One of the most monstrous manifestations of Hitler’s activity and his ideology was the Holocaust - the mass persecution and extermination of European Jews from 1933 to 1945. This was an unprecedented example of the annihilation in history along with the genocide of Armenians in the early 20th century in the Ottoman Empire. January 27, Holocaust Remembrance Day, was associated with the first release of one of the Auschwitz camps.
The goal is to destroy
The main goal set by Hitler's henchmen and the authors of the solution of the Jewish question was the purposeful extermination of a particular nation. As a result, up to 60% of European Jews died, which amounted to approximately a third of the total Jewish population. According to various sources, up to 6 million people were killed. Liberation came only in 1945, January 27. International Holocaust Remembrance Day combines the memory of not only the dead Jews.
In a broader sense, the Holocaust as a phenomenon of Nazi Germany involves the destruction of other national, homosexual minorities, hopelessly sick, as well as medical experiments. These terms began to designate, in principle, all criminal acts and the ideology of fascism. In particular, up to a third of the total Roma population was exterminated. Excluding military losses, about ten percent of Poles and about three million prisoners of war of the Red Army were exterminated.
Death machine
In the massive “purge” of human resources, key attention was also paid to patients. The mentally ill and disabled were subjected to mass extermination. They also included homosexuals, of whom nine thousand were destroyed. In addition to extermination, the Holocaust system involved the continuous improvement of the extermination system. This also includes inhuman medical experiments that were put on prisoners by doctors and scientists of the Wehrmacht.
Truly the “industrial” scale of the extermination of people continued until the invasion of the Allied forces on German territory. In this regard, January 27, Memorial Day for the victims of Nazism, united all the human victims of targeted extermination within the framework of the created camp system.
Hebrew term
Jews themselves are much more likely to use another term - the Shoa, which refers to the policy of the Nazis for the purposeful destruction of the people and translates as disaster or disaster. It is considered a more correct term than the Holocaust. This term combines all those who lived in the occupied territories and died during mass shootings, in camps, prisons, ghettos, shelters and forests, while trying to resist, as a participant in partisan, underground movement, during rebellions or while trying to escape, crossing the border, was killed by the Nazis or their supporters. The Hebrew word turned out to be as capacious as possible and included all the representatives of the nation who died from the Nazi regime, and also went through terrible torment of captivity and camps, but still survived. For all of them, January 27, Holocaust Remembrance Day, is a landmark, historical milestone that the Jewish people are unlikely to ever forget.
Figures of death and life
Immediately after the war, the first figures began to appear, reflecting the monstrous atrocities of the Third Reich in Europe and Russia. So, according to the earliest estimates, seven thousand camps and ghettos were organized to realize various goals in relation to “inferior” people — using as a slave force in construction and production facilities, isolating, punishing, destroying. Among the inferior, besides the Jews, were Slavs, Poles, Gypsies, insane, homosexuals, terminally ill. At the beginning of the 21st century, it was officially announced that the Nazis created about twenty thousand such institutions. Such findings during the research were made by the staff and scientists of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, which is located in Washington. Ten years later, the same museum announced that it had found new locations for such death camps, which, according to their estimates, in Europe were about 42.5 thousand.
Difficulties in identifying victims
As you know, after the war ended, the world community described the actions of the Nazis as a crime against peace and humanity and decided to judge those who remained. At the famous Nuremberg trials, which lasted more than ten days, the official at that time the number of Jews killed was announced - 6 million. However, this figure, of course, does not reflect reality, since there is no named list of the dead. As the Soviet and Allied forces approached, the Nazis destroyed any traces that could shed light on the truth. In Jerusalem, at the National Holocaust and Heroism Memorial, there is a roll-call list of identified four million. But the difficulties in calculating the true number of victims are explained by the fact that the Jews killed on the territory of the Soviet Union could not be counted, since everyone passed under the heading "Soviet citizen." In addition, there were many deaths in Europe, which there was no one to fix.
When calculating the summary data, scientists use the information from censuses made before and after the war. According to these data, 3 million Jews died in Poland, the USSR - 1.2 million, Belarus - 800 thousand, Lithuania and Germany - 140 thousand each, Latvia - 70 thousand, Hungary - 560 thousand, Romania - 280 thousand. , The Netherlands - 100 thousand, in France and the Czech Republic - 80 thousand each, in Slovakia, Greece, Yugoslavia, 60 to 70 thousand people were destroyed. No matter how difficult the calculations are, for anyone who honors the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the briefly voiced Nazi atrocities are a crime against humanity.
Auschwitz
One of the most famous and terrible death camps. Although the Nazis kept fairly strict records of prisoners, there is no consensus on the number of victims. The world process called a figure of 4 million people, SS men who worked in the camp called 2-3 million, various scholars call it 1 to 3.8 million. The liberation of this particular camp was designated January 27, the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The camp, known in world practice as Auschwitz, was organized not far from the Polish city of Auschwitz. From 1941 to 1945, 1.4 million people were killed on its territory, of which 1.1 million were Jews. This camp lasted the longest and went down in history as a symbol of the Holocaust. Two years after the end of the war, a museum was organized here, which became part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Since this was the first camp that was liberated during the defeat of the fascist troops, it became the quintessence of cruelty, inhumanity, true hell on Earth. By decision of the UN, January 27, the day of remembrance of the victims of the genocide of World War II, became an international day of remembrance.
Three steps to resolve the Jewish question
At the international tribunal in Nuremberg, it was said that the solution of this issue was divided into three stages. Until 1940, Germany and its occupied regions were cleansed of Jews. Until 1942, work was carried out to concentrate the entire Jewish population in Poland and Eastern Europe, under German control. Then they were formed throughout the eastern territory of the ghetto, where they were isolated. The third period lasted until the end of the war and involved the complete physical extermination of the Jews. The order for the final resolution of the issue was signed directly by Heinrich Himmler himself.
Before the destruction, it was planned, in addition to being placed in the ghetto, to separate them from another population, the so-called segregation, and also provided for a complete exclusion from public life, confiscation of their property and bringing the Jews into a state where the possibility of survival would be ensured only by slave labor. The memory of these crimes is contained in the events held on January 27. Memorial Day is dedicated not only to those who died, but, perhaps, primarily to those who, at the cost of incredible efforts, could survive.
Date determination
It is worth noting that the International Holocaust Remembrance Day was not immediately indicated in the world war chronicle. The date was approved by a separate UN resolution, which was adopted on November 1, 2005. Then the special meeting of the UN General Assembly dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the liberation began with a moment of silence. The meeting was attended by the country that became the source of the monstrous catastrophe of European Jewry. Democratic Germany, its representative said then, had learned from the dangerous and monstrous mistakes of its past, the methods of governing an incorrect, erring leadership. It is for this country that January 27, Holocaust Remembrance Day in Germany, the annual ceremonies on this occasion are a constant reminder of mistakes. However, the German people understand their responsibility to these people and do not consciously obscure their past. In 2011, this day for the first time included the mention of Gypsies as victims of genocide.
The upbringing of the young generation
The perfect atrocities of man against man remain forever in the history and memory of mankind. However, there are such crimes, the reminder of which should be repeated from time to time in order to prevent, protect, warn. Such a crime is the systematic destruction by the Nazis of all those whom they considered lower races and not deserving of the right to life. For a better study of this period, schools conduct open lessons with a demonstration of documentary chronicles, including filming by the Nazis themselves in camps and in mass executions.
“January 27 is Holocaust Remembrance Day” - a class hour with this name is held in many Russian and European schools. These lessons explain in detail the origin of the word and its meaning. In particular, the word has a Greek biblical root, which means “burnt offering”. In the lessons, students are shown monstrous slides with photos flying around the world after an international tribunal, the meaning of the international tragedy associated with the Holocaust is consolidated.
Light wedged together
The first question that arises when studying the Holocaust is why the Jewish people caused such hatred? Why did the Jews become the main goal of the program for the destruction of humanity? There are no unequivocal answers to these questions to this day. One of the common versions is that at that time anti-Semitism was characteristic of the mass consciousness of the Germans, which Hitler managed to inflate to incredible proportions. That is why, hiding behind a common interest, he managed to realize his goals of destruction.
Another reason for the connivance of the German people is that the property taken from the Jews after Kristallnacht in November 1938 was transferred to ordinary Germans. Among other reasons, the struggle for their property and for the leading positions that Jews held in society is called one of the most probable. However, apart from this, Hitler’s rhetoric was led by racial superiority. And everyone who, according to his theory, was worse than the Aryans in terms of signs that were understood only by supporters of this idea, needed to be destroyed. And January 27, Holocaust Remembrance Day, is that regular reminder of what Orthodox worship and submission to any idea can bring.
International Day of Suffering
Despite an understanding of the international character of the tragedy, for more than half a century there has not been a single memorial day for the victims of those terrible events. And only in 2005 it was decided to choose the date, which was the day of the liberation of the first Auschwitz camp - January 27. Holocaust Remembrance Day, however, is celebrated on some dates in some countries. In Hungary, the day of the mass migration of Hungarian Jews to the ghetto was chosen on this day - April 16, 1944. The period of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, which took place in January 1943 and was crushed, was elected as a memorable date in Israel. According to the Hebrew calendar, this is Nisan Day 27. According to the Gregorian calendar, this date coincides with the period from April 7 to May 7. In Latvia, a memorial day was elected on July 4, when in 1941 all synagogues were burnt. On October 9, 1941, the mass deportation of Romanian Jews began. This became the date of the Holocaust in Romania. Holocaust Remembrance Day in Germany is celebrated, as elsewhere in the world, on January 27th.