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DAVID CESARANI THE HOLOCAUST A GUIDE FOR STUDENTS AND TEACHERS David Cesarani was Research Professor in History, Royal Holloway University of London, and Britain’s leading historian of the Holocaust prior to his untimely death in 2015. Design by David O’Connor Designs. © Holocaust Educational Trust 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Cover Photograph: Part of the “Wall of Names” at the Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris. The wall bears the first and last names of 76,000 Jews deported from France to death camps in Poland, including 11,000 children. Arranged alphabetically according to the year of deportation, each victim’s name is accompanied by their date of birth. Image Credits Cover photograph by Jono David © Jono David, 2006. Page 3: Photograph taken from Wikimedia Commons, originally posted to Flickr by Inabel & Nir at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ inbal_nir/3650699/. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License. Page 5: Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library. Page 8: “A woman burns money in her stove”, (Signatur 6/FOTB000751) Bildarchiv im AdsD. Page 32: The Wiener Library. Page 33: The Yad Vashem Photo Archive. Page 34: The Yad Vashem Photo Archive. Page 36: Both images, The Yad Vashem Photo Archive. Page 37: Manuscript Collection # 361 The World Jewish Congress, The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives. Page 38: The Wiener Library. Page 9: Professor Randall Bytwerk, German Propaganda Archive, Calvin College. Page 39: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Page 11: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Page 41: The Yad Vashem Photo Archive. Page 40: The Yad Vashem Photo Archive. Page 12: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Page 42: L’Osservatore Romano – Photographic service. Page 13: Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, 2009. Page 43: The Imperial War Museum. Page 15: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Page 17: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Page 18: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Page 19: The Yad Vashem Photo Archive. Page 20: The Imperial War Museum. Page 21: Political Archives of the Federal Foreign Office, Germany. Page 22: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Page 25: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Page 26: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Page 27: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Page 28: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Page 30: The Yad Vashem Photo Archive. Page 44: Suzanne Bardgett, The Imperial War Museum. All maps are used with kind permission and are taken from Martin Gilbert, The Routledge Atlas of The Holocaust 4th Edition 2009, ISBN 9780415484817 HB & 9780415484862 PB. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK. We are grateful to The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for many of the photographs that appear in this book. The views or opinions expressed in this book, and the context in which the images are used, do not necessarily reflect the views or policy of, nor imply approval or endorsement by, The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. THE HOLOCAUST A GUIDE FOR STUDENTS AND TEACHERS DAVID CESARANI THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers CONTENTS 1 The Jews 3 2 Germany, Hitler, and the Rise of the Nazis 8 3 The Third Reich and the Jews, 1933-1939 11 4 War, Ghettos and Genocide 1939-1941 16 5 The Final Solution 1941-45 21 6 Jewish Responses to Persecution 27 7 Responses to the Persecution and Mass Murder of the Jews 32 8Liberation 39 9Retribution 40 10 The Echoes of Genocide 42 THE HOLOCAUST THE HOLOCAUST A guide A guide for students for students & teachers & teachers The Jews T he origins of the Jewish people lie in the Middle East, but the emergence of this ancient people is shrouded in myth. Even the phrase “the Jews” is rather misleading because it refers to a religion that nomadic tribes adopted in the process of becoming a nation – one distinguished by the belief in a single god (monotheism), and a particular code of laws. The Israelite tribes migrated to an area they called the Land of Israel where they settled and established a state under the rule of the legendary kings Saul, David, and Solomon, who built the first Temple. After the death of Solomon the Israelite state split into two kingdoms, the longest lasting of which was called Judah. Over time the religion of Judah evolved and changed. It crystallized after invaders destroyed the first temple and exiled the Judean elite to Babylon. When the exiles were allowed to return they rebuilt the temple and began to practice a religion that is recognisably the forerunner of modern Judaism. This saga is told in the five books of Moses, prophetic writings, psalms, sayings, and historical chronicles that comprise the Hebrew Bible, known also as the Old Testament. Judea, as their homeland was known, developed under various local and foreign rulers for six hundred years. The Jews lost their independence totally when a revolt against Roman rule in 70 CE failed and the temple was destroyed. Many fled into exile. The Jewish population of Judea was further dispersed after an unsuccessful bid to regain independence was crushed sixty years later. 1 The Jewish people were scattered around the Mediterranean world, mostly in trading communities that had been established many years earlier. This was the origin of the Jewish population of Europe. Jews moved northwards through the Roman empire and settled in areas that are today France and Western Germany. These Jews, who became known as Ashkenazim, developed different customs to the Jews who settled in North Africa and the Near East, known as Sephardim. Origins of Conflict For a thousand years the life of the Ashkenazi Jews in Europe was shaped by the dominant Christian religion. To understand the troubled relationship A contemporary photograph of Judea – the ancient homeland of the Jews and one of the first sites of human settlement in history. between Jews and Christians it is necessary to go back to Judea and the origins of Christianity. The early Christians, followers of Jesus of Nazareth, were Jews who saw themselves as a Jewish sect; but to establish a separate identity they exaggerated the differences between their beliefs and traditional Judaism as prescribed by the priestly caste associated with the Temple. They were 3 THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers © Martin Gilbert Two Thousand Years of Jewish Life in Europe NORWAY 88 years ESTONIA 600 years LATVIA 400 years HOLLAND 800 years WHITE RUSSIA 550 years LITHUANIA 600 years DENMARK 317 years POLAND 850 years GERMANY 1,618 years UKRAINE 822 years BELGIUM 700 years CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1,000 years LUXEMBOURG 653 years FRANCE 1,936 years AUSTRIA 1,030 years ITALY 2,100 years HUNGARY 1,900 years RUMANIA 1,800 years CRIMEA 1,900 years YUGOSLAVIA 1,000 years GREECE 2,239 years This map show the age of Jewish communities in Europe as of 1939. Many of these pre-dated the nation-states in which the Jews lived. For discussion How can an understanding of the origins of Christianity help to explain hostility towards Jews in Europe? 4 also keen to distinguish themselves from the rebellious Jews who caused so much trouble to the Romans. The early Christian writings that comprise the New Testament were a form of propaganda against Judaism, largely directed to winning converts from amongst the Jews and pagans. The New Testament depicts Judaism as a rigid, unforgiving creed. The Jews are held responsible for conspiring with the Romans to achieve the death of Jesus. The story that Judas betrayed Jesus for money began the stereotypical association of Jews with greed and material gain. In the gospel of Saint John the Jews are even depicted as the children of the devil. Christianity was thereby responsible for the depiction of Jews as ruthless, cruel, conspiratorial, money-obsessed, and Satanic. Because Christianity was one of the foundations of European culture, a negative depiction of the Jews was built into that culture and survived even when religious belief began to decline. Christianity helped to transmit THE HOLOCAUST and disseminate hateful stereotypes of “the Jew” across the centuries. This is the basis of what became known in modern times as antisemitism. Once Christianity was recognised as the religion of the Roman Empire it was passed on to successor states as the sole, official religion: Europe became Christendom. Religious Persecution The Jews in Europe For centuries the Jews survived in Europe as a persecuted and despised minority. But just as the nobility, the Church, the cities, and the guilds were allowed to govern themselves, so were the Jews. They were regarded as aliens, a foreign population, but they were permitted to live according to their own laws in their own communities. There were frequent explosions of antiJewish violence, notably during the Crusades. Much violence was triggered by horrible folk myths about the Jews, some spread by the Church. The most tenacious was the malicious legend that Jews killed Christians and used their blood for ritual purposes. The first so-called blood-libel actually took place in England. For discussion Why were Jews in Europe persecuted? © Lebrecht Music & Arts Photo Library The Church encouraged secular powers, kings and princes, to pass laws that penalised the Jews for their refusal to accept Jesus as the messiah. They were held collectively responsible for the death of Christ and punished. Discriminatory laws and degrading treatment were also ways to symbolise the supremacy and truth of Christianity. A guide for students & teachers Yet the Jews were not exterminated like other heretics. Instead, the Church maintained that they should be preserved to witness the second coming of Christ, when they would admit their error and convert. This would signify the ultimate triumph of Christianity. In the meanwhile, they had to suffer. Jews were forbidden to own land at a time when most people farmed for a living. They were also barred from many forms of manufacture in the cities because craftsmen had to belong to Christian guilds. Jews were consequently confined to money lending, which was forbidden to Christians, and trade. This economic discrimination cemented the linkage of Jews with money and dealing, as against more obviously “productive” occupations such as farming and manufacturing. A 15th Century depiction of European Jews celebrating Passover. Rituals such as these are part of the rich religious and cultural history of the Jews, and continue to be practised today. Beginning with England (in 1290) Jews were expelled from one country after another. This was the start of 5 THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers in a positive light because they were close to the first Christians. After centuries of warfare between Catholics and Protestants, philosophers and political leaders began to argue that religious uniformity was less important than peace and prosperity. The new idea that states should promote trade and industry led to a more rational way of seeing Jews: they were regarded as useful and their presence was tolerated. This was why the Protestant revolutionary, Oliver Cromwell, readmitted the Jews to England in the mid-1650s. Enlightenment & Emancipation Drawing of Kazimierz the Great, the 14th Century King of Poland. Kazimierz was a Christian who defended the rights of Jews and offered those persecuted in Europe a safe haven in Poland. For discussion What developments allowed for a more tolerant attitude towards Jews to emerge? a great migration eastwards to the land of Poland-Lithuania where Jews were welcomed for the contribution they could make to developing the economy. Jewish life flourished there for several centuries. Jews also enjoyed tolerance in Spain and prospered while it was under Muslim rule. In 1496, following the Christian reconquest of the Iberian peninsular, the Jews along with the Muslims were driven out or forcibly converted. Wherever Jews remained they were forced to live in enclosed areas known as ghettos. The first ghetto was established in Venice in 1516. Many states passed special “Jewry laws” that regulated how many Jews could live in a ghetto, how many could marry, and what occupations they could perform. In some places they had to wear distinctive clothing or badges. The Protestant Reformation began the process which led to religious toleration in Europe. The more radical Protestant thinkers were interested in the Hebrew Bible and saw the Jews 6 During the 18th century scientific investigation and rationalism began to challenge views of the world based on superstition or blind faith. Prejudice and discrimination on the grounds of religion were increasingly seen as medieval, even barbaric. The Jews were no more loved, and Judaism was certainly not valued, but “enlightened” men and women did question the way Jews were treated. Their squalid and overcrowded ghettos, their poverty, their despised occupations and their imposed foreignness were seen less as a just punishment than as a consequence of Christian intolerance. Beginning in the 1780s, enlightened rulers began scrapping laws that singled out the Jews, although they expected them to become useful subjects in return. Jews responded to the changing mood with their own “Enlightenment”. Some Jewish thinkers argued that they should make a greater effort to integrate, even at the expense of modifying Judaism, and acquire professions that showed they could be useful and productive members of the community. The French Revolution made the Jews equal citizens of a European state for the first time. The Rights of Man THE HOLOCAUST proclaimed that men should be treated equally no matter what religion they followed. Between 1790 and 1870 in one country after another the Jews of Western Europe were freed from life in ghettos and restrictive, discriminatory laws. It was not a smooth process and there were many setbacks. In some places the struggle for equality, also called “emancipation”, took decades. Many Jews felt that the offer of equal treatment was conditional on merging as far as possible into the majority population, even to the extent of giving up their Jewish identity. In Eastern Europe very little changed until the 1860s. Jews in the Tsarist Empire did not get full equality until the Russian Revolution in 1917. Wherever Jews were given freedom they flourished. Jews appeared to be amongst the beneficiaries of the modern era: they embraced education and the sciences; they became prominent in the “free professions” (law, medicine, journalism) and A painting of Ashkenazi Jews praying on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. For centuries Jews lived in Central and Eastern Europe, making significant social and cultural contributions. A guide for students & teachers business and they led innovation in the arts. The Emergence of Antisemitism With success came resentment. The Roman Catholic Church regarded the Jews as freethinkers and blamed them for the decline of traditional beliefs. Small shopkeepers believed that Jewish-owned department stores were putting them out of business. During the economic depression of the 1870s, many people suspected (wrongly) that Jewish bankers were responsible for their woes. Conservatively minded people saw Jews at the forefront of modern trends in the arts and sciences and blamed them for undermining oldfashioned values. By the 1880s there were anti-Jewish movements in every European country. These movements drew on oldestablished expressions of hatred rooted in Christianity. But they also made use of new ideas that were potentially more dangerous. The new Jew-haters claimed that they were not acting on the basis of superstition or old-fashioned religious beliefs. Instead, they argued that Jews were different and inferior on the grounds of race: they called this idea antisemitism. For discussion What were the catalysts of antisemitism in 19th Century Europe? According to these pseudo-scientific theories, Jews were unlike other people because of their nature or their blood or their genetic make-up. The key here was that Jews could not change: they could talk like Frenchmen or worship German culture but inside they would always be “alien”. Moreover, if humanity was divided into different races, these races were not all equal. Some racist thinkers adapted Charles Darwin’s ideas about the survival of species to suggest that there was a struggle between races. In Germany various agitators began to talk of a life-or-death battle between the Jews and the “Aryans”. 7 THE HOLOCAUST 2 A guide for students & teachers Germany, Hitler, and the Rise of the Nazis I n 1919 Germany was in crisis. The country had lost a gruelling war (1914-18) and suffered humiliation at the Versailles Peace Conference. The economy was in ruins and a Communist-inspired revolution seemed imminent. In the province of Bavaria a small group of angry nationalists formed the German Workers’ Party dedicated to reversing Germany’s fortunes and preventing a left-wing takeover. © Bildarchiv im AdsD During the height of the economic crisis in 1923, inflation in Germany spiralled out of control. Money was so devalued it became worthless, with some people even burning their banknotes for warmth. The party attracted the attention of the German Army which was trying to curb the revolutionary movement. It sent one of its agents to join and monitor their activity. He was Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler was born in Austria in 1889, the son of a customs official. During his youth he attempted to become a painter, but failed to get into an art 8 school and ended up drifting around Vienna working as a commercial artist. Vienna was a hotbed of German nationalism and antisemitic politics. Hitler picked up many ideas there, but showed no political inclinations. In 1914 he volunteered for the German Army and fought bravely in the trenches. Germany’s defeat came as a terrible shock to him. He swallowed the Army’s propaganda that revolutionaries, some of whom happened to be Jews, had “stabbed Germany in the back”. From 1918 he began to develop twin obsessions: that he had a mission to save Germany from the Jews and from the menace of Communism. In 1920 he left the Army to work full time for the German Workers’ Party. A talented speaker who drew large crowds, he soon became its leader and renamed it the National Socialist German Workers’ Party - the NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei) or Nazis, for short. At first the NSDAP was only one of many right-wing, nationalist and antisemitic parties in Bavaria. There was nothing special about Hitler either. But in 1923 he joined with other rightwingers to stage a coup in Munich, the provincial capital. The coup failed and he was sentenced to a short prison term. His trial made him famous and while he was locked up he wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle) in which he set out his world view. Ideology, Antisemitism & Racism Hitler saw everything in racial and biological terms. Humanity was divided THE HOLOCAUST into distinct “races”, each biologically different and ranged in a hierarchy. He believed that the “Aryans” were the superior “race” responsible for all civilisation. The Germans and other “Nordic” peoples were “Aryans”. The Jewish race was purely destructive. Hitler believed in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious forgery by the Tsarist secret police that claimed to expose an international Jewish conspiracy against Christianity and the established order. But he went still further. To him the Jews were a demonic force, not even human, conspiring to undermine civilisation and destroy the “Aryans”. If they succeeded life on earth would be wiped out! A guide for students & teachers For discussion How new and revolutionary was Nazi ideology? A Nazi propaganda poster showing a sword killing a snake which has a red Star of David on its head. Some of the words around the snake’s body are: Versailles, unemployment, war guilt lie, Marxism, Bolshevism and inflation. Hitler wanted to restore Germany’s greatness. To do this he thought it was essential to strengthen the German people (the Volk) by eliminating all biologically weak and “racially” foreign elements, especially the Jews. He believed it was then necessary for Germany to conquer land in “the East”, for living space (lebensraum). The destruction of the Soviet Union would also end the threat of Communism, which he regarded as a Jewish invention. First he had to win power. Hitler did not hide his contempt for democracy but said he would use the parliamentary system to destroy it. He saw propaganda as the way to mobilise the masses, using simple, nationalistic slogans and hate-figures to build support for the Nazis until they could take power and end elections forever. He believed in the leadership principle: one man, once he was given power, had the right to command everyone else. Only a core of Nazi supporters shared this brutal vision. In the late 1920s the Nazi Party attracted people because it was youthful and appeared idealistic. 9 THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers It was not tarred with the brush of failed policies. Hitler preached a vision of communal solidarity and national rebirth that many found attractive, even if he was vague on policy details. But the NSDAP was just one of several extreme nationalist, anti-socialist and antisemitic parties. During the years of prosperity and political stability from 1924 to 1929 the Nazis seemed politically irrelevant. During the years of prosperity and political stability... the Nazis seemed politically irrelevant. The Great Depression For discussion What conclusions can be drawn from the graph below? Percentage of the votes 40 That changed in 1929 with the onset of the global financial crisis. The Great Depression in Germany caused mass unemployment, widespread discontent, and fear of a Communist revolution. In the parliamentary elections of 1928 the Nazis had obtained just 810,000 votes. In 1930 their vote jumped to over 6 million and in 1932 it reached 14 million. This made the NSDAP the largest party in the German parliament. Hitler was seen as a dynamic, new, young leader who had proven his love for Germany in the war. His party was well-organised and efficient at mobilising voters. By 1932 the NSDAP had 800,000 members with 2 million more in the party militia, the SA (Sturmabteilung) or Stormtroopers (called Brownshirts). This was a formidable electoral machine. The party was also good at taking care of its supporters. The Nazis promised something for everybody and conveniently blamed the Jews for all the country’s ills. By contrast the other parties seemed out of touch, just talking to one class or interest group in society. A succession of left-wing and rightwing governments tried to deal with the economic crisis and failed. None of the conservative parties had mass support and they became increasingly afraid of a Communist victory. Eventually, in January 1933 a group of conservative politicians offered Hitler the Chancellorship at the head of a coalition government. This offer came just in time because the Nazi vote was dipping and the party was exhausted. Hitler seized his chance. NSDAP: ational Socialist German N Workers’ Party (Nazi) SPD: Social Democratic Party KPD: German Communist Party 30 20 ZENTRUM: Centre Party 10 0 May 1924 Dec 1924 May 1928 Sept 1930 July 1932 DNVP: erman National People’s G Party DVP: German People’s Party Nov 1932 NSDAP SPDthe share KPD ZENTRUM DNVP Graph showing of the popular vote among the main DVP political parties in Weimar Germany, during the elections of 1924 to 1932 10 THE THE HOLOCAUST HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers The Third Reich and the Jews, 1933-1939 T he Nazis came to power legally at the head of a right-wing coalition. Hitler’s initial priorities were to consolidate his grip on power by crushing political opposition and to revive the economy. Nazi propaganda depicted an arson attack on the Reichstag (the German parliament building) in February 1933 as the first step in a Communist insurrection. This gave Hitler the excuse to demand extraordinary powers from the parliament. Few delegates dared oppose him. Hitler became the dictator at the head of a one-party state. 3 - even sporting groups. Thousands of communists, socialists, and liberals were arrested and sent to concentration camps. The Nazis did not come to power with elaborate plans for dealing with the Jews. But at this stage the key to Hitler’s rule was consent rather than compulsion. Central and local government, politicians and civil servants, the police and the Army, voluntarily lined up with the Nazis because they agreed broadly with Nazi policies. Terror was only used against specific groups who often lacked broad public sympathy. Selective terror, however, also sent a signal to everyone else not to defy the regime. For discussion What was the “racial state”? How did it relate to politics? Creating the “Racial State” Adolf Hitler poses with SS members shortly after his appointment as Chancellor in January 1933. The SS would become the main agents in the persecution and later extermination of the Jews. The Nazis did not come to power with elaborate plans for dealing with the Jews. Nazi policy on the “Jewish Question” was only one element in the creation of a “racial state”. The Nazis believed that social characteristics were inherited biologically. According to the Nazi ideal men were destined to be warriors, farmers and workers; women were to be mothers and homemakers. Anyone who did not conform to these norms was victimised. In a few months the Nazis dissolved the other parties, eliminated the trade unions, and Nazified almost every social and cultural association People with physical or mental disabilities that Nazi-oriented doctors considered to be genetically inherited were targeted for sterilization. Gay 11 THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers A mixed faith German family enjoying a Sunday afternoon in the woods, Kaiserslautern, Germany. Prior to 1933, marriages betwen Jews and Christians were not uncommon. For discussion What significance should we give to the laws passed during 1933? men, those labelled “asocial” (Gypsies and travellers, beggars, tramps, the long term unemployed or “work-shy”), and “hereditary criminals” were sent for “correction” in concentration camps. Germany’s small black population suffered, too. Germans of African descent fell into two groups. There were the offspring of marriages between German settlers and indigenous people in Germany’s pre- The Jews were to be eliminated from politics, government service, public life and cultural activity by a combination of law and intimidation. 1914 African colonies; and there were the so-called “Rhineland bastards” who were the result of relationships between French North African soldiers and German women during the French 12 military occupation of the Rhineland. Black Germans were forcibly sterilised and many ended up in special camps. Above all, the Jews were to be eliminated from politics, government service, public life, and cultural activity by a combination of law and intimidation. In parallel to this the German people, the Volk, was to be strengthened by racial-biological measures to promote marriage between “Aryans”, large families, and better public health. The new government quickly passed a raft of laws to implement these steps. In April 1933 the “Law for the Reconstruction of the Civil Service” enabled the expulsion of political opponents and Jews (except those exempted because of war service) from government employment. The June 1933 law on unemployment and family forced women back to the home. The July 1933 law for “The Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Progeny” sanctioned the compulsory sterilisation of women and castration of men. By 1939 committees of doctors, psychiatrists and lawyers had THE HOLOCAUST supervised the forced sterilisation of about 350,000 Germans. Persecuting the Jews There were 520,000 Jews in Germany, under one per cent of the total population, although most lived in a few big cities. Jews made up a high proportion of those in the professions and commerce; while not especially rich or powerful, they were a visible minority. Despite their patriotism they were widely regarded as “unGerman”. Although the persecution of the Jews was not a high priority for the Nazi leadership, the SA were impatient to strike at the Jews and there was sporadic anti-Jewish violence. In April A guide for students & teachers The 1935 Nuremberg Laws In 1934 the Nazi regime was preoccupied with domestic politics, but in 1935 the pressure to act on the “Jewish Question” grew. The civil service and the Army wanted to end confusion over who was a Jew. Despite all its anti-Jewish propaganda the Nazis had no scientific definition of a Jew and could not answer questions about how half-Jews or converts should be treated. On the eve of the annual party rally at Nuremberg Hitler demanded a law that he could announce dealing with these issues. For discussion What did the Nuremberg Laws seek to achieve? Were they successful? Civil servants in the Interior Ministry quickly produced the “Law for the Protection of German Blood and © bpk, Berlin, 2009 In effect, Nazi Germany became an apartheid state. 1933 Hitler approved a boycott of Jewish stores and shops to channel this frustration. It was called off after two days because it was unpopular with shoppers and threatened to make the economy worse. To Hitler’s annoyance, many Jewish lawyers, judges, and doctors remained in government work because they had fought for their country in the war and were protected by President Hindenberg who had led the German Army in 1916-18 and felt a bond with former soldiers. However, throughout Germany businesses, professional associations, universities and cultural organisations expelled Jewish members. In small towns and villages there were boycotts and violence against isolated Jewish communities, forcing Jews to move to the safety of the cities. A park bench bearing the words “For Aryans Only”. Discriminatory measures like these were intended to further marginalize Jews from society, and intensified after the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. Honour”. It defined a person as Jewish according to the number of his or her grandparents who were Jews in a religious, not racial, sense. “Aryans” were forbidden from having sexual relations with Jews or marrying them. Jews lost their full citizenship and 13 THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers were reduced to second-class status. Under the Nuremberg Laws and supplementary regulations, Gypsies and Blacks were also defined as being of “non-Aryan blood”. In effect, Nazi Germany became an apartheid state: Jews were forced into their own communities and increasingly isolated. Crucially, there were no protests from any section of German society. During 1936 the pace of oppression slowed. Due to the Berlin Olympics Hitler wanted Germany to seem peaceful and well-ordered. Hitler was also focused on the first of his foreign policy triumphs: the reoccupation of the Rhineland. Thousands of Jews tried to emigrate, only to find other countries throwing up immigration restrictions. Radicalisation 1937-1939 For discussion Why was Kristallnacht such an important event? In 1937 Hitler dismissed the last remaining conservatives from his government and embarked on aggressive, expansionist policies. The previous year Hitler had placed Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS (Schutzstaffel, or Elite Guard), in charge of the police. The SS (originally set up as Hitler’s bodyguard) were the most fanatical Nazis. The Gestapo, the secret police, now began to monitor the Jews even more aggressively. Hermann Goering was placed in charge of the Four Year Plan, gearing the economy for war. Part of this preparation involved stealing the wealth and assets of German Jews and forcing them to sell their businesses to “Aryans”. In April 1938, the “Decree on the Declaration of Jewish Assets” marked the first stage in this systematic robbery. 14 In March 1938 Hitler ordered the occupation of Austria. The Anschluss (annexation) was accompanied by anti-Jewish violence and plunder. Thousands of Jews tried to emigrate, only to find other countries throwing up immigration restrictions. In Vienna a young lieutenant in the SS, Adolf Eichmann, developed a method to speed up emigration using a combination of terror and centralised bureaucracy. German Jews now faced a hail of discriminatory regulations. Their assets and property were seized. In October 1938, 60,000 Jews of Polish nationality were expelled into Poland. The Poles refused to admit them so they sat in miserable refugee camps. A Polish Jew in Paris, Herschel Grynszpan, whose parents were amongst the expellees, was so upset that he marched into the German Embassy and shot an official working there. This assassination gave Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, the pretext to unleash a wave of attacks on the Jews of Germany and Austria. Kristallnacht On the night of 9th-10th November 1938 hundreds of synagogues were burned down and Jewish shops attacked. Over ninety Jews were killed. Thirty thousand were sent to concentration camps and not released unless they emigrated. The Nazis called this riot “Kristallnacht”, the Night of Broken Glass, because of the destruction it caused. Although the pogrom was staged with Hitler’s knowledge, Himmler and Goering had not been consulted. THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers The front of a Jewish-owned shop after “Kristallnacht”, Berlin, November 10th 1938. The scale of violence and destruction seen during the pogrom marked a new stage in anti-Jewish persecution. Goering was angry about the damage to the economy. Paradoxically, this led to even more radical measures against the Jews in the Third Reich. find countries that would accept them. But at a time of high unemployment, few countries wanted impoverished Jewish refugees. At a meeting convened by Goering, Nazi leaders agreed to adopt the Viennese model for “orderly” forced emigration. As a result, the fate of the Jews was placed in the hands of the SS apparatus under the command of Reinhard Heydrich, which was now responsible for organising Jewish emigration. Jews were also forced to pay a huge fine to the government for the assassination in Paris. Jews faced a complete ban on economic activity. After the annexation of Austria there was an international conference at Evian in France to discuss the “refugee question”. The results were very poor: every country claimed it lacked room. This was a tragedy because at that time Nazi policy was simply to make the Jews leave, but there were few places for them to go. Nevertheless, about half of the German population and two-thirds of Austrian Jews managed to emigrate. Many went to adjacent countries, such as France or the Netherlands. Large numbers went to Palestine (which was under British rule), the United States, and Britain. As immigration rules got tighter, they went as far as Latin America and even Shanghai to find refuge. Even though German public opinion was shocked by the destruction and violence, there were no public protests. German and Austrian Jews realised that there was no future for them in the Third Reich and tried desperately to For discussion What conditions led to the “refugee question”? Are there contemporary parallels? 15 THE HOLOCAUST 4 A guide for students & teachers War, Ghettos and Genocide 1939-1941 H itler’s decision for war in September 1939 had a military logic, but his strategy was decisively influenced by his belief that Jews controlled policy in London, Paris, Washington and Moscow. The treatment of the Jews who fell under Nazi control was closely linked to the course of the war. For discussion What is meant by the term the “Jewish Question”? Motek Mysch, a Jewish man, served in the Polish army during the 1930s. Mysch was also a highly talented sportsman who was the highest-scorer for his army unit’s football and basketball teams. In a speech in January 1939 Hitler warned that if a world war developed it would be the fault of the Jews and they would pay the price. Incredibly, he believed that he could hold the Jews of Germany hostage against the good behaviour of the Americans. Hitler’s ultimate goal was to conquer land and create an empire in Eastern 16 Europe (Poland, Ukraine, Russia) that would make Germany a world power strong enough to rival the British Empire and the United States. He dreamed of settling Germans in “the East” and either destroying or enslaving the local peoples. The Occupation of Poland German foreign policy from 1933-1938 had aimed at recovering land lost due to the Versailles Treaty so Poland was always a target. In September 1939 Germany and Russia carved up Poland between them. Poland was home to 3 million Jews, half of whom ended up under German rule. War and the conquest of Poland forced the Nazis to reassess their anti-Jewish policies. From 1937-39 their aim was to make Jews emigrate. In 1939-40 the policy became forced emigration and expulsion. War diminished the opportunities for emigration, but occupied Poland offered a radical alternative. In October 1939, the Nazi leadership considered using the area around Lublin as a “Jewish reservation”. Adolf Eichmann organised the first trial deportations of Jews from Austria and the Czech lands to Poland. This was just the first of several attempts to find a “territorial solution” to the “Jewish Question”; that is, to settle Jews by force in territory at the edges of or beyond the Nazi empire. It was part of a barbaric vision for reorganising entire populations in the conquered territories. The plan was to expel Jews and Poles from areas annexed to the Reich, dump them in an area of Poland called the GeneralGovernment, and replace them with THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers thousands of ethnic Germans brought “home” from Russia, the Baltic States and Romania. A million people were brutally shunted to and fro in 1939-40 in an attempt to realise this racial utopia, but the Germans lacked the resources or the time to complete the job. In September 1939, Heydrich decreed that the Polish Jews should be concentrated in towns and cities prior to being removed. They were stripped of their rights and property, denied work (except forced labour for the Germans), and crammed into the worst slum districts. The Jews were soon afflicted by mass starvation and disease. To prevent the spread of epidemics the Nazi authorities confined them to certain districts and beginning in spring 1940 built walls around the Jewish “living quarters”, thereby creating ghettos. This was a temporary measure and more a case of desperation than design; a sign that the policy was failing. The Ghettos in Poland and “The Madagascar Plan” In May-June 1940 the German army conquered France and most of Western Europe, bringing more Jews under Nazi control. The fall of France offered a new “territorial solution” for the Jews. The German Foreign Office suggested deporting the Western European Jews to the French colony of Madagascar, an island off east Africa. The SS took up the plan and enlarged it to include all the Jews of Europe. The “Madagascar Plan” was latently genocidal. It envisaged uprooting millions of people and shipping them to an island, under SS rule, unable to support them all. It was never implemented because as long as Britain held out against the Third Reich Photograph of residents in the Warsaw ghetto buying goods from street vendors, summer 1941. These goods would have been made by craftsmen or smuggled into the ghetto, but very few people would have been able to pay for them. the Royal Navy denied freedom of the seas to Germany. In the meantime, conditions in the Polish ghettos became critical due to overcrowding, malnutrition and epidemics. In the Warsaw ghetto alone over 400,000 Jews were crammed into an area covering a few square miles. The Germans used starvation to extort money and valuables from the ghetto population. This led to the mass death of those with no money or skills, the old, sick, the very young and Jews from other districts who had no connections to get work. However, it was soon evident that this would simply lead to a slow attrition of population with the attendant risk of a public health disaster. For discussion Between 1939 and mid-1941, how did Nazi policies towards the Jews change? What does this tell us? Instead several Nazi regional chiefs adopted a policy of “productivisation” – supplying the ghettos with raw materials and enough food to keep workers and their families alive to produce goods for the German war effort. This was only ever seen as a temporary solution. About 450,000 Jews would die in the Polish ghettos from malnutrition, ill-treatment and related diseases, but by mid-1941 conditions had stabilised. 17 THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers It seemed as if Nazi policy had reached a dead end. However, when Hitler ordered his generals to prepare the invasion of the Soviet Union a new possibility opened up. The Nazi leadership was convinced that the USSR would be easily defeated; after victory they could deport Europe’s Jews to the wastes of Siberia. the means to manufacture anything. The German Army envisaged the death by starvation of 40 million Russians. Ordinary soldiers were told by their officers that they were rooting out the racial enemy. Mass Shootings in the Soviet Union, 1941-42 In the weeks after the invasion began on 22 June 1941, the Einsatzgruppen shot to death thousands of Jewish men. In mid-summer Himmler transferred more SS and police troops to the killing fields. They were assisted by locally recruited auxillaries, especially in Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Romanian troops also shot Jews en masse. The war against the Soviet Union was intended by Hitler to be “an ideological war of extermination”. The Nazis saw Russia as the centre of Bolshevik and The war against the Soviet Union was intended by Hitler to be “an ideological war of extermination”. Anna Glinberg was a threeyear-old Jewish girl killed during the massacre at Babi Yar, September 1941. Babi Yar is a ravine outside Kiev, Ukraine, where 33, 771 Jews were murdered in two days of shootings. (mythical) Jewish power. Orders were issued for all captured commisars (political officers) and Jews who worked for the Communist Party and the state to be shot by mobile killing squads known as Einsatzgruppen. Four thousand SS personnel, SS troops and policemen were assigned to this muderous task. The Army assented to this criminal order. It was planned as a genocidal war. The conquered territory would be exploited to feed the Wehrmacht (German Army) and supply Germany with food and raw materials. The local urban population would not be given food or 18 Einsatzgruppen Policy now shifted to killing Jewish men, women and children without any discrimination. By the end of the year, around 500,000 Jews in Soviet territory had been murdered. These killing operations followed a pattern: Jewish men in a town or village were rounded up and marched off to a nearby forest, forced to dig mass graves and then shot. Sometimes anti-tank ditches or natural ravines were used. Women and children were rounded up later and murdered in batches. Some large Jewish populations could not be wiped out in one blow and they were forced into temporary ghettos. During the spring and summer of 1942, the Germans organised a “second sweep” of the occupied territories, wiping out the remaining ghettoised communities and hunting down any Jews who fled into the forests. Captured soldiers of the Red Army and civilians also suffered appallingly. THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers In Poland the Jews were confined to ghettos. Many were now manufacturing goods for the German war effort in return for supplies and the population had stabilised even though conditions were awful. Their Nazi overlords still wanted to get rid of them. A column of captured Soviet soldiers, being led to a prisoner of war camp, 1941. Of the 5.7 million Soviet soldiers captured by the Nazis, some 3.3 million had lost their lives by 1945. Of the 3 million prisoners of war taken by the Wehrmacht in 1941-42, over 2 million died due to deliberate neglect. Eight hundred thousand inhabitants of Leningrad perished in the course of a siege that was intended to cause starvation. The mass murder of Soviet Jews was a genocide within a genocide, yet the origins of both lay in the Nazi concept of racial war, conquest and exploitation. The German Army and the civilian administration were complicit in this murderous enterprise alongside the SS. Steps Towards Industrialised Mass-Murder On 31st July 1941, Heydrich obtained authorisation from Goering to prepare a plan for the “complete solution of the Jewish Question in Europe”. This was probably envisaged as a vast programme of deportations, pushing the Jews beyond the Nazi empire. The Jewish Bureau of the SS Head Office, under Adolf Eichmann, was given the task of preparing the plan. Unexpectedly, however, the invasion of Russia did not culminate in a German victory. The resistance of the Red Army prevented the Nazis from using Siberia as the destination for unwanted Jews. German policy-makers faced a dilemma. Hitler was under pressure from Nazi party bosses to remove the remaining Jews from German cities in order to re-house Germans bombed out of their homes and fulfil the promise to “cleanse” Germany of Jews. In October 1941, he agreed to the deportation of German and Austrian Jews to ghettos in Lodz, Lvov, Lublin, Kovno, Riga, and Minsk, but decreed that they were not to be murdered. They were useful as hostages to prevent Jews in the free world pushing America into the war, which Hitler fantastically believed lay within their power. For discussion Why did some local populations collaborate in genocide? Why did some “ordinary men” in the German Army not refuse to take part? Unexpectedly the invasion of Russia did not culminate in a German victory...German policymakers faced a dilemma. Heydrich simultaneously ordered the “cleansing” of the Czech lands and ordered the creation of a ghetto at Theresienstadt, near Prague. It was also used as a place to hold elderly and distinguished German and Austrian Jews. The news that more Jews would be added to the ghettos dismayed the Nazi regional bosses in the East. Where would they put them? To “make room” the Einsatzgruppen massacred tens of thousands of Jews from the 19 THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers © The Imperial War Museum, EA 62183 A photograph of members of staff of the Hadamar sanatorium standing outside the institution. As one of the main sites of the “euthanasia programme”, nearly 15,000 men, women and children were killed at Hadamar by the psychiatric staff between 1941 and 1945. For discussion Why is the euthanasia programme so significant to understanding the ideology and mechanics of the Holocaust? ghettos of Vilna, Kovno, Riga, Minsk, and Lublin. murder were transferred to the killing of Jews. However, constant mass shooting was too public and wearing on the killers. Already in the summer of 1941 Himmler ordered SS commanders to find a more discreet and efficient killing method. They made a connection with the secret Nazi programme of compulsory euthanasia, codenamed “T4”. In November 1941 construction work began on the first death camp at Belzec, near Lublin in Poland. Two more were planned in the region of Warsaw (Treblinka) and Lublin (Sobibor). On 8th December 1941, gas vans operating from a makeshift camp in the town of Chelmno began the systematic murder of Jews from nearby Lodz. Jews were loaded into the back of lorries converted so that the exhaust fumes from the engine were piped into the airtight compartment. The vans were then driven a few miles to mass graves in a forest, where the Jews, now sufficated to death, were unloaded and buried. Between August 1939 and September 1941, over 70,000 mentally or physically disabled inmates of sanatoria and asylums in Germany and Austria were murdered after doctors certified them as “life unworthy of life”. The victims were transported to one of six clinics equipped with gas chambers where they were poisoned with carbon monoxide gas piped through false shower heads in mock bathrooms. The personnel of the clinics were attached to the SS. The programme was suspended after the relatives of some of the victims worked out what was happening. Church leaders protested, and Hitler ordered the suspension of the killing because he feared the effect on morale at a time of war. Instead, the personnel, expertise and technology of mass 20 Meanwhile, the commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp experimented with lethal Zyklon-B (cyanide) gas. The first victims were Russian prisoners of war. This was still not a European-wide genocide. Although anti-Jewish measures had been enacted throughout Western Europe there were no preparations to deport all the Jews. And the existing death camps were too small for such a task. THE HOLOCAUST THE HOLOCAUST A guide A guide for students for students & teachers & teachers The Final Solution 1941-45 5 H istorians still debate exactly when Hitler initiated the genocide against Europe’s Jews and what triggered it. The decision was shrouded in secrecy and the surviving documentary evidence is fragmented. The trigger may have been America’s entry into the war in December 1941. The Jews were no longer useful as hostages and Hitler publicly repeated his “prophecy” that if Germany was forced into a world war the Jews would pay. He may have acted in a state of euphoria, believing the war to be as good as won, or in fury that he had been thwarted at the gates of Moscow. What is beyond doubt is that he now had the power and the freedom to turn his murderous hatred of the Jews into actual genocide. There were grotesquely rational economic reasons, too. On the one hand, the deportation of the Jews would give the Germans access to their wealth and property at a time when the German economy was straining to support the war effort. Letting the people of occupied Europe share some of this loot would bind them to the Nazi cause. On the other hand, there would be fewer demands on the dwindling food supply in occupied Europe, especially in Poland where over two million Jews were still confined in the ghettos. In late November 1941 Heydrich summoned leading civil servants and SS officers to a meeting on 9th December to coordinate the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” in Europe. The meeting, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, had to Table taken from the “Wannsee-Protocol” – the minutes of the Wannsee Conference as drawn up by Adolf Eichmann. This table was compiled by Eichmann and circulated among attendees to show the distribution of the Jewish population in Europe, according to religious belief. All were earmarked for destruction. be postponed to 20th January 1942 because Germany declared war on America. We know roughly what was said because Adolf Eichmann took the minutes and one copy survived. He also testified about the meeting when he was put on trial in Israel in 1961. At the Wannsee Conference Heydrich announced the systematic deportation of Jews from across Europe to “the 21 THE HOLOCAUST For discussion Was the Final Solution inevitable? A guide for students & teachers A child separated from his family prior to deportation from the Lodz ghetto to his death at Chelmno, September 1942. In this month alone, 15,000 Jews were deported as part of the “Gehsperre Action”, including many children under the age of 10. East”. The fit would be put to work on roads; those unable to work would be put to death. The survivors of harsh forced labour would eventually also be murdered. Heydrich may have originally intended to preside over The local genocides with limited objectives...were now merged into a vast project. the mass deportation and dumping of Jews in Siberia, but by early 1942 there was no chance of that “solution” and successful experiments with mass murder had shown the Nazis that they could annihilate masses of people. Killing on a vast scale was explicitly discussed at the Wannsee meeting and Heydrich obtained agreement from the key ministries to cooperate in the programme. The local genocides with limited objectives that had been underway 22 in Russia (the Einsatzgruppen) and in Poland (the fixed-site death camps) were now merged into a vast project that required elaborate planning and new facilities. The Nazis also needed the cooperation of numerous foreign allies and collaborationists. The entire operation was managed by Office IVB4 of the SS Head Office under Adolf Eichmann. Genocide in the East The extermination camps in Poland – Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Chelmno – were not ready or were too small: they had been designed for local needs. At Auschwitz the gas chambers were improvised from converted peasant huts near the Birkenau subcamp. Construction of purpose-built gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau did not begin until mid-1942 and they were not ready until March 1943. Due to the demands of the Eastern front, transport did not become available until spring 1942. The deportations to Belzec commenced in THE HOLOCAUST mid-March 1942 and halted in midMay while the gas chambers were enlarged. The killing resumed in midJuly and continued until the end of December 1942. About 600,000 Jews were murdered at Belzec. Sobibor operated from May to July 1942, paused while the rail line serving the camp was strengthened to take the unusual volume of traffic to which it was being subjected, and continued from September 1942 to October 1943. It is estimated that 250,000 Jews were murdered there. After a false start in August 1942, Treblinka was active continuously from September 1942 to August 1943. No less than 870,000 Jews were killed there. Over 215,000 originated from Warsaw alone and were murdered in a five week period from July to September 1942. Majdanek, a concentration camp that was equipped with gas chambers using Zyklon-B, accounted for 125,000 Jews being gassed and shot. The methods of murder were the same in all the killing centres. Having been tricked or forced onto the deportation trains the Jews spent anything from one to five days crammed in cattle trucks with no sanitation, food or water. Some transports of Jews from Western Europe used converted passenger carriages. Some Jews had to pay for the cost of their transport. They were guarded all the way; anyone attempting escape was shot. On arrival men were separated from women and children. They were forced to hand over all their valuables and told to undress so they could shower. The hair of the women was cut off (it was used for industrial purposes). The “showers” were in fact airtight rooms into which poison gas was released. Special teams of Jews spared A guide for students & teachers immediate murder were used to clear out the gas chambers and transport the bodies to pits where they were burned. In Auschwitz-Birkenau a proportion of each transport was selected for work. After a quarantine period, during which many were tattooed, they were sent for slave labour in the Auschwitz camp complex or to other sites. Some, especially twins, were selected for “medical” experiments. Genocide in Central and Western Europe The implementation of the “Final Solution” varied from country to country and was influenced by the extent of German control and the stage in the war at which it was put into effect. Denmark preserved its own government. Norway was under a Nazi commissioner who governed through the civil service. The Netherlands were under a similar system, while Belgium and northern France were controlled by the German Army. Part of France was unoccupied until November 1942, and the entire country was technically neutral, with its own government. For discussion Why did European governments collaborate in the “Final Solution”? The Czech lands were ruled directly as a “protectorate”. Slovakia and Croatia had puppet governments. Greece was under joint Italian and German military occupation. Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria were independent countries but closely allied to Germany. Italy was, theoretically, an equal partner to the Third Reich in the “Axis” alliance. Hungary and Romania had a long tradition of antisemitism and passed anti-Jewish laws in the 1930s. Italy adopted “race laws” in 1938. Slovakia and Croatia adopted antiJewish laws soon after they gained “independence”. France passed an anti-Jewish statute in 1940 23 THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers after its surrender to Germany, but without being forced to do so. In the Netherlands anti-Jewish regulations were issued by the German authorities and enforced by local agencies and the police. In every country anti-Jewish laws involved the registration and confiscation of Jewish property and In every country anti-Jewish laws involved the registration and confiscation of Jewish property and assets. For discussion What features made the Holocaust a “modern” event? assets. Sometimes the Germans instigated the “Aryanisation” of Jewish businesses; sometimes they competed with local initiatives. Once the deportation of Jews started there was a huge and lucrative market in “abandoned” flats and houses, “ownerless” companies and shops, frozen stocks and shares, “dormant” bank accounts, unclaimed insurance policies, artworks, jewellery, furniture and furnishings, tableware, musical instruments, clothing, and even toys. The Jews of Slovakia were the first to be deported en masse, starting in March 1942, on the initiative of the Slovak government. German, Austrian and Czech Jews were deported to Theresienstadt or Lublin. Theresienstadt was merely a pause on the way to Auschwitz. Jews sent to Lublin were soon murdered in Belzec. The preparations for the “Final Solution” in France, the Netherlands and Belgium began in spring 1942. Jews in all three countries had been forced to register as Jews the previous year. In May 1942 they were compelled to wear the Yellow Star. Eichmann met with his field officers in June to 24 agree the transportation schedules. From July, Jews were ordered to report for “resettlement” in “the East” or seized in roundups. The civil service and local police (except in Belgium) provided the necessary manpower for these operations. Jews were first held in transit camps: Drancy, in Paris; Malines, outside Antwerp; Westerbork, near Amsterdam. The camps were near railway lines. Trains, each carrying roughly 1000 people, took most to Auschwitz. Some transports from Western Europe went to Sobibor and Treblinka. In March 1943 the large purpose-built gas chambers and crematoria came into operation at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Over 1.1 million Jews from all over Europe were murdered there between May 1942 and October 1944. Expropriation The distribution of plunder created a common interest between the Germans and their collaborators. Thousands of rail trucks and barges filled with household goods and clothing were transported to the Reich and distributed amongst German families bombed out of their homes or given as a reward to loyal Nazis. The plunder of the Jews helped finance the German war machine and assuaged discontent amongst the German population. During 1943 it became harder for the Nazis to extract Jews from countries in Western Europe. Thanks to the German defeat at Stalingrad, even Germany’s allies began to get nervous. Nevertheless, the Nazis were still able to deport the entire Jewish population of Salonika in Northern Greece. In THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers Prisoners in the Order Commando at Auschwitz sort through the belongings of a recently arrived transport, May 1944. The section of the camp which handled loot such as this was called “Canada” by prisoners, in reference to the imagined riches of North America. the wake of the Warsaw ghetto revolt in April 1943 Himmler ordered the remaining large ghettos and camps to be liquidated in an “Aktion” called “Harvest Festival”. More than 17,000 Jews were murdered on 3rd November 1943 in Majdanek alone. Although Danish resistance foiled the attempt to seize all the 7,800 Jews in Denmark, the occupation of Italy led to the rounding up of a similar number of Jewish Italians. The Pope was silent while the Jews of Rome were seized in streets adjacent to the Vatican. By 1944 the 750,000 Jews on Hungarian territory were the largest surviving population. Paradoxically, because they had been shielded from the “Final Solution” for so long they felt safe. But when the Hungarian government tried to negotiate peace with the Allies the Germans moved in. The Nazis saw this as an opportunity to seize valuable economic assets and slave labour. The Hungarians were eager to assist. In just four months the Jews were ghettoised, plundered, and 437,000 were deported to Auschwitz- Birkenau where most were killed on arrival. Tens of thousands were selected for brutal work in the Nazi jet fighter and rocket factories. The 70,000 Jews from Lodz who were transported to Auschwitz in August 1944 was the last major community to be destroyed. Two months later the gas chambers ceased to function and the Germans started destroying the evidence of genocide. For discussion Why might the Nazi leadership have been divided over using Jewish labour? Extermination Through Labour The Nazi leadership was divided over the exploitation of the Jews for labour. When the German war economy ran short of workers and it was clear the war would drag on, the Nazis started using forced and slave labour, even Jews. During the deportations of 1942 and 1943 the Jewish inhabitants of the ghettos who had skills or were fit for work were routinely exempted. Workshops existed in the ghettos. However, Himmler repeatedly demanded the elimination of “work Jews” and in late 1943 succeeded 25 THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers in wiping out most of this labour force and moving the remnant into labour camps. Only the Lodz ghetto workshops survived, until August 1944. In mid 1944 tens of thousands of deported Hungarian Jews were selected for work in AuschwitzBirkenau. They joined a concentration camp population of 700,000, largely non-Jewish, working in appalling conditions. Because the supply of labour was plentiful and the work was mainly unskilled there was no incentive to treat the workers decently. Thousands died in camps such as Dora-Mittelbau working on special weapons projects. For discussion What was the purpose of the death marches, if the Second World War was already lost? The End of the Extermination Camps and the Death Marches Belzec stopped operating in August 1943 and the Nazis destroyed traces of its existence. Sobibor was shut down after a prisoner revolt in October 1943 and the evidence destroyed. Treblinka was closed after an uprising in November 1943. Chelmo was discontinued in 1943 and revived for a period in 1944 when the last camps were liquidated. Over 150,000 Jews were murdered there. Majdanek was captured almost intact by the Red Army in July 1944. Simon Trampetter removes the Star of David from the coat of his fellow Jewish survivor, Joseph Keller, January 1945. 26 In early November 1944 murder by gas at Birkenau stopped although killing by shooting and lethal injection went on for weeks. Later that month orders were given to dismantle the gas chambers. This work and demolition of the crematoria extended into December, while the last functioning unit was blown up by retreating SS men on 26 January 1945. About 1.25 million people had been murdered there, of whom some 1.1 million were Jews. Other large victim groups included Gypsies and Soviet Prisoners of War. Tens of thousands of Poles were shot and tortured to death in the Auschwitz main camp. During the winter of 1944-45, as the Red Army drew near, the Nazis started to evacuate Auschwitz, where 70,000 prisoners remained, as well as other concentration camps. The aim was to transport the prisoners to camps deep in areas still under German control. But transport and provisioning broke down. Thousands perished on the wintery roads of eastern Germany. Guards and local people mercilessly shot those too weak to march. Nor could the reception camps cope with the influx. In the last months of the war starvation and disease ran out of control. The worst disaster occurred in Bergen-Belsen. This former prisoner of war camp was converted in 1943 to hold Jewish hostages and Jews to be exchanged for Germans in Allied hands. Conditions were reasonable until Autumn 1944 when Jews from other camps flowed in, taking the camp population from 15,000 to 60,000. Eventually 40,000 Jews died of hunger and illness in Belsen. Despite a heroic relief effort, typhus and malnutrition claimed 14,000 lives after the camp was liberated by British troops in April 1945. THE HOLOCAUST THE HOLOCAUST A guide A guide for students for students & teachers & teachers Jewish Responses to Persecution 6 I n the aftermath of the war, Jews were criticised for not having escaped from Europe while they had the chance and failing to resist the Nazis. Some historians even accused the Jews of collaborating in their own destruction. A more balanced view of Jewish behaviour now prevails, although there is still argument over whether one response would have been better than another. In Germany and Austria German and Austrian Jews were the first to face persecution and more than half did emigrate. However, it was easier to leave if you were young or well-off. Many with aged parents felt they should stay and care for them. The level of persecution rose and fell; until 1938 it was possible to believe that things would improve. By then few countries would accept Jewish immigrants. Mordechai Rumkowski, Chairman of the Jewish Council in Lodz, meets with German officials on the street of the ghetto. Rumkowski remains a controversial figure whose leadership of the Judenrat continues to divide opinion. young Jews went underground and survived in hiding or with false papers. In 1942 a small group of Jewish Communists launched sabotage attacks against the regime; they were quickly rounded up by the Gestapo. In the Polish Ghettos In what became the pattern for other communities, the German Jewish community set up schools for Jewish children and welfare agencies for those thrown out of work by the Nazis. Jewish cultural life flourished when professors, teachers, artists and musicians were taken into their own community. Because the Nazis banned art, writing, and music by Jews cultural activity was also a form of defiance. After the conquest of Poland, Heydrich decreed that Jews in every city had to set up a Jewish Council, a Judenrat. Its members were selected by the Germans. Initially the Councils had the task of supplying the Germans with Jewish forced labour. Later they organised food rationing, manufacturing, sanitation, welfare and child care in the ghettos. Each ghetto had a police force to implement sanitation rules and rationing. None could have known what lay in the future. When the deportations started, hundreds of elderly Jews committed suicide rather than submit to further indignities. Numbers of Tragically, when the deportations from the ghettos commenced the Germans made the Judenrat responsible for filling daily quotas. Adam Czerniakow, the head of the Judenrat in Warsaw, For discussion Can we make fair judgements on how Jews responded to the Holocaust? 27 THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers refused to comply and committed suicide. Chiam Rumkowski, elder of the Jews in Lodz, believed that if the ghetto complied it would be possible to save at least some, as long as they remained productive. Several heads of Jewish councils, like Efraim Barash in Bialystok, covertly encouraged armed resistance. Ultimately though, no strategy succeeded in thwarting German intentions. The deportations were carried out with terrifying ferocity. The Jewish Councils were told that non-essential Jews were to be “resettled in the East” and they were given daily quotas to meet. As an incentive, the Jews were told that if they went voluntarily to the embarkation points they would receive extra rations. In many ghettos the “working Jews” were physically divided from the Jews regarded as “surplus”. To begin with “surplus Jews” were lured to the A Jewish orchestra performs in the Kovno ghetto, 1944. In 1941, many musicians were targeted for extermination, prompting the Judenrat to make them policemen in an attempt to protect them. During the “Police Action” of spring 1944, only the musicians were spared from death. assembly points by the promise of food. But as rumours spread about mass murder the Jewish police 28 were charged with rounding up the necessary numbers each day. When more and more Jews hid, heavily armed teams of SS men and auxiliaries stormed through streets, courtyards and buildings grabbing anyone they found and using sniffer dogs to uncover hiding places. The onslaught against the ghettos was so sudden and brutal that it was hard for the Jews to respond effectively. The Nazis initially demanded that the Jewish Councils select “useless mouths” – those considered unproductive and therefore expendable. They never said how many would be removed so the Jewish Councils always hoped that each transport would be the last. In Soviet Territory (Eastern Poland, Baltic States, White Russia, Ukraine) The German onslaught in mid 1941 was so swift that Jews had little time in which to react. In the areas annexed to the Soviet Union many local people turned on the Jews, because they (wrongly) identified all Jews with the Communist Party and saw the Germans as liberators. In several places Poles, Ukrainians, and Lithuanians spontaneously massacred Jews. Where Jews had time, many escaped or were evacuated with the factories and government agencies they worked in. Once the first wave of pogroms and mass shootings had passed the surviving Jews took stock. Where large ghettos lasted long enough, such as Vilna, Kovno, Bialystok, the Jewish Councils pursued the policy of working to survive. They too set up welfare agencies and cultural activities to try to make life more bearable. However, thanks to the first wave of mass shootings they had few illusions about what was in store for them in the long run. THE HOLOCAUST Jewish Revolts 1942 - 45 River N eim Ponary 19 May 1944 Key Ghettoes in which Jews rose up in revolt against the Germans Vilna 1 September 1943 Death Camps in which Jews revolted Mir 9 August 1942 Nieswiesz 22 July 1942 Kuldichvo 25 March 1943 Bialystok 16 August 1943 Riv Armed Resistance er V istu la Kletsk 21 July 1943 Treblinka 2 August 1943 Warsaw 19 April 1943 Minsk Mazowiecki 10 January 1943 Chelmno 17 January 1945 Krushin 17 December 1942 Sobibor 14 October 1943 Lakhva 3 September 1942 Ri e v a Riv Bedzin 3 August 1943 Auschwitz 7 October 1944 Lutsk 12 October1943 t ul s Vi er B ug Chenstochov 25 October 1943 Lublin 3 November 1943 r Armed resistance presented huge challenges. The ghettos were large, fixed communities with women and children and elderly folk, not small guerrilla units that could hit and run. Usually there was no place to flee or hide. The Jews had little experience of military operations and almost no arms. Most Jews of military age had been called to serve with the Polish or Soviet army. It was nearly impossible to obtain weapons once the ghettos were sealed. The Polish underground were reluctant to part with any of their guns for what they perceived as a hopeless cause. en © Martin Gilbert A few young Jews in each ghetto, mainly Zionist youth or socialists, decided to escape into the forests and to resist as partisans. In some ghettos they dug bunkers and prepared to fight or hide when the next onslaught began. Several ghetto leaders secretly helped the Jewish underground and made contact with Soviet partisans. A guide for students & teachers Tuchin 3 September 1942 Tarnow 1 September 1943 Brody 17 May 1943 Cracow 22 December 1942 Kremenetz 9 September 1942 Lvov 1 June 1943 Stryj 28 April 1943 C Z E C H O S L O VA K I A H U N G A RY Ri ve r Dn ie st er This map shows the location of camps and ghettos where Jews revolted against the Nazis and their collaborators, 1942-1945. Neverthless, armed Jewish resistance did develop. In Warsaw it grew up around young Zionists and Jewish socialists who joined to form the Jewish Fighting Organisation. In Vilna the ghetto leader initially helped set up the United Partisan Organisation. In Bialystok the head of the Council turned a blind eye while the underground built bunkers and acquired arms. The largest uprising occurred in the Warsaw ghetto in April-May 1943 when a few hundred young fighters held the Germans at bay for weeks. Other ghetto revolts occurred in Bialystok, Bedzin, Czestochowa, and Krakow. Ghetto uprisings occurred when Jews had lost any illusions about the chances of surviving through work or rescue from the outside. They were more a gesture of defiance than a survival strategy. There was even resistance in the death camps... these revolts convinced Himmler to liquidate them. Jewish partisans fought throughout Poland and Russia wherever there were favourable conditions. 29 THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers them as pro-Soviet. There was even resistance in the death camps. The first revolt occurred in Treblinka on 2nd August 1943 amongst the Jews temporarily spared the gas chambers for work purposes. Few Jews escaped but part of the camp was destroyed. In October 1943 a Jewish Red Army officer led a rising of skilled workers who were kept alive in Sobibor. Dozens managed to break through the wire and the surrounding minefield to reach the forests. These revolts convinced Himmler to liquidate the death camps. A group of Jewish partisans fighting in Lithuanian forests in 1944. In addition to resistance in the ghettos and camps, a number of Jews were active in fighting the Nazis and their collaborators on and behind the Eastern front. Tuvia Bielski and his brothers from Novogrudek led a remarkable partisan group in the Nalibocki Forest where they created a family camp. Yehiel Grynszpan led a Jewish partisan unit that successfully attacked German targets around the Parcew Forest. Other groups operated in the Wlodowa, Wola and Janow forests. Up to mid-1944, about 40,000 Jews survived in Poland in hiding or in disguise. However, the Jewish partisans faced daunting odds. Unless Jews already had weapons few established partisan units were willing to accept them. Groups of armed Jews were frequently attacked by antisemitic elements of the Polish Home Army or Ukrainian nationalist guerrillas which regarded 30 In October 1944 the Sonderkommando, the special work force that operated the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau, revolted. The prisoners succeeded in killing several SS men and blowing up some installations before the SS crushed the revolt. Evasion It is estimated that 25,000 Jews fled the Warsaw ghetto and found refuge on the “Aryan side”. The escapees were Jews who had connections with Christian Poles through intermarriage, former business dealings or as employees. With their help they constructed “melinas” or hiding places. A Jew could not survive underground without food, and it was essential to have a team of helpers. Some Jews could pass as Christian Poles by virtue of their looks, or, if they were middle class and Polonised, because they did not speak Polish with a Yiddish accent. However, they too needed contacts in order to obtain ID and ration cards. Up to mid-1944, about 40,000 Jews survived in Poland in hiding or in disguise, supported by many times that number of Christians who risked their lives and the welfare of their families every day. The Zegota organisation THE HOLOCAUST played a vital role channelling aid to the Jews in hiding. Unfortunately, the Polish national uprising in 1944 was fought over the very ground in Warsaw where Jews were concealed. Many emerged from their “melinas” because they thought liberation was imminent and were killed in the subsequent mayhem. Spiritual Resistance After the war praise was heaped on those who fought back in the forests or in the ghettos. Much later it was realised that because the Nazis set out to break the spirit of the Jews and dehumanise them, every effort to retain their dignity and to maintain Jewish traditions was a form of defiance. Schools, theatres, songs, artworks, and hidden prayer rooms were all ways of resisting Nazi aims. Keeping a record, collectively or individually, defied the Nazi aspiration to hide their crimes and wipe out any memory of the Jews. Because the Nazis wanted to starve the Jews, food smuggling was a form of resistance. The “criminals” in the ghettos and the children able to crawl through tiny openings in the walls became folk heroes. The strategy of the Jews was “iyberlebn”: to survive or overcome, which in the face of genocide was resistance. Patterns of Response in Western Europe There were a wide variety of responses in Western Europe reflecting the fractured nature of Jewish societies. Native born Jews tended to behave obediently until the last moment, putting their faith in their countrymen to protect them. Foreign-born Jews were more vulnerable, but had stronger organisations and were more A guide for students & teachers politicised. Many were Zionists, Bundists and Communists with militant traditions and links with other political organisations that could help them to go underground or resist. In each country the Nazis set up a Jewish Council to transmit orders to the Jewish population. The councils also arranged welfare, education, and cultural activities. They were later criticised for fostering complacency, but their responses were governed by information which was sporadic and confused. It was hard to believe the rumours from “the East”. For discussion What factors do we need to consider when discussing resistance? When the deportations began, German deception strategies were highly effective. Many Jews believed in “resettlement” in “the East”. Even if Jews decided to flee or hide, geography influenced their survival chances. The Jews of France were able to move to the unoccupied zone, the Italian occupation zone, or scatter into the large, sparsely populated interior of the country. This was not possible in Belgium or the Netherlands. Timing was also crucial. By early 1943 Germany’s allies were getting cold feet. Romania was reluctant to deport its Jews. Vichy France withdrew its cooperation too. When the Germans tried to round up the Danish Jews, neutral Sweden was less worried about annoying Germany and helped the Danish resistance evacuate the Jews to safety. There was also extensive resistance. This took the form of locating or creating safe places for children and manufacturing forged papers. Many Jews joined the underground and some formed all-Jewish resistance groups such as the Armée Juive in southern France. In April 1943, the Jewish communist underground in Belgium derailed a train and helped 231 deportees escape. 31 THE HOLOCAUST 7 A guide for students & teachers Responses to the Persecution and Mass Murder of the Jews H For discussion Most Germans knew about the mass killings. What can we learn from their response? The Germans who voted for Hitler were not necessarily anti-Jewish, but his hatred of the Jews did not put them off the Nazis. Anti-Jewish prejudice and discrimination pervaded Germany. While only a proportion of Germans shared Hitler’s radical racial-biological view of the world, many more disliked the Jews because they saw them as too “modern”, or too “foreign”, or because they were not Christian. Traditional antipathies were a bridge to the Nazis more radical racial-biological antisemitism. After 1933 Germans were subjected to constant anti-Jewish propaganda. Social and commercial contacts with Jews were progressively severed. In 1938 Germans may have recoiled at Traditional antipathies were a bridge to the Nazis more radical racial-biological antisemitism. massive anti-Jewish violence, but few felt any empathy with their suffering. By the time the deportations began in 1941 Jews were confined to “Jew houses” and almost invisible. Ironically, many Germans did not like it when Jews were forced to wear the Yellow 32 © Photo: The Wiener Library istorians have debated the extent to which ordinary Germans were antisemitic and how much they knew about the genocide against the Jews. Poster advertising the Nazi exhibition “The Eternal Jew” (Der ewige Jude) in the German Museum, Munich 1937. Star in September 1941 because it made them visible again. Information about the mass killings in the East was widespread in 1941-42. Soldiers on leave brought back stories of what they had seen and even sent photos home. By 1943 there were rumours about death camps. The BBC broadcast explicit reports about the deportations and death camps on its German-language service; the Gestapo was aware that people tuned into the broadcasts. But the Nazis actually turned this limited knowledge to their benefit. Goebbels used propaganda that hinted at the mass murder of the Jews to create the sense that all Germans were now complicit. When German cities THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers experienced fierce bombing raids it was common for Germans to remark that Jews were sending the planes in revenge for what Germany had done to their people. So, if the average German did not know exactly what was happening they knew enough not to want to know more. There was certainly no expression of opposition. The main German resistance to Hitler actually agreed with moderate discrimination against the Jews! Only a few, like the tiny White Rose group, explicitly condemned the mass murder. There was one public protest against the deportations from Berlin. In February 1943 “Aryan” women who were married to Jewish men protested when their partners were rounded up for deportation. The question of those of “mixed race”, converts, and Jews married to “Aryans” was always tricky for the Nazis because it involved many “pure” Germans, so the regime frequently back-peddled. In this unique case the interned Jews were released and survived the war. In Occupied Europe Antisemitism was widespread throughout Europe. The Nazis found rich soil for their propaganda, and when they seemed all powerful, people under Nazi rule tended to align with their point of view, especially if there was money to be made from plundering the Jews. When the tide of war turned, opinions about the fate of the Jews changed too. Poland was subjected to the most brutal occupation regime, and Poles were preoccupied with their own suffering. They tended not to see the Jews as fellow-countrymen. Traditional Catholic antisemitism and antiCommunism also cut across sympathy for the Jews. Before long Poles began to profit from the liquidation of Jewish The founding members of the White Rose group – Hans and Sophie Scholl with Christoph Probst, 1942. From the University of Munich, the group distributed anti-Nazi propaganda, before all three founding members were arrested in February 1943 and executed for treason. property and assets, yet about 40,000 Jews went underground or hid with help from Christian Poles. Antisemitism was widespread throughout Europe. The Nazis found rich soil for their propaganda. In the portion of Poland occupied by the USSR in 1939 and in the Baltic States annexed in 1940, the period of Soviet rule inflamed local attitudes towards the Jews. Left-wing Jews initially welcomed the invaders, although the Soviet secret police soon destroyed any independent Jewish life. Soviet rule was harsh and thousands were deported to the gulags. When the Germans drove out the Red Army in July 1941, there were several murderous pogroms by Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Latvians who associated the Jews with the Communist regimes. For discussion How do the local pograms of 1941 contribute to our understanding of the Holocaust? 33 THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers of war. In October 1940 the Vichy regime passed strict anti-Jewish laws. A Jewish bureau was set up in March 1941 to register and confiscate Jewish property. When the Nazis first discussed the deportation of the Jews, the French authorities suggested they take Jews from the internment camps and foreign Jews. During 1942 French police rounded up Jews for deportation. However, by 1943 the mood changed and police cooperation was limited. The Germans could only rely on extreme right-wing groups. The Head of State of the Vichy regime, Henri Phillipe Pétain. A former military hero of World War One, Pétain promoted collaboration with the Nazis including active persecution of France’s Jewish population. For discussion How, and in what ways, was the Holocaust a truly European event? Tens of thousands of White Russians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Latvians served as auxiliary policemen and in Waffen-SS units. The first waves of recruits in 1942-43 were voluntary; later they were conscripted. They guarded ghettos, took part in mass shootings, and provided the security units at the death camps in Poland. Tens of thousands of White Russians, Ukranians, Lithuanians and Latvians served as auxillary policemen and in Waffen-SS units. In France there were strong right-wing and anti-Jewish currents. Thousands of foreign Jews, mostly refugees from the Nazis, were interned at the outbreak 34 Over 20,000 Jewish children were hidden with non-Jewish families, in country villages, and in Catholic schools. In a few exceptional cases the population of entire villages took in Jewish refugees and worked together to protect them. Of around 350,000 Jews in France, 78,000 were deported. Sephardi Jews in French North Africa – Morrocco, Algeria, Tunisia – also suffered anti-Jewish laws. The ItaloGerman occupation of Tunisia in 1942-43 led to a period of harsh forced labour and extensive plunder. In the Netherlands there was no deep antisemitic tradition. However, the cooperation of the Dutch civil service and the police, in combination with a compliant Jewish population, had devastating results. Approximately 110,000 out of 140,000 Jews in the Netherlands were deported. About 15,000 survived in hiding. By contrast, in Belgium 22,000 out of roughly 90,000 Jews were successfully hidden. Only some 26,000 were deported. This reflected the unenthusiastic attitude of the military government and the courage of leftwing Belgians and Catholic clergy who helped the Jews. In Slovakia the government was THE HOLOCAUST officially Catholic and was initially eager to get rid of its Jews, especially if it could seize the wealth they left behind. Hungarians too saw the “Jewish Question” as one of economic gain and collaborated enthusiastically with the Nazis. Romania was a country with a ferociously antisemitic record. Romanian troops killed tens of thousands of Jews on Soviet territory, while “foreign” Jews in annexed areas were massacred or forced into camps. Over 100,000 Romanian Jews were deported to the annexed zone, called Transnistria, and around 200,000 Romanian Jews perished. But in 1943 the regime refused to allow the deportation of its Jewish citizens to Auschwitz; they survived. Italy ended the war with a benign reputation. Italian troops protected Jews wherever they were stationed in France and the Balkans. Yet Italy also passed anti-Jewish laws in 1938, and hard core Italian Fascists rounded up Jews in 1943 and 1944. Approximately 7,800 were deported. Denmark was the only country with a significant Jewish population where a concerted effort by the resistance thwarted Nazi aims. However the Danes had previously enjoyed kidglove treatment from the Germans who were keen not to upset a country that was otherwise placid and, even more important, was a crucial source of food. There is evidence that the effort to round up the Danish Jews was half-hearted, although the brave men and women of the resistance did not know this. In the “Free World” From 1933 to 1938, most democratic governments in Europe were intent on appeasing Hitler. They felt guilty about the way Germany had been treated after the First World War. A guide for students & teachers Many politicians sympathised with Hitler’s anti-Communism, his social policies and his goals of strengthening Germany. His treatment of the Jews From 1933 to 1938, most democratic governments in Europe were intent on appeasing Hitler. did not intrude into their diplomatic reckoning. There were also powerful anti-Jewish and pro-Nazi lobbies that made a pro-Jewish line politically expensive. When Jews started to emigrate from Germany in 1933 the numbers were relatively small, and most Western countries accepted them. However, there was constant pressure to restrict immigration, notably due to high unemployment. After 1938 Jewish emigration turned into a stampede. The international conference at Evian that attempted to find havens for refugees was a farce. Britain controlled Palestine where it was overseeing the development of a Jewish National Home. Over 60,000 Jews emigrated there, with the connivance of the German government. However, in 1937 violent opposition from the Arab population led Britain to curb Jewish immigration. In turn, in 1938 Britain relaxed its domestic immigration controls and allowed in 50,000 refugees, including 9,000 unaccompanied Jewish children who came on special children’s trains – the Kindertransport. For discussion To what extent do those governments which appeased Hitler in the 1930s bear responsibility for the Holocaust? Once war began Jews were trapped, although the emigration of some German Jews did continue until October 1941. Switzerland, which was neutral, accepted a trickle of refugees, 35 THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers In the 1990s, declassified documents from American intelligence agencies revealed that all the neutral countries had traded extensively with Nazi Germany throughout the war years. The Germans paid for vital raw materials, components, munitions, and food using gold plundered from conquered countries and from the Jews. Some of this gold originated as the fillings extracted from the mouths of Jews murdered in the gas chambers. Photograph of Jewish children arriving in London on the Kindertransport in December 1938. Children were officially only allowed in on a temporary basis, with their parents excluded for fear of increasing competition for jobs. but its policy was influenced by antiJewish attitudes in the police force and fear of provoking the Germans. At the height of the “Final Solution” Switzerland sealed its borders and sent back more than 25,000 Jews who tried to reach safety from France. Paradoxically, the fascist regimes in Spain and Portugal took a rather lenient view of Jewish refugees. Several Portuguese consuls gave out large numbers of valuable transit visas to Jews, while Spain allowed Jews to pass through (legally and illegally) despite pressure from Germany to close its frontier with France. Sweden operated tight immigration controls, discriminating against Jews until 1943 when news of the mass murders and the turning tide of the war led to a more open-door policy. Swedish diplomats, notably Raoul Wallenberg, helped to protect thousands of Hungarian Jews in the last year of the war. 36 Bankers and businessmen in Switzerland, Sweden, Portugal, Turkey and Spain had a shrewd idea where the money and gold was coming from. However, they did not object and helped maintain the Nazi war machine, and therefore helped prolong the genocide. Fortunes were made in Switzerland trading in artworks that were looted from the Jews; again, no questions were asked. Raoul Wallenberg Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat who worked in Budapest from the summer of 1944. Wallenberg was sent to the Hungarian capital as part of a change in Swedish foreign policy. The government of Sweden now took steps to try and protect some 200,000 Jews within the city who were yet to be deported to Auschwitz. The young diplomat saved thousands of lives by issuing “protective passports”, going to even greater lengths to personally rescue hundreds from the death marches to the Austrian border. THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers The “Riegner Telegram” sent in August 1942. In the message Gerhart Riegner informed the Western world of intelligence that the Nazis planned to annihilate Europe’s Jews. It would take some months before this information was believed. Could the Allies have done more to help the Jews? There is now no doubt that the governments in London and Washington knew a genocide was taking place. In the summer of 1941 Winston Churchill read intercepted radio traffic between the Einsatzgruppen and Berlin that showed German “police troops” were slaughtering Jews in Russia. However, at this phase of the war there was little he or anyone could do about it except make condemnatory statements. As the persecution gathered pace governments-in-exile, especially the Poles, raised the issue publicly. In mid-1942 intelligence sources and couriers from Poland provided details about the scale of the deportations and the existence of extermination camps, even if the precise location and methods were still clouded. The fragmentary reports and scepticism about “atrocity propaganda” held up any response. There was also a belief that antisemitism was so strong in Britain and the USA that an expression of support for the Jews would be counterproductive. However, by December 1942 the evidence was overwhelming. The Allied governments issued a solemn declaration condemning the extermination of the Jews. The declaration, which promised retribution against German war criminals, triggered a burst of public outrage. In response the Allies agreed to hold a conference at Bermuda in April 1943 to discuss aid for Jewish refugees. It was nothing but an empty gesture. For discussion Why, given their knowledge of events, did the Allies not respond more convincingly to the Holocaust? The Allies could have pressured neutral states to accept more refugees. They could have taken up several offers to give sanctuary to Jewish children. 37 THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers However, at a time when the war hung in the balance, saving Jews was not a priority. In 1944 the Germans were on the defensive and the Allies had the power to intervene. After the Germans occupied Hungary in March 1944 and began to deport Jews to AuschwitzBirkenau, Jewish leaders implored Winston Churchill to order the Royal © Photo: The Wiener Library For discussion What conclusions can be drawn from the way in which the world responded to the persecution and mass murder of the Jews? Frank Foley Frank Foley was a British spy based in Berlin during the 1930s, working under the cover of a passport officer. Based at the British embassy, Foley travelled to concentration camps to present visas that enabled imprisoned Jews to travel. He also hid Jews in his home, and used his position to secure false papers, passports, and visas. In so doing, Foley was breaking British law and risking his life, for if he had been discovered as a spy he would have no diplomatic immunity from the Nazi regime. It is estimated Foley saved 10,000 people. Air Force to bomb the gas chambers or the railways leading to the camp. The RAF objected that this was too dangerous and a diversion of resources from the war effort. Similar pleas to the US president failed too. However, in early 1944 Franklin D Roosevelt did approve the establishment of the War Refugees Board which managed to help Jews in various ways. One of the most controversial “rescue” schemes 38 concerned negotiations between Eichmann and Jewish leaders in Budapest. Eichmann offered to stop the deportation of the Hungarian Jews if the Allies gave the Germans 10,000 trucks to use against the Red Army. A Jewish representative took this message to Istanbul, but the Allies refused to negotiate with the Germans. The offer was a trick, intended to divide the British and Americans from their Russian allies, but little effort was made to exploit the opportunity to at least bluff the Germans. The Vatican remained silent about the persecution of the Jews despite ample information about what was happening and what was being done by nominally Catholic governments. The reasons for this silence are hotly debated. Pope Pius XII tended to sympathise with Hitler’s war against Bolshevism, but even when Catholics were suffering in Poland he did not want to protest and endanger the neutrality of the Vatican. In July 1944 the Pope did send a message to the Hungarian ruler, Admiral Horthy, criticising the treatment of the Jews. This helped secure a halt to the deportations. The Red Cross operated through national committees and was largely neutral during the war as far as the Jewish issue was concerned. However, the International Committee of the Red Cross, based in Switzerland, could have intervened by asking to inspect certain camps. Instead it seems to have been easily duped by the Nazis. Red Cross delegates twice visited the ghetto of Theresienstadt and each time they were fooled by their Nazi guides who arranged for it to be “beautified”. The inmates were forced to act as if all was well, and the delegates did not press their hosts about what happened to those who were transported from the camp to “the East”. THE HOLOCAUST THE HOLOCAUST A guide A guide for students for students & teachers & teachers Liberation 8 T he first of the concentration and extermination camps to be liberated were Majdanek in Poland in July 1944 and Natzweiler in Eastern France in September 1944. Auschwitz fell in January 1945. Most of the camps (Ohrdruf, Nordhausen, Buchenwald, Belsen, Dachau) were overrun in April. Mauthausen in Austria, and Theresienstadt near Prague, were the last to be freed in the first week of May 1945. Allied troops entering the camps were shocked by what they found. General Eishenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in the West, ordered the press and teams of Allied officers to inspect the evidence of Nazi crimes. German civilians from neighbouring towns were forced to confront what had been done “in the name of the German people”. For the prisoners liberation was not a clear cut experience. Some were too ill to know they were free. After initial euphoria many found they were confined to the camps until epidemics were brought under control. It took weeks or months for former prisoners to get home. Jewish survivors, especially those from Eastern Europe, had no homes to go to or did not want to return. Their families had been murdered; they were disorientated and lost. Most wanted to emigrate to the USA or to Palestine and start new lives. But America retained strict immigration controls until 1948 and the British refused to increase the numbers permitted to enter Palestine. A Russian prisoner of war identifies a former camp guard in Buchenwald, April 1945. Jews congregated in camps for “Displaced Persons” (DPs) where they were cared for by the United Nations. By 1947 there were about 250,000 Jews in the British and US zones of occupation of Germany, of whom about 150,000 had crossed from Poland (having survived the war in Russia). Jewish relief organisations sent aid to the camps and set up rehabilitation centres. Many married and started families, showing an amazing will to overcome past traumas and rebuild Jewish life. Cultural life flourished. The establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948 enabled the majority of survivors to leave Europe. Thousands also went to Australia, Canada, and the USA. For discussion For Survivors, to what extent did the damage and upheaval of the Holocaust end upon liberation? Survivors who returned to their homes in Europe faced a cold reception. They were only a tiny part of the flood of returning prisoners of war, forced labourers, and imprisoned resistance fighters. In France the resistance fighters were lionised at the expense of the “racial deportees”. The Dutch looked with horror and embarrassment on the bedraggled Jews who trickled back. Many Hungarian and Polish Jews found their homes occupied. In Poland dozens of Jews were murdered by antisemitic Poles. 39 THE HOLOCAUST 9 A guide for students & teachers Retribution The defendants during the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg 1945-46. T he Allies discussed trying the top Nazis as war criminals during the war. This required a major innovation in international law. In August 1945 Britain, the USA, France and Russia drew up the charter for an International Military Tribunal (IMT) to try the surviving Nazi leaders. Its main purpose was to indict the Nazis for conspiring to wage an aggressive war as well as crimes against humanity and war crimes. Hundreds of German war criminals slipped away to South America. The trial in Nuremberg lasted from November 1945 to October 1946. Although the mass murder of the Jews was mentioned, it was never central to the prosecution case. The IMT did result in the collection of evidence, though, which was the cornerstone of later historical research. 40 Several thousand German war criminals and collaborators were also put on trial in the countries occupied by the Germans or once allied to the Third Reich. In Nuremberg the Americans also mounted a series of twelve subsequent trials dealing with the Einsatzgruppen, the role of the German High Command, industry and the judiciary, the exploitation of slave labour, and medical crimes. While the Allies were occupying Germany they mounted a programme of de-Nazification, investigating all those connected with the NSDAP. However, by 1946 the British and Americans saw the Russians as their main enemy and lost interest in retribution. Hundreds of German war criminals slipped away to South America. Thousands more Nazi-collaborators pretended to be Displaced Persons and emigrated to Britain, Canada, Australia and the USA. Justice would not catch up with them until the 1980s. When the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) was created in 1949 it was given the power to prosecute THE HOLOCAUST Hunting Perpetrators In the last few months of the war, thousands of people responsible for perpetrating the Holocaust were able to evade capture and avoid being brought to justice. Sometimes this was due to preparation and planning, on other occasions it was thanks to indifference or officials turning a “blind eye” to peoples’ past. A number of perpetrators remained in Europe, whilst others escaped through “ratlines” to countries in other continents. Since 1945, individuals like Simon Wiesenthal, Beate and Serge Klarsfeld and Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, have taken it upon themselves to hunt down “the last Nazis” and hold them to account for their crimes. South America who worked with secret organisations set up by ex-Nazis to assist the flight of SS men. However, he was tracked down, kidnapped by the Israeli secret service, and taken to Israel. The Eichmann trial was the first in which the persecution and mass murder of the Jews were the main focus. It gave a platform for survivors to recall their experiences. Dramatic scenes from the trial were shown in cinemas and on TV around the world. This helped to transform attitudes towards the survivors and led to a wave of publications. A guide for students & teachers For discussion In the case of perpetrators of the Holocaust, was justice delivered or delayed? The trial stimulated a wave of scholarship too. This marked the origin of Holocaust Studies. Historical research and the discovery of new documentation has, in turn, provided evidence of crimes and criminals from the Nazi era. Efforts to achieve justice continue to the present day. Nazi-era criminals, but did so with little enthusiasm. The civil service, police and judiciary were full of ex-Nazis and those complicit in the crimes they were supposed to be investigating. By the 1950s many who had been imprisoned were released. In 1958, after a number of embarrassing revelations that exNazis were still at large, a special prosecuting office was set up in West Germany. In the 1960s and 1970s it went on to mount a series of important trials of Einsatzgruppen personnel as well as guards and commanders at Auschwitz and Treblinka. The most spectacular example of retribution was the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961-62. Eichmann had adopted a false identity in 1945 and gone into hiding. In 1950 he escaped to Argentina with the help of pro-Nazi elements in the Vatican and A document room used to hold evidence for the Nuremberg Trials, 1945-1946. However inadequate, legal proceedings at Nuremberg broke new ground in international law as prosecutors sought to dispense justice to the perpetrators of the Holocaust. 41 THE HOLOCAUST 10 A guide for students & teachers The Echoes of Genocide S urvivors began to collect evidence of the genocide as soon as the war was over. The Displaced Persons camps were centres for the first historical research. In the late 1940s and 1950s dozens of books were published, mainly in Yiddish, German and Polish recalling the terrible years. However, the first historians of the Nazi era tended to neglect these sources and left it to Jewish scholars like Phillip Freidman, Leon Poliakov and Gerald Reitlinger to chronicle the “Final Solution”. © L’Osservatore Romano – Photographic service Pope John Paul II at the Western Wall, Jerusalem, 2000. Some of the leading intellectuals of the post-war era tried to explain the origins of Nazism and antisemitism. Jean-Paul Sartre, Theodor Adorno, and Hannah Arendt produced widely differing but insightful analyses of Nazism. These theories converged in depicting the Jews as a scapegoat for social ills and personal problems. Racism and antisemitism were seen as crucial for the development of national as well as individual identities. 42 Leading psychologists such as Bruno Bettleheim, Erich Fromm and Wilhelm Reich tried to understand “the Nazi mind”. They related ideas of child rearing to authoritarianism and suggested that Nazism offered people a respite from the uncertainties of complex, modern societies. Theologians, especially in Germany, began to examine the Christian roots of Jew-hatred. This culminated in the declaration of the second Vatican Council in 1962-65 that the Jews could not be held responsible for the death of Christ. However, it was not until the pontificate of John Paul II (19782005) that the Vatican came close to acknowledging the role of Catholicism in fomenting antisemitism, tolerating Nazism, and remaining silent in the face of genocide. During the 1960s and 1970s many scholars attempting to understand human behaviour in times of crisis turned to the Nazi mass murderers. Stanley Milgram argued that their behaviour was typical of people acting under orders in hierarchical societies in which actions were separated from the consequences. Phillip Zimbardo explained their behaviour in terms of peer pressure within dehumanising systems. In the 1980s various thinkers, notably Zygmunt Bauman, argued that Nazism was the high point of rational thinking. Rather than being a deviant phenomenon, or a throw-back to medievalism, it was a symptom of modernity. It expressed the desire for order and purity in it’s most radical form. Modern bureaucracies and technology also made mass killing feasible. THE HOLOCAUST The end of the Cold War stimulated many new approaches. First, the collapse of the Soviet bloc led to “ethnic cleansing” and genocide, which reminded people of the potential effect of unbridled hate. Second, sensitive documents from wartime intelligence agencies in archives in the USA, Britain and the former Soviet Union were made available to researchers. These documents helped reconstruct Nazi Germany’s trade with neutral countries and the disposal of looted gold. They also revealed that Swiss banks had not only traded in looted gold, but after the war had quietly retained the bank accounts of Jews murdered by the Nazis. They made little attempt to find the heirs to these accounts and made it very difficult for survivors who were legitimate claimants. A campaign by the World Jewish Congress and several law suits in the USA raised the profile of these issues and led to a series of international conferences (London in 1997, Washington in 1998, Stockholm in 2000) to resolve the “unfinished business” of the Nazi era. In order to assess the losses of Jewish property and assets, as well as the degree of local responsibility, historical commissions were established in over a dozen countries. The reports of these commissions were a major step forward in historical understanding. © The Imperial War Museum, BOS 33 There was a prolonged debate amongst historians in West Germany about whether the Third Reich could be considered a stage in the modernisation of Germany, and hence a normal period of history, or whether it was extraordinary and should never be treated on a par with other epochs. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen caused a world-wide controversy when he suggested that the Germans were uniquely antisemitic and “Hitler’s willing executioners”. A guide for students & teachers British troops deployed in Bosnia and Croatia as part of the international community’s response to civil war and genocide, 1992. The UN Protection Force were tasked with protecting UN humanitarian aid convoys. The new sources shed fresh light on the role played by German industry in processing the loot (including dental gold), supplying poison gas, and employing slave labour. Several corporations, including Volkswagen, commissioned historians to investigate their wartime activities. At the start of the 21st century, billions of dollars were awarded to the survivors of Nazi persecution as a result of negotiations in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria and court cases in several countries. The democratisation of Eastern Europe opened the way for the restitution of Jewish property and the rebuilding of Jewish life. While there was a wave of anti-Soviet nationalism that tended to glorify the men who collaborated with the Nazis, there was also a more honest confrontation with the past. Historical commissions were set up in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to investigate local collaboration and plunder. Sites of mass murder were appropriately marked for the first time, and annual commemorations inaugurated. For discussion Some argue that the Holocaust was the defining event of the twentieth century – to what extent is this view valid? As more and more became known about the crimes of the Nazi regime and the experience of the victims, the period attracted the attention of novelists, playwrights, and film- 43 THE HOLOCAUST A guide for students & teachers © Suzanne Bardgett, The Imperial War Museum memory of the persecution and mass murder of the Jews was confined largely to Jewish communities. It is now omnipresent, so much so that some social scientists argue that it is used in some societies as a substitute for exploring their own historical traumas. Some critics argue that there is a “Holocaust industry” designed to elicit sympathy for the Jews and deflect hostile comment about Israel. Others maintain that commemoration has gone so far that Jews are associated with suffering and death at the expense of recalling Jewish culture and celebrating the Jewish present. A section of the permanent Holocaust exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, London. Since opening in June 2000, the exhibition has been visited by over two million people and is internationally recognised. makers. A string of acclaimed and controversial books and films – Sophie’s Choice, Shoah, Schindler’s List to name a few – brought what was now universally known as “the Holocaust” to a global audience. For discussion In the wake of the Holocaust, many have proclaimed “Never Again”. In practical terms, how can we meet this challenge? By the 1990s, the Holocaust came to be seen as the defining event of the twentieth century. This message was projected in impressive museums in Washington (opened in 1993), London (opened in 2000) and monuments, such as that at the heart of Berlin (unveiled 2005). An Intergovernmental Task Force for International Cooperation in Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research was initiated in 1998. At the 2000 Stockholm conference, many countries endorsed official, government-supported annual commemorations which focused on extensive educational programmes. For a quarter of a century after 1945 44 There is no doubt that at a time when values are in flux and different cultures are arguing their merits against one another, the Holocaust seems to be one evil that everyone can agree upon. The recurrence of ethnic cleansing and genocide, in Rwanda, the Balkans, and Darfur, has only added to the contemporary interest in the “Final Solution” and the urgency of understanding how it was possible. Tragically, despite the often repeated slogan “Never Again”, there is ample evidence that antisemitism, racism in all its forms, religious hatred, political intolerance and terror have not been banished from human society. This makes the need to learn about the Nazi era and the fate of the Jews as important as ever. Education and commemoration will remain a vital part of efforts to construct decent societies in which difference is accepted and there are shared standards of morality, civility and legality. The abandonment of these standards between 1933 and 1945 resulted in discrimination, persecution, torture, oppression, enslavement, ethnic cleansing, mass murder and, ultimately, genocide. About The Holocaust Educational Trust The Holocaust Educational Trust was founded in 1988 during the passage of the War Crimes Act. Our aim is to raise awareness and understanding in schools and amongst the wider public of the Holocaust and its relevance today. We believe that the Holocaust must have a permanent place in our nation’s collective memory. One of the Trust’s earliest achievements was to ensure that the Holocaust was included in the National Curriculum for England in 1991 – for Key Stage 3 students (11-14 year olds). The Holocaust has remained on the National Curriculum since then. We also successfully campaigned to have the assets of Holocaust victims and survivors released and returned to their rightful owners in the late 1990s. Since 1999 the Trust’s Lessons from Auschwitz Project has given thousands of post16 students and teachers the opportunity to visit the Nazi concentration and death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau as part of a four-part educational programme. Since 2006 the Project has received Government funding. Having played a crucial role in the establishment of Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK in 2001, the Trust continues to play a key role in the delivery of this national commemorative day. We work in schools, colleges and higher education institutions, arranging for survivors of the Holocaust to speak to young people; providing teacher training workshops and lectures, as well as teaching aids and resource materials. For further information, please contact us: Telephone: +44 (0)207 222 6822 Fax: +44 (0)207 233 0161 Email: [email protected] Web: www.het.org.uk Registered Charity no. 1092892