Holocaust Flashcards
Three reasons for the start of the holocaust:
Hitler hated Jews because he (incorrectly) thought they (along with communists and socialists) had caused Germany to lose WWI (stab in the back myth/Dolchstoss)
Hitler hated Jews because he hated Communists and he thought that Jews were Communists (a few Jews were Communists, but most were not)
Hitler hated Jews because he thought they were an inferior and dangerous “race” who would weaken the “Aryan race” in a Social Darwinist competition of races
Three examples of early laws and prosecution in April 1933
Boycott of Jewish businesses (April 1, 1933)
Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (April 1933) – excluded Jews and others from government jobs
Law against Overcrowding at Schools and Universities – limited the numbers of Jews allowed in schools and universities
Three examples of early laws and prosecution in April 1933
Boycott of (refusal to use) Jewish businesses (April 1, 1933)
Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (April 1933) – excluded Jews and others from government jobs
Law against Overcrowding at Schools and Universities – limited the numbers of Jews allowed in schools and universities
Nuremberg Laws
When: September 1935
Why significant: Among the first race-based laws in Germany against Jews; took citizenship and civil rights away from Jews
How many were there? 2
Law #1: Law of the Reich Citizen – took away citizenship from Jewish Germans, designating them “subjects of the state”
Law #2: Law for the Protection of German blood and German honour – forbade marriage or sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews
Memorise: Were announced on September 15, 1935, at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party, Marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews were prohibited. Required to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing. Anyone with 3-4 Jewish grandparents was a Jew.
Kristallnacht
Brief: Means ‘crystal night’ and refers to the broken glass created during this anti-Semitic pogrom. Kristallnacht was the night between November 9th and 10th, 1938, when German mobs attacked Jewish synagogues, businesses, homes and people in Germany.
Stats: 1,000 synagogues were burned and damaged, around 7,500 Jewish businesses were ransacked and looted, around 91 Jews were killed and around 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps
How was it organised? Dr. Goebbels organised it to look like a spontaneous uprising against Jews in the wake of a Jewish youth assassinating a German diplomat in Paris, but it was in fact a coordinated attack on Jews issued from the top. German police were told to allow attackers free rein and fire departments were told to not help. Jews were forced to pay a $400 million fine for the attacks (1938 money) and the insurance money was confiscated.
Aftermath: the remaining Jews in schools were expelled (Nov. 15); and Jews were under curfews by late November. By December, Jews were banned from most public places.
What was the significance of Kristallnacht?
It marked an intensification and acceleration of anti-Semitism in Germany – from economic boycotts (1933), racist laws (1933-1935) and anti-Semitic propaganda to physical violence against property and people, mass arrests and imprisonment.
In a similar vein, it marked a turning point within Hitler’s regime away from trying to export the “Jewish problem” by getting Jews to emigrate from the country, to dealing with the problem themselves in physically violent ways.
Ghettoisation
Where?
There were no ghettos in Germany. There were 800-900 in Poland, the USSR, Hungary and Romania.
When?
Roughly October 1939-1944 after Nazis occupied Western Poland in 1939, they began segregating Polish Jews into the first ghettos
Ghettoization, more or less, continued when Germany invaded the USSR in June 1941.
from 1942-1944, Jews were deported from ghettos and shot or transported to extermination camps in Operation Reinhard such as Belzec and Treblinka
What?
Ghettos were districts where Jews were forced to live. There were 800-900 ghettos in Poland, the USSR and Romania. Not all Jews experienced ghettos.
The ghetto was surrounded by barbed wire, walls and/or fences.
Jews wore the star of David in ghettos.
Inside the ghetto, a Jewish council – the Judenrat – and Jewish police force tried to maintain order.
Jews in ghettos were conscripted into forced labour.
Ghettos were overcrowded. For example, the Lodz ghetto had approximately 165,000 Jews in it (the second largest ghetto in Poland) in the space of less than 4 square km
Ghettos lacked sanitary infrastructure (indoor plumbing, sturdy buildings). Disease, consequently, was rampant.
An estimated 500,000 Jews and Roma died in ghettos because of starvation and disease.
After the “final solution” (policy of killing Jews systematically), ghettos became temporary holding places before Jews were sent to death camps for execution
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 4 week resistance April 19, 1943 - May 16, 1943
Reinhard Heydrich, SS security chief, ordered Polish Jews to be put into ghettos near train lines to prepare them for the “final aim”
Wannsee Conference
Meeting in Jan. 1942 in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee
To plan the “final solution to the Jewish question”
Attended by 15 senior Nazi bureaucrats, led by SS leader and Gestapo chief Reinhard Heydrich
Turning point in policy to European Jewry – no longer desire for forced emigration (impractical during the war)
New policy was to round up all Jews in Europe, transport them eastward, organise them into labour gangs, and implement a “final solution”
Nazis decided that the work and living conditions would be so hard that many would die “naturally” and that those who still lived would be “treated accordingly”
Extermination was never officially mentioned in paperwork at the conference, but historians believe it was understood from the discussion and within a few months after Wannsee the first poison-gas chambers were installed in death camps in Poland
Responsibility for carrying out the new policy was the SS and the Gestapo (secret police) under the direction of Heinrich Himmler
SS – Schutzstaffel
(meaning Protection Squadron in Germany); elite paramilitary Nazi organisation that enforced racial policy, organised some ghettos, and ran the death camps.
The Einsatzgruppen
“deployment groups”) were SS death squads responsible for mass killings of civilians, usually by shooting, in occupied Europe.
1941 to 1945, they were responsible for killing an estimated two million civilians, roughly 1.3 million of whom were Jews (the others were Roma, communists, and the Polish intelligentsia)
600-1000 in each group
For example,
Babi Yar massacre (Kiev, Ukraine) – Sept. 1941; the Einsatzgruppen were responsible for the shooting of approximately 33,771 Jews in Babi Yar (Ukraine) over a period of two days;
Rumbula massacre (Riga, Latvia); Nov-Dec. 1941, where roughly 25,000 Jews were shot over two days.
Death Camps
Death camps were a type of concentration camp that specialised in mass annihilation of unwanted people – Jews, Roma, Slavs, homosexuals, alleged disabled and others
Major camps were in German-occupied Poland – Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka
Chelmno – first gassing began on 8 December 1941
Auschwitz – most notorious (widely and unfavourably known)
Poison-gas chambers could take 2,000 at one time
12,000 could be gassed and incinerated (burned) each day
Death camps represented a shift in policy
From mobile killing units of the Einsatzgruppen (we come to you and execute you) – think Babi Yar and Rumbala massacres
To mobile victims brought to death camps (you come to us to be executed) – think Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno
Advantage – more killing with fewer staff
staff of Treblinka – 120, with 20-30 of them SS
staff of Belzec – 104, with about 20 SS
These were killing factories
Killing was done by poison gas
Evolution of technique
gas vans were used at Chelmno using carbon monoxide to asphyxiate passengers
Zyklon-B (pesticide) was used in gas chambers in Auschwitz
Numbers killed in each camp
Auschwitz – 1.1 million to 1.3 million
Treblinka – 750,000-900,000
Belzec – c. 500,000
Closed in 1943 – Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec because ghettos had been emptied and Jews killed
Auschwitz remained open until Soviet troops approached in January 1945
SS attempted to destroy all record of the killing factories
Camps were dismantled
Documents were burned
Possessions were burned
Still left when Auschwitz was liberated were tonnes of hair, hundreds of thousands of suits, dresses, glasses, etc
Escalation of the Holocaust
Historian Richard Overy’s Argument – there were 4 stages in Nazi racial policy towards Jews
Vilification – abusing Jews in speech or writing; demonising
Discrimination – treating Jews less favourably than others
Separation – moving Jews apart from others
Extermination – killing Jews
