Research Paper on Holocaust: The Inhumane Genocide of 6 Million European Jews 1941-1945

Introduction

Holocaust was also known to the many people as Shoa was a very terrible incident that happened to the European Jews in the year 1941-1945. The holocaust genocide happened across Germany occupied territory whereby Nazi Germany and their collaborators systematically murdered around six million European Jews who are equivalent to two-thirds of Europe's population of the Jews. The holocaust tragedy was one of the historical events that still ring to most of the Jew's descendants' brain as an inhuman treatment that involved a lot of harshness with led to the killings of millions of the Jews in Poland. However, most of the Jews managed to survive the stores, and they have lived until to date to share their miserable story to act as a lesson to coming generations of what they went through during the persecution. The Jews homes were taken away from them by the German military, and the families were destroyed, which destroyed the different social structures of the healthy living conditions in the region. Freda Teitelbaum, she is one of the volunteers who decided to share her story through the USC Shoa foundation of how they survived the holocaust strategy since it started until its ending. This paper will outline the historical event of the holocaust survivor (Freda Teitelbaum) and how life has changed from the period of the holocaust to date.

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Freda Teitelbaum Background

By the time of the interview, Freda was 68 years having been born in the year 1926 august she was from a popular type of standard, which most of the families were not enjoying by that time. Freda narrates a beautiful life story since she was born until when she was thirteen years old, and then everything changed. Freda was born in a family of three, with her brother being 15 years old by the time the Germans military and police force started invading their homeland (Tape 1). Freda goes along to describe the family structure and social life, and it seems more amazing how life was between her times of birth until she turned 13 years of age. The father, who was known as Henrich Spira and her mother Sabina Spira, lived in Krakow, Poland, and were all living in a big house, which was according to the wellbeing of her parents' economic status. Henrich was an electronic engineer by profession, and his wife Sabina was a businesswoman who was running the family business, a store that had a lot of goods and everything that was consumed in the region by that time. Freda could often pass by their store and check up on her mother before proceeding to their home, and this was her general routine after school.

Freda Teitelbaum traces her family background roots as being the Jews descendant, and as she describes her father used to go to the synagogues often to pray and also to perform some cultural rituals such as Christmas and Easter celebrations. At the age of 13, no one was allowed to go to the synagogues to implement their cultural practices because they were referred to the community as children (Tape 1). However, Freda had a simple lifestyle where she would keep herself busy by practicing her hobbies such as skating and swimming with her friends. From the interview, it is apparent that Freda was a social person who used to play a lot and interact with everyone in the community, and that is why she had to survive among other holocaust survivors. One of her die-hard friends Irene was her everything, and they could share every moment's together throughout from school and during cultural events where they would dance and even go for walks together.

Germans Invasion

The Germans began to invade the Krakow in the year 1939 by taking the land of the citizens and owning them entirely as they were theirs hence running different operations in the region. Due to the situation, Freda's father decided to offer himself as a volunteer individual in Poland's military to serve his country. However, due to some health problems, the father was denied the opportunity but remained in the military to partake in some other light tasks as required by their commanders. During the time the German was invading Krakow, Freda was 13 years old, and she would believe everything told by her old ones because she was a teenager; hence she was not entitled to make her own decisions concerning the situation. Freda's family began to feel displaced, which made her end up being separated from her nuclear family that is her father being taken away from them and later her brother (Tape 2). It is much evident that Germans destroyed the lifestyle of many citizens in Poland and disrupted the whole social structure of governance because they were using harsh and brutal measures to deal with the indigenous people.

The Germans started to invade the city of Krakow by taking total control of the political, economic, and social activities in the area. The Germans knew the importance of churches and the museum; hence they maintained the structures to use them for their benefits such as offices and hiding places. As Freda describes it, the Germans changed their way of living, which later caused her mother's suicide and her brother's death. The Germans walked in their house one of the days looking for their father, and when they did not find him, they took her brother, who was 15 years by then, and they beat him up until he was bleeding everywhere then later took him with them to prison (Tape 2). The reason why Adolf Hitler the anti-Semitic Nazi leader was attacking the Jew's ethnicity is that he thought they were a threat to his leadership and feared being overtaken by one of the Jews people. They would destroy the German ethnic community and purity.

How Germany Invasion Affected Freda and Other Jews Lives

Before the Germans' invasion in Poland, Krakow, the polish, was living in peace and harmony. However in 1939 under the leadership of Adolf Hitler Germany regime decided to set up ghettos as Freda puts it to separate the Jews from the other ethnic group in the region which later led to the growth of many camps and other detention sites across German-occupied Europe because the ghettos were beginning to overcrowd. At the age of 13 years, Freda's mother decided to escape from their home into a single room with some of her relatives because they were no longer safe in their homeland. As the camps began to overcrowd, the Germans started to practice the policy of extermination following the orders from their Nazi leader Hitler as it was discussed in the year 1942 by the Nazi officials (Tape 2). Through the capturing of the territories in the East the German started to radicalize all of the anti-Jewish measures which made them begin brutal killings and mistreatment of the Jews at the camp, for instance, they would take women in trucks at someplace for them to shower since in the fields there were no showers. The Germans forces or soldiers would watch them as they bath. However, they were not sexually harassed by the German troops because those acts such as rape and sexual molestation were against the law. The Freda's, as she describes it, was popular, and she had a good rapport with the people around, which saved her from experiencing some of the harsh treatments that other Jews were going through in the camps and ghettos.

In the year 1942, most of the Jews victims whom some were Freda's friends started being deported from their ghettos across Europe in some sealed trains to the extermination region camps whereby those who survived the harsh weather conditions of other adverse factors in the journey they were overworked to death and some gassed. When Freda's mother had that her son was taken, she was so much distressed and started having some depression, which led to her suicide action, and she is left in the hands of her extended family members, her two aunts, and one uncle and a cousin (Tape 3). Freda was left with no other option at her age rather than to cope with the situation by the following everything as directed by her adults however she would sneak out of the ghetto and go for walks with friends and sing and dance in silent because it was against the law to be heard by the Germans singing and one would be persecuted or taken to prison where a lot of mass shootings used to happen.

Living Conditions in Ghettos and Camps

The Germans continued to capture a lot of Jews and take their businesses; this contributed a lot to the shift paradigms where they Jews were left with no other option rather than to end up in ghettos and camps. The ghettos and fields were not safe places for children and adults since they were living in the congested area, which means that there was a big struggle for natural resources and amenities among the people, which made them use the dam and borehole water which was unhygienic to utilize. In ghettos, five people were expected to share a single room, which is not environmentally friendly because some were forced to sleep on the floor or even on the chairs, which lead to the deaths of many children due to emergence of diseases and lack of medical health care in the region (Tape 3). However, at the camps and ghettos, the Jews were not allowed to practice their cultural activities such as singing and dancing, and that is why they would go to an empty house with Milek one of her friend then sing and dance in silent together with other couples they would found them at the premises.

In the camps, the Germans carried out a lot of experiments to the Jews inmates, and about seven thousand individuals were subjected to the operations, and this contributed to the death of the many people at the spot and later in their living. The Jews were mostly subjected to anti-Semitism because of their Christian theology, and Freda experienced this lifestyle because she was an orthodox Jewish, and they were blamed for killing Jesus. There was a lot of deprivation, and related psychological impacts which profoundly affected Freda first is for losing her family that is her father, mother, and brother and as she puts it is she does not recall how she happened to survive from brutal beatings and harsh treatment in the region because this used to happen every day when they were in the camps (Tape 3). Freda, at her tender age she used to accompany the other adults and Jews captured to go and do some communal jobs such as sweeping the snow during the winter season, which was so tiresome and others were exposed to cold-related diseases which lead to their death.

Freda is among the holocaust survivor who has an interesting story to narrate to many young generations and even through sounds like a movie, and it is based on actual factors. Freda could make many friends; she was able to leave the ghetto without other people noticing, and this was through the help of her uncle, who was always concerned about her well being. Freda was still alert and made new friends who were taking her blames; for instance, two girls were murdered for helping her to escape. In June 1941, at the period of Lviv pogroms in Lviv Ukraine, more than 5,000 polish Jews were killed in the streets by the Ukrainian people's militia through the help of the Germans and the local people. In contrast, other 3500 were murdered through mass shootings, and this action was engineered by the German police forces (Tape 3). However, most of the ghettos in Poland were located in Krakow, Lodz, Vilna, Warsaw, and Budapest according to Freda statement and these ghettos were often closed from the outside world due to different reasons at different times, but Freda had a gate pass to keep on often going to their store. One of the biggest ghettos was Warsaw, but Freda lived in Krakow and Lodz ghetto, where almost nine people would share a single room, and in this place, thousands of the polish Jews died due to poor hygienic conditions and lack of food.

Also, at the cam...