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Inside Auschwitz – English version in 360°/VR

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This is a timeline noting the major conceptual and legal advances in the development of "genocide." It does not attempt to detail all cases which might be considered as genocides, but rather how the term becomes a part of the political, legal, and ethical vocabulary of responding to widespread threats of violence against groups.

1900: Raphael Lemkin
Raphael Lemkin, who would later coin the word "genocide," was born into a Polish Jewish family in 1900. His memoirs detail early exposure to the history of Ottoman attacks against Armenians (which most scholars believe constitute genocide), antisemitic pogroms, and other histories of group-targeted violence as key to forming his beliefs about the need for legal protection of groups.

1933: Rise of Adolf Hitler
With the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor on January 30, 1933, the Nazi Party took control of Germany. In October, German delegates walked out of disarmament talks in Geneva and Nazi Germany withdrew from the League of Nations. In October, at an international legal conference in Madrid, Raphael Lemkin (who later coined the word "genocide" ) proposed legal measures to protect groups. His proposal did not receive support.

1939: World War II
World War II began on September 1, 1939. Germany invaded Poland, triggering a treaty-mandated Anglo-French declaration of war on Germany. On September 17, 1939, the Soviet army occupied the eastern half of Poland. Lemkin fled Poland, escaping across the Soviet Union and eventually arriving in the United States.

1941: A crime without a name
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. As the German forces advanced further east, SS, police, and military personnel carried out atrocities that moved British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to state in August 1941: "We are in the presence of a crime without a name." In December 1941, the United States entered World War II on the side of the Allied forces. Lemkin, who arrived in the United States as a refugee in 1941, had heard of Churchill's speech and later claimed that his introduction of the word "genocide" was in part a response to Churchill's statement.

1944: "Genocide" coined
Nazi leadership embarked on a variety of population policies aimed at restructuring the ethnic composition of Europe by force, using mass murder as a tool. Included among these policies and involving mass murder were the attempt to murder all European Jews, which we now refer to as the Holocaust, the attempt to murder most of the Roma (Gypsy) population of Europe, and the attempt to physically liquidate the leadership classes of Poland and the former Soviet Union. Also included in these policies were numerous smaller scale resettlement policies involving the use of brutal force and murder that we now refer to as a form of ethnic cleansing. In 1944, Raphael Lemkin, who had moved to Washington, DC, and worked with the US War Department, coined the word " genocide" in his text Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. This text documented patterns of destruction and occupation throughout Nazi-held territories.

1945-1946: International Military Tribunal
Between November 20, 1945, and October 1, 1946, the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg tried 22 major Nazi German leaders on charges of crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity and conspiracy to commit each of these crimes. It was the first time that international tribunals were used as a post-war mechanism for bringing national leaders to justice. The word "genocide" was included in the indictment, but as a descriptive, not legal, term.

1947-1948: Creating an international convention on genocide
Raphael Lemkin was a critical force for bringing "genocide" before the nascent United Nations, where delegates from around the world debated the terms of an international law on genocide. On December 9, 1948, the final text was adopted unanimously. The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide entered into force on January 12, 1951, after more than 20 countries from around the world ratified it.

1950-1987: Cold war
Massive crimes against civilian populations were all too common in the years after World War II and throughout the Cold War. Whether these situations constituted "genocide" was scarcely considered by the countries that had undertaken to prevent and punish that crime by joining the Genocide Convention.

1988: US signs the Genocide Convention
On November 4, 1988, US President Ronald Reagan signed the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. The Convention had strong supporters, but also faced ardent opponents, who argued it would infringe on US national sovereignty. One of the Convention's strongest advocates, Senator William Proxmire from Wisconsin delivered over 3,000 speeches advocating the Convention in Congress from 1968-1987.

1991-1995: Wars of the former Yugoslavia
The wars of the former Yugoslavia were marked by massive war crimes and crimes against humanity. The conflict in Bosnia (1992-95) brought some of the harshest fighting and worst massacres to Europe since World War II. In one small town, Srebrenica, as many as 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were murdered by Serbian forces.

1993: Resolution 827
In response to the atrocities occurring in Bosnia, the United Nations Security Council issued resolution 827, establishing the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. It was the first international criminal tribunal since Nuremberg. Crimes the ICTY can prosecute and try are: grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, violations of the laws or customs of war, genocide, and crimes against humanity. Its jurisdiction is limited to crimes committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia.

1994: Genocide in Rwanda
From April until mid-July, between 500,000 and a million Rwandans, predominantly Tutsis, were killed in Rwanda. It was killing on a devastating scale, scope, and speed. In October, the UN Security Council extended the mandate of the ICTY to include a separate but linked tribunal for Rwanda, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), located in Arusha, Tanzania.

1998: First conviction for genocide
On September 2, 1998, the ICTR issued the world's first conviction for genocide in an international tribunal when Jean-Paul Akayesu was judged guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity for acts he engaged in and oversaw as mayor of the Rwandan town of Taba.

Through an international treaty ratified on July 17, 1998, the International Criminal Court was permanently established to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The treaty reconfirmed the definition of genocide found in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. It also expanded the definition of crimes against humanity and prohibits these crimes during times of war or peace.

While the ICTY and ICTR, other ad hoc tribunals, and the International Criminal Court have helped establish legal precedents and can investigate crimes within their jurisdictions, punishment of genocide remains a difficult task. Even more difficult is the continuing challenge to prevent genocide.

2004: Genocide in Darfur
For the first time in US government history, an ongoing crisis was referred to as a "genocide." On September 9, 2004, Secretary of State Colin Powell testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "We concluded-I concluded-that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the Government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility-and that genocide may still be occurring."

March 17, 2016: Genocide in Iraq and Syria
Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) had committed genocide against Yezidi, Christian, and Shia Muslim populations in areas under its control across Syria and Iraq. This is the first time in more than a decade that the United States has declared genocide. Secretary Kerry also stated that IS committed "crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing directed at these same groups and in some cases also against Sunni Muslims, Kurds, and other minorities."

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This is a timeline noting the major conceptual and legal advances in the development of "genocide." It does not attempt to detail all cases which might be considered as genocides, but rather how the term becomes a part of the political, legal, and ethical vocabulary of responding to widespread threats of violence against groups.

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Stories of WWI and the Holocaust

Please click on the link above to access a curation of books, films and audio material.

Huge shout out and thank you to Ms. JulieAnne!

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INSTRUCTIONS:

Using the comment prompts to help you structure your thinking, please provide TWO comments for EACH testimony that you watch.

COMMENT PROMPTS

I learned that…which impacted my thinking because...

I now know…because

I realize that…because

I discovered…which makes me think that...

I used to think...now, I think…

I find it strange/odd/ disturbing that...because...

I noticed that … which … because…

When he/she explained… I could connect it to… because…

A question I have is…because...

I’m curious about…because...

I’m wondering about…because..

I would like to learn more about...because...

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Read reflections and testimonies written by Holocaust survivors in their own words.

As Chief Radio Officer on the SS Zion, I had the 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. watch, which provided me with the whole evening free to enjoy dinner with guests in the dining room plus partake in activities of a social nature. However, my watch was also in the wee hours of the morning from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. Generally, activities in the radio room were slack during those hours, and I had plenty of free time to chat with the night watchman who used to stop by. He held one of those clocks that registered at different stations aboard the ship and time stamped at each location. However, it still provided ample time for me to hear his story.

Tags: alfred traum echoes of memory, volume 13

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Read reflections and testimonies written by Holocaust survivors in their own words. As Chief Radio Officer on the SS Zion, I had the 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. watch, which provided me with the whole evening free to enjoy dinner with guests in the dining room plus partake in activities of a social nature.

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Holocaust survivors remember Auschwitz 75 years later

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A Holocaust survivor tells her story | DW Documentary

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69 books based on 82 votes: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, Between Shades of Gr...

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Every year, Jews around the world observe Holocaust Remembrance Day, known as Yom Hashoah in Hebrew, to ensure that the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis are never forgotten. The unimaginable horror of the Holocaust is hard for adults to fathom, so how do we talk to our children about it? These picture books, middle grade reads, and YA titles are good places to start.

Picture Books:

Middle Grade Books:

What other books about the Holocaust would you recommend to young readers?

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13 Children's and YA Books to Help Remember the Holocaust | Brightly

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Every year, Jews around the world observe Holocaust Remembrance Day, known as Yom Hashoah in Hebrew, to ensure that the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis are never forgotten. The unimaginable horror of the Holocaust is hard for adults to fathom, so how do we talk to our children about it?

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JOJO RABBIT | Official Trailer [HD] | FOX Searchlight

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Life Is Beautiful | Official Trailer (HD) - Roberto Benigni, Nicoletta Braschi | MIRAMAX

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Interview with an Auschwitz survivor | Channel 4 News

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The Book Thief Official Trailer #1 (2013) - Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson Movie HD

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The Zookeeper's Wife Official Trailer 1 (2017) - Jessica Chastain Movie

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Schindler's List 25th Anniversary - Official Trailer - In Theaters December 7

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The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its allies and collaborators. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum teaches millions of people each year about the dangers of unchecked hatred and the need to prevent genocide. Learn more about the Holocaust, antisemitism, and genocide below.

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Learn About the Holocaust, Antisemitism, and Genocide - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

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The US Holocaust Memorial Museum teaches millions of people each year about the dangers of unchecked hatred and the need to prevent genocide.

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The US Holocaust Memorial Museum teaches that the Holocaust was preventable and that by heeding warning signs and taking early action, individuals and governments can save lives. With this knowledge, the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide works to do for the victims of genocide today what the world failed to do for the Jews of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.

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The US Holocaust Memorial Museum teaches that the Holocaust was preventable and that by heeding warning signs and taking early action, individuals and governments can save lives. With this knowledge, the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide works to do for the victims of genocide today what the world failed to do for the Jews of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.

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Early Life

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, a small Austrian town near the Austro-German frontier. After his father, Alois, retired as a state customs official, young Adolf spent most of his childhood in Linz, the capital of Upper Austria.

Not wanting to follow in his father's footsteps as a civil servant, he began struggling in secondary school and eventually dropped out. Alois died in 1903, and Adolf pursued his dream of being an artist, though he was rejected from Vienna's Academy of Fine Arts.

After his mother, Klara, died in 1908, Hitler moved to Vienna, where he pieced together a living painting scenery and monuments and selling the images. Lonely, isolated and a voracious reader, Hitler became interested in politics during his years in Vienna, and developed many of the ideas that would shape Nazi ideology.

Military Career of Adolf Hitler

In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich, in the German state of Bavaria. When World War I broke out the following summer, he successfully petitioned the Bavarian king to be allowed to volunteer in a reserve infantry regiment.

Deployed in October 1914 to Belgium, Hitler served throughout the Great War and won two decorations for bravery, including the rare Iron Cross First Class, which he wore to the end of his life.

Hitler was wounded twice during the conflict: He was hit in the leg during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, and temporarily blinded by a British gas attack near Ypres in 1918. A month later, he was recuperating in a hospital at Pasewalk, northeast of Berlin, when news arrived of the armistice and Germany's defeat in World War I.

Like many Germans, Hitler came to believe the country's devastating defeat could be attributed not to the Allies, but to insufficiently patriotic "traitors" at home-a myth that would undermine the post-war Weimar Republic and set the stage for Hitler's rise.

Nazi Party

After Hitler returned to Munich in late 1918, he joined the small German Workers' Party, which aimed to unite the interests of the working class with a strong German nationalism. His skilled oratory and charismatic energy helped propel him in the party's ranks, and in 1920 he left the army and took charge of its propaganda efforts.

In one of Hitler's strokes of propaganda genius, the newly renamed National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazi Party, adopted a version of the swastika-an ancient sacred symbol of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism -as its emblem. Printed in a white circle on a red background, Hitler's swastika would take on terrifying symbolic power in the years to come.

By the end of 1921, Hitler led the growing Nazi Party, capitalizing on widespread discontent with the Weimar Republic and the punishing terms of the Versailles Treaty. Many dissatisfied former army officers in Munich would join the Nazis, notably Ernst Röhm, who recruited the "strong arm" squads-known as the Sturmabteilung (SA)-which Hitler used to protect party meetings and attack opponents.

Beer Hall Putsch

On the evening of November 8, 1923, members of the SA and others forced their way into a large beer hall where another right-wing leader was addressing the crowd. Wielding a revolver, Hitler proclaimed the beginning of a national revolution and led marchers to the center of Munich, where they got into a gun battle with police.

Hitler fled quickly, but he and other rebel leaders were later arrested. Even though it failed spectacularly, the Beer Hall Putsch established Hitler as a national figure, and (in the eyes of many) a hero of right-wing nationalism.

'Mein Kampf'

Tried for treason, Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison, but would serve only nine months in the relative comfort of Landsberg Castle. During this period, he began to dictate the book that would become " Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle"), the first volume of which was published in 1925.

In it, Hitler expanded on the nationalistic, anti-Semitic views he had begun to develop in Vienna in his early twenties, and laid out plans for the Germany-and the world-he sought to create when he came to power.

Hitler would finish the second volume of "Mein Kampf" after his release, while relaxing in the mountain village of Berchtesgaden. It sold modestly at first, but with Hitler's rise it became Germany's best-selling book after the Bible. By 1940, it had sold some 6 million copies there.

Hitler's second book, "The Zweites Buch," was written in 1928 and contained his thoughts on foreign policy. It was not published in his lifetime due to the poor initial sales of "Mein Kampf." The first English translations of "The Zweites Buch" did not appear until 1962 and was published under the title "Hitler's Secret Book."

Obsessed with race and the idea of ethnic "purity," Hitler saw a natural order that placed the so-called "Aryan race" at the top.

For him, the unity of the Volk (the German people) would find its truest incarnation not in democratic or parliamentary government, but in one supreme leader, or Führer.

"Mein Kampf" also addressed the need for Lebensraum (or living space): In order to fulfill its destiny, Germany should take over lands to the east that were now occupied by "inferior" Slavic peoples-including Austria, the Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia), Poland and Russia.

The Schutzstaffel (SS)

By the time Hitler left prison, economic recovery had restored some popular support for the Weimar Republic, and support for right-wing causes like Nazism appeared to be waning.

Over the next few years, Hitler laid low and worked on reorganizing and reshaping the Nazi Party. He established the Hitler Youth to organize youngsters, and created the Schutzstaffel (SS) as a more reliable alternative to the SA.

Members of the SS wore black uniforms and swore a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler. (After 1929, under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler, the SS would develop from a group of some 200 men into a force that would dominate Germany and terrorize the rest of occupied Europe during World War II.)

Eva Braun

Hitler spent much of his time at Berchtesgaden during these years, and his half-sister, Angela Raubal, and her two daughters often joined him. After Hitler became infatuated with his beautiful blonde niece, Geli Raubal, his possessive jealousy apparently led her to commit suicide in 1931.

Devastated by the loss, Hitler would consider Geli the only true love affair of his life. He soon began a long relationship with Eva Braun, a shop assistant from Munich, but refused to marry her.

The worldwide Great Depression that began in 1929 again threatened the stability of the Weimar Republic. Determined to achieve political power in order to affect his revolution, Hitler built up Nazi support among German conservatives, including army, business and industrial leaders.

The Third Reich

In 1932, Hitler ran against the war hero Paul von Hindenburg for president, and received 36.8 percent of the vote. With the government in chaos, three successive chancellors failed to maintain control, and in late January 1933 Hindenburg named the 43-year-old Hitler as chancellor, capping the stunning rise of an unlikely leader.

January 30, 1933 marked the birth of the Third Reich, or as the Nazis called it, the "Thousand-Year Reich" (after Hitler's boast that it would endure for a millennium).

Reichstag Fire

Though the Nazis never attained more than 37 percent of the vote at the height of their popularity in 1932, Hitler was able to grab absolute power in Germany largely due to divisions and inaction among the majority who opposed Nazism.

After a devastating fire at Germany's parliament building, the Reichstag, in February 1933-possibly the work of a Dutch communist, though later evidence suggested Nazis set the Reichstag fire themselves-Hitler had an excuse to step up the political oppression and violence against his opponents.

On March 23, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, giving full powers to Hitler and celebrating the union of National Socialism with the old German establishment (i.e., Hindenburg).

That July, the government passed a law stating that the Nazi Party "constitutes the only political party in Germany," and within months all non-Nazi parties, trade unions and other organizations had ceased to exist.

His autocratic power now secure within Germany, Hitler turned his eyes toward the rest of Europe.

In 1933, Germany was diplomatically isolated, with a weak military and hostile neighbors (France and Poland). In a famous speech in May 1933, Hitler struck a surprisingly conciliatory tone, claiming Germany supported disarmament and peace.

But behind this appeasement strategy, the domination and expansion of the Volk remained Hitler's overriding aim.

By early the following year, he had withdrawn Germany from the League of Nations and begun to militarize the nation in anticipation of his plans for territorial conquest.

Night of the Long Knives

On June 29, 1934, the infamous Night of the Long Knives, Hitler had Röhm, former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and hundreds of other problematic members of his own party murdered, in particular troublesome members of the SA.

When the 86-year-old Hindenburg died on August 2, military leaders agreed to combine the presidency and chancellorship into one position, meaning Hitler would command all the armed forces of the Reich.

Persecution of Jews

On September 15, 1935, passage of the Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of German citizenship, and barred them from marrying or having relations with persons of "German or related blood."

Though the Nazis attempted to downplay its persecution of Jews in order to placate the international community during the 1936 Berlin Olympics (in which German-Jewish athletes were not allowed to compete), additional decrees over the next few years disenfranchised Jews and took away their political and civil rights.

In addition to its pervasive anti-Semitism, Hitler's government also sought to establish the cultural dominance of Nazism by burning books, forcing newspapers out of business, using radio and movies for propaganda purposes and forcing teachers throughout Germany's educational system to join the party.

Much of the Nazi persecution of Jews and other targets occurred at the hands of the Geheime Staatspolizei (GESTAPO), or Secret State Police, an arm of the SS that expanded during this period.

Outbreak of World War II

In March 1936, against the advice of his generals, Hitler ordered German troops to reoccupy the demilitarized left bank of the Rhine.

Over the next two years, Germany concluded alliances with Italy and Japan, annexed Austria and moved against Czechoslovakia-all essentially without resistance from Great Britain, France or the rest of the international community.

Once he confirmed the alliance with Italy in the so-called "Pact of Steel" in May 1939, Hitler then signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union. On September 1, 1939, Nazi troops invaded Poland, finally prompting Britain and France to declare war on Germany.

Blitzkrieg

After ordering the occupation of Norway and Denmark in April 1940, Hitler adopted a plan proposed by one of his generals to attack France through the Ardennes Forest. The blitzkrieg ("lightning war") attack began on May 10; Holland quickly surrendered, followed by Belgium.

German troops made it all the way to the English Channel, forcing British and French forces to evacuate en masse from Dunkirk in late May. On June 22, France was forced to sign an armistice with Germany.

Hitler had hoped to force Britain to seek peace as well, but when that failed he went ahead with his attacks on that country, followed by an invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor that December, the United States declared war on Japan, and Germany's alliance with Japan demanded that Hitler declare war on the United States as well.

At that point in the conflict, Hitler shifted his central strategy to focus on breaking the alliance of his main opponents (Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union) by forcing one of them to make peace with him.

Concentration Camps

Beginning in 1933, the SS had operated a network of concentration camps, including a notorious camp at Dachau, near Munich, to hold Jews and other targets of the Nazi regime.

After war broke out, the Nazis shifted from expelling Jews from German-controlled territories to exterminating them. Einsatzgruppen, or mobile death squads, executed entire Jewish communities during the Soviet invasion, while the existing concentration-camp network expanded to include death camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau in occupied Poland.

In addition to forced labor and mass execution, certain Jews at Auschwitz were targeted as the subjects of horrific medical experiments carried out by eugenicist Josef Mengele, known as the "Angel of Death." Mengele's experiments focused on twins and exposed 3,000 child prisoners to disease, disfigurement and torture under the guise of medical research.

Though the Nazis also imprisoned and killed Catholics, homosexuals, political dissidents, Roma (gypsies) and the disabled, above all they targeted Jews-some 6 million of whom were killed in German-occupied Europe by war's end.

End of World War II

With defeats at El-Alamein and Stalingrad, as well as the landing of U.S. troops in North Africa by the end of 1942, the tide of the war turned against Germany.

As the conflict continued, Hitler became increasingly unwell, isolated and dependent on medications administered by his personal physician.

Several attempts were made on his life, including one that came close to succeeding in July 1944, when Col. Claus von Stauffenberg planted a bomb that exploded during a conference at Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia.

Within a few months of the successful Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944, the Allies had begun liberating cities across Europe. That December, Hitler attempted to direct another offensive through the Ardennes, trying to split British and American forces.

But after January 1945, he holed up in a bunker beneath the Chancellery in Berlin. With Soviet forces closing in, Hitler made plans for a last-ditch resistance before finally abandoning that plan.

How Did Adolf Hitler Die?

At midnight on the night of April 28-29, Hitler married Eva Braun in the Berlin bunker. After dictating his political testament, Hitler shot himself in his suite on April 30; Braun took poison. Their bodies were burned according to Hitler's instructions.

With Soviet troops occupying Berlin, Germany surrendered unconditionally on all fronts on May 7, 1945, bringing the war in Europe to a close.

In the end, Hitler's planned "Thousand-Year Reich" lasted just over 12 years, but wreaked unfathomable destruction and devastation during that time, forever transforming the history of Germany, Europe and the world.

Sources

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
iWonder - Adolf Hitler: Man and Monster, BBC.
The Holocaust: A Learning Site for Students, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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Adolf Hiter: Rise to Power, Impact & Death

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Adolf Hitler was leader of the Nazi Party who rose to become dictator of Germany. Hitler used his power to orchestrate the deaths of 6 million Jews and millions of others during World War II.

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Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany. His fascist agenda led to World War II and the deaths of at least 11 million people, including some six million Jews.

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Nazi Party: Definition, Philosophies & Hitler - HISTORY

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The Nazi Party was a political organization that ruled Germany through murderous, totalitarian means from 1933 to 1945 under the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler.

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NAZISM & THEIR SOPHISTICATED PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGNS

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NAZISM & THEIR SOPHISTICATED PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGNS

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This microsite is based on a Museum special exhibition underwritten in part by grants from The David Berg Foundation, Shelly and Michael Kassen, The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, and Katharine M. and Leo S. Ullman. The Museum's exhibitions are also supported by the Lester Robbins and Sheila Johnson Robbins Traveling and Special Exhibitions Fund, established in 1990.

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United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Propaganda

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This microsite is based on a Museum special exhibition underwritten in part by grants from The David Berg Foundation, Shelly and Michael Kassen, The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, and Katharine M. and Leo S. Ullman. The Museum's exhibitions are also supported by the Lester Robbins and Sheila Johnson Robbins Traveling and Special Exhibitions Fund, established in 1990.

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On July 18, 1925, Volume One of Adolf Hitler's philosophical autobiography, Mein Kampf, is published. It was a blueprint of his agenda for a Third Reich and a clear exposition of the nightmare that will envelope Europe from 1939 to 1945. The book sold a total of 9,473 copies in its first year.

Hitler began composing his tome while sitting in Landsberg prison, convicted of treason for his role in the infamous Beer Hall Putsch in which he and his minions attempted to stage a coup and grasp control of the government in Bavaria. It ended in disaster, with some allies deserting and others falling into the hands of the authorities. Hitler was sentenced to five years' imprisonment (he would serve only nine months). His time in the old fortress at Landsberg was hardly brutal; he was allowed guests and gifts, and was treated as something of a cult hero. He decided to put his leisure time to good use and so began dictating Volume One of his opus magnus to Rudolph Hess, a loyal member of the German National Socialist Party and fellow revolutionary.

The first part of Mein Kampf, subtitled "A Reckoning," is a 400-plus page diatribe on the alleged problems besetting Germany-the French, who wished to dismember Germany; the lack of Lebensraum, "living space," and the need to expand east into Russia; and the baleful influence of "mongrel" races. For Hitler, the state was not an economic entity, but a racial one. Racial purity was an absolute necessity for a revitalized Germany. "[F]or men do not perish as the result of lost wars, but by the loss...of pure blood."

As for leadership, Hitler's Third Reich would mimic the Prussian ideal of absolute authoritarian rule. "There must be no majority decisions, but only responsible persons... Surely every man will have advisers... but the decision will be made by one man."

Volume Two of Mein Kampf, focusing on national socialism, was published in 1927. Sales of the complete work remained mediocre throughout the 1920s. It was not until 1933, the first year of Hitler's tenure as chancellor of Germany, that sales soared to over 1 million. Its popularity reached the point where it became a ritual to give a newly married couple a copy.

Fact Check

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Hitler's "Mein Kampf" is published | July 18, 1925 | HISTORY

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On July 18, 1925, Volume One of Adolf Hitler's philosophical autobiography, Mein Kampf, is published. It was a blueprint of his agenda for a Third Reich and a clear exposition of the nightmare that will envelope Europe from 1939 to 1945. The book sold a total of 9,473 copies in its first year.

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Read 13.5k reviews from the world’s largest community for readers. On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of its first publication, here is the de…

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Explore a timeline of events that occurred before, during, and after the Holocaust.

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www.museumoftolerance.com > Education > Teacher Resources > Holocaust Resources > Timeline of the Holocaust: 1933-1945

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Blanka was an only child in a close-knit family in Lodz, Poland. Her father died in 1937. After the German invasion of Poland, Blanka and her mother remained in Lodz with Blanka's grandmother, who was unable to travel. Along with other relatives, they were forced into the Lodz ghetto in 1940.

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"Why a member of the Polish underground sent himself to the infamous prison camp"

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"Why a member of the Polish underground sent himself to the infamous prison camp"

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Why a member of the Polish underground sent himself to the infamous prison camp

Why a member of the Polish underground sent himself into the infamous prison camp

"The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones."

- Julius Caesar; Act 3, Scene II

WARSAW -- There are very few places that can accurately be described as hell on Earth. One of these is the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, where as many as 1.5 million people died during the five years the camp was in operation.

The Polish resistance had been hearing horrific first- or second-hand accounts about the conditions inside Auschwitz. These early accounts came primarily from released prisoners, but also from casual observers like railway employees and residents of the nearby village of Oswiecim. The resistance decided they needed someone on the inside.

It is into this environment that Witold Pilecki, a 39-year old veteran of the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921 who fought against the initial Nazi invasion and a member of the Polish resistance, volunteered himself in 1940. Pilecki's mission was to allow himself to be arrested and, once inside Auschwitz, to collect intelligence for the Polish resistance in the country and the government-in-exile in London, and to organize a resistance from inside the camp.

"I think he knew, he realized what he was getting himself into," said Jacek Pawlowicz, a historian at Poland's Institute of National Remembrance. "But even so, he was not prepared for the things he was actually able to witness."

During the next three years, Pilecki was involved in one of the most dangerous intelligence-gathering and resistance operations of the war. He authored three reports about life inside the camp for the Polish resistance. During his incarceration, Pilecki witnessed from the inside Auschwitz's transformation from a detention facility for political prisoners and Soviet soldiers into one of the Nazis' deadliest killing machines.

An English translation of Pilecki's third and most comprehensive report -- a primary source for this article -- was recently published as a book titled The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery . It is a fascinating first-hand account of virtually all aspects of life inside the camp. The original document is in the custody of the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust in London.

"He was there in all of Auschwitz's worst periods, because he arrived at the moment when the camp was being created and was there until [1943]," Pawlowicz explained. "So while there he saw the camp growing, he saw [Birkenau] being built -- where the ovens were. But the ovens were not only in [Birkenau], there were gas chambers and crematoria on the territory of Auschwitz I."

Pilecki's family was kept out of the loop regarding his activities for security reasons. His son Andrzej Pilecki recalls, "There was secrecy because of the danger, so that the children would know as little as possible. But I felt something. My father was in Warsaw. We were 100 kilometers away. We came to visit him sometimes and my father would teach us how to behave during the occupation."

Pilecki began preparations for his mission in the late summer of 1940. While staying at a safehouse, he found identity papers belonging to a man named Tomasz Serafinski, who was erroneously presumed killed in September of 1939. Because the Nazis asked for the names and addresses of inmates and their relatives as a method to keep the population under control, Pilecki wisely decided not to give his real name or those of his immediate family. Pilecki placed his photograph on Serafinski's papers and memorized his details. His plan was to be arrested and booked under the Serafinski alias.

In the early morning hours of September 19, Nazis did a roundup in Warsaw and arrested as many as 2,000 people. According to Adam Cyra and Wieslaw Wysocki's 1997 biography Rotmistrz Witold Pilecki, Pilecki was in the apartment of Eleonora Ostrowska the morning of the roundup. A caretaker and member of the resistance came in and made several suggestions to Pilecki for how to avoid being caught. According to Ostrowska, "Witold rejected those opportunities and didn't even try to hide in my flat." When a German soldier knocked on the door and asked who lived there, Pilecki walked out. As he was saying goodbye to Ostrowska, he quietly whispered to her, "Report that I have fulfilled the order."

Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, who later became Foreign Minister of Poland, was arrested in the same roundup and taken to Auschwitz in the same transport as Pilecki, which left the morning of September 21 and arrived at the prison camp at 10 p.m. that same day.

"At the time we were not aware of what Auschwitz was," he wrote. "The underground movement was compelled to investigate what was happening to those people, to check the possibilities of organizing them somehow, possibly of helping them. And Witold Pilecki embarked on that tremendous task. It was his aware and voluntary decision to join another huge round up in Warsaw."

Pilecki was not happy with the behavior he saw of his fellow Poles. "What really annoyed me the most was the passivity of this group of Poles," he later wrote. "All those picked up were already showing signs of crowd psychology, the result being that our whole crowd behaved like a herd of passive sheep."

"A simple thought kept nagging me: stir up everyone and get this mass of people moving."

Pilecki was booked under the Serafinski alias, and was assigned the prisoner number 4859. Once inside, Pilecki immediately began work on organizing a network among the inmate population. In his own words, his objective was to set up a military organization on the inside to keep up morale, provide news from the outside world, distribute food and clothing to members, smuggle camp intelligence to the outside world, and to prepare detachments to take control of the camp by force if the order were given.

He called his network the Union of Military Organization, known by its Polish acronym ZOW, and would be part of the Home Army, the Polish resistance. The secrecy of the ZOW's existence was paramount. To ensure its continuity in the event of discovery by Nazi guards or informants, Pilecki created a highly compartmentalized system of five-man cells. The leader of each cell would be people of utmost confidence, committed to the Polish resistance and able to withstand possible interrogation or investigation by the German guards. Each cell leader swore an oath to Pilecki himself and only knew of the four men under his command, but not of the existence of any other cells. By doing so, Pilecki effectively minimized the risk of exposure to the entire network.

Pawlowicz estimates that Pilecki's network included some 500 inmates at Auschwitz by March of 1942, but notes this number may have doubled by the time of Pilecki's escape the following year. In time, Pilecki was able to place informants and allies in key positions throughout the camp. In time, these would prove crucial for Pilecki and other ZOW members.

Life inside Auschwitz tested every inmate. How each of them reacted was entirely subjective. Pilecki wrote, "Camp was a proving ground of character."

"Some -- slithered into a moral swamp."

"Others -- chiseled themselves a character of finest crystal."

According to Pawlowicz, Pilecki would write his reports by hand and then have them smuggled out of the camp to the Polish government-in-exile in London. It would usually take about four months for one of his reports to get from Poland to London, typically smuggled by couriers leaving Gdansk heading for Stockholm using forged German documents. The Polish underground used the Stockholm route because Germans were allowed to travel there without special papers.

By early 1943, Pilecki began considering his escape from the camp. He had gone in and accomplished his objective of organizing a resistance within the camp, at which point he thought the logical thing to do was wait for an attack on the camp by the Polish resistance from the outside so they could rise up from within. On top of this, the Gestapo was clamping down on security in the camp and many of Pilecki's recruits had been lost.

Pilecki ultimately made the decision to escape on April 13, 1943. The reason behind this was so he could make the argument for an armed assault on Auschwitz in person to the resistance leadership. He began handing over his network contacts and responsibilities to top deputies as a gradual transition process.

After approximately 2,500 roll calls and 947 days inside the camp by his own calculations, Witold Pilecki and two other inmates escaped Auschwitz. On the night of Monday, April 26 -- the day after Easter Sunday -- the three men were assigned to work in the bakery, which was located outside the camp grounds. They took advantage of a moment when the SS guard wasn't paying attention to cut a telephone wire, force open a door and made a run for it.

Pilecki eventually made his way back to Warsaw and reported to the Home Army's headquarters on August 25, 1943 hoping to find a receptive audience for the ZOW's idea of taking control of Auschwitz from the inside. Unfortunately for him, his former commanding officer, who had known the purpose of his Auschwitz mission, had been arrested two months earlier and the new leadership was not receptive to his proposal. According to Cyra and Wysocki's biography of Pilecki, he felt "bitter and disappointed."

Pilecki's use of the Tomasz Serafinski alias had unintended consequences for the real Serafinski. The Gestapo arrested Serafinski on Christmas Day of 1943 on charges of escaping from Auschwitz. He was held in a local prison in Bochnia for three days before being handed over to the Gestapo in Krakow. After undergoing what Cyra and Wisocki describe as a "brutal investigation" in which he consistently rejected the accusations against him, Serafinski was released on January 14, 1944. According to Jacek Pawlowicz, Pilecki and Serafinski later became friends, adding "That friendship is alive to this day, because Andrzej Pilecki visits their family and is very welcome there."

When the Warsaw Uprising began on August 1, 1944, Pilecki was in the thick of it. According to Norman Davies' authoritative book Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw , Pilecki's company focused on a key building on Jerusalem Avenue that overlooked traffic on a crucial east-west thoroughfare. The street is near the present-day location of the Warsaw Uprising Museum.

"Almost every day during the first two weeks of the month, he [Pilecki] captured, lost, and recaptured this building," Davies wrote. "Repeatedly driven out, he repeatedly returned and with deadly cunning repeatedly expelled the German defenders. He lived to fight elsewhere. But so long as he threatened this one vital pressure point, the German command was constantly made to feel insecure." The area came to be known as "Pilecki's Redoubt."

After the defeat of the Warsaw Uprising, Pilecki surrendered to German authorities on October 5 and was taken as a prisoner-of-war to Marnau, Germany, where he was liberated by the U.S. Army on April 28, 1945. After liberation, he remained at the camp for two months before joining the II Polish Corps in Italy under the leadership of General Wladyslaw Anders. Pilecki was assigned to Section II -- an intelligence unit. It was during this period in Italy in the summer of 1945 that he began writing his third and most definitive report about his time in Auschwitz.

Pilecki and two others left Italy in late October of 1945, eventually arriving in Warsaw on December 8. According to Pawlowicz, Pilecki established a cover as a supply manager on a construction site. His real job was to carry out intelligence operations for the II Corps still in Italy, which would pass his information on to the Polish government-in-exile in London.

Pilecki recruited several of his old contacts from Auschwitz and the Polish resistance worked in various post-war institutions. According to Pawlowicz, Pilecki's successful operations in this period included obtaining the phone numbers of government officials and Soviet advisors, documents showing the falsification of the results of the People's Referendum of 1946 by the communists, and a secret bilateral trade agreement between Poland and Russia calling for the Red Army to be stationed on Polish territory.

David de Sola

Andrzej Pilecki was 13 or 14 the last time he saw his father in the spring of 1947. At the time, he was living with his mother, sister and two cousins in the town of Ostrow Mazowiecka. At the time, his father was on a mission to convince anti-communist youth resistance living in hiding in the Red Forest by Bialystok to demobilize. "He was to pull out the youth who was in the forest, to let them know that there won't be a Third World War, so why should they stay in the forest?" Pilecki says of his father's assignment. "It was a difficult mission. Why? Because he could have been found out and killed on the spot or exiled to Siberia. And he couldn't reveal himself as an officer for that reason, and the youth would only listen to officers."

Of the final meeting with the family, he says, "We lived on the road to Warsaw, and he came to us. He was very sad. He played the piano to himself. And he revealed who he was to my friends. He came to us -- I was with my friends -- and he showed us how to play various games," Pilecki recalls. "He was very happy that my sister and I had so many friends, that we weren't loners -- because we had moved from the east and it was different in Mazowsze. He was very happy that we were connected with others and liked by our peers."

"He didn't know he was leaving us forever. But in letters, he would write that we should live worthwhile lives, to respect others and nature. He wrote to my sister to watch out for every little ladybug, to not step on it but place it instead on a leaf because everything has been created for a reason. "Love nature." He instructed us like this in his letters."

Pilecki was arrested by communist authorities not long after, on May 5, 1947. According to Pawlowicz, "His fingernails were ripped off, ribs broken, nose broken. His interrogation was very difficult and he was tortured badly." He, and others, were given a show trial for activities against the state the following March. On March 15, he was found guilty on several charges. The court declared, "As a paid agent of General Anders' Intelligence Service, he organized a spy network on Polish territory, collecting information and sending it abroad,' and in doing so 'betraying state secrets.' Pilecki was sentenced to death. A typical capital punishment sentence was carried out within 95 to 105 days of the sentence. The order for Pilecki's execution was given on May 22, two months after his trial.

The final account of anyone seeing Pilecki alive comes from father Jan Stepien, a Home Army chaplain whose own capital punishment was later changed to a 15-year prison sentence. His description of Pilecki as he was being led to his execution at the Mokotow prison in Warsaw: "He had his mouth tied with a white bandage. Two guards led him by his arms. He could hardly touch the ground with his feet. I don't know if he was conscious then. He seemed completely faint."

The exact location of where Pilecki was buried is unknown. His remains are believed to be either in a meadow next to the Sluzewiec cemetery, or in an area of the Powazki Military Cemetery in Warsaw, also called the meadow, in a mass grave with others who were executed by the post-war communist regime.

Today, there is a tombstone with what had been an empty grave for Pilecki in this cemetery. Pilecki's widow Maria, who died in 2002, is now buried there. Flowers, candles and a small Polish flag with the anchor symbolizing the Polish resistance now decorate the gravesite. On the site of the meadow, a brick monument has been built, with small bronze plaques bearing the names of each of the people believed to be buried there, including Pilecki's. Flowers, candles, and Polish flags decorate the site.

Pilecki's family wasn't notified of his execution at the time. They even went so far as to doubt whether it had happened. "When it came to his sentence, we didn't believe that it had been carried out," his son Andrzej recalled. "We weren't notified, there was no body. We hoped -- especially my mother -- that he would be useful [to the communists], because he knew so much about different organizations, was so active. We deluded ourselves that maybe he's alive somewhere, in Lubyanka [Prison] or in Siberia."

Two years after Pilecki's execution, his son was approached by a former Mokotow prison guard. "I was in prison with your father. I want to help you because your father was a saint," he told Andrzej Pilecki. "I had different tasks, including bringing food to your father. Sometimes he wouldn't touch the food, I wasn't sure if he was praying or thinking. So I would take the food away. Under his influence, I changed my life. I do not harm anyone anymore."

But the years after Pilecki's death were difficult on his family. His widow, a teacher, was unemployed for a year and repeatedly had her job applications rejected. Both of his children found their high school and college ambitions limited because of their father's history. They didn't know about their father's activities during the war at the time, only gradually hearing or reading about it over the years. The family owned property in what is now Belarus, which was taken from them and they were never compensated for it.

There were unsuccessful attempts to rehabilitate Pilecki's memory through official channels in 1957 and again in 1974. In 1989, the Board of the Association for the Care of Auschwitz posthumously awarded Pilecki Order of the Auschwitz Cross, and pushed the Polish Minister of Justice to have Pilecki's name cleared. On October 1, 1990, a court sentence exonerated Pilecki and the others condemned with him during the 1948 trial. In the two decades since, Pilecki has been honored the recipient of numerous posthumous honors, with schools and streets named after him in Poland. A bust of Pilecki is included at Jordan Park in Krakow alongside busts of other distinguished Poles like John Paul II and Marie Curie. Nearly six decades after his death, Polish president Lech Kaczynski awarded Pilecki the Medal of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honor.

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During the summer of 2012, Polish archaeologists exhumed the remains of nearly 100 skeletons in the mass grave at Powazki Military Cemetery. The hope is that the remains of Pilecki and others can be identified using genetic testing with DNA provided by their descendants. The process is expected to take several months, but even then this might only be the beginning of the process. According to the AP, the mass grave in Powazki is believed to contain the remains of as many as 400 people.

In his introduction to the English translation of Pilecki's report, Norman Davies wrote, "Pilecki's name mirrors the tragic fate of millions whom the West forgot. Only when one grasps the true horror of his fate can one comprehend what the Second World War in Europe was really about."

After several decades of silence and ostracism regarding his father, Andrzej Pilecki is grateful for the posthumous recognition he has been receiving during the past twenty years. "There was a ban of speaking about my father," he said. "There's a rebirth now. Those were terrible times, but more and more people are talking about it, and I don't have a moment's peace at home because there are constantly phone calls and the like. That makes me happy."

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

David de Sola is a writer based in Washington, D.C.

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