The Holocaust
“Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a
perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a
bystander.”-USHMM
“All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to
do nothing”-Edmund Burke
“It is true that not all the victims were Jews, but all
the Jews were victims”-Elie Wiesel
“First they came for the communists, and I
did not speak out because I was not a
communist.
Then they came for the socialists, and I did
not speak out because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the labor leaders, and I
did not speak out because I was not a labor
leader.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not
speak out because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me, and there was no
one left to speak out for me.”
-Reverend Martin Niemöller
Things to Remember
• Antisemitism in Europe for thousands of years
– including ghettos and having to wear identifiers (Star of David)
• Nazi restrictions and persecutions happened gradually
over 12 year period
– many of these had happened multiple times throughout history,
nothing suggested this time would result in anything different
• Ger Jews very patriotic, very well assimilated
– over 10,000 died fighting for Germany during WWI
– people trust their government
– some kids didn‟t know they were Jewish until they were deported
• Jews DID resist
• Eisenhower knew there would be deniers so he made sure
as many people witnessed camp horrors as possible
Key Nazi Leaders
• Adolf Eichmann: instrumental in implementing the FS, organized
transports of Jews all across Europe to camps
• Joseph Goebbels: Reich Minister for People's Enlightenment and
Propaganda, had total control of radio, press, publishing houses, and
cinema, highly skilled at mass persuasion, played imp role in creating
and maintaining Hitler‟s image
• Hermann Goring: Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, H's
successor, created secret police, helped set up early concen. camps
• Reinhard Heidrich: established ghettos in Poland, SS Leader
• Heinrich Himmler: head of SS and Gestapo, organizer of mass
murder of Jews, in charge of concentration and death camps
• Joseph Mengele: SS “physician” at Auschwitz, most notorious for
medical experiments, “Angel of Death”
Rescuers
• Each rescue story is different. Yet, what rescuers had in common was
a combination of awareness, resourcefulness, empathy, vigilance,
inventiveness, courage, compassion, persistence. First, a rescuer had to
recognize that a person was endangered, then, had to decide whether
or not to help and risk potential consequences. Public hanging,
deportation, and shootings were consequences of helping Jews.
• Andre Trocme and the town of Le Chambon-sur Lignon
• Raoul Wallenberg -Joop Westerweel
• Irene Gut Opdyke -Antonin Kalina
• Varian Ffry -Jan Karski
• Miep Gies -Father Jacques de Jesus
• Jean Deffaugt -Adelaide Hautval
• Janis Lipke -Esta Heiber
• Oskar Schindler -Kindertransport
• Dorothea Neff -Chiune Sugihara
• As of 1996, 24,000 have been recognized as Righteous Among the
Nations by Yad Vashem, but that in no way represents every rescuer
1935
• Nuremberg Laws enacted by the Nazi Party
– deprive Jews of German citizenship
– forbid intermarriage/intercourse with Jews to prevent
“racial pollution,” punishable by death
– curfews, no bikes, no radios, rations, can‟t own
business, can‟t go to German school, must wear Star of
David,can‟t walk on same side of street as a Ger citizen
• Basic def of a Jew published Nov 14th defines the
categories of mixed offspring, or mischlinge
– first degree: anyone with two Jewish grandparents
– second degree: anyone with one Jewish grandparent
1937
• Buchenwald concentration camp opens July 16
– first inmates mostly pols prisoners of every religious belief
– most of the 238,980 inmates who will ultimately be sent to
Buchenwald will be Jews, 56,545 will die in gas chambers
• Ger evicts Jews from trade and industry, orders
yellow “star-of-David” badges to be worn, bans Jews
from all parks, places of entertainment, health
resorts, and public institutions
• Romania forbids Jews to own land,
bars them from professions at year‟s
end under legislation put through by
new Prime Minister Octavian Goga
1938
• Nazis deprive Austrian Jews of civil rights/means
of livelihood; plunder Jewish shops and homes
– Italy enacts anti-Jewish legislation
• Nov 9th, Nazis destroy Jewish shop windows in
Kristallnacht (night
of broken glass)
– shops, homes,
synagogues looted,
demolished, burned
– 20,000-30,000 taken
to concentration camps
Anti-Semitic Films, Propaganda,
Racial “Science”
1939
• Ger foreign minister von Ribbentrop sends
circular to diplomatic/consular offices Jan 25
titled “The Jewish Question, a Factor in our
Foreign Policy for 1938”
– states “this disease in the body of our people had first
to be eradicated before the Great Ger Reich could
assemble forces in 1938 to overcome will of the world”
• The S.S. St. Louis leaves Hamburg May 13
– 937 Jewish refugees
– last shipload to leave before the war begins
– refused admission to Cuba and US
– GB, Fr, Belg, Holl. admit refugees at the last moment
• Brazil permits entry 3,000 Ger Jew refugees
1940-1941
• Nazis extend persecution to Poland,
Romania, Netherlands, occupied territories
• SS troops surround a densely populated
Jewish area in January, herd thousands of
half-naked polish men, and women into a
large square, beat them, and keep them
standing for hours
• Einsatzgruppen, Babi Yar, humiliation
– almost 34,000 killed in two days
Babi Yar
• Kikes of the city of Kiev and vicinity! On Monday,
September 29, you are to appear by 8:00 a.m. with your
possessions, money, documents, valuables, and warm
clothing at Dorogozhitskaya Street, next to the Jewish
cemetery. Failure to appear is punishable by death.
• I watched what happened when the Jews – men, women,
and children – arrived. The Ukrainians led them past a
number of different places where one after the other they
had to give up their luggage, then their coats, shoes and
over-garments and also underwear. They also had to leave
their valuables in a designated place. There was a special
pile for each article of clothing. It all happened very
quickly and anyone who hesitated was kicked or pushed
by the Ukrainians to keep them moving.
1941
• Hitler signs Final Solution to „Jewish problem‟
– Adolf Eichmann proposes “killing with showers of
carbon monoxide while bathing”
• cyanide gas Zyklon B found to be more effective
• Ger SS units m. gun 3,000 Jewish men/women/
children to death, suburbs of Minsk and Mogilev
• Estonian, Galician, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish,
and Russian Jews flee at the approach of the Gers
– drafted into labor gangs, driven into ghettos,
massacred w/m guns, shipped to detention camps
Deportations and Camps
1942
• 2,000 Parisian Jews rounded up by police
officers on July 16th
• German Army buses them out of the city to
Nazi concentration camps
• 8,000 Greek Jews are transferred from
Salonika to concentration camps
– ultimately over 40,000 of Salonika‟s Jews die
1943
• Apr 18, Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto begins, lasts 6 wks
• 5,000 Jews killed, 500,000 Jews had been locked into an
area that had accommodated half that number
• 20,000 deported to concentration camps in retaliation
• SS fuhrer, Heinrich Himmler states, “we will never speak
of it in public, destruction of Jews will remain forever an
unwritten and never-to-be-written page of glory.”
• SS in Denmark begin rounding up Danish Jews in Oct,
Danes help most escape to safety in Sweden
Warsaw Ghetto
1944
• Amsterdam- Otto Frank and family betrayed to
Gestapo on Aug 4th after hiding for over 2 years
• All deported in last convoy of cattle trucks to
Auschwitz, Anne (15) sent to Bergen-Belsen
where she dies, Otto is only survivor of family
• Anne‟s diary fills three notebooks, will be
discovered at 263 Prinsengracht in Amsterdam,
chronicles hidden life
1945
• Jan 26 SU troops liberate Auschwitz, fewer than
3,000 prisoners at camp where 1 mill + died
– SS removed the rest of survivors to camps inside Ger
• Apr 11, Gen Patton liberates Buchenwald
• Apr 24, Allies liberate Dachau
• Nazi genocide has killed an estimated 5 million
gypsies, Poles, homosexuals, asocials, physically
and mentally handicapped, other undesirables,
and close to 6 million Jews
– 1/3 world‟s Jews died in thousands of Nazi
death/labor/concentration camps in 6 years, and in
systematic massacres, shootings, pogroms, and
ghettos, and from starvation, brutality, torture, disease
Liberation
German Citizens Face the Truth
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Why Not Bomb Auschwitz/RR Tracks
• Ass. Sec of War McCloy, received multiple requests to
bomb camps/rr tracks, acknowledged humanitarian
motives, rejected requests, said to public:
– bombing Auschwitz would divert too much air support from the
rest of the war effort
– success wasn‟t guaranteed
– feared provoking Germany
• War Dept official policy: “Am military forces not used for
purpose of rescuing victims of enemy oppression unless
such rescues are direct result of military ops conducted
with objective of defeating armed forces of enemy”
• Aug 1944, Allies bombed synthetic oil/rubber factories
connected to Auschwitz
• Allies: best way to stop atrocities--win the war
Nuremberg Trials, 1946-1949
• 4 charges: crimes against peace
: war crimes
: crimes against humanity
: conspiracy to commit any of the
aforementioned crimes
• Crimes against humanity included: “murder,
extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other
inhumane acts committed against any civilian population,
before or during the war, or persecutions on political,
racial, or religious grounds”
• First trial (total of 12 trials under Am jurisdiction): 7
received lengthy prison terms, 12 condemned to death by
hanging (Goring avoided hanging by suicide by cyanide)
• 23 camp doctors tried in „46-‟47 for medical experiments
16 found guilty (7 of those 16 sentenced to death)
Partial Death Toll
• Europe: 9.5 million Jews in 1933, 3.5 million in 1950
• Bohemia/Moravia: 80,000 Jews killed, 89% of population
• Denmark: 60 Jews killed, 1.3% of population
• Germany: 130,000 Jews killed, 55% of population
• Greece: 65,000 Jews killed, 80% of population
• Hungary: 450,000 Jews killed, 70% of population
• Lithuania: 220,000 Jews killed, 94% of population
• Poland: 2,900,000 Jews killed, 88% of population
– 3 million Jews pre-war, 45,000 post-war
• Slovakia: 71,000 Jews killed, 80% of population
• Ukraine: 900,000 Jews killed, 60% of population
Topics/Frequently Raised Concerns
• Rescuers, Collaborators, Bystanders, Partisans
• Hidden Children (in the open and in the dark)
• Medical Experiments (especially on twins and gypsies)
• Other countries as bystanders, other countries aid Nazis
• Forest Massacres
• “Life” in camps, “life” on the outside, “life” in ghettos
• Survivor Guilt, German Guilt
• Nuremberg Trials
• Nazis escape-many flee to South America (esp Brazil, Arg)
• What the German public knew or didn‟t know
• What the Jewish community knew or didn‟t know
• What the world knew or didn‟t know
• How could this have happened
• Why didn‟t/couldn‟t Jews fight back more, but at least
they did (ghetto/camp uprisings, individual resistance)
• Why has this allowed to repeat in other countries
(Cambodia, Rwanda, Sudan)
Books
• *In My Hands, by Irene Gut Opdyke
• *Children of the Flames, by Lucette Lagnado&Sheila Dekel
• *Auschwitz: A New History, by Laurence Rees
• The Hidden Children, by Howard Greenfield
• Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry
• Night, by Eli Wiesel
• *The Holocaust Chronicle, ed. by John Roth
• *Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final
Solution in Poland, by Christopher Browning
• *The Devil‟s Arithmetic, by Jan Yolen
• *The Rape of Nanking, by Iris Chang
• *Survival in Auschwitz, by Primo Levi
• Those Who Save Us, by Jenna Blum
• The Kommandant‟s Girl, by Pam Jenoff
• Flory, by Flory Van Beek
• *The Road to Rescue: The Untold Story of Schindler‟s List,
by Mietek Pemper
• Sarah‟s Key, by Tatiana De Rosnay
• Lost: A Search for 6 of 6 Million, by Daniel Mendelsohn
• *Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience, by
Gitta Sereny
• *After Daybreak: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, 1945,
by Ben Shephard
• *Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi
Germany, by Marion A. Kaplan
• In Kindling Flame, by Linda Atkinson
• The Upstairs Room, by Johanna Reiss
• The Other Victims: First Person Stories of Non-Jewish
Victims of the Holocaust, by Ina R. Friedman
• We Are Witnesses: The Diaries of 5 Teenagers Who Died
in the Holocaust, ed. by Jacob Boas
• *Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews,
1939-1945, by Saul Friedlander
• *The Holocaust Sites of Europe: An Historical Guide, by
Martin Winstone
• *Hitler‟s Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial
Laws and the Men of Jewish Descent in the German
Military, by Bryan Mark Rigg
Websites
• http://auschwitz.dk/
• http://frank.mtsu.edu/~baustin/glossary.html
• http://www.teacheroz.com/holocaust.htm
• http://remember.org/
• http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Holocaust/stlouis.html
• http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timel
ine.html
• http://www.ushmm.org/
• http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/media_list.php?Med
iaType=OH
• http://motlc.wiesenthal.org
• http://library.thinkquest.org/12663/
• http://www.annefrank.com
• http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/index.html
• http://www.yadvashem.org