The
truth of the photographs of the crimes and atrocities
included in this Holocaust project needs to be shown. The
photos may be of graphic nature and disturbing - before
providing access to younger learners, parents and teachers
should preview the sites and guide through what they may
read and see.
KZ Dachau
was the first concentration camp established in Nazi
Germany - the camp was opened on March 22, 1933. The
camp's first inmates were primarily political prisoners,
Social Democrats, Communists, trade unionists, habitual
criminals, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, beggars,
vagrants, hawkers.
In the late 1930's the Nazis killed thousands of
handicapped Germans by lethal injection and poisonous gas.
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June
1941, mobile killing units following in the wake of the
German Army began shooting massive numbers of Jews and
Gypsies in open fields and ravines on the outskirts of
conquered cities and towns.
Eventually the Nazis created a more secluded and organized
method of killing. Extermination centers were established
in occupied Poland with special apparatus especially
designed for mass murder. Giant death machines.
Six such death camps existed: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec,
Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka.
Large-scale murder by gas and body disposal through
cremation were conducted systematically by the Nazis and
Adolf Hitler's SS
men ..
Victims were deported to these centers from Western Europe
and from the ghettos in Eastern Europe which the Nazis had
established. In addition, millions died in the ghettos and
concentration camps as a result of forced labor,
starvation, exposure, brutality, disease, and execution.
were established 1996 to
promote education about the history of the
Holocaust and assist visitors in developing
understanding of the ramifications of prejudice
and racism. The resources include essays, poems,
eyewitness testimonies, photographs, documents,
films, literature, timelines, links.
