Drawing the Holocaust: A Teenager's Memory of Terezín, Birkenau, and Mauthausen

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After two and one half years in the camp, Jan Komski and three comrades, Mieczyslaw Januszewski, Boleslaw Kuczbara, and Otto Küsel, participated in one of the most famous escapes in the history of that infamous camp. When I met Michael Kraus, I had a chance for the first time to listen to a Holocaust survivor tell his story directly to me. Michael’s memoir is a chance for everyone to hear that story, the voice of a teenager who lived through the grief and physical pain of that terrible time. The Holocaust is no longer just history for me. It’s a personal story. — Austin de Besche, director of “Pilgrimage into the Past,” a documentary film about Michael Kraus and his family

Most Jewish artists working in Germany in the 1930s experienced persecution. Many, including Kurt Schwitters, David Ludwig Bloch, Nandor Glid and Arno Nadel, were interned in labor or concentration camps. These experiences had a significant, long-lasting impact on their work.

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Twelve-year-old Michael Kraus began keeping a diary while he was still living at home in the Czech city of Nachód but continued writing while a prisoner at Theresienstadt (Terezín). When he was shipped with other prisoners to the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, all of his writings were confiscated and destroyed. After his liberation and while convalescing, he began to draw and make notes again about his experiences in Theresienstadt, in Auschwitz, the first death march out of Mauthausen and its satellite camps in Melk and Gunskirchen. The first days where I had to go in the school to tell my history, my horrible history, it was very difficult for me. I am crazy when I have to tell something what happened in the concentration camps. As a teenager confronting the traumas of these experiences, Kraus found that recording his memories in words and pictures helped him overcome his hatred for those who had murdered his parents. The process of writing and drawing also helped him begin the painful transition to a so-called normal life. As a survivor, Kraus also felt the need to recount his experiences for the benefit of future generations, especially on behalf of the many who did not survive. The word ‘Holocaust’ comes from two Ancient Greek words: ‘holos’, which means ‘completely’, and ‘kaustos’, meaning ‘burnt’. The original meaning of this word referred to a religious sacrifice, which the mass murder of Jewish people was not. As a result, many people prefer to use a different term, such as the Hebrew word ‘Shoah’, which means ‘catastrophe’. While the authorities in Romania, one of Germany's Axis partners, did not systematically annihilate the Roma population living on Romanian territory, Romanian military and police officials deported around 26,000 Roma in 1941 and 1942. They deported Roma primarily from Bukovina and Bessarabia, but also from Moldavia and Bucharest (the capital) to Transnistria, a section of south western Ukraine placed under Romanian administration. Thousands of those deported died from disease, starvation, and brutal treatment.

were infeasible, and it would not be possible to forcibly deport and resettle the Jewish population of Europe. DAISY GOODWIN: Why I believe a good funeral can be just as memorable and life-affirming as a wedding (and to deny your family one is selfish), as more than half of us say a formal send-off is a waste of money Those selected for work were tattooed with a number when they arrived, had their hair shaved and were forced to wear a striped uniform. People were forced to do hard labour in very difficult conditions. When they became too frail to work, they were sent to the gas chambers.The conditions on deportation transports were horrific. German and collaborating local authorities forced Jews of all ages into overcrowded railcars. They often had to stand, sometimes for days, until the train reached its destination. The perpetrators deprived them of food, water, bathrooms, heat, and medical care. Jews frequently died en route from the inhumane conditions. And Just Like That... it's dinner time! Cynthia Nixon's hunger strike to try and end Israel-Palestine conflict will only last two or three DAYS, source claims Meanwhile, for the other camp inmates, the 'one in a million chance' of a mother and son reuniting at Auschwitz provided a beacon of hope among the despair. His sketch of new arrivals at the notorious death camp, which has been engraved on a special memorial wall at Auschwitz, was for him 'the most important and by far the saddest picture of modern history'.

This resource includes an English and Spanish version of The Holocaust - Read, Draw & Write. These are perfect for your bilingual or dual-language classrooms! The Nazi regime also targeted Germans whose activities were deemed harmful to German society. These included men accused of homosexuality, persons accused of being professional or habitual criminals, and so-called asocials (such as people identified as vagabonds, beggars, prostitutes, pimps, and alcoholics). Tens of thousands of these victims were incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps. The regime also forcibly sterilized and persecuted Afro-Germans. There were also a number of instances of Jewish people using violent and armed resistance against the Nazis, in both the ghettos and the concentration and extermination camps: In late 1941, the Nazi regime began building specially designed, stationary killing centers in German-occupied Poland. In English, killing centers are sometimes called “extermination camps” or “death camps.” Nazi Germany operated five killing centers: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. They built these killing centers for the sole purpose of efficiently murdering Jews on a mass scale. The primary means of murder at the killing centers was poisonous gas released into sealed gas chambers or vans. This was often made possible with the collaboration of local police and government organisations. Following their defeat to the German army, France was controlled by the German government. However, at times, French authorities went beyond what they were asked to do by their German occupiers. Marshal Philippe Pétain, a French general who had fought in World War One, became head of state. His government brought in many antisemitic laws and policies. Pétain also opened several concentration camps in France, and his government participated in the murder of Roma people.

Fate of Roma in German-Occupied Areas of Europe

Mr. Komski eventually reached the city of Krakow, where he was arrested in a routine roundup as he was sitting on a train awaiting departure for Warsaw. Any escaped prisoner would have been hanged very soon after his return to Auschwitz. But Komski was not recognized and his identity papers now bore a different name.

Many ordinary Germans became involved when they acquired Jewish businesses, homes, or belongings sold at bargain prices or benefited from reduced business competition as Jews were driven from the economy. With such gains, these “bystanders” developed a stake in the ongoing persecution of the dispossessed. The rise in nationalism intensified the rise in antisemitism, which had also been growing since the Enlightenment. The First World War (1914-1918) strengthened these feelings of nationalism across Europe, as nations were pitted against each other. I knew when I was five-years-old that I was Jewish because I was not allowed to play with the other children on the street anymore,' he said. A concentration camp had been established at Majdanek in 1941. In the spring of 1942, following the Wannsee Conference, the camp was adapted to become an extermination camp by the addition of gas chambers and crematoria.The largest death camp was Auschwitz-Birkenau, built near Kraków, Poland. Approximately 1 million Jewish people were murdered at Auschwitz.