Thread by @1943Treblinka

I've had a personal request to post more history. Apparently someone found my political stuff dull.
To those without an interest, just ignore. Some of you might find this disturbing or upsetting. My interest is 20th century European history, particularly WW II/Holocaust.

These series of posts will focus on the Holocaust. This term is generic for the destruction of the European Jews during WW II, primarily during the time period between 1941 until late 1944. By the end of 1944 the "organized" period ended though isolated incidents

continued until the end of the war. There were isolated incidents of killings between 1939-1941 and large numbers of Polish Jews died due to conditions in ghettos but those were not necessarily deliberate (though the Germans did nothing to alleviate conditions in ghettos).

There is a misconception about what Western soldiers found when they liberated places like Dachau, Ohrdruf, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, etc. The pictures, film, interviews, etc. of these camps are not evidence of the Holocaust. They show us evidence of a human tragedy, brought

about by criminal neglect of sick, starving and weak prisoners by the Germans. But it's not evidence of genocide. These camps could be lethal but that was not their primary function. The Germans used these camps for punishment and to extract labor. But they weren't

extermination camps.
The actual extermination camps existed in Poland. There were two concentration/extermination camps: Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek and four extermination camps: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. Chelmno opened in December of 1941, the other camps

opened in 1942 (the Germans began building Birkenau in 1941 as a camp for Soviet POWs. It was later repurposed as a camp for Jews). Birkenau remained open until 1945. Belzec opened in the Spring of 1942 and closed by the following December, Sobibor opened in May of 1942

and Treblinka opened in July of 1942. Both closed in the Fall of 1943. Jewish prisoners revolted in both Sobibor and Treblinka and many escaped and survived the war. Chelmno closed in the Spring of 1943 but the Germans later reopened it in 1944 to complete the destruction

of the Lodz Ghetto. It's the only camp to reopen after it's initial closure.
The attempted genocide did not start with camps (which is another misconception). It started with the mass shooting of both non-Soviet and Soviet Jews by Einsatzgruppen squads, death squads set up in

the Spring of 1941. Their initial orders were not necessarily to shoot only Jews but Communist officials, saboteurs, partisans operating behind the lines...basically any potential threat. But there were orders to stir up pogroms. The Einsatzgruppen wound up shooting large

numbers of Jews, at first military age males and later extending it to women, children and the elderly. The Einsatzgruppen later received reinforcements in the form of SS cavalry units. German police units along with the Wehrmacht also participated in mass shootings

with German allies and proxies also joining in. One important note: the Wehrmacht started shooting Jews and Roma in Yugoslavia in the Spring of 1941 but these were reprisal killings in response to partisan activity. It is important to point out that while not genocidal

in nature the victims were primarily Jews and Roma.
That's it for now. I have some things to do but I will pick this up later.

@threadreaderapp unroll