Warsaw, Poland January 14 th, 1928 His father was a newspaper
man. Has fathers father was also a newspaper man. His mothers
father was an umbrella maker.
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September 1, 1939 Germany invades Poland. Germany makes a deal
with the Soviet Union to split Poland.
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Jewish Laws As Germany took control of Poland, the Jews of that
area came under German jurisdiction. Jews are put into areas with
walls called ghettos. Warsaw had the largest Jewish community in
Europe. Over 400,000 residents had to live in 1.3 square miles.
(Approximately 7-8 per small room.)
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Warsaw Ghetto Food rations were not sufficient to sustain life.
83,000 died of starvation and disease. Smuggling of food began and
kept the death rate lower.
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Typhoid There was an epidemic in the ghetto. Fever 104 Diarrhea
Head ache Rash on the chest and abdomen It is relatively unheard of
in the United States. Is caught by coming in contact with bodily
fluids of infected people.
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Irena Sendler At 29 years old, she and other women helped to
rescue 2,500 children out of the Warsaw Ghetto. The children were
hidden in Catholic homes. She planned on reuniting the children
with their parents after the war.
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Treblinka From July 22 to September 12, 1942, Germans deported
265,000 Jews to Treblinka to be executed. Treblinka started off as
a work camp, then later a second was built strictly for
extermination. The labor area ended up supplying the labor for the
extermination area. As Allied forces advanced, the Germans burned
most of the camp.
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Uprising In January 1943, when the Germans came to deport more,
many of the Jews revolted, believing they were going to be
exterminated.
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Liquidation In April, the Germans liquidated the ghetto. The
Jews resisted the liquidation. In May, the Germans deported 42,000
to work camps near Lublin. The ghetto was burned.
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after being discovered in the basements when the Warsaw ghetto
was burned, we were taken to a designated place and put on a boxcar
that took quite a few trips. When we got on, there were human
remains on the floors, smells impregnated the boxcar from previous
trips. They packed it to over full capacity (100+) people each car.
A trip that should've taken 2 hours took 5 days. There was no food
and no water. No bathroom facilities. The low roof of the boxcar
with 100+ human beings resembles a lid on a boiling pot of water.
People would reach up to get a drop of condensation to wet their
lips because it's easier to die of dehydration than starvation.
They were packed so tightly that people would die standing up. If
you saw someone with their eyes closed, you didn't know if they
were sleeping or dead.
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Lublin/Majdanek
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Majdenak Conditions in camp were harsh, especially in the
winter. The SS routinely shot prisoners that were too weak to work.
Maxs family was murdered here.
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Budzyn This was a sub- camp of Majdenek. Aircraft factory
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Maxs father died here. It was the worst day of my life. He was
the only one that was alive after our trip to Majdanek (where I
lost my mother and brother and many other members of my family).
Being 13 years old and not knowing whether I would survive alone is
a horrific experience. BUT life must go on.
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Flossenburg
Slide 26
Max manufactured aircraft parts at this camp. Soviet prisoners
of war were executed here. This camp was also used to train female
guards. Irma Grese
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Because of the conditions that we were subjected to, each
person becomes an island of his own. Unless it's family you really
can't trust anyone so there was not much communication between
people in the camps. We were also not allowed to roam so there was
not a lot of opportunity to have social interactions.
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Allied Forces Advance 1945
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Concentration Camp Liberation As the allied forces advanced,
the concentration camps were liberated. The horrors of what the
Germans had done became known.
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After being liberated we were not allowed into homes of German
residents because they feared of what we might do to them so we
were looking for shelter in displaced person camps. While on the
road looking for a DP camp, I was picked up by a Lieutenant with
the 179 Signal Repair Corp of the US Army, given American clothing,
and I was made a mess Sargent for German POWs and the Polish guards
that were assigned to guard them. We settled at the Nuemayer Cable
Works factory in Nuremberg, Germany.
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there were some secretly sympathetic soldiers (Vermacht). If
there were not any good people among the bad ones, none of us
survivors would be here.
Slide 36
I received American uniforms, I learned how to drive, I
received food when they picked me up....it was a shock but it was
actually easy for me. As a result, when I came to the states in
1947 I was drafted during the Korean conflict and I was again a
mess Sargent with the 702 Armored Infantry Battalion of the first
armored division. Life was definitely much better than before.
Slide 37
Yes, I still have flashbacks. My wife tells me that I even get
tremors and cry out in my sleep from time to time. I see life
differently now because the Holocaust didn't have to happen. People
CHOSE to commit these crimes. Because of that I strive to help
people make better choices and live to a higher standard of
acceptance. I devote most of my time now to lecturing and making my
presentations in a way that they would not create hate, the same
hate that was applied toward us. And emphasizing that only through
education, we can eradicate hate and become "Upstanders" instead of
being bystanders like many of the people were during the period of
WWII.
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Hate is within the hater. It distorts who he is and also stays
within him. The person that he hates sometimes doesn't even know
about it. Hating someone is the equivalent of drinking poison and
hoping that the person who he hates will die. I choose not to hate
so that I don't become the person that applied hate to me.
Slide 39
Maxs YouTube Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvF2_2exQ 5Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvF2_2exQ 5Q