SPECIAL | Episode 1: The Shoá ( 1933–1945 )

Hello, how are you? Welcome to this podcast , from the Canary Islands to the world.

This year marks 81 years of a merciless war that ended, according to estimates, the lives of some 11 million human beings.

The term holocaust comes from ancient Greek and means "to burn everything." Before World War II, this word was sometimes used to describe the death of a large group of people, but since 1945 it has become almost synonymous with the murder of European Jews during World War II. That is why we use the term “the Holocaust,” with a capital letter. Jews also use the term: Shoah, which in Hebrew means "catastrophe", a curious word, because in '48, the Palestinians began to use "nakba" for theirs.

The Wannsee Conference was held on January 20, 1942. At the conference, 15 senior Nazi officials, SS and police officers, and representatives of the operational departments of the Nazi government, met in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to coordinate the implementation of the so-called “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.”

To say that the Nazis mainly targeted those people who, belonging to a group, did not fit into their model of society. In this case, the victims were Jewish people, gypsies, homosexuals, people with disabilities, people with left-wing ideology or Jehovah's Witnesses.

Of those 11 million, it is estimated that just over six million Jews died as victims of this extermination, apart from some 800,000 gypsies, four million Soviet prisoners of war or victims of the occupation (they were also subject to systematic extermination), Poles and individuals classified as asocial of various nationalities (political prisoners, homosexuals, physically or mentally disabled, common criminals, etc.)

Up to this point, this special is going to be similar to last year's. And not . I will not shut up. The difference is the war in Gaza. Seriously, I condemn and abhor the attack on October 7, and I want with all my might for the hostages to return to their homes. However, I want to remember that there are certain practices, denounced by Israeli soldiers in the reserve, that remind me a lot of what the victims of the Shoah suffered: mass expulsion of the population, scorched earth policy or the attempt to deport them to another country.

The German invasion of Poland in September 1939 marks the beginning of a new, more radical stage in the persecution of the Jews. Emigrating to escape war is practically impossible. The occupation of Poland means that 1.7 million Polish Jews are under Nazi German authority. They are housed in ghettos, prison-like Jewish residential areas. Often, several families must share the same home. Hunger and lack of medical care reign. Jews cannot leave the ghetto without permission and are usually forced to perform forced labor. In the first months of the occupation of Poland, the Nazis also murdered thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish citizens.

In this period, the Nazis planned to deport Jews from occupied territories to nature reserve areas in Poland or, after the victory over the Soviet Union, to such annexed territories. There is also the idea of deporting Jews to the island of Madagascar. Just like Netanyahu, who intends to deport them to the Congo

It should be noted that the Nazi plans do not include housing or other similar facilities, but they did frequently include the confiscation of Jewish possessions. In reality, the Nazis expected a high mortality rate among the Jews. Does the displacement of population to Gaza sound familiar to you?

Of course: the victims will always be in my memory. It hurts to see certain clearly far-right personalities visiting Auschwitz and participating in a conference on anti-Semitism in the Polish city of Krakow, organized by the European Jewish Association. If there is something that unites them, in addition to their racist statements, their far-right ideology and their alliance and camaraderie with other fascists, it is their explicit support for Israeli apartheid and the extermination that is being committed in Gaza.

 

Patricia López Muñoz

Student of English Studies

Higher Technician in Sociocultural Animation

Specialist in Immigration

Higher Technician in Social Integration