DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.31076#0134
a lack of information and communication, as well as by the slim
possibility of intervention from abroad. The Holocaust, the
greatest crime in the history of mankind, was started with the
Polish Jewry.
It was performed in stages. In the beginning, the Jews were
marked and then cut off from Poles and the outside world,
enclosed in ghettos or concentration camps. Finally they were
killed methodically with the use of the most practical technical
methods, by gas and by fire in crematories. All valuable objects—
gold, jewels, watches, and money—were stolen from the victims,
and attempts were made to efface all traces of the crime.
It is hard to understand and remember that these plans were
contrived and carried out by the nation which gave the world
such geniuses as Wolfgang Goethe and Immanuel Kant, Veit
Stoss and Albrecht Diirer, Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolf-
gang Amadeus Mozart. However, the plan of genocide was
realized very consistently. As early as 1933 Hitler and his close
assistant Himmler had conceived a design for a concentration
and extermination camp in Dachau near Munich. Here, they ini-
tially imprisoned their political opponents, and then all people
who were considered dangerous to the Third Reich.
Soon after the occupation of Poland, they started to build
similar camps in Cracow and its environs. The largest of these
camps was in Auschwitz (Oswipcim), where the Nazis mur-
dered at least 1.3 million people—a total mainly comprised of
Jews, but which also includes Poles and nationalities from all
over Europe. As a matter of official policy, all Poles were des-
tined for death after the war period of slave work.
124
possibility of intervention from abroad. The Holocaust, the
greatest crime in the history of mankind, was started with the
Polish Jewry.
It was performed in stages. In the beginning, the Jews were
marked and then cut off from Poles and the outside world,
enclosed in ghettos or concentration camps. Finally they were
killed methodically with the use of the most practical technical
methods, by gas and by fire in crematories. All valuable objects—
gold, jewels, watches, and money—were stolen from the victims,
and attempts were made to efface all traces of the crime.
It is hard to understand and remember that these plans were
contrived and carried out by the nation which gave the world
such geniuses as Wolfgang Goethe and Immanuel Kant, Veit
Stoss and Albrecht Diirer, Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolf-
gang Amadeus Mozart. However, the plan of genocide was
realized very consistently. As early as 1933 Hitler and his close
assistant Himmler had conceived a design for a concentration
and extermination camp in Dachau near Munich. Here, they ini-
tially imprisoned their political opponents, and then all people
who were considered dangerous to the Third Reich.
Soon after the occupation of Poland, they started to build
similar camps in Cracow and its environs. The largest of these
camps was in Auschwitz (Oswipcim), where the Nazis mur-
dered at least 1.3 million people—a total mainly comprised of
Jews, but which also includes Poles and nationalities from all
over Europe. As a matter of official policy, all Poles were des-
tined for death after the war period of slave work.
124