Transcript KZs Info Slides

Concentration Camps
Info for Slides
Essential Questions?
• What is a “state of emergency?”
• How are emergency powers used
and abused?
• What is administrative detention?
• What is internment?
• What is a concentration camp?
Essential Questions?
• How are governments using
emergency powers right now, and
how are contemporary uses different
from Nazi usage?
• How is propaganda used to justify
government seizure of emergency
powers?
KZ Dachau unt KZ Buchenwald
• What is important to know about:
–KZ Dachau?
–KZ Buchenwald?
• Why did the KZ system emerge and who
were the leading personalities involved?
How will you use this information?
• Create a visitor brochure for KZ Dachau, KZ
Buchenwald or KZ of your choice.
• Refer to the copies of visitor brochures provided.
• Design a brochure for an English speaking visitor.
• Provide essential information you believe the visitor
should know about touring the historical site.
Emergency Powers
• Administrative detention
• Extrajudicial detention
• Internment (preventative
confinement)
• State of Emergency
Administrative detention
• is arrest and detention of individuals
by the state without trial, usually for
security reasons. Many countries,
both democratic and undemocratic,
resort to administrative detention as
a means to combat terrorism, control
illegal immigration, or to protect the
ruling regime.
Internment
• is the imprisonment or confinement of people,
commonly in large groups, without trial.
• "The action of 'interning'; confinement within
the limits of a country or place" - Oxford English
Dictionary.
• Most modern usage is about individuals, and
there is a distinction between internment,
which is being confined usually for preventive
or political reasons, and imprisonment, which is
being closely confined as a punishment for
crime.
Internment camps
• is a large detention center created for political
opponents, enemy aliens, people with mental
illness, members of specific ethnic or religious
groups, civilian inhabitants of a critical warzone, or other groups of people, usually
during a war. The term is used for facilities
where the inmates were selected by some
generalized criteria, rather than detained as
individuals after due process of law fairly
applied by a judiciary.
State of emergency
• Is a governmental declaration that
may suspend some normal functions
of the executive, legislative and
judicial powers, alert citizens to
change their normal behaviors, or
order government agencies to
implement emergency preparedness
plans.
State of emergency
• can also be used as a rationale for
suspending rights and freedoms, even if
guaranteed under the constitution. Such
declarations usually come during a time
of natural or man made disaster, during
periods of civil unrest, or following a
declaration of war or situation of
international or internal armed conflict.
United States of America
• The US is formally in an ongoing limited state
of emergency declared by
several Presidents for several reasons.
• A state of emergency began on January 24,
1995 with the signing of Executive Order
12947 by President Bill Clinton. In accordance
with the National Emergencies Act, the
executive order's actual effect was not a
declaration of a general emergency, but a
limited embargo on trade with "Terrorists Who
Threaten To Disrupt the Middle East Peace
Process".
USA, USA!!!
• This "national emergency" was expanded in
1998 to include additional targets such
as Osama bin Laden, and has been continued to
at least 2008 by order of President George W.
Bush.
• There are a number of other ongoing national
emergencies of this type, like the one declared
on September 14, 2001 through Bush's
Proclamation 7463, regarding the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001.
USA, USA, USA!!!
• President Obama extended George
Bush's Declaration of Emergency
regarding terrorism on September
10, 2009 and again on September 10,
2010.
USA Patriot Act
• dramatically reduced restrictions on law
enforcement agencies' ability to search
telephone, e-mail communications, medical,
financial, and other records; eased restrictions
on foreign intelligence gathering within the
United States; expanded the Secretary of the
Treasury’s authority to regulate financial
transactions, particularly those involving
foreign individuals and entities; and
broadened the discretion of law enforcement
and immigration authorities in detaining and
deporting immigrants suspected of terrorismrelated acts.
USA Patriot Act
• expanded the definition of
terrorism to include domestic
terrorism, thus enlarging the
number of activities to which
the USA PATRIOT Act’s
expanded law enforcement
powers can be applied.
A Patriotic Act?
• Opponents of the law have criticized its
authorization of indefinite detentions of
immigrants; searches of a home or business
without the owner’s or the occupant’s
permission or knowledge; the expanded
use of National Security Letters, which
allows the FBI to search telephone, e-mail,
and financial records without a court order;
and the expanded access of law
enforcement agencies to business records,
including library and financial records.
A Patriotic Act?
• Since its passage, several legal
challenges have been brought
against the act, and Federal
courts have ruled that a number
of provisions are
unconstitutional.
January 2011
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Egypt
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12282585
Jordan
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/9373045.stm
Tunisia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws84S4L1m1E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPyvrWblA0I
Russia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvRqeXy7_4Q
Lebanon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6bHKpSKoCo&feature=related
Egypt
• Egyptians have been living under an
Emergency Law (Law No. 162 of
1958) since 1967, except for an 18month break in 1980. The emergency
was imposed during the 1967 Arab-Israeli
War, and reimposed following
the assassination of President Anwar
Sadat.
• The law has been continuously extended
every three years since 1981.
Egypt
• Under the law, police powers are extended,
constitutional rights suspended and censorship is
legalized.
• The law sharply circumscribes any nongovernmental political activity: street
demonstrations, non-approved political
organizations, and unregistered financial
donations are formally banned. Some 17,000
people are detained under the law, and estimates
of political prisoners run as high as 30,000.
Israel
• The Defence (Emergency) Regulations
are an expansive set of regulations that
were first enacted by the Mandatory
authorities in Palestine on 27 September
1945. Incorporated into Israel's domestic
legislation in 1948, the regulations
remain in force to this day.
Israel
• According to Israeli human rights group
B’Tselem, provisions in the regulations permit
the establishment of military tribunals to try
civilians without the right to appeal,
prohibitions on the publication of books and
newspapers, house demolitions, indefinite
administrative detention, extensive powers of
search and seizure, the sealing off of
territories and the imposition of curfews.
France
• Three main dispositions concern various kind
of "state of emergency" in France: article 16 of
the Constitution of 1958 allows, in time of
crisis, "extraordinary powers" to the
president. Article 36 of the same constitution
regulates "state of siege." Finally, the April 3,
1955 Act allows the proclamation, by the
Council of Ministers, of the "state of
emergency" (état d'urgence).
• These dispositions have been used at various
times, in 1955, 1958, 1961, 1988 and 2005
France: Since 1955 a state of emergency has been
decreed five times
• In 1955 in Algeria due to
nationalist unrest
• In 1958 due to the uprising
in Algeria
France
• In 1961 after the Generals' putsch (invocation of
article 16 from April 23 to September 29, 1961)
• In 1984 in New Caledonia due to nationalist troubles
• During the 2005 unrest, President Chirac declared a
state of emergency on November 8, 2005. It was
extended for three months on November 16 by the
Parliament, which was dominated by
the UMP majority. On December 10 France's highest
administrative body, the Council of State, ruled that
the three-month state of emergency decreed to
guarantee calm following unrest was legal.
UK
• In the United Kingdom, the Monarch, the Privy
Council, or the Prime Minister can make emergency
regulations under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 if
there is a serious threat to human welfare, the
environment, or in case of war or terrorism. These
regulations last for seven days unless confirmed
otherwise by Parliament. However, as there are no
entrenched constitutional provisions, Parliament can
pass restrictive legislation limited only by
international treaties and public outrage.
• A state of emergency was last invoked in 1974 by
Prime Minister Edward Heath in response to
increasing industrial action.
The Troubles in Northern Ireland
• The Falls Curfew (also called the "Rape of the Lower
Falls") was a British Army operation during 3–5 July 1970
in an area along the Falls Road in Belfast, Northern
Ireland.
• The operation started with a weapons search but quickly
developed into rioting and gun battles between British
soldiers and the Official Irish Republican Army. Shortly
after the violence began, the British commander
imposed a curfew, which would last 36 hours.
• During the curfew, four civilians were killed by the British
Army, at least 75 people were wounded (including 15
soldiers) and 300 republicans were arrested.
Controversial policies
• During the period known as "the Troubles",
the British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary were
accused of operating a shoot-to-kill policy, under
which suspects were alleged to have been
deliberately killed without any attempt to arrest
them.
• Such a policy was alleged to have been directed
almost exclusively at suspected or actual members
of Irish republican paramilitary groups. The Special
Air Service (SAS) is the most high-profile of the
agencies that were accused of employing this policy,
as well as other British Army regiments and the Royal
Ulster Constabulary (RUC)
Nazism
• National Socialism was the ideology and practice
of the Nazi Party - a unique variety of fascism that
involved biological racism and antisemitism.
• Nazism presented itself as politically syncretic,
incorporating policies, tactics and philosophies
from right- and left-wing ideologies; in practice,
Nazism was a far right form of politics.
Nazis believed:
• supremacy of an Aryan master race;
• Germany's survival as a great nation
required a New Order — an empire in
Europe that would give the German
nation the necessary land mass,
resources, and expansion of population
needed to be able to economically and
militarily compete with other powers;
Nazis believed:
• Jews were the greatest threat to the Aryan race
and the German nation;
• Jews were a parasitic race that attached itself to
various ideologies and movements to secure its
self-preservation, such as: enlightenment,
liberalism, democracy, parliamentary democracy,
capitalism, industrialisation, Marxism and trade
unionism;
Nazis believed:
• an economic Third Position-a managed
economy that was neither capitalist nor
communist;
• communism and capitalism were
associated with Jewish influences and
interests;
• rejection of liberalism, Marxism and
parliamentary democracy;
Nazis believed:
• a nationalist form of socialism that was to
provide for the Aryan race and the German
nation: economic security,
social welfare programs for workers, a just
wage, honour for workers' importance to
the nation, and protection from capitalist
exploitation.
Establishment of the Nazi State
• Reichstagsbrand an arson attack on
the Reichstag in
Berlin on 27 February
1933. The event is
seen as pivotal in the
establishment of Nazi
Germany.
Establishment of the Nazi State
•
•
Reichstag Fire Decree
(Reichstagsbrandverordnung) - Order
of the Reich President for the
Protection of People and
State (Verordnung des
Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von
Volk und Staat) issued by President
Hindenburg.
The decree nullified key civil
liberties of Germans. The decree was
used as the legal basis to imprison
anyone considered to be opponents
of the Nazis, and to suppress
publications not considered
"friendly".
Establishment of the Nazi State
• Order of the Reich President for the Protection of People and
State, invoked Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution Reichspräsident - take any appropriate measure to remedy
dangers to public safety.
• The decree consisted of six articles:
• Article 1 suspended most of the civil liberties set forth in the
Weimar Constitution, including freedom of the person, freedom
of expression, freedom of the press, the right of free association
and public assembly, the secrecy of the post and telephone, not
to mention the protection of property and the home.
• Articles 2 and 3 allowed the Reich government to assume
powers normally reserved for the federal states.
• Articles 4 and 5 established draconian penalties for certain
offenses, including the death penalty for arson to public
buildings.
Gleichschaltung
• meaning "forcible-coordination",
"making the same", "bringing into
line“ - the process by which
the Nazi regime successively
established a system
of totalitarian control and tight
coordination over all aspects of
society.
• One goal of this policy was to
eliminate individualism by forcing
everyone to adhere to a specific
doctrine and way of thinking and
to control as many aspects of life
as possible using an invasive
police force
Establishment of the Nazi State
• Gesetz zur Behebung der
Not von Volk und Reich "Law to Remedy the
Distress of People and
Reich“
• Enabling ActErmächtigungsgesetz
• 24 March 1933
• Established dictatorship
Führer und Reichskanzler
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•
•
•
•
President Hindenburg died on 2 August
1934
Hitler merged the presidency and the
office of Chancellor - Führer und
Reichskanzler - making himself
Germany's Head of State and Head of
government, thereby completing the
progress of Gleichschaltung.
Hitler could not be legally removed
from office - no institutional checks and
balances on his power remained.
Hitler had a plebiscite held on 19
August 1934, in which the German
people were asked if they approved of
Hitler merging the two offices.
The Ja (Yes) vote - 90%.
Führerprinzip
• "leader principle“
• prescribes the fundamental
basis of political authority in
the governmental structures
of the Third Reich.
• "the Führer's word is above all
written law" and that
governmental policies,
decisions, and offices ought to
work toward the realization of
this end.
Nazi Period 1933-1939
• Dachau served as a prototype and model for the
other Nazi concentration camps that followed.
Almost every community in Germany had members
taken away to these camps, the Newspapers
continuously reported of "the removal of the
enemies of the Reich to concentration camps", and
as early as 1935 there were jingles warning:
• "Dear God, make me dumb, that I may not to
Dachau come."
Nazi Period 1939-1945
• 1933-1945 more than 3.5 million
Germans would be forced to spend time
in Nazi detention, concentration camps
or prisons for political reasons, and
approximately 77,000 Germans were
executed for one or another form of
resistance by Special Courts, courts
martial, and the civil justice system.
Encyclopedia of Camps and
Ghettos, 1933–1945, USHMM
• Geoffrey Megargee and Martin Dean quantified
42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout
Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from
France to Russia and Germany itself, operating
from 1933-1945. They estimate that 15-20 million
people died or were imprisoned in camps, ghettos,
and other sites of detention, persecution, forced
labor, and murder the Nazis and their allies ran.
Precision of language
• Konzentrationslager • Arbeiterziehungslager
•
•
(extrajudicial detention facility) (re-education for Poles)
Geisellager (hostage) • Polenlager (labour reformatories)
Kriegsgefangenen- • Gestapo Lager (extended
police prisons)
Mannschafts-
Stammlager (POW) • Internierungslager
(internment)
• Arbeitslager (labour) • Vernichtungslager
• Durchgangslager(transit) (extermination)
Konzentrationslager
• The term concentration camp refers to a camp
in which people are detained or confined,
usually under harsh conditions and without
regard to legal norms of arrest and
imprisonment that are acceptable in a
constitutional democracy.
• In Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945,
Konzentrationslager were an integral feature
of the regime.
Konzentrationslager (2)
• The first KZs in Germany were established
soon after Hitler's appointment as chancellor
in January 1933. In the weeks after the Nazis
came to power, The SA (Sturmabteilungen;
Storm Troopers), the SS (Schutzstaffel;
Protection Squadrons), the police, and local
civilian authorities organized numerous
detention camps to incarcerate real and
perceived political opponents of Nazi policy.
Konzentrationslager (3)
• Germany maintained Konzentrationslager (KLs
or KZs) throughout the territories it controlled.
• The first KZs were greatly expanded
in Germany after the 1933 Reichstag fire, and
were intended to hold political prisoners and
opponents of the regime.
• The term comes from British concentration
camps of the Second Anglo-Boer War.
Konzentrationslager (4)
• The number of KZs quadrupled between 1939
and 1942 as Jews, political prisoners,
criminals, homosexuals, gypsies, the mentally
ill, others were incarcerated, generally without
trial or judicial process.
• Holocaust scholars – difference between
concentration camps
and extermination camps, which were
established for the industrial-scale murder of
the predominantly Jewish ghetto populations.
Hostage camps
• camps where hostages were held
and killed as reprisals
• eg. Nacht und Nebel hostages at
Natzweiler-Struthof
Arbeitslager(Labour camps)
• concentration camps where interned
inmates had to do hard physical labor
under inhumane conditions and cruel
treatment. Some of these camps were
sub-camps of bigger camps, or
"operational camps", established for a
temporary need.
Arbeitslager
• The German government (and its private-sector, Axis,
and collaborator partners) used forced labor
extensively, starting in the 1930s but most especially
during World War II.
• The Nazis operated several categories
of Arbeitslager for different categories of inmates.
• The largest number of them held civilians forcibly
abducted in the occupied countries to provide labour
in the German war industry, repair bombed railroads
and bridges, or work on farms.
Arbeitskommandos
• Arbeitskommandos, officially
Kriegsgefangenenarbeitskommando
were sub-camps under Prisoner-ofwar camps for holding prisoners of
war of lower ranks (below sergeant),
who were working in industries and on
farms.
Arbeitskommandos (2)
• Prisoners were not allowed to work in industries
manufacturing war materials, but this restriction was
frequently ignored by the Germans. They were
always under the administration of the
parent prisoner-of-war camp, which maintained
records, distributed ICRC packages and provided at
least minimal medical care.
• Differentiate these from sub-camps of Nazi
concentration camps operated by the SS, which were
also called Arbeitskommando.
Arbeitskommandos (3)
• There is some confusion about the
terminology, with the result of occasional
reports of prisoners-of-war being held in
concentration camps. In some cases the two
types were physically adjacent, when both
POWs and KZ-inmates were working at a large
facility such as a coal mine or chemical plant.
They were always kept apart from each other.
Kriegsgefangenenlager
• concentration camps where
prisoners of war were held after
capture.
• Soviet POW's endured torture
and liquidation on a large scale
(3 million+).
Protective Custody Camp
• Camps for rehabilitation and re-education
of target groups:
• 1933-39 German and Austrian political
prisoners, Jews, ordinary criminals.
• 1939-45 (in order of prisoner numbers) Poles,
Russians, French, Yugoslavs, Jews, and Czechs.
Durchgangslager, Transitlager
• Transit and collection camps
• camps where inmates were
collected and routed to main
camps, or temporarily held.
Vernichtungslager
• extermination camp (Vernichtungslager), death
camp (Todeslager) are interchangeable, each
referring to camps whose primary function was
genocide, not for punishing crime or containing
political prisoners, but for systematic murder.
• extermination camps were built by Nazi
Germany during 1942–45 to systematically
murder millions by gassing, mostly Jews.
Extermination camps
• These camps differed from the rest, since not all
were also concentration camps. Although none of
the categories is independent, and each camp could
be classified as a mixture of several of the above,
and all camps had some of the elements of an
extermination facility, systematic extermination of
new-arrivals occurred in very specific camps.
• Of these, 4 were extermination camps, where all
new-arrivals were simply killed – "Aktion Reinhard"
camps -(Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec), together
with Chelmno. Two others (Auschwitz and
Majdanek) were combined concentration and
extermination camps. Others were at times
classified as "minor extermination camps".
By the invasion of Poland in September 1939, there were
six concentration camps in the Greater German Reich:
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•
•
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Dachau (founded 1933)
Sachsenhausen (1936)
Buchenwald (1937)
Flossenbürg in northeastern Bavaria near the
1937 Czech border (1938)
• Mauthausen, near Linz, Austria (1938)
• Ravensbrück, women's camp, southeast of
Berlin (1939)
Nazi Period 1933-1945
• Between the years 1933 and 1945 more than
3.5 million Germans would be forced to spend
time in these concentration camps or prison for
political reasons, and approximately 77,000
Germans were executed for one or another
form of resistance by Special Courts, courts
martial, and the civil justice system.
• Many of these Germans had served in
government, the military, or in civil positions,
which enabled them to engage
in subversion and conspiracy against the Nazis.
Theodor Eicke
• commandant –26 June 1933
• a fearsome reputation. Even in the SS, he
was described as brutal, evil, distrustful,
cruel, ambitious, and full of hatred for
everyone who did not agree with Nazi
ideology.
• attitude of "inflexible harshness" also
influenced the guards in the camps.
Constant indoctrination removed any
compassion for the detainees from the
guards and created an atmosphere of
controlled, disciplined cruelty that lived
on.
• Eicke influenced: Rudolf Höß, Franz
Ziereis, Karl Otto Koch and Max Kögel.
Theodor Eicke
• reorganized Dachau, establishing new
guarding provisions: blind obedience to
orders, and tightening disciplinary and
punishment regulations for detainees adopted by all concentration camps on 1
January 1934.
• radical antisemitism and anti-bolshevism as
well as his insistence on blind and
unconditional obedience towards him as the
camp's commander, to the SS and Hitler
made an impression on Himmler.
• May 1934, appointed Concentration Camps
Inspector. Although technically responsible
to the SS-Hauptamt, Eicke reported directly
to Himmler.
Viktor Frankl
• Viktor Emil Frankl M.D., Ph.D.(26 March
1905 – 2 September 1997) was
an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist.
• founder of logotherapy.
• Man's Search for Meaning chronicles his
experiences as a concentration camp inmate.
• Described psychotherapeutic method of
finding meaning in all forms of existence,
even the worst ones, and thus a reason to
continue living.
• one of the key figures in existential
therapy and a prominent source of
inspiration for humanists.
Georg Elser
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Johann Georg Elser
(4 January 1903 - 9 April 1945)
opposition was motivated by his concerns about
working conditions, and the lowering of working
wages.
understanding of politics was influenced
strongly by his political associations. He detested
the restrictions on civil rights and especially
despised Nazi restrictions on workers' freedoms
- the choice of employment and the right to
organize.
loathed the Nazis' propaganda and their total
control of the educational system, and the
curtailing of religious freedoms.
Murdered at Dachau - 25,613
• 200,000+ prisoners from more than 30
countries, of whom two-thirds were
political prisoners and nearly one-third were
Jews.
• 25,613 prisoners are believed to have died in
the camp and almost another 10,000 in its
subcamps, primarily from disease,
malnutrition and suicide.
Karl Otto Koch
• SS-Obergruppenführer Josias, Prince of Waldeck
and Pyrmont stumbled across the name of Dr.
Walter Krämer, a head hospital orderly, which he
recognized because Krämer had successfully
treated him in the past.
• Josias investigated the case - found out that Koch
had ordered Krämer and Karl Peixof, a hospital
attendant, killed as "political prisoners" because
they had treated him for syphilis and he feared it
might be discovered.
Karl Otto Koch
• Josias ordered a full scale investigation of the camp by
Dr. Georg Konrad Morgen, an SS officer and court
judge.
• Koch's orders to kill prisoners at the camp were
revealed, as well as embezzlement of property stolen
from prisoners.
• Charge: incitement to murder, with added charges of
embezzlement.
• Koch: sentenced to death for disgracing self and the SS.
• Koch was executed by firing squad on 5 April 1945.
Ilse Koch
• wife of commandant of
KZ Buchenwald from 193741, Majdanek from 1941-43.
• Tried by the US military
charged with "participating in a
criminal plan for aiding, abetting
and participating in the murders at
Buchenwald".
Ilse Koch
• accused of taking souvenirs from
murdered inmates with distinctive
tattoos
• "The Witch of Buchenwald.“
• "Die Hexe von Buchenwald.“
• convicted of charges of incitement to
murder, incitement to attempted
murder, incitement to the crime of
committing grievous bodily harm,
and on 15 January 1951 was
sentenced to life imprisonment and
permanent forfeiture of civil rights.
Committed suicide – 1 Sept. 1967.
Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel
• 30 September 1928
• author of 57 books,
including Night, a work
based on his
experiences as a
prisoner in Auschwitz,
Buna, Buchenwald.
Elie Wiesel
• when Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1986, the Committee called him a
"messenger to mankind", stating that "his
own personal experience of total
humiliation and of the utter contempt for
humanity shown in Hitler's death
camps", as well as his "practical work in
the cause of peace", Wiesel had delivered a
powerful message "of peace, atonement
and human dignity" to humanity.
Ernst Thälmann
• Ernst Thälmann (16 April
1886 – 18 August 1944) leader of the Communist
Party of Germany (KPD)
during the Weimar Republic.
• Arrested in 1933 and held in
solitary confinement for 11
years, before being shot on
Hitler's orders.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer (4
February 1906 – 9 April 1945)
• Lutheran pastor, theologian, martyr.
• Participant in the German
resistance movement
against Nazism and a founding
member of the Confessing Church.
• Involved in plans by members of
the Abwehr (German Military Intel.
Office) to assassinate Hitler - arrested
in April 1943 - executed by hanging,
April 1945.
Léon Blum
• André Léon Blum (9
April 1872–30 March
1950) French politician,
and 3 times PM of France.
• Janot Blum, chose to live
with him inside the KZ.
The Blums were the only
Jews to marry inside the
KZ system.
Marcel Dassault
• Marcel Dassault,
born Marcel Bloch (22
January 1892 - 17 April 1986)
• invented a type of
aircraft propeller used by the
French army during WW I.
• founded the Société des Avions
Marcel Bloch aircraft company.
• deported to Buchenwald for
refusing collaboration with
the German aviation industry.
M. Dassault
• changed his name from Bloch
to Dassault in 1949.
• Dassault was the pseudonym of
his brother, General Darius
Paul Bloch, in the French
resistance and means "for
assault", originally from char
d'assaut, French for tank.
• After the war, Dassault built the
foremost French military aircraft
manufacturer, Avions Marcel Dassault.
Imre Kertész
• Imre Kertész ( 9 Nov.
1929) author and winner of
the 2002 Nobel Prize in
Literature "for writing that
upholds the fragile experience of
the individual against the
barbaric arbitrariness of history.”
• Fatelessness
Yisrael Meir Lau
• Yisrael Meir Lau ( ‫ישראל‬
‫ ;מאיר לאו‬1 June 1937 ) is
the Chairman of Yad
Vashem and Chief
Rabbi of Tel Aviv. He
previously served as
the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi
of Israel from 1993-2003.
Ernst Wiechert
• Ernst Wiechert (18 May 1887 – 24
August 1950) was a teacher, poet and
writer.
• He was one of the most widely
read novelists in Germany during the
1930s. He incorporated his humanist ideals
in his novels.
• Wiechert was strongly opposed
to Nazism from the start. He appealed in
1933 and 1935 to the undergraduates
in Munich to retain their critical thinking in
relation to the national socialist ideology.
This was rated as call to internal resistance.
Ernst Wiechert
• openly criticized the imprisonment
of Martin Niemöller in 1938.
• due to his criticism, he was interned
in KZ Buchenwald for 4 months.
• wrote down his memories of
imprisonment and buried the
manuscript-published in 1945,
entitled Der Totenwald (Forest of the
dead), a shocking account of the
conditions in Buchenwald.
• Goebbels threatened after Wiechert's
release he would be killed if he
publicly protested.
Murdered at Buchenwald - 56,545
• Total prisoner #s: 238,380
• Deaths due to torture, murder, disease,
malnutrition and suicide : 33,462
• Executions by shooting: 8,483
• Executions by hanging (estimate): 1,100
• Deaths during evacuation transports: 13,500
• Death rate of 24%
Extermination camps
• These camps differed from the rest, since not
all were also concentration camps. Although
none of the categories is independent, and
each camp could be classified as a mixture of
several of the above, and all camps had some
of the elements of an extermination facility,
systematic extermination of new-arrivals
occurred in very specific camps.
Extermination camps
• 4 were extermination camps, new arrivals were
simply murdered – "Aktion Reinhard" camps (Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec), together
with Chelmno.
• Two others (Auschwitz and Majdanek) were
combined concentration and extermination
camps. Others were at times classified as "minor
extermination camps".
Vernichtungslager
• Operationally,
there were
three types of
death camp
• Aktion Reinhardt
extermination camps
• Concentration–
extermination camps
• Minor extermination
camps
Aktion Reinhardt extermination camps
• prisoners were killed upon
arrival. Initially, the camps
used carbon monoxide gas
chambers; at first, the
corpses were buried, but
then incinerated atop pyres.
• Later, gas chambers and
crematoria were built in
Treblinka and Belzec.
Concentration–extermination camps
some prisoners were selected for
slave labor, instead of immediate
death; they were kept alive as
camp inmates, available to work
wherever the Nazis required.
These camps — including Auschwitz,
Majdanek, and Jasenovac — later
were retrofitted with Zyklon-B gas
chambers and crematoria,
remaining operational until war's
end in 1945.
Minor extermination camps
• such as Sajmiste in
Serbia, Maly Trostenets in
the USSR, Janowska, in
Poland, and Gornija Rijeka,
initially operated as prisons
and transit camps, then as
extermination camps late in
the war, using portable gaschambers and Gas vans. Gas
vans were initially
developed at the Chelmno
extermination camp, before
being used elsewhere.
SS-Totenkopfverbände
• "Death's-Head Units", was
the SS organization responsible for
administering the Nazi concentration
camps for the Third Reich.
• The SS-TV was an independent unit
within the SS with its own ranks and
command structure. It ran the camps
throughout Germany, such as Dachau
and Buchenwald.
SS-Totenkopfverbände
• in Nazi-occupied Europe, SS-TV
ran Auschwitz in Poland, Mauthausen in
Austria and all other concentration
and death camps.
• SS-TV was responsible for facilitating the
Final Solution in collaboration with
the Reich Main Security Office and the SS
Economic and Administrative Main Office.
SS-Totenkopfverbände
• 1st TK-Standarte Oberbayern. Formed 1937 at
Dachau. During the Polish invasion conducted
"security operations" behind the lines.
• 3rd TK-Standarte Thüringen. Formed 1937 at
Buchenwald. During the Polish invasion
conducted "security operations" behind the
lines.
• 10th TK-Standarte. Formed 1939 at
Buchenwald. Garrison duties in Poland 1940.
Organisation of the KZ
• Zone 1: barracks for the prisoners. Fenced with
barbed wire, live, sometimes, and minefields.
Sanitation was nearby. Barracks were equipped with
two or three triple decker bunks (width of 1 m.).
Barracks were often separated into sectors - for
special prisoner groups (eg, family-Gypsy camp in
Birkenau, a camp for Jewish women at Ravensbrück,
the Nacht und Nebel hostages at NatzweilerStruthof).
• Zone 2: special institutions within the camps: field
hospitals, interrogation rooms, execution walls, (gas
chambers), crematoria.
Organisation of the KZ
• Zone 3: working space in which each KZ
acted as an Arbeitslager-places of work for
external kommandos, working for the camp,
a place of slave labor for German companies
and German war effort. Many camps had
numerous sub-camps for work kommandos.
• Zone 4: KZ kommandatur (administration),
canteen, barracks for the SS and auxiliaries.