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On the night of 5 April 1944, Siegfried Lederer, a Czech Jew, escaped from the Auschwitz concentration camp wearing an SS-TV uniform provided by SS-Rottenführer Viktor Pestek. Pestek opposed the Holocaust ; he was a devout Catholic and was infatuated with Renée Neumann, a Jewish prisoner.
On 19 April 1943, members of the Belgian Resistance stopped a Holocaust train and freed a number of Jews who were being transported to Auschwitz concentration camp from Mechelen transit camp in Belgium, on the twentieth convoy from the camp. In the aftermath of the attack, a number of other captives were able to jump from the train as well.
The Nazis had no plan for concentration camps prior to their seizure of power. [11] The concentration camp system arose in the following months due to the desire to suppress tens of thousands of Nazi opponents in Germany. The Reichstag fire in February 1933 was the pretext for mass arrests.
During World War II, some individuals and groups helped Jews and others escape the Holocaust conducted by Nazi Germany. The support, or at least absence of active opposition, of the local population was essential to Jews attempting to hide but often lacking in Eastern Europe. [1] Those in hiding depended on the assistance of non-Jews. [2]
According to the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, there were 23 main concentration camps (German: Stammlager), of which most had a system of satellite camps. [1] Including the satellite camps, the total number of Nazi concentration camps that existed at one point in time is at least a thousand, although these did not all exist at the same time.
The Holocaust (/ ˈ h ɒ l ə k ɔː s t / ⓘ), [1] known in Hebrew as the Shoah (שואה), was the genocide of European Jews during World War II.Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population.
This is a list of notable victims and survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp; that is, victims and survivors about whom a significant amount of independent secondary sourcing exists. This list represents only a very small portion of the 1.1 million victims and survivors of Auschwitz and is not intended to be viewed as a representative or ...
The conditions in these camps were harsh and primitive at first, but once basic survival needs were being met, the refugees organized representatives on a camp-by-camp basis, and then a coordinating organization for the various camps, to present their needs and requests to the authorities, supervise cultural and educational activities in the ...