This is my History Lesson!

I read a great book yesterday called Sarah's Key from Tatiana De Rosnay. It was a great fictitious story about two different experiences wrapped into one from two different world but were linked by generations. I cried and it was a wonderful story based on a real event in French History during WW2. I decided to write about this time because for me History is a passion for me even if I don't talk about what my passions are besides reading and listening to music. I read a lot about books based about the Holocaust. Some of these books are fictitious and others are a persons memoir based on there time during the war. To me this time in History is important to remember and all the millions of Jews who lost there life because of hatred during WW2. Every Country has secrets and shame and these are the times in History we should remember not only to learn from our History but to remember these peoples stories and to not forget them. From reading this book I learned about one day, July 16, 1942. This day is so important because of the Vel' d'Hiv, is the name of the July 16, 1942 raid - Operation Spring Breeze - during the occupation of France by the Germans. The raids in Paris were one of several aimed at reducing the Jewish population. The Jews were rounded up on buses and sent to the Vélodrome d'Hiver which at the time was an indoor cycle track. At 4:00 am on July 16 1942, 12,884 Jews were arrested from there homes. They could take with them only a bed cover, a sweater, a pair of shoes and two shirts. 4,051 children, 5,802 women and 3,031 men. Most families were split up and never reunited. After the raids, some Jews were taken by bus to a concentration camp in an incomplete block of flats in the northern suburb of Drancy. Others were taken to the Vélodrome d'hiver in the 15th arrondissement, which had already been used as a prison in a roundup in the summer of 1941. This place had no lavatories and of the 10 available, five were sealed because their windows offered a way out and the others were blocked. The Jews were kept there with only water and food brought by Quakers, the Red Cross and a few doctors and nurses allowed to enter. There was only one water tap. Those who tried to escape were shot on the spot. Some killed themselves. After five days of staying in harsh conditions the Jews were taken to camps at Drancy, Beaune-la-Rolande and Pithiviers and then to Auschwitz. The roundup accounted for more than a quarter of the 42,000 Jews sent from France to Auschwitz in 1942, of whom only 811 came home at the end of the war. Auschwitz is important to remember. History to understand the evil which happened here. Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest of Nazi Germany's concentration camps. Auschwitz is located in Poland about 286 kilometers south of Warsaw. Its believed that up to 1.1 million people had died at Auschwitz during the war. Most victims were killed in Auschwitz II's gas chambers using Zyklon B gas. Other deaths were caused by starvation, forced labor, lack of disease control, individual executions, and medical experiments. Auschwitz had three main camps, 1,2 and 3. Nazi party's paramilitary the SS ran the camps. Auschwitz I was the original camp, and it served as the administrative center for the whole complex. Auschwitz 2 was designed to hold several categories of prisoners, and to function as an extermination camp in preparations for the Final Solution of Jews. Prisoners were transported from all over German-occupied Europe by rail, arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau in daily convoys. Arrivals at the complex were separated into two main groups - those marked for immediate extermination, and those to be registered as prisoners. The first group, about three-quarters of the total, went to the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau within a few hours and they included all children, all women with children, all the elderly, and all those who appeared on brief and superficial inspection by an SS doctor not to be fully fit. SS personnel told the victims that they were to take a shower. The victims would undress in an outer chamber and walk into the gas chamber which was disguised as a shower facility with complete fake shower heads. After the doors were shut the SS men would dump in the cyanide pellets via holes in the roof or windows on the side. In the Auschwitz Birkenau camp more than 20,000 people could be gassed and cremated each day. Those deemed fit to work were used as slave labor at industrial factories. At the Auschwitz complex 405,000 prisoners were recorded as slaves between 1940 and 1945. Of these about 340,000 perished through executions, beatings, starvation, and sickness. Sonderkommandos yanked gold teeth from the corpses of gas chamber victims. The gold was melted down and sent back to the Third Reich. The belongings of the arrivals were seized by the SS. They were sorted in an area of the camp called "Canada". The name "Canada" was very cynically chosen. In Poland it was used as an expression. The expression came from the time when Polish emigrants were sending gifts home from Canada. Medical experiments at Auschwitz Nazi doctors performed a wide variety of experiments on helpless prisoners. The most infamous doctor at Auschwitz was Josef Mengele, who was also known as the “Angel of Death”. His interest in research on identical twins. Mengele performed cruel experiments on them, such as inducing diseases in one twin of a pair and killing the other when the first died to perform comparative autopsies. This was a hard time of History and one I will never forget. I have a large selection of books surrounding this era. I want to remember this time so these peoples lives were not in vain. I will always remember them and there stories. I could write more on this subject but it's hard for me and makes me emotional so I will stop for the day. Take care, Peace!