Monday 8 June 2009

Holocaust...

Timeline of Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel is a Jewish Romanian-American writer, professor and the author of the bestselling book "Night" as well as many other books dealing with Judaism, the Holocaust, and the moral responsibility of the people to fight hatred, racism and genocide. A Holocaust survivor, Wiesel lost his parents in his early childhood and escaped to France where he studied literature, philosophy, and psychology at the Sorbonne. Wiesel emerged as a noted journalist and eventually settled in America. Catholic writer Francois Mauriac successfully persuaded Wiesel to write his experiences of the "Holocaust" which he did in his memoir "Night". While his most of the works indirectly address the appalling Holocaust, his literary excellence is often overshadowed by his role of a Holocaust testimony. In his later life, Wiesel emerged as a political activist and humanitarian and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for voicing his concern about the "global crisis of humanity".
Childhood
Born on 30th of September 1928 in the town of Sighet, Transylvanina, Elie’s father was an orthodox Jew who worked in a grocery store and his mother was a daughter of a farmer.
His father Chlomo Wiesel was an orthodox Jew and had a grocery store while Sarah, his mother, was a daughter of a farmer. Growing up in a small village in Romania, Elie’s world revolved around family, religious study, community and God. Chlomo instilled a strong sense of humanism in his son, encouraging him to learn Modern Hebrew and to read literature, whereas his mother encouraged him to study Torah and Kabbalah. Elie grew up speaking Yiddish at home, and Hungarian, Romanian, and German outside.

Days in Death Camps
During World War II in 1994, Elie and his family with some other Jews were deported to the German concentration and extermination camps in Poland. He and his father got separated from his mother and his younger sister taken to Auschwitz. His father and he were forced to work in a cold, bitter condition in the concentration camp. Elie moved to several different concentration camp and ended up being in the Buchenwald where his father died after suffering from dysentery and starvation.

End of Holocaust
In April 1945, the camps got liberated. Wiesel spent a few years in a French orphanage where he got reunited with his older sisters. Wiesel, from the shock of his experiences during the 10years of Holocaust refused to write for discuss of his experiences. In 1948, Elie began to study literature, philosophy and psychology in Paris. He got involved in working in the French newspaper L’arche as a journalist. He wrote for Israeli and French newspaper. He wrote about his experiences in the death camps after the urge of Catholic writer Francois Mauriac.


Timeline:
1928, September 30: Birth of Elie Wiesel at Sighet, now Romania
1944: During the Second World War, all the Jews from the region were deported to concentration camps in Poland.
1945: January 29: His father Chlomo died of starvation and dysentery
1945: April: Jews were liberated. Wiesel visited France
1956: Wiesel hit by a taxicab in New York
1965: Wiesel traveled to the USSR and shared his experiences in “The Jews of Silence”.
1972: Appointed professor of Humanity at City Unviersity of New York
1976: He joined Boston University as a professor of Humanity
1978: Chairperson of the US Holocaust Memorial Council
1985: He won the Congressional Gold Medal
1996: Received Nobel Peace Prize
2006: November 30: Received honorary “Knighthood” in London
2007: February 1: Wiesel was attacked by a young denier of Holocaust

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Timeline of Holocaust

Timeline of the Holocaust
1919: World war ends with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Germany is to be blamed. So Germany is forced to reduce its army and pay $57trillion for the war damage. This ruins Germany’s Economy and rage the German citizens. “Some of this anger is directed at an old scapegoat, the Jews”
November 1923: Hitler is in the jail for the failure of Beer hall Putzt. He writes Mein Kampf which talks bout his racial and religious theories. He says Germans are the master race. Their enemies are the Jews.

Nazis Win Power
1930: The Great Depression makes “the Nazis win 18% of the vote by promising jobs and a strong Germany.” Hitler comes to power.

1932: The Nazi become Germany’s Largest political party. People trust them for their
strong leadership that they will guide Germany to a strong country.

1933: Hitler is appointed as German Reich Chancellor. He curtails the right of Jews.
The first concentration camp in Dachau is opened.

1935-1936:Nuremberg Laws Passed – “The "Reich Citizens Law" declares that only persons of "German blood" are Reich citizens, and that those of "impure blood" are inferior.”

1937: Buchenwald Concentration camp opens—all sorts of enemies are sent here for extermination such as, Jews, Gypsies and etc.

1939:
Hitler invades Czechoslovakia and Poland.
Ghettos are established in occupied Poland by order of Reinhard Heydrich; Jews are isolated from their communities. Directive by Hans Frank to establish 'Judenraete' (Jewish Councils) in the Government-General.
First Polish ghetto established in Piotrkow; soon after, many other ghettos are established.
Identifying arm bands made obligatory for all Jews in Central Poland.
1941:
Heydrich is appointed by Goering to carry out the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" (the extermination of all Jews in Europe).
Massacres total of 142,000 Jews
Deportation of German Jews to concentration camps begins.
Experimentation with gassing at Auschwitz begins.
Protestant villagers of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in southeastern France start protecting between 2,500 and 5,000 Jews.
1942:
Wannsee Conference on the Nazi "Final Solution of the Jewish Question."
Deportation of 300,000 Jews from Warsaw ghetto to Nazi death camp at Treblinka begins.
Extermination begins at Sobibor, Belzec, and Majdanek camps.
Unified Partisan Organization (FPO) set at Vilna.
Resistance begins in other ghettos.
"Zegota," a Polish underground movement to save Jews, established in Warsaw.
100,000 to 400,000 Gypsies deported to Auschwitz in December 1942.
June
Himmler orders the liquidation of all ghettos in Poland and the USSR.
Danish underground saves 7,000 Jews.
March
Hitler invades Hungary.
Deportation of 14,000 Slovakians and Hungarians to Auschwitz.
July
USSR liberates Majdanek death camp
Warsaw uprising, crushed by Nazis, causes 200,000 casualties.
Evacuation of Auschwitz.
1945
Yalta Conference in February, where Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt meet to discuss their strategy in 1945.
Himmler orders destruction of Auschwitz crematoria as Nazis try to hide evidence of their death camps.
LIBERATION:
Auschwitz-Birkenau is liberated by USSR troops.
Buchenwald is liberated by the United States.
Bergen-Belsen is liberated by British.
Dachau is liberated by the United States.

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German Nazi's Buchenwald Concentration camp

Buchenwald concentration camp was one of the largest and first Nazi concentration camp instituted near Weimar, Thuringia, Germany in July 1937.

Camp prisoners such as Jews, Poles, political prisoners, Roma and Sinti, Jehovahs Witnesses and etc worked primarily as forced labour in local armament factories. The Nazis used Buchenwald until the camp got liberated in 1945. From then on until 1950, the Soviet Union used the camp as an NKVD special camp for Germans. Then on 6 January 1950, t he camp was handed over to the East German Ministry of Internal Affairs. Between July 1938 and April 1945 more than 250,000 people were imprisoned in Buchenwald by the Nazi regime.

The Buchenwald camp was a site of an extraordinary number of deaths, although it was not technically an extermination camp. The causes of the deaths were illness that led to death mostly due to the harsh camp conditions, with starvation and infectious diseases. Many were worked to death. If they werent working they were inevitably executed. Most of the prisoners died in violence from the SS guards. Others were simply murdered by execution of hanging and shooting. The camp was also a site of large-scale trials for vaccines against epidemic typhus in 1942 and 1943. Total of 729 of prisoners were used as test subjects, with 280 of them dying as a result.

The SS left behind huge number of prisoners and people coming to and leaving the camp, categorizing those leaving them by release, transfer, or death. These accounts are one of the sources of estimates for the number of deaths in Buchenwald. According to SS documents, 33,462 died in Buchenwald. These documents were not, however, necessarily accurate: Among those executed before 1944 many were listed as "transferred to the Gestapo". Furthermore, from 1941 forward Soviet POWs were executed in mass killings. Arriving prisoners selected for execution were not entered into the camp register and therefore were not among the 33,462 dead listed in SS documents.

The total number of deaths at Buchenwald is estimated at 56,545. This number is the sum of:

§ Deaths according to material left behind by SS: 33,462

§ Executions by shooting: 8,483

§ Executions by hanging (estimate): 1,100

§ Deaths during evacuation transports: 13,500

On April 4, 1945, the U.S. 89th Infantry Division overran Ohrdruf, a subcamp of the Buchenwald. It was the first Nazi camp to be liberated by the U.S troops After that the Buchenwald camp was partially evacuated by the Germans on April 8, 1945.


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