tion) of Austria was completed on March 12, 1938, before the plebiscite had a chance to take place. A Nazi government immediatly took over, and Austria was divided into seven administrative districts. This was around the time the holocaust began. In the meantime, the Austrian economy continued to move in a downward slope. Austria remained occupied by Germany during the entire Second World War. In 1943, with the Allies beginning to push the German army backwards, an independent Austria was considered one their goals. The Moscow Declaration signed by the US, great Britain and the USSR stated this principle. By early 1945 the Eastern part of Austria was liberated by the Soviet army, with the Western part following a few months later. With the end of World War II, Austria became free of Nazism, independent, neutral and began to rise once again. Its industry, which had totally collapsed as result of the war, was helped with funds from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, and the country started prospering again.While Skimming through a few research books, I came across a very startling fact. While Jewish people were in concentration camps, they were forced to dig their own mass graves then stand in front of it to get shot in the head and fall in the pit that they dug. Any Jews who were chosen to live had to pick up corpses of dead people strewn about the camp and either bury them or cremate them. I also learned that there were over one million Jewish men, women, and children who were sent to concentration camps. However, not even two thirds of those Jews ever made it out alive. Not all of the Jewish who were slain were killed in concentration camps several of them were killed in public or sent to mobile gassing chambers set up in vans. once in those chambers, they inhaled carbon monoxide and other poisonous gasses.I always thought that the Holocaust was a sad event, but the further along I got on my project, th...
