holocaust :: essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Ruth Moses was one of the children that went through the holocaust. She was born in 1935 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. In Frankfurt am Main many things occurred. Ruth was one of the children of Berta and Hugo Moses, which was one of the important Jewish centers. In January 30, 1933, the Nazi’s rose to power. As Ruth got older and older more and more bad things occurred in her homeland.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In the nineteenth century Frankfurt was a cultural center of the Jewish Enlightment, it played an important role in commerce, industry, and banking. From 1817 to 1930 the population of Jews rose from 3,300 to 30,000, so this place was one of the largest Jewish centers. After the nazi’s rise to power in 1933 Jews were subject to physical assaults, boycotts and they were transferred to nazi ownership. Through March to October about 536 Jewish enterprises were closed. During the time when Ruth Moses was born about forty five hundred Jewish people were in need of help, which was 20 percent of the Jewish population. When Moses was six years old she was deported off to a sealed off ghetto in the city of Riga with another 2,000 Jews from Frankfurt. The ghetto had not enough food for all the Jews, bad sanitation, and over crowdedness. Thousands of Jews died of starvation, disease and exposure. Soon enough they were able to return to Frankfurt but were not allowed back into their homes because they were sealed by the police they were only put in private homes and in schools. Most of the inhabitants in Riga were gassed to death in transport vans or were shot or were sent in labor camps where they would work to death. In 1938 five large synagogues and prayer houses were burned down. Gangs would riot roaming the streets, ransacking and destroying Jewish stores and also killing. They also started to arrest Jews in their homes, on the streets and in the railway stations. On November 1938 to May 1939 about 15,000 Jews were leaving Frankfurt. By the end of September 1941, the total number of Jews had gone down 10,592. The police were able to transfer hundreds of Jewish apartments into German control. In about March 1941 Jews were put on forced labor and this too was under Gestapo officer’s supervision. Afterwards about 715 Jews committed suicide in Frankfurt.