As expected, going to the Holocaust Museum was a very emotional experience. I learned about the Holocaust throughout my middle and high school years and it makes me angry and disgusted, but once I saw all the artifacts and pictures of what the Jewish people and their families had to go through I have this indescribable sense of empathy, putting myself in their shoes which gives me a different feeling then of just learning about it from a book or a Powerpoint presentation. Seeing artifacts from the war and concentration camps gave me chills. Going through this Museum makes you think how could one person full of hate could not only get a whole county's support, but their willingness to execute his insanely dark and murderous plan. When I was walking through the museum I decided to talk about the crematorial which they used to dispose of the bodies after they were executed. This gives great insight of this time period by showing us how the Nazis thought that they really were the superior race and that using scientific racism was a justification to their inhumane thoughts and actions. We learn that the people of Germany were so desperate for a leader to bring them out of depression and make them a European or global power again, that they embodied his terrible plans and were willing to execute the Final Solution for him.

When I went to the Museum there were so many moving artifacts to choose from. I was debating on quite a few of them to write about. I ended up choosing the crematorial because I felt like it showed us more of the destruction and intent of the Final Solution than the other artifacts. It was actually in the very last room of the tour so I thought I had already found what I was going to write about, but this really intrigued me because I had never seen one of the things the Nazis used to dispose of the bodies. Throughout school they show pictures of the gas chambers, the work sites, and the awful living spaces for the Jewish people at the camps, but I had never once seen a cermatorial, not even a picture of one. It had its own room and not very many people stopped and looked at it so I decided I would check it out. After reading the short write up on it I knew I wanted to use it for this paper. I think it is something different than a lot of people would choose to do because no one really cares and talks about what happened to the Jewish people after they were killed. I will say it isn't as important to learn about it compared to most things when you are taught about World War II and the Holocaust, but very important and it is symbolic of this time period. This is the final step of the Final Solution so it is important to talk about and should not get left out.

It looks like how you would think a crematorial would look like. It has a big black metal door to it with a handle on. It also has another opening at the bottom of it that is also made out of the black metal which I don't know what the bottom opening is used for. Around the openings is made of red brick. When you look at the picture you can see that there are metal tools that they used when they were disposing of the bodies. You can see blackness all around the red brick from the fire.

In the death camp of Auschwitz there were five different crematoriums that they used to burn the dead bodies. Each of the crematoriums had their own building. Some also had gas chambers connected to them. These Crematoriums were first built in 1939, but there wasn't many of them solely because at that time period the deaths were relatively low compared to what they would become in the upcoming years. The crematoriums used oil to run and were actually built for farmers who needed to burn debris and dead animals. As the number of deaths grew a man by the name of Heinrich Kori made the first permanent crematoria which did not run off oil like the previous one, but it ran off coal. The permanent ones would be put into brick buildings so an accident wouldn't burn down the building. The crematorium buildings would also have a place to store the dead bodies to just lay there until they could be cremated. They were usually built right beside where the Jewish people would sleep so it would be easier to gather them to be executed. If you have ever seen the Boy in the Striped Pajamas the process is the same. They would round everyone up then tell them they are getting to shower so they had to take off all their clothes, then they would lock them in and put the gas on, killing everyone inside. After all that they would cremated the bodies and that was the smoke his father saw at the end of the movie. My artifact was taken from Crematorium V in 1944 when this specific furnace broke down after burning thousands of dead bodies.

The first permanent crematorium was built in 1940 and was used until 1943. According to the Jewish virtual library this crematorium could burn 340 bodies per day. People that were deemed unfit and not healthy would be killed then burned first, and the Polish would be picked out too. There were two rooms in the crematorium that were just for killing people with gas. These rooms were called Bunker no.1 and Bunker no.2. After 1943 they had made countless other crematoriums so they stopped using crematorium I.

Crematorium II-III were even bigger than the first one. According to the Jewish virtual library they could burn 1,440 bodies per day, that is more than 4x as many bodies per day. These buildings also had gas chambers connected to them and were used to kill Jews and some people who weren't Jewish. These crematoriums were used from 1943- 1944. At the end of the war once the Nazis knew the allies were going to find the camps, the officers ordered Crematorium II-V to be destroyed to hide all the evidence.

Crematorium IV-V were smaller than II and III, but bigger than the first one. According to Jewish virtual library it could burn 740 bodies per day, and some ex-Nazis say it could even be more. The Nazi soldiers would make the Jewish people dig pryes and pits next to these two crematoriums and then burn them inside the pits after they were killed in the gas chambers. That seems so messed up to me that they would almost work them to death digging so later they can lay in them dead and then cremated. These two crematoriums were used between the years 1943-1945, and were also destroyed so the Allies couldn't find the evidence of them.

This object gives us insight on how much faith and how much the military personal and the whole country looked up to Hitler and thought he was the country's savior. This country was in a time of misery and economic desperation, and Hitler rose to power and fixed it. Once this happened everyone was brainwashed by Hitler and his ideas and thought because he got them out of the country's worst depression that everything he said and planned was the right thing to do. Being an independent person in this time period was very difficult and most people weren't. If you had ideas that were against Hitler's regime you could be prosecuted or worse, killed. For that reason the majority of people just followed what Hitler said, no questions asked. I'm not saying no one spoke out, but the majority did not either because they were scared or because they truly thought Hitler was the country's savior. This furnace and the crematoriums show us how dark and evil Hitler's Nazi regime really was. They were willing to kill 11 million people because of one man's plans for a better Germany. The military and German people were so brainwashed that they thought all of this evil was acceptable.

This museum was a memory I will have with me for the rest of my life. It showed more of the Jewish peoples' struggles that you can't always invision from a book. My artifact supported how desperate the people of Germany must have been to get out of their depression and how they were dependent on Hitler and believed everything he wanted to do was the right thing to do. Based on the facts and history of the five crematoriums and the amount of people that were killed and then burned in them supports my thesis of the dependency and desperation of the German people.

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The Holocaust was a time in history that will never be forgotten. It was a time of sorrow and pain. The historical fiction novel Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly demonstrates how the Holocaust affected the lives of very different people. The three characters Caroline Ferriday, Kasia Kuzmerick, and Herta Oberheuser all live disparate lives during the Holocaust but each of them gets affected by it. People who lived through the Holocaust had their social, romantic and family lives affected poorly.

The years 1933 to 1945 were some of the most horrific years in world history. There were over 17 million deaths through these years and 6 million of those people were Jews. That time period was called the Holocaust. It was a time when humanity went out of control. During this period there were concentration camps overfilled with adults, teens and children working as hard as they can because if they showed weakness they had a very likely chance of being killed. And others were killed for no reason. Millions of people were shot, put into gas chambers, starved to death, suffered from illness and more. Leaving mountains of lifeless bodies piled up to get burnt to ash and then get disposed of.

Adolf Hitler the leader of it all started off by taking rule of Germany when Germany was in an economic crisis. Germany during this period was called Nazi Germany and the Germans who were on Hitler's side were called Nazis. Hitler's rule soon escalated terribly, leading the creation many concentration camps and overcrowding them with thousands and thousands of jews from all around Europe. In the article The Article That Told The World About The Holocaust Hillary Kelly states the first inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto were placed in rail cars and deported to Nazi concentration camps less than six months later, the ghetto held only approximately 50,000 of the original 550,000 Jews. That means that 90% of the Jews were moved within six months, and that was just at one ghetto. This shows how brutal it was during the Holocaust. People were forced out of their homes leaving almost everything behind for the Nazis to steal and make money over, then forced to work.

Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly takes place during the holocaust and focuses mainly on three women, Caroline Ferriday, Kasia Kuzmerick and Herta Oberheuser. The novel is written in first person, however the narrator switches each chapter between the three main characters stated before. Caroline, Kasia and Herta have very different lives and this novel tells the story of how these girls come together despite their different lifestyles, Kelly's novel is based off a true story, it mostly takes place in a concentration camp called Ravensbruck which was a real camp in Germany.This camp was very cruel, it had done medical experiments on teen girls which lead to a lot of suffering. According to the article Ravensbruck The camp was the second largest women's concentration camp in size, Auschwitz being first. And it was also the only main camp that was meant for mostly women. Around this time women were viewed as less important which is why the novel being about 3 girls and one of the largest women's concentration camps is very significant. Kelly shows that women did have power during this time and that they were strong, on top of that she showed the effects that the Holocaust had on people.

The novel Lilac Girls begins with the perspective of Caroline Ferriday she is like the hero of the novel. She is based off a real person named Caroline Ferriday. She lives in Manhattan and is a New York socialite, she also works for a charity that helps french orphans. Caroline is a wealthy hard worker that loves her job very much. She is loving and brave and stands up for what she believes in. During the first couple of pages of the novel these characteristics are shown. Caroline states Loving all things French was simply genetic for me. (4) This makes her seem sweet and positive like she always looked towards the good side of life, but then her life takes an unexpected turn when Hitler's army invades Poland.

In 1939 Hitler invaded Poland, and next up he wanted to invade France. As shown before Caroline really loved France, so when she heard this it hurt her a lot. After hearing the unfortunate news she did more research and was disgusted by what she learned. But even throughout these times Caroline still kept all of her good qualities, A man Caroline was very close to Paul went to France to try and help but got imprisoned. It was terrible news but oddly hopeful, for at least he was alive. (219). This shows that she still tried to look at the positive sides, she was staying strong even though someone she loved was in danger. And although she tried to stay strong it did not last very long. This was affecting her relationship with Paul and giving her a lot of stress, and sadness, and anger. 'Im fine,' I said, stuffing the frustration down deep. 'I guess it's just hard on the nerves,' (221). This shows that Caroline was starting to struggle and lose her bravery. Its showing the negative effects The Holocaust had on her. It was affecting her romantic and social life and her qualities that made Caroline Ferriday, Caroline Ferriday. She was starting to not always look on the positive side of life. She lost some of her friends and Paul to the Nazis. And she didn't have as much time to be social as before because she was so focused on helping the others. Although Caroline did have one good effect from it all and that was that she saved a bunch of prisoners in Ravensbruck and brought them to America to get the treatment they needed after the medical experiments they were put through in Germany which according to the article Ravensbruck they people who were saved/survived were called lapins which translates to rabbits.

The next girl introduced to the novel is Kasia Kuzmerick. Kasia is like the victim of the story and is not based off a real person like Caroline, Kasia is fictional. She has one sister a mom and a dad. She is a teenage polish girl and her school had gotten closed down due to the war. Her school being shut down affected her education because she no longer had a place to learn, and it also affected her social life since she was not interacting with the people at school everyday like usual. And according to Hillary Kelly's article The Article That Told The World About The Holocaust many schools got shut down during this time. Kasia was very close with her family she cared about all of them alot. I knew not to argue with papa. (29). She said this when her father was distraught.This shows that she has respect for her father and that she cares about him and does not want to argue with him. Kasia and her sister decide to try and help prisoners escape the camp but while they were trying to help they got captured and put into Ravensbruck. This affected her relationship with her family since she was separated from all of them. This also poorly affected her by putting her in a dangerous place and it made her very scared and weaker. But just like Caroline Kasia did have one good affect from the Holocaust and that was that she was saved by Caroline and became friends with Caroline. Also she got the Health care she needed.

The last women introduced is Herta Oberheuser. She is like the villain of the novel.She is based off a real person who is named Herta Oberheuser also. She is a doctor and she signs up to work at Ravensbruck to do medical experiments on the prisoners. Nothing affected her that much while the Holocaust was actually happening, but when the Holocaust had ended she was put in prison for murder since Herta did harmful experiments on teenagers. This affected Hertas career very badly, since she was in jail she could not work as much so she was not learning more about being a doctor. Although she did learn some new medical tricks while working at the camp,

Martha Hall Kelly's historical fiction novel Lilac Girls tells an inspirational story based on true events that happened in the worlds history. It shows how one big conflict like the Holocaust can affect everyone no matter if the person is the hero, victim, or villain. And as the survivors of Holocaust are decreasing this story should be remembered and spread to others.

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How Hitler rose to power

On January 30, 1933 the president of Germany Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as the new chancellor of Germany. At the time Germany was in an economical depression that had put millions out of work, because of this its was fairly easily for someone like Adolf Hitler to rise to power. On July 14, 1933 the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche arbeiterpartei in German) was declared the only political party that was allowed in Germany. At the time german population did not realize the extent of the nazis hate for jews and non-germans.

The beginning of a tragedy

One survivor named Edward Adler says that on June the 14th, 1935 he was at a birthday party when he heard someone banging on the door. Tthinking it was his friends he opened the door,. but instead of finding his friends on the other side he found two men with guns telling him that he was under arrest( it was later found out that it was because he was dating a non-jewish woman). Confused he got dressed and left with the the men. From there he was taken to the local police station and was put in a room with two to three hundred other people all asking each other why they were in there. The answer was always that they didn't know.

Around six o'clock in the morning they loadedloading everyone, including Edward, into trains (the germans had not begun to use boxcars yet). Then after several hours they arrived to the outskirt of Berlin and unknowingly began to march to the concentration camp. Edward was the forced to do construction labor until in 1938 his wife made arrangements to leave Germany. Later on it wouldn't be so easy to leave.

Auschwitz and the Angel of Death

Over 6 million people were killed in the Hholocaust itself, over 1 million of these people were killed in a Auschwitz. Even though many know about Auschwitz not very many people have heard of Josef Mengele the Angel of Death. Josef joined the Nazi party in 1937 and on May 30, 1943 he was transferred to the Auschwitz Death camp. In the death camp if they had survived they were to be unloaded and go through a selection. Selections were common occurrences in death camps. When a new group of people arrived a selection took place as soon as they stepped out of the boxcars. They were terrifying things, the prisoners would step out and soon after a german guard would either point to the right or to the left. Whether they lived or died was up to the guard. If they were pregnant, had kids, were under 18 or looked too old they were chosen to die and would be sent to the showers which were actually the gas chambers in disguise. If they were chosen to live then they would be shaved, given new clothes and taken to the barracks. Most guards could not do this sober they would often show up drunk to feel less guilty and would not go if they weren't required to,but Josef Mengele was different. He would come to almost every selection, sober and in his best uniform unlike all the other doctors and guards.

Mengele wanted to make a name for himself in the medical community using genetics. He thought if he could find out how to assure that a baby would look a certain way(eye /hair colors) it would be one step closer to the saving the german population.For this reason mengele was obsessed with twins, as well as people with dwarfism, gigantism, and those with heterochromia. He didn't want to missed any twins so he told the guards to shout Zwillinge! (which meant twins) when unloading the boxcars. Some parents did not want give up their children and hid them more often than not the children were found but if not then they sent off to the gas chambers with their mothers.

Josef was called the Angel of Death for many reasons,but one of the main reasons were that he experimented on children of all ages.He would often drop dye or some other chemical into their eyes wondering if it would change their eye color, or purposely inject one twin with a dangerous disease to see if the other would react, if the injected twin died they would kill the other one as well to see what affects the disease had. Each and everyday the twins would be examined for any differences in their physical appearance, then they would have massive blood transfusions,after they would have various injections without anesthesia. That were painful and often fatal.

The War after the War

Even though many camps were liberated the war was not yet over for the prisoners that survived. Most prisoners went back to their hometowns only to find out that they were destroyed and a ghost of what they were before the war. On top of that over 6 million Jews were killed many big families were reduced to one or two people and small families were even less likely to survive. Since this was common after the war many committed suicide not being able to deal with the loss. Others had one or two family members left and lived to honor their family. The holocaust was a dreadful time in history where many inhuman things happened we should learn from past mistakes and prevent this from happening again.

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