Mass shootings of Jews
When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, a new phase in the Nazis' murders began. Up until then, they had mainly killed Jewish men, leaders and political opponents. In the swamps on the border between present-day Belarus and Ukraine, they also began to murder Jewish women and children.
At a conference in Wannsee in January 1942, Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich gathered bureaucrats and officials. The purpose of the conference was to coordinate the systematic killing of Europe’s Jews. The Nazis called it “the final solution to the Jewish question”.
In German-occupied Poland, pure extermination camps such as Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor and Treblinka were created, with the sole purpose of murdering the people taken there by the Nazis. At the same time, mass murders took place in many other places. In villages and towns, in forests, in fields and on beaches, places that often also became the graves of the murdered.
In a ravine outside the town of Babyn Jar in Ukraine, Nazis shot dead over 33,000 Ukrainian Jews during the last two days of September 1941. In total, about 100,000 people were murdered there. This site and many others are now memorial sites. Elsewhere, no trace of what happened can be seen today.
Mass shootings of Sinti and Roma
The Nazis considered Sinti and Roma to be work-shy, antisocial and criminal and believed that these characteristics were hereditary. According to the Nazis, they were therefore a threat to the German people. As early as 1934, German police began arresting Roma and forcing them to live in special camps. During Nazi invasion of Poland in the autumn of 1939, Sinti and Roma were murdered in mass shootings.
It is difficult to know how many Sinti and Roma were murdered in mass shootings because the number of unreported cases is high. In most cases, the shootings of the Sinti and Roma were not registered and there is a lack of preserved documentation and witnesses to these events. However, research agrees that the majority of Sinti and Roma was murdered in mass shootings during the Holocaust.
Hanna and her family lived a nomadic life. Her father wanted to move the family further away from the front, but Hanna and her little sister Anita could not walk and were therefore left with an aunt. When Hanna's father and other siblings were about to leave Hanna and Anita, they were met by Nazi soldiers.
The deportation of the Hungarian Jews
Hungary was an ally of Nazi Germany. However, in March 1944, Nazi Germany invaded the country when the Hungarian government wanted to negotiate peace with the Allies.
The Nazis and the Hungarian police subsequently deported 440,000 Jews from the Hungarian countryside to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp and to labor camps in Austria. The deportation of Hungarian Jews sparked protests in many countries. Through the efforts of diplomats from several countries, at least 10,000 Hungarian Jews were saved. Swedish diplomats in Budapest participated in the rescue operation.
Alice was living in Budapest when Nazi Germany invaded Hungary. She lived under a false identity to avoid being deported.
