The Worst Betrayals In History: The Roundup

The year is 1942; it is midsummer in Nazi occupied France. The Nazis have been capturing and deporting Jews with unsettling regularity, but they are not content. The Nazi leaders collaborate with a fascist government in France to form a plan to increase the Jewish capture rate. The two parties working together led to the “Spring Wind” Operation. T he most famous incident in this operation, the Veldrome d’hiver roundup.

On the day of July 16th, 1942 , a horrible event took place. The Vel’d’Hiv Roundup. 4,500 French policemen arrested over 11,000 Jews. Within the short time frame of a week 13,000 Jews had were being held in the Vel’d’Hiv , the winter stadium , more then 4,000 children were with them. Children two years to sixteen years of age were arrested alongside their parent or guardian.

One chapter describes a girl jumping out the window before the gas was released. Mrs. Nomberg- Przytyk was saddened that she had taken parts in helping Germans killing many innocent Jews, in fear of being killed. But she said it wasn’t the fear that controlled her from helping, it was the thought of them not knowing what was coming to them. She said she wanted prisoners to die carefree instead of trying to save themselves from their terrible death, then said that it was fear of her being killed that made her help the Germans. If they knew what was in store for them, they wouldn’t be able to bare the thoughts of getting burned alive.

In The First Betrayal Josan, a man who works in a lighthouse finds himself in the midst of a violent storm. Consequently the disheartening storm threatens to destroy the light in the tower, causing the ships to crash into the rocks. In the passage- The First Betrayal, Patricia Bray’s use of harsh diction and vivid imagery creates a mood of suspense. For instance, the author’s use of word choice illustrates a tone of fear.

This is after WWI when Germany 's leader Adolf Hitler was mad they lost the war. He thought it was because of the Jewish people. The article states that Adolf Hitler said, “eliminate the jews, and you will eliminate all of germany 's problems”. (6) The text also stated that jews were being murdered in gas chambers. (9) Finally the text said that the war ended in 1945.

The Roundup was seen as their first attempt at undermining France’s anti-Semitic authorities. The message, however, appealed to emotions, mostly of the need to protect children, and provided no precise details other than the roundup would occur “shortly” and still in its planning phase, which was not accurate. Of the records available, however, many mention an awareness to the impending event. The journal of Hélène Berr, which is deemed a French treasure equal to the Diary of Anne Frank, began her July 15th, 1942 entry, “Something is brewing, something that will be a tragedy, maybe the tragedy. M. Simon came round this evening at 10:00 to warn us that he’d been told about a roundup for the day after tomorrow, twenty thousand people.”

In Night one of the ways that the Jews were dehumanized was by abuse. There were beatings, “I never felt anything except the lashes of the whip... Only the first really hurt.” (Wiesel, 57) “They were forced to dig huge trenches. When they had finished their work, the men from the Gestapo began theirs.

Site #1: Rosa Marie Burger’s Holocaust Story In Rosa Marie Burger’s story, she accounts for the Kristallnacht and the difficulties that the Jews in her village went through to try to keep safe from the terrors of the Nazis. She tells of how Jews would come to her mother so that they could learn English in hopes that they might be able to get a sponsor in America so they can escape the looming war. During Kristallnacht, or the Night of broken Glass, she tells of several trucks of Nazis coming and using axes to break down doors and destroy everything worth value in the homes, she also recalls a woman who fled into the night with her son and only wearing her nightgown and caught pneumonia and didn’t survive. She also told of how the Nazis used

Many people have learned about the Holocaust throughout the years, but learning about it from a primary source is a whole different experience. A scary journey that turned out to be the Holocaust has been told by two individuals that survived. These two stories tell the reader what life was like and what they went through. Even though the conditions were terrible, both Eli and Lina were able to survive and break away through fear, horrendous experiences, and hope that lead them to surviving and leaving people they cared about behind.

On April 6, 1944, the Nazis raid a french home in Izieu, France housing Jewish children. The children aged from five to seventeen, were watched by seven adults. The Gestapo- a secret police force for the Nazis- had pulled up in front of the orphanage. They trampled into the house, taking all the children. As a witness later recalled: 'I was on my way down the stairs when my sister shouted to me:

By doing all of this, she’s risking her life. As the USSR front draws closer to Auschwitz, the Jews walk Death Marches. Eventually, they are rescued by Soviet Union soldiers while sleeping in a revene. They are told not to hope to find their families

Sure it sounds a little messed up, but hey, don 't tell me you haven 't thought of that before if you are reading this currently because guess what? That 's a lie. Anyway, after the allies rescued the remaining survivors of the concentration camps, and spread the news to everyone so people that were in hiding could come out of hiding, a diary was discovered. A diary by a girl that had gone through everything. From hiding, to surviving.

It is 1945. The year that world war II had ended. You are just some family in America that helped as much as you can. That was great, but you always wished you knew what it was like to experience something as intense, and frightening as being in an actual concentration camp. What it would feel like, what was going on.

A trip to Germany in 1964 put the Holocaust into perspective

We are given an insight on how the Nazis had taken bribes form Jews and Polish people for exchange for little scraps of food, or even for some sort safety. Even The beating of Jews for no reason. “It was many, many such stories – Synagogues burned, and Jews were beaten with no reason, whole towns pushed out all the Jews – each story getting worse than the