CURRENTLY READING - Mind Game (Ghost Walkers #2) by Christine Feehan

READ -

My big read for the month. Not exactly light summer reading, but my brother lent me the book.

The Holocaust A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War
Author: Martin Gilbert

The most comprehensive compilation of holocaust information, includes testimonial and records from Europe. Palestine, America..etc. This book is nearly 1000 pages of cruelty, torture and murder of the Jews of Europe. Starting at the beginning of early nazi power, to the end of the war and just after, this is a must read for the student of the Jewish holocaust. Anti semitism, already a part of European culture, was the reason why, in part, so many looked the other way or were complicit collaborators. The terror takes a turn when Germany invades Poland,  then invaded Russia. As the German army pushed the Russian army east. So then did the pogroms of eastern Europe begin. Complicit in these were the Lithuanians, the Ukranians and the Poles. Encouraged by nazi antisemitism, some Lithuanian right wing militias didn't even wait for the German soldiers to get to town. No town, village or isolated community were spared if Jews lived there. Their fellow townspeople would turn them in. Jews were turned out of their homes, old and weak ones shot, and marched to pits already dug by locals. They were made to undress and stand in line as the proceeded to be shot. Babies were thrown by the legs and smashed against trees to save bullets. Children were pushed into pits alive to suffocate under the dead. Maybe a million Jews and thousands of communists were murdered this way until the germans were finally pushed back west by the Russians after about 2 years.
The Ukranians joined the German SS. Some Jews escaped the pogroms to fight with the partisans - mostly Russians and Jewish soldiers and survivors of the pogroms, who fought the Germans. Many died fighting. There were many, many Jewish who resisted.

When Jews resisted, they were usually tortured and hung. Often fellow non Jews would clap and cheer.

In the camps, when Jews tried to resist, they would be tortured and hung. All Jews in the same block would be forced to watch.

In some towns all over Europe, Jews were locked in synagogues and burned alive.


Those in the bigger cities and ghettos of the German empire, including the million or more  polish Jews, were deported and sent to camps. Most of the polish Jews were sent to treblinka, the death camp, and exterminated. More isolated towns and villages in german occupied Poland , the Jews were seized from their homes by the einsatzgruppen and the einsatzkommando and shot in programs. Polish people collaborated, and turned in their Jewish neighbors. But some good poles tried to help and many poles and their families were shot for hiding Jews.

The 400,000 Jews of Hungary were sent to Auschwitz towsrds the end of the war. They had been unassaulted in Hungary til the end of the war. Many were exterminated at Auschwitz.

Many Jews tried to go back home after the war, but their homes and businesses were stolen by aryans. After a pogrom in poland in 1946, many of the surviving Jews of Poland refuged to to Palestine and America. . The Hungarian Jews who tried going back to Hungary didn't have it much better.  Anti semitism was high, there was much brutality and even murders. Many Hungarian Jews took refuge in America and Palestine. 

This was so hard to read but so important to read , too. Only by studying history can we prevent it from happening again.