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Holocaust Final

Terms in this set (25)

-document drafted in 1941 that presented the Nazi vision of eastern Europe as an alternative to the Madagascar plan

-This was SS proposal for the ethnic reshuffling of Eastern Europe to what the Nazis wanted it to be = Nazi goal

-30+ years to expel 40 million Jews & Slavs to East of the Ural Mountains (Serbia) and colonize the Lebensraum with 10 million Germans

-The escalation of this was the expulsion of Slavs & Jews, high death rate was taken for granted
General Plan East
...
Treblinka
-A death camp located in annexed parts of Poland.

-It was the main site of death for Jews from countries other than Poland due to its railroad network.

-It was unique for it's large size and for performing other functions besides just being a death camp. There were 3 parts: _______ I = the main camp, _______ II = the killing facility, & _________ III = the forced-labor camp

-it was the only camp that had a crematoria and was the only camp still operating when the Soviets came.
Auschwitz
-a training camp set up for local collaborators so that they could become SS auxiliaries, police, and informers

-Nazi's often used locals to do their dirty work. They would be required to herd Jews and kill them

-SS and police officials inducted, processed, and trained 2,500 auxiliary police guards at this training camp between Sept. 1941 and Sept. 1942

-Most had been Soviet prisoners of war (POWs)
Trawnikis
-occurred on January 20th, 1942 in the Berlin neighborhood of Wannsee

-It was run by Reinhard Heydrich and the head of Gestapo's Jewish desk, Adolf Eichmann.

- It was attended by reps from all different branches of the Nazi army/government.

-not a meeting where decisions were made, the decision of the 'final solution' was already made
---->It was a coordination conference (give us your jews)

PURPOSES:

1) Defining which Mischlinge would be subject to deportations

2) Ensure coordination between various departments efficient deportation of Jews from all over Europe to the East

3) Spreading knowledge and complicity
Wannsee Conference
-'Holocaust by bullets' refers to the amount deaths that occurred from shootings.

-Einsatzgruppen in Poland accounted for much of this because mass shootings was their main method of killing.

-The Wehrmacht army also contributed. The mass shootings accounted for about 1/2 of all Jewish victims

-victims were killed very close to their homes, own villages, close proximity to where they lived;

-People were gathered, shot, and killed very close to their homes and on their own soil
'Holocaust by Bullets'
-Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann -- all were closely involved in organizing the genocide of the Jews. It was they who built up the murder squads and extermination camps, and negotiated with governments and police, as well as Jewish councils to carry out the Holocaust

-Policy-making and policy implementation without direct personal involvement in mass murder

-Division of labor, compartmentalization, and careerism

-Complicity (the state of being involved with others in an illegal activity or wrongdoing.) of other institutions (Wehrmacht, German ministries, etc.)
'Desk Murderers'
...
Holocaust in Croatia
In Hungary proper, Jews had been highly assimilated while In the newly annexed areas, there were many orthodox Jews. There had been anti-semitic laws passed from 1938-1941. The death rate was 60%.


• Territorial expansion at the expense of neighboring states in 1938-1941
• In Hungary proper, Jews where highly assimilated + in newly annexed areas, there were many orthodox Jews
o In total, about 5% of the population
o Almost 1/3 lived in the capital city Budapest
• Hungarian state sovereignity + the ability to resist German demands
• Occupied by Nazi Germany in March 1944
o Adolf Eichmann supervised rapid deportations to Auschwitz, starting with newly annexed areas
o March 1944 - January 1945, some 400,000 Hungarian Jews deported
o Up to 25% of them were not murdered immediately due to German labor needs - entering the last stretch of the war and the Nazis were on the defense so they needed all the help they could get
o Overall 60% death rate
Holocaust in Hungary
• Benito Mussolini's fascists were in power since 1922
o Remained a monarchy and still had a king, so Mussolini was not in charge
• Anti-Semitism was NOT a big part of Italian fascism
• Italian Jews (few, assimilated) could join the fascist party as late as 1938
• 1938-1941: Anti-Semitic laws passed
o Response to German pressure and growing racism in Italian society
o Italian occupation of Ethiopia ruled it in a racist way
• Despite this, Italy and its occupation zones in Greece, Yugoslavia and France remained a safe haven for Jews until 1943
• Summer 1943: Italian King dismissed Mussolini as the head of government due to disastrous performance in the war
o In response, German troops occupied north and central Italy
o Wehrmacht, SS, and Italian police started rounding up Jews for transportation to Auschwitz
o 15-20% death rate
Holocaust in Italy
-Forced complicity (the state of being involved with others in an illegal activity or wrongdoing) Jewish councils and Jewish police in the ghettos

-In charge of ghetto administration, eventually also of rounding up people for deportation to death camps

-No real bargaining power with the occupying Germans + targets of ghetto residents anger and frustration

-They were promised to live longer -- what wouldn't a Jew do to live a little longer?

-This is one of the choiceless choices the Holocaust presented Jews

-Spectrum of Jewish council members' attitudes
-ie. Rumkowski in the nazi-ghetto "king of Jews", Lodz Jewish Council
Jewish Councils
Homosexuals were imprisoned in concentration camps by Nazis.

• During the war, there was still continued KZ imprisonment and occasional forced castration

• Continued debates on the roots and curability of homosexuality

-No set criteria as to how they should be persecuted
-*SS members who were found to have engaged in such behavior were generally excused for one reason or another (they were cold)

-In KZs, they were vulnerable to abuse by guards and other prisoners

-Number of victims were difficult to assess unsystematic persecution, possibility of being reclassified into another prisoner category (political, or even Jewish)
Nazi persecution of suspected homosexuals
• Reminder: before 1939, they were targeted on the basis of their lifestyle and their association with crime rather than clear-cut racial criteria
• Subject to police round-ups, imprisonment, and even compulsory sterilization
• During the war, there was much unsystematic persecution:
o Several 1,000 German Roma moved to Polish ghettos, some gassed alongside Jews
o 1,000 imprisoned and killed in Auschwitz
o In 1944-1945, some allowed to evacuate from the East as Reich citizens
o Their standing in the Nazi hierarchy remained low but ambivalent

• Number of Romani deaths difficult to estimate...
o In the Reich, some 15-22,000 out of 29,000 died

o In Europe as a whole, some 100-200,000 died out of about 800,000-1 million
Nazi persecution of Roma
-Slavs were predominant among the 5-9 million foreigners that were employed in the Reich from 1939-1945.

-Although the Germans found many of these people racially inferior, they still had labor needs in an effort to help their war cause. WWII

-A minority of the workers were french/Italian volunteers, while civilians from Eastern Europe made up a majority of the work force.
Foreign workers in Nazi Germany
-Ex. the Bielski brothers' group - provided shelter to any Jews in danger; most of their members were women and children

-There was a direct correlation between how harsh an area was ruled by Nazis and how much resistance existed there

-General challenges faced by resistance movements:
o Terrain and geography large scale resistance only existed in Poland, the USSR, and Yugoslavia

o Availability of weapons

o Organization, group cohesion and loyalty

o Hardships of guerilla warfare and brutality of retaliation

o Overlap of war and civil war - Poland had two major resistance movements that fought each other as much as they fought the Nazis
Jewish armed resistance
•Swedish diplomat led one of the most extensive and successful rescue efforts during the Nazi era. His work with the War Refugee Board saved thousands of Hungarian Jews.

—Shortly after arriving in Budapest, Hungary, in July 1944, began distributing certificates of protection to Jews. During the autumn of 1944, Wallenberg repeatedly intervened to secure the release of bearers of certificates of protection and those with forged papers

-In Budapest in 1944 example of neutral and allied states conspiring to aid the Jews

o Convinced some of his colleagues to issue fake papers to aid Jews; basically held that "if you deport this person, you are killing a citizen of a neutral country"
Raoul Wallenberg
...
Cecilia Slepak
a prisoner functionary; was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp who was assigned by the SS guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks.
Kapo
- Rape and forced prostitution in war

- Vulnerability especially of women in Poland and the USSR, also female prisoners were forced to be laborers

- 'Race defilement' as a crime in Nazi Germany vs. endemic sexual violence even against Jewish women in the east

- Women survivors reluctance to discuss their experience

- Military brothels 'staffed' by non-Jewish women

- Fertility, sterilization, abortion and childbirth in KZs and labor camps

- Abortion in the Bielski group
Sexual violence in Holocaust
Forced marches under brutal conditions required of death camp and concentration camp inmates by the Nazis to avoid liberation by advancing Allied forces.

• January 1945 - Chelmno and Auschwitz liberated by the Red Army

o KZ system in areas still under German control contained at least 714,000 prisoners

• Summer 1944 - evacuation of KZs nearest to the advancing front lines forced movement of prisoners inside the Reich

o Murderous brutality inflicted by SS guards in charge, but also German civilians unsystematic killing yet Jews remained specifically vulnerable

• 250,000 prisoners involved in death marches died or killed en route or within one of the KZs in Germany
Death Marches
Trial took place in Jerusalem from 1961-1962.

-Adolf Eichmann escaped to Argentina after the war and was positively identified in 1961.

-Although objections were raised over Eichmann's 'illegal' capture, moral right to prosecute anyone for crimes against the Jewish people was given to the Jewish state.

-Eichmann was found guilty at the trial and sentenced to death, with this trial remaining the only time that Israel has ever enacted a death sentence.

-Significance: the word holocaust entered the mainstream as the term for specific historical event

-Jewish suffering stressed more

-Gradual expansion of public and scholar debates scope and sophistication
Eichmann Trial
A historian who has become known for being a denier of the Holocaust.
-He took writer Deborah Lipstadt to court and attempted to sue her and her publisher for slander.
-Libel Trial in 1996 David Irving vs. Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt

-a public education trial
-David Ir Deborah called in Historians to give a testimony on her behalf. At the end, the judge ruled in Deborah's favor rather than David's, resulting in David becoming discredited as a historian.
-he writes a lot of books money scheme; not credible
David Irving
stepping stones/stumbling blocks, is a monument created by Gunter Demnig which commemorates a victim of the Holocaust


-German for 'stumbling stones', which is exactly what the artwork is. This public art project made by Gunter Demnig involves imbedding different blocks of metal in different countries and cities (Bonn Germany and Budapest Hungary included) into the pavement in front of places where Jews lived before being deported from their homes.

(holocaust memory)
Stolpersteine
-hidden in trees

-screen inside showing film of 2 men kissing

-This memorial was unveiled in 2008 and stands to signify the homosexuals as a group that was also persecuted by the Nazis. Homosexuals are often seen as one of the "forgotten victims" when it comes to the Holocaust.
Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted under Nazism in Berlin
complied in 2014 pushes you to figure out your own meaning of the holocaust; a punch of rectangle cinder blocks
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin
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