Introduction to the Holocaust Part II

1. Introduction to the Holocaust Part II Daniel W. Blackmon IB HL History Coral Gables Sr. High

2. The Ghetto • The Lódz ghetto provided a model for the organization of the others

3. The Ghetto • .“. . . [T]he overwhelming majority of the Jews were interned in ghettos and the laborers were brought to places of work outside. According to this plan, the ghetto and the labor camps were designed for only a transitional period.

4. The Ghetto • [governor of the Lódz district, Friedrich] Übelhör concluded his remarks, ‘The establishment of the ghetto is naturally only an interim measure. When and how the ghetto and the city of Lódz will be purged of Jews is something I reserve for my exclusive decision.

5. The Ghetto • In any case, however, the final aim will be to burn this fraternity of pestilence to the end.’” (Yahil 165)

6. The Ghetto • .The Nazis were careful to conceal their ultimate goal from the Judenräte. • .Jews were rounded up and sent to the ghettos with very little warning. They were able to take with them only very minimal belongings. Everything else was looted.

7. Judenräte • The Germans appointed the leaders of the Judenräte. Membership was neither voluntary or optional. A refusal to serve meant not only one’s own execution but also of one’s family.

8. Judenräte • .The order given to Mordekhai Chaim Rumkowski, the Elder of the Lódz Judenrat is typical: “You must particularly ensure an orderly economic life, nutrition, the duty of labor, health, and welfare assistance.

9. Judenräte • “Toward that end, you are authorized to determine all the necessary measures and orders and to carry them out with the aid of the Order Service under your control.” (Yahil 166)

10. Judenräte • “Thus Judenälteste Rumkowski was charged with duties such as commercial and economic activities and assuring the supply of food, duties that were usually handled by the municipality, or in a free socierty, by the citizenry itself.

11. Judenräte • “Normally, these spheres, including the labor market, require control or organization in either war or peace; thus they are tended to by the highest ruling authority, usually the government itself.

12. Judenräte • “But in this case, responsibility for them all–including seeing to housing in the insufferably crowded ghetto and to sanitation in a quarter that lacked sewers–fell upon a single man–

13. Judenräte • “–one who had little experience in administration, to say nothing of politics; one in whom the public had not expressed its confidence; and one whose authority derived from the edict of a tyrannical regime.

14. Judenräte • Rumkowski served that regime on penalty of death, and to carry out his duties he was equipped with a policing mechanism made up of Jews who were likewise residents of the ghetto: the Jewish police, called the Order Service [Ordnungsdienst]” (Yahil 167)

15. Judenräte • Joseph Goebbels called the ghettoes “death caskets.” They were intended to “ensure maximum loss of population during the period alloted for the ghetto’s existence while facilitating the seizure of the property left behind.” (Yahil 167)

16. The Ghettoes • A Police Report from the Lódz ghetto • Ghetto Police Station 6 Litzmannstadt [Lódz] 1.12.1941 • Re: Use of firmarms.

17. The Ghettoes • )On 1December 1941 I was at Checkpoint 4 in the Hohensteinerstraße between 14.00 and 16.00. At 15.00 I saw a woman climbing onto the ghetto fence, stick her head through it and attempt to steal a turnip from a passing lorry.

18. The Ghettoes • ) I used my firearm. The Jewess was killed with two shots. Type of weapon: Carbine 98. Munition expended : 2 bullets.

19. The Ghettoes • )Signed: Naumann • )Constable of the Reserve Security Police • )1 Comp Bl. Batt. Ghetto • (Pridham and Noakes 1071)

20. Judenräte • Ephraim Barash in Bialystok believed that he could save the Jews in his ghetto by making themselves too useful to kill. “As you know, the focus of our activity which may be our salvation, is the rapidly developing industry.”

21. Judenräte • When criticized, he defended himself saying, “I would like to declare that we have one sole objective: to preserve ourselves until the war is over.”

22. Judenräte • )What he did not know is that the Germans would use them right up to the point when they would choose to murder them all.

23. Judenräte • The head of the Warsaw Judenrat was Adam Czerniakow

24. Second Phase The Final Solution 1941-1945 • Madagascar Plan • In the summer of 1940, Himmler toyed with the idea of mass deportation of Jews to Madagascar, where they would be held in a huge ghetto.

25. Second Phase The Final Solution 1941-1945 • Madagascar Plan • .Adolf Eichmann was assigned to investigate its feasibility. • .It was not feasible and it was soon dropped

26. Adolf Eichmann

27. Operation Barbarossa • The invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany • .Hitler conceived of the invasion of the USSR as both an attack on Jewry and an attack on Communism, since he regarded both as two sides of the same coin.)

28. Operation Barbarossa • .Andreas Hillgruber has argued that “Hitler thought it both essential and possible to link the military campaign against Russia with the liquidation of the Jews.” (Yahil 253)

29. Operation Barbarossa • .In March 1941, on the eve of the invasion, Himmler told his senior officers, “Without remorse, cruel war will develop between nations; in its course, twenty to thirty million Slavs and Jews will perish because of war activities and food shortages.” (Yahil 254)

30. Operation Barbarossa • .On July 31, 1941, Heydrich received an order from Goering giving him authorization to demand cooperation from all other Nazi agencies in implementing the overall solution (Gesamtlösung) and the final solution (Endlösung) of the Jewish Question (Judenfrage). (Yahil 255)

31. Einsatzgruppen • Four Einsatzgruppen, or Special Action Groups, were established and attached to an army corps.

32. Einsatzgruppen • .“The units moved systematically from place to place, assembling the Jews, conveying them outside towns and villages, and murdering them beside antitank trenches or pits dug especially for this purpose.

33. Einsatzgruppen • The victims were ordered to strip and to stand in groups by the pit where they were shot by automatic weapons, the dead and dying falling into the mass graves.

34. Einsatzgruppen • Sometimes, the victims were even forced to lie down in the pit in neat lines, head to toe alternately, and there they were executed row by row by what the SS called the sardine method. Finally the pit was covered over with earth.” (Yahil 256)

35. Einsatzgruppen • .The army and auxiliary police recruited from conquered territories cooperated.

37. Einsatzgruppen • Field Marshall Walter von Reichenau issued the following order to his Sixth Army (which fought at Stalingrad) on October 10, 1941):

38. Einsatzgruppen • “There is still a lot of uncertainty regarding the behaviour of the troops towards the bolshevist system. . . .

39. Einsatzgruppen • “The main aim of the campaign against the Jewish-bolshevist system is the complete destruction of its forces and the extermination of its asiatic influence in the sphere of European culture.

40. Einsatzgruppen • “As a result, the troops have taken on tasks which go beyond the conventional purely military ones. In the eastern sphere, the soldier is not simply a fighter according to the rules of war,

41. Einsatzgruppen • “but the supporter of a ruthless racial (völkisch) ideology and the avenger of all the bestialities which have been inflicted on the German nation and those ethnic groups related to it.

42. Einsatzgruppen • “For this reason, soldiers must show full understanding for the necessity for the severe but just atonement being required of the Jewish subhumans.

43. Einsatzgruppen • “It also has the purpose of nipping in the bud uprisings in the rear of the Wehrmacht which experience shows are invariably instigated by Jews. . . . “ (Noakes and Pridham 1096)

45. Einsatzgruppen • Gestapo Chief Heinrich Müller to the commanders of the four Einsatzgruppen, August 1, 1941, sent in code.: “. . . the Führer [was] to be kept informed continually from here about the work of the Einsatzgruppen in the East . . . . to this end, visual materials of special interest, such as photographs [were needed].” (Fleming 109-110)

47. Einsatzgruppen • Interrogation of Lieutenant Erwin Bingle in 1945 of events in Uman, Ukraine on September 15, 1941

48. Einsatzgruppen • )“. . . A number of tables was then unloaded from one of the trucks, and placed in a line at distances from each other. Meanwhile a few more trucks with Ukrainian militiamen commanded by SS had arrived.

49. Einsatzgruppen • These militiamen had work tools with them and one of their trucks also carried chloride of lime. . . .

50. Einsatzgruppen • )“In the meantime, a number of transport planes . . . had landed at the airport. Out of these stepped several units of SS soldiers . . . .