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1. Columnists

TAYLOR: How the power of music helped a Holocaust survivor reclaim his life

Jun 13, 2022  •  1 day ago  •  4 minute read  •  Join the conversation

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival and on Wednesday, June 15, will premiere the Hoffert production of The Rhapsody in homage to Leo Spellman.

With lightning speed, on Sept. 8, 1939, eight days after the brutal invasion of Poland, Nazi jack boots rattled through the streets of Ostrowiec in the southeastern part of the country, thrusting terror into the core of every household.

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Lazar Szpilman, a 26-year-old Jew, his life in jeopardy, ran to the safety of the nearby forest.

Leo Spellman, as he would later become known, was born with music in his heart, into a family of celebrated musicians.

Taught piano at the age of four by his father, Reuven, he was playing for silent movies at age nine.

By the time he reached his twenties he had a flourishing career, composing and performing, until the Nazis descended on his homeland and changed his life forever.

When his town of 30,000 was occupied, the Nazis murdered almost 11,000 Jews, many of them publicly hanged in the market square.

Spellman survived by hiding in the woods, dodging German soldiers and working with Polish partisans.

In 1943, he and his wife, Mania, were taken in by a young student, Henryk Wronski, a Christian, who risked his life by hiding them in a secret compartment in his home.

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They were cold, hungry and “couldn’t speak in case the neighbours would hear” Spellman later recalled. But they survived.

Eventually emerging from their hiding place, Spellman and his wife found shelter in his sister Chana’s home, until the night bandits broke in and wreaked havoc on the family.

One of Chana’s children was murdered and Spellman was shot in the arm.

In 1947, Spellman and his wife found their way to a displaced person’s camp near Munich.

It was in that grim and stressful refugee camp that his love of music began to revive and soar.

Spellman was employed in the camp as a pianist but, as he set out on his road to recovery, his composing of “Symphony 1939-1945” based on his memories of the war years became the focus of his life.

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It was premiered in the camp with an orchestra of Holocaust survivors and the misery of Spellman’s past began to recede to his creative passion.

As his daughter, Helene Shifman, would later say of her father: “He had the most extraordinary musical spirit. What was taken from him was reclaimed and brought to life with the life-affirming power of music”.
Eventually, Spellman emigrated to Canada and in 1948 set about making a living as a dishwasher in Toronto.

But it wasn’t long before he was composing and performing and getting paid for it.

He formed the “Leo Spellman and his Orchestra for all Social Occasions” and it remained in high demand for decades.

Yet, for some 50 years, his masterwork, Symphony 1939-1945, lay moldering in an old suitcase hidden in his garage, until a musician who had performed it decades before put Spellman in touch with the Holocaust Museum in Washington, which was searching for music for its “Life Reborn” conference.

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To an overwhelming reception, the Holocaust Museum gave the work its first North American performance in 2000.

In Canada, a casual phone call from Spellman brought him together with Paul Hoffert.

Hoffert, the son of parents who fled the Holocaust, had been a musician his entire life — a composer and performer of classical, jazz and rock and roll music with his ground-breaking Canadian band, Lighthouse.

“He made me audition,” recalled Hoffert “He wanted to make sure he had the right guy.”

It was the perfect fit that resulted in Hoffert producing a recording of Spellman’s symphony and in 2012, conducting a sold-out concert with Spellman in the audience at Toronto’s Koerner Hall.

At the same time, Brenda, Paul and David Hoffert, along with Jeff Preyra, set out on a 10-year journey to produce a documentary about Spellman’s life, The Rhapsody.

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Using on-camera interviews and intimate family footage, it gives an intimate portrayal of Spellman’s life, including excerpts from his personal diaries discovered after his death.

They present a day-by-day record of the desperate times of the Second World War and since their discovery, have been published and now reside in book collections around the world.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival and on Wednesday, June 15, will premiere the Hoffert production of The Rhapsody in homage to Leo Spellman.

Rhapsody is a beautiful and important work, born of a fascination with music, pursued with a sense of duty and finished as a labour of love. It deserves to be seen.

Nine months short of his one hundredth birthday and before principal photography on Rhapsody began, Leo Spellman passed way — his life’s work preserved and his mission accomplished because, as he once said: “I always dreamed that I have to survive the Nazis, Hitler, to tell the world what happened.”

— Col. Gilbert Taylor, (HCol. retired) is the immediate past president of the Royal Canadian Military Institute and Ontario Branch of the Last Post Fund

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TAYLOR: How the power of music helped a Holocaust survivor reclaim his life

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Lazar Szpilman, a 26-year-old Jew, his life in jeopardy, ran to the safety of the nearby forest.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lpTceEE3d8

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Holocaust survivor - Lydia Tischler - prisoner of Auschwitz

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_survivors#:~:text=Holocaust%20survivors%20are%20people%20who,in%20Europe%20and%20North%20Africa.

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Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no universally accepted definition of the term, and it has been applied variously to Jews who survived the war in German-occupied Europe or other Axis territories, as well as to those who fled to Allied and neutral countries before or during the war. In some cases, non-Jews who also experienced collective persecution under the Nazi regime are also considered Holocaust survivors. The definition has evolved over time.

Survivors of the Holocaust include those persecuted civilians who were still alive in the concentration camps when they were liberated at the end of the war, or those who had either survived as partisans or been hidden with the assistance of non-Jews, or had escaped to territories beyond the control of the Nazis before the Final Solution was implemented.

At the end of the war, the immediate issues which faced Holocaust survivors were physical and emotional recovery from the starvation, abuse and suffering which they had experienced; the need to search for their relatives and reunite with them if any of them were still alive; rebuild their lives by returning to their former homes, or more often, by immigrating to new and safer locations because their homes and communities had been destroyed or because they were endangered by renewed acts of antisemitic violence.

After the initial and immediate needs of Holocaust survivors were addressed, additional issues came to the forefront. These included social welfare and psychological care, reparations and restitution for the persecution, slave labor and property losses which they had suffered, the restoration of looted books, works of art and other stolen property to their rightful owners, the collection of witness and survivor testimonies, the memorialization of murdered family members and destroyed communities, and care for disabled and aging survivors.

Definition[edit]

The term "Holocaust survivor" clearly applies to Jews who managed to live through the mass exterminations which were carried out by the Nazis. However, the term can also be applied to those who did not come under the direct control of the Nazi regime in Germany or occupied Europe, but were substantially affected by it, such as Jews who fled Germany or their homelands in order to escape the Nazis, and never lived in a Nazi-controlled country after Adolf Hitler came to power but lived in it before the Nazis put the "Final Solution" into effect, or others who were not persecuted by the Nazis themselves, but were persecuted by their allies or collaborators both in Nazi satellite countries and occupied countries.[1]

Yad Vashem, the State of Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, defines Holocaust survivors as Jews who lived under Nazi control, whether it was direct or indirect, for any amount of time, and survived it. This definition includes Jews who spent the entire war living under Nazi collaborationist regimes, including France, Bulgaria and Romania, but were not deported, as well as Jews who fled or were forced to leave Germany in the 1930s. Additionally, other Jewish refugees are considered Holocaust survivors, including those who fled their home countries in Eastern Europe in order to evade the invading German army and spent years living in the Soviet Union.[2]

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum gives a broader definition of Holocaust survivors: "The Museum honors any persons as survivors, Jewish or non-Jewish, who were displaced, persecuted, or discriminated against due to the racial, religious, ethnic, social, and political policies of the Nazis and their collaborators between 1933 and 1945. In addition to former inmates of concentration camps, ghettos, and prisons, this definition includes, among others, people who lived as refugees or people who lived in hiding."[3]

In the later years of the twentieth century, as public awareness of the Holocaust evolved, other groups who had previously been overlooked or marginalized as survivors began to share their testimonies with memorial projects and seek restitution for their experiences. One such group consisted of Sinti (Gypsy) survivors of Nazi persecution who went on a hunger strike at Dachau, Germany, in 1980 in order to draw attention to their situation and demand moral rehabilitation for their suffering during the Holocaust, and West Germany formally recognized the genocide of the Roma in 1982.[4][5] Another group that has been defined as Holocaust survivors consists of "flight survivors", that is, refugees who fled eastward into Soviet-controlled areas from the start of the war, or people were deported to various parts of the Soviet Union by the NKVD.[6][7]

The growing awareness of additional categories of survivors has prompted a broadening of the definition of Holocaust survivors by institutions such as the Claims Conference, Yad Vashem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum so it can include flight survivors and others who were previously excluded from restitution and recognition, such as those who lived in hiding during the war, including children who were hidden in order to protect them from the Nazis.[7]

Numbers of survivors[edit]

At the start of World War II in September 1939, about nine and a half million Jews lived in the European countries that were either already under the control of Nazi Germany or would be invaded or conquered during the war. Almost two-thirds of these European Jews, nearly six million people, were annihilated, so that by the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, about 3.5 million of them had survived.[1][8]

Those who managed to stay alive until the end of the war, under varying circumstances, comprise the following:

Concentration camp prisoners[edit]

Between 250,000 and 300,000 Jews withstood the concentration camps and death marches, although tens of thousands of these survivors were too weak or sick to live more than a few days, weeks or months, notwithstanding the care that they received after liberation.[8][9]

Other survivors[edit]

Other Jews throughout Europe survived because the Germans and their collaborators did not manage to complete the deportations and mass-murder before Allied forces arrived, or the collaborationist regimes were overthrown. Thus, for example, in western Europe, around three quarters of the pre-war Jewish population survived the Holocaust in Italy and France, about half survived in Belgium, while only a quarter of the pre-war Jewish population survived in the Netherlands.[10] In eastern and south-eastern Europe, most of Bulgaria's Jews survived the war,[11] as well as 60% of Jews in Romania[12] and nearly 30% of the Jewish population in Hungary.[13] Two-thirds survived in the Soviet Union.[14] In Poland, the Baltic states, Greece, Slovakia and Yugoslavia close to 90% of Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their local collaborators.[15][8][16][17]

Throughout Europe, a few thousand Jews also survived in hiding, or with false papers posing as non-Jews, hidden or assisted by non-Jews who risked their lives to rescue Jews individually or in small groups. Several thousand Jews also survived by hiding in dense forests in Eastern Europe, and as Jewish partisans actively resisting the Nazis as well as protecting other escapees, and, in some instances, working with non-Jewish partisan groups to fight against the German invaders.[8]

Refugees[edit]

Jewish refugees arriving in London from Nazi Germany and Poland in February 1939

The largest group of survivors were the Jews who managed to escape from German-occupied Europe before or during the war. Jews had begun emigrating from Germany in 1933 once the Nazis came to power, and from Austria from 1938, after the Anschluss. By the time war began in Europe, approximately 282,000 Jews had left Germany and 117,000 had left Austria.[18]

Nearly 300,000 Polish Jews fled to Soviet-occupied Poland and the interior of the Soviet Union between the start of the war in September 1939 and the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, more than a million Soviet Jews fled eastward into the interior. The Soviet authorities imprisoned many refugees and deportees in the Gulag system in the Urals, Soviet Central Asia or Siberia, where they endured forced labor, extreme conditions, hunger and disease. Nonetheless, most managed to survive, despite the harsh circumstances.[6][7][16][17]

During the war, some Jews managed to escape to neutral European countries, such as Switzerland, which allowed in nearly 30,000, but turned away some 20,000 others; Spain, which permitted the entry of almost 30,000 Jewish refugees between 1939 and 1941, mostly from France, on their way to Portugal, but under German pressure allowed in fewer than 7,500 between 1942 and 1944; Portugal, which allowed thousands of Jews to enter so that they could continue their journeys from the port of Lisbon to the United States and South America; and Sweden, which allowed in some Norwegian Jews in 1940, and in October 1943, accepted almost the entire Danish Jewish community, rescued by the Danish resistance movement, which organized the escape of 7,000 Danish Jews and 700 of their non-Jewish relatives in small boats from Denmark to Sweden. About 18,000 Jews escaped by means of clandestine immigration to Palestine from central and eastern Europe between 1937 and 1944 on 62 voyages organized by the Mossad l'Aliyah Bet (Organization for Illegal Immigration), which was established by the Jewish leadership in Palestine in 1938. These voyages were conducted under dangerous conditions during the war, with hundreds of lives lost at sea.[8][16][19]

Immediate aftermath[edit]

When the Second World War ended, the Jews who had survived the Nazi concentration camps, extermination camps, death marches, as well as the Jews who had survived by hiding in forests or hiding with rescuers, were almost all suffering from starvation, exhaustion and the abuse which they had endured, and tens of thousands of survivors continued to die from weakness, eating more than their emaciated bodies could handle, epidemic diseases, exhaustion and the shock of liberation. Some survivors returned to their countries of origin while others sought to leave Europe by immigrating to Palestine or other countries.[20][21]

Trauma of liberation[edit]

U.S. Army surgeon attends to a survivor in a sub-camp of Buchenwald concentration camp shortly after liberation

A survivor, reduced by starvation to a living skeleton, photographed after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen by the British

For survivors, the end of the war did not bring an end to their suffering. Liberation itself was extremely difficult for many survivors and the transition to freedom from the terror, brutality and starvation they had just endured was frequently traumatic:

As Allied forces fought their way across Europe and captured areas that had been occupied by the Germans, they discovered the Nazi concentration and extermination camps. In some places, the Nazis had tried to destroy all evidence of the camps to conceal the crimes that they had perpetrated there. In other places, the Allies found only empty buildings, as the Nazis had already moved the prisoners, often on death marches, to other locations. However, in many camps, the Allied soldiers found hundreds or even thousands of weak and starving survivors. Soviet forces reached Majdanek concentration camp in July 1944 and soon came across many other sites but often did not publicize what they had found; British and American units on the Western front did not reach the concentration camps in Germany until the spring of 1945.[9][22]

When Allied troops entered the death camps, they discovered thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish survivors suffering from starvation and disease, living in the most terrible conditions, many of them dying, along with piles of corpses, bones, and the human ashes of the victims of the Nazi mass murder. The liberators were unprepared for what they found but did their best to help the survivors. Despite this, thousands died in the first weeks after liberation. Many died from disease. Some died from refeeding syndrome since after prolonged starvation their stomachs and bodies could not take normal food. Survivors also had no possessions. At first, they still had to wear their concentration camp uniforms as they had no other clothes to wear.[9][23]

During the first weeks of liberation, survivors faced the challenges of eating suitable food, in appropriate amounts for their physical conditions; recuperating from illnesses, injuries and extreme fatigue and rebuilding their health; and regaining some sense of mental and social normality. Almost every survivor also had to deal with loss of many loved ones, many being the only one remaining alive from their entire family, as well as the loss of their homes, former activities or livelihoods, and ways of life.[20][24]

As survivors faced the daunting challenges of rebuilding their broken lives and finding any remaining family members, the vast majority also found that they needed to find new places to live. Returning to life as it had been before the Holocaust proved to be impossible. At first, following liberation, numerous survivors tried to return to their previous homes and communities, but Jewish communities had been ravaged or destroyed and no longer existed in much of Europe, and returning to their homes frequently proved to be dangerous. When people tried to return to their homes from camps or hiding places, they found that, in many cases, their homes had been looted or taken over by others. Most did not find any surviving relatives, encountered indifference from the local population almost everywhere, and, in eastern Europe in particular, were met with hostility and sometimes violence.[20][25][26]

Sh'erit ha-Pletah[edit]

Jewish survivors who could not or did not want to go back to their old homes, particularly those whose entire families had been murdered, whose homes, or neighborhoods or entire communities had been destroyed, or who faced renewed antisemitic violence, became known by the term "Sh'erit ha-Pletah" (Hebrew: the surviving remnant). Most of the survivors comprising the group known as Sh'erit ha-Pletah originated in central and eastern European countries, while most of those from western European countries returned to them and rehabilitated their lives there.[20]

Most of these refugees gathered in displaced persons camps in the British, French and American occupation zones of Germany, and in Austria and Italy. The conditions in these camps were harsh and primitive at first, but once basic survival needs were being met, the refugees organized representatives on a camp-by-camp basis, and then a coordinating organization for the various camps, to present their needs and requests to the authorities, supervise cultural and educational activities in the camps, and advocate that they be allowed to leave Europe and immigrate to the British Mandate of Palestine or other countries.[21]

The first meeting of representatives of survivors in the DP camps took place a few weeks after the end of the war, on 27 May 1945, at the St. Ottilien camp, where they formed and named the organization "Sh'erit ha-Pletah" to act on their behalf with the Allied authorities. After most survivors in the DP camps had immigrated to other countries or resettled, the Central Committee of She'arit Hapleta disbanded in December 1950 and the organization dissolved itself in the British Zone of Germany in August 1951.[21][27]

The term "Sh'erit ha-Pletah" is thus usually used in reference to Jewish refugees and displaced persons in the period after the war from 1945 to about 1950. In historical research, this term is used for Jews in Europe and North Africa in the five years or so after World War II.

Displaced persons camps[edit]

After the end of World War II, most non-Jews who had been displaced by the Nazis returned to their homes and communities. For Jews, however, tens of thousands had no homes, families or communities to which they could return. Furthermore, having experienced the horrors of the Holocaust, many wanted to leave Europe entirely and restore their lives elsewhere where they would encounter less antisemitism. Other Jews who attempted to return to their previous residences were forced to leave again upon finding their homes and property stolen by their former neighbors and, particularly in central and eastern Europe, after being met with hostility and violence.[20][25][26][28][29]

Since they had nowhere else to go, about 50,000 homeless Holocaust survivors gathered in Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Emigration to the Mandatory Palestine was still strictly limited by the British government and emigration to other countries such as the United States was also severely restricted. The first groups of survivors in the DP camps were joined by Jewish refugees from central and eastern Europe, fleeing to the British and American occupation zones in Germany as post-war conditions worsened in the east. By 1946, an estimated 250,000 displaced Jewish survivors – about 185,000 in Germany, 45,000 in Austria, and 20,000 in Italy – were housed in hundreds of refugee centers and DP camps administered by the militaries of the United States, Great Britain and France, and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA).[23][20][21][28]

Survivors initially endured dreadful conditions in the DP camps. The camp facilities were very poor, and many survivors were suffering from severe physical and psychological problems. Aid from the outside was slow at first to reach the survivors. Furthermore, survivors often found themselves in the same camps as German prisoners and Nazi collaborators, who had been their tormentors until just recently, along with larger number of freed non-Jewish forced laborers, and ethnic German refugees fleeing the Soviet army, and there were frequent incidents of anti-Jewish violence. Within a few months, following the visit and report of President Roosevelt's representative, Earl G. Harrison, the United States authorities recognized the need to set up separate DP camps for Jewish survivors and improve the living conditions in the DP camps. The British military administration, however, were much slower to act, fearing that recognizing the unique situation of the Jewish survivors might somehow be perceived as endorsing their calls to emigrate to Palestine and further antagonizing the Arabs there. Thus, the Jewish refugees tended to gather in the DP camps in the American zone.[9][29][30][31][32]

The DP camps were created as temporary centers for facilitating the resettlement of the homeless Jewish refugees and to take care of immediate humanitarian needs, but they also became temporary communities where survivors began to rebuild their lives. With assistance sent from Jewish relief organizations such as the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in the United States and the Jewish Relief Unit in Britain, hospitals were opened, along with schools, especially in several of the camps where there were large numbers of children and orphans, and the survivors resumed cultural activities and religious practices. Many of their efforts were in preparations for emigration from Europe to new and productive lives elsewhere. They established committees to represent their issues to the Allied authorities and to a wider audience, under the Hebrew name, Sh'erit ha-Pletah, an organization which existed until the early 1950s. Political life rejuvenated and a leading role was taken by the Zionist movement, with most of the Jewish DPs declaring their intention of moving to a Jewish state in Palestine.[7][20][28][29][33]

The slow and erratic handling of the issues regarding Jewish DPs and refugees, and the substantial increase of people in the DP camps in 1946 and 1947 gained international attention, and public opinion resulted in increasing political pressure to lift restriction on immigration to countries such as the US, Canada, and Australia and on the British authorities to stop detaining refugees who were attempting to leave Europe for Palestine, and imprisoning them in internment camps on Cyprus or returning them to Europe. Britain's treatment of Jewish refugees, such as the handling of the refugee ship Exodus, shocked public opinion around the world and added to international demands to establish an independent state for the Jewish people. This led Britain to refer the matter to the United Nations which voted in 1947 to create a Jewish and an Arab state. Thus, when the British Mandate in Palestine ended in May 1948, the State of Israel was established, and Jewish refugee ships were immediately allowed unrestricted entry. In addition, the United States also changed its immigration policy to allow more Jewish refugees to enter under the provisions of the Displaced Persons Act, while other Western countries also eased curbs on emigration.[20][21][26]

The opening of Israel's borders after its independence, as well as the adoption of more lenient emigration regulations in Western countries regarding survivors led to the closure of most of the DP camps by 1952. Föhrenwald, the last functioning DP camp closed in 1957. About 136,000 Displaced Person camp inhabitants, more than half the total, immigrated to Israel; some 80,000 emigrated to the United States, and the remainder emigrated to other countries in Europe and the rest of the world, including Canada, Australia, South Africa, Mexico and Argentina.[33][34]

Searching for survivors[edit]

As soon as the war ended, survivors began looking for family members, and for most, this was their main goal once their basic needs of finding food, clothing and shelter had been met.[25]

Local Jewish committees in Europe tried to register the living and account for the dead. Parents sought the children they had hidden in convents, orphanages or with foster families. Other survivors returned to their original homes to look for relatives or gather news and information about them, hoping for a reunion or at least the certainty of knowing if a loved one had perished. The International Red Cross and Jewish relief organizations set up tracing services to support these searches, but inquiries often took a long time because of the difficulties in communications, and the displacement of millions of people by the conflict, the Nazi's policies of deportation and destruction, and the mass relocations of populations in central and eastern Europe.[25][35][34]

Location services were set up by organizations such as the World Jewish Congress, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) and the Jewish Agency for Palestine. This resulted in the successful reunification of survivors, sometimes decades after their separation during the war. For example, the Location Service of the American Jewish Congress, in cooperation with other organizations, ultimately traced 85,000 survivors successfully and reunited 50,000 widely scattered relatives with their families in all parts of the world.[36] However, the process of searching for and finding lost relatives sometimes took years and, for many survivors, continued until their end of their lives. In many cases, survivors searched all their lives for family members, without learning of their fates.[37][38][39][40]

In Israel, where many Holocaust survivors emigrated, some relatives reunited after encountering each other by chance. Many survivors also found relatives from whom they had been separated through notices for missing relatives posted in newspapers and a radio program dedicated to reuniting families called Who Recognizes, Who Knows?[41]

Lists of survivors[edit]

Initially, survivors simply posted hand-written notes on message boards in the relief centers, Displaced Person's camps or Jewish community buildings where they were located, in the hope that family members or friends for whom they were looking would see them, or at the very least, that other survivors would pass on information about the people whom they were seeking. Others published notices in DP camp and survivor organization newsletters, and in newspapers, in the hopes of reconnecting with relatives who had found refuge in other places. Some survivors contacted the Red Cross and other organizations who were collating lists of survivors, such as the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which established a Central Tracing Bureau to help survivors locate relatives who had survived the concentration camps.[25][34]

Various lists were collated into larger booklets and publications, which were more permanent than the original notes or newspaper notices. One such early compilation was called "Sharit Ha-Platah" (Surviving Remnant), published in 1946 in several volumes with the names of tens of thousands of Jews who survived the Holocaust, collected mainly by Abraham Klausner, a United States Army chaplain who visited many of the Displaced Persons camps in southern Germany and gathered lists of the people there, subsequently adding additional names from other areas.[42][43]

The first "Register of Jewish Survivors" (Pinkas HaNitzolim I) was published by the Jewish Agency's Search Bureau for Missing Relatives in 1945, containing over 61,000 names compiled from 166 different lists of Jewish survivors in various European countries. A second volume of the "Register of Jewish Survivors" (Pinkas HaNitzolim II) was also published in 1945, with the names of some 58,000 Jews in Poland.[44][45]

Newspapers outside of Europe also began to publish lists of survivors and their locations as more specific information about the Holocaust became known towards the end of, and after, the war. Thus, for example, the German-Jewish newspaper "Aufbau", published in New York City, printed numerous lists of Jewish Holocaust survivors located in Europe, from September 1944 until 1946.[46]

Over time, many Holocaust survivor registries were established. Initially these were paper records, but from the 1990s, an increasing number of the records have been digitized and made available online.[47]

Hidden children[edit]

Following the war, Jewish parents often spent months and years searching for the children they had sent into hiding. In fortunate cases, they found their children were still with the original rescuer. Many, however, had to resort to notices in newspapers, tracing services, and survivor registries in the hope of finding their children. These searches frequently ended in heartbreak — parents discovered that their child had been killed or had gone missing and could not be found. For hidden children, thousands who had been concealed with non-Jews were now orphans and no surviving family members remained alive to retrieve them.[35][29]

For children who had been hidden to escape the Nazis, more was often at stake than simply finding or being found by relatives. Those who had been very young when they were placed into hiding did not remember their biological parents or their Jewish origins and the only family that they had known was that of their rescuers. When they were found by relatives or Jewish organizations, they were usually afraid, and resistant to leave the only caregivers they remembered. Many had to struggle to rediscover their real identities.[35][48]

In some instances, rescuers refused to give up hidden children, particularly in cases where they were orphans, did not remember their identities, or had been baptized and sheltered in Christian institutions. Jewish organizations and relatives had to struggle to recover these children, including custody battles in the courts. For example, the Finaly Affair only ended in 1953, when the two young Finaly brothers, orphaned survivors in the custody of the Catholic Church in Grenoble, France, were handed over to the guardianship of their aunt, after intensive efforts to secure their return to their family.[49][50]

In the twenty first century, the development of DNA testing for genealogical purposes has sometimes provided essential information to people trying to find relatives from whom they were separated during the Holocaust, or to recover their Jewish identity, especially Jewish children who were hidden or adopted by non-Jewish families during the war.[51][52]

Immigration and absorption[edit]

Young Holocaust survivors aboard the refugee ship Mataroa arrive in Haifa port, July 1945

After the war, anti-Jewish violence occurred in several central and Eastern European countries, motivated to varying extents by economic antagonism, increased by alarm that returning survivors would try to reclaim their stolen houses and property, as well as age-old antisemitic myths, most notably the blood libel. The largest anti-Jewish pogrom occurred in July 1946 in Kielce, a city in southeastern Poland, when rioters killed 41 people and wounded 50 more. As news of the Kielce pogrom spread, Jews began to flee from Poland, perceiving that there was no viable future for them there, and this pattern of post-war anti-Jewish violence repeated itself in other countries such as Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and the Ukraine. Most survivors sought to leave Europe and build new lives elsewhere.[26][53][54][55]

Thus, about 50,000 survivors gathered in Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy and were joined by Jewish refugees fleeing from central and eastern Europe, particularly Poland, as post-war conditions there worsened. By 1946, there were an estimated 250,000 Jewish displaced persons, of whom 185,000 were in Germany, 45,000 in Austria, and about 20,000 in Italy. As the British Mandate in Palestine ended in May 1948 and the State of Israel was established, nearly two-thirds of the survivors immigrated there. Others went to Western countries as restrictions were eased and opportunities for them to emigrate arose.[20][21]

Rehabilitation[edit]

Medical care[edit]

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (August 2019)

Psychological care[edit]

Holocaust survivors suffered from the war years and afterwards in many different ways, physically, mentally and spiritually.[56]

Most survivors were deeply traumatized both physically and mentally and some of the effects lasted throughout their lives. This was expressed, among other ways, in the emotional and mental trauma of feeling that they were on a "different planet" that they could not share with others; that they had not or could not process the mourning for their murdered loved ones because at the time they were consumed with the effort required for survival; and many experienced guilt that they had survived when others had not. This dreadful period engulfed some survivors with both physical and mental scars, which were subsequently characterized by researchers as "concentration camp syndrome" (also known as survivor syndrome).

Nonetheless, many survivors drew on inner strength and learned to cope, restored their lives, moved to a new place, started a family and developed successful careers.[57]

[edit]

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (August 2019)

Restitution and reparations[edit]

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (August 2019)

Memoirs and testimonies[edit]

Holocaust survivors light a memorial candle with a concentration camp liberator at a remembrance ceremony, Washington DC, 2013.

Holocaust survivor David Faber speaks in 2006 about his experiences in nine different concentration camps between 1939 to 1945.

After the war, many Holocaust survivors engaged in efforts to record testimonies about their experiences during the war, and to memorialize lost family members and destroyed communities. These efforts included both personal accounts and memoirs of events written by individual survivors about the events that they had experienced, as well as the compilation of remembrance books for destroyed communities called Yizkor books, usually printed by societies or groups of survivors from a common locality.[58][59][60]

Survivors and witnesses also participated in providing oral testimonies about their experiences. At first, these were mainly for the purpose of prosecuting war criminals and often only many years later, for the sake of recounting their experiences to help process the traumatic events that they had suffered, or for the historical record and educational purposes.[58][61]

Several programs were undertaken by organizations, such the as the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, to collect as many oral history testimonies of survivors as possible.[62] In addition, survivors also began speaking at educational and commemorative events at schools and for other audiences, as well as contributing to and participating in the building of museums and memorials to remember the Holocaust.

Memoirs[edit]

Some survivors began to publish memoirs immediately after the war ended, feeling a need to write about their experiences, and about a dozen or so survivors' memoirs were published each year during the first two decades after the Holocaust, notwithstanding a general public that was largely indifferent to reading them. However, for many years after the war, many survivors felt that they could not describe their experiences to those who had not lived through the Holocaust. Those who were able to record testimony about their experiences or publish their memoirs did so in Yiddish.[1][58]

The number of memoirs that were published increased gradually from the 1970s onwards, indicating both the increasing need and psychological ability of survivors to relate their experiences, as well as a growing public interest in the Holocaust driven by events such as the capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961, the existential threats to Jews presented by the Six-Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the broadcasting in many countries of the television documentary series "Holocaust" in 1978, and the establishment of new Holocaust memorial centers and memorials, such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.[58]

The writing and publishing of memoirs, prevalent among Holocaust survivors, has been recognized as related to processing and recovering from memories about the traumatic past.[61] By the end of the twentieth century, Holocaust memoirs had been written by Jews not only in Yiddish, but also other languages including Hebrew, English, French, Italian, Polish and Russian. They were written by concentration/death camp survivors, and also those who had been in hiding, or who had managed to flee from Nazi-held territories before or during the war, and sometimes they also described events after the Holocaust, including the liberation and rebuilding of lives in the aftermath of destruction.[58]

Survivor memoirs, like other personal accounts such as oral testimony and diaries, are a significant source of information for most scholars of the history of the Holocaust, complementing more traditional sources of historical information, and presenting events from the unique points of view of individual experiences within the much greater totality, and these accounts are essential to an understanding of the Holocaust experience.[1][58] While historians and survivors themselves are aware that the retelling of experiences is subjective to the source of information and sharpness of memory, they are recognized as collectively having "a firm core of shared memory" and the main substance of the accounts does not negate minor contradictions and inaccuracies in some of the details.[63][64]

Yizkor books[edit]

Yizkor (Remembrance) books were compiled and published by groups of survivors or landsmanshaft societies of former residents to memorialize lost family members and destroyed communities and was one of the earliest ways in which the Holocaust was communally commemorated. The first of these books appeared in the 1940s and almost all were typically published privately rather than by publishing companies. Over 1,000 books of this type are estimated to have been published, albeit in very limited quantities.[59][60][65]

Most of these books are written in Yiddish or Hebrew, while some also include sections in English or other languages, depending on where they were published. The first Yizkor books were published in the United States, mainly in Yiddish, the mother tongue of the landsmanschaften and Holocaust survivors. Beginning in the 1950s, after the mass immigration of Holocaust survivors to the newly independent State of Israel, most of the Yizkor books were published there, primarily between the mid-1950s and the mid-1970s. From the later 1970s, there was a decline in the number of collective memorial books but an increase in the number of survivors' personal memoirs. Most of the Yizkor books were devoted to the Eastern European Jewish communities in Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania and Hungary, with fewer dedicated to the communities of south-eastern Europe.[60]

Since the 1990s, many of these books, or sections of them have been translated into English, digitized, and made available online.[66][67]

Testimonies and oral histories[edit]

In the immediate post-war period, officials of the DP camps and organizations providing relief to the survivors conducted interviews with survivors primarily for the purposes of providing physical assistance and assisting with relocation. Interviews were also conducted for the purpose of gathering evidence about war crimes and for the historical record.[68] These were among the first of the recorded testimonies of the survivors Holocaust experiences.

Some of the first projects to collect witness testimonies began in the DP camps, amongst the survivors themselves. Camp papers like Undzer Shtimme ("Our Voice"), published in Hohne Camp (Bergen-Belsen), and Undzer Hofenung ("Our Hope"), published in Eschwege camp, (Kassel) carried the first eyewitness accounts of Jewish experiences under Nazi rule, and one of the first publications on the Holocaust, Fuhn Letsn Khurbn, ("About the Recent Destruction"), was produced by DP camp members, and was eventually distributed around world.[7][29]

In the following decades, a concerted effort was made to record the memories and testimonials of survivors for posterity. French Jews were amongst the first to establish an institute devoted to documentation of the Holocaust at the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation.[29] In Israel, the Yad Vashem memorial was officially established in 1953; the organization had already begun projects including acquiring Holocaust documentation and personal testimonies of survivors for its archives and library.[69][70]

The largest collection of testimonials was ultimately gathered at the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, which was founded by Steven Spielberg in 1994 after he made the film Schindler’s List. Originally named the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, it became a part of the University of Southern California in 2006. The foundation’s mission was to videotape the personal accounts of 50,000 Holocaust survivors and other witnesses, a goal which it achieved in 1999 and then surpassed.[71]

In 2002, a collection of Sinti and Roma Holocaust survivor testimonies opened at the Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma in Heidelberg, Germany.[71]

Organizations and conferences[edit]

Warsaw Ghetto and Concentration Camps Survivors’ meeting rally in Tel Aviv, 1968

A wide range of organizations have been established to address the needs and issues of Holocaust survivors and their descendants. Immediately following the war, "Sh'erit ha-Pletah" was established to meet the immediate physical and rehabilitation needs in the Displaced Persons camps and to advocate for rights to immigrate. Once these aims had largely been met by the early 1950s, the organization was disbanded. In the following decades, survivors established both local, national and eventually international organizations to address longer term physical, emotional and social needs, and organizations for specific groups such as child survivors and descendants, especially children, of survivors were also set up. Starting in the late 1970s, conferences and gatherings of survivors, their descendants, as well as rescuers and liberators began to take place and were often the impetus for the establishment and maintenance of permanent organizations.

Survivors[edit]

In 1981, around 6,000 Holocaust survivors gathered in Jerusalem for the first World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.[72][73]

In 1988, the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, was established to as an umbrella organization of 28 Holocaust survivor groups in Israel to advocate for survivors' rights and welfare worldwide and to the Government of Israel, and to commemorate the Holocaust and revival of the Jewish people. In 2010 it was recognized by the government as the representative organization for the entire survivor population in Israel. In 2020, it represented 55 organizations and a survivor population whose average was 84.[74]

Child survivors[edit]

Child survivors of the Holocaust were often the only ones who remained alive from their entire extended families, while even more were orphans. This group of survivors included children who had survived in the concentration/death camps, in hiding with non-Jewish families or in Christian institutions, or had been sent out of harm's way by their parents on Kindertransports, or by escaping with their families to remote locations in the Soviet Union, or Shanghai in China. After the war, child survivors were sometimes sent to be cared for by distant relatives in other parts of the world, sometimes accepted unwillingly, and mistreated or even abused. Their experiences, memories and understanding of the terrible events they had suffered as child victims of the Nazis and their accomplices was given little consideration.[75]

In the 1970s and 80s, small groups of these survivors, now adults, began to form in a number of communities worldwide to deal with their painful pasts in safe and understanding environments. The First International Conference on Children of Holocaust Survivors took place in 1979 under the auspices of Zachor, the Holocaust Resource Center. The conference and was attended by some 500 survivors, survivors’ children and mental health professionals and established a network for children of survivors of the Holocaust in the United States and Canada.[76]

The International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors held its first international conference in New York City in 1984, attended by more than 1,700 children of survivors of the Holocaust with the stated purpose of creating greater understanding of the Holocaust and its impact on the contemporary world and establishing contacts among the children of survivors in the United States and Canada.[77]

The World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust and Descendants was founded in 1985 to bring child survivors together and coordinate worldwide activities. The organization began holding annual conference in cities the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel. Descendants of survivors were also recognized as having been deeply affected by their families’ histories. In addition to the annual conferences to build community among child survivors and their descendants, members speak about their histories of survival and loss, of resilience, of the heroism of Jewish resistance and self-help for other Jews, and of the Righteous Among the Nations, at schools, public and community events; they participate in Holocaust Remembrance ceremonies and projects; and campaign against antisemitism and bigotry.[75]

Second generation of survivors[edit]

The "second generation of Holocaust survivors" is the name given to children born after World War Two to a parent or parents who survived the Holocaust. Although the second generation did not directly experience the horrors of the Holocaust, the impact of their parents' trauma is often evident in their upbringing and outlooks, and from the 1960s, children of survivors began exploring and expressing in various ways what the implications of being children of Holocaust survivors meant to them.[1] This conversation broadened public discussion of the events and impacts of the Holocaust.[78]

The second generation of the Holocaust has raised several research questions in psychology, and psychological studies have been conducted to determine how their parents' horrendous experiences affected their lives, among them, whether psychological trauma experienced by a parent can be passed on to their children even when they were not present during the ordeal, as well as the psychological manifestations of this transference of trauma to the second generation.[79]

Soon after descriptions of concentration camp syndrome (also known as survivor syndrome) appeared, clinicians observed in 1966 that large numbers of children of Holocaust survivors were seeking treatment in clinics in Canada. The grandchildren of Holocaust survivors were also over-represented by 300% among the referrals to a child psychiatry clinic in comparison with their representation in the general population.[80]

A communication pattern that psychologists have identified as a communication feature between parents who experienced trauma and their children has been referred to as the "connection of silence". This silent connection is the tacit assent, in the families of Holocaust survivors, not to discuss the trauma of the parent and to disconnect it from the daily life of the family. The parent's need for this is not only due to their need to forget and adapt to their lives after the trauma, but also to protect their children's psyches from being harmed by their depictions of the atrocities that they experienced during the Holocaust.

Awareness groups have thus developed, in which children of survivors explore their feelings in a group that shares and can better understand their experiences as children of Holocaust survivors. Some second generation survivors have also organized local and even national groups for mutual support and to pursue additional goals and aims regarding Holocaust issues. For example, in November 1979, the First Conference on Children of Holocaust Survivors was held, and resulted in the establishment of support groups all over the United States.[1]

Many members of the "second generation" have sought ways to get past their suffering as children of Holocaust survivors and to integrate their experiences and those of their parents into their lives. For example, some have become involved in activities to commemorate the lives of people and ways of life of communities that were wiped out during the Holocaust. They research the history of Jewish life in Europe before the war and the Holocaust itself; participate in the renewal of Yiddish culture; engage in educating others about the Holocaust; fight against Holocaust denial, antisemitism and racism; become politically active, such as with regard to finding and prosecuting Nazis, or by taking up Jewish or humanitarian causes; and through creative means such as theater, art and literature, examine the Holocaust and its consequences on themselves and their families.[1]

In April 1983, Holocaust survivors in North America established the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants; the first event was attended by President Ronald Reagan and 20,000 survivors and their families.[81][82][83]

Amcha, the Israeli Center for Psychological and Social Support for Holocaust Survivors and the Second Generation was established in Jerusalem in 1987 to serve survivors and their families.[84]

Survivor registries and databases[edit]

One of the most well-known and comprehensive archives of Holocaust-era records, including lists of survivors, is the Arolsen Archives-International Center on Nazi Persecution founded by the Allies in 1948 as the International Tracing Service (ITS). For decades after the war, in response to inquiries, the main tasks of ITS were determining the fates of victims of Nazi persecution and searching for missing people.[47][85]

The Holocaust Global Registry is an online collection of databases maintained by the Jewish genealogical website JewishGen, an affiliate of the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust; it contains thousands of names of both survivors trying to find family and family searching for survivors.[47]

The Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, maintained by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, contains millions of names of people persecuted under the Nazi regime, including concentration camp or displaced persons camp lists that can be searched by place name or keywords.[47]

The Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Holocaust Survivors, created in 1981 by the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors to document the experiences of survivors and assist survivors and their families trying to trace missing relatives and friends, includes over 200,000 records related to survivors and their families from around the world.[86][87]

In partnership with the Arolsen Archives, the family history website Ancestry began digitizing millions of Holocaust and Nazi-persecution records and making them searchable online in 2019. Two distinct databases included in the records are the "Africa, Asia and European passenger lists of displaced persons (1946 to 1971)" and "Europe, Registration of Foreigners and German Individuals Persecuted (1939-1947)".[88]

The Holocaust Survivor Children: Missing Identity website addresses the issue of child survivors still hoping to find relatives or people who can tell them about their parents and family, and others who hope to find out basic information about themselves such as their original names, dates and place of birth, and parents’ names, based on a photograph of themselves as a child.[47][48]

See also[edit]

Aftermath of the Holocaust

Armenian genocide survivors

References[edit]

This article incorporates text from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and has been released under the GFDL.

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77. ^ Kamins, Toni L. (1984-05-30). "Over 1,700 Children of Holocaust Survivors Hold First World Meeting". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Retrieved 2019-09-02.

78. ^ Stein, Arlene (2014). Reluctant Witnesses: Survivors, Their Children, and the Rise of Holocaust Consciousness. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199733583.

79. ^ Davidson, Shamai (January 1980). "The Clinical Effects of Massive Psychic Trauma in Families of Holocaust Survivors". Journal of Marital and Family Therapy. 6 (1): 11–12. doi:10.1111/j.1752-0606.1980.tb01700.x.

80. ^ Fossion, P., Rejas, M., Servais, L., Pelc, I. & Hirsch, S. (2003). "Family approach with grandchildren of Holocaust survivors," American Journal of Psychotherapy, 57(4), 519-527.

81. ^ Miller, Stephen (26 October 2006). "Benjamin Meed, 88, Organized Holocaust Survivors". New York Sun. Retrieved 2015-05-16.

82. ^ Trausch, Susan (10 April 1983). "Holocaust Survivors Gather to Piece the Puzzle Together". Boston Globe. ISSN 0743-1791. ProQuest 294115949.(subscription required)

83. ^ "Ronald Reagan: Remarks to the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors". The American Presidency Project. 11 April 1983. Retrieved 2018-10-04.

84. ^ "Amcha - what does it mean?". The Israeli Center for Psychological and Social Support for Holocaust Survivors and the Second Generation. Retrieved 2019-09-02.

85. ^ "International Center on Nazi Persecution". Arolsen Archives. 2019. Retrieved 2019-12-24.

86. ^ "Register a Holocaust Survivor". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 24 February 2014. Retrieved 2019-12-12.

87. ^ "Registry of Survivors -- Museum of Jewish Heritage". Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. 24 June 2017. Retrieved 2019-12-12.

88. ^ Baig, Edward C. (31 July 2019). "Ancestry search may help you find relatives displaced by the Holocaust". USA Today. Retrieved 2019-12-12.

Further reading[edit]

Cohen, B.B. (2006). Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-4130-3.

David, Paula (2010). "Aging Holocaust Survivors: An Evolution of Understanding". Kavod: Honoring Aged Survivors. Journal for Caregivers and Families.

Kangisser-Cohen, Sharon (2014). Testimony and time: Holocaust survivors remember. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, International Institute for Holocaust Research. ISBN 978-9653084780.

Kangisser-Cohen, Sharon (2020). What Now? Child Survivors in the Aftermath of the Holocaust (video). Jerusalem: Yad Vashem. Archived from the original on 2021-12-19. Retrieved 2020-10-08.

Klaiman, Yehudit; Shpringer-Aharoni, Ninah (1995). The Anguish of Liberation: Testimonies from 1945. Jerusalem, Israel: Yad Vashem. ISBN 9789653080447.

Lemberger, John, ed. (1995). A Global perspective on working with Holocaust survivors and the second generation. Monograph series. JDC-Brookdale Institute of Gerontology and Human Development in cooperation with the World Council of Jewish Communal Service. ISBN 9789653530119.

Marks, Jane (1995). The Hidden Children: The Secret Survivors of the Holocaust. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0-449-90686-6.

Stein, A. (2014). Reluctant Witnesses: Survivors, Their Children, and the Rise of Holocaust Consciousness. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-938192-0.

Steir-Livny, Liat (2019). Remaking Holocaust Memory: Documentary Cinema by Third-Generation Survivors in Israel. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-3632-8.

Stone, Dan (2015). The Liberation of the Camps: the End of the Holocaust and its Aftermath. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-20457-5. OCLC 908252719.

The Survivors of the Holocaust: An Overview, by Anita Shapira, Irit Keynan

External links[edit]

Resources for Holocaust Survivors and Their Families (US and international) – United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Resources on Survivors and Victims – United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Kavod: Honoring Aging Survivors – journal for caregivers and families

The Holocaust: Survivors – collection at the Jewish Virtual Library including articles, photographs, famous survivors, testimonies and reports

A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust: Survivors – University of South Florida

Organizations[edit]

Amcha, the Israeli Center for Psychological and Social Support for Holocaust Survivors and the Second Generation (in English)

American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors

Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany

World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust & Descendants

World Jewish Restitution Organization

Survivor registries[edit]

Holocaust Survivor Children

Holocaust Global Registry – at JewishGen

The Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database – at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Registry of Survivors – Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust

Holocaust survivor testimonials and witness accounts[edit]

USC Shoah Foundation – first-hand accounts of survivors and other eyewitnesses of the Holocaust

Holocaust Literature Research Institute – collection of Holocaust survivor testimonials and witness accounts

Telling Their Stories – Holocaust Survivors and Refugees and Liberators and Witnesses to Genocide

Holocaust Survivors – accounts of wartime and post-war experiences

Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive – at the University of Michigan

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Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no universally accepted definition of the term, and it has been applied vari…

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In this chapter, many things happened such as Lisa got to shoot a German soldier!. She was sacred as she stated ''I can not shoot a gun as good as Susanne''. After Stefan told Lisa to not be afraid Lisa shot!. She then had to get everybody on the lifeboats safely.

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This chapter was the chapter that Lisa and her family took off to go to swizerland. I was very up tight about the whole thing I was so scared they were going to get caught!. Let alone Lisa kept baby Sarah calm by giving her a shot so she would go to sleep. Towards the end of the page Lisa might have to shoot a german!.

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What did I think of the book?:

Right from the beginning of the book, I could infer I would be entertained by this novel. As I laid eyes on the cover page I knew that this would be an action, horror, and accurate story. Getting into the first pages of the book I felt incredibly uninterested and bored. I thought to myself ‘’This is going to be like every other war book I have ever read’’. Just a few for reference, Number the Stars, The book thief, and many battle movies. It wasn't until Lisa said ‘’I'm thirteen now, and I want to do something! playing chicken is not enough’’. Moreover, this line hit very close to home, mabey a little too close. Turning thirteen you are stuck in the middle, you are expected to act mature, to dress and act appropriately, yet adults still treat you as if your a child. That one line is where I made my connection the most and felt understood. As the book went along I had a few predictions some of which were very right, and horribly wrong. One of my predictions I thought of was the chance ‘’Lisa and Jesper were going to end up together in the end’’. I thought this because of the way Lisa would describe him. For example, when Lisa said to Jesper  ‘’What about you will you be coming along!?’’. As well as the conversation Jesper and Lisa had in the living room as it states ‘’Jesper is smiling at me’’ then Lisa goes on to say ‘’I smile back’’. Towards the end of the book, Jesper and Lisa have their moment. Stating ‘’Then he reached for me, practically pulls me in the water, and kisses me’’. At this moment I was squealing in my head!. One of my protections was correct. There were moments I was unsure about, such as Stefan saying to Lisa ‘’You're a girl, and you're too young to join the resistance’’. After Stefan had said this, I lost a lot of respect for him. Other times I was saying in my head ‘’Will they get out alive!?’’ as well as ‘’Will they escape?’’. Personally, I believe the saddest part about this whole story was it was based on something that happened in the past. If you were to read this to someone without any context they would say ‘’That's horrible who would do such a thing’’. Until they find out that it did happen. An estimated 7,800 Jews escaped Denmark during this time. Thankfully Lisa’s family was one of the many survivors. I hope in the future I will be able to read novels as good as Lisas War.

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The soldier

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Flight

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What was the scariest part in the whole chapter?: 

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What was the scariest part in the whole chapter?: 

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There were many parts in the story where it was life or death. One thing that I was certain of was that ''they would make it out alive!''. The thing that tramtized me was the end part one Lisa said ''Could they kill a little baby like her?''. Furthermore the sad truth is they would.

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Its time to escape!. Lisa's family is in her dads Hospital hiding and ready to go to Sweeden!. She is stuck with baby Sarah, and worried that she will be killed in order for her to make sure that does not happen she needs to keep her quiet. As for everyone else ''dont make a sound''.

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Frikadeller: Frikadeller are flat, pan-fried dumplings of minced meat, often likened to the Danish version of meatballs

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Psychiatric wing: Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental health units or behavioral health units

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Sentiment: a view of or attitude toward a situation or event; an opinion.

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-Sentiment
-Psychiatric wing
- frikadeller

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At the Hospital

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(Free pass)

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Rosh Hashanah

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‘I’m afraid there will be no service tonight at the synagogue,’ Father continues. ‘Rabbi Melchior told everyone at the early service that he’ll be closing the  synagogue. He’s going on holiday.’I almost laugh. The rabbi going on holiday on Rosh Hashanah?Then it hits me.”

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‘I’m afraid there will be no service tonight at the synagogue,’ Father continues. ‘Rabbi Melchior told everyone at the early service that he’ll be closing the  synagogue. He’s going on holiday.’I almost laugh. The rabbi going on holiday on Rosh Hashanah?Then it hits me.”

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Sometimes things don't always connect until after you think about them. In this case for Lisa, she stated ‘’The rabbi going on holiday on Rosh Hashanah? Then it hits me.’’ At that moment Lisa knew what was going to happen to the Rabbi. During this time the Nazi soldiers were taking Jews to the concentration camps. Even worse the gas chambers.  Unfortunately for Rabbi Melchior ‘’Holiday’’ would possibly be the longest of his internity. It pains me to know that after Lisa’s realization she says ‘’All of a sudden my mouth is dry I can barely answer him’’. This tells me that her response is by simply ‘’Ignoring the problem, and moving on’’. It's significant to the story for the reason that ‘’When the Rabbi was on holiday it was also the night of Rosh Hashana’’. Making it more believable for the people to be convinced that the Rabbi was on ‘’break’’.

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“She whispers to me, ‘That was for Mama and Papa. But it was only the first.’ She’s actually enjoying herself.A chill runs down my spine. My God, I think, these Germans are dragging us all down to their level. How will we keep ourselves better than them?”

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“She whispers to me, ‘That was for Mama and Papa. But it was only the first.’ She’s actually enjoying herself.A chill runs down my spine. My God, I think, these Germans are dragging us all down to their level. How will we keep ourselves better than them?”

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From bombs to killing, Lisa has seen it all. I personally believe that what she means by that

statement is ‘’We are doing the same thing as the germans. How can we do better’’. In my

judgment I believe that when she says ‘’The Germans are dragging us down to their level’’ she

means that the resistance is ‘’bombing buildings, lighting fires etc’’ just like the Nazis. By

doing this they are doing the same amount of destruction as the Nazis just for different

reasons. I think Lisa is concerned because ‘’they are not fixing the problem’’ they are just

doing what the Nazis have been doing to the Jews and innocent lives. It concerns Lisa because

she is worried ‘’I will be caught’’.

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“I leap off, dragging my bag, run into the grass and trees beside the stop, and finish throwing up. Then I sink down by my sack. I’m weak, I’m shaking. I think I’m crying, and my mouth tastes terrible. I want to go home. How did I get myself into this? I think back to the streetcar. All those people – they saved me. Maybe they saved my life.”

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“I leap off, dragging my bag, run into the grass and trees beside the stop, and finish throwing up. Then I sink down by my sack. I’m weak, I’m shaking. I think I’m crying, and my mouth tastes terrible. I want to go home. How did I get myself into this? I think back to the streetcar. All those people – they saved me. Maybe they saved my life.”

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Lisa has done many things in her fourteen years of life. Though never once has she done something like she experienced today. At the beginning of the chapter she was told by Stefan to drop off ‘’Laundry’’ at a laundry station. Nonetheless, she went on to a bus to get home trying to hide the evidence. It was not until two german soldiers got on and sat right across from her. As it states ‘’I lunge right into the soldiers, and throw up all over them’’. The germans then react to that by ‘’Cursing’’. Lisa is then blessed by ‘’20 passengers standing between me and them’’. As well as someone whispered to Lisa ‘’Go. Go’’. These people have just saved a life. This is singfacant to the story because as its Lisa’s first time doing a real job she is not successful but lucky.

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“I remember I was dreaming about a bee. A giant bumblebee. It was buzzing in my ear; it was going to sting me. I opened my eyes and sat up with a start, but the buzzing didn’t stop.”

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“I remember I was dreaming about a bee. A giant bumblebee. It was buzzing in my ear; it was going to sting me. I opened my eyes and sat up with a start, but the buzzing didn’t stop.”

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Right from the beginning of the book I could always infer that Lisa was always a poet. I believe that what Lisa was trying to communicate with that message was ‘’That even though reality may seem like a dream the truth is it's not’’. I believe that she chose a bee to symbolize that it was a ‘’dream ’’ because it states ‘’ a giant bumblebee’’ I think that was the issue that Lisa may be avoiding. In this case, that issue would be the ‘’Nazis invading Denmark’’. In other terms the bumblebee represented the Nazis taking over. It also states ‘’I opened my eyes and sat up with a start, but the buzzing didn’t stop.” Meaning that this problem never went away when Lisa woke up. This is significant to the story because it talk’s about how dreams become the actuality of life. In the case of world war two lots of people including Lisa's family had to pretend it was never happening. You wish it was all a bad dream until you come to your senses and realize it's not.

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Am I so diffrent?

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-I think that the ''New member'' of the group who snicthed on the two men might be Eric
-The Nazi soldiers will find the body in the River

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Lisa had her 15th birthday andJesper took her to tavoli. Along with that she also got a very pleasent ''brithday surprise''. As it states in the novel 'Rember those two men we met when we followed Stefan''. Then Susanne contuines to say ''They were informed on by a new member of the group. We were suspicous of him, and we saw him meet with a gestpo officer''. After that Susanne shot and dumped him in the river.

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Name One fun thing that Lisa got to do for her 15th Birthday 

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Name One fun thing that Lisa got to do for her 15th Birthday 

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Turning fifteen is a big day for anybody!. Though it just became alot more diffcult for Lisa. Growing up in the time of the War it was hard to do many fun things!. Lisa was lucky enough for Jesper to take her out to ''Tivoli''. Even though Stefan tried to ''talk him out of it''.

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Goose-Stepping: march with a goose step. ex. "soldiers goose-stepped outside"

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Borge: Borge is a Norwegian-Danish and Spanish surname

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-Borge
-Goose-stepping

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Guns and Secrets

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10/10

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Tonight was Lisa and Susannes first time helping the resistance. Susanne has not spoken a word for a few months until tonight. After she blow up a building she said ''That was for mama and papa''. Showing the determination that she had. As they came back from there evening out, Stefan yelled at Lisa and Susanne for following him (as they were not supposed to). He makes an exception tonight since Susanne is talking.

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Prongs: each of two or more projecting pointed parts at the end of a fork.

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Industrial Area: An industrial park is an area zoned and planned for the purpose of industrial development

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-Industrial area
- Prongs

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After they set the factory bomb, Lisa says the following:“A chill runs down my spine. My God, I think, these Germans are dragging us all down to their level. How will we keep ourselves better than them?” In your own words tell what does Lisa mean by this and what is she concerned about? 

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After they set the factory bomb, Lisa says the following:“A chill runs down my spine. My God, I think, these Germans are dragging us all down to their level. How will we keep ourselves better than them?” In your own words tell what does Lisa mean by this and what is she concerned about? 

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From bombs to killing, Lisa has seen it all. I personally believe that what she means by that statement is ‘’We are doing the same thing as the germans. How can we do better’’. In my judgment I believe that when she says ‘’The Germans are dragging us down to their level’’ she means that the resistance is ‘’bombing buildings, lighting fires etc’’ just like the Nazis. By doing this they are doing the same amount of destruction as the Nazis just for different reasons. I think Lisa is concerned because ‘’they are not fixing the problem’’ they are just doing what the Nazis have been doing to the Jews and innocent lives. It concerns Lisa because she is worried ‘’I will be caught’’.

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In chapter eight, what was Susanne’s motivation for helping with the resistance bombing? 

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In chapter eight, what was Susanne’s motivation for helping with the resistance bombing? 

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In Chapter eight we got informed that Susanne could not talk, along with that her parents were gone. It's mad to know that something can happen all so quickly and your life can be changed. Her motivation came from the bombing of the dance hall as it staes ‘’Thats for Mama and papa but only the first’’.

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Susanne

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During Chapter Seven many things occured. Some of which is life changing. After Lisa comes back from the dance hall she sees a ''tiny,winkled, mess''. Just to find out its a newborn baby!. After finding this out, her mother goes on to tell her it's the baby sister of Inge, Lisa's deceased freind. Furthermore after Lisa thinks she had a busy night, a fire arose from where Susanne lives. Susanne has lost her parents and is burned....

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Wading: walk with effort through water or another liquid or viscous substance.

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Guzzling: eat or drink (something) greedily.

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Revolting: causing intense disgust; disgusting.

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-Revolting
-Guzzling
-Wading

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What happens to Susanne in chapter seven?

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What happens to Susanne in chapter seven?

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Chapter seven was the saddest chapter in my opinion. From having fun and being able to see your parents, to bombs and never saying goodbye. In this chapter Susanne ‘’Loses her parents’’ and ‘’She has no hair only a charred friz left,  her clothes are simply tatters’’. The fire has hit her. The thing that makes it the most frightening was the fact that Lisa said ‘’Hundreds of people live over there, why would something happen to her?’’. Just to find out that Susanne was one of the many people who suffered.

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What “surprise” is waiting at home for Lisa and Stefan when they get back from Lisa’s birthday celebration?

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What “surprise” is waiting at home for Lisa and Stefan when they get back from Lisa’s birthday celebration?

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As Stefan and Lisa get home they hear ‘’A baby crying’’. At first, Lisa thinks it was the wrong apartment until she sees the infant. As it states ‘’It is a pink, wrinkled mess as far as I can see’’.  Until she clues in that it was the baby of whom the parents were shot. Now she has a baby sister named Sarah.

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When Lisa tells Stefan and Erik about the hospital massacre, how does Erik react? Why does his reaction make Stefan so mad?

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When Lisa tells Stefan and Erik about the hospital massacre, how does Erik react? Why does his reaction make Stefan so mad?

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Many things happened in chapter six one of which will not be forgotten. After finding out that the Neils and the Albrechts had died after being shot by the Germans. Erick's reaction was ‘’soulless’’. For example, in the text, Eric says ‘’It's horrible’’ as well as ‘’His face drained in color’’. This tells me that Erick was clearly upset as to what happened in the hospital just not with a lot of emotion. Then Stefan says ‘’Oh be quiet, I don't want to hear any of your phony sympathies’’. I believe that this made Stefan upset because this whole time Erick has been pretending the war is not real. While people died on the streets or in hospitals such as what happened on that very day. Stefan also states ‘’it isn't your fault but you sure aren't doing anything to change it’’. Meaning that Erick has been doing nothing this whole time and clearly Stefan wants to be violent about the whole situation.

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Sarah

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Here are a few commen songs played back in the 1940s during dances!

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https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5gw7YBnW0dd5pKmQPpjhFo

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For Lisas 14 birthday she was lucky enough to go to Susannes dance hall and have a fun time. Sadly enough after the hosptal incdent Lisa has not been enjoying her birthday as much as she thinks she should be.

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Give four reasons why Lisa’s fourteenth birthday is so memorable?

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Give four reasons why Lisa’s fourteenth birthday is so memorable?

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Anybody's birthday is a special day but for some people such as Lisa it involves alot more crime than a normal person. Lisa was lucky enough to get taken by Erik to a ‘’Real life Band playing swag’’.  She even got to wear a new dress at the time of the war. Where things like clothes and shoes were hard to come across. The birthday was also so memorable because of what happened to the Alberchts and Nelsons. According to her father ‘’Shot right through the hand’’. What Also made the birthday so memorable is she got to go to a ‘’Dance hall’’ even for being under age.

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Schnapps: Type of alcoholic beverage

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Minerva: the Roman goddess of wisdom

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Matinees: a musical or dramatic performance or social or public event held in the daytime and especially the afternoon

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-Matinees
-Minerva
-Schnapps

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Dear Abby,                                                                                                                              April 23, 1940

I am a Jewish, teenage girl currently struggling to find my role in the war. From the time of my birth to the present day I have always been the person everyone asks or looks up to for advice. I have never had any hesitation when it comes to advising someone, until today. My father is a medical practitioner and works to serve the Nazi’s. It pains me to know my father is working for the enemy. Sometimes, the key to happiness is letting each situation be what it is instead of what you think it should be.

He recently brought his delma of working with the Nazi soldiers up  in a discussion.  I felt the need to speak on the matter. So without thinking I had said  ‘’mistreat the Nazi soldiers at the hospital’’. I did not fully understand the dangers that could come with doing this . I feel foolish for suggesting something so treacherous. In this situation I feel torn, knowing that if my father goes along with this idea, he could possibly hurt the lives of the attacker and the lives of his family. He has yet to come to a decision and he feels queasy about the whole idea.  Furthermore not only is it risky but for a jew, it takes a lot more guts to do one simple action. From time to time I wish I could strangle any Nazi that comes near me. The one problem is I would not have the heart to do it.

Im simply shredded into pieces and I'm not sure what I should do. Im I doing the right thing?.  Your articles seem to give solid advice. Please help a desprite teenger. Before this situation sistuion consumes me.

Sincerely,

Determined Jew

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My fourteenth Birthday:

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My Papa who is age 86 grew up in belguim during the time of the war. German soldries came took the horses and ''tried'' to get butter. My great grandmother did not let them and instead held one of the officers by the shirt with her bare hand.

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In chapter five many things happend such as Lisas first Mission!. It started off by Lisa going to pick up lundry for her ''Mom'' when really they were importent notes for the resistance. As she gets on the bus she notices two german soldires sit right infront of her. Lisa's stomach gets the best of her and she throws up all over them. As she runs away her and Stefan get a good laugh

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Lisa has done many things in her fourteen years of life. Though never once has she done
something like she experienced today. At the beginning of the chapter she was told by Stefan
to drop off ‘’Laundry’’ at a laundry station. Nonetheless, she went on to a bus to get home
trying to hide the evidence. It was not until two german soldiers got on and sat right across
from her. As it states ‘’I lunge right into the soldiers, and throw up all over them’’. The
germans then react to that by ‘’Cursing’’. Lisa is then blessed by ‘’20 passengers standing
between me and them’’. As well as someone whispered to Lisa ‘’Go. Go’’. These people have
just saved a life. This is singfacant to the story because as its Lisa’s first time doing a real job
she is not successful but lucky.

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having the head and shoulders habitually bent forward.

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-Stooped

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In chapter five, what dilemma does Lisa’s father face?

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In chapter five, what dilemma does Lisa’s father face?

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In chapter two many things occurred such as ‘’The Nazi’s taking over all of Denmark as well as the invasion’’. Though bigger things came up for Lisa's father, Lisa has a hard time trying to comprehend what was happening. As it states in the book ‘’Tell them to their faces you won't treat them?’’. Then Lisa’s father goes on to say ‘’Right to their goddamn faces’’. As I can tell Lisa’s father is angered about the fact he is helping the Nazis and their cause. As it says in the book ‘’My father is a doctor’’. This indicates that Lisa’s father is working for the Nazis as a doctor and arguing that he won't treat them anymore. Lisa’s mother has different plans as she says ‘’You’ll be shipped off because your Jewish’’. Followed by ‘’You’ll go to work at the hospital one day and never return home’’. I can tell Lisa’s mother is worried about her husband possibly making the wrong decision and putting her family at risk to be taken away as well’’. Unfortunately for Lisa’s father, he has to be faced with problems that should not be an issue in the first place.

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In chapter four as Lisa is walking to school their teacher Mrs.Jensen says ‘’School will only be every other day from now’’. As Lisa turns she sees that there are people with no teeth and imprisoned behind wire they look thin and unhealthy making Lisa feel ‘’fat and healthy’’. She gives them food and the prison guard shoos them away.

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My first Mission

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The Man He Killed by Thomas Hardy | Poetry Foundation

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"Had he and I but met

By some old ancient inn,

We should have sat us down to wet

Right many a nipperkin!

"But ranged as infantry,

And staring face to face,

I shot at him as he at me,

And killed him in his place.

"I shot him dead because —

Because he was my foe,

Just so: my foe of course he was;

That's clear enough; although

"He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,

Off-hand like — just as I —

Was out of work — had sold his traps —

No other reason why.

"Yes; quaint and curious war is!

You shoot a fellow down

You'd treat if met where any bar is,

Or help to half-a-crown.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciBQFItYc7E

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A Holocaust survivor tells her story | DW Documentary

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After reading this chapter I have come to the relzsion that some pepole in the world are cruel. After Lisa and Stefan see the jewish prisners Lisa states ''I feel so fat, and heathy''. Even at a time where there was not much food. Furthermore just by Lisa saying this I can imgine how skinny these pepole might be.

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having or showing a feeling of patronizing superiority.

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-condescending

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In the poem ‘’The Man he Killed’’ by Thomas Hardy there were many things the author was suggesting. More specifically he was talking about ‘’How war can ruin and affect the lives of each other’’.  I believe that this is what the author was suggesting because in the poem it says this line ‘’Had he and I but me By some old ancient inn’’.  This tells me that he and the enemy in some different time line might have been ‘’Sitting down buying each others drinks and talking to one another’’.  I can clearly tell just by this statement the author was dishearted to know that  this is the reality of the world.

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Waiting to hear

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https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/gestapo

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The name Gestapo is an abbreviation for its official German name " Ge heime Sta ats po lizei." The direct English translation is "Secret State Police."

The Gestapo was not the first political police force in German history. Germany, like many countries in Europe, had a long history of political policing.

Political policing is a specific type of police work. Its goal is to maintain the political status quo. Political police forces protect a state or government from subversion, sabotage, or coup. They use surveillance and intelligence gathering. These methods help them identify domestic threats against the government. Political police forces are sometimes referred to as "secret police." Authoritarian states, such as the Nazi regime, often rely on them to maintain and protect their power.

The Gestapo as a Symbol of Nazi Brutality

The Gestapo became infamous for its brutality. Today, the institution and its political policemen are symbols of authoritarian policing.

The word "Gestapo" is often mistakenly used as a catchall for multiple groups of Nazi and the uniformed perpetrators. In reality, the Gestapo was just one of many institutions that perpetrated Nazi crimes. Other German police forces were also perpetrators of the Order Police. Holocaust. This included the criminal police (Kripo)

The Gestapo earned its infamous reputation. Gestapo policemen used torture and violence in interrogations. They coordinated the deportation of Jews to their deaths. And they harshly repressed resistance movements in Germany and in German-occupied Europe.

Political Policing during the Weimar Republic

Before the Nazis came to power in 1933, Germany was a democracy called the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). The country was a federation made up of states. These states included Prussia, Bavaria, and Saxony. Most of these states had their own political police forces.

The Weimar Republic's constitution guaranteed individual rights and legal protections. These included: freedom of speech; freedom of the press; and equality before the law. Political police forces had to respect these rights. The constitution prevented them from conducting arbitrary police actions. Nevertheless, political policemen were active during the Weimar Republic.

In particular, the political police focused on containing political violence among the anti-democratic movements of the extreme right and left. This included policing the Nazi Party and the Communist Party. Both parties became increasingly popular in Germany beginning in 1930. Over the next three years, the Weimar-era political police struggled to respond to these often violent mass movements.

Nazifying the Political Police

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. Hitler and other Nazi leaders planned to establish a dictatorship. They also planned to eliminate all political opposition. The new Nazi regime intended to use Germany's political police to accomplish these goals. However, there were some obstacles to overcome.
Obstacles to Nazifying the Political Police
Initially, there were two main obstacles:

1. First, the Weimar Republic's constitution remained in effect. It contained legal protections against arbitrary police actions.

2. Second, Germany's political police forces were decentralized. They remained subordinate to various state and local governments. The police did not answer to Hitler as chancellor.

These two obstacles limited how Hitler and the Nazi regime could legally use the political police. For example, in the first weeks of the Nazi regime, the Nazis could not simply order the political police to arrest Communists without a legal basis. But this quickly changed.
Overcoming Legal Obstacles
Beginning in February 1933, the Nazi regime used emergency decrees to transform Germany. These decrees freed the political police from legal and constitutional limitations. The most important of these was the Reichstag Fire Decree. It was issued on February 28, 1933. This decree suspended individual rights and legal protections, such as the right to privacy. This made it easier for the police to investigate, interrogate, and arrest political opponents. Police could now read private mail, secretly listen to telephone calls, and search homes without warrants.

Creating the Gestapo

The Nazi regime wanted to establish a centralized political police force that would answer directly to Nazi leadership. To create this, they had to reform the existing decentralized police system. This process took several years. It included Nazifying the entire police system.

In the early 1930s, political policing remained tied to local governments. Thus, it was subject to local power struggles. By the end of 1936, however, the Nazi regime had created a strong, centralized political police force under SS leader Heinrich Himmler. This political police force was the Gestapo.

The position of the Gestapo was further strengthened in the summer of 1936. At that time, it was combined with the criminal police (Kripo). Together they formed a new organization called the Security Police (SiPo). Himmler's deputy Reinhard Heydrich led the Security Police. Heydrich also led the SS intelligence service ( Sicherheitsdienst or Security Service). This office was referred to by its German abbreviation "SD."

In September 1939, the Security Police was officially united with the SS intelligence service (SD). Together, they became a new office called the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). The Gestapo became Office IV of the RSHA. It was still referred to as the Gestapo.

Who worked for the Gestapo?

The Gestapo was staffed by plainclothes policemen, often called Gestapo agents. Most of these men were professionally trained. They often had worked as detectives or political policemen during the Weimar Republic. For instance, Heinrich Müller had worked for the police in Munich since 1919. He went on to become the head of the Gestapo in 1939. Professionally trained policemen like Müller brought experience, knowledge, and skill to the Gestapo.

But not all Gestapo agents were longtime policemen. Some came to the Gestapo through the SS intelligence service (SD). These SD men were Nazi ideologues with little or no police training. They were hired as part of SS leader Heinrich Himmler's plan to transform the police system into an ideologically-driven institution.

The Gestapo united the knowledge of professional policemen with the zeal of Nazi ideologues.

What was the Gestapo's Mission?

The Gestapo's mission was to "investigate and combat all attempts to threaten the state." In the Nazi view, threats to the state encompassed a wide variety of behaviors. These behaviors included everything from organized political opposition to individual critical remarks about the Nazis. The government even defined belonging to certain categories or groups of people as threatening. To combat this wide array of potential threats, the Nazi dictatorship gave the Gestapo enormous power.

One way in which the Gestapo carried out its mission was by enforcing new Nazi laws. Some of these laws broadly defined criticism of the regime as a security threat. For example, a December 1934 law made it illegal to criticize the Nazi Party or the Nazi regime. Telling a joke about Hitler could be categorized as a "malicious attack against the state or the Party." It could then result in an arrest by the Gestapo, trial before a special court, and even imprisonment in a concentration camp.

But the Gestapo went much further than monitoring individual behaviors. They implemented Nazi ideology, which defined entire groups of people as racial or political enemies. Membership in the Communist Party or a Jewish background was enough to make someone a threat to the state and subject to Gestapo attention.

During the 1930s, the vast majority of Aryan Germans did not encounter or even expect to encounter the Gestapo. But the Gestapo was a constant threat for political opponents, religious dissenters (including Jehovah's Witnesses), homosexuals, and Jews.

Empowering the Gestapo with Protective Custody

The Nazi regime gave Gestapo agents a great deal of power to decide the fate of the people they arrested.

Most notably, the Gestapo had the power to send people directly to a concentration camp. This was called "protective custody" ( Schutzhaft). Protective custody allowed the Gestapo to bypass the court system. Those placed in protective custody could not consult a lawyer, appeal their sentence, or defend themselves in court. The Gestapo even used protective custody to override court decisions in some cases. Typically they did so when they considered the court's sentence too lenient.

As an institution, the Gestapo was not subject to legal or administrative oversight. This meant that no other institution (including the courts) could overrule the Gestapo's decisions. The Gestapo had the final word.

How did the Gestapo Work?

The Gestapo fulfilled their mission in a radical way. In Nazi Germany, they used common police investigation methods. However, they did so without legal limits. They pursued denunciations from the public. They carried out arbitrary searches. And they conducted brutal interrogations. In the end, Gestapo agents held the fate of the people they arrested in their hands.
Denunciations
Sometimes, the Gestapo initiated investigations themselves. At other times, the Gestapo received tips from the public. A neighbor, acquaintance, colleague, friend, or family member could inform the Gestapo that a person was behaving illegally or suspiciously. Other police forces and Nazi organizations could also inform the Gestapo of a potential crime or threat.

In Nazi Germany, these types of tips were referred to as denunciations. They were often motivated by ideology, politics, or personal gain. The consequences for those people who were denounced could be severe.
Arbitrary Searches and Surveillance
During the course of an investigation, Gestapo officers interviewed witnesses, searched homes and apartments, and conducted surveillance. In Nazi Germany, there were no limits to these activities. The Gestapo did not need a warrant to read a suspect's mail, enter a home, or listen to telephone conversations.

Many people feared Gestapo surveillance. In reality, the Gestapo had limited personnel and only used these methods in specific cases. There was no widespread surveillance of the German population. This was why denunciations were so important.
Interrogations
The Gestapo was infamous for the ruthless ways it carried out interrogations. Gestapo officers regularly used intimidation, and psychological and physical torture. It was common for Gestapo officers to beat detainees in custody. Despite the Gestapo's brutal interrogation methods, they did not often personally kill those whom they arrested. However, some people did die during interrogations or in Gestapo custody.
Deciding the Fate of Those Arrested
Gestapo agents had the power to determine people's fates. Individual agents could choose to be lenient. They could let people go, dismiss cases, or issue warnings and fines.

But Gestapo agents could also choose to be ruthless. They could detain someone in prison indefinitely or condemn someone to a concentration camp. The only monitoring of these decisions came from within the Gestapo itself.

The Gestapo and the Jews Before the War

The Nazis considered Germany's Jews a racial threat to the German people and the Nazi regime. Therefore, the Gestapo was responsible for policing Jews as part of its mission to defend the state. This became increasingly important in the second half of the 1930s.

In the first two years of the Nazi regime, the Gestapo did not focus on policing Germany's Jewish population. At that time, the Gestapo's priority was policing political opponents. The Gestapo did arrest some Jews in 1933 and 1934. However, these Jews were typically detained because they were Communists or Social Democrats. The Gestapo considered them political opponents.
The Nuremberg Laws and Race Defilement
The Gestapo's involvement in anti-Jewish measures began to change with the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in fall 1935. These laws banned future marriages between Jews and non-Jewish Germans (meaning those that the Nazis considered "people of German blood"). They also criminalized extramarital sexual relationships between Jews and non-Jewish Germans. The Nazis called this crime "race defilement" ( Rassenschande ).

In response to the new laws, Gestapo offices throughout Germany established specialized Jewish Departments ( Judenreferate ). One of their responsibilities was investigating cases of race defilement.
Emigration and the "Jewish Question"
The Gestapo's Jewish Departments also kept track of Jewish emigration. In the 1930s, the Nazi state considered Jewish emigration to be the best way to solve Germany's "Jewish question." The Gestapo worked to help coordinate and speed up many aspects of the emigration process. This was their way of dealing with the supposed Jewish threat to the Nazi regime. In particular, the Gestapo's Jewish Departments worked to ensure that Jews' financial assets remained behind and were transferred to the Nazi state.

The Gestapo at War

The most notorious and deadly Gestapo crimes took place from 1939-1945 during World War II.

During this time, the Gestapo carried out a variety of tasks at home in Nazi Germany and abroad in German-occupied territories. These tasks were supposed to guarantee the security of the Nazi regime. The war radicalized the role of the Gestapo. When Gestapo agents deployed to German-occupied territories, they behaved brutally and with impunity against the local populations.

During the war, the Gestapo:

Investigated and harshly punished civilians who undermined the war effort or challenged the regime

Joined the Einsatzgruppen and perpetrated mass shootings of Jews and others

Policed foreign forced laborers in Germany and in German-occupied territories

Repressed resistance movements in Germany and in German occupied-territories

Organized deportations of Jews from across Europe to ghettos, concentration camps, killing sites, and killing centers.

Last Edited: Mar 10, 2021

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The name Gestapo is an abbreviation for its official German name " Ge heime Sta ats po lizei." The direct English translation is "Secret State Police." The Gestapo was not the first political police force in German history. Germany, like many countries in Europe, had a long history of political policing.

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In chapter three a lot of things happened such as Lisa trying to find out where her brother goes each day. Just to find out he is doing things for the resistance to help the country of denmark. Lisa wants to help as well and follows them. She finds herself with a package and decides to bring it home herself. Stefan will be waiting....

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How does the Resistance “tell” the Danes the real news of the war?

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How does the Resistance “tell” the Danes the real news of the war?

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The Resistance tells the Danes the real news of the war by ‘’Sending packages and getting information through there’’.  For example, in the text, it says ‘’Folding underground bulletins, putting them in envelopes, and addressing them’’. This tells me instead of communicating through talk they communicate through words and paper. Lisa also states she is a good writer, and that's how she helps.

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At the end of the chapter, Lisa is waiting anxiously for Stefan. Why?

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At the end of the chapter, Lisa is waiting anxiously for Stefan. Why?

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After Lisa had just done something for the resistance for the first time I could infer she felt thrilled and excited!. As it states in the book ‘’I wait patiently for Stefan to get home’’. Then goes on to say ‘’I’ll convince him to let me help’’. Just by Lisa saying this I know that the reason she was waiting for Stefan so intently was so she could not only tell Stefan about the success she made, but to prove to him she can help!. This is significant to the story because at the beginning of the book Stefan said ‘’Lisa you cant help your a girl’’ then Lisa goes on to prove him wrong by getting the ‘’package’’.

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What “game” do Stefan and Lisa play with the Nazi soldiers?

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What “game” do Stefan and Lisa play with the Nazi soldiers?

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It's very easy to trick someone and in this case, it became a lot easier for Stefan and Lisa. As it says in the book ‘’Somtimes when there are just two of them, I and Stefan play chicken. He’ll walk right in between them. Once one of them hit him, right in the side with the butt of the riffle’’. It also states ‘’It makes Stefan more determined’'. This is significant to the story because it shows that no matter how risky things get Stefan and his sister will always be intent on making ‘’trouble’'.

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Why does Lisa decide to follow Stefan and Jesper? What does she discover?

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Why does Lisa decide to follow Stefan and Jesper? What does she discover?

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Back in the 1940s a lot of girls were not allowed to do a lot of the things men were able to do. In this case for Lisa, she states ‘’I asked Stefan why I could not go and he said I was too young, and a girl’’. I believe that Lisa followed them to prove that she is more than just a ‘’girl’’. As it states ‘’I'm almost thirteen now, and I want to do something. Playing chicken is not enough. I'm not stupid’’. I can imagine what Lisa might be thinking during that moment. It was a mix of anticipation and wanting to help during the time. As she follows them she gets led to a ‘’Children's playground’’.

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Gestapo: Secret-police organization employing underhanded and terrorist methods against persons suspected of disloyalty.