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    Ritvik Chaturvedi
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    Between 1941-1945, the Nazi German regime systematically murdered approximately 6 million European Jews - around two-thirds of the Jewish population at the time. Jews were segregated into ghettos and concentration camps were built, where many died from starvation, disease, forced labor, or were murdered in gas chambers. Extermination camps like Auschwitz had gas chambers and crematoria that could kill thousands of people per day. Survivor testimony describes the horrific conditions and mass killings that took place during the Holocaust. Seventy-five years later, it remains crucial to educate younger generations and not forget the lessons of this dark period in history.

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    Between 1941-1945, the Nazi German regime systematically murdered approximately 6 million European Jews - around two-thirds of the Jewish population at the time. Jews were segregated into ghettos and concentration camps were built, where many died from starvation, disease, forced labor, or were murdered in gas chambers. Extermination camps like Auschwitz had gas chambers and crematoria that could kill thousands of people per day. Survivor testimony describes the horrific conditions and mass killings that took place during the Holocaust. Seventy-five years later, it remains crucial to educate younger generations and not forget the lessons of this dark period in history.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    26 views4 pages

    The Holocaust

    Uploaded by

    Ritvik Chaturvedi
    Between 1941-1945, the Nazi German regime systematically murdered approximately 6 million European Jews - around two-thirds of the Jewish population at the time. Jews were segregated into ghettos and concentration camps were built, where many died from starvation, disease, forced labor, or were murdered in gas chambers. Extermination camps like Auschwitz had gas chambers and crematoria that could kill thousands of people per day. Survivor testimony describes the horrific conditions and mass killings that took place during the Holocaust. Seventy-five years later, it remains crucial to educate younger generations and not forget the lessons of this dark period in history.

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    of 4

    WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS GRAPHIC DETAIL AND PICTURE THAT AREN’T FOR

    THE FAINT-HEARTED

    The Holocaust
    -​Ritvik Chaturvedi

    It’s one thing to read about hate, another to hear about it but to immerse yourself completely
    into a time when it flowed unchallenged; its a greater lesson.

    Between 1941 and 1945 across German-occupied Europe, the Germans under Hitler
    systematically murdered “some” six million jews- two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population. The
    Germans carried violent riots aimed at the persecution of jews and mass shootings policy
    extermination through work which was a method of killing prisoners by forced labour, gas
    chambers and gas vans.

    Extermination camps like Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor being set up in
    German-occupied Poland following Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor in 1933. The regime built
    a network of concentration camps in Germany for the “undesirable”.

    Jewish businesses and other buildings were ransacked, smashed or set on fire “Night of Broken
    Glass”. After Germany invaded Poland which triggering World War II, segregation of Jews in
    ghettos culminated in the policy called “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”. Paramilitary
    death squads “Einsatzgruppen” murdered around 1.3 million Jews in mass shootings and
    pogroms in the span of 4 years between 1941 and 1945.
    Victims deported across Europe in sealed freight trains to extermination camps where they were
    killed, worked to death or gassed which continued till early 1945

    Concentration camps were first used as places of


    unlawful incarceration of political opponents and other
    “enemies of the state”, the Jews weren’t sent until late
    1939. After 1942, Forced labour of camp prisoners
    became commonplace. Guards became more brutal,
    not only beating and starving the prisoners but also
    killed them frequently; the death rate increased.

    It was estimated that the average prisoner’s lifespan in


    a camp was at max 3 months, as a lack of food and
    clothing, constant epidemics and punishments for the
    most minor transgressions; often exposed to dangerous
    materials during their shifts.

    Zyklon B, a cyanide-based pesticide invented in


    Germany consisted of hydrogen cyanide. First used in
    California as a pesticide, later being banned in the
    World War 1. It interferes with cellular respiration, a set
    of metabolic reactions to in cells to convert chemical
    energy into ATP. The death occurred in humans (68 kg)
    within two minutes of inhaling it.

    The final solution would encompass the 11 million Jews living not only in territories controlled by
    Germany, but elsewhere in Europe and adjacent territories, such as Britain, Ireland,
    Switzerland, Turkey, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, and Hungary.

    At the end of 1941 in occupied Poland, germans


    began building additional camps or expanding existing
    ones, “new facilities” had been installed. In a span of
    1 year from October 1941 when of the expansion of
    the first camp began till October 1942 about
    3,218,000 deaths were recorded and a total of about
    11 million over the span of the Hitler’s regime.

    In Auschwitz, about 20 per cent of Jews were


    selected to work. Those selected for death at all
    camps were told to undress and hand their valuables
    to the camp workers. To prevent panic, they were told
    the gas chambers were showers or delousing
    chambers, removing lice form.
    After being filled, the doors were shut and pellets of
    Zylon B were dropped.
    All died within 20 minutes. “Shouting and screaming
    of victims could be heard through the opening and it
    was clear that they fought for their lives.

    Then, workgroups of Jewish prisoners consisting of


    children who were below the age of being classified
    as a teenager- carried out the bodies, removed
    jewellery, artificial limbs and glasses.
    Bodies were buried in deep pits covered with lime but
    later were dug up and burnt to accommodate the
    growing numbers. The body was burned in open fire
    pits and the remaining bones crushed into powder.

    PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

    “Auschwitz was hell, prisoners arrived at the peak of midnight and they could smell the fear.
    Immediately going in for selections, an officer looked at you and sent you to the left or the right.
    Left for living and right for gas. I knew that our mother... because she didn’t come to the left she
    went to the right.​ ​But after the war, I sort of hoped that maybe she was in some displaced
    persons’ camp. You know, that she wasn’t dead. That somehow, by a miracle, she escaped.
    Day to day life someone - one just took every day as it came.
    Paradoxically, I got acquainted with cultural life in Terezin. You know, music, there were, of
    course, all of the well-known actors, musicians, writers, professors were also in camp. So there
    was a rich cultural and intellectual life, as far as it was possible.”

    “Usually, when people have to deny something, it’s because they have to deny something
    because he’s a nasty man and he doesn’t want to feel nasty so he has to deny that anybody -
    you know, he perhaps would have like to do it himself. This is how I understand when people
    have to deny the horrors. But, when I studied psychology, I understood that when things are so
    outside human experience, you really can’t believe it.”
    “And, although the Germans were able to take away all my physical - almost everything, except
    my life, they left me alive. But, you know, whatever could be removed from my body, they
    removed from my body - they couldn’t remove my soul. My soul, they couldn’t remove my
    integrity, my inner-self. That I managed to maintain. All of us have, you know, all of us have the
    capacity to be sadistic and horrible to other people. We manage to not do it, you know, but the
    potential for destructiveness is in all of us.”

    “Hatred hatred hatred hatred that's all it is. Guard came over and told the woman to put the baby
    down go to the other side. Well, you can imagine a mother wouldn't do it they tried to rip that
    baby out of their hands if that sometimes they didn't succeed they shot the baby shut the child.”

    “They told them they're going into the showers but of course there was no showers it was a
    building you see and they packed them into that building close to the door and then they killed
    them. It just breaks my heart.”

    “so please never forget whatever happened.”

    75 years after the Holocaust the younger generations with their phones forget our harsh pasts
    including many others and become indulged in themselves and forget that the life they are living
    is actually outside of them. We as humans are identified by our past, and this is one we cannot
    forget. People who managed to survive this very Holocaust did so with a hope inside of them, of
    which is deprived in the generation today. With the ongoing pandemic, we must revive this spirit
    of hope and the will to live every moment inside of us and collectively work towards a better
    future not for ourselves but for the society far and wide.

    “It’s not what you take but leave behind.”

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