Deportations

By 1939, over 50% of German and Austrian Jews had succeeded in emigrating. Those who remained were less fortunate. The winter of January 1942 was a bitter one in Berlin. Yet, unlike the German population, Jews received no clothing rations. Whatever warm clothing they had, was confiscated. By the summer of 1942, Jews were also forced to give up all suits, blouses, skirts, hats, undergarments as well as all fabric remnants, including the cloth yellow stars that Jews had been required to wear.

By the end of 1941, the Final Solution, the Nazi policy of exterminating all Jews, was in place and the mass deportations of Jews to concentration camps had begun. Concentration camp inmates were used as slave labour in weaving and dressmaking shops to fabricate uniforms and civilian clothing.

As historian Raul Hilberg wrote of the concentration camps, "A person stepped off the train in the morning, in the evening his corpse was burned and his clothing packed for shipment to Germany." The mass deportations of millions of Jews to concentration camps provided the Nazis with warehouses of confiscated property.

'Kanada' was the name used for the warehouses in Auschwitz where deportees possessions were sorted and stored. Thirtyfive barracks were filled with confiscated clothing and other valuables. The amount of clothing taken from the Jews deported and murdered was staggering. In 1945, Liberators at Auschwitz reported that the six barracks which escaped fire set by fleeing SS troops, contained 348,820 men's suits, 836,525 dresses, 388,000 pairs of men's shoes and 5,255 pairs of women's shoes.

Definitions

Auschwitz - A concentration camp established in 1940 near Oswiecim, Poland. In 1943 it became an extermination camp. It contained a labour camp, the death camp Birkenau, and the slave labour camp, BunaMonowitz. Up to 1 .5 million Jews and 100, 000 victims From other ethnic and cultural groups were murdered here.
Kanada - Area of Ausckwitz-Birkenaw where the clothes, jewelry and other valuables of arriving deportees were stored. Its name comes From the prisoners' image of Canada as a land of plenty.
Concentration Camp - Immediately after assuming power in 1933, the Nazis established camps where they "concentrated" and imprisoned perceived enemies of the state. The SS operated 1,800 labour, prison and transit camps throughout Europe. Six of them were built exclusively as death camps.
Final Solution - Nazi code name for the plan to destroy the Jews of Europe.

Examples

Child's Shoe. This shoe was recovered from the 'Kanada' barracks at Auschwitz. Courtesy Vancouver Holocaust Centre Society Archive
The 'Kanada' Barracks at Auschwitz. This warehouse of clothing was discovered along with 34 others after the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945. Courtesy United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

A Child's Shoe

Explain the importance of a simple artifact, like the child's shoe, recovered from the Kanada barracks at Auschwitz. In what way is it a form of documentary evidence? What personal experiences can it evoke?

Write a narrative about the shoe to explain how AuschwitzBirkenau was organized to achieve its purpose of the mass killing of Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Jehovah's Witnesses and others. Consider the movement of people from the deportation trains to the showers, barracks and forced labour or to the gas chambers and crematoria.

"Redistribution"

Dr. Rudolf Vrba was one of only five Jews to escape Auschwitz prior to its liberation. In his address at the Kristallnacht Commemoration in Vancouver, 1997, he explained that "[Jewish] houses, apartments, shops on the main street, furniture, cars, radios, sewing machines, carpets, kitchen utensils, bicycles, baby prams, and all imaginable sorts of other property, which was vital during war time, were confiscated from the deported Jews and redistributed."

Approximately 4 million Jews were deported to concentration camps during the Holocaust. The combined population of Montreal and Vancouver is about 4 million. Imagine the deportation of this number of people and the "redistribution" of their homes, businesses, cars and other possessions, to supporters of the government in power. What does that tell you about the economics of the deportations?

Thomas Blatt is a survivor and escapee of the Sobibor death camp. He was forced to sort through the clothes of those individuals who were exterminated immediately upon their arrival in Sobibor. These bundles of clothes were soon shipped back on a train to Germany. After some time, he was given the job of burning all the personal documents, photographs and nonvaluable items of these murdered Jews. Why would the Nazis feel it important to have someone dispose of nonvaluables this way?