80 years after Holocaust, 245,000 Jewish survivors are still alive…
ARUN KUMAR JOSHI
Today, the global Jewish population is estimated to be around 15 million. According to the report by the Claims Conference, survivors alive today are spread out across more than 90 countries. Nearly half live in Israel. The United States, France and Russia host the next largest groups of survivors. The vast majority, or 96% of survivors, are “child survivors” who were born after 1928, says the report “Holocaust Survivors Worldwide. A Demographic Overview’” which is based on figures that were collected up until August.
“The numbers in this report are interesting, but it is also important to look past the numbers to see the individuals they represent,” said Greg Schneider, the Claims Conference’s executive vice president. “These are Jews who were born into a world that wanted to see them murdered.
The lady who witnessed Kristallnacht : They endured the atrocities of the Holocaust in their youth and were forced to rebuild an entire life out of the ashes of the camps and ghettos that ended their families and communities.”
The report was released by the New York based Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany which is known Claim Conference after a study conducted by them.. The vast majority are child survivors around 96 percent who were born after 1928 and their numbers are quickly dwindling with a median age of 84.
Six million European Jews and people from other minorities were killed by Nazis during Holocaust. Now as regards the surviving Jews nearly half of them around 49 percent live in Israel 18 percent in western Europe and 12 Percent in erstwhile Soviet States In Poland, of 3.3 million Jews living there Only 300,000 survived. It was a dreaded cruel desire of Hitler loaded with whims and fantasies to rule the world in the name of super race and blood in lust of new territories and power.
In 2006 I visited the the Nazis Concentration Camps of Auschwitz and Birkenou in Poland where Hitler killed lakhs of Jews. The Nazis used various heinous ways to kill or harras the jews forcing them to work keeping them hungry. On 30th April 1945 Russian Forces entered Berlin. The world was freed from Hitler on this day by efforts of allied forces winning second world war. Hitler commited suicide on 30th April.
Three months earlier in January of 1945 Soviet troops liberated Warsaw the capital of Poland. On 27th January Red Army freed the world’s biggest Nazi Concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau revealing to the world of the horrors perpetrated there. Around a million people were forced murdered over a period of cruel tyranny but about 9000 starving prisoners were found alive in the camp. They discovered millions of clothing items that once belonged to men women and children along with 6350 kilos of human hair. more than a hundred thousand pairs of shoes, 12 thousand kitchen utensils, 3800 suitcases and 350 striped camp garments. The museum also displays eighty eight pounds of eye glasses and hundreds of prosthetic limbs.
The Auschwitz-Birkenou was the largest and the deadliest of extermination camps where millions were tortured and murdered with heinous cruel practices of large Gas chambers and other inmates were forced to do extensive work with insufficient food and poor health conditions during notorious holocaust under the orders of Adolf Hitler. As the Russians liberated Warsaw the German guards began to evacuate and flee towards the German territories. 9000 Prisoner including children and women in dire health remained there and some got hidden in the hope to escape. The Auschwitz was connected with broad gauge rail lines with a terminus for carrying the load Jew inmates from various part of Germany for extermination.
From Polish Capital Warsaw we drove to Cracow first. Our bus was crossing towards these concentrations camps a gloom started shadowing our minds and heart. Near camps a sensitive mind can feel heavy air around loaded with cries of spirits who were butchered massacred eliminated brutally in gas chambers or by firing squads or due to hard labor under hunger and malnutrition conditions. Around 15 Lakhs of Jews and Polls were killed in these camps.
As one enters in Auschwitz an arch grill at entrance gate catches attention with words” Arbeit macht freie” is a German phrase meaning “work sets you free”. Such a dreaded Criminal intentions was actually aimed to liberate people from life. Both the camps have a number of large barracks rather big halls fitted with Wooden sleepers accommodating thousands of inmates.
Railway line is also preserved which were carrying wagons loaded with inmates for tortures and eliminations. A Gestapo police officer at each wagon will divide inmates into two groups. Children and old destitute at one side and young and middle aged to other side. The Nazis made the gas chambers look like showers. They convinced prisoners that they were going into the gas chambers to shower. Then they would flow poisonous gas Zyklon B into the gas chambers through pipe showers and killed everyone inside. We saw at roof those pipes showers were not fitted by any water supply but gas cylinders.
The dead bodies were burned to ashes in Birkenau in four crematoria. All the crematoria had powerful electric furnaces to churn bodies. Nazis collected kilos of gold from such furnaces as jews and Polish people were fond of filling gold in teeth cavities. The other group were taken to barracks for various hard labour till their death due to diseases malnutrition or hunger. Very few survived and a few could escape braving electric barbed wire fences and watch towers.The striped dresses of inmates still displayed on wall of barracks.
My beautiful interpreter Tanya tells me that this century is known for developed civilization in all the sphere of life and human mind and people of my generation are unable to bear that how such a dastardly barbaric act was committed by a so called leader turned a dreaded Genocidal mass killer just some decades ago. I said Yes Tanya history cannot be changed as it is a chronicle of facts and events but new generations can always take lessons from it to check recurrence in future. People go cruel in greed and lust of Power.
