Remembering The Holocaust-A Real Time In History-Part 1a

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

Auschwitz-Birkenau- January 21, 2026Auschwitz-Birkenau-Concentration Camp 

International Holocaust Remembrance Day Tuesday, January 27

9 Shevat 5786/ 2026

Aushwitz was established in June 1940 where they did poison gas experiments.  It was the punishment camp, set up for Polish political prisoners, later used on Jews.  

„Arbeit macht frei” - work will set you free - is the inscription over the gate of the German Nazi Auschwitz I concentration camp, one of the most recognizable visual icons of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, which for the world is a symbol of the crimes of World War II. 

Jews arriving in Auschwitz off packed trains

The sign at the entrance of Auschwitz: Work will make you free:

It became of place of gassing people to death.

We remember as a nation the Holocaust every year in Israel.  How can people forget ancestors who suffered and died at that time while Nazi Germany tried to exterminate all the Jews in the world starting with their own country and their neighbors.  They managed to snuff out 6 million of us.  I was so lucky;  my paternal grandparents had moved to the USA before 1924 when the USA's door for Jews was barely open so I was born in the USA.  In 1934 life was beginning to become very grim for Jews in Germany.  

In 1934 Germany, Jewish people faced escalating legal discrimination, economic exclusion, and social isolation as the Nazis solidified power. Jews were losing jobs, property, and participation in public life through laws like the Civil Service Law, while facing economic boycotts, restricted education, and forced name changes, all pushing them out of German society and towards emigration or persecution. 

This is what my mother and father would have faced if living in Germany

• Exclusion from Professions: The Civil Service Law (from 1933) and subsequent decrees excluded Jews from government, university, and other state positions, with Jewish tax consultants losing licenses.
• Economic Strangulation: Jewish businesses were denied market access, banned from advertising, and lost government contracts; membership in the German Labor Front became mandatory for workers, but Jews were banned from it, effectively blocking private sector jobs.
• Educational Restrictions: Quotas severely limited Jewish student admissions to public schools and universities.
• Forced Assimilation & Identity: Jews with non-Jewish first names were forced to adopt "Israel" (men) or "Sara" (women). It was to identify them.  Wearing the star of David would not be enough.  
  
     Jews couldn't get out of Germany or other sites after 1939, then rounded up to be slaughtered.  The "doors closed" for German Jews to flee in stages, but effectively by late 1941, when Nazi Germany made emigration illegal for Jews still in the country and revoked their citizenship, while other nations had already largely shut their borders due to restrictive immigration policies and economic fears, trapping most remaining Jews inside Nazi-controlled territory for the Holocaust. 
• Invalidation of Passports: Passports of East European Jewish immigrants were invalidated, creating grounds for deportation.
• Physical & Social Separation: Signs forbidding Jews from public spaces like health spas appeared, and the Gestapo (secret police) was established to enforce Nazi rule. 

                                                          Overall Impact

By 1934, the systematic persecution aimed to strip Jews of their rights, property, and presence in German society, creating immense pressure for them to leave the country, though the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 would formalize racial separation even further.  

The Nuremberg Laws   ^ⓘ) were antisemitic and racist laws introduced in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935 at a special session of the Reichstag during the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. The legislation comprised two measures. The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour prohibited marriages and sexual relations between Jews and Germans and barred Jewish households from employing German women under the age of 45. The Reich Citizenship Law restricted citizenship to people of "German or related blood", reducing others to state subjects without full rights.

Jews realized they were doomed, yet developed that optimism of saying it would all blow over and the government would get rid of Nazi power.  Many were older people, not used to change, not ready to pick up and run away, so much like the many Jews of Spain in 1492 who also were threatened and had to hide their Jewish beliefs and meld in with the society as Catholics.  They became today's anusim.  

My uncle Werner was born in 1916 and raised in Westerburg, Hildesheim, Niedersachsen Germany.  He had been picked up by the Gestapo or police and put in Aushwitz for hitting his cow with a stick gently as they walked the dirt path together to the barn.   Luckily, it was at a time before it became the gas chambers;  and though treated horribly, beaten and humiliated as they forced him to eat raw pig meat, his family managed to scrape up all the money they had to get him  out. His passport was issued from Stuttgart.   I think he was the last Jew, boarding a ship on May 4, 1939 from Boppard, Germany.  His whole family, parents, 16 year old red-headed sister, aunts, uncles, all were wiped out. His father had served in the German army in WWI  and was a decorated soldier in the service of the Kaiser, but was forced to scrub the streets because he was a Jew.  Many wore their uniforms while doing this to show people they had been good citizens.  

               The George Washington, Werner's ticket to New York.   They were only able to get him out and he, arriving in New York as a butcher, could not help, either.  Later in life he suffered emotionally from this trauma.                                       

                        This cartoon was from Iran  

Yes, top leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have a well-documented history of denying or casting doubt on the Holocaust. The Iranian regime, under the guidance of its supreme leaders, has used Holocaust denial and distortion as a tool to advance its anti-Israel and anti-Zionist agenda, often framing it as a "fabricated story" or questioning its magnitude. 

Well-known Holocaust deniers include authors and pseudo-historians like David Irving, political figures like Pat Buchanan, notorious white supremacists such as George Lincoln Rockwell, and contemporary figures like B.o.B and Dan Bilzerian, alongside academics who promoted denial, such as Arthur Butz. These individuals, often promoting antisemitic ideologies, spread misinformation claiming the Holocaust didn't happen or was exaggerated, using tactics from campus ads (Bradley Smith) to books. 

• George Lincoln Rockwell: Founder of the American Nazi Party, openly espoused Holocaust denial as part of his racist agenda.
• Pat Buchanan: A political commentator and author who has questioned aspects of the Holocaust narrative.
• Arthur Butz: A professor who wrote The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, a foundational text for modern Holocaust denial.
• Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator whose regime was recently toppled, engaged in Holocaust denial in 2023
• Resource:
  Book: The Holocaust-A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War by Martin Gilbert
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust