Childrens Illustrated Encyclopedia

259

Ghettos

In Warsaw and other east european cities

occupied by the Germans after 1939, Jews

were herded into ghettos. these ghettos

were isolated from the rest of the city and

their inhabitants denied proper food or

medical care. In 1943 the Germans

attacked the Warsaw ghetto in order to

kill everyone inside. the Jews fought back,

but by 1945 only about 100 of the original

500,000 inhabitants were still alive.

the “fInal solutIon”

after the invasion of Poland in 1939

and Russia in 1941, the number

of Jews under German rule

increased. at a conference at

Wannsee, Berlin, in 1942, the

nazis decided on what they

called the “final solution”:

to kill all Jews in specially-

built extermination

camps. these included

auschwitz and treblinka in

Poland, and Belsen, Dachau,

and Buchenwald in Germany.

yelloW staR

after 1941, Jews over the

age of six in German-

occupied europe were

required to sew a yellow

star on to their clothes.

this made it easy to

identify them. Jews were

also made to wear yellow

stars in the camps.

ResIstance

Many Jews resisted the nazis, by

attacking German forces and

supplies. Both the hungarian and

Italian governments, although

German allies, at first refused to

hand over their Jews, while the

swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg

helped many Jews escape to sweden

in 1944. Most famously, German

businessman oscar schindler saved

about 1,200 Jews from death, by

giving them essential war work in

his munitions factory.

anne fRank

In order to escape the nazis,

many european Jews went into

hiding. thirteen-year-old anne

frank and her family hid for

two years in the back attic of a

house in amsterdam, holland.

In 1944, they were betrayed

and sent to a concentration

camp, where anne died of

typhus in 1945, aged 16. While

in hiding, anne kept a diary of

daily events and her hopes for

the future. Published in 1947,

her diary was translated into

more than 50 languages.

In 1933, aDolf hItleR’s nazI PaRty came to power in Germany. the nazis

were deeply anti-semitic (prejudiced against Jews) and began to attack German

Jews. at first they rounded up Jews and sent them to labor or concentration camps,

together with other people the nazis did not like, such as gypsies, homosexuals,

and communists. Jews in German-occupied europe were forced into

ghettos (closed-off areas of a city) or shot. In 1942, the nazis

decided to kill all european Jews in an act of genocide (the

deliberate extermination of an entire people). no one

knows how many were murdered in death camps, such as

auschwitz and treblinka, but more than six million Jews

lost their lives before the end of World War II. this

terrible event in human history is called the holocaust.

Jewish

Museum,

Berlin

Gates to Auschwitz

THE HOLOCAUST

1933 hitler’s nazi Party

takes power in Germany.

1935 nuremberg laws

forbid marriage between

Jews and non-Jews.

1937 Jewish businesses

confiscated.

1938 the night of Broken

Glass (9-10 november);

synagogues, stores and

homes destroyed.

1942 “final solution”

begins.

1943 Jews in the Warsaw

ghetto wiped out.

1945 concentration

camps liberated.

1948 Israel founded.

coMMeMoRatIon

after the war, the united

nations tried to repay the

Jews for their suffering by

creating a Jewish homeland—

Israel—in Palestine in 1948.

holocaust museums have

been opened in Berlin and

elsewhere. Many countries

have an official holocaust

commemoration day on

January 27—the anniversary

of the liberation of auschwitz,

the first camp to be freed.

Holocaust

Israel

Judaism

World war ii

Find out more

Oscar

Schindler

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