How did people survive the holocaust?

(The main entrance to Auschwitz, the words above the gate reads “arbeit macht frei” a German phrase meaning “work sets you free”)

The holocaust was the mass genocide of the Jewish people across Nazi-occupied Europe during the Second World War. After Germany lost the First World War, a document called the Treaty of Versailles was signed which put restrictions on Germany and caused it to suffer a massive economic and political breakdown. Amongst other things, the treaty forced Germany to accept responsibility for the war and to pay reparations to various countries for a combined amount of 132 billion gold marks which was a ridiculous amount of money at the time. The treaty also stripped the military of most of its power and took away captured lands and returned them to their original owners.

The treaty put so many restrictions on the country as a whole that general life there was miserable, to say the least, and paper money had become close to worthless. Mass unemployment and poverty struck the country and this was the excuse that one man needed to rise in power. This man was named Adolf Hitler and blamed many of the problems in the country on the Jewish people who he claimed controlled the banks and were responsible for everyone’s suffering. This wasn’t true in the slightest but after his power and influence increased, so did the anti-Jewish messages he sent out through government-controlled newspapers and radio broadcasts.

He convinced the German people that he would repair everything that was wrong with the country, and stop the Jews from destroying it again. In reality, the Jewish people of Germany fought alongside everyone else from their country during the First World War and were nothing more than the excuse Hitler needed to unite the people under his own ideology.

(Camps were always designed to stop people from escaping, but weren’t excessive as the guards knew the prisoners would be too weak to even try)

Less than two years after the war started, Hitler ordered the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” to begin, which was the organized mass genocide of any people of Jewish descent within their range. To complete this task as efficiently as possible, the Nazis constructed many concentration camps to kill as many people as quickly and easily as they could, but these camps were in place long before the war started. The first camps were built in 1933 to house political prisoners and criminals but were quickly converted to their more sinister purpose soon after the final solution was ordered.

The holocaust isn’t restricted to the deaths that happened in the concentration camps but rather the name given to the mass genocide itself. Thousands of people were shot in the streets or died from wounds or illnesses caused by the conditions they were forced to live in.

So how did people actually survive the holocaust?

As much of a cop-out answer as it may seem, the number one factor in surviving the holocaust was luck. When someone was sent to a concentration camp they had a life expectancy of less than one month, with the stronger ones usually being worked to death and dying of starvation instead of the gas chambers. The chances of being able to escape one of these camps were next to nothing because, after the first few days, people simply didn’t have the energy to make their way through several barbed wire fences with tools they didn’t have, and then be able to escape the guards and dogs in hot pursuit. To survive the holocaust you had a very limited number of options, all of which would rely on being lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.

Escape

Even though it was close to impossible, it was still worth trying to escape the camp you were in. In the biggest and most notorious camp of the war, Auschwitz, there were 928 people who were recorded as trying to escape, of which 196 attempts were successful but some of those were later re-captured. Most of the people who tried to escape the camp were Polish making up 439 of the 928 attempts, with the remainder being made up of Soviet prisoners, criminal prisoners, allied prisoners of war, and Jewish civilians.

The vast majority of these escape attempts took place in the work camps outside the main walls of Auschwitz, something you would only be doing if the inspecting officer considered you strong enough to work. If left inside the camp you would be faced with starvation until you were killed in one of the gas chambers, but escaping from inside the walls is almost unheard of.

(Security was extremely tight around the whole camp and designed to keep the different types of prisoners apart)

Home nation protection

There were many countries in Europe who were very much against the anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime, even if they couldn’t say so openly. After the final order was given, nations allied with or under the control of the Nazis were expected to send their Jewish citizens to the concentration camps, but many either refused or took measures to hide their Jewish people. Bulgaria and Finland are two of the nations that refused to deport their Jewish citizens, and nations directly within the Nazi’s reach like Denmark took measures to smuggle their people by boat to the neutral country of Sweden.

Some countries took no action at all against their Jewish population and the non-Jewish citizens even went through great efforts to protect them. Albania was one of the countries where the non-Jewish population took little to no action against their fellow Jewish citizens and lived alongside them throughout the war. Italy was also a country where the general population took less action against the Jews than expected since they were a major ally of Germany and close to its southern border. The idea of the Jews being responsible for Germany’s problems wasn’t shared in Italy and its people weren’t convinced they were the great evil that Hitler made them out to be. Many of Italy’s Jewish citizens were protected by the non-Jewish population and the army did little to enforce the antisemitic regulations they were supposed to comply with.

Hide

One of the most famous stories of Jewish people hiding during the war is about a girl named Anne Frank who was just 10 years old when the war broke out. She was part of a group of people of Jewish origin who were being hidden by a Dutch citizen named Miep Gies who hid them in her attic behind a secret entrance hidden by furniture. This is the most famous story of registered non-Jewish civilians hiding Jews but it’s far from being the only one. All across Europe people of all origins, including Germans helped Jewish people to hide until they were able to escape, or for as long as possible at least.

(People identified as Jewish had to wear a yellow star on their clothes so the Germans knew they were Jewish on sight)

The other option was to hide in plain sight by changing their identity. Almost all the Orthodox Jews started to hide their appearance after they realized what was happening, and identifying them mostly came down to documents and their names. Civilians, Governments, and the various resistance groups all helped to provide fake documents when they could, but the supply never met the demand. Even if you had the ability to acquire fake identification, there was still the chance that you may be accused of being Jewish due to your appearance or any other reason and sent to a camp anyway.

Run

The Nazis captured Jews anywhere within their reach which spread across the center of Europe but didn’t cover the whole continent. Neighboring countries that were sympathetic to the Jewish people would take them in and often make them citizens if they could get there in the first place. During the early stages of the war, the best option would have been to flee to America, Australia, the UK, or Sweden, but of course, no one knew how bad things would get until it was too late. Many countries around the world would take in Jewish people fleeing the Nazi regime, but only if they could actually get to them in the first place.

Fight

Since the Jews were the same as any other people, there were those amongst them who wanted to fight. The French resistance and the many Partisan groups that formed were made up of many Jewish members who actively took up arms against the Nazis. As for survival rates within these groups, the numbers are unknown, mostly because secret anti-Nazi resistance groups generally didn’t keep records. This was a good choice for those who wanted to hit back, but living on the edge and constantly attacking an enemy that greatly outnumbers you with much better weapons wasn’t exactly a safe job.

Get Lucky

Not all the camps around at the time were primary sites of execution and were used as holding facilities before transferring people to the death camps. Some people were transferred many times and survived for several months, but were always eventually sent somewhere they wouldn’t leave. There were also thousands of people liberated from concentration camps when the Allies captured the area. The guards and staff had long since gone and left all the prisoners locked up, sometimes killing as many as they could before leaving. Around 6 million Jews along with gypsies, the disabled, and various other people caught in the holocaust lost their lives, a number that was around 2/3rds of the Jewish population of Europe.

The country you were in would also dictate your chances of survival, with Poland having the highest mortality rate of 90% of the country’s Jewish population. Your survival chances would depend on your location and ability to run at the time you realized what was going on, but for millions of people, it was too late. They became victims of the continent-wide organized mass murder known as the Holocaust.