Pictures

When U.S. and British soldiers entered the Nazi concentration camps at liberation, they brought camera crews with them. These crews were the first to document the horrors of the camps. In this photo, taken April 17, 1945, U.S. soldiers walk across the grounds of the Nordhausen concentration camp, past row upon row of corpses. Nordhausen was a subcamp of the concentration camp Dora-Mittelbau.

Holocaust Survivors

"Jewish prisoners at Buchenwald Concentration Camp in Germany." Gale World History in Context. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Gale World History In Context. Web. 12 Aug. 2011.



"Dachau." Europe Since 1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction. Ed. John Merriman and Jay Winter. Vol. 2. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2006. 763-766. Gale World History In Context. Web. 12 Aug. 2011.

 

"Holocaust Survivors." Gale World History in Context. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Gale World History In Context. Web. 12 Aug. 2011.

 

 

The Ending

The Holocaust ended in 1944 and 1945, when the Allied armies began to liberate the concentration camps one by one from July 1944 on. The Allied forces defeated and occupied Nazi Germany and took control of the country. They liberated the camps, one by one, from July 1944 onwards. For most it was too late: the victims were dead. Hitler committed suicide and after his death many leading Nazis and war criminals went into hiding for fear of punishment. The Allies defeated Nazi Germany, and that ended the Holocaust. There were no Allied actions that specifically targeted the Holocaust.

 

HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY (Heb. יוֹםהַשּׁוֹאָה; Yom ha-Sho'ah). In a resolution passed by the Knesset (April 12, 1951) the 27^th day of Nisan was proclaimed as "Holocaust and Ghetto Uprising Remembrance Day – a day of perpetual remembrance for the House of Israel." This date was chosen because it falls between that of the *Warsaw Ghetto uprising (which began on the first day of Passover) and the Israel War of Independence Remembrance Day (on Iyyar 4), and also because it occurs during the traditional mourning of the Counting of the Omer. The Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Law of *Yad Vashem (1953) determined that one of the tasks of the Yad Vashem Authority is to inculcate in Israel and its people awareness of the day set aside by the Knesset as Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day. On March 4, 1959, the Knesset passed the Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day Law, which determined that tribute to victims of the Holocaust and ghetto uprising be paid in public observances. An amendment to the law (1961) required that places of entertainment be closed on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day. Outside Israel, however, Holocaust Remembrance Day is usually celebrated on April 19, the day on which the Warsaw Ghetto uprising broke out according to the civil calendar. The rabbinate in Israel has ruled Tevet 10 as the Day of Kaddish on which persons commemorate the Yahrzeit ("memorial anniversary") of relatives, victims of the Holocaust, whose date of death is unknown, with prayer and study.

Eck, Nathan, and Michael Berenbaum. "Holocaust Remembrance Day." Encyclopaedia Judaica. Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. 2nd ed. Vol. 9. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. 495. Gale World History In Context. Web. 12 Aug. 2011.



"The Hall of Remembrance at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum." Encyclopaedia Judaica. Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. 2nd ed. Vol. 9. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. Gale World History In Context. Web. 12 Aug. 2011.

 

 

"Dachau." Europe Since 1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction. Ed. John Merriman and Jay Winter. Vol. 2. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2006. 763-766. Gale World History In Context. Web. 12 Aug. 2011

Concentration Camps

Almost approximately 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, more than half were systematically exterminated in the highly rationalized gas chamber/crematorium system of the Nazi Death Camps between 1942 and 1945. The names of Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, Chelmno, Sobibor, Belzek and Majdanek are indelibly stamped on history. Following the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, January 20, 1942, the "Final Solution" was an official policy and a major obsession of the Nazi regime. It was at that point that camps were constructed for the express purpose of rational mass extermination, principally of Jews, but of other groups as well. Almost immediately following his rise to power, Hitler began the creation of concentration camps. Initially these were designed to incarcerate political prisoners (enemies of the regime), criminals and security risks. While conditions were, predictably, horrible in these camps, and while the death rates were high, there is no evidence that they were used for extermination purposes. By the late 1930s there were literally hundreds of camps scattered throughout Germany and with the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, Holland and France, camps were established throughout the Reich. The death rates were so high, from malnutrition, typhus and exhaustion that the disposal of corpses became a serious problem. In Dachau, one of the largest camps in Germany proper, crematoria were constructed for disposal of corpses. There was also a gas chambers constructed at Dachau; however, there is no evidence to this point that they were ever used for extermination. Presumably, the crematoria displayed on the left were used for disposing of the corpses of those who perished from other causes. There were other execution devices at Dachau, such as a gallows, and presumably prisoners were executed and disposed of there.