Timeline: extension materials

1. Timeline: extension materials Case study cards: personal stories further context

2. Teachers’ notes Preparation: • Print on A4 paper and laminate • The cards in this document give more detailed contextual information for each of the personal stories in this lesson activity • Please refer to the accompanying lesson plan and pedagogical guidance

3. The Night of the Long Knives The murder of Ernst Röhm and other SA leaders were political murders carried out to help Hitler hold on to power. Although the SA leaders killed on the Night of the Long Knives were victims of Hitler and the Nazis, although they suffered and were mourned by their loved ones, they were also part of that violent, extremist movement. Very few people would suggest that they should be remembered alongside other victims of the Nazis: Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, the disabled, political opponents of the Nazis, or homosexuals. When seeking to understand the many atrocities committed by the Nazis, it is clear that we need to consider the differences as well as the similarities between these crimes. ErnstRöhm ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

4. Nazi political persecution Shortly after Hitler gained power the Nazis made all other political parties illegal. Socialists, Communists, trade unionists, and other political opponents were persecuted tens of thousands of Germans were imprisoned for ‘political crimes.’ If a court did not find a police suspect guilty then instead of releasing them the police would often send that person to a concentration camp, where they could be held for as long as the Nazis wanted, without trial. The first concentration camps, set up in 1933, were for the Nazis’ political opponents, not for Jews, Gypsies or others who became victims of the regime. On the eve of the war in 1939 the concentration camps held about 25,000 inmates, most of them political prisoners. This was the Nazi totalitarian state: Hitler insisted on complete obedience and tolerated no criticism, dissent, or opposition. The concentration camp was brutal and violent, and many thousands suffered terribly under the Nazis. Many died in the camps. However, there was no intention to kill everyone who disagreed with the Nazis. Most people sent to the camps in these years were released after several weeks or months, as it was expected that they would now obey the Nazi state without question. Those who might lead an opposition to Hitler – anti-Nazi politicians and union leaders, for example – were at much greater risk. They either fled Germany or faced long spells in a concentration camp. Ernst Thälmann, leader of the German Communist party since 1925, for example, was arrested after the fire that destroyed the Reichstag (the German parliament building) in February 1933. Thälmann spent more than 11 years in the camps. The SS killed him in Buchenwald concentration camp in the summer of 1944. During the war years, the concentration camps became far more murderous. The SS now used the camps to kill Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and others they considered enemies of Germany. Vast numbers were deliberately worked to death. Those inside Germany who opposed the Nazi state were also far more likely to be executed during the war years. Xaver Franz Stützinger ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

5. The Porajmos The Roma and Sinti (often called Gypsies) arrived in Europe from India about 500 years ago. While trying to live peacefully alongside their European neighbours, as a minority group Gypsies have often been seen as outsiders and treated with suspicion. Over the centuries they have been unfairly labelled as criminals, have suffered great persecution and violence, and were made slaves in parts of the Balkans and Eastern Europe. During the Second World War, European persecution of the Roma turned to genocide: an attempt to destroy the Romani peoples and their way of life. As many as half a million Roma and Sinti were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. In the Romani language this genocide has been called the Porajmos (‘Great Devouring’) or Samudaripen (‘Great Dying’). The Nazis believed Gypsies were a lower ‘race’ of people and called the Roma and Sinti people living in Europe a ‘Gypsy menace’. In Germany and Austria, many Gypsy children were forcibly sterilised to prevent them from having children when they grew up. In Eastern Europe, huge numbers of Roma men, women and children were shot into mass graves by the Nazis and their collaborators. Thousands more from other countries under German occupation were deported to concentration and death camps and were murdered in gas vans and gas chambers. More than 23,000 Roma and Sinti people were deported to the so-called ‘Gypsy Family Camp’ at Auschwitz-Birkenau. They were given little to eat, their living conditions were overcrowded, and their treatment was so brutal that 18,000 died from hunger and disease. In the summer of 1944 the Nazis decided to shut down the ‘Gypsy Family Camp’ and on the night of 2-3 August almost 3,000 Roma and Sinti men, women and children were murdered in the gas chambers. JosephMuschaMüller ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

6. The Porajmos Since arriving from India more than five hundred years ago. Romani-speaking peoples have lived in countries throughout Europe.The Roma and Sinti, commonly called Gypsies because of the mistaken idea that they came from Egypt, are among the oldest minority groups in Europe. While trying to live peacefully alongside their European neighbours, as a minority group Gypsies have often been seen as outsiders and treated with suspicion. Over the centuries they have been unfairly labelled as criminals, have suffered great persecution and violence, and were made slaves in parts of the Balkans and Eastern Europe. During the Second World War, European persecution of the Roma turned to genocide: an attempt to destroy the Romani peoples and their way of life. As many as half a million Roma and Sinti were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. In the Romani language this genocide has been called the Porajmos(‘Great Devouring’) or Samudaripen (‘Great Dying’). The Nazis believed Gypsies were a lower ‘race’ of people and called the Roma and Sinti people living in Europe a ‘Gypsy menace’. In Germany and Austria, many Gypsy children were forcibly sterilised to prevent them from having children when they grew up. In Eastern Europe, huge numbers of Roma men, women and children were shot into mass graves by the Nazis and their collaborators. Thousands more from other countries under German occupation were deported to concentration and death camps and were murdered in gas vans and gas chambers. More than 23,000 Roma and Sinti people were deported to the so-called ‘Gypsy Family Camp’ at Auschwitz-Birkenau. They were given little to eat, their living conditions were overcrowded, and their treatment was so brutal that 18,000 died from hunger and disease. In the summer of 1944 the Nazis decided to shut down the ‘Gypsy Family Camp’ and on the night of 2nd to 3rd August almost 3,000 Roma and Sinti men, women and children were murdered in the gas chambers. OssiStojka ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

7. The Porajmos For decades it was believed that the young girl filmed gazing out of the railway wagon was Jewish. Some fifty years after the Holocaust, a Dutch journalist discovered that she was in fact nine year old Settela Steinbach, a Sinti (Gypsy) girl from the Netherlands. While Settela’s image had been used in countless books, films and museums around the world as a symbol of the Jewish children killed in the Holocaust, she was in fact murdered in another, less well-known Nazi crime: the genocide of the Roma and Sinti. The Roma and Sinti (often called Gypsies) arrived in Europe from India about 500 years ago. While trying to live peacefully alongside their European neighbours, as a minority group Gypsies have often been seen as outsiders and treated with suspicion. Over the centuries they have been unfairly labelled as criminals, have suffered great persecution and violence, and were made slaves in parts of the Balkans and Eastern Europe. During the Second World War, European persecution of the Roma turned to genocide: an attempt to destroy the Romani peoples and their way of life. As many as half a million Roma and Sinti were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. In the Romani language this genocide has been called the Porajmos (‘Great Devouring’) or Samudaripen (‘Great Dying’). The Nazis believed Gypsies were a lower ‘race’ of people and called the Roma and Sinti people living in Europe a ‘Gypsy menace’. In Germany and Austria, many Gypsy children were forcibly sterilised to prevent them from having children when they grew up. In Eastern Europe, huge numbers of Roma men, women and children were shot into mass graves by the Nazis and their collaborators. Thousands more from other countries under German occupation were deported to concentration and death camps and were murdered in gas vans and gas chambers. More than 23,000 Roma and Sinti people were deported to the so-called ‘Gypsy Family Camp’ at Auschwitz-Birkenau. They were given little to eat, their living conditions were overcrowded, and their treatment was so brutal that 18,000 died from hunger and disease. In the summer of 1944 the Nazis decided to shut down the ‘Gypsy Family Camp’ and on the night of 2-3 August almost 3,000 Roma and Sinti men, women and children were murdered in the gas chambers. SettelaSteinbach ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

8. A crime against humanity When ReinhardHeydrich, a high-ranking Nazi SS officer, was killed in Prague by the Czech resistance, the German Gestapo and SS murdered more than 1000 Czech people in revenge. As part of these revenge killings, the entire village of Lidice was destroyed. The Nazis used torture, concentration camps, summary executions and mass murder as part of their rule of terror in every country that they occupied during the Second World War. They caused immense suffering to millions of people, shattering lives all across the European continent. However, Nazi racial beliefs meant that they treated some groups of people more harshly than others. Those people in northern, western and central Europe were, generally, treated better than those of eastern and southern Europe. In eastern Europe, Hitler saw the war as one of ‘extermination’ a ‘racial struggle’ between Germanic and Slavic people that he wrongly believed were different human ‘races’. In Poland and the Soviet Union Hitler aimed not just at conquering new lands but at driving millions of local people from their homes to make room for German farmers. The Nazis wanted to make slaves of whole national and ethnic groups, and to destroy Polish and Slavic culture, language and national identities. There was no word to describe these crimes at the time; today they are called genocide. There were no such Nazi genocides against the nations of western, northern or central Europe, no intention to destroy these national and ethnic groups. So there was no Nazi genocide of the Czech people. However, the Nazis’ destruction of Lidice and their mass murder of its men, women and children was certainly a crime against humanity. Lidice 1942 ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E www.ioe.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

9. The Sheffield Blitz Sheffield’s steel factories and nearby coal mines were hugely important to Britain’s war effort, making everything from bayonets to tank armour. Over three nights in December 1940 German bomber planes tried to destroy these factories in air raids that became known as the Sheffield Blitz. More than 660 people lost their lives in the attacks and nearly 80,000 buildings were destroyed. Elsewhere, between September 1940 and May 1941, the German Blitz of Great Britain hit many towns and cities across the country. London was bombed continuously every night for 57 nights. By the end of May 1941, over 43,000 civilians, half of them in London, had been killed by bombing and more than a million houses were destroyed or damaged in London alone. Other important military and industrial centres, such as Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Clydebank, Coventry, Greenock, Swansea, Liverpool, Hull, Manchester, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Nottingham and Southampton suffered heavy air raids and very high casualties. More than 50,000 British civilians were killed during the Second World War from bombing. In 1944, Nazi Germany’s development of V-1 flying bombs and V-2 rockets that could be fired from Europe across the English Channel meant that Germany could again attack London. These V weapons killed almost 9,000 civilians in London and the south east, bringing the total number of deaths to more than 60,000 men, women and children. The Wolstenholmefamily ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

10. Allied prisoners of war The German treatment of prisoners of war varied greatly depending on how the Nazis viewed the ‘race’ of their prisoners. While the war in Eastern Europe was seen as one of ‘racial struggle’ and even extermination, prisoners of war from western countries were generally treated reasonably well, according the normal rules of war and the Geneva Convention. Life in prisoner of war camps for British, American, and west European soldiers and airmen was hard, and could be very dull, but they were treated far better than Soviet prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates, where murder, overwork, poor living conditions, starvation and brutality all led to mass death. The murder of fifty escapees from StalagLuft III was a war crime, specifically named at the Nuremberg Trials, and a number of Gestapo officers involved in the killings were also convicted at a war crimes trial in Hamburg after the war. However, these murders were clearly different in their cause, scope and scale to the mass murders of Soviet POWs, of whom some 3.3 million died in German captivity. RogerBushell ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

11. The mass murder of disabled people Under cover of the Second World War, Hitler ordered the secret mass murder of German people who were physically or mentally ‘unfit’. The Nazis believed that support for disabled people was a waste of money and that the German ‘Aryan’ race would be weakened if they had children and passed on their disability. The killing of 200,000 disabled German people was called ‘Euthanasia’ or ‘mercy killing’ but was in fact the Nazis’ first programme of mass murder. The methods used – including gas chambers, shooting, injections of poison, and starvation – were later used to kill Jews and Gypsies in eastern Europe. By 1942, a plan was developed to murder all of the Jewish people in German-occupied Europe using the methods of the ‘Euthanasia’ programmes. Gas chambers and crematoria were built in death camps in eastern Europe. Doctors, police and other staff involved in the ‘Euthanasia’ killing were now experts in mass murder and were sent to the east to murder Jewish people in the death camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblink Helene Lebel ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

12. Genocide of the Polish people Poles may have only one master – a German. Two masters cannot exist side by side, and this is why all members of the Polish intelligentsia must be killed. Father PiotrSosnowski Adolf Hitler, 1940 In a wave of terror following the invasion of Poland in September 1939, German soldiers and SS men murdered Polish teachers, politicians, priests, trade unionists and others who could lead the Polish people. This was the first stage of a Nazi genocide that aimed not to kill all Polish people but to destroy the Polish nation, its culture and identity. At least 1.8 million Poles were murdered in this Nazi genocide during the Second World War. ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

13. Mass murder of Soviet Prisoners of War This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. • Adolf Hitler, 1941, on the eve of the invasion of the Soviet Union Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union was to be not only a war to defeat an enemy or to conquer new land but a war to destroy the people already living there. The new ‘living space’ that Nazi Germany won in the east would be settled by German farmers. The Slavic people who already lived there would be murdered, driven from their lands, or enslaved. The Nazis planned that as many as 30 million Slavic people would starve to death, as food was taken from the farms of the Soviet Union to feed the German people and army. So the lives of the more than five million captured Soviet soldiers counted for very little and they were held in appalling conditions. Some 3.3 million of these prisoners of war died of mass starvation or of the cold while held in camps that lacked even basic shelter and heating, or were shot or gassed. JosefTarantov Deblin, Poland, 1942 or 1943. Sack of wood flour (finely powdered wood or sawdust) used to make substitute bread. The official ration of this "bread" for Soviet prisoners of war was less than five ounces a day. Credit: USHMM Dugouts: holes in the ground that served as living quarters for prisoners in Stalag 319, a Nazi-built camp for Soviet prisoners of war. Chelm, Poland, between 1941 and 1944. Credit: USHMM ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

14. Nazi persecution of German gay men Homosexuality was a crime in Germany from 1871, long before the Nazis came to power. But from 1933, the Nazis took persecution of gay men to new heights of violence. The Nazis’ aim was for German men to father as many children as possible, to strengthen the ‘Aryan race’, and they believed that gay men were failing in this ‘duty’. From 1933 to 1945, more than 100,000 men were arrested for the crime of homosexuality. Some 50,000 of these men were found guilty and were sentenced to prison. Of these, between 5,000 and 15,000 were sent to concentration camps where treatment was particularly brutal and many died. At the end of the war, when Germany was defeated by the Allied armies of Britain and its Commonwealth, the Soviet Union and the United States, the surviving inmates of concentration camps were freed and allowed to go home. But, as homosexuality was illegal not only in Nazi Germany but in the Allied countries as well, gay men who survived the camps and Nazi persecution were still seen as criminals and were forced to serve out the rest of their sentences in prison. RobertÖlbermann ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

15. Nazi persecution of German gay men Homosexuality was a crime in Germany from 1871, long before the Nazis came to power. But from 1933, the Nazis took persecution of gay men to new heights of violence. The Nazis’ aim was for German men to father as many children as possible, to strengthen the ‘Aryan race’, and they believed that gay men were failing in this ‘duty’. From 1933 to 1945, about 100,000 men were arrested for the crime of homosexuality. Some 50,000 of these men were found guilty and were sentenced to prison. Of these, between 5,000 and 15,000 were sent to concentration camps where treatment was particularly brutal and many died. At the end of the war, when Germany was defeated by the Allied armies of Britain and its Commonwealth, the Soviet Union and the United States, the surviving inmates of concentration camps were freed and allowed to go home. But, as homosexuality was illegal not only in Nazi Germany but in the Allied countries as well, gay men who survived the camps and Nazi persecution were still seen as criminals and were forced to serve out the rest of their sentences in prison. Robert T.Odeman ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

16. The persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses There were 25,000 to 30,000 Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany when Hitler came to power in January 1933. Soon they became targets of the persecution for refusing to support the Nazis, to give the Nazi salute and say ‘Heil Hitler’, or to serve in the German army. Many fled Germany as the persecutions began. Some gave up their religion. Others tried to keep out of trouble, keeping their religious life private and practicing it within their homes. But some 20,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses continued to practice their religion in public all through the Nazi period, despite great personal danger. About half of those who stayed active were sent to prison. Another 3000 Jehovah’s Witnesses were sent to concentration camps, where as many as 1,400 died. A further 250 German Jehovah's Witnesses were executed for refusing to serve in the German army. Jehovah’s Witnesses were the only group who were offered the chance to leave the concentration camps. They only had to sign a form saying that they would no longer be a Jehovah’s Witness and they could walk free. Remarkably, there is no record that any one signed this form. Helene Gotthold ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

17. An antisemitic murder Walther Rathenau was one of those blamed by the far right for Germany’s defeat in the First World War and for the humiliating Treaty of Versailles. Accused of ‘stabbing Germany in the back’ and of being part of an ‘international Jewish conspiracy’, Rathenau’s murder was a sign of the problems facing Germany’s new Weimar democracy. Many on the extreme right hated the new democracy and were prepared to use violent means to destroy it and to gain power. At the time of Rathenau’s murder, Hitler’s Nazi Party was one of many small parties in German politics. Like other extremist nationalist movements the Nazi Party was prepared to use violence, terror and murder to fight its opponents. When Hitler became the head of the German government in 1933 the Nazis used their new power to attack and imprison people they saw as their enemies and to crush all opposition. But the murder of Walther Rathenau was not part of the Holocaust. Throughout history there have been violent attacks on Jewish people just because they were Jewish. Some, like Rathenau, were murdered. But the Holocaust was different. Never before in human history was there an attempt to murder every Jewish person everywhere: the Nazi genocide that today we call the Holocaust. Walther Rathenau ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

18. Murder in the November Pogrom On the night of 9 -10 November 1938, rioters across Nazi Germany and Austria destroyed and burned 267 synagogues, vandalized 7,500 Jewish businesses, and killed at least 91 Jewish people. Jewish cemeteries were desecrated. Windows of synagogues, Jewish-owned shops and businesses, homes and community buildings were smashed. Jewish hospitals, schools and homes were attacked as the German and Austrian police stood by and the fire brigades allowed Jewish buildings to burn. The riots became known as Kristallnacht: the ‘Night of Broken Glass’. More than 20,000 Jewish men were rounded up by the Nazi storm troopers and sent to concentration camps. This night marked a new stage in the Nazi persecution of the Jewish people, and new heights of violence. But, while Selma Zwienicki was only murdered that night because she was Jewish, her murder was not part of a plan to kill all of the Jewish people. No such plan existed at this time. In 1938 the Nazi regime was trying to force Jewish people to leave Germany. A year later, in 1939 with the outbreak of war and the invasion of Poland, violence against Jewish people turned to acts of mass murder, such as in the town of Bedzin where soldiers killed large numbers of Jewish people without even being ordered to do so. Later still, in 1941 with the invasion of the Soviet Union, this mass murder became officially ordered and organised. Mass murder became part of a plan to ‘get rid of’ Jewish people in the newly conquered lands: a crime that today we call ‘genocide’. By 1942 an even more total plan had been decided upon: to extend the genocide in eastern Europe to the planned murder of every Jewish person everywhere. It is this plan for total murder that today we call the Holocaust. SelmaZwienicki www.ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

19. Mass murder of Polish Jews When the German army invaded Poland in 1939, violence against Jewish people reached new heights. Far from home, out of sight of German civilians, soldiers, SS and policemen attacked and killed Jewish people without being ordered to do so. Polish Jews were attacked in the streets. Their homes and shops were smashed. Their synagogues were burned. In Bedzin and other places across German-occupied Poland, this violence turned to mass murder. The Nazis had spent the previous six years trying to ‘get rid’ of the small Jewish population from Germany. Jewish teachers, government workers, doctors, judges and lawyers had been sacked. Jewish people were forced to sell their shops, businesses and factories to other Germans for very little money. In November 1938 there was a wave of violence against Jewish people across Germany and Austria. By 1939, half of the Jewish people in Germany and Austria had become refugees in other countries. However, by invading Poland in 1939, Hitler’s government suddenly had millions more Jewish individuals under their control. It would be impossible to get all of these people to leave the newly conquered lands – there were far too many of them and they had nowhere to go: other countries were unwilling to take them. So, by the beginning of 1940, the Nazis still had no clear plan about what to do with the Jewish people of Europe. Despite the violence and mass murders in 1939 and 1940, there was no decision yet to kill all of the Jewish people. At the beginning of the war, the Nazis began to force Jews in Poland into crowded areas of towns and cities, often building fences or walls around these areas to isolate and control them in Jewish ghettos. Bedzin1939 ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

20. Edith Stein or Saint Theresa Benedicta? Look carefully at the photographs of Edith Stein and Sister Theresa Benedicta. They are the same person, a woman who was born Edith Stein, to a Jewish family, but who later became a Catholic nun and changed her name to Theresa Benedicta. The two stories told about her death agree on key details: she was born a Jew, became a Christian nun, and was murdered in Auschwitz. But they disagree on why she was killed. Which one is more accurate, and does this matter? The Nazi genocide of the Jewish people had nothing to do with religion. So it made no difference to the Nazis whether Edith Stein believed in the Jewish or the Christian religion. The Nazis believed that human beings were divided into different ‘races’, and that these races had to fight each other to survive. For the Nazis, the Jewish ‘race’ was the greatest threat to the existence of the German ‘Aryan race’. During the Second World War the Nazis tried to murder every Jewish person everywhere: every man, woman and child who had Jewish grandparents would be killed. It is this attempt at total murder that today we call the Holocaust. It made no difference what Sister Theresa Benedicta thought of herself, what she believed in, or how she behaved. To the Nazis, she was still a Jewish person: it was enough that she was born to a Jewish family, and for that alone she was murdered. How to remember ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

21. The Holocaust death marches • Even in the final weeks and days of the Second World War, when it was clear that Germany was defeated, the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people continued. • As the Allied armies advanced toward Berlin, the SS force-marched tens of thousands of concentration camp inmates deeper into the remaining Nazi territories. The death marches had several purposes: • To prevent eyewitnesses to the Nazi crimes from falling into Allied hands • To continue to use the camp inmates as forced labour for the German war effort • To use Jewish prisoners as hostages to bargain with the British and Americans for a separate peace that would split these countries from their alliance with the Soviet Union. • The camp inmates were terribly weak from hunger, overwork and the brutal treatment they had suffered, and yet were forced to march tens or even hundreds of miles in all weathers, including bitter cold, rain and snow. Many died of exhaustion and starvation. Those that collapsed along the roadside or could not keep pace with the marching columns were shot by their guards. MendelGrossman ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

22. The Holocaust Leon and Else Greenman knew that their lives were in danger, as they travelled on a locked train eastwards across Europe. But they did not realise that nearly every man, woman and child aboard that train would be dead within hours of their arrival in ‘the East’. Nothing like the Nazi death camps had ever been built before in all of human history: a place built to murder thousands of human beings day after day, as quickly as possible. Nor could Leon and Else imagine that their little boy, Barney, was in such great danger: why would anyone hurt a small child? What the Greenmans did not understand was that – by the end of 1941 – the Nazis had decided to murder every Jewish man, woman and child everywhere that they could reach them. This attempt at total murder is what today we call ‘the Holocaust’. Else and Barney Greenman ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

23. The Holocaust The Pitel family was murdered as part of the Nazis’ attempt to kill every Jewish man, woman and child, everywhere. The Nazis wrongly believed that human beings are separated into different ‘races’, and that these races fight each other to survive. Although everywhere Jewish people lived ordinary, peaceful lives, the Nazis believed that Jews were subhuman, and the most dangerous enemy of the German people. During the Second World War the Nazis decided to murder every member of this so-called Jewish ‘race’ everywhere: every man, woman and child who had Jewish grandparents would be killed. It is this plan for total murder that today we call the Holocaust. The Pitel family ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

24. The Holocaust When Manfred Lewin and his family were rounded up by the Nazis they were held in a transit camp in Berlin, awaiting deportation to the East. Gad Beck tried desperately to rescue Manfred, at great risk to himself. Disguised as a Nazi Storm Trooper, Gad had Manfred released and could have saved him from deportation. Manfred, however, couldn’t bear to abandon his family, and so returned to the transit camp. He was deported with them to Auschwitz. How should we understand and remember these events? The story of Manfred and Gad is a powerful and moving love story set against the backdrop of Nazi persecution. However these two young men were not persecuted because they were gay, but because they were Jewish. German gay men were persecuted because in the Nazis’ eyes they were failing make more ‘Aryan’ children. The Nazis’ aim was not to murder these men but to ‘cure’ them of their homosexuality. That said, the persecution was so brutal that perhaps 10,000 German gay men were killed. The Nazis were not interested in Jewish people’s sexuality, or the sexuality of the Roma, of Poles, Russians or Slavs. It did not matter to them if ‘non-Aryans’ were gay, as they did not want these people to reproduce anyway. Manfred Lewin was gay but he did not die as part of the Nazi persecution of homosexuals. He was murdered in the Holocaust: the Nazi attempt to kill every Jewish man, woman and child, everywhere. ManfredLewin ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

25. The Holocaust JanuszKorczak and the children of his orphanage were murdered as part of the Nazis’ plan to murder every Jewish person, everywhere. It made no difference what Korczak or the children in his care believed in, what they did, or how they behaved. It was enough that they had been born into Jewish families for all of them to be marked for murder. The Nazis believed that human beings were divided into different ‘races’, and that these races had to fight each other to survive. Even though Jewish people everywhere lived ordinary, peaceful lives, the Nazis believed they were the worst of the human ‘races’ and the greatest enemy of the German ‘Aryan race’. By the end of 1941, Hitler and the Nazi leadership had decided to murder every member of the so-called Jewish ‘race’ wherever they could reach them. It is this plan for total murder that today we call the Holocaust. JanuszKorczak ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

26. Armed resistance in the Holocaust The Warsaw ghetto was the largest in Nazi occupied Europe. Almost half a million Jewish people were crammed into a few streets in the city. surrounded by a ten feet high brick wall, topped with barbed wire. In the overcrowded conditions – with an average of seven people living in each room – some 100,000 people died of hunger and disease. From 1942, trains journeyed from Warsaw to Treblinka death camp with cattle wagons packed full of people. Some 300,000 Jewish men, women and children from the Warsaw ghetto were murdered in Treblinka’s gas chambers during the summer months of 1942. By April 1943, only 60,000 people remained inside the Warsaw ghetto. German soldiers came into the ghetto once again, this time to deport all of the remaining Jewish people to their deaths. The Germans expected this Aktion to take just three days. However, Jewish fighters led by Mordecai Anielewicz attacked the German soldiers. Armed only with a small number of guns, limited ammunition and some homemade grenades, the Jewish fighters fought off the German army for an entire month. The Germans used aircraft to bomb the ghetto and sent in reinforcements with tanks and flamethrowers to burn it down, building by building. The fires were so fierce that the pavements melted in the heat. Eventually, the ghetto fighters were defeated. But in rising up against the Germans, and holding out for so long, they shocked the world and inspired other Jews to fight against the Nazis: in other ghettos, in the forests of eastern Europe and even inside the death camps of Treblinka, Sobibor and Auschwitz-Birkenau. MordecaiAnielewicz ucl.ac.uk/holocaust-education E

27. Timeline: extension materials Case study cards: personal stories further context E