The End oF The Holocaust

How The Systematic Murder of the Enemies of the Third Reich Came to

an End

The Rescue of Jews During the Holocaust

• Individuals of all countries and all religious backgrounds risked their lives to help Jews

• Rescue efforts ranged from individual actions to organized networks of people

• Some European churches, orphanages, and families provided hiding places for Jews

The Rescue of Jews During The Holocaust

• Individuals willing to help Jews faced severe consequences if they were caught

• It was also difficult to keep them hidden for the duration of the Nazi occupation

Rescue of Danish Jews

• In late summer 1943, German Security Police officials planned to deport the Danish Jews

• On September 28, 1943, a German businessman warned Danish authorities of the impending operation, scheduled for the night of October 1–2, 1943

Rescue of Danish Jews

• With the help of their non-Jewish Danes, virtually all the Danish Jews went into hiding

• The Danish resistance organized a rescue operation, in which fishermen ferried some 7,200 Jews (of 7,800) in small fishing boats, to safety in neutral Sweden

Rescue of polish Jews

• In German-occupied Poland, some Poles provided assistance to Jews

• Zegota, a Polish underground organization that provided for the social welfare needs of Jews, began operations in September 1942

Rescue of Polish Jews

• Members of the nationalist Polish Home Army and the communist Polish People's Army assisted Jewish fighters by attacking German positions during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

• During The Final Solution, as many as 20,000 Jews were living in hiding in Warsaw with the help of Polish civilians

Rescue of French, Belgian and Italian Jews

• In France, Belgium, and Italy, underground networks run by Catholic clergy and laymen saved thousands of Jews

• These networks were especially active both in southern France, where Jews were hidden and smuggled to safety to Switzerland and Spain, and in northern Italy, where many Jews went into hiding after Germans occupied Italy in September 1943

Individual Rescue Efforts

• Some individuals also used their personal influence to rescue Jews

• German industrialist Oskar Schindler took over an enamelware factory located outside the Krakow ghetto in German-occupied Poland

• He later protected over a thousand Jewish workers employed there from deportation to the Auschwitz concentration camp

The Righteous

• Whether they saved a thousand people or a single life, those who rescued Jews during the Holocaust demonstrated the possibility of individual choice even in extreme circumstances

• These and other acts of conscience and courage, however, saved only a tiny percentage of those targeted for destruction

• People who helped save victims of the Holocaust became known as “The Righteous”

Liberation of Nazi Camps

• As Allied troops moved in to German occupied Eastern Europe they came across tens of thousands of concentration camp prisoners

• Many of these prisoners had survived forced marches from camps in occupied Poland

• These prisoners were suffering from starvation and disease

Soviet Liberation of the Camps

• Soviet forces were the first to approach a major Nazi camp, reaching Majdanek in July 1944

• Germans were caught off guard by the rapid Soviet advance and attempted to hide the evidence of mass murder by demolishing the camp

• Camp staff set fire to the large crematorium used to burn bodies of murdered prisoners

Soviet Liberationof the Camps

• In the hasty evacuation the gas chambers were left standing

• In the summer of 1944, the Soviets also liberated the Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka

• The Germans dismantled the camps in 1943, after most of the Polish Jews were already killed

Liberation of Auschwitz

• The Soviets liberated Auschwitz in January 1945

• The Nazis had forced the majority of Auschwitz prisoners to march westward

• Soviet soldiers found several thousand emaciated prisoners alive when they arrived

Liberation of Auschwitz

• Retreating Germans had destroyed most of the warehouses in the camp, but in the remaining ones the Soviets found personal belongings of the victims

• They discovered hundreds of thousands of men's suits, more than 800,000 women's outfits, and more than 14,000 pounds of human hair

American Liberation of the Camps

• US forces liberated the Buchenwald camp near Weimar, Germany, on April 11, 1945

• On the day of liberation, an underground prisoner resistance organization seized control of Buchenwald to prevent atrocities by the retreating camp guards

• 20, 000 prisoners were rescued at Buchenwald

British Liberationof the Camps

• British forces liberated concentration camps in northern Germany

• At Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, some 60,000 prisoners were found alive but in critical condition because of a typhoid epidemic

• More than 10,000 of them died within a few weeks of liberation

Evidence of Atrocities

• Liberators confronted conditions in the Nazi camps, where piles of corpses lay unburied

• Only after the liberation of these camps was the full scope of Nazi horrors exposed to the world

• The inmates who survived resembled skeletons because of the demands of forced labor and the lack of food, and months and years of maltreatment

Evidence of Atrocities

• Many were so weak that they could hardly move

• Many of the camps had to be burned down to prevent the spread of epidemics

• Survivors of the camps faced a long and difficult road to recovery