Learning from the past ~ lessons for today - Holocaust Education ...

Holocaust Memorial Day 2012
The Holocaust
The Holocaust did not begin with gas chambers and crematoria, it began with whispers, taunts, humiliation,
discrimination, confiscation of property, segregation, restrictions, rules and laws. It began with stereotyping, attitudes,
bigotry and prejudice.
When Adolf Hitler became leader of the Nazi party in 1921, he stated that his ultimate aim was the removal of the Jews
from German society. By the time he became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, he was planning to remove the Jews from
Germany by expulsion and evacuation. With the annexation of Austria in 1938 and the subsequent absorption of
Czechoslovakia in 1939, Hitler was in control of more territory and more Jews. The invasion of Poland in 1939, which
heralded the beginning of World War II, brought a further three million Jews under German control. The persecution of
the Jews went through several stages. The words ‘expulsion’ and ‘evacuation’ were soon understood to mean murder.
It is estimated that 9.6 million Jews lived in what became Nazi occupied Europe. By the end of the war in 1945, only 3.2 million
Jews had survived the Holocaust. There were also millions of other victims of Nazi atrocities.
What I found most shocking was that the Nazi German leaders were normal people!
Telford Taylor, one of the chief prosecutors at the first trial in Nuremberg
Nazi Persecution of the Jews
HUMILIATION
IDENTIFICATION
SEGREGATION
CONCENTRATION
MURDER
Auschwitz-Birkenau has come to symbolise the process that was to implement the destruction of the
Jews of Europe. The camp was planned and constructed like any other site. Its blueprints were drawn
by professional engineers and draftsmen. The trains that delivered the victims to their deaths were
driven by regular drivers, the gas used in the Nazi’s murderous crimes was essentially a disinfectant.
None of the site’s overt elements, its objects and procedures, gave any indication that they were
instruments used to commit one of the greatest crimes against humanity – the genocide of the Jewish
people, together with the torture and murder of many other innocents.
From the exhibition Architecture of Murder: The Auschwitz-Birkenau blueprints. Yad Vashem Archives Collection
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