The
Holocaust was the
systematic annihilation of six million Jews by the Nazis during
World War 2. In 1933 approximately nine million Jews lived in
the 21 countries of Europe that would be occupied by Germany
during the war. By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had
been killed. The European Jews were the primary victims of the
Holocaust.
By mid 1942, mass gassing of Jews using Zyklon-B began at Auschwitz, where
extermination was conducted on an industrial scale with some estimates running
as high as three million persons eventually killed through gassing, starvation,
disease, shooting, and burning.
The number of children killed during the Nazi
genocide is not
fathomable and full statistics for the tragic fate of children
who died will never be known. Some estimates range as high as
1.5 million murdered children. This figure includes more than
1.2 million Jewish children, tens of thousands of Gypsy children
and thousands of institutionalized handicapped children who were
murdered under Nazi rule in Germany and occupied Europe.
Nazi persecution, arrests, and deportations were directed
against all members of Jewish families without concern for age.
Plucked from their homes and stripped of their childhoods, the
children had witnessed the murder of parents, siblings, and
relatives. They faced starvation, illness and brutal labor,
until they were consigned to the gas chambers.
The Holocaust survivor, the author Elie Wiesel, has dedicated
his life to ensuring that none of us forget what happened to the
Jews. The Nobel Prize recipient wrote:
"In
those times there was darkness everywhere. In heaven and on
earth, all the gates of compassion seemed to have been closed.
The killer killed and the Jews died and the outside world
adopted an attitude either of complicity or of indifference.
Only a few had the courage to care."
Louis
Bülow ©2009-11
Privacy
www.oskarschindler.com
www.emilieschindler.com
www.deathcamps.info www.auschwitz.dk
www.annefrank.dk
|