Americans During Holocaust

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in German-Occupied Poland started tomorrow (April 19, 1943) and lasted until May 16, 1943.

It started when the Jews in the Ghetto learned the Germans were going to deport the last remaining People to the Death Camps (as the Germans did to 265,000 Men, Women and Children from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka Death Camp during the Grossaktion Warsaw from July 23-September 21, 1942.)

Doomed to fail (with little to no outside help from the Allies or the Non-Jewish Polish Resistance) from the start the Ghetto’s Jewish Resistance fought to show Jews and the World that they wouldn’t “go to lambs to the slaughter.”

13,000 Jews were killed during the Uprising (6,000 burnt alive) and the remaining 50,000 were deported to German Concentration and Death Camps. 300 Germans were killed.

Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) is also coming up (April 27^th this year.)

Some people - especially Americans - may wonder why they should care about all of this since it seems that only Other Nationalities (Germans, Poles, etc.) were Victims. In reality American Citizens (Jewish, Catholics and Protestants) were Holocaust Victims and Survivors. I am talking about people who were American Citizens before and during World War 2 – not those that became Americans after the War.

Some of the American Citizens During the Holocaust:

Mildred Harnack: 1902–1943 - Literary Historian, Translator, Resistance Fighter - Beheaded at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin, Germany.

Eddy Hamel: 1902–1943  - Soccer Player for AFC Ajax in the Netherlands – Gassed at the Auschwitz Death Camp in German-Occupied Poland.

James Watkins, 20, of Oakland, CA, was found at the Prison Hospital in Fuchsmuehl, Germany, by the U.S. Third Army after surviving the Death March from the Berga Concentration Camp in Germany in 1945 (one of 343 Americans kept there.)

Mary Berg (born Miriam Wattenberg; 1924- 2013 -  Survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto in German-Occupied Poland - Author of a Holocaust Diary (the first Diary about the Holocaust in the US in English in 1944.)

There were many more Americans and other Nationalities that you don't usually associate with being a Holocaust Victim/Survivor: Brits, Irish, Canadians, Spaniards, Swiss, Brazilians, etc.