by Anonymous

{For those of you who are removed by age from the second world war, this will serve as a valuable history lesson. - Ed.}  Dedicated to the memory of the six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated with the German and Russian peoples looking the other way.

FOREWORD

 "The Holocaust (also called Shoah in Hebrew) refers to the period from January 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, to May 8, 1945 (V­E Day), when the war in Europe ended. During this time, Jews in Europe were subjected to progressively harsh persecution that ultimately led to the murder of 6,000,000 Jews (1.5 million of these being children) and the destruction of 5,000 Jewish communities.  These deaths represented two-thirds of European Jewry and one-third of world Jewry. The Jews who died were not casualties of the fighting that ravaged Europe during World War II.  Rather, they were the victims of Germany's deliberate and systematic attempt to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe, a plan Hitler called the “Final Solution” (Endlosung)."  - http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/history.html 

As early as 1933, the word had gotten out about the Nazi's internment camps but the conditions reported were not believed but rather attributed to propaganda.

The Germans had established a number of camps to carry out their 'final solution shown here.  Some of the more infamous were, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Treblinka and Sobibor.

"The Nazis incarcerated Christian church leaders who opposed Nazism, as well as thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses who refused to salute Adolf Hitler or to serve in the German army. Through the so-called “Euthanasia Program,” the Nazis murdered an estimated 200,000 individuals with mental or physical disabilities. "  - http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005149

Life in the Camps

Treatment of those interned by the Nazis' was horrific from the moment they were forced onto the trains.  Cattle cars and freight cars transported the victims.  The cars were packed to near double their capacity, standing room only, no fresh air circulated, little food or water and the heat and stench was unbearable.  Many died during the journey to the camps.

Once at the camps the strong and weak were separated.  The strong would be used for work, the weak gassed, burned and dumped in a pit.  The strong were tatooed with an identifying number obliterating their identity and assigned to barracks, crawling with lice and other insects.  The prisoners were forced to do hard labor and cruelly treated.  There was little food for those inside the camps and death by starvation was common.

Liberation

As Hitler's Reich began to crumble under the onslaught of American and British Forces from the West and Russian forces from the East, the camps began to fall under the control of the two advancing armies. 

These photos were taken in Germany by James Emison Chanslor, an Army Master Sergeant who served in World War II from 1942 until 1945.

Generals George Patton and Omar Bradley along with Supreme Allied Commander, Dwight Eisenhower arrived at the camp in April of 1945.  They saw more than 3200 naked and emaciated bodies, a shed piled to the ceiling with dead bodies and various torture devices.  Patton became physicall ill behind the barracks.

Photo: The dead line the camp interior

It is a matter of history that when Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps, he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead.  He did this because he said in words to this effect: 'Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because some where down the track of history some b**tard will get up and say that this never happened.  "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" - Edmund Burke

Photo: U.S. Soldiers count the carnage                                 

U.S.  troops were not prepared for the shock and horror of the newly liberated camps.

The heaps of dead and dying inmates were visible everywhere.
The brutality of starvation, the horrendus medical experiments and torture had taken their toll.  The U.S. Army Signal Coor filmed and documented the scenes for history.

Photo:  dead strewn in and outside the Barracks area

In April of 1945, the American 4th armored division from Patton's 3rd army, searching for Nazi communications in the move on Gotha and Ohrdruf, stumbled across the first of the camps surrounding Buchenwald.

In Little Camp, a subset of Buchenwald, the inmates were described as "..Their legs and arms were sticks with huge bulging joints, and their loins were fouled by their own excrement. Their eyes were sunk so deep that they looked blind.  If they moved at all, it was with a crawling slowness that made them look like huge, lethargic spiders."
-  http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/camps.html

On April 29, 1945 American forces liberated Dachau, operational since 1933.  In the east, Auschwitz, Sobibor and Treblinka were overrun by Soviet forces.

The U.S. Government actively seeks out and deports Nazis who partcipated in persecution in the deathcamps.