146-658: The Katzmann Report (or the Final Report by Katzmann ) is one of the most important testimonies relating to the Holocaust in Poland and the extermination of Polish Jews during World War II. It was used as evidence in the Nuremberg Trials (USA No. L-18, Exhibit-277) and numerous other proceedings against war criminals abroad. It is a leather-bound report by SS-Gruppenführer Fritz Katzmann , German SS and Police Leader (SSPF) in
292-531: A death toll of 143,000 people. In all, the report described the murder of 434,329 Jews, implementing a thoroughly sanitized and approved language based on popular "racial science" of Adolf Hitler and his "experts", so as to help Katzmann advance his career. Holocaust in Poland The Holocaust in Poland was the ghettoization, robbery, deportation and mass murder of Jews, alongside other groups under similar racial pretexts in occupied Poland by
438-574: A legislative decree allowing the remaining survivors to leave Poland without Western visas or Polish exit permits. This also served to strengthen the government's acceptance among the anti-Communist right, as well as weaken the British hold in the Middle East. Most refugees crossing the new borders left Poland without a valid passport. Uninterrupted traffic across the Polish borders increased dramatically. By
584-551: A nationalist, anti-communist organization, widely perceived as anti-Semitic – also collaborated with the Germans on several occasions, killing or giving away Jewish partisans to the German authorities, and murdering Jewish refugees. Among some 30,000 Ukrainian nationalists who fled to polnischen Gebiete , thousands joined the pokhidny hrupy [ pl ] as saboteurs, interpreters, and civilian militiamen, trained at
730-479: A newly built extermination camp 50 kilometres (30 mi) distant, 11,000 were deported to labor camps, 10,000 were shot in the ghetto, 35,000 were allowed to remain in the ghetto after a final selection, and around 20,000 or 25,000 managed to hide in the ghetto. Misdirection efforts convinced many Jews that they could avoid deportation until it was too late. During a six-week period beginning in August, 300,000 Jews from
876-725: A pace that the Germans deemed too slow. The last train from France left Drancy on 31 July 1944 with over 300 children. After the invasion , Greece was divided between the Italian, Bulgarian, and German zones of occupation until September 1943. Most Greek Jews lived in Thessaloniki (Salonika) ruled by Germany, where the collection camp was set up for the Jews also from Athens and the Greek Islands . From there 45,000–50,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau between March and August 1943, packed 80 to
1022-577: A ship requisitioned by the Quisling government and taken to Hamburg , Germany. From there, they were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau by train. In total, 770 Norwegian Jews were sent by boat to Germany between 1940 and 1945. Only two dozen survived. Following invasion of Poland in September 1939 Nazi Germany disbanded the Polish National Railways ( PKP ) immediately, and handed over their assets to
1168-517: A synagogue in Będzin . Thousands of Jews were chased away to areas occupied by Soviet troops. 6,000 Polish soldiers of Jewish descent were killed and 60,000 were taken prisoner. Germany gained control of 1.7 million Jews in Poland. Parts of western and northern Poland were annexed into Germany and incorporated into the administrative structure of the German Reich as Zichenau , Danzig–West Prussia ,
1314-532: A train left for Auschwitz-Birkenau and Sobibor extermination camps , or Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt , in 94 outgoing trains. About 60,000 prisoners were sent to Auschwitz and 34,000 to Sobibor. At liberation approximately 870 Jews remained in Westerbork. Only 5,200 deportees survived, most of them in Theresienstadt , approximately 1980 survivors, or Bergen-Belsen , approximately 2050 survivors. From those on
1460-682: A wagon. There were also 13,000 Greek Jews in the Italian, and 4,000 Jews in the Bulgarian zone of occupation. In September 1943, the Italian zone was taken over by the Third Reich. Overall, some 60,000–65,000 Greek Jews were deported in Holocaust trains by the SS to Auschwitz, Majdanek, Dachau and the subcamps of Mauthausen before the war's end, including over 90% of Thessaloniki's prewar population of 50,000 Jews. Of these, 5,000 Jews were deported to Treblinka from
1606-524: Is controversial. According to political science research, pogroms were most likely to occur "where political polarization was high, where the Jewish community was large, and where Jews pressed for national equality in the decades before 1941". Parallel to Operation Reinhard , which was organised in the General Government, the final mass murder of the Jewish population was organised in eastern Poland in
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#17328770855021752-516: Is estimated that about 350,000 Polish Jews survived the Holocaust. Some 230,000 of them survived in the USSR and the Soviet-controlled territories of Poland, including men and women who escaped from areas occupied by Germany. After World War II, over 150,000 Polish Jews according to Grzegorz Berendt or 180,000 according to David Engel , were repatriated or expelled back to new Poland along with
1898-608: Is widely seen as simplistic by Jewish scholars, because the Italian Jewish community of 47,000 constituted the most assimilated Jews in Europe. About one out of every three Jewish males were members of the Fascist Party before the war began; more than 10,000 Jews who used to conceal their identity, because antisemitism was part of the very ideal of italianità , wrote Wiley Feinstein. The Holocaust came to Italy in September 1943 after
2044-821: The Einsatzgruppen , mobile extermination squads, were already conducting mass shootings of Jews in Eastern Europe. The Jews of Western Europe were either deported to ghettos emptied through mass killings, such as the Rumbula massacre of the inhabitants of the Riga Ghetto , or sent directly to Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibór, extermination camps built in spring and summer of 1942 only for gassing. Auschwitz II Birkenau gas chambers began operating in March. The last death camp, Majdanek, began operating gas chambers in late 1942. At Wannsee,
2190-475: The Kristallnacht . Approximately 30,000 Jews were rounded up and sent via rail to refugee camps. Within various phases of the Holocaust , the trains were employed differently. At first, they were used to concentrate the Jewish populations in the ghettos , and often to transport them to forced labour and German concentration camps for the purpose of economic exploitation. In 1939, for logistical reasons,
2336-520: The Amsterdam ghetto before being moved to Westerbork transit camp in the north-east near the German border. Deportees for "resettlement" leaving aboard the NS passenger and freight trains were unaware of their final destination or fate, as postcards were often thrown from moving trains. Most of the approximately 100,000 Jews sent to Westerbork perished. Between July 1942 and September 1944 almost every Tuesday
2482-600: The Bavarian government ordered the deportation of Jews with Polish citizenship as undesirables. In Poland, after the beginning of the Great Depression and the death of Marshal Józef Piłsudski in 1935, the situation of Polish Jews worsened. The Endecja faction waged a campaign against Jews consisting of economic boycotts, limitations on the number of Jewish students at universities, and restrictions on kosher slaughter . The Polish government stated its intention to "settle
2628-698: The Białystok Ghetto uprising erupted. The revolt in Sobibór extermination camp occurred on October 14, 1943. At Auschwitz-Birkenau , the insurgents blew up one of Birkenau's crematoria on October 7, 1944. Similar resistance was offered in Łuck , Mińsk Mazowiecki , Pińsk , Poniatowa , and in Wilno . On 26 June 1942, BBC services in all languages publicized a report by the Jewish Social-Democratic Bund and other resistance groups and transmitted by
2774-714: The Deutsche Reichsbahn in Silesia , Greater Poland and in Pomerania . In November 1939, as soon as the semi-colonial General Government was set up in occupied central Poland, a separate branch of DRB called Generaldirektion der Ostbahn ( Kolej Wschodnia in Polish) was established with headquarters called GEDOB in Kraków ; all of the DRB branches existed outside Germany proper. The Ostbahn
2920-640: The District of Galicia , entitled "Lösung der Judenfrage im Distrikt Galizien" (The Solution of the Jewish Question in the District of Galicia), submitted on 30 June 1943 to his superior officer, the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) "Ost" (East), SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger . It describes part of Operation Reinhard . The Katzmann Report was published in German and illustrated with photographs of
3066-879: The Hungarian State Railways (MÁV) in Northern Transylvania (Erdély). The non-native Jews were expelled from the Hungarian territory; some 20,000 were transported to occupied Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia , while the Transylvanian Jews were sent back to Romania. Hungary took part in Operation Barbarossa , supplying 50,000 Jewish slave labour for the Eastern Front. Most of the workers were dead by January 1943. Later that year, Hitler discovered that Prime Minister Miklos Kállay secretly conferred with
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#17328770855023212-499: The Jewish problem " by the emigration of most Polish Jews. In 1938, after Poland passed a law to denaturalize Jews living abroad, Germany expelled all Polish Jews in October 1938. Because Poland refused to admit them, these Jews were stranded in no-man's land along the border. The German Wehrmacht (armed forces) invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, triggering declarations of war from
3358-628: The Lublin District in mid-March 1942. The Lublin Ghetto was emptied between 16 March and 20 April; many Jews were shot in the ghetto and 30,000 were deported to Belzec. Most victims from the Lublin District were sent to Sobibor except 2,000 forced laborers imprisoned at Majdanek. The killing was interrupted on 10 June, to resume in August and September. At the same time as these killings, many Jews were deported from Germany and Slovakia to ghettos in
3504-619: The Majdanek concentration camp , and at Auschwitz II-Birkenau . In the German-occupied USSR, at the Maly Trostenets extermination camp , shootings were used to kill victims in the woods. At Chełmno , victims were killed in gas vans , whose redirected exhaust fed into sealed compartments at the rear of the vehicle. These were used at Maly Trostenets as well. Neither of these two camps had international rail connections; therefore,
3650-533: The Mizocz Ghetto followed suit. The Warsaw Ghetto firefight of January 18, 1943, led to the largest Jewish uprising of World War II launched on April 19, 1943. On June 25, the Jews of the Częstochowa Ghetto rose up. At Treblinka , Sonderkommando prisoners armed with stolen weapons attacked the guards on August 2, 1943. A day later, the Będzin and Sosnowiec ghetto revolts broke out. On August 16,
3796-582: The Nazi Germany . 3,000,000+ Polish Jews were murdered, primarily at the Chelmno , Belzec , Sobibor , Treblinka and Auschwitz extermination camps , who made up half of the Jewish Holocaust victims. During Nazi occupation, the country lost 20% of its population, or six million people, including three million Jews (90% of the country's Jewish population). The important Polish Jewish community pre-war
3942-758: The Polish Underground State , a Provisional Committee to Aid Jews ( Tymczasowy Komitet Pomocy Żydom ) was founded for the purpose of rescuing Jews. It was superseded by the Council for Aid to Jews ( Rada Pomocy Żydom ), known by the code name Żegota and chaired by Julian Grobelny . It is not known how many Jews, overall, were helped by Żegota; at one point in 1943 it had 2,500 Jewish children under its care in Warsaw alone, under Irena Sendler . An estimated 30,000 to 60,000 Polish Jews survived in hiding. Some rescuers faced hostility or violence for their actions after
4088-530: The Polish government-in-exile , documenting the killing of 700,000 Jews in Poland. In December 1942, the United Nations adopted a joint declaration condemning the systematic murder of Jews. Many Jews attempted to escape death by jumping from trains, but the most of these immediately returned to the ghetto to avoid the risk of being denounced by Poles, which would lead to immediate death. Ability to speak Polish
4234-666: The Polish resistance . At its peak in May 1944, the Blue Police numbered some 17,000 men. The Germans also formed the Baudienst ("construction service") in several districts of the General Government. Baudienst servicemen were sometimes deployed in support of aktion s (roundup of Jews for deportation or extermination ), for example to blockade Jewish quarters or to search Jewish homes for hideaways and valuables. The Polish right-wing National Armed Forces ( Narodowe Siły Zbrojne , or NSZ ) –
4380-872: The Radom District were sent to Treblinka. There was practically no Jewish resistance in the General Government in 1942. Ghetto uprisings were only undertaken when the inhabitants began to believe that their death was certain. In 1943, larger uprisings in Warsaw and Białystok necessitated the use of heavy weapons. The uprising in Warsaw prompted the Nazi leadership to liquidate additional ghettos and labor camps in German-occupied Poland with their inhabitants shot or deported to extermination camps for fear of additional Jewish resistance developing. Nevertheless, in early 1944 more than 70,000 Jews were performing forced labor in
4526-688: The Reich Transport Ministry , and the Reich Foreign Office . The RSHA coordinated and directed the deportations; the Transport Ministry organized train schedules; and the Foreign Office negotiated with German-allied states and their railways about "processing" their own Jews. The deportation trains did not make major demands on the railways' resources; a typical day during the 1941-2 period would see 30,000 rail services operated by
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4672-599: The Reichsbahn . The Holocaust trains were always managed and directed by native German SS men posted with that express' role throughout the system. The transports to camps under Operation Reinhard came mainly from the ghettos. The Warsaw Ghetto in the General Government held eventually over 450,000 Jews cramped in an area meant for about 60,000 people. The second-largest Ghetto in Łódź held 204,000 Jews. Both ghettos had collection points known as Umschlagplatz along
4818-559: The SS estimated that the "Final Solution" could ultimately eradicate up to 11 million European Jews; Nazi planners envisioned the inclusion of Jews living in neutral and non-occupied countries such as Ireland , Sweden , Turkey , and the United Kingdom . Deportations on this scale required the coordination of numerous German government ministries and state organisations, including the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA),
4964-504: The SS fees. According to an expert report established on behalf of the German "Train of Commemoration" project, the receipts taken in by the state-owned Deutsche Reichsbahn for mass deportations in the period between 1938 and 1945 reached a sum of US$ 664,525,820.34. Powered mainly by efficient steam locomotives, the Holocaust trains were kept to a maximum of 55 freight cars on average, loaded from 150% to 200% capacity. The participation of German State Railway (the Deutsche Reichsbahn )
5110-563: The Third Reich...or otherwise glaringly minimizes the responsibility of the real perpetrators of these crimes". The law was later revised to a civil penalty. Snyder, Timothy (2010). Bloodlands. Europe between Hitler and Stalin . Bodley Head. ISBN 9780224081412 . Holocaust trains Holocaust trains were railway transports run by the Deutsche Reichsbahn and other European railways under
5256-565: The Vichy Government was involved in the "Final Solution". In total, the Vichy government deported more than 76,000 Jews, without food or water (pleaded for by the Red Cross in vain), as well as thousands of other so-called undesirables to German-built concentration and extermination camps aboard the Holocaust trains, pursuant to an agreement with the German government; fewer than 3 percent survived
5402-428: The Wartheland , and East Upper Silesia —while the rest of the German-occupied territories were designated the General Government . Around 50,000 Polish leaders and intellectuals were arrested or executed , especially in West Prussia, with fewer victims in the Wartheland and fewer still in the General Government. Polish Jewish intellectuals and community leaders were not spared. Around 400,000 Poles were expelled from
5548-406: The existence of the ghettos . In Warsaw, up to 80 percent of food consumed in the ghetto was brought in illegally. The food stamps introduced by the Germans provided only 9 percent of the calories necessary for survival. Most ghettos were not fully sealed from the outside world and although many Jews suffered from hunger, fewer died from it because they were able to supplement their rations from
5694-404: The mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka in 1942, trains carried up to 7,000 victims each. In total, over 1,600 trains were organised by the Reich Ministry of Transport , and logged mainly by the Polish state railway company taken over by Germany, due to the majority of death camps being located in occupied Poland. Between 1941 and December 1944, the official date of
5840-448: The twelfth century . Many Polish Jews settled on noble estates where they were offered protection in exchange for the economic benefits they could provide. An estimated 3 million Jews lived in Poland in 1933 around ten percent of the population. Due to historical restrictions on what occupations Jews were allowed to have, they became concentrated in trades such as commerce and craftsmen. Many lived in small towns called shtetls . After
5986-456: The Łódź ghetto more Jews than all of the Netherlands. More Jews lived in the city of Kraków than in all of Italy, and virtually any medium-sized town in Poland had a larger Jewish population than all of Scandinavia. All of southeast Europe – Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Greece – had fewer Jews than the original four districts of the General Government . The plight of Jews in war-torn Poland could be divided into stages defined by
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6132-514: The "resettlement of the entire Jewish population of the General Government should have been implemented and completed by 31 December 1942"; henceforth, Jews would only be allowed to live in Warsaw, Częstochowa, Kraków, and Majdanek. The majority of ghettos were liquidated in mass executions nearby, especially if they were not near a train station. Larger ghettos were more commonly liquidated during multiple deportations to extermination camps. During this campaign around 1.8 million Jews were murdered in
6278-525: The 1939 Intelligenzaktion and the 1940 German AB-Aktion in Poland ) or imprisoned at the Nazi concentration camps . Managerial jobs were staffed with German officials in a wave of some 8,000 instant promotions. The new Eastern Division of DRB acquired 7,192 kilometres (4,469 mi) of new railway lines and 1,052 km of (mostly industrial) narrow gauge in the annexed areas . The Deutsche Reichsbahn acquired new infrastructure in Poland worth in excess of 8,278,600,000 złoty , including some of
6424-408: The 1960s as a reaction to West German trials, but these camps remain much less well known. The most well-known Holocaust museum in the world is the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum which receives about 2 million visitors per year as of 2021 . Since 1988, the March of the Living has been held annually at the site of the former camp. The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews opened in 2014 on
6570-457: The Dutch national rail company Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) apologised for its role in the deportation of Jews to the death camps. Norway surrendered to Nazi Germany on 10 June 1940. At the time, there were 1,700 Jews living in Norway. About half of them escaped to neutral Sweden. Round-ups by the SS began in the fall of 1942 with the support of the Norwegian police. In late November 1942, all Jews of Oslo including women and children were put on
6716-483: The Galicia district and the Białystok District. In the fall of 1942, there were more than 400 ghettos on Polish soil. Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. Around 100,000 Polish Jews fled deep into the USSR from German soldiers. The Wehrmacht was followed by four special groups ( Einsatzgruppen ) which perpetrated mass executions of the Jewish population. From September 1941, entire Jewish communities were liquidated. The General Government
6862-438: The General Government. Tens of thousands of Jews were deported from ghettos in the Wartheland and East Upper Silesia to Chełmno and Auschwitz. Jews resisted the Nazis with not only armed struggle, but also spiritual and cultural opposition that upheld their dignity despite the inhumane conditions of life in the ghettos. Many forms of resistance existed, although the elders feared mass retaliation against women and children in
7008-429: The General Government. In late 1941 in East Upper Silesia , Jews in forced-labor camps operated by the Schmelt Organization deemed "unfit for work" began to be sent in groups to Auschwitz where they were murdered. In March 1942, killings began in Belzec, targeting Jews from Lublin who were not capable of work. This action reportedly reduced the black market and was deemed a success to be replicated elsewhere. Belzec
7154-419: The General Government. 45,000 Jews were deported by November and left to fend for themselves, causing many deaths. Deportations stopped in early 1940 due to the opposition of Hans Frank , the appointed head of the General Government, who did not want his fiefdom to become a dumping ground for unwanted Jews. Overall, between 80-90,000 Jews were deported to the General Government from Wartheland in that time. At
7300-422: The German Railways for transport of the Jews. The Reichsbahn was paid the equivalent of a third class railway ticket for every prisoner transported to his or her destination: 8,000,000 passengers, 4 Pfennig per track kilometer, times 600 km (average voyage length), equaled 240 million Reichsmarks . The Reichsbahn pocketed both this money and its own share of the cash paid by the transported Jews after
7446-509: The German bases across Distrikt Krakau . The genocidal techniques learned from the Germans, such as the advanced planning of the pacification actions , site selection, and sudden encirclement, became the hallmark of the OUN-UPA massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia beginning in March 1943, and killing of Jews in Western Ukraine , parallel with the liquidation of the ghettos in Reichskommissariat Ostland ordered by Himmler. Thousands of Jews who escaped deportations and hid in
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#17328770855027592-438: The German occupation zone. Of the refugees, 35-40,000 people were forced in late autumn 1939 to go deep into Ukraine and Belarus to work. The Soviet Union deported hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens to the Soviet interior in four big deportations. The Jews were particularly affected by the third one, which began on 28/29 June 1940, which affected refugees willing to return to the area under German rule, but to whose return
7738-436: The German takeover of the country due to its total capitulation at Cassibile . By February 1944, the Germans shipped 8,000 Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau via Austria and Switzerland, although more than half of the victims arrested and deported from northern Italy were rounded up by the Italian police and not by the Nazis. Also between September 1943 and April 1944, at least 23,000 Italian soldiers were deported to work as slaves in
7884-456: The German war industry, while over 10,000 partisans were captured and deported during the same period to Birkenau. By 1944, there were over half a million Italians working for the benefit of the German war machine. The Netherlands was invaded on 10 May 1940 and fell under German military control. The community of native-Dutch Jews including the new Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria was estimated at 140,000. Most natives were concentrated in
8030-401: The Germans and their local helpers, or were murdered in various unexplained circumstances." In addition to peasantry and individual collaborators, the German authorities also mobilized the prewar Polish police as what became known as the " Blue Police ". Among other duties, Polish policemen were tasked with patrolling for Jewish ghetto escapees, and in support of military operations against
8176-435: The Germans did not agree. More than 77,700 Jewish refugees were deported at this time, representing 84% of the total deportees. The fourth deportation included 7,000 Jews from the Vilnius region. Although most Jews were not pro-communist, some accepted positions in the Soviet administration, contributing to a pre-existing perception among many non-Jews that Soviet rule was a Jewish conspiracy. Some 10,000 Polish Jews had left
8322-401: The Holocaust varied by country. After Germany invaded Belgium on 10 May 1940, all Jews were forced to register with the police as of 28 October 1940. The lists enabled Belgium to become the first country in occupied Western Europe to deport recently immigrating Jews. The implementation of the "Final Solution" in Belgium centred on the Mechelen transit camp (Malines) chosen because it
8468-519: The Jewish communities in settlements without railway lines in occupied Poland were dissolved. By the end of 1941, about 3.5 million Polish Jews had been segregated and ghettoised by the SS in a massive deportation action involving the use of freight trains. Permanent ghettos had direct railway connections because the food aid (paid for by Jews themselves) was completely dependent on the SS , similar to all newly built labour camps. Jews were legally banned from baking bread. They were sealed off from
8614-421: The Jewish population there began to decline. Ghettos were established both in the territory incorporated into the Reich and in the General Government. Characteristic of the Wartheland were the so-called "rural ghettos," which encompassed several contiguous villages. The Germans also set up ghettos in areas of eastern Poland occupied as a result of the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Most were established in
8760-416: The Jews from the former Serbian province of Vardar Banovina and Thrace (today's North Macedonia and Greece ). The "deportations to the east" of 13,000 inmates, mostly to Treblinka extermination camp began on 22 February 1943, predominantly in passenger cars. In four days, some 20 trainsets departed under severely overcrowded conditions to occupied Poland requiring each train to stop daily to dump
8906-738: The Jews of Bulgaria proper were not deported. Czechoslovakia was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1939. Within the new ethnic-Czech Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia the Czechoslovak State Railways (ČSD) were taken over by the Reichsbann and the new German railway company Böhmisch-Mährische Bahn (BMB) was set up in its place. Three-quarters of Bohemian and Moravian Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, of whom 33,000 died in Theresienstadt Ghetto . The remainder were transported in Holocaust trains from Theresienstadt mainly to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The last train for Birkenau left Theresienstadt on 28 October 1944 with 2,038 Jews of whom 1,589 were immediately gassed. The French national SNCF railway company under
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#17328770855029052-420: The Lublin District that had previously been cleared. From the end of May and especially since the cessation of deportations in Lublin, thousands of Jews were deported from the Kraków District to Belzec. These transports were halted by a railway moratorium on 19 June. The Warsaw Ghetto was cleared between 22 July and 12 September. Of the original population of 350,000 Jews, 250,000 were killed at Treblinka,
9198-410: The Nazi press, the term Ostjude began to be used as a slur, and as a synonym for Bolshevik and Communist . In the interwar period Polish Jews in Germany faced also legal persecution. In 1918, the Prussian Ministry of the Interior banned Polish Jews from entering the country on the pretext of their unwillingness to work, low morals, physical uncleanliness and the spread of typhus by them. In 1923,
9344-436: The Nazi train guards and the three resistance members – equipped only with one pistol between them – the train started again. Of the 233 people who attempted to escape, 26 were shot on the spot, 89 were recaptured, and 118 got away. Bulgaria joined the Axis powers in March 1941 and took part in the invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece. The Bulgarian government set up transit camps in Skopje , Blagoevgrad and Dupnitsa for
9490-482: The Polish Jewish population was estimated at 4,000, around 0.133% of the pre-1939 population. Although the postwar Jewish community wanted to make Treblinka the main memorial site, the Polish government decided to instead build a memorial at the former Warsaw Ghetto and to focus memorialization efforts at Auschwitz. During the communist era, the differences between different persecuted groups were elided. Memorials were established at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka during
9636-402: The Reichsbahn - of these, just two would be deportation trains. They were also a low priority, and SS officials such as Franz Novak often faced difficulty in securing the rolling stock needed. The first trains with German Jews expelled to ghettos in occupied Poland began departing from central Germany on 16 October 1941. Called Sonderzüge (special trains), the trains had low priority for
9782-428: The Soviet interior, where most survived the war. In 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union and began the systematic murder of Jews. 1.8 million Jews were killed in Operation Reinhard , shot in roundups in ghettos, died during the train journey , or killed by poison gas in the extermination camps . In 1943 and 1944, the remaining labor camps and ghettos were liquidated. Many Jews tried to escape, but surviving in hiding
9928-415: The USSR for Palestine, the Middle East and the West by June 1941. As a result of expulsions and escapes, about 500,000 Jews lived in the lands incorporated into the Reich at the beginning of the German occupation. The Germans planned to deport all Jews from these territories by the end of 1940, by which time the plan was to place them in ghettos. They tried to concentrate Jews in the Lublin District of
10074-523: The United Kingdom and France . During the invasion of Poland as many as 16,000 civilians, hostages, and prisoners of war may have been shot by the German invaders; there was also a great deal of looting. Special units known as Einsatzgruppen followed the army to eliminate any possible resistance. Already during the hostilities, the Germans carried out pogroms against the Jewish population, for example, 600 people were murdered in Przemyśl [ pl ] , 200 in Częstochowa , and 200 were burned in
10220-520: The United States. It corresponds to approximately $ 100,000 per survivor. Drancy internment camp served as the main transport hub for the Paris area and regions west and south thereof until August 1944, under the command of Alois Brunner from Austria. By 3 February 1944, 67 trains had left from there for Birkenau. Vittel internment camp served the northeast, closer to the German border from where all transports were taken over by German agents. By 23 June 1943, 50,000 Jews had been deported from France,
10366-410: The Wartheland to the General Governorate occupation zone from 1939 to 1941, and the area was resettled by ethnic Germans from eastern Europe . The rest of Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union , which invaded Poland from the east on 17 September pursuant to the German–Soviet pact . Approximately 1.6 million Polish Jews came under Soviet rule, 250-300,000 of whom were refugees or expellees from
10512-524: The Western Allies. To stop him, Germany launched the Operation Margarethe in March 1944, and took over control of all Jewish affairs. On 29 April 1944, the first deportation of Hungarian Jews to Birkenau took place. Between 15–25 May according to SS-Brigadeführer Edmund Veesenmayer 138,870 Jews had been deported. On 31 May 1944, Veesenmayer reported an additional 60,000 Jews were sent to
10658-487: The action. In addition to local non-Jewish collaborators, the Jewish councils and Jewish ghetto police were often ordered to assist with liquidation actions, although these Jews were in most cases murdered later. Chaotic, capriciously executed selections determined who would be loaded onto the trains. Many Jews were shot during the action—making up perhaps 20 percent or more of the total deaths—often leaving ghettos strewn with corpses. Surviving Jews were forced to clean up
10804-515: The black market. The 'productionists' among the German authorities – who attempted to make the ghettos self-sustaining by turning them into enterprises – prevailed over the 'attritionists' only after the German invasion of the Soviet Union . The most prominent ghettos were thus temporarily stabilized through the production of goods needed at the front , as death rates among
10950-1034: The bodies and collect any valuables from the victims. Gas vans developed from those used to kill mental patients since 1939 were assigned to the Einsatzgruppen and first used in November 1941; victims were forced into the van and killed with engine exhaust. The first extermination camp was Chełmno in the Wartheland, established on the initiative of the local civil administrator Arthur Greiser with Himmler's approval; it began operations in December 1941 using gas vans. In October 1941, Higher SS and Police Leader of Lublin Odilo Globocnik began work planning Belzec —the first purpose-built extermination camp to feature stationary gas chambers —amid increasing talk among German administrators in Poland of large-scale murder of Jews in
11096-467: The bodies of Jews who died during the previous 24 hours. In May 1943, the Bulgarian government led by King Boris III expelled 20,000 Jews from Sofia and at the same time, made plans to deport Bulgaria's Jews to the camps pursuant to an agreement with Germany. A Holocaust train from Thrace was witnessed by Stefan I , the Metropolitan Bishop of Sofia , who was shocked by what he saw. Ultimately,
11242-448: The camp closed down per Globocnik 's directive. Of the more than 245,000 Jews who passed through the Łódź Ghetto , the last 68,000 inmates, by then the largest final gathering of Jews in all of German-occupied Europe, had been murdered by the Nazis after 7 August 1944. They were told to prepare for resettlement; instead, over the next 23 days they were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau by train at
11388-484: The camps in six days, while the total for the past 16 days stood at 204,312 victims. Between May and July 1944, helped by Hungarian police, the German Sicherheitspolizei deported nearly 440,000 Hungarian Jews, mainly to Auschwitz-Birkenau, or 437,000 at the rate of 6,250 per day. Approximately 320,000 Hungarian Jews are estimated to have been murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau before July 1944. On 8 July,
11534-483: The camps required the labor of less than 3,000 Jewish prisoners, 1,000 Trawniki men (largely Ukrainian auxiliaries), and very few German guards. About half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust died by poison gas. Thousands of Romani people were also murdered in the extermination camps. Prisoner uprisings at Treblinka and Sobibor meant that these camps were shut down earlier than envisioned. Fewer than 150 Jews survived these death camps. Systematic murder began in
11680-465: The capacity of the railways to transport the victims from Nazi ghettos to extermination camps. The most modern accurate numbers on the scale of the "Final Solution" still rely partly on shipping records of the German railways. The first mass deportation of Jews from Nazi Germany, the Polenaktion , occurred in October 1938. It was the forcible eviction of German Jews with Polish citizenship fuelled by
11826-631: The closing of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, the transport/arrival timetable was 1.5 trains per day: 50 freight cars × 50 prisoners per freight car × 1,066 days = ~4,000,000 prisoners in total. On 20 January 1943, Heinrich Himmler sent a letter to Albert Ganzenmüller , the Under-secretary of State at the Reich Transport Ministry, requesting: "need your help and support. If I am to wind things up quickly, I must have more trains." Of
11972-528: The control of Nazi Germany and its allies , for the purpose of forcible deportation of the Jews , as well as other victims of the Holocaust , to the Nazi concentration , forced labour , and extermination camps . The speed at which people targeted in the " Final Solution " could be exterminated was dependent on two factors: the capacity of the death camps to gas the victims and quickly dispose of their bodies, as well as
12118-427: The death penalty was not always carried out in practice. Rescuers' motivations varied on a spectrum from altruism to expecting sex or money; it was not uncommon for helpers to betray or murder Jews if their money ran out. It was also not uncommon for the same people to help some Jews yet hunting down or kill others. In September 1942, on the initiative of Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and with financial assistance from
12264-503: The deportation of Jews from Hungary had stopped due to international pressure by the Pope , the King of Sweden , and the Red Cross (all of whom had recently learned about the extent of it). However, in October 1944 some 50,000 Jews were forced on a death march to Germany following a coup d'état which put the Hungarian pro-Nazi government back in control. They were forced to dig anti-tank ditches on
12410-413: The deportations. According to Serge Klarsfeld , president of the organization Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees from France , SNCF was forced by German and Vichy authorities to cooperate in providing transport for French Jews to the border and did not make any profit from this transport. However, in December 2014, SNCF agreed to pay up to $ 60 million worth of compensation to Holocaust survivors in
12556-545: The deportees would never return to Slovakia. Except for Croatia, Slovakia was the only Axis ally to pay for the deportation of its own Jewish population. Most of the Jewish population perished in two waves of deportations. The first, in 1942, took away two-thirds of the Slovak Jews; the second wave after the Slovak National Uprising in 1944 claimed another 13,500 victims, 10,000 of whom did not return. Switzerland
12702-728: The deteriorating situation in occupied Belgium before the liberation. The percentages of Jews who were deported varied by location. It was highest in Antwerp, with 67 percent deported, but lower in Brussels (37 percent), Liége (35 percent) and Charleroi (42 percent). The main destination for the convoys was Auschwitz concentration camp in occupied Poland . Smaller numbers were sent to Buchenwald and Ravensbrück concentration camps , as well as Vittel concentration camp in France. In total, 25,437 Jews were deported from Belgium. Only 1,207 of these survived
12848-441: The estimated six million Jews exterminated during World War II, two million were murdered on the spot by the military, Waffen-SS , Order Police battalions and mobile death squads of the Einsatzgruppen aided by and the local auxiliary police . The remainder were shipped to their deaths elsewhere. Most Jews were forced to pay for their own deportations, particularly wherever passenger carriages were used. This payment came in
12994-526: The event of an anti-Nazi revolt. As the German authorities began to liquidate the ghettos, armed resistance was offered in over 100 locations on both sides of Polish-Soviet border of 1939 , especially in eastern Poland. Uprisings erupted in five major cities, 45 provincial towns, five major concentration and extermination camps, and at least 18 forced labor camps. The Nieśwież Ghetto insurgents in eastern Poland fought back on July 22, 1942. The Łachwa Ghetto revolt erupted on September 3. On October 14, 1942,
13140-466: The factories in Poznań and Chrzanów were mass-producing for the Eastern Front the redesigned "Kriegslok" BR52 locomotives stripped of non-ferrous metals and instead made mostly of steel; locomotives in that battlespace were not expected to survive for long, so managers eliminated the use of higher-value metal like bronze, chrome, copper, brass, and nickel. Before the onset of Operation Reinhard which marked
13286-497: The first wave were not Belgian citizens, resulting from the intervention by Queen Elisabeth with the German authorities. In 1943, the deportations of Belgians resumed. In September, Jews with Belgian citizenship were deported for the first time. After the war, the collaborator Felix Lauterborn stated in his trial that 80 percent of arrests in Antwerp used information from paid informants. In total, 6,000 Jews were deported in 1943, with another 2,700 in 1944. Transports were halted by
13432-407: The focus was on separating and enclosing Jews in ghettos. However, such plans were not completely dropped. After the conquest of France in 1940, the Nazis considered deporting Jews to French Madagascar , but this proved impossible. The Nazis planned that harsh conditions in these areas would kill many Jews. After the attack on the Soviet Union, plans were made to remove the Jewish population to
13578-519: The forests were murdered by the Banderites . The existence of Sonderdienst paramilitary formations of Germans from Poland was a grave danger to those who attempted to help ghettoized Jews in cities with sizable German and pro-German minorities, as in the case of the Izbica , and Mińsk Mazowiecki Ghettos , among many others. Half of all Jewish Holocaust victims, around 3 million, were from Poland. It
13724-576: The form of direct money deposit to the SS in light of the "resettlement to work in the East" myth. Charged in the ghettos for accommodation, adult Jews paid full price one-way tickets, while children under 10–12 years of age paid half price, and those under four went free. Jews who had run out of money were the first to be deported. The SS forwarded part of this money to the German Transport Authority to pay
13870-842: The foundation of the Second Polish Republic simultaneously with the armistice of 11 November 1918 ending World War I , Jews suffered from institutionalized discrimination and many were poor. Anti-Semitism became a state ideology in Germany after the Nazis gained power, but even before that, Eastern European Jews, called in Germany Ostjuden held a particularly low position in German perception. Jews in Germany tended to be secularized and largely assimilated into German society, while most Polish Jews lived in traditionalist religious communities, speaking Yiddish and distinguishing themselves in dress and customs from their surroundings. Prejudice
14016-402: The gas chambers were not functioning. At other extermination camps, nearly everyone on a transport was killed on arrival, but at Auschwitz around 20-25 percent were separated out for labor, although many of these prisoners died later on. Belzec, Sobibor , and Treblinka reported a combined revenue of RM 178.7 million from belongings stolen from their victims, far exceeding costs. Combined,
14162-491: The general public in hundreds of virtual prison-islands called Jüdische Wohnbezirke or Wohngebiete der Juden . However, the new system was unsustainable. By the end of 1941, most ghettoised Jews had no savings left to pay the SS for further bulk food deliveries. The quagmire was resolved at the Wannsee conference of 20 January 1942 near Berlin , where the "Final Solution of the Jewish question" ( die Endlösung der Judenfrage )
14308-417: The ghetto to work outside it. Because the ghettos were not segregated by sex some family life continued. A Jewish community leadership ( Judenrat ) exercised some authority and tried to sustain the Jewish community while following German demands. As a survival strategy, many tried to make the ghettos useful to the occupiers as a labor reserve. The Warsaw ghetto contained more Jews than all of France;
14454-479: The largest killing operation of the Holocaust. In order to reduce resistance the ghetto would be raided without warning, usually in the early morning, and the extent of the operation would be concealed as long as possible. Trawniki men ( Trawnikimänner ) made up of Soviet prisoners-of-war or Polish Blue Police would cordon off the ghetto while the German Order Police and Security Police carried out
14600-928: The largest locomotive factories in Europe, the H. Cegielski – Poznań renamed DWM, and Fablok in Chrzanów renamed Oberschlesische Lokomotivwerke Krenau producing engines Ty37 and Pt31 (designed in Poland), as well as the locomotive parts factory Babcock-Zieleniewski in Sosnowiec renamed Ferrum AG (tasked with making parts to V-1 i V-2 rockets also). Under the new management, formerly Polish companies began producing German engines BR44, BR50 and BR86 as early as 1940 virtually for free, using forced labor . All Polish railwaymen were ordered to return to their place of work, or face death. Beating with fists became commonplace, although perceived as shocking by Polish long-term professionals. Their public executions were introduced in 1942. By 1944,
14746-454: The low priority accorded to these transports. Shortage of rail transport sometimes led to postponement or cancellation of deportations. Upon arrival, the victims were robbed of their remaining possessions, forced to undress, had their hair cut, and were chased into the gas chamber. Death from the gas was agonizing and could take as long as 30 minutes. The gas chambers were primitive and sometimes malfunctioned. Some prisoners were shot because
14892-594: The mass " resettlement to the east ". The victims were told they were being taken to labour camps in Reichskommissariat Ukraine . In reality, from 1942 on, for most Jews, deportations meant being murdered at either Bełżec , Chełmno , Sobibór , Majdanek , Treblinka , or Auschwitz-Birkenau . The plan was being realized in the utmost secrecy. In late 1942, during a telephone conversation, Hitler's private secretary Martin Bormann admonished Heinrich Himmler , who
15038-486: The more pragmatic, such as the need to reduce the amount of food consumed by Jews, in order enable a slight increase in rations to non-Jewish Poles, and combat the black market , to avoid hunger and increase of the resistance among them. By mid-1942, Nazi leaders decided to allow only 300,000 Jews to survive in the General Government by the end of the year for forced labor; for the most part, only those working in armaments production were spared. On 19 July, Himmler decreed
15184-560: The most deadly phase of the Holocaust in Poland many Jews were transported by road to killing sites such as the Chełmno extermination camp , equipped with gas vans . In 1942, stationary gas chambers were built at Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Majdanek and Auschwitz. After the Nazi takeover of PKP, the train movements, originating inside and outside occupied Poland and terminating at death camps, were tracked by Dehomag using IBM -supplied card-reading machines and traditional waybills produced by
15330-590: The most plausible estimates for Jews who survived in hiding were between 30,000 and 60,000. The German surrender in May 1945 was followed by a massive change in the political geography of Europe. Poland's borders were redrawn by the Allies according to the demands made by Joseph Stalin during the Tehran Conference , confirmed as not negotiable at the Yalta Conference of 1945. The Polish government-in-exile
15476-419: The movement and frequently had to wait for other trains to pass, inevitably extending transport time beyond expectations. In Western and Central Europe, trains usually consisted of third class passenger carriages, but in Eastern Europe they usually used freight wagons or cattle wagons ; the latter packed with up to 150 deportees, although 50 was the number proposed by the SS regulations. No food or water
15622-400: The rail tracks, with most deportations from Warsaw to Treblinka taking place between 22 July and 12 September 1942. The gassing at Treblinka started on 23 July 1942, with two pendulum trains delivering victims six days each week ranging from about 4,000 to 7,000 victims per transport, the first in the early morning and the second in the mid-afternoon. All new arrivals were sent immediately to
15768-818: The rate of 2,500 per day. Căile Ferate Române (Romanian Railways) were involved in the transport of Jewish and Romani people to concentration camps in Romanian Old Kingdom , Bessarabia , northern Bukovina , and Transnistria . In a notable example, after the Iasi pogrom events, Jews were forcibly loaded onto freight cars with planks hammered in place over the windows and traveled for seven days in unimaginable conditions. Many died and were gravely affected by lack of air, blistering heat, lack of water, food or medical attention. These veritable death trains arrived to their destinations Podu Iloaiei and Călăraşi with only one-fifth of their passengers alive. No official apology
15914-452: The reader into believing in their authenticity. The Katzmann Report was written not in the occupied territories but in Berlin after Katzmann's tour of duty in the District of Galicia where he personally directed the murder of between 55,000 and 65,000 Jews during 1941-1942 around Lemberg. In the following months, his "Jew hunts" coupled with roundups for mass deportations to death camps produced
16060-608: The regions of Thrace and from Macedonia in the Bulgarian share of the partitioned Greece, where they were gassed upon arrival. Under Hungarian control, the number of Jews officially increased to 725,007 by 1941. Of this total, 184,453 Jews lived in Budapest. While in alliance with Nazi Germany, Hungary acquired new provinces at both the First and the Second Vienna Awards (1938; 1940). The Hungarian Army received vital help from
16206-494: The road westward. A further 25,000 Jews were put in an "international ghetto" under Swedish protection engineered by Carl Lutz and Raoul Wallenberg . When the Soviet Army liberated Budapest on 17 January 1945, of the original 825,000 Jews in the country, less than 260,000 Jews were still alive, including 80,000 Hungarian natives. The popular view that Benito Mussolini resisted the deportation of Italian Jews to Germany
16352-403: The roof from cans sealed hermetically. Once off the transports, the prisoners were split by category. The old, the young, the sick, and the infirm were sometimes separated for immediate death by shooting, while the rest were prepared for the gas chambers. In a single 14-hour workday, 12,000 to 15,000 people would be killed at any one of these camps. The capacity of the crematoria at Birkenau
16498-531: The same time, escapes, expulsions and murders continued unabated. As a result of these, only 1,800 Jews lived in the province of West Prussia in February 1940. In the Wartheland, their number dropped to 260,000. Deportations to the General Government resumed in January 1941, but only 2140 Jews and 20,000 Poles were deported from Wartheland. At this point, efforts to concentrate Jews in a compact territory were abandoned,
16644-743: The seizure of most Jewish property and the takeover of Jewish-owned businesses. When Jews were forced into ghettos, they lost their homes and belongings. The first Nazi ghettos were established in the Wartheland and General Government in 1939 and 1940 on the initiative of local German administrators. The largest ghettos, such as Warsaw and Łódź , were established in existing residential neighborhoods and closed by fences or walls. In many smaller ghettos, Jews were forced into poor neighborhoods but with no fence. Forced labor programs provided subsistence to many ghetto inhabitants, and in some cases protected them from deportation. Workshops and factories were operated inside some ghettos, while in other cases Jews left
16790-582: The site of the former Warsaw Ghetto and is connected with earlier memorials such as the 1948 Monument to the Ghetto Heroes and the memorial at the Umschlagplatz. The phenomenon of Holocaust tourism exploded after 1989 due to reduced travel restrictions and brought along with it increasing tourism and commercialization that sometimes was criticized as kitsch . In 1999, the Institute of National Remembrance
16936-483: The sixty-eight transports to Auschwitz 1052 people returned, including 181 of the 3450 people taken from eighteen of the trains at Cosel . There were 18 survivors out of approximately one thousand people selected from the nineteen trains to Sobibor, the remainder being murdered on arrival. For the Netherlands, the overall survival rate among Jews who boarded the trains for all camps was 4.86 percent. On 29 September 2005,
17082-505: The spring and summer of 1942. Jews from the Galicia district were transported to the extermination centres at Belzec and Sobibor, among them some 150,000 Jews deported to Galicia by the Romanian authorities. Plans to kill most of the Jews in the General Government were affected by various goals of the SS ( Schutzstaffel ), military, and civil administration; stretching from purely racial one to
17228-477: The spring of 1947 only 90,000 Jews remained in Poland. Britain demanded that Poland (among others) halt the Jewish exodus, but their pressure was largely unsuccessful. Around 13,000 Polish Jews left the country between 1968 and 1972 because of the Communist state antisemitic campaign , as much as one-third of those remaining back then. An apology was made by the democratic Polish government in March 2018. In 2019,
17374-609: The subsequent Warsaw Ghetto Uprising resulting in new deportations. The 1942 Höfle Telegram of the total number of victims most of whom were transported by train to Operation Reinhard death camps, including cumulative numbers known today, is as follows: The Höfle Telegram lists the number of arrivals to the Reinhard camps through 1942 as 1,274,166 Jews based on Reichsbahn own records. The last train to be sent to Treblinka extermination camp left Białystok Ghetto on 18 August 1943; all prisoners were murdered in gas chambers after which
17520-474: The swampy areas of Polesia . In the fall of 1941, any such plans were abandoned. During the invasion, synagogues were burned and thousands of Jews fled or were expelled into the Soviet occupation zone. Various anti-Jewish regulations were soon issued. In October 1939, adult Jews in the General Government were required to perform forced labor. In November 1939 they were ordered to wear white armbands. Laws decreed
17666-482: The systems of persecution. A Polish translation of the report was published in the 1950s, but was subject to communist censorship and it did not have an accompanying scholarly analysis; that came with a more recent edition by the Institute of National Remembrance . A full uncensored text of the report was published in 2009. Modern historians consider the report to be of limited value in terms of evidence because of its intentional distortion of some facts, meant to cover up
17812-411: The trains stopped at the nearby Łódź Ghetto and Minsk Ghetto , respectively. From there, the prisoners were taken by trucks. At Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor, the killing mechanism consisted of a large internal-combustion engine delivering exhaust fumes to gas chambers through pipes. At Auschwitz and Majdanek, the gas chambers relied on Zyklon B pellets of hydrogen cyanide, poured through vents in
17958-532: The undressing area by the Sonderkommando squad that managed the arrival platform, and from there to the gas chambers. According to German records, including the official report by SS Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop , some 265,000 Jews were transported in freight trains from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka during this period. The murder operation code-named Grossaktion Warsaw concluded several months before
18104-607: The victims were kept locked inside overnight at layover yards. The Holocaust trains also waited for military trains to pass. An average transport took about four days. The longest transport of the war, from Corfu , took 18 days. When the train arrived at the camp and the doors were opened, everyone was already dead. The SS built three extermination camps in occupied Poland specifically for Operation Reinhard: Bełżec , Sobibór , and Treblinka . They were fitted with identical mass-killing installations disguised as communal shower rooms. In addition, gas chambers were developed in 1942 at
18250-478: The war. Some Polish peasants participated in German-organized Judenjagd ("Jew hunt") in the countryside, where according to Jan Grabowski , approximately 80% of the Jews who attempted to hide from the Germans ended up being murdered. According to Grabowski, the number of "Judenjagd" victims could reach 200,000 in Poland alone; Szymon Datner gave a lower estimate - 100,000 Jews who "fell prey to
18396-507: The war. The only time during World War II that a Holocaust train carrying Jewish deportees from Western Europe was stopped by the underground happened on 19 April 1943, when the Transport No. 20 left Mechelen with 1,631 Jews, heading for Auschwitz. Soon after leaving Mechelen, the driver stopped the train after seeing an emergency red light, set by the Belgians. After a brief firefight between
18542-677: The war. The most notable incident was the Kielce pogrom in July 1946, which cost 42 lives. The Polish state held trials of war criminals under the decree of 31 August 1944 . Historian Andrew Kornbluth estimates that "several dozen Poles were executed for denouncing, capturing, and killing their Jewish neighbors during the war", and thousands more perpetrators were investigated or received a lesser sentence. Many Jews, fearing for their lives, fled to displaced persons camps in Germany. The pogrom prompted General Spychalski of PWP from wartime Warsaw, to sign
18688-527: The wholesale theft of gold and money by various German officials. The 62-page book attempts to present the extermination of Jews as an orderly operation. It begins with a photo collection titled "The Solution of the Jewish Problem in East Galicia", which is followed by a cost–benefit analysis . The report provides only a window into the scale of plunder. The totals are never rounded off. They are meant to lead
18834-545: The younger men conscripted to the Red Army from the Kresy in 1940–1941. Their families were murdered in the Holocaust. Gunnar S. Paulsson estimated that 30,000 Polish Jews survived in the labor camps; but according to Engel as many as 70,000–80,000 of them were liberated from camps in Germany and Austria alone, except that declaring their own nationality was of no use to those who did not intend to return. Dariusz Stola found that
18980-673: Was 20,000 bodies per day. The standard means of transport was a 10-metre long (32 ft 9 + 3 ⁄ 4 in) freight car , although third class passenger carriages were also used when the SS wanted to keep up the "resettlement to work in the East" myth, particularly in the Netherlands and in Belgium. The SS manual covered such trains, suggesting a carrying capacity per trainset of 2,500 people in 50 cars, each boxcar loaded with 50 prisoners. In reality, however, boxcars were routinely loaded to 200% of capacity or 100 people per car. This resulted in an average of 5,000 people per trainset. During
19126-482: Was a key factor in managing to survive, as were financial resources to pay helpers. The death penalty was threatened for individuals hiding Jews and their families. Each village head was responsible for handing over all Jews and escaped Soviet prisoners of war, partisans, and other strangers to the German occupation authorities under the threat of collective punishment for the village. Although one study found that at least 700 Poles were executed for helping Jews,
19272-472: Was almost destroyed. All Poles, Christian or Jewish, were bound for total annihilation. In 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland while the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east . In German-occupied Poland, Jews were killed, subjected to forced labor, and forced to move to ghettos. Some 7,000 Jews were killed in 1939, but open mass killings subsided until June of 1941. The Soviet Union deported many Jews to
19418-512: Was crucial to the effective implementation of the " Final Solution of the Jewish Question ". The DRB was paid to transport Jews and other victims of the Holocaust from thousands of towns and cities throughout Europe to meet their death in the Nazi concentration camp system. As well as transporting German Jews, DRB was responsible for coordinating transports on the rail networks of occupied territories and Germany's allies. The characteristics of organized concentration and transportation of victims of
19564-670: Was established in order to promote state-sponsored historical narratives, although the degree to which it is politicized has changed over time. In 2018 the Polish government caused a diplomatic crisis by proposing the Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance , that would have prescribed up to three years' imprisonment for someone who "attributes to the Polish Nation or Polish State...co-responsibility for Nazi crimes committed by
19710-423: Was excluded from the negotiations. The territory of Poland was reduced by approximately 20 percent. Before the end of 1946 some 1.8 million Polish citizens were expelled and forcibly resettled within the new borders. For the first time in its history Poland became a homogeneous one nation-state by force, with the national wealth reduced by 38 percent. Poland's financial system had been destroyed. Intelligentsia
19856-477: Was expanded by adding Galicia District ; the Białystok District was administered separately. During the invasion, local inhabitants carried out at least 219 pogroms , killing around twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand Jews. The pogroms were extremely violent with many Jews beaten, raped, stolen from, and brutally murdered. Although German forces tried to incite pogroms, their role in causing violence
20002-490: Was granted 3,818 kilometres (2,372 mi) of railway lines (nearly doubled by 1941) and 505 km of narrow gauge, initially. In December 1939, on the request of Hans Frank in Berlin, the Ostbahndirektion was given financial independence after paying back 10 million Reichsmarks to DRB. The removal of all bomb damage was completed in 1940. The Polish management was either executed in mass shooting actions (see:
20148-484: Was informing him about 50,000 Jews already exterminated in a concentration camp in Poland. "They were not exterminated – Bormann screamed – only evacuated, evacuated, evacuated!", and slammed down the phone, wrote Enghelberg. Following the Wannsee Conference of 1942, the Nazis began to murder Jews in large numbers at death camps, newly built as part of Operation Reinhard . Since 1941,
20294-410: Was intensified during World War I , when many Jews from the occupied eastern territories moved to Germany. They were accused by antisemitic press and politicians of criminal activity, lack of hygiene, spreading disease, speculation, trafficking of women, spreading revolution, and were eventually blamed for Germany's defeat in the war and interwar economic problems faced by Germany. Soon, especially in
20440-426: Was largely obliterated along with the Jews, and the population reduced by about 33 percent. Many non-Jews had obtained property or jobs vacated by Jews during the war, and refused to give up these gains to Jewish survivors. The elimination of the Polish aristocracy as well as Polish Jews cleared the way for the foundation of an ethnically Polish middle class. An estimated 650 to 1,200 Jews were killed in Poland after
20586-560: Was released yet by Căile Ferate Române for their role in the Holocaust in Romania. On 9 September 1941, the parliament of the Slovak State ratified the Jewish Codex, a series of laws and regulations that stripped Slovakia's 89,000 Jews of their civil rights and means of economic survival. The ruling Slovak People’s Party paid 500 Reichsmarks per expelled Jew, in exchange for a promise that
20732-462: Was set in place. It was a euphemism referring to the Nazi plan for the annihilation of the Jewish people. During the liquidation of the ghettos starting in 1942, the trains were used to transport the condemned populations to death camps. To implement the "Final Solution", the Nazis made the Deutsche Reichsbahn an indispensable element of the mass extermination machine, wrote historian Raul Hilberg . The Nazis disguised their "Final Solution" as
20878-467: Was supplied. The covered freight wagons were fitted with only a bucket latrine . A small barred window provided irregular ventilation, which oftentimes resulted in multiple deaths from either suffocation or exposure to the elements. Polish forced labourers and Soviet prisoners of war were transported in similar poor conditions, also resulting in many deaths. At times, the Germans did not have enough Jews to fill an entire train's worth of wagons, so
21024-474: Was the hub of the Belgian National Railway system. The first convoy left Mechelen for extermination camps on 22 July 1942, although nearly 2,250 Jews had already been deported as forced laborers for Organisation Todt to Northern France. By October 1942, some 16,600 people had been deported in 17 convoys. At this time, deportations were temporarily halted until January 1943. Those deported in
21170-437: Was the prototype camp on which the others were based. The camps were located on rail lines to make it easier to transport Jews to their deaths, but in remote places to avoid notice. The stench caused by mass killing operations was noticeable to anyone nearby. People were typically deported to the camps in overcrowded cattle cars . As many as 150 people were forced into a single boxcar . Many died en route , partly because of
21316-546: Was very difficult due to factors such as the lack of money to pay helpers and the risk of denunciation. Only 1 to 2 percent of Polish Jews in German-occupied territory survived. After the war, survivors faced difficulties in regaining their property and rebuilding their lives. Especially after the Kielce pogrom , many fled to displaced persons camps in Allied-occupied Germany . Jews have lived in Poland since
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