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I thought this was pretty interesting:

Many young Germans joined Nazi youth groups for a feeling of belonging and shared purpose. Members of the Hitler Youth and League of German Girls usually took part in activities like athletics and community service. But the Nazi regime also used these groups to introduce young people to aspects of Nazi ideology. As the future of a “superior German race,” young Germans were taught by their leaders to hate and persecute Jews and other “inferior races.”

In this photograph, Hitler Youth are encouraged to humiliate Jews by forcing them to clean city streets in Vienna. By 1936, membership in the Hitler Youth became mandatory for all non-Jewish Germans ages 10 to 18. Only a small number managed to resist joining.

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She and her family friend were close, they shared food and other things about themselves. During certain holidays they would invite each other over and chat. They knew what the other liked.However when racism became persistent, their “friends” turned on them and they wondered why they did this.

I found this interesting because the only reason they turned was because they were told to. It’s quite sad. They weren’t exactly forced to but they still turned after hearing the news.

It’s crazy to think how we as people can be influenced so easily, what does that say about us today? In our modern lives? Maybe we are being manipulated without a clue. Maybe that means its important to challenge other people’s ideas.

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This story is about non-german police that were ordered to kill Jewish civilians. They would carry out mass shootings and ended up killing over 2.5 million Jews. I found it really interesting the testimony from one of the ex-police members. He recounted that they felt like robots with no emotions.

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Teachers and Students humiliate German Jews.

I thought it was interesting how they all humiliated them and targeted them as they started a act to humiliate them. Something surprising was the burning of synagogues.

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I found this story particularly interesting, because even though the title is called “an ordinary day”, the story doesn’t seem like one. There were the German Jews fleeing to avoid prosecution, but it wasn’t that easy because laws were enforced making it harder to flee the country. Officials even worried about not enforcing laws, because it would prevent them from advancing in the work place. There were many reasons why local Germans would want to not let the Jews flee. Even though the ordinary German would not have the same visions as Hitler, they thought this situation would benefit them.

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I found this account was pretty interesting because of how it showed a police officer being forced to comply with orders, but still providing help to an imprisoned Jewish boy. He provided food and protection to the boy, but could not prevent him from being transferred to Auschwitz. Although the boy survived, the officer could not prevent him from being deported to the killing camp. This really shows orders clashing with the officer’s morals.

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The former police member who gave the video testimony intrigued me. His testimony was very direct, he described the event as it was, no extra emotions. Even in the part when he was talking about shooting a father next to the child. He said what happened, and what the procedure was, not going into detail about the event. There was one part where he mentions how he would never feeling anything like that ever again, and how the person became a “robot”. It was interesting how he was able to tell the story very directly, and it helps show that even the people who were committing the atrocities were human.

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In November 1938, the Nazis released violent attacks in Germany targeted towards Jews which is known as Kristalnaacht. Later, Nazi officials released a rule where German kids could not be in the same classroom as Jewish kids.

When 14 year old Rosa Marx went to class after Kristalnaacht, old friends and people she knew had stopped talking to her.

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i found this story compelling and sad because Walter’s talks about his families business and how it was destroyed due to violence and many Nazi leaders ordered the attack while many Jewish families homes and businesses were being attacked. I thought it was interesting when many European and German neighbors would report their Jewish neighbors and support the violent attacks rather than standing up and protecting their fellow neighbors.

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I thought that it was interesting to read about how Ruth and her brother, Bob, were treated. She spoke about how in 1937, someone thew a brick through their window with a note on it saying “Jews get out.” She spoke about how this attack could not have prepared her for the true terrors that happened during Kristallnacht. She spoke about how she was struggling with harassment even from her friends and neighbors. Her synagogue had been burned down and that caused people walking by the wreckage to realize that Jews were no longer welcome inside of Germany, even if they where citizens.

I thought it was really interesting to learn that Jewish people were treated unfairly even before WW2 had started, and I thought it was very interesting to learn about Ruth’s life.

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I thought it was really interesting that when Jana Malia’s went to her friend for help (the friend was non-Jewish) her friend turned her away. Jana’s mom had been killed before, and when Jana went to the community for help, she asked this friend. Later, she was reported to the authorities, being taken.

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The Iglauer family, made up of Margaret and Ernest, were a Jewish couple living in the Netherlands. They went into hiding for a long time to hide from the Nazi. Eventually they were worried enough about being found that they tried to escape the Netherlands and go to Switzerland. Because their id cards had large “J”s on them they were caught and had to return. Eventually a fisherman helped them escape to Switzerland and they later made it to the U.S. I found this story very interesting because they had to try multiple times to leave the country. Because their id cards said that they were Jewish, they were caught. Otherwise they probably would have escaped the first time.

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The former police officer’s testimony stood out because he spoke very plainly and without emotion, even about serious events. He focused on what happened rather than details, and said he felt like a “robot” and never wanted to feel that way again. It shows that even those who committed these actions were still human.

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I found the teenage story about the lovers very interesting because the German thought that this plan would work but it would not work. I also thought it was interesting because after the girls fam moved away. Poor German…

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During her whole life, Rosa Marx had many non Jewish friends. She also looked up to her teacher as a role model. Sh was enjoying life in school. However, in November of 1938 everything changed. Kristalnacht happened and everyone was turning against Jews. I found that this heavily impacted Rosa Marx. After the violence, in school her teacher treated her with such hostility and her non Jewish friends stopped talking to her. I found it very heartbreaking how they would treat her horribly just based on her faith. Nazi officials then declared it “intolerable for German schoolchildren to sit in a classroom shared with Jews.” Sadly, she got expelled from her school and her and her family were deported to a ghetto in Poland. They did not survive. I found it very interesting how fast her life became worse and how the teacher did not think about their long relationship while excluding Ros just because she was Jew.

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Teenagers who lived in the period of the Holocaust had a hard task while being assigned the same or similar work to adults, but yet they weren’t being treated like adults because they did not have the same set of choices or options that adults did. An example of when teens retreat unfairly compared to adults is when they were humiliated by the adults while being assigned to clean the streets in Vienna. A lot of these tasks did not only include Jewish teens, but also included all German teens from age 10 to 18

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I think the fact that so many people looted Jewish people’s homes and businesses is very interesting. The account of a Lithuanian person named Regina Prudnikova describes how she and many others were “grabbing whatever they could lay hands on”, even if they knew deep down that it was wrong. I think it’s kind of understandable that you do what you have to do to get richer and live a better life, but I’m curious about what was really going on in those people’s minds as they destroyed Jewish businesses, wrecked their homes, took their belongings, and even auctioned some off.

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Bronia(16 years old) was Polish and Gerhard(19 years old) was German, so it was illegal for them to be together. They were forced to wear signs saying “I am a polish pig” and “ I am a German traitor”. Gerhard was later sent to fight on the eastern front and he was killed in 1945. Bronia was sent to a concentration camp and it’s unknown what happened to her. They never saw each other again. I think it’s interesting that neither of them cared that they were German and Polish, and even though it was illegal they wanted to be together anyway.

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The testimony from the former police officer was especially striking because of how direct and detached he sounded, even when describing severe incidents. He emphasized the sequence of events rather than adding personal detail, explaining that he felt almost mechanical at the time and never wanted to experience that sense of disconnection again. His account highlights that, despite their actions, those involved were still human.

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I thought that it was sad because Edward was Jewish and the German guy who liked his girlfriend could just denounce Edward to the Gestapo. It was pretty unfair that the Nazi made that illegal (for a Jew and German to be in a relationship) and that the German guy could just denounce Edward. He was arrested and spent six months in solitary confinement just because the German guy was jealous and Edward was Jewish. He got arrested again as a “habitual criminal offender” because of his last conviction. That’s pretty messed up. It was sad that his mother and sister died, but it was good that he made it out.

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Edward Adler story is very sad.

His life was stripped from him because he loved a girl.

This is a heart breaking story.

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Walter Tick’s parents owned a business in Berlin, they were a Jewish family and were very successful. But in November of 1938 their shop was looted during Kristallnacht. This hurt their business, made it very hard for Jewish people in Germany to be successful.

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This story was interesting and cool to me because it’s about a schoolteacher who helped young Jewish children hide from the Nazis. She ferried them from house to house, knowing that certain death awaited if she was caught.

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This dark story really showed me the influence that the Nazi regime can have on every day civilians. Manfred Wildmann was a young Jewish boy growing up in the town of Philippsburg, Germany when Nazi forces had him, along with the rest of his family deported. Manfred grew playing with, and interacting with other Jewish, and non-Jewish families in his hometown. But the part of this story that really stands out to me is what happened during his families deportation. The non Jewish neighbors who he had know for his entire life just stood there and watched. They had all been turned to hate by the Nazi regime. But this isn’t a one time event. Throughout the course of WWII many similar events occurred. Non-Jewish Germans would be hard pressed to help Jewish people. One, for the constant downpour of anti-semitism that engulfed many of their consciousnesses, and two, for the fear of getting punished, or worse.

-Emmett

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This story is about how a holocaust survivor got a letter from his “friend” from before the holocaust. They exchange letters and the kid seems apologetic but doesn’t apologize. They send letters back and forth and eventually the “friend” explains that he was once a guard in a concentration camp and that he “never touched a Jew.” The holocaust survivor wanted to know how he felt about what his limb was, and how he felt about killing Jews, to which he had no response.

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I thought that the teenager’s story was really compelling. The kids were forced to step up and act like adults. They joined the Hitler youth to feel like they belonged. The kids were taught such terrible things at such a young age. The women complied in being molded by the nazis.

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This story was about a kid named Jacob. Jacob used to hang out with his friends. He attended a public school and hung out with all of his friends there. After school they used to bike together around town. When Hitler barn into town less non Jewish customers chant to his shop. His neighborhood begin to become less friendly and even cruel toward him because he was Jewish.

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This story was about a Jewish boy named Jacob Wiener who hung out with both Jewish and non-Jewish friends. They usually gathered at the shop together. When Hitler came in power in 1933 Jacob first noticed less non-Jewish at the shop, neighbors grew less friendly, and his German classmates joined Nazi organizations. As time went on Jacob remembered that his non-Jewish friend stopped talking to him and would avoid the Jewish on the street.

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Bernhard Linhard was a successful cafe owner in Vienna until March 1938, when Nazi Germany annexed Austria. Authorities immediately implemented new anti-Jewish laws. One measure barred Jews from running businesses, forcing Bernhard to turn over his business to “Aryan” Germans.

With no income to support them, Bernhard and his family resorted to selling their belongings to survive. To further intimidate them into leaving Germany, Nazi paramilitaries raided the Linhards’ home and threatened the family.

This is interesting to me because it is sad, and it gives us an example of how many sacrifices they had to make.

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I found the story of Bronia and Gerhard, a young "interracial" couple very interesting and sad. Bronia was Polish, and Gerhard was German, which the Nazi regime did not approve of; the two were forced into humiliating activities for all to see. They had to wear degrading signs in public while boys played trumpets and men marched around them, had their hair cut short/styled in mean ways, and had their belongings burned on the ground. Both of them ended up being sent away, Bronia to a concentration camp where she presumably died, and Gerhard to fight on the eastern front, where he was wounded and died in 1945. It's heartbreaking to watch, and so incredible to me that anything like this could really happen for such a harmless "crime."

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the story of many holocaust survivors recount friendship betrayals as some of their most painful memories. I find this super interesting and tragic because despite having gone through so much, being betrayed by someone you trusted and have them practically sentence you to death in a camp is utterly devastating. I believe that the there are many different reasons as to why the friends did this. It could be because due to societal pressures and simply the threat of physical harm if they didn’t turn in their friends. But it also could be due to the fact that these kids were raised in a certain way and were educated to oppress Jews.

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The some friends were forced to betray each other but the ones who didn’t where discibed as. Very loyal and they thanked them very much this was interesting becuase all of them were were friends and then they weren’t in a secand.

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Germans forced Jews to sell their property and business to 'Aryan' Germans. It was a effort to take Jews away from the ecomony and drive them out of Germany. Asserts of Jews were placed in 'Aryan' German's hands. They were forced to sell their business to non-Jew employees, and only getting a fraction of the profit, leaving their families in poverty.

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The story that I thought was compelling was an account of a Nazi Police. He talked about how he was ordered to shoot people and he didn’t dear refuse orders. He says that he is really traumatized by his actions and he can’t image the things that he was forced to do. He feels very sad and he is disappointed in himself for doing the things that he did.

He vowls to spend the rest of his life making up for the actions that he committed.

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- I chose this story because I thought it was insane how it wasn’t just the nazi’s shooting the Jews it was also other Germans. It was also crazy to me that Marsha Taplin had to hide in a forest 2.5 years, while the rest of her family was massacred by Germans.

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People like ruth grew up around non jewish family’s and everyone was friendly until that all changed in 1937. People were terrorizing jews even though they were once friends. They burned the synagogue and watched people get talking to ghettos, kids even watched their own family mementos get shot, just like ruth. Jacob used to ride bikes withhis friends until hitler took power and they stopped talking to him completely. Things can change so fast. The days-long wave of attacks had a devastating impact on Jacob’s family.No one was safe. It’s shocking to me how people can treat other people like that especially there own friends.

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Ruth grew up around non-Jewish families, and mostly everyone got along. In 1937, people turned against Jewish families even if they were close friend before. they would force them into ghettos and they would watch their families get murdered. Jacob used to play with his friends, but they stopped talking to him after Hitler and attacks. It’s surprising why people switched on their own friends so easily and quickly.

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One story I thought was interesting was the one about Ruth Rack and her brother Bob. Bob had many friends that weren’t Jewish and regularly spent time with him. But soon, they started doing things like throwing rocks at their windows and telling them to get out. Ruth Rack would also see one of her friends during kristallnacht.

I find this interesting because it kind of shows how children are a part of the Nazi propaganda machine. Kids, little kids in particular, have very moldable ideas of the world, that can be easily challenged by an adult that they perceive as knowing more than them, and it’s interesting that this trait was used in this way.

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Something that I found compelling and surprising were the stories of teachers targeting their own students. You would think that after teaching a student for so long you would grow a connection that couldn’t be broken by someone telling you that they’re Jewish, but some of the stories proves that wrong. 14 year old Rosa was treated with extreme hostility and disrespect from her teacher, and even by her friends who refused to speak to her.

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So many teens joined the Hitler youth groups to feel apart of something and/or to “fit in.” And I also wonder if people who didn’t join the youth groups were frowned upon. In these groups they would do community service and athletics, but they would feed these kids Nazi ideology, teaching them that what Nazis do was good and that Germans are superior to everyone else.

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I thought that the story of Clara Kramer was so moving. When she was fourteen years old, her family went into hiding with two other families, seventeen in total. Their non-jewish friends helped, sleeping above the crawl space where they lived. Clara wrote that they were “closer than blood”. Before this, however, she and her friends, knowing that there was a very slim chance that they would survive, wanted one last picture together. As she left her house, a boy called after her, “Dirty Jew!” She tried to smile for the picture, but in it she was not. She says that it was the only picture of her where she wasn’t smiling. She said that “We thought about writing a message on each picture, but what was there to say?”

One thing that was particularly shocking to me was that one of the neighbors who had helped them was antisemitic himself, yet could not tolerate murder.

“[I always] wanted a Poland without Jews” he notes, “but not like this”

I find it so sad that there was so little hope, Clara could not force herself to smile, that they decided no message was necessary. I also was shocked that even the Germans who helped Jews may have been antisemitic. Stories like these give further weight to the Holocaust, and it really makes me wonder what I would have done. We like to think that we would be heroes, risking our lives to help, but in the moment…what would we do?

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I found Jana Malish’s story shocking and very sad. When she was imprisoned in the ghetto, she reached out to her non-Jewish best friend, Jadwiga, asking for help. But her friend’s cousin, Romuald, whom she was close with, came to tell her that Jadwiga wasn’t going to help her, and that she didn’t want Jana to reach out ever again. Jadwiga warned that if Jana did risk reaching out again, she would send her “where her mother went,” turn her in to the Nazis. Jana describes how Jadwiga was her girlfriend, and they would always have fun and laugh together, studying for hours for the final test together. It’s horrible that such a close friend could turn against her just because of her race, even threaten to get her killed because of it. It makes me wonder whether Jadwiga was a true friend after all. It just shows how much people are willing to change when they are under pressure from authority and the general public. However, there was one sign that Jadwiga might have felt a smidge of uncertainty in shutting Jana out: she told Romuald that she “didn’t know how he would tell it to Jana.” This suggests that deep down, she might have known that this was wrong. But this definitely doesn’t justify her actions towards her best friend.

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I found a story about a young couple separated after the boy was sent to a concentration camp by another young boy who wanted the girlfriend all to himself. What surprised me is how confident he was that after the boyfriend was sent away, the girl must come running to him immediately which of course is not what happened. It’s also surprising how he could just casually be ok with sending another young boy your age away to a concentration camp where just about anything could happen to him. It really shows a lack of empathy and kindness that someone his age really should have.

— L & B