The Testimony: Beno Helmer

Beno Helmer was borned in 1923 in Teplice-Sanov, Czechoslovakia. As already explained in recent post of this blog Czechoslovakia was one of the first territories to be occupied by the German forces, this happened even before war was officially declared.  As a young man he used his ability to speack in different languages to land small roles in movies. He and his family where sent to the Lodz ghetto where conditions were terrible and survival was really hard. The family was sent to Auschwitz where they where separated. At the end of the war Beno found one of his sisters but the rest died. He survived a variety of concentration camps and then he dedicated himself to help find war criminals. The theme of the testimony is clearly the idea of the importance of self survival and how people make it the most primary thing in their life.

In his testimony he explains and describes how was the living conditions in one of the ghettos he lived in, the Lodz ghetto. Beno,in his testimony, talked about how he became completely used to seeing bodies in the streets or people just dying day by day with no hope at all. He said the first bodies would shock him but afterwards he just dissasociated completely from what was happening to the rest. He explained how people thought the dead bodies had no association with them and simply had no reaction to seeing them on the streets. Ghettos had terrible living conditions, they where captive cities with huge problems of overpopulation, starvation, poverty and unemployment, this can be clearly evidenced with the testimony of Beno.

Throughout his testimony Beno talked about how people where sometimes taken to forced labor and describes the terrible living standard he had to survive. He described how in winter the toilet would become practically ice and all the waste would overflow, of course showing the awful sanitary conditions people had to live in although Beno just uses the world filthy to sum it all up. Obviously these sanitary conditions where caused by the overpopulation and poverty situation in the ghettos and this led to many deaths, some of which probably where the dead bodies Beno refers to in his testimony as he remembers how he saw them just laying on the streets.

He also talked a lot about survival during the his testimony. He focused on its importance during that time and how peope would put their own survival over everything else. He told a story about a time they where all taken into a home and lined up in a semi circle. He described how there was a child and his mother in the lined up with them, and how the German entered and asked whose child was it. He said no one answered so the German took the kid by the legs threw him against the wall and killed him. But Beno described how his mom was almost completely indifferent to what was happening and never showed not even the smallest sign of pain. He said that it seemed she wasn't even his mother, but he explained how that oment showed him how self survival was above everything at that time.

Testimony: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_oi.php?MediaId=1094



Sources:

• "The Holocaust." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 07 June 2015.
• "Oral History." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, n.d. Web. 07 June 2015. <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_oi.php?MediaId=1094>

World War II

The Second World War was a global conflict that took place from 1939 to 1945 and it came just two decades after the Great War. The Second World War is considered to be the deadliest and most widespread war in history. This conflict involved 30 countries and ended up with more than 50 million deaths. After a huge global war the instability in Europe would mix up with a rise of a economical and political power in Germany called the Nazis which would lead to a worst conflict than the last one.

With the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, taking power in Germany the idea of a pure superior German race, the Aryan race, needing space and an expansion in its territory he started to rearm its army secretly break the Versailles Treaty. Hitler signed a alliances with Italy and Japan respectively and started to expand its territory starting with Austria in 1938 and then with Czechoslovakia after. Because of the great instability the Great War had left on Europe France and Great Britain had no intent nor desire of confrontation at the time so these violent acts from Germany without mentioning the violation of the Versailles Treaty passed almost ignored by these while the Soviet Union and the United States where concentrated in internal politics and restoration payed no attention to these events.

In 1939 Hitler and Joseph Stalin, the Soviet leader, signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact which led to Germany invading Poland with no fear of a war from both sides. Two days after the attack France and Great Britain declared war against Germany honoring their agreement of giving military protection to Poland. After a few days Germany and the Soviet Union had divided Poland and each would have control of a half of the territory. Afterwards each one of these European powers started to expand their territory. The Soviet Union occupied the Baltic States and Finland while Germany concentrated its attacks in Great Britain. In 1940 Germany invaded Denmark, Norway, Belgium and Netherlands by using a confrontation technique known as “blitzkrieg" which means lighting war. The German army would invade territories in a matter of days and this would give no time for the enemy to react.

While Germany started an offensive against France Italy honored its Pact of Steel and declared war against France and Great Britain. After German forces entered Paris the French surrendered and made a deal giving full control to Germany of  half of its territory while half would still maintain its french control but with no offensives against German forces. After this Hitler was determine to gain control of Great Britain, which had not been able to do and he would never achieve. The Royal Air forces would overcome the German Air force after months of attacks and devastating bombs against London and the entire British territory. After this huge British victory Great Britain started receiving a very important aid from the United States.

With the expansion of German territory increasing more and more Hitler saw the need of invading the Soviet Union and with this giving his Aryan race the territory they needed and destroying Jews with a German occupied Europe. The German forces attacked the Soviet Union and because its high tech in air forces and the element of surprise they got into 200 miles from Moscow but then they found themselves with a huge counterattack from the Soviet forces.

With a huge war going on in Europe the United States had to help in counterattacking the rise of Japan who was dominating in the East. With a Japanese attack to the American Air base of Pearl Harbor the United States of America declared war to Japan officially entering to the Second World War. And in 1942, after a lot of confrontations in the Pacific the United States defeated Japan. Afterwards in 1943 the United Sates and Allied forces defeated Italy after months of attacks in North Africa and Italy itself. Meanwhile, the Soviet forces defeated completely the German offensive.

In 1944 the allied forces took back France leading a huge offensive in Normandy obligating Hitler to move his troops and concentrate them in the West while leaving the East unprotected allowing the Soviet forces to advance freely and when the allied forces got to German territory the Soviets would have already major control of the country.And finally in May 8 of 1945 the German forces formally and officially surrendered.

Sources:

• "World War II History." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 07 June 2015.

The Holocaust

The Holocaust is the word used to describe the mass killing of Jews during the Second World War under the orders of the Nazi ruler Adolf Hitler. It is important to understand that Jewish persecution was not started by Hitler himself nor Nazis per se but it is much more ancient, it really comes since the Roman Empire. With the rise of Hitler after the death of Germany's president in 1934 a new persecution against Jews would start. Hitler had two main reasons of why he started this antisemitism campaign. One of these was the fact that he had served the Germany army during the Great War and mainly he, as well as a lot of people, blamed Jews for the lost of the war. The other reason for this was his obsession with the superiority of a pure German race, the Aryan race. He thought this superior race needed space for living and expanding territory.

When the Nazi tool power before Hitler, persecution was done to political opposition, specially Communists. This led to the creation of the first concentration camps. But when Hitler took power Germany started a compete "Aryanization" which started with big political persecution to Jews, the government would liquidate Jew companies and would steel clients from Jewish doctors or lawyers. Really unjust laws where created starting with the Nuremberg Laws, which practically stated who would be considered a Jew and what where the consequences of this. All of this disrupted in "The Night of the Broken Glass" when German synagogues where burned and windows of Jewish stores where smashed. This big outbreak led to German authorities to start killing and arresting Jews.

In 1939 German army took over the Western half of Poland and persecution was worst than ever. Tens of thousands of Jews were being sent into ghettos after having all their goods confiscated. Ghettos where small captive cities governed by a Jewish council but with the worst living standards possible and with no real way of managing, big rates of unemployment, poverty, hunger and overpopulation made almost impossible to survive. At the same time a pilot program for the Holocaust was starting, it was called the Euthanasia Program. This consisted in the killing of around 70,000 handicap or disabled men or women by the use of mortal gas. The program was shut off after a few years because of the discontent of religious Germans but the killing continued in secrecy.

With the expansion of the German territory more and more Jews started to arrive in Polish ghettos. So in 1941 a huge transportation of people from the ghettos to concentration camps started. Concentration camps where killing camps where huge executions where done through mas gassing. People not only died because of this in concentration camps, excessive and inhuman jobs as well as starvation was another way of murder. Around 12,000 Jews were killed daily. Each day German forces where closer to defeat and this made things worst, bigger transportation of people underwent with the intention of moving prisoners before enemies could get to the respective concentration camp. This made living standards in the remaining concentration camps even worst, bigger overpopulation and nor resources nor supplies could get in easy so starvation would get worst. This continued until German surrendered.

The holocaust was one of the biggest genocides throughout the entire human history but its historical importance is clear. It opened the worlds eyes and changed human ideologies towards any kind of racism and discrimination. Although the world is no where near the complete disappearance of these two social problems big advancements have been done and the world now share the idea of the importance of fighting against them, this is in part thanks to the Holocaust.

Sources:

• "The Holocaust." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 07 June 2015.