1. Victims of the Holocaust

2. 11 million victims Undesirable because of: Who they were What they did
Approximately 11 million people were killed because of Nazi genocidal policy. It was the explicit aim of Hitler's regime to create a European world both dominated and populated by the "Aryan" race. The Nazi machinery was dedicated to eradicating millions of people it deemed undesirable. Some people were undesirable by Nazi standards because of who they were,their genetic or cultural origins, or health conditions. These included Jews, Gypsies, Poles and other Slavs, and people with physical or mental disabilities. Others were Nazi victims because of what they did. These victims of the Nazi regime included Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, the dissenting clergy, Communists, Socialists, asocials, and other political enemies.
Those believed by Hitler and the Nazis to be enemies of the state were banished to camps. Inside the concentration camps, prisoners were forced to wear various colored triangles, each color denoting a different group. The letters on the triangular badges below designate the prisoners' countries of origin.

3. Jews Boycotted in April 1933 Nuremberg Laws Kristallnacht
6 million Jews killed
The world accessible to German Jews narrowed. Jews were no longer allowed to enter cinemas, theaters, swimming pools, and resorts. The publishing of Jewish newspapers was suspended. Jews were required to carry identification cards and to wear Star of David badges. On one night, Nazis burned synagogues and vandalized Jewish businesses. The arrests and murders that followed intensified the fear Jews felt. Next, Jewish children were barred from schools. Curfews restricted Jews' time of travel and Jews were banned from public places. Germany began to expel Jews from within its borders.
Germany's invasion of Poland in late 1939 radicalized the Nazi regime's policy toward Jews. Hitler turned to wholesale death of the European Jewish population. He swept Jewish populations into ghettos in eastern Europe. Simultaneously, mobile squads killed millions. The next step was to send Jews to squalid concentration and death camps. Approximately six million died for one reason: they were Jewish.

4. Sinti and Roma Nomadic, tribal people
Viewed as asocial and racially inferior
Gypsies is a popular colelctive term use dto refer to an ethnic minority whose members in reality belong to distinctive tribes (name originates because Europeans thought they were from Egypt
They arrived in Europe from northern India in the 1400s
Most gypsies in German-occupied Europe belonged to the sinti and roma tribes (Sinti in Germnay and western Europe and Roma in Austria, eastern Europe, and the Balkans)
The Roma, a nomadic people believed to have come originally from northwest India, consisted of several tribes or nations. Most of the Roma who had settled in Germany belonged to the Sinti nation. The Sinti and Roma had been persecuted for centuries. The Nazi regime continued the persecution, viewing the Roma both as asocial and as racially inferior to Germans. Although the Nuremberg Laws did not specifically mention them, Roma were included in the implementation of the statutes. Like Jews, they were deprived of their civil rights. In June 1936, a Central Office to "Combat the Gypsy Nuisance" opened in Munich. By 1938, Sinti and Roma were being deported to concentration camps.
The fate of the Romani peoples paralleled that of the Jews after the beginning of World War II: systematic deportation and murder. First, western European Roma were resettled in ghettos. Then they were sent to concentration and extermination camps. Many Roma in the east--Russia, Poland, and the Balkans--were shot by the Einsatzgruppen. In total, hundreds of thousands of Sinti and Roma were killed during the Holocaust.

5. Anti-Romani laws started before 1933:
Prohibited travel
Forced-labor camps
“Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Defects”
“Law Against Dangerous Habitual Criminals”
1929 law prohibited gypsies from roaming about or camping in bands, and those “unable to prove regular employment were sent to forced labor camps for up to 2 years
Phsycians sterilized against their will gypsies, part-gypsies, and gypsies in mixed marriages—July 1933
“Law against dangerous Habitual Criminals” –led to imprisonment of prostitutes, beggars, chronic alcoholics, homeless vagrants in concentraiton camps
Gypsies were indirectly considered applicable to Nuremberg race laws of 1935
1936: a Central Office to “combat the gypsy nuisance” opened in Munich---became headquarters of national data bank on gypsies
Gypsies were raided to be remove din time for the summer olympic games

6. First resettled to ghettos By 1938, deported to camps
Roma of Russia, Poland, and Balkans executed by Einsatzgruppen
220, ,000 victims
A group of Romani prisoners, awaiting instructions from their German captors, sit in an open area near the fence in the Belzec concentration camp. Photo credit: Archives of Mechanical Documentation, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives
Romani (commonly but incorrectly called Gypsies) were considered by the Nazis to be social outcasts. Under the Weimar Republic--the German government from 1918 to anti-Romani laws became widespread. These laws required them to register with officials, prohibited them from traveling freely, and sent them to forced-labor camps. When the Nazis came to power, those laws remained in effect--and were expanded. Under the July 1933 sterilization law, many Romani were sterilized against their will.In November 1933, the "Law Against Dangerous Habitual Criminals" was passed. Under this law, the police began arresting Romani along with others labeled "asocial." Beggars, vagrants, the homeless, and alcoholics were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
The Nuremberg racial laws of September 15, 1935, did not specifically mention Romani, but they were included along with Jews and "Negroes" as "racially distinctive" minorities with "alien blood." As such, their marriage to "Aryans" was prohibited. They were also deprived of their civil rights.
By the summer of 1938, large numbers of German and Austrian Romani were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. There they wore black triangular patches (the symbol for "asocials") or green patches (the symbol for professional criminals) and sometimes the letter "Z."
As was the case for the Jews, the outbreak of war in September 1939 radicalized the Nazi regime's policies towards the Romani. Their "resettlement to the East" and their mass murder closely parallel the systematic deportations and killings of the Jews. It is difficult to determine exactly how many Romani were murdered. The estimates range from 220,000 to 500,000.

7. Poles and Slavs
“The destruction of Poland is our primary task. The aim is not the arrival at a certain line but the annihilation of living forces…I have placed my death head formations in readiness…with orders to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space that we need.”
Adolf Hitler
Poles were often mostly roman Catholic—they were sub-humans occupying lands vital to Germany
Poles and Other Slavs
It is often forgotten that Christian Poles and other Slavs, notably Ukrainians and Byelorussians, were also primary targets of Nazi Germany hatred during World War II. To the Nazis, the Slavs were considered Untermenschen,or subhumans, and nothing more than obstacles to gaining territory necessary for the superior German race. This philosophy is apparent in Hitler's statement, "The destruction of Poland is our primary task. The aim is not the arrival at a certain line but the annihilation of living forces...."
The combination of a Nazi genocidal policy and the Nazis' thirst for more living space resulted in disaster for Polish, Ukrainian, and Byelorussian populations. Millions of Slavs were deported to Germany for forced labor. Intelligentsia, consisting of teachers, physicians, clergy, business owners, attorneys, engineers, landowners, and writers, were imprisoned in concentration camps or publicly executed. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians were executed by mobile killing squads, or Einsatzgruppen.
Those who were sent to camps had to wear badges, of course. There was not one badge designation for Poles and other Slavs. Rather, a Polish or Slavic person was categorized as a criminal, asocial, political prisoner, and so on.
Millions upon millions of non-Jews were slaughtered in the Slavic countries.
Further information about the Nazi treatment of the Polish people.

8. Focus on Polish Catholic majority
Mass murders
Confined in prisons and concentration camps
Wanted to prevent polish elites from rising up or regrouping into a governing class
Wanted to exploit the less educated majority of peasants and workers as unskilled laborers in agriculture and society

9. Destruction of Polish culture (Germanization)
Polish children limited to elementary education:
“The sole goal of this schooling is to teach them simple arithmetic, nothing above the number 500; writing one’s name; and the doctrine that it is divine law to obey the Germans…I do not think that reading is desirable”---Himmler
Germans destroyed universities, schools, museums, libraries, and scientific laboratories
Destroyed monuments to national heroes

10. Children were kidnapped and adopted by Germans
SS Lebensborn program
Over 50,000 kids from Poland alone
Lebensborn program “Fount of Life”
4400 kids went through Germanization: went through German names, forbidden to speak polish, reeducated in Nazi institutions, few ever saw their parents again; if determined to be racially unfit, they were killed (phenol injections)
Forced abortions on Polish couples whose children would not result from racially valuable children

11. 6 million Polish “nationals” were killed during the war
Half were Jewish

12. Political Dissidents
In the beginning, most concentration camp inmates were political prisoners
Dachau in particular was a camp for political prisoners
The remnants of the Communist and Socialist parties and members of the trade unions resisted the Nazi regime. Especially in the early years of the Third Reich, political prisoners were a significant portion of the concentration camp inmates. At the end of July 1933, about 27,000 political prisoners were being held in concentration camps in "protective custody." During its twelve year existence, Dachau was always a camp for political prisoners. In 1933, the Roman Catholic Church signed a concordat or agreement with the new Nazi government, recognizing the legitimacy of the Third Reich. The Protestant Church was united into a single Reich Church under one bishop. In September 1933, Martin Niemöller, a pastor of a fashionable church in Berlin, set up a Pastors' Emergency League which led to the formation of the anti-Nazi Confessional Church. This church wrote a memorandum to Hitler attacking the government's anti-Christian campaign, policies of antisemitism, and terrorizing tactics. Hitler responded with a crackdown on members of the Confessional Church. Hundreds of dissenting clergy were arrested, many were imprisoned, and also executed.
Further information about the Nazi treatment of political prisoners and dissenting clergy.

13. Dissenting Clergy
Between , 3,000 Polish clergy were killed in concentration camps
In 1933, the Roman Catholic Church signed a concordat or agreement with the new Nazi government, recognizing the legitimacy of the Third Reich. The Protestant Church was united into a single Reich Church under one bishop. In September 1933, Martin Niemöller, a pastor of a fashionable church in Berlin, set up a Pastors' Emergency League which led to the formation of the anti-Nazi Confessional Church. This church wrote a memorandum to Hitler attacking the government's anti-Christian campaign, policies of antisemitism, and terrorizing tactics. Hitler responded with a crackdown on members of the Confessional Church. Hundreds of dissenting clergy were arrested, many were imprisoned, and also executed.
Further information about the Nazi treatment of political prisoners and dissenting clergy.
Saint Maximillian kolbe
The Priest Barracks of Dachau Concentration (in German Pfarrerblock, or Priesterblock) incarcerated clergy who had opposed the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler. From December 1940, Berlin ordered the transfer of clerical prisoners held at other camps, and Dachau became the centre for imprisonment of clergymen. Of a total of 2,720 clerics recorded as imprisoned at Dachau some 2,579 (or 94.88%) were Roman Catholics. Among the other denominations, there were 109 Protestants, 22 Greek Orthodox, 8 Old Catholics and Mariavites and 2 Muslims. Members of the Catholic Society of Jesus (Jesuits) were the largest group among the incarcerated clergy at Dachau.
Many clergy were imprisoned at Dachau.[19][20] The first Churchman arrived at Dachau in 1935, but from 1940, Dachau became the concentration point for clerical prisoners of the Nazi regime. Prior to this, in the early stages of the camp, the SS had permitted a local priest to say mass on Sundays in the camp, but invented discouragements for prisoners to attend: following the first Catholic mass in July 1933, those who attended were lined in ranks and forced to spit at, then lick at the face of the others lined up, before being beaten. The attendant priest was also humiliated and spied upon, but was permitted to hear confessions – in the presence of an SS guard. Ultimately, the SS scheduled extra work for mass attendees and told the priest that none but two wished to attend mass, at which point the priest ceased to visit.[21]
On 11 December 1935, Wilhelm Braun, a Catholic theologian from Munich, became the first churchman imprisoned at Dachau. The annexation of Austria saw an increase in clerical inmates. Berben wrote: "The commandant at the time, Loritz, persecuted them with ferocious hatred, and unfortunately he found some prisoners to help the guards in their sinister work".[22] Until 1940, clerical prisoners were initially placed in the punishment blocks 15 and 17 upon arrival, where they would remain for a time before being distributed among the other blocks. From December 1940, Berlin ordered that all clergy distributed among the Nazi network of concentration camps were to be transferred to Dachau, whereafter the camp became the gathering place for thousands of clergy of all ranks. Clergymen were transferred from Buchenwald, Gusen, Mathausen and Sachenhausen – though some remained, classed under other categories like "Communist" by the Nazi authorities.[23]
The racial hierarchy of Nazi ideology saw German priests given certain concessions and better treatment than others. With the dire state of Germany's war effort in 1944, German priests were invited to join the armed forces. A few volunteered for the medical corps, most declined and the authorities gave up.[24]
Despite SS hostility to religious observance, the Vatican and German bishops successfully lobbied the regime to concentrate clergy at one camp and obtained permission to build a chapel, for the priests to live communally and for time to be allotted to them for the religious and intellectual activity. Priests were withdrawn from the punishment blocks and gathered in Blocks 26, 28 – and 30, though only temporarily. 26 became the international block and 28 was reserved for Poles – the most numerous group.[25]
A chapel was constructed in Block 26 and the first mass held on 20 January 1941.[26] Two tables were put together to form an altar, and the priests made do with a single vestment and the scant accessories brought by a Polish chaplain from Sachsenhausen. The building improved in October 1941, but the altar and accessories were kept for its symbolic value. By 1944, tabernacle, candelabra, statues and stations of the cross were all present and a range of items scrounged, secretly made or gathered through food parcels. Prisoners of all trades contributed to the construction and upkeep. The tabernacle was originally decorated with metal from food tins, but from 1944 by carved pear wood, behind which stood a crucifix sent by a Munster congregation. A statue of Mary had also been donated at Easter 1943, and placed on a special altar, and dubbed "Our Lady of Dachau". Berben wrote:[27]
The patient work by clergy and lay people alike had in the end achieved a miracle. The chapel was 20 metres long and 9 wide and could hold about 800 people, but often more than a thousand crowded in. The walls were painted with light green crosses alternating with lilies. Special care was taken over the decoration of the east end behind the altar. The windows... had been made to look like stained glass... but in September 1941, when German clergy were separated from the others, the windows looking out on Block 28 were covered in a thick coat of white paint.
— Extract from Dachau: The Official History 1933–1945 by Paul Berben
Non-clerical prisoners were forbidden from the chapel – and barbed wire erected in effort to keep the clerics separate from other prisoners. Friction and jealousies developed among the "ordinary prisoners". The SS continued to harass the chapel going priests – snatching the eucharist, trampling rosaries and medallions. In March 1941, conditions improved again, with easing of work requirements, allowance for meditation, permission to read newspapers and use the library, and the allocation of Russian and Polish prisoners to tend to the priests' quarters. Briefly wine and cocoa were supplied. "It appears that this was due to the intervention of the Vatican", wrote Berben – though the camp guards continued seek to humiliate the priests.[26]
Religious activity outside the chapel was totally forbidden.[28] Non-clergy were forbidden from the sanctuary, and, wrote Berben, the German clergy feared that breaking this rule would lose them their chapel: "the clergy in Block 26 observed this rule in a heartless way which naturally raised a storm of protest. With the Poles in Block 28 it was different: all Christians of whatever nationality were welcomed as brothers and invited to attend the clandestine Sunday masses, celebrated before dawn in conditions reminiscent of the catacombs".[29] Priests would secretly take confessions and distribute the Eucharist among other prisoners.[30]
From March 1943, all priests could officiate at mass, and in 1944, masses were held each Sunday, officiated by all nationalities and the chapel was also used by other denominations.[31] While Catholics could communicate in Latin, the multinational nature of the prison population made communication difficult.
In December 1944, Karl Leisner, a deacon from Münster who was dying of tuberculosis received his ordination at Dachau. Gabriel Piguet, Bishop of Clermont-Ferrand had arrived at the camp in September and was able to organise for the necessary documents. The necessary objects of worship were secretly scrounged, a bishop's cross, mitre, cassock and cape were improvised and Piquet presided at the secret ceremony, enabling Leisner to say his first mass. The new priest died soon after the liberation of the camp.[24]
Treatment of Polish clergy[edit]
The Blessed Antoni Zawistowski was tortured and died at Dachau in Polish clergy were sent to Dachau, and many are remembered among the 108 Polish Martyrs of World War II.
The Nazis introduced a racial hierarchy – keeping Poles in harsh conditions, while favouring German priests.[32] 697 Poles arrived in December 1941, and a further 500 of mainly elderly clergy were brought in October the following year. Inadequately clothed for the bitter cold, of this group only 82 survived. A large number of Polish priests were chosen for Nazi medical experiments. In November 1942, 20 were given phlegmons. 120 were used by Dr Schilling for malaria experiments between July 1942 and May Several Poles met their deaths with the "invalid trains" sent out from the camp, others were liquidated in the camp and given bogus death certificates. Some died of cruel punishment for misdemeanors – beaten to death or run to exhaustion.[33]
Polish priests were not permitted religious activity. Anti-religious prisoners were planted in the Polish block to watch that the rule was not broken, but some found ways to circumvent the prohibition: clandestinely celebrating the mass on their work details. By 1944, conditions had been relaxed and Poles could hold a weekly service. Eventually, they were allowed to attend the chapel, with Germany's hopes of victory in the war fading.[34]
Conditions in the camp[edit]
1942 was a painful year for the inmates of Dachau. Exhausted by forced labour and facing malnutrition, inmates were forced to sweep heavy snow. Hundreds died in Blocks 26, 28 and 30. Clergy – even the younger Germans – were set to work in plantage, clothe repair and some in office work. The arrival of a new commandant improved conditions from August of that year. Food parcels were permitted for clergy – and these came from family, parishioners and church groups, enabling secret distribution to other prisoners, but the relative comfort afforded to the priests angered ordinary prisoners. Some priests distributed their food – others hoarded it. The food parcels ceased in 1944, as Germany's communications decayed in the final stages of the war, though German priests continued to receive extra food tickets.[34]
The clergy were excluded from administrative posts in the camp until 1943 – unsympathetic prisoners were awarded the posts prior to this. From 1943, clergy could work as nurses and provide spiritual aid to the sick – some consequently falling victim to infectious diseases.[35]
According to Ronald Rychlak the clergy prisoners were treated marginally better than other prisoners, however treatment worsened in the wake of Papal or episcopal announcements critical of the Nazi regime, such as Pope Pius XII's 1942 Christmas address. One Easter, the guards marked Good Friday by torturing 60 priests. Tying their hands behind their backs, chaining their wrists, and hoisting them up by the chains – tearing joints apart and killing and disabling several of the priests. The threat of further torture was used to keep the priests obedient. Food was so lacking, that prisoners would retrieve scraps from the compost pile.[36]
An Austrian priest, Andreas Reiser of Dorgastein was imprisoned for putting up a notice at his church which denounced the Nazi system. Sent to Dachau in August 1938, he later wrote of his experience, saying that the prisoners were stripped to the waist, shaven headed and forced to labour through the day. A young SS guard was assigned to torment him and at one point forced Reiser to wrap barbed wire on his head as a "crown of thorns" and carry planks (like Christ "carried the cross"), while Jewish prisoners were forced to spit on him. Dachau was re-opened in 1940, whereupon German priest Fritz Seitz became the first clerical inmate – he was mocked on arrival and told that the Pope would be imprisoned at Dachau at war's end.[22]
In a book about his time at Dachau, Father Jean Bernard of Luxembourg wrote that although forbidden to say mass, priests were brought great comfort through conducting secret Masses, using scraps of bread as communion.[36]
Statistics[edit]
Of a total of 2,720 clergy recorded as imprisoned at Dachau, the overwhelming majority, some 2,579 (or 94.88%) were Catholic. Among the other denominations, there were 109 Evangelicals, 22 Greek Orthodox, 8 Old Catholics and Mariavites and 2 Muslims. In his Dachau: The Official History 1933–1945, Paul Berben noted that R. Schnabel's 1966 investigation, Die Frommen in der Holle found an alternative total of 2,771 and included the fate all the clergy listed, with 692 noted as deceased and 336 sent out on "invalid trainloads" and therefore presumed dead.[37]
Kershaw noted that some 400 German priests were sent to Dachau.[38] Total numbers are difficult to assert, for some clergy were not recognised as such by the camp authorities, and some – particularly Poles – did not wish to be identified as such, fearing they would be mistreated.[30]
Members of the Catholic Society of Jesus (Jesuits) were the largest group among the incarcerated clergy at Dachau
Saints of Dachau[edit]
Among the priest-martyrs who died at Dachau were many of the 108 Polish Martyrs of World War II.[41] The Blessed Gerhard Hirschfelder died of hunger and illness in 1942.[42] The Blessed Titus Brandsma, a Dutch Carmelite, died of a lethal injection in Blessed Alois Andritzki, a German priest, was given a lethal injection in 1943.[43] The Venerable Engelmar Unzeitig, a Czech priest died of typhoid in 1945.[44] The Venerable Giuseppe Girotti died at the camp in April 1945.[45]
Amid the Nazi persecution of the Tirolian Catholics, the Blessed Otto Neururer, a parish priest was sent to Dachau for "slander to the detriment of German marriage", after he advised a girl against marrying the friend of a senior Nazi. He was cruelly executed at Buchenwald in 1940 for conducting a baptism there. He was the first priest killed in the concentration camps.[46]
The Blessed Bernhard Lichtenberg died en route to Dachau in In December 1944, the Blessed Karl Leisner, a deacon from Munster who was dying of tuberculosis received his ordination at Dachau. His fellow prisoner Gabriel Piguet, the Bishop of Clermont-Ferrand presided at the secret ceremony. Leisner died soon after the liberation of the camp.[47]
The 108 Martyrs of World War II, known also as the 108 Blessed Polish Martyrs (Polish: 108 błogosławionych męczenników), were Roman Catholics from Poland killed during World War II by Nazi Germany.
Their liturgical feast day is 12 June. The 108 were beatified on 13 June 1999 by Pope John Paul II in Warsaw, Poland. The group comprises 3 bishops, 52 priests, 26 members of male religious, 3 seminarians, 8 female religious, and 9 lay people. There are two parishes named for the 108 Martyrs of World War II in Powiercie in Koło County, and in Malbork, Poland.[1]
The deathcamp Auschwitz became the killing centre during WWII where the largest numbers of European Jews were murdered by the Nazis. One Christian man who died here became a martyr to the truth of evils of Nazism - a true hero for our time, a saint who lived what he preached, total love toward God and man ...
Maximilian Kolbe was a Polish priest who died as prisoner in Auschwitz, on August 14, When a prisoner escaped from the camp, the Nazis selected 10 others to be killed by starvation in reprisal for the escape. One of the 10 selected to die, Franciszek Gajowniczek, began to cry: My wife! My children! I will never see them again! At this Maximilian Kolbe stepped forward and asked to die in his place. His request was granted ...
One day an SS officer found some of the heaviest planks he could lay hold of and personally loaded them on the Franciscan's back, ordering him to run. When he collapsed, the SS officer kicked him in the stomach and face and had his men give him fifty lashes. When the priest lost consciousness the Nazis threw him in the mud and left him for dead. But his companions managed to smuggle him to the camp infirmary - and he recovered. The doctor, Rudolph Diem, later recalled:'I can say with certainty that during my four years in Auschwitz, I never saw such a sublime example of the love of God and one's neighbor.'
  Auschwitz  Bergen-Belsen  Belzec  Sobibor  Treblinka    
Prisoners at Auschwitz were slowly and systematically starved, and their pitiful rations were barely enough to sustain a child: one cup of imitation coffee in the morning, and weak soup and half a loaf of bread after work. When food was brought, everyone struggled to get his place and be sure of a portion. Father Maximilian Kolbe however, stood aside in spite of the ravages of starvation, and frequently there would be none left for him. At other times he shared his meager ration of soup or bread with others.
In the harshness of the slaughterhouse Father Kolbe maintained the gentleness of Christ. At night he seldom would lie down to rest. He moved from bunk to bunk, saying: 'I am a Catholic priest. Can I do anything for you?' 
A prisoner later recalled how he and several others often crawled across the floor at night to be near the bed of Father Kolbe, to make their confessions and ask for consolation. Father Kolbe pleaded with his fellow prisoners to forgive their persecutors and to overcome evil with good. When he was beaten by the guards, he never cried out. Instead, he prayed for his tormentors. 
Maximilian Kolbe the Saint
A Protestant doctor who treated the patients in Block 12 later recalled how Father Kolbe waited until all the others had been treated before asking for help. He constantly sacrificed himself for the others.
In order to discourage escapes, Auschwitz had a rule that if a man escaped, ten men would be killed in retaliation. In July 1941 a man from Kolbe's bunker escaped. The dreadful irony of the story is that the escaped prisoner was later found drowned in a camp latrine, so the terrible reprisals had been exercised without cause. But the remaining men of the bunker were led out.
'The fugitive has not been found!' the commandant Karl Fritsch screamed. 'You will all pay for this. Ten of you will be locked in the starvation bunker without food or water until they die.' The prisoners trembled in terror. A few days in this bunker without food and water, and a man's intestines dried up and his brain turned to fire.
The ten were selected, including Franciszek Gajowniczek, imprisoned for helping the Polish Resistance. He couldn't help a cry of anguish. 'My poor wife!' he sobbed. 'My poor children! What will they do?' When he uttered this cry of dismay, Maximilian stepped silently forward, took off his cap, and stood before the commandant and said, 'I am a Catholic priest. Let me take his place. I am old. He has a wife and children.'
Astounded, the icy-faced Nazi commandant asked, 'What does this Polish pig want?'
Father kolbe pointed with his hand to the condemned Franciszek Gajowniczek and repeated 'I am a Catholic priest from Poland; I would like to take his place, because he has a wife and children.'
Observers believed in horror that the commandant would be angered and would refuse the request, or would order the death of both men. The commandant remained silent for a moment. What his thoughts were on being confronted by this brave priest we have no idea. Amazingly, however, he acceded to the request. Apparantly the Nazis had more use for a young worker than for an old one, and was happy to make the exchange. Franciszek Gajowniczek was returned to the ranks, and the priest took his place.
Gajowniczek later recalled:
'I could only thank him with my eyes. I was stunned and could hardly grasp what was going on. The immensity of it: I, the condemned, am to live and someone else willingly and voluntarily offers his life for me - a stranger. Is this some dream?
I was put back into my place without having had time to say anything to Maximilian Kolbe. I was saved. And I owe to him the fact that I could tell you all this. The news quickly spread all round the camp. It was the first and the last time that such an incident happened in the whole history of Auschwitz.
For a long time I felt remorse when I thought of Maximilian. By allowing myself to be saved, I had signed his death warrant. But now, on reflection, I understood that a man like him could not have done otherwise. Perhaps he thought that as a priest his place was beside the condemned men to help them keep hope. In fact he was with them to the last.'‘
Franciszek Gajowniczek
Father Kolbe was thrown down the stairs of Building 13 along with the other victims and simply left there to starve. Hunger and thirst soon gnawed at the men. Some drank their own urine, others licked moisture on the dank walls. Maximilian Kolbe encouraged the others with prayers, psalms, and meditations on the Passion of Christ. After two weeks, only four were alive. The cell was needed for more victims, and the camp executioner, a common criminal called Bock, came in and injected a lethal dose of cabolic acid into the left arm of each of the four dying men. Kolbe was the only one still fully conscious and with a prayer on his lips, the last prisoner raised his arm for the executioner. His wait was over ...
A personal testimony about the way Maximilian Kolbe met death is given by Bruno Borgowiec, one of the few Poles who were assigned to render service to the starvation bunker. He told it to his parish priest before he died in 1947:
'The ten condemned to death went through terrible days. From the underground cell in which they were shut up there continually arose the echo of prayers and canticles. The man in-charge of emptying the buckets of urine found them always empty. Thirst drove the prisoners to drink the contents. Since they had grown very weak, prayers were now only whispered. At every inspection, when almost all the others were now lying on the floor, Father Kolbe was seen kneeling or standing in the centre as he looked cheerfully in the face of the SS men.
Father Kolbe never asked for anything and did not complain, rather he encouraged the others, saying that the fugitive might be found and then they would all be freed. One of the SS guards remarked: this priest is really a great man. We have never seen anyone like him ..
Two weeks passed in this way. Meanwhile one after another they died, until only Father Kolbe was left. This the authorities felt was too long. The cell was needed for new victims. So one day they brought in the head of the sick-quarters, a German named Bock, who gave Father Kolbe an injection of carbolic acid in the vein of his left arm. Father Kolbe, with a prayer on his lips, himself gave his arm to the executioner. Unable to watch this I left under the pretext of work to be done. Immediately after the SS men had left I returned to the cell, where I found Father Kolbe leaning in a sitting position against the back wall with his eyes open and his head drooping sideways. His face was calm and radiant ..'
So it was that Father Maximilian Kolbe was executed on 14 August, 1941 at the age of forty-seven years, a martyr of charity. The death certificate, as always made out with German precision, indicated the hour of death
Father Kolbe's body was removed to the crematorium, and without dignity or ceremony was disposed of, like hundreds of thousands who had gone before him, and hundreds of thousands more who would follow.
The heroism of Father Kolbe went echoing through Auschwitz. In that desert of hatred he had sown love. A survivor Jozef Stemler later recalled: 'In the midst of a brutalization of thought, feeling and words such as had never before been known, man indeed became a ravening wolf in his relations with other men. And into this state of affairs came the heroic self-sacrifice of Father Kolbe.' Another survivor Jerzy Bielecki declared that Father Kolbe's death was 'a shock filled with hope, bringing new life and strength ... It was like a powerful shaft of light in the darkness of the camp.'
The cell where Father Kolbe died is now a shrine. Maximilian Kolbe was beatified as Confessor by Paul VI in 1970, and canonized as Martyr by Pope John Paul II in 1981.
But what happened to Gajowniczek - the man Father Kolbe saved?
He died on March 13, 1995, at Brzeg in Poland, 95 years old - and 53 years after Kolbe had saved him. But he was never to forget the ragged monk. After his release from Auschwitz, Gajowniczek made his way back to his hometown, with the dream of seeing his family again. He found his wife but his two sons had been killed during the war. 
Every year on August 14 he went back to Auschwitz. He spent the next five decades paying homage to Father Kolbe, honoring the man who died on his behalf.
VIDEO CLIP 20:16 (10 minutes long)

14. Handicapped
“Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases” (July 1933)
Forced sterilization
300, ,000 were sterilized
Inspired by American efforts: Before Hitler, the US led the world in forces sterilizaitons. Between , more than 30,000 people in 29 states were sterlized, many unknowingly or against their will while incarcerated in prisons or institutiosn for the metnally ill. 50% were done in California. But, no nation took sterilizaiton as far as Hitler’s Germany
Hereditary diseases such as: mental illness, retardation, physical deformity, epilepsy, blindness, deafness, and severe alcoholism
“whereas hereditarily healthy families have for the most part adopted a policy of having only one or two children, countless numbers of inferiors and those suffering from hereditary conditions are reproducing unrestrainedly while their sick and asocial offspring burden the community”
Sterilization methods: vasectomy and ligation of ovarian tubes of women; xrays or radium was used in a few cases. Several thousand people died as a result of the operationsn, especially women
Majority of those targeted were in metnal hospitals or other institutions
Persons with Physical or Mental Disabilities….aimed at Aryan Germans
These people never were assigned a badge because they were rarely sent to concentration camps. Persons with physical or mental disabilities threatened the Nazi plan for human "perfection." In 1934, forced sterilization programs sterilized 300, ,000 people, mainly those in mental hospitals and other institutions. Propaganda was distributed which helped build public support for these government policies. Persons who were mentally ill or physically disabled were stigmatized, while the costs of care were emphasized in propaganda campaigns.
In 1939, a Nazi "euthanasia program" began. This term is used as a euphemism for the Nazi plan to murder those with physical or mental defects. Unlike the sterilization program, the "euthanasia" program was conducted in secrecy. "Operation T4" was the code term used to designate this killing project.
As word leaked out about the "euthanasia" program, some church leaders, parents of victims, physicians, and judges protested the killings. Hitler ordered the end of Operation T4 in August However, the murders continued in a decentralized manner. Doctors were encouraged to kill patients with disabilities by starvation, poisoning, or injection.
Further information about the Nazi treatment of persons with physical or mental disabilities

15. Later, Hitler approved in 1939 euthanasia for the incurable (Operation T4)
Medial experts determine health level
Doomed bused to killing centers
Cremated bodies, falsified death certificates, sent condolences
Cleansing the Aryan race of persons considered genetically defective and a financial burden to society
Economic deprivation during WWI inspired this…during the war, patients in asylums had ranked low on the list for rationing of food and medical supplies, and as a result, many died from starvation or disease. More generally, the war undermined the value attached to individual life and ocmbined with Germany’s humiliating defeat, led many nationalists to consider ways ot regenerate the nation as a whole at the expense of individual rights.
Frees up hospital beds and medical personnel for the war effort
Killed with lethal injeciton or later carbon monoxide gassing
Tiergartenstrasse 4, address of the berlin chancellery offices where the prgram was headquartered
Hartheim Castle, a "euthanasia" killing center where the physically and mentally disabled were killed by gassing and lethal injection. (pic)

16. Over 70,000 killed in the T4 program
Handicapped were viewed as unnecessary costs and damaging to the war effort
Over 70,000 killed in the T4 program
200, ,000 were murdered all together
School math problem: the construction of a lunative asylum costs 6 million marks. How many houses at 15,000 marks each could have been built for that amount
5,000 of them Jews
Stopped in 1941, and gas chambers were sent to be used in killing centers out East (started in 1939, so only 2 years); some of the doctors were also sent out there
200, ,000 were murdered from under all the euthanasia programs
Killing center operators (pic)

17. Jehovah’s Witness
They would not swear allegiance or bear arms for any worldly government
They would not do the hitler salute, they did not vote in elections, they would not join the army or German Labor Front
They also relied on part of the Bible that had Jewish scripture (Old Testament)
Jehovah's Witnesses
In 1933, the Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany totaled about twenty thousand. Although their religious meetings were outlawed after the Nazi rise to power, many continued to practice their religion. In 1934, Jehovah's Witnesses attempted to fend off Nazi attacks by having congregations send letters to the government explaining their beliefs and political neutrality. The Nazis did not tolerate the Jehovah's Witnesses' refusal, which was based on religious principles, to salute flags, to raise their arms to "Heil Hitler,"or to serve in the German army. The group was banned by national law in April Those Witnesses who defied the ban on their activities were arrested and sent to prisons and concentration camps.
Marked with purple triangular badges, the Witnesses were a relatively small group of prisoners in the concentration camps, numbering several hundred per camp. If Jehovah's Witnesses within the camps signed documents renouncing their religious beliefs, they would be freed. Very few, even in the face of torture, signed the declarations. In all, about 10,000 Jehovah's Witnesses were imprisoned in concentration camps. Of these, approximately 2,500 to 5,000 died in Dachau, Belsen, Buchenwald, Auschwitz, and other camps.
Further information about the Nazi treatment of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

18. The religious group was formally banned by 1933
They were harassed and imprisoned
Their children were taken away
Kids harassed at school, sent to reform schools, orphanages, or private homes to be brought up as Nazies

19. Were allowed the opportunity to escape persecution by renouncing religious beliefs
Jehovah’s Witnesses were founded in 1870s America…sent missionaries to Germany to seek converts in the 1890s
By the early 1930s, only 20,000 (of 65 million German people total) in Germany were Jehovah’s Witnesses
Went after their proselytizing activities by charging them with illegal peddling
Jehovah's Witnesses sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp

20. 10,000 were imprisoned during Nazi rule
2,500-5,000 died in camps or prisons
200 were executed after court trials
Most of them were German, but some from a few other countries
Exectued by German War court after refusing military service
Called “175ers” because Paragraph 175 of the law code banned lewd behavior btween two males

21. Homosexuals Deemed “socially aberrant”
By 1933, Hitler banned all homosexual and lesbian organizations
A state policy of persecution of homosexuals began in Germany in Publications by and about homosexuals were prohibited and burned. In 1934, a special Gestapo division on homosexuals was set up. A criminal code relating to homosexuality was amended and made harsher. German police raided gay clubs and bars and made arrests. Some homosexuals spent time in regular prisons, and an estimated 5,000-15,000 were sent to concentration camps. Even within the confines of the camps, homosexuals were mistreated and tormented by other inmates.
The Nazi regime claimed its concern about homosexuality related to keeping the Aryan birthrate high. German and Austrian gays were subject to arrest and imprisonment, but in German-occupied countries, Nazis did not deport homosexuals and send them to camps.
Memorial photographs, Web links, and a bibliography related to homosexual victims of the Third Reich.
An estimated 1.2 million men were homosexuals in Germany in 1928
Between , an estimated 100,000 men were arrested as homosexuals, and of these, some 50,000 officially defined homosexuals were sentenced

22. Viewed as a problem to the German birthrate
They want to increase higher birthrate of the Aryan population

23. 5,000-15,000 were sent to concentration camps “forgotten victims”
Death rate believed to possibly have been as high as 60% but we are unsure
Under the Allied military government of Germany, some homosexuals were forced to serve out their terms of imprisonment, regardless of the time spent in concentration camps. The 1935 version of Paragraph 175 remained in effect in the Federal Republic until 1969, so that well after liberation, homosexuals continued to fear arrest and incarceration.
There was social stigma of homosexuality in Europe and the US in the decades after

24. African-Germans
African-Germans were considered to be part of the “Jews’ secret plan” to destroy the white race
About 500 African children were forcibly sterilized
When the Nazis came to power there were hundreds of African-German children living in the Rhineland. They were the offspring of German mothers and African soldiers brought in during the French occupation. In Mein Kampf,Hitler claimed these children were part of a Jewish plot to begin "bastardizing the European continent at its core." Under the Nazi regime, African-German children were labeled "Rhineland Bastards" and forcibly sterilized.