The Holocaust

DachauDachau was the first Nazi concentration camp. The camp was first established in March 1933. More than 200,000 people were kept prisoner and more than 30,000 people died in Dachau. Theodor Eicke was the commandant of Dachau, and he ran the camp. The first people brought to the camp were mostly communist and social democrats, also known as, political enemies of the Nazi regime. Other people like Gypsies, homosexuals, clergy men that spoke out against the Nazi, Jehovah's Witnesses and many more who criticized the Nazis methods were sent to the Dachau concentration camp. In 1942 Jews were sent to extermination camps from Dachau and other camps. Prisoners heads was shaven and they were dressed in striped uniforms. The Nazis took advantage of the labor.and forced them to build roads and drain marches. They were given very minimal food and water. Many pseudo medical experiments were tested on the prisoners. A few months before Dachau was liberated they treated the prisoners even worse. They would jam more than 1,600 people in a room built for only 200 people. On April 26, 1945 the Nazis did a death march with about 7,000 people. The ones who survived were liberated by the United States troops. 40 members of the Dachau staff were caught and prosecuted. 36 of the staff were sentenced to death.

PropagandaThe Nazis used this type of propaganda to target the Jews because it captures people's attention. By making posters of the Jews and making them look ugly and unattractive, and saying all of these horrible lies about them, it makes people start to believe that Jews really are evil. The Nazis had many many poster and books about how Jews are evil and not to be trusted, and when people keep seeing and hearing those things over and over again they will eventually start to believe in them. Slowly but surely everyone would start to believe in all these lies and they would start to hate, harass, and judging the Jews for no good reason only because of what the Nazis are saying about them

Soloman RadaskySoloman Radasky survived warsaw ghettos and concentration camps. He was the only one to survive out of his three sisters, two brothers, and his parents. His mother, older sister and his father were all shot and killed by Nazis and his two brothers and two sisters were sent to Treblinka. On May, 1943 he was sent to Majdanek concentration camp. At Majdanek they took their clothes and replaced them with striped shirt and pants, and gave them wooden shoes. He would have to fight through the pain everyday throughout his 3k walk to work because he was scared if he wa caught limping he would get punished. At Majdanek they would hang you for any little thing. A Nazi smelled cigarette smoke and was asking which prisoner was smoking but none of them were confessing to it. So the Nazi got 10 random prisoners and said he is going to hang all 10 of them since no one wanted to confess to smoking. Radasky was one of the men chose to be hung. When he was up on the benches with the rope around his neck the Nazi started to beat him. Luckily another Nazi came and stopped it because Radasky was chosen to move to a different concentration camp. He was sent to the camp Buna, where he was put to work building railroad tracks. He could see who went where. He saw who went to the gas chambers and who went to the real showers, and who went to the crematorium. He even saw live children get picked up and thrown into the crematorium. January 18, 1945 is when they started liquidating Auschwitz so he started heading to Dachau. He was liberated on May 1,1945. The Americans that saved them were cooking rice and Radasky went to go get a bowl but one of the soldiers told him he would die because there is too much fat in rice for his shrunken stomach. So instead the soldier gave him some toast. He met his wife in Germany, Feldafing, where a lot of liberated people would go to find relatives. They were married on November 11, 1946. They eventually moved to the United States where they had their son on May 13, 1948

CambodiaAnother attempted genocide was in Cambodia. The group of people that was attempting a genocide in Cambodia is called, The Khmer Rouge. They first took control of the Cambodian government in 1975. They evacuated the cities of millions and put them in labor camps where they were starved and abused. They were targeting political dissidents. Citizens including doctors, teachers, and students suspected of receiving education were targeted out for torture at the Tuol Sleng prison. In all of the 4 years the Khmer Rouge was in power, between 1.7 and 2 million Cambodians were sent to the killing fields. The killing fields were set up all over the country where they took the people to be killed, once they could not work anymore, weren’t being useful, or had “confessed” to the crimes they have done. The would beat, torture, and starve the prisoners while they were in the camp. This relates to the Holocaust because they sent

The Holocaust