23 - The 'Final Solution'

Question 1

How many people were murdered by the Nazis?

Answer 1

6 million

Question 2

What were the origins of the final solution?

Answer 2

• plans to send Jews to Madagascar and Siberia had to be abandoned
• Jews in the General Government were too many for authorities to cope with
• led to the radical policies

Question 3

When did the Wansee conference take place?

Answer 3

20th January 1942

Question 4

What is the misconception regarding the Wansee conference and what was reality?

Answer 4

Misconception - that this is the conference where the decision to kill the Jews was made
Reality - where senior bureaucrats were informed of the decision and their roles within

Question 5

When do historians agree that the official decision was made?

Answer 5

22nd June 1941, following the invasion of the Soviet Union

Question 6

Who was involved in the Wansee Conference?

Answer 6

• 15 high ranking Nazi officials
• Heydrich as chairman after Goering ordered him to organise the final solution

Question 7

What do historians believe about the driving force behind the final solution?

Answer 7

An unwritten order from Hitler

Question 8

How did Wansee affect the deportation of Jews?

Answer 8

No longer to vague destinations in Poland, now in an organised camp system

Question 9

How did the turning of war in 1942-43 impact Jewish treatment?

Answer 9

Anti Jewish propaganda following:
Spring 1943 - total war speech
Autumn 1943 - bombing raids
Summer 1944 - allied landings in France

Question 10

What were the German population being told about the final solution?

Answer 10

• war would result in the destruction of Jews
• never spelled out the details but destruction highlighted
• Jewish populations of France, Italy, Greece and Slovakia were rounded up
• Vilnius and Minsk ghettos destroyed

Question 11

When were Amsterdam Jews deported to Auchwitz?

Answer 11

February 1944

Question 12

What was the correlation between the war and the final solution?

Answer 12

As Germany failed in war, the final solution sped up

Question 13

When was the killing machine slowed down?

Answer 13

November 1944 when soviet armies were deep into Poland, the crematorium at Auschwitz was blown up, and survivors were sent on death marches westward

Question 14

Why was destruction of the killing machine impossible?

Answer 14

The size of Auschwitz - Birkenau

Question 15

Was the final solution ever completed?

Answer 15

2/3 of Europe’s Jewish population had been killed
By May 1945 the horrors of camps was being revealed, Dauchau liberated

Question 16

What was the difference between extermination and concentration camps?

Answer 16

Concentration was not designed for mass killings

Question 17

How was selection carried out?

Answer 17

Straight off the train people were sorted into unproductive and productive, the unproductive were sent straight to the gas chambers

Question 18

How many holocaust victims died at Auschwitz?

Answer 18

1/5

Question 19

What other death camps were key?

Answer 19

• Chelmno, about 40 miles from Łódź and first killing centre in December 1941, Zyklon B developed in 1942, 145,000 deaths
• Treblinka, 75 miles from Warsaw, 1 million deaths from July 1942 - September 1943

Question 20

What was the significance of Auschtwiz ?

Answer 20

• became the hub of the killing machine
• more than a death camp, had many functions
• produced munitions and essential goods

Question 21

Cultural and spiritual resistance?

Answer 21

• mainly within ghettos
• literary evenings, gatherings and concerts

Question 22

Active / armed resistance in ghettos

Answer 22

• organisations formed in 100 ghettos
• designed to stage uprisings and escape
• found it difficult to smuggle weapons in

Question 23

Active / armed resistance in ghettos

Answer 23

• organisations formed in 100 ghettos
• designed to stage uprisings and escape
• found it difficult to smuggle weapons in

Question 24

Armed resistance in extermination camps

Answer 24

• Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz
• forced to dispose of the bodies
• some of the Sobibor and Treblinka rebels escaped

Question 25

Partisans

Answer 25

• guerrilla fighters on occupied territory
• assassinated nazis in Eastern Europe
• 20,000 - 30,000 Jews participated
• difficult to join, had to leave families and be accepted by these groups

Question 26

How many people died on the death marches?

Answer 26

Up to 400,000

Question 27

Why did the death marches begin?

Answer 27

Camps were closing down and people needed to get away from the red army

Question 28

What is Hitler’s responsibility for the Holocaust?

Answer 28

• motivated from the start by fanatical antisemitism
• dominated all aspects of propaganda and power within Germany
• all Germans supported him or were incapable of opposing him
  = could not have happened without him

Question 29

How were senior SS officials responsible for the holocaust?

Answer 29

• Heydrich responsible for Wansee
• Eichmann responsible for deportations
• Himmler head of SS

Question 30

How were senior SS officials responsible for the holocaust?

Answer 30

• Heydrich responsible for Wansee
• Eichmann responsible for deportations
• Himmler head of SS

Question 31

How were ordinary Germans responsible for the Holocaust?

Answer 31

• Goldhagen believed Germans were willing to not protest
• truths were kept private for their own security
• at least 100,000 ordinary Germans involved

Question 32

How was the war responsible for the Holocaust?

Answer 32

• disrupted emigration plans
• brutalised people
• removed fear of public opinion
• encouraged extremism as made people paranoid that the enemy was inside

Question 33

How were the allies responsible for the Holocaust?

Answer 33

• British Home Secretary knew about Auschwitz transport and ignored it
• only decided to accept 10,000 Jewish children
• attended the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games despite anti semitism