A Bunch of Holocaust Facts You Don’t Know: Part One

• These Holocaust facts are surprising and many, unknown.

These Holocaust facts remind us of all the things that happened during this tragic time. And provide some details that are less known.

• The Hall of Names is located at the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem, Israel. There are pictures of 600 of the people who died during the Holocaust.
• German teachers in the 1930s were bullies to Jewish students. They mocked them, ordered them to stand with their heads bowed and would write on the blackboard, “ The Jew is our Greatest Enemy.”
• Germans called Jews “Untermenschen means” which means subhuman. This is one of the most terrible of the Holocaust facts.
• Jews forced into camps were starved, forced into hard labor, tortured and sometimes put through medical experiments. 
• The word Holocaust comes from Ancient Greek for burning an animal as a sacrifice to the gods. It later came to mean a great massacre or slaughter. 
• About 6 million jews were killed by the Nazis, along with 5 million others including Salvs, Roma and Sinti (gypsies) anyone who was homosexual or disabled, Soviet prisoners of war and any religious groups or anyone that opposed the Nazis.
• Genocide is the attempted extinction of a whole people. This is the worst definition of these Holocaust facts.
• The Nazi party took control in Germany following the destruction and instability of World War I.
• Jews were originally from Southwest Asia. Their ancestors founded a kingdom that later was separated into Israel and Judah.
• Because of the Great Depression in the United States, other countries were also affected and by 1932, 30% of the German workforce was unemployed.
• The National Socialist German Workers’ Party was founded in 1920. It’s supporters, the Nazi’s, stirred up public feelings about the government and recent treaty, calling for Germany to build its military, promising jobs. They blamed banks, business and communists and soon directed their anger towards Jewish companies.
• The Nazi’s first came to public notice in 1923 when they tried to seize power with an armed uprising in the city of Munich. What a terrible start and one of the first of the worst of the Holocaust facts.
• Hitler wanted to be seen as responsible, having the Nazi’s participate in voting. In reality, the Nazi’s and Hitler won votes through street violence, intimidation and bullying.
• On March 24th, 1933, a special Enabling Act was passed in Germany giving Hitler the powers of a dictator or a ruler with absolute power. After power, communists and other political opponents including members of the parliament were rounded up and arrested. 
• When the Gestapo (a secret and much feared police force) was formed, the persecution of Jews began in earnest also said as the persecution of Jews has already started but is now being done in a serious and complete way.
• The idea of humans being divided into races and that some races were superior to others was very common in Europe in the 1800s and 1900s. These views were used to justify slavery and European rule in other lands. Even scientists and scholars of the day thought this to be true.
• Antisemitic means anti-Jewish.
• Aryans were considered the master race. Nordic peoples or Germans, were perfect examples according to this ideology.
• The Nazi’s killed handicapped people at the Hartheim Hospital in Austria, calling them “mercy killings.”
• The idea of eugenics came about during this time, the idea being that “better” human beings could be produced through breeding the cleverest, fittest and strongest people. 
• Because of the idea of eugenics, mental patients in Germany, France, the United States and even the United Kingdom were sterilized so they couldn’t have children. Nazi’s extended this practice towards the deaf, disabled and blind, extending mercy killings to people with disabilities. 
• Poison gas used in killing people was first developed for mental patients in 1940. One of the worst Holocaust facts on the list, if not the fact before.
• There was an anti-Jewish educational picture book called Don’t Trust a Fox in a Green Meadow- or the Word of a Jew. There’s a posted notice on the front cover as well, in German reading, “Jews Not Wanted Here.”

For more, follow the link to read A Bunch of Holocaust Facts You Don’t Know: Part Two.