1.
History of the Jews in Slovakia
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The History of the Jews in Slovakia goes back to the 11th century, when the first Jews settled in the area. In the 14th century, about 800 Jews lived in Bratislava, in the early 15th century, a Jewish cemetery was established at Tisinec and was in use until 1892. In 1494, a blood libel caused a number of Jews to be burned at the stake, in 1529, thirty Jews were burned at the stake in Pezinok. In 1683, hundreds of Jews from Moravia fled to Slovakia, seeking refuge from Kuruc riots, in 1700, a leading yeshiva was established in Bratislava and recognized by the government. Under Joseph II, Jews received many additional civil liberties, in 1867, Slovakia became part of Austria-Hungary and was classified as Northern Hungary. The Hungarian parliament subsequently passed legislation promoting assimilation among minorities, including Jews, although the government supported Jewish participation in industry, the Jewish population grew, especially in small, secluded towns in the east. However, widespread antisemitism prevented Jews from assimilating, in 1882 and 1883, antisemitic rioting occurred in several towns. In 1896, the Reception Law was introduced, under this law, Judaism and Christianity were placed on an equal level. Shortly afterward, the Slovak Clerical Peoples Party was formed and its main interests were anti-liberalism and limiting Jewish influence. During the 19th century and early 20th century, the Zionist movement also reached Slovakia, in 1903, Bratislava hosted the First Hungarian Zionist Convention, and the following year, the First World Mizrahi Congress was held there. In 1919, the National Federation of Slovak Jews and the Jewish Party were established, in the 1929 elections, the Jewish Party won two seats in parliament. In addition, a Jewish newspaper, the Jewish Peoples Paper, was first published in Bratislava on August 2,1919. In the first national census in Czechoslovakia, carried out on February 15,1921,135,918 people registered as practicing Jews, in addition, there were 165 Orthodox and 52 Reform congregations in the country. In the 1930s, antisemitic rioting and demonstrations broke out, incited by the Slovak Peoples Party, some 5,000 Jews emigrated before the outbreak of World War II and several thousands afterwards, but most were killed in the Holocaust. The Hlinka Guard began to attack Jews, and the Jewish Code was passed in September 1941, resembling the Nuremberg Laws, the Code required that Jews wear a yellow armband and were banned from intermarriage and many jobs. By 1940, more than 6,000 Jews had emigrated, the pro-Nazi regime of President Jozef Tiso, a Catholic priest, agreed to deport its Jews as part of the Nazi Final Solution. By October 1941,15,000 Jews were expelled from Bratislava, originally, the Slovak government tried to make a deal with Germany in October 1941 to deport its Jews as a substitute for providing Slovak workers to help the war effort. The initial terms were for 20,000 young, strong Jews, the deportations of Jews from Slovakia started on March 25,1942
2.
Auschwitz concentration camp
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Auschwitz concentration camp was a network of German Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II. It consisted of Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II–Birkenau, Auschwitz III–Monowitz, Auschwitz I was first constructed to hold Polish political prisoners, who began to arrive in May 1940. The first extermination of prisoners took place in September 1941, from early 1942 until late 1944, transport trains delivered Jews to the camps gas chambers from all over German-occupied Europe, where they were killed with the pesticide Zyklon B. An estimated 1.3 million people were sent to the camp, around 90 percent of those killed were Jewish, approximately 1 in 6 Jews killed in the Holocaust died at the camp. Many of those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labor, infectious diseases, individual executions, and medical experiments. In the course of the war, the camp was staffed by 7,000 members of the German Schutzstaffel, some, including camp commandant Rudolf Höss, were executed. The Allied Powers refused to believe reports of the atrocities at the camp. As Soviet troops approached Auschwitz in January 1945, most of its population was sent west on a death march, the prisoners remaining at the camp were liberated on 27 January 1945, a day now commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the following decades, survivors, such as Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, and Elie Wiesel, wrote memoirs of their experiences in Auschwitz, and the camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust. In 1947, Poland founded the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on the site of Auschwitz I and II, immediately after the Nazi seizure of power in Germany, acts of violence perpetrated against Jews became ubiquitous. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, passed on 7 April 1933 excluded most Jews from the legal profession, similar legislation soon deprived Jewish members of other professions of the right to practise. Harassment and economic pressure were used by the regime to encourage Jews to leave the country voluntarily and their businesses were denied access to markets, forbidden to advertise in newspapers, and deprived of government contracts. German Jews were subjected to violent attacks and boycotts, in September 1935 the Nuremberg Laws were enacted. The Reich Citizenship Law stated that only those of Germanic or related blood were defined as citizens, thus Jews and other minority groups were stripped of their German citizenship. The laws were expanded on 26 November 1935 to include Romani people and this supplementary decree defined Gypsies as enemies of the race-based state, the same category as Jews. By the start of World War II in 1939, around 250,000 of Germanys 437,000 Jews had emigrated to the United States, Palestine, the United Kingdom, Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. German dictator Adolf Hitler ordered that the Polish leadership and intelligentsia be destroyed, approximately 65,000 civilians, who were viewed as being inferior to the Aryan master race, were killed by the end of 1939. In addition to leaders of Polish society, the Nazis killed Jews, prostitutes, Romani, sS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, then head of the Gestapo, ordered on 21 September that Polish Jews should be rounded up and concentrated into cities with good rail links
3.
The Holocaust
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The Holocaust, also referred to as the Shoah, was a genocide in which some six million European Jews were killed by Adolf Hitlers Nazi Germany, and the World War II collaborators with the Nazis. The victims included 1.5 million children, and represented about two-thirds of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe, killings took place throughout German-occupied Europe, as well as within Nazi Germany, and across all territories controlled by its allies. Other victims of Nazi crimes included ethnic Poles and other Slavs, Soviet citizens and Soviet POWs, communists, homosexuals, Freemasons, Jehovahs Witnesses, some 42,500 detention facilities were utilized in the concentration of victims for the purpose of gross violations of human rights. Over 200,000 people are estimated to have been Holocaust perpetrators, the persecution was carried out in stages, culminating in the policy of extermination of European Jews termed the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. Following Hitlers rise to power, the German government passed laws to exclude Jews from civil society, starting in 1933 the Nazis began to establish a network of concentration camps. After the outbreak of war in 1939 both German and foreign Jews were herded into wartime ghettos, in 1941, as Germany began to conquer new territory in the East, all anti-Jewish measures radicalized. Specialized paramilitary units called Einsatzgruppen murdered around two million Jews in mass shootings actions in less than a year, by mid-1942, victims were being regularly transported by freight trains to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, most were systematically killed in gas chambers. This continued until the end of World War II in Europe in April–May 1945, the most notable exception was the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943, when thousands of poorly-armed Jewish fighters held the Waffen-SS at bay for four weeks. An estimated 20, 000–30,000 Jewish partisans actively fought against the Nazis, French Jews took part in the French Resistance, which conducted a guerilla campaign against the Nazis and Vichy French authorities. Over a hundred armed Jewish uprisings took place, the term holocaust comes from the Greek adjective holókaustos, a variant of holókautos, referring to an animal sacrifice offered to a god in which the whole animal is completely burnt. Often used substantively in apposition with the noun thysia, the term appears in a fragment of pseudo-Callisthenes, writing in Latin, Jerome Latinized the Greek word as a neuter noun holocaustum, using it to translate references to the Jewish burnt offering in his translations of Exodus and Leviticus. In his Chronicon de rebus gestis Ricardi Primi, Richard of Devizes, the English poet John Milton had used the word to denote a conflagration in his 1671 poem Samson Agonistes and the word gradually developed to mean a massacre thereon. The term was used in the 1950s by historians as a translation of the Jewish word shoah to refer specifically to the Nazi genocide of Jews, the television mini-series Holocaust is credited with introducing the term into common parlance after 1978. The biblical word shoah, meaning calamity became the standard Hebrew term for the Holocaust as early as the 1940s, especially in Europe and Israel. Shoah is preferred by some Jews for several reasons including the offensive nature of the word holocaust which they take to refer to the Greek pagan custom. The Nazis used the phrase Final Solution to the Jewish Question, all branches of Germanys bureaucracy were engaged in the logistics that led to the genocides, turning the Third Reich into what one Holocaust scholar, Michael Berenbaum, has called a genocidal state. Every arm of the countrys sophisticated bureaucracy was involved in the killing process, as prisoners entered the death camps, they were made to surrender all personal property, which was catalogued and tagged before being sent to Germany to be reused or recycled. Berenbaum writes that the Final Solution of the Jewish question was in the eyes of the perpetrators, through a concealed account, the German National Bank helped launder valuables stolen from the victims
4.
Trnava
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Trnava is a city in western Slovakia,47 km to the north-east of Bratislava, on the Trnávka river. It is the capital of a kraj and of an okres and it is the seat of a Roman Catholic archbishopric. The city has a historic center, because of the many churches within its city walls, Trnava has often been called parva Roma, i. e. Little Rome, or more recently, the Slovak Rome. The name of the city is derived from the Slovak word tŕnie which characterized the banks in the region. The Hungarian name originates from the Hungarian word szombat, referring to the weekly market held on Saturdays. The varieties of the name in different languages include German, Tyrnau, Hungarian, Nagyszombat and Latin, permanent settlements on the citys territory are known from the Neolithic period onwards. During the Middle Ages, an important market settlement arose here at the junction of two important roads – from Bohemia to Hungary and from the Mediterranean to Poland, the first written reference to Trnava dates from 1211. In 1238, Trnava was the first town in Slovakia to be granted a charter by the king. The former agricultural center gradually became a center of manufacture, trade, by the early 13th century, the king of Hungary had invited numerous Germans to settle in Trnava, this settlement increased after the Tatar invasion in 1242. At the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries, a part of Trnava was enclosed by very long city walls, the original Slovak market settlement and the Germans stayed behind this wall. The temporary German majority in Trnavas population yielded in favour of the Slovaks during the campaigns undertaken by the Czech Hussites in the 15th century, the Hussites opposed Germans and made Trnava the center of their campaigns in northwestern Kingdom of Hungary from 1432 to 1435. The cathedrals of the archbishopric were the Saint John the Baptist Cathedral, many ethnic Hungarians fleeing from the Turks moved to the town after 1541 from present-day Hungary. In the 16th and especially the 17th century, Trnava was an important center of the Counter-Reformation in the Kingdom of Hungary, the Archbishop Nicolas Oláh invited the Jesuits to Trnava in 1561 in order to develop the municipal school system. Subsequently, he had a seminary opened in 1566 and in 1577 Trnava’s priest Nicolas Telegdi founded a house in the town. The first Catholic Bible translation into Hungarian was also completed in the town by the Jesuit György Káldi who was there in 1573. On 26 December 1704 Francis II Rákóczis army suffered defeat against the Imperial Army, led by Sigbert Heister. The Jesuit Trnava University, the university of the Kingdom of Hungary at that time, was founded by Archbishop Péter Pázmány. From the late 18th century Trnava became a center of the literary, the first standard codification of the Slovak language was based on the Slovak dialect used in the region of Trnava
5.
Bratislava
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Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia, and with a population of about 450,000, the countrys largest city. The greater metropolitan area is home to more than 650,000 people, Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia, occupying both banks of the River Danube and the left bank of the River Morava. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the national capital that borders two sovereign states. The history of the city has strongly influenced by people of different nations and religions, namely by Austrians, Croats, Czechs, Germans, Hungarians, Jews, Serbs. The city served as the site and legislative center of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1536 to 1783. Bratislava is the political, cultural and economic centre of Slovakia and it is the seat of the Slovak president, the parliament and the Slovak Executive. It is home to several universities, museums, theatres, galleries, many of Slovakias large businesses and financial institutions also have headquarters there. The capital of Slovakia is the eighth best city for freelancers to live in, mostly because of fast internet, in 2017, Bratislava was ranked as the third richest region of the European Union by GDP per capita. GDP at purchasing power parity is about three times higher than in other Slovak regions, the city received its contemporary name in 1919. Beforehand it was known in English by its German name, Pressburg, as it was long dominated by Austrians. This is the term which the German, the pre-1919 Slovak, the citys Hungarian name, Pozsony, was given after the castles first castellan, Poson. The origin of the name is unclear, it come from the Czech Pos or the German Poscho. Hungarian speakers still use the Hungarian name, Pozsony, the medieval settlement Brezalauspurc is sometimes attributed to Bratislava, however the actual location of Brezalauspurc is under scholarly debate. The citys modern name is credited to Pavel Jozef Šafáriks misinterpretation of Braslav as Bratislav when analyzing medieval sources, thus coming up with the term Břetislaw, during the revolution of 1918–1919, the name Wilsonov or Wilsonstadt was proposed by American Slovaks, as he supported national self-determination. The name Bratislava, which was used only by some Slovak patriots. The name Pressburg was also used in English-language publications until 1919, in older documents, confusion can be caused by the Latin forms Bratislavia, Wratislavia etc. which refer to Wrocław, Poland – not to Bratislava. The first known permanent settlement of the area began with the Linear Pottery Culture, about 200 BC, the Celtic Boii tribe founded the first significant settlement, a fortified town known as an oppidum. They also established a mint, producing silver coins known as biatecs, the area fell under Roman influence from the 1st to the 4th century AD and was made part of the Danubian Limes, a border defence system
6.
Zyklon B
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Zyklon B was the trade name of a cyanide-based pesticide invented in Germany in the early 1920s. It consisted of hydrogen cyanide, as well as an eye irritant. Hydrogen cyanide, a gas that interferes with cellular respiration, was first used as a pesticide in California in the 1880s. Research at Degesch of Germany led to the development of Zyklon and it was banned after a similar product was used by Germany as a chemical weapon in World War I. The new product was also named Zyklon, but it known as Zyklon B to distinguish it from the earlier version. Uses included delousing clothing and disinfesting ships, warehouses, and trains, in early 1942, Zyklon B emerged as the preferred killing tool of Nazi Germany for use in extermination camps during the Holocaust. Around a million people were killed using this method, mostly at Auschwitz, Tesch was executed in 1946 for knowingly selling the product to the SS for use on humans. Hydrogen cyanide is now used as a pesticide, but still has industrial applications. Firms in several countries continue to produce Zyklon B under alternative names, including Detia-Degesch, the successor to Degesch. Hydrogen cyanide is a gas that interferes with cellular respiration. Cyanide prevents the cell from producing adenosine triphosphate by binding to one of the involved in the electron transport chain. This protein, cytochrome c oxidase, contains several subunits and has ligands containing iron groups, the cyanide component of Zyklon B can bind at one of these iron groups, heme a3, forming a more stabilized compound through metal-to-ligand pi bonding. As a result of the formation of this new iron-cyanide complex, instead, these electrons destabilize the compound, thus, the heme group no longer accept them. Consequently, electron transport is halted, and cells can no longer produce the energy needed to synthesize ATP, in a human weighing 68 kilograms, death occurs within two minutes of inhaling 70 mg of hydrogen cyanide. Hydrogen cyanide, discovered in the late 18th century, was used in the 1880s for the fumigation of citrus trees in California and its use spread to other countries for the fumigation of silos, goods wagons, ships, and mills. Its light weight and rapid dispersal meant its application had to place under tents or in enclosed areas. Chemists at Degesch added a cautionary eye irritant to a less volatile cyanide compound which reacted with water in the presence of heat to become hydrogen cyanide, the new product was marketed as the pesticide Zyklon. As a similar formula had been used as a weapon by the Germans during World War I, Deutsche Gold- und Silber-Scheideanstalt became sole owners of Degesch in 1922
7.
Allies of World War II
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The Allies of World War II, called the United Nations from the 1 January 1942 declaration, were the countries that together opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War. The Allies promoted the alliance as seeking to stop German, Japanese, at the start of the war on 1 September 1939, the Allies consisted of France, Poland and the United Kingdom, and dependent states, such as the British India. Within days they were joined by the independent Dominions of the British Commonwealth, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Poland was a minor factor after its defeat in 1939, France was a minor factor after its defeat in 1940. China had already been into a war with Japan since the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of 1937. The alliance was formalised by the Declaration by United Nations, from 1 January 1942, however, the name United Nations was rarely used to describe the Allies during the war. The leaders of the Big Three – the UK, the Soviet Union, in 1945, the Allied nations became the basis of the United Nations. The origins of the Allied powers stem from the Allies of World War I, Germany resented signing Treaty of Versailles. The new Weimar republics legitimacy became shaken, by the early 1930s, the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler became the dominant revanchist movement in Germany and Hitler and the Nazis gained power in 1933. The Nazi regime demanded the cancellation of the Treaty of Versailles and made claims to German-populated Austria. The likelihood of war was high, and the question was whether it could be avoided through strategies such as appeasement, in Asia, when Japan seized Manchuria in 1931, the League of Nations condemned it for aggression against China. Japan responded by leaving the League of Nations in March 1933, after four quiet years, the Sino-Japanese War erupted in 1937 with Japanese forces invading China. The League of Nations condemned Japans actions and initiated sanctions on Japan, the United States, in particular, was angered at Japan and sought to support China. In March 1939, Germany took over Czechoslovakia, violating the Munich Agreement signed six months before, Britain and France decided that Hitler had no intention to uphold diplomatic agreements and responded by preparing for war. On 31 March 1939, Britain formed the Anglo-Polish military alliance in an effort to avert a German attack on the country, also, the French had a long-standing alliance with Poland since 1921. The Soviet Union sought an alliance with the powers. The agreement secretly divided the independent nations of eastern Europe between the two powers and assured adequate oil supplies for the German war machine, on 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, two days later Britain and France declared war on Germany. Then, on 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east, a Polish government-in-exile was set up and it continued to be one of the Allies, a model followed by other occupied countries. After a quiet winter, Germany in April 1940 invaded and quickly defeated Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Britain and its Empire stood alone against Hitler and Mussolini
8.
Hungary
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Hungary is a unitary parliamentary republic in Central Europe. With about 10 million inhabitants, Hungary is a member state of the European Union. The official language is Hungarian, which is the most widely spoken language in Europe. Hungarys capital and largest metropolis is Budapest, a significant economic hub, major urban areas include Debrecen, Szeged, Miskolc, Pécs and Győr. His great-grandson Stephen I ascended to the throne in 1000, converting the country to a Christian kingdom, by the 12th century, Hungary became a middle power within the Western world, reaching a golden age by the 15th century. Hungarys current borders were established in 1920 by the Treaty of Trianon after World War I, when the country lost 71% of its territory, 58% of its population, following the interwar period, Hungary joined the Axis Powers in World War II, suffering significant damage and casualties. Hungary became a state of the Soviet Union, which contributed to the establishment of a four-decade-long communist dictatorship. On 23 October 1989, Hungary became again a democratic parliamentary republic, in the 21st century, Hungary is a middle power and has the worlds 57th largest economy by nominal GDP, as well as the 58th largest by PPP, out of 188 countries measured by the IMF. As a substantial actor in several industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds 36th largest exporter and importer of goods, Hungary is a high-income economy with a very high standard of living. It keeps up a security and universal health care system. Hungary joined the European Union in 2004 and part of the Schengen Area since 2007, Hungary is a member of the United Nations, NATO, WTO, World Bank, the AIIB, the Council of Europe and Visegrád Group. Well known for its cultural history, Hungary has been contributed significantly to arts, music, literature, sports and science. Hungary is the 11th most popular country as a tourist destination in Europe and it is home to the largest thermal water cave system, the second largest thermal lake in the world, the largest lake in Central Europe, and the largest natural grasslands in Europe. The H in the name of Hungary is most likely due to historical associations with the Huns. The rest of the word comes from the Latinized form of Medieval Greek Oungroi, according to an explanation the Greek name was borrowed from Proto-Slavic Ǫgǔri, in turn borrowed from Oghur-Turkic Onogur. Onogur was the name for the tribes who later joined the Bulgar tribal confederacy that ruled the eastern parts of Hungary after the Avars. The Hungarians likely belonged to the Onogur tribal alliance and it is possible they became its ethnic majority. The Hungarian endonym is Magyarország, composed of magyar and ország, the word magyar is taken from the name of one of the seven major semi-nomadic Hungarian tribes, magyeri
9.
Nazism
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National Socialism, more commonly known as Nazism, is the ideology and practice associated with the 20th-century German Nazi Party and Nazi Germany, as well as other far-right groups. Nazism subscribed to theories of racial hierarchy and Social Darwinism, identifying Germans as part of what Nazis regarded as an Aryan or Nordic master race and it aimed to overcome social divisions and create a homogeneous society, unified on the basis of racial purity. The term National Socialism arose out of attempts to create a nationalist redefinition of socialism, the Nazi Partys precursor, the Pan-German nationalist and anti-Semitic German Workers Party, was founded on 5 January 1919. By the early 1920s, Adolf Hitler assumed control of the organisation, following the Holocaust and German defeat in World War II, only a few fringe racist groups, usually referred to as neo-Nazis, still describe themselves as following National Socialism. The full name of Adolf Hitlers party was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the shorthand Nazi was formed from the first two syllables of the German pronunciation of the word national. The term was in use before the rise of the NSDAP as a colloquial and derogatory word for a peasant, characterizing an awkward. It derived from Ignaz, being a version of Ignatius, a common name in Bavaria. Opponents seized on this and shortened the first word of the name, Nationalsozialistische. The NSDAP briefly adopted the Nazi designation, attempting to reappropriate the term, the use of Nazi Germany, Nazi regime, and so on was popularised by German exiles abroad. From them, the spread into other languages and was eventually brought back to Germany after World War II. In English, Nazism is a name for the ideology the party advocated. The majority of scholars identify Nazism in practice as a form of far-right politics, far-right themes in Nazism include the argument that superior people have a right to dominate over other people and purge society of supposed inferior elements. Adolf Hitler and other proponents officially portrayed Nazism as being neither left- nor right-wing, but the politicians of the Right deserve exactly the same reproach. It was through their miserable cowardice that those ruffians of Jews who came into power in 1918 were able to rob the nation of its arms, a major inspiration for the Nazis were the far-right nationalist Freikorps, paramilitary organisations that engaged in political violence after World War I. The Nazis stated the alliance was purely tactical and there remained substantial differences with the DNVP, the Nazis described the DNVP as a bourgeois party and called themselves an anti-bourgeois party. After the elections in 1932, the alliance broke after the DNVP lost many of its seats in the Reichstag, the Nazis denounced them as an insignificant heap of reactionaries. The DNVP responded by denouncing the Nazis for their socialism, their violence. Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was pressured to abdicate the throne and flee into exile amidst an attempted communist revolution in Germany, there were factions in the Nazi Party, both conservative and radical
10.
Witold Pilecki
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Witold Pilecki was a Polish Army officer and intelligence agent during World War II. He was the author of Witolds Report, the first comprehensive Allied intelligence report on Auschwitz concentration camp, during World War II, he volunteered for a Polish resistance operation to get imprisoned in the Auschwitz death camp in order to gather intelligence and escape. While in the camp, Pilecki organized a movement and as early as 1941. He escaped from the camp in 1943 after nearly two and a years of imprisonment. Pilecki took part in the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944 and he was executed after a show trial in 1948. Until 1989, information about his exploits and fate was suppressed by the Polish communist regime, as a result of his efforts, he is considered as one of the greatest wartime heroes. In the introduction to that book Norman Davies, a British historian, wrote, If there was an Allied hero who deserved to be remembered and celebrated, Witold Pilecki was born on May 13,1901 in the town of Olonets, Karelia in the Russian Empire. He was a descendant of a Polish noble family originally from West Belarus and he and his family were later forcibly resettled in the remote territory of Karelia. Witolds father, Julian Pilecki, was educated in Saint Petersburg and joined the Tsarist civil service and he would eventually settle in the town of Olonets where he married Ludwika Pilecki née Osiecimska. Witold Pilecki was the fourth of five children. In 1910, Pilecki relocated with his family to Wilno, where he completed primary school, shortly after the outbreak of World War I Wilno was occupied by the German Army, forcing Pilecki and his family to relocate to Mogilev, Byelorussia. In 1916 Pilecki moved to the city of Orel, where he continued his education, following the Russian Revolution, Pilecki returned to Wilno in 1918 and joined a ZHP Scout section of the Lithuanian and Belarusian Self-Defense Militia under General Władysław Wejtko. After Wilno was overrun by the Bolsheviks, Pilecki and his unit conducted partisan warfare behind Russian lines, Pilecki eventually made his way to Białystok where he enlisted the newly-established Polish Army. He took part in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1920, serving under Captain Jerzy Dąbrowski and he fought in the Kiev Offensive and as part of a cavalry unit defending the city of Grodno. On 5 August 1920, he joined the 211th Uhlan Regiment and fought in the crucial Battle of Warsaw, Pilecki later took part in the liberation of Wilno and the Żeligowski rebellion. He was twice awarded the Krzyż Walecznych for gallantry, following the conclusion of Polish-Soviet War in 1921, Pilecki was demobilized and went on to complete his high-school education in Wilno. In 1922 Pilecki enrolled as a student at the University of Poznań where he studied agricultural science and he later transferred to the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Stefan Batory University in Wilno. Pilecki left school in 1924 due to difficulties and his fathers declining health
11.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is the United States official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D. C. the USHMM provides for the documentation, study and it is dedicated to helping leaders and citizens of the world confront hatred, prevent genocide, promote human dignity, and strengthen democracy. The museum has a budget, as of 2015, of $104.6 million. In 2008, the Museum had a staff of about 400 employees,125 contractors,650 volunteers,91 Holocaust survivors and it had local offices in New York City, Boston, Boca Raton, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Dallas. The Museums visitors came from all over the world, and less than 10 percent of the Museums visitors are Jewish and its website had 25 million visits in 2008 from an average of 100 different countries daily. 35% of these visits were from outside the United States and it also has teacher fellows in every state in the United States and almost 400 university fellows from 26 countries since 1994. Researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have documented 42,500 ghettos, on November 1,1978, President Jimmy Carter established the President’s Commission on the Holocaust, chaired by Elie Wiesel, a prominent author and Holocaust survivor. Its mandate was to investigate the creation and maintenance of a memorial to victims of the Holocaust, the mandate was created in a joint effort by Elie Wiesel and Richard Krieger. After a unanimous vote by the United States Congress in 1980 to establish the museum, in October 1988, President Ronald Reagan helped lay the cornerstone of the building, designed by the architect James Ingo Freed. Dedication ceremonies on April 22,1993 included speeches by American President Bill Clinton, Israeli President Chaim Herzog, Chairman Harvey Meyerhoff, on April 26,1993, the Museum opened to the general public. Its first visitor was the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, the museum has been the target of a planned attack and a fatal shooting. On June 10,2009, 88-year-old James von Brunn, an anti-Semite, Special Police Officer Johns and von Brunn were both seriously wounded and transported by ambulance to the George Washington University Hospital. Special Police Officer Johns later died of his injuries, he is honored in an official memorial at the USHMM. Von Brunn, who had a criminal record, had been disowned by his family. He was being tried in court when he died on January 6,2010 in Butner federal prison in North Carolina. Designed by the architect James Ingo Freed of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, in association with Finegold Alexander + Associates Inc, the outside of the building disappears into the neoclassical, Georgian, and modern architecture of Washington, D. C. Upon entering, each architectural feature becomes a new element of allusion to the Holocaust, in designing the building, Freed researched post-World War II German architecture and visited Holocaust sites throughout Europe. Other partners in the construction of the USHMM included Weiskopf & Pickworth, Cosentini Associates LLP, Jules Fisher, the structural engineering firm that was chosen for this project was Severud Associates
12.
Rudolf Vrba
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Originally from Slovakia, Vrba and fellow escapee Alfréd Wetzler fled Auschwitz three weeks after German forces invaded Hungary and began deporting its Jewish population to the camp. While it confirmed material in earlier reports from Polish and other escapees, there was a delay of several weeks before the report was distributed widely enough to gain the attention of governments. Mass transports of Hungarys Jews to Auschwitz began on 15 May 1944 at a rate of 12,000 people a day, most went straight to the gas chambers. Vrba argued until the end of his life that the deportees would have refused to board the trains had they known they were not being resettled and his position is generally not accepted by Holocaust historians. On 7 July 1944 he ordered an end to them, possibly fearing he would be held responsible after the war. By then 437,000 Jews had been deported, constituting almost the entire Jewish population of the Hungarian countryside, Vrba was born Walter Rosenberg in Topoľčany, Czechoslovakia. His parents, Elias Rosenberg and Helena Rosenberg, the latter from Zbehy, Slovakia, owned a sawmill in Jaklovce, near Margecany. Because he was a Jew, Vrba was excluded at age 15 from the gymnasium in Bratislava, there were restrictions in Slovakia on Jews education, housing and travel, and they were required to wear a yellow badge. Available jobs went first to non-Jews, in 1942 the Slovak authorities announced that Jews were to be sent to reservations in Poland, starting with the young men. Then aged 17, Vrba decided instead to join the Czechoslovak Army in England, at the Hungarian border the guards handed him back to the Slovak authorities, who in turn sent him to the Nováky transition camp, a holding camp for Jews awaiting deportation. He managed to escape briefly, but was caught by a policeman who, Vrba wrote and he was assigned to work in the Aufräumungskommando in Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the extermination camp, which lay two-and-a-half miles away from the main camp. Property from new inmates was taken to storage facilities Effektenlager I and II there, the facilities occupied several dozen barracks in the Big sector of Auschwitz II. The prisoners called the barracks Canada I and Canada II, because they contained food, clothes and it was thanks to this access that Vrba was able to stay healthy. The work included sorting through the property on the Judenrampe at Auschwitz II, where trains carrying Jews arrived. Some new prisoners were selected to work as labour. Vrba worked there from 18 August 1942 until 7 June 1943, in 1985 he told Claude Lanzmann, for the documentary film Shoah, that he had seen around 200 trains arrive during those 10 months. From 15 January 1943 Vrba was housed in Block 16 of Auschwitz II and he tried to remember the numbers he saw arriving and the place of origin of each transport. Many had brought clothes for different seasons, as well as utensils and this strengthened Vrbas conviction that he had to escape
