JEWISH LIFE IN EUROPE BEFORE THE HOLOCAUST

Street scene in the Jewish quarter of Paris before the war. Paris, France, 1933-1939.
National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.

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When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Jews were living in every country of Europe. A total of roughly nine million Jews lived in the countries that would be occupied by Germany during World War II. By the end of the war, two out of every three of these Jews would be dead, and European Jewish life would be changed forever. In 1933 the largest Jewish populations were concentrated in eastern Europe, including Poland, the Soviet Union, Hungary, and Romania. Many of the Jews of eastern Europe lived in predominantly Jewish towns or villages, called shtetls. Eastern European Jews lived a separate life as a minority within the culture of the majority. They spoke their own language, Yiddish, which combines elements of German and Hebrew. They read Yiddish books, and attended Yiddish theater and movies. Although many younger Jews in larger towns were beginning to adopt modern ways and dress, older people often dressed traditionally, the men wearing hats or caps, and the women modestly covering their hair with wigs or kerchiefs. In comparison, the Jews in western Europe -- Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium -- made up much less of the population and tended to adopt the culture of their nonJewish neighbors. They dressed and talked like their countrymen, and traditional religious

practices and Yiddish culture played a less important part in their lives. They tended to have had more formal education than eastern European Jews and to live in towns or cities. Jews could be found in all walks of life, as farmers, tailors, seamstresses, factory hands, accountants, doctors, teachers, and small-business owners. Some families were wealthy; many more were poor. Many children ended their schooling early to work in a craft or trade; others looked forward to continuing their education at the university level. Still, whatever their differences, they were the same in one respect: by the 1930s, with the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany, they all became potential victims, and their lives were forever changed.

Key Dates
SEPTEMBER 1791 JEWS EMANCIPATED IN FRANCE The term "emancipation of Jews" means the removal of all legal discrimination against Jews and the granting of rights equal to those of other citizens in a country. In September 1791, the National Assembly of France granted rights of citizenship to Jews who took a loyalty oath. France was in the vanguard of the emancipation movement. For example, Jews were only later emancipated in Greece (1830), Great Britain (1858), Italy (1870), Germany (1871), and Norway (1891). Although civil equality for Jews was thus guaranteed by law, European Jewry remained beset by antisemitism and social discrimination. JUNE 24, 1922 JEWISH POLITICIAN ASSASSINATED IN GERMANY Walter Rathenau, one of the most prominent Jewish political figures of the Weimar Republic, is assassinated by right-wing radicals. Rathenau, the president of the General Electric Corporation of Germany (AEG) since 1915, became foreign minister of the Weimar Republic in 1922. As a Jew, he was hated by right-wing groups particularly for his policy of fulfilling the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and his normalization of relations with the Soviet Union. His murder is indicative of the right-wing antisemitic campaign blaming Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I. MARCH 9, 1936 POGROM IN PRZYTYK, POLAND Violence erupts in Poland. Three Jews are killed and more than sixty wounded in the town of Przytyk, Poland. In the days following the attack, the pogrom spreads to neighboring towns. Before the pogrom is ended, almost 80 Jews are killed and over 200 wounded. Violence against Jews is widespread throughout central Poland between 1935 and 1937. Anti-Jewish pogroms take place, for example, in Czestochowa, Lublin, Bialystok, and Grodno.

Holocaust Facts

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What You Need to Know About the Holocaust By Jennifer Rosenberg, About.com Guide See More About: holocaust holocaust basics world war ii

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Below you will find a list of 33 important Holocaust facts. What Does Holocaust Mean? The Holocaust began in 1933 when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and ended in 1945 when the Nazis were defeated by the Allied powers. y The term "Holocaust," originally from the Greek word "holokauston" which means "sacrifice by fire," refers to the Nazi's persecution and planned slaughter of the Jewish people. The Hebrew word "Shoah," which means "devastation, ruin, or waste," is also used for this genocide. y In addition to Jews, the Nazis targeted Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the disabled for persecution. Anyone who resisted the Nazis was sent to forced labor or murdered. y The term "Nazi" is an acronym for "Nationalsozialistishe Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" ("National Socialist German Worker's Party"). y The Nazis used the term "the Final Solution" to refer to their plan to murder the Jewish people. The Big Numbers
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It is estimated that 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust. Six million of these were Jews. y The Nazis killed approximately two-thirds of all Jews living in Europe. y An estimated 1.1 million children were murdered in the Holocaust. Persecution Begins
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On April 1, 1933, the Nazis instigated their first action against German Jews by announcing a boycott of all Jewish-run businesses. The Nuremberg Laws, issued on September 15, 1935, began to exclude Jews from public life. The Nuremberg Laws included a law that stripped German Jews of their citizenship and a law that prohibited marriages and extramarital sex between Jews and Germans.

The Nuremberg Laws set the legal precedent for further anti-Jewish legislation. y Nazis then issued additional anti-Jews laws over the next several years. For example, some of these laws excluded Jews from places like parks, fired them from civil service jobs (i.e. government jobs), made Jews register their property, and prevented Jewish doctors from working on anyone other than Jewish patients. y During the night of November 9-10, 1938, Nazis incited a pogrom against Jews in Austria and Germany in what has been termed, "Kristallnacht" ("Night of Broken Glass"). This night of violence included the pillaging and burning of synagogues, breaking the windows of Jewish-owned businesses, the looting of these stores, and many Jews were physically attacked. Also, approximately 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. y After World War II started in 1939, the Nazis began ordering Jews to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing so that Jews could be easily recognized and targeted. Ghettos
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After the beginning of World War II, Nazis began ordering all Jews to live within certain, very specific, areas of big cities, called ghettos. Jews were forced out of their homes and moved into smaller apartments, often shared with other families. Some ghettos started out as "open," which meant that Jews could leave the area during the daytime but often had to be back within the ghetto by a curfew. Later, all ghettos became "closed," which meant that Jews were trapped within the confines of the ghetto and not allowed to leave. A few of the major ghettos were located in the cities of Bialystok, Kovno, Lodz, Minsk, Riga, Vilna, and Warsaw. The largest ghetto was in Warsaw, with its highest population reaching 445,000 in March 1941. In most ghettos, Nazis ordered the Jews to establish a Judenrat (a Jewish council) to both administer Nazi demands and to regulate the internal life of the ghetto.

Nazis would then order deportations from the ghettos. In some of the large ghettos, 1,000 people per day were loaded up in trains and sent to either a concentration camp or a death camp. y To get them to cooperate, the Nazis told the Jews they were being transported to another place for labor, y When the Nazis decided to kill the remaining Jews in a ghetto, they would "liquidate" a ghetto by boarding the last Jews in the ghetto on trains. y When the Nazis attempted to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto on April 13, 1943, the remaining Jews fought back in what has become known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The Jewish resistance fighters held out against the entire Nazi regime for 28 days -- longer than many European countries had been able to withstand Nazi conquest. Concentration and Extermination Camps
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Although many people refer to all Nazi camps as "concentration camps," there were actually a number of different kinds of camps, including concentration camps, extermination camps, labor camps, prisoner-of-war camps, and transit camps. (Map) One of the first concentration camps was Dachau, which opened on March 20, 1933. From 1933 until 1938, most of the prisoners in the concentration camps were political prisoners (i.e. people who spoke or acted in some way against Hitler or the Nazis) and people the Nazis labeled as "asocial." After Kristallnacht in 1938, the persecution of Jews became more organized. This led to the exponential increase in the number of Jews sent to concentration camps. Life within Nazi concentration camps was horrible. Prisoners were forced to do hard physical labor and yet given tiny rations. Prisoners slept three or more people per crowded wooden bunk (no mattress or pillow). Torture within the concentration camps was common and deaths were frequent. At a number of Nazi concentration camps, Nazi doctors conducted medical experimentson prisoners against their will.

While concentration camps were meant to work and starve prisoners to death, extermination camps (also known as death camps) were built for the sole purpose of killing large groups of people quickly and efficiently. y The Nazis built six extermination camps: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz, and Majdanek. (Auschwitz and Majdanek were both concentration and extermination camps.) y Prisoners transported to these extermination camps were told to undress to take a shower. Rather than a shower, the prisoners were herded into gas chambers and killed. (At Chelmno, the prisoners were herded into gas vans instead of gas chambers.) y Auschwitz was the largest concentration and extermination camp built. It is estimated that 1.1 million people were killed at Auschwitz. Suggested Reading y The Holocaust y Pictures of the Holocaust y Auschwitz Suggested Reading y Theresienstadt: The Model Ghetto y Anne Frank y Interview With a Survivor Suggested Reading y A German Spy in the SS y History of the Swastika y Der Stuermer Related Articles y The Holocaust - Comprehensive Resources About the Holocaust y Aktion Erntefest y Secrets and Propaganda - World War II y Holocaust Map of Concentration and Death Camps
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YOM HASHOAH, HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY

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Holocaust Day (Yom HaShoah in Hebrew) is Monday. I, for one, am sick and tired of the fetishism of dead Jews and the endless memorials to holocaust victims while the world rubs its hands in gleeful anticipation of holocaust the sequel. I am sick of the false narrative. The role of Islam and that of the Muslim leader of the ummah, the Mufti of Jerusalem, was pivotal to the extermination of the Jews, and yet his role and that of jihad was scrubbed from the history books. And here we are 60 years later and Islam is back in full bloom, with Muslims sharpening their machetes for the beheading of the Jewish state, much the way Muhammad annihilated the Qurayzah tribe, beheading all the men of the last Jewish tribe of Arabia (after he exiled the other two). Sixty years after the Mufti Hajj Amin al Husseini sent 400,000 Jews to their deaths in Poland, we have Ahmadinejad and every Islamic leader, imam, cleric, calling for the death of the Jews. TEL AVIV (EJP)---According to a new survey, 2009 was the worst since monitoring of anti-Semitic manifestations began two decades ago, in terms of both major anti-Semitic violence and the hostile atmosphere. On the eve of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, experts in the field of anti-Semitism presented data demonstrating an increase of over 100% in anti-Semitic attacks and events, with a special emphasis on what they called "the orchestrated and concerted attempt to delegitimize the Jewish People and Israel in Europe. The European Jewish Congress (EJC) and The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University on Sunday jointly released the survey findings regarding the state of anti-Semitism worldwide. "These were generated worldwide by the mass demonstrations and verbal and visual expressions against Israel and the Jews. The worst offenders appeared in Western Europe, particularly in the UK and France, followed by Canada," they stated. The survey also found a disproportionate and pre-planned onslaught of radical activists from the left, the right and from among Muslim immigrant communities against Jews and against Israel as a Jewish state, using anti-Semitism and the Holocaust as political tools. "When it comes to the Jews or the Jewish State both extremes are almost mirror images in their expressions of hate and their goals to eliminate the

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Jewish presence and influence," said Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress, an umbrella organization for Jewish communities in Europe, at the surveys presentation. Did six million die for nothing? Could it be possible they died in vain? And once again will the American Jewish diaspora fail their brethren, in a horrible repeat of history? y The Auschwitz Album Sick of it. And sick of the liberal American Jews who sell their souls and their children just so that they can get on with the barbarians. Holocaust Day commemorates the martyrs and heroes who died under the Nazis. The State of Israel will take time out to remember the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, marking the start of Holocaust Remembrance Day. The annual state ceremony will begin at Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.

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The Mufti and Hitler In 1941, Haj Amin al-Husseini fled to Germany and met with Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Joachim Von Ribbentrop and other Nazi leaders. He wanted to persuade them to extend the Nazis' anti-Jewish program to the Arab world. He lived in the lap of luxury from '41 to '45, making weekly broadcasts to the Muslim world from Berlin, inciting the ummah to exterminate the Jews and fight the allied forces. Same jihad, different day.
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Himmler: "Muslims responded to the call of Muslim leaders and joined our side because of their hatred of our joint Jewish-English-

Bolshevik enemies, and because of their belief and respect for, above all -- Our Fuehrer."

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Photo: Ilan Halimi 'MUSHROOM CLOUD IS ON THE WAY!" "THE REAL HOLOCAUST IS ON IT'S WAY!"

And here, in another authentic document, also deposed at Nuremberg, and signed by another of the three members mentioned above, are further details of the ex-Muftis role. It is the affidavit of Dr. Kasztner. I reproduce the relevant extracts: As the leader of the Jewish Rescue and Relief Committee in Budapest, I requested the competent German authorities to grant the emigration to Palestine of a group of Hungarian Jews. In the course of these negotiations, which are the subject of my testimony deposed in the minutes of the Nuremberg trial, the high Gestapo official Eichmann declared he would be willing to recommend the emigration of a group of 1,861 Hungarain Jews, on condition that the group should not go to Palestine. They may go to any country but Palestine, I was told by Eichmann, who, as the leader of the Department IV.B. of the Reichssicherheitshaupant, was personally responsible for the deportation and extermination of the European Jews. At first, his argument for his negative and attitude toward the emigration to Palestine was that he did not want to rouse the Arabs against the Reich. At last he said to me literally: I am a personal friend of the Grand Mufti. We have promised him that no European Jew would enter Palestine anymore. Do you understand now? Some days later, SS Hauptsturmfuehrer Dieter Wisliceny, a close collaborator of Eichmann, confidentially confirmed to me the above statement of his chief, and added: According to my opinion, the Grand Mufti, who has been in Berlin since 1941, played a role in the decision of the German Government to exterminate the European Jews, the importance of which must not be disregarded. He had repeatedly suggested to the various authorities with whom he has been in contact, above all before Hitler, Ribbentrop and Himmler, the extermination of European Jewry. He considered this as a comfortable solution of the Palestine problem. In his messages broadcast from Berlin, he surpassed us in anti-Jewish attacks. He was one of Eichmanns best friends and has constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard say that, accompanied by Eichmann, he has visited incognito the gas chamber at Auschwitz. The statement referred to in the affidavit was made by Eichmann in his office in Budapest on the 4th June, 1944. The confirmation by Wisliceny was given some days later, also in Budapest.

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On 13th June, 1946, in the New York Post, Edgar Ansel Mowrer published facsimile copies of a number of documents found in the Mufti archives at Oybin and Bad Gastein after the Nazi collapse. Mr. Mowrer writes: Similar documents were found in the Foreign Offices of countries like Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, etc., with which the Mufti had been in correspondence. There were so many of these that they were available to any newspaperman. Three letters in particular, published in the New York Post, shed more light on the Muftis role in the plan to liquidate European Jewry. They are addressed respectively to the Foreign Office of Bulgaria, Hungary and Rumania. The dates are between May and July, 1944. To Hungary and Rumania, he wrote (the text is in French): "I beg Your Excellency to permit me to draw your distinguished attention to the necessity of preventing these Jews from leaving your country for Palestine; and if there are any reasons which make their withdrawal necessary, that they be sent to other countries, as for example Poland, where they would find themselves underactive surveillance, and where they would not be dangerous or cause misfortune. The letter to Bulgaria is in German, and has the following addition:

Thereby one would accomplish a good and gracious act towards the Arabian people, who will be permanently grateful to you, and you will also make friendship relations even more close. When these letters were written, Poland had already been set aside as the extermination area for the European Jewry.

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The new Bosnian Muslim Nazis:

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Nazi Bosnian Pride Movement Below: The Nation, May 17th, 1947