On January 27, the day of memory falls: what is its meaning

The day of memory commemorates the holocaust, that is, the massacre of six million Jews and some other millions of people, perpetrated by Nazi Germany and his allies during the Second World War. The term Holocaust More being understood in two different ways: for some authors it refers only to the extermination of the Jewish people (with this meaning the term is also used Shoah), for others to all the victims of Nazism. What is certain is that millions of Jews and other “lower” were deported to special extermination camps And then killed in the gas chambers or forced to work in unsustainable conditions until death. The Causes of the Holocaust They must be traced in anti -Semitism and racist ideology of Nazism; The war provided the opportunity to implement the massacre.

The day of memory

The Memorial Day It was established in almost all of Europe, in North America and Israel to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. Not all countries have chosen the same date, but on January 27 it is the most widespread because it was the day in which, in 1945, the Soviet Union army freed the largest extermination camp, that of Auschwitz.

In Italy the day of memory was introduced in 2000 And he commemorates not only the Shoah, but also the Italian victims of Nazism and the Jews persecuted by the fascist regime. The day is celebrated by schools, television and institutions with special cultural initiatives.

Solstice winter 2022

But how was it possible that the Nazis sent millions of Jews to death? To understand it, it is necessary to start from the concept of anti -Semitism.

The origin of the Shoah: anti -Semitism

Anti -Semitism, understood as hatred against Jews, exists at least since the time of ancient Rome. The Jews have been discriminated against for centuries, also undergoing mass deportations and massacres, throughout the Christian world. The reasons were different. First of all, hatred had one Religious matrix: The Jews were discriminated against because they did not recognize Jesus like the Messiah. Furthermore, while living mixed with other peoples, the Jews have always kept their own ethnic and religious identitywhich made them appear a sort of foreign body to society. Until the nineteenth century, however, if a Jew yes convert to Christianity He was no longer under discrimination (with some exceptions).

Between 19th and 20th century anti -Semitism took on a new form and he connected to racismthat is, to the idea – that today we know to be without scientific foundation – according to which human beings are divided into different breeds from each other. The Jews were considered a “race” in its own right And, consequently, they were denied the possibility of saving themselves by conversion.

In the twentieth century the racial anti -Semitism spread in different European countries. In Germany, he was one of the cornerstones of the ideology of Nazi partyfounded in 1919 and ascended to power in 1933. In the early years of government, the Nazis introduced laws that the Jews heavily discriminated and organized mass violence against them. The Nazi ideology also considered “lower” Many other categories of people: disabled, political opponents, homosexuals, blacks, Slavs and others.

After the start of the Second World War, the actual extermination started.

The beginning of the Holocaust: the Einstatzgruppen and the Wannsee conference

Between 1939 and 1941 Germany occupied Poland and a vast portion of the Soviet Uniontwo countries in which millions of Jews lived. Some special departments of the SS, known as einsatzgruppen, were commissioned to eliminate the Jews, political opponents and other categories of people. The victims, killed by shooting or in vans transformed into gas chambers, were approximately 1,400,000.

Summary executions of prisoners in Poland

It was still little for the Nazis. In the winter of 1941-42 Hitler and his hierarchs decided to implement the “Final solution”as they called the deliberate extermination of all the Jewish people. The organizational details were discussed by some managers during a conference held in Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin, the January 20, 1942.

Auschwitz and the other fields: the extermination machine

The most intense phase of extermination took place between 1942 and 1945 and was implemented through deportation to the extermination camps. Most of the fields were Located in Poland: Sobibor, Treblinka, Belzec and, above all, Auschwitz are some of the best known.

The extermination was organized in a “scientific” way. The Jews and the other “lower” came rakes in cities and placed in transit fields or in real ghettos. Later they were brought to the extermination fields aboard armored trains. The deportations took place in almost all the countries that Germany had occupied and in those with which it was allied, that is to say in most of Europe.

Arrived in the fields, the deportees in non -optimal physical conditions were led to gas rooms; The others were killed with a different system: they were forced to work as slavesin terrible conditions and with insufficient nutrition, up to the storm of the forces.

The other victims and the account of the dead

Not only the Jews, but also the other categories of people considered lower or dangerous were victims of the Holocaust. In the extermination camps they were also deported homosexuals, political opponents, Roma, Jehovah’s Witnesses, subjects considered “asocial”.Other places of death were the concentration camps for i Soviet and Poles prisoners of warconsidered a lower breed. Although they were not sent to the gas chambers, the prisoners often found death for underground heavy work and for the harassment they underwent from jailers (the treatment reserved for war prisoners of Western countries was better).

Prisoners of the Buchenwald camp in 1945

Historians estimate that the overall victims of Nazism have been Between 12.5 and 17.5 million (without considering the dead due to war). Of these, about 5,900,000 were Jews, equal to about 78% of the European Jewish population.

Collaborations and the case of Italy

Germany benefited from the support of allied countries, who collaborated, for opportunism or by conviction, to the raids and deportations. This is what happened in Italy too, because the Republic of Salò – the state founded in 1943 by Mussolini in the north of the country – collaborated with the Nazis in search and detention of the Jews in the transit fields, from which they were deported to Auschwitz.

THE Italian citizens Instead they had heterogeneous attitudes: many refused anti -Semitism and some lavished to save the Jews; Others had no scruples in helping the Nazis to identify people to be deported.