1940: Blizkrieg in West/Terror in East: Holocaust Monument

Holocaust Monument.

The German conquest of Europe continued; Denmark capitulated in April; Belgium and Holland in May; Norway and France in June. Italy entered the war on the German side in June. The Rome-Berlin-Tokyo agreement was signed on September 27.

Territorial solutions were considered to solve the "Jewish problem". Approximately 95,000 Jews were deported to Nisko by March. A plan to establish a Jewish reservation was abandoned after international protests and intervention from Hans Frank, governor of the general government. A second solution involved deporting the Jews of Europe to the African equatorial island of Madagascar. The inability of Germany to defeat Great Britain and gain control of the seas and Hitler's decision to attack Russia doomed this alternative. Policy toward Jewish immigration changed after abandonment of the Madagascar plan. Jews were no longer allowed to emigrate. They were cut off from the free world.

Jews were isolated in ghettoes. Lodz Ghetto was sealed on April 30 and the Warsaw Ghetto gates closed in mid-November. Ghettoes suffered from over-crowding, lack of food and proper sanitation, ultimately precipitating epidemics (notably typhus), widespread starvation and mass deaths. Amid the misery, Jews maintained religious, cultural, educational, political, and social welfare institutions. . This historical marker was erected in 1992 by Los Angeles Museum of The Holocaust; American Congress of Jews from Poland; and Survivors of Concentration Camps.. It is in Fairfax in Los Angeles in Los Angeles County California