When The World Was Ours

Content Warning: This section contains descriptions of antisemitism and the Holocaust, including human rights violations, severe abuse, violence, genocide, and gruesome death.

The Nazi regime gained control over Germany and subsequently Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and several other countries. Their influence first began to spread in 1933 and lasted until the end of World War II in 1945. The war was officially declared on September 3, 1939, but Hitler’s forces invaded Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938. The Munich Agreement was struck between Hitler and the Allied Forces, which allowed Hitler to take over the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, under the assumption that his expansion would end there. Even as the Nazi regime began implementing laws against various groups such as Jews, Roma people, gay people, and people with disabilities, the Allied Forces were initially more concerned with Hitler’s expansion, which threatened to dominate Europe.

During the Holocaust, countries around the world were aware of the crisis and the hundreds of thousands of people seeking refuge, but many countries, including the US, either completely rejected or severely limited the entry of refugees during the war. Furthermore, no real effort was made to educate the general public about what was happening to Jewish people. Hundreds of thousands of people fled from Europe, and many settled in new countries and never returned to their places of origin. In a 2024 report published by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, it was found that there are still about 245,000 Holocaust survivors living across the world today, with almost half living in Israel and approximately 18% living in Canada and the United States (“Holocaust Survivors Worldwide: A Demographic Overview.” Claims Conference, 2024). Most of these survivors were children when the Holocaust took place; the youngest of these survivors is 77 years old, and the eldest is over 100 years old. Their stories remain a crucial part of international history. Retelling them, both through direct interviews and fictionalized accounts, ensures that people can learn how the process of dehumanization often unfolds, thereby becoming empowered to speak out against it.