Nadene Goldfoot
Today is the day we have been remembering the Holocaust when about 6 million Jews were killed on purpose because they were Jews. Those responsible for wanting to wipe out a people, whether they thought we were a race or a religion or both were the German National Socialist (NAZI) regime led by Adolf Hitler.
Extermination of the Jews was an essential part of the gospel of Nazism and inherent in the core of its creed. The Aryan decree issued on April 11, 1933 happened a year before I was born, so it's something that could have involved me. This decree defined non-Aryan's as any person having a non-Aryan, particularly Jewish parent or grandparent. My family were definitely non-Aryans: Jews.
By September 15, 1935, when I was 1 year old, the NUREMBERG LAWS were adopted byi the Reichstag. These were racial laws. They coordinated and regularized Nazi anti-Jewish action. They were reinforced by persecutory decrees, economic and social discrimination, and incarceration in CONCENTRATION CAMPS without legal proceedings or protection.
My uncle by marriage, Werner Oster, whose father had been a German soldier in WWI, born in Westerburg, Hildesheim, Niedersachsen, Germany in October 1916, was about 22 when he was thrown in one during 1938-39 which was the Dachau Concentration Camp before they became gas chambers for walking a cow down a path to the slaughter house. His father was a sausage-maker. His family took all their money to get him out of the country and he just made it by March 15, 1939 and on March 22 getting his passport to use on the SS Washington before Jews were not allowed to leave.
The German occupation of Czechoslovakia (1938–1945) began with the German annexation of Sudetenland in 1938, continued with the March 1939 invasion of the Czech lands and creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and by the end of 1944 extended to all parts of the former Czechoslovakia.
Werner made it to New York and then our great Uncle Max, who didn't know him, became someone that took all the responsibility of his being in the states and spoke for him, his sponsor. He got him a job with my father, a newbie in his new business of being a wholesale butcher. Werner married my father's sister Ann and tried to get his parents and 16 year old red-headed sister out, but it was too late. He was one of the last to get out. Later on this affected Werner terribly who carried a guilt complex for being a survivor of the Holocaust. All were affected in some way.
Although the war began with Nazi Germany's attack on Poland in September 1939, the United States did not enter the war until after the Japanese bombed the American fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941.
My paternal grandparents came from Telsiai, Lithuania. Kovno, Kaunas, Lithuania was close by. Before WWII, there were about 25,000 Jews in Kovno which was 25% of their total population. In 1941, they were herded into a ghetto by the Nazis and 10,000 killed in a single day on October 28, 1941. The survivors were joined by 7,000 deportees from Germany and Lithuania but nearly all were exterminated by 1944. The Jewish population in Kovno in 1988 was 5,500. Why they were there and not in Israel is beyond my comprehension except that maybe they were too old and too poor to make the move. It was a miracle that our grandparents had made the move in the early 1900s to Oregon.
Update: 4/8/2021 11:20pm
Resource
Family history
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
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