The Holocaust was the group killing or genocide of around six million Jews that took place at the time of the Second World War led by Adolf Hitler of the Nazi Germany. In 2004, Father Patrick Desbois, president of Yahad-In Unum began to investigate the story of the Jews murdered during the war. It was his grandfather’s stories who witnessed the war in the Ukraine that inspired him to start investigating and documenting the Holocaust. His grandfather did not offer enough information, so he remained interested in getting facts about the Holocaust.
Local witnesses were encouraged by the desire to know what happened to their people. As a result of witnessing, they ensured that those dreadful acts were not forgotten and kept on commemorating the lives of their people. Fr. Desbois mostly targets actual eye witnesses who were among the survivors and so the desire to know the truth made them cooperative in giving out information. Desbois has been so victorious than any other Jewish researcher because he had readily available facts from his grandfather who was a survivor from the war. His work received recognition, as well as support internationally, and that has enabled him to identify and locate mass graves of Jews that no other Jewish researcher has ever discovered. He has extensive expertise in anti-Semitism, which means he understands discrimination against the Jews.
Joel Brand and Rudolf Kastner worked together to save the Hungarian-Jewish community from being expatriated to the death camps in Nazi Europe. They suffered blame and accusations of having collaborated with the Nazi. Kastner was alleged to have been discriminating against some Hungarian Jews by only saving certain groups of Jews from the Nazi. The Nazi expected to gain from these efforts by bribing the officials in order to get large numbers of Jews. Through their collaboration, more than 1900 Hungarian Jews were transported by train across the Swiss border. Rudolf Kastner disguised as he was saving the Jews, but instead he sold them to the Nazi in exchange for money, gold and diamonds.
The Nazi sought to divide the allied powers by bribing some of the officials from the Jewish community among them Rudolf Kastner. In April 1944, Kastner and Joel Brand met with Nazi officers and demanded two million dollars to implement what was dubbed as ‘Europa plan’ which became a suspension of some Jews to concentration camps in Europe. The Nazis met with Kastner and Brand and took their offers seriously because the “Europa plan” could bring European Jews in large scale in exchange for money. This plan was instigated on April 5th, 1944 when Rudolf Kastner and Joel Brand met with Wisliceny and other members of Defense corps commonly referred to as Schutzstaffel (SS).
Italy was seen as a place of safety because Benito Mussolini, the Italian armed forces, churches and civilians protected the Jews through the period of the war. Italy as a sovereign state became a haven of refuge for the Jewish refugees fleeing from Nazi persecution. Italy police initiated rescue efforts to help the refugees. The Italian fascist government treated its Jews harshly and in disregard of their pain. In essence, this was part of Italy that fought the idea of Italy rescuing the refugee Jews. Fascist Italy introduced campaigns against the Jewish population. The Jews could no longer get hired in any state office, and even children could not be sent to private or public Italian schools. In fact, orders carried out cited that all books by Jewish authors should be removed from the Italian classrooms. In this way, the Jews could no longer work in the Italian army, they had no authority to own any land, and even faced revocation their Italian citizenship. The Italian concentration camps were better in terms of facilities during the reign on Mussolini. In 1943, Mussolini was put to prison by the fascist communities and the Germans took control over the Jewish camps. The Jews were oppressed, and even some were killed and subjected to forced labor.
The Vatican led by Pope Pius acted to prevent the extermination of Jews in Rome. Pope Pius employed diplomacy to assist the victims of war, and directed his church to offer diplomatic support to the Jews and through this he managed to save as well as protect thousands of Jewish lives. Pius shared intelligence with the Allies. However, he was disapproved of his efforts and his fight for genocide was deemed inadequate by the Jews and allies thus he was termed to some extent unsuccessful.
Displaced Persons (DP) Camps were provisional facilities for those people who were forced out of their homes. To contain all refugee DP camps, several of them were set up across Italy, Germany and Austria. Initially, the facilities in the camps were extremely poor, and the survivors received terrible treatment. But in 1945, Jewish DPs were identified as special, and that is why they were unwilling to go back to their homes. They could handle their affairs, formed groups which took care of hygiene, religion, education and health.
Anti-Semitism mostly came from the Muslims and Christians. Even as the Second World War concluded in 1945, the Nazi system continued with their anti-Semitism. They feared that the Jews would regain their property stolen during the Holocaust. An example was the Kielce Pogrom where many Jewish citizens living in Poland were brutally attacked by Christians after being accused of kidnapping a Christian child. There was also the growth of anti-Semitic in the USSR where many Yiddish language writers and poets died in the hands of Nazi campaigners. Additionally, Jewish doctors faced detention for many months and then they were also killed.
Anti-Semitism affected the refugees because the Jews were only allowed to settle and live in certain cities known as ghettos. They were not allowed to live in fancy houses or even built their own houses in their own land. These operations of violence could be essentially have been influenced by the Christian faith that the Jewish community was responsible for the killing of Jesus, through the claimed curse of Pontius Pilate in the Gospels. The Christians also accused the Jews of the custom killings of Christian Children in what was called blood libels. The blood libels meant blood accusation since they argued that it was used in Jewish