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Friday, February 22, 2019

THE HOLOCAUST; How it touched our family

Nadene Goldfoot                               

Germany's Nazi (National Socialism) political party came into being in 1933.  Forced labor camps established by them were in use between 1933 and 1945.  Nazis set up and ran about 15,000 concentration camps throughout German-occupied Europe.  All this started before the official date of the HOLOCAUST.  
                                                   
Notice Wilno.  This is Vilnius, the Vilna we are accustomed to reading about
in the history of the Gaon of Vilna.  It had been taken over by the Polish government like Lazdijai had been!  I hadn't realized that, thinking it
was always part of Lithuania.  
    
THE HOLOCAUST, also now called The Shoah, was a period of genocide during World War II.  Genocide means the act of killing everyone of that group; a complete wipe-out of a people, in this situation, the slaughter 6 million Jews.   It was a systematic bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators, who were the native population of where the Jews lived; the non- Jews.  

About 1/2 the Jews murdered during the Holocaust were killed in the extermination camps.  They were also called the death camps or killing centers. Nazis used extermination camps to quickly and systematically murder many people at the same time by exposing them to poison gas.  6 of these centers were in German-occupied Poland;  Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, TREBLINKA, MAJDANEK and AUSCHWITZ-Birkenau.  More than 3.2 million were killed in these 6 camps between 1942 and 1944.  Almost all were Jews, and 10 -15% were Rome people (Gypsies)_ also people with disabilities and gay men and women.  These were groups that Nazis also considered as unacceptable.  By the end in 1945, 1/3 of the world's Jewish population was eliminated.  Today, Jews make up only 0.02% of the world population.

The Nazis had decided on their FINAL SOLUTION.  This was the Nazi Party's policy for their  more perfect world, and it targeted THE JEWS.  This systematic murder of all Jews began in 1941 and lasted through 1945, when the Allied forces liberated German-occupied Europe.  
                                                          
Beginning of Lodz Ghetto

An old standby of anti-Semitic Europe was THE GHETTO.  It originated in Venice, Italy in 1517 where  Jews were segregated.  This idea came from an even earlier time in earlier Catholic Church legislation going back to the Lateran Council of 1179 and 1215 which forbade Jews and Christians to live together in close contact.  Actually this all came from the beginnings of Christianity in around 300 when a meeting was held in Constantinople about the formulation of Christianity and how people viewed Jesus and as what and how they were going to deal with the prevailing religion of the country, Judaism.  
                                                      

During World War II, the Nazis set up more than 400 ghettos.  Lodz was the first ghetto to be established and had the 2nd largest population next to the Warsaw ghetto. 

April 1940: Barbed wire, barricades, sentry booths are installed to isolate the ghetto from the rest of the city.  In the Lodz ghetto, the Nazis proposed that skilled residents produce goods for the Nazis. By May 1940 Jews were restricted to the ghetto now sealed off from the rest of the city of Lodz.  Attempts to escape resulted in immediate shooting without warning. 
                                                             
Directing traffic in the ghetto

June 1940:  census records 160,320 Jews living in the 1.6 sq mile ghetto, over 20 times the population density of Portland today (2019).  Production systems were established and factories open, most food going to office workers that were in the hands of Rumkowski, a Jew, appointed elder- head of Nazi-controlled Jewish Council of Lodz, enforcer of German laws and orders.  October 1940: Malnutrition and illness begins to spread, labor office created to oversee factories producing goods like clothing, shoes, textiles, munitions for Nazis.  December 1940: All food now rationed, death due to starvation increases in ghetto.   
                                                                  

 The ghetto was but a prelude to the CONCENTRATION CAMPS AND GAS CHAMBERS.  Great numbers of Jews were brought to Poland from other parts of Nazi-occupied Europe for annihilation.  Jewish youth were in the underground struggle of the Partisans, while the ghetto up risings at Warsaw, Bialystok and other places produced acts of desperate courage.  
                                                            

The forced removal of residents and prisoners during the closure of ghettos and concentration camps was the Nazi LIQUIDATION.  During most liquidations, Jews were deported to extermination camps by the thousands where they were quickly murdered.  
                                                         

A word about the Nazi Party.  

This was Nazism or National Socialism, the German political movement started in 1919 by the German Workers' Party who added the words, NATIONAL SOCIALIST to its name and in 1921 Adolf Hitler became its leader.  Until 1923 it was largely restricted to Bavaria and only became a mass movement in the economic depression at the end of the 1920s.  1929 was the year the USA stock market crashed.   At the last election in Weimar, Germany in 1932, it was the country's largest party, although not a majority (37% of the votes.).  It achieved power on January 30, 1933.  After this it used every method to become the country's only party---a position it ruthlessly maintained until the end of World War II.  "Nazism is a form of fascism." National-Socialism or Nazism is a racist and antisemitic ideology which holds that the Aryan race is superior to all other races, and that the government must actively promote the perfect race.

A word about Polish anti-Semitism:  A pronounced anti-Semitic trend prevailed at the end of the 19th century.  Polish anti-Semites supported by the clergy and the press launched a campaign against the Jews, which was supported by the great majority of political groups.  There was a pogrom in Warsaw in 1881.  Zionism took a strong hold, while the Bund also flourished. Large numbers of Polish Jews emigrated at this period to Western Europe and the USA.  
                                                  

The independent state of Poland was established after World War I (1914-1917).  Then it tried to protect its minorities, but its attitude toward the Jews left much to be desired.  In other words, they could not get rid of the anti-Semitism already established for centuries.  The economic position of the Jews sharply deteriorated as the new Polish middle-class pushed them out of trade, handicrafts, and industry.  In 1938, 300,000 Jewish breadwinners were unemployed and emigration continued on a large scale. 
                                                            
Our uncle, Werner Oster arrived from Germany from 4-12 May 1939 on SS Washington.  Germany had invaded Poland in 1st June 1939, the start of the War.  To enter, he had to have our great uncle Max Turn be his sponsor and take all responsibilities-financially and otherwise, for him, so Uncle Max got my father to hire him.  He was a sausage maker-his father's business.  My father had just started Lincoln Wholesale Meats on SW 3rd & Lincoln, Portland. The rest of Werner's family were unable to get out.  His 16 year old sister perished with her parents.  Werner married my aunt and had 5 girls.   

 395,223 Jews left Poland from 1921 to 1937, but were stopped from entering the USA in 1924 with the National Origins Act; Johnson- Reed Act; Asian Exclusion Act.  The struggle for the full enjoyment of civic and national rights was almost impossible.  By 1939, Poland had over 3 million Jews.  

Socialism is often collocated in the opposite end of the spectrum compared to fascism; if fascism pertains to the group of far-rights movements, socialism is, then, located to the far-left.


Reference:  The Standard Jewish Encyclopedia-ghetto
Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education pamphlet.  
THE HOLOCAUST, by Martin Gilbert
http://immigrationtounitedstates.org/590-immigration-act-of-1924.html
update:  6:45pm:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism- about from socialism to fascism 
http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/politics/ideology-politics/difference-between-socialism-and-fascism/

https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/256/what-is-the-difference-between-fascism-and-nazism

1 comment:

  1. On my mothers side, the last name was Lodz before it was c hanged to Marks. I am a "Judeo-Bolshevik", aka Russian Jew. I never received my mind-control kit though, or even directions to the Synagogue of Satan. Was there some sort of form I was supposed to fill out?

    Wikipedia claims that linking Jews to Russian leadership or socialism / communism is an error. It always annoys me when I hear that- it is untrue, and also validates the "mind-control" (or at least undue influence) claim of the anti-Jewish crowd. Socialist leadership was disproportionately Jewish in Europe and America until the 1920s. Also, it is said that Marx was a Jew. Culturally, yes. He was actually a Christian for the first 17-18 years of his life, and shortly after considered Jesus to be the first Communist. His views on religion soured later, obviously.

    I missed out on the "Taglit-Birthright" (I regret that now). I seem to be living in the shadow of WW2, with Polish and German and Russian heritage, while living in the USA. When I heard the Evangelicals chant "the Jews will not replace us" in Charlottesville with torches in their hands, it invoked my "cultural memory" of this: wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Evangelical_Church. History is circular, it seems.

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