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THE HOLOCAUST
WHAT WAS THE HOLOCAUST?
The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored
persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its
collaborators.
Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire."
The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that
Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were
an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.
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WHO WERE THEY TARGETING AND WHY?
In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million. Most European Jews
lived in countries that Nazi Germany would occupy or influence during World War II. By
1945, the Germans and their collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European
Jews as part of the "Final Solution," the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe.
Although Jews, whom the Nazis deemed a priority danger to Germany, were the primary
victims of Nazi racism, other victims included some 200,000 Roma (Gypsies). At least
200,000 mentally or physically disabled patients, mainly Germans, living in institutional
settings, were murdered in the so-called Euthanasia Program.
As Nazi tyranny spread across Europe, the Germans and their collaborators persecuted
and murdered millions of other people. Between two and three million Soviet prisoners of
war were murdered or died of starvation, disease, neglect, or maltreatment.
The Germans targeted the non-Jewish Polish intelligentsia for killing, and deported
millions of Polish and Soviet civilians for forced labor in Germany or in occupied Poland,
where these individuals worked and often died under deplorable conditions.
From the earliest years of the Nazi regime, German authorities persecuted homosexuals
and others whose behavior did not match prescribed social norms. German police
officials targeted thousands of political opponents (including Communists, Socialists, and
trade unionists) and religious dissidents (such as Jehovah's Witnesses). Many of these
individuals died as a result of incarceration and maltreatment.
WHY NOT JUST LEAVE???
Emigration OUT of Germany
• Passport
Immigration INTO the U.S.
• Visa application (Form BC)—Five copies
• Birth certificate—Two copies (country of birth determined applicable
quotas) • Quota number, which established the person’s place on the
waiting list to enter the United States
• Two sponsors (close relatives of prospective immigrant were preferred).
The sponsors had to be American citizens or have permanent resident
status, and they had to fill out and provide the following: – Affidavit of
Support and Sponsorship (Form C)—Six copies, notarized – Certified
copy of most recent federal tax return – Affidavit from a bank about
accounts – Affidavit from any other responsible person regarding other
assets (affidavit from the sponsor’s employer or statement of commercial
rating)
• Certificate of Good Conduct from German police authorities, including
two copies of each of the following: – Police dossier prison record –
Military record – Other government records about the individual •
Affidavits of Good Conduct (after September 1940)
• Evidence of passing a physical examination at a U.S. consulate
• Proof of permission to leave Germany (imposed September 30, 1939)
• Proof the prospective immigrant had booked passage to the Western
hemisphere (imposed September 1939)
• Certificate from the local police noting the formal dissolution of residence
in Germany
• Certificate from the Reich Ministry of Finance approving emigration, which
required: – Payment of an emigration tax of 25 percent on total assets
valued at more than 50,000 R M. This tax came due upon the dissolution of
German residence. – Submission of an itemized list of all gifts made to third
parties since January 1, 1931. If their value exceeded 10,000 R M, they
were included in the calculation of the emigration tax. – Payment of a
capital transfer tax of 25 percent (levied only on Jews) of assets in addition
to the emigration tax. – Certification from the local tax office that there
were no outstanding taxes due. – Certification from a currency exchange
office that all currency regulations had been followed. An emigrant was
permitted to take 2,000 R M or less in currency out of the country. Any
remaining assets would be transferred into blocked bank accounts with
restricted access.
• Customs declaration, dated no earlier than three days before departure,
permitting the export of itemized personal and household goods. This
declaration required: – Submission of a list, in triplicate, of all personal and
household goods accompanying the e m i grant stating their value. The list
had to note items acquired before January 1, 1933, those acquired since
January 1, 1933, and those acquired to facilitate emigr a t i o n . –
Documents attesting to the value of personal and household goods, and
written explanations for the necessity of taking them out of the country. –
Certification from a currency exchange office permitting the export of
itemized personal and household goods, dated no earlier than 14 days
before departure.
THE FINAL SOLUTION
They used the term “Final Solution” to refer to their plan to annihilate the
Jewish people. It is not known when the leaders of Nazi Germany definitively
decided to implement the "Final Solution." The genocide, or mass
destruction, of the Jews was the culmination of a decade of increasingly
severe discriminatory measures.
After the September 1939 German invasion of Poland (the beginning
of World War II), anti-Jewish policy escalated to the imprisonment and
eventual murder of European Jewry.
The Nazis first established ghettos (enclosed areas designed to isolate and
control the Jews)
Polish and western European Jews were deported to these ghettos where
they lived in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions with inadequate food.
MASSIVE KILLING OPERATION BEGINS
After the June 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, SS and police
units (acting as mobile killing units) began massive killing operations aimed
at entire Jewish communities.
By autumn 1941, the SS and police introduced mobile gas vans. These
paneled trucks had exhaust pipes reconfigured to pump poisonous carbon
monoxide gas into sealed spaces, killing those locked within. They were
designed to complement ongoing shooting operations.
On July 17, 1941, four weeks after the invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler
tasked SS chief Heinrich Himmler with responsibility for all security matters
in the occupied Soviet Union. Hitler gave Himmler broad authority to
physically eliminate any perceived threats to permanent German rule.
Two weeks later, on July 31, 1941, Nazi leader Hermann Goering authorized
SS General Reinhard Heydrich to make preparations for the implementation
of a "complete solution of the Jewish question."
KILLING CENTERS
The Nazis established killing centers for efficient mass murder. Unlike
concentration camps, which served primarily as detention and labor centers,
killing centers (also referred to as "extermination camps" or "death camps")
were almost exclusively "death factories."
German SS and police murdered nearly 2,700,000 Jews in the killing centers
either by asphyxiation with poison gas or by shooting.
The first killing center was Chelmno, which opened in the Warthegau (part of
Poland annexed to Germany) in December 1941. Mostly Jews, but
also Roma (Gypsies), were gassed in mobile gas vans there.
In 1942, in the Generalgouvernement (a territory in the interior of occupied
Poland), the Nazis opened the Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka killing centers
(known collectively as the Operation Reinhard camps) to systematically
murder the Jews of Poland.
In the Operation Reinhard killing centers, the SS and their auxiliaries killed
approximately 1,526,500 Jews between March 1942 and November 1943.
AUSCHWITZ
The Auschwitz concentration camp complex was the largest of its kind established
by the Nazi regime. It included three main camps. All three camps used prisoners for
forced labor. One of them also functioned for an extended period as a killing center.
The camps were located approximately 37 miles west of Krakow.
The best estimates of the number of victims at the Auschwitz concentration camp
complex, including the killing center at Auschwitz-Birkenau, between 1940 and 1945
are: Jews (1,095,000 deported to Auschwitz, of whom 960,000 died); Poles (147,000
deported, of whom 74,000 died); Roma (23,000 deported, of whom 21,000 died);
Soviet prisoners of war (15,000 deported and died); and other nationalities (25,000
deported, of whom 12,000 died).
It is estimated that the SS and police deported at least 1.3 million people to the
Auschwitz complex between 1940 and 1945. Of these, the camp authorities
murdered approximately 1.1 million.
DEATH MARCHES
A massive Soviet 1944 summer offensive in eastern Belarus annihilated German Army
Group Center and permitted Soviet forces to overrun the first of the major Nazi
concentration camps, Lublin/Majdanek.
Shortly after that offensive, SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordered that prisoners in all
concentration camps and subcamps be evacuated toward the interior of the Reich.
Due to the rapid Soviet advance, the SS had not had time to complete the evacuation of
Majdanek.
Soviet and western media widely publicized SS atrocities at the camp, using both
footage of the camp at liberation and interviews with some of the surviving
prisoners. The evacuations of the concentration camps had three purposes:
(1) SS authorities did not want prisoners to fall into enemy hands alive to tell their stories
to Allied and Soviet liberators
(2) the SS thought they needed prisoners to maintain production of armaments wherever
possible
(3) some SS leaders, including Himmler, believed irrationally that they could use Jewish
concentration camp prisoners as hostages to bargain for a separate peace in the west
that would guarantee the survival of the Nazi regime.
DEATH MARCHES...CONTINUED
In the summer and early autumn months of 1944, most of the evacuations were
carried out by train or, in the case of German positions cut off in the Baltic States, by
ship. As winter approached, however, and the Allies reached the German borders
and assumed full control of German skies, SS authorities increasingly evacuated
concentration camp prisoners from both east and west on foot.
Major evacuation operations moved prisoners out of Auschwitz, Stutthof, and GrossRosen westward to Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Dachau, and Sachsenhausen in winter
1944-1945; from Buchenwald and Flossenbürg to Dachau and Mauthausen in spring
1945; and from Sachsenhausen and Neuengamme northwards to the Baltic Sea in the
last weeks of the war.
To almost the last day of the war, German authorities marched prisoners to various
locations in the Reich. As late as May 1, 1945, prisoners who had been evacuated
from Neuengamme to the North Sea coastline were loaded onto ships; hundreds of
them died when the British bombed the ships a few days later, thinking that they
carried German military personnel.
LIBERATION
Soviet forces were the first to approach a major Nazi camp, reaching Majdanek near Lublin, Poland,
in July 1944.
Germans attempted to hide the evidence of mass murder by demolishing the camp. Camp staff set
fire to the large crematorium used to burn bodies of murdered prisoners, but in the hasty evacuation
the gas chambers were left standing.
The Soviets liberated Auschwitz, the largest killing center and concentration camp, in January 1945.
Soviet soldiers found over six thousand emaciated prisoners alive when they entered the camp.
There was abundant evidence of mass murder in Auschwitz. The retreating Germans had destroyed
most of the warehouses in the camp, but in the remaining ones the Soviets found personal belongings
of the victims.
They discovered, for example, hundreds of thousands of men's suits, more than 800,000 women's
outfits, and more than 14,000 pounds of human hair.
LIBERATION CONTINUED...
US forces liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany, on April 11,
1945, a few days after the Nazis began evacuating the camp.
On the day of liberation, an underground prisoner resistance organization seized control of
Buchenwald to prevent atrocities by the retreating camp guards.
American forces liberated more than 20,000 prisoners at Buchenwald. They also
liberated Dora-Mittelbau, Flossenbürg,Dachau, and Mauthausen.
Liberators confronted unspeakable conditions in the Nazi camps, where piles of corpses lay
unburied. Only after the liberation of these camps was the full scope of Nazi horrors exposed
to the world.
The small percentage of inmates who survived resembled skeletons because of the demands
of forced labor and the lack of food, compounded by months and years of maltreatment.
Many were so weak that they could hardly move. Disease remained an ever-present danger,
and many of the camps had to be burned down to prevent the spread of epidemics. Survivors
of the camps faced a long and difficult road to recovery.