For hundreds of years Christian Europe had regarded the Jews as the Christ -killers. At one time or another Jews had been driven out of almost every European country. The way they were treated in England in the thirteenth century is a typical example.

In 1275 they were made to wear a yellow badge.

In 1287 269 Jews were hanged in the Tower of London.

This deep prejudice against Jews was still strong in the twentieth century, especially in Germany, Poland and Eastern Europe, where the Jewish population was very large.

After the First World War hundreds of Jews were blamed for the defeat in the War. Prejudice against the Jews grew during the economic depression which followed. Many Germans were poor and unemployed and wanted someone to blame. They turned on the Jews, many of whom were rich and successful in business.

Jews were a SCAPEGOAT

Hitler and the Nazis tap into the long-held feeling of many Europeans; the resentment of Jews This is known as anti-Semitism

Hitler and Nazis say the Aryans — blonde hair, blue eyed Germanic peoples — are the “master race” of Germany and world

1935 Nuremberg Laws take away rights of German Jews

Kristallnacht, “the night of shattered glass” occurs in 1938.

Fearing more violence and oppression, thousands of Jews tried to leave Germany.

Other countries accepted a large number but were unwilling to take all those who wished to leave.

The Holocaust truly began in 1939 at the start of the war when the Nazis invaded Poland.

Poland had a large Jewish population at the time which increased the urgency of the “Jewish Question”.

The Nazi’s quickly devised ways to deal with the Jews. German Troops marching into Warsaw, the

capital of Poland.

This is the true story of a Jewish man named Wladek Szpilman.

He and his family were living in Warsaw at the time of the Nazi takeover in 1939.

Wladek was a pianist who worked for a Polish radio station.

Wladek and his family rejoiced when they heard the news that France and Great Britain had declared war on Germany.

However, this is short lived when the Nazis completely take Poland in just over a month’s time.

Hitler then ordered all Jews in Germany and his conquered lands to live in certain parts of cities called ghettos or be sent to concentration camps where they would be put to work for the Germany war industry.

Poland, who had the over 3 million Jews, (the largest population in Europe), had especially large ghettos.

Warsaw was the largest. By 1940, all German Jews

were deported to Poland.

A newly-constructed wall partitions the central part of Warsaw, Poland, seen on December 20, 1940. It is part of red brick and gray stone walls built 12 to 15 feet high by the Nazis as a ghetto - a pen

for Warsaw's approximately 500,000 Jews.

A scene from the Warsaw Ghetto where Jews are seen wearing white armlets bearing the Star of David and trams are seen marked with

the words "For Jews Only", on February 17, 1941.

Hitler hoped that Jews in ghettos would die of disease, starvation

Despite bad conditions, many Jews survived in these areas

The faces of Jewish children living in a ghetto in Poland, under Nazi occupation. This may be the last picture taken of them smiling.

Sadly, many Jews will not survive…

A man carries away the bodies of dead Jews in the Ghetto of Warsaw in 1943, where people died of hunger in the streets.

German soldiers question Jews after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.

Very quickly life for Jews deteriorated as the Nazi authorities prevent them working or owning businesses, and force them to wear Star of David armbands.

Wladek and his family were forced from their home in 1940, into the overcrowded  Warsaw Ghetto where conditions only get worse.

People starve, the guards are brutal and corpses are left in the streets.

On one occasion, the Szpilmans witness the SS kill an entire family during a raid on an apartment building across the street.

To ensure the death of all Jews, Hitler enacts the “Final Solution” in 1942.

He chooses genocide — the systematic killing of an entire people.

Germans also turned on many other people — gypsies, Poles, Russians, and those who were mentally or physically disabled, homosexuals, etc.

The Germans put the most attention on Jews, however.

There were 3 phases of the Nazi plan to wipe out the Jewish population of

Europe.

Jews were rounded up and told they were to be relocated.

They were then shot, one by one, by the Nazi SS “death squads”.

Their bodies were then buried in mass graves.

There was even competition between group leaders to see who could kill the most Jews.

The worst round of executions took place at Babi Yar, a ravine in the Ukraine.

The Nazi SS rounded up and executed 33,771 Jews in a single operation in September, 1941.

Other people executed were Soviet POW’s and gypsies.

An estimated 150,000 total people lost their lives at Babi Yar.

Jewish women, some holding infants, wait in a line for their turn to be executed by the Nazi SS at Babi Yar.

A German policeman shoots individual Jewish women who remain alive in the ravine after the mass execution. Many times the people were told to lie face down. This way, the executioners did not have to see the individual faces of the people they were murdering.

Portrait of two-year-old Mania Halef, a Jewish child who was among the 33,771 persons shot by the SS during the mass executions at Babi Yar, September, 1941.

Nazis sift through a huge pile of clothes left by victims of the massacre.Two year old Mani Halef’s clothes are somewhere amongst these.

During the course of his captivity of the ghettos, Wladek is able to avoid and survive random executions.

Again, Jews were rounded up and told they were to be relocated in vans.

The vans were equipped so that the van’s exhaust was piped back into the van.

700,000 Jews were killed using gas vans.

The Nazis encountered several problems with the executions and gas vans.

First, they were both taking too much time.

Second, resources such as gas and ammunition were becoming scarce.

Third, soldiers involved were beginning to have psychological problems with what they were doing.

Nazi leaders decided to drastically speed up the Final Solution.

There were two different types of camps: CONCENTRATION CAMPS EXTERMINATION CAMPS

Jews from all over Nazi occupied Europe were to be brought here.

Camps separated the strong from the weak.

Strong prisoners were sent to concentration camps and the weak (mostly women, children and elderly) were exterminated immediately.

Prisoner selection at Auschwitz - Birkenau

During 1942, Hitler gives the order to start separating the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Wladek’s family is taken and relocated but Wladek is saved by a friend in the Jewish Ghetto Police (Jews working for the Nazis).

He is allowed to remain in the ghetto (now the Warsaw Concentration Camp) as a worker.

This would also be the last time Wladek would see of his family.

Millions were gathered and placed in concentration (prison) camps.

There were over 100 of these in Nazi-occupied Europe.

First camp was opened in 1933, right after Nazis came to power.

These prisons used the inmates as slave workers.

Many in the camps died of starvation, disease and the harsh conditions.

Most often time, prisoners lasted less than half a year.

A prisoner in Dachau is forced to stand without moving for endless hours as a punishment. He is wearing a triangle patch identification on his chest.

A chart of prisoner triangle identification markings used in Nazi concentration camps which allowed the guards to easily see which type of prisoner any individual was.

Soviet POWs at forced labor in 1943 exhuming bodies in the ravine at Babi Yar, where the Nazis had murdered over 33,000 Jews in September of 1941.

In 1943, when the number of murdered Jews exceeded 1 million. Nazis ordered the bodies of those buried to be dug up and burned to destroy all traces.

Ravensbruck – concentration camp for women

Buchenwald – one of the largest, deadliest concentration camps. Held over 250,000 prisoners

Dachau – very first Nazi concentration camp, held over 200,000 prisoners

Women of Ravensbruck

This is a picture of Anne Frank. In August of 1944, Anne, her family and others who were hiding from the Nazis, were all captured and

shipped off to a series of prisons and concentration camps. Anne died from typhus at age 15 in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Heinrich Himmler visits Dachau concentration camp

Bodies of starved prisoners at Buchenwald

Wladek spent most of 1942 as a slave laborer in the Warsaw Concentration Camp.

In 1943, he was able to escape the concentration camp and hides with a non-Jewish friend.

He is able to hide out for more than a year before he has to find new places to keep from being discovered.

Starting in 1942, the Nazis built “death camps.”

Many started out as ordinary concentration camps and were later modified with gassing installations for use on humans

At these camps, thousands of Jews were gassed to death in huge gas chambers.

Zyklon B poison gas of choice by the Nazis. It was originally used to kill vermin such as rats. The small pellets, were dropped from the ceiling. When in contact with the air, they dissolve into gas.

Chelmo – first ever extermination camp

Treblinka – said to have executed around 870,000

Auschwitz-Birkenau – most notorious and deadliest death camp

Most Jews “relocated” from the Warsaw Ghetto were sent to the extermination camp, Treblinka.

This included Wladek’s entire family where they would be executed.

At Auschwitz-Birkenau, over 2 million people died. Around 1.4 million

gassed Half million died from

starvation or disease Auschwitz was said

to have killed around 12,000 people a day!

Smoke rises as the bodies are burnt.

16 of the 44 children taken from a French children’s home.

They were sent to a concentration camp and later to Auschwitz.

ONLY 1 SURVIVED

A group of children at a

concentration camp in Poland.

The Nazis ordered the SS to take all possessions from Jews

TEETH WITH GOLD

PILES OF GLASSES

After liberation, an Allied soldier displays a stash of gold wedding rings taken

from victims.

Bales of hair shaven from women at Auschwitz, used to make felt-yarn.

A warehouse full of shoes and clothes taken from the victims

0

200,000

400,000

600,000

800,000

1,000,000

1,200,000

1,400,000

Auschwitz Treblinka Chelmo

killed in camp

By 1944, Wladek has to continually change hiding spots as the city is destroyed from constant fighting.

He desperately travels from house to house in search of food and supplies.

As winter sets in, he is alone, cold and starving.

As the Allies advanced towards Berlin, one by one they discovered the horrors left by the Nazis.

First the Soviets at Chelmo, then the Americans at Dachau and many more...

“Our troops found sights, sounds, and stenches horrible beyond belief, cruelties so enormous as to be incomprehensible to the normal mind.“ - Colonel William Quinn

General Eisenhower and officers look over the discovered remains of Nazi extermination.

While hiding in a house, Wladek is discovered by a German soldier, Wilm Hosenfeld.

Wilm learns that Wladek is a pianist and ask him to play something.

Moved by Wladek’s music, Wilm allows Wladek to remain hiding in the attic.

Wilm would even regularly bring food to Wladek.

In 1945, the Germans are forced to leave Warsaw because of the advancing Soviet army.

Wilm met up with Wladek one last time to promise he would listen for him on the radio after the war.

As a last act of friendship, Wilm gave Wladek his greatcoat to keep warm just before he leaves.

Soviet and Polish troops liberate Warsaw in 1945 and the war comes to an end soon thereafter.

Wladek is rescued and is the only one of his family through to have survived the war and the entire Holocaust.

As the war came to and end and it was all said and done, about 11 million people had been killed as a result of Nazi extermination.

Around 6 million of the victims were Jewish.

Of the 9 million Jews in Europe, fewer than four million had survived the whole ordeal.

0

1,000,000

2,000,000

3,000,000

4,000,000

5,000,000

6,000,000

Jews SovietPOW's

Polish Gypsies

Death Totals

A Total of 6,000,000 Jews

Percentage of Jews killed in each country

0

500,000

1,000,000

1,500,000

2,000,000

2,500,000

3,000,000

3,500,000

POLAND USSR HUNGARY GERMANY

BEFOREAFTER

Jewish population before, Jewish population after Holocaust

01,000,0002,000,0003,000,0004,000,0005,000,0006,000,0007,000,0008,000,0009,000,000

10,000,000

BEFORE KILLED SURVIVORS

JEWISHPOPULATION INEUROPE

Wladek would continue playing music his entire life.

He went on to work for the Polish Radio and composed over 500 original works for radio, plays and movies.

He even performed more than 2000 concerts worldwide.

He died at the age of 88 in the year 2000.

Originally a teacher, Wilm was drafted into the military in 1939.

Throughout the war, Wilm helped rescue or hide many Jewish Poles, including Wladek Szpilman.

Wilm was captured by the Soviets in 1945.

He was sentenced to 25 years of labor for war crimes (likely because of the crimes of his Nazi affiliation).

He died in 1952 after being tortured in a Soviet prison camp.