Holocaust Survivors:Historical Overview

Esther Cohen HexterOctober 12, 2015

Jewish Life in Europe

2,000 year history– Since Roman times Jews lived in many cities– Middle Ages Jews were driven from Western

Countries, 1150-1500– Invited to Poland by king starting in late 13th

century– Rich and varied Jewish culture, religious and

communal life throughout

Relations with Christian Countries

• Much anti-Semitism– Jews victimized by Crusaders in Europe on

way to Jerusalem– Jews required to wear special badge or hat– 1516 first formal ghetto established in Venice– Modern era - 1789 Ghetto walls were opened

Developments in Germany• Late 19th Century- Racial Supremacy theory;

Aryan Race ideal• German defeat in WWI > severe depression• National Socialist Workers Party (Nazi)

– Started 1919; anti Jewish planks; Hitler joins• 1923 Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle)• 1933 Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of

Germany• 1933 - The Holocaust begins

European Jewish Population Distribution, ca. 1933

• Estimate 9.5 million Jews in Europe • More than 60 % of world's Jewish population, estimated

at 15.3 million. • Most Jews in Eastern Europe

– About 5 1/2 million lived in Poland & the Soviet Union.• Before Nazi takeover in 1933, Europe had dynamic,

diverse & highly developed Jewish culture. • By 1945 most of Europe: conquered, occupied, or

annexed by Nazi Germany • Most European Jews--two out of every three--would be

dead by 1945.- based on material from United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

European Jewish Population 1933

European Jewish population distribution, circa 1933—United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Plight of Jews During Holocaust• 1933-39

– Some children sent to “safety”:• Starting 1933: 15,000 to Palestine with Youth Aliyah• 1938-39: 10,000 on Kindertransport to England & 2,000 to

Netherlands; 1,000 to United States [50 with Brith Shalom]

– Some adults to early German Concentration Camps – Some able to emigrate from Europe – but visas were

hard to get– Laws gradually separated Jews from rest of society– Businesses boycotted, synagogues destroyed, people

beaten

Plight of Jews During Holocaust

• 1939-1945:– Rounded Up & Deported to 42,000 locations– A few were Hidden by individuals, towns or groups– To Ghettoes– To Forced Labor Camps / Slave Labor Camps– To Concentration Camps– To Death Camps– Death by: Extreme Starvation, Disease, Being Shot

by Einsatzgruppen – Death marches back to Germany at end of war

HOLOCAUST DEATHS BY COUNTRY

COUNTRY ESTIMATED

PRE-WARJEWISH

POPULATION

ESTIMATEDJEWISH

POPULATION ANNIHILATED

Poland 3,300,000 3,000,000Baltic countries 253,000 228,000Germany & Austria 240,000 210,000Bohemia & Moravia 90,000 80,000Slovakia 90,000 75,000Greece 70,000 54,000Netherlands 140,000 105,000Hungary 650,000 450,000Byelorussian SSR 375,000 245,000Ukrainian SSR 1,500,000 900,000Belgium 65,000 40,000Yugoslavia 43,000 26,000Romania 600,000 300,000Norway 2,173 890France 350,000 90,000Bulgaria 64,000 14,000Italy 40,000 8,000Luxembourg 5,000 1,000Russian SFSR 975,000 107,000Finland 2,000 22Denmark 8,000 52

TOTALS 8,861,800 5,933,900

Surviving Remnant of European Jewry

• Very limited revolt of inmates at concentration camps and ghettoes

• Concentration Camps in west liberated by allied soldiers – many died of starvation and disease right after liberation

• Concentration camps in east liberated by Soviet soldiers

• Jews still in hiding come out to freedom

Where to Go? Challenges?• Free to do what? • Who am I? –then after WWII and now?• With whom? – no family or friends left• Where to live?

– Consider political realities at the time– What countries will take you?

• How to build new lives?

Displaced Persons• Displaced Persons Camps [DP Camps] in

Germany, Austria and Italy 1945-52• Run by UNRAA (U.N. Relief &

Rehabilitation Administration) + U.S. Army• Often in former concentration camps

– Conditions deplorable• 250,000 Jewish Survivors separated into

own camps that they begin to run

Voices of Survivors at Liberation

"I Alone had Returned"Shmuel Krakowski, born in Poland in 1926, was deported to Auschwitz and Buchenwald. He describes his feelings after being liberated in Theresienstadt:

 

"Although we had seen a lot and experienced the worst, we still had hoped, still had dreamed. All those days we had struggled to survive, hour after hour, day after day, there had been no time to grasp the enormity of our tragedy. Now everything became clear. No longer were our families waiting for us; no homes to go back to. For us, the victory came too late, much too late." 

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/education/newsletter/03/main_article.asp. Kleiman and N. Springer-Aharoni, The Anguish of Liberation, Jerualem: Yad Vashem, 1995, p. 16.

Voices of Survivors at LiberationYitzhak (Antek) Zuckerman, who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, recalls his emotional state when he was liberated in a town near Warsaw:

  "That day, January 17 [1945], was the saddest day of my life. I wanted to weep, not from joy but from sorrow. I am not saying that I wept, but that I wanted to shed tears – for the first time. The tank crews blowing kisses, the flowers hurled at them, the elation of the crowd, the sense of freedom and liberation, and we – Zivia and I and the dog – standing there among the crowd, lonely, orphaned, lost and only too well aware that there was no longer a Jewish people." 

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/education/newsletter/03/main_article.asp

Return to Life, Beth Hatefutsoth, Ghetto Fighters’ House and Yad Vashem, 1995, p. 13.

   

 Lily & Ludwig Friedman on wedding day.

http://www.jewishpress.com/banners/clickLinkNew.cfm?a:399.c:165.p:21.s:400.z:22

Wedding Gown Made History in Bergen Belsen Another voice…. 

A wish to be married in white; a worthless parachute…. So goes the story for two residents of Bergen Belsen DP camp. The rest is history. 

Four hundred people marched 15 miles in the snow to the town of Celle on January 27, 1946 to attend Lilly and Ludwig's wedding. The town synagogue, damaged and desecrated, had been lovingly renovated by the DPs with the meager materials available to them.  When a Sefer Torah arrived from England they converted an old kitchen cabinet into a makeshift Aron Kodesh. New generations still wear the same gown.    

Where Survivors Live Today• An estimated 189,000 survivors currently live in

the State of Israel; about half the number of survivors who arrived since State was founded. – 45,000 Holocaust survivors are living in poverty and poor health– 46% believe their children and grandchildren will forget the

Holocaust after they are gone

• Estimated 130,000 survivors live in U.S.– Half living in the U.S.—about 60,000—live in New York City and

the three suburban counties. – Many are below the poverty line, suffer from health problems;

and often feel lonely and believe that future generations will forget the Holocaust after they are gone 

Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, paid tribute to Holocaust survivors he has worked with.

At the UK Commemoration event for HMD [Holocaust Memorial Day] 2013, the retiring Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, paid tribute to the Holocaust survivors he has worked with:

‘Because of their indomitable faith in life itself they married […], had children, grandchildren, and refused to let evil have the final word or the final victory. And so, the survivors became my heroes. And then when they built a life for themselves and often after only fifty years they did look back and they told their stories – taught them to all our children and bore witness so that the world would know these things happened not just through films or books, but through the words of those who were there.’

The Challenge is now ours!

• To remember• To teach• To say Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the

dead.• To stand up and give help when others

need it as so few did for the Jews of Europe 1933-1945