Tiffany Hernandez

September 29, 2011

Once Adolf Hitler was released from prison and he wanted to have power constitutionally not through the force of arms. Hitler talk to mass audiences and called for German people to create a new empire that would take over the world for at least a thousand years. The Nazis joined the Communists in violence between 1931 and 1933. He decided he would run for president in 1932 and won 30% of the vote. Hitler lost the presidential election to veteran Paul von Hindenburg in April. Hitler didnt let that bring him down, he didnt give up. In January 1933 he entered coalition government as a chancellor. Hindenburg died in August 193, and Hitler became a dictator. In preparation for war the German industrial machine was made. In November 1937 Hitler called his top military to get together at the Fuhrer Conference. There he talked about his plan for war in Europe. The people that didnt want to be in it were just dismissed. The Nazis got some of their support from the lower middle class. Most of them feared that the depression wouldnt let them have the standard of living. The Nuremberg Law was passed in September 15, 1935. It was made to isolate Jews and cause their social death. The Reich Citizens Law was only people of German Blood were Reich Citizens and Jews were Impure Blood so they were no longer citizens. The Auschwitz complex was divided into three different camps. Stammlager, Auschwitz Birkenau, and Monowitz. Auschwitz- Birkenau was the largest extermination campduring the holocaust. The camp was in Oswiecim, Poland. It all started in April 1940 and lasted till January 1945. Heinrich Himmler ran the extermination camps until 1943 after he died Rudolf Hoss took over. Jews were their main target but they also had Poles, Gypsies, and Soviet POWs. They were sent to the work camps to do slave work for the German government and some were sent to have medical experiments on them. During the holocaust a lot of innocent people were killed. Kids were taken away from their families. Most of them knew they would never see their parents or other siblings again. Some children were shot when they arrived at the camp and if any babies were born in the camp they were also killed on the spot, especially if they were Jewish. Jewish, gypsy, and children that had disabilities were also put through medical experiments. They were tortured by the Notorious Josef Mengele. Josef was one of the doctors that were in the camp. His patients were put into pressure chambers, tested with drugs or frozen to death. Most children died during the test but for the ones that survived through the experiments they were paralyzed, blinded, and had a lot of different illnesses. The estimated number of deaths during those long five

years is 2.1 to 2.5 million killed in the gas chambers. 2 million were Jews, Poles, Gypsies and Soviet POWs. About 330,000 deaths were from other causes. There were many other methods of extermination other than the gas chambers. The main ones were work and exhaustion, hunger, Illnesses, Medical experiments, killed by poisoned injections and shootings. After all the torture and struggle these people went through in Auschwitz it was finally over. Auschwitz was liberated on January 27, 1945 by the Soviet Army (the Russians). For some of the survivors it wasnt over. Men from the Soviet Army would rape and physically abuse some of the children. When the war was over most of the survivors emigrated from Europe to start their lives over. One of the survivors was Solomon Radasky; he was from Warsaw but lived in Praga. He had his own shop that would make fur coats. He had 78 people in his family; he was the only one that survived. Solomon had 2 brothers and 3 sisters; his brothers were Moishe and Baruch, and the three sisters were Sarah, Rivka and Leah. Solomons parents were Toby and Jacob, they were all killed. Solomon had multiple jobs. When he got out of camp Buna he was sent to build railroad tracks and he also worked In Birkenau at the sand mines with ten other men. They would take sand and cover the aches from the crematoria form more than a year. He sometimes said he was lucky. There was a Hungarian man that would give them bread and soup if the workers would bring him money from Canada. He always had hope and never thought about if he would live or die. On January 18th he left Auschwitz, and 9 days later the Russians liberated it. Solomon Radasky and Frieda got married November 11, 1946. They came to the United States and they had their son in 1948. In 1949 they moved to New Orleans. He got a job at a fur shop and got paid 50 cents an hour. He saved enough money to get his own sewing machine and opened his own shop. He and his wife lived a good life after. They had another child and they lived their lives to raise their children. How did I survive? When a person is in trouble he wants to live. He fights for his life...Some people say, Eh -- What will be, will be. No! You have to fight for yourself day by day. Some people did not care. They said, "I do not want to live. What is the difference? I don't give a damn." I was thinking day by day. I want to live. A person has to hold on to his own will, hold on to that to the last minute.