Yad Vashem has put up the coolest interactive map of the six extermination centers and concentration camps. You can click on any location and read all about that particular place.
Map
Grant- I didn't know that Mussolini had a concentration camp, much less fifteen!
Justin- I didn't realize that either. It's interesting how almost all were foreign-born Jews and not Italians.
Artwork
Grant- It's easy to forget that the refugees endured a horrible experience in the Holocaust as well as the victims. Their pain was psychological.
USHMM
Ashlee- It is unbelievable how organized things were. They spent so much time with the little details. The gas chambers took a lot of time to build.
Madison- It's shocking to think of all this happening. The attention to detail, the fact that they made fellow Jews clean up the bodies, the roll camp, the camps, the gassing... It leaves me speechless. It's hard to believe that soldiers supported this. Where is the line that defines just doing your job and having a heart?
Kelsey- All of these men have shaved heads. I can't even imagine that much hair in one place. What does 30,000 heads of hair look like?
Olivia- These pictures really illustrate how they stripped the Jews of EVERYTHING. Like Madison said, the children one is absolutely heartbreaking, but the one that got me the most is probably the one with the women. Shaving a woman's hair is somewhat like taking her dignity.
Walker- Another thing that is ironic is that they were making the guns that could possible be the death of them. However, this awful work could also save them if they were capable of doing it.
Sierra- It's crazy because of the time it took to build the camps. They took so much time building these for people who will end up dead and then they would have no use.
Walker- So many men arrested during Kristallnacht, can you imagine the feeling of your country turning on you?
Dachau was the first concentration camp to be established. This is aerial footage of Dachau taken by liberators.
Dachau
Concentration camps
Becca- The first thing Greenberg said was "We really expected to die." She talks about people writing on the walls "tell others to remember us." This whole testimony was heart-breaking!
Sarah- The amount of people killed in those death camps was startling. To know that 875,000 Jews were killed by 150 people is upsetting.
Kylee- The picture of the Hungarian children walking to a gas chamber is so sad. It is impossible for me to understand how they felt at that time.
Agustina- I think it is incredible the way she describes the odor that burning human flesh would produce. It doesn't get any more real. To imagine that-- it's crazy.
Sierra- The description of burning flesh sounds unimaginably horrid. I wonder if the Nazis ever truly got used to it or if it haunted them.
Kelsey- If I think of the most I've ever suffered, it doesn't compare to this suffering. If I recall screams that I've heard, the anguish doesn't come close to what must have been in these. How could this happen to human beings?
Grant- Beyond the obvious horror of the pain, death by burning seems to strip even another piece of dignity from someone. Witches are burned, heretics are burned. Children are not. I think something to take from that is that (and it sounds obvious, but...) responsible institutions don't execute people through torture. The witches and heretics burnt in the past were killed for no reason and obviously the children deserved none of it.
Abigel- I can't imagine being so close to someone who was alive among all of the dead ones and not being able to help them. I would rather be one of the dead instead of the person moving them. I would not want to live through something like that. Absolutely terrifying.
This is a very informative link to the "Auschwitz Alphabet". Lots of really valid information.
Auschwitz Alphabet
Olivia- The ordnungsdienst reminds me a lot of the Judenrate. It seems so cruel. It kind of amazed me that they lost the necessity of being clean. I can't imagine not wanting to be clean. It makes me cringe to think of how helpless they must have felt being clothed in nothing, but their misery.
Walker- The Nazis absolutely humiliated them. They not only stripped them of their clothes, but also of their dignity. It is crazy to think that this woman made a makeshift belt and she was the happiest woman there.
One especially tragic story comes out of Terezín. The Opera of Children Going to the Gas, Brundibar, the Organ Grinder, was performed for camp inmates. Seizing an opportunity for a massive propaganda campaign, the Germans also had the Opera moved to a nearby theater and performed for the International Red Cross. The Red Cross workers were impressed, and shortly thereafter the camp commander ordered the entire cast and crew to the gas chambers.
(fcit.edu)
NPR presentation
Victoria- This is so powerful. Especially in how it was used during WWII. I'm also glad the producers decided to bring it back into modern times. It stands for something beautiful regardless of the time period it's being performed in.
Melissa- I agree with Victoria, that it is extremely powerful. I also feel that the "remake" of it being performed in a fantastical sense amplifies the Holocaust in a way. That this simple plotline of innocence conquers evil and oppression could be accurately portrayed by children and that the audience would be seeing this as a last performance gives it an underlying fantastical meaning. The final element that stood out to me was the end. The open-ended lines "I will not go far, for I am Brundibar" then the victory song ensued. I find it immensely powerful and awe-filled that the opera ended in such a way that though it concluded there was still the lurking Brundibar and the line "I will not go far" and then it was stated that it did not truly end. I find it haunting.
Other comments about other documents:
Sarah- I thought Alice Lok's experience with the gas chambers was chilling. You rarely ever hear stories of someone actually having been in a gas chamber with the gas going and living to tell the tale.
Melissa- I didn't even need to read the passage to know how it would impact me. All I saw was the quote from Michael Vagel and it encompasses the feelings these people had to conceal for the sake of their lives. They were never able to grieve for lost ones or simply take a moment to think of what they must endure on a day to day basis. The work was insufferable and the living conditions rotten. With these conditions physically, mentally, emotionally draining and "Being run over by the heaviest wheels to ingrain it into your mind", the Final Solution because truly "Final" and everyone became indispensable.
Kelsey- These children had to do so many things that are unnatural for children to do: wait in long lines for hours, stand still in one place, eat horrible food. Everything was backwards.
Eva- It says you can find death everywhere it catches up to you.
Olivia- This book kind of breaks my heart every time I look through it. Children are SO full of innocence and positivity. They recognize their hardships, but never cease to look forward. I envy children.
Holly-Children noticed the small details. And those were the details that impacted them the most.
Sierra- It's sad these kids were robbed of their childhood. Yet, it seems they were the only ones who did not lose hope.
Olivia- I really enjoyed reading that (story of resistance). It amazes me that the people knew so well what was going to happen and knew how to get out. I really love the way Michael risked his own safety to grant his cousin's safety.
Holly- I really enjoyed reading this because it gave me hope to see someone sticking out for someone else. In most cases, it seemed everyone had to focus on themselves, but the fact that they stuck together and Michael saved him was heartwarming.
Kelsey- In "Be Seeing You", death seems like a pleasant inside joke that only they know. There is tension as if death is longed for, but they won't admit it.
Dan- "Be Seeing You" is just heartbreaking. They know someone will die. They all basically are saying their "silent goodbyes". It seems like they've lost faith in their God. Death would be terrifying without the belief in a God.
Sierra- When I read this, I automatically think of the Jewish religion. I remember talking about how they treated each dead body like it was their own mother and father and they would mourn for and pray over them. Then I wonder how they felt about all the dead bodies that surrounded them.
Kelsey- How can you have so many dead and dying that you don't have a place for them all? What kind of world do you have to be in for it to be better to spare a child the pain of living?
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