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The NAZIs with the advent of World War II pursued the Holocaust much more rapid in the occupied cointries. With the the invasion of Poland The first acts were against adults (September 1939). There were several incidents of Jews being shot, mostly adult men from some boys were included among the victims. The general process in Poland was to keep the families together and heard Jews into medieval ghettos. This process was continued after the victory in the West and the occupation of Belgium, France, and the Netherlands (June 1940). The NAZIs changed this process with the invasion of the Balkans (Yugoslavia and Greece (April 1941). Here the pkilling process began soon after the occupation. The NAZIs did not pursue the ghetto process as in Poland. This was because smaller numbers of Jews were involved and the decesion to kill the Jews was more advanced. In the Balkans the pricess was often to kill the men first and only later the women and children. Large scale killing began with Operation Barbarossa, the NAZI invasion of the Soviet Union (June 1941). SD Commander Heydrish organized four Einsatzgruppen were organized to kill Communist officials, other regime supporters, and Jews. Apparently, the orders were unclear because some Einsatzgruppen atfirst only killed adult male Jews, although this very quickly shifted to all the Jews they found. While the killing process was underway in the Soviet Union, it was not in Poland. This began in Chelmo. Many of the victims came from the nearby Lodz Ghetto. There was within the NAZI hierarchy considerable differences as to just what to do with the Jews, at least in the short term. There was a great deal of money to be made by exploiting the Jews, both through graft and corrupting and using them as slave labor. Of course killing them ended all the lucrative possibilities. Thus some NAZIs a range of policies other than mass extermination. This debate was possible because Hitler as far as we know never issued written orders. Thus there was ampel reason to misunderstand the verbal orders he almost certainly gave Himmler. Göring, and Heydrich. One of the options was to kill the children and other non-workers. The Allgemeine Gehsperre order selecting the children was one result (September 1942). By this time, howver, the decesion to kill all the Jews had already been taken. And the SS had worked out the best process. Trying to separate the children from their parents meant that the SS then had to enter the ghettos and find where their parents his them. It was more efficent to separate them upon arrival at the death camps. Counting on the desire of parents to hang on to their children, the SS allowed the families to stay together until reaching the death camps. Here they were either all killed or the children (with their mothers), sick and elderly were separated for immediate death.
The NAZIs with the advent of World War II pursued the Holocaust much more rapid in the occupied cointries. With the the invasion of Poland The first acts were against adults (September 1939). There were several incidents of Jews being shot, mostly adult men from some boys were included among the victims. Terrifying incidents occurred all over Poland. Often the incidents involved shooting hostages for one infraction or another of NAZI regulations. Commonly Jews were selected to be hostages.
The general process pursued by the NAZIS in Poland was to keep the families together and heard Jews into an institution from the medieval era--ghettos. The NAZI ghettos were set up in other countries (Czechoslovalia, Latvia, and Lithuania), but most were located in Poland. The time frame and experience varied somewhay at the various ghettos. Here the whole families were forced into the ghettos. And although food was limited, the parents could to an extent protect their children. Scgools were set up to create some semplance of normal life. Some parents were killed both before and after the ghettos were created. Orphaned children were in terrible danger wiithout parents to protect them.
This process was continued after the victory in the West and the occupation of Belgium, France, and the Netherlands (June 1940). Ghettos were not established as in Poland, but the Jews were concentrated in camps or in sections of the major cities. Some families were more aware of the danger than others. It was much harder for a family to survive which meant hiding if they had young children. Many of the children who survived were placed with sympathetic Christian families. An example here is Irma. Some whole families went into hiding, but this took a great deal of planning and assistance from Christian friends. The best known such family is of course the Frank family in Amsterdam. They went into hiding as soon as their oldest daughter received a notice to report for "war work".
The NAZIs changed their approach with the invasion of the Balkans (Yugoslavia and Greece (April 1941). Here the pkilling process began soon after the occupation. The NAZIs did not pursue the ghetto process as in Poland. This was because there was a smaller population of Jews in the Balkans and the decesion to kill the Jews was more advanced. And in Yugoslavia the Germans had enthusiastic local killers. In the Balkans the pricess was often to kill the men first and only later the women and children who were easier to handel.
This began in Chelmo. Many of the victims came from the nearby Lodz Ghetto. There was within the NAZI hierarchy considerable differences as to just what to do with the Jews, at least in the short term. There was a great deal of money to be made by exploiting the Jews, both through graft and corrupting and using them as slave labor. Of course killing them ended all the lucrative possibilities. Thus some NAZIs a range of policies other than mass extermination. This debate was possible because Hitler as far as we know never issued written orders. Thus there was ampel reason to misunderstand the verbal orders he almost certainly gave Himmler. Göring, and Heydrich. One of the options was to kill the children and other non-workers. The Allgemeine Gehsperre order selecting the children was one result (September 1942). By this time, howver, the decesion to kill all the Jews had already been taken. And the SS had worked out the best process. Trying to separate the children from their parents meant that the SS then had to enter the ghettos and find where their parents his them. It was more efficent to separate them upon arrival at the death camps. Counting on the desire of parents to hang on to their children, the SS allowed the families to stay together until reaching the death camps. Here they were either all killed or the children (with their mothers), sick and elderly were separated for immediate death. This varied somewhat from camp to camp. Sone of the death camps were pure killing operations. Others like Auschwitz were slaave labor facilities where healthy adult Jews were used for slave labor until their health deteriorated due to malnutrition and abuse at which time they were also killed.
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