The Poles

by Theo Dean Slobod

The Nazis thought that the Poles where just a waste of their space, they invaded Poland on the first of September. Polish troops fought heroically but ran out of food and water and on September twenty seventh they were forced to surrender. Hitler sent the troops in Poland eastward for "more living space." The central southern areas became the General Government, and in 1941 Germany claimed eastern Poland as well. The Nazi's had a genocidal policy that targeted 3.3 million men children and women for destruction.

During the 1939 invasion of Poland, special action squads of SS and police were arresting or killing the civilians defying the Germans or thought capable to do so. During the summer of 1940 several thousand university professors, teachers, priests, and many others were shot. The mass murders occurred outside Warsaw, in the Kampinos forest near Palmiry and inside the city at the Pawiak prison.

The Germans closed or destroyed schools, museums, libraries and scientific laboratories. They demolished hundreds of monuments to national heroes. German officials then decreed that Polish children's schooling would end after a few years of elementary education. "The sole goal of this schooling is to teach them simple arithmetic - nothing above the number 500, how to write one's name and the doctrine that it is divine law to obey the Germans." Himmler wrote in his May 1940 memorandum.

Beginning in 1939 the SS began to expel Poles and Jews from the Wartherland and the Danzig corridor and move them to the General Government, by the end of 1940 the SS had expelled 325,000 people without warning. Many elderly people and children died. In 1941 the Germans expelled 45,000 more people. In late 1942 the SS also carried out huge expulsions in the General Government uprooting 110,000 poles from 300 villages.

Some Polish children were chosen for Germanization and forbidden to speak Polish and reeducated in SS or other Nazi institutions. Few ever saw their parents again. Many more children were rejected from Germanization; these unfortunate kids were sent to children's homes or killed. 50,000 children were kidnapped from Poland, mostly from orphanages or foster homes.

As the Polish resistance grew stronger, in 1943 after the German defeat at Stalingrad, German reprisal efforts escalated. The Germans destroyed a lot of villages killing women men and kids. Public executions occurred daily.

1.5 million Poles were transported for labor, most against their will, they were forced to wear purple P's on their clothing they had a curfew and were banned from any means of public transportation. 20,000 Poles died at Sachsenhausen, 20,000 at Gross-Rosen 30,000 at Mauthausen and 17,000 at Ravensbruck.

Handicapped in the Nazi Era

By Adam Bradstreet


After Hitler became chancellor the Nazis devised a plan to make what they believed to be an Aryan master race. The “Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases was made in July 14th 1933, the Sterilization started so that all handicapped and sick were sterilized .



Hitlers Idea
was that the Nazis should go around weeding out “Defects” and handicapped from their race to “Purify” it. He believed they “Spoiled the race” and that the “Inferior” people should be sterilized.



The Gas-chambers and The Crematoriums
They continued on with the “Purifying” by putting the Handicapped in gas-chambers, and saying that “they were just going to take a shower”. The gas-chambers were completed with a fake shower nozzle so the occupants believed they were just taking a shower. After, the Nazis took the body's to be cremated, one of the facilities (As pictured) celebrated their 10,000th cremation, having wine and food in the crematorium.





(A killing center were they took the mentally disabled.)




Through methods of gassing sterilization and execution, the Nazis tragically eliminated thousands of mentally ill in till the year of 1945.

Jehovah's Witnesses

by Olivia Bradstreet

During the Holocaust the Jehovah's Witnesses were prosecuted along with many other religious and racial groups.

The Jehovah's Witnesses, founded in 1870's America, were never truly welcomed in Germany and had very few friends. Even before the Nazis took hold, the Jehovah's Witnesses were not a particularly popular group, and their religious literature was often banned. When Hitler did take hold of Germany, they also would refuse to do the “Heil Hitler” salute, did not vote, and they did not join the German Labor Front or the army. They do not fight for any county (it against their religion), and Germany at the time was still recovering from losing WWI.

After Hitler became chancellor he banned Witnesses from certain areas in Germany, and eventually in 1935 the whole country. Twice the police raided Jehovah Witnesses' offices and confiscated religious literature. In 1934, Jehovah's Witnesses sent a letter to the government explaining their beliefs, which explained why they didn't vote, etc. This failed to convince the Nazis of the groups harmlessness. The Nazis then sent many Witnesses to concentration camps and prisons, and several were executed. Every Witness lost their job and benefits. After this the Witnesses were almost totally persecuted. A Gestapo was set up and began making lists of suspected Jehovah's Witnesses.

By 1939, including those from Austria and Czechoslovakia, 6,000 Witnesses were put into concentration camps and prisons.

Many Jehovah's Witnesses could sign a declaration renouncing their religion, but very few did.

All the while, Jehovah's Witnesses were still working, continuing to pray together, study the bible, and convert others. In the concentration camps they would still do these things, peacefully fighting the Nazis.