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The Camps Survivors found in barracks in Mauthausen and Buchenwald. The Final Solution • • • While the United States was becoming embroiled in the war in the Pacific, back in Europe the true intent of the Nazi armies was becoming increasingly clear. As more and more of eastern Europe fell into German hands, the territory became a sort of backyard for the Nazis, where the ugliest parts of their plan could be carried out far away from prying eyes. By late 1941, the first Jews from Germany and western Europe were gathered and transported, along with many other minorities, to concentration camps in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, and western Russia, where they were first used as slaves and then systematically murdered. At this point, the notorious gas chambers of the later Nazi concentration camps were not yet common. Most victims were taken in groups to secluded areas where they were stripped of clothing, pushed into open pits, machine-gunned, and then quickly covered over, in many cases even before all were dead. Indeed, one of the reasons for creating the gas chambers and extermination camps was that many troops in the German S.S. experienced severe psychological repercussions carrying out the gruesome tasks put before them. The German atrocities were not directed solely at Jews. Precisely the same fate awaited millions of non-Jewish Russian and eastern European civilians, as well as many Soviet prisoners of war. By December 1941, the number of Nazi murders was already in the hundreds of thousands and growing rapidly. The Wannsee Conference • On January 20, 1942, a group of fifteen Nazi officials met in a villa in the Wannsee district outside Berlin in order to settle the details for resolving the so-called “Jewish question.” The meeting was led by Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Gestapo (the Nazi secret police), and included several members of the S.S. along with representatives of several German government ministries. Neither Hitler nor any heads of government ministries were present. • The topics discussed at the Wannsee Conference included the logistics of expelling Jews from Germany by emigration, the possibility of mandatory sterilization, and the best ways to deal with people of mixed blood. The conference devoted considerable attention to the matter of who would be legally considered a Jew; ultimately, it set different conditions for pure Jews and those of mixed blood, in turn classified by first generation and second generation. Delegates also discussed how to handle Jews who would not or could not leave the country; it was decided that these Jews would be sterilized and sent to live in all-Jewish “retirement ghettos.” • The official record of the Wannsee Conference made no mention of mass killing of Jews or of extermination camps. However, the meeting did set a secret goal to remove 11 million Jews from Europe by whatever means and expressed concern that the mass emigration process already taking place was becoming expensive and more difficult to negotiate. The terms “final solution” and “absolute final solution” were used, although the specifics were not elaborated. Concentration Camps (Konzentrationslager) Prior to and during World War II Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps (Konzentrationslager) throughout the territory it controlled. The Nazis adopted the term euphemistically (to make it sound “better”) from the British concentration camps of the Second Anglo-Boer War to conceal the deadly nature of the camps. None ever were actual concentration camps, whose purpose was to concentrate and detain large groups of people at specific locations. Their main purpose was to kill through attrition. The first Nazi camps were within Germany, and were primarily labor camps. During the war, prisoners in the concentration camps included millions of Jews, Poles, Soviet and other prisoners of war, homosexuals, gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others. Millions of concentration camp prisoners were killed through mistreatment, disease, starvation and overwork. The extermination camps were the facilities set up by Nazi Germany in World War II for the express purpose of killing the Jews of Europe. Members of some other groups whom the Nazis wished to exterminate, such as Roma (Gypsies), Serbs exterminated as a main target of Croatian Usta!e, Soviet prisoners of war, Poles and others, were also killed in these camps. Prisoners at these camps were not expected to live more than 24 hours beyond arrival. The method of killing at these camps was typically poison gas, usually in "gas chambers", although many prisoners were killed in mass shootings, starvation or sadism. Rudolf Höss, the Commandant of Auschwitz, wrote after the war that many of the Einsatzkommandos involved in the mass shootings went mad or committed suicide, "unable to endure wading through blood any longer". The bodies of those killed were destroyed in crematoria (except at Sobibór where they were cremated on outdoor pyres), and the ashes buried or scattered. The Death Camps • Nazi forces had begun the mass killing of Jews as early as 1939, when Germany first invaded Poland. These actions expanded greatly during the invasion of the USSR in 1941. By 1942, the so-called Endlösung, or “final solution,” took shape, as the murders become increasingly systematic and Hitler pressed his underlings to speed up the process. During the previous year, S.S. commanders had experimented with different methods, and gas chambers proved to be the method of choice. • Although prisoners died by the thousands from disease, overwork, or starvation in German labor camps throughout Europe, there were only seven designated extermination camps. Six were located in Poland, one in Belorussia. These camps existed purely for the purpose of killing, and most of the prisoners taken to them were dead within hours of arrival. A limited number of prisoners deemed fit enough to work were temporarily forced to labor in these camps, but they were underfed and overworked until they too were unfit for labor and subsequently killed. • More than 90 percent of the victims sent to these extermination camps were Jews, brought in from all over Germany and other German-controlled areas of eastern and western Europe. Romany (Gypsies) and homosexuals also lost their lives in the camps in significant numbers, as did some Soviet prisoners of war. The camps continued operation virtually unimpeded until the Allies finally liberated them near the end of the war. “Cattle cars” as transport Survivors of Mauthausen Sieg Maandag, a young Jewish Dutch survivor, walking on a street bordered by cadavers near Bergen-Belsen 20 April 1945 Newly arriving prisoners are registered upon arrival at Buchenwald concentration camp located near Weimar, Germany. The faces of the brothers Robi and Gyuri gaze out of the mirror. Paul Vadasz married before World War II, and had two sons. In 1944, when the boys were 5 and 3 years old, the family was sent to Auschwitz. Paul was the only member of the family to survive, and when he returned to Oradea, he found the mirror with the photograph among the few remaining items in his home. Emanuel and Avram Rosenthal killed at Majdanek. March 22, 1933 - Nazis open Dachau concentration camp near Munich Nov 24, 1941 Theresienstadt Ghetto is established near Prague, Czechoslovakia. The Nazis will use it as a model ghetto for propaganda purposes. Arrival of Jews into the Theresienstadt ghetto/concentration camp. Remnants of personal effects found at the site of the exterminations at Chelmno. In his book, Night, Elie Wiesel spoke about the enduring importance of his spoon. This violin used to belong to Mordechai Schlein (Motele), who was born in 1930 in Karsnovka, Poland, now Ukraine. Juliek “played his soul” on his violin in the book, Night, by Elie Wiesel. Only two Jewish families lived in Karsnovka at the time: the Schleins, who made a meager living grinding flour, and the Gersteins, who had become very wealthy from the sugar beet trade. At the age of eight, Motteleh moved into the Gersteins palatial home, and was enchanted by the music lessons given there. They gave him the violin which lay in the house unused, and Mrs. Gerstein’s brother, impressed by Motele’s musical talent, gave him his first lessons. The Germans entered Karsnovka in 1941, and murdered Motele’s entire family in their own home. Motele saw everything from his hiding place in the attic, and when night fell, he took his violin and fled to the forest. The young boy hid in the forests of Byelorussia until he encountered Misha, (Moshe Gildenman) who commanded a Jewish partisan unit. Misha took Motele under his wing, and provided permanent refuge for the boy in the partisans’ camp. It soon became apparent that Motele, by now an accomplished violinist, could be very helpful to the partisans. The 12-year-old Motele fought with them and carried out a variety of missions, including listening to the movements of German troops while playing his violin in town squares. Tragically, Motele was killed during a bombardment, but Misha zealously guarded the faithful violin. He bequeathed the instrument to his family, and his grandson, Sefi Hanegbi kept it for many years. He recently decided to place it in the permanent care of Yad Vashem, and at a unique ceremony in the presence of Keshet Eilon (the international master classes at Kibbutz Eilon), the violin was handed over to Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev. Copyright ©2003 Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority Dec 8, 1941 In occupied Poland, near Lodz, Chelmno extermination camp becomes operational. Jewish deportees from the Lodz ghetto arrive in Chelmno after having been transferred from a closed passenger train to a train of open cars at the Kolo station. Jews taken to this extermination camp are placed in mobile gas vans and driven to a burial place while carbon monoxide from the engine exhaust is fed into the sealed rear compartment, killing them. Killing people face to face as the Einsatzgruppen did left them demoralized and depressed, so mobile gas vans (using carbon monoxide) were utilized to kill more effectively and spare the German soldiers the pain of killing. Extermination camps also aided in mass killing in the “easiest” way possible. A group of Jewish men awaiting death in a gas van. They were told they were being transported to a new location. In January 1942 mass killings of Jews using Zyklon-B begin at AuschwitzBirkenau in Bunker I in Birkenau with the bodies being buried in mass graves in a nearby meadow. A stockpile of Zyklon-B poison gas pellets found at Majdanek death camp in 1944. Close-up of the containers and a soldier’s gas mask found at Majdanek. After liberation, an Allied soldier displays a stash of gold wedding rings taken from victims at Buchenwald. SS begins cashing in possessions and valuables of Jews from Auschwitz and Majdanek. German banknotes are sent to the Reichs Bank. Foreign currency, gold, jewels and other valuables are sent to SS Headquarters of the Economic Administration. Watches, clocks and pens are distributed to troops at the front. Clothing is distributed to German families. By Feb. 1943, over 800 boxcars of confiscated goods will have left Auschwitz. Sept 26, 1942 Oct 14, 1943 Massive escape from Sobibor as Jews and Soviet POWs break out, with 300 making it safely into nearby woods. Of those 300, fifty will survive. Exterminations then cease at Sobibor, after over 250,000 deaths. All traces of the death camp are then removed and trees are planted. A group portrait of the participants of the successful uprising in the Sobibor death camp. April 6, 1944 - Nazis raid a French home for Jewish children. Only one survived. Group portrait of staff members and some of the children from the children's home at Izieu. (Below) Marcel (on left) and Albert (in center) Bulka with Alec Bergman, on the terrace at the children's home, a place of refuge for children who had come to France to escape Nazi persecution - until the raid of April 6, 1944 by the Lyon Gestapo, headed by Klaus Barbie. Of the 51 persons arrested, 44 were children. The entire group was sent to Drancy and then deported to Auschwitz, on one of the last transports from France. June 12, 1944 Rosenberg orders Hay Action the kidnapping of 40,000 Polish children aged ten to fourteen for slave labor in the Reich. Polish boys imprisoned in Auschwitz look out from behind the barbed wire fence. Approximately 40,000 Polish children were kidnapped and imprisoned in the camp before being transferred to Germany during "Heuaktion" (Hay Action), ordered by Alfred Rosenberg, Reich Minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories. The children were used as slave laborers in Germany. July 24, 1944 Soviet troops liberate first concentration camp at Majdanek where over 360,000 had been murdered. A group of Soviet soldiers surveys a German warehouse containing thousands of shoes taken from prisoners before their deaths. In 1945 As the Allies advance, the Nazis conduct death marches of concentration camp inmates away from outlying areas. Prisoners being evacuated from Dachau concentration camp walk along a street in Gruenwald on a forced march to an unknown destination. April 1945. Another view of the march. Prisoners received little aid from people in towns they passed through, and in some cases were harassed and assaulted. Auschwitz Extermination Camp Liberated January 27, 1945 Prisoners of Auschwitz greet their Soviet liberators. Jan 27, 1945 - Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz. By this time, an estimated 2,000,000 persons, including 1,500,000 Jews, have been murdered there. The entrance to the main camp of Auschwitz (Auschwitz I). The gate bears the cynical Nazi motto "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work makes one free). Jewish children, kept alive in Auschwitz II (Birkenau) extermination camp. Among those pictured are: Tomasz Szwarz; Alicja Gruenbaum; Salomea Rozalin; Gita Sztrauss; Wiera Sadler; Marta Wiess; Word Eksztein; Josef Rozenwaser; Rafael Szlezinger; Gabriel Nejman; Gugiel Appelbaum. Pesa Balter (second from the left), arrived in Auschwitz in August 1944 at the age of 11. Six-year old Anna Klein and three-year old brother Jon. Both perished in Auschwitz. American soldiers escort children survivors of Buchenwald out of the main gate of the camp. Among the children pictured is future Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel (fourth child in the left column). Young survivors behind a barbed wire fence in Buchenwald. Crematoria ovens in Buchenwald concentration camp. Crematoria in Bergen-Belsen An exhibit of human remains and artifacts retrieved by the U.S. Army from a pathology laboratory run by the SS in Buchenwald. These items were used as evidence of SS atrocities. The items include tattooed skin taken from executed prisoners, a lampshade made of human skin, and two shrunken heads from Polish prisoners who were recaptured after escaping from the camp and executed. April 15, 1945 Approximately 40,000 prisoners freed at Bergen-Belsen by the British, who report "both inside and outside the huts was a carpet of dead bodies, human excreta, rags and filth." A mass grave in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. April 29, 1945 U.S. 7th Army liberates Dachau. Survivors in Dachau on the day of liberation. Survivors in Dachau on the day of liberation. Assignment • React to these photos of the camps. • Why do you think the Nazis would take pictures of their crimes? Why would they chronicle it? • What is the difference between a concentration camp and an extermination camp? • What do you think it would have been like to liberate (free) one of the camps? • How many Jews were killed in this manner? How many others?