Florida Holocaust Museum preview

Led by the dictator Adolf Hitler, the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s believed that certain people - especially Jews, Gypsies and the disabled - were inferior and didn’t deserve to live.

The Nazis were anti-Semitic, which means they hated the Jewish people. Although many Jews were doctors, lawyers, business people, bankers and teachers who contributed a great deal to German society, Hitler blame them for the country’s economic problems. The truth was that Germany was going through a difficult time because it was badly defeated in World War I, which ended in 1918 and deep in debt.

Hitler and his parliament passed laws that required Jews to give up their jobs, homes, businesses, and rights. To enforce these laws, the police organization known as the Gestapo and an elite army corps known as the S.S. imprisoned, beat, and murdered Jews - simply because they were Jewish. Many Jews and political enemies of the Nazis were sent to brutal prisons known as concentration camps.

Hitler was determined to protect at all costs “German blood and German honor“ for the country’s Aryans, the name given to white, non-Jewish Germans. He also was determined to invade and occupy all of Europe.

In March 1938, Germany annexed Austria (which a majority of non-Jewish Australians welcomed) and put into effect harsh new laws stripping Jews of their rights. Next, Germany annexed parts of Czechoslovakia and influenced pro-Nazi governments in Hungry and Slovakia to establish anti-Jewish laws.
Then in September 1939, Poland was invaded, triggering World War II. Because of a secret prewar agreement, Germany occupied the western half of the country while the Soviet Union controlled the eastern half.

Great Britain and France, who were allies of Poland, declared war on Germany. The following year, Nazi forces invaded and occupied Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, and Luxenberg. Then France fell, and Great Britain was battered by German air assaults. Next, Germany launched a surprise attack against Russia in June 1941 and occupied such Soviet countries as Lithuania and the Ukraine. In December 1941, the United States entered the war and joined Great Britain and the Free French to form the Allied Powers, which were determined to halt the German war machine. The Soviet Union joins the Allies, too.

Also fighting the Nazis in German-occupied territory were super groups of brave citizens known as the underground, the Resistance, and the partisans. These rebels for freedom used hit and run guerrilla tactics and sabotage against the German army and helped Jews escape.

As country after country fell under German occupation; Jews were singled out for mistreatment, just as they were in Germany. They had to wear the six pointed Star of David, a symbol of Judaism on their sleeves, chest, or back to set them apart from non-Jews. They couldn’t walk freely in the streets or do many of the things other Europeans took for granted. Signs in theaters, cafés, restaurants, and other public places warned the Jews weren’t allowed to enter.

During the war years, the Nazis created ghettos. These were small areas inside cities that were sealed up by brick or stone walls or barbed wire, where Jews were forced to live under unhealthy and crowded conditions. Each month, tens of thousands of Jews were deported – moved to forced labor camps or concentration camps where, unless they were useful to the Nazis, they were killed in gas chambers or murdered in some other way. It was all part of Hitler’s final solution, the Nazi plan to eliminate all Jews of Europe.

Why would such cruelty go virtually unchecked? Out of fear, anti-Semitism, or self-protection, millions of non-Jewish Europeans couldn’t or wouldn’t get involved in stopping the Nazi madness. It’s estimated that only one half of one percent of European non-Jews risked their lives to assist and hide Jews from the Nazis. Sadly, many Europeans actively supported the Nazis by turning in Jews and those who assisted Jews. These morally bankrupt people were known as collaborators, informants, or Nazi sympathizers.

As the war came to an end in 1945, the Allies liberated the remaining imprisoned or hidden Jews, although hundreds of thousands were barely alive because of Nazi cruelty. The world was shocked to discover that of the 9 million Jews who lived in Europe before the war, 6 million have been murdered or died from starvation or disease in Nazi camps. Of the Jewish children who failed to escape from Europe after 1939, more than 1.5 million were murdered by Nazis or were deported to camps where they all died of illness or hunger. Another 4 million non-Jewish civilians died at the hands of the Nazis.

This horrific mass murder is called the holocaust, a word from ancient Greece meaning “sacrifice by fire.“ Overtime, the word came to mean the deliberate and systematic slaughter of a large number of human beings

Out of the ashes of the Holocaust emerged Israel - the rebirth of the Jewish homeland – where in 1948 hundreds of thousands of Jews started a new life free from the tyranny of hate. Many other Holocaust survivors chose to remain in Europe, came to America, or settle on other continents, hoping to put together the pieces of the shattered lives. They each have a story to tell, but over the decades, the world still has heard too few of them. Now, with each passing year, the number of Holocaust survivors dwindle as they pass away of old age. Their stories deserve to be told before it is too late.

Map of Europe 1938