|
Adolf Hitler gave a
speech not long before the beginning of World War II and the
Holocaust. His words foretold of what was to become of the
Jewish people of Europe:
"Today I will
once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers
in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations
once more into a world war, then the result will not be the
Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but
the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!"
The
Final Solution was a plan devised by Nazi Germany to commit
genocide against the Jews of Europe during World War II. This
decision was made during a discussion held among a group of
German Nazi officials at the Wannsee conference (Wannsee is a
locality located in a Berlin borough) on 20 Jan 1942. The
conference was to decide on the "Final Solution of the Jewish
Question."
Almost
one million Jews had already been murdered before the Nazis put
their plans for their Final Solution fully into effect. When it
was finally determined to eliminate the entire population from
Europe, extermination camps were
built and the mass killings of Jews began to accelerate. Already
by November of 1941 such camps had been built in Belzec, then
Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau.
When the "Final Solution" was agreed upon, the mass murders of
Jews began. |
photo: On April 1st,
1933, the boycott which was announced by the Nationalsocialistic party
began. Placard reads, “Germans, defend yourselves, do not buy from the
Jews,” at the Jewish Tietz store. Berlin. New York Times Paris Bureau
Collection. (USIA).
Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration,
College Park, MD. |