Transcript 02 The Holocaust Part II

Introduction to the Holocaust
Part II
Daniel W. Blackmon
IB HL History
Coral Gables Sr. High
The Ghetto
• The Lódz ghetto provided a model for
the organization of the others
The Ghetto
• .“. . . [T]he overwhelming majority of
the Jews were interned in ghettos and
the laborers were brought to places of
work outside. According to this plan,
the ghetto and the labor camps were
designed for only a transitional period.
The Ghetto
• [governor of the Lódz district,
Friedrich] Übelhör concluded his
remarks, ‘The establishment of the
ghetto is naturally only an interim
measure. When and how the ghetto
and the city of Lódz will be purged of
Jews is something I reserve for my
exclusive decision.
The Ghetto
• In any case, however, the final aim will
be to burn this fraternity of pestilence
to the end.’” (Yahil 165)
The Ghetto
• .The Nazis were careful to conceal
their ultimate goal from the Judenräte.
• .Jews were rounded up and sent to the
ghettos with very little warning. They
were able to take with them only very
minimal belongings. Everything else
was looted.
Judenräte
• The Germans appointed the leaders of
the Judenräte. Membership was
neither voluntary or optional. A refusal
to serve meant not only one’s own
execution but also of one’s family.
Judenräte
• .The order given to Mordekhai Chaim
Rumkowski, the Elder of the Lódz
Judenrat is typical: “You must
particularly ensure an orderly
economic life, nutrition, the duty of
labor, health, and welfare assistance.
Judenräte
• “Toward that end, you are authorized
to determine all the necessary
measures and orders and to carry them
out with the aid of the Order Service
under your control.” (Yahil 166)
Judenräte
• “Thus Judenälteste Rumkowski was
charged with duties such as
commercial and economic activities
and assuring the supply of food, duties
that were usually handled by the
municipality, or in a free socierty, by
the citizenry itself.
Judenräte
• “Normally, these spheres, including the
labor market, require control or
organization in either war or peace;
thus they are tended to by the highest
ruling authority, usually the
government itself.
Judenräte
• “But in this case, responsibility for
them all–including seeing to housing in
the insufferably crowded ghetto and to
sanitation in a quarter that lacked
sewers–fell upon a single man–
Judenräte
• “–one who had little experience in
administration, to say nothing of
politics; one in whom the public had
not expressed its confidence; and one
whose authority derived from the edict
of a tyrannical regime.
Judenräte
• Rumkowski served that regime on
penalty of death, and to carry out his
duties he was equipped with a policing
mechanism made up of Jews who were
likewise residents of the ghetto: the
Jewish police, called the Order Service
[Ordnungsdienst]” (Yahil 167)
Judenräte
• Joseph Goebbels called the ghettoes
“death caskets.” They were intended
to “ensure maximum loss of population
during the period alloted for the
ghetto’s existence while facilitating the
seizure of the property left behind.”
(Yahil 167)
The Ghettoes
• A Police Report from the Lódz ghetto
• Ghetto Police Station 6
Litzmannstadt [Lódz] 1.12.1941
• Re: Use of firmarms.
The Ghettoes
( )On 1December 1941 I was at
Checkpoint 4 in the Hohensteinerstraße
between 14.00 and 16.00. At 15.00 I
saw a woman climbing onto the ghetto
fence, stick her head through it and
attempt to steal a turnip from a passing
lorry.
The Ghettoes
( ) I used my firearm. The Jewess was
killed with two shots. Type of weapon:
Carbine 98. Munition expended : 2
bullets.
The Ghettoes
( )Signed: Naumann
( )Constable of the Reserve Security
Police
• )1 Comp Bl. Batt. Ghetto
• (Pridham and Noakes 1071)
Judenräte
• Ephraim Barash in Bialystok believed
that he could save the Jews in his
ghetto by making themselves too
useful to kill. “As you know, the focus
of our activity which may be our
salvation, is the rapidly developing
industry.”
Judenräte
• When criticized, he defended himself
saying, “I would like to declare that we
have one sole objective: to preserve
ourselves until the war is over.”
Judenräte
• )What he did not know is that the
Germans would use them right up to
the point when they would choose to
murder them all.
Judenräte
• The head of the Warsaw Judenrat was
Adam Czerniakow
Second Phase The Final Solution
1941-1945
• Madagascar Plan
• In the summer of 1940, Himmler toyed
with the idea of mass deportation of
Jews to Madagascar, where they would
be held in a huge ghetto.
Second Phase The Final Solution
1941-1945
• Madagascar Plan
• .Adolf Eichmann was assigned to
investigate its feasibility.
• .It was not feasible and it was soon
dropped
Adolf Eichmann
Operation Barbarossa
• The invasion of the Soviet Union by
Nazi Germany
• .Hitler conceived of the invasion of the
USSR as both an attack on Jewry and
an attack on Communism, since he
regarded both as two sides of the same
coin.)
Operation Barbarossa
• .Andreas Hillgruber has argued that
“Hitler thought it both essential and
possible to link the military campaign
against Russia with the liquidation of
the Jews.” (Yahil 253)
Operation Barbarossa
• .In March 1941, on the eve of the
invasion, Himmler told his senior
officers, “Without remorse, cruel war
will develop between nations; in its
course, twenty to thirty million Slavs
and Jews will perish because of war
activities and food shortages.” (Yahil
254)
Operation Barbarossa
• .On July 31, 1941, Heydrich received
an order from Goering giving him
authorization to demand cooperation
from all other Nazi agencies in
implementing the overall solution
(Gesamtlösung) and the final solution
(Endlösung) of the Jewish Question
(Judenfrage). (Yahil 255)
Einsatzgruppen
• Four Einsatzgruppen, or Special
Action Groups, were established and
attached to an army corps.
Einsatzgruppen
• .“The units moved systematically from
place to place, assembling the Jews,
conveying them outside towns and
villages, and murdering them beside
antitank trenches or pits dug especially
for this purpose.
Einsatzgruppen
• The victims were ordered to strip and
to stand in groups by the pit where they
were shot by automatic weapons, the
dead and dying falling into the mass
graves.
Einsatzgruppen
• Sometimes, the victims were even
forced to lie down in the pit in neat
lines, head to toe alternately, and there
they were executed row by row by
what the SS called the sardine method.
Finally the pit was covered over with
earth.” (Yahil 256)
Einsatzgruppen
• .The army and auxiliary police
recruited from conquered territories
cooperated.
Einsatzgruppen
• Field Marshall Walter von
Reichenau issued the following order
to his Sixth Army (which fought at
Stalingrad) on October 10, 1941):
Einsatzgruppen
• “There is still a lot of uncertainty
regarding the behaviour of the troops
towards the bolshevist system. . . .
Einsatzgruppen
• “The main aim of the campaign against
the Jewish-bolshevist system is the
complete destruction of its forces and
the extermination of its asiatic
influence in the sphere of European
culture.
Einsatzgruppen
• “As a result, the troops have taken on
tasks which go beyond the
conventional purely military ones. In
the eastern sphere, the soldier is not
simply a fighter according to the rules
of war,
Einsatzgruppen
• “but the supporter of a ruthless racial
(völkisch) ideology and the avenger of
all the bestialities which have been
inflicted on the German nation and
those ethnic groups related to it.
Einsatzgruppen
• “For this reason, soldiers must show
full understanding for the necessity for
the severe but just atonement being
required of the Jewish subhumans.
Einsatzgruppen
• “It also has the purpose of nipping in
the bud uprisings in the rear of the
Wehrmacht which experience shows
are invariably instigated by Jews. . . . “
(Noakes and Pridham 1096)
Einsatzgruppen
• Gestapo Chief Heinrich Müller to the
commanders of the four Einsatzgruppen,
August 1, 1941, sent in code.: “. . . the
Führer [was] to be kept informed
continually from here about the work of the
Einsatzgruppen in the East . . . . to this end,
visual materials of special interest, such as
photographs [were needed].” (Fleming 109110)
Einsatzgruppen
• Interrogation of Lieutenant Erwin
Bingle in 1945 of events in Uman,
Ukraine on September 15, 1941
Einsatzgruppen
( )“. . . A number of tables was then
unloaded from one of the trucks, and
placed in a line at distances from each
other. Meanwhile a few more trucks
with Ukrainian militiamen commanded
by SS had arrived.
Einsatzgruppen
( These militiamen had work tools with
them and one of their trucks also
carried chloride of lime. . . .
Einsatzgruppen
( )“In the meantime, a number of
transport planes . . . had landed at the
airport. Out of these stepped several
units of SS soldiers . . . .
Einsatzgruppen
( )“One row of Jews was ordered to
move forward and was then allocated
to the different tables where they had
to undress completely and hand over
everything they wore and carried.
Einsatzgruppen
( )“Some still carried jewelry which they
had to put on the table. Then having
taken off all their clothes, they were
made to stand in line in front of the
ditches, irrespective of their sex.
Einsatzgruppen
( )“The commandos then marched in
behind the line and began to perform
the inhuman acts, the horror of which
is now known to the whole world.
Einsatzgruppen
( )“With automatic pistols and 0.8
pistols these men mowed down the line
with such zealous intent that one could
have supposed this activity to have
been their life work..
Einsatzgruppen
( )“Even women carrying children a
fortnight to three weeks old, sucking at
their breasts, were not spared this
horrible ordeal.”
Einsatzgruppen
• Account of Dina Pronicheva of the
events at Babi Yar, September 28,
1941, first published in 1966.
Einsatzgruppen
( )“All around and beneath her she could
hear strange submerged sounds
groaning, choking and sobbing: many
of the people were not dead yet.
Einsatzgruppen
( )“The whole mass of bodies kept
moving slightly as they settled down
and were pressed tighter by the
movements of the ones who were still
living.
Einsatzgruppen
( )“Some soldiers came out on to the
ledge and flashed their torches down
on the bodies, firing bullets from their
revolvers into any who appeared to be
still living. . . .
Einsatzgruppen
( )“Then she heard people walking near
her, actually on the bodies. They were
Germans who had climbed down and
were bending over and taking things
from the dead and occasionally firing
at those which showed signs of life. . . .
Einsatzgruppen
• “There was a clatter of spades and then
heavy thuds as the earth and sand
landed on the bodies, coming closer
and closer until it started falling on
Dina herself.” (Gilbert 204-5)
Women Forced to Strip
Women Waiting Their Turn
Women About to Be Shot
Finishing Off the Wounded
Einsatzgruppen
• Account taken down in 1945 of an
unnamed eyewitness from
Stanislowow, Eastern Galicia of
events on October 12, 1941.
Einsatzgruppen
( )“We were driven into the cemetery
with cruel, brutal beatings. . . . Then
came an order, ‘Hand over all
valuables!’ . . . The German
stormtroopers together with the
Ukrainian police took up their stations
beside the machine guns.
Einsatzgruppen
( )“Fifteen of the stormtroops shot, and
fifteen others loaded the guns. The
Jews leapt naked into the graves. The
bullets hit them while jumping. . . .
Einsatzgruppen
( )“Three graves had been dug there. . . .
Nobody even imagined that six thousand
Jews would meet with their deaths at this
place.
Einsatzgruppen
( )“The graves were deep, the naked people
fell one on the other, whether dead or alive.
The heap of bodies grew higher and higher.
...
Einsatzgruppen
( )“‘Take off your clothes!’ I was
ordered, and quickly stood naked.
Three of us approached the grave.
There were shots. Two of us fell.
Suddenly something strange happened.
Einsatzgruppen
• There came an order, ‘Cease fire!’ The
stormtroopers standing ready stopped
their shooting. I stood astonished and
confused.
Einsatzgruppen
• “One of the murderers approached me
and said, ‘Jew, you are lucky. You are
not going to die. Dress again, quickly.’
• )“The graves were filled to
overflowing. . . . “ (Gilbert 209-10)
Einsatzgruppen
• Report given to Soviet authorities in
1948 on the liquidation of the
Borissov, Byelorussia ghetto in
October 1941 by David Ehof, who
was appointed by the SD to organize
the liquidation.
Einsatzgruppen
( )“On [Obersturmführer] Kraffe’s
instructions, I sealed off the ghetto
during the night of 8-9 November with
additional guards. By this time, three
graves had been dug near the airfield
about 2 km from Borissov by prisoners
of war under the direction of the Secret
Field Police.
Einsatzgruppen
( )“They were about 400 metres long, 3
metres wide and up to 2 metres deep
and were intended for burying the
corpses. . .
Einsatzgruppen
( )“I also announced that I had been put
in charge of shooting the Jews. I then
once again called for a merciless
reckoning with the Jews.
Einsatzgruppen
( )“I then ordered my deputy Kowalski
and the police platoon leader Pipin, to
organize the transport of the Jews to
the place of execution and ensure that
they were guarded. . . .
Einsatzgruppen
( )“The police broke into the Jewish
houses, chased the people to the square
in the center of the ghetto, drove them
into the vehicles by force and
transported them to the place of
execution.
Einsatzgruppen
( )“There was no mercy shown either to
old people, children, pregnant women,
or the sick. Anyone who offered
resistance was shot on the spot by my
orders. . . .
Einsatzgruppen
( )“The condemned people were not
only brought in lorries but also on foot
in groups so of 70 or 80 persons and
were mercilessly beaten in the process.
Einsatzgruppen
• )“The people who had been brought to
the place of execution were placed
about fifty metres from the graves and
guarded until it was their turn to be
shot. Twenty or twenty-five people at
a time were led to the place of
execution, to the graves.
Einsatzgruppen
• )“At the graves they were undressed;
they even had their good quality
underclothes torn from their bodies.
Having been completely undressed,
they were driven to the grave and
forced to lie face down.
Einsatzgruppen
• )“The police and Germans shot them
with rifles and automatic weapons. In
this way, more and more groups were
driven to the graves and shot. They too
were made to lie face down on the
corpses of those who had been
previously shot.”
Einsatzgruppen
• The commander of Einsatzgruppe A,
Franz Stahlecker reported on
January 31, 1942 of the number
murdered in the Baltic States:
Lithuania
80,311
Latvia
30,025
Estonia
474
Belarus
7,620
Misc. Pogroms
5,500
Tilsit
5,502
“Communists”
3,387
Mental Patients
748 (Yahil 256)
Einsatzgruppen
• Minsk, the capital of Belarus, was
40.8% Jewish in 1926. By October
1943, it was declared judenrein (free of
Jews). An estimated 100,000 Jews
were killed. (It should be noted that
the Germans killed another 200,000
non-Jews in Minsk.) (Yahil 270-271)
Einsatzgruppen
• .Executing so many people face to face
began to create a serious psychological
strain on the Einsatzgruppen.
Einsatzgruppen
• .One solution to the problem of
psychological stress was to introduce
gas vans. The victims were told that
they were to be transported to another
location and to climb into the back.
Einsatzgruppen
• .The doors were then locked and the
engine started. The exhaust led into
the rear compartment, and killed the
victims by asphyxiation.
Einsatzgruppen
• . A report in June 1942 stated “Since
December 1941, for example, 97,000
have been processed in the three
vehicles in operations without any
malfunctions in the vehicles.” (Yahil
259-260)
Statistics on the
Einsatzgruppen (partial)
Date
# of Aktionen
# of Victims
August 1941
35
53,770
September 1941 40
192,662
October 1941
32
74,998
January 1942
18
47,057
February 1942
12
27,840
March 1942
11
22,086
Racial Eugenetics
• Among the physicians who developed
the Nazi euthanasia program (to end
the lives of “lebensunwertes Leben”
were Hitler’s personal physician, Dr.
Karl Brandt, Victor Brack, Dr.
Leonardo Conti, and Dr. Herbert
Linden
Dr. Victor Brack
Racial Eugenetics
• .In a rare written directive, Hitler
ordered physicians to determine
incurably sick persons who should be
given a “mercy death.” (Yahil 308)
Euthanasia / T4 Program
• The name refers to the headquarters for
the program, at Tiergartenstraße 4 in
Berlin.
Euthanasia / T4 Program
• .The process took place in 5 stages”
• .Victims were selected from medical
institutions, then transported to transit
center, and from thence to the nearest
euthanasia facility.
Euthanasia / T4 Program
• . They were then examined and placed
in a room which was pumped with
carbon monoxide.
Euthanasia / T4 Program
• . Afterwards, the bodies were collected,
gold teeth removed, and (occasionally)
organs removed (for ‘scientific
research’) and the bodies cremated.
Euthanasia / T4 Program
• .A chemist, Dr. Kallmeyer, became the
expert on the use of gas to kill people.
• .From January 1940 to August 1941,
some 70,273 persons were murdered in
five centers. (Yahil 308-9)
Euthanasia / T4 Program
• .Protest from both Protestant and
Catholic churches led Hitler to order
the end of the program in August 1941.
• .However, about 20,000 more persons,
including disabled children, were
killed by means such as lethal injection
or starvation.
Gassing of Jews
• Meetings between Victor Brack and
Adolf Eichmann led to an agreement to
use the euthanasia experts to build gas
chamber facilities in the concentration
camps in order to kill Jews deported
from the West. Dr. Kallmeyer was sent
to lend expert advice.
Gassing of Jews
• .Lower Court Judge Dr. Erhard
Wetzel, Adviser on Jewish Affairs in
the Ministry for the Occupied
Eastern Territories, taken in
deposition on September 20-21,
1961.:
Gassing of Jews
• “On 24 October 1941, I went to [SS
Colonel Dr. Viktor] Brack’s office in
the Führer’s Chancellery on
Voßstrasse. Brack said . . . that he had
an assignment for me.
Gassing of Jews
• “I was to convey the following
message to Minister [Alfred]
Rosenberg: Minister Rosenberg should
inform Reichskommisar [Hinrich]
Lohse that he, Brack, had a gassing
apparatus ready for shipment to Riga.
Gassing of Jews
• Brack told me that the gassing
apparatus was to be used on the Jews,
and that [Adolf] Eichmann had agreed
that this gassing van should be sent to
Riga. Jewish convoys would also be
sent to Riga and Minsk. . . .
Gassing of Jews
• In the course of this briefing, Brack
told me that this was a matter of a
Führer-order or Führer-commission. . .
. I was only acting as deputy and I do
not feel in any way answerable for
these things.” (Fleming 110-110)
Gassing of Jews
• .The death camps were built mostly in
the Generalgovernment, beginning in
early 1942
The Wannsee Conference
• Held on January 20, 1942 and chaired
by Reinhard Heydrich
The Wannsee Conference
• .The Wannsee protocol surveys the current
state of the killings, and concludes that
previous methods had not been satisfactory
• .“The Chief of the Security Police and the
SD then gave a short report of the struggle
which has been carried on thus far against
this enemy, the essential points being the
following:
The Wannsee Conference
( )a) the expulsion of the Jews from every
sphere of life of the German people,
( )b) the expulsion of the Jews from the
living space of the German people.”
The Wannsee Conference
• .“In carrying out these efforts, an
increased and planned acceleration of
the emigration of the Jews from Reich
territory was started, as the only
possible present solution.”
The Wannsee Conference
• .All the offices realized the drawbacks
of such enforced accelerated
emigration. For the time being they
had, however, tolerated it on account
of the lack of other possible solutions
of the problem.
The Wannsee Conference
• .“In the meantime the Reichsführer_SS
and Chief of the German Police had
prohibited emigration of Jews due to
the dangers of an emigration in
wartime and due to the possibilities of
the East.” [emphasis added]
The Wannsee Conference
• “Another possible solution of the
problem has now taken the place of
emigration, i.e. the evacuation of the
Jews to the East”
The Wannsee Conference
• .“Approximately 11 million Jews will
be involved in the final solution of the
European Jewish question, distributed
as follows among the individual
countries:”
The Wannsee Conference
• .There followed a listing of nations and
the number of Jews living in them,
including not only all lands under
German control, all German allies, and
Great Britain but Portugal, Sweden,
and Ireland, all neutral countries.
The Wannsee Conference
• .“Under proper guidance, in the course
of the final solution the Jews are to be
allocated for appropriate labor in the
East.
The Wannsee Conference
• .“Able-bodied Jews, separated
according to sex, will be taken in large
work columns to these areas for work
on roads, in the course of which action
doubtless a large portion will be
eliminated by natural causes.”
The Wannsee Conference
• “The possible final remnant will, since
it will undoubtedly consist of the most
resistant portion, have to be treated
accordingly, because it is the product
of natural selection and would, if
released, act as a the seed of a new
Jewish revival”
The Wannsee Conference
• “In the course of the practical
execution of the final solution, Europe
will be combed through from west to
east. Germany proper, including the
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia,
will have to be handled first due to the
housing problem and additional social
and political necessities.”
The Wannsee Conference
• .“In conclusion the different types of
possible solutions were discussed,
during which discussion both Gauleiter
Dr. Meyer and State Secretary Dr.
Bühler took the position
The Wannsee Conference
• .“certain preparatory activities for the
final solution should be carried out
immediately in the territories in
question, in which process alarming
the populace must be avoided.”
End of Part II