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While in prison, Hitler wrote volume one of Mein Kampf (My Struggle) , which
was published in 1925. This work detailed Hitler's radical ideas of German
nationalism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Bolshevism. Linked with Social Darwinism, the human struggle that
said that might makes right, Hitler's book became the ideological base for the Nazi Party's racist beliefs and
murderous practices.
This site discusses many of the ideas contained within Mein Kampf.
After Hitler was released from prison, he formally resurrected the Nazi Party. Hitler began rebuilding and reorganizing the Party,
waiting for an opportune time to gain political power in Germany. The Conservative military hero Paul von Hindenburg
was
elected president in 1925, and Germany stabilized.
Hitler skillfully maneuvered through Nazi Party politics and emerged as the sole leader. The Führerprinzip, or leader principle,
established Hitler as the one and only to whom Party members swore loyalty unto death. Final decision making rested with him, and
his strategy was to develop a highly centralized and structured party that could compete in Germany's future elections. Hitler hoped
to create a bureaucracy, which he envisioned as "the germ of the future state."
The Nazi Party began building a mass movement. From 27,000 members in 1925, the Party grew to 108,000 in 1929. The SA
was the paramilitary unit of the Party, a propaganda arm that became known for its strong-arm tactics of street brawling and terror.
The SS
was established as an elite group with special duties within the SA, but it remained inconsequential until Heinrich
Himmler
became its leader in 1929. By the late twenties, the Nazi Party started other auxiliary groups. The Hitler Youth
,
the Student League and the Pupils' League were open to young Germans. The National Socialist Women's League allowed women
to get involved. Different professional groups--teachers, lawyers and doctors--had their own auxiliary units.
From 1925 to 1927, the Nazi Party failed to make inroads in the cities and in May 1928, it did poorly in the Reichstag
elections, winning only 2.6% of the total vote. The Party shifted its strategy to rural and small town areas and fueled anti-Semitism
by calling for expropriation of Jewish agricultural property and by condemning large Jewish department stores. Party propaganda
proved effective at winning over university students, veterans' organizations, and professional groups, although the Party became
increasingly identified with young men of the lower middle classes.
On August 8, 1938, just a few weeks after the Nazi occupation of Austria, prisoners from the Dachau, concentration camp near
Munich, were transferred to the Austrian town of Mauthausen, near Linz.
They were brought to the rock quarry there, known as the "Wiener Graben", where they began to build the granite fortress-prison of
the main camp, mostly with their blood, bodies, bare hands and backs. It was known as the “mother camp” for all of Austria,
comprising some 49 sub-camps. Between Aug. 8, 1938 and May 5, 1945, about 195, 000 persons, men and women, were forced into
these camps. Most of the people were imprisoned under the Nazi “protective custody” laws, that is, they were consider dangerous to
the Third Reich of Germany and Austria, and therefore, these two nations, now joined, had to be “protected” from these people
because of their racial origin, nationality, political affiliation or religious belief. It should be noted that Austria contributed more
volunteers for the SS, per capita , than did Germany.
The Mauthausen camp was one of the most infamous in the entire Nazi alternate universe of human destruction. Many people, most
of whom were innocent of any crimes, were tortured to death in its rock quarry, and in the tunnels of Mauthausen-Gusen, the most
infamous of the sub-camps. The policy of death through work was instituted by Chief of SS, Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler.
Prisoners were to be given only the most primitive tools, and also, whenever possible, they were to work with their bare hands. This
policy was known as “Primitivbauweise”. In Mauthausen it resulted in a harsh, stone world, deprived of any human kindness and
compassion. It is there today still... sitting on a small mountain-top in the astonishingly beautiful and bucolic Austrian countryside,
maintained by the Austrian government.
In the beginning of the systematic mass murder of Jews, Nazis used mobile killing squads called
Einsatzgruppen.
The Einsatzgruppen consisted of four units of between 500 and 900 men each which
followed the invading German troops into the Soviet Union. By the time Himmler
ordered a halt to
the shooting in the fall of 1942, they had murdered approximately 1,500,000 Jews. The death camps proved
to be a better, faster, less personal method for killing Jews, one that would spare the shooters, not the
victims, emotional anguish.
Five photographs and a map of Einsatzgruppen activities may be viewed in the Resources
section.
A chilling report by the commander of one of the Einsatzgruppen, detailing the murders of 137,346 persons in a five
month period.
Detailed information about the Einsatzgruppen, with primary source material.
A growing collection of documents related to the Einsatzgruppen is available at this site.
Map of Einsatzgruppen massacres in Eastern Europe, 1941-1942.
In September 1941, the Nazis began using gassing vans--trucks loaded with groups of people who were locked in and asphyxiated
by carbon monoxide. These vans were used until the completion of the first death camp, Chelmno, which began operations in late
1941.
Nazi correspondence detailing the operation of gassing vans.
Nazi testimony regarding gassing vans.
On December 7, 1941, the Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) order was issued to deter resistance by allowing military courts to
swiftly sentence resisters to death. Those arrested under this order were said to have disappeared into the "night and fog."
More on the Night and Fog order from the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust.
THE DEADLY PHILOSOPHY: RACIAL PURITY
"Be honest, decent, faithful and congenial towards members of our own blood
but to no one else."
Heinrich Himmler, October 4, 1943
At the core of the Nazi ideology was a deadly vision of a racially pure
society: a vicious form of social, genetic, and population planning that
eliminated every individual not fitting its narrow definition of perfection.
While Jews were the primary target, Gypsies, Slavs, Jehovah’s
Witnesses, Polish, homosexuals, the handicapped and political
dissidents were also trapped in the deadly grip of Nazi ideology.
Der Untermensch (The Subhuman), a German-produced
racial propaganda pamphlet (1942). CL:SWC
The Nazis believed that the "useless mouths" (the
chronically ill and the physically and mentally defective)
had no right to live. On September 1, 1939, Hitler signed
an order "granting" such individuals the right to die. The
so-called euthanasia (mercy-killing) program of the
Nazis killed hundreds of thousands of individuals by gas
or lethal injection.
In 1940-41 special liquidation centers were established
throughout Germany to eliminate the mentally or
chronically ill. In these centers the first hermetically
sealed gas chambers were developed. These deadly
chambers, disguised as showers, were the prototypes
for the mass extermination chambers later used in the
Nazi extermination camps.
A demonstration of Aryan features in Nazi-run schools. CL:SW
Over 500,000 Gypsies were systematically murdered by the Nazis
between 1939 and 1945. Like the Jews, Gypsies were stereotyped in
Nazi propaganda as vagabonds, criminals, and parasites.
On the selection platform at Birkenau, 1944. CL:Archives
of the State Museum in Oswiecim
"The Blood Protection Law deals with the segregation of Jewish and German
blood from the biological point of view." Stuckart and Globke,
Commentaries to the German Race Laws, 1936
Gypsies being deported from Simmering in Vienna to the transit camp of
Bruck on the Leitha River, late 1938. CL:DOW
Gypsy mother and child at the Lackenbach transit camp
in Burgenland, Austria 1940. CL:DOW
Prisoner Reception: The Sauna
This is where prisoners selected for slave labor were processed. Often people would have to wait outside
naked in any weather. Here they would have to give up all their remaining possessions: money, jewels, even
wedding rings and photos. In short, the prisoner was left with only one possession, his or her body. In this
building planned humiliation was performed on the confused and terrified new arrivals. Men and women were
forced to stand on stools, in a room crowded with people while heads, armpits and other intimate parts of one's
body were shaved by male prisoners and where numbers were tattooed in each arm. It is also where prisoners
already in the camp were deloused. This is because of the raging typhus epidemics. After liberation at BergenBelsen, former Auschwitz and Birkenau prisoner Adolf Gawalewicz said to British Army personal during a
personal DDT session: "It's not going to work. Even the Germans couldn't get rid of the lice!"
The United States government response to Nazi anti-Semitic policy is best viewed in the context American foreign policy
and the domestic economic crisis of the 1930s. During the refugee phase (1933 - 1941), there was a reluctance to
accept Jewish refugees. As the situation developed, there was some response. Hugh R. Wilson, the United States
ambassador to Germany, was "recalled for consultation" after Kristallnacht. After the annexation of Austria, the German
and Austrian immigration quotas were unified in order not to lose the latter, and the existing quotas were fully utilized.
But a bill to admit ten thousand Jewish refugee children outside the quota (the Wagner - Rogers Bill), introduced in 1939
and again in 1940, did not emerge from committee. During World War II, the "Jewish question" maintained the low
priority it had had before the war.
The initial context of the United States relationship to Germany was its policy of isolationism, which prevented the
Roosevelt administration from assuming an interventionist posture. More difficult to appraise is the direct link between
isolationism and antisemitism. The Jewish community, because of its close ties to the Roosevelt administration, acted as
a magnet for anti - New Deal sentiment. They earned thereby the opposition of isolationist spokesmen like Charles
Lindbergh. During the 1930s antisemitism was a sentiment that stemmed primarily from the right wing of the political
spectrum, from men like Charles E. Coughlin, and Gerald L. K. Smith. The possibilities of forming the necessary
coalitions to shape rescue policy were thus limited to the liberal side of the political spectrum. Moreover, the fear that
refugees would increase unemployment was one of the main arguments of antirescue policy. As a consequence, efforts
to rescue Jews by means of refugee ships, like the St. Louis, failed.
The American Entry into the War.
American's entry into the war hardly stilled the strident antisemitism. Antirefugee and antirescue sentiment was now
buttressed by a new fear that Germany would infiltrate spies into the refugee stream. Perceiving these popular passions,
Roosevelt beleived that the war, which he considered necessary, must never be allowed to be depicted in terms of a war
to save the Jews. The existing indifference to the refugees extended to the question of rescuing those in camps. Even
when it became clear that Berlin had actually embarked on the "Final Solution, " no immediate change came about.
The Evian Conference.
Most of the steps taken by the Roosevelt administration were intended more as gestures than as a consistent policy to
ameliorate the plight of the victims. The Evian Conference, called at Roosevelt's behest in mid - 1938, was foredoomed
to failure since the American delegation was instructed that no tampering with the immigration laws would be
countenanced. Without taking the lead, the US could not convince other nations to take in masses of Jewish refugees.
Rescue of Jews - Not a War Priority.
Between 1942 and the end of the war in Europe in 1945, the Allies gave no priority in their war aims to the rescue of
Jews. Repeated suggestions for retribution, negotiations, or ameliorating the situation, were rejected because it was felt
that such steps would interfere with the prosecution of the war. The murder of the Jews was not mentioned at any of the
Allied war conferences. As news continued to reach the West between May and December 1942, the British government
was subjected to growing pressure to do something to help the Jews. When told of the British desire to make some sort
of gesture, the United States responded by favoring the issuing of a declaration. A joint statement issued on December
17, 1942, in the names of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the USSR,
Great Britain, the United States, and the French National Committee, clearly condemned the "bestial policy of cold blooded extermination."
The Bermuda Conference.
The Bermuda Conference, called in the aftermath of the swell of information about the mass murder of the Jews, was
the next "gesture." It soon became apparent that the purpose of this conference was to assuage public opinion. So
meager were its results that it was decided not to make them public, and rescue advocates dubbed the conference a
"cruel mockery."
The Creation of the War Refugee Board._7E
Firm action on the rescue question came from the Treasury Department, headed by Henry Morgenthau, Jr., the closest
Jew to Roosevelt. Josiah E. DuBois, Jr., an official in the Treasury Department, discovered evidence that the State
Department had sought to undermine all efforts at rescue. That information was delivered to the President on January
16, 1944, together with a plan to create an interdepartmental rescue agency. Subsequently Roosevelt created the War
Refugee Board (WRB), which was financed by the Joint Distribution Committee.
The War Refugee Board's Activities.
Almost immediately, the WRB was faced with a crisis in Hungary. It urged the Hungarian people not to cooperate with
the deportations and appealed to all nations maintaining diplomatic contact with Hungary to increase the size of their
legations so that the deportations could be monitored. In Sweden the WRB recruited Raoul Wallenberg, who went on to
demonstrate what could be achieved. A special executive order issued by Roosevelt in April 1944 established a
temporary haven for rescue in Fort Ontario, near Oswego, New York. The heretofore immutable immigration laws were
thus circumvented. Pressure was put on various neutral countries to accept refugees. But proposals to bomb the rail
lines leading to Auschwitz, and the camp itself were rejected.
An Assessment.
Despite the increase in activity by the Roosevelt administration, the rescue of the surviving Jews proved to be very
difficult. The breakthrough on the rescue front represented by the creation of the WRB came too late and was too
weakly implemented to save the surviving Jews of Europe.
Courtesy of:
"Encyclopedia of the Holocaust"
©1990 Macmillan Publishing Company
New York, NY 10022
2. DISCRIMINATORY DECREES AGAINST JEWS
When the Nazi Party gained control of the German State, the conspirators used the means of official decrees as a weapon against the
Jews. In this way the force of the state was applied against them.
Jewish immigrants were denaturalized (1933 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 480, signed by Frick and Neurath).
Native Jews were precluded from citizenship (1935 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 1146, signed by Frick).
Jews were forbidden to live in marriage or to have extramarital relations with persons of German blood (1935 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part
I, page 1146, signed by Frick and Hess).
Jews were denied the right to vote (1936 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 133, signed by Frick).
Jews were denied the right to hold public office or civil service
[Page 981]
positions (1933 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 277, signed by Frick) .
Jews were relegated to an inferior status by the denial of common privileges and freedoms. Thus, they were denied access to certain
city areas, sidewalks, transportation, places of amusement, restaurants (1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 1676).
Progressively, more and more stringent measures were applied, even to the denial of private pursuits. They were excluded from the
practice of dentistry (1939 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 47, signed by Hess).
The practice of law was denied to them (1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 1403, signed by Frick and Hess).
The practice of medicine was forbidden them (1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 969, signed by Frick and Hess).
They were denied employment by press and radio ( 1933 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 661).
They were excluded from stock exchanges and stock brokerage 1934 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 661).
They were excluded from farming ( 1933 Reichsgesetzblatt, , Part I, page 685).
In 1938 they were excluded from business in general and from the economic life of Germany (1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, Page
1580, signed by Goering).
The Jews were also forced to pay discriminatory taxes and huge atonement fines. Their homes, bank accounts, real estate, and
intangibles were expropriated.
A report of a conference under the chairmanship of Goering, and attended by Funk, among others, which was held at 11 clock on 12
November 1918 at the Reich Ministry for Air, quotes Goering as saying:
"One more question, gentlemen, what would you think the situation would be if I'd announced today that Jewry
shall have to contribute this one billion as a punishment."
"I shall choose the wording this way that German Jewry shall, as punishment for their abominable crimes, etc.,
etc., have to make a contribution of one billion; that'll work. The pigs won't commit another murder. I'd like to say
again that I would not like to be a Jew in Germany." (1816-PS)
Following these whimsical remarks a decree was issued over the signature of Goering, fining German Jews the sum of one billion
Reichsmarks (1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 1579 dated 12 November 1938, signed by Goering).
[Page 982]
Similar decrees are contained in 1939 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 282, signed by Goering; and in 1941 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I,
page 722, signed by Frick and Bormann.
Finally, in 1943, the Jews were placed beyond the protection of any judicial process by a decree signed by Bormann and Frick,
among others; the police were made the sole arbiters of punishment and death (1943 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 372, signed by
Frick and Bormann.)
In 1925 Adolf Hitler formed his own personal bodyguard called the Schutzstaffel (SS). Four years later Hitler appointed
Heinrich Himmler as the leader of the SS. By the time of Himmler's appointment the SS had only 280 members. They
wore the same uniform as the SA except for a black cap with a silver death's head badge and a black tie.
Over the next year Himmler obtained the independence of the SS from the Sturm Abteilung (SA). Sepp Dietrich was put
in charge of Hitler's bodyguard whereas Himmler concentrated on building up the organization.
With the agreement of Adolf Hitler, Himmler expanded the size of the SS. Himmler personally vetted all applicants to
make sure that all were good 'Aryan' types. In 1932 Himmler introduced all-black uniform of the SS.
By the time the Nazi Party gained power in 1933 Himmler's SS had grown to a strength of 52,000. He was also made
head of all German political police outside Prussia, where Hermann Goering was the minister of the interior.
Himmler agreed with Goering that the Sturm Abteilung (SA) posed a threat to the German Army and in June 1934, along
with his loyal assistants, Reinhard Heydrich, Kurt Daluege and Walter Schellenberg, he arranged what became known
as the Night of the Long Knives.
As a result of this purge the SS was now the principal instrument of internal rule in Germany. In 1936 the Gestapo also
came under Himmler's control. Himmler was also able to put SS men in all the key posts in Nazi Germany.
In December, 1940 Heinrich Himmler established the Waffen SS. This new army grew rapidly and within six months
grew to over 150,000 men.
During the Second World War the SS Death's Head Units were put in charge of Germany's Concentration Camps. The
SS also followed the German Army into the Soviet Union where they had the responsibility of murdering Jews, gypsies,
communists and partisans.
By June 1944 the SS had over 800,000 members: Hitler's Body Guard (200,000) Waffen (594,000) and Death Head
Units (24,000).
At the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial the Schutzstaffel (SS) was declared a criminal organization and a large number of
its leaders were executed.
David Low, So you won't be protected. Eh? (1st October, 1941)
Prewar photograph of
three Jewish children
with their babysitter.
Two of the children
perished in 1942.
Warsaw, Poland, 19251926.
United States
Holocaust Memorial
Museum
THE HOLOCAUST
The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution
and murder of approximately 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 "life
unworthy of life." During the era of the Holocaust, the Nazis also targeted other
groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the
handicapped, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others).
Other groups were persecuted on political and behavioral grounds, among them
Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals.
In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million. Most
European Jews lived in countries that the Third Reich would occupy or influence
during World War II. By 1945, close to two out of every three European Jews
had been killed as part of the "Final Solution", the Nazi policy to murder the Jews
of Europe. Although Jews were the primary victims of Nazi racism, other victims
included tens of thousands of Roma (Gypsies). At least 200,000 mentally or
physically disabled people were murdered in the Euthanasia Program. As Nazi
tyranny spread across Europe, the Nazis persecuted and murdered millions of
other people. More than 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 citizens for forced labor in Germany or in occupied Poland. From the
earliest years of the Nazi regime, homosexuals and others deemed to be
behaving in a socially unacceptable way were persecuted. Thousands of political
dissidents (including Communists, Socialists, and trade unionists) and religious
dissidents (such as Jehovah's Witnesses) were also targeted. Many of these
individuals died as a result of incarceration and maltreatment.
Before beginning the war in 1939, the Nazis established
concentration camps to imprison Jews, Roma, other victims of
ethnic and racial hatred, and political opponents of Nazism. During
the war years, the Nazis and their collaborators created ghettos,
transit camps, and forced-labor camps. Following the invasion of
the Soviet Union in June 1941, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing
units) carried out mass-murder operations against Jews, Roma,
and Soviet state and Communist party officials. More than a
million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered by these
units. Between 1942 and 1944, Nazi Germany deported millions
more Jews from the occupied territories to extermination camps,
where they murdered them in specially developed killing facilities.
The Holocaust
See maps
In the final months of the war, SS guards forced camp inmates on death marches in an
attempt to prevent the Allied liberation of large numbers of prisoners. As Allied forces
moved across Europe in a series of offensives on Germany, they began to encounter
and liberate concentration camp prisoners, many of whom had survived the death
marches. World War II ended in Europe with the unconditional surrender of German
armed forces in the west on May 7 and in the east on May 9, 1945.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Human
remains found
in the Dachau
concentration
camp
crematorium
after
liberation.
Germany,
April 1945.
"FINAL SOLUTION"
It remains uncertain as to when the Nazi leadership decided to implement the
"Final Solution," the plan to annihilate the Jewish people. The genocide of the
Jews was the culmination of a decade of Nazi policy, under the rule of Adolf
Hitler.
The persecution and segregation of the Jews was implemented in stages. After
the Nazi party achieved power, state-enforced racism resulted in anti-Jewish
legislation, boycotts, "Aryanization," and the Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken
Glass") pogroms, all of which aimed to systematically isolate the Jews from
German society and drive them out of Germany.
After the September 1939 German invasion of Poland (the beginning of World
War II), anti-Jewish policy evolved into a comprehensive plan to concentrate and
eventually annihilate European Jewry. The Nazis first established ghettos in the
Generalgouvernement (a territory in central and eastern Poland in which the
Germans established a German civilian government) and the Warthegau (an
area of western Poland annexed to Germany). Polish and western European Jews
were deported to these ghettos.
After the June 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, Einsatzgruppen
(mobile killing units) began killing operations aimed at entire Jewish
communities. The SS, the elite guard of the Nazi state, soon regarded the mobile
killing methods--mainly shooting or gas vans--as inefficient and as a
psychological burden on the killers. On July 31, 1941, Hermann Goering
authorized Reinhard Heydrich to make preparations for the implementation of a
"complete solution of the Jewish question."
Describes gas chambers in
Auschwitz
Personal stories
See artifact
Casting of Majdanek gas chamber door
In the autumn of 1941, Heinrich Himmler entrusted SS General Odilo
Globocnik (SS and police leader for the Lublin District) with the
implementation of a plan to systematically murder the Jews of the
Generalgouvernement. The code name Aktion Reinhard was eventually
given to the plan, after Heydrich (who had been tasked with
implementing the "Final Solution" and who was assassinated by Czech
partisans in May 1942). Three extermination camps were established in
Poland as part of Aktion Reinhard--Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. Upon
arrival at the camps, Jews were sent directly to the gas chambers.
Globocnik's assistant, SS Major Hermann Hoefle, was in charge of
organizing the deportations to the Aktion Reinhard camps.
The Nazis also gassed Jews at other extermination camps in Poland:
Auschwitz-Birkenau (which was the largest camp), Majdanek, and
Chelmno. At Majdanek, groups of Jews deemed incapable of work were
gassed. At Chelmno, Jews were gassed in mobile gas vans. The Nazis
systematically murdered over three million Jews in the extermination
camps.
In its entirety, the "Final Solution" called for the murder of the Jews of
Europe by gassing, shooting, and other means. Up to six million Jews
lost their lives--two-thirds of the Jews living in Europe in 1939.
National Archives - Film
Liberation of Auschwitz
Commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Anielewicz was born into a poor family living in Warsaw and became a leader of the Zionist Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir
movement.
The Outbreak of War
On September 7, 1939, a week after the outbreak of the war, Anielewicz fled from Warsaw, and, together with the senior
members of his movement, made his way to eastern Poland. Anielewicz traveled to the southern part of the Sovietoccupied area of Poland and tried to cross into Romania to establish a route to Palestine. He was caught by the Soviets
and jailed. When he was released, he returned to Warsaw and on the way he visited many Jewish communities. He
stayed in Warsaw a short while and left for Vilna, where a large group of refugees from Warsaw had congregated.
Anielewicz called on his fellow Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir members to send a team of instructors back to German-occupied
Poland, where they would resume the movement's activities underground. He and his friend Mira Fuchrer set an
example by being the first to volunteer for this assignment. By January 1940, Anielewicz had become a full-time
underground activist. He set up cells and youth groups, helped publish an underground newspaper, arranged meetings
and seminars, and made frequent illegal trips outside Warsaw, visiting his movement's chapters in the provincial
ghettos.
Establishing an Armed Underground in Warsaw
Under the impact of the first reports of the mass murder of the Jews in the east, after June 1941, Anielewicz
concentrated on the creation of a self-defense organization in the ghetto. His first efforts to establish contact with the
Polish underground were unsuccessful. In March and April 1942, he joined in the formation of the Antifascist Bloc; but
after a wave of arrests, it soon ceased to exist.
Improving the Warsaw Armed Underground
During the mass deportation from Warsaw in the summer of 1942, Anielewicz was in Zaglebie transforming the
underground youth movements into an armed resistance movement. On his return to Warsaw after the massdeportation, he found that only 60,000 Jews were left in the ghetto, and that the small Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa
(Jewish Fighting Organization; ZOB) lacked arms and was in a dire situation. Anielewicz reorganized and reinvigorated
the ZOB and most of the existing Jewish underground groups now joined it. In November 1942, he was appointed its
commander.
The First Battles in the Warsaw Ghetto
On January 18, 1943, the Germans launched a second mass deportation from the Warsaw ghetto. Caught unaware, the
ZOB staff was unable to meet and decide what action to take. There were two foci of ZOB resistance, with Anielewicz
commanding the major street battle. Most of the fighters belonging to the Ha-Shomer Ha-Tsa'ir group fell in that battle.
Anielewicz was saved by his men. The resistance action was of great importance, because four days later the Germans
halted the deportation, a step that the ghetto population interpreted as meaning that the Germans were drawing back in
the face of armed resistance. The following three months were used by the ZOB for intensive preparations, under the
supervision of Anielewicz.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
On April 19, the eve of Passover, the final deportation of Warsaw Jews was launched, an event that served as the signal
for the Warsaw ghetto uprising. In the first days of the fighting, Anielewicz was in command. When the street fighting
was over, Anielewicz, together with his staff and a large force of fighters, retreated into the bunker at 18 Mila Street. The
bunker fell on May 8, and the main body of the ZOB, including Anielewicz, was killed. In his last letter, of April 23, 1943,
to Yitzhak Zuckerman (a member of the ZOB staff who was then on assignment on the Polish side), Anielewicz wrote:
"What has happened is beyond our wildest dreams. Twice the Germans fled from the ghetto. One of our companies held
out for forty minutes and the other, for over six hours...I have no words to describe to you the conditions in which the
Jews are living. Only a few chosen ones will hold out; all the rest will perish sooner or later. The die is cast. In the
bunkers in which our comrades are hiding, no candle can be lit for lack of air... The main thing is: My life's dream has
come true; I have lived to see Jewish resistance in the ghetto in all its greatness and glory."
Honoring Mordecai Anielewicz.
Night
by Elie Wiesel
New York: Bantam Books, 1986 (Original copyright 1960)
(reference pages 111-114)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elie Wiesel was only twelve years old when, in 1941, the events of World War II and the
Holocaust invaded his home in Sighet, Transylvania. His childhood was cut short, his dreams
and beliefs shattered, as he witnessed the death of his family and his people in the Nazi death
camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. After the war, Wiesel took a 10-year vow of silence
before he attempted to put into words the horror and pain of the Holocaust. When he finally
wrote Night, Wiesel had difficulty finding a publisher, for it was believed that few would want
to read such heart-wrenching words. Today it is one of the most read and respected books on
the Holocaust.
After World War II, Wiesel lived in Paris, France, for 10 years where he studied at the
Sorbonne and worked as a journalist, traveling to both Israel and the United States. Eventually,
Wiesel moved to the United States and currently lives in New York City. In 1976, Wiesel
became the Andrew Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University. His book Night
has been followed by other equally powerful books. Against Silence: The Voice and Vision of
Elie Wiesel is a three-volume collection of his work. In 1985, Elie Wiesel was the recipient of
the Congressional Gold Medal and in 1986, he was honored with one of the greatest of all
awards, the Nobel Peace Prize.
Over the years, Wiesel has, in a sense, become the soul of the Holocaust. His books and
lectures compel us to not only confront the issues and consequences of the Holocaust, but to
keep it in our memory to ensure that history is never repeated. He lives his life, he explains, in
the pursuit of meaning. Wiesel has traveled all over the world, including Bosnia, where he
attempted to assist with the peace efforts. His eloquence, sensitivity, and insights serve as the
voice for those who can no longer speak.