Common Questions about the Holocaust

1. Common Questions about the Holocaust • How could Hitler make the Holocaust happen by himself? Hitler did not make the Holocaust happen himself. Many, many Germans and non-Germans were involved in the so-called Final Solution. Besides the SS, German government, Nazi party officials who helped to plan and carry out the deportation, concentration, and murder of European Jews, many other “ordinary” people – such as civil servants, doctors, lawyers, judges, soldiers, and railroad workers – played a role in the Holocaust.

2. Why did Hitler want a ‘pure’ Aryan race? • The view that the Nazis wanted a pure "blonde-haired, blue-eyed" race is largely a popular MYTH. The Nazis aimed to ensure that all members of the state were of "Germanic" stock. In practice that usually meant proving that one's ancestry for three generations past was free of any mixing with "non-Aryans", i.e. Jews, Asians, Africans. However, the emphasis was always on ancestry, which was tested through records. There was no test based on the individual's hair or eye color. • Obviously German propaganda depicted individuals with a handsome appearance and with North European features. But blondness was not an exclusive characteristic. Propaganda films, such as films showing members of the Hitler youth, or girls doing gymnastics, display the normal range of physical features found among German, e.g. many blondes, but also many persons of darker coloring.

3. Why were the Jews singled out for extermination? • The explanation of the Nazis' implacable hatred of the Jew rests on their distorted world view which saw history as a racial struggle. They considered the Jews a race whose goal was world domination and who, therefore, were an obstruction to Aryan dominance. They believed that all of history was a fight between races which should culminate in the triumph of the superior Aryan race. Therefore, they considered it their duty to eliminate the Jews, whom they regarded as a threat. Moreover, in their eyes, the Jews' racial origin made them habitual criminals who could never be rehabilitated and were, therefore, hopelessly corrupt and inferior. • There is no doubt that other factors contributed toward Nazi hatred of the Jews and their distorted image of the Jewish people. These included the centuries-old tradition of Christian antisemitism which propagated a negative stereotype of the Jew as a Christ-killer, agent of the devil, and practitioner of witchcraft.

4. How did they know who was Jewish? • Eventually Jews in Germany were locatable through census records. In other countries, Jews might be found via synagogue membership lists, municipal lists or more likely through mandatory registration and information from neighbors or local civilians and officials. • On Nov. 14, 1935, the Nazis issued the following definition of a Jew: Anyone with 3 Jewish grandparents; someone with 2 Jewish grandparents who belonged to the Jewish community on Sept. 15, 1935, or joined after; was married to a Jew on Sept. 15 or after; was the offspring or a marriage or extramarital liaison with a Jew on or after Sept. 15.

5. Why didn’t they all leave? • Frequently this question refers to German Jews before the start of 1939. Consider what is involved in leaving one's homeland as well as what sacrifices must be made. German Jews were in most cases patriotic citizens. Over 10,000 died fighting for Germany in World War I, and countless others were wounded and received medals for their valor and service. Jews, whether in the lower, middle, or upper classes, had lived in Germany for centuries and were well assimilated in the early twentieth century.It is important to consider how the oppressive measures targeting Jews in the pre-war period were passed and enforced gradually. These types of pre-war measures and laws had been experienced throughout the history of the Jewish people in earlier periods and in other countries as well. No one at the time could foresee or predict killing squads and killing centers. Once the difficult decision was made to try to leave the country, a prospective emigrant had to find a country willing to admit them and their family. This was very difficult, considering world immigration policies, as demonstrated by the results of the Evian Conference of 1938. If a haven could be found, consider other things that would be needed to get there.

6. Wasn’t one of Hitler’s relatives Jewish? • There is no historical evidence to suggest that Hitler was Jewish. Recent scholarship suggests that the rumors about Hitler’s ancestry were circulated by political opponents as a way of discrediting the leader of an antisemitic party. These rumors persist primarily because the identity of Hitler’s paternal grandfather is unknown; rumors that this grandfather was Jewish have never been proven.

7. Why wasn’t there more resistance? • The impression that Jews did not fight back against the Nazis is a myth. Jews carried out acts of resistance in every country of Europe that the Germans occupied, as well as in satellite states. They even resisted in ghettos, concentration camps and killing centers, under the most harrowing of circumstances. Why is it then that the myth endures? Period photographs and contemporary feature films may serve to perpetuate it because they often depict large numbers of Jews boarding trains under the watchful eyes of a few lightly armed guards. Not seen in these images, yet key to understanding Jewish response to Nazi terror, are the obstacles to resistance.

8. What happened if you disobeyed an order to participate? • Contrary to popular assumption, those who decided to stop or not participate in atrocities were usually given other responsibilities, such as guard duty or crowd control. Quiet non-compliance was widely tolerated, but public denunciation of Nazi anti-Jewish policy was not.

9. What is a death camp? How many were there? • A death (or mass murder) camp is a concentration camp with special apparatus specifically designed for SYSTEMATIC MURDER! Six (6) such campus existed: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka. All were located in Poland. While thousands of Jews were murdered by Nazis or died as a direct result of discriminatory measures instituted against Jews during the initial years of the Third Reich, the systematic murder of Jews did not begin until the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

10. What did people in Germany know about the persecution of Jews and other enemies of Nazism? • Certain initial aspects of Nazi persecution of Jews and other opponents were common knowledge in Germany. Thus, for example, everyone knew about the Boycott of April 1, 1933, the Laws of April, and the Nuremberg Laws, because they were fully publicized. Moreover, offenders were often publicly punished and shamed. The same holds true for subsequent anti-Jewish measures. Kristallnacht (The Night of the Broken Glass) was a public pogrom, carried out in full view of the entire population. • While information on the concentration camps was not publicized, a great deal of information was available to the German public, and the treatment of the inmates was generally known, although exact details were not easily obtained. As for the implementation of the "Final Solution" and the murder of other undesirable elements, the situation was different. The Nazis attempted to keep the murders a secret and, therefore, took precautionary measures to ensure that they would not be publicized. Their efforts, however, were only partially successful. Thus, for example, public protests by various clergymen led to the halt of their euthanasia program in August of 1941. These protests were obviously the result of the fact that many persons were aware that the Nazis were killing the mentally ill in special institutions. • As far as the Jews were concerned, it was common knowledge in Germany that they had disappeared after having been sent to the East. It was not exactly clear to large segments of the German population what had happened to them. On the other hand, there were thousands upon thousands of Germans who participated in and/or witnessed the implementation of the "Final Solution" either as members of the SS, the Einsatzgruppen, death camp or concentration camp guards, or police in occupied Europe.

11. The Other Side of WWII…

12. U.S. Holocaust Memorial MuseumIdentification Cards • These cards describe the experiences of people who lived in Europe during the Holocaust. • The museum has developed nearly 600 identification cards. Approximately half of them are about Holocaust survivors. These cards describe the experiences of those who hid or were rescued, as well as those who survived internment in ghettos and campus. The other half represent the experiences of people who died. • These cards were developed from interviews with survivors of the Holocaust and from other oral histories and written memoirs. Quietly, read your ID card to yourself….

13. Genocide Geno- cide Geno – from the Greek word genos, which means birth, race, of a similar kind Cide – from the French word cida, which means to cut, kill Definition: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.

14. The Holocaust was not the only genocide of this time period: Rape of Nanking, December 1937

15. From December 1937 to March 1938, the Japanese army terrorized the people of Nanjing, China. After the city’s surrender, the Japanese killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians and brutalized still more. The cruelty and destruction became known around the world as the “rape of Nanjing.”

16. The Rape of Nanking was a mass murder and war rape that occurred during the six-week period following the Japanese capture of the city of Nanjing (Nanking), the former capital of the Republic of China. Historians and witnesses have estimated that 250,000 to 300,000 people were killed.

17. During this period hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers were murdered by soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army. Widespread rape and looting also occurred.

18. “The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II”

20. Genocide Geno- cide Geno – from the Greek word genos, which means birth, race, of a similar kind Cide – from the French word cida, which means to cut, kill Definition: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.

21. U.S. Holocaust Memorial MuseumIdentification Cards • Pass your ID card back one student, those in the back of each row walk your ID card up to the first person in each row. • Quietly, read this new ID card to yourself.

22. For hundreds of years Christian Europe had regarded the Jews as the Christ-killers. At one time or another Jews had been driven out of almost every European country. The way they were treated in England in the thirteenth century is a typical example. In 1275 they were made to wear a yellow badge. In 1287 269 Jews were hanged in the Tower of London. Jews were a SCAPEGOAT This deep prejudice against Jews was still strong in the twentieth century, especially in Germany, Poland and Eastern Europe, where the Jewish population was very large. After the First World War hundreds of Jews were blamed for the defeat in the War. Prejudice against the Jews grew during the economic depression which followed. Many Germans were poor and unemployed and wanted someone to blame. They turned on the Jews, many of whom were rich and successful in business.

23. Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass) Nov. 9, 1938

25. Between 1939 and 1945 sixmillion Jews were murdered, along with hundreds of thousands of others, such as Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, disabled and the mentally ill.

26. Percentage of Jews killed in each country AUSTRIA 35% POLAND 91% USSR 36% NORWAY 45% BELGIUM 45% LUXEMBOURG 55% ESTONIA 44% ROMANIA 84% A Total of 6,000,000 Jews HUNGARY 74% YUGOSLAVIA 81% BOHEMIA 60% LATVIA 84% NETHERLANDS 71% LITHUANIA 85% GERMANY 36% FRANCE 22% GREECE 87%

27. A MAP OF THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS AND DEATH CAMPS USED BY THE NAZIS.

28. 16 of the 44 children taken from a French children’s home. They were sent to a concentration camp and later to Auschwitz. ONLY 1 SURVIVED! A group of children at a concentration camp in Poland.

29. Part of a stockpile of Zyklon-B poison gas pellets found at Majdanek death camp. Before poison gas was used , Jews were gassed in mobile gas vans. Carbon monoxide gas from the engine’s exhaust was fed into the sealed rear compartment. Victims were dead by the time they reached the burial site.

30. Smoke rises as the bodies are burnt.

31. Bales of hair shaven from women at Auschwitz, used to make felt-yarn. After liberation, an Allied soldier displays a stash of gold wedding rings taken from victims at Buchenwald.

32. In 1943, when the number of murdered Jews exceeded 1 million. Nazis ordered the bodies of those buried to be dug up and burned to destroy all traces. PHOTO: Soviet POWs at forced labor in camps 1943 exhuming bodies in the ravine at Babi Yar, where the Nazis had murdered over 33,000 Jews in September of 1941.

42. How Did It End??? • Germany surrenders and Allied forces win WWII. • Auschwitz in Poland was liberated on January 27, 1945 by the Soviet Red Army. • The British liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northwestern Germany on April 15, 1945. Consider: How do you feel those who committed these crimes against humanity should be punished?

43. Essential Questions: • How should we remember past genocides or crimes against humanity? • What social responsibility do we have to prevent future crimes against humanity?

44. U.S. Holocaust Memorial MuseumIdentification Cards • Pass your ID card back one student, those in the back of each row walk your ID card up to the first person in each row. • Quietly, read this new ID card to yourself. • Then pass all the ID cards forward!