Unit X: The Age of Franklin D. Roosevelt

Question/Problem 3: How did World War II affect people's lives?

Ernest Honig remembers: 'It was early evening when the train stopped and the doors opened. As I came off the train, I saw on the left huge chimneys belching forth thick black smoke. There was a strange smell, like burning the feathers off a chicken before it was cooked. I didn't know that the smoke and the smell were not from chickens. I didn't know, until I found out later on, that I was smelling our own flesh, our own families burning.'

Leo Machtingier remembers: 'It was hell. It was worse than hell. When it ended, all my family was gone, my parents, grandparents, sisters, brother, uncles, aunts, cousins, all of them.'

Esther Klein remembers: 'What I saw was horror upon horror upon horror.'

They remember the Holocaust, years of discrimination, torture, and agony for the Jews living in Europe-- years of mass killings. Six million Jews were killed, men and women, children, even babies. This was to be genocide, the destruction of and entire people. The principal reason for it was not to gain land or property, but simply to kill. Most were not random killings, but were carefully planned and carried out by the Nazis in death camps built for their efficiency-- camps built to kill a great number of people as quickly as possible and at low cost.