The+Holocaust

by Sydney and LeAnn Grade 5

The Holocaust was a heartbreaking and brutal event that began in 1933. Holocaust means destruction by fire. During the Holocaust six __million__ Jews and many others were slaughtered. Adolph Hitler, the organizer of the Holocaust, planned to take over Europe and rule the world.

Before the Holocaust, when World War I was over, Germans were unemployed and discouraged. The German money became worthless. Hitler started taking over and becoming powerful. He took over Germany because people were depressed and wanted someone to start controlling Germany. Hitler began to blame Jews and turn on them. He said he hated Jews and planned to kill them by putting them in concentration camps.

On March 23, 1933, the first concentration opened. It was named Dachau. Hitler created a death camp for Jews. Political prisoners, homosexuals, Gypsies, people who had disabilities and people who disagreed with Hitler were also sent there. Dachau also held religious prisoners. More than 3,000 preachers, deacons and bishops were imprisoned there. In 1944 a women’s camp opened inside Dachau. There were over 200,000 prisoners and 31,951 deaths in Dachau. There was an electric fence which surrounded Dachau. If you walked near it or towards it, you would get killed. This was the first concentration camp that Hitler built, but many more were built during World War II.

On November 9, 1938 there was a night called Kristallnacht in which the Nazi’s destroyed everything in Jewish neighborhoods in Germany and Austria. Kristallnacht means “Night of broken glass”. The Nazis broke and burned stores, houses and synagogues. That night Jews stayed inside and watched their property be destroyed. Children and adults became scared and devastated. The next day, Jews were ordered to __r__epair the damage. People all over the world were shocked by the devastation of that night. Franklin D. Roosevelt said “The news of the past several days from Germany has deeply shocked public opinion in the United States.” But he refused to let Jews from Germany and Austria come to America right after Kristallnacht.

On September 1, 1939, Hitler’s army invaded Poland and World War II began. In the first few months of the war tens of thousands of Polish people and Jews were killed. Polish Jews were forced into sealed ghettos. They were treated with extreme abuse. There were some resistance groups that took life or death risks. If they were found resisting, they were doomed. By 1942, Jews from all over Europe were sent to Polish ghettos and concentration camps. At the end of World War II over three million Polish Jews had been killed, and only fifty to seventy thousand survived. In 1944, Soviet forces approached concentration camps in Poland. The Germans demolished these concentration camps because they didn’t want to leave evidence. United States forces liberated Buchenwald and Dachau in Germany in April, 1945. The British also liberated concentration camps in Northern Germany, including Bergen-Belsen. The conditions in the liberated camps were indescribably abusive. They found that people were infected with diseases and looked like skeletons. When the camps were liberated the world learned that people in the concentrations had been treated worse than abused dogs.

The Holocaust ended in 1945. Jews that were able to escape through liberation of the camps went back to their families. But the Holocaust was a life-tragic memory.

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