The Kielce Pogrom: A Blood Libel Massacre of Holocaust Survivors

Those who are unaware what "Kielce Pogrom" means, it refers to a violent massacre of Jews in the southeastern Polish town of Kielce on July 4, 1946. "Pogrom" is a Russian word that means to demolish violently. Onto the Article Review:

    This article talks about what happened during the Kielce Pogrom and how a mob of Polish soldiers, police officers, and civilians murdered 42 Jews and injured over 40. That incident was named the worst outburst anti-Jewish violence in Poland. It also talks about how the incident made a local history of anti-Semitism, along with falsely accusing Jews of performing rituals using the blood of Christian children. The Kielce massacre convinced many Polish Jews that they had no future in Poland after the Holocaust and spurring them to leave the country. The article mentions in 1939 there were approximately 24,000 Jewish inhabitants in Kielce or one-third of the town's population. Almost all of them were murdered during the Holocaust. By the summer of 1946, about 200 Holocaust survivors had returned to or settled in Kielce.

     During the Pogrom a nine- year old non-Jewish boy left his home in Kielce, on July 1, 1946, without informing his parents. When the boy returned the 3^rd of July he reported to his parents and the police in an effort to avoid punishment for wandering off, that he had been kidnapped and hidden in the basement of the local Jewish Committee building on 7 Planty Street. The Committee building sheltered up to 180 Jews, and housed various Jewish institutions operating in Kielce at the time. Because the boy tried to escape punishment, Polish soldiers and policemen entered the building and called upon the Jewish residents to surrender any weapons. After an unidentified individual fired a shot, officials and civilians fired upon the Jews inside the building, killing some of them. Outside, the angry crowd viciously beat Jews fleeing the shooting, or driven onto the street by the attackers, killing some of them. By day's end, civilians, soldiers and police had killed 42 Jews and injured 40 others. Two non-Jewish Poles died as well, killed either by Jewish residents inside the building or by fellow non-Jewish Poles for offering aid to the Jewish victims. Then three days after the pogrom, surviving Jews and local residents buried the victims in a mass grave in the Jewish cemetery. Government authorities ordered military units and local residents to attend the funeral as a sign of respect for the victims. 

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Holocaust History." The Kielce Pogrom: A Blood Libel Massacre of Holocaust Survivors. N.p., 11 May 2012. Web. 15 Jan. 2013. <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007941>.

Hidden Children: Daily Life

   

 "Hidden Children: Daily Life." Hidden Children: Daily Life. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Jan. 2013.

  The Nazi rule forced some of these helpless children to mature beyond their years. One child,who survived, called the children of the Holocaust, "Old people with children's faces, without a trace of joy,happiness, or childish innocence." The children in hiding often improvised games and  took advantage of what little education they could get. The daily experiences of the hidden children mostly varied, depending on whether or not they could live openly and maybe attend school. For some of the hidden children that could not journey outside, their life in hiding was mostly filled with pain, tormet, and boredom. They sometimes read, played, and got creative to try to take their minds off of it. Even in the ghettos and concentration camps, Jewish children looked for ways to play games. Some children taught themselves by reading and writing.
        The Jewish hidden children worked in factories and black markets. The Nazis limited the amount of pocessions the children could have and the only thing they really had was the clothes on their backs.

Bing.com/images. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Jan. 2013.

D-Day

D- Day was in June 6 1944 an invasion that the Allies made in effort to rescue France from German control. The Allies send 11 divisions and planned to drive inland to a distance of nine miles. On  June 11, the allies overcame Germany to unite, the divisions united  into one large group. There was  155,000 troops including 40,000 vehicles, 1,000 tanks, 7,000 naval crafts, and 11,500 aircrafts. On the first day there was about 10,000 casualties in which 6,600 of those were US troops. By August 25 Allies were able to free Paris; and on September 16 troops reach the German borders.

Works Cited

D-DAY — PHOTOGRAPH. 1944. Photograph. Http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_ph.php?ModuleId=10005158&MediaId=1578, n.p.

Holocauts Museum. "Holocaust History." D-Day. N.p., 11 May 2012. Web. 15 Jan. 2013. 

Nazi Medical Experiments

In my article it talked about, Unethical medical experiments done during the Third Reich may be divided into three groups. The first, consists of experiments mainly for facilitating the survival of Axis military personnel.
The second, of experiment went for developing and test treatment methods for injuries and illnesses. The third, was medical experiment to higher the racial tenets of the Nazi worldview. The most infamous were the experiments of Josef Mengele. He conducted medical experiments on twins. He directed other experiments on Roma, as did Werner Fischer, in order to determine how "races" get various contagious diseases.



"Holocaust History." Nazi Medical Experiments. 11 May 2012. UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM. 15 Jan. 2013 <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005168>.

Deadly Medicine: Irmgard Huber

In the small German town of Hadamar there was a psychiatric hospital that was rumored to have murdered several mentally ill patients.  There were six of these facilities who killed around 200,000 German patients. The crimes committed were not classified as war crimes just as murders. Hospital records showed that 476 people from Allied nations were killed in the hospital.Irmgard Huber was o the head nurse at the time and denied that she and her staff had killed patients voluntarily. It was later ruled the Huber had played significant parts in faking death certificates and selecting patients to recieve overdoses of medication. She and six others were arrested and given 25 years in jail. She was later tried in the Hadamar trial in 1947 with 25 other people. She was given another eight years in prison for carrying out 120 patient murders. She was released from prison in 1952 under amnesties from American authorities.

Photo:  "Deadly Medicine: Irmgard Huber." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Jan. 2013. <http://www.ushmm.org/lcmedia/photo/wlc/image/05/05472.jpg>.

Article: "Holocaust History." Deadly Medicine: Irmgard Huber. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Jan. 2013. <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007146>.

Swastika: the true meaning

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The Swastika was used up to 5,000 years before the Germanys ever adopted it. It truley means "good fortune" and "well being". The motif which is a hooked cross was the first time that the Germans ever adapted the swastika. Before that the meaning of the swastila was good fortune. So no the Germany did not make up the swastika or even give its name they adopted it and turned it into a sign of death and war and evil. 

"Holocaust History." History of the Swastika. N.p., 11 May 2012. Web. 15 Jan. 2013

Death Marches

The marches started out in 1944 when  a camp called Lublin was overran. A SS officer decided to move the prisoners to another camp before others came. But he was too late evacuating all the prisoners. The western media showed up to discover what was really going on in the concentration camps. They interviewed different prisoners that were still within the camp and a few SS officers. The media also gained some footage of the camp.

After that SS officers began to notice how many prisoners die while on marches. They decided to make prisoners march for no reason. They purposely made them march just to kill them off. If someone was to fall behind because of exhaustion during the march then the officers would shoot them. They also shot the people that were too ill to keep up or just older. From 1944-1945 the officers began making the prisoners march more and the amount of deaths increased at an exponential rate. Many died of starvation, being tired, and from the harsh winter conditions. SS officers marched their prisoners almost to last day of the war. On May 1, 1945, the SS officers made the prisoners march to a ship where they would've been taken to the North Sea coastline. While they were on the ship the British bombed it. They thought there were military men from Germany on the ship when it turned out to be the prisoners.


http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005162
"Holocaust History." Death Marches. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Jan. 2013.

http://dtsdapache.hershey.k12.pa.us/wpmu/hs_eng9/2011/01/24/death-marches-killing-jews/
"A Time of Terror." A Time of Terror RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Jan. 2013.

Jewish Resistance

There were many attempts to resist the Nazi overtake from the Jews. Jewish civilians fought back with armed resistance in over 100 ghettos. In April-May 1943 there was a big revolt from the Jews that lived in Warsaw because of rumors rumors that the Germans would take the remaining Jews to the Treblinka killing center.  They fought back with a few firearms and Molotov cocktails. The Jews put up a fierce fight but they failed to hold off the German army. Some Jews survived by escaping to the forest. Jews also rose against guards in camps also but they could not overpower the Nazis. One plot to overthrow the Nazis was when five women supplied explosives to blow up the crematorium but it was a fail and the women were all latter killed.

"Jewish Resistance." Holocaust Encyclopedia. Unites States Holocaust Museum, 11 May 2012. Web. 14 Jan. 2013.

MAUTHAUSEN: KILLING OPERATIONS

"Mauthausen Concentration Camp (Austria)." Mauthausen Concentration Camp (Austria). N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Jan. 2013.

The Mauthausen camp authorities killed Jews that was disable, sick, or too weak to work. The most popular way that they killed the Jews was with gas. They started using gas in 1941-1942. The Mauthausen camp had gas chambers that killed up to 80 people at a time. in 1934 the RSHA provided the camps with mobile gas van that killed up to 30 people. Physicians and camp authorities chose people to be in an "experiment". They mostly chose twins to do these expiroments on. Camp physician Hermann Richter surgically removed important organs like the stomach, liver, or kidneys from living prisoners so they will know how long a prisoner could survive without the organ. The SS also killed perishers by shooting, hanging, and mistreating them. Thousands of Jews died from harsh living conditions, disease, and starvation.   

"Holocaust History." Mauthausen: Killing Operations. N.p., 11 May 2012. Web. 14 Jan. 2013. <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007729>.

Forced Labor: In Deaths.

Many citizens in Germany believed that labor was a protective way of allowing "outsiders" to work on the local labor force. They also believed that the labor was a way of teaching the poeple proper habits and ways of doing certian objectives in everyday socity. When the NAZI came into the picture they used labor not only as a punishment but a way to teach the German people to support the racial goals of National Socialism.

Nazis prepared Germany for the second world war, the SS in the concetration camp system saw thetthe prisoners as a source of labor. The Nazi's decided that the "criminals" or "state enemines" would make a great alternet for the labor that was being lost. In 1938 the German police rounded up and started plans for houseing a large number of people, starting of with prisoners of war and then on to the Jews. When poland was concurred by Germany they required all Jewish and Polish males to preform unpaid labor.





"Holocaust History." Forced Labor: In Depth. UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM,, 11 May 2012. Web. 14 Jan. 2013 
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007326 

Invastion of Poland, Fall 1939

http://www.ushmm.org/lcmedia/photo/wlc/image/80/80487.jpg

    Germany's first thing to do after coming to power was to sign a nonaggression pact with poland in 1934. Many germans did not agree with the pact with poland. Hitler did it anyways so that the french didn't become a allience with poland before germany had a chance to rearm. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded poland. The polish was easily defeted within weeks,German units, with more than 2,000 tanks and over 1,000 planes, broke through Polish defenses along the border and advanced on Warsaw in a massive encirclement attack. After heavy shelling and bombing, Warsaw surrendered to the Germans on September 27, 1939. The British and France standing by their guarantee of Poland's border, had declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939. The Germans were not worried to fight British and france, but they were not ready to face a powerful army like the nazis. So the French and British forces aggred to not go to war with Germany. Even before Germany attacked Poland they wanted to sign a pact called the German-Soviet Pact which  stated that Poland was to be partitioned between the two powers, enabled Germany to attack Poland without the fear of Soviet intervention. Right after that was done Germany attact Poland and won within a week.

http://www.ushmm.org/lcmedia/photo/lc/image/20/20361.jpg

"Holocaust History." Invasion of Poland, Fall 1939. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Jan. 2013.

Refugees

During Hitler's reign of terror, many of the Jewish people were seeking and making refuge in other countries. What they didn't know was that most of the countries were controlled by Germany and weren't looking for round two with Hitler and the Nazi's. Those who weren't already run by Germany, took as many as 30,000 Jewish people but turned away as many as 30,000. Most were snuck out and onto boats that were sailing to America and whenever they got there, the majority couldn't get in because they were denied visas. After the reign of terror was over, we looked at nearly 140,000 Jews entered Israel safely.

"Holocaust History." Refugees. N.p., 11 May 2012. Web. 14 Jan. 2013

Life After the Holocaust

Joan Ringelheim heard about the Memorial Measuem for the United States Holocaust in 1994. He wanted to  interview people who was survivors about what they went through. The time frame most people talked about was 1933-1945. But you can't just defined someones life as something that happened in history. Everyday you change and grow in your own way. So, Joan also focused on present day life of the survivors. Throught the interviews, he learned so much of the lives and what they actually went through. 

"Holocaust History." Life After the Holocaust. Arwen Donahue, n.d. Web. 14 Jan. 2013