The Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

Eric & I followed the crowds

 to the Holocaust Museum.

In the 1920s Adolf Hitler was constructing the framework of a "new Germany."  His vision was based upon the "superior" Aryan Race gaining power and ridding Germany of those who are inferior, including Jews, the disabled, homosexuals and Roma gypsies.

After assuming the Chancellorship in 1933, Adolf Hitler put his plans into action.  The Jews were the cause of Germany's woes.  Jews owned everything, making Germans subject to their whims.  After constant propaganda, average citizens joined the government in persecuting Jews.

Germans boycotted 
Jewish businesses.







To promote his plan, Jews needed to be identified, on sight.

All Jews were ordered

to wear yellow star
 badges to identify
 themselves.

Tauba Szmuckler, age

13, wore this dress.

Jews were ordered to turn

their valuables into 

the government.

Not every Jew stood in line to be identified, badged and give up their valuables.  The Reich depended on citizens to turn in Jews who were not complying with the new laws.

Jews were turned in by

their neighbors, friends,

school mates etc.

Hitler annexed Austria on March 12, 1938.  Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy met in Munich in  Septemberr, 1938.  Hitler was allowed to annex western Czechoslovakia (the Sudetenland) because of the large German population living there.

On September 1, 1939 Germany invaded Poland and exported the persecution of Jews.  The German machine relied on propaganda to spread their message of hate.  In each country Jews were forced to wear the yellow star, identifying themselves.  They were forced to give up their valuables.

Hitler was not done remaking Europe in his image.  German tanks and troops invaded Belgian, the Netherlands, France, Norway, Denmark, Yugoslavia, Greece and Russia, 

Jews were rounded up &

 forced into walled-in

areas called ghettos.

They died of starvation and disease in these ad hoc concentration camps.  There were uprisings in some ghettos.  The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising lasted 28 days, from April 19 to May 16, 1943.

America reacted...

The Nazi Regime was

denounced by President

Franklin D. Roosevelt

November, 1938.

Protesters demanded the end 

persecution of Jews &

Catholics in Europe.

Plans to annihilate the Jews of Europe continued.

Some Jews were rounded up and forced to walk into pre-dug pits.  Germans would line the pit and shoot until there was no more movement from their victims.  The pits were covered over and the death squads moved on.

And then, there were the concentration camps in Germany, Poland, Latvia, Ukraine, Austria, France, Czechoslovakia and the Netherlands.

These thousands of shoes

 represent the lives of people

 sent to the concentration camps.

The healthy were used for hard labor.







Internees were given
barely enough room
to sleep.

These bunks would hold
40 prisoners.







After Jews were ordered to strip off their clothing, they were told that they would be de-loused in the nest room.  Herded into the next room, Jews stood and waited.  The chamber filled with gas and thousands of Jews were killed.

Dead Jews were sent to the

ovens to be cremated.

An aerial photo taken of

Auschwitz.

Military leaders were lobbied

to bomb the camp to disrupt

the killings.

Auschwitz was not bombed.

Just a few of the many, many
photos of Jews who died
during World War II.

Allies liberate the death
camps in spring of 1945.

What they find is worse than
they had ever imagined.

War Crimes Trials were held in Germany from 1946 to 1952.  Many brought up on trial received prison sentences.  Some were executed.

Many European Jews wanted

to go to Palestine & create

their own nation.

There isn't enough space to light a candle for the nearly six million Jews that died during World War II.

"I call heaven & earth to witness
this day: I have put before you
life & death, blessing & curse.
Choose life, that you & your
offspring shall live."
Deuteronomy 30:19