The Aftermath

"If I looked at a football stadium and there were 10,000 people there,

just thinking of 60,000 times as much (murdered) makes me want to cry."

~ Robbie, high school attendant at the 2003 Holocaust Education Symposium (The Hope Site)

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The Holocaust literally shook the world to its core. After the war finally ended and the other countries fully realized the atrocities that had been committed, shock and disbelief, even denial rippled through nation after nation. Regardless, there is undeniable proof that the terror of the Holocaust truly did happen. It can be seen in the photographs of the concentration camps and ghettos before, during, and after those terrible years, in the eyes of the survivors as they recount stories of the horrors they faced, and in the Artifacts left behind to tell the tale of the people who once owned them.

The Holocaust was one of the most terrible and inhumane acts of racism and arrogance this world has ever seen. The price: six million lives. Thankfully, the truth did not die with them. It lives on through the Testimonies of those who did survive.

Soon after liberation, surviving children of the Auschwitz camp walk out of the children's barracks.

Poland, after January 27, 1945. ~ The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

"In 1945, when Anglo-American and Soviet troops entered the concentration camps, they discovered piles of corpses, bones, and human ashes -- testimony to Nazi mass murder. Soldiers also found thousands of survivors -- Jews and non-Jews -- suffering from starvation and disease. For survivors, the prospect of Rebuilding Their Lives was daunting (The Aftermath of the Holocaust)."

Though it was finally over, the after effects of the Holocaust still rippled across the world. The victims were free, but they sill feared for their lives due to continued anti-semitism. Thousands of survivors migrated westward to the Allied countries. Hundreds of organizations and programs formed to help them in their displacement. Most of the remaining survivors had been just children or young adults when they endured Hitler’s hatred. His quest to dehumanize them failed but they will live the rest of their days with those images haunting them.

Thousands of displaced persons being relocated.

When they could finally leave those terrible Death Camps they were physically free, but now they carry the burden of making sure the world knows the truth of what happened. Many, like Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel have taken on the task of giving a “written account”, while others speak out to tell their stories in schools, documentaries, and even while working in places like the Holocaust Museums and other memorials around the world. It is not for fame and recognition, but to make sure what happened during the Holocaust never happens again.

Return to Jews home page or for more in-depth information on the lives of the survivors visit our Post World War II page.