In 1939, World War II was just beginning. The Germans blamed the Jews for their loss in World War I. In order to compensate, Hitler, the new leader of Germany, decreed to get rid of all Jews. Most of the Jews were excavated by rail.
Railways have been important for transportation in Germany, as well as the rest of the world, ever since the invention of the locomotive. By 1939, Germany had the railroads of Austria, Sudentenland, Bohemia, Moravia, Czechoslovakia, Danzig, and Poland in its possession (Oxlade). All of these different passageways by rail helped when Germany addressed the “Final Solution” in 1942. The Germans informed the Jews that they were being relocated eastward with resettlement in mind. The Jews were put in cattle, passenger, and freight cars (Museum).
Lieutenant Fischman was commander of the transport commando. He had two sergeants and thirteen policemen to aid him in his quest to transport the Jews. Through him, the Germans had a “Special Train waiting for the Jews at Aspang. One thousand Jews made the trip in cattle cars. The DA-38 train departed from Vienna on June 14th, 1942. The train passed through many towns until it arrived at Lublin on June 16th, 1942. Once stopped, the Germans asked fifty one able-bodied Jews between 15 and 50 to depart from the labor camp there. The remaining 949 Jews were transported to Sobibor (Yitzhak). They were only given a bucket for their transport (Museum).
The train types varied further than just steam locomotives and electric trains. The steam trains used during the Holocaust period included trains built from 1930 to 1945. In 1930, there were the 0-1, 0-3, 58, and 93. The class 71 and 89 was introduced in 1934. 60, 61, and 84 were the three new classes unveiled in 1935. In 1...
... middle of paper ...
...are used for the right purposes.
Works Cited
Graham, Randolph L. "The Politics of Genocide." The Holocaust in Hungary, Volume 1. New York: The Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, 1994. 686.
Museum, The United States Holocaust. German Railways and the Holocaust. 10 June 2013. 13 March 2014 .
Oxlade, John. A brief history of German railways. 31 December 2003. 14 March 2014 .
Platz, Potsdamer. The Track 17 Memorail at Grunewald railway station. 25 January 2012. 13 March 2014 .
Yitzhak, Arad. The Deportation of Austrian and German Jews. 1987. 14 March 2014 .
Some people died when the Allies continuously bombed the railway, unaware that their own people were working on it and creating more work for them to do.
" The journey to the camps began with a train ride, with Jews packed into pitch-black rail cars, with no room to sit down, no bathrooms, no hope." (Lombardi). This is a quote from a book a man wrote about his time in Auschwitz when he was young. Up to 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust, an awful event led by Adolf Hitler and his army based in Germany, the Nazis. One of the horrible things about the Holocaust was the boxcars taking the victims to the camps. Some things that made the boxcars in the Holocaust so bad are; the size of the boxcars, the conditions in the cars, and the deaths that occurred on the journey to the concentration camps.
"World War II in Europe." 10 June 2013. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 18 March 2014 .
"The United States and the Holocaust." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 10 June 2013. Web. 04 Feb. 2014.
ade Manifest: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Virginia University, 10 Mar. 1997. Web. 5 Apr. 2011.
...locaust." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 10 June 2013. Web. 13 Apr. 2014. .
After Germany lost World War I, it was in a national state of humiliation. Their economy was in the drain, and they had their hands full paying for the reparations from the war. Then a man named Adolf Hitler rose to the position of Chancellor and realized his potential to inspire people to follow. Hitler promised the people of Germany a new age; an age of prosperity with the country back as a superpower in Europe. Hitler had a vision, and this vision was that not only the country be dominant in a political sense, but that his ‘perfect race’, the ‘Aryans,’ would be dominant in a cultural sense. His steps to achieving his goal came in the form of the Holocaust. The most well known victims of the Holocaust were of course, the Jews. However, approximately 11 million people were killed in the holocaust, and of those, there were only 6 million Jews killed. The other 5 million people were the Gypsies, Pols, Political Dissidents, Handicapped, Jehovah’s witnesses, Homosexuals and even those of African-German descent. Those who were believed to be enemies of the state were sent to camps where they were worked or starved to death.
Jewish people weren’t the only ones sent to concentration camps. People such as people with disabilities, Homosexuals, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Communists, and Socialists (Byers.p.12). Everyone that was sent to concentration camps was sent via train cars (www.historychannel.com). They had no food, water, or restrooms for up to 18 days. Many people died from the lack of food and water (Byers, p.15).
The Jewish people were targeted, hunted, tortured, and killed, just for being Jewish, Hitler came to office on January 20, 1933; he believed that the German race had superiority over the Jews in Germany. The Jewish peoples’ lives were destroyed; they were treated inhumanly for the next 12 years, “Between 1933 and 1945, more than 11 million men, women, and children were murdered in the Holocaust. Approximately six million of these were Jews” (Levy). Hitler blamed a lot of the problems on the Jewish people, being a great orator Hitler got the support from Germany, killing off millions of Jews and other people, the German people thought it was the right thing to do. “To the anti-Semitic Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Jews were an inferior race, an alien threat to German racial purity and community” (History.com Staff).
Evens, Richard; Gotfried, Ted; Lipsadt, Deborah; Zimmerman ,John; Sherman, Michael; Globman, Alex. “Holocaust Encyclopedia.” http://www.ushmm.org United States Holocaust
“Auschwitz.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 10 June 2013. Web. 24 March 2014.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “The Holocaust.” Holocaust Encyclopedia, last modified June 10, 2013, http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005425.
Dwork, Deborah, and R. J. Van Pelt. Holocaust: a History. New York: Norton, 2002. Print.
During the Holocaust in the mid-20th century, millions of Jews lost their lives for the simple reason; they were Jewish. These Jews were forced into concentration camps and ghettos, where they were persecuted by the Germans. Many Jews were also made to transport to these places in tightly packed trains, employed by everyday Germans. The employees of the German railway network were perpetrators because they knew that they were taking the Jews to their deaths, and even though some may have felt bad about it, they still did not speak up or try to save the Jews.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 10 June 2013. Web. The Web. The Web.