Geography and the Holocaust

1) While the Nazi Party hunted and rounded up Jews throughout Europe, they also had to fight a two front war between France and Russia. This circumstance made it essential that Germany place its concentration camps carefully. Since Jews were scattered throughout all of Europe, they set up "mini-camps" for Jew collection and then transported them on trains across Europe to the center concentration camps, such as Dachau and Auschwitz. Dachau was located in southern Gewrmany, while Auschwitz was located in west Poland. Germany located these camps in central Europe to increase their isolation and decrease their accessibility. Although the Allied forces continued to close in on both the west and eastern fronts, Germany's main camps remained in the middle, untouchable for a over a decade. This geographical tactic of the Germans also helped hide the numbers of Jews killed.

2) Clearly, the website containing these video-maps commemorates the Holocaust as a horrible tragedy. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum created/sponsors this website, implying that its features aim to reveal the evil nature of the Holocaust and the unfair treatment of Jews. The statistics that each video presents are valid and clearly emphasize that Jews and other minorities were immensely executed unjustly and savagely. However, were all of the people sent to these camps innocent? Most of them probably were, but there were surely German citizens who were sent as a punishment for their crimes. The videos assume that its viewers sympathizes towards the Holocaust (which the vast majority does indeed), which is a fair assumption (the videos were probably not created to prove anything to non-Holocaust-believers). The website and its contents definitely memorialize the Holocaust. The videos take on a somber tone and use statistics to cut to the bare truth: 6 million Jews were killed, along with millions more minorities. Monuments commemorate something - the website commemorates the Holocausts not with placards or statues, but with hard facts presented in video form on a museum's website. It is the same as a museum, only in electronic form. These very facts that make the Holocaust the horror as we remember it today.