By Carrell Evans
President of the MonDak Historical & Art Society
Part 2 - The Victims
The victims of the Holocaust were, by definition, Jews; but the handicapped, the old, the Poles, the Gypsies (Roma), the homosexuals, the Jehovah’s Witnesses — and the children, were also victims. The victims were persons residing in Germany or German occupied territories whom the Nazis deemed “sub-human” or “sub-useful.”
At the beginning of the nightmare of the Third Reich, the mentally and physically handicapped who occupied several institutions in Germany, were euthanized and or forcibly sterilized to reduce their drain on time and material resources of the Third Reich as the War was upon Germany. These euthanasia centers later provided the scientific resources for the mass murders in the killing centers throughout Europe.
The Gypsies (Roma) were considered lazy and of no use to the Third Reich. Along with the Jews, the Slavs (Poles and others), the homosexuals and the blacks, they were considered a possible threat to the pure Aryan blooded citizens and were victimized for these reasons. Hitler wrote, “All who are not of a good race are chaff.”
The Jehovah Witnesses were viewed as a political threat to the Nazis because they would not swear allegiance to the Fuhrer and the Third Reich. Most of these victims and political dissidents were sent to labor and concentration camps where many died of starvation and brutality.
The Nazis first attempted to push the Jews out of Germany in mass emigration edicts, following the revocation of their citizenship, their rights and confiscation of their property in the mid 1930's. Following the unopposed accession of the Austria (pre-World War II), and after the start of World War II, begun with the invasion of Poland and the subsequent invasions of Poland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Hungary and other countries, the Nazis again acquired not only the Jews they had forced to leave Germany, but also the Jewish citizens of the conquered territories.
To control the Jews, the Nazi German government started the systematic reduction of their living spaces, and squeezed millions of Jews into ghettos (small sections within cities) located mostly in Poland, where lack of food and sanitation took great tolls on the populations. As the war was ending and Germany faced defeat, the ghettos were emptied and the transports to the concentration camps and ultimately to the killing centers began in earnest.
The children of all these groups of victims became the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. There was no reason to kill children, yet 1.5 million Jewish children and unknown numbers of other little ones died in their hometowns, died in the ghettos, died in the camps and died in the gas chambers. They died of starvation. They died of forced labor and beatings. They died of medical experimentations. They were murdered with guns and poison gases.
By the end of World War II, six million Jews, the largest single victim group, and about five million other victims in Europe’s populations were decimated by the murderous actions of the Nazis and their collaborators. How can prejudice and hatred develop to such a catastrophic end? |
