MODERN U.S. HISTORY discussion

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Holocaust

Backgrounds

Raul Hilberg ~ post WWII discoveries

Doris Bergen, “Pre-conditions”

From anti-Judaism to anti-Semitism

Holocaust Timeline

Rise of the Nazi Party (1918-1933).

Nazification (1933-1939).

The Ghettos (1939-1941).

The Camps (1941-1942).

Resistance (1942-1944).

Rescue and Liberation (1944-1945).

Aftermath (1945-2000).

Historical Theme = “One man’s VIRTUE is another man’s EVIL” ~ Extreme human acts and responses in history

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“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Edmund Burke
Irish orator, philosopher, & politician (1729 - 1797)

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”

Dante Alighieri

(1265 - 1321) Florentine poet.

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Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

Dictated by Hitler from his prison cell in 1923-24.

Hitler divides humans into categories based on physical appearance establishing higher and lower orders
– Highest: Germanic man- fair skin, blond hair and blue eyes –Aryan; Lowest: Untermenschen -- Jews, Slavic peoples, notably the Czechs, Poles, and Russians.

People actually benefit by being conquered because they come in contact with and learn from the superior Aryans. (only if they don’t mingle or intermarry with inferior conquered peoples)

Jews are engaged in conspiracy to keep master race from assuming its rightful position as rulers of the world by trying to control world finances, controlling the press, inventing liberal democracy as well as Marxism and promoting prostitution and vice and disharmony.

The conspiracy idea and notion of ‘competition’ for world domination between Jews and Aryans became widespread beliefs and even taught in schools.

States that since the Aryans are the master race, they are entitled to more land for themselves. This Lebensraum or Living Space will be acquired by force. Lands east of Germany namely Russian.

At first release of book sold poorly, but after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, millions of copies were sold.

Raul Hilberg, a Jewish émigré from Nazi-occupied Vienna, launched the field of Holocaust studies with his long and minutely detailed 1961 study
The Destruction of the European Jews.

April 1, 1939, Hilberg (13 yrs.old) fled Austria with his family; reached France, boarded a ship for Cuba. After a four-month stay in Cuba, his family arrived in the USA on September 1, 1939, the day the WWII began in Europe. Hilberg's family lost 26 members in the Holocaust.

The Hilbergs settled in Brooklyn, New York - Raul attended Abraham Lincoln High School and Brooklyn College. When he reached draft age, he called up for military service. Hilberg served first in the 45th Infantry Division (United States) in WWII, but, given his native fluency and academic interests, was soon attached to the War Documentation Department, charged with examining archives throughout Europe. It was his discovery of part of Hitler's crated private library in Munich, which he stumbled across while quartered in the Braunes Haus, that prompted his research into the Holocaust, a term for the genocidal destruction of the Jews as yet not yet invented when he discovered Hitler’s intentions of the annihilation of the Jews

What is the Holocaust?

The Holocaust is the state-sponsored systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims -- six million were murdered; Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), people with mental and physical disabilities, and Poles were also targeted for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, and political dissidents, also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi Germany.

What is the origin of the word “Holocaust”?

  • Anc. Greek, olos "whole" and kaustos or kautos "burnt.“ 5th c. B.C.E., = sacrifice wholly consumed by fire
  • religious writings through the centuries = rituals involving burnt sacrifices.
  • secular writings, holocaust most commonly came to mean "a complete or wholesale destruction,“
  • late 19th century through the nuclear arms race of the 20th century
  • pogroms against Jews in Russia,
  • persecution and murder of Armenians by Turks during World War I
  • attack by Japan on Chinese cities
  • large-scale fires where hundreds were killed.
  • 1941, writers used term holocaust with regard to the Nazi crimes against the Jews,
  • not reserved to a single horrific event but retained its broader meaning of large-scale destruction.
  • “You are meeting at a time of great tragedy for our people. In our ... deep sense of mourning for those who have fallen ... we must steel our hearts to go on with our work ... that perhaps a better day will come for those who will survive this holocaust.” (Chaim Weizmann, letter, Dec. 24, 1942)
  • “What sheer folly to attempt to rebuild any kind of Jewish life [in Europe] after the holocaust of the last twelve years!” (Zachariah Shuster, Commentary, December 1945, p.10)
  • late 1940s = Holocaust (with either a lowercase or capital H) in Israeli translations of the word Sho’ah.
  • Hebrew word throughout Jewish history = assaults upon Jews,
  • In 1940s term being applied to the Nazis' murder of the Jews of Europe.
  • Yiddish-speaking Jews used the term churbn, a Yiddish translation of sho'ah.
  • official English translation of the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948
  • publications of Yad Vashem throughout the 1950s,
  • journalistic coverage of the Adolf Eichmann trial in Israel in 1961.
  • The April 1978 broadcast of the TV movie, Holocaust, based on Gerald Green's book of the same name,
  • President Carter's creation of the President's Commission on the Holocaust late 1978
  • creation of the USHMM through the 1980s and 1990s, est. term Holocaust (with a capital H) as the standard referent to the systematic annihilation of European Jewry by Germany's Nazi regime.

Preconditions: According to Doris Bergen in War & Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust, and accepted fairly universally, preconditions set the stage for the annihilation of the Jews. One statement with which I fully agree = It needed the cover of war.

Anti-Judaism

Antisemitism

Racial Ideology

WWI

Treaty of Versailles

Nationalism

Rise of Hitler

“War enables evil and cripples virtue” (B. Harris)

1144 C.E. - The first recorded blood libel— the abhorrent myth that Jews murdered Christian children and used their blood to make matzoh (unleavened bread) for Passover.

1298 C.E. The charge of host desecration against Jews arose after Pope Innocent III had recognized (1215) the doctrine of transubstantiation, which resulted in the public and general worship of the consecrated host– that the wine and wafer of the Eucharist actually became the blood and flesh of Christ upon consumption. Accusations against Jews for “desecrating the host” was equivalent to the Jews continuing their crime of deicide in crucifying Christ over and over.

1879

Wilhelm Marr coined the term anti-Semitism—Marr’s publication entitled The Victory of the Jews over Germany argued that the antisocial traits of Jews were due to their blood. Marr believed that everything in Germany was threatened by the Jews and that they were a demonic race.

1903 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was published: "If ever a piece of writing could produce mass hatred, it is this one. . . . This book is about lies and slander.” Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate . The Protocols is entirely a work of fiction, intentionally written to blame Jews for a variety of ills. Those who distribute it claim that it documents a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world. The conspiracy and its alleged leaders, the so-called Elders of Zion, never existed. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is the most notorious and widely distributed antisemitic publication of modern times. Its lies about Jews, which have been repeatedly discredited, continue to circulate today, especially on the Internet. The individuals and groups who have used the Protocols are all linked by a common purpose: to spread hatred of Jews.

BASIC WWII – HOLOCAUST TIMELINE

Rise of the Nazi Party (1918-1933). During the fourteen years following the end of World War I, the Nazi party grew from a small political group to the most powerful party in Germany.

*Nazification (1933-1939). Once Hitler became Chancellor and later Reichsführer, the Nazi party quickly changed Germany's political, social, and economic structure.

The Ghettos (1939-1941). Confining Jews to ghettos was another critical step in Hitler's Final Solution.

The Camps (1941-1942). The concentration camps were Hitler's final step in the annihilation of the Jews.

Resistance (1942-1944). People resisted by any means possible, from stealing a slice of bread to sabotaging Nazi installations.

Rescue and Liberation (1944-1945). Some survived through the heroics of neighbors, and others by deception; all survivors were liberated by the Allies and joined hordes of DPs.

Aftermath (1945-2000). After the war, Nazi perpetrators faced punishment for their war crimes and survivors began rebuilding their lives.

*camp system, book burning, propaganda, Hitler Jugend, Nüremberg Laws, Olympics, failed emigration

NAZIFICATION OF GERMANY

  • On January 30, 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor.
  • On February 27, 1933, the Reichstag goes up in flames This laid the foundation for a police state.
  • Within months of Hitler's appointment as Chancellor, the Dachau concentration camp was created.
  • Parliamentary democracy ended with the Reichstag passage of the Enabling Act
  • Policy of Gleichstaltung, the Nazis began taking over existing political, social, and economic institutions and putting their own in power - courts to punish political dissent - civil laws that barred Jews from civil service, legal and medical professions, and in teaching and university positions.
  • Boycotts of Jewish-owned shops and businesses - book burnings of writings by Jews and by others
  • The SA (Sturmabteilung), "Brown Shirts,” terrorist actions facilitate Adolf Hitler's rise to power.
  • The SS (Schutzstaffel or Protection Squad) formed in 1925 as Hitler's personal guard. In mid-1934, they established control of the police and security systems, forming the basis of the Nazi police state and the major instrument of racial terror in the concentration camps and occupied Europe.

In 1926, on National Party Day, before Hitler had taken office as Chancellor and President, the formal Youth Party, Hitlerjugend, was founded with only about 300 members. Before the War years were out, the number would grow to close to 9 million, due in large part to the compulsory membership requirement established in 1940. This requirement mandated that all children (but particularly boys) belong to the HJ, giving the Third Reich complete control over the generation to come.

Dachau, once the site of a munitions factory during WWI, is about 9 miles NW of Munich. It is here, in March 1933 just days after the Nazi Party seized power in Germany, that Heinrich Himmler, Commissioner of Police for the city of Munich, ordered a concentration camp to be erected in the abandoned munitions factory at Dachau. This inaugurated a system of terror that cannot be compared with any other state mandated persecution or penal system. In June 1933, Theodor Eicke was appointed commandant of the Dachau Concentration Camp. He organized camp rules with stipulations that later became valid for all concentration camps. Eicke also divided the model concentration camp into two areas: the prisoners' camp surrounded by a variety of security measures and guard towers; and the so-called camp command area with administrative buildings and barracks for the SS.

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Hitler announced the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. More than 120 laws, decrees, and ordinances were enacted after the Nuremburg Laws and before the outbreak of World War II, further eroding the rights of German Jews and dehumanizing them in the eyes of the rest of society. Resulted in a “social annihilation” before the physical extermination.

1938 – Anti-Jewish Actions take a significant turn

  • March Anschluss – Germany annexes Austria – anti-Jewish actions follow

immediately

  • May Crisis – Germany amasses its Wehrmacht

  • September Munich Pact – Allied appeasement of Hitler

  • October Occupation – Germany occupies the Sudetenland

  • October Polenaktion – First Mass Jewish Deportations (Zbaszyn)

  • November 9 Kristallnacht – The Day the Holocaust Began – State organized and

sanctioned violence against Jewish Synagogues,

homes, and businesses of the Jews in Germany,

Austria, and the Sudetenland .

The annexation [Anschluß] of Austria Photo, March 15, 1938

The Sudetenland was part of Germany and after WWI the Sudetenland became part of Czechoslovakia. Hitler wanted to march into Czechoslovakia but his generals warned that if Britain, France or the Soviet Union joined on the side of Czechoslovakia, Germany would probably be badly defeated.

In September 1938, Hitler threatened to invade Czechoslovakia unless Britain supported Germany's plans to takeover the Sudetenland. A four-power conference of Germany, Britain, France and Italy took place in Munich on 29th September, 1938. Desperate to avoid war, and anxious

to avoid an alliance with Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union, Britain and France agreed that Germany could have the Sudetenland. In return, Hitler promised not to make any further territorial demands in Europe.

On 29th September, 1938, Adolf Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Edouard Daladier and Benito Mussolini signed the Munich Agreement which transferred the Sudetenland to Germany.

The German Army marched into the Sudetenland on 1st October, 1938. As this area contained nearly all Czechoslovakia's mountain fortifications, she was no longer able to defend herself against further aggression.

The Zbaszyn Deportation, also known by its Nazi term as the 'Polenaktion', occurred on October 28, 1938, less than two weeks before the 'Reichkristallnacht' Pogrom of November 9, 1938, an event that looms larger than all other actions in the story of the destruction of the Jews of Europe. The Polenaktion expelled nearly 20,000 Polish Jews from Germany and was soon eclipsed by the state invoked violence of Kristallnacht wherein tens of thousands of German Jews lost their homes, their businesses, their synagogues, their civil liberties, and some even their lives. As an episode of profound historical eminence, it is no wonder that Kristallnacht overshadowed the very event that precipitated it, pushing the Polenaktion into obscurity for the last seventy years. Known to historians as the Zbaszyn Deportations and termed by the Nazis as the Polenaktion, this event received little to no attention in the massive field of Holocaust scholarship over the ensuing decades since it occurred.

To avenge the brutal abduction and deportation of his Polish Jewish family in the Polenaktion at the end of October, 1938, 17-year-old Herschel Grynszpan, who was living in Paris, on November 7, 1938, walked into the German Embassy in Paris and shot Third Secretary, Ernst vom Rath. For Adolf Hitler, the shooting in Paris provided an opportunity to incite Germans to 'rise in bloody vengeance against the Jews'. It supplied the pretext for massive Nazi pogroms launched against Jews in Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland - the orgy of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass.

Reichkristallnacht,

Nov. 9-10, 1938

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Government-backed rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland. Many synagogues burned throughout the night, in full view of the public and of local firefighters, who had received orders to intervene only to prevent flames from spreading to nearby buildings. SA and Hitler Youth members across the country shattered the shop windows of an estimated 7,500 Jewish-owned commercial establishments, and looted their wares. Jewish cemeteries became a particular object of desecration in many regions. Hundreds of Jewish men were arrested and sent to Dachau and other sites of detainment.

Kristallnacht,
Night of Broken Glass,
November 9, 1938

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JEWISH IMMIGRATION

 Jewish immigration to the United States can be described in five different stages.

1654-1825 (171 years)
The first Jewish settlers, 23 in all, came to New Amsterdam, New York.  Throughout this long period the numbers were small and assimilation was most common.  By the time of the American Revolution there were Jews in all 13 colonies.  They were mostly Sephardic and German Jews totaling only 1,500 by 1790.

1825-1880 (55 years)
The Jewish population increased significantly.  The United States became a major center of the world’s Jews, from 6,000 in 1826 to 280,000 by 1880 (47-fold increase).  German Jews dominated this wave of immigrants.  Many of them did not stay on the East Coast.  They became peddlers and traveling salesmen and settled in the mid-west.

1881-1929 (48 year period)
The Jewish population rose from 280,000 to 4,500,000 (16-fold increase) by 1925.  This represented a major event in all of Jewish history.  Between 1881-1914, 2.2million Jews left Europe.  Most of them came to the United States.    They were fleeing all of Eastern Europe where life was unbearable due to pogroms, war, expulsion, anti-Semitism, but mostly because of the high population which could not survive economically (poverty). By 1918 the USA contained the largest Jewish community in the world. Most of this torrent of immigrants disembarked at Ellis Island in New York harbor. “The overwhelming majority of the six million Jews who live in America today (1976) are descendants of the immigrants who came to this country from the shtetls which existed for over 600 years, until their destruction in World War II by the Germans.”

1929-1945 (16 years) Beginning of Depression - end of World War II.    There was little or no immigration during the war years.  The total number during this period was only 124,000.

1945-1980 Holocaust survivors immigrated from 1947-1951 as a result of the Displaced Persons Act of 1947.  In the 1960’s, 73 Jews came from Israel, Cuba and the Near East.

Since then the largest numbers of Jews have come from the former Soviet Union.

From the mid-1300's, Jews settled in a large strip of eastern Europe known as the "Pale of the Settlement." By 1900, there were approx. 7 million Jews living in this area bounded by Germany and Austria-Hungary on the west, the Baltic sea on the north, the Black Sea on the south and the Dnieper River in Russia on the east. The Jewish population of Poland in 1939 was about 3.3 million with an additional 2.1 million in Russian provinces. There were also heavy concentrations of Jews in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to the north and Hungary and the Slavic states to the south. Anti-Semitism had long been in Poland. Jews were not considered Poles and, as in Nazi Germany, were defined as a race. It appears that, until 1939, Polish policies toward Jews mirrored those of Germany — forced emigration. This was all to change with the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939.

September 1939 – Invasion of Poland and beginning of WWII

“We go to Poland to destroy the Jews”

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After the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, German soldiers enjoyed the public humiliation of Polish Jews. In this photograph, one Jew is forced to cut the beard of another under German supervision as the local population of Tomaszow Mazowiecki, Poland watches.

Humiliation was a part of the psychological warfare that Nazis used against their enemies. In Poland, a soldier tutors two Jewish men on how to give the Nazi salute correctly. During the September 1939 Nazi military campaign, about 600,000 men of the Polish Army, including 60,000 Jews, were taken prisoner by the German fascists. Most of the Jewish prisoners were murdered.

In the fall of 1939 the German government established, under the Reich Chancellery, the Euthanasie Programme under the direction of Philip Bouhler and Dr. Karl Brandt. The headquarters of the operation were at Tiergartenstrasse 4, Berlin and the code name for the program was derived from that address—T-4. Guided by the over-riding principles of racial hygiene, racial purity, and national health, the Nazi regime seems fairly consistently committed to the removal of those unfit to live and produce inferior offspring. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws provided for the forced sterilization of the unfit. Not only did Hitler have in mind such "inferior races" as Jews and Gypsies, he also included unfit Aryans—the mentally defective, severely handicapped, the incurably insane and the incurably sick. To implement the euthanasia program, special carbon-monoxide chambers were constructed.

 

Hartheim Castle, one of six "euthanasia" killing centers where the physically and mentally disabled were killed by gassing and lethal injection. Hartheim, Austria

Of the number of people at the “Euthanasia Centers,” the following statistics are usually given: adult mental patients from institutions, 80,000 to 100,000; children in institutions, 5,000; special action against Jews in institutions, 1,000; concentration camp inmates transported to killing centers (14f13), 20,000 (it is estimated that at the end of 1941, some 93,521 `beds' had been emptied for other uses [70,000 patients gassed, plus over 20,000 dead through starvation and medication] - in other words approximately one-third of the places for the mentally ill.) But these figures may well be too low; twice these numbers of people may have perished. The fact is that we do not know and shall probably never know. Elements of deception, imposed chaos, and the destruction of many records make anything like an accurate estimate impossible.

The Nazis' ghettos (1939-1941) were a preliminary step in the annihilation of the Jews, rather than a method to just isolate them from the rest of society. As the war against the Jews progressed, the ghettos became transition areas, used as collection points for deportation to death camps and concentration camps.

Jewish Ghettos were established by an order from Reinhard Heydrich on September 21, 1939, three weeks after the invasion of Poland and the beginning of the war.

The first ghetto was set up in Piotrkow, Poland on 28th October 1939. The two largest ghettos were established in Warsaw and Lodz. Other main ghettos were set up in Krakow, Lublin, and Lvov.
In total, the Nazis established over 1,000 ghettos in Poland, the Soviet Union, the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Hungary between 1939 and 1945.

There was no uniformity to these ghettos. The ghettos in small towns were generally not sealed off, which was often a temporary measure used until the residents could be sent to bigger ghettos. Larger cities had closed ghettos, with brick or stone walls, wooden fences, and barbed wire defining the boundaries. Guards were placed strategically at gateways and other boundary openings. Jews were not allowed to leave the so-called "Jewish residential districts," under penalty of death.

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There were three types of ghettos: closed ghettos, open ghettos, and destruction ghettos. Some ghettos existed for only a few days, others for months or years. With the implementation of the "Final Solution" (the plan to murder all European Jews) beginning in late 1941, the Germans systematically destroyed the ghettos. The Germans and their auxiliaries either shot ghetto residents in mass graves located nearby or deported them, usually by train, to killing centers where they were murdered. German SS and police authorities deported a small minority of Jews from ghettos to forced-labor camps and concentration camps.

A member of Einsatzgruppe D prepares to shoot a Ukrainian Jew, who is forced to kneel before a mass grave full of other victims.

Immediately following the invasion of Poland, Heinrich Himmler was appointed to take measures to strengthen German ethnicity in the occupied territories and to create Lebensraum, or living space for German citizens. To this end, Himmler created special task forces within the SS, the Einsatzgruppen, and placed them under the command of Reinhard Heydrich. On September, 21, 1939, Heydrich instructed those under his command to observe a distinction between the "final aim," which would take some time and "the steps necessary for reaching it which can be applied more or less at once." The Einsatzgruppen became "mobile killing units" charged with liquidating all political enemies of the Reich. According to historian, Raul Hilberg, the mobile killing units murdered 1.4 million Jews between 1941 and the end of the war in 1945.

Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22,1941 in the largest German military operation of
WWII. The destruction of the Soviet Union and the seizure of land within Soviet borders for long-term German settlement had been a core policy of the Nazi movement since the 1920s.

Adolf Hitler had always regarded the German-Soviet nonaggression pact of August 23, 1939, as a temporary tactical maneuver. In July 1940, just weeks after the German conquest of France and the Low Countries, Hitler decided to attack the Soviet Union within the following year. On Dec 18, 1940, he signed Directive 21 (code-named Operation "Barbarossa"), the first operational order for the invasion of the Soviet Union.

As the German army advanced, SS and police units followed the troops. The Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police, often known as mobile killing units, initiated mass-murder operations, primarily against Jewish males, officials of the Communist Party and State and Soviet Roma, and, often with assistance from German Army personnel, established ghettos and other holding facilities to concentrate large numbers of Soviet Jews. In late July, the Higher SS and Police Leaders and significant reinforcement, the SS and police, supported by locally recruited auxiliaries, began to physically annihilate entire Jewish communities in the Soviet Union. Success both on the military front and in the murder of the Soviet Jews contributed to Hitler's decision to deport German Jews to the occupied Soviet Union beginning on October 15, 1941, initiating what would become "Final Solution" policy: the physical annihilation of the European Jews.

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Evolution of Mass Extermination

The Einsatzgruppen (Mobile Killing Squads) consisted of four units of between 500 and 900 men each which followed the invading German troops into the Soviet Union in June 1941. When Himmler ordered a halt to the shooting in the fall of 1942, they had murdered approx. 1,500,000 Jews. The death camps proved to be a better, faster, less personal method for killing Jews, one that would spare the shooters, not the victims, emotional anguish.

In September 1941, the Nazis began using gassing vans--trucks loaded with groups of people who were locked in and asphyxiated by carbon monoxide. These vans were used until the completion of the first death camp, Chelmno, which began operations in late 1941.

On January 20, 1942, 15 high-ranking Nazi Party and German government officials gathered at a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to discuss and coordinate the implementation of what they called the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question."

Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the SD (Security Service) and Nazi governor of Bohemia and Moravia.

The "Final Solution" was the code name for the systematic, deliberate, physical annihilation of the European Jews. At some still undetermined time in 1941, Hitler authorized this European-wide scheme for mass murder. Heydrich convened the Wannsee Conference to inform and secure support from government ministries and other interested agencies and to disclose to the participants that Hitler himself had tasked Heydrich and the RSHA with coordinating the operation. The men at the table did not deliberate whether such a plan should be undertaken, but instead discussed the implementation of a policy decision that had already been made at the highest level of the Nazi regime.

Heydrich indicated that approx. 11,000,000 Jews in Europe fell under the provisions of the "Final Solution." In this figure, he included not only Jews residing in Axis-controlled Europe, but also the Jewish populations of the United Kingdom, and the neutral nations (Switzerland, Ireland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and European Turkey). For Jews residing in the Greater German Reich and holding the status of subjects of the German Reich, the Nuremberg Laws would serve as a basis for determining who was a Jew.

In January 1942, Wannssee Conference. SS official Reinhard Heydrich held a meeting of Nazi officials to present the “Final Solution.” All agreed to SS plans for the transport and murder of all 11 million Jews of Europe. Their long-range plans, unrealized, included targeting some 30 million Slavs, along with Russian POWs, and Gypsies for death.

HITLER’S TOP 12 NAZIS

Heinrich Himmler

Joseph Goebbels

Baldur von Schirach

Hermann Goering

Reinhard Heydrich

Ernst Kaltenbrunner

Rudolf Hess

Hans Frank

Albert Speer

Martin Bormann

Wilhelm Frick

Adolf Eichmann

The first concentration camp was set up in Germany after Hitler seized power in 1933. It was located in Dachau, near Munich Germany, and served initially as a place of detention for political opponents of Nazism. As opposition to the camp system grew, so also did the number of camps. Before the outbreak of WWII in September 1939, the following camps were in operation in Germany and Austria: Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Flossenbürg, Neuengamme, and Ravensbrück.

As the war advanced  this led to the building of both POW and civilian concentration camps, along with their satellite camps, in the occupied territories: Stutthof, Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen, Bergen-Belsen, Majdanek, Dora, and Kovno. Some of the camps then became sites of extermination, as did Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, and Chelmno. Three death or extermination camps were constructed in Poland; Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibór . These six camps were infamously named factories of death = Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec , Sobibór, Majdanek, and Chelmno . The primary purpose of these camps was the methodical killing of millions of innocent people. The first, Chelmno, began operating in late 1941. The others began their extermination operations in 1942.

The need for manpower in sustaining German industry during the war years produced numerous labor camps and transit camps, set up to handle the thousands displaced by mass resettlement actions and eviction campaigns. In all, there were over 7,000 different kinds of camps that had been in operation in Hitler's Europe by the end of the war.

The Nazi camp system expanded rapidly after the beginning of World War II in September 1939, as forced labor became important in war production. The German defeat in the battle of Stalingrad in 1942-1943 led to the increased use of concentration camp prisoners as forced laborers in German armaments industries. In 1943 and 1944, hundreds of subcamps were established in or near industrial plants. Subcamps were generally smaller camps administered by the main camps, which supplied them with the required number of prisoners. Camps such as Auschwitz in Poland, Buchenwald in central Germany, Gross-Rosen in eastern Germany, Natzweiler-Struthof in eastern France, Ravensbruck near Berlin, and Stutthof near Danzig on the Baltic coast became administrative centers of huge networks of subsidiary forced-labor camps.

When the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum first began to document all of the camps, the belief was that the list would total approximately 7,000. However, researchers found that the Nazis had actually established about 20,000 camps between 1933 and 1945. Each of the 23 main camps had subcamps, for a range of purposes including: forced-labor camps, transit camps which served as temporary way stations, and extermination camps, built primarily or exclusively for mass murder.

  • major Nazi organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.
  • grew from a small paramilitary unit of a few hundred to a powerful force that served as the Nazi Party's "Shield Squadron" of nearly a million men
  • By the time the Nazi Party gained power in 1933 Himmler's SS had grown to a strength of 52,000.
  • In December, 1940 Heinrich Himmler established the Waffen SS. This new army grew rapidly and within six months grew to over 150,000 men.
  • By June 1944 the SS had over 800,000 members: Hitler's Body Guard (200,000) Waffen (594,000) and Death Head Units (24,000).
  • Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS, under Heinrich Himmler's command, was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II, and most of the particularly egregious ones.
  • At the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial the Schutzstaffel (SS) was declared a criminal organization and a large number of its leaders were executed.
SS
Schutzstaffel

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Single triangles

* Red triangle—political prisoners: communists, trade unionists, liberals, social democrats, Freemasons, anarchists.

* Green triangle— "habitual criminals" (convicts, ofttimes Kapos, serving in exchange for reduced sentences or parole).

* Blue triangle—foreign forced laborers, emigrants.

* Pink triangle—sexual offenders which included homosexual men along with rapists, bestiality and pedophiles.

* Purple triangle—"Bible Students" (Jehovah's Witnesses).

* Black triangle—people who were deemed "asocial elements" and "work shy" including

o Roma (Gypsies), who were later assigned a brown triangle

o The mentally retarded

o The mentally ill

o Alcoholics

o Vagrants and beggars

o Pacifists

o Conscription resisters

o Prostitutes

o Some anarchists.

* Brown triangle—Roma (Gypsies) (previously wore the black triangle).

* Uninverted red triangle—an enemy POW, spy or a deserter.

Double-triangle badges resembled two superimposed triangles forming a Star of David.

* Two superimposed yellow triangles, the "Yellow badge"—a Jew.

* Red inverted triangle superimposed upon a yellow one—a Jewish political prisoner.

* Green inverted triangle upon a yellow one—a Jewish "habitual criminal".

* Purple inverted triangle superimposed upon a yellow one—a Jehovah's Witness of Jewish descent.[6]

* Pink inverted triangle superimposed upon a yellow one—a Jewish sexual offender.

* Black triangle inverted triangle superimposed upon a yellow one—"asocial " and "work shy" Jews.

* Voided black inverted triangle superimposed over a yellow triangle—a Jew convicted of miscegenation= a "race defiler".

* Yellow triangle superimposed over a black inverted triangle—an Aryan (woman) “ “ and labeled as a "race defiler".

Functions and Phases of the Camp System (3 main functions)

1: pacification of populace (intimidation, isolation, 'neutralization') 1933-1940

* "Pacification" of populace: physical removal, isolation, psychological intimidation

* March-Apr. 1933: 25,000 potential opponents in "protective custody" in 50 camps (run by SA & police)

* 1935: Himmler persuades Hitler not to dissolve camps; SS takes over all camps

* 1936: Sachsenhausen built outside Berlin

* 1937 Buchenwald built near Weimar & Dachau rebuilt; 8,000 total inmates in all camps

* Dec. 1938: 33,000 total inmates, including 25,000 Jews (Nov. 10, Kristallnacht)

2: "cleanse" society 1935-1945

* 2a. "Social /ethnic cleansing" 1935: "asocial action" (as isolation from the general populace)

unemployed, homeless, prostitutes, homosexuals, "lesser" & "non-" humans

* 1938: Kristallnacht * 1941: mass murder

* 2b. "Ethnic cleansing" (as extermination of the unwanted people)

* poison gas (cyclon/cyanide, not diesel exhaust) test in Auschwitz, September 1941

* "Operation Reinhard" (July 1942-Nov. 1943)[named after SD-chief Reinhard Heydrich, who

called the Jan. 1942 Wannsee conference, and was assassinated in June '42]

* main centers [not true "camps"]: (Chelmno--used for loading gas trucks), Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka

3: economic production - * 1938: camps near quarries (building materials for Hitler's grand cities)

Flossenbürg (near Nuremberg in Bavaria), Mauthausen (near Hitler's home, Linz, in

Austria), Neuengamme (near the north German port city Hamburg; near clay for a brick

factory, not a quarry) * 1943-45: subcamp/branch camp system

* "Extermination through work* - transition 1943: outsourcing of labor; system of branch or subcamps

* August 1944: 20 main camps w/ 165 subcamps: 524,286 inmates

* December 1944: 500 subcamps : 714,000 inmates, 40,000 guards

Immediately following the decision of the Nazis to implement “Aktion Reinhardt,” the Germans began construction of three death camps in Poland designed for the purpose of exterminating the Jews living in the region known as the “General -Gouvernement.” On November 1, 1941, Belzec, the first of the three death camps, the others being Treblinka and Sobibor, was the first death camp in which the Nazis used stationary gas chambers for killing their victims. The annihilation of the Jews at Belzec lasted for only nine months between March and December of 1942, but in that time over ½ a million exterminations took place, mostly Polish and foreign Jews, and small groups of non-Jewish Poles and Gypsies.

Auschwitz

* "Auschwitz" was a town and three different kinds of camps

o Auschwitz I, main camp: June 1940-Jan. 1945

March 1942: women's camp with 6,000 inmates; in August moved to Birkenau

o Auschwitz II, Birkenau: construction begins Oct. 1941; conversion of morgues to gas

chambers in fall 1942; crematoria operational in March 1943.

o Auschwitz III, Monowitz: a huge labor camp for the I.G. Farben's Buna chemical

works (opened in May 1942)

o The relative sizes of the three camps (order of magnitude figures for winter 1943/44):

+ I: 18,000 inmates

+ II: 50,000 inmates (in late 1944: 90,000)

+ III: 13,000 inmates

+ 51 Auschwitz branch camps: 50,000 inmates

+ by way of comparison, Dachau and other camps in Germany were designed for

about 10,000 inmates (although they often held far more: Dachau had 31,432

survivors in the main camp at liberation [2,259 of them were Jews])

*

Auschwitz II, Birkenau

*

Early in 1942, the genocide of the Jews went into full operation. Auschwitz 2 (Birkenau), Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibór began operations as death camps. There was no selection process; Jews were destroyed upon arrival.

Nazis were responsible for killing 2.7 million Jews in the death camps, done secretly under the ruse of resettlement. They went so far as to charge Jews for a one-way train fare and often, just prior to their murder, had the unknowing victims send postcards back to the ghettos. Millions of Jews went unwittingly to their deaths with little or no resistance.

By the end of 1943 the Germans closed down the death camps. The death tolls for the camps are as follows: Treblinka, (750,000 Jews); Belzec, (550,000 Jews); Sobibór, (200,000 Jews); Chelmno, (150,000 Jews) and Majdanek (50,000 Jews).

Auschwitz continued to operate as the only death camp through the summer of 1944; its final death total was about 1 million Jews and 1 million non-Jews. Allied encirclement of Germany was nearly complete in the fall of 1944. The Nazis began dismantling the camps, hoping to cover up their crimes. By the late winter/early spring of 1945, they sent prisoners walking to camps in central Germany. Thousands died in what became known as death marches.

The total figure for the Jewish genocide, including shootings, consumption in the ghettos, and death in the camps and on the marches, was approximately 6 million, roughly 2/3 of Europe's Jewish population, the highest percentage of loss of any people in the war. About 6 million other victims perished at the hands of Nazi Germany as well.

1.5 million Jewish children were deemed enemies of the state and murdered in the most horrific means – others were used for medical experimentation – and orphaned .

http://www.ushmm.org/remembrance/dor/video/?content=whyweremember&tr=y&auid=6188894

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_nm.php?MediaId=7826&ModuleId=10005131

*

Nürnberg trials, (also spelled Nuremberg,)

A series of trials held in Nürnberg, Ger., in 1945–48, in which former Nazi leaders were indicted and tried as war criminals by the International Military Tribunal. The indictment lodged against them contained four counts: (1) crimes against peace (i.e., the planning, initiating, and waging of wars of aggression in violation of international treaties and agreements), (2) crimes against humanity (i.e., exterminations, deportations, and genocide), (3) war crimes (i.e., violations of the laws of war), and (4) “a common plan or conspiracy to commit” the criminal acts listed in the first three counts.

The tribunal was given the authority to find any individual guilty of the commission of war crimes (counts 1–3 listed above) and to declare any group or organization to be criminal in character. The tribunal consisted of a member plus an alternate selected by each of the four signatory countries. The first session, under the presidency of Gen. I.T. Nikitchenko, the Soviet member, took place on Oct. 18, 1945, in Berlin. At this time, 24 former Nazi leaders were charged with the perpetration of war crimes, and various groups (such as the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police) were charged with being criminal in character. Beginning on Nov. 20, 1945, all sessions of the tribunal were held in Nürnberg under the presidency of Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence (later Baron Trevethin and Oaksey), the British member.

After 216 court sessions, on Oct. 1, 1946, the verdict on 22 of the original 24 defendants was handed down. (Robert Ley committed suicide while in prison, and Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach’s mental and physical condition prevented his being tried.) Three of the defendants were acquitted: Hjalmar Schacht, Franz von Papen, and Hans Fritzsche. Four were sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from 10 to 20 years: Karl Dönitz, Baldur von Schirach, Albert Speer, and Konstantin von Neurath. Three were sentenced to life imprisonment: Rudolf Hess, Walther Funk, and Erich Raeder. Twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death by hanging. Ten of them—Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Alfred Rosenberg, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Wilhelm Keitel, and Arthur Seyss-Inquart—were hanged on Oct. 16, 1946. Martin Bormann was tried and condemned to death in absentia, and Hermann Göring committed suicide before he could be executed.

The tribunal rejected the major defenses offered by the defendants. 1st , it rejected the contention that only a state, and not individuals, could be found guilty of war crimes; the tribunal held that crimes of international law are committed by men and that only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced. 2nd,it rejected the argument that the trial and adjudication were ex post facto. The tribunal responded that such acts had been regarded as criminal prior to World War II.

Holocaust: from the Past to its Present and into the Future

  • The Holocaust exists as part of the world’s history, as a reality that cannot be ignored and yet as a challenge to our understanding of the historical progress of civilization
  • The Holocaust is a crime without a statue of limitations = its repercussions on the lives of survivors and their children and their future continues today and into tomorrow
  • Once the Holocaust happened, once that kind of massive destruction occurred, derivatives and imitative actions can occur again and again and can model themselves after Holocaust events
  • As atrocities against humanity and civilization continue to be perpetrated around the world, the current tragedies of failed empathy, indifference, prejudice, intolerance, and hate reverberate Holocaust consciousness and replay all of the traumatic memories from the past.
  • By definition, the Nazi Genocide of the Jews was a crime against all humanity, against the essence of what it is to be human = it is a crime against the existence of the past, the reality of the present, and the possibility of the future.
  • Hitler’s goal = there were to be NO traces of the crime left, no traces of the burned bodies, no traces of the thriving Jewish life that had existed for generations – there was to be no future for the Jewish people.
  • TO THE SURVIVORS, the Holocaust is not “past” – it did not end at liberation – time did not heal all wounds = their present was one of death, absence, destruction, deprivation, singularity. They could see no hope in their future, and their memories of the past were riddled with the memories of separation and loss
  • The Holocaust contaminates all previous, current, and subsequent events – its imagery remains indelible, unassimilated, and paralyzing, constantly intruding on the survivor’s thoughts – it has created a disconnect with past , present, and future generations.
  • Europe today remains a site of massive death, especially in the East = empty fields of past graves, desecrated synagogues, Jewish homes occupied by strangers = empty places of memory because they reveal nothing about what happened there.
  • Physical places as Auschwitz, Birkenau, Jedwabne, Warsaw, etc., are almost as “judenrein” as the perpetrators had intended = the presence of Jews in Europe is marked mostly by their absence.
  • The Jewish Holocaust experience had no presence in the constructed post-war “identities” = the French as “fighters for the Resistance,” the Poles as “martyrs for the Socialist cause,” of the Germans as “victims of a tyrannical regime.” NOR did the survivors have a place in the post-war identities of Americans & British as “the heroes over Fascism,” or the Israelis as “freedom-fighters and resisters of oppression.”
  • It is only in the intimacy of the personal testimonies of Jewish survivors that the richness and authenticity of a deep subjective historical truth can be found – a truth found no where else and is OFTEN at odds with formal historical accounts.

Scientific inventions and discoveries also helped shorten the war. The United States organized its scientific resources in the Office of Scientific Research and Development. That government agency invented or improved such commodities as radar, rocket launchers, jet engines, amphibious assault boats, long-range navigational aids, devices for detecting submarines, and more. Scientists also made it possible to produce large quantities of penicillin to fight a wide range of diseases, as well as DDT to fight jungle diseases caused by insects.

Europe 1939

*

As the war ended, both the Soviet Union and the Western Allies had overrun large portions of a devastated Europe that had endured years of warfare. These victors also shared responsibility for deciding the postwar futures of the occupied countries. The end of the global conflict heralded a new contest that pitted the Western Allies (favoring democratically elected governments and independent European states) against the USSR (striving for a Soviet-influenced bloc of Communist countries). By 1947, this power struggle for European influence became known as the Cold War ; it would last for more than forty years.

Protocols of the Elders of Zion

The anti-Semitic publication known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, was first composed

in Russian sometime between 1899 and 1902 through the patronage of Piotr Ratchkovsky,

head of the czarist secret police in Paris to undermine western liberalism. I ts main author

Matthieu Golovinsky, a Russian journalist living in Paris, plagiarized nearly an entire work by

Maurice Joly, a deceased French satirist, by transforming Joly’s fictitious dialogs in hell between

Machiavelli and Montesquieu into the fictiona l secret minutes of the 1897 World Zionist

Congress, headed by Zionist Theodor Herzl. The forgery supposedly detailed the Jewish

conspiracy to achieve financial and political domination of the world. The Judeophobic

conspiracy theories generated by the Pro tocols especially resonated with Adolf Hitler, who

considered them both dark and diabolical, fashioning his own political subterfuge after the

patterns promoted in the Protocols. Themes, which drew from centuries of anti-Semitic

stereotypes, portray Jews a s heartless bankers out to enslave Gentiles, with the intent to create

world chaos through massive wars. The publication also promotes a Jewish resolve to control

the press, exercise censorship, rule the masses through propaganda, and to corrupt society

with the destruction of religion and the dissemination of pornography. Protocols continues to be

disseminated around the world through the Internet, in print, with it greatest best -seller market in

Arabic speaking nations and as a serial show for entertainme nt on Arabic television.

(entry by Dr. Bonnie Harris for Encyclopedia of Racism, 2012)

HITLER’S TOP TWELVE NAZIS

1. Heinrich Himmler - (1900-1945) was the Reich Leader (Reichsführer) of the dreaded SS of the Nazi party from

1929 until 1945. Himmler presided over a vast ideological and bureaucratic empire that defined him as the

second most powerful man in Germany during World War II. Given overall responsibility for the security of the

Nazi empire, Himmler was the key and senior Nazi official responsible for conceiving and overseeing

implementation of the so-called Final Solution, the Nazi plan to murder the Jews of Europe.

2. Joseph Goebbels – Propaganda Minister – Following the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Hitler established a

Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda headed by Joseph Goebbels. The Ministry's aim was to

ensure that the Nazi message was successfully communicated through art, music, theater, films, books, radio,

educational materials, and the press.

3. Baldur von Schirach - was leader of the Hitler Youth (1933 -1945), and Reich Governor and Nazi party Gauleiter

(district leader) in Vienna, Austria (1940 -1945). In the latter position his responsibilities included deporting Jews

from Vienna to ghettos and camps in Poland. Schirach was found guilty on count four (crimes against humanity)

and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. He was released in 1966.

4. Hermann Goering (1893-1946) was the highest-ranking Nazi official tried at Nuremberg. A decorated fighter

pilot during World War I, Goering joined the Nazi party in 1923 after hearing a speech by Adolf Hitler. He

eventually found his way into the inner circles of Nazi power. After Hitler's appointment as Chancellor of

Germany in 1933, Goering took on many positions of power and leadership within the Nazi state: Commander in

Chief of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force), Director of t he Four Year Plan in the German economy, and, at the

outbreak of war in Europe, Hitler's acknowledged successor. It was Goering who ordered Security Police chief

Reinhard Heydrich to organize and coordinate a "total solution" to the "Jewish question."

1. Reinhard Heydrich – Chief of the Security Service of the Reichsführer -SS (Sicherheitsdienst; SD) from 1931 until

1942. Also head of the German Secret State Police ( Geheime Staatspolizei; Gestapo) from 1934 to 1936 and the

German Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei; SiPo), which consisted of the Gestapo and the criminal police

detective forces (Kriminalpolizei; Kripo), from 1936 until 1942 . Under Heydrich, the Security Police and the SD

was the primary agency responsible for intelligence analysis and executive measures in suppressing numerous

internal and external enemies of the Nazi state.

2. Ernst Kaltenbrunner - Following Heydrich’s assassination in June 1942, Ernst Kaltenbrunner became Chief of the

Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) and Chief of Security. In this position he controlled the security police, SD,

and the Gestapo. He was a prime figure in the "Final Solution" in the last years of the war. He was found guilty

on counts 3 and 4 and sentenced to death and hanged on October 16, 1946.

3. Rudolf Hess - was a longstanding personal aide to Hitler, and deputy party leader of the Nazi party (until 1941).

In May 1941, Hess flew to Scotland hoping to make peace between Germany and Britain. He was immediately

arrested and imprisoned. Hess was found guilty on counts one (conspiracy) and two (crimes agains t peace) and

sentenced to life imprisonment. Hess was the only one of the defendants to serve the full life term; he

committed suicide in prison at age 93.

4. Hans Frank was an early supporter of the Nazi party. He studied law and eventually became the pers onal legal

advisor to Adolf Hitler. After the outbreak of World War II, Frank was appointed Governor General of occupied

Poland. In this capacity, Frank was responsible for the exploitation and murder of hundreds of thousands of

Polish civilians, as well as the deportation and murder of Polish Jews. He was found guilty on counts three and

four (war crimes and crimes against humanity) and sentenced to death. Frank was executed on October 16,

1946.

1. Albert Speer was a trained architect. After joining the Nazi party in 1930, Speer became Hitler's personal

architect. In 1942, he was named Minister of Armaments and Munitions, assuming significant responsibility for

the German war economy. In this position, Speer used millions of forced laborers to raise economic production.

Speer was found guilty on counts three and four (war crimes and crimes against humanity) and sentenced to 20

years in prison. He was released in 1966.

2. Martin Bormann became the Chief of Staff for Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy. Virtually unknow n to the German

public, as a close assistant to Hitler he was a powerful force behind the scenes in internal politics. Following

Hess' flight to Great Britain, Bormann became head of the Party Chancellery (1941) and, officially in 1943,

Secretary to the Führer. Bormann's hand could be seen in an array of domestic policies, including the plunder of

artwork, the persecution of Jews, the " euthanasia" effort, and the expansion of forced -labor programs. He also

signed a series of edicts ordering Jewish deportati ons to the east. Bormann died in an effort to flee Berlin in the

last days of World War II, but was long thought to be at large. He was tried in absentia in Nuremberg, where he

was sentenced to death. West German authorities officially declared him dead in 1973, after his remains were

discovered and positively identified.

3. Wilhelm Frick - Reich Minister of the Interior from 1933 -1943, and Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia. In

the decisive first years of the Nazi dictatorship, he directed legislation th at removed Jews from public life,

abolished political parties, and sent political dissidents to concentration camps. Frick was found guilty on counts

2, 3, and 4 and sentenced to death. He was executed on October 16, 1946.

12. Otto Adolph Eichmann - sometimes referred to as "the architect of the Holocaust", was a Nazi and SS -

Obersturmbannführer (equivalent to Lieutenant Colonel). Because of his organizational talents and ideological

reliability, he was charged by Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich with th e task of facilitating and managing

the logistics of mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in Nazi -occupied Eastern Europe.

After the war, he travelled to Argentina using a fraudulently obtained laissez -passer issued by the International

Red Cross and lived there under a false identity working for Mercedes -Benz until 1960. He was captured by

Israeli Mossad operatives in Argentina and tried in an Israeli court on 15 criminal charges, including crimes

against humanity and war crimes. He was convicted and hanged in 1962.

Dishonorable Mentions:

 Wilhelm Keitel - Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces High Command.

 Leni Riefenstahl - German dancer, actress, and film director best known for her imposing

propaganda films in support of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party.

 Rudolf Hoess - Camp master mind of Auschwitz

 Joachim von Ribbentrop - Foreign Minister, persuaded leaders of other countries to deport Jews to

concentration camps.