The holocaust

“The Holocaust began in 1933 when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and
ended in 1945 when the Nazis were defeated by the Allied powers.” In addition to
Jews, the Nazis targeted Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the
disabled for persecution. Anyone who resisted the Nazis was sent to forced labor or
murdered. “The term "Nazi" is an acronym for "Nationalsozialistishe Deutsche
Arbeiterpartei" ("National Socialist German Worker's Party").The Nazis used the
term "the Final Solution" to refer to their plan to murder the Jewish people” When
Adolf Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the world watched with
concern and disbelief. The following years revealed persecution of Jews, but the
world reveled in the belief that by appeasing Hitler, he and his beliefs would remain
within Germany. The ghetto, On September 1, 1939, Hitler shocked the world by
attacking Poland. Using blitzkrieg tactics, Poland fell within three weeks. Lodz,
located in central Poland, held the second largest Jewish community in Europe,
second only to Warsaw. When the Nazis attacked, Poles and Jews worked frantically
to dig ditches to defend their city. Only seven days after the attack on Poland
began, Lodz was occupied. Within four days of Lodz's occupation, Jews became
targets for beatings, robberies, and seizure of property.

September 14, 1939, only six days after the occupation of Lodz, was Rosh
Hashanah, one of the holiest days within the Jewish religion. For this High Holy day,
the Nazi's ordered businesses to stay open and the synagogues to be closed. While
Warsaw was still fighting off the Germans (Warsaw finally surrendered on
September 27), the 230,000 Jews in Lodz were already feeling the beginnings of
Nazi persecution.

On November 7, 1939, Lodz was incorporated into the Third Reich and the Nazi's
changed its name to Litzmannstadt ("Litzmann's city") - named after a German
general who died while attempting to conquer Lodz in World War I.

The next several months were marked by daily round-ups of Jews for forced labor
as well as random beatings and killings on the streets. It was easy to distinguish
between Pole and Jew because on November 16, 1939 the Nazi's had ordered Jews
to wear an armband on their right arm. The armband was the precursor to the
yellow Star of David badge which was soon to follow on December 12, 1939.

During the two years and one month Anne Frank spent hiding in a Secret Annex in
Amsterdam during World War II, she kept a diary. Anne Frank's diary, which was
published by her father after the war and has been read by millions of people
around the world, chronicles both the tensions and difficulties of living in such a
confined space for that long a duration as well as Anne's struggles with becoming a
teenager. Since the publication of her diary, Anne Frank has become a symbol of
the children that were murdered in the Holocaust.

The yellow star, inscribed with the word "Jude," has become a symbol of Nazi persecution.
Its likeness abounds upon Holocaust literature and materials. But the Jewish badge was not
instituted in 1933 when Hitler came to power. It was not instituted in 1935 when the
Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their citizenship. It was still not implemented by
Kristallnacht in 1938. The oppression and labeling of the Jews by use of the Jewish badge
did not begin until after the start of the Second World War. And even then, it began as local
laws rather than as a unified Nazi policy. Adolf Hitler was responsible for starting World War
II and for killing more than 11 million people during the Holocaust.