Photo of a concentration camp by Paul Goldfinger from a documentary.

Paul Goldfinger, MD,  Editor Blogfinger.net

The Nazis’ goal was to make the world “judenfrei” (free of Jews) and they nearly succeeded.  The process began in 1930’s Germany and then became full blown as the Nazis invaded most of Europe as well as other areas such as North Africa and Scandinavia.    At first they killed Jews by shooting using “killing pits” (below).    When that was not efficient enough they used trucks that crowded victims and then pumped  carbon monoxide inside. But that was way too slow.

Then they switched to ghettos where Jews were crowded inside and usually died of disease and starvation.   After that they created extermination camps which used poison gas, following which they put the bodies into ovens for mass cremation. The neighbors knew what was emanating from the smokestacks.

Other groups were also singled out, but in much smaller numbers such as gays, Gypsies, mentally ill,  disabled , and Jehovah’s Witnesses, but nothing could compare to the Holocaust which refers to the estimated 6 million murdered Jews.  When Jews tried to escape to other countries, they were often met with hostility and were sent back.

Nazis used cattle cars to transport Jews and others to concentration camps. They offered no food or water to those in the  crowded stifling, filthy  cars.  Some died on the way.  Most  were gassed on arrival and then burned in ovens. Those who lived for awhile usually succumbed to exhaustion and starvation.      Photos by Paul Goldfinger from a live streamed commemorative broadcast from Israel.

Nazi shooting of civilians. Times of Israel.   That method of extermination resulted in an estimated 2.5 million Jewish deaths. Victims were rounded up, marched to an open area where pits had been dug by prisoners, and then lined up to be shot.    Numbers come  from meticulous German records. Yad Vashem has a film of this taken surreptitiously by a passing soldier.

This rare image is from the Holocaust Museum. (Yad Vashem) in Jerusalem. A solder is about to shoot a woman holding a child.

Women in concentration camps had their hair shaved off.  Most who arrived in the camps were murdered in gas chambers . They were stripped naked and marched into “showers.”   Many were accompanied by their children.   Violent sexual assaults were common.

SS guards greet the trains and then storm the doors.

Courageous Jews, barricaded and resisting  in the Warsaw Ghetto, held out longer than expected, but finally the survivors were marched off to their deaths if they weren’t killed by artillery and tanks. 1943.  Rare photograph. Very few photographs or footage  of Nazi atrocities survived the war. Photography was banned by the Nazis.

In Israel the Holocaust Remembrance Day is  held at Yad Vashem, the amazing Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.  There also is a remarkable Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. You need two days to visit it.

6 million innocent Jews were killed by the Nazis as were many millions more across  Europe and Russia. An unbelievable number of Russian civilians and soldiers died.  But the Holocaust , specific towards Jews,  was just born out of hatred.  The underlying reason was anti-semitism which had been around long before Nazi Germany and is now surging again world-wide.

Hitler almost succeeded in accomplishing the “final solution.”  Despite all the dead, there were some  survivors, and they often dedicated themselves to telling their stories in an effort to prevent hate alone from destroying lives in the future. Their numbers are getting smaller, but for “survivors” and their families, the scars are handed on from generation to generation.

In 2012 the Camp Meeting brought a survivor to OG to speak.

Here is a link to that event in the Grove.  This survivor is still alive (2023)

2012 program in Ocean Grove

Survivor is reunited with family in New York City. Still image by Paul Goldfinger.

A personal note: I am a 2nd generation Jewish-American. My family came from Poland and Austria around 1900.  Both sides undoubtedly lived in those locations for at least 400 years.

Most of us lost most or all of our relatives in Europe to the murderous Nazis.  Hitler wiped out the vast majority of Jewish communities in Europe, especially in eastern Europe–where millions lived.  As the German army (Wehrmacht) swept through Poland and Russia, they were followed by the Einsatzgruppen, a branch of the SS, whose job was only to kill Jews or to ship them to concentration camps where gas chambers were more efficient at killing than bullets.

I was going through my mother’s possessions. I knew that our family kept  nothing from the “old country.” 

But I found a photograph dated 1938 of one of our cousins in Poland. It must have been sent to Mom’s family in Bayonne, NJ.   And the handwriting on the front indicates that some contact was maintained and that we did learn of his fate.

From my mother’s side of the family (Poland.) 1938  “Dr. Maury”

On the back he wrote a personal note:   “To my dearest New World cousins.”

He signed it and dated it: “1938”

Unfortunately he didn’t escape.  I wish we knew more about him, but at least I know that he existed and should be mourned.  From his brief greeting on the back, I think I would have liked him.

Kristallnacht occurred in Germany in 1938.  Little did our cousin know that the Nazis would invade Poland in 1939 and would go about killing every Jew that they could find, and they spent a lot of manpower and resources  to do that.

One Jewish child was killed with her Mom,  and the child  was only 30 minutes old.  The crazed Nazis spared no one.

On April 27, 2022, for the Holocaust commemoration, the Bundestag (Germany) President Barbel Bas was welcomed at an official ceremony in the Knesset  (Israel parliament.) Israeli representatives have gone to Germany for events and to meet with German Jews.  It is hard for today’s Jews to go there. No one in my family has been to Germany.  I bought a Mercedes some time ago, and my cousin Marty, a veteran, asked, “Why are you driving a Nazi car?”

I said, “Many taxis in Israel are Mercedes.”

The German President  said, “The lessons of the Holocaust oblige us to give no place to antisemitism.  Germany’s responsibility hasn’t ended. We stand alongside Israel.”

MICHELE GARRUTI.   “Theme from Schindler’s List:”