How Many Years Did the Holocaust Last | uk.QACollections.com How Many Years Did the Holocaust Last How Many Years Did the Holocaust Last? Holocaust refers to the state-sponsored murder of millions of Jews by Nazi Germany. The Holocaust lasted for 12 years; people were imprisoned in camps as early as 1933 and it lasted until the end o... Read More » Related Videos Top Q&A For: How Many Years Did the Holocaust Last How Many Years Did World War 2 Last? World War 2 was a war that involved most of the world's nations that were eventually divided into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. World war 2 lasted for six years; it star... Read More » How Many Years Did Slavery Last? Slavery in America started since 1619 and lasted until 1865. After 246 long years, President Abraham Lincoln put an end to it. How Many Years Did the Vietnam War Last? The Vietnam War was a battle fought by the pro and anti communist groups in the country. The war, which started on September 26, 1959 and ended on April 30, 1975, lasted for exactly fifteen years, ...

Read More » How Many Years Does Bankruptcy Last? One way people deal with debts they can't pay is by announcing bankruptcy. Bankruptcy usually lasts for one year. You can find more information here: The Dreadful Days: How Long Did The Holocaust Last? The Dreadful Days: How Long Did The Holocaust Last? Tweet on Twitter “Holocaust” or the final solution is the word originated from two Greek words “holos” meaning whole and “kaustos” meaning burned. Historically, Holocaust signifies sacrifices offered on the altar. After 1945, the word modified to take horrible meaning of mass destruction and loss of life. Owing to the brutal murder of 6 million European Jews and few people of oppressed groups of homosexuals and Gypsies the word acquired an awful form. This phase was during the Second World War. The anti-semitic Nazi leader Adolf Hitler considered Jews to be an inferior race. After years of struggle of Jews under the rule of Nazis, Hitler comes up with a “final solution” the Holocaust behind the world war. The camps turned into mass killing centers. So, how long did the Holocaust last? And how Jews and other minor groups suffered and the aftermath? Read the article to know more about this.

How Long Did The Holocaust Last? Before getting into the phase of the holocaust, it is crucial for you to know the prior developments that lead to this mass destruction. So, let us see the prior developments. Before The Holocaust The anti-Semitism though referred to Adolf Hitler’s period but existed much before Hitler. Since, ancient time hostility toward Jews existed. The Jews were asked to leave Palestine forcefully after the Roman authorities destroyed their temple in Jerusalem. So, the term anti-Semitism dates back to 1870s. Later 17th and 18th century came in the Enlightenment with emphasis on religious toleration. In the 19th century, other European rulers along with the Napolean ordained legislation to remove the long-standing confinements on Jews. However, anti-semitic feelings began to take racial character rather than a religious one. The origin of anti-Semitism especially the virulent brand of Hitler is vague. Adolf Hitler was born in Austria in the year 1889 and served the German army during the World War I. Similar to most of the anti-Semites in Germany even Hitler blamed the Jews for the defeat in 1918.

Once the World War I ended, he joined the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) known among the English speakers as Nazis. He was imprisoned due to treason for his part in the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. During the confinement period, he penned the memoir “Mein Kampf” meaning “My Struggle.” In his work, he predicted the general European war resulting in the complete annihilation of the Jewish race from Germany. Further, he was obsessed with the thought of “pure” German race. He called this race as “Aryan” and people of this race required living space or “Lebensraum” to expand. Hitler rose the party from abstruseness to power eliminating the rivals within a decade after his release from the prison. He became the Chancellor of Germany on January 20, 1933, following the death of President Paul von Hindenburg. Then Hitler became a “Fuhrer ” – Germany’s Supreme ruler following an anointing. Nazi Revolution 1933-1939 The spatial expansion and racial purity were the goals of Hitler and from 1933 these two formed the motivating factors to shape the domestic and foreign policy.

Initially, Nazis were opposed by the harsh political components like Social Democrats and Communists. In Dachau near Munich was the first official concentration camp opened in March 1933. Most of the first prisoners here were communists. The camps sprang up and were widely spread to become the killing grounds – the Holocaust. The German concentration camps by July 1933 hold about 27,000 people in protective custody. Nazis hold huge rallies, public burning of books by Jews were some of the symbolic acts enacted by them. The population of the Jews remained meager by1933 it was about 525,000 amounting to 1 percent of the complete German population. In the next six years took place “Aryanization” lead by the Nazis in Germany. This process fired non-Aryans from Civil services, stripped Jewish lawyers, doctor, and their Jewish clients, knocked off Jewish-owned businesses. As per the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 any person with three or four Jewish grandparents was designated as a Jew. And one with two grandparents (Jews) was considered as half-breeds or Mischlinge.

According to Nuremberg laws Jews were always the targets of persecution and stigmatization. The synagogues (Jewish worship place) burned, and their shops were destroyed. And about few 100s of Jews killed and left 1000s imprisoned. Between 1933 and 1939 few thousands of Jews left Germany while those remained in the country suffered fear and state of uncertainty. The War (1939-1940) By September 1939, the western half of Poland was occupied by the German army. A lot of hundreds of thousands forced into ghettos from their homes. All those left back property was confiscated by Germany and was handed over to the ethnic Germans. Ethnic Germans were the people residing outside Germany identified themselves as Germans and were non-Jews. These ethnic Germans were probably Polish gentiles or Reich. On the other hand, Jewish ghettos wore horrified looks with barbed wires surrounding and high walls. Poland functioned as captive city-states and were governed by the Jewish councils. Additionally, diseases like typhus spread over the ghettos owing to the overpopulation and hunger. Further, Jews were unemployed and suffered poverty.

In 1939, Hitler came up with Euthanasia Program looking forward to more destruction. According to the program, Nazi officials picked up 70,000 Germans suffering from mental illness or other disabilities to be gassed until death. However, the program came to an end after few well-known German religious leaders protested in August 1941. But, the program indeed was implemented in secrecy and around 275,000 suffering from any of the disabilities were killed all over the Europe. When you analyze the scenario, you can find out the Euthanasia leading the Holocaust. Towards The Holocaust (1940-1941) All through the summer and spring of 1940 Hitler’s empire was extended all over the Germany with the aid of army. The Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, France, and Luxembourg were conquered. In early 1941, Jews present in the whole of the continent and several thousands of European Gypsies were transferred into Polish ghettoes. Further, in June 1941, new brutal combat was initiated with the German invading Soviet Union.

Einsatzgruppen were the mobile killing units employed to murder around 500,000 or more Soviet Jews and other communities generally by shooting as part of German occupation. On July 31, 1941, the Hitler’s top commander Hermann Goering the chief of Security Service Reinhard Heydrich mentioned there is a need of “final solution” to the problem of Jews. Consequently, by September 1941, every Jew in the German-held territory mandatorily should carry a yellow star. These yellow stars make them open targets for shooting. Simultaneously, about tens of thousands of people were exiled to the Polish ghettos and cities occupied by Germans in USSR. From the mid of 1941 the killing experiments went on at the camps Auschwitz, near Krakow. Using a pesticide Zyklon-B around 500 officials killed 500 Jews in August. Additionally, the Security Service placed a huge order for the fatal gas with one of the leading German pest-control firm indicating more horrible holocausts are waiting.

The HoloCaust: Death Camps (1941-1945) By late 1941, the Germans transported the masses from the Polish ghettos to concentration camps. The massed included the old, sick, weak, and young. The first gassing that is where people killed in masses began near Lublin in the Belzec camp, and the chain of disasters took place on 17th March 1942.Further, around five mass killing centers were set up in Poland, Sobibor, Chelmno, Majdanek, and Treblinka. Among all the setup centers, the Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest. Between 1942 and 1945 all Jews residing in Europe, German controlled territory and countries associated with Germany deported to the deadly camps. During summer in 1942 the hefty deportations took place. In this around 300,000 people were deported from only the Warsaw ghetto. Though Nazis tried to keep the death campaigns a secret, it was no possible due to high death tolls. Most of the eyewitness of the German atrocities approached the allied governments, but they failed to respond.

And these governments were harshly criticized about their disability to act against such mass slaughter. The allied governments fail to take any action as they completely concentrated on the war in the hands and general disbelief on such atrocities happening on such a huge scale. Similar to large industrial operation over 2 million people killed at a camp of Auschwitz alone. A huge population of non-Jews and Jews were found working in the labor camp in this place. While Jews were gassed, the other population lost their lives due to disease or starvation. During 1944 in summer months even on the D-Day of World War II which spelled the end of Germany the Jews not spared from killing. About 12,000 Jews killed per day by deporting huge population to Auschwitz. The Jewish Resistance Germany’s overwhelming repression made it difficult for the Jews to resist. However, Jewish population tried to resist in several forms. Some of the Jewish religious traditions showcase their resistance against the inhuman act of Nazis. And attempts made by the Jews to escape from the camps and ghettos were a type of resistance. Most of them who succeeded to escape from deadly camps and ghettos managed to get into the mountains and forests and lived in the family camps set up there.

One of the significant revolts against the Nazis was Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. This took place following the massive deportations of the Jews from the prison to ghettos in September 1942. Again in January 1943 when Germans attempted to take several thousands of Jews a small unorganized group of Jews attacked them. The Germans ended up taking few people than the expected numbers. However, all of these revolts remained largely unsuccessful to face the superior powers of Germans. Nazi Rule Ends Yet Holocaust Claims Lives (1945) The German leadership started descending owing to internal dissent between Hitler and Goering, Himmler. Both opted to remain distant from Hitler and to snatch his power. In the political testament and last will the German dictator urged the Germans to follow “the strict racial laws and resist the Jews and prevent them from poisoning the Universe mercilessly” on April 29. The very next day dictator committed suicide. Followed by a week around May 8, 1945 Germany formally surrendered. Most of the death camps evacuated by the German forces by the ending of 1944. The inmates sent on a march in the guidance of a guard beyond the distances as the enemies were fast approaching.

These marches termed as “death marches” and it continued until Germany’s surrender with a death toll between 250,000 and 375,000. The Italian Jewish author Primo Levi have captured the moments of fear and dread in his work. One of the lines read “We lay in a world of death and phantoms. The last trace of civilization had vanished around and inside us. The work of bestial degradation, begun by the victorious Germans, had been carried to conclusion by the Germans in defeat.” These lines depict the state of mind of the author and his mates a day before the arrival of Soviet Camp in January 1945. Aftermath Of Holocaust And Its Impact Forever Holocaust resulted in such wounds that took a lot of time to heal, and it was a catastrophe. Though few survived in the lethal camps found it hard to get back to their homes. Most of them lost their families and the non-Jewish neighbors they had betrayed them. Consequently, in 1940s huge number of refugees arose. Among them, most of them were Jews, and other groups of the population who were ill-treated and found roaming around Europe.

As an effort to punish the culprits of Holocaust, the Allies conducted the Nuremberg Trials in 1945-46. As a result, the atrocities of the Nazi regime were exposed. Due to pressure the Allied powers created a homeland for the Jewish survivors. As a result, Israel created in 1948. The decades following the Holocaust were a bitter legacy to the ordinary Germans. The families of victims and survivors sought restitution for the property confiscated and loss of wealth during the rule of Nazis. In early 1953, the German government made a responsible move by making some payment to the Jewish people due to crimes they suffered. SHARE The Holocaust - World War II - HISTORY.com Google Before the Holocaust: Historical Anti-Semitism & Hitler’s Rise to Power Anti-Semitism in Europe did not begin with Adolf Hitler . Though use of the term itself dates only to the 1870s, there is evidence of hostility toward Jews long before the Holocaust–even as far back as the ancient world, when Roman authorities destroyed the Jewish temple in Jerusalem and forced Jews to leave Palestine.

The Enlightenment , during the 17th and 18th centuries, emphasized religious toleration, and in the 19th century Napoleon and other European rulers enacted legislation that ended long-standing restrictions on Jews. Anti-Semitic feeling endured, however, in many cases taking on a racial character rather than a religious one. Did You Know? Even in the early 21st century, the legacy of the Holocaust endures. Swiss government and banking institutions have in recent years acknowledged their complicity with the Nazis and established funds to aid Holocaust survivors and other victims of human rights abuses, genocide or other catastrophes. The roots of Hitler’s particularly virulent brand of anti-Semitism are unclear. Born in Austria in 1889, he served in the German army during World War I . Like many anti-Semites in Germany, he blamed the Jews for the country’s defeat in 1918. Soon after the war ended, Hitler joined the National German Workers’ Party, which became the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), known to English speakers as the Nazis.

While imprisoned for treason for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, Hitler wrote the memoir and propaganda tract “Mein Kampf” (My Struggle), in which he predicted a general European war that would result in “the extermination of the Jewish race in Germany.” Hitler was obsessed with the idea of the superiority of the “pure” German race, which he called “Aryan,” and with the need for “Lebensraum,” or living space, for that race to expand. In the decade after he was released from prison, Hitler took advantage of the weakness of his rivals to enhance his party’s status and rise from obscurity to power. On January 20, 1933, he was named chancellor of Germany. After President Paul von Hindenburg’s death in 1934, Hitler anointed himself as “Fuhrer,” becoming Germany’s supreme ruler. Nazi Revolution in Germany, 1933-1939 The twin goals of racial purity and spatial expansion were the core of Hitler’s worldview, and from 1933 onward they would combine to form the driving force behind his foreign and domestic policy.

At first, the Nazis reserved their harshest persecution for political opponents such as Communists or Social Democrats. The first official concentration camp opened at Dachau (near Munich) in March 1933, and many of the first prisoners sent there were Communists. Like the network of concentration camps that followed, becoming the killinggrounds of the Holocaust,Dachau was under the control of Heinrich Himmler, head of the elite Nazi guard, the Schutzstaffel (SS), and later chief of the German police. By July 1933, German concentration camps (Konzentrationslager in German, or KZ) held some 27,000 people in “protective custody.” Huge Nazi rallies and symbolic acts such as the public burning of books by Jews, Communists, liberals and foreigners helped drive home the desired message of party strength. In 1933, Jews in Germany numbered around 525,000, or only 1 percent of the total German population. During the next six years, Nazis undertook an “Aryanization” of Germany, dismissing non-Aryans from civil service, liquidating Jewish-owned businesses and stripping Jewish lawyers and doctors of their clients.

Under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, anyone with three or four Jewish grandparents was considered a Jew, while those with two Jewish grandparents were designated Mischlinge (half-breeds). Under the Nuremberg Laws, Jews became routine targets for stigmatization and persecution. This culminated in Kristallnacht , or the “night of broken glass” in November 1938, when German synagogues were burned and windows in Jewish shops were smashed; some 100 Jews were killed and thousands more arrested. From 1933 to 1939, hundreds of thousands of Jews who were able to leave Germany did, while those who remained lived in a constant state of uncertainty and fear. Beginning of War , 1939-1940 In September 1939, the German army occupied the western half of Poland. German police soon forced tens of thousands of Polish Jews from their homes and into ghettoes, giving their confiscated properties to ethnic Germans (non-Jews outside Germany who identified as German), Germans from the Reich or Polish gentiles.

Surrounded by high walls and barbed wire, the Jewish ghettoes in Poland functioned like captive city-states, governed by Jewish Councils. In addition to widespread unemployment, poverty and hunger, overpopulation made the ghettoes breeding grounds for disease such as typhus. Meanwhile, beginning in the fall of 1939, Nazi officials selected around 70,000 Germans institutionalized for mental illness or disabilities to be gassed to death in the so-called Euthanasia Program. After prominent German religious leaders protested, Hitler put an end to the program in August 1941, though killings of the disabled continued in secrecy, and by 1945 some 275,000 people deemed handicapped from all over Europe had been killed. In hindsight, it seems clear that the Euthanasia Program functioned as a pilot for the Holocaust. Towards the “Final Solution” , 1940-1941 Throughout the spring and summer of 1940, the German army expanded Hitler’s empire in Europe, conquering Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France.

Beginning in 1941, Jews from all over the continent, as well as hundreds of thousands of European Gypsies, were transported to the Polish ghettoes. The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 marked a new level of brutality in warfare. Mobile killing units called Einsatzgruppen would murder more than 500,000 Soviet Jews and others (usually by shooting) over the course of the German occupation. A memorandum dated July 31, 1941, from Hitler’s top commander Hermann Goering to Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the SD (the security service of the SS), referred to the need for an Endlösung (final solution) to “the Jewish question.” Beginning in September 1941, every person designated as a Jew in German-held territory was marked with a yellow star, making them open targets. Tens of thousands were soon being deported to the Polish ghettoes and German-occupied cities in the USSR. Since June 1941, experiments with mass killing methods had been ongoing at the concentration camp of Auschwitz , near Krakow.

That August, 500 officials gassed 500 Soviet POWs to death with the pesticide Zyklon-B. The SS soon placed a huge order for the gas with a German pest-control firm, an ominous indicator of the comingHolocaust. Holocaust Death Camps, 1941-1945 Beginning in late 1941, the Germans began mass transports from the ghettoes in Poland to the concentration camps, starting with those people viewed as the least useful: the sick, old and weak and the very young. The first mass gassings began at the camp of Belzec, near Lublin, on March 17, 1942. Five more mass killing centers were built at camps in occupied Poland, including Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and the largest of all, Auschwitz-Birkenau. From 1942 to 1945, Jews were deported to the camps from all over Europe, including German-controlled territory as well as those countries allied with Germany.

The heaviest deportations took place during the summer and fall of 1942, when more than 300,000 people were deported from the Warsaw ghetto alone. Though the Nazis tried to keep operation of camps secret, the scale of the killing made this virtually impossible. Eyewitnesses brought reports of Nazi atrocities in Poland to the Allied governments, who were harshly criticized after the war for their failure to respond, or to publicize news of the mass slaughter. This lack of action was likely mostly due to the Allied focus on winning the war at hand, but was also a result of the general incomprehension with which news of the Holocaust was met and the denial and disbelief that such atrocities could be occurring on such a scale. At Auschwitz alone, more than 2 million people were murdered in a process resembling a large-scale industrial operation. A large population of Jewish and non-Jewish inmates worked in the labor camp there; though only Jews were gassed, thousands of others died of starvation or disease.

During the summer of 1944, even as the events of D-Day (June 6, 1944) and a Soviet offensive the same month spelled the beginning of the end for Germany in the war, a large proportion of Hungary’s Jewish population was deported to Auschwitz, and as many as 12,000 Jews were killed every day. Nazi Rule Comes to an End, as Holocaust Continues to Claim Lives, 1945 By the spring of 1945, German leadership was dissolving amid internal dissent, with Goering and Himmler both seeking to distance themselves from Hitler and take power. In his last will and political testament, dictated in a German bunker that April 29, Hitler blamed the war on “International Jewry and its helpers” and urged the German leaders and people to follow “the strict observance of the racial laws and with merciless resistance against the universal poisoners of all peoples”–the Jews. The following day, he committed suicide. Germany’s formal surrender in World War II came barely a week later, on May 8, 1945.

German forces had begun evacuating many of the death camps in the fall of 1944, sending inmates under guard to march further from the advancing enemy’s front line. These so-called “death marches” continued all the way up to the German surrender, resulting in the deaths of some 250,000 to 375,000 people. In his classic book “Survival in Auschwitz,” the Italian Jewish author Primo Levi described his own state of mind, as well as that of his fellow inmates in Auschwitz on the day before Soviet troops arrived at the camp in January 1945: “We lay in a world of death and phantoms. The last trace of civilization had vanished around and inside us. The work of bestial degradation, begun by the victorious Germans, had been carried to conclusion by the Germans in defeat.” Aftermath & Lasting Impact of the Holocaust The wounds of the Holocaust–known in Hebrew as Shoah, or catastrophe–were slow to heal. Survivors of the camps found it nearly impossible to return home, as in many cases they had lost their families and been denounced by their non-Jewish neighbors.

As a result, the late 1940s saw an unprecedented number of refugees, POWs and other displaced populations moving across Europe. In an effort to punish the villains of the Holocaust, the Allies held the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46, which brought Nazi atrocities to horrifying light. Increasing pressure on the Allied powers to create a homeland for Jewish survivors of the Holocaust would lead to a mandate for the creation of Israel in 1948. Over the decades that followed, ordinary Germans struggled with the Holocaust’s bitter legacy, as survivors and the families of victims sought restitution of wealth and property confiscated during the Nazi years. Beginning in 1953, the German government made payments to individual Jews and to the Jewish people as a way of acknowledging the German people’s responsibility for the crimes committed in their name. Tags Frequently Asked Questions — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 1. Can you help me find a particular quotation I saw at the Museum? The Bible What have you done? Hark, thy brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground!

Source: Genesis 4:10 Only guard yourself and guard your soul carefully, lest you forget the things your eyes saw, and lest these things depart your heart all the days of your life, and you shall make them known to your children, and to your children’s children. Source: Deuteronomy 4:9 I call heaven and earth to witness this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life—that you and your offspring shall live. Source: Deuteronomy 30:19 Source: Isaiah 43:10 George H. W. Bush Here we will learn that each of us bears responsibility for our actions and for our failure to act. Here we will learn that we must intervene when we see evil arise. Here we will learn more about the moral compass by which we navigate our lives and by which countries will navigate the future. Source: George H. W.

Bush, 41st president of the United States, February 15, 1991 Jimmy Carter Out of our memory...of the Holocaust we must forge an unshakable oath with all civilized people that never again will the world stand silent, never again will the world...fail to act in time to prevent this terrible crime of genocide....we must harness the outrage of our own memories to stamp out oppression wherever it exists. We must understand that human rights and human dignity are indivisible. Source: Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States, at the presentation of the report of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust, September 27, 1979 William J. Clinton This museum will touch the life of everyone who enters and leave everyone forever changed—a place of deep sadness and a sanctuary of bright hope; an ally of education against ignorance, of humility against arrogance, an investment in a secure future against whatever insanity lurks ahead. If this museum can mobilize morality, then those who have perished will thereby gain a measure of immortality. Source: William J.

Clinton, 42nd president of the United States, at the dedication of the Museum, April 22, 1993 Albert Einstein A desire for knowledge for its own sake, a love of justice that borders on fanaticism, and a striving for personal independence—these are aspects of the Jewish people’s tradition that allow me to regard my belonging to it as a gift of great fortune. Those who today rage against the ideals of reason and individual freedom and who seek by means of brutal force to bring about a vapid state-slavery are justified in perceiving us as their implacable enemies. History has imposed on us a difficult struggle; but so long as we remain devoted servants of truth, justice, and freedom, we will not only persist as the oldest of living peoples, but will also continue as before to achieve, through productive labor, works that contribute to the ennoblement of humanity. Source: Albert Einstein, from a translation by David Luebke of a passage from Albert Einstein’s Mein Weltbild (Amsterdam: Qerido Verlag, 1934), p. 133 General Dwight D.

Eisenhower The things I saw beggar description...The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were...overpowering...I made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to “propaganda.” Source: General Dwight D. Eisenhower, in a cable message to General George C. Marshall on April 15, 1945 Hermann Göring I herewith commission you to carry out all preparations with regard to...a total solution of the Jewish question in those territories of Europe which are under German influence...I furthermore charge you to submit to me as soon as possible a draft showing the...measures already taken for the execution of the intended final solution of the Jewish question. Source: Hermann Göring, in a directive to Reinhard Heydrich dated July 31, 1941, as quoted in William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960), p.

964 Willy Heidinger (speaking about the Hollerith machine) We are recording the individual characteristics of every single member of the nation onto a little card....We are proud that we can contribute to such a task, a task that provides the physician of our German body politic with the material [he needs] for his examination, so that our physician can determine whether, from the standpoint of the nation’s health, the data thus arrived at correlate in a harmonious, that is, healthy, relationship—or whether diseased conditions must be cured by corrective interventions....We have firm confidence in our physician and will follow his orders blindly, for we know that he will lead our nation toward a great future. Heil to our German people and their leader! Source: “Festrede des Grunders, Generaldirektor Willy Heidinger,” in Denkschrift zur Einweihung der neuen Arbeitsstatte der Deutschen Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft m.b.H. in Berlin, Lichterfelde am 8. Januar 1934 (Berlin: Deutschen Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft m.b.H., 1934) p.

39 Heinrich Heine Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned. Source: Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), German Jewish poet, from Almansor: A Tragedy (1823) Adolf Hitler The great mass of the people...will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one. Source: Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe! Source: Translation from J. Noakes and G. Pridham, Nazism 1919–1945, Volume 3 (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1988), p. 1049 I have issued the command—and I’ll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by firing squad—that our war aim does not consist of reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy.

Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness—for the present only in the East—with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians? Source: Adolf Hitler, Obersalzberg, August 22, 1939, speech delivered by Hitler to the Supreme Commanders and Commanding Generals; as stated by Former Bureau Chief of the Associated Press in Berlin, Louis Lochner, in his book What About Germany? (New York: Dodd, Mead, & Company, 1942), p. 2. This particular language does not appear in any of the other primary source accounts of Hitler’s speech. Abba Kovner January 1, 1942: Before our eyes they took away our parents, our brothers and sisters.... Of those taken out through the gates of the Ghetto not a single one has returned.... You who hesitate, cast aside all illusions. Your children, your wives and husbands are no longer alive....

Hitler plans to destroy all the Jews of Europe, and the Jews of Lithuania have been chosen as the first in line. We will not be led like sheep to the slaughter! True, we are weak and defenseless, but the only reply to the murderer is revolt! Brothers! Better to fall as free fighters than to live by the mercy of the murderers. Resist! Resist with your last breath! Source: Abba Kovner, “A First Attempt to Tell,” in The Holocaust as Historical Experience, edited by Yehuda Bauer and Nathan Rotenstreich (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1981), p. 81. Primo Levi My number is 174517; we have been baptized, we will carry the tattoo on our left arm until we die. Source: Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz (New York: Summit Books, 1986), p. 27. Pastor Martin Niemöller First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. Source: Attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller, as stated in Franklin H. Littell’s foreword to Exile in the Fatherland: Martin Niemöller’s Letters from Moabit Prison, edited by Hubert G. Locke (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 1986), p. viii Ronald Reagan We who did not go their way owe them this. We must make sure that their deaths have posthumous meaning. We must make sure that from now until the end of days all humankind stares this evil in the face...and only then can we be sure it will never arise again. Source: Ronald Reagan, 40th president of the United States, at the cornerstone-laying ceremony for the Museum, October 5, 1988 Hannah Senesh Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame. Blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness of the heart.

Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honour’s sake. Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame. Source: Hannah Senesh (1921–1944), Sardice, Yugoslavia, May 2, 1944 Moses Schulstein We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses. We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers, From Prague, Paris, and Amsterdam, And because we are only made of fabric and leather And not of blood and flesh, each one of us avoided the hellfire. Source: From Moses Schulstein’s (Moishe Shulstein’s) poem “I Saw a Mountain,” translated by Beatrice Stadtler and Mindele Wajsman in From Holocaust to New Life, edited by Michael Berenbaum (New York: The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, 1985), p. 121. Harry S. Truman There are left in Europe 1,500,000 Jews, men, women and children, whom the ordeal has left homeless, hungry, sick, and without assistance. These, too, are victims of the crime for which retribution will be visited upon the guilty.

But neither the dictates of justice nor that love of our fellowman which we are bidden to practice will be satisfied until the needs of these sufferers are met. Source: Remarks to a delegation from the United Jewish Appeal on February 25, 1946, from the Public Papers of the United States, Harry S. Truman, January 1–December 31, 1946 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1962), p. 131 George Washington The government of the United States...gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance. Source: George Washington’s letter “To the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island,” dated August 17, 1790 Elie Wiesel Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.

Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never. Source: Elie Wiesel, Night (New York: Bantam, 1982), p. 32. Yevgeny Yevtushenko The wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar. The trees look ominous, Here all things scream silently, and, baring my head, am one massive, soundless scream above the thousand thousand buried here. Source: Yevgeny Yevtushenko, The Collected Poems 1952–1990, edited by Albert C. Todd with the author and James Ragan (New York: Henry Holt, 1991), pp. 102–4 2. What are some significant dates in the Museum’s history? 1978, November 1 President Jimmy Carter establishes the President’s Commission on the Holocaust. 1979, April 24 The first Days of Remembrance ceremony is held in the Capitol Rotunda.

1979, September 27 The President’s Commission on the Holocaust submits its report concerning Holocaust remembrance and education in the United States. 1980, October 7 President Carter signs Public Law 96-388 , establishing the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. 1983, April 13 Land for the Museum building is transferred from the government to the Council in a ceremony held at the Capitol. 1984, April 30 A symbolic groundbreaking ceremony is held at the future site of the Museum. 1985, October 16 Actual groundbreaking ceremonies take place. Two milk cans containing soil and ashes from different concentration and extermination camps are symbolically buried on the site. 1986, October 8 15th Street, adjacent to the future Museum entrance, is officially renamed Raoul Wallenberg Place. 1988, October 5 The cornerstone for the Museum is laid. President Reagan speaks at the ceremony. 1989, July 17 The contract for the Museum’s construction is awarded to Blake Construction Company. 1989, August 2 Construction of the Museum begins.

1990, April 17 Two milk cans containing soil and ashes from different concentration and extermination camps are buried under the basement level of the Hall of Remembrance. 1993, April 21 A tribute to liberators and rescuers is held at Arlington National Cemetery. [Back to top] 3. How did the Museum get started? On November 1, 1978, President Carter established the President’s Commission on the Holocaust and charged it with issuing a report on the state of Holocaust remembrance and education in the United States. Almost a year later, on September 27, 1979, the President’s Commission presented their results and made four main recommendations: That a living memorial be established to honor the victims and survivors of the Holocaust and to ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust are taught in perpetuity; That an educational foundation be established to stimulate and support research in the teaching of the Holocaust; That a Committee on Conscience be established to collect information on and alert the national conscience regarding reports of actual or potential outbreaks of genocide throughout the world; and That a national Day of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust be established in perpetuity and held annually.

In 1980, Congress unanimously passed legislation to establish the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. The Council, which succeeded the President’s Commission on the Holocaust, was charged with carrying out the above recommendations. Elie Wiesel was named the first chairman of the Council and Mark E. Talisman the first vice chairman. 4. Who were the members of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust? Elie Wiesel, Chairman 8. How long did it take to build the Museum? Actual construction took almost four years, from July 1989 until April 1993. [Back to top] 9. How much did it cost to build the Museum? The Museum cost approximately $168 million to build ($90 million for the building’s construction and $78 million for the exhibits). [Back to top] 10. How were the funds raised for the Museum’s construction? Built on land donated by the federal government and funded with more than 200,000 private donations, the Museum is the result of a strong partnership between the government and private philanthropy.

As required by law, all funds for planning, constructing, and equipping the Museum were raised exclusively from private, tax-deductible contributions. [Back to top] 11. How big is the Museum? The Museum is 161 feet wide, 312 feet long, 91 feet tall, and 265,000 square feet in size. The Permanent Exhibition occupies 36,000 square feet on three floors. [Back to top] 12. How many people have visited the Museum? As of June 2016, more than More than 40.2 million people had visited the Museum since it opened in April 1993: 24% were school children 12% were from outside the United States approximately 90% were not Jewish more than 3,500 were dignitaries, from more than 132 countries and including 98 heads of state or government For the most recent attendance figures, please see the Museum Press Kit . 13. Who was primarily responsible for the design of the Permanent Exhibition? Michael Berenbaum worked as the project director for developing the Permanent Exhibition.

Ralph Appelbaum, through his firm, Ralph Appelbaum Associates (external link), served as the exhibition designer for the Permanent Exhibition. Martin Smith, a British documentary filmmaker, served as the first director of the Permanent Exhibition. Raye Farr developed the 70 videos central to the storytelling design of the Permanent Exhibition, and in 1990 she replaced Smith as the exhibition’s director. (Edward Phillips is the current director of exhibitions.) Cindy Miller and David Luebke wrote the majority of the exhibition texts. [Back to top] 14. What is the story behind the Children’s Tile Wall? In 1990, under the leadership of Adeline Yates, wife of Congressman Sidney R. Yates, a group of Congressional wives and other women formed the Committee to Remember the Children, in honor of the estimated 1.5 million children killed during the Holocaust. They invited thousands of young students throughout the nation to help create this wall of remembrance. The children recorded their impressions of the Holocaust on ceramic tiles that were then combined to create this permanent memorial. 15. What special exhibitions has the Museum displayed?

Remember the Children: Daniel’s Story (since 1991) Assignment: Rescue, The Story of Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee (1993–95) Faces of Sorrow: Agony in the Former Yugoslavia (1994–95) Liberation 1945 (1995–96) [Back to top] 16. Who said “Thou shall not be a perpetrator; thou shall not be a victim; and thou shall never be a bystander”? On January 27, 1998, Yehuda Bauer, professor of Holocaust studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, delivered a speech to the German Bundestag in which he said, "I come from a people who gave the Ten Commandments to the world. Time has come to strengthen them by three additional ones, which we ought to adopt and commit ourselves to: thou shall not be a perpetrator; thou shall not be a victim; and thou shall never, but never, be a bystander.” Variations of the quote have been used in many other contexts and attributed to various people.

The quote does not appear on the walls of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The full text of Bauer’s speech to the Bundestag is available on the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ website (external link). The quote gained further attention when Professor Bauer included it in a speech delivered at the opening of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust on January, 26, 2000. The forum was attended by major dignitaries and leading figures in the field of Holocaust studies and remembrance and was covered by the international press. More recently, the quote was used in a United Nations discussion paper (external link) issued in connection with the observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January 2006. 17. How can I find out more about the Museum, including its history, architecture, and exhibitions? Please consult the following resources on the Museum’s website:

Question: How many years did the Holocaust last?
Answer: 12