The Holocaust. Notes to accompany the PowerPoint (2007)

Slide 143

World War II Begins:

Map - World War II: 1939-1942

According to Nazi ideology, the Germanic peoples were a superior part of the “Aryan” race, and along

with other nations of similar “blood,” the rightful rulers of the world. They were the only true humans.

Because of the Germanic “blood” in their veins, certain nations (e.g. Scandinavians and the British)

might become Germany’s allies. France, because it was supposedly under a Jewish-controlled

administration, was considered an enemy. England, who was struggling against “Jewish domination,”

was a friend, a potential German ally. Hitler refused to believe until the last moment that “Aryan”

England would enter the war against Germany.

Other Europeans (e.g. Latins and Slavs), although they were “Aryans,” would be ruled by Germany

because of their lack of Germanic blood. Due to past contacts between Germans and Slavs, the latter

had absorbed some Germanic “blood,” which was to be “rescued” by kidnapping blue-eyed, blonde-

haired Slav children, and by permitting Poles with German names or German ancestry (real or

supposed ) to be considered Germans. Some of the other Slavs were often termed “sub-humans” and

though there never was any plan to completely annihilate any of the Slav nations, their leadership was

to be eliminated along with their religious and educational institutions. With their culture reduced to a

primitive level, the Czechs, Poles, Soviets, and others were to become slaves. Other Slavs, however,

the Slovaks, Bulgarians and Croats, became allies of Nazi Germany, and were treated with relative

respect.

Whereas some Slavs were subhuman, the Jews were non-human. Hitler saw the Jews as a kind of

anti-race, a nomadic mongrel group. The Nazis described them as parasites, viruses, or loathsome

creatures from the animal and insect world. As a parasitic force, the Jews corroded, and would

ultimately destroy, the cultures of their host nations. Because contact with Jews would corrupt German

blood and culture, Jews would be segregated, a segregation that led to the possibility of annihilation.

The Nazis, in essence, were accusing the Jews of wanting to do what they, the Nazis, were out to do

themselves: control the world and annihilate their enemies. They described the Jews as the demonic

force of evil that Nazism itself was.

Slide 144

World War II Begins (opening breaker slide)

Slide 145

World War II Begins:

The German Invasion of Poland (September 1, 1939)

Hitler’s ultimate goals were the elimination of Jews and the conquest of living space in the east for

Germany. He believed that Germany had to conquer a vast continental empire in the east so as to

secure for Germans their place in the world as members of a "master race."

According to Nazi racial ideology, all Slavic peoples (including the Poles) were an inferior breed,

although not in the vermin class of Jews. Both were what the Nazis called “sub-humanity.” These

“sub-human” Slavs were occupying land vital to Germany. Once conquered, the Poles were to

become serfs, a labor force for the Nazi Reich and the lands in Poland were to become Lebensraum

(living space) for ethnic Germans.

On September 1, 1939, German forces attacked Poland under the pretext of re-annexing lands lost by

Germany to the new Polish state in Treaty of Versailles. World War II had begun.

Interesting Note:

German citizens were told that the attack was a retaliation for a recent attack by Polish partisans on a

German military transmitter unit located on the border. The truth was revealed after the war. In reality

on August 31, German soldiers, dressed as Poles and speaking Polish, attacked the transmitter unit,

locked the staff in the cellar and interrupted the broadcast with speeches in Polish saying that they

had come to invade Germany. For physical evidence, actual bodies of previously killed prisoners

dressed in Polish uniforms were placed at the scene of the “attack.” On September 1, Hitler told the

Reichstag that Poland had tried to invade Germany and the Wehrmacht (German army) was returning

fire.

Slide 146

World War II Begins (breaker slide)

Slide 147

World War II Begins:

Poland’s Largest Jewish Communities on the Eve of War

This map shows Polish cities with 12,000 or more Jewish inhabitants at the time of the 1931 census as

well as the percentage of Jews among the total population of the town.

In 1939 there were about 3.3 million Jews in Poland (approximately 10% of the population). Since its

independence in 1918, the country had suffered economic crisis. The middle class, in particular, had

been hurt. Bitter competition for employment had drastically increased antisemitic acts, including

boycotts and pogroms. These antisemitic acts mounted in the mid-1930’s. Jewish students,

separated from others at Polish universities, were subjected to harassment and attacks by fellow

students. Boycotts against Jews, with open government approval, occurred. Between 1935 and

1937, 118 Jews were killed and 1,350 were wounded in 16 pogroms. These pogroms were motivated

by hatred of the stranger and the economic crisis.

In 1931, 1,123,025 Jews were gainfully employed in Poland, primarily as laborers, artisans and

traders.

By 1935, 1 million Jews were unemployed or working part time.

Despite a hopeless and deepening poverty, intellectual, artistic, and political activities continued to be

pursued.

Slide 148

World War II Begins (breaker slide)

Slide 149

World War II Begins:

The Blitzkrieg of Poland

The Invasion (September 1, 1939)

On September 1, 1939, in what is known as a Blitzkrieg or “lightening war,” 1.5 million German troops

and 2,000 tanks crossed into Poland. Simultaneously, Luftwaffe (German Air Force) bombers bombed

Polish air fields, destroying most of the Poles’ air power as it sat on the ground. Poland’s army was

totally unprepared. Polish ground forces consisted largely of cavalry, a poor match for Nazi military

machinery.

By September 27, the capital of Warsaw had fallen. Despite military defeat, the Polish government

itself never surrendered. A Polish government-in-exile established itself in London, coordinating and

sending support to the various underground resistance groups in Poland.

During the September 1939 Nazi military campaign, about 600,000 men of the Polish Army, including

60,000 Jews, were taken prisoner by the German fascists. Most of the Jewish prisoners were

murdered.

Allies Declare War

On September 3, 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany. Both countries had previously

pledged to help Poland if Germany attacked, but when the time came, Britain had only a small army

and France was only prepared to defend its territory, not attack.

Both stood by while Poland collapsed.

Soviets Invade Poland (September 17, 1939)

On September 17, 1939, Soviet forces invaded Poland from the east. By late September, the Soviet

Union occupied the eastern third of Poland.

Polish Losses

Poland suffered the highest percentage of deaths of any country during the war. In the end, 2.7-3

million Polish Jews perished. In addition, scholars believe 1.8-1.9 million non-Jewish Poles died at the

hand of the Germans.

Slide 150

World War II Begins (breaker slide)

Slide 151

World War II Begins:

The Division of Poland

On September 28, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned Poland into three major areas as

previously planned by the non-aggression pact.

The western third (green) was annexed to the Reich.

These lands where many ethnic Germans resided were intended for complete Germanization. In the

first months after the invasion, the Germans forcibly expelled both Jewish and Gentile Poles residing

in these territories to the General Government. The re-settlement of large segments of the Polish

population made room for the influx of the “superior Germanic race.” Ethnic Germans from the Baltic

and other regions were resettled in homes formerly occupied by Jews and Poles. It was the BDM that

traveled from village to village to help new German settlers get established.

At the end of World War II, with the collapse of the Third Reich, these German settlers became

displaced as the countries they occupied were no longer under German control. They were treated

without mercy, harassed and thrown out of places where they were living. In Czechoslovakia, Poland

and other countries overrun by Germany during the war, natives at last took revenge on the hated

Germans.

The eastern third (purple) was annexed to the Soviet Union.

Soviet occupation was better than Nazi rule. The Soviets abolished the previous Polish restrictions

that had prevented Jews from entering universities, the administration, and some trades. On the other

hand, the Soviets restricted religious life, abolished all Jewish institutions, and confiscated property.

Approximately 17-20% of the Jews in Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland were deported into Soviet exile

or Soviet camps. The same can be said for Polish deportees. During the war itself, the Jews saw the

Soviet regime as their only hope for rescue.

The central portion (yellow), now known as the General Government, became a German protectorate.

This area became the designated holding center where Nazis sent Jews and all others deemed unfit

for Reich citizenship.

Slide 152

World War II Begins (breaker slide)

Slide 153

World War II Begins:

Germanization of Polish Gentiles

Hitler saw the Poles ( a Slavic people) as “subhuman.”

The Poles are especially born for low labor … There can be no question of improvement for

them … Priests will preach what we want them to preach. If any priest acts differently, we

shall make short work of him. The task of the priest is to keep the Poles quiet, stupid and dull-

witted … There should be one master only for the Poles, the German … All representatives of

the Polish intelligentsia are to be exterminated.

- Adolf Hitler, October 2, 1940

Quoted in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer

Germany’s campaign in Poland was devised to destroy the Polish culture and enslave the Polish

people.

In order to prevent any organized resistance, the Nazis focused on killing or suppressing the Polish

elite (political, religious and intellectual leaders) i.e. those who might attempt to lead a revolution. This

was code named A-B Aktion (A-B Action). About 10,000 Polish priests, teachers, technicians and

political leaders were murdered. Although the major annihilation occurred during the first months of

occupation, it continued intermittently until the spring of 1940.

In addition to these measures, were those enumerated on the slide.

Thousands of men were sent to concentrations camps, and the Nazis began a mass expulsion of

Poles from the newly annexed western Polish territories to the General Government. A rigid

separation was maintained in Poland between the German master race and the Poles. Only Germans

were allowed to frequent certain restaurants, cinemas and shops. When food rationing was

introduced, Germans received much higher rations than Poles.

Slide 154

World War II Begins:

Germanization of Polish Gentiles - Photos of Forced Labor & Tearing Down of Monuments.

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Slide 155

World War II Begins:

Germanization of Polish Gentiles - Photo of Polish Children Captured for Re-Germanization

The Lebensborn (Fountain of Life) program was founded by Heinrich Himmler in 1938. It started out

running birthing homes where racially acceptable, mostly unwed mothers could bear their children for

adoption by Nazi families. An estimated 20,000 children were born in German Lebensborn homes

(roughly half of them anonymously) and another 12,000 or so were born to mostly non-German

mothers and Nazi fathers in Norway.

After World War II broke out, Lebensborn took on an even more sinister role. It became an adoption

agency for hundreds of “racially desirable” toddlers and young children seized from their families in

Poland and other occupied territories and forcibly Germanized. They were a “gift for the Führer.”

Approximately 40,000 eastern European children were transferred to Germany during the Heuaktion, a

cover name for the kidnapping of children aged 10 to 14 deemed suitable for "re-Germanization" into

the Reich. The Heuaktion was one of many such operations carried out by the SS with the cooperation

of institutions administered by its youth and Lebensborn programs.

"Re-Germanization" was the legal and educational process by which "racially desirable" persons from

the population of territories occupied by the Wehrmacht could become members of the German "Volk"

and citizens of the Reich. In order to qualify for "re-Germanization," they had to provide proof of

German racial origins or that they were sufficiently German-minded. "Re-Germanization," however,

could be extended to "racially valuable" children belonging to foreign peoples, in some cases, even

children who were Jews. The children transferred to Germany under the "Heuaktion" fell into this

category.

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Slide 158

World War II Begins:

Isolation of Polish Jews - Humiliation & Terror

Photo Bottom Right:

Jewish men are publicly humiliated in the market square of Minsk Mazowiecki by being forced to race

against one another while riding on the backs of their fellows.

These Jews were selected from a larger group (the spectators in the background) that was rounded up

by Germans in the streets surrounding the market square. The Germans also assembled a group of

Poles to watch the spectacle (not pictured).

_________________________________________________________________________________

Terror enveloped the Jews. Killing and senseless violence became daily rituals.

Once the German army had captured a Polish town, special SS “operational groups” roamed the town

and amused themselves. Their refinements of cruelty were reserved especially for the pious Jews and

rabbis, whose traditional Jewish garb - hat and long coat, beard and side-locks - identified them as

quintessentially Jewish. They tormented individual Jews, kicking them, cutting off their beards or even

forcing Orthodox Jews to pull at one another’s beards. “Games” were even played involving forcing

Jews to eat pork or setting their beards on fire. These humiliating acts were often followed by acts of

life-threatening brutality, severe beatings and even executions.

Jewish stores were confiscated or plundered. Individuals were forced to give up all possessions.

All Poles were subjected to food rationing, but the Jews were ejected from soup lines because “A

lower race needs less food.” - Dr. Ley, Head of the German Labor Front.

The Germans deliberately forced observant Jews to desecrate and destroy their own sacred articles of

Judaism, even to set fire to their own synagogues. All over Poland synagogues went up in flames.

The Germans organized pogroms, rounding up the non-Jewish population to witness and learn how to

mock, abuse, injure and murder Jews. In one place, thousands of half-naked men and women were

beaten to bleeding in the town square, and then kept standing for hours in the freezing cold. The

Germans arrested a beloved rabbi, tortured him and savagely displayed his head for several days in

the window of a main-street store.

In the first 55 days of the German conquest and occupation of western Poland, 5,000 Jews were

murdered. At the same time, the Germans killed more than twice that number of non-Jewish Poles,

likewise executed at random.

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Slide 159

World War II Begins:

Isolation of Polish Jews (breaker slide)

Slide 160

World War II Begins:

Isolation of Polish Jews - Forced Labor

October 26, 1939: Official decree requiring forced labor of all Jews aged 14-60.

Jews were seized to clean the streets of rubble, to scrub the floors of German residences, to haul and

move, load and unload, to labor beyond fatigue. Sometimes they were released at the day’s end and

allowed to return home, but more likely they were kept for a week or two, incommunicado, unable to

inform their families of their whereabouts or even of their very existence.

As the Germans consolidated their position in Poland, they set up labor camps outside the big cities,

some of which - Treblinka and Majdanek - eventually became annihilation camps. Teams of forced

laborers were assigned for periods of weeks and even months to construct these camps.

Prior to this Jews were randomly seized from their homes or off the streets for forced labor.

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Slide 161

World War II Begins:

Isolation of Polish Jews (breaker slide)

Slide 162

World War II Begins:

Isolation of Polish Jews - Expulsion

As soon as the Germans occupied Poland, they began to direct a flow of human traffic that soon

radically altered the age-old patterns of Jewish settlement in Poland. Within a few months, thousands

of Jewish settlements were erased from the map of Poland, their inhabitants ejected without notice,

forbidden to take the bare necessities, condemned to exposure, hunger and homelessness.

Tens of thousands of Jews fled eastward toward Russia.

Jews living in East Prussia, West Prussia and the Warthegau regions (lands that had been annexed

into the Reich and were to become Germanized) were forced to move to the General Government

region. Over 330,000 Polish Jews, 1/10 of the Jews in Poland, had become homeless refugees,

beggars for bread and shelter, candidates for disease and death.

The fate of the Jews of Aleksandrow, seven miles west of Lodz, was typical. Aleksandrow, was the

hosiery center of Poland. One-fourth of its 12,000 residents were Jews. It was the seat of one of the

most distinguished Hasidic (ultra-orthodox Jews) dynasties in all of Poland. The Germans entered

Aleksandrow on September 7 and the next day burned down its synagogues. After 3 months of terror,

arrests, shootings, expropriations and impressments into forced labor, the Jews were expelled on

December 17, 1939. In the depths of the Polish winter, they were marched out on the highway, men,

women, children and infants, with the few belongings they were permitted to take in sacks, baby

carriages, wheelbarrows, pushcarts, bicycles and sleds. The nearest town was Glowno, on the border

of the newly incorporated area of the General Government, which most managed to reach.

An official order was decreed on September 21, 1939 that Jews were to be concentrated into large

cities, such as Warsaw, Lublin and Krakow, with the intention of establishing ghettos. Judenraete

(Jewish Councils) were to be established as a “go-between” between the Nazis and the Jews.

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Slide 163

World War II Begins:

Isolation of Polish Jews (breaker slide)

Slide 164

World War II Begins:

Isolation of Polish Jews - The Jewish Badge

Teacher Note:

The drawing on left is by Arthur Szyk.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Although the proposal to create an official Jewish sign was not introduced until November 1938

(immediately after Kristallnacht), the practice existed in ancient times when Jews were forced to wear

specific clothing colors and shapes to distinguish them from the rest of the population.

Reinhard Heydrich first suggested the Jewish badge concept after the Kristallnacht pogrom of

November 1938. It was not until the invasion of Poland that his suggestion was put into practice.

In November 1939, Hans Frank (head of the General Government of Poland) ordered that by

December 1 all Jews in the General Government (the section of German-occupied Poland not

incorporated into the Reich) over the age of 12 were to don white armbands, at least four inches wide,

inscribed with a blue Star of David. The Jews were responsible for buying and distributing the badges.

If a Jew was caught without a badge, he was fined, imprisoned, or shot. In some ghettos, certain

groups were given different badges to identify them as being unique among the Jews. These included

Jewish police, doctors, Judenrat employees and factory workers, who no longer had to wear the

regular Jewish badge and thus felt more favored than the rest of the Jews. Different symbols, all

variations on the same theme, were introduced in different areas of the General Government and the

Polish territories occupied by Germany. In 1941 the SS ordered the Jews to wear a yellow, six-

pointed star, four inches high, on the left side of the breast and on the back.

When Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Jews there were also forced to wear Jewish badges.

By September 15, 1941 all Jews above the age of 6 within the Reich (Germany proper and all

acquired lands) were ordered to wear the “Jewish star.” This yellow star had the word “Jude” (Jew)

with Hebraic looking calligraphy in black. The star, which also represented a public stigmatization,

was introduced to facilitate the identification of Jews in preparation for their deportation to the East. In

March 1942, the doors of all Jewish residences in Germany also had to be marked with a white Star of

David.

In German-occupied countries in Western Europe, there was some opposition to the badge decrees.

The implementation of the badges in France, for example, was delayed because of resistance by the

French people and on the part of the Vichy regime in unoccupied France. However, the decree was

finally announced in France on June 7, 1942.

The Nazis did not even try to make the Jewish badge obligatory in Denmark due to the Danes’ strong

opposition to anti-Jewish measures. A story is told that King Christian X himself donned the Jewish

badge in solidarity with the Jews of Denmark. The story is fictional (as Danish Jewry was never forced

to wear badges), but it powerfully demonstrates the Danish King’s courage and commitment to his

country’s Jews.

106

Both Jews and non-Jews reacted strongly to the Jewish badge decree. Almost all Polish Jews

cooperated with the law, in fear of severe punishment; however, diaries from the time speak with

unabashed bitterness about having to wear the badge. In Germany, the introduction of the badge was

followed by a wave of suicides. Many French Jews refused to wear the badge, and some French non-

Jews expressed their empathy for the Jewish plight by wearing stars themselves. Even the French

police did not enforce the decree. In Holland, an underground newspaper expressed its solidarity with

the Jews by printing 300,000 stars, inscribed with the words: “Jews and non-Jews are one and the

same.”

The German government's policy of forcing Jews to wear badges, and then confining all who wore

them to ghettos, was a tactic aimed at isolating the Jews from the rest of the population. It enabled

the German government to identify, concentrate, deprive, starve and ultimately murder the Jews of

Europe under its control.

These decrees are important to remember in teaching the Holocaust because they show the gradual

implementation of the Final Solution, the importance to the Nazis of both racial law and separation,

and the possibility of resistance. In some countries, the stars were symbols of degradation and

isolation. In others, opposition to the badge and other anti-Jewish measures highlight the power of

popular resistance.

Slide 165

World War II Begins

Isolation of Polish Jews - Photos of Jewish Badges

Questions to Consider:

● How are these markings similar or different?

● Why would a government feel it necessary specifically to identify certain groups of people?

● How do these objects have an impact on either a personal or a group identity?

● What are some of the ways in which an individual becomes labeled in our society?

● What effect do you think these marking had on society?

● How did these markings help the Germans achieve their goal?

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Slide 166

The Ghettos

Slide 167

The Ghettos:

Map of Ghettos in Occupied Europe 1939-1944

Part of the Nazi propaganda effort was to persuade non-Jews that the ghettoes were necessary in

order to protect them from the Jews. Jews were said to be carriers of epidemic illnesses and were

even accused of cooperating with Germany’s enemies, thus the need to isolate them in ghettos.

The first ghetto was established in Piotrków-Trybunalski, Poland on October 28, 1939, shortly after the

war broke out. The second was in the industrial center of Lodz on April 30, 1940. The largest ghetto

in Europe, the Warsaw Ghetto, was set up in November 1940.

By the summer of 1941, ghettos were being established in the Soviet Union.

By 1942, most of the Jews of Eastern Europe were in ghettos.

With the exception of Theresienstadt (Terezin) in Bohemia, which was a ghetto-like concentration

camp rather than a ghetto, no ghettoes were established in Czechoslovakia, Austria, Germany or

Western territories.

There were more than 800 ghettos in Eastern Europe.

By the Fall of 1944, no ghettos remained.

Each ghetto was unique in how and when it was set up, how it was sealed off from the rest of the city,

and how it was governed. The ghetto was actually a city-within-a-city. The Jews were forced to run

services and institutions for themselves for which they had no previous experience.

Although many Jews died in the ghetto, there is no proof that the ghettos were originally created for

the distinct purpose of killing Jews. Nevertheless, the Germans were not troubled by the huge number

of Jews dying from hunger and lack of other basic needs.

Slide 168

The Ghettos:

Chart of Major Jewish Ghettos / Country / Population

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Slide 169

Ghetto Life (opening breaker slide)

Slide 170

Ghetto Life:

Judenrat

Teacher Note:

● Judenrat (singular)

● Judenraete (plural)

____________________________________________________________________________

By a government decree on November 28, 1939, every Jewish community in Poland with a population

of up to 10,000 had to elect a Judenrat of 12 members, and every community with more than 10,000

people had to choose 24 members. These councils were to be filled with pre-war Jewish community

leaders.

Once the ghettos were formed, the Judenrat had the following functions:

1. the transmission of German directives to the Jewish population

2. the use of Jewish police to enforce German will

3. the establishment of hospitals, kitchens, schools, recreation facilities, orphanages based on

available resources

4. the over-seeing of taxes, banking, grievances, labor, public health, social welfare, postal

service, housing and religious services

5. the delivery of Jewish property, Jewish labor, and Jewish lives to the Germans

Most Judenrat leaders were tragic characters placed in impossible situations. For example, when the

Nazis decided to deport Jews, the Judenrat was ordered to deliver a certain number for deportation to

the train station. Most complied, even sending “Jewish police” to bring those who refused to obey.

Most Judenrat leaders rationalized such cooperation, claiming that it enabled them to save some

Jewish lives. Jewish community members often viewed their Judenrat as betrayers.

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Slide 171

Ghetto Life (breaker slide)

Slide 172

Ghetto Life:

Arrival

Photos:

(Left) Jews of Lodz move to the ghetto as the former Polish inhabitants leave, February 1940.

(Top Right) Jewish families on their way to the Lodz Ghetto.

(Bottom Right) Jews deported from Western Europe (e.g. from Vienna, Berlin, Prague and

Luxembourg) arrive in the Lodz Ghetto, Fall 1941.

________________________________________________________________________________

Initially, the inhabitants of the ghettos were from the immediate area, but eventually new inhabitants

arrived from more distant cities as well as other countries. The population was economically and

socially diverse. Some arrived with money and possessions that proved valuable for future bartering.

Others, who had been forcibly evicted from their homes, arrived with little more than the clothes on

their backs and the bundles they could carry.

Slide 173

Ghetto Life:

Map of the Lodz Ghetto / Building Ghetto Walls

Litzmannstadt was the German name for Lodz.

Ghetto boundaries were drawn by the Nazis encompassing existing neighborhoods in the most run-

down areas, often lacking basic facilities such as sewers and lighting. The Nazis would evict non-

Jewish residents before forcing Jews to move in. In the case of the Warsaw Ghetto, 113,000 Poles

had to leave the newly demarcated ghetto and 138,000 Jews moved in.

Some ghettos were closed, while others were relatively open.

In some cases, barbed wire would mark the “Jewish section.” Later more permanent walls were

erected by forced Jewish laborers.

The Warsaw Ghetto was surrounded by 11 miles of walls. Krakow was enclosed by a wall as well as

barbed wire, while Lodz was enclosed by barbed wire. Piotrkow Trybunalski, Radom, Chelm and

Kielce were “open ghettos,” with access to other parts of town. Poles could go back and forth, and at

first, Jews had little difficulty leaving.

Before the final deportations, however, all ghettos were sealed.

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Slide 174

Ghetto Life (breaker slide)

Slide 175

Ghetto Life:

Daily Life

The Nazis' goal in the ghettos was to brutalize and break the spirit of the inhabitants. To combat this,

underground social, religious, educational, and political organizations were created. Newspapers

were published, classes held and religious services conducted, despite the threat of death for such

activities.

While attempts were made to make life appear to be as normal as possible, conditions in the ghetto

brought about a rapid deterioration in daily life. Students may notice variations in physical

appearances in the following photos. This is indicative of the decline in human life that occurred over

time.

Slide 176

Ghetto Life:

Daily Life - continued

Photo of ghetto orchestra:

In the midst of decaying life, many Jews found solace in retaining life’s normalcy…including their

musical entertainment.

Slide 177

Ghetto Life:

Daily Life - continued

Photo of communal kitchen for children:

It should be noted that many children became orphans as time progressed, and the ghettos tried to

find ways to provide for them - food kitchens and orphanages were often the answer.

Photo of Lodz Ghetto bridge:

This particular street was for the non-Jews of Lodz. The Jews were not allowed to set foot on it.

- Why were the Jews not allowed to cross the street with the other people?

- How did this make the Jews feel?

Photo of the burial:

As the death rates increased, burials such as this became impossible. Bodies accumulated and the

only answer was mass graves.

Photo of the street scene:

This photo was taken by a German soldier from inside a car. It is always important to consider the

perspective of a photo.

- Why did the soldier take a picture of a crowd of Jews?

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Slide 180

Ghetto Life (breaker slide)

Slide 181

Ghetto Life:

Conditions

Starvation

Food was obtainable in 2 ways: from official German sources, and from the unofficial black market.

Officially, the Jews were given ration cards that allowed them to buy much less than the rest of the

local population. By mid-1941, in Poland, the Germans were giving out ration cards that provided only

184 calories per day (7.5% of the minimum daily requirement). The Germans themselves received a

full ration, while the Poles received a ration of 26% of the daily needs. In order to supplement their

rations, Jews were forced to pay exorbitant prices for food sold on the black market. Most Jews had

very little money, so many starved to death. Those that worked in German factories received extra

rations or extra food on the job.

The rations for the ghetto included no meat, only bread and potatoes.

Hunger overwhelmed everyone. Hunger killed, but first it disabled peoples’ bodies and minds.

Fatigue, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea were daily complaints. Hunger weakened and

debilitated its victims so as to make them fall prey to countless other diseases.

Overcrowding

Apartments might house several families. The average room had to accommodate 8-14 people.

Heating fuel was scarce. Many resorted to chopping up furniture or destroying buildings for fuel.

People froze to death.

Contagious Disease

Plumbing was often poor or non-existent. Human waste was thrown in the streets along with the

garbage.

With no soap or hot water, people could not bathe or wash.

Bodies ravaged by hunger were more susceptible to disease. The young and the elderly were the

most vulnerable.

Typhus, typhoid, bed bugs and lice were rampant.

Isolation

The ghettos were surrounded by walls with limited or no access. This isolation was compounded by

the removal of telephones from private homes. Radios had long since been confiscated. Mail was

erratic and undependable. Once the Jews were inside the ghetto, the Judenrat had to assume postal

functions. Telegrams and cables could be sent only through the Judenrat and required Gestapo

approval. Parcels of food and clothing were more often than not confiscated by the Germans before

they ever reached the ghetto post office.

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Slide 182

Ghetto Life (breaker slide)

Slide 183

Ghetto Life:

Smuggling

Without the ghettos’ smugglers, the Nazis could very well have succeeded in starving the inhabitants

to death.

Most of the smugglers were children 10-14 years old. Their small bodies could slip under a hole in the

barbed wire or though a chink in the wall and get back. If they were successful, starvation was

postponed another day. If they were caught, the penalty was death.

Paradoxically, thievery and sneaking became prestigious kinds of work.

Slide 184

Ghetto Life (breaker slide)

Slide 185

Ghetto Life:

Forced Labor

The Judenrat was responsible for issuing work permits which allowed the Jews to leave and work at

factories outside the ghetto that supported the German war effort. The incentive was pay or extra food

rations. Laborers often died from exhaustion or mistreatment.

Not all work was volunteer. Dragnet operations were staged without warning for the purpose of

rounding up workers for forced labor.

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Slide 186

Ghetto Life (breaker slide)

Slide 187

Ghetto Life:

Liquidation / Resettlement

Teacher Notes:

Students should understand that the flow of events from ghetto to “Final Solution” to extermination

camps was not so clear cut. All the ghettos did not originate at the same time. All the ghettos were

not immediately liquidated when the extermination camps became operational. Two months after D-

Day, in 1944, there were still Jews in ghettos. The Lodz Ghetto was not liquidated until August of

1944.

Nazi Euphemisms:

In an effort to disguise actual intentions, the Nazis used language that was designed to deceive the

general public, both Jew and non-Jew.

Liquidate - to dispose of needless products

In Nazi terminology, this term referred to the forced removal of ghetto inhabitants to

camps.

Resettlement - to move from one place to another with the intention of establishing residence

This term was used by the Nazis to deceive the Jews into believing that they were

being sent to a better place to live. In truth, they were being sent to their deaths.

The teacher should make special note of these euphemisms and try not to gloss over the atrocities by

using such benign vocabulary.

______________________________________________________________________________

It is estimated that 1/5 of ghetto inhabitants died of disease and hunger-related illnesses. At that rate,

the entire population of all of the ghettos would have died out within 5-6 years. But that was not fast

enough for the Nazis.

Soon after the “Final Solution” began, the Germans began to eliminate the ghettos. The first ghettos

were liquidated in the spring of 1942. The last Polish ghetto to be destroyed, Lodz, was emptied in the

summer of 1944. Most of the Jews taken from the ghettos were deported to Extermination Camps

where they were murdered. Only a small number were taken to Concentration Camps and Forced

Labor camps near the end of the war.

Often these liquidations were sudden, un-announced, chaotic and violent. At other times, they were

announced by the Judenrat and carefully orchestrated.

The German strategy of lies and deceptions convinced many Jews that they were being resettled for

hard labor.

After information of mass shootings and gassings filtered into the ghettos, the first response was

shocked disbelief. Even the unrestrained cruelties committed by the German had not prepared the

Jews to grasp the facts of systematic mass murder. The Jews had no way of verifying the reports

which came to them.

By the spring of 1943, 2.7 million of the 3.3 million Jews of Poland were dead. Hundreds of thousands

had fled to the Soviet Union. The Jews remaining in Poland were in concentration or slave labor

camps or hiding among the non-Jewish population. Only two ghettoes remained: Bialystok in the east

and Lodz in the west. In August 1943, the Bialystok ghetto was destroyed and its inhabitants

murdered. Lodz remained, with 69,000 inmates in early 1944.

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Slide 188

Ghetto Life:

Liquidation / Resettlement - continued

Slide 189

Ghetto Life:

Liquidation / Resettlement - continued

Teacher Note:

These photos offer writing opportunities or class discussion:

● What message might the young girl be writing and to whom?

● What would a mother tell her child that is being taken away?

● Assuming the young adults were left behind, what directives or message of hope might a parent

give?

Slide 190

Ghetto Life:

Drawing by Samual Bak, “The Ghetto”

According to the artist, the ghetto was “an inclined surface with no horizon and no possibility of

escape. Indeed, when we were thrown into the ghetto like human garbage, it felt like being in a deep

hole. This hole is in the shape of the Star of David, the emblem of the ghetto. Near it lies our badge

of identification.

Samuel Bak

Samuel Bak was born in Vilna, Lithuania in 1933 to an educated, cultured, middle-class family.

On June 24, 1941, the Germans occupied Vilna and ordered the Jews to don the yellow Jewish

Badge. Samuel, aged 8, was charged with preparing badges for his parents and extended family.

On September 6, the deportation of Jews to the Vilna Ghetto began. Samuel’s father was sent to a

labor camp while his mother fled the ghetto and found refuge in the city’s Benedictine convent, where

a nun took Samuel under her wing and supplied him with paint and paper.

When the Germans suspected the convent of collaborating with Soviet forces, they placed it under

military jurisdiction and the Bak family was forced to return to the Vilna Ghetto.

In March 1943, the poets Avrom Sutzkever and Szmerke Kaczerginski invited the 9-year-old Samuel

to participate in an exhibition organized in the ghetto. Sensing that their end was near, the poets

decided to deposit the Pinkas, the official record of the Jewish community, into Samuel’s hands in

hopes that they both would survive. Paper was a precious commodity and the white pages of the

Pinkas beckoned the young artist: he used them to satisfy his craving to draw. Over the next two

years, Samuel filled the page margins and empty pages of the Pinkas.

Upon liquidation of the ghetto on September 24, 1943, Samuel and his mother were sent to the same

forced labor camp that his father was in.

On March 27, 1944, a children’s Aktion took place in the camp and 250 children were sent to their

death. Bak’s mother took advantage of the confusion in the camp and fled while Samuel hid under a

bed in the living quarters of one of the camp buildings. A few days later, his father smuggled him out

of the camp in a sack of sawdust. Outside, by a pre-arranged signal, they linked up with his mother.

Again, they made their way to the Benedictine convent where they found shelter for 11 months, until

liberation.

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Slide 191

Attack in the West

The fate of Jews in Western Europe differed from country to country. Three major factors determined

what happened to the Jews of Western Europe:

1. the degree of control exercised by the Nazis in the conquered country

2. the history of Jews in the region

3. the behavior of the local population

Despite local distinctions, anti-Jewish policy followed a familiar scenario. The pattern set by Germany

toward its own Jews between 1933 and 1939, and toward Austrian Jews in 1938, became the model

imposed swiftly on occupied countries. The progression is noted on the slide.

Slide 192

Attack in the West (initial breaker slide)

Although England and France had declared war against Germany with the invasion of Poland, they

had yet to engage troops. France moved troops to the Maginot Line, a belt of steel and concrete

fortresses it had built after World War I along its border with Germany. Britain sent a small force into

northern France. Germany stationed troops along the Siegfried Line, a strip of defenses Hitler built in

the 1930’s opposite the Maginot Line. The two sides avoided fighting in late 1939 and early 1940.

Journalists called this period “The Phony War.”

From the beginning, Hitler had designs on England for its shipyards and on France in retaliation for its

brutal treatment of Germany after World War I.

Slide 193

Attack in the West:

Invasion of Denmark & Norway (April 9, 1940)

Teacher Note:

In the eyes of the British, the Norwegian campaign was a disaster. There was a vote of no confidence

in the British Parliament. The government suffered a reduced majority, and Prime Minister Neville

Chamberlain resigned.

The main architect of the Norwegian campaign, the British First Lord of the Admiralty Winston

Churchill, who had been responsible for many of the mistakes of the campaign, was the main

beneficiary of these political events. He was the favored candidate to take over as prime minister, and

thus became Britain’s war leader on May 10, 1940. Such are the ironies of history.

__________________________________________________________________________

When World War II broke out in 1939, all of Scandinavia had proclaimed itself strictly neutral in the

event of war.

With Poland now secured and the Soviet Union safely on hold via the German-Soviet Non-Aggression

Pact, Hitler was eager to attack in the west, but bad weather forced the offensive to be postponed. In

the meantime, Russia attacked Finland in November 1939, making Norway and Denmark vulnerable

to a Russian takeover. Germany recognized the need to advance into Scandinavia first.

Germany invaded Norway and Denmark on April 9, 1940.

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Denmark (see slide #359, “Governments that Rescued”)

The German attack on Denmark was an infringement on the German-Danish Non-Aggression Pact of

May 30, 1939. The Germans claimed that this step was necessary in view of the threat of an Allied

invasion of Norway...and that it was Germany’s duty to take the Nordic countries under its protection to

prevent the war from spreading to them.

The Germans invaded at 4:00 am on April 9 and by 6:00 am the Danish government had capitulated.

The Danish people were taken completely by surprise and the tiny Danish army was quickly

overpowered. King Christian X surrendered at once.

While the Poles were a “race” to be subjugated, the Danes were to be wooed. The Danes were seen

as a “Nordic people,” the highest sort of “Aryan.” Germany offered Denmark a partnership and

collaboration that initially worked.

The Germans permitted the Danish government to remain in place and govern. Free parliamentary

elections were held as late as March 1943.

About 8,000 Jews, 0.2% of the total population, lived in Denmark at the time of the occupation. The

Danish government insisted on certain conditions including no discrimination against Jews and no

Danish forces to support the German army. The King remained in place until 1942 when the Nazis

tried to push the government to adopt anti-Jewish measures.

Upon learning of Nazi plans to deport the Jews of Denmark, the King and his country organized one of

the most effective resistance movements in all of occupied Europe. Most of Denmark’s Jews were

saved. The ones who were not were interred in Theresienstadt, where 51 died of natural causes.

The moderate attitude of the Germans toward the Danes is usually explained by the economic benefits

that could be reaped from Denmark. The agricultural output the Danes were able to place at the

disposal of the Germans far surpassed German calculations. Denmark supplied close to 10% of

Germany’s food needs. The Danes were allowed to continue their standard of living although price

controls and rations were introduced. The Danes were the only people among the occupied areas

whose standard of living was higher than that of the Germans.

Norway

Unlike the Danes, the Norwegians resisted the German attack. Germany’s air power prevented British

ships and French troops from assisting and Norway fell to the Germans on June 10, 1940. King

Haakon VII and his cabinet fled to London to set up a government in exile. He returned after the war

to re-establish his government.

Like the Danes, the Nazis perceived the people of Norway as “fellow Aryans” who had a future in a

German-ruled Europe and their lands were seen as vital resources. Hitler knew that the Norwegian

coastal waters were vital for the transport of Swedish iron ore to German blast furnaces. Wary that

England might attempt to block shipments, submarine bases were to be placed on the Norwegian

coast to provided protection. In addition, German control of Norwegian waters would make breaking

the Allied blockade of Germany a little easier. Unfortunately, the Norwegians wanted nothing to do

with Hitler and Nazi Germany.

At the time there were about 1,900 Jews living in Norway, including about 200 Jewish refugees.

Norway’s Minister-President Vidkun Quisling, the Nazi collaborator whose name has become

synonymous with betraying one’s country, cooperated fully with the Reich Commissar in dealing with

the Jews.

Approximately 800 Jews were deported to Auschwitz where most died. The remainder escaped to

Sweden with the help of the underground. Approximately 55% of the Norwegian Jews perished.

More than 5,000 non-Jews were also deported to camps. Approximately 750 died in the camps.

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Sweden

Sweden was neutral during the war and unlike other neutral countries; it was not invaded by the Nazis

at any point. This was due to the fact that Sweden was able to provide resources to Nazi Germany,

such as steel to build Panzer tanks. The Swedish government went to extraordinary means to save

Jewish lives.

Finland (see slide #359, “Governments that Rescued”)

Finland was invaded by the Soviets in 1939. In return, Finland joined Nazi Germany when Germany

invaded the Soviet Union. Finland provided a base of operations for the Germans, but was never

actually occupied by the Germans, except in the northern regions. In early 1942, there were an

estimated 2,300 Jews in Finland, but their death toll was remarkably low. Only 2.8% of the Jews of

Finland perished.

Iceland

Iceland was, at the onset of the war, part of Denmark, but it was occupied early on by Allied forces to

prevent any possible attack on the U.S. Its small Jewish population remained protected.

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Slide 194

Attack in the West (breaker slide)

Slide 195

Attack in the West:

Invasion of the Lowlands (May 10, 1940)

The Lowlands refers to the countries of Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium. All hoped to

remain neutral after World War II began.

Germany attacked without declaring war. Allied assistance was requested, but it was too late. British

and French forces were able to rush into Belgium, but only fell into a German trap (see Invasion of

France).

Luxembourg surrendered in 1 day, the Netherlands surrendered in 5 days, and Belgium surrendered

in 18 days.

Luxembourg

Luxembourg was overrun simply because of its location: on the way to Belgium’s Ardennes Forest.

After Luxembourg surrendered, Grand Duchess Charlotte fled to London. The Germans annexed

Luxembourg to the Reich and began a rapid Germanization program.

In 1935, about 3,000 Jews lived in Luxembourg, 1% of the total population. Luxembourg Jews

enjoyed complete equality and prosperity.

By the time of the invasion in May 1940, less than 4,000 Jews lived in Luxembourg, 30% were

refugees of Nazi Germany. More than a thousand fled into France after the invasion. Those that

remained were subjected to Nazi legislation. From August 1940 to October 1941, nearly 1,500 Jews

left Luxembourg, many of them on transports to unoccupied France.

From October 1941 through April 1943, approximately 800 Jews were deported to Lodz, Auschwitz,

and Theresienstadt. After liberation, about 400 Jews were found to have survived in Luxembourg.

At least 1,200 Jews from Luxembourg perished during the Holocaust.

The Netherlands

The Dutch forces fought back formidably. In response, the German air force, the Luftwaffe, unleashed

a massive bombing attack on the city of Rotterdam, even while surrender negotiations were under

way. Over 800 civilians were killed. The Dutch forces surrendered on May 15, 1940 under threat of

further bombings. Queen Wilhelmina and other government officials went into exile in England. A civil

administration controlled by the Germans ran the country. The Netherlands brought the Allies

important resources: the Dutch navy, a large merchant fleet, and the oil and rubber-rich Dutch East

Indies.

While the Danish and Norwegian people were seen by Hitler as “fellow Aryans,” the Dutch were

viewed as “blood relatives” bound to Germany by geography, history and language. Hitler planned to

Nazify the Dutch to prepare them for ultimate reintegration into the Reich. Most Dutch people did not

wish to take a place either in German history or the German future. They wanted to preserve their

Dutch identity. As in Norway, the Germans failed.

At that time, the Netherlands had a Jewish population of 140,000, one of the oldest Jewish

communities in Europe. Approximately 110,000 of these were Dutch, while the remainders were

refugees mostly from Germany. Many German refugees had moved to the Netherlands upon Hitler’s

rise to power. Nearly 60%, 80,000 Jews, lived in Amsterdam alone. Dutch Jews enjoyed complete

equality, received financial support from the government and were active in the social and political life

of the country.

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Those that entered the country illegally were interned in camps, the main one being Westerbork.

Westerbork, along with Vught, later served as a transit camp to Auschwitz.

Beginning in August 1940, Jewish restrictions were put into place.

In February of 1941 a ghetto was established in Amsterdam. The only ghetto in Western Europe.

By May 1941, “Aryanization” of Jewish enterprises began.

In January 1942 forced labor camps were set up in Holland and in April 1942 the yellow star was

introduced.

In the midst of the war and occupation, Anne Frank celebrated her 13^th birthday and received a red

and white plaid diary on June 12, 1942. Less than two weeks later, Anne wrote in her diary:

Our freedom was severely restricted by a series of anti-Jewish decrees: Jews were required

to wear a yellow star; Jews were forbidden to use street cars…Jews were forbidden to visit

Christians in their homes; Jews were required to attend Jewish schools. You couldn’t do this

and you couldn’t do that. But life went on.

In October 1942, deportations to the East began. Few were able to escape since the country offered

no thick forests, remote mountains or neutral borders to hide. Safety could only be found in attics and

back rooms of sympathetic Dutch gentiles. Of the 24,000 Jews who went into hiding, about 2/3

survived.

During the next 2 years, 110,000 Jews were sent to the death camps, where fewer than 5% survived.

Approximately 75% (100,000) of the Dutch Jews were killed.

During its 5 years of bondage, the Netherlands suffered the most hardship and famine of all the

occupied countries in Western Europe.

Belgium

The Allied defense of Belgium was a disaster. The British and French planned to make a stand at a

line of forts between the cities of Antwerp and Liege. Unaware that these forts had already been

captured by German paratroopers, the British and French found themselves under siege. At the same

time, a second German offensive emerged from the Ardennes Forest, south of the Allied troops. The

Allied armies were trapped between two German forces, unable to protect Paris or stop the Germans

from advancing to the English Channel.

Belgium was needed by the Germans to make a surprise invasion into France.

Belgium surrendered on May 28, a country in shambles. The Belgium government fled to Great

Britain and formed a government in exile in London. King Leopold III remained in Belgium under

house arrest during the German occupation.

The surrender left the Allied forces trapped in Belgium in great danger. They retreated toward the

French seaport of Dunkirk.

Before the German invasion, about 90,000 Jews lived in Belgium, 1% of the total population.

After the German occupation, about 66,000 Jews lived in Belgium. Of these, only 10% were citizens.

The remainders were immigrants, predominantly from Eastern Europe. In 1938, the Belgian

government had allocated a grant of 6 million francs toward the relief of German Jewish refugees.

Most of Belgium’s Jews had fled the country when the Nazis invaded. The rest were foreign or

stateless Jews, mainly immigrants and refugees.

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The Nazis did not show their intentions in Western Europe early on. Consequently, more than half of

the Belgian Jews who had fled to southern France during the fighting returned. The war had severed

all communications with Eastern Europe, thus the Jews of Western Europe were clueless to Nazi

intentions. Even after discriminatory laws were implemented in late 1940 and 1941 and conditions

seemed precarious, no danger to life was perceived.

By May 1942 the yellow star was introduced in Belgium (this occurred in France 2 days later).

People were first deported to forced labor camps in Belgium or northern France. A detention camp at

Malines was converted into a transit camp for Auschwitz. The first transport from Malines to

Auschwitz left on August 4, 1942.

Unlike the SS Chiefs that ran the Netherlands, the German General that controlled Belgium did not

see the destruction of the Jews as his primary task. He even encouraged Jews to cross into France

and when roundups began, he declared native Belgian Jews exempt.

Between 1942 and 1944 more than 25,000 Jews left Belgium, primarily for Auschwitz. The Belgian

civilian administration refused to cooperate in the deportations, leaving the German military police to

carry out the deportations largely without assistance from the Belgians. In 1942, the Jewish

underground destroyed the registry of Belgian Jews, hindering deportations.

Approximately 34,801 Jews were imprisoned or deported during the Holocaust. Approximately 28,900

of these perished.

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Slide 196

Attack in the West (breaker slide)

Slide 197

Attack in the West:

Invasion of France (May 13, 1940)

At the signing of the Treaty of Versailles (end of World War I), France chose to crush Germany into

humiliation by making them pay unrealistic reparations and forcing them to accept the “War Guilt

Clause” that stated that Germany was solely responsible for World War I. These vengeful actions

created a bitter hatred among the German people. Hitler considered France an irreconcilable and

mortal enemy. It was the country he most wanted to conquer and humiliate.

When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Winston Churchill remarked, “Thank God for the French

Army.” The French army seemed a powerful bulwark against possible Nazi aggression. The defeat of

this powerful army in a mere six weeks in 1940 stands as one of the most remarkable military

campaigns in history.

At the time, France’s military was larger and more technologically advanced than Germany’s. The

British and French commanders believed that German forces would attack through central Belgium,

north of the Ardennes Forest, as they had in World War I. The Maginot Line, a sophisticated series of

fortifications, was expected to protect France’s frontier with Germany, even though it did not cover the

Franco-Belgian border. The Ardennes Forest, a hilly and heavily forested area on the Belgian-French

border, was believed to be impenetrable to German tanks.

Hitler was forced to rethink his original attack plans for France after a German plane crashed in neutral

Belgium with a copy of the attack orders on board. Fearing his plans had fallen into enemy hands,

Hitler took the advice of one of his generals to attempt a daring, unexpected military campaign. The

German army would attempt to enter France just north of the Maginot Line through Luxembourg and

the dense Ardennes Forest of Belgium. This campaign would rely heavily on the blitzkrieg tactics as

well as the strength of the German tank units. Contrary to common belief, the Germans had fewer

tanks than the Allies.

As expected, the British and French had responded to the German invasion of the Lowlands (May 10),

sending their best forces into Belgium. As the Allied forces raced northward, the main German

invasion cut behind them through the Ardennes Forest to the south. On May 13, the first German

forces emerged from the Ardennes Forest in southwest Belgium. With the bulk of Allied forces fighting

in Belgium, there was little to stop the German forces as they sliced across the Allied supply lines.

The Allied forces in Belgium found themselves nearly surrounded and the only strategy left was to

retreat.

Britain’s Prime Minster, Winston Churchill, ordered his troops to flee via the French port of Dunkirk.

He sent 165 ships of the Royal Navy to meet them, but the waters were too shallow for the navy

vessels. London put out an emergency call for any boat that could cross the English Channel and

rescue the soldiers. Some 850 boats responded while the Luftwaffe descended on the town. In the

greatest air battle of the war, the British royal air Force held off the Luftwaffe while the makeshift fleet

rescued more than 300,000 British, French and Belgium soldiers from Dunkirk. From May 26 to June

4, the Allied army was saved but had to leave behind all their tanks and equipment. France was now

left unguarded.

Had Hitler pressed forward with ground troops, he might have wiped out the Allied forces at Dunkirk.

Instead he decided not to risk losing more men and equipment with a ground battle and relied on the

Luftwaffe to finish the job.

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Slide 198

Attack in the West:

Invasion of France - Hitler Tours Paris

Drawing Lower Left:

“Occupied Paris” by Arthur Szyk, 1940

On June 14, 1940 German troops entered Paris. The French government had already fled and the

city was nearly deserted. Less than 1/3 of the population remained. Prime Minister Paul Reynaud,

who had just taken office in March, wanted to fight on. His Vice-Premier, Henri Philippe Pétain, and

the commander of the armed forces insisted that the government should seek an armistice. Outvoted,

Reynaud resigned, and a new French government led by Field Marshal Philippe Pétain agreed to an

armistice on June 22, 1940.

The conquest of France was the zenith of Hitler’s career and the peak of popularity for the Nazis

among the German people. On June 23, Hitler flew to Paris for a brief sightseeing tour of the

occupied city, during which the widely published photo was taken of Hitler standing against the

backdrop of the Eiffel Tower.

Slide 199

Attack in the West:

Invasion of France - Armistice (June 22, 1940)

Hitler presented France with conditions of surrender in the Forest of Compiegne, on the very spot of

Germany’s humiliating surrender at the end of World War I. The same railroad car where France had

once dictated terms to Germany was dragged from a museum in Paris and erected again on now-rusty

rails.

Under the terms of the armistice, France was divided into two zones:

Occupied France:

● Northern 2/3 of France and all of the Atlantic coastline down to the border with Spain

● Under German control.

● General Charles de Gaulle, who bitterly opposed Petain’s collaboration with the German’s,

fled to Great Britain and set up the “Free French” government in exile.

Unoccupied France / Vichy France:

● Southern 1/3 of France

● Under the control of a collaborative French government led by Field Marshal Henri Philippe

Pétain.

● Established a capital in the town of Vichy.

● The Vichy government eagerly participated in the Holocaust, claiming it would soften the

hardships of the occupation.

Several articles of the armistice were reminiscent of the Treaty of the Versailles:

● The French were allowed to maintain an army of 100,000 men to maintain domestic order, precisely

the figure set for the Germans at Versailles.

● The French were required to pay 400 million francs per day for the privilege of German occupation

(60% of the national income)…reminiscent of the required German reparations.

In addition:

● 1.2 million French P.O.W.’s would remain in captivity.

● The government had to prevent any French people from leaving the country.

● France was required to turn over to German custody anyone within the country whom the Germans

demanded. This included refugees that the French had previously granted asylum.

125

The attack on France had been a rational military action, but no plan existed beyond conquest.

While it appeared that Hitler had offered France a partnership in his New Order, in truth he was only

interested in exploitation. Allowing the French to maintain their sovereignty and government was a

cheap and convenient way to get them to do the dirty work. The French were responsible for

delivering the quotas the Germans set for agricultural products, industrial goods, gentiles to work as

“volunteer” laborers in Germany, and Jews for deportation “to the east.”

During the interwar period, France was one of the more liberal nations in opening its doors to Jewish

refugees from Poland, Romania, and Germany. In 1939, however, the French government imposed

restrictions on Jewish immigration and set up internment camps for refugees. When Germany

defeated France in June 1940, there were approximately 350,000 Jews in the country. 150,000 were

native French Jews whose ancestors had lived in France for centuries, familiarly known as “Israelites.”

They were largely middle-class businessmen and professional men that were well integrated in French

society. The immigrant Jews were familiarly known as “Juifs” and were largely lower middle-class,

left-wing, working people. Other “Juifs” were strictly orthodox and continued to speak Yiddish.

Following the collapse of the France, thousands of Jews and non-Jews fled to the south, away from

the invading armies. Many Jews tried to cross the borders into the neighboring neutral countries of

Switzerland, Portugal and Spain. Thousands managed to flee via Spain to Portugal, and in time

escaped to North Africa and the Western Hemisphere. The Portuguese consul at Bordeaux, Aristides

de Sousa Mendes, issued Portuguese transit visas to thousands of Jewish refugees contrary to his

government’s instructions - perhaps the largest rescue action by a single individual during the

Holocaust.

German resources were stretched thin in France, with only 3 battalions of German police (some 3,000

men) in the occupation zone. In order to carry out their anti-Jewish plans, the Germans needed

French cooperation. They had little trouble finding it.

During the first 2 years of German occupation, the Vichy government implemented antisemitic

legislation defining, isolating and impoverishing the Jews. By 1941, thousands of French Jews were

penniless refugees.

At the same time that the ghettos of Poland were being emptied in the summer of 1942, deportations

of Jews from France began. The French police were indispensable to the operation. They rounded

up Jews, mainly those without French citizenship, in both the occupied and unoccupied (Vichy) zones.

Throughout France, Jews were assembled in camps, loaded onto cattle cars, and sent to the transit

camp of Drancy northeast of Paris. On March 28, 1942, the first deportation train left Drancy for

Auschwitz. In Paris, on July 16-17, 12,844 non-French Jews, including women and children, were

rounded up. Those without families were sent to Drancy. The remaining 9,000, including 4,000

children, were penned up in the vast sports stadium Velodrome d’Hiver, where they spent a week in

horrible conditions before being shipped off to Auschwitz. Only 30 adults returned alive after the war;

no child survived.

In six months, 42,500 Jews were shipped to Auschwitz from Drancy; one-third of them from the

unoccupied zone.

By late 1942, Berlin realized that matters would run more smoothly if the German military occupied the

whole country. Choosing the historical date of November 11, the German army crossed the

demarcation line and occupied Vichy France.

Thousands of Jews fled to the southeast corner of France after the Italian army occupied territory east

of the Rhone River in late 1942. The Italian authorities refused to hand over Jews to the Germans,

despite repeated demands. While many Jews in the Italian zone were rounded up by the Germans

after September 1943, thousands managed to hide or to escape to Switzerland. The last deportation

from France to Auschwitz took place in August 1944.

126

During the war, over 77,000 Jews (24% of French Jewry) were deported from France and murdered in

Nazi camps. Of these, 1/3 were French citizens and over 8,000 were children under the age of 13.

More than three-quarters of the Jews who resided or had found refuge in France in 1939 managed to

survive. This high survival rate was due to many factors, including dispersal of Jews in many

localities, a minimal German police presence, and assistance from some non-Jews.

The Allied landing in Normandy, in northwestern France, on June 6, 1944 began the liberation of

France from Vichy and German domination. On August 24, right after the liberation of Paris, Drancy

was liberated. The number of Jews who were deported, executed by the Germans, or who perished in

internment camps, is estimated at 90,000, most of them foreign born.

To avoid capture, many Vichy officials fled to Germany.

Marshal Pétain and his government were ultimately tried and found guilty of treason after the war.

Opposition to the German occupation was led by the French Resistance within France and the Free

French Forces led by Charles de Gaulle outside of France.

Slide 200

Attack in the West:

“Stamps” - Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite

The Jews in France, both native-born and refugee, believed that French authorities would seek to

safeguard them. France was the country of the “Rights of Man,” of asylum, of “Liberte, Egalite,

Fraternite.” Those were the founding principles of the state. Jews who had fled to France from the

Nazi regime elsewhere in Europe trusted in the national promise of protection. They were utterly

betrayed.

127

Slide 201

Italy Joins the Axis (June 10,1940) (see slide #359, “Governments that Rescued”)

In 1938, some 57,000 Jews lived in Italy, about 0.1% of the Italian population.

On June 10, 1940, Italy enters World War II as a German ally hoping to establish a new Italian empire.

Italy occupied territory in Yugoslavia (1941), Greece (1941), and a small portion of southern France

(1942). Although allied with Germany, Italy did not willingly cooperate in the Nazi plan to kill the Jews

of Europe. In fact, between 1941 and 1943, thousands of Jews escaped to Italy and Italian occupied

territories from German-occupied territory.

After the invasion of Sicily, the Allies invaded southern Italy. Mussolini’s dictatorship was overthrown

and King Victor Emmanuel ordered Mussolini imprisoned. Pietro Badoglio, the new Prime Minister,

negotiated a cease-fire with the Allies in early September 1943.

In the meantime, German forces occupied most of northern and central Italy. German paratroopers

freed Mussolini from prison and installed him as the head of a pro-German puppet government in

northern Italy. German forces also occupied the Italian zones in Yugoslavia, Greece and France.

It was only after the fall of Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship in 1943, and the subsequent German

invasion and occupation of northern Italy, was there a serious attempt to deport Italian Jews. In

October 1943, as Denmark was saving its Jews, the roundups and deportations of Italian Jews began.

Jews were interned in transit camps such as Fossoli di Carpi and Bolzano, and periodically deported

to Auschwitz. Nazi officials deported about 8,000 Jews from Italy to Auschwitz and other Nazi camps.

About 7,500 of those deported were murdered.

The Vatican had been informed of the planned deportations, but Pope Pius XII failed to issue any

protest. Nevertheless, hundreds of priests, nuns, etc. came to the aid of Jews - hiding them in

churches, convents and monasteries.

Because Italian authorities obstructed the deportations and many Italian Jews were able to hide or

escape southward to the Allied-occupied areas of Italy, approximately 80% of the Jews of Italy

survived.

In late April 1945, Communist partisans captured and executed Mussolini. German forces in Italy

surrendered to the Allies on May 2, 1945.

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Slide 202

Attack in the West (breaker slide)

Slide 203

Attack in the West:

The Battle of Britain (July 10, 1940)

After France was defeated and divided, there were still two great powers in Europe that frustrated

Hitler: Great Britain and the Soviet Union. Hitler’s plan was to take possession of London by August

1940 and to march into Moscow before winter.

The German navy had been reduced during the Norwegian campaign. The British invasion would

therefore require German superiority in the air. Though smaller than the Luftwaffe (German Air

Force), the British Royal Air Force (RAF) had the advantage of home territory as well as radar, which

the Germans had not yet perfected.

For 3 weeks the Germans bombed British airfields and naval vessels, careful to avoid direct hits on

London for fear of a retaliation on German cities. In August, the Luftwaffe mistakenly bombed London

and as predicted, the RAF conducted retaliatory raids on Berlin. Although these caused only minimal

casualties, the effect on German morale was devastating. Hitler had assured the German people that

their capital would never be touched. An outraged Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to raze British cities to

the ground. In September, the attacks on London began. The attacks on British cities caused

widespread damage and loss of life.

Germany’s strategy was one of night bombings, which were destructive, but strategically ineffective

against RAF radar. Without naval or air superiority, Germany was helpless against Britain. In

October, Hitler postponed the invasion until the following spring. About 1,700 Luftwaffe bombers and

fighters had been shot down in just a few months and Britain had lost more than 900 fighter planes.

Nearly 500 British pilots and aircrew had also been killed. The British Prime Minister, Winston

Churchill, memorably said: "Never... was so much owed by so many to so few."

The Battle of Britain was the first major battle to be fought entirely in the air and was the first strategic

defeat of the Nazi war machine. Britain’s survival was crucial in the war because the country served

as a base for the Allied liberation of Europe from Nazi rule.

Slide 204

Attack in the West:

Political Cartoon, “The Painter and the Clipper”

Teacher Notes:

● Discuss with students Hitler’s intention to conquer all of Europe as well as Great Britain’s sole

responsibility to save the continent.

● It might be worth noting at this point that the U.S. was still claiming neutrality.

● The scissors say: “England”

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Slide 205

The Tripartite Pact (September 27, 1940)

Teacher Notes:

● The Japanese Flag shown on the slide, a sun disc with 16 red ray, was used by Japan's military,

particularly the Imperial Japanese Navy. It was first adopted as the naval ensign on October 7, 1889

and was used until the end of World War II.

● The Italian Flag shown on the slide was the flag of the Kingdom of Italy 1861-1946.

______________________________________________________________________________

World War II, which involved most of the world’s nations, was fought chiefly between two major

alliances: the Axis and the Allies.

On September 27, 1940, Japan joined Germany and Italy as Axis Powers.

As Hitler was gaining power as leader of Germany, Japan was growing increasingly powerful both

economically and militarily. But Japan had 2 big problems:

Japan had very little land.

The only way it could keep growing was to import food and raw materials to feed it people and

support its industry.

Japan had a lot of people.

Japan was not treated as an equal by other industrialized countries even though Japan had been an

ally of Great Britain, France, the U.S. and Italy in World War I.

Between World War I and World War II, the Japanese army and navy grew more powerful and

aggressive, eventually seizing control of the government. General Hideki Tojo was the Japanese

Minister of War and one of the military leaders who believed that the only way Japan would be treated

equally was if it took what it wanted and needed by force.

In 1937, instead of signing a trade agreement with China, Japan chose to attack and keep the parts of

China it had invaded. The U.S. demanded that Japan halt its invasion of China and return the land it

had conquered, but Japan refused. In protest, the U.S. stopped all shipments of raw materials that

Japan so desperately needed, including oil, iron ore and other metals.

The Tripartite Pact (also called the Axis Pact or the “Pact of Steel”) was signed on September 27,

1940 in Berlin, Germany by Saburo Kurusu of Imperial Japan (Japan’s ambassador to Germany),

Adolf Hitler of Nazi German and Benito Mussolini of Fascist Italy. It officially founded the Axis Powers

of World War II. The three nations agreed that for the next 10 years they would stand by and

cooperate with one another in order to establish a new order. It also stated that should one of the

signatories be aggressed upon by the United States, the other two were obliged to send help. This

was most beneficial for Japan, as they had the more to gain by drawing the United States into a

European war than Germany and Italy did a Pacific one.

This agreement was a warning to the U.S. to remain neutral in World War II, or become involved in a

war on two fronts.

The Tripartite Pact was subsequently joined by Slovakia (November 1940), Hungary (November,

1940), Romania (November, 1940) and Bulgaria (March, 1941). Finland fought with Germany against

the Soviet Union but did not sign the Tripartite Pact and was not technically part of the Axis alliance.

Yugoslovia joined the Axis alliance on March 25, 1941, but withdrew two days later after an anti-

German coup.

130

Slide 206

Attack in the South (April 1941)

Believing that he could defeat the Soviet Union during the 3 summer months, Hitler planned a

campaign for the spring of 1941. Once Soviet Premier Stalin was defeated, Churchill would certainly

beg for mercy.

Now for the first time, maneuvers other than his own dictated Hitler’s next move. His Italian allies

attacked Greece unsuccessfully in October 1940. With Britain’s help, the Greeks had trapped the

Italian troops in the mountains. Worried that the British would establish a stronghold in the south,

Hitler ordered the entire German force toward the Balkans (Romania, Yugoslavia, Albania, and

Greece) in April 1941. By the end of April, the Axis powers controlled Greece, but this caused a fatal

delay in Hitler’s plans to invade the Soviet Union.

Albania

On the eve of World War II there were about 600 Jews in Albania, of whom 400 were refugees from

Germany and Austria who had gone to Albania in the hope of making their way to the U.S. or South

America. There was no discrimination of Jews in Albania.

Italy had joined the Axis in June 1940.

On April 7, 1939, Italian troops entered Albania. For the most part, the Italian regime did not

persecute Jews harshly. In the spring of 1941, the Kosovo Province of Yugoslavia was annexed to

Italian controlled Albania. Germany demanded that the Jews be handed over, but the Italians refused.

Eventually prisoners from jails were handed over to the Germans and murdered, including 60 Jews.

In September 1943, Albania came under German control and the situation for Jews became worse.

Albanian clerks gave identity papers to many of the Jews so that they could go into hiding. Other

Jews obtained false papers from Albanian friends and avoided roundup. Albanian officials did not

supply the Germans with lists of Jews living in Albania. Christian and Muslim Albanians regarded it as

a matter of national pride to help Jews. No Jews were ever turned over to the Germans. The Jewish

community survived the war.

Bulgaria (see slide #359, “Governments that Rescued”)

Bulgaria had 50,000 Jews (less than 1% of the population) prior to the onset of war. On one hand,

Bulgaria had a long history of sheltering persecuted Jews as far back as the 15^th century. On the

other hand, King Boris III was married to the daughter of King Victor Emmanuel of Italy and had been

a German/Italian sympathizer since the 1930’s.

On March 1, 1941, Bulgaria joined the Axis Alliance and participated in the German led attack on

Yugoslavia and Greece. They hoped to recapture Macedonia from Yugoslavia and Thrace from

Greece, both provinces that were stripped from Bulgaria after World War I. Bulgaria refused to enter

the war against the Soviet Union in June 1941.

Although Hitler requested anti-Jewish measures, Bulgaria did not have a history of antisemitism and

refused to comply. Laws were passed restricting Jewish rights, but the Jews were not deported or

extinguished. When the Germans pressed the Bulgarian government to deport Jews in 1943, King

Boris was caught between his own sympathies to the Reich and his country’s refusal to hand over

Jews. A secret agreement was reached by which at first, only the Jews of Thrace and Macedonia

(territories awarded to Bulgaria by Hitler) would be targeted. Starting March 10, 1943, as a result of

German pressure, 12,000 Jews from Thrace and Macedonia were deported to Treblinka.

In October 1944, Bulgaria switched allegiances and declared war on Germany. Bulgaria’s 50,000

native Jews survived. Bulgaria was the only country in Europe whose local Jewish population in 1945

was larger than it had been before the war.

131

Greece

The Jewish population in pre-war Greece was close to 76,000 (0.9% of the population). On October

28, 1940, Greece was attacked by Italy. Unable to finish the job, Italy requested assistance from its

new ally, Germany. Greece had remained neutral until the German invasion in April 1941. Nearly

13,000 Jews fought in the Greek army at the time of the German invasion. With the German

onslaught, the British colonial powers withdrew from Greece.

Greece was occupied by Germany, Italy and Bulgaria. The occupying forces stripped the country of

its resources.

80% of the Jews from Greece perished, over 60,000 were annihilated.

Hungary (see slide #359, “Governments that Rescued”)

In 1930, 445,000 Jews lived in Hungary, about 5% of the population. The Jews were distinctively

middle class.

Hungary had joined the Axis in November 1940 to protect its territory. During this time, Hitler allowed

Hungary to control its own internal affairs - including its Jewish population. Although antisemitic

legislation was passed, the Hungarians did not deport the Jews. Hungarian troops assisted German

troops in the invasion of Yugoslavia (April 1941) and the Soviet Union (June 1941). As a result of the

assistance, Germany awarded Hungary with part of Czechoslovakia. With these annexations, the

Jewish population of Hungary now totaled approximately 725,000. Hungary seemed a haven of

relative security for the Jews.

After the German defeat at Stalingrad in 1942-43, a battle in which Hungarian units suffered

tremendous losses, Prime Minister Miklos Kallay recognized that Germany would likely lose the war.

He therefore sought to negotiate a separate armistice for Hungary with the western Allies.

Fearing that the Hungarian government was seeking a separate peace with the Allies, the German

occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944. Kallay was dismissed and the Germans installed General

Dome Sztojay, a fanatical pro-German, as Prime Minister. Sztojay cooperated fully with the Germans

in their efforts to deport the Hungarian Jews.

In early April 1944, Jews were moved into ghettos. By the end of the month, deportations to

Auschwitz began. SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann was in charge. In less than 2 months, nearly 440,000

Jews were deported from Hungary in more than 145 trains. Most were deported to Auschwitz, but

thousands were also sent to the border with Austria to be deployed at digging fortification trenches.

By the end of July 1944, the only Jewish community left in Hungary was Budapest, the capital.

By October 26, 1944, another 35,000 Jews had been rounded up, but since Auschwitz was being

liquidated, these Jews were to be used as slave laborers. Since the war had rendered railroad

transportation impossible, the Germans marched 27,000 Jews on a trek of over 100 miles to Austria.

The Hungarian government stopped these marches because of the high death rate. Some 160,000

Jews remained in Budapest, subject to terror and murder at the hands of the Arrow Cross (fascist

party), as well as cold, hunger and disease in their ghetto-like quarters.

Attempts were made to inform the free world of the events in Hungary, but to no avail.

By February 1945, the Soviets had liberated Budapest.

Of approximately 825,000 Jews living in Hungary in 1941, about 63,000 died prior to the German

occupation of March 1944. Under German occupation, just over 450,000 died. Less than 1/3 survived

the Holocaust.

132

Romania

The Jewish population of pre-war Romania was 757,000 (4% of the population). It was home to the

3rd largest Jewish community in Europe. Only Poland and the Soviet Union had more Jews.

In November 1940, Romania joined the Axis Alliance and participated in the Nazi invasion of the

Soviet Union in 1941. One of the most notorious incidents was the Iasi Pogrom in June, 1941. In the

northern Romanian town of Iasi, at least 8,000 Jews were killed during the pogrom and thousands

were deported in sealed trains. On June 30, 4,322 survivors of the pogrom were loaded on 2 trains.

One was scheduled for Calarasi, some 300 miles away. The cattle cars simply shuttled back and forth

until their human cargo perished from hunger and dehydration in the heat of the Romanian summer.

Before the journey was over, 2,544 people died.

In August 1944, as the Soviets were on the offensive and about to liberate Romania from German

domination, Romania switched sides and joined the Allies. By wars end, approximately 271,000

Romanian Jews were dead. Two thirds were killed not by Nazis, but by Romanians and Hungarians.

An official report released by the Romanian government concluded, “Of all the allies of Nazi Germany,

Romania bears responsibility for the deaths of more Jews than any country other than Germany itself.

Not only within the country, but Romanian cooperation with the German Einsatzgruppen killed

hundreds of thousands of Jews.

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia had 78,000 Jews before the war (0.4% of the population). Yugoslavia joined the Axis in

March 1941 and was then invaded by Germany in April 1941. The country was divided between

Germany, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria. Nearly 60,000 Jews were caught and killed by the Nazis (this

included Jews from Bosnia, Croatia, Rab, and Serbia).

133

Slide 207

Dr. Seuss Political Cartoon: “Pulling in Russia”

In this cartoon by Dr. Seuss, he illustrates the “heads” of all the countries in Western Europe and

Southern Europe that have been overrun. The next country to be brought down, a real beast, is

Russia.

Notice that Italy appears different from the other countries. Italy was a supposed ally at this time.

Slide 208

Attack in the East (initial breaker slide)

Slide 209

Attack in the East:

The Invasion (June 22, 1941)

According to the 1939 census, there were over 3 million Jews in the Soviet Union (2^nd only to Poland).

After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the traditional religious and communal organizations of the

Jewish community were suppressed as were also the modern Jewish national movements promoting

the establishment of a Jewish homeland. Jews enjoyed equal civic status in the Soviet Union, but

popular antisemitism continued to exist, especially in the Ukraine.

The aim of the invasion of the Soviet Union went beyond military conquest. It was, in the words of

Heinrich Himmler, “an ideological battle and a struggle of races.” Ideologically, Germany and the

Soviet Union despised each other. Hitler had devoted much of Mein Kampf to his belief in the

“menace of Communism.” With regard to the racial struggle, the Nazis saw the Slavs and Jews as

barely human. It was only logical that killing these “inferior peoples” to ensure “Aryan racial

supremacy” was permissible, if not essential.

Hitler’s 1939 Non-Aggression Pact with the Soviet Union had served its purpose of keeping the Soviet

Union out of a war with Germany while Germany overran Western Europe. In direct violation of this

pact, Germany invaded Russia on June 22, 1941 in what the Nazis called “Operation Barbarossa.”

The goal was to take Moscow by October of that year.

Germany invaded with 80% of their entire army (3 million soldiers) in addition to ½ million allied Axis

troops (Finnish, Romanian and Hungarian troops). The Soviet Air Force was defeated quickly. The

aged Russian tankers were no match for the modern German ones. The Soviet army lost battle after

battle slowly retreating to Moscow. By October 1941, 3 million Soviet soldiers were prisoners of war.

All seemed lost.

Early in December 1941, against the recommendations of his generals, Hitler splintered his central

attacking forces in hopes of acquiring more territory. This slowed the German advance into Moscow

such that German forces found themselves in -40 degree temperatures wearing only summer

uniforms. The Germans were forced to transport food from far away Poland because the Soviets had

burned the crops behind them. The speedy German advance had also caused the forces to outrun

their supply lines. German solders were starving and freezing to death.

The tables were turned when Hitler set in motion one of the bitterest conflicts of the 20^th century - the

Battle of Stalingrad. In the spring of 1942, he launched what he believed would be his final offensive

in the East. The Battle of Stalingrad marked a turning point in World War II, halting Germany’s

eastward advance.

134

Slide 211

Attack in the East (breaker slide)

Slide 212

Attack in the East:

Soviet P.O.W.’s

On June 22, 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Three million German soldiers were reinforced

by Finnish, Romanian, Hungarian, Italian, Slovak, and Croatian troops. Within weeks, German

divisions conquered the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. In September the Germans

laid siege to Sevastopol and Leningrad, and by late October, the cities of Minsk, Smolensk, Kiev,

Odessa, and Kharkov had fallen. Millions of Soviet soldiers were encircled, cut off from supplies and

reinforcements, and forced to surrender.

For Nazi Germany this attack was not an "ordinary" military operation. The war against the Soviet

Union was a war of annihilation between German fascism and Soviet communism; a racial war

between German "Aryans" and subhuman Slavs and Jews. From the very beginning this war of

annihilation against the Soviet Union included the killing of prisoners of war (P.O.W.’s) on a massive

scale. German authorities viewed Soviet P.O.W.’s as a particular threat, regarding them not only as

Slavic subhumans but as part of the "Bolshevik menace" linked in their minds to a Jewish conspiracy.

The brutal treatment of Soviet P.O.W.’s by the Germans violated every standard of warfare.

Existing sources suggest that some 5.7 million Soviet army personnel fell into German hands during

World War II. As of January 1945, the German army reported that only about 930,000 Soviet P.O.W.’s

remained in German custody. The German army released about one million Soviet P.O.W.’s as

auxiliaries of the German army and the SS. About half a million Soviet P.O.W.’s had escaped German

custody or had been liberated by the Soviet army as it advanced westward through eastern Europe

into Germany. The remaining 3.3 million, or about 57 percent of those taken prisoner, were dead by

the end of the war.

Second only to the Jews, Soviet prisoners of war were the largest group of victims of Nazi racial

policy.

This death toll was neither an accident nor an automatic result of the war. It was the Nazi state's

deliberate policy. German treatment of Soviet P.O.W.’s differed dramatically from German policy

towards P.O.W.’s from Britain and the United States, countries the Nazis regarded as racial equals to

the Germans. Of the 231,000 British and American prisoners held by the Germans during the war

only about 8,300 -- 3.6 % -- died in German custody.

Soviet P.O.W.’s were the first victims of the Nazi policy of mass starvation in the east. Food rations

were prioritized in the order below:

1. German forces in the East.

2. German forces elsewhere in Europe.

3. German home-front.

4. Other populations in the East including the Slavs of the Soviet Union.

In August 1941, rations for working Soviet P.O.W.’s were set at 2,200 calories per day, but in practice

they actually received about 700 calories a day. The result was death by starvation.

The Germans made little provision to shelter most of the Soviet P.O.W.’s. Often the prisoners had to

dig holes in the ground as improvised shelter from the elements. By the end of 1941, epidemics such

as typhoid and dysentery emerged as the main cause of death. In October 1941 alone, almost 5,000

Soviet P.O.W.’s died each day. The onset of winter accelerated the mass deaths.

136

Slide 213

Attack in the East (breaker slide)

Slide 214

Attack in the East:

Einsatzgruppen

Many scholars believe that the systematic killing of Jews in the occupied Soviet Union by the

Einsatzgruppen was the first step of the Nazi program to murder all the Jews of Europe.

During the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Einsatzgruppen (also known as Special

Action Groups, Task Squads, or Mobile Killing Units) followed the German army as it advanced deep

into Soviet territory. Their primary task was to kill Jews, Communists, gypsies, political leaders and

intelligentsia.

Made up of about 3,000 men, and divided into 4 battalions, the Einsatzgruppen were recruited mainly

from the ideologically committed Nazi SS. The majority of the officers were professional men including

a physician, a professional opera singer and a large number of lawyers. Most of the members of

these battalions had never been in the army, had never been fired upon, had never seen brutal

warfare, and had never encountered the enemy. They were neither criminals nor delinquents;

nevertheless, they became efficient killers.

The Einsatzgruppen were under the command of Heinrich Himmler. Since the implementation of their

tasks required additional manpower, they were often assisted by regular and reserve battalions of the

German police, by units and members of the German army, and by local auxiliary forces. In many

instances, local officials and citizens collaborated with the Nazis in the persecution of Jews. This

occurred not just in the killings, but in making sure that all Jews were rounded up for elimination.

When the Einsatzgruppen crossed the border into Russia, 3 million Jews were living under the Soviet

flag, most in the western parts of the country. Not only were the Jews concentrated in an area within

reach of the German army, but they lived in the cities (almost 90% were urban). Unlike the rest of

world Jewry, the Soviets Jews did not know how deeply the Nazis hated them because Stalin had

censored all news reports of Nazi antisemitism. As a result, when the Einsatzgruppen arrived in a city

or town and asked all Jews to present themselves, most complied. The killing operation was

standardized throughout every city in the following manner:

1. Jews were rounded up to a central location such as a school or town square.

2. They were marched outside city limits and were forced to hand over all valuables and often

clothing.

3. They were then shot, either individually or in mass execution style.

While the goal of this process was to be as uniform and efficient as possible, three major problems

began to plague both the soldiers of the Einsatzgruppen and the Nazi leadership:

1. Hitler’s plan for secrecy in carrying out these killings wasn’t possible, as many non-Jews

witnessed the disappearance and killing of Jewish citizens.

2. Although hundreds of thousands of Jews had already been shot by December 1941, there

were still large communities of Jews untouched by the Einsatzgruppen. The mobile

killing units were simply too “slow” and “inefficient.”

3. The morale of some of the killers in the Einsatzgruppen units was being affected. The men

doing the killings often became physically and mentally sick due to the grotesqueness

of their work. Liquor was freely provided in an effort to make the process easier.

138

Despite the Nazi perception of the ”inefficiency” of the Einsatzgruppen units, more than 1.2 million

Jews were killed between July 1941 and March 1942.

Sporadic killings continued until late 1943. Most were killed in Poland, the Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia,

Lithuania and western Russia. Within five weeks in mid-1941, the Einsatzgruppen had killed more Jews

than had died at the hands of the Nazis during the previous eight years. Besides eradicating human lives,

the mobile killing units erased a vast and complex Jewish culture. After the war, these ordinary men

returned to their homes and lives as if nothing had happened.

It is interesting to note that a handful of these men had requested to be relieved of their

unconscionable assignment. Individual soldiers who expressed a desire not to participate in the

killings were transferred elsewhere and were not harmed in any way.

To this date, no written order by Hitler to kill the Jews has ever been found.

Even as these mobile killing actions were being carried out, the Nazis were planning and had begun

construction of special gassing facilities at extermination camps to more efficiently and “humanely”

murder the vast numbers of Jews now under German control.

Following this initial wave of mass murder by the Einsatzgruppen, ghettos were formed in the Soviet

Union. The Vilna Ghetto in Lithuania followed the mass murders at Ponary, and the Riga Ghetto in

Latvia was formed after thousands of Jews had been shot in the Bikernicki Forest.

Estonia

On the eve of World War II, there were 4,500 Jews in Estonia, out of a total population of more than

one million. They were considered an important Estonian minority and were allowed a certain amount

of self-rule.

Estonia was an independent country between the two world wars. In August 1940, the Soviets took

control of the country as a result of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Many Jews were arrested and about ½ left

the country.

When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, they entered and conquered Estonia. Many of the

remaining Jews fled eastward. Those remaining were immediately treated to harsh restrictions: they

were forced to wear the Jewish badge and stripped of their property. Then the Einsatgruppen arrived

and began murdering the Jews with the help of right-wing Estonian units. By October 1941, almost all

Jewish males over 16 had been killed. By the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, authorities in

charge of Estonia noted that the region was Jew-free.

In the fall of 1942, the Germans began sending tens of thousands of Jews to Estonia from other

occupied areas. They were imprisoned in 20 labor camps, the main one being at Vaivara. Laborers

built military defenses for the German army and mined shale oil.

By the fall of 1944, as the Soviet army began advancing towards Estonia, the Germans either killed or

evacuated the Jews.

No Estonian Jews, of those remaining in the country after German occupation, survived.

Approximately 1,500 were killed.

139

Latvia

In 1935, more than 93,000 Jews lived in Latvia (5% of the population). Approximately ½ lived in the

capital city of Riga. Jews were represented in all social and economic classes.

After World War II broke out, Latvia was occupied and later annexed by the Soviet Union, according to

the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. In June 1941, when Germany attacked it former ally, the Soviet

Union, Latvia was immediately occupied by German troops. At that point, come 70,000 Jews lived in

Latvia.

At the end of July 1941, the mobile killing units of Einsatzgruppe A carried out the first mass murder of

Jews. From July to October 1941 some 34,000 Jews were massacred.

At the end of October, about 32,000 Jews from Riga were forced into two ghettos. On November 30

and December 7, thousands of Jews were taken from the ghetto and shot to death in the Rumbala

Forest in what is known as the Jeckeln Akition. Detachments of German Einsatzgruppen, together

with Latvian and Lithuanian auxiliaries, massacred most of the Latvian Jews.

In November 1941, about 20,000 Jews from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia were brought to

Latvia and moved into the Riga Ghetto in place of the Riga Jews who were being killed. A small

number were used by the Germans as forced laborers, but the majority (some 14,000) were killed in

the forest from January to July 1942.

By the beginning of 1943 only 5,000 Jews remained in Latvia, either in ghettos or forced labor camps.

As the Soviets approached in 1944, the Jews were sent to camps in Germany; many died en route.

By war’s end, nearly all of the 70,000 Jews living in Latvia in 1941 had perished.

Lithuania

Before World War II, the Jewish population of Lithuania was about 160,000 (7% of the population).

Jews had lived in Lithuania since the 14^th century. From the 17^th century, Lithuania’s rabbinical

academies were world-renowned, and during the 19^th century the country was a center of Jewish

culture, religion and Zionism. After World War I, Lithuania became an independent state.

Before World War II broke out, Lithuania became part of the Soviet sphere, as part of the Nazi-Soviet

Pact. At that time, Lithuania’s Jewish population had grown due to Jewish refugees who had fled to

Vilna, Lithuania from Nazi-occupied Poland. Most of Lithuania’s population was angered by the Nazi-

Soviet Pact, which took away their country’s independence. Their anger was directed toward the Jews

and included attacks on the people and their property.

On June 15, 1940, the Soviet army occupied Lithuania and the country was officially annexed to the

Soviet Union in August. On one hand, Jews were asked to join the government, and on the other

hand, Jewish political, cultural and welfare organizations were closed down. Although the Jews

suffered greatly under the Soviets, their fellow Lithuanians considered them supporters of the Soviets

and harassed them.

By 1941 the Jewish population had swelled to 250,000 (10% of population). When Germany invaded

June 1941, most of the Lithuanian population welcomed the Germans, feeling that the Germans would

grant them independence. The Lithuanians willingly collaborated with the Germans against the Jews.

Just weeks after the Germans arrived, they instituted a systematic campaign to exterminate all the

Lithuanian Jews. Many stages of the annihilation, including rounding up the Jews, guarding them, and

transporting them to the extermination sites, were performed by Lithuanian soldiers and police.

During the summer of 1941, most of the Jews were murdered. By late 1941, only 40,000 Jews were

left in Lithuania. They were localized in 4 main ghettos and several labor camps.

By the time Germany surrendered in 1945, only a few thousand Lithuanian Jews had survived. The

Nazis murdered over 90% of the Jewish population.

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NOTE:

A 1948 book by Josef Gar, a Lithuanian, describes a horrifying event from 1941. That year, a

champion-caliber Lithuanian basketball team was awarded a dubious prize for its victory over a team

comprised of members from the occupying German military. After the match, the victorious team was

told that it had won the right to kill some Jews. According to the book, each player accepted the prize.

The team reportedly herded Jewish residents near a tower, where each player took their turn shooting

about 10 people.

In 2004, 2 suspected members of that team (both in their 80’s) were prosecuted in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Ukraine

In 1920, most of the Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet Union, while portions were annexed to

Poland (Volhynia and Eastern Galicia) and Romania (Bukovina). On the eve of World War II, there

were 1.5 million Jews living in the Soviet Ukraine.

When war broke out in September 1939, the Soviet Union annexed Polish Ukraine, according to the

Nazi-Soviet Pact. In June 1940, the Soviet Union took control of Romanian Ukraine (Bukovina) as

well as Bessarabia. With these new borders, the Ukraine now housed 2.4 million Jews.

In June 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union and by October they occupied almost all of the

Ukraine. Many Ukrainians had considered the Soviets unlawful occupiers and welcomed their

German “saviors,” whom they believed would grant them full independence. Many Ukrainians

volunteered to join the Germany army and police.

Bukovina and Bessarabia were turned over to Romania, which was allied with Germany. Many of the

Jews in these areas were deported to the Ukrainian region of Transnistria, where tens of thousands

died of disease, malnourishment, exposure, ill treatment, or were murdered.

In the Ukraine proper, persecution of Jews commenced immediately. Thousands of Jews were

massacred and Jewish property was either destroyed or looted. The Germans were more than happy

to take advantage of Ukrainian antisemitism and encouraged the Ukrainian savagery.

The Einsatzgruppen began fulfilling their main task of annihilating Jews and Communists. Following

the German arrival in each city, the Jews were ordered to wear a Jewish badge for easy identification,

a Judenrat was established, the Jews were confined to certain streets and some were sent to forced

labor. A short time later, the executions began. Jews were taken to empty quarries, ravines or anti-

tank ditches. Upon arrival, they were shot by the Einsatzgruppen. In some cases, the Germans used

gas vans to murder the Jews. The largest murder operation carried out by the Einsatzgruppen took

place in a ravine called Babi Yar (see slide #220), outside the city of Kiev. In many communities, Jews

offered resistance or fled to the forests and swamps where they engaged in partisan activities.

The Ukraine was liberated by Soviet forces in August 1944.

Approximately 900,000 Jews perished in the Ukraine, including the 33,771 persons who perished at

Babi Yar in September, 1941.

Slide 215

Attack in the East:

Einsatzgruppen Photos

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Slide 216

Attack in the East:

Photo of Einsatzgruppen

Questions to Consider:

● Who is taking the picture? Why would they take this picture?

● Who is the victim looking at?

● What do you think is going through the mind of the man about to pull the trigger? How did he feel

years later when this photo became widely published?

● How do these men justify these killings to themselves while maintaining an image of themselves as

moral human beings?

Slide 217

Attack in the East (breaker slide)

Slide 218

Attack in the East:

Bialystok Massacre (June 27, 1941)

Teacher Note:

How was the leap made from burning synagogues in Germany during Kristallnacht in 1938 to the

burning of 500-700 Jews within a synagogue in Bialystok in 1941?

_________________________________________________________________________________

Bialystok, a city in northeastern Poland, was an important Jewish center and home to about 40,000

Jews (greater than 50% of the population). The Germans invaded on September 15, 1939 and

transferred the city to the Soviets, as promised by the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

The Germans invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, and 5 days later they retook control of

Bialystok.

Immediately upon their arrival, the German policemen began to plunder Jewish shops, especially

liquor stores. Around noon, the battalion commander gave the order to search the neighborhood

around the synagogue and arrest all Jewish men. The search was conducted with extreme brutality

and shootings. Doors were forced open. Jews were kicked and beaten, and their beards were set on

fire. At the end of this part of the operation, there were at least 50 corpses strewn around.

More Jews were then brought to the marketplace. Some were taken to a nearby park or to a forest on

the outskirts of town and shot. In spite of the ongoing killing, the number of assembled Jews

increased steadily. Subsequently, someone proposed that the Jews be placed in the Great

Synagogue, which stood just across from the marketplace, and that they be burned there. There had

been no explicit order to do so - the idea was the result of one policeman’s suggestion, which was

then adopted by the unit.

Some 500-700 Jews were forced into the Bialystok synagogue. The building was locked. It was

doused with gasoline and set afire. The Germans shot those who tried to escape. The others burned

to death. June 27 became known as “Red Friday,” because on that day the Einsatzgruppen murdered

over 2,000 Jews.

Over the next two weeks, another 4,000 Jews were killed.

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Slide 219

Attack in the East (breaker slide)

Slide 220

Attack in the East:

Babi Yar Massacre (September 28-29, 1941)

The most infamous Einsatzgruppen massacre occurred on the eve of Yom Kippur, September 28,

1941.

The Germans had reached Kiev (the capital of Ukraine) on September 19, 1941. Kiev was a city of

160,000 Jews (20% of the population). About 100,000 fled in advance of the occupation. Most of

those who remained were women, children, the elderly, and the sick that had been unable to flee.

On September 28, signs were posted for Jews to appear the next morning at the Jewish cemetery for

re-settlement. They were to bring documents, money, valuables, as well as warm clothes, underwear,

etc. Failure to appear was punishable by death.

Most thought this meant the Jews were to be deported. The Nazis, however, had decided on

September 26 that the Jews would all be killed in retaliation for a series of bombings against German

installations for which they were blamed (they were actually set off by Soviet military engineers).

The Jews of Kiev gathered by the cemetery, expecting to be loaded onto trains. The crowd was large

enough that most of the men, women, and children did not know what was happening, and by the time

they heard machine-gun fire, it was too late to escape. They were driven in small groups of ten, and

led down a corridor of soldiers, as described by A. Kuznetsov:

There was no question of being able to dodge or get away. Brutal blows, immediately drawing

blood, descended on their heads, backs and shoulders from left and right. The soldiers kept

shouting: "Schnell, schnell!" laughing happily, as if they were watching a circus act; they even

found ways of delivering harder blows in the more vulnerable places, the ribs, the stomach

and the groin.

Stripped of all clothing, the trembling Jews were led into the ravine. Ordered to lie down, each was

shot in the back of the head. The massacre continued uninterrupted. New victims were forced to lie

on those already dead. Corpses stacked up in layers.

According to the Einsatzgruppen reports, at least 33,771 Jews from Kiev and its suburbs were killed at

Babi Yar on September 28 and 29, 1941. They were systematically shot dead by machine gun fire. In

the months following the massacre, German authorities stationed at Kiev killed thousands more Jews

at Babi Yar, as well as non-Jews including Roma (Gypsies), Communists, and Soviet prisoners of war.

It is estimated that some 100,000 people were murdered at Babi Yar.

In August 1943, in the face of Soviet Army advances, the mass graves of Babi Yar were dug up and

the bodies burned in an attempt to remove the evidence of mass murder. For more than a month,

Nazi soldiers as well as concentration camp inmates dug up the bodies. Massive bone crushing

machinery was brought to the scene. The bodies were piled on wooden logs, doused with gas and

ignited. When the work was done, the Jewish forced laborers were killed. Twenty-five of them

escaped and 15 survived to tell what they had seen.

This was one of the largest mass murders at an individual location during World War II. It is not just

one site where Jews were exterminated; it is the place which became the symbol for the destruction of

Soviet Jewry.

143

For 25 years after the war, the Soviet Union barely acknowledged Babi Yar. Only after Russian poet

Yevgeny Yevtushenko drew international attention to the massacre with his 1961 poem "Babi Yar" did

the Soviets put up a monument at the site, though it did not mention Jews (a commemorative menorah

was put up by Jewish groups in 1991). Since that time, the ravine has been flooded with mud and

runoffs from nearby quarries and has become a picnic ground where youths play football over the

mass grave.

In September 2006, for the first time, a state memorial service was held and attended by Ukrainian

officials. No major government-sponsored commemoration has taken place there in the 15 years of

Ukrainian independence. Responding to accusations about Ukrainian callousness, President Viktor

Yuschenko announced that the massacre site would be turned into "a state historical and cultural

reserve, which would include a museum dedicated to the Jewish victims.”

As of September 2006, only 10% of the Babi Yar victims have been identified. It is interesting to note

that Yad Vashem knows the names of more than 90% of Jewish victims killed in western and central

Europe, 35-40% of those killed in Romania, Hungary and Poland, yet only about 20% of those killed in

the former Soviet Union.

Slide 221

Attack in the East:

Elegy for the Jewish Villages

Besides eradicating human lives, the mobile killing units erased a vast and complex Jewish culture.

Jews had settled in Eastern Europe in the early Middle Ages and had built vibrant communities called

shtetls (meaning “towns”). Evoked in the paintings of Marc Chagall, the shtetls were Jewish

hometowns. Poor, often with crooked earthen streets, they were places where neighbors knew each

other and where Jewish families had been in close contact for hundreds of years, one generation after

the next. In many of the shtetls, Jews also lived side-by-side with Christians, whether Polish,

Ukrainian, Russian, Lithuanian, or German. In these close quarters, there was a great deal of

interaction, with each learning something of the other’s language and custom. But there was also

separation. Interfaith marriages, for example, were extremely uncommon. The Jews of the shtetls

were deeply religious and marked out the days and year by the rituals of the Jewish calendar. They

were also deeply committed to learning. The shtetls were centers of craftsmanship and trade. This,

too, is what was lost.

Marc Chagall (1887-1985)

Marc Chagall was born Moishe Segal. His name was later “Russified” to Mark Shagalov and then

further to Shagal. He was born in Vitebsk, Belarus, the oldest of nine children in a close-knit Jewish

family. His father was a herring merchant. Chagall began to study painting in 1906. This period of his

life, described as happy though impoverished, appears in references throughout Chagall's work.

Ultimately moving to St. Petersburg, Chagall became an active participant in the Russian Revolution of

1917.

Chagall later moved to Paris to be near the art community of the Montparnasse district. With the Nazi

occupation of France in World War II, Chagall and his wife and daughter fled Paris. He hid in

Marseille under the watchful supervision of American journalist Varian Fry. Fry assisted in Chagall’s

escape from France through Spain and Portugal. In 1941, he settled in the U.S.

After his wife’s untimely death, Chagall returned to Provence, France. He remarried and had a son.

His works of this period are dedicated to love and the joy of life, with curved, sinuous figures. He also

began to work in sculpture, ceramics, and stained glass.

Chagall died at the age of 97 in France.

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Slide 222

Japanese Attack Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941)

Japan’s military leaders were looking to build an empire. Their eyes were on China. By 1940,

Japanese forces had occupied Indochina (today Laos and Vietnam). In October of that year, Japan

realized that only the U.S. Navy had the power to block further expansions into Asia. They decided to

cripple the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

On October 17, 1941, Hideki Tojo (newly appointed Prime Minister by Emperor Hirohito) told Emperor

Hirohito that if Japan did not immediately take strong action against the U.S., he feared Japan would

become a third class nation.

On November 5, 1941, with the Emperor’s agreement, the Japanese government secretly made the

decision to go to war.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The bombing was a great success for

Japan at first. It disabled much of the Pacific Fleet and destroyed many aircraft. But in the long run it

was disastrous. The U.S., Canada and Great Britain declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941.

The next day, China declared war on the Axis. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. on

December 11. World War II had become a global conflict.

By Christmas 1941, the Japanese had taken the British colony of Hong Kong, the U.S. islands of

Guam and Wake, as well as Thailand. From there, Japanese forces advanced into Malaya and Burma

(both controlled by Great Britain). By mid-February, Japanese forces captured Singapore. Then in

March 1942, the Netherlands’ Indies fell. Japan’s string of victories astonished even the Japanese. It

In August 1942, U.S. Marines invaded the island of Guadalcanal where the Japanese were building an

air base to attack Allied ships. The Japanese were defeated in 6 months. From late 1943 to the Fall

of 1944, the Allies made significant inroads. By early 1945, superiority at sea and in the air enabled

the Allies to close in on Japan.

In January 1945, the U.S. began dropping incendiary bombs on Japanese cities. Japan’s military

leaders continued to fight, even though faced with certain defeat. By the summer of 1945, the Allies

gained control of the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The plan was to invade Japan in November.

Fearing this invasion might cost up to a million U.S. lives, the Allies turned to the atomic bomb. The

Allies threatened to destroy Japan unless they surrendered, yet the Japanese continued to fight.

On August 6, 1945, the American bomber, Enola Gray, dropped the first atomic bomb on the

Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion killed 70-100,000 people and destroyed about 5 square

miles. After Japanese leaders failed to respond, the U.S. dropped a larger bomb on Nagasaki on

August 9, 1945. It killed about 40,000 people. Later, thousands died of injuries and radiation from the

two bombings. Emperor Hirohito, who had traditionally stayed out of politics, urged the government to

surrender.

On August 15, 1945 Japan surrendered and Victory over Japan (VJ Day) was declared.

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Slide 223

Wannsee Conference (January 20, 1942)

The “Final Solution” was the code name for the deliberate, planned destruction or genocide of all

European Jews.

In a document dated July 31, 1941, Hermann Göring sent the following order to Reinhard Heydrich. It

was here that the term “Final Solution” was used for the first time to describe mass murder:

I hereby commission you to carry out all necessary preparations with regard to organizational,

substantive and financial viewpoints for a total solution of the Jewish question in the German

sphere of influence in Europe.

Insofar as the competencies of other central organizations are hereby affected, these are to

be involved.

I further commission you to submit to me promptly an overall plan showing the preliminary

organizational, substantive, and financial measures for the execution of the intended final

solution of the Jewish question.

The destruction of European Jewry had already begun in June 1941 with the invasion of the Soviet

Union, and by the end of the year, approximately 500,000 Jews had been killed by the

Einsatzgruppen. Starting in December 1941, the Germans had also begun to use gas vans to kill

Jews in Chelmno, Poland. This document simply legitimized actions that were already underway.

Nazi documents often regularized actions “after the fact.”

On January 20, 1942, SS Lieutenant General Reinhard Heydrich (Heinrich Himmler’s Deputy) called

together 15 high ranking Nazi officials at a lakeside villa in Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin. The purpose

was to discuss and coordinate the implementation of this “Final Solution” to the Jewish question in

Europe. The Germans would abandon their earlier policy of expulsion and containment for a new

policy of mass extermination. Heydrich held the meeting in order to involve key members of the

German ministerial bureaucracy whose cooperation was needed to implement the killing measures.

The Wannsee Conference did not mark the beginning of the “Final Solution,” rather it was the place

where the “Final Solution” was formally revealed to Nazi leaders and where Reinhard Heydrich

announced that he was principally responsible for coordinating the efforts to exterminate the Jews of

Europe.

Heydrich made the following points at the conference:

1. His office was responsible for the central direction of the Final Solution regardless of

boundaries.

2. The evacuees were to be organized into huge labor groups. During this process, a majority

would “fall away through natural decline.” The survivors of this process would have to

be “treated accordingly” since these Jews were the core of Jewry and were people

who could rebuild Jewish life.

3. Jews who had distinguished themselves on the German side in World War I were to be sent

to Theresienstadt - a model camp.

4. Various types of “solution possibilities” were being explored by the Reich and needed to be

refined.

The 15 men seated at the conference table at the Conference were considered the Reich’s best and

brightest. More than half of them held doctorates from German universities. Each understood that the

cooperation of his agency was vital if such an ambitious policy was to succeed. During the

conversations there was no evading the subject. “They spoke about methods of killing, about

liquidation, about extermination,” Eichmann reported. As they talked, butlers served brandy. There

was no opposition, nor were there qualms of conscience. Everyone was enthusiastic about doing their

part.

146

Within ninety minutes, the implementation of the “Final Solution” had been planned and the death

sentence of 11 million Jews had been passed down. Not one of the men present at Wannsee

objected to the announced policy. The importance of Wannsee lies in the fact that at that place and at

that time the entire German bureaucracy became involved in the conscious effort to murder a nation.

This marks the first time in history that a modern state committed itself to the murder of an entire

people.

The following May, Heydrich’s car was bombed in Prague by members of the Czech resistance and he

died shortly thereafter. The Gestapo and SS tracked down and killed the attackers as well as other

resistance members and anyone suspected of being involved in Heydrich’s death - more than 1,000

people. In addition, Hitler ordered the Czech mining village of Lidice to be liquidated as retaliation for

Heydrich’s murder. On June 9, 1942, German police shot all the men of Lidice and deported the

women and children to concentration camps in Germany. The village was completely leveled.

In honor of Heydrich, the extermination of the Jews of Poland was given the name Operation

Reinhard. Three extermination camps (Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka) were constructed to carry out

Operation Reinhard. They became known as Operation Reinhard Camps.

For historians, a central interpretive issue has been the degree to which Adolf Hitler intervened in

decision making and at what level. The evidence points to what one historian calls “government by

announcement.” Hitler announced his intentions and subordinates worked out the precise details.

An important such announcement could be heard in a now-famous speech delivered eight months

before the outbreak of World War II, in which Hitler prophesied that a coming war would bring about

the “annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.” The speech strongly suggests that Hitler had

envisioned the annihilation of the Jews even before the war, though concrete plans for annihilation

were neither commissioned nor forthcoming until 1941.

Since January 1992 (the 50th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference) the villa has been a museum

and conference centre dedicated to the study of the Holocaust.

Slide 224

Wannsee Conference: Documentation

Picture on Left:

● List “A” gives the countries under direct German rule.

● List “B” gives the countries allied to Germany, neutral or at war with Germany. The USSR figure is

far too high: less than a million Jews were still alive in the German-occupied regions of the Soviet

Union.

● Note that this list also specifies the number of Jews in unconquered countries for eventual

destruction, including 330,000 from Britain, 18,000 from Switzerland, 6,000 from Spain, and 4,000

from Ireland.

Picture on Right:

One of the macabre features of the numerical list of the Jews submitted at the Wannsee Conference

was the fact that no figure was given for the Jews of Estonia, merely a brief note that Estonia was “free

of Jews.” This was true. The 1,000 Estonian Jews who had come under German rule in October

1941 had all been murdered during the 3 months prior to the Wannsee Conference.

_______________________________________________________________

At the Wannsee Conference, Heydrich gained formal authority over the “Final Solution” and the use of

the Jews as a slave labor force. Heydrich calculated there were about 11 million Jews in Europe -

including England and Ireland - and outlined a plan whereby they would be deported to the east, put

to work, and then killed. The Jews would build the German utopia, a proposed 80 billion Reichsmark

construction project. It was understood that those who were not worked to death would be

systematically murdered.

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Slide 225

The Evolution of Death

Teacher Note:

Zyklon-B was manufactured by DEGESH (German Vermin Combating Corporation) in Germany.

______________________________________________________________________

The Nazis did not start World War II with a plan to eliminate the Jews. This solution evolved.

It began with the Einsatzgruppen’s elimination of Jews in the Soviet Union. The methodology of killing

human beings at close range proved to be psychologically devastating to the killers.

…these men are finished for the rest of their lives. What kind of followers are we producing

here - either neurotics or brutes?

-SS General Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski

A more efficient, impersonal and cost effective alternative was needed and various methods of killing

were tested.

The Nazis had already experimented with poisonous gas for the purpose of mass murder in late 1939

with the killing of those considered “useless eaters” - those who were physically and mentally

handicapped. This was known as the T-4 Program. Six gassing installations, using carbon monoxide

gas, were established for this purpose. Gas chambers disguised as showers, complete with fake

nozzles, were used. When this program received public outcry, it was halted “publicly” in August

1941; although, it continued secretly throughout the war years. Nazi T-4 personnel transferred their

expertise to the extermination of the Jews. The gas chambers from some of these euthanasia killing

centers were dismantled and shipped to extermination camps in Poland.

The use of explosives was explored as a means of mass extermination. As early as September 1941,

an Einsatzgruppen battalion was faced with the task of liquidating the patients in a mental asylum in

the occupied Russian city of Minsk. Twenty-five people were locked in bunkers and an explosion was

set off, killing only a few. It took a second explosion to complete the job.

A few days later, a different test was conducted at a mental asylum in Mogilev. This time 20-30

patients were locked in a sealed room with two pipes driven into the walls. A car was parked outside

and its exhaust pipes were attached to one of the pipes. After 8 minutes and no deaths, a second car

was connected to the pipe in the wall. With both cars running simultaneously, all in the room were

dead within minutes.

In another experiment, using deported Jews from the Lodz Ghetto, mobile gas vans were used.

These vans resembled modern day refrigerator trucks with a rear cargo area that was airtight. The

Jews were herded through a hallway to a windowless room that turned out to be the cargo area of a

large van. Once full, the van doors were shut, and as it was driven to a nearby forest, exhaust fumes

were routed into the back, asphyxiating the trapped victims. Eyewitnesses describe hearing “hellish”

screams from inside the vans, earning them the name “Hell Vans.”

The first gas vans in the Soviet Union were used by the Einsatzgruppen in Poltava in November 1941.

The killing process took 15-30 minutes. In addition, there was difficulty with the hose connections,

there was no means to dispose of the bodies, and the issue of mental stress was still a factor.

On December 8, 1941, Chelmno (1^st Nazi extermination camp) began using gas vans for killings. By

June 1942 there were 20 gas vans in operation, and another 10 were being prepared. Some of the

trucks could hold up to 50-60 victims; others could only handle 25-30 people.

Ultimately, the gas vans could not handle the large number of Jews that the Nazis intended to murder,

so the more effective gas chambers were developed.

148

On September 3, 1941, gas from Zyklon-B crystals was tested at Auschwitz for the first time on Soviet

POW’s. Zyklon-B was an amethyst blue crystal of hydrogen cyanide (prussic acid) and had originally

been sold for disinfection and pest control in industrial settings. At Auschwitz, it was originally used for

these purposes. By August of 1941, Zyklon-B was first used experimentally, and then routinely, as an

agent of mass annihilation. Due to its volatility, the Zyklon-B granules were supplied to the camps in

sealed metal canisters. When the crystals were exposed to air, they turned into poisonous gas. The

crystals were dropped into hermetically sealed rooms through a small opening in the ceiling. After a

few minutes of intense suffering, the victims died. The first victims were Soviet soldiers who had been

taken prisoner.

Rudolf Hess, commandant of Auschwitz, witnessed the killing and was satisfied with the gassing

procedure which took only 3 to 15 minutes to kill. Now he only needed large gassing chambers.

“In mid-March 1942, some 75-80% of all victims of the Holocaust were still alive, while 20-25% had

perished,” according to Holocaust historian Christopher R. Browning. “A mere eleven months later, in

mid-February 1943, the percentages were exactly the reverse.”

149

Slide 226

Deportations

Teacher Note:

With over a million people operating and maintaining the train system leading to the camps, one has to

wonder if after the war, when everyday Germans declared that they had no idea what was going on,

could this be?

Discuss with students whether those involved with the railroad were perpetrators or bystanders.

_________________________________________________________________________

According to the Wannsee Conference of January 1942, there were approximately 11 million Jews for

the Nazis to eliminate.

Railroads would be the essential link to the killing process.

The deportation of the Jews was a tremendous operation. The overall planning and supervision of the

trains was the job of Adolf Eichmann, the Gestapo specialist in charge of the Reich Center for Jewish

Emigration. Eichmann secured cooperation from local authorities in rounding up their Jewish

populations and loading them onto the trains. They also worked closely with those who ran the

railroads in all countries through which they would pass, making sure the rail lines were kept clear for

their passage.

This effort required the coordination of numerous German government ministries and state

organizations, including the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), the Transport Ministry, and the

Foreign Office. The RSHA coordinated and directed the deportations; the Transport Ministry

organized train schedules; and the Foreign Office negotiated with German-occupied countries about

handing over their Jews. All Jews for transport had to be booked as passengers, and one-way fares

were charged and billed to the RSHA. The SS even used travel agents to book the passages, even

though they would be traveling in freight cars.

The Reichsbahn, the German railroad, was one of the largest organizations in the Third Reich. It had

1.4 million workers, of whom 500,000 were civil servants who kept the system in operation. During the

Holocaust, their job was to allocate personnel, obtain freight cars, coordinate train schedules, keep the

tracks open, drive the locomotives, and clean cars.

The Germans went to great effort to disguise their intentions from their victims. They often employed

euphemisms to keep the victims in the dark about where they were going until they got there. Forced

deportation was called “Resettlement in the East.” Anxious victims were told they were being sent to

labor camps. The ruse often worked. Even as late as the spring of 1944, many Hungarian Jews had

not heard of Auschwitz.

Towards the end of the war, as the supply lines needed for a 2-front war lengthened, there was a

chronic shortage of trains. The railroad system was stretched thin in its efforts to provision the army.

Even with allied bombing raids on the lines disrupting traffic, the trains carrying Jews continued to roll.

Transports were given additional cars, more Jews were crammed into fewer trains and indirect routes

were taken so the human traffic could keep moving. Even as Germany was losing the war and their

troops were in need of supplies, the trains were prioritized for the deportation of Jews.

150

The process of deportation varied, depending on the region of origin.

Deportations from the East:

In the east (Poland, Soviet Union, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, etc.) most Jews were in ghettos

by 1942. They had already abandoned their homes and many possessions. Deportations from the

ghettos might take the entire population at once, or only a portion. When deportations were gradual,

the elderly were taken first. Then those who could not work or had no work permits. Later, children

and those without influence or family connections were removed.

In the smaller ghettos, the Nazis carried out this process in just one or two days. In the larger ghettos,

which sometimes contained hundreds of thousands of Jews, the deportation could not be carried out

in only one day. The Judenrat would be instructed to gather several thousand people at a time. If the

Judenrat could not or would not provide the Germans with the number of people they had requested,

German troops would be sent in to apprehend Jews in hiding. The Jews were then marched out of the

ghetto to the local railroad station, where they were jammed into cattle cars. The trip to the

extermination camp sometimes took only a few hours, but often took days.

Deportations from the West:

In the west (France, Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, etc.), the Jews were

deported directly from their homes and often were given advanced notice to prepare for their journey.

When notified by the German authorities of their impending deportation, the Jews often received

specific instructions. The SS and police made it clear to all deportees that failure to adhere to these

instructions would result in prosecution or death. These rigid orders included instructions to pack

approximately 50 kg. (110 pounds) of their possessions to take with them. Since it was now clear that

the SS intended to kill these people either on arrival at a killing center or through forced labor, those

instructions revealed the extent of Nazi deception. For the deportees, those instructions created an

illusion of survival to the very end and enabled the SS to control the large numbers of deportees

arriving in the camps.

Steps prior to deportation from one’s home:

Complete a property inventory form, detailing possessions to be left behind. This property

was then confiscated by authorities and the forms were countersigned by the deportee.

House keys were to be marked and delivered to the police. Desk and closet locks were to be

left open.

● All rent and debts were to be paid prior to deportation. All utilities were to be shut off.

● All currency, bank books, etc. were to be surrendered to the police. Cameras, bicycles and

typewriters were to be surrendered.

● The deportation transport number was to be printed on one side of a piece of cardboard

and the home address on the other side. The cardboard was to be attached to the

outermost article of clothing worn by the deportee.

● Deportees were allowed to carry 2 types of luggage: a suitcase with blankets, clothing &

kitchen utensils that could weigh no more than 50 kg (110 pounds); the other a

knapsack with bedding and linens as well as food for the trip.

● The baggage was to be marked with the name and evacuation number of the deportee.

● All deportees were searched bodily at the assembly centers and all contents were searched

by the Gestapo before the trains departed, enabling the authorities to confiscate

hidden valuables.

In some instances, Jews were not given the luxury of prior notification of their deportation.

Unannounced “razzias” (evictions of families from their own apartments) were carried out in full light of

day, capturing Jewish residents unaware as well as spreading terror throughout the neighborhood.

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The Germans used both freight and passenger cars for the deportations. The freight cars were

packed with up to 100 victims/car such that most passengers were not able to sit. The trains carried 1

- 2,000 people, sometimes 5,000. This weight slowed travel to 30 mph, prolonging the ordeal.

The deportees were not provided with food or water, even when the transports had to wait days for

other trains to pass. The people deported in sealed freight cars suffered from intense heat in summer,

freezing temperatures in winter, and the stench of urine and excrement. Aside from a bucket, there

were no provisions for sanitary requirements. Without food or water, many deportees died before the

trains reached their destinations. Armed guards shot anyone trying to escape. When the doors of the

train cars were finally opened upon arrival at the camps, grateful passengers thought that the worst of

the ordeal was behind them.

The Story of Ethel Katz

Born in Bialystok in 1930, Ethel’s story begins in August 1943 in the terrifying darkness of a boxcar on

its way to the Treblinka death camp. The thin 13-year-old girl nicknamed Edjya sat on the floor

listening to the thudding rail ties, trying to understand the terrible events that had befallen her family.

Her mother nudged her and whispered, “You’re a skinny one, Edjya, always a skinny one,” as she

eyed the tiny vent at the top of the boxcar. “Quickly, up there,” she said. “Edjya, go through,” her

mother repeated. “Quickly, I said. We’ll let you down slowly. Hold onto the towel.”

Edjya inched out of the vent and down the horizontal wooden slats of the boxcar’s exterior until her

elbows and then finally her wrists cleared. With one foot resting on an exterior bolt, and hanging onto

the towel against the wind, Edjya cried out, “Take me back up. I can’t do it.”

“Get ready,” her mother instructed. “When you hit the ground, run, Edjya, run. And tell someone. Tell

someone what is happening!” Edjya jumped. On the ground, she was shot by militiamen and then

buried in a snowy mass grave. But when Herschel, a teenaged Polish forest fighter, came upon her

leg protruding from the snow, he pulled her out to life and survival. They lived in the woods for two

years. Later, the couple married.

After a brief stay in a post-war Displaced Persons Camp, the young survivors reached America,

settled in Chicago and as her mother enjoined, “she told someone.” Ethel’s dramatic and unique

escape from a boxcar - one of a few that occurred - was retold many times.

Hitler placed Ethel and millions of other European Jews in boxcars, and gave them numbers instead of

names to wipe out the Jewish people and eradicate their memory. To defeat Hitler’s plan, Jews like

Ethel only needed to survive to tell their story. Ethel Katz died on February 9, 2005.

Rudolf Vrba’s Memoirs

Rudolf Vrba was deported from his home in June 1942. He ultimately ended up at Auschwitz and in

1944 escaped to tell the world what he had experienced. In his memoirs, Rudolf Vrba recalled how, in

a cattle wagon with 80 other deportees being transported to Poland, the following thought processes

occurred:

They were all imprisoned mentally by unanswerable questions. How had it happened? Why

had it happened? What was going to happen to them and to those they had left behind? And,

of course, where were they going? Snatched from civilization, yet still attached to it by the

umbilical cord of domesticity, they worried, too, about trifles. Had they turned the gas off at

the main? Had they locked the back door? Had they remembered to cancel the milk and the

newspapers?

One of Vrba’s fellow deportees foretold their future:

You’re fools, if you think you’re going to resettlement areas. We are all going to die! Soon, in

fact, he was forgotten, though later his words were remembered.

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Slide 227

Deportations:

Drawing, “In the Railway Car” by Ella Shiber

Ella Shiber (born Liebermann) was born in Berlin in 1927 to a well-off family. Her father was a fur

merchant, and her mother, a native of Poland, was a midwife. In addition to Ella there were three

more children: Bertha (b. 1919), Alexander (b. 1922) and Leo, (b. 1929). They received a Jewish-

Zionist education at home.

In 1938 the family was forced to leave Germany because of her mother's Polish origin. They moved to

Bendin, where her mother's family lived. During World War II the extended family was moved to the

local ghetto. In the last Aktion (roundup) in August 1943, Ella, her brother (Leo) and her parents went

into hiding in a pit that they had dug beneath the garbage container beside their house. (Bertha and

Alexander had previously been sent to labor camps in Germany). Their food was provided by thirteen-

year old Leo, who used to sneak into the house at night, as well as by the Polish janitor of the building,

who risked his life and brought additional essential products to their hiding place. One day an SS

officer asked the Polish janitor to explain what he was doing beside the hiding place, and when he

refused to hand over the family, he was apparently beaten to death. In light of this, the father

understood that the hiding place was no longer safe, and the family came out and turned themselves

in to the Germans. They lived in the ghetto until December 1943, and then the parents, Ella and her

brother were deported on the last transport to Auschwitz.

In the concentration camp the women were separated from the men. The latter were immediately sent

to the crematoria, while sixteen-year old Ella and her forty-two year old mother were sent to work in

the munitions factory where they worked extremely long days under dreadful conditions. During this

time one of the SS officers learned that Ella was an artist, and she was asked to paint the picture of

one of his relatives who had been killed on the front, based on his photograph. He provided the

drawing materials as well as food for mother and daughter. The SS officer asked that she comply with

the requests of his comrades to draw portraits of their relatives. Thanks to these drawings, the mother

was not transferred elsewhere, and they remained together the entire time.

In January 1945, Ella and her mother took part in the Death March. They were brought to Neustadt

camp, which was a satellite camp of Ravensbrück.

Ella and her mother were liberated by the Allies on May 2, 1945, and they decided to return to Poland

to search for relatives. They arrived in Bydgoszcz-Bromberg where Ella met the man who would

become her husband, Emanuel Shiber, a Jewish officer in the Polish army who was stationed in the

area and had heard that there were Jewish survivors of the camps there. Ella and Emanuel were

married on February 2, 1946 and on May 23, 1946, together with her mother, they left Poland and

reached a DP camp near Munich from where they hoped to continue on to Israel.

The ship on which they sailed, the Ben Hecht, was captured on the shores of Israel by the British on

March 12, 1947, and its six hundred passengers were taken to a camp in Cyprus on a British warship.

During the short trip, Ella drew a picture on the side of the ship’s hull of a rifle and a hand driving out

the British. During their detention in Cyprus, Emanuel taught a course in military training and prepared

an instruction book which contained drawings of weapons, their parts and how to use them, which was

illustrated by the Ella. Later on (1985), she was awarded the "National Fighter's Medal" by the Israeli

Defense Ministry "for her part in the fight for the rebirth of Israel".

The period of detention in Cyprus ended in May 1948 and the family made their home in Haifa, Israel

where Ella studied painting and art at Haifa University.

In 1945 the artist began to create a series of drawings, On the Edge of the Abyss, which depicts the

daily atrocities during the war. The work was begun at the urgings of her husband, who thought that

the artistic expression would help her free herself of the traumas she had experienced. The series

was completed in Haifa in 1948 and was first exhibited in a Haifa cinema in 1950. Two years later the

drawings were exhibited at the Ghetto Fighters' Museum, and afterwards were donated to its

permanent collection.

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Ella Liebermann-Shiber passed away in Haifa in 1998. Her husband and three children continue to

work at perpetuating the artist's memory. After her death she received "a certificate of merit and

appreciation" from the wife of the President of Israel for her work and for her major contribution to

"Holocaust remembrance and assurance of the future."

Slide 228

Deportations:

“Written in Pencil in a Sealed Railway Car” by Dan Pagis

Teacher Notes:

● Adam and Eve’s first two sons were Cain and Abel.

● According to the Jewish Talmud, when Cain killed Abel, he killed any descendants that may have

emerged from Abel. Not only did he destroy Abel’s life and presumably Adam and Eve’s lives by

murdering their son, he destroyed future generations which Able may have fathered.

● Nazi ideology sought to undermine the ethical imperative, “Thou shalt not murder.” Nazi racial

ideology was based not on the biblical assumption that all human beings are brothers, but rather on a

racial theory that divided humanity into distinct “races” and endorsed a struggle between them, even to

the point of eliminating the allegedly rival race - the Jews.

Questions to Consider:

● What is different about the setting of the poem as compared with the original creation story in

Genesis 2-4? How does this different setting affect the meaning of the poem?

● Who is the “you” in the fourth line of the poem? (Note that in the original Hebrew version of the

poem, “you” is a plural pronoun.) What does this imply about our responsibilities as readers and as

persons in a post-Holocaust world?

● Why can “eve” not finish the poem?

● What do you imagine comes after the “in,” in the last line?

_______________________________________________________________________________

This poem was written by Dan Pagis, a Holocaust survivor. Dan Pagis was born in Bukovina (formerly

part of Austria, then Romania, and finally Russia) in 1930. He spent his early years in a concentration

camp in the Ukraine from which he escaped in 1944. He eventually settled in Israel where he became

a well known poet. Dan Pagis died in 1986.

From the title to the poem itself, many students are puzzled by this “odd” poem. Dan Pagis uses the

first murder in the Bible as a metaphor for the Holocaust.

In a few words, Dan Pagis presents Eve’s heart-wrenching cry to whoever may hear her - to pass a

message to her son, Cain. Her message, left open, denotes her intense need to convey some form of

will and testament that she, in extremis, is incapable of formulating. The title of the poem immediately

catapults us directly into the throes of the annihilation process together with the human need to leave

some testimony, even if it is written in pencil.

154

The Biblical Story of Cain and Abel, Genesis, Chapter 4, 2b-12 (New International Version)

2b Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the

soil. 3 In the course of time Cain brought some of

the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord.

4 But Abel brought fat portions from some of the

firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on

Abel and his offering, 5 but on Cain and his offering

he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry,

and his face was downcast.

6 Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry?

Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is

right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do

what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it

desires to have you, but you must master it."

8 Now Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let's go

out to the field." And while they were in the field,

Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.

9 Then the Lord said to Cain, "Where is your

brother Abel?"

"I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's

keeper?"

10 The Lord said, "What have you done? Listen!

Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.

11 Now you are under a curse and driven from the

ground, which opened its mouth to receive your

brother's blood from your hand. 12 When you work the

ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you.

You will be a restless wanderer on the earth."

Slide 229

Deportations:

Map of Deportations to Auschwitz

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Slide 230

The Camps (Initial Breaker Slide)

Slide 231

The Camps:

Types of Concentration Camps

Teacher Notes:

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. Concentration camps

(Konzentrationslager; KL or KZ) were an integral feature of the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945.

It is estimated that the Nazi established 20,000 camps in the occupied countries. There were several

small camps which were created for limited operations against the local population. Most of these

camps were destroyed by the Nazis themselves, sometimes after two or three months of activity.

Camps filled a variety of purposes: labor camps, prisoner of war camps, transit camps, extermination

camps. Even among these categories, each camp was unique in its administration, physical attributes

and severity of conditions.

Only 6 camps were designated as extermination/death camps. In these camps, all or part of the

prisoner population was gassed upon arrival. All were located in Poland, in semi-rural area and near a

railway line.

____________________________________________________________________________

After the Nazis came to power, detention facilities were established to imprison “enemies of the state”

who were taken into “protective custody” to be “re-educated.” The “Protective Custody Law” of

February 28, 1933 authorized the police to make arrests on suspicion of criminal activity and

incarcerate without benefit of legal counsel of trial. The Gestapo engaged in a policy of arrest aimed

at frightening and intimidating the population - a strategy of deterrence. The prisoners in these early

concentration camps were primarily political opponents of the regime, including German Communists,

Socialists, Social Democrats, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Christian clergy. These individuals suddenly

“disappeared,” returning after a certain time both depressed and frightened. The first such SS-run

camp was Dachau, established on March 22, 1933 in Germany.

By 1936, the SS began constructing new concentration camps as part of a 4-year plan to “clean up”

the cities as well as a means to fund the SS-owned building material industry. Roundups now focused

on groups such as Gypsies, homosexuals, and others accused of “asocial” behavior. These camps

included Oranienburg (later re-named Sachsenhausen, est.1936), Buchenwald (est.1937),

Flossenburg (est. 1938), Mauthausen (punishment/work camp in Austria, est. 1938), and Ravensbruck

(for women, est. 1939). Location of the camps was based on proximity to production facilities for

building materials, granite quarries, and tile & brick factories.

After Kristallnacht in November 1938, the Nazis conducted mass arrests of Jews. They were briefly

incarcerated with the hopes of “encouraging” emigration.

By the late 1930’s there were hundreds of camps scattered throughout the Reich. While conditions in

the camps were horrible, and while the death rates were high due to malnutrition, typhus and

exhaustion, there is no evidence that these camps were used for extermination purposes.

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With the outbreak of World War II, the number of Jewish prisoners in German concentration camps

rose exponentially. With the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Nazis opened Labor Camps

where thousands of prisoners died of exhaustion and starvation. Following the June 1941 invasion of

the Soviet Union, the Nazis increased the number of Prisoner of War Camps.

By the winter of 1941, 1.5 million Jews had been eliminated, but as pointed out at the Wannsee

Conference, there were 11 million Jews targeted for annihilation. The current killing methods were too

slow.

Using Germany’s scientists, businessmen, engineers and officials, the Nazis built a modern and

efficient way to eliminate the Jews:

1. An elaborate train system was developed that involved over one million people to operate

and maintain.

2. In Eastern Europe, the Nazis had already moved most of the Jews to ghettos which were

conveniently located near railroad lines. Between 1942 and 1944 these ghettos were

“liquidated,” deporting the residents for “Resettlement in the East.” This “resettlement” was to

Labor Camps or Extermination Camps.

3. In the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen killed Jews on the spot. There was no need to

collect and ship people to extermination camps.

4. In Western Europe, the situation was more complicated. There were no closed ghettos

and Jews had long been integrated into society. Local sensibilities might be offended if

people were crammed into cattle cars in the central train station.

The Germans decided to send Jews by third-class rail to an isolated transit camp within the

country, and from there to the east. And so it was that Jews were deported to intermediate

Transit Camps that served to control and organize the flow of victims to the awaiting gas

chambers. Here, Jews got a taste of life under Nazi control - a life that included constant

hunger, systemized humiliation, disease and death.

The ultimate destination was the Labor Camps or Extermination Camps.

Slide 232

The Camps:

Photos of Different Types of Concentration Camps

Slide 233

The Camps:

Photos of Different Types of Concentration Camps

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Slide 234

The Camps (Breaker Slide)

Slide 235

The Camps:

Chart of the Extermination Camps

Teacher Notes:

● There were 6 extermination camps:

Auschwitz-Birkenau

Belzec

Chelmno

Majkanek

Sobibo

Treblinka

Although there were deaths in other camps due to work, conditions or murder, these were the only

camps with organized extermination facilities.

● Approximately half of all the Jewish victims of German gas chambers were supposedly gassed with

Diesel exhaust. In other words, the Diesel gas chambers are as important, at least in terms of

numbers of alleged victims, as the gas chambers that used Zyklon-B.

● Hitler never visited an extermination camp. Heinrich Himmler did and even witnessed a gassing

which supposedly made him quite ill.

Interpreting the Chart:

● The main thing to point out in the chart above is the rapid acceleration of exterminations beginning

in early 1942 with the creation of the Operation Reinhard camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka.

Their primary purpose was the extermination of the Jews of Poland.

● Another point to consider is that the U.S. landed on European shores in June 1944. By that time,

the majority of the victims of the Holocaust were already dead.

______________________________________________________________________________

Unlike the earlier phases of the destruction process, the extermination camps were unprecedented.

Never before in history had people been killed on an assembly-line basis.

Of the approximately 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, more than half were systematically

killed in the Nazi extermination camps.

All extermination camps were located in German occupied Poland near railroad lines. Poland was

chosen as the main killing site for several reasons:

1. There was a large Jewish population in Poland.

2. It was geographically feasible, i.e. land was available.

3. Local anti-Jewish sentiments lent itself to little resistance.

4. This was far from “core” Germany and outside the spotlight of the German as well as the

international public.

Secrecy was paramount. Everything connected with the “Final Solution,” including the term itself, was

carefully camouflaged.

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Chelmno

Chelmno was the first Nazi camp where gassings were used to exterminate Jews on a large-scale

basis, and the first place outside of the Soviet Union where Jews were slaughtered en masse as part

of the “Final Solution.” This pilot extermination project was rude and crude - conferring death by 3 gas

vans borrowed from the eastern front. There were no crematoria, just mass graves in the woods.

The Germans called the camp Kulmhof. It was 37 miles northwest of Lodz, the 2^nd largest city in

Poland. The camp opened on December 8, 1941. Killing operations were conducted until March

1943, with a brief re-opening in June/July 1944 to take care of the liquidation of the Lodz Ghetto.

No railroad tracks reached Chelmno directly, so the deportees were brought by train to a nearby

station, and then loaded onto trucks that delivered them straight to the camp. Upon arrival, prisoners

were greeted by SS officials, often wearing white coats to induce the impression that they were

physician. The “doctors” explained to the deportees that they would go to Germany as laborers, but

first had to bathe and have their clothes disinfected. The Jews entered a house and were led to a

back room where they undressed and handed over their valuables for a receipt. The naked prisoners

were led to the cellar, where they had to walk down a ramp sloping into the back of a large paneled

truck that could hold 50-70 person. When the back of the van was full, the doors were closed and

sealed. The mechanic on duty attached a tube to the van’s exhaust pipe and then started the engine,

pumping carbon monoxide gas into the space where the prisoners were crowded, killing them by

asphyxiation. It usually required 10-15 minutes to murder all who were inside. The driver then drove

the bodies to the pre-dug graves in the forest where Jewish workers unloaded the bodies into the

graves. The van then returned to the camp and the operation was repeated.

On January 14, 1942 an inmate, Jacob Grojanowski, succeeded in escaping and reached the Warsaw

Ghetto where he gave detailed information to the underground Oneg Shabbat Archives. By June

1942, through the channels of the Polish underground, his report reached London and was published.

Estimates of the number of people killed at Chelmno vary from 170,000 to 360,000, virtually all Jews.

Most authorities agree on the higher estimates. Late in 1944 there were plans to shut down the camp;

however, Soviet troops arrived before these plans could be implemented. The Germans abandoned

Chelmno on January 17, 1945.

Operation Reinhard Camps: Belzec, Sobibor and Treblnka

In 1942, the Nazis opened Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka to systematically exterminate the 2+ million

Jews of the General Government of Poland. This was known as Operation Reinhard in memory of

Reinhard Heydrich, the main organizer of the “Final Solution,” who had been assassinated by Czech

resistance fighters on May 2, 1942. These 3 camps were known as Operation Reinhard Camps.

Belzec (near Lublin, Poland) was established a forced labor facility shortly after the Germans invaded

Poland. Prisoners were used to build fortifications and anti-tank ditches along the Bug River, which

formed the demarcation line between German- and Soviet-occupied Poland. By mid-August 1940 the

camp housed 11,000. Conditions were deplorable and inmates died by the 1,000’s due to overwork,

starvation, disease and execution. The labor camp was dismantled at the end of 1940.

In November 1941, construction began for a killing center on the site of the former Belzec labor camp.

It was the first camp in which large gas chambers were built. Killing operations began on March 17,

1942. Belzec was the model for the other two Operation Reinhard Camps.

Each arriving train consisted of 40-60 cars. Twenty cars at a time, carrying over 2,000 Jews, were

detached from the train and pulled into the camp. The Jews would disembark the trains onto the

platform where they were assured they had arrived at a transit camp. They were told that before being

assigned labor duties elsewhere they would be disinfected and showered. Older people, the sick and

invalid, and those unable to walk were told that they would enter an infirmary for medical treatment. In

reality, they were taken on carts straight to the open ditches where they were shot. Men were

separated from women and children and marched off to large huts where they undressed. Women

had their hair shaven off. They were then brutally pushed and prodded through “the tube” a narrow

passageway leading to the gas chambers which were disguised as showers. For the first few months,

159

extermination was accomplished using diesel fumes. The carbon monoxide gas was piped in from a

diesel engine mounted outside of the building. The killing process took up to 30 minutes. By August

1942, Zyklon-B was used experimentally. The corpses of the victims were stripped of valuables and

buried in nearby mass graves.

At first this entire process of killing 2,000 Jews lasted 3-4 hours, but as the Nazis gained more

experience, they cut the time down to 60-90 minutes. Frequently, the entire procedure was

accompanied by beatings and other acts of cruelty on the part of the German and Ukrainian guards.

Extermination ceased in late 1942, and early the next year the bodies were exhumed and cremated

and the camp was closed. To deter scavengers, the camp was ploughed over and turned into a farm.

One of the Ukrainian guards was made the farmer.

Sobibor was built in March 1942 near the village of Sobibor. It was the smallest of the Operatioin

Reinhard Camps and was surrounded by a minefield 50 feet wide.

The camp was designed after Belzec. One important technical change in Sobibor was a narrow-

gauge mine-track which ran from the railroad platform to the mass graves. Belzec had only a trolley

pulled by prisoners or horses to transport the dead, sick and invalid from the train to the ditches.

The camp operated from May 1942 until October 1943. Very few historic facts remain concerning this

camp. On October 14, 1943, about 300 Jewish inmates assigned to the Sonderkommando (special

work units) rose in revolt, killing several SS supervisors. Several inmates were also killed during the

rebellion or during the escape attempt. The number of inmates who managed to escape is not certain,

but all who stayed behind were shot the next day. Following their revolt, the installations for mass

extermination were destroyed and the area was planted with trees. About 50 prisoners survived to tell

their stories.

Treblinka was located 62 miles from Warsaw, Poland and 4 km. from the village of Treblinka. It was

the 2^nd largest killing center after Auschwitz.

Treblinka was originally a punitive labor camp for Poles. Construction to convert it to an extermination

camp began in late May 1942 after Belzec and Sobibor were already operational. It was ready for

operation in July 1942. The construction was carried out by Jewish and Polish slave laborers.

Learning from the mistakes of the previous 2 camps, the Nazis were able to construct an unusually

efficient destruction instrument that managed to destroy the lives and bodies of almost 1,000,000

human beings in only 12 months. The SS technicians and experts had no precedents on which to

rely. They had to depend on original thinking to accomplish this task.

As the Warsaw Ghetto was liquidated, the majority of its inhabitants were transported to Treblinka.

The killing process at Treblinka was very similar to that of Belzec and Sobibor. Upon arrival by rail

cars, the victims were separated by sex as well as adults from children. They were told they were

being transported to other work camps but first had to bathe and be disinfected. They were stripped of

their clothing and other possessions and forced to run naked along a fenced-in path to the gas

chambers known as the “tube.” Many realized that they were going to their death and, when they

resisted, were beaten or clubbed with rifles and whips by the camp staff. The gas chambers were

deceptively labeled “bathhouses.” There was even a Hebrew inscription on a curtain at the entrance

that read, “This is the gate through which the righteous pass.” Here they were gassed with carbon

monoxide gas produced by diesel engines and pumped in through ceiling pipes camouflaged as

shower heads. The staff at Treblinka was minimal. They made extensive use of Jewish prisoners

called Sonderkommandos (special work units). When these workers became too weak to do their

work they were killed and replaced by younger and stronger inmates. The Sonderkommandos were

forced to transport the corpses to mass graves for burial, and later, when the bodies were exhumed,

they burned the victim’s bodies on iron grates.

On August 2, 1943, in a planned rebellion by a Sonderkommando group, one SS guard was killed and

more than 200 inmates escaped. Most were hunted down and killed or recaptured. The facilities at

Treblinka were closed at the end of November, 1943.

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Auschwitz

Unlike the Operation Reinhard Camps, Auschwitz developed slowly into a death camp. It was

established in 1940 as a concentration camp for Poles, and in 1941 it was to become a camp for

Soviet P.O.W.’s. It became a death camp for Jews in 1942.

The camp of Auschwitz was established by the Nazis in the suburbs of Oswiecim, a Polish city that

was annexed into the Reich and had its name changed to Auschwitz. Auschwitz was 37 miles west of

Krakow, Poland near the border of Czechoslovakia. Before the war, it was a town whose residents

were of German descent and supported the Nazis. It had a Jewish population of 7-8,000.

Auschwitz ultimately consisted of 3 main subcamps:

Auschwitz I

Auschwitz I was the first camp built. It utilized the site of World War I Polish military barracks and was

designed to hold 10,000 political prisoners. It first opened in May 1940 as a concentration camp for

Polish civilians. It was here that prisoners first saw the sign that gave them false hope, “Arbeit Macht

Frei” (work will make you free). Contrary to these words, prisoners were brutally tortured and used as

a source of labor for the war effort. Death was the only real escape.

Auschwitz I was surrounded by double barbed-wire electric fences and nine watch towers. It

consisted of the commandant’s office and living quarters, the administration building, kitchen,

infirmary, the main guard station, one gas chamber and crematorium, the Gestapo camp, location for

medical experiments, gallows and execution area. Barracks housed the criminals. These barracks

also housed the “court rooms” where the prisoners were “tried” and usually sentenced to death. In the

execution area, prisoners were lined up against the “Black Wall” and shot. Their bodies were placed

in gravel pits in and around the main camp.

Auschwitz I also became a location for medical experiments that used humans as guinea pigs.

Auschwitz I became a camp for Soviet P.O.W.’s in 1941. It was here, on September 3, 1941, that

Soviet P.O.W.’s were used in trials of Zyklon-B. They were gassed in underground cells.

Auschwitz II (Birkenau)

Auschwitz II (Birkenau) was the largest part of the Auschwitz complex. The Nazis began building it in

October 1941 on the site of the village of Brzezinka, 3 km from Oswiecim. The Polish civilian

population was evicted and their houses confiscated and demolished. Construction was completed in

March 1942. About 10,000 Soviet P.O.W.’s died in the process.

Originally Auschwitz II functioned as both a concentration camp to aid in subduing the area’s Polish

population and as the site of the German Earth and Stone works, an SS-owned enterprise which

turned sand and gravel from the Sola River into building materials for the Reich. The camp was also

home to an experimental farm, intended to serve as the center of a vast agricultural empire providing

food and employment for the ethnic German migrants Himmler planned to settle in the Lebensraum

made available by the ethnic cleansing of the local population.

Another aspect of this same project was the construction of the I.G. Farben “Buna” synthetic rubber

plant. To lure Farben to his site, Himmler promised the company a slave-labor pool of 100,000 Soviet

prisoners of war (a byproduct of the expected conquest of the Soviet Union) to build and work in the

plant. In return, Farben agreed to finance and provide building materials for Himmler’s Germanization

project inside the SS’s surrounding 15 square mile “Zone of Interest.”

By early 1942, when it was becoming clear that Soviet prisoners would not be in such plentiful supply,

Himmler decided Jews would take their place. Although the mass murder of Jews by the

Einsatzgruppen was well underway, Himmler was still committed to his racial utopia. His plans

required laborers, and when, in January 1942, Hermann Goering directed that Soviet P.O.W.’s be sent

to work in German armament factories, Himmler used the power he had to order the transport of Jews

to Auschwitz.

161

The camp was divided into more than a dozen sections separated by electrified barbed-wire fences.

The camp included sections for women, men, a family camp for Roma, a family camp for Jews, and a

camp for holding and sorting plundered goods.

Rudimentary gas chambers, in two converted farmhouses, went into operation in September 1941.

They used Zyklon-B. A“provisional” gas chamber I went into operation in January 1942 but was later

dismantled. “Provisional” gas chamber II operated from June 1942 through the fall of 1944. When this

proved inadequate, four large structures, each containing a disrobing area, gas chamber and

crematorium were constructed between March and June 1943. More than 20,000 people could be

murdered and their bodies burned in a single day. The single day’s highest output was 24,000 with

Jews comprising the largest number of victims.

Over a million Jews and tens of thousands of Roma, Poles, and Soviet P.O.W.’s were gassed at

Auschwitz.

Auschwitz III (Monowitz or Buna)

Buna is the term for a synthetic rubber.

Auschwitz III (Monowitz or Buna) was established to house prisoners assigned to work at the Buna-

Werke synthetic rubber and fuel plant, 6 km. from the Auschwitz main camp. It was completed in

October 1942. The Buna factory was built by the German I.G.Farben Industries, and the SS agreed to

supply the prisoner labor.

Other Subcamps

There were 39 other sub-camps of Auschwitz. These camps provided a cheap source of labor for

mines, quarries, fisheries, armaments industries, and other enterprises. Auschwitz inmates were also

employed on huge farms, including the experimental agricultural station at Rajsko. The conditions in

these sub-camps were often worse than in the main camps.

When the SS realized that the end of the war was near, they attempted to remove all evidence of their

atrocities. They dismantled the gas chambers, crematories and other buildings. They burned

documents and evacuated all prisoners who could walk (about 58,000). When the Soviet army

marched into Auschwitz to liberate the camp on January 27, 1945, they found about 7,600 survivors

abandoned there.

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Majdanek

Majdanek was located on the outskirts of Lublin in an entirely open area with no trees to hide the

activities inside. It was originally constructed in October 1941 as a labor camp for Polish and Soviet

prisoners. After the “Final Solution” was unveiled at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, mass

transports of Jews began arriving at Majdanek beginning in April 1942, during the same time period

that Auschwitz was also being converted to an extermination camp for Jews.

In October 1942, a gassing facility was installed consisting of crude wooden barracks using carbon

monoxide gas. Later more sophisticated concrete structures were constructed with air-tight steel

doors. The use of Zyklon-B was implemented after its successvul use at Belzec.

Unlike Belzec and Sobibor, Majdanek was set up to produce military goods. There was some

industrial activity at the camp as well as agricultural and forestry work.

In late 1943, plans were made to dismantle the camp. At that time there were several thousand Jews

still in the camp. In October 1943, prisoners were ordered to dig 3 huge trenches in preparation for

Erntefest (Operation “Harvest Festival”). At the morning roll call on November 3, Jews were separated

from the other prisoners, sent to the trenches and shot. Dance music blared from the camp

loudspeakers to drown out the screams and machine gun fire. Murders continued until night fall.

Majdanek has the distinction of being the most deadly sight of the German’s largest one-day killing

operation against the Jews. 18,000 Jews died in Majdanek’s trenches that day.

The Soviets liberated Majdanek on July 24, 1945 and found 800,000 shoes, filling 4 barracks. The

shoes from nearby camps were sent here for repair and reuse.

About 170,000 prisoners died in Majdanek; virtually all of them Jews, Soviet soldiers and civilians, and

Polish civilians.

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Slide 236

The Camps (Initial Breaker Slide)

Slide 237

The Camps:

Treblinka

Teacher Notes:

Treblinka is included here as an example of the highly sophisticated Operation Reinhard Camp

developed exclusively for extermination. Notice on the map that there are very few barracks, only

enough to house the officers and prisoners to run the camp. Even those prisoners were routinely

executed and replaced.

Note # 4, the zoo, located on Zoo Street near the vegetable garden. Early in 1943 a zoo was built

where SS men could relax from their bloody work. The zoo contained foxes, birds and other captured

forest animals.

______________________________________________________________________________

In 1942, the Nazis opened Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka to systematically exterminate the 2+ million

Jews of the General Government of Poland. This was known as Operation Reinhard in memory of

Reinhard Heydrich, the main organizer of the “Final Solution,” who had been assassinated by Czech

resistance fighters on May 2, 1942. These 3 camps were known as Operation Reinhard Camps.

Treblinka was located 62 miles from Warsaw, Poland and 4 km. from the village of Treblinka. It was

the 2^nd largest killing center after Auschwitz.

Treblinka I was a punitive labor camp for Poles. Here, the prisoners were forced to work in quarries to

extract materials for the construction of fortifications along the German-Soviet demarcation line in

occupied Poland.

Construction on the Treblinka killing center began in May 1942 and was completed in July 1942.

(Deportations to the Operation Reinhard camps of Belzec and Sobibor had already begun.) The

construction was carried out by Jewish and Polish slave laborers. Learning from the mistakes of the

previous 2 camps (Belzec and Sobibor), the Nazis were able to construct an unusually efficient

destruction instrument that managed to destroy the lives and bodies of almost 1,000,000 human

beings in only 12 months. The SS technicians and experts had no precedents on which to rely. They

had to depend on original thinking to accomplish this task.

A branch railway track was built leading from the labor camp, Treblinka I, to the extermination camp,

Treblinka II, and continued to the nearby railway station in the village of Treblinka. The upper camp at

Treblinka was unable to receive lengthy trains because of its' short ramps. Therefore, only a few cars

at a time were backed in to the camp compound and unloaded.

The camp was laid out in a trapezoid. The site was heavily wooded and hidden from view. Branches

woven into the barbed-wire fence and trees planted around the perimeter served as camouflage,

blocking any view into the camp from the outside. Watchtowers 26’ high were placed along the fence

and at each of the four corners.

164

The camp was divided into three parts:

1. the reception area

2. the living area

3. the extermination area.

The living area contained housing for German and Ukrainian guards assigned to the camp, offices, a

clinic, storerooms and workshops. One section contained barracks that housed Jewish prisoners

forced to work in the camp.

As the Warsaw Ghetto was liquidated, the majority of its inhabitants were transported to Treblinka.

Incoming trains of about 50 or 60 cars first stopped at the Treblinka village railway station. Twenty

cars at a time were detached from the train and brought into the camp. Victims were ordered to

disembark in the reception area. Here the deportees would hear a speech by an SS officer that told

them they had arrived at a transit camp. Prisoners were then moved into two barracks: women and

children were separated from the men. Those too sick to walk on their own, unbeknownst to the

others, were taken to a pit near the infirmary and shot.

Once in the barracks, the prisoners’ hair was shorn, they had to undress, and their valuables were

taken. From here they would be directed to the gas chambers.

A camouflaged, fenced-in path, referred to as the “tube,” led from the reception area to the

extermination area. Victims were forced to run naked along this path to the gas chambers, labeled as

“bathhouses.” Many realized that they were going to their death and, when they resisted, were beaten

or clubbed with rifles and whips by the camp staff. Once the gas chamber doors were sealed, an

engine installed in a room attached to the gas chambers was started. Carbon monoxide was funneled

into the gas chambers via camouflaged shower heads, killing those inside. The bodies of the gassing

victims were interred in huge trenches. The process was then repeated.

Treblinka opened with three gas chambers in operation but quickly expanded to at least six.

Like all of the other death camps, Treblinka adhered to a specific routine that supported the ruse of

resettlement and which minimized the chances of Jewish rebellion or resistance. Details were added

in each of the death centers to support the lie of Jewish resettlement. The Star of David on the front

wall of Treblinka's gas house, and the Hebrew inscriptions on the curtain that hung at the entrance

that read, “This is the gate through which the righteous pass," are just two examples. Upon arrival,

postcards were often written by the prisoners and were later sent by the camp personnel. These

postcards encouraged relatives to move east for resettlement.

The staff at Treblinka was minimal. They made extensive use of Jewish prisoners called

Sonderkommandos (special work units). When these workers became too weak to do their work they

were killed and replaced by younger and stronger inmates. The Sonderkommandos were forced to

transport the corpses to mass graves for burial, and later, when the bodies were exhumed, they

burned the victim’s bodies on iron grates.

Treblinka Revolt: August 2, 1943

In May 1943, one of the last transports from Poland arrived in Treblinka. The ghettos of Warsaw and

the Bialystok district had been emptied. Only a small crew of some 1,000 prisoners remained in the

camp. Their assignment was to exhume and burn the bodies that had been buried in shallow pits.

When it was completed, they, too, would be dispatched to join their dead brethren.

The underground group that planned the Treblinka revolt had been inspired by the Warsaw Ghetto

Uprising, of which they learned in May 1943. They began to acquire weapons and plan a strategy for

taking over the camp, which was scheduled to be destroyed and then abandoned. Inmates had to

make do with the weapons at hand - shovels, picks, and a few homemade grenades.

165

On August 2, 1943, the arsenal was opened and a small number of weapons removed and distributed

to resistance fighters. The plan was to destroy the gas chambers, free the penal camp, and get out.

Instead, fire was set to the garages and the warehouse chambers and within moments the Germans

began shooting. Prisoners were running for their lives. As many as 300 prisoners escaped, but only

about 1/3 survived the German dragnet set to recapture them.

From July 1942 through November 1943, the Germans killed between 870,000 and 925,000 Jews at

the killing center.

In the fall of 1943, the Germans dismantled Treblinka II. The German SS and police authorities shot

the surviving prisoners. A farm was built on the site and it was offered to a Ukrainian to run it for

income.

Treblinka I, the forced-labor camp, continued operations until late July 1944. While the killing center

was in operation, some of the arriving Jews were selected and transferred to Treblinka I, while Jews

too weak to work at Treblinka I were periodically sent to Treblinka II to be killed.

Soviet troops overran the site of both labor camp and killing center during the last week of July 1944.

166

Slide 238

The Camps (Breaker Slide)

Slide 239

The Camps:

Map of Auschwitz I, II, III

Teacher Note:

Auschwitz is used in the following slides as a prototype for conditions and procedures in the

extermination camps. Please remind students that Auschwitz was unique and that all 6 extermination

camps did not follow the same procedures.

Map:

This map shows the 3 large sub-camps of Auschwitz: Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II (Birkenau), and

Auschwitz III (Monowitz/Buna).

______________________________________________________________________________

Auschwitz (“Oswiecim” in Polish) was the largest Nazi extermination and concentration camp. It was

located in the Polish town of Oswiecim, 37 miles west of Krakow. One-sixth of all Jews murdered by

the Nazis were gassed at Auschwitz. It has come to represent the epitome of Nazi brutality.

Slide 240

The Camps:

Map of Auschwitz I

Teacher Note:

The slides of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau) are included to provide students and teachers

with an understanding of the complexity and efficiency of this extermination center.

Slide 241

The Camps:

Map of Auschwitz II (Birkenau)

Slide 242

The Camps:

Photos of Auschwitz

Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau) were surrounded by electrically charged, four-meter high,

barbed wire fences guarded by SS men armed with machine guns and rifles. The two camps were

further closed in by a series of guard posts located 2/3 of a mile beyond the fences.

Slide 243

The Camps:

Map of Auschwitz Sub-Camps

There were over 40 sub-camps associated with Auschwitz. Most were labor oriented and located in

close proximity to the designated workplace.

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Slide 244

The Camps (Breaker Slide)

Slide 245

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Arrival

Many perished on their journey to the camps. By the time the trains came to a halt, surviving

prisoners were frightened, exhausted, filthy, hungry and thirsty. When doors were finally thrown open,

the passengers were blinded by their first glimpse of daylight and were greeted by vicious, barking

dogs and the harsh commands of Alle heraus! (Everybody out!) and Alles dort lassen! (Leave

everything there!).

The area where prisoners were unloaded was known as “the ramp.” They were thrilled to be freed

from the boxcar yet wary of leaving personal possessions. What would become of their warm coats,

bed linens, baby diapers, food, family pictures, medicines, etc. that would be left behind? These were

their last vestiges of normal life.

Upon disembarking, the passengers were forced into 2 lines: one for women and one for men.

It was here that families were separated: mothers from their children, husbands from their wives, and

brothers from their sisters.

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Slide 246

The Camps (Breaker Slide)

Slide 247

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Selection

Photo Bottom Right:

Note that the photo includes a Jewish prisoner assisting in the selection process. He is located on the

far right in a striped uniform.

These prisoners became unwilling accomplices to the Nazi tactics. Jewish prisoners acting in this

capacity would try to keep the incoming prisoners calm and even saved lives on occasion with their

seasoned advice.

_____________________________________________________________________________

On “the ramp”, after forming lines for men and women, new arrivals experienced selection by SS

officers who determined which prisoners would go immediately to the gas chambers and which would

be assigned to forced labor.

Most women, children and those that looked unfit for work were sent to one side of the ramp - their

ultimate fate would be death. At Auschwitz, children were usually killed upon arrival. Children born in

the camp were generally killed on the spot. Near the end of the war, in order to cut expenses, living

children were often placed directly in the ovens or thrown into open burning pits.

Most young men and others that were physically fit were sent to the other side of the ramp - receiving

a reprieve from death and entry into the camp’s labor force. At camps maintaining labor installations,

like Auschwitz, 10% of the arrivals were selected for work.

Camp doctors were often present at selection in hopes of finding suitable subjects, such as twins or

dwarfs, for medical experimentation.

Jewish prisoners were used to assist the SS in controlling the crowd. It was hoped that the Jewish

prisoners would impart a sense of reassurance among their own people by speaking their native

language and that this would minimize panic situations. These Jewish prisoners sometimes took

advantage of their position and offered words of advice to the new arrivals. Occasionally they warned

parents to abandon their children in order to save their own lives. The following example depicts the

traumatic experience of making hurried responses to such suggestions.

A young woman holding a baby is approached by a Jewish worker who politely says:

Madame, I see next to you an elderly woman that could be the child's grandmother or an aunt.

Leave the child with her so to be able to get out of this column and join those that will walk to

the Camp.

Some accepted and conformed with the request, temporarily saving their own lives. Others

embraced their babies even harder. She begins crying and shouting hysterically:

I am not giving up my baby. It is mine! I would rather die than be separated from my baby!

Madame please do not provoke panic here. I did not order you to do anything. I just made a

suggestion. If you do not want to, that is fine. Please continue on your way.

The woman, happy of the outcome, holds her baby tightly with one hand and with the other,

wipes her tears on her way to the gas chambers that were nearby.

169

In another instance, a mother refuses to be separated from her 13-year-old daughter and physically

resists the SS officer who attempts to force her into another line. The officer in charge of selection

drew his gun and shot both the woman and child. As a blanket punishment, all of the people from that

transport who had previously been selected for work were sent to the gas chambers. The officer in

charge condemned them with the comment, “Away with this shit!”

Age, skill and physical strength were favorable factors in selection for work. Children above the age of

14 were considered capable for work. Those with special skills were needed for a camp’s daily

operation. A strong body was capable of hard labor. The Jewish workers would often warn

adolescents to lie about their age in order to save their lives.

Slide 248

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Selection - continued

Photo Top Right:

An elderly Jewish woman is being held in place by three Jewish men after having been separated from

family members during the selection.

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Slide 249

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Artwork by David Olère, “Selection”

Teacher Note:

Have students take note of the following in the artwork:

● In the background of this painting, smoke rises from the crematorium to form the SS insignia.

● The elderly woman’s star.

● The faceless masses on the left, next to the fence…arrivals?

● The workers on the right

● The baby doll.

● The guard’s arm on the left: notice the SS insignia as well as the death’s head insignia.

● The arching corpse embracing the family.

● The dark hand reaching down from the upper left…the hand of God?

● The innocent baby going to its death.

● The multiple generations that were annihilated.

_____________________________________________________________________________

The Artist:

David Olère is well-known as an artist whose work testifies to the enormity of the Holocaust.

David Olère was born in Warsaw, Poland on January 19, 1902. At a young age, he was accepted into

the Academy of Fine Arts, and remained in Poland until he was sixteen. During his teenage years he

exhibited woodcuts at museums and art houses in Danzig and Berlin. He was later hired by the

Europäische Film Allianz as a painter, sculptor, and architect. So began his short career as a set

designer in the film industry. Olère even worked briefly for Paramount Pictures in Europe and

befriended the company's president. In 1930 Olère was married to Juliette Ventura, and the couple

moved to a French suburb. They had a son, Alexandre. Once war was declared in Europe, Olère was

drafted into the infantry regiment at Lons-le-Saunier. On February 20, 1943, he was arrested by

French police during a round up of Jews. Olère was detained at Drancy, then deported to Auschwitz.

From March 2, 1943, to January 19, 1945, David Olère was interned at Auschwitz. There he worked

as a Sonderkommando, part of a special labor unit responsible for emptying the remains from the

ovens of the crematory and for removing the bodies from the gas chambers. The horrors he

witnessed there are incomprehensible to anyone who did not personally experience the Holocaust.

He saw the victims of the gas chamber undress in the cloakroom, paralyzed with fear and the

knowledge of certain death. He saw the incineration of countless bodies. He saw the so-called

medical experiments performed on the weak and the sick and the old. He saw the SS rape and torture

young Jewish girls. He saw prisoners suffer terrible cruelties while living under the most deplorable of

conditions. And on a regular basis, he saw disease, despair, and death. David Olère was one of the

few laborers to penetrate the dark interiors of the crematoria and the gas chambers of Auschwitz and

to emerge alive. He took part in the evacuation death march of Auschwitz in January of 1945 and was

finally liberated by the Americans at Ebensee in May of that year.

While at Auschwitz, David Olère was forced to work as an illustrator and to write and decorate letters

for the SS. The works of art he produced after his release were created out of an obligation he felt to

those who did not survive. He believed he had to tell the true story of their fate, and he did so in the

best way he could, through his art. In his paintings he himself is sometimes present as a ghostly face,

floating in the background, a silent, pained witness observing the inhuman scenes that could not ever

be erased from his memory.

In 1962, David Olère retired from his work as an artist. He died in 1985.

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Slide 250

The Camps (Breaker Slide)

Slide 251

The Camps:

Auschwitz - “Canada”

Questions to Consider:

● How would the loss of one’s suitcase contribute to this feeling of total loss?

● How could these suitcases be regarded as a symbol of deception?

Interesting Fact:

The SS ordered prisoners to squeeze toothpaste into buckets in search for hidden diamonds.

___________________________________________________________________________

“Loot” was a central element in the Nazi persecution of the Jews. The murder of 6 million people

provided a source of rich booty for the SS, for the German war machine and for the Germans in

general.

When prisoners arrived at Auschwitz II (Birkenau), all personal belongings were left on the arrival

ramp.

Under strict supervision of SS guards, these possessions were loaded onto trucks and taken to a

special warehouse area known as “Canada” (so-called because Canada represented the land of

plenty and prosperity to the prisoners). Here inmates, mostly Jewish women, sorted, cleaned and

disinfected the contents. Any money, jewelry, precious stones, pearls or the like were sent directly to

the German Reich Bank. Watches, clocks, pencils, electric razors, scissors, flashlights and wallets

were distributed among the German front-line troops. Most of the clothing was ear-marked for

Germans who had been living outside the borders of Germany.

In 1942, the clothes taken from Jews who had been murdered were sent to Germany to be distributed

as part of the Winter Aid Campaign. On at least one occasion, the recipients complained that the

clothes sent to help them out over the winter were bloodstained.

According to a report from Majdanek, the Nazis had calculated that by February of 1943, from this one

camp alone, they had recovered over 100 million Reichsmark ($40 million) in valuables.

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Slide 252

The Camps (Breaker Slide)

Slide 253

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Registration

Photo Upper Right:

Washing and shaving newly arrived Polish prisoners in the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Questions to Consider:

Can you retain your personal identity when forced to abandon your personal belongings?

How would having to wear someone else’s clothes and/or shoes affect your identity?

_________________________________________________________________________________

Those selected for forced labor were sent to a part of the camp called the “quarantine.” Here new

arrivals spent 4 weeks, supposedly to stop the newcomers from bringing infections into the camp. In

fact, it was to terrorize them into good behavior. These prisoners experienced the following before

being sent to one of the nearby satellite labor camps.

Disinfection

Prisoners were forced to take showers before entering the work camp. Often they underwent a de-

lousing process that involved the use of Zyklon-B. This was the same poison used in the gas

chambers for extermination, but at a lesser concentration.

Shaving

The Nazis shaved the heads of each prisoner, supposedly to prevent typhus. Although this may be

true, shaving the prisoners’ heads made it easier to identify escapees. At Auschwitz, prisoners had

their body shaved of all body hair. The instrument of choice was usually a blunt razor, which was

painful.

The victims’ hair was sold by the government to industries to use in socks for submarine crews and to

manufacture felt stockings for railroad workers. It was also used for hair cloth, the ignition mechanism

of bombs, ropes and cords for ships, as well as stuffing for mattresses.

To the barber!

Belt and shoes in hand I let myself be dragged off to the barbers. They took our hair off with

clippers and shaved off all the hair on our bodies.

- Elie Wiesel, Night

Uniforms

Sometimes, personal belongings and clothes were traded in for a striped prison uniform, often the

wrong size and much too thin for the cold Polish winter. Their prison number was sewn onto their

uniform. At Auschwitz, women were often given wooden shoes, replacing their own comfortable

leather shoes.

Death begins with the shoes; for most of us, they show themselves to be instruments of

torture, which after a few hours of marching cause painful sores which become fatally infected.

Whoever has them is forced to walk as if he was dragging a convict’s chain … He arrives last

everywhere, and everywhere he receives blows. He cannot escape if they run after him; his

feet swell and the more they swell, the more the friction with the wood and the cloth of the

shoes becomes insupportable.

- Primo Levi, survivor, speaking of his shoes

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Tattoos

Tattoos were just one of the ways in which the Nazis dehumanized their prisoners. They understood

the individuality in a name. Remove the name and the victims cease to be human:

Numbers have no history.

Numbers have no character.

Numbers have no reason to fight.

Numbers are lost in the pool of collectivity.

It was much easier to exterminate numbers rather than people with names.

Beginning in 1941, registration consisted of a tattoo which was placed on the left breast of the

prisoner. Later, the tattoo location was moved to the left inner forearm. It was not only Jews who

were marked: all prisoners other than ethnic Germans and police prisoners were tattooed. The

tattoos were made with a special metal stamp containing rather thick needles about ½ inch long. High

and low prisoner numbers were also significant, revealing the duration of imprisonment; a low number

indicated that a prisoner had survived a long time and a high number usually indicated a newcomer.

Despite the perception that all Holocaust prisoners were given tattoos, only the prisoners of Auschwitz

after 1941 were branded this way.

The operation was slightly painful and extraordinarily rapid: they placed us all in a row, and

one by one, according to the alphabetical order of our names, we filed past a skillful official,

armed with a sort of pointed tool with a very short needle. It seems that this is the real, true

initiation: only by “showing one’s number” can one get bread and soup….And for many day,

while the habits of freedom still led me to look for the time on my wristwatch, my new name

ironically appeared instead, its number tattooed in bluish character under the skin.

- Primo Levi, Survival at Auschwitz

Photos

Until 1943, all but the Jewish prisoners, who seldom entered the records at all because they were

expected to die quickly, were photographed for the records. After 1943, photos were often were not

made.

174

Slide 254

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Registration - Camp Badges

The Nazis used triangular badges or patches to identify prisoners in the concentration camps.

Different colored patches represented different groups.

PURPLE

Jehovah’s Witnesses

RED

Political Prisoners

BLACK

Asocials (prostitutes, vagrants, murderers, thieves, lesbians, and those who

violated laws prohibiting sexual intercourse between Aryans and

Jews)

PINK-

Homosexuals

GREEN

Criminals

BROWN

Gypsies

YELLOW

Jews

Some patches included letters on the triangles to further distinguish among the various groups in the

camps. Most commonly the letter indicated nationality. e.g. "F" for franzosisch (French), "P" for

polnisch (Polish), "T" for tschechisch (Czech), etc.

Letters could also denote special sub-categories of prisoners. For example, the white letter "A" on a

black triangle signified a labor disciplinary prisoner (Arbeitserziehungshaftling), while a black "S" on a

green triangle identified a strafthaft, or penal prisoner. In addition, the word Blod on a black triangle

marked mentally retarded inmates, and a red and white target symbol set apart those who had tried to

escape.

For Jewish offenders, triangles of two different colors were combined to create a six-pointed star, one

triangle yellow to denote a Jew, the second triangle another color to denote the added offense. For

example, a Jewish criminal would wear a yellow triangle overlaid by a green one; Jewish homosexuals

wore pink triangles over yellow.

“Penal Company” - political prisoners considered especially dangerous.

175

Slide 255

The Camps (Breaker Slide)

Slide 256

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Daily Life: Barracks

Picture Left:

Former prisoners of the "little camp" in Buchenwald stare out from the wooden bunks in which they

slept three to a "bed."

Elie Wiesel is pictured in the yellow circle.

________________________________________________________________________________

The dreadful living conditions at Auschwitz were one of the reasons for the epidemics and contagious

diseases that prevailed there.

Barracks were dark, gloomy, smelly and overcrowded. At Auschwitz, inmates slept on three-tiered,

wooden shelves with each allowed a space equal to that in a coffin. Some of the barracks at

Auschwitz II (Birkenau) were wooden, pre-fabricated horse barns, used because they were quick to

assemble and disassemble. They were built to hold 48 horses; they housed 800 prisoners.

Dampness, leaky roofs, and the fouling of straw and straw mattresses by prisoners suffering from

diarrhea made difficult living conditions worse. The barracks swarmed with various sorts of vermin

and rats. Typhus was spread through these rodent hosts and then spread to humans through fleas,

mites and lice. Typhus flourished under these poor living conditions and was a major cause of death.

NOTE: Anne Frank died from a typhus outbreak at Bergen-Belsen.

A constant shortage of water for washing, and the lack of suitable sanitary facilities, aggravated the

situation. Until 1943, the only drinking water was provided by one tap in the camp lavatory.

The barracks had stoves available for heating although they did not necessarily produce adequate

heat.

Prisoners would relieve themselves in a bucket, and when the bucket was filled, it had to be emptied in

the lavatory.

The latrine, serving 250 people at a time, was a wooden hut with rows of holes sunk through a

concrete floor. It was filled in the morning by prisoners routinely suffering from dysentery as a result of

camp food.

Whereas most viewed their bunks as refuge from the day’s precarious and dangerous existence, the

nights were also filled with terror. The nocturnal ragings of drunk Kapos (prisoners given authority

over other prisoners), ceaseless struggles with bunkmates, and the relentless trips to the latrines and

chamber pots punctuate the memory of survivors.

176

Slide 257

The Camps (Breaker Slide)

Slide 258

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Daily Life: Roll Call

Teacher Note:

On February 6, 1943, a marathon roll call at Auschwitz forced inmates to stand motionless in snow

without food for over 13 hours. Many died on their feet and many others who were too weak to dash

back to the barracks at day’s end were sent to the gas chamber.

________________________________________________________________________________

Wake Up

4:00 A.M. awakenings were brutal, involving savage commands, freezing temperatures, hurried

washings and a trip to the latrine.

Morning Roll Call

All prisoners, including those that died during the night, had to be present at roll call. The day before,

they had been standing numbers at the roll call, now, they were lifeless.

During roll call, prisoners were required to stand at attention, regardless of the weather. Talking and

moving was forbidden. Some prisoners died during the roll call itself because they were too weak to

stand at attention for hours.

SS guards, officers and Kapos counted thousands of prisoners. One mistake during the counting and

everything must start again.

Evening Roll Call

Again, Kapos count prisoners and the dead. The survivors would carry the bodies of the prisoners

who died during the day. If a prisoner tried to escape, all other prisoners would stand at attention at

roll call until the escapee was retrieved. Evening roll call could sometimes take 10 hours.

It was at evening roll call that punishments were delivered. This included hangings and beatings.

Sometimes prisoners were forced to watch as a deterrent.

Slide 259

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Daily Life: Artwork by Jan Komski, “Roll Call”

Komski was a Roman Catholic Pole who was arrested for attempting to reach the Polish army in exile

located in France. He was carrying false identity papers under an assumed name. He was first taken

to the prison at Tarnow and then to Auschwitz, arriving on June 14, 1940. This was the very first

prisoner transport to Auschwitz. He was prisoner #564. Fortunately, early numbers were not tattooed

on prisoner’s arms. After spending 2-1/2 years in the camp, Komski and 3 other comrades

participated in one the most famous escapes at Auschwitz. The escape was significant because it

was the first to be organized by the illegal camp resistance movement and with the help of the local

population. Using a stolen SS uniform, the 4 men, one dressed as an SS officer, walked out of the

camp. In a nearby village, they met a resistance woman who gave them civilian clothes. Komski

eventually reached Krakow, where he was arrested in a routine roundup. Normally an escaped

prisoner would have been hanged very soon after return to Auschwitz. Komski was not recognized,

and his identity papers now bore a different name. He was eventually sent to Buchenwald, back to

Krakow, to Gross-Rosen, to Sachsenhausen, and ultimately to Dachau where he was liberated by

Patton’s army on May 2, 1945. He immigrated to the U.S. and became a citizen. He died at age 87 in

2002.

177

Slide 260

The Camps (Breaker Slide)

Slide 261

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Daily Life: Food

Artwork Lower Left:

“The Food of the Dead for the Living” by David Olère:

Drawing of prisoner stealing food that has been left behind by a recent arrival. If caught, this could

mean death.

Teacher Note:

● This is a good chance to discuss terminology. Ask students to define the meaning of hunger and

give examples.

● Hunger is a term that we use today, but does not describe what camp prisoners felt. Hunger is

missing a meal, maybe two. How do you describe coming into a camp and hardly eating for months,

maybe years. And then when nourishment is provided by the liberating troops, it causes death.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Every day in Auschwitz was a fierce struggle to survive. Food was always a problem. Always.

Prisoners were constantly hungry.

The SS calculated that a prisoner could exist on the daily food ration for about 3 months, then he/she

was supposed to die.

Food was cooked in the kitchen block, then taken to the barracks in barrels or big metal pots. By the

time the SS officials and the prisoners in charge of the blocks had helped themselves to the most

nutritious foods, such as sausage and margarine, the 1,700 calories that prisoners were supposed to

be getting had fallen to 1,300 or less.

…we queue with our bowls ready and we all have an animal hurry to swell our bellies with the

warm stew, but no one wants to be first, as the first person receives the most liquid

ration….the Kapo mocks and insults us for our voracity and takes care not to stir the pot, as

the bottom belongs notoriously to him.

- Primo Levi, Survival at Auschwitz

The prisoners were served food that was barely edible. One Auschwitz survivor recalled,

The containers were dirty and smelly…we didn’t care. It was warm and it was food, even if

there were pieces of wood, potato peeling and unrecognizable substances swimming in it

…Ten miserable mouthfuls and it was over. We were hungrier than before.

After several weeks on such starvation rations in the camp, most prisoners began to experience

organic deterioration that led to the so-called “Muselman” state, extreme physical exhaustion that

ended in death.

Prisoners often developed dysentery, caused by the ingestion of food or water containing

microorganisms. Dysentery, a highly contagious disease, causes inflammation of the intestines and

ultimately diarrhea. This loss of nutrients coupled with poor caloric content in the diet causes swelling

of limbs --- a sickness known as “starvation disease.” Even under these conditions, the prisoners

were required to continue working.

To endure such misery, many prisoners found comfort in helping one another, trading for rations and

goods in an underground “black market” and maintaining hopes for survival.

178

Slide 262

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Daily Life: Drawings of Food Distribution by Ella Liebermann Shiber

Slide 263

The Camps (Breaker Slide)

Slide 264

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Daily Life: Slave Labor

Picture Lower Left:

The Buna Factory at Auschwitz III (Monowitz) produced synthetic rubber and oil.

______________________________________________________________________________

In 1942, the concentration camps, which had been established initially to carry out Nazi policies,

became an indispensable part of the war economy.

People who survived quarantine were organized into work groups which were regularly changed. The

SS rationalized that a combination of a high death rate and the constant shifting around would prevent

prisoners from forming resistance groups. Being selected to work upon arrival in the camp was far

from a guarantee of survival; however, the ability to work was essential for survival.

Initially at Auschwitz, prisoners worked to build the camp: leveling the ground, erecting new blocks

and buildings, laying roads, and digging drainage ditches. After morning roll call, prisoners were off for

a 12-14 hour work day. If lucky, prisoners received a good tool, a shovel or pickax. Otherwise, they

worked with their hands; however, this might mean death because of inability to work as fast as the

guards requested. The work was difficult and often useless: moving heavy sand bags from one point

to another, extracting and carrying heavy stones, digging trenches or boring tunnels. Working in a

factory did not necessarily improve the condition of life. Everything had to be done as fast as possible,

and always with insults and beatings from the kapos and the SS. If a guard thought work was not

being completed quickly enough, prisoners were beaten, perhaps to the point of death.

Later in the course of the war, prisoners were hired out to German manufacturers, often companies

making supplies for the war. Concentration camp labor was central to the Reich’s wartime manpower

needs. Despite being starved, ill and weak, the Jews were expected to perform heavy industrial tasks

- and when they inevitably fell short, prisoners were beaten and shot. The well-known companies that

lined up to receive workers included I.G. Farben (rubber, fuel), BMW (airplane parts), Siemens

(industrial electronics), Messerschmitt (fighter planes), Daimler-Benz (cars & military vehicles), and

Krupp (steel). The decision to use slave labor was entirely voluntary.

Under the brutal conditions of slavery in the antebellum American South, a slave was still

considered a crucial economic resource. By contrast, the Nazis viewed the forced laborer not

as a capital investment, but a dispensable commodity, a replaceable waste product.

- The World Must Know by Michael Berenbaum

179

Other Slave Labor Camps:

Ravensbruck

At Ravensbruck, the German industrial firm of Siemens built barracks to house 2,500 women who

worked in a factory manufacturing electrical switches for aircraft. The factory was located 5 miles from

Auschwitz.

Mauthausen

Mauthausen was a punishment camp where the inmates had to do hard time in a rock quarry. The

Mauthausen concentration camp was built at the edge of the quarry so that prison labor could be used

to take the granite for Hitler's grandiose building plans. The quarry was known as the "Wiener

Graben" because the streets of Wien (Vienna) had been paved with stones taken from it. Those on

the punishment detail had to carry granite boulders placed on wooden “backpacks” (shown on slide)

up the steep “stairs of death” (shown on slide) out of the quarry.

Sub-camps:

During 1942-1944, hundreds of sub-camps were established for each concentration camp. Sub-

camps were located in or near factories or sites for the extraction of raw materials. For example,

Wiener Neudorf, a sub-camp of Mauthausen established in 1943, was located near an airplane factory

on the east side of Vienna, Austria; Sosnowitz was established in the vicinity of a coal mine as a sub-

camp of Auschwitz III (Monowitz); prisoners incarcerated at Dora-Mittelbau worked under brutal

conditions in underground factories for the production of rockets.

Central SS authorities tried to induce camp commandants to focus their efforts on keeping the

prisoners alive, if only to serve the German war effort. However, few of the commandants took these

instructions seriously and none were concerned about changing the murderous culture of the camps.

180

Slide 265

The Camps (Breaker Slide)

Slide 266

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Daily Life: Brutality

Teacher Notes:

● Have students write their impressions of this artwork by Zinovi Tolkachev.

● Even faced with the deprivations and tortures of Auschwitz, the desire of many prisoners to give

artistic expression to their experiences remained strong. Painting materials had to be improvised,

traded for, or stolen from the SS. Art often became a method of self preservation, a way for inmates to

detach themselves temporarily from the brutal realities of life. Many artists were also aware of their

role as witnesses and made conscious efforts to preserve their works as historical evidence by burying

them in secret hiding places or arranging to have them smuggled out of the camps.

Although the vast majority of artistic works were lost or destroyed with the artist, the portraits and

drawings which did survive provide a remarkable document of life in Auschwitz. Among the soldiers

who liberated Auschwitz were also artists who tried to record the scenes which confronted them.

Zinovi Tokachev was one of them. He was a Russian soldier and painter. He dedicated his works,

exhibited throughout Poland after the war, to “those of all nations - that they may never forget.”

● Note that the figure has no face, the one feature that identifies us. This is indicative of the

universality of the brutal SS soldier. The SS did not consider themselves to be acting individually in

their brutality, they were working collectively, following orders to carry out the mission of the Reich.

● Note the irony in the belt buckle, imprinted with the German slogan- Gott mit Uns (God is With Us).

● Note the heavy boots trampling the fragile body of a helpless child.

_______________________________________________________________________________

In addition to deaths by starvation and disease, prisoners had to endure random beatings, shootings,

hangings and torture. If one showed even the slightest sign of weakness or frailty, the result could be

death.

One prisoner later wrote of the terror of trying to blend in as the Nazis selected who would be

murdered,

I tried to make myself as inconspicuous as possible, not too erect, yet not slouching; not too

smart, yet not sloppy; not too proud, yet not too servile, for I knew that those who were

different died in Auschwitz, while the anonymous, the faceless ones, survived.

Executions by hanging were carried out sporadically in the camp. Hangings were carried out in front

of other prisoners, usually during roll call. The goal was to intimidate the witnesses, and the victims

were most frequently prisoners trying to escape, or suspected of aiding escapees.

181

Slide 267

The Camps (Breaker Slide)

Slide 268

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Daily Life: Survival

Teacher Notes:

● Remind students to avoid passing judgment on the life decisions that were made by prisoners in the

camps. We can never understand what these people endured and the decisions they were forced to

make.

● The camp system was designed to kill Jews, either immediately upon arrival or after utilizing their

labor. Their survival chances were somewhat higher if they arrived at the camp late in the war,

because of the increased need for labor, or if they had special skills or were assigned relatively easy

jobs.

● Muselmann was the German term used widely among concentration camp inmates to refer to

prisoners who were near death due to exhaustion, starvation or hopelessness. The word Muslemann

literally means “Muslim.” Some scholars believe that the term originated from the similarity between

the near-death prone state of a concentration camp Muslemann and the image of a Muslim prostrating

himself on the ground in prayer.

Many prisoners reached this stage soon after their arrival in a camp, due to their inability to adapt to

the conditions and their unwillingness to accept the harsh regime. Other succumbed to sickness,

physical abuse, hunger and overwork. Many prisoners were sick, but sought to hide their condition for

fear that their admittance to the camp hospital would lead to their being designated for death.

One could identify Muselmanner by their physical and psychological decline: they were lethargic,

indifferent to their surroundings, and could not stand up for more than a short period of time. There

was a lack of flesh on their bodies, their skin was tight over their bones, and there was a dull,

expressionless look in their eyes.

Most other prisoners avoided contact with Muselmanner, in fear of contracting the condition

themselves. The Nazis running the camps considered the Muslemanner undesirable because they

could not work or endure camp rule. Thus, during selections, these victims were the first to be

sentenced to death. A person at the Muslemann stage had no chance for survival; he/she would

not live for more than a few days or weeks.

Questions to Consider:

● What factors might help a person survive under such circumstances?

faith, imagination, hope (either of rescue or reuniting with loved ones), desire to document the

atrocities through testimony, age, physical condition upon entering the camp

_____________________________________________________________________________

Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house,

his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possess: he will be a hollow man, reduced to

suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses

himself.

- Primo Levi, Survival at Auschwitz

All lived and worked in the shadow of death. For some prisoners, living in the presence of death

became too much. Some committed suicide, others simply gave up.

182

For those who had lost the desire to live, suicide was a means of escape. The camp was surrounded

by two rows of electrical, barbed-wire fences, with guardhouses set all along them. Prisoners were not

supposed to go near the fence. Survivors of the camp say that some guards deliberately threw

prisoners’ caps close to the fence and sent them to fetch the caps - knowing the prisoners would be

shot for approaching the fence. Many people chose deliberately to run at the fences to commit

suicide.

Those prisoners who did not resort to taking their own lives simply deteriorated, becoming dazed and

apathetic through starvation, thirst, maltreatment and sheer exhaustion. They were little more than

walking dead. These prisoners were called Muselmann (singular) / Muselmanner (plural) and were

ultimately gassed.

My sister just didn’t want to live. She refused to eat. She became very depressed. Each day

I would force open her mouth. We would get one day a piece of margarine with the bread,

and one day a piece of wurst, so I would change the wurst for margarine so that I could push

the margarine in her mouth … it should melt, that she should swallow.

We were surrounded by electrified wires. She only wanted we should go and kill ourselves.

She would say she doesn’t want to live, she wants to go to the wires. I always told her, “You

tell me when you want to go,” because this way I felt I have control and I can talk her out of it.

Each time she would say, “Let’s go today,” I would always tell her, “Not today. Look, today it’s

too warm. Why don’t we wait?” Then it was very cold. “Let’s wait. We always have time to kill

ourselves.” But I wanted very much to live. I had a lot of zest and a lot of life in me; and also,

I felt that somebody must remain alive to tell all this. Because just like we didn’t know, we

thought nobody else knew in this world. And this is how I kept her.

- Cecile Klein, Survivor

For some, religion provided the strength to endure. Jewish religious life persisted in the camps, even

though the Nazis had no patience for Jewish prayers or rituals. Prayer books were smuggled into

Auschwitz, and rabbis continued their roles as sources of spiritual and legal wisdom even inside the

camps. Although keeping kosher or observing festivals was nearly impossible in a death camp, many

religious Jews did the best they could to remain faithful to their God and their traditions.

While some Jewish prisoners found comfort in their religion, others felt abandoned by their God,

ultimately losing faith.

183

Slide 269

The Camps (Breaker Slide)

Slide 270

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Medical Experiments

Teacher Notes:

After World War II, in October of 1946, the Nuremberg Medical Trial began, lasting until August of

1947. Twenty-three German physicians and scientists were accused of performing vile and potentially

lethal medical experiments on concentration camp inmates and other living human subjects. Josef

Mengele was not among the accused. Fifteen defendants were found guilty, and eight were acquitted.

Of the 15, seven were given the death penalty and eight imprisoned.

After the war, Joseph Mengele found asylum in Argentina. Facing extradition, he lived in Brazil and

Paraguay, managing to avoid capture. He died a free man in 1978.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Perhaps the most gruesome aspect of life in the camps was the fact that some prisoners were

subjected to horrific medical experiments.

In Dachau, German scientists experimented on prisoners to determine the length of time German air

force personnel might survive under reduced air pressure or in frozen water. In Sachsenhausen,

various experiments were conducted on prisoners to find vaccines for lethal contagious diseases such

as typhoid and tuberculosis. Many of the experiments were designed to find the most efficient way to

sterilize people - so the Nazis could continue to wipe out “inferior races” and “undesirables.” Women

were injected with chemicals, men had their testicles amputated, and many prisoners were given high

doses of radiation. Many "patients" became crippled or died from the brutal maltreatment.

At Auschwitz I, SS physicians carried out medical experiments in the hospital, Barrack (Block) 10.

They conducted pseudoscientific research on infants, twins and dwarfs, and performed forced

sterilizations, castrations and hypothermia experiments on adults.

In November 1943, SS Captain Dr. Josef Mengele became the chief physician Auschwitz II (Birkenau).

Mengele wanted to “prove” the superiority of the Nordic race. He conducted experiments on twins to

seek ways of increasing the German population by breeding families that would produce twins. He

would also experiment on them by trying different poisons or tortures on each and comparing the

reactions. Mengele subjected his experimental group to all possible medical analyses that could be

performed while they were still alive. The test he conducted were painful, exhausting and traumatic for

the frightened and hungry children who made up the bulk of his subjects. When the research was

completed, some subjects were killed by lethal injection and then their organs were autopsied and

analyzed.

One twin recalled the death of his brother:

Dr. Mengele had always been more interested in Tibi. I am not sure why - perhaps because

he was the older twin. Mengele made several operations on Tibi. One surgery on his spine

left my brother paralyzed. He could not walk anymore. Then they took out his sexual organs.

After the fourth operation, I did not see Tibi anymore. I cannot tell you how I felt. It is

impossible to put into words how I felt. They had taken away my father, my mother, my two

older brothers - and now, my twin…

Between 1939 and 1945, at least 70 different medical-research projects took place in concentration

camps. More than 7,000 people were part of these forced experiments which broke all the rules and

norms of medical research. About 200 Nazi doctors participated.

184

Slide 271

The Camps (Breaker Slide)

Slide 272

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Extermination: Photo of Women and Children Prior to Extermination

Teacher Note:

The euphemistic term, “extermination,” was one used by the Germans. It is a term that implies getting

rid of something not needed or wanted, as in pests. Point out to students that this is not extermination,

but murder, murder on a massive, pre-calculated scale.

______________________________________________________________________________

This photo was taken by an SS photographer. It is part of an album discovered after liberation by a

female prisoner. Most people create family albums containing photos of their children, wives,

husbands, mementos of places visited... evidently this SS photographer was proud of the work he and

his comrades were doing. The people in the photo had only just been brought from the trains where

they had been crammed in cattle cars with no food, water or sanitation. Look closely at them, these

were the people the Nazis considered dangerous. Not long after this photo was taken, they were

gassed, and their bodies were burned.

185

Slide 273

The Camps (Breaker Slide)

Slide 274

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Extermination: Gassings

Photo Bottom Right:

In order to calm the fears of Jews as they came off the trains, the camp orchestra, composed of

inmates, was forced to play happy tunes. The orchestra also played cheerful music for fellow forced

laborers on their way to work, as well as on their way to the gas chambers.

Teacher Notes:

Two German firms, Tesch/Stabenow and Degesch, produced Zyklon-B gas after they acquired the

patent from Farben. Tesch supplied two tons a month, and Degesch three quarters of a ton. The firms

that produced the gas already had extensive experience in fumigation. After the war the directors of

the firms insisted that they had sold their products for fumigation purposes and did not know they were

being used on humans. But the prosecutors found letters from Tesch not only offering to supply the

gas crystals but also advising how to use the ventilating and heating equipment. Rudolf Hoess,

Commandant of Auschwitz, testified that the Tesch directors could not help but know of the use for

their product because they sold him enough to annihilate two million people. Two Tesch partners

were sentenced to death in 1946 and hanged. The director of Degesch received five years in prison.

During World War II, only one man managed to get prisoners out of Auschwitz - Oscar Schindler.

By a mistake, 300 Schindler-women were routed on a train to Auschwitz. Certain death awaited. A

Schindler survivor, Anna Duklauer Perl, later recalled, “I knew something had gone terribly

wrong…they cut our hair real short and sent us to the shower. Our only hope was Schindler would

find us…”

Anna and the other Schindler-women were being herded off toward the showers. They did not know

whether this was going to be water or gas. Then they heard a voice, “What are you doing with these

people? These are my people.” Schindler! He had come to rescue them, bribing the Nazis to retrieve

the women on his list and bring them back.

The women were released - the only shipment out of Auschwitz during World War II.

_______________________________________________________________________________

During the summer and fall of 1941, Zyklon-B gas was introduced into the German concentration

camp system as a means for murder. In September, the SS first tested Zyklon-B as an instrument of

mass murder at Auschwitz I. The victims were some 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 ill prisoners.

The "success" of these experiments led to the adoption of Zyklon-B for all the gas chambers at the

Auschwitz complex.

The facilities for mass killing were later located at Auschwitz II (Birkenau). Here, the SS initially

converted two farmhouses for use as gas chambers. “Provisional” gas chamber I went into operation

in January 1942 and was later dismantled. “Provisional” gas chamber II operated from June 1942

through the fall of 1944. The SS judged these facilities to be inadequate for the scale of gassing they

planned.

During the summer of 1942, plans were made to build newer and more efficient gas chambers and

crematoria ovens to dispose of corpses. The project was completed under the direction of J.A. Topf

and Sons by the spring of 1943, allowing Auschwitz to become the Nazis’ main killing center. Four

large crematorium buildings were constructed between March and June 1943. Each had three

components: a disrobing area, a large gas chamber, and crematorium ovens. The gassing chambers

were built to resemble shower rooms.

186

In Crematoriums 2 and 3, where the gas chambers were located in underground buildings, the Zyklon-

B pellets were inserted through holes in the roof. In Crematoriums 4 and 5, which were at ground

level, they were tossed in through window-sized openings covered with metal shutters.

At the height of the deportations, more than 10-12,000 Jews were gassed at Auschwitz each day. The

SS continued gassing operations at Auschwitz II (Birkenau) until November 1944. Over a 4-year

period, more than a million people were gassed to death at Auschwitz.

Children, the elderly, pregnant women and the disabled were told they were being sent to work, but

first needed to shower and be disinfected. The unsuspecting victims were taken as quietly as possible

down a flower-lined path to the crematorium which contained both gassing chambers and crematoria.

Elaborate deception was practiced, with buildings clearly marked “Bath and Disinfection.” These

“showers’” were realistically outfitted with shower heads and water pipes. Once inside, prisoners were

instructed in their own languages by members of the Sonderkommando to hang their clothes on

numbered hooks so that they could reclaim their possessions after “showering.” Sometimes, in order

to expedite the process, women were not separated from men, thus adding to the indignity of being

forced to disrobe in front of men. It was at this point that women’s heads were shaved. It was

essential that the prisoners who made up the Sonderkommando maintain a sense of calm and order to

ensure that the operation proceeded efficiently and smoothly. Having just arrived after a difficult

journey to the camp, some prisoners asked for food or water and were assured that after the shower

and de-lousing, their needs such as food and water would soon be supplied.

They were brought into the chambers for undressing. There were benches, and there were

hangers with numbers. Sometimes women would be separated from the men, but when there

was not time, they were put into those chambers together, and had to undress all together.

The SS men would warn them, ‘Please remember the number of your hanger for the clothes.

Tie both shoes well, and put your clothing in one pile, because they will be handed back to

you at the end of the showers.

They would ask for water. They were thirsty after the long journey in those sealed trucks.

They were told, ‘Hurry. Coffee is ready in the camp. The coffee will get cold.’ And similar

things to calm them, to mislead them.

- Yehuda Bakon, a deportee from Hungary, giving evidence at the

Eichmann trial in 1961.

Before entering the gas chamber, prisoners were forced to march between rows of police who

prodded them on with whips, sticks, and guns. Women went into the gas chambers first, along with

children; men followed last. The Jews were rammed in, one person per square foot. To keep the

prisoners calm, members of the prison’s Sonderkommando and a member of the SS would remain

inside the chamber with the prisoners until the last moment.

The SS doctors and other SS men did the actual killings by introducing the gas into the chambers.

The airtight door would now be quickly closed and the gas immediately discharged through vents in

the ceilings and down a shaft that led to the floor. Zyklon-B, a form of hydrogen cyanide previously

used as an insecticide, was the gas being used. It came in a pellet form and converted to lethal gas

when exposed to air. The gassing lasted from 10 - 30 minutes, depending on the facility. In Belzec,

according to an eyewitness, it took 32 minutes and “finally, all were dead,” he wrote, “like pillars of

basalt, still erect, not having any space to fall.” To make room for the next load, the bodies were

tossed out immediately and either taken to the crematoria or other methods of disposal.

It could be observed through the peephole that those standing nearest the vents were killed at

once. It can be said that about 1/3 died straight away. The remainder staggered and began

to scream and struggle for air. The screaming soon changed to the death rattle and in a few

minutes all lay still. After 20 minutes at the latest no movement could be discerned.

187

Johann Paul Kremer, an SS doctor at Auschwitz, was one of the defendants at the Auschwitz trial. All

SS physicians on duty in the camp took turns participating in the gassings. An avid diarist, Kremer

reports on September 2, 1942:

Was present for the first time at a special action at 3 a.m. By comparison Dante’s “Inferno”

seems almost a comedy. Auschwitz is justly called an extermination camp!

The purpose of modern technology was supposed to liberate society; without science and technology,

Auschwitz would not have been possible.

Slide 275

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Extermination: Artwork by David Olère, “Gassings”

Teacher Notes:

● Notice the bodies are already emaciated. Why?

● The container in the lower right is labeled Zyklon-B.

● Note the Jewish star at bottom right.

● What is the symbolism of the skulls just behind the wall on the right?

___________________________________________________________________________

When the Auschwitz victims filed into the gas chamber, they discovered that the imitation showers did

not work. Outside, a central switch was pulled to turn off the lights, and a Red Cross car drove up with

the Zyklon. An SS man, wearing a gas mask fitted with a special filter, lifted the glass shutter over the

lattice and emptied one can after another into the gas chamber. Although the lethal dose was one

milligram per kilogram of body weight and the effect was supposed to be rapid, dampness could retard

the speed with which the gas was spreading. … as the first pellets sublimated on the floor of the

chamber, the victims began to scream. To escape from the rising gas, the stronger knocked down the

weaker, stepping on prostrate victims in order to prolong their own lives by reaching gas-free layers of

air. The agony lasted for about two minutes, and as the shrieking subsided, the dying people slumped

over. Within fifteen minutes (sometimes five), everyone in the gas chamber was dead.

The gas was now allowed to escape and after about half an hour, the door was opened. The bodies

were found in tower-like heaps, some in sitting or half-sitting positions, children and older people at the

bottom. Where the gas had been introduced, there was an empty area from which the victims had

backed away, and pressed against the door were the bodies of men who in terror had tried to break

out. The corpses were pink in color, with green spots. Some had foam on the lips, other bled through

the nose. Excrement and urine covered some of the bodies, and in some pregnant women the birth

process had started. The Jewish work parties (Sonderkommandos), wearing gas masks, dragged out

the bodies near the door to clear a path and hosed down the dead, at the same time soaking the

pockets of poison gas remaining between the bodies. Then the Sonderkommandos had to pry the

corpses apart.

The Destruction of the European Jews by Raul Hilberg, p.248-249.

Slide 276

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Extermination: Quote from J.S. Toft & Sons

Both gas chambers and crematoria were built by German companies who knew exactly what they

were building - they even made a profit.

188

Slide 277

The Camps (Breaker Slide)

Slide 278

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Crematorium I

Cleaning the bodies and disposing of them was a huge job. At first the dead were buried in lime pits,

but the mass graves were soon packed to overflowing. The process later became more sophisticated.

Ovens were built for cremation.

Crematorium I, at Auschwitz I, was in use for only a short time before being converted into a bomb

shelter. It was at the edge of the camp, a small nondescript structure built into the ground. It remains

as it was, complete with gas chamber, iron body carts, and furnaces. It had undressing rooms and

gas chambers in which the air could be completely changed. The gas chamber at Crematorium I could

contain between 7-800 people. It did not have dummy shower fittings on the ceiling. The bodies were

taken to the ovens on the floor above by means of a lift. Notice in the background is the building used

by the Gestapo as a regional headquarters.

The name Sonderkommando was assigned to those groups of Jewish prisoners in the Nazi

extermination camps who were forced to work in the gas chambers and crematoria. The Jewish

inmates were rewarded with better food. Sonderkommando members helped prep the Jews who were

about to be gassed. They cut the women’s hair (sometimes doing this after the gassing). Others

removed the corpses from the gas chambers, removed gold teeth and fillings, searched body cavities

for hidden valuables and transferred the bodies to pits or to the crematoria. Some Sonderkommandos

cleaned the gas chambers, while others dealt with the victims’ personal possessions, sorting them and

readying them for shipment to Germany.

After a few months of such gruesome work and in an attempt to eliminate the possibility of revolt, the

Sonderkommando were themselves executed and replaced with new prisoners. Some committed

suicide. The Sonderkommando could not be transferred to another detachment, for no witnesses

were to be available to testify. Some managed to survive.

The bodies of Jews were burned in large ovens called crematoria. Crematorium I could cremate about

2,000 bodies in less than 24 hours.

The burning lasted about ½ hour. The stench given off by the crematoria contaminated the

surrounding countryside. At night, the red sky over Auschwitz could be seen for miles. Ashes and

bones from ovens of Auschwitz crematoria were crushed with wooden mortars, then buried in pits or

sunk in the Sola and Vistula Rivers or in ponds near Birkenau. They were also used as fill in the

terrain and as fertilizer for camp fields.

Some bodies were disposed of while the victim was still alive. Fourteen-year-old Shony Alex Braun

described his work for the special units that operated in the vicinity of the gas chambers:

My job for the Sonderkommando was to go around the camp and pick up dead or nearly dead

bodies, put them on a cart, and push them up to the crematories where another group of

people, Sonderkommandos, would take over and they would shove them into the oven. Some

of these people were far from being dead. They were just helpless, very ill or dehydrated,

they just didn’t have any more power even to stand. So they fell. On one occasion, I went to

the kapo (prisoner foreman) and I said, “This man is not dead!” I got such a terrible slap in the

face that I made a somersault. And he says, ‘You were not supposed to think or say anything!

Your job is to pick them up and put them on a cart and shove them up to the crematorium, just

as you were told.’

189

Slide 279

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Pictures of Crematorium I

Corpse caddies (wagons shown in picture on lower left) that ran on tracks were used to assist the

Sonderkommando in transporting the bodies to the ovens. Bodies were placed onto metal slides that

were then pushed like a drawer into the ovens.

Slide 280

The Camps (Breaker Slide)

Slide 281

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Crematorium II

Top Photos:

Taken by Nazi SS officer, 1943.

Photo Bottom Left:

Beyond the ruins of Crematorium II, notice the guard tower.

Photo Bottom Right:

The steps in foreground led to an underground undressing room. The gassing chamber is out of view

on the right in the distance and was also built underground.

____________________________________________________________________________

The first mass murder at Crematorium II occurred on March 13, 1943.

Crematorium II had 15 ovens located above a subterranean gas chamber that could contain a

maximum of 2,500. The gas chamber had false shower heads to deceive the victims. Because it took

a while for all victims to undress and enter the gas chamber, the first ones had time to inspect the

room. Sometimes those who had entered early became suspicious, panic broke out, and they were

brutally put down by armed SS men.

Elevators transported 10-15 corpses at a time from the gas chamber to the ovens one floor above.

The maximum oven capacity at any given moment was between 45-75 bodies. In one day, 2,000

bodies could be cremated.

190

Slide 282

The Camps (Breaker Slide)

Slide 283

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Crematorium III

Drawing top left:

Drawing by David Olére, 1946.

David Olére was a professional painter in France before being deported to Auschwitz II (Birkenau). He

was forced to work in the Sonderkommando unit. He also helped the SS-men by illustrating postcards

and working as a translator. These skills made him so valuable that he avoided being executed when

the Sonderkommando was to be replaced, which happened every 3-4 months. He is one of very few

to have survived the Sonderkommando.

Photo top right:

Taken by SS officer, 1943.

Photo bottom right:

Collapsed roof of Crematorium III, with the unloading ramp on the right. This structure was a mirror

image of Crematorium II, out of the photo to the right.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Crematorium III was a mirror image of Crematorium II.

A vast incineration room with 15 ovens took up most of the main floor of the building. A large

undressing room and the gas chamber were located underground.

191

Slide 284

The Camps (Breaker Slide)

Slide 285

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Crematorium IV

Photo Top:

Taken by Nazi SS officer, 1943.

Photo Bottom Left:

All that is left of Crematorium IV. It was burned by the Sonderkommando in their revolt of October,

1944 and subsequently dismantled by the SS before running from the advancing Soviet Army. The

room in the foreground is one of two gas chambers used here. In the background is the “little wood"

where Jews just off transports waited their turn for "special treatment," as the creators of the policy of

murder called it.

Photo Bottom Right:

One of the largest problems facing the murderers was what to do with the bodies. Gassing was no

problem, but the system was often overloaded by the sheer number of corpses, thus slowing the entire

process. Cremation, rather than burial, was their solution, but even then the ashes had to be disposed

of with some care. Into this pond were dumped the ashes of many tens of thousands of people, mostly

Jews, who were gassed at Crematorium IV, just behind and to the left. The "little wood" can be seen

behind the pond. In those days, a fence of interwoven branches blocked the waiting victims' view of

what lay ahead.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Crematoria IV and V were built above the ground to economize. They were planned as pure

extermination facilities from the very beginning and were much simpler in construction and function

than II and III. They were identical.

Each contained 4 gas chambers, 2 of which were rather large.

On October 7, 1944, the Sonderkommando unit that worked in Crematorium IV staged their own revolt

after learning that they were going to be killed. During the uprising, the prisoners killed three guards

and blew up the crematorium and adjacent gas chamber. The prisoners used explosives smuggled

into the camp by Jewish women who had been assigned to forced labor in a nearby armaments

factory. The Germans crushed the revolt and killed all of the prisoners involved in the rebellion. The

Jewish women who had smuggled the explosives into the camp were publicly hanged in early January

1945. Some of those involved in the revolt had authored diaries that were later found in the ruins of

the crematorium. The diaries described the daily anguish of being in constant contact with murder,

and begged the world to understand how the Sonderkommando prisoners had not willingly done their

jobs but had been forced by the Nazis to participate in the extermination process.

Gassing operations continued, however, until November 1944, at which time the SS, on orders from

Himmler, disabled the gas chambers that still functioned. The SS destroyed the remaining gassing

installations as Soviet forces approached in January 1945.

192

Slide 286

The Camps (Breaker Slide)

Slide 287

The Camps:

Auschwitz - Crematorium V

Photo top left:

Taken by a Nazi SS officer, 1934.

Photo top right:

One of only three photographs ever taken by prisoners at Auschwitz II (Birkenau) and successfully

smuggled out. This was taken in 1944 by a camp inmate assigned to one of the special prisoner

teams (sonderkommando) who were forced to work in the gas chamber/crematorium. This photo

shows prisoners burning naked corpses freshly removed from the gassing facility at Crematorium V.

This was the practice when the crematoria could not keep up with the volume of bodies.

Photo bottom left:

Note guard tower and fence in background, right of center.

Photo bottom right:

At the end of the war, the Nazis blew up the crematorium in an effort to destroy any evidence of their

crimes. Among the brick rubble are the iron reinforcements of the ovens which were made of brick.

Brick needs room to expand when it gets hot, but with so many ovens next to each other, the bricks

had little area to expand. The bricks sometimes cracked which compromised the structure of the

ovens. These iron reinforcements were added to keep the ovens intact.

_____________________________________________________________________________

The ovens at Auschwitz could cremate as many as 4,000 people a day - which by 1944 was not

enough to destroy the up to 10,000 Jewish victims of the camp each day. At that point the Nazis

began to burn the bodies in open pits. The pits had indentations at one end from which human fat

drained off. To keep the pits burning, the stokers poured oil, alcohol and large quantities of boiling

human fat over the bodies.

Slide 288

The Camps:

Artwork by Yehuda Bacon, “In Memory of the Czech Transport to the Gas Chambers”

A short time following his liberation from Auschwitz, 16-year-old Yehuda Bacon drew this portrait of his

father who perished in the death camp. Bacon conjures up the thin, exhausted face and blazing eyes

of his father, the disembodied face ascending from the smoke. The image of the father whose life was

ended in the furnaces of Auschwitz is reconstructed by the son who still remembers the father he was

recently separated from. In the lower section of the drawing, where we would expect to see his

father's body, we detect the crematoria and a body hanging off the barbed wire fence which

surrounded the camp. In the right-hand corner, the artist has added the date and time: 10.VII.44,

22:00 - marking the exact moment when his father perished.

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The Holocaust. Notes to accompany the PowerPoint (2007) - page 2