The SS Men
wore black uniforms with a skeleton's head on their hats, the motto Unsere
Ehre heisst Treue on their belts and their symbol was the double S-rune.
They had sworn eternal faith to Adolf Hitler and they were his most
ruthless henchmen, men often seen as the very personifications of evil. A violent
group who rose to power in a democracy and established
institutions of legitimized terror.
These masterminds of death were found to be quite psychologically normal. They were
men of fine standing, husbands who morning and night kissed their wives,
fathers who tucked their children into bed.
But murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhuman
acts were an everyday occurrence.
In 1933 approximately nine million Jews lived in the countries of Europe that
would be occupied by Germany during the war. By 1945 two out of every three
European Jews had been killed by the SS Men. was the systematic annihilation of six million Jews.
1.5 million
were murdered during World War 2. This figure includes more than 1.2 million
Jewish children, tens of thousands of Gypsy children and thousands of
handicapped children.
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