The Holocaust of WWII, a war within a war.

The Holocaust of WWII,a war within a war. “Nobody's free until everybody's free.” --Fannie Lou Hamer

What is Genocide? “The state sponsored extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.” ***This is the dictionary definition. A big problem is that no consensus exists on the definition of genocide.

Heinrich Himmler set-up and directed the SS and the Concentration camps. People sent to the camps: - Communists - Political opponents / critics - Jews - Jehovah Witness - Slavic people - Soviet POWs. - Dissenting clergy - Gypsies / Roma - Gay men - Emigrants / people of color - Forced laborers - Criminals - Mentally / physically challenged Heinrich Himmler  His chief goal was to further the German master race.  Leading organizer of the Holocaust; officer in charge of the concentration camps.  Directed medical experiments on gay prisoners (homophobic).

Reinhard Heydrich was a member of the SS and chief of the Reich Security Main Office (including the Gestapo and Nazi police agencies). Heydrich was one of the architects of the Holocaust, chairing the 1942 Wannsee conference, which finalized plans for the extermination of all European Jews. He was later assassinated in Prague, CZ. Heinrich Himmler (left) chief of the SS, with Adolf Hitler (right).

Adolf Eichmann was a high-ranking Nazi. Due to his organizational talents and ideological reliability, he was tasked by Reinhard Heydrich to facilitate and manage the logistics of mass deportation to ghettos and extermination camps in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. He was captured by Israeli Mossad agents in Argentina and indicted by Israeli court on fifteen criminal charges, including charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes. He was convicted and hanged. Adolf Eichmann in Germany in 1940. Adolf Eichmann coined the phrase “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” and supervised the genocide of millions of innocent people.

Anne Frank was a German-born Jewish girl from the city of Frankfurt, who wrote a diary while in hiding with her family, the Van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer in Amsterdam during the German occupation of the Netherlands in WWII.  Anne Frank – wrote a journal about her time in a “safe house” in Amsterdam, Netherlands.  Denmark saved almost its entire Jewish population. House where they hid from the Nazis. Statue of Anne Frank, by Mari Andriessen, in Amsterdam. Anne Frank pictured in May, 1942.

Some Rescuers… Some Collaborators… In 2004, 93 year old Maurice Papon who was A (Vichy) French gov’t minister and Nazi collaborator lost an appeal for a retrial after being convicted for sending Jews to death camps during WWII. Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese Consul-General in Kaunas, Lithuania, issued thousands of visas to Jews fleeing Poland. Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg and his colleagues saved as many as 100,000 Hungarian Jews by providing them with diplomatic passes. 2007, A former Ukrainian Nazi collaborator who worked with the Auxiliary Police, assisted in the annihilation of more than 100,000 Jews in Poland. Mr Firishchak was stripped of his US citizenship by a Chicago judge and ordered deported back to the Ukraine. Oskar Schindler – Was he a rescuer or Nazi profiteer of the Holocaust ? He saved over 1,100 lives.

SS soldiers guard the captured Jewish resistance fighters during the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Jews are captured during the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto and deported to the extermination camps.

A member of Einsatzgruppe D is just about to shoot a Jewish man kneeling before a filled mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in 1942. Einsatzgruppen (German for "task forces") were paramilitary groups operated by the SS before and during WWII. Their principal task "was the annihilation of the Jews, Gypsies, and political commissars." Mass grave at Bergen Belsen concentration camp, 1945. According to their own records, the Einsatzgruppen was responsible for killing over one million civilians without judicial review and later without any semblance of legality.

Concentration camp prisoners wearing badges. Forced labor

Auschwitz survivor The colors and their meanings were:

“The Final Solution of the Jewish Question” Refers to the Nazis' plan to engage in systematic genocide against the European Jewish population during WWII. Estimated number of people killed at these death camps: ■ Auschwitz II: about 1,400,000 ■ Belzec: at least 436,000 ■ Chelmno:at least 152,000 ■ Majdanek: 78,000–235,000 ■ Sobibór: at least 170,000 ■ Treblinka: at least 800,000 ■ Jasenovac: 500,000–840,000 ■ Maly Trostenets: at least 60,000 6 million Jews killed. The entire Jewish population of Poland killed. Total of 11 million people killed.

Business who helped the Nazis in the Holocaust: IBM, DuPont, Siemens (then: factories near camps to make military electrical switches, now: high speed trains), and Krupp (steel). Row after row of corpses covered the ground inside the Nordhausen concentration camp. First Army men who captured the camp said that there were 3,000 to 4,000 inmates of a half dozen nationalities.

Auschwitz gas chamber Dachau prisoners Birkenau camp.

Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The Kill Wall

"Selection" of Hungarian Jews at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in May/ June 1944. To be sent to the right meant slave labor; to the left, the gas chambers. Birkenau, July 2006.

Some people did not believe or acknowledge the full horrors of Hitler’s genocide of civilians because WWI propaganda exaggerated the German atrocities. Death camp ovens

Photograph of Birkenau, taken May 31, 1944, by the South African Air Force, sent to photograph the fuel factory at nearby Monowitz. The photographic analysts missed the significance of the photograph; it was identified only in the late 1970s and analyzed by the CIA in 1978. Smoke can be seen issuing from Crematorium V.

"First they came for the Jews but I did not speak up because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the communists but I did not speak up because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade Unionists but I did not speak up because I was not a trade Unionist. Then they came for me but there was no one left to speak for me."

20th Century Genocides (Only a few) • Turkish Massacre of Armenians (1915-1918/23) • Stalin’s Collectivization Famine (1932-1933) • The Rape of Nanking (1937-1938) • The Nazi Holocaust (1938-1945) • Mao Zedong in China (1958-1968) • Pol Pot in Cambodia (1975-1979) • Rwanda (1994) • Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-1995)

The Holocaust of WWII, a war within a war.