In Remembrance of the Holocaust

In Remembrance of the Holocaust

Unfortunately, it’s an event so brilliantly inscribed in my mind for a multitude of reasons. Number one, I was brought up in a family whose father served in WWII – my dad Walter Poniedzialek, a 540th Combat Engineer, experienced two and a half years of war in Europe. I was a later-in-life baby for my parents. They married at thirty-nine and had me at forty, their first and only child, a decade after the war. My father was unique because unlike so many of the returning vets, they rarely or never talked about what happened in the European and the Pacific theatres. The memories were too painful, and the people they often came home to couldn’t understand or relate to all that they had endured, my mother included. That always made me sad and furious, for she would dismiss his feelings. One time I recall her saying, “Oh, get over it, the war happened a long time ago.” However, others I’m happy to say wanted to hear his stories, including his young daughter.

Thanks to his forthcomings, I maintained an avid interest in the history of WWII, including the haunting stories of the holocaust, that not only took the lives of millions of Jewish men, women, and children, but also the innocent souls of people not deemed worthy of life in the eyes of the Gestapo – disabled people, misfits and other “undesirables”.

Even though my father died when I was only twelve, later in life I looked into his personal military history, and through that venture, met and became friends with numerous WWII veterans who shared their stories on my website, VI Corps Combat Engineers. Our interactions were priceless, and I will cherish them forever. Several of the vets were involved in the European camp liberations and their personal photographs along with the thousands of others I’ve seen, have left their indelible stains on my soul.

This image courtesy of the 48th Combat Engineers and supplied to me by Captain Al Kincer.

Imagine soldiers not only going through the horrors of everyday warfare but then stumbling upon concentration camps near or at the end of the war. Just when you thought you’d seen it all, then this unfolds before your very eyes. Who would do this to fellow human beings? Who would incarcerate citizens, torture, starve, gas and work millions of people to death, “just because”. Just because you were thought of as inferior. Because they looked upon you as animals to be experimented on, because you were deemed as unworthy or inhuman. Yes, there were people who actually believed these things (and some still do).

There were several types of camps:
Concentration camps: For the detention of civilians seen as real or perceived “enemies of the Reich.”

Forced-labor camps: The Nazi regime brutally exploited the labor of prisoners for economic gain and to meet labor shortages. Prisoners lacked proper equipment, clothing, nourishment, or rest.

Transit camps: Functioned as temporary holding facilities for Jews awaiting deportation. These camps were usually the last stop before deportations to a killing center.

Prisoner-of-war camps: For Allied prisoners of war, including Poles and Soviet soldiers.

Killing centers: Established primarily or exclusively for the assembly-line style murder of large numbers of people immediately upon arrival to the site. There were 5 killing centers for the murder primarily of Jews. The term is also used to describe “euthanasia” sites for the murder of disabled patients.

The Nazis closed down Jewish establishments including shops. Burnt Jewish synagogues. Beat Jews in the streets. Disallowed Jews from attending schools and universities, including Jewish professors. Made Jews register and forced them to wear yellow stars on their clothes in order to identify them.

Yet, things grew worse. Thinking they were safe within their homes; millions were shocked as they were absconded in the middle of the night and only allowed one suitcase each. Then they were thrown into trucks or marched for miles to holding facilities in order for the Germans to be able to control sizable Jewish populations. They were made to reside in marked-off sections of towns and cities the Nazis called “ghettos” or “Jewish residential quarters”, surrounded by walls and barbed wire fences. Everything they owned, including their homes, were lost to them forever. Think about that!

Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies established more than 44,000 camps and other incarceration sites (including ghettos). The perpetrators used these sites for a range of purposes, including forced labor, detention of people thought to be enemies of the state, and for mass murder.

The hangar of shoes at Auschwitz concentration camp – photo courtesy of Roger Viollet/Getty Images

How many were killed, how many children were sent to the site and the numbers of people who attempted to escape are among the facts that reveal the scale of crimes committed at Auschwitz.

Then came the dreaded trains. And by this time, many of the inhabitants in the ghettos were aware of the “death camps”. Through back-door channels they learned about gas chambers and other horrors that made the terrible treatment at the ghettos seem palpable. Of course, many believed these were just rumors, for who could imagine anything like this? Yet, the trains came, and they were thrown into cars made for transporting cattle and goods. Standing room only. Bathroom facilities consisted of a bucket. No food. No water. No provisions. And the trains droned on for days. Men, women, and children all huddled together and during all kinds of weather conditions. Many got sick and many died. It was claustrophobic and the smell was overwhelming. Can you imagine dozens of people stuffed into a closed cattle car? No privacy. Nothing.

The number of camps was staggering. From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps and sub-camps. These existed in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Czechowski, Estonia, Finland, France, Holland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russia, and Yugoslavia,

Children at a camp

They were taken to places that were dark and foreboding with ferocious barking dogs and Nazis screaming at the new arrivals while stripping them of their belongings. For most, the comfort of having your loved ones by your side disappeared as soldiers divided men from women and decided who should live or die, simply by looking at you. Those forced to go to the left, were doomed and would be sent to the gas chambers – The Final Solution. Others sent to the right didn’t have it much better, because they would become workers and slaves and many of them would be gassed at later dates. They were now meaningless souls who faced horrific conditions and the worst days of their lives.

Once inside, their heads were shaved. Yes, this included women too and your arms were tattooed with a number. You were no longer human. No longer a person. Just another Jew with a number. The clothes you were wearing were taken, along with any jewelry you were wearing, wedding rings included. Now your daily wear consisted of a striped uniform or a just a ragged piece of clothing regardless of weather conditions, and it didn’t matter whether is fit correctly or not. The Nazis collected all the good stuff for themselves! Looting for them was a way of life.

They were exposed to all kinds of infectious diseases including typhus, tuberculosis, malaria, diphtheria, scabies, and dysentery. Malnutrition ran rampant as it wasn’t unusual to be fed once a day, and the “meals” were often a tasteless broth with maybe a slice of bug infested stale bread. Sleeping conditions were atrocious and prisoners lived in leaky, uninsulated barracks and slept on wooden bunk beds that were often layered with straw bedding. The bunks were theoretically designed to hold three people, one per tier, but in reality, sometimes slept up to eighteen.

While the above only gives you a limited view of the event, I’ve provided just a few recommended websites, movies, and books. I strongly believe that WWII and the holocaust should be part of every school curriculum because as the famous adage says,

Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it

Webs

Horrors of Auschwitz: The Numbers Behind WWII’s Deadliest Concentration Camp

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Yad Vashem – The World Holocaust Remembrance Center

The Shoah Foundation

Anne Frank House

Movies

The Last Days
Schindler’s List
Ordinary Men
The Pianist
The Diary of Anne Frank
Woman in Gold
The Book Thief
Defiance
The Grey Zone
Into the Arms of Strangers
The Last Days
Sophies’ Choice

Books

The Diary of Anne Frank
The Redhead of Auschwitz – Nechama Birnbaum
Violins of Hope – James A Grymes
The Archive Thief: The Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History in the Wake of the Holocaust
Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
The Whispering Town by Jennifer Elvgren
Defying Hitler by Sebastian Haffner
The Ravine: A Family, A Photograph, A Holocaust Massacre Revealed by Wendy Lower
KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nikolaus Wachsmann
The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis by David Fishman
Winds of War and War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk

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2 Comments on “In Remembrance of the Holocaust

  1. We cannot forget what took place, the horrors that were perpetuated on so many people.
    Good post, hard to read but necessary to know! And if our world does “forget” it will happen again. Evil is out there and it isn’t the devil. It’s real!
    My father was there as well and could not talk about any of it.

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