The Horrors of the Holocaust

 

The Holocaust was one of the many major attacks against the people of God, the Jews. Hitler became a dictator on August 2, 1934 and eventually wiped out an estimate of 11 million people (Six million of which were Jews) It was definitely Satan attempting to use Hitler to wipe out God's people, but like it says in Revelation, there will be 144,000 Jews that will be saved. So, Satan will never ever be able to completely destroy the Jews. I would like to cover what life was like in the Prison Camps.

I can't imagine how hard it would have been for those children to be separated from their parents. In the book Hanna's Suitcase, the children are taken in by their aunt and uncle after both parents had been taken away. They are soon called to report to the deportation center. Their uncle hires a taxi to drive them there because he knew where they would be going. Hannah and George stay in a ghetto for some time. The whole time, George's goal is to get his family back together again. Later he is taken to Auschwitz and then his sister follows, only to be led into one of the horrible gas chambers. He is released from Auschwitz and finds out that his Father and Mother were murdered. After searching and searching a girl comes up to him saying that Hanna was gassed. You can see through that one story how the Holocaust messed up so many families.
The prison camps were where Hitler put Jews and then they were later taken and gassed. They are also known as death camps which better fits the description. The Jews were taken from their homes, or from a deportation center, stuffed into cattle cars, sometimes with no more then a bucket as a toilet. They would travel for days and people would die on the way to the prison camps. They were treated like they were animals. It was so awful. The stench was horrific. One girl said that she was nauseated when she was in there and that it took her some getting used to.
The prison camps were worse. People described them as "hell." The stories that are told are so eye opening to what it was like. The food portions were so dinky and their "vegetable soup" was basically water with maybe a little chunk of meat floating around.

The Line up was a miserable part of the day. They would have to stand outside for long periods of time no matter what the weather was like.
The bunk rooms in which they slept were infested with lice. The bedding was filled with sawdust, and they were unworthy to even be called bedding. The bunks were so unstable. There was an instance in which one of the bunk beds crashed down, breaking the nose of the person underneath it.
There was one situation in the camp when women were all in a tent and the bucket of waste spilled all over. It was totally disgusting.  I don't think that they were able to change their clothing after that. The people had to work so hard, it was impossible to do everything, especially surviving off of their meager rations. If they didn't meet the standards of the Nazis or they didn't obey the rules, they were beaten; sometimes, they even died.

Auschwitz was one of the worst death camps. When people arrived there, the ones that weren't useful  would be sent to the "showers" (disguised gas chambers) When the gas was put into the chambers, the people would pile up on top of each other to get the last breath of air. It was a slow and awful death of suffocation. One lady told the children to breath in deeply when they went to be gassed so that they could see their mommies sooner. She didn't want them to have to suffer much. It is so sad to think that a lot of these people died without Christ.

There are two ways you can react to the Holocaust:

1. In anger towards God. In a documentary a man said that his mother told him that God was simply taking a long nap during the Holocaust; he became bitter towards God and claimed that his religion was now "survival".
2. Or you could look at it and recognize that God had a reason for what happened and was sovereign in every area of the Holocaust. (Deuteronomy 29:29)

We, as Christians, know that God had a purpose in it and will keep His the promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to never completely destroy the Jewish people.

The Horror of the Civil War

 The Civil war was the bloodiest war in American history. About 1,264,000 people were killed.

 
      At the beginning of the war, the boys began eagerly signing up for battle. They thought it would be so cool to wear their uniforms, carry guns and bayonets and be able to set ambushes on the enemy. All the people thought there would be a couple minor skirmishes and then the war would be over. At the first battle, people came to watch the "Victory." But it was quite different from what they had expected. Instead, the war lasted for four long dreaded years.
The Civil War was a turning point in American history. Many new war weapons were invented. Some of the most dreaded weapons were the land mines, water mines and the Gatling gun. The most dreaded was the Ironclad.
     The first weapons that I will talk about is the land mines and the water mines. These were one in the same thing. If you stepped on a land mine or floated your boat into one of the water mines, it would automatically explode.
     The Gatling gun was a very dreaded weapon that would totally cut off the first line of soldiers. People were terrified to be on the wrong side of it. It was like a small machine gun.
The Iron Clad was the worst of all. It was the very first submarine. It had canons on it and some had turrets at the top that you could twist around to get a good shot at the enemy. If it rammed into a ship it would sink the ship. If it was shot at, the shell would ricochet off.
     Another one of the horrors of the Civil War were the prison camps, the worst camp being Camp Douglas. It treated its southern prisoners terribly. They were not fed well at all. When they went into the camp there was a very small chance that they could escape.
     The war had both good and bad on both sides, which I will not talk about today. But you can come back next time to hear a little bit more about that.