The Shoah by Daisy Walsh https://padlet.com/walshhdaisyy/1fokrk6kcfsqsqzo en-us 2022-04-12 12:34:05 UTC 2022-05-11 10:33:50 UTC hello@padlet.com Gas chamber door from Majdanek gas chamber. walshhdaisyy https://padlet.com/walshhdaisyy/1fokrk6kcfsqsqzo/wish/2159191448 Majdanek was one of the main annihilation camps in Poland which operated from July 1941- July 1944. (Jewish Virtual Library 1998) One of ways the Nazis committed the murder of millions of Jews and other minorities was via gas chambers. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)These gas chamber doors, as pictured above, were designed in order to allow the SS guard outside observe the killing process through peepholes in the door.(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) Deepening the sinister nature of this picture, we can infer that the SS guards either were so desensitised to this violence or enjoyed it as “killing was a central work duty for most camp staff.” (Mailänder, Szobar 2015) The process of selecting prisoners, plundering their belongings was done by the SS workers and after the death of said prisoners pulling any gold teeth and cutting hair was forced upon the prisoners of the camp. (Mailänder, Szobar 2015) Majdanek had not always operated as an annihilation camp however, the dark history behind the murder camp that it was developed into overshadows the other uses the Nazis had for it. 



]]> 2022-04-26 19:57:23 UTC https://padlet.com/walshhdaisyy/1fokrk6kcfsqsqzo/wish/2159191448 Zyklon B gas pellets. walshhdaisyy https://padlet.com/walshhdaisyy/1fokrk6kcfsqsqzo/wish/2165517739 The Nazis used Zyklon B pellets(pictured above) in mass murder operations from 1941-1943, Zyklon B is a toxic gas from hydrogen cyanide.(BASF 2022)From 1942 poison gas was used in Majdanek until the end of 1943 to murder prisoners that were too weak to continue to forced labour.(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)The process of killing prisoners too weak to work was not a new part of life in the camp as sick prisoners and those deemed unable to work had been shot from the start of the camps existence.(Mailänder, Szobar 2015) However, this new form of mass murder also known as ‘the final solution’(Mailänder, Szobar 2015), allowed the Nazis to murder European Jews at a much faster rate than shootings alone on a larger scale.


]]> 2022-04-30 23:27:18 UTC https://padlet.com/walshhdaisyy/1fokrk6kcfsqsqzo/wish/2165517739 Survivor of the Holocaust, Zigi Shipper. walshhdaisyy https://padlet.com/walshhdaisyy/1fokrk6kcfsqsqzo/wish/2165519213 Pictured above is a survivor of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, Zigi Shipper. Zigi escaped deportment from the ghetto he lived in 1942 and remained there until the liquidation of the ghetto in 1944. (Holocaust Education Trust) This then saw him sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau on cattle trucks. Nazi officers determined which prisoners were fit enough to endure the back braking labour that ensued in the camps, and as previously mentioned, prisoners deemed too weak to work were put to death via gas chamber. Zigi was deemed fit to work and was sent from Auschwitz to Stutthof concentration camp. In 1945 on the 3rd of May the camp was liberated by British troops. Prisoners like Zigi who were deemed old enough and strong enough to work were moved to forced labour camps such as Stutthof, Belzec, Dachau and many others. The concentration camps that the Nazis operated were mainly in Poland and Germany but were also set up in other regions that the Nazis had invaded such as: Latvia, Ukraine, Austria, and the Czech Republic
. (Jewish Virtual Library 1998)Zigi was among the younger prisoners who were not killed on arrival due to their age, over a million and a half Jewish children were murdered by the Nazis.(Yad Vashem 2004)



]]> 2022-04-30 23:32:16 UTC https://padlet.com/walshhdaisyy/1fokrk6kcfsqsqzo/wish/2165519213 walshhdaisyy https://padlet.com/walshhdaisyy/1fokrk6kcfsqsqzo/wish/2165519855 This is the testimony of Ruth Cohen, a victim of the Nazi regime and a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Born on April 26, 1930, in Czechoslovakia, Ruth was 14 when she and her family were forced from their homes into a designated ghetto, a practise that was common in the Nazi regime of ousting Jewish citizens from their homes, this process of confining Jews to ghettos can be seen as ‘a step towards genocide’. (Friedman 1954) Ruth’s family, as well as many others, experienced the growing support the Nazis accumulated not just in Germany but countries such as Ruths home of Czechoslovakia were dismantled by Hitler’s regime. This process was gradual starting with denying Jewish citizens’ rights and laws that non-Jews were allowed, for example being able to own companies as Ruths father experienced and gradually ousting them from their homes into Ghettos. Finally, the last step in the Nazi regime was the annihilation of European Jews through concentration camps. Historians have argued that the Ghettos were the start of ‘concentration’ of the Jews and was intended as a preparation for gradual extermination. (Friedman 1954) The conditions of the ghettos such as hunger, cold, disease and forced labour acted as a ‘partial extermination.’ (Friedman 1954)



]]> 2022-04-30 23:34:36 UTC https://padlet.com/walshhdaisyy/1fokrk6kcfsqsqzo/wish/2165519855 walshhdaisyy https://padlet.com/walshhdaisyy/1fokrk6kcfsqsqzo/wish/2165523163 The story of Hilda shlick, previously Glasberg is proof of the continuing affect that the Shoah had on families and survivors of the Nazi regime, Hilda had been separated from her family during the Nazi occupation which led her to believe that her family were murdered by the Nazis, this was not the case and 65 years later her brother and herself were reunited with the help of the Yad Vashem data base.(Yad Vashem 2008) The separation of families and siblings was commonplace in concentration camps, whether the separation be because of age or ability to work, families were not kept together. An unprecedented number of children had been separated from their parents during the war,(Zahra 2009) in reference to the entirety of the war including ethnic cleansing to evacuation millions of children, including Jewish children were lost across post-war Europe. This meant stories such as Hilda’s were more common than you might expect however due to survivor silence (Kidron 2009) caused by the PTSD of the Shoah, many survivor families were not able to find each other due to the absence of descendant knowledge.(Kidron 2009)


]]> 2022-04-30 23:46:13 UTC https://padlet.com/walshhdaisyy/1fokrk6kcfsqsqzo/wish/2165523163 Female prisoners surrounded by the shoes of dead prisoners walshhdaisyy https://padlet.com/walshhdaisyy/1fokrk6kcfsqsqzo/wish/2165523973 This picture shows a group of women in bergen Belsen concentration camp in Germany in April of 1945, not long after the camp was liberated by British troops. The pile of shoes behind the women in the photo belonged to prisoners of the camp who had perished.( Yad Vashem 1982) Bergen Belsen was not considered an annihilation camp but rather a holding centre,(Jewish Virtual Library 1998) however, this proves that not only was the number of deaths high in annihilation camps, holding and labour camps had a high number of casualties too. This picture of shoes continues a running theme of remembrance of the Jews that were murder in the Shoah. ‘The Shoes on the Danube Prominade’ (Ochayon)represent a memorial for to the Hungarian Jews who were shot on the banks of the Danube River.(Ochayon)The use of shoes to remember victims of the Shoah is a powerful demonstration of using artifacts from an atrocity to help remember the victims and understand that they were people with families and lives that were destroyed by the Nazi regime, almost trying to get you to imagine yourself in their shoes.

]]> 2022-04-30 23:49:15 UTC https://padlet.com/walshhdaisyy/1fokrk6kcfsqsqzo/wish/2165523973 walshhdaisyy https://padlet.com/walshhdaisyy/1fokrk6kcfsqsqzo/wish/2165524426 The video above details the uniform male prisoners were given to wear and Otto Feuer story is told, his uniform was donated by his sons to the United States holocaust memorial museum. The uniform consisted of a striped top, trousers, and a brown jacket.(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) Jewish prisoners upon arrival at concentration camps were stripped of any belongings that had been brought with them, any belongings left behind was stolen by the Nazi state.(Kwiet 2019)  
Prisoners who were deemed not fit to work in the camps were sent to the gas chambers where they were to undress and were stripped of their clothes, glasses, watches and artificial limbs, gold fillings and any other valuables were stripped from the prisoners before they entered the gas chamber.(Kwiet 2019)  As well as being stripped of belongings the prisoner were humiliated and subjected to having their heads shaved, both men and women alike and were forced as part of their uniform to receive a tattoo on their arm with their prisoner number.(Kwiet 2019)  
 







 
]]> 2022-04-30 23:50:49 UTC https://padlet.com/walshhdaisyy/1fokrk6kcfsqsqzo/wish/2165524426 Memorial Plate in Birkenau, Poland walshhdaisyy https://padlet.com/walshhdaisyy/1fokrk6kcfsqsqzo/wish/2165525368 This plate in Birkenau in Poland serves as a memorial dedicated to the four million prisoners who were murdered by the Nazi regime at the concentration camp in Birkenau.(Yad Vashem 1995) Around the world there are memorials dedicated to the victims of the heinous crimes committed by the Nazis, but most importantly there are archives of documents, pictures, artefacts and survivor statements that can be found on such websites as Yad Vashem that can be used to educate and inform people from all walks of life about the history of the cruel and unforgivable regime that the Nazis enrolled, in order to do justice to the memory of the victims and ensure the education of the world about these events  to make sure nothing of this stature ever occurs again, these documents are invaluable to keep the memory of the victims in our minds and to never forget their struggle.



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