In an open bicycle shed behind the house, we tried desperately to hide on the floor between bicycles and pieces of wood. Our luck had run out. Within minutes the house was surrounded by Nazis.

--Anita Mayer

Bronia Beker tells how her family hid in caves they dug themselves.

Ernest and Elisabeth Cassutto's story of survival is told by their son George.

Sally Eisner survived a search by Ukrainian police by hiding under a bed with her brother.

Joseph Heinrich was born in Germany. Soon after Kristallnacht he left for Holland, where he lived in hiding. He traveled from Holland to Spain, much of the way on foot. In 1944, he emigrated to Palestine.

Alfred Lessing recalls childhood memories of hiding in the Netherlands.

Yettie Mendels was born in Holland and lived underground for the duration of the war.

Bram Pais' account of his life during the Holocaust describes his years of hiding in the Dutch underground. Near the end of the war he was arrested and imprisoned.

Agnes Vadas describes losing her father to injuries incurred during an air raid in Budapest.

Erika Van Hesteren, a Dutch woman, recounts the years she lived in hiding during the war.

Sophie Yaari, born in Germany, tells about life in Germany in the 1930s. She remembers Kristallnacht. She and her sister went to Holland, where they survived by living in hiding for years.

Exile: Flight in and through Europe

Many survivors either sensed the danger awaiting them if they stayed in their hometowns accross Europe, or were forced to leave their homes. For those who left, it often meant that they would see their friends and relatives for the last time. Life in exile was full of fear and uncertainty. It consisted of dependence on the charity of strangers and a lot of luck. One had to keep one step ahead of Nazi hunger for Lebensraum.

So, on August 10, one day before my birthday, my father and my sister--I had an older sister who did not go to England because she was too old to go as a child and she would have had to go as a servant and my father didn't want that--we went to the railroad station in Berlin. There were maybe 50 or 100, I don't know the number, other children. All were Jewish. I think we were the only half Jews on this Kindertransport saying goodbye to their parents.

--Helga Waldman

Ernest Dr�cker tells his story of escape from Vienna as a teenager.

Marietta Dr�cker tells her story of rescue from Vienna on a Kindertransport.

Betty Grebenschikoff tells her story of escape to Shanghai.

Marie Silverman tells her story of escape from Antwerp.

Helga Waldman tells her story of leaving Germany on a Kindertransport.

Suzanne Klein was born in Romania. In November, 1944 she was deported and eventually sent to Russia.

Kurt Lenkway paddled a kayak to freedom from Germany to Switzerland in 1938. His family made its way to the United States in 1941.

Oskar Blechner sailed on the ill-fated SS St. Louis, but was granted refuge in Great Britain when the ship was returned to Europe.

Shanghai was a refuge during the Holocaust for thousands of Jews who had nowhere else to go.

Christine Damski was a journalism student in Poland in the late 1930s. She moved throughout eastern Europe eluding the Germans.

Renata Eisen credits her survival to the strength and perseverance of her mother and the assistance of Italian villagers.

In an interview format, Walter F. describes in great detail life in Germany during the rise of Nazism. He was arrested during Kristallnacht and went to Buchenwald. He tells of his time in Shanghai, China.

Helen L. tells the story of how she and her sister survived as two young girls living in the woods of eastern Europe.

Death Factories and Forced Labor

The chances of surviving the war in any of the Nazi death, concentration, or labor camps were slim to none. Those who did survive are the sole witnesses to the horrors put into action behind the barbed electric fences surrounding Nazi compounds. Their stories remind us of the atrocities humans are capable of when led to believe those who are different from them are sub-human or otherwise undesirable.

So then we had to march in rows of five, which became the daily norm, and we walked through the night, and we heard music, and we heard all kinds of miserable noises. When it was almost light, we came to the sauna. We came to big low buildings and whoever was left was numbered. I was number two, I can show you. O.K. and they kept telling us how lucky we were that we might be able to live because we have a number.

--Anita Mayer

Anita Mayer tells her story of arrest and life in a concentration camp.

Judy Cohen tells of her life from the time the Nazis occupied her home country of Hungary to her liberation from a death march.

Irene Csillag recalls her life in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Stutthof camps.

Elisabeth De Jong describes the so-called medical experiments inflicted upon her and other women at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In an interview format, Lucille E. gives a lengthy, detailed, and personal account of her life before the war in Germany, during the war, living in several concentration camps, and in her life in America, after liberation.

Alexander Ehrmann tells of life in Auschwitz and other camps. He was also sent to Warsaw after the uprising to help with clean up and salvage operations. (Acrobat and RealAudio files)

Rabbi Baruch G., a Polish survivor, describes forced labor in Mlawa.

Gabor Hirsch was born in Hungary. In his brief account he tells of his time in Birkenau and his liberation there.

Judith Jagermann describes in detail her experience in several concentration camps.

Abram Korn's story is told in excerpts from his book and by means of an interactive map.

Primo Levi, Auschwitz survivor, gave this interview upon his return visit to the camp in 1982.

Filip Muller was born in Slovakia and survived the Auschwitz camp. His brief, but detailed account tells about the crematorium in Auschwitz.

Edith P., a Dutch survivor, was deported to Auschwitz. (Photo, video, audio, and text)

Abraham Pasternak describes life in Romania during the occupation and his experiences in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. (Acrobat and RealAudio files)

Helen R. is a Polish survivor who was deported to Auschwitz.

Judith Rubinstein describes the selection process at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Peter S., a German child survivor, describes a selection at Ravensbr�ck. (Photo, video, audio, and text)

Anna W. is a Gypsy survivor who was deported to Ravensbr�k. (Photo, audio and video in German, text in English and German)

Cyla Wiener recalls her experiences in the Krakow ghetto and working as a seamstress in Plaszow, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen. (Acrobat and RealAudio files)

Rescue and Risk

There are some hopeful and heart-warming stories survivors tell of rescue at the hands of non-victims. Whether officially recognized as righteous gentiles or not, these brave souls risked their lives and the lives of their families in order to preserve a sense of humanity in the brutal chaos caused by Nazi persecution. Many stories of rescue will never be told.

Their lives (my parents) were saved by the gentile farmers in that town. There were some very righteous non-Jewish people who had the courage to speak up. Many, many of them...Many of them lost their lives...Sometimes not enough is written about those courageuous non-Jews.

--Ernest Dr�cker

"A Good Man by the Name of Jeff." The story of one rescuer during the Holocaust as told by Anita Mayer. Herman Feder was in several concentration camps before being rescued by the Chlups in Czechoslovakia. He hid with the Chlup family for years.

Rachel G., a Belgian child survivor, was hidden in convents.

Eva and Henry Galler, Felicia Fuksman, Anne Levy, and Leo Scher relate their extensive survivor testimonies at the Louisiana Holocaust Survivor site.

Erna Blitzer Gorman tells of her experiences in various ghettos and of being hidden in a barn by a Ukrainian farmer for two years. (Acrobat and RealAudio files)

Ibi Grossman survived in a Budapest ghetto thanks in part to the intervention of Raoul Wallenberg.

Henny Juliard was living in The Hague in Holland at the beginning of World War II. She lived under the care of the Bochoves, a Dutch couple, for almost three years.

Alina Kentof was hidden in a Polish monastery as a child. She and her mother were later able to make their way to Palestine.

Dr. Olga Lilien was born in 1904 in Lvov, Poland. She lived through the war with the help of Barbara Szymanska Makuch's family.

Yes it did. There are people out there who don't know and don't believe it happened. There are also some who know it occured, but deny that it happened. I have no idea why. But, there is definite proof that the Holocaust occured, ask historians or survivers themselves. Also, I had 4 cousins and 2 uncles that fought in World War 2, and none of them died. My family wouldn't lie to me.

Well yes. the holocaust did occur. There is proof! There are pictues and documentaries from survivors.

There isn't much doubt. A few people deny the evidence that the holocaust occurred, but they are usually mentally challanged, mentally unstable or racists.

Yes, it certainly did happen. There's a lot of evidence and there are accounts by survivors and liberators, too. There's also evidence from the Nuremberg Tribunal and there are the records of the proceedings at the trials of some of the camp guards and Kommandants.

There is also evidence from those who committed the genocide. One of the most interesting is the autobiography of Rudolf Hoess (*not* to be confused with deputy fuehrer Rudolf Hess). Hoess was Kommandant of Auschwitz from its foundation in 1940 till late in 1943. He wrote the story of his life while awaiting trial, and although warned about the dangers of incrimminating himself, he presented the book to the court, as if he felt some deep-seated need to confess (and in a strange way, also justify himself). He was convicted and taken back to Auschwitz in 1947 and hanged just inside the main gate. The authenticity of the manuscript has been checked a number of times and all the experts agreed that it's completely genuine.

What's more, those who deny the Holocaust can't explain how six million Jews disappeared in 1941-45. Before 1939-40 many cities in Poland and Lithuania had large, flourishing Jewish communities and in many cases were thriving Jewish cutural centres - for example, Warsaw, Vilnius, Lemberg (Lviv), Czernowitz ... By 1945 these places had almost no Jews at all ... The same applies to places like Lodz and Lublin - and to countless places in Belarus and Ukraine - Minsk, Kiev, Odessa ... The death toll was staggering, and also the destruction of Jewish cultural life.

Moreover, there is archaeological evidence, such as the 33 mass graves at Belzec with about 10,000 skeletons found in each.

Cheka (Chrezvychaynaya Komissiya, Extraordinary Commission), from 1917.

NKVD (Narodnyy komissariat vnutrennikh del,People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) 1934-1954.

After Stalin's death in 1953:

KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, Committee for State Security) 1954-1991.

The most widely accepted figure is that Stalin killed around 20 million.

But there is no argument, both Hitler and Stalin where ruthless and blood letting rulers of nations, where the people of those nations were just to frightened to do anything it. Both leaders led a reign of terror over many. Jews, Muslims, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, even Gays. (There are many other groups that I have not mentioned). Or anyone who tried to stand up against them.

According to the documentary, "Stalin, Portrait of a Monster in Blood." He is estimated to have been responsible for possibly 60 Million Deaths. This is likely an exaggeration, but millions did suffer under his repression.

Look to "Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy" for an excellent portrait of the man by Volkogonov. J Arch Getty's works on Stalin's purges are also an excellent source of information.

There is a vast difference between the number of people Stalin killed in purges and the number that died of neglect and poor conditions in his horrendous network of labor camps which stretched across all of the USSR's 12 time zones. These prisoners of Stalin are largely forgotten in most accounts of Stalin. "Gulag" by Anne Applebaum is the definitive guide on the subject due to her detailed research into both memoirs of prisoners and the NKVD records from the time. If a dictator has people imprisoned or sent to camps, then he's ultimately responsible for their fate, so there is little distinction between killing people and deliberately letting them die of neglect.

The gap between high and low estimates is enormous. At the upper end one gets estimates ranging from about 40-60 million or even 100 million, at the lower end about 10-20 million. Clearly, there's ideological 'monkey business' at work. Until someone can reconcile these amazing discrepancies satisfactorily, and provide a very clear explanation of how the new figure is arrived at, it's impossible to say how many people Stalin had killed. During WWII he encouraged tactics which led to the deaths of about 8,000,000 of his own soldiers. Additionally about 2,800,000 German, Hungarian, Romanian, and Finnish troops were killed by his armies. Stalin's policies meant no mercy to prisoners, and huge numbers died after being taken captive during the war. Perhaps 30,000,000 persons of various nations died. Following WWII, Stalin instigated a policy of terror on the German people. This led to about 2,000,000 German civilians being murdered outright and thousands more committing suicide. Stalin enforced brutal police states on all the peoples of eastern Europe which he overran with his armies. Tens of thousands died in these takeovers. German POWs were kept in horrible conditions for as long as ten years after the war, leading to the deaths of at least 1,000,000. In 1945 he launched an unprovoked war with Japan, killing many tens of thousands of Japanese troops and capturing many others.

[Poor military tactics are usually put in a different category. After all, it is not common to regard the generals of World War 1 as mass murderers on the grounds that they lacked the imagination to break out of trench warfare].

All accounts agree that it is in the millions, perhaps even more than Hitler.

Stalin caused the deaths of people of certain races and nationalities (Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, etc.), people of certain economic status (wealthy farm owners called "kulaks") by relocating them to the gulags (concentration camps) in Siberia where they died of malnutrition, overwork and exposure. He murdered political opponents, actual and suspected, in the thousands usually by a single gunshot to the back of the head. He forced the repatriation of all Russian soldiers taken prisoner during World War 2 and treated them as virtual traitors, sending [many of] them to the gulags as well. Most accurately, Stalin caused the deaths of at least 20,000,000 people. Obviously, though, he did not kill that many himself. With his faulty tactics and failed techniques on the battlefield, he cause at least 25,000,000 Red Army soldiers. He had several million executed or worked to death in Russia as well.

Some estimates will reach over 60 million, but Stalin is actually only a direct cause of 15-20 million deaths. The 5 million difference is from varying estimates due to how many people there were and the secrecy of the USSR.

Well, some "historians" blame Stalin for all deaths of Russian people that happened from 1924 to 1953. The actual victims of Stalin were a few thousand people who were imprisoned or killed during "purges" or died in prison.

Some "military experts" talk about "faulty tactics" during WWII. If we see total military losses at Eastern front - Russia lost about 9 million soldiers, Germans lost about 6.5 million and German allies lost more than 1.5 million. Losses of both sides are comparable given the forces involved. The militarily-experienced Germans prevailed during the first year of war, but then were beaten, much as Napoleon was, by the combination of Soviet determination and Russian weather.

The actual number of persons killed may never be known, because in the aftermath of World War II, there was no "official" record kept of those who Stalin disposed of, which certainly included anybody he saw as a threat to his rule. His henchman, Lavrentiy Beria (Beriya), was more intimately involved in the killing process than Stalin himself.

The higher end of figures are likely exaggerated, however, because those with no actual power would have been needed for labor camps, rather than killed.

Joseph Stalin wanted to regain Russia's (USSR) land that was lost in the previous World War I, (The Great War) basically wanted to take over the world, little by little. To do this, he eliminated anyone who he thought would be more powerful than him, such as the important rulers in the Central Planning Committee. He also signed the Non-aggression Pact with Hitler to give him more time to build up his army. he also wanted to modernize the economy, build a strong military, spread the ideas of communism, increase the food supply, and increase raw material production.

Stalin also lived by Lenin's ideas. Stalin believed that Communism was what the world needed. His ultimate goal was to make the world a communist, and Russian world.

He wanted to make the USSR atheist. He wanted and was willing to defend the USSR at all costs.

He wanted the USSR to be a strong country, especially in the military aspect.

• Since 1897 Stalin's goal was to improve people's life. He took part in organising meetings about rights of working people. He seek for ways to improve people's life. In 1903, he become member of communist party.
• Until 1917, Stalin's goal was to finish ill and capitalistic czar's regime, based on exploiting people.
• In 1917-1921 Stalin's goal was to win civil war in Russia and also defend country of direct and indirect aggression of Britain, France and US. Also, he took part in leading as Lenin's trusted man. He started to solve national questions - and solved lots of problems, preventing different people coexist peacefully.
• He wanted to gain sole control of the USSR in the time period of around 1922 until he succeeded in 1928 (Lenin ceased control in 1922 and in charge was high party command, until Stalin get to sole control).
• He had a goal of industrializing the USSR in the early thirties. He wanted to increase domestic production and turn the USSR into a super-power of the production world.
• Throughout his career he had a goal of maintaining absolute control and never allowing other threats to grow.
• In the early forties he had the goal of defeating the Germans.
• By the late forties into the early fifties he had a goal of making the USSR into an international military super-power, and to keep their military ahead of the United States.