announcer: "Heroines of the Storm" is funded by Niagara-on-the-Lake Museum, the Milson-Ferrabee Family, Royal Canadian Legion Branch 458 Tamworth, Royal Canadian Legion Branch 105 Cardinal, and Roger and Sandra Harris.

announcer: "First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist.

Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me."

Pastor Martin Niemoller.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ announcer: In 1933, the year Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, approximately 9.5 million Jews lived in Europe.

By the time Hitler and his Nazi thugs were finally stopped on May 8, 1945, that number had shrunk to 3.8 million.

1933 is an important year.

It's the year Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, and with this begins one of the great human tragedies.

Andrea Shaulis: I just want to emphasize the fact that numbers are extremely large, and that they're so large that it's sometimes hard for people to actually comprehend what they mean.

So when we're talking about something like the Holocaust, we're talking about one murder millions of times.

It's not a large number of people, but it's murders repeatedly, repeated endlessly.

So this number is hard to comprehend because we're not talking about a very abstract number.

We're actually talking about people who were murdered and who disappeared due to the actions of this regime.

So the Holocaust is the systematic killing and persecution of Jews in Europe and Northern Africa by the Nazis and their collaborators between 1933 and 1945.

At the same time as they were perpetrating this genocide, they also targeted other groups of people, namely the Roma people, disabled people, but also people for their politics, so communists, and the Holocaust specifically is about this murder of Jews, but the Nazis targeted a large number of people that did not correspond to their idea of who were able people or people who were deserving of rights and safety.

announcer: It began with the simplest of acts.

Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power on the strength of hatred and fear.

On April 1, 1933, a one day boycott of Jewish businesses was announced by the Nazi government.

It was the start of what Hitler often described as a final march toward the final objective of solving the Jewish problem.

Andrea: The Nazis are not entirely responsible for the rise of antisemitism in Germany, but they did use it, the sentiments that people had, the ideas that people believed against the Jews, the Nazis, basically gave it--gave them legitimacy, and they use these antisemitic ideas and stereotypes for political gain.

So the accusations, they used the same accusations against Jews that Jews faced for centuries.

For example, they did reuse the idea that Jews sacrifice children on blood rituals.

So in the 1930s there were publications in "Der Sturmer," which is an antisemitic weekly.

Its editor, Julius Dreiser, was actually an early member of the Nazi Party, and he would basically publish Nazi ideology in his weekly.

Lisle Ivry: My mother's name was Elsa Epstein, since my maiden name is Epstein, and she was born Sicher, S-I-C-H-E-R, and my father's name was Victor Epstein.

My mother was from a family of 10, or rather, as I was told, there were 12, but 2 of them seem to have gone to the United States at an early age, but I could never ascertain that, and they lived in--my mother's family lived in the village I was born, and she was born in the house I was born, and my grandmother was born in that house where I was born, and my great grandmother, and so on, and their name was--my mother's name was Sicher, my grandmother's name was Shansa, my great grandmother's name was Tansa.

My father's family came from the village next door.

announcer: For Lisle Ivry, living as a young girl in the small village of Listay found in the foothills of Liechtenstein's mountains, Hitler and the Nazis in Germany were of no concern at first.

Lisle: So from 1931 to 1937, in Czechoslovakia we didn't hear very much about Hitler or anything like that, and the people--don't forget, my mother grew up there.

She was one of them.

announcer: Along with her brother, Lisle helped their widowed mother with the family run general store.

To be Jewish in this small village was to be very much in the minority.

Lisle: Just because you were Jewish didn't mean anything to the people.

They were Catholics, most of them, I would say 100%, and as a matter of fact, the priest would come to my mother and said, "Look, Mrs.

Epstein, your children are starting school.

I know you would like to have for them instruction in your religion, but I teach only the Old Testament till Grade 3, so they can stay there till we start the New Testament."

So my mother thought that was a good idea, and I stayed and you know, we learned about Cain and Abel, and so on.

announcer: Back in Germany, Hitler and the Nazis continued to crack down on Jews in society.

Before autumn 1933, Jews were removed from civil service, banned from teaching in schools, and Jewish students were limited to just over 1% of the total student population of schools and universities.

It wasn't only the Jews who suffered.

On March 22, 1933, the first 100 prisoners arrived in the concentration camp in Dachau.

They were all communists.

The first concentration camp created by the Nazi regime served as a model for the concentration camps that followed, as well as a model for the reign of horror and murder the Nazis would unleash.

Anne Steiner: Well, I was born in 1925 in Prague, and I was an only child, and I was quite spoiled, I think.

I had a wonderful childhood.

announcer: Anne Steiner was born Anne Federer.

Her father held a PhD in chemistry and managed a chemical plant at Uvalli.

Her mother was a talented seamstress and dressmaker.

Life was good, and then the changes began, just as they were happening elsewhere in other countries under Hitler's gaze.

Anne: Well, at first the changes were not so great, you know.

We would have her in our apartment, but my father was--lost his job, and it was all everything different.

I was going to a member in a figure skating club, and they said before because I was there several years I can stay, but they didn't let anybody new join who was Jewish, and when my father heard that, he said, "No, why don't you stop too.

You don't have to be in such a club," but, you know, I had friends who were in the same situation, and then we were going to something called the Aliyah School, and that was--we had a special school which was very friendly school, and we were all friends, and from that school the group of children went to Denmark, you know.

We had the opportunity to leave and go to Denmark.

announcer: In Germany, Hitler continued with his antisemitism of reason, where his acts of hatred toward Jews was almost entirely legislated, with each law designated to further Hitler's desire to eradicate all Jews.

The antisemitism of reason soon gave way to the antisemitism of emotion.

Andrea: What was new for the Nazis is that antisemitism would be central--would become central in their politics and their political program, and it would later also become a state policy in itself.

announcer: Violence increased against Jews as Nazis and those who sympathized with the Nazis's cause felt emboldened to act.

In the lead up to the 1936 Olympics, Hitler launched a public relations campaign.

As part of his strategy to woo other nations, he forbade anti-Jewish violence and suspended acts on Jews before and during the Olympic Games.

No official boycott was called for in Canada.

Still, some Jewish athletes, such as Sammy Luftspring, the top ranked lightweight boxer in Canada, refused to attend the games.

The rest of the world was happy to be fooled, while Hitler and Nazi Germany was eager to oblige.

By 1938, life for those who didn't match the Nazis's Aryan ideal had become increasingly intolerable.

Hitler and his supporters concentrated their efforts to remove these so-called lesser people from society.

In an effort to appease Hitler and keep him contained and content, France and Great Britain struck a deal that allowed him to annex parts of Czechoslovakia.

Anne: I heard my mother crying every night, like it was so hard on her, but she let me go.

My father said situation is like getting out of a burning house, so who can get out has to get out.

Unfortunately, they had no opportunity to get out.

They didn't survive.

announcer: As Hitler and his Nazis felt more emboldened, the Western nations turned their back to what was happening, largely due to foreign policies guided in part by indifference or racism.

Ultimately, Anne would escape Prague thanks to a Zionist organization whose mission was to shuttle children to safety under the cover of darkness.

Thanks to the kindness of strangers, many children escaped the Nazis.

Anne: And I was very fortunate that I ended up with very nice people who treated me like their own daughter, but I had no opportunity to go to school anymore.

announcer: In France, the clergy found housing for 12,000 Jewish children.

They also managed to smuggle some into Switzerland and Spain.

Meanwhile in Prague, a 38-year-old Englishman born to Jewish parents was devising a plan to spirit away Jewish children to safety out of reach of Hitler and his Nazi soldiers.

In the nine months prior to the outbreak of war, Nicholas Winton arranged for close to 700 children to be shepherded out of Prague on trains.

Anne's parents knew, as the threat of the Nazi invasion of Prague grew each day, that they had to get their daughter to safety.

They turned to the Zionists and the Kinder Train movement.

At the train station, goodbyes were spoken, and Anne, along with the other children, received a special token to help them with their journey.

Anne: It was like a little necklace with a little silver bell, and we all got the bell, you know, and they told us--they made up a story that whenever we need each other, the bells will ring.

It was just like a fairy tale to make us feel better, I guess.

announcer: For a while, even with the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, Anne and her parents managed to exchange letters.

Then suddenly the letters from her parents stopped.

Anne never heard from or saw her parents again.

She got word they had been sent to Terezin concentration camp.

There her parents, like so many other Jews, were stripped of their humanity.

Andrea: Prisoners had to follow strict schedules.

They were given a uniform, so the infamous white and blue striped uniforms were given to concentration camp prisoners.

The belief behind the fact that the Nazis used this scheme of fabric for prisoners is that vertical stripes were always deemed in Europe in the Middle Ages as something very shameful, so that vertical stripes were a mark of shame for people, and also the pattern of blue and white stripes would make it harder for prisoners to escape because it's very visible from afar.

So giving them a uniform is also a way to dehumanize them, to make them understand that they're nothing, basically, and to rid them of any hope of surviving or leaving the camp.

announcer: For Jews, existence under the ever growing Nazi regime was one fraught with danger and an ever shrinking list of rights.

So many Jews looked to the West as a safe haven and were let down.

Western nations opted to turn their backs on the Jews of Germany and Eastern Europe.

Andrea: We see really, an influx of Jews trying to leave the--basically, the territory occupied and under Nazi governance.

announcer: Over two November evenings, Nights of Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht, in 1938 the cruelty of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi brown shirts reached a new level.

During these nights of antisemitism and thuggish violence against Jews in Germany and Austria, it's estimated that at least 7,500 Jewish businesses were looted.

Jewish-owned businesses and residential properties were also destroyed.

As many as 30,000 Jewish men and boys were arrested by the German SS and Gestapo.

The newly arrested were sent to concentration camps.

Andrea: Kristallnacht is a turning point in the sense that while the Nazis had always persecuted and discriminated Jews, targeted violence had not yet been inflicted on the Jewish population as a whole.

Also, the lack of response or interest from the international community for the way that the Nazis treated Jews was also a signal for the party that they could carry out such policies pretty much unopposed.

So it was also the signal for the Jewish community that they would not be safe under the Nazi regime, that they had to leave, that their lives were in danger.

announcer: Hitler was given the Sudetenland as part of an appeasement plan by France and Great Britain, and since it was his, Hitler ordered his troops to march in and take it.

Lisle: And all her--not all, but some of her brothers and sisters lived in Prague.

So she got in touch with them, and they decided that we should come to Prague.

So we left on the 8 of October, Liechtenstein or Listany, and we arrived in Prague on the 28th of October 1938, which really 28th of October is a national holiday in Prague because that's when the Czech Republic was established in 1918.

So I remember the date very well.

I was in school, and we used to go home for lunch, and I get out of school and I go on the main street, and there I saw the Germans marching in.

So, you know, the other kids don't--I also was, again, the only Jewish child in that class.

You know, they walked with me.

They had not the same apprehension.

I mean, the Czech people had apprehension, but they didn't have the same worries that I had because after all, I already are a--nobody wants and what's gonna be.

So I came home and my uncle and my aunt were terribly upset, and-- announcer: On May 15, 1939, the sailing ship Saint Louis set sail with its human cargo of 1,000 Jewish refugees seeking a safe new home.

Promised they would be accepted in Cuba, the ship tried to dock in Havana only to be blocked and told there were problems with the passengers's visas.

The United States also turned them away.

Andrea: So the ship had to go back to Europe, and some passengers disembarked in England, but more disembarked in France and Belgium, and we know that out of the 900 or so passengers that were on the MS Saint Louis, about 200 of them were killed in concentration camps during the war.

announcer: Canada also could have helped the passengers of the SS Saint Louis.

Instead, it turned its back.

The ship and her human cargo were forced to continue on, and became known as a voyage of the damned.

Eventually Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France granted asylum to the weary refugees.

Of the four countries, three would soon fall to the Nazis, leaving Britain alone.

Andrea: This idea that we have a Canada today as an open door country and accepting country, it was only something created after the Second World War because before the Second World War, Canada had one of the harshest immigration policies throughout what are now the G7 or G8 countries.

Canada has the record for the lowest number of Jews accepted between 1933 and 1945.

We're talking about a few handful of thousands of people that were able to come here.

announcer: During the last two weeks in August, the German armies moved toward the Polish border where they assembled 70 divisions, many of them armored.

From a military standpoint, the Poles were hopelessly outclassed by their predatory neighbor.

They managed to mobilize barely 30 divisions made up of infantry or horse cavalry.

In two important respects, the difference was staggering.

announcer: On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, marking the start of World War II.

Days later, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east.

With this invasion, the Holocaust would forever be linked to the war.

Eva Konapacki: That was--but that was his plan, but he had a friend, Stalin, on the other side, and officially we had three years peace treaty still working with the Soviet Union.

So Polish government didn't realize that Hitler made a secret treaty with Stalin to take Poland between two fires.

No--even--it didn't-- nobody in the army nowhere had any--the faintest idea that the Soviet Union is going to move in.

So the whole army was moving from Hitler's onslaught east.

And on 17th of September, the war started on the 1st, they move--their army moved in, and at first they were moving in that--as helpers, so people were confused.

They didn't know if they are coming to help the Poles, but of course, very quickly at the border-- divisions or whatever they were, they realized that they are not coming as friends, and they started to fight, but it was a hopeless situation.

announcer: For Maria Znamirowska, born Maria Zawanska in a small town in western Poland, life changed in the fall of 1939.

Maria Znamirowska: And each summer the whole family children, not just us, but uncle's children and aunt's children, all gathered in a country estate that one of my mother's brother was administering, and we all got there together, and there were lakes and forests and bicycles and horses, and we had a lovely time, and that lasted till 1939.

Well, we actually were that we knew something was coming.

We were still at that country place, and my father phoned my mother and said that we'd better come home because things don't look well, and he--we think we should be together and decide what we want to do.

announcer: With the Nazis invading from the west, Maria and her family had little choice but to flee with as many belongings as they could carry.

Maria: And so we went there two days before the war.

We stayed with his physician's friend in their summer villa, it was, and the war broke out.

At that time, my father was organizing the evacuation, and when the train moved, he went into his car and followed the train.

Unfortunately, about 50 kilometers from where they started, the train stopped at the station to let people get water and things, and the German planes came, they came down, used machine guns and gunned everybody who was on the platform, and when my father arrived soon afterwards, there were lots of people dead and injured.

So he spent the next two days in the operating room, you know, patching everybody up as much as he could.

In the meantime, the Germans were advancing.

So he, when everybody was patched up more or less, he got back into his car and drove to where we were.

In the meantime, German bombed--planes started bombing Warsaw, and we could hear them coming over us.

announcer: Soon she and her family, who had been established members of the community, were refugees of war forced to catch rides in filthy train cars.

As the Germans pushed their way into Poland, they established cruel systems for controlling the Jewish people.

Andrea: The first ghetto was actually established only a few weeks after the beginning of the Second World War.

So ghettos would be established throughout the world.

There would be hundreds of ghettos, mostly in Eastern Europe and Poland, and the intent behind the creation of the ghettos was basically to confine and contain Jews to prevent them from going anywhere else.

Jews were forced into the ghettos.

They didn't have a choice.

Those who would hesitate or were unwilling to go were killed by the soldiers, by the German soldiers, and once they were inside the ghetto, the ghetto would be closed off and people could not leave, so they would be under the complete control of the Nazis.

announcer: As Germany and the Soviet Union occupied and divided Poland during the early days of World War II, out of the 3.3 million Polish Jews, approximately 2 million found themselves under German control.

The rest were under Soviet control.

Nazi occupiers set up hundreds of ghettos through Central and Eastern Europe.

Andrea: Most times the inhabitants of ghettos would receive food rations three times a month, and this amount was about 2,000 calories for ten days, so very little food.

Diseases were rampant in ghettos, and because of the living conditions, the starvation, and the illnesses that were present, many, many people died from these conditions.

The ghettos were also administered by what were called Judenrates, which are Jewish consuls.

So these consuls would be in charge of taking rent from people, from distributing food also, for implementing any rule or decision that the Nazis made, including the deportation of its inhabitants.

So it's the Jewish consul that had to give lists of names to the Nazis so that they could deport them, and from ghettos, people--it's really from ghettos that people would be deported first.

So as of 1942, a lot of people from the ghettos were deported from there to go to either concentration camps or killing centers.

announcer: In November 1941, the Nazis put together the first transports to concentration camps.

First there were 1,000 poor Jews, then 1,000 wealthy Jews.

By 1942, the camps had morphed from forced labor camps to something even more insidious.

Andrea: So concentration camps were part of this larger system to control, detain, exploit, and ultimately kill Jews.

They work in part with ghettos, and in 1942, in January 1942, the head of the Nazi regime, so the main basically lieutenants of the Nazi regime gathered at a conference in Vanzi to discuss how to basically coordinate the killing of Jews.

So it is during this conference that they decided that they would deport through trains people from ghettos to concentration camps and killing centers, and it's after this conference in January 1942 that the first killing centers were established in Poland.

So ghettos, concentration camps, and killing centers, and the deportation were all organized into a system to facilitate the mass murder of Jews.

announcer: Lisle then saw firsthand the cruelty of Hitler's antisemitic policies when she arrived at Birkenau.

Lisle: First of all, they came every morning to count us, you know.

We were twice a day that we were counted.

So we had to stand outside and line up in fives, and they would count, and sometimes they made a mistake so they counted us over and over and over, and it was--don't forget, it was December, January, February, and you stand out there, and then they--sometimes they forgot to count the dead because the dead were behind the barracks, and so they had the first the live ones, then the dead ones, and they had to see where the tallies, and then they didn't tally, and so--and it was desolate.

We didn't do anything.

We just sat there.

We couldn't go out.

It was horrible.

You just were kind of waiting, waiting, waiting.

And so, as I said, my mother died on the 4th of January, '44, and on the 5th--on the 7th of March '44, they took out all the people who came the previous transport from us, the 15th of September transport.

They took them all out, and they brought them into the next camp, in the A camp, and I saw my brother still there, and I said to him--like, you know, he was on the other side of the wire, and I said, "I have a pair of gloves for you.

Would you like to have the pair of gloves?"

He says, "Where I'm going I don't need them," and during the night from the 7th to the 8th of March, they took them all out by trucks and they killed them all.

So, it was--I remember desolation.

We knew that they--we could hear them, you know.

You could hear them saying-- say prayers, and it was a terrible time.

And the mud, you know, just the Polish mud.

Wherever you look, there was mud.

You couldn't walk, and so we said, well, three months more and then it's our turn because we--you know, when you went to Auschwitz you signed a paper that after six months you're going to have Sonderbehandlung.

That means that you're going to have special treatment, and the special treatment was going to the gas chamber.

You know, one of the-- announcer: Meanwhile, on the other side of the world the storm clouds of war had been gathering as the Empire of Japan had been flexing its muscle when it invaded French Indochina on September 22, 1940.

Five days after the invasion, Japan officially formed an alliance with Germany and Italy.

In what was then known as Dutch East Indonesia, Susi Reinink, who was born Susi Depetit to a Swiss mother and a Dutch father, was living a happy childhood in what is now Indonesia.

Susi Reinink: Well, of course, colonial times, you know, it was very comfortable.

We had a lot of servants, not that we were all that rich, but, I mean, that was--everybody had, you know, a cook, and a chauffeur, and a gardener, and several people helping in the house, a nanny.

That was the norm in those days there.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

Susi: The war broke out, right, and then, of course, with the bombing on Pearl Harbor.

The Japanese got--occupied Indonesia, and--well, then all hell broke loose for us.

announcer: In November 1941, a month before Japan invaded, Susi's father was summoned for military duty by the Dutch marines.

Having fallen to Germany earlier in the war, the Netherlands was in no position to help its Far East colony.

Meanwhile, Susi and her mother, along with other civilians, were ordered to make backyard bomb shelters.

Susi: I mean, when they invaded Indonesia, they did it with bombings, I mean, and I do remember the troops marching in, just so aggressive, and then the bombings.

So yes, we had a dugout--well, a bunker, and, many, many times when the sirens sounded, we had to go to get shelter there for our own safety.

announcer: Reinink recalled the bomb shelter was a sound investment, as they ended up spending many hours in the small shelter stocked with canned goods, a first aid kit, playing cards, and board games to help with boredom or to distract from the sounds overhead.

Susi: Dark and smelly.

It was--I still--creosote still gives me the shivers when I smell it somewhere, like the ties and the railroad or something like that, but anyway.

Yeah, creosote and dark, of course, and small, very small, so a shelter.

It just was what we needed to do.

I mean, yeah.

I was scared, of course, scared.

Actually, the first raid that we--that I remember that we experienced was that we were in a hardware store, and everybody dove down under the counters, and each one grabbed an iron wok to put over your head to again, hopefully protect you for debris falling through the bombings and so on.

announcer: By the spring of 1942, her father was taken by the Japanese, along with other men and boys, in a methodical system based on nationality, and placed in simple work camps.

Susi: At first he was--it was behind barbed wire fences and so on, and first he had quite a pleasant job for the Japanese.

He was--he loved driving, he loved cars, so he was assigned to be a chauffeur for commandants, and, you know, every once in a while we were still free.

Every once in a while, of course, we would go or frequently we would go and visit and--between the fence, and bring him stuff and so on.

I remember that very well, and then one day we arrived and there was nobody there anymore.

speaker: Must have been heartbreaking.

Susi: Well, yeah, and what I also should mention that when the men were incarcerated, the boys, only nine years old, were separated from the mothers and had to go to the men's camp.

announcer: Susi would never see her father again.

He would die on April 10, 1943, of dysentery and malnutrition in the jungles of Thailand while working as a forced laborer on the construction of the Burma railroad.

In March 1942, Susi, her sister, and mother began to experience their own internment camp nightmare.

After the Japanese swooped in under the cover of darkness, confiscated their home and car, Susi and her remaining family were interned.

Susi: First we were brought into a compound, and--of bungalows, but under heavy guard, and conditions deteriorated rapidly all over, and then we were transported to Gadan, which was a cloister--abandoned cloister nunnery, and they had put basically planks down and--barracks really, and each one of the prisoners was allowed 18 inches to sleep and live on.

18 inches, that's about it, and yeah, luckily enough, we were quite fortunate because we were allotted a corner so we didn't have to kind of squeeze between other people.

We had at least a little bit of privacy in that corner, but then eventually they transported us to another camp, to Halmahera.

Halmahera in retrospect was the most notorious of the camps in Indonesia.

announcer: As the war in Europe began to wind down and it was apparent an Allied victory was imminent, life within German concentration camps was at its worst.

Lisle: And we were--our camp was near a power station, so it had the chimneys, and when they crossed the channel and came over Hamburg, that was their line to go to Dresden, and they had some problems with the plane, so they had to let the bombs go, and that's how we got it.

They knew it.

They knew where we were, and a lot of girls got killed, and the whole camp was a mess, and so they had to move us.

Where did they move us?

To Bergen-Belsen.

So--and we were on the train--we were waiting for the train to come, we were lying around there, and sure enough, there was another air raid, and we were just lying, but thank God nothing happened at that time.

So we came to Bergen-Belsen, which was hell on earth, because after all, it was already '45, 1945--February 1945.

I said before '44, but it was '45, and there was nothing.

The barracks were full.

People were sick with typhoid.

It was--people were dying left and right.

They didn't feed you at all anymore.

I mean, we had very few--little food, but there was nothing.

We were lying on the floors, and the worst thing was when you had to go to the bathroom and you had to make it fast, and you had to run over all the people lying there because you didn't want it to happen on them, right, and we did it outside and we did it everywhere, and it was terrible, and there was a huge tent which was filled with dead people.

They didn't want to bury them because they said it will spread the typhoid more if they don't bury them.

So, fortunately it was already spring of '45, and I think if it would have been another two weeks we would have been all dead because I weighed about 80 pounds, and I'm a big girl, and people were just dying, and the Germans started running away.

speaker: When did they get the sense, or did you feel that they got the sense, that the end was near?

Lisle: Well, the front was very close.

The front was in Hanover, you know.

You could hear it almost.

So they started running, and then Booby came back to us, and she wanted we should hide her, and we said nothing doing you.

You go.

We will not hide you, and they send in Hungarians, Hungarian soldiers to stay with us, to look after.

If you think they were any better, they weren't very much better.

They were--you know, they had huge warehouses in Bergen-Belsen, tremendous warehouses.

It was all kinds of things with--the night before they left, we had--they dragged--we had to drag all kinds of stuff to the railroad station.

They had these bomber jackets, leather bomber jackets.

They had attache cases.

They had fantastic warehouse there, and they also had turnips, you know, for the winter how they are covered.

So we found those turnips, and let's say the girls would go and dig up a turnip, and the Hungarians would just shoot them.

So then everybody ran away, and they kind of started to prepare for the Red Cross.

announcer: As Victory in Europe Day dawned, bringing an end to the madness of Hitler and his Nazi's war machine, the reality that heavy bombing campaigns had leveled not just houses, but entire towns, came into sharp focus.

It's estimated between 6.5 million and 7 million people were displaced because of the war.

Andrea: It's really after the war that Canada changed its immigration policies and became really a country that wanted to accept and be open, especially to refugees.

announcer: As the war came to an end for Susi Reinink and her fellow detainees, there were challenges still to overcome before they could hope to return to something resembling home.

Susi: I was ten years old, my tenth birthday, so it was in 1945, and pamphlets--planes flew over, and pamphlets came down with that we were free.

We were--we didn't believe at first, of course.

Oh well, it's another hoax of the Japanese or something, but then they airdropped food too, and for the first time we could eat.

Now, mind you, it was very precarious with the food is too, that overeating can be fatal, bloating, and a lot of people couldn't resist, and after three and a half years died.

announcer: Among those displaced in Europe were Jewish children, some of whom had survived because parents threw them from moving trains on the way to concentration camps in acts of desperation.

Displaced Jews often faced antisemitism in the form of strict immigration quotas in the United States.

A British blockade of what was then post-war Palestine meant Jews couldn't relocate to either country.

Andrea: Well, I would say that the first legacy of the Holocaust is our responsibility to remember and to educate ourselves about what happened, and it's a responsibility that we have towards survivors but also victims of the Holocaust, and it's by remembering and understanding how events like this can happen that we can hope to prevent them and stop them from happening again, and not only against Jews, but against any other groups that could be potentially targeted in a genocide or a crime against humanity.

Also, after the Holocaust the Nuremberg trials happened, and it's really in the aftermath of these trials that certain international laws and policies were established regarding crimes against humanity, that the International Criminal Court was established, and that principles of laws pertaining to crimes against humanity but also towards refugees were put into place.

announcer: The Holocaust continues to have a haunting legacy.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ announcer: More information on this program can be found at wanderingjournalist.com/ heroines-in-the-storm.

"Heroines in the Storm" is funded by Niagara-on-the-Lake Museum, the Nelson Ferrabee Family, Royal Canadian Legion Branch 458 Tamworth, Royal Canadian Legion Branch 105 Cardinal, and Roger and Sandra Harris.