1. Holocaust Survivors: Historical Overview
Esther Cohen Hexter
October 12, 2015

2. Jewish Life in Europe 2,000 year history
Since Roman times Jews lived in many cities
Middle Ages Jews were driven from Western Countries,
Invited to Poland by king starting in late 13th century
Rich and varied Jewish culture, religious and communal life throughout

3. Relations with Christian Countries
Much anti-Semitism
Jews victimized by Crusaders in Europe on way to Jerusalem
Jews required to wear special badge or hat
1516 first formal ghetto established in Venice
Modern era Ghetto walls were opened

4. Developments in Germany
Late 19th Century- Racial Supremacy theory; Aryan Race ideal
German defeat in WWI > severe depression
National Socialist Workers Party (Nazi)
Started 1919; anti Jewish planks; Hitler joins
1923 Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle)
1933 Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany
The Holocaust begins

5. European Jewish Population Distribution, ca. 1933
Estimate 9.5 million Jews in Europe
More than 60 % of world's Jewish population, estimated at 15.3 million.
Most Jews in Eastern Europe
About 5 1/2 million lived in Poland & the Soviet Union.
Before Nazi takeover in 1933, Europe had dynamic, diverse & highly developed Jewish culture.
By 1945 most of Europe: conquered, occupied, or annexed by Nazi Germany
Most European Jews--two out of every three--would be dead by 1945.
- based on material from United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

6. European Jewish Population 1933
European Jewish population distribution, circa 1933 —United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

7. Plight of Jews During Holocaust
Some children sent to “safety”:
Starting 1933: 15,000 to Palestine with Youth Aliyah
: 10,000 on Kindertransport to England & 2,000 to Netherlands; 1,000 to United States [50 with Brith Shalom]
Some adults to early German Concentration Camps
Some able to emigrate from Europe – but visas were hard to get
Laws gradually separated Jews from rest of society
Businesses boycotted, synagogues destroyed, people beaten

8. Plight of Jews During Holocaust:
Rounded Up & Deported to 42,000 locations
A few were Hidden by individuals, towns or groups
To Ghettoes
To Forced Labor Camps / Slave Labor Camps
To Concentration Camps
To Death Camps
Death by: Extreme Starvation, Disease, Being Shot by Einsatzgruppen
Death marches back to Germany at end of war

9. HOLOCAUST DEATHS BY COUNTRY
ESTIMATED PRE-WAR JEWISH POPULATION
ESTIMATED JEWISH POPULATION ANNIHILATED
Poland
3,300,000
3,000,000
Baltic countries
253,000
228,000
Germany & Austria
240,000
210,000
Bohemia & Moravia
90,000
80,000
Slovakia
75,000
Greece
70,000
54,000
Netherlands
140,000
105,000
Hungary
650,000
450,000
Byelorussian SSR
375,000
245,000
Ukrainian SSR
1,500,000
900,000
Belgium
65,000
40,000
Yugoslavia
43,000
26,000
Romania
600,000
300,000
Norway
2,173
890
France
350,000
Bulgaria
64,000
14,000
Italy
8,000
Luxembourg
5,000
1,000
Russian SFSR
975,000
107,000
Finland
2,000 22
Denmark 52
TOTALS
8,861,800
5,933,900

10. Surviving Remnant of European Jewry
Very limited revolt of inmates at concentration camps and ghettoes
Concentration Camps in west liberated by allied soldiers – many died of starvation and disease right after liberation
Concentration camps in east liberated by Soviet soldiers
Jews still in hiding come out to freedom

11. Where to Go? Challenges? Free to do what?
Who am I? –then after WWII and now?
With whom? – no family or friends left
Where to live?
Consider political realities at the time
What countries will take you?
How to build new lives?

12. Displaced Persons
Displaced Persons Camps [DP Camps] in Germany, Austria and Italy
Run by UNRAA (U.N. Relief & Rehabilitation Administration) + U.S. Army
Often in former concentration camps
Conditions deplorable
250,000 Jewish Survivors separated into own camps that they begin to run

13. Voices of Survivors at Liberation
"I Alone had Returned"
Shmuel Krakowski, born in Poland in 1926, was deported to Auschwitz and Buchenwald. He describes his feelings after being liberated in Theresienstadt:
"Although we had seen a lot and experienced the worst, we still had hoped, still had dreamed. All those days we had struggled to survive, hour after hour, day after day, there had been no time to grasp the enormity of our tragedy. Now everything became clear. No longer were our families waiting for us; no homes to go back to. For us, the victory came too late, much too late." 
. Kleiman and N. Springer-Aharoni, The Anguish of Liberation, Jerualem: Yad Vashem, 1995, p. 16.

14. Voices of Survivors at Liberation
Yitzhak (Antek) Zuckerman, who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, recalls his emotional state when he was liberated in a town near Warsaw:
  "That day, January 17 [1945], was the saddest day of my life. I wanted to weep, not from joy but from sorrow. I am not saying that I wept, but that I wanted to shed tears – for the first time. The tank crews blowing kisses, the flowers hurled at them, the elation of the crowd, the sense of freedom and liberation, and we – Zivia and I and the dog – standing there among the crowd, lonely, orphaned, lost and only too well aware that there was no longer a Jewish people." 
Return to Life, Beth Hatefutsoth, Ghetto Fighters’ House and Yad Vashem, 1995, p. 13.

15. Wedding Gown Made History in Bergen Belsen Another voice….
   
 Lily & Ludwig Friedman on wedding day.
A wish to be married in white; a worthless parachute…. So goes the story for two residents of Bergen Belsen DP camp. The rest is history. 
Four hundred people marched 15 miles in the snow to the town of Celle on January 27, 1946 to attend Lilly and Ludwig's wedding. The town synagogue, damaged and desecrated, had been lovingly renovated by the DPs with the meager materials available to them.  When a Sefer Torah arrived from England they converted an old kitchen cabinet into a makeshift Aron Kodesh. New generations still wear the same gown.    

16. Where Survivors Live Today
An estimated 189,000 survivors currently live in the State of Israel; about half the number of survivors who arrived since State was founded.
45,000 Holocaust survivors are living in poverty and poor health
46% believe their children and grandchildren will forget the Holocaust after they are gone
Estimated 130,000 survivors live in U.S.
Half living in the U.S.—about 60,000—live in New York City and the three suburban counties.
Many are below the poverty line, suffer from health problems; and often feel lonely and believe that future generations will forget the Holocaust after they are gone 

17. Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, paid tribute to Holocaust survivors he has worked with.
At the UK Commemoration event for HMD [Holocaust Memorial Day] 2013, the retiring Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, paid tribute to the Holocaust survivors he has worked with:
‘Because of their indomitable faith in life itself they married […], had children, grandchildren, and refused to let evil have the final word or the final victory. And so, the survivors became my heroes. And then when they built a life for themselves and often after only fifty years they did look back and they told their stories – taught them to all our children and bore witness so that the world would know these things happened not just through films or books, but through the words of those who were there.’

18. The Challenge is now ours!
To remember
To teach
To say Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead.
To stand up and give help when others need it as so few did for the Jews of Europe