the quest for racial purity - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

at Auschwitz had died. In Bergen-Belsen, hundreds of prisoners died every day for three
weeks. During the first month after liberation, 13,000 of the camp’s approximately 50,000
surviving prisoners died. Even at the sites of the killing centers, which the SS and police
had dismantled, forensic evidence, such as buried ash and bone fragments, bore witness
to the crimes committed there.
World War II ended in Europe with the unconditional surrender of the German armed
forces to the Western Allies on May 7, 1945, and to the Soviets on May 9, 1945. May 8,
1945, was proclaimed Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day). One week earlier, as Soviet forces
neared his command bunker in central Berlin on April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler committed
suicide. It is no exaggeration to say that Europe lay in ruins. War and genocide, displace-
ment and upheaval left the continent in a state of chaos. Although trials of the perpetrators
began within months of the German surrender, western European Jewish communities
would take decades to partially restore themselves. The Jewish communities of central and
eastern Europe disappeared, culturally and physically, except for remnants in Hungary and
Romania and small groups of survivors elsewhere in the region. Indeed, what was destroyed
during the 12 years of Nazi rule—human life, culture, history, community, and collective
memory—could be never be rebuilt or repaired.
Shortly following the liberation in April 1945, emaciated survivors (right) rest in a group at the
Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. buchenwald, germany, c. april 11, 1945. ushmm,
courtesy of hadassah bimko rosensaft
According to Nazi ideology, the Jews of Europe represented the priority “racial” enemy
who by their very existence threatened the survival of the “Aryan” German race. Drawing
154 | nazi ideology and the holocaust