The Holocaust

1. The Holocaust

2. The Jewish ‘problem’ Jews had been regarded as social outcasts throughout Christian Europe for hundreds of years, and had been driven out of nearly every European country at one time or another. In the 20th century this deep prejudice was still strong, especially in Germany, Poland and the Ukraine where there were large Jewish populations.

3. In Germany, Jews were sometimes blamed for losing World War I. Hatred towards them increased during the economic depression of the 1920s. This was mainly due to the fact that while many Germans were poor and unemployed, many hardworking Jews were still able to make a successful business. This hatred began to be channelled and accentuated as the Nazis increased in popularity. Der Stürmer, a Nazi newspaper, concentrated on stirring up hatred towards the Jews.

4. Hitler’s hatred of Jews Hitler hated Jews and constantly used them as a scapegoat. His aim was to rid the world of Judaism. “The Jews inhabited Hitler’s mind. He believed that they were the source of all evil, misfortune and tragedy. They were devils whom he had been given a divine mission to destroy…” Lucy Dawidowicz, 1975.

5. As soon as the Nazis gained power, concentration camps were set up and Jews murdered. Many Jews began to flee Germany, but their emigration was hindered as many countries did not want to take them in. In 1938, a group of nations met to discuss the Jewish emigration problem at Evian, but failed to agree on even a partial ‘open-door’ policy. As the Australian delegate said: “…as we have no racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one.” Do you think that more Jews could have been saved? Explain.

6. Life for the Jews “…I suddenly became very aware of my Jewish identity. Up until this point my religion had never seemed an important part of who I was.” Edith Velmun, who was in Holland during the Nazi occupation. “With all the Nazi propaganda about Jewish physiology, I had begun to wonder if my face could give me away…” a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust.

7. “…It wasn’t very nice, to look over at the tennis courts and to know that you can’t go in. You see your friends on their way to play tennis or hockey … and you can’t do any of those things any more.” Edith Velmun. Edith Velmun was taken in by a rich Dutch family as a servant, and so survived the Nazi occupation. Hundreds of thousands of other Jews did not survive. Compare and contrast these sources with those on the next slide.

8. Ghettos As the German expansion began, it became impossible to deal with all the Jews at once. Adolf Eichmann was put in charge of ‘Jewish resettlement’. This involved rounding up Jews from occupied countries and taking them to a ‘Jewish reservation’ near Lublin, Poland. This too soon proved unworkable, and Jews were moved to ghettos in a range of cities, the largest being Warsaw. Walls were built to separate the ghetto from the rest of the city. Jews lived in cramped conditions – seven or eight people to a room, each given only 300 calories of food per day.

9. “On the streets children are crying in vain, children who are dying of hunger. They howl, beg, sing, moan, shiver with cold, without underwear, without clothing, without shoes … emaciated skeletons … Already completely grown up at the age of five … I no longer look at the people; when I hear groaning and sobbing I cross the road.” a visitor to Warsaw, 1940.

10. The Final Solution Hitler: “Till a few years ago, I thought of making a clean sweep of all European Jews and lumping them on Madagascar or some other island. But today, I’m sure it’s far better to exterminate them, right on the spot, wherever you find them.” In January 1942, a secret conference was held at Wannsee to discuss the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Problem’. According to Rudolph Hess during his war crime trial in 1946, “The ‘Final Solution’ of the Jewish question meant the complete extermination of all Jews in Europe…”

11. The Final Solution involved an increase in the number of extermination camps, and Jews were herded out of their ghettos and into these camps. “Hitler and his lieutenants cloaked their most criminal activities in euphemistic language, [and] tried … to keep their murderous plans secret … Hitler was reluctant to commit himself to paper…” M Marrus, 1988, on the Final Solution. Why do you think Hitler’s plans for the Jews changed? Why did he not want these plans written down?

12. Jews identified at the Wannsee Conference, 1942 Look at the map of Europe. Which country had the most Jews? Suggest reasons. (Think about ghettos and resettlement). Why do you think Estonia was quoted as being ‘free of Jews’? Why, considering the size of Germany, were there relatively low numbers of Jews? Estonia ‘Free of Jews’ Norway 1,300 The Netherlands 160,000 Denmark 5,600 Latvia 3,500 Belgium 43,000 Lithuania 34,000 Germany 131,800 Poland 3,550,484 Ukraine 2,994,684 Czechoslovakia 162,200 France, occupied = 165,000 unoccupied =700,000 Austria 43,700 Hungary 742,800 Romania 342,000 Yugoslavia 50,000 Bulgaria 48,000 Italy 58,000 Albania 200 Greece 69,600

13. Did the Jews know what was to happen to them? “None of the captives … realized what was in store for them. In fact some of them were given pretty picture postcards … to be signed and sent back home to their relatives…” “The gas chambers themselves … viewed from a short distance, were not sinister looking places at all … Over them were well kept lawns with flower borders; the signs at the entrances merely said BATHS. The unsuspecting Jews thought they were simply being taken to the baths for the de-lousing … And taken to the accompaniment of sweet music!”… William Shirer

14. “…An orchestra of young and pretty girls all dressed in white blouses and navy-blue skirts … had been formed from among the inmates…” “…men, women and children were led into the ‘bath houses’ where they were told to undress preparatory to taking a ‘shower’. Once they were inside … they realized something was amiss…the massive door was slid shut, locked and hermetically sealed.” William Shirer

15. Who was killed first? “The railway carriages were unloaded…After leaving their luggage the Jews had to pass individually in front of an SS doctor, who decided if they were fit enough to work. Those fit enough were taken off into the camp … The remainder were taken to the crematoria, the men being separated from the women…” Rudolph Hess, 1946, commandant of Auschwitz.

16. The old were among the first to be gassed by the Nazis because they had no usefulness as workers in the camps. Many elderly survivors today have emphasized they have no model for growing old because their parents were murdered by the Nazis. Sucking children were taken from their mothers and killed: “…the children were taken from their mothers as soon as they got off the train. The children were taken to an enormous ditch, they were shot and thrown in the fire. No one bothered to see if they were really dead…” a Jew from the Treblinka camp, 1947.

17. Were all Jews gassed immediately? “…death camps … were built at the end of 1941 … Four thousand inmates including Jewish women were forced to build Auschwitz, which was made up of forty camps including Burkina. One third died during the building. The death camps were surrounded by many smaller camps … Some were labour camps … and some were smaller killing centres.” C Supple, 1993. As the war dragged on, all fit Germans were called on to fight. It became even more essential that Jews should be made to work before being killed. They were used as slave labour, building roads and buildings, as well as working in the fields to provide food for the army. Life expectancy was three months. Prisoners died from disease, exhaustion or lack of food. When they became too weak to work, they were killed.

18. Concentration camp locations E. Prussia Netherlands Stutthof Treblinka Chelmno Germany Auschwitz Buchenwald Belgium Poland Czechoslovakia Mauthausen Reich Boundary Dachau Concentration Camp France Extermination Camp Austria In concentration camps, people were forced to work. The extermination camps were set up simply as mass killing facilities for Jews.

19. Plan of Birkenau death camp Pits for burning bodies Why could the Jews not escape? Why was the men’s camp larger than the women’s camp? Women were more likely to be gassed on arrival than the men who would have to work. What happened to the Jews’ possessions? Gas chambers New camp being built Canada SS barracks Men’s camp Railway Women’s camp Electric fence Canada were huts where Jewish possessions were taken, sorted and dispatched to Germany

20. How did the Germans cope with killing the Jews? Extract from an interview with Fraz Stangl, commandant of Treblinka, 1971: Q. “Did you think the Jews were human beings?” A. “Cargo. They were cargo.” Q. “When did you begin to think of them as cargo?” A. “I think it started the day I saw the death camp … I remember Wirth standing there, next to the pits full of blue-black corpses. It had nothing to do with humanity – it couldn’t have … Wirth said, ‘What shall we do with this garbage?’ I think that started me thinking of them as cargo.”

21. “Himmler had never seen dead people before and he stood right on the edge of this mass grave … he had the bad luck to get a splash of brains on his coat, and he went very green and pale; he wasn’t actually sick…” an SS general on Himmler’s visit in 1941. What does this source and the previous one suggest about how people felt about the killing?

22. Lambs to the slaughter Read the sources below and on the next slide and then write about what they tell you about the Jewish character. “The people who had got off the lorries … had to undress on the orders of an SS man who was carrying a dog whip … Without weeping or crying these people undressed and stood together in family groups … [a] father held a 10-year-old boy by the hand … The boy was struggling to hold back tears. The father pointed a finger to the sky and stroked his head … The people, completely naked, climbed down steps … and stopped at the spot indicated by the SS man. They lay down. Then I heard a series of rifle shots. I looked in the ditch and saw bodies contorting.” By a German builder who witnessed the death squad at work.

23. “The mother hid in one corner of the room, the three children in another. The Germans entered the room and discovered the children. One of the children … began to scream, ‘Mama! Mama!’ … another of them … shouted to his brother in Yiddish … ’Don’t say Mama, they’ll take her too’. The boy stopped screaming … The mother was saved.” M Gilbert, 1986.

24. What role did ordinary Germans play in the Holocaust? “Our great mistake lay in our failure to see right at the beginning when the Party decided to persecute the Jews, that once persecution became part of its gospel, no one could say where it would stop. We were not quick enough to organize against the movement while it was still possible … And while we were so slow, and I will add so tired after the last war and all the bad years that … followed, the Nazis gained such control over our lives that we woke up to find ourselves in chains.” E A Buller, 1945. What viewpoint does Buller give about why the Germans let the Holocaust happen? Do you think it was the only reason that no one stopped the Holocaust? Explain your answer.

25. How guilty were the ordinary Germans? There is no evidence to show that most Germans supported the Final Solution. Some claimed to have been brainwashed by Nazi propaganda and others were ‘just obeying orders’. Others were sadists and psychopaths. Some SS officers even saw themselves as a ‘privileged elite championing a noble mission on behalf of their race’.

26. Certainly, during the 1930s public opinion was against the vicious attacks on Jews, and most Germans tried to break the Jewish shop boycotts that the Nazis tried to enforce. Even in 1941, there was hostility to the decree that Jews had to wear the yellow Star of David, but few worried over the disappearance of their Jewish neighbours. Many have maintained ignorance, and this is not surprising. Extermination decisions were made in strict secrecy. Extermination camps were built outside Germany by non-Germans. Films fooled the Red Cross that the Jews were being happily resettled. German refugees did not make accusations of genocide before 1944.

27. Approximate Jewish death toll 1939–45 Furthest advance of German Army Norway 868 North Sea Estonia 1,000 Latvia Netherlands 106,000 Lithuania Belgium 24,000 4,565,000 Poland Germany 125,000 Western USSR Czechoslovakia 277,000 Luxembourg 700 Hungary 300,000 Austria 70,000 Romania 264,000 France 83,000 Black Sea Yugoslavia 60,000 Italy 7,500 This map uses minimum figures How many Jews were killed by the Germans?

28. Jewish resistance Not all Jews accepted their fate. Many managed to escape and fled to the forests to form resistance groups. They were often helped by local people, and in some cases, even members of the German army. But it was hard to know whom to trust as betrayal meant mass slaughter. The escapees blew up railway lines and attacked German soldiers. They played an active role in the French Resistance, an underground group who worked to disrupt German communications in France.

29. When the German troops entered the Warsaw Ghetto in April 1943 to destroy it, they were beaten back. Look at the table below: What were the odds that the Jews could defend themselves? Why do you think they were able to?

30. Kindertransport Before the World War II began, ‘Bill’ Barazetti and Nicholas Winton (a Briton) organized the removal of eight trainloads full of Jewish children from Prague to London. Barazetti started off helping channel the flood of refugees from post-Anschluss Austria towards Britain and Scandinavia. Winton realized the need for evacuation in Czechoslovakia in 1938. Barazetti was recommended as a business partner. Winton returned to England to arrange the visas and homes for the evacuee children. Barazetti organized the trains and interviewed the families.

31. The whole scheme was almost stopped when Barazetti got caught by the Gestapo. Luckily his uncle, a colonel in the Swiss Army, intervened. Barazetti was able to slip into the British Embassy in Warsaw and get a new passport. Barazetti returned to Prague, which had been occupied by the Germans in March 1939. He managed to get eight trains safely across to Holland. A ninth left, just as war broke out. It never reached Holland, and was never heard from again.

32. What should the Holocaust be called? The word Holocaust means ‘sacrifice’. Certainly, thousands of Jews lost their lives during the war when they were put to death in the concentration camp gas chambers. However, the Jews had no choice over their deaths. So was it really a sacrifice? A sacrifice is something you choose to make. Perhaps a better description would be genocide. This is the deliberate extermination of a race or group. How would you describe the events of this time? Do you think that the term Holocaust is the right one to use? Explain your answer.