View of the kitchen barracks, the electrified fence, and the gate at the main camp of Auschwitz (Auschwitz I). In the foreground is the sign "Arbeit Macht Frei." This photograph was taken after the liberation of the camp by Soviet forces. Auschwitz, Poland, 1945.
Prisoners during a roll call at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Their uniforms bear classifying triangular badges and identification numbers. Buchenwald, Germany, 1938–41.
Johann was born to Catholic parents in the part of Austria known as Carinthia, where he was raised on the family farm. Johann enjoyed acting and belonged to a theater group in nearby Sankt Martin, which also happened to have a Jehovah's Witness congregation. He became a Jehovah's Witness during the late 1920s, actively preaching in the district around Sankt Martin.
1933-39: Johann continued to do missionary work for the Jehovah's Witnesses even after this was banned by the Austrian government in 1936. The situation for Jehovah's Witnesses worsened after Germany annexed Austria in March 1938. Like other Witnesses, Johann refused to give the Hitler salute, to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler, or to enlist in the army.
1940-44: In April 1940 Johann was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in Klagenfurt. The Nazis deported him to the Neuengamme concentration camp, and then to the Sachsenhausen camp. In Sachsenhausen, the Germans tried to force Johann to repudiate his faith as a Jehovah's Witness, but Johann refused. Though it was forbidden, he had secretly hidden a tiny Bible, and reading Scripture enabled him to fortify his belief that the power of God was stronger than the power of the Nazi regime.
Johann was executed on May 7, 1944, in Sachsenhausen. He was 34 years old.
One of six children, Yosel was raised in a religious Jewish family in Lodz, an industrial city in western Poland. His father was a businessman. At the age of 6, Yosel began attending a Jewish day school. His two older sisters attended public school in the morning and religious school in the afternoon. Yosel spent much of his free time playing soccer with his brothers.
1933-39: Yosel's family lived in a modest house in the northern section of Lodz. He went to a Jewish day school and had many friends there. September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland. Seven days later, he was kicking his soccer ball around the backyard when he suddenly saw German soldiers marching through the streets, some of them riding horses. Later, he heard a single gunshot. The Germans occupied Lodz, and annexed it to the Reich on November 9, 1939.
1940-44: Yosel and his sister waited in line all night at the bakery for bread, only to be kicked out in the morning when a Pole recognized them, shouting "Jews!" On the way to another bakery, they saw three Jews who had been hung in the street. They ran home. In late 1943 Yosel was deported from the ghetto to the Fuerstengrube labor camp in Poland. He worked in the mines, gathering loose coal and putting it into wagons. He did well because he was short and could fit in the small tunnels. He was fed only bread in the morning and soup at night.
In January 1945 Yosel was one of many prisoners force-marched towards northern Germany. Liberated by the British on May 5, he eventually immigrated to America in 1947.
Gabrielle was the second of four children born to Dutch parents. Her father was a minister in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. She grew up in Collonges, France, near the Swiss border, where her father served as a pastor. Gabrielle was baptized in the Seventh-Day Adventist faith at the age of 16. She attended secondary school in London, England.
1933-39: Gabrielle became increasingly active in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, eventually becoming the secretary at the French-Belgian Union of Seventh-Day Adventists headquarters in Paris. Her student travels in western Europe and her knowledge of foreign languages proved useful in her work. On September 3, 1939, two days after Germany invaded Poland, France declared war on Germany.
1940-44: German forces invaded France in May 1940, and Gabrielle fled to the south. After the armistice, Gabrielle returned to Paris and resumed working for the church. On Saturday, February 26, 1944, the Gestapo arrested her during 10 a.m. church services. Along with 140 other members of the "Dutch-Paris" network that helped Dutch Jews and political refugees, Gabrielle was implicated by a fellow member who was tortured. On August 24 Gabrielle was deported from the Fresnes Prison in Paris to the Ravensbrueck camp in Germany.
On February 17, 1945, Gabrielle died of malnutrition in Koenigsberg, a subcamp of Ravensbrueck, just days after being liberated by Soviet troops.
A blue and gray striped jacket from the Flossenbürg concentration camp. The letter "P" on the left front of the jacket indicates that it was worn by a Polish, non-Jewish prisoner. "P" stands for "Pole" in German. The jacket was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by the prisoner who wore it, Julian Noga.
Throughout German-occupied Europe, the Germans arrested those who resisted their domination and those they judged to be racially inferior or politically unacceptable. People arrested for resisting German rule were mostly sent to forced-labor or concentration camps. The Germans deported Jews from all over occupied Europe to extermination camps in Poland, where they were systematically killed, and also to concentration camps, where they were used for forced labor. Transit camps such as Westerbork, Gurs, Mechelen, and Drancy in western Europe and concentration camps like Bolzano and Fossoli di Carpi in Italy were used as collection centers for Jews, who were then deported by rail to the extermination camps. According to SS reports, there were more than 700,000 prisoners registered in the concentration camps in January 1945.
The Nazi camp system began as a system of repression directed against political opponents of the Nazi state. In the early years of the Third Reich, the Nazis imprisoned primarily Communists and Socialists. In about 1935, the regime also began to imprison those whom it designated as racially or biologically inferior, especially Jews. During World War II, the organization and scale of the Nazi camp system expanded rapidly and the purpose of the camps evolved beyond imprisonment toward forced labor and outright murder.
Throughout German-occupied Europe, the Germans arrested those who resisted their domination and those they judged to be racially inferior or politically unacceptable. People arrested for resisting German rule were mostly sent to forced-labor or concentration camps. The war brought unprecedented growth in both the number of camps and the number of prisoners. Within three years the number of prisoners quadrupled, from about 25,000 before the war to about 100,000 in March 1942. The camp population came to include prisoners from almost every European nation. Prisoners in all the concentration camps were literally worked to death. According to SS reports, there were more than 700,000 prisoners registered in the concentration camps in January 1945.
The Germans deported Jews from all over occupied Europe to extermination camps in Poland, where they were systematically killed, and also to concentration camps, where they were drafted for forced labor—"extermination through work." Several hundred thousand Roma (Gypsies) and Soviet prisoners of war were also systematically murdered.
Key Dates
September 3, 1939 Defeatists deported to concentration camps Three days after the beginning of World War II, Reinhard Heydrich, commander of the Security Service (SD), orders the immediate arrest of any person who publicly voices doubts concerning Germany's victory in the war or the nature of the war being fought. As the war progresses, an increasing number of people are arrested. Many are deported without trial directly to concentration camps.
December 7, 1941 Hitler orders "Night and Fog" policy On Adolf Hitler's orders, Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the German Armed Forces High Command, issues the "Night and Fog" decree. Those who resist German rule in occupied territories are to be arrested and deported to concentration camps in Germany. Those arrested are simply to disappear into the "Night and Fog." Their relatives are not to be informed. About 7,000 people, mostly from France, are arrested under the provisions of this decree. Most are deported to the Gross-Rosen and Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camps.
September 18, 1942 Prisoners subject to "extermination through work" The ministry of justice and the SS reach agreement on the systematic transfer of prisoners to the jurisdiction of the SS. The ministry of justice agrees that all Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and Ukrainians, as well as Poles sentenced to more than three years, and Czechs and Germans to more than eight years, are under the exclusive jurisdiction of the SS. Prisoners in these categories are subject to "extermination through work"; they are to be worked to death in the concentration camps.
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