Transcript Exposing Holocaust Misconceptions

Holocaust
Misconceptions
1. Misconceptions
connected with
Adolf Hitler
Hitler did it.
Hitler was part Jewish.
Hitler was a latent homosexual.
Hitler was elected by the German people.
Hitler attracted unusual numbers of female voters.
Hitler survived the war.
Hitler did it.
“One People,
One Nation,
One Leader”
Other perpetrators
In December 1944, SHAEF ordered the
automatic internment of about 200,000
Germans as suspected war criminals,
including:
 Gestapo, SD, police, Nazi Party and
organization officials (30,000)
 SS officers (8,000)
 Waffen SS officers (60,000)
 SA (officers about “Sturmbannfuhrer”)
(30,000)
 German civilian administrators for
occupied territories (about 3,000)
 German Reich officials (above city
administrator) (about 1,500)
Collaborators
Ustasa (Croatia)
Militia (Lithuania)
Arrow Cross (Hungary)
Iron Guard (Romania)
Auxiliary SS (Ukraine)
Police (Latvia)
Hlinka Guard (Slovakia)
Collaborators
Police (France)
Danish Nazis
Dutch Nazis
Belgian Nazis
Police (Poland)
Hitler was part Jewish.
Hitler was a latent homosexual.
Hitler was elected by the
German people.
Hitler attracted unusual
numbers of female voters.
Hitler survived the war.
2. The Nazi state was effectively
totalitarian.
Some of the offices claiming responsibility
for formulating and implementing anti-Jewish
policy in Nazi Germany:
Reich Security Main Office
Ministry of Finance
Office of the Four Year Plan
Ministry of the Interior
Ministry of Justice
Reich Foreign Office
Reich Armaments Ministry
Organization Todt
Office of Labor Mobilization
Reich Chancellery
Reich Bank
Ministry for the Economy
Wehrmacht
Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories
Office of the Governor General of Occupied Poland
Site of the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, convened by
Reich Security Main Office chief Reinhard Heydrich,
on the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question."
Wannsee, Germany, date uncertain.
“Working towards the Fuhrer”
Students and members of the SA throw books deemed "un-German" into
the flames during the book burning. Berlin, Germany, May 10, 1933.
3. Only Jews were victims
of the Holocaust.
The Nazis persecuted groups other than Jews. Among the
earliest victims of Nazi discrimination in Germany were
political opponents--primarily Communists, Socialists,
Social Democrats, and trade unionists.
While Jews were the primary target,
the Nazis also targeted Roma (Gypsies)
on racial grounds.
The Nazis viewed Poles and other Slavs as
inferior, and slated them for subjugation,
forced labor, and eventual annihilation.
The Nazis incarcerated Jehovah's Witnesses
who refused to salute Adolf Hitler or to
serve in the German army.
Through the Euthanasia program (T-4), the
Nazis murdered individuals deemed mentally
or physically "handicapped".
The Nazis also
persecuted
male
homosexuals,
whose
"impure"
behavior was
considered a
hindrance to
the
preservation
of the German
nation.
Soviet prisoners of war received especially brutal
treatment; over three million died during
einsatzgruppen operations and incarceration in
prisoners of war camps or concentration camps.
Overview of Nazi Persecution of Specific
Groups
“Racial Enemy”
The Jew
The quest for racial purity
Gypsies (Roma)
German disabled persons
Germans of African descent
The racial struggle for Europe
Slavs
Poles
Soviet prisoners of war
Nazi ideology and the persecution of Germans
Political dissidents
Jehovah’s Witnesses
Male homosexuals
4. Jews are a race.
(The Holocaust teaches about Jews and Judaism.)
Killing Centers
Boycott
“Aryanization”
Kristallnacht
Mass Shooting
Ghettoization
The history examines the process
of victimization and murder.
Deportation
5. All camps were alike.
Belzec
Bergen-Belsen
Auschwitz
6. Every concentration camp used a
tattooing system, and all inmates
were tattooed.
7. Nazi euphemisms reflect reality
German Language Regulation (examples)
“action”= organized hostile operation against Jews.
“resettlement to the East”= deportation to a
killing center.
 “evacuation”= deportation to a killing center.
“special treatment” = killing.
“make harmless” = killing.
“Final Solution”= kill Jews.
“removal of Jews”= deportation to a killing center;
shoot.
“change of residence”= deportation to
Theresienstadt.
“Jewish residential area”= ghetto.
8. The Nazis routinely made soap
out of human fat and lampshades
out of human skin.
9. Jews went “like sheep
to the slaughter.”
Yugoslavia
Poland
Czechoslovakia
Greece
Belorussia
France
Lithuania
Ukrain
e
JEWISH PARTISANS
Only armed resistance is resistance
Underground
schools and
libraries.
Documenting the
Holocaust.
Cultural activities.
Clandestine prayer.
Maintain humanity.
Maintaining Jewish
identity.
Resistance occurred at three
killing centers. At Sobibor and
Treblinka, prisoners with stolen
weapons attacked the SS staff
and their Ukrainian auxiliary
guards. Most of the rebels were
shot, though several dozen
prisoners escaped. At Auschwitz,
four Jewish women helped
Jewish crematorium workers
blow up a crematorium. All four
rebels were killed.
10. The king
of
Denmark
donned the
“yellow
star” to
show
support
for Danish
Jews.
 According to popular legend, King Christian X chose
to wear a yellow star in support of the Danish Jews
during the Nazi occupation of Denmark.
 In another version, the Danish people decided to wear
a yellow star for the same reason.
 Both of these stories are fictional.
 In fact, unlike Jews in other countries under Nazi
rule, the Jews of Denmark were never forced to wear
an identification mark such as a yellow star.
 However, the legend conveys an important historical
truth: both the King and the Danish people stood by
their Jewish citizens and were instrumental in saving
the overwhelming majority of them from Nazi
persecution and death.
11. The war is separate
from the Holocaust.
12. The Nazis lost the war because too many
resources were devoted to the Holocaust.
For the invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941
Germany assembled 152 divisions, more than 3 million men. At
its height, the German army had some 10 million soldiers.
The mobile killing squads that were assigned to kill Jews and
Soviet Commissars during the invasion numbered under
3,000 men.
The SS killed about 750,000 Jews at the Treblinka Killing
Center. The German staff at the camp numbered between
20 and 30 SS men. The Ukrainian watch personnel numbered
between 90 and 120 men.
In January 1945 the SS reported that about 720,000
prisoners were in concentration camps. The SS reported
that the watch personnel numbered 40,000.
13. All Germans were Nazis;
all Germans were perpetrators.
14. Reading The Diary of Anne
Frank or Night provides one with a
pervasive picture of the
Holocaust.