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Slide 289
The Camps (Breaker Slide)
Slide 290
The Camps:
The Value of Life
Photo Lower Right:
This photo was taken inside a huge glass case in the Auschwitz Museum.
Question to Consider:
How does it make you feel when you consider that all that is left of these lives…their dreams, their
parent’s dreams for them, their hopes for the future…is merely a pair of shoes or a ring?
______________________________________________________________________________
These camps were envisioned by ideologues, organized by bureaucrats, financed by industrialist,
serviced by technocrats, operated by ordinary men and supported by millions of Germans whose daily
lives were improved by the goods shipped home to the Reich for their use.
These shoes reflect life before arrival at the camps: there are men’s, women’s and children’s shoes;
hand-stitched shoes, as well as shoes custom made for the wealthy and those mass produced from
cheap leather for poorer people. These shoes look backward to a time before…to life in a ghetto, or
even to times of relative normality before the war. They symbolize a loss of connection to a person’s
identity and are a vivid and jarring reminder of the cataclysmic loss of self that occurred in the camps.
Slide 291
The Camps:
Calculation by the SS of Profit Value of Prisoners
Teacher Note:
In 1941, $1 = 2.5 Reichsmark
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Deprived of their belongings and standing naked before the gas chambers, the deportees,
unknowingly, still possessed value to the executioners. Women’s hair for example, could be sold for
50 pfennig (50 cents) to Bavarian factories which processed it into felt, used it for mattresses on
submarines, or wove it into slipper linings for these same crew men. At Auschwitz, as much as 5-10
kilos (12-25 pounds) were produced daily.
In addition, gold teeth, bridges and crowns were removed from corpses and melted down into molds
for shipment to the German Reich Bank.
Slide 292
The Camps:
Quote by Primo Levy Describing the Camps
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Slide 293
Resistance (Initial Breaker Slide)
Slide 294
Resistance:
Obstacles to Resistance
Due to the careful organization and overwhelming military might of the Nazi German state and its
supporters, few Jews and other Holocaust victims were able to resist. This was due, in part, to the
following obstacles:
1. Superior armed power of the Germans.
The possibility of resisting the Nazis was very slim, especially for mostly unarmed civilians with limited
access to weapons.
2. German tactic of “collective responsibility.”
The Germans vowed to hold entire families and communities responsible for individual acts of armed
and unarmed resistance. One of the most notorious single examples of German retaliation as
punishment for resistance involved the Bohemian mining village of Lidice and its 700 residents. After
Czech resistance fighters assassinated Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, the Nazis retaliated by
“liquidating” nearby Lidice, whose citizens were not involved in the assassination. The Germans shot
all men and older boys, deported women and children to concentration camps, razed the village to the
ground, and struck its name from the map.
3. Secrecy and deception of deportations.
Jews most often did not know where they were being sent. Nazis went so far as to force new arrivals
at Auschwitz to write postcards to relatives before they were gassed saying, “Arrived safely. I am
well.”
4. Family ties and responsibilities.
Any individual who considered escaping from a ghetto knew that such an action could mean death for
family members who remained behind. Because family members depended upon each other for
moral support as well as assistance in smuggling food, any decision to retaliate was often viewed as
abandonment by those left behind. Thus, many waited to resist until after they had seen the rest of
their families deported.
5. Absence of a non-Jewish population willing to help.
Even if individuals did escape from a Nazi ghetto or camp, they faced great difficulties finding hiding
places, food and sympathetic people to help them.
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Slide 295
Resistance (Breaker Slide)
Teacher Note:
In most Holocaust narratives, Jews are regrettably described as victims who were ruthlessly
murdered, with little knowledge of who they were as individuals or as a community. These German-
centered narratives routinely highlight Nazi persecution and destruction, without relating to the
perspective of how the Jews responded during the Holocaust. Hence, Jews under German
domination are depicted as either mere objects in the evolving drama of Nazi butchery, or worse, as
passive victims of Nazi persecution.
It is not surprising then that many students - both Jewish and non-Jewish - raise questions that imply
partial blame to the Jewish victims. For example, when relating to the response of German Jews prior
to the outbreak of World War II, students have asked why the Jews did not take the opportunity to flee
Nazi Germany. Likewise, when the almost exclusive depiction of Jewish reactions to German
persecution is that of armed resistance, this conveys a problematic message: “If the Jews who rose
up in arms were able to decipher the Nazi plans of total extermination, why didn’t others reach this
conclusion and respond accordingly?”
Both these queries imply that the victims could have taken an alternative course of action and that by
not doing so the victims were “wrong” or, even worse, might be somewhat responsible for their own
demise. These questions pose - perhaps unconsciously - a value-laden judgment that finds fault with
the Jewish victims, rather than creating empathy with their plight. This widespread depiction of Jews
as innocent but passive victims also prevents students from viewing them in a positive light: “Victims”
rarely serve as positive role models. There is a critical need, therefore, to present students with a
more contextualized presentation of how Jews perceived and vigorously responded to the evolving
persecution.
In discussing Jewish Resistance, the Jews should be presented as active agents who exhibited
resourcefulness and vitality within the limitations imposed by the tragedy and calamity they were
experiencing.
It is essential that students recognize that the Jews could not anticipate their fate. While our post-war
generation clearly knows that German anti-Jewish policy ended in systematic mass murder, this
historical awareness was not available to wartime Jews. In fact, it was nearly impossible for anyone to
believe that an advanced Western nation such as Germany could plan and implement the brutal
murder of millions of innocent men, women and children. Understanding the pre-Holocaust mindset is
critical in understanding the context of Jewish responses and demands that students suspend their
own historical hindsight.
While most Jews ultimately fell victim to the brutality that engulfed them, they did not, as a rule,
succumb to demoralization or moral collapse. Students should learn to appreciate and respect the
dignity and strength of both the victims and the survivors. In doing so, they will understand why, as
one resister reflected, the miracle was not that Jews could occasionally take up arms, but that such
diverse forms of resistance existed at all.
- Taken from the Teacher’s Guide to Daring to Resist: Jewish Defiance in the Holocaust, a
publication of the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
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Slide 296
Resistance:
Jewish Resistance
Resistance is often thought of in terms of armed resistance only. Equally important was the more
common, unarmed resistance.
Armed Resistance:
- espionage
- sabotage of the Nazi war effort
Unarmed Resistance:
- smuggling of food, clothing and weapons
- forging identity documents
- distributing anti-Nazi literature
- assisting in covert escape & rescue efforts
- underground radio programs
- clandestine prayer
- underground schools and libraries
- documenting the Holocaust
- cultural activities
At first, armed resistance was not the way Jews responded to Nazi oppression. Jews were more
practiced in the art of spiritual resistance. They initially attempted to thwart German intentions by
nonviolent means, stopping short of direct confrontation in which Jews would inevitably be over
powered. Later, it became clear that death could not be evaded by cooperation or negotiation. Armed
resistance was almost always an act of desperation when all hope was lost. When Jews fully
understood what the Nazis intended, the fighters were motivated to uphold Jewish honor and avenge
Jewish deaths.
The Nazis wanted to murder all the Jews of Europe and ban Jewish culture from the continent forever.
In this atmosphere, merely participating in Jewish rituals, reading Jewish religious books or speaking
Hebrew was a form of resistance. Thousands of other Jews chose more active ways of resisting such
as printing illegal newspapers, destroying records, stealing German army supplies, sabotaging trains
and factories, or blowing up bridges and roads. Thousands also took up arms and joined partisan
groups in the forests. Any kind of armed resistance or sabotage was extremely dangerous. One was
not only risking one’s own life, but the Nazis often took revenge by killing innocent civilians. Those
who took this course of action had a real dilemma. Doing severe damage to the German war machine
meant an even harsher response by the German military against innocent men, women and children.
Hannah Senesh and the Tzanchanim
In the summer of 1942, reports of the systematic extermination of Jews in Nazi-occupied countries
began to travel to the free world. When the shocking news reached Jewish settlers living in British-
occupied Palestine, many decided to attempt rescue missions. After considerable debate, the British
agreed to train volunteers as parachutist agents. These agents would be dropped behind enemy lines
in order to carry out specific missions. They were known as the Tzanchanim.
Because many of the Tzanchanim were natives of the target countries, they had the necessary
language skills and familiarity with the terrain to blend in with the citizens and perform the desired
duties. Some 250 men and women volunteered, 110 received training. Only 32 actually parachuted
in missions between 1943 and 1945. One of these was 23 year-old Hannah Senesh, a Hungarian
Jew who immigrated to Palestine in 1939. Senesh was one of five parachutists who was able to
penetrate into her target country.
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Senesh parachuted into Yugoslavia on March 13, 1944, determined to cross into Hungary to warn
Hungarian Jews about the extermination camps. Before crossing the border into Hungary on June 7,
1944, Senesh, a poet, handed a poem to one of her companions. It ended with these lines:
Blessed is the heart with strength to stop
its beating for honor’s sake
Blessed is the match consumed
in kindling flame.
Senesh was captured the next day in Nazi-occupied Hungary. After 5 months of imprisonment and
torture in a prison in Budapest, she was brought to trial and convicted of treason against Hungary.
Senesh was executed shortly before the city of Budapest fell to the advancing Soviet Army.
Today, Senesh is considered a national heroine in Israel, where her legacy symbolizes courage and
moral strength.
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Slide 297
Resistance (Breaker Slide)
Quote on Slide:
Philosophy professor Kurt Huber guided the “White Rose” Movement until they were discovered by the
Nazis.
He was eventually arrested. At his trial Huber concluded his defense with these words from 18th
century German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s disciple, Johann Gottlieb Fichte.
Kurt Huber was executed.
Slide 298
Resistance:
Non-Jewish Resistance
The White Rose
In June 1942, Hans Scholl, age 24, and Alexander Schmorell, age 25, both medical students at the
University of Munich, founded “The White Rose,” an opposition group established to resist the Nazis.
They were later joined by Hans’s 22-year-old sister Sophie, 24-year-old Christoph Probst, and others.
The members of The White Rose were outraged that educated Germans went along with Nazi
policies. They distributed anti-Nazi leaflets and painted slogans like “Freedom!” and “Down With
Hitler!” on walls of the University. The last White Rose leaflet, which the Scholls scattered in the
entrance hall of the University of Munich on February 18, 1943, aroused a particular stir. The leaflet
declared that “The day of reckoning has come, the reckoning of German youth with the most
abominable tyranny that our people have ever suffered.” The building janitor saw Hans and Sophie
distributing this flyer and reported them to the Gestapo. They, along with Christoph, were arrested.
Within days, all three were brought before the People’s Court in Berlin. On February 22, 1943, in a
trial that lasted only a few hours, they were convicted of treason and sentenced to death. Only hours
later, the court carried out that sentence by guillotine. All three faced their deaths bravely, Hans crying
out his last words, “Long live freedom!”
Later that same year, other members of the White Rose - Alexander Schmorell (age 25), Willi Graf
(age 25) and Kurt Huber (age 49) - were tried and executed. Most of the other students convicted for
their part in the group’s activities received prison sentences.
The Rosenstrasse Protest
In what has become known as the Rosenstrasse Protest, a group of non-Jewish Germans defied the
Third Reich and saved their spouses or “mischling” children from deportation through a weeklong,
non-violent protest.
Before dawn on Saturday, February 27, 1943, the Gestapo began a massive action to arrest and
deport the last Jews remaining in Berlin. Pulled from their jobs and homes or snatched off the streets,
these Jews were herded into trucks that took them to pre-designated assembly points. After the initial
collection, the Nazis weeded out one group selected to be housed at a separate location: Jews
married to non-Jews and children from the intermarriages (“mischling”). They were separated in an
attempt to mislead their families into believing that they would not suffer the same fate as the others.
As word spread that their spouses and children had been arrested, many Germans, mostly women,
rushed to the holding site at Rosenstrasse 2-4, a local Jewish community center. The crowd
demanded to speak to or see their loved ones. Determined to prevent their deportation, the protesters
yelled, chanted, or simply kept their presence on the street, even in the face of threatened gunfire. A
day of protest lengthened to a week and news of the demonstration spread throughout the country
and eventually to the international press.
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In an effort to alleviate this public relations nightmare and to prevent further protest, Joseph Goebbels
ordered the release of the prisoners on March 6, promising to resume deportations in a few weeks.
This declaration was only partially true. Though the roundup of Jews continued and Goebbels
declared Berlin “Jew free” in May 1943, intermarried Jews were permitted to remain with their families.
Goebbels even initiated the return of a group of 35 intermarried Jews who had previously been
deported to Auschwitz.
Jehovah’s Witnesses
Defied laws and practices that conflicted with their religious beliefs.
Refused the “Heil Hitler” salute.
Did not vote in elections.
Refused to join the army.
Ignored the ban on their activities and continued to meet and distribute their literature.
Six thousand Jehovah’s Witnesses were detained in prisons and camps. Because they refused to
escape or physically resist, camp officers and guards sought them as domestic servants. There was
no fear that witnesses would ever slash their throats as they shaved them.
Assassination Attempts on Hitler
There were many plots to assassinate Hitler during the war. The most serious attempt took place on
July 20, 1944 when it looked as though the tide was turning against the German army. The assassins
believed Hitler was leading “their Germany” to disaster. A bomb in a briefcase was left under the table
in a room where Hitler and his staff were having a conference. The briefcase had been moved from its
original location where it would have killed Hitler. Hitler escaped the bomb blast with minor injuries.
Hitler order the round-up of the men and women involved. Those who were taken into custody, who
had not committed suicide, were hanged in an especially cruel way and their death filmed for his
enjoyment.
Christian Opposition
The opposition of the Christian Church was very limited. Protestant churches, which represented
about 2/3 of the German population, were politically conservative and did not oppose the regime or its
persecution of political opponents, Jews and gypsies. The same was true of the Catholic Church.
However, some individual clergy and members of religious orders did speak out against Nazi German
policies and assisted Jews in fleeing the country. Karl Barth, Martin Niemoeller and Dietrich
Bonhoeffer opposed efforts to Nazify the Protestant Churches. They formed an alliance known as the
“Confessing Church” which was committed to a “conscientious struggle against…every use of force
and coercion of conscience in the Church.”
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Slide 299
Resistance (Breaker Slide)
Slide 300
Resistance:
Resistance in the Ghettos and the Camps
The Jews knew that their resistance would not stop the Germans, yet they still made the decision to
resist.
Resistance in the Ghettos
The deprivations of living in the ghettos and under the constant fear of Nazi terror made resistance
dangerous but not impossible. Between 1941 and 1943, underground resistance movements
developed in about 100 Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied eastern Europe. Acts of unarmed resistance
predominated, as Jewish ghetto activists did not usually take the risk of armed resistance against
overpowering military force until the last days and weeks before the destruction of the ghetto.
From the beginning of their confinement in the ghettos - when they could not begin even to imagine
the idea of gas chambers and crematoria - underground activists were focused on survival, not only
physical survival, but on standing up in defiance against their enemies’ goals of persecution,
degradation and dehumanization.
Jewish armed resistance…, when it came, did not spring from a sudden impulse; it was not an
act of personal courage on the part of a few individuals or organized groups: it was the
culmination of Jewish defiance, defiance that had existed from the advent of the ghetto.
- Vladka Meed, Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Fighter
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Perhaps the most famous ghetto uprising was the one that took place in the Warsaw Ghetto of Poland.
Between July and mid-September 1942, the Germans deported at least 300,000 Jews from the
Warsaw Ghetto. For the 60,000 Jews remaining in the Warsaw Ghetto, deportation seemed
inevitable. In response to the deportations, several Jewish underground organizations created an
armed self-defense unit known as the Jewish Fighting Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa;
ZOB). The Z.O.B., led by 23-year-old Mordecai Anielewicz, issued a proclamation calling for the
Jewish people to resist going to the railroad cars.
The Germans tried to resume mass deportations of Jews from Warsaw in January 1943. A group of
Jewish fighters infiltrated a column of Jews being forced to the Umschlagplatz (transfer point) and, at a
prearranged signal, broke ranks and fought their German escorts. Fighters used a small supply of
weapons that had been smuggled into the ghetto. After seizing 5,000-6,500 ghetto residents to be
deported, the Germans suspended further deportations. Encouraged by the apparent success of the
resistance, which they believed may have halted deportations, members of the ghetto population
began to construct subterranean bunkers and shelters in preparation for an uprising should the
Germans begin the final deportation of all remaining Jews in the ghetto.
The Germans intended to begin deporting the remaining Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto on April 19,
1943, the eve of Passover. When they entered the ghetto that morning, its streets were empty. The
renewal of deportations was the signal for an armed uprising within the ghetto. 750 fighters fought
about 2,000 heavily armed and well-trained Germans. Anielewicz and those with him were killed in an
attack on his command bunker, which fell to German forces on May 8.
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Ultimately the Germans set fire to or blew up buildings to force the Jews out of their bunkers. The
ghetto fighters were able to hold out for nearly a month, but on May 16, 1943, the revolt ended. Of the
more than 56,000 Jews captured, about 7,000 were shot, and the remainder were deported to killing
centers or concentration camps. A small number escaped through the sewer system and eventually
joined the Polish resistance fighters.
On May 16, 1943, SS General Juergen Stroop ordered the Great Synagogue on Tlomacki Street
destroyed to symbolize German victory.
The liquidation was only to have taken 3 days, but instead took nearly a month. The Warsaw ghetto
uprising was the largest, symbolically most important Jewish uprising, and the first urban uprising, in
German-occupied Europe.
Emanuel Ringelblum’s Oneg Shabbat Archives
The most comprehensive effort to document ghetto life was undertaken in Warsaw by a group of
several dozen writers, teachers, rabbis and historians led by Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum in a secret
operation code-named Oneg Shabbat (Joy of the Sabbath). They wrote diaries, collected documents,
commissioned papers, and preserved the posters and decrees that comprised the memory of the
doomed community. They had no illusions; their only hope was that the memory of the Warsaw
Ghetto would endure.
On the eve of destruction, when all seemed lost, the archive was placed in metal milk cans and metal
boxes and buried deep beneath the streets of Warsaw. One can was found in 1946. It is on display at
the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. A second can, on display at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum, was discovered on December 1, 1950. Scholars speak of a third milk can. Despite
repeated searches for this can and other metal containers, they remain buried.
After being discovered hiding on the “Aryan side” of Warsaw following the final destruction of the
Warsaw Ghetto, Ringelblum was shot by the Germans in March 1944.
Resistance in the Concentration and Death Camps
The atmosphere of total terror and isolation in the camps as well as the chronic starvation of most
prisoners severely inhibited the will of the prisoners and the possibilities of resistance. Barbed and
high voltage electrically wired fences and numerous guard towers left little hope of escape.
While the conditions of imprisonment made armed resistance extremely difficult, it was not impossible.
The most dramatic examples of armed resistance were revolts planned and carried out by organized
underground groups of Jewish inmates at Treblinka, Sobibor, and Auschwitz II (Birkenau). As was the
case with the ghetto revolts, these uprisings occurred with little hope of success against the superior
German forces. But, like the ghetto revolts, the Jewish prisoners realized their days were numbered
anyway.
Treblinka
By 1943, Treblinka’s work was nearly completed. The Jews of Poland were almost all dead.
Prisoners believed rightly that Treblinka would be demolished and themselves killed when the camp
went out of operation.
After learning of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt from new arrivals who smuggled in a few concealed
weapons, organizers decided their time had come. On August 2, 1943, the plan was put into action:
steal additional arms from the warehouse, eliminate the German and Ukrainian guards on duty, set the
camp on fire, destroy the extermination area, then help the remaining prisoners escape to the forest.
The camp underground, about 100 men, made careful plans for the uprising. A locksmith, called to
repair the lock on the SS arsenal, made a wax impression of the lock. Over several months, a copy of
the key was made. SS arms would be used to fight the SS.
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Approximately 800 prisoners joined in the uprising. Many were killed during the rebellion, including all
the resistance leaders. As many as 200 prisoners escaped to the neighboring forest, but only half
survived German efforts to recapture them.
A few months after the revolt, the Germans closed the camp, leveled it, and planted pine trees to hide
all traces of the mass murders. No Nazi records of the uprising have been found.
Slide 301
Resistance:
Map of Jewish Armed Resistance in Ghettos and Camps 1941-1944
Slide 302
Resistance:
Artwork by Arthur Szyk, “Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto”
In April 1945, the second anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Arthur Szyk created this tribute
to the fighters. He shows the diversity of the fighters, including a woman firing from the battlements
and an aged man bearing the Torah. The Jewish heroes are seen fighting under the Zionist flag.
Szyk’s image is one of defiance: the Jewish fighters, having killed an SS officer, hold aloft his order
from Himmler to murder all the Jew of the ghetto. The painting bears the dedication “Samson in the
ghetto,” a clear reference to Judges 16:30 that tells of a blinded Jewish hero who pulled down the
pillars supporting his enemy’s palace, killing himself and his peoples oppressors while crying out, “Let
me die with the Philistines!” Surrounding the entire image is Szyk’s curse upon the Germans: “To the
sons of Cain, be ye doomed forever and ever amen.”
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Slide 303
Resistance (Breaker Slide)
Quote on Slide:
The day before Hannah Senesh crossed into occupied Hungary, knowing of the risk she was taking,
she had handed a poem to one of her companions. It ended with these lines:
Blessed is the heart with the strength to stop its beating for honor’s sake. Blessed is the
match consumed in kindling flame.
Slide 304
Resistance:
Partisan Activity
Some of those who escaped from trains, ghettos and even concentration camps fled to the forests
where they joined underground movements - partisan fighters. The fighting groups could be found all
over occupied Europe and consisted of young men and women, mainly teenagers, who stole or
bought guns and attacked Germans whenever possible. Dense forests served as their protective
home.
Partisan groups were both Jewish refugees and nationals who shared the same goal of defeating the
Nazi invaders. In Yugoslavia, Russia, Bulgaria and Greece, Jews fought as equals alongside native
partisans. Some Polish partisan groups permitted Jews to join. Others hated Jews almost as much
as the Nazis did. Sometimes Jews formed their own partisan groups.
The Bielski Brigade
Young Jewish inhabitants of the Vilna Ghetto in occupied Lithuania escaped to the forests of Western
Belorussia and formed armed partisan units which engaged in operations against the Germans. A
unique partisan group known as the Bielski Brigade lived in the Belorussian forests. By 1944, the
Brigade had more than 1,200 Jewish members. Though the brigade did engage in armed combat, its
primary mission was to provide a safe haven for Jewish civilians who escaped to the forest. The
Bielski Brigade was essentially a small Jewish community residing in the forest with a synagogue, law
court, workshops, school and medical dispensary.
The Avengers
In the winter of 1941, a charismatic young poet named Abba Kovner formed a Jewish guerrilla group
in the Vilna Ghetto in Lithuania. They sneaked through the city’s sewers, blowing up German
transports and outposts with homemade bombs. After the war, Kovner and his Avengers hatched a
plan to poison 8,000 Nazis imprisoned at Stalag 13 in Nuremberg. By sneaking poison into a bakery
that made bread for the Nuremberg prisoners, the Avengers successfully poisoned approximately
2,238 Nazis. It was never clear just how many people were killed in the attack.
The most lethal chemical poisoning ever, outside of the Nazi gas chambers, appears to be the
arsenic poisoning of several thousand captive German SS soldiers in April 1946 by the Jewish
reprisal organization Nokmim (Avengers).
-America’s Achilles Heel
Slide 305
Resistance:
Maps of Jewish Partisan Activity in Eastern & Western Europe, 1942-1944
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Slide 306
The Final Stages of War (Initial Breaker Slide)
Slide 307
The Final Stages of War:
Map of Allied Invasions
Slide 308
The Final Stages of War (Breaker Slide)
Slide 309
The Final Stages of War:
Allied Invasion at Normandy, D-Day (June 6, 1944)
Teacher Notes:
● D-day is an official military term referring to the day chosen for the beginning of a military operation.
Because of the scale and importance of the Allied Invasion of Normandy, the term has become
synonymous with this event.
● The Free French Forces were French fighters in World War II who decided to continue fighting
against Axis forces after the surrender of France and subsequent German occupation. They were led
by General Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle was part of a small group of politicians who argued against
a negotiated surrender to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
_____________________________________________________________________________
In 1942, the U.S. and Britain began to discuss a large-scale invasion across the English Channel.
After two years of planning, Allied troops swarmed ashore June 6, 1944 in northern France in the
largest land, air and sea invasion in history. With the success of the Normandy invasion, the Allies
had secured a safe harbor for unloading troops and supplies for further advances into Europe.
Paris was liberated by American and Free French forces on August 25, 1944. Vichy officials fled to
Germany and French General Charles de Gaulle returned from exile in Great Britain as leader of Free
France. British forces swept into Belgium capturing Antwerp on September 4.
The Germans were not ready to give up. As a last attempt, Hitler sent troops into the Ardennes Forest
of France, trying to drive a wedge between American and British armies. The Battle of the Bulge was
the bloodiest battle of the war. It was over by January 16, 1945. There was no clear victor, but
Germany suffered severe losses. Hitler was in denial of his losses.
Slide 310
The Final Stags of War:
Artwork by Simon Jeruchim, “Invasion of Normandy”
Simon Jeruchim was born in 1929 in Montreuil, France. After hearing rumors of Jewish deportations,
his parents placed him and his two siblings in hiding. In 1942 his parents were arrested and
eventually sent to Auschwitz where they perished. Posing as a Catholic, Simon found refuge at the
home of a non-Jewish woman who was hiding other children. He met a schoolmaster who gave him a
sketchpad and watercolor set.
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Slide 311
The Final Stages of War (Breaker Slide)
Slide 312
The Final Stages of War:
The Allies Close In: Map of Soviet Advances
Supplies poured into the Soviet Union from Britain and the U.S. Soviet forces moved slowly forward
during the summer and fall of 1943. By late July 1944, Soviet troops had reached the outskirts of
Warsaw, Poland. Poland’s Home Army rose up against German forces in Warsaw on August 1,
without Soviet assistance. Stalin permitted the Germans to destroy the Home Army, fearing they
might have resisted his plans to set up a Communist government in Poland after the war. Soviet
forces then took Warsaw from the Germans in January 1945.
Soviet troops drove into Romania and Bulgaria. The Germans pulled out of Greece and Yugoslavia.
Vienna, Austria fell to the Soviets in April 1945. Soviet troops now occupied most of eastern Europe.
Slide 313
The Final Stages of War:
The Allies Close In: Map of the Allied Push to Central Germany 1942-1945
This map depicts the Allied advances from all sides, squeezing the German troops toward Berlin, the
capital of Germany. In the process, Allied troops were startled to find the evidence of Nazi atrocities -
the camps. The rumors of Nazi deeds were actually true. The camps they found were often evacuated
or destroyed, both to remove the prisoners, as well as to hide the evidence of wrongdoing. These
evacuations were known as death marches.
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Slide 314
The Final Stages of War (Breaker Slide)
Slide 315
The Final Stages of War:
Artwork by Ella Liebermann Shiber, “Death March”
As early as the autumn of 1942, German SS and police officials began to remove or conceal the
evidence of genocide and mass murder. Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka were dismantled and the sites
were plowed over and seeded with trees. The surviving prisoners at each of these killing centers were
either shot at the site or transferred to another location and shot there.
During 1942, to further conceal the evidence of mass murder, the Germans searched the territory of
the occupied Soviet Union to locate mass graves filled with the victims of the Einsatzgruppen
operations that occurred in 1941-42. Jewish forced laborers were deployed to dig up the bodies and
burn them.
By November of 1944, the Germans knew the war was lost. As the Allied armies closed in on the Nazi
concentration camps - the Soviets from the east, and the British, French and Americans from the west
- desperate SS officials tried frantically to evacuate the camps. They wanted no eyewitnesses
remaining when the camps were overrun. A concerted effort was made to conceal the crimes that had
been committed. The concentration camps were dismantled or abandoned. But Germany still needed
slave labor and more time to complete the “Final Solution.” In the dead of winter, prisoners were taken
first by train and then marched by foot toward the heartland of Germany. Thousands froze to death or
died as a result of Allied air attacks on German troops retreating into Germany. These became known
as the “death marches.” An estimated 100,000 Jews died during these “death marches.”
Hugo Gryn, a survivor of several death marches, later reflected:
For the Nazis, the destruction of the Jews had an unchanging function until the very end of the
war; it was the only thing about which they have never changed their policies. I have never
ceased to be amazed by the priority they gave it, even when everything was collapsing.
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen has described the death marches as the antithesis of deportations. This
dispersion sent the Jews off in various paths toward Germany, which on the brink of defeat was
receiving back the Jews it had once so proudly expelled.
There were 59 different marches from concentration camps during the final winter of Nazi domination,
some covering hundreds of miles. The largest death marches took place in the winter of 1944, when
the Soviet army began its liberation of Poland. The prisoners were given little or no food and water,
and hardly any time to rest or take care of bodily needs. Those who paused or fell behind were shot.
Many reached the end of their strength and collapsed. Many of those still alive after the evacuations
and death marches were incarcerated in concentration camps throughout central Germany (Bergen-
Belsen, Dachau, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen and Ravensbruck). Thousands died of
exposure, starvation and disease in these camps.
The marches often passed through German towns and villages. Gisela Teumann recalls:
We passed through some German town. We asked for food. At first they thought that we
were German refugees. The SS man who accompanied us shouted: ‘Don’t give them
anything to eat, it’s Jews they are.’ And so I got no food. German children began to throw
stones at us.
207
In early November 1944 the Auschwitz gas chambers were dismantled.
When the liberating Soviet army arrived at Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, only a few thousand ill
persons remained. Days earlier, on January 18, 1945, there was last minute mass murder, and then
the marches began for those able to walk into the German-held interior. Some 66,000 prisoners were
marched to Wodzislaw, where they were put on freight trains to Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald, Dachau,
and Mauthausen concentration camps. Almost one in four died en route. Thomas Buergenthal, at the
age of nine, was one of the youngest survivors of the Auschwitz death march. He recalled:
In January the liquidation of Auschwitz happened. They lined us all up. They came in to
announce that the camp was being liquidated. They gave us some food and began to march
us out of the camp. We were marched first for about 3 days to a town in Upper Silesia called
Gleiwitz. The three of us kids were together. The children’s camp group was put in front
when we first marched out. But in Poland, January is very cold. After about a 10-12 hour
walk we began to be very tired. The children began to fall back.
People from the back were pushing, that we weren’t going fast enough. And whoever sat
down was shot by guards at each side of the road.
The three of us developed a system of resting, which was to run up to the front, and then sort
of stop almost, until we reached the back. And by that time, we had rested, and then we could
run up again and we would stay warm. Suddenly in the evening they stopped the column and
asked for all the children to come forward, that they were going to put us on a farm. And we
wouldn’t have to march anymore. Well, we had had experience. And we didn’t go. All the
children from that group were taken away, and apparently shot. So we were the only three
that stayed.
In April and May 1945 the camps in Germany itself and the wandering columns of women and men
were finally liberated. Buchenwald was freed on April 11 by the Americans, Bergen-Belsen by the
British on April 15, Dachau and Mauthausen on April 29 and May 3, respectively, by the Americans.
Terezin on May 9 by the Soviets.
Slide 316
The Final Stages of War:
Photos of Death Marches
When, in the last days of the war, prisoners were evacuated on forced marches before the
approaching Allied armies and thousands of people saw the miserable skeletons dragging themselves
through their towns, with the SS beating and shooting those who faltered, the population's responses
ranged from hard indifference, even active participation in murder, to surreptitious kindness toward the
prisoners.
Slide 317
The Final Stages of War:
Photo of Civilians Viewing Deaths from Marches
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Slide 318
The Final Stages of War (Breaker Slide)
Slide 319
The Final Stages of War:
Liberation
Teacher Notes:
● In 2006, the date of January 27 was declared “International Holocaust Remembrance Day” by the
United Nations. This day marks the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops.
● This is once again a chance to discuss terminology with your students.
Liberation means to be set free. Indeed for the camp prisoners, they were free from the Nazi madmen
controlling their lives. But free to do what? To go where? Lives had to be repaired both physically and
mentally. Families had to be reunited and/or re-created. Would the survivors use this term to describe
what they experienced?
_________________________________________________________________________________
As we entered the camp, the living skeletons still able to walk crowded around us and, though
we wanted to drive farther into the place, the milling, pressing crowd would not let us. It is not
an exaggeration to say that almost every inmate was insane with hunger. Just the sight of an
American brought cheers, groans and shrieks. People crowded around to touch an American,
to touch the jeep, to kiss our arms - perhaps just to make sure that it was true. The people
who couldn’t walk crawled out toward our jeep. Those who couldn’t even crawl propped
themselves up on an elbow, and somehow through all their pain and suffering, revealed
through their eyes the gratitude, the joy they felt at the arrival of Americans.
- Captain J.D. Pletcher, 71st Division Headquarters
You can’t imagine how really pathetic it was to see these people walking with shallow faces,
their eyes sunk in. They were just beaten human beings - they were destroyed and no
amount of food or anything like that was going to bring them out of it. It was going to take love
and understanding to make them human beings again. But they looked so gruesome. People
can’t imagine what it was like to see people who were actually nothing but skin and bones.
You can’t imagine a human being starving other human beings so badly they would get in that
condition.
- Anonymous soldier of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, liberation of Dachau
But here, on this day in April in 1945, I was going to have the shock of my life because, you
see, I was going to go through the gates of Buchenwald and I was totally unprepared for that
experience. I knew something had happened to me. I was not the same anymore. I had
changed. I came into that camp thinking and feeling one way. I was an angry young black
soldier. Angry at my country for what it was doing to me: making me fight and die, and then
telling me at the same time that I’m not good enough. So, I was angry, yes! But after I came
into Buchenwald and I saw what I saw, things changed. My blinders came off. My tunnel
vision dissipated. I could see more clearly now. I recognized that human suffering is not just
left to me and mine. Human suffering can touch all of us. And I also came to the realization
that on this day in April 1945, I had seen the face of evil. I had come to know that racism is
evil. When any group of people can get so powerful that they can control other people and
dictate terms of life and death, that’s evil. And the Nazis thought that they were super men;
they were superior to others. They were the ‘Aryan race.’ And now I recognize racism and
what happens when it is carried to the ultimate. And so I knew somehow that I had to fight it.
- Leon Bass, nineteen-year-old African American soldier
209
The Allied soldiers who entered the concentration camps did so as liberators. In every camp that they
reached in April and May 1945 they found as many prisoners dead as alive. Sometimes they reached
a camp while killings were still taking place.
The first camps were liberated by the Soviet Army as they invaded German-occupied territory from the
east.
On July 23, 1944, Soviet troops liberated Majdanek, just outside the Polish city of Lublin. The
Germans had left with no time to destroy the evidence of their crimes. Upon entering the camps, the
soldiers were shocked by what they saw. They found few prisoners, but ample evidence, including
800,000 pairs of shoes.
The West was not prepared for what they saw. The first British reporter to visit Majdanek had his story
spiked as “a propaganda stunt.” In the U.S., the editors of Christian Century found the parallels
between Majdanek “and the ‘corpse factory’ atrocity tales of the First World War … too striking to be
overlooked.”
The Soviet capture of Majdanek was viewed as a propaganda disaster for Hitler. The Nazis raced to
eliminate the evidence of what they had done in other camps. Documents were burned. The
Sonderkommando (prisoners who disposed of corpses, tended the crematoria and emptied the gas
chambers) were executed and when possible, facilities were destroyed.
SS leader Heinrich Himmler ordered the destruction of the killing facilities at Auschwitz II (Birkenau) in
November 1944.
Roman Karman, a well-known Soviet correspondent, filed this report on August 21, 1944:
In the course of my travels into liberated territory I have never seen a more abominable sight
than Majdanek near Lublin, Hitler’s notorious extermination camp, where more than a half a
million European men, women, and children were massacred … This is not a concentration
camp; it is a gigantic murder plant.
During the summer of 1944, Soviet forces overran the sites of the Belzec, Sobibor, and
Treblinka.
These killing centers had been closed a year earlier when the annihilation of Polish Jews was virtually
complete. The SS had dismantled these camps and turned them into farms. Soldiers found bones
protruding from the ground.
In late 1944, the first major concentration camp to be overrun and liberated by British and
American troops was Natzweiler (near Strassburg, France).
On January 27, 1945, the Soviets liberated Auschwitz, but the SS had already forced the majority
of its prisoners on death marches into the German interior. At Auschwitz III (Monowitz) they found 600
sick prisoners from the I.G. Farben plant. In the main camp, 1,200 prisoners had been too ill to join
the 60,000 sent on the death march to the west. At Auschwitz II (Birkenau), 5,800 inmates remained.
Hoping to avoid the propaganda disaster that followed the discoveries at Majdanek, the Nazis had
dismantled the gas chambers, blown up the crematoria, and burned 32 storage huts to the ground.
The Soviet troops still found 348,820 men’s suits, 836,255 women’s coats, tens of thousands of pairs
of shoes, more than 7 tons of human hair, huge quantities of toothbrushes, shaving brushes, glasses,
crutches, false teeth and even 13,964 rugs.
Among the survivors was Anne Frank’s father, Otto Frank.
210
In April-May 1945, British troops overran and liberated Bergen-Belsen (Germany) and
Neuengamme (Germany).
Neither a death camp nor even a concentration or labor camp, Bergen-Belsen was a “convalescent”
camp. Prisoners too weak to work were transported there in large numbers in February and March
1945 in hopes they would regain strength and thus boost the free labor force. By that time the camp
administration was breaking down. The water supply was no longer sufficient and the food was a
watery soup with rotten vegetables. By April 15 there was no food at all to feed 60,000 people who
were dying of starvation and typhus. Thousands of bodies lay unburied and rotting in the sun. The
uncontrollable typhus epidemic was so lethal that the camp had to be burned.
Prior to liberation 37,000 died. After liberation another 14,000 died, despite the efforts of a British
medical team. Most of the inmates were Jewish.
Former inmates were moved to a school 2 miles down the road, which became the site of a displaced-
persons camp. The British colonel in charge of medical efforts marched the local civilians through the
camp to show them the horror at their doorstep. Speaking to them he said:
You must realize that according to those wretched victims who experienced other camps, this
camp was in some respects one of the better ones. Chiefly because in this camp it was
possible in most cases, though not in all, to die fairly quietly from hunger or typhus. In certain
other camps, the inmates were done to death and hurled into massive graves, sometimes
before they were dead…
Also in April and May of 1945, Soviet troops encountered Sachsenhausen (Germany),
Ravensbruck (Germany), and Theresienstadt (Czechoslovakia).
U.S. troops came upon and liberated Buchenwald (Germany), Dachau (Germany), Flossenburg
(Germany), and Mauthausen (Austria).
American troops entered Buchenwald on April 11, 1945. The SS had left hours earlier, so inmates
had taken over the camp when the Americans entered. Days before, 25,000 prisoners had been
taken out of the camp…many did not survive. The prisoners who were still alive were living skeletons.
Those left alive were remnants of human beings, so sick, so starved and weak, they could not even
survive being free. “Many died from sheer joy,” reported a witness. “They had lived on hope, on fear
and on their sheer nerves for so long that the sudden relaxation, when it came, was too much for
them.”
American troops approached Dachau on April 29, 1945. Realizing the camp was still guarded by the
SS, the troops were fearful. As they chanced upon train boxcars filled with dead bodies, the fear
turned to hatred. As one soldier recalled:
Control was gone after the sights we saw, and the men were deliberately wounding guards
that were available and then turned them over to prisoners and allowed them to take their
revenge on them.
The last of the camps encountered by the Americans were Mauthausen and Gusen on May 5-6, 1945.
Several days later, the war was over.
Survivors had mixed reactions to their new-found freedom. While a few looked forward to being
reunited with other family members, some felt guilty for surviving when so many of their relatives and
friends had died.
For the great part of the liberated Jews of Bergen-Belsen, there was no ecstasy, no joy at our
liberation. We had lost our families, our homes. We had no place to go, nobody to hug,
nobody who was waiting for us, anywhere. We had been liberated from death and from the
fear of death, but we were not free from the fear of living.
- Hadassah Rosensaft, a survivor who organized medical efforts at Bergen-Belsen
211
As Jews, the survivors had no place in society. As human beings, they returned to nothing. Of the
200,000 Jews liberated from the camps, roughly ¾ returned to their own countries. Survivors came
home to find that their loved ones would never join them and that the Jewish community itself had
been destroyed. Nothing they had left in their homes was to be found, and little that had been
entrusted to friends and neighbors was recovered. They were greeted with hostility by their neighbors,
many of whom had profited from looted Jewish property.
It fell to the survivors to recreate a material and moral universe in which they could live once again.
Slide 320
The Final Stages of War:
Liberation Photos - Conditions
Slide 321
The Final Stages of War:
Liberation Photos - Food & Medicine
Allied troops, physicians and relief workers tried to provide nourishment for the surviving prisoners.
They were fed, but they had been starved for so long that some of them could not eat anymore.
Hundreds died from the first food given to them. Their feeble beaten bodies could not deal with such
“richness” as powdered milk, sugar, salt, oatmeal and canned meat. Doctors reported that the
average prisoner weighed between 60-80 pounds. They had lost 50-60% of their body weight and
inches off their normal height. In the areas freed by the Americans, French and British, 60,000 Jews
were found alive. Within one week, 20,000 had died. In Bergen-Belsen alone, the death count was
500 each day.
Slide 322
The Final Stages of War:
Liberation Photos - Witness to the Atrocities
The sight of the emaciated corpses at Ohrdruf created a wave of revulsion that spread back to Great
Britain and the U.S.
I saw Eisenhower go to the opposite end of the road and vomit. From a distance I saw Patton
bend over, holding his head with one hand and his abdomen with the other. And I soon
became ill. I suggested to General Eisenhower that cables be sent immediately to President
Roosevelt, Churchill and de Gaulle, urging people to come and see for themselves. The
general nodded.
- Lewis H. Weinstein, Lieutenant Colonel and Chief of the Liaison
Section of General Eisenhower’s staff, April 1945.
Eisenhower was so shocked that he at once telephoned Churchill to describe what he had seen. He
then sent photographs of the scene to Churchill, who circulated them to each member of the British
Cabinet and arranged for a delegation of British members of Parliament to be flown to Germany to
witness the sight first hand.
I have never felt able to describe my emotional reaction when I first came face-to-face with the
indisputable evidence of Nazi brutality and ruthless disregard of every shred of decency … I
visited every nook and cranny of the camp because I felt it my duty to be in a position from
then on to testify firsthand about these things in case there ever grew up at home the belief or
assumption that the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda.
- General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Forces, Europe,
In a letter to Chief of Staff George Marshall, April 12, 1945
212
U.S. Congressman were flown to Dachau to witness the atrocities. In addition, local German civilians
were forced to confront the horrors that occurred in their “backyards.” In some cases, civilians as well
as Nazi officials were forced to assist in the removal and disposal of thousands of corpses.
213
Slide 323
The Final Stages of War (Breaker Slide)
Slide 324
The Final Stages of War:
Yalta (Crimea) Conference / February 4-11, 1945
Photo of F.D.R & Churchill:
Just think of the power these two leaders had at that moment…carving up Europe as if it was a piece
of pie. Roosevelt was obviously suffering from congestive heart failure and some critics say that he
wasn't thinking clearly at the conference. Perhaps he knew that he was going to have to pacify Stalin
by giving him Poland and all the other countries that he demanded. At this point, Roosevelt was afraid
that the U.S. military would need the help of the Soviet Union in fighting the Japanese in the Pacific.
_____________________________________________________________________________
The Yalta Conference took place at Yalta, a famous Black Sea resort in the Crimea from February 4-
11, 1945.
Great Britain (Prime Minister Winston Churchill), the U.S. (President Franklin D. Roosevelt) and the
Soviet Union (Premier Joseph Stalin) participated. France was absent.
Allied forces had pushed Nazi Germany to the brink of collapse, and all sides recognized that the end
of the war was imminent. Roosevelt hoped to use the conference not only as a planning meeting for
the postwar period, but also as a forum to establish a warmer personal relationship with Stalin.
Although weakened by a deteriorating heart condition that took his life two months later, Roosevelt
believed he could use his charm and skills of persuasion to win Stalin’s confidence in American
goodwill, thereby ensuring a peaceful postwar world order.
Stalin drove a hard bargain at Yalta. Roosevelt’s physical weakness as a dying man and Churchill’s
political weakness left Stalin in the strongest bargaining position of the three. The fact that Soviet
forces had numerical superiority over their American and British allies on the continent of Europe
further strengthened Stalin’s hand.
Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin agreed on several points:
1. The priority would be the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. This policy had
previously been adopted at the Casablanca Conference.
2. After the war, Germany and Austria would be split into four zones that would be occupied
by Great Britain, the U.S., the Soviet Union and France. Berlin and Vienna (the capitals)
would be shared by all four powers.
3. Germany would undergo demilitarization and de-nazification. Germany was to have its
industrial base rebuilt, but its armaments industries were to be abolished.
4. Nazi war criminals would be brought to trial.
5. The Allies would help the freed peoples of Europe set up democratic and self-governing
countries by helping them to (a) maintain law and order; (b) carry out emergency relief
measures; (c) set up governments; and (d) hold elections.
6. The most troublesome issue was the fate of Eastern European countries that Germany had
conquered during the war. The Soviet army currently occupied most of the territory, making it
difficult for Churchill and Roosevelt to bargain with Stalin on this point. It was agreed that
interim governments in these countries would give way to democratically elected regimes as
soon as practicable.
214
7. The new eastern border of Poland would follow the Curzon Line, giving the Soviet Union
about 1/3 of pre-war Poland. Poland would be given unspecified German territory in the north
and west as well as a new, freely elected, democratic Polish government. This excluded the
Polish government-in-exile that had evacuated in 1939.
8. A new world peace organization, the United Nations, should be set up to replace the failed
League of Nations.
At Yalta, Roosevelt sought Stalin’s approval of the U.N. Charter, which had already been
drafted. Stalin had previously insisted on representation for each of the 16 Soviet Republics in
the General Assembly as well as permanent members of the Security Council having veto
power on all issues, not just those involving sanctions or threats to peace. Stalin agreed to 3
seats for the Soviet Union in the General Assembly and a limited veto power.
The Conference asked China and France to join them in sponsoring the founding conference
of the United Nations that was to be held in San Francisco on April 25, 1945.
9. The Soviet Union agreed to enter the war against Japan in exchange for control of the Kuril
Islands, the southern half of Sakhalin Island and two strategic ports. These islands are north
of Japan, off the eastern coast of Russia.
Roosevelt came to Yalta seeking early Soviet participation in the war against Japan. He
promised Stalin the return of territories lost following the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. Stalin
agreed to declare war on Japan, but required a waiting period of 90 days after the surrender of
Germany. With the surrender of Japan in August 1945, the Soviet Union did obtain the
promised territories even though they only contributed minimal effort.
10. A commission would be set up to look into reparations.
The Yalta conference is often cited as the beginning of the “Cold War.” Contrary to Roosevelt’s
hopes, the conference failed to establish a spirit of trust between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
Relations between the two steadily deteriorated and the “Cold War” developed between the two rival
superpowers. The Yalta conference became a major point of friction with Americans charging that
Stalin violated several points of the Agreement. Although Stalin had agreed to support freely elected
democratic governments in the liberated territories, he broke his pledge and suppressed democratic
movements across Eastern Europe. Roosevelt’s critics accused the Roosevelt administration of
having capitulated to Stalin’s demands at Yalta.
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Slide 325
The Final Stages of War (Breaker Slide)
Slide 326
The Final Stages of War:
Hitler’s Last Days
The Allies began their final assault on Germany in early 1945. Hitler ordered his soldiers to fight to the
death, but large numbers of German soldiers surrendered each day. Hitler Youth, as young as 12,
were recruited as a last resort to defend the streets of Berlin. In the midst of the ceremony with the
Hitler Youth shown in the photo above, Hitler was noted to have unexplained physical tremors.
I had the image of a very strong vital person with charisma, but what I saw was a sick old
man. His right arm was injured by the attempt (assassination attempt) on his life and his
figure had changed. His head was sunk into his shoulders. His left hand was very week and
his left foot dragged behind him. The eyes were pale and without expression any more.
- Major Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven, Aide to army chiefs, housed Hitler’s bunker
By April 25, 1945, the German capital of Berlin was encircled by Allied troops. Adolf Hitler and his
closest aides retreated to the shelter of the underground bunker located beneath the Chancellery
building in Berlin. Unwilling to concede defeat, Hitler commanded his forces to fight to the last man.
Hitler declared that he had decided to stay in Berlin, lead its defense, and then at the last
moment shoot himself … for he could not run the risk of falling into enemy hands. We all
attempted to bring him over from this decision … His answer was that everything was falling to
pieces anyway, and
that he could do no more.
- Alfred Jodl, Chief of Staff of the German Armed Forces
Most of the top Nazi leaders had no wish to share Hitler’s fate. They left their Führer in his
underground refuge and began to make their own plans for survival.
In his final days, Hitler split the offices of Chancellor and President, both of which he had held since
the death of Hindenburg. According to his Last Will and Testament, Joseph Goebbels was appointed
Chancellor and Admiral Karl Doenitz was appointed President without the title of führer. Goebbels
was Chancellor of Germany for only one day. Goebbels was instructed to leave Berlin in order to lead
the government in exile. For the first time, Goebbels disobeyed a command and remained in the
bunker with his family, later to commit suicide together. Doenitz became the last ruler of Nazi
Germany for a little over a week.
In those last days, the bunker in Berlin housed nearly 50 people who attempted to coordinate the
defense of Berlin and sustain the Nazi government. Included in the group in the bunker was Hitler’s
mistress, Eva Braun. To fulfill Braun’s dearest wish, Hitler consented to marry her before they
committed suicide. They wed on April 29, 1945 in the bunker. Hitler then retired to his office to dictate
his Last Will and Testament. He ended his testament with the following advice for future leaders of
Germany:
Above all I charge the leaders of the nation and those under them to scrupulous observance
of the laws of race and to merciless opposition to the universal poison of all peoples,
International Jewry.
On the following day, April 30, 1945, Hitler and Braun committed suicide. Eva apparently took poison
and Hitler shot himself. According to his wishes, their bodies were taken into the Chancellery garden
and burned.
216
Hitler himself was perfectly consistent. He began his political career with an expression of his view
that the central problem facing the world was the removal of the Jews. The day he committed suicide
he wrote;
Centuries will pass away, but out of the ruins of our towns and monuments the hatred against
those finally responsible, whom we have to thank for everything, international Jewry and its
helpers, will grow…I left no one in doubt that this time…the real criminal would have to atone
for his guilt, even if by more humane means…Above all I command the leadership of the
nation and the followers to observe punctiliously the racial laws and to show unrelenting
resistance to the poison of all the nations of the world, international Jewry.
Nazism ended the way it began - by attacking Jews.
Slide 327
The Final Stages of War (Breaker Slide)
Slide 328
The Final Stages of War:
The Fall of Berlin (May 2, 1945)
Hitler was briefly encouraged by Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1945, but that was only short-lived.
The Soviet advance toward Berlin began on April 16. The U.S. army captured Nuremberg, the site of
Nazi party rallies in the 1930’s on April 20. Four days later, Soviet armies closed a ring around Berlin.
The next day the Soviets and the Americans made contact on the Elbe River and Germany was split
into two parts which ultimately delineated the division that became known as East and West Germany.
German forces surrendered to the Soviets on May 2, 1945.
The fall of Berlin marked the end of World War II in Europe.
We Americans, after being attacked by the Japanese and having received a declaration of war
from Hitler, had fought to defend our land and our belief in human rights, not to glorify an all-
powerful leader or subjugate others. Our president was the servant of our country, not the
other way around. When Roosevelt died, we were shocked and sad, but our values were
intact. When Hitler was gone and, with him, any chance of victory, Germans had nothing left
to fight for. The object of their oath was gone and nothing took its place. There were no
humanistic ideals, no defense of the rights of man, no definition of nobility or honor, only blind
obedience. It was as though Goethe, Beethoven, Brahms, Schiller, Luther, and the
great German philosophers had never existed. The only goals of Nazis had been to make
slaves of their neighbors and to advance in their own hierarchy. When their enemies defeated
them, Germans were made to confront the stupidity of Nazi delusions and the perversity of
their crimes, survey their utterly destroyed cities, and long for the imprisoned men to come
home.
- Richard W. Sonnenfeldt, Witness to Nuremberg
217
Slide 329
The Final Stages of War (Breaker Slide)
Slide 330
The Final Stages of War:
Surrender in the West (May 8, 1945)
On May 8, 1945, the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces (Wehrmacht) was signed by
Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel in Berlin, ending World War II for Germany. The German people were
suddenly confronted by a situation never before experienced in their history: the entire German
territory was occupied by foreign armies, cities and infrastructure were largely reduced to rubble, the
country was flooded with millions of refugees from the east, and large portions of the population were
suffering from hunger and the loss of their homes. The nation-state founded by Otto von Bismarck in
1871 lay in ruins.
May 4:
German forces in Holland, Denmark, and northwest Germany surrendered to British Field Marshall
Montgomery.
May 6:
After Hitler’s death, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz (now Reich President without the title of führer) had no
course open to him other than surrender. Doenitz authorized General Jodl to “conclude an armistice
agreement” with General Eisenhower. The Germans wanted a separate peace with Allied troops in
the West in order to continue their battle with the Soviets in the East. Eisenhower refused.
May 7:
At Eisenhower’s headquarters in the French city of Reims, the first “Act of Military Surrender” was
signed by General Alfred Jodl, Chief of the Operations Staff in the German High Command, as the
representative for the new Reich President, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz.
This “Act of Surrender” applied to all military forces on land, at sea, and in the air who were at that
point in time under the control of the German High Command. Pursuant to this “Act of Surrender,” the
German High Command issued orders to all forces under its command to cease active operations on
May 8, 1945. Thus, this Act of Surrender legalized unconditional surrender of all armed forces under
German control, officially ending combat in Europe.
The Soviet Union’s only representative in Reims was General Ivan Susloparov, the Military Liaison
Mission Commander. General Susloparov's scope of authority was not entirely clear, and he had no
means of immediate contact with the Kremlin, but nevertheless decided to risk signing for the Soviet
side. Stalin was displeased by these events. He believed that the German surrender should have
been accepted only by the envoy of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Command, and insisted the Reims protocol
be considered preliminary, with the main ceremony to be held in Berlin.
May 8:
The cessation of fighting took effect at 11:01 P.M.
The second “Act of Military Surrender” was signed shortly before midnight in Berlin. The German
command representatives, headed by Wilhelm Keitel, signed the final “German Act of Unconditional
Surrender,” explicitly surrendering to Soviet forces.
V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day)
After 6 catastrophic years, the war was over in Europe but not yet in the Pacific.
218
August 6:
First atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.
August 9:
Second atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
August 14:
Japanese agree to unconditional surrender.
September 2:
Japanese signs the surrender agreement.
V-J (Victory over Japan) Day. World War II is over.
219
Slide 331
The Final Stages of War (Breaker Slide)
Slide 332
The Final Stages of War:
Allied Occupation & Denazification
Allied Occupation of Germany & Austria:
The German people were suddenly confronted by a situation never before experienced in their history:
the entire German territory was occupied by foreign armies, cities and infrastructure were largely
reduced to rubble, the country was flooded with millions of refugees from the east, and large portions
of the population were suffering from hunger and the loss of their homes. The nation-state founded by
Otto von Bismarck in 1871 lay in ruins.
The total breakdown of civil administration throughout Germany required immediate measures to
ensure the rebuilding of civil authority. After deposing Admiral (Führer) Karl Doenitz, Hitler's
successor as head of state, and his government, the Allies issued a unilateral declaration on June 5,
1945 that proclaimed their supreme authority over German territory. The Allies would govern
Germany and Austria through four occupation zones, one for each of the Four Powers: the United
States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. These zones of occupation had been decided at a
series of conferences and were finalized at the Yalta Conference. The boundaries of these zones
generally followed the borders of the former German States.
Each occupation power assumed rule in its zone by June 1945. The powers originally pursued a
common German policy, focused on denazification and demilitarization in preparation for the
restoration of a democratic German nation-state.
The zones were governed by the Allied Control Council (ACC), consisting of the four supreme
commanders of the Allied Forces. The ACC's decisions were to be unanimous, but as circumstances
will have it, occupation policies soon varied.
The French, for instance, vetoed the establishment of a central German administration, a decision that
furthered the country's eventual division. Because they had not participated in the Potsdam
Conference, the French did not feel bound to the conference's decision that the country would remain
an economic unit. Instead, the French sought to extract as much as they could from Germany and
even annexed the Saar area for a time.
The Soviet occupiers likewise sought to recover as much as possible from Germany as compensation
for the losses their country had sustained during the war. Unlike the French, however, they sought to
influence Germany as a whole and hoped to hold an expanded area of influence. In their own zone,
the Soviet authorities quickly moved toward establishing a socialist society like their own.
The United States had the greatest interest in denazification and in the establishment of a liberal
democratic system. Early plans, such as the Morgenthau Plan to keep Germans poor by basing their
economy on agriculture, were dropped as the Soviet Union came to be seen as a threat and Germany
as a potential ally.
Britain had the least ambitious plans for its zone. However, British authorities soon realized that
unless Germany became economically self-sufficient, British taxpayers would bear the expense of
feeding its population. To facilitate German economic self-sufficiency, U.S. and British occupation
policies soon merged, and by the beginning of 1947 their zones had been joined into one economic
area--the Bizone.
Ultimately the three western zones merged to form the Federal Republic of Germany when that state
was declared in May 1949, and the Soviet zone emerged as the German Democratic Republic in
October 1949.
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Denazification:
The program of denazification was launched after the end of the Second World War and solidified by
the Potsdam Agreement. At its high point, the Nazi party had 8 million members. After the war, any
remnants of the Nazi regime were to be removed from German society, culture, press, economy,
judiciary and politics. Denazification also referred to the removal of the physical symbols of the Nazi
regime as seen in the photo above.
Though all the occupying forces had agreed on the initiative, the methods used for denazification and
the intensity with which they were applied differed between the occupation zones. The American and
British only weakly enforced the denazification. With the economy in chaos, millions homeless,
refugees overflowing, the Allies felt the only way the country could rebuild was by using the skills and
talents of former Nazi leaders. Only 170,000 people were tried for wartime activities and most
received only minor punishment.
In practice, denazification was not limited to Germany and Austria. In every European country with a
vigorous Nazi or Fascist party (such as France, the Netherlands or Norway), effective measures of
denazification were carried out.
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Slide 333
The Aftermath (Initial Breaker Slide)
Slide 334
The Aftermath:
Jewish Losses
Teacher Notes:
● What country had the greatest number of Jews killed? (Poland)
● What country had the highest percentage of Jews killed? (Lithuania)
The citizens of Lithuania actively participated in the killing of Jews. Lithuania had a very vibrant,
scholarly Jewish population who were killed, in many instances, by their fellow citizens. In Eishyshok,
Lithuania, the town’s 3000 Jews were murdered in 2 days with the help of their neighbors.
________________________________________________________________________________
When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Jews lived in every country of Europe. A total of
roughly 9 million Jews lived in the 21 countries that would be occupied by Germany during World War
II. By the end of the war, almost 2 out of every three of these Jews were dead, and European Jewish
life was changed forever.
Holocaust statistics include wide margin of error because:
● Not all victims were registered.
● Countless records that did exist were destroyed by the Nazis, or lost, burned or damaged in
military actions.
● Records often contain fragmentary information, failing to include, for example, the victim’s
ethnic, national, or religious affiliation.
In addition, one should critically examine any statistics presented because:
● Different scholars have used different base dates for computing their figures, a situation
that results in statistical differences due to the changing national borders of the
Holocaust period.
● Figures for victims of a given country usually include not only citizens but also resident
aliens and stateless refugees.
● Scholars have sometimes wrongly equated data about the arrests of various victims with
fatalities, particularly in the case of non-Jewish victims.
Albania (See slide #206)
On the eve of World War II there were about 600 Jews in Albania, of whom 400 were refugees from
Germany and Austria. There was no discrimination of Jews in Albania until September 1943 when
Albania came under German control. 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
except for one family of 6 that had only 1 survivor.
Austria (See slide #116)
At the time of the Anschluss, March 13, 1938, 185,000 Jews lived in Austria. Thousands fled after the
Anschluss and subsequent Kristallnacht pogrom. After this, most of the Jews were concentrated in
Vienna. Approximately 50,000 Austrian Jews perished in the Holocaust.
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Belgium (See slide #195)
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
remainder 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.
Approximately 34,801 Jews were imprisoned or deported during the Holocaust. Approximately 28,900
of these perished.
Bohemia & Moravia (See slide #119)
Approximately 118,000 Jews lived here when the Germans took over in March 1939. Emigration was
banned in October 1941 so by the time deportations began, only 92,199 Jews were left.
During the war, over 77,000 Jews (20% 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.
Bulgaria (See slide #206)
Bulgaria had 50,000 Jews (less than 1% of the population) prior to the onset of war.
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.
Denmark (See slide #193)
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 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.
Estonia (See slide #214)
Estonia had 4,500 Jews prior to the war. No Estonian Jews, of those remaining in the country after
German occupation, survived. Approximately 1,500 were killed.
Finland (See slide #193)
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.
France (See slide #199)
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.
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Germany
When the Nazis seized power in 1933, 500,000 Jews (1% of population) lived in Germany. On
September 15, 1941, a police decree was issued for all Jews over 6 years of age to wear the yellow
star. In October 1941, deportations began to major ghettos in Poland and Russia. Over 40,000
“privileged” deportees were sent to Theresienstadt. In May 1943, Berlin was declared “free of Jews.”
Approximately 134,500 German Jews perished.
Greece (See slide #206)
The Jewish population in pre-war Greece was close to 76,000 (0.9% of the population).
80% of the Jews from Greece perished, over 60,000 were annihilated.
Hungary (See slide #206)
In 1930, 445,000 Jews lived in Hungary, about 5% of the population.
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.
Iceland (See slide #193)
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.
Italy (See slide #201)
In 1938, some 57,000 Jews lived in Italy, about 0.1% of the Italian population.
Although Italy had become part of the Axis Alliance in June 1940, the Italians generally refused to
participate in the genocide of the Jews. Between 1941 and 1943, thousands of Jews escaped to Italy
and Italian-occupied territory 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 had 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.
In October and November 1943, the Germans rounded up Jews in the major cities of northern Italy.
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. A high proportion survived because the Italian
authorities obstructed the deportations early on, many succeeded in hiding or escaping southward to
Allied-occupied areas of Italy, and many received aid from the Italian population and the local Catholic
priesthood.
In late April 1945, Communist partisans captured and executed Mussolini. German forces in Italy
surrendered to the Allies on May 2, 1945.
Latvia (See slide #214)
Latvia had more than 93,000 Jews in 1935. By the time the Germans invaded that number had
decreased to 70,000. Approximately 70,000 perished during the Holocaust.
Lithuania (See slide #214)
Lithuania was home to 160,000 Jews. The Nazis murdered over 90% of the Jewish population, one of
the highest victim rates in Europe.
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Luxembourg (See slide #195)
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. After liberation,
about 400 Jews were found to have survived in Luxembourg.
At least 1,900 Jews from Luxembourg perished during the Holocaust.
Netherlands (See slide #195)
The Netherlands’ death toll is the highest in Western Europe.
At the time of the Nazi invasion, 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
remainder 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.
Several reasons have been suggested to explain the large number of deaths:
- the occupying regime was composed of fanatical Austrian Nazis
- the efficiency of the pre-war Dutch administration
- the Dutch landscape (no trees or mountains) made it difficult to hide
- the majority of Dutch Jews lived in the big cities, thus easy targets
- Jewish leaders chose collaboration with the Nazis to “prevent worse”
- active assistance from Dutch collaborators
Approximately 75% (100,000) of the Dutch Jews were killed.
Norway (See slide #193)
At the time of the Nazi invasion 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.
Poland (See slides #147 and #149)
In 1939 there were about 3.3 million Jews in Poland (approximately 10% of the population). 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.
Romania (See slide #206)
The Jewish population of pre-war Romania was 757,000, about 4% of the population. It was home to
the 3rd largest Jewish community in Europe. Only Poland and the Soviet Union had more Jews.
By wars end, approximately 271,000 Romanian Jews were dead. Two thirds were killed not by Nazis,
but by Romanians and Hungarians.
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Slovakia (See slide #119)
In 1938, there were 135,000 Jews in Slovakia (about 4.1% of the population). Slovakia was one of the
first German-allied countries to agree to the deportation of Jews as part of the “Final Solution.”
According to a December 15, 1940 census, there were about 90,000 Jews left in Slovakia. Shortly
after the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Slovakia entered World War II as an ally of
Germany. Between March and October 1942 almost 60,000 were deported to German-occupied
Poland and killed. The remaining Jews were confined in labor camps in Slovakia.
After the Slovak National Uprising and German occupation of the country in 1944, an additional
10,000 Jews were deported, mostly to Auschwitz, but also to Theresienstadt and camps in Germany.
In all, 70,000 Jews were deported and 68,000 were murdered.
Soviet Union (including Ukraine) (See slide #209)
According to the 1939 census, there were over 3 million Jews in the Soviet Union (2nd 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.
Approximately 1,000,000 Soviet Jews perished.
Sweden (See slide #193)
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.
Ukraine (See slide #214)
Ukraine had a Jewish population of 2.4 million. Approximately 900,000 perished including the 33,771
persons who perished at Babi Yar in September, 1941. This figure is lumped into the figure for the
Soviet Union on the chart above.
Yugoslavia (See slide #206)
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).
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Slide 335
The Aftermath (Breaker Slide)
Slide 336
The Aftermath:
Displaced Persons (DP’s)
May 8, 1945 marked the end of hostilities and a turn toward peace for war-ravaged Europe. For those
who had survived the Nazi Holocaust, however, the end of the war brought the beginning of a long
and arduous period of rebirth.
Following the defeat of Nazi Germany in the spring of 1945, as many as 100,000 Jewish survivors
found themselves among the 7-9 million uprooted and homeless people classified as displaced
persons (DP’s). The roads of Europe were filled with people going home. The liberating armies were
intent on returning these multitudes to their homes both to ease the pressure on scarce military
resources and to aid the liberated countries to reactivate their economies.
In the months after the war, as many as 6 million non-Jewish DP’s, who had been deported to
Germany as forced laborers for the Nazis, wandered through Germany and Central Europe toward
their homelands.
By the summer of 1945, less than a million Jews were still living in Europe. Liberated Jews were
plagued by illness and exhaustion. Many of them had to learn that they were the only ones left alive
from a large family, sometimes the last from an entire community. They emerged from concentration
camps and hiding places to discover a world in which they had no place.
Bereft of home and family, some Jews tried to return home. Again and again, their homecoming was
marked by violence. Returning to pre-war homes, Jews were often met by a slammed door, a gun, or
even worse. In the years after World War II, 1,500 Jews died in such attacks. One of the worst post-
Holocaust killing sprees occurred in Kielce, Poland. Before the war, 18,000 Jews lived in Kielce. By
1946 only 200 remained. One night, when a Christian child was found dead in the town, the Jews
were accused of the Blood Libel. A million Jewish children had been killed in Poland during the war,
and now, one year later, the people of Kielce were accusing survivors of murdering a child. Within an
hour, the citizens were storming the homes of Jews…forty-two died. The message to the Jews was
clear, “Get out of Europe.”
The 100,000 Jewish survivors would be joined in a matter of months by more than 150,000 other Jews
fleeing fierce antisemitism in Poland, Hungary, Romania and Russia. Together, these 250,000 Jewish
survivors became known as Sh’erit ha-Pletah, a biblical term that means "the Surviving Remnant."
From 1945 to 1952, Jewish DP’s lived in camps and urban centers in Germany, Austria and Italy
known as DP Camps. These DP Camps were administered by Allied authorities and the United
Nations Rehabilitation and Relief Administration (UNRRA). They provided the basic necessities of
food, clothing and medical supplies. The former concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen was the largest
and only all-Jewish DP Camp in the British zone of Germany. The original barracks had been burned
down as a health precaution and over 11,000 Jews were housed there.
Neither free nor enslaved, unwanted by the community of nations, and caught in the lands of their
oppressors, the Jewish DP’s created flourishing communities in the camps. The Sh’erit ha-Pletah
transformed from a disorganized group into a powerful moral and political force. As Sh'erit ha-Pletah
leader Zalman Grinberg declared, “What we, the Sh'erit ha-Pletah must do is show that we, the victims
of Nazism, have always been and will always be the carriers of humanity.”
227
Soon after liberation survivors began searching for their families. A Central Tracing Bureau was
established to help survivors locate relatives who had survived the concentration camps. Public radio
broadcasts and newspapers contained lists of survivors and their whereabouts. The attempt to reunite
families coincided with the creation of new ones; there were weddings and births in the DP Camps.
Within one year, 2,000 babies were born in Bergen-Belsen alone. These children and others born out
of the flames of the Holocaust are now known as “Children of Survivors of the Holocaust.”
By the fall of 1945 the relief effort was taken over by Jewish welfare organizations. Schools were soon
established and teachers came from Israel and the U.S. Orthodox Judaism also began its rebirth and
religious schools were founded in several camps. The first Jewish newspaper, hand written, appeared
only weeks after liberation. Religious holidays became major occasions for gatherings and
celebrations. Theater and musical troops toured the camps and athletic clubs from various DP centers
challenged each other.
The main hope of the survivors was to leave the camps, resettle outside Europe and begin new lives.
But the world was not welcoming the Jewish people with open arms. Little had changed regarding
immigration policy. Neither the U.S. nor Great Britain relaxed their immigration policies and British-
controlled Palestine would not let Jews enter. Thousands of Jewish survivors were forced to live in the
camps for 2-3 years. By 1947, even though thousands had left, one million DP’s still remained in
camps. For many, the promise of finding work abroad was their only hope; however, with millions of
soldiers returning home to flood the job market, work was scarce. The more highly educated the DP,
the more absolute was his hopelessness.
In May 1948, Israel became an independent nation after the United Nations voted to partition
Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. Almost 2/3 of the survivors eventually settled in Israel. In
1948, the U.S. government passed special immigration legislation known as the Displaced Persons
Act, which relaxed immigration quota restrictions and authorized the State Department to issue
hundreds of thousands of immigration visas. Approximately 80,000 were issued to Jewish DP’s.
By 1952, only one significant Jewish DP Camp, Foehrenwald, remained.
In an unparalleled six-year period between 1945 and 1951, European Jewish life was reborn in the DP
Camps.
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Slide 337
The Aftermath (Breaker Slide)
Slide 338
The Aftermath:
Potsdam Conference (July 17 - August 2, 1945)
The Potsdam Conference took place at Cecilienhof Palace in Potsdam, Germany, near Berlin.
Although Germany had been defeated, the U.S. and Britain were still at war with Japan.
At Potsdam, the “Big Three” Allied powers (U.S., Soviet Union, Great Britain) convened to clarify and
implement agreements reached at Yalta earlier in the year as well as to reach an accord on the war in
the Pacific.
The participants had changed significantly:
● U.S. President Harry S. Truman (replacing FDR who died in April 1945)
● Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin
● British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (Clement Attlee succeeded Churchill as Prime
Minister on July 26 and represented Great Britain for the rest of the conference.)
The foreign ministers of the three nations were also present.
Potsdam Declaration:
Previously at the Yalta Conference (February 1945), Stalin had promised to enter the war with Japan
within three months of the defeat of Germany. Originally, it was planned that the conference at
Potsdam would confirm this decision; however, since the previous meeting, the U.S. had successfully
tested the atom bomb. The Allies no longer needed the cooperation of the Soviet Union.
Truman's advisers were urging him to use this bomb on Japan. They also pointed out that its
employment would avoid an invasion of Japan and thus save the lives of up to two million American
troops. When Truman told Stalin that the U.S. had a new powerful bomb, he appeared pleased and
asked no further questions about it. Truman did not mention that it was an atomic bomb, and it
appeared that Stalin did not initially grasp the significance of this new weapon.
Before the end of the Conference, on July 26, the U.S., British, and Chinese governments issued an
ultimatum to the Japanese government called the Potsdam Declaration. This presented Japan with a
choice between unconditional surrender and total annihilation. Since the Soviet Union was not yet at
war with Japan, it was not part of the ultimatum. Prime Minister Suzuki of Japan announced to the
world on July 28 that he would ignore the ultimatum.
With the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki August 6 and 9, 1945, the Japanese
quickly surrendered and the Allies were successful in preventing Soviet gains in the Far East.
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Potsdam Agreement:
A declaration was issued at the close of the conference known as the Potsdam Agreement. It
contained the following decisions reached by the participants:
1. Authority in Germany would be transferred to the American, Soviet, British and French military
commanders in their respective zones of occupation and to a four-power Allied Control Council for
matters regarding the whole of Germany.
2. Reversal of all German annexations in Europe after 1937 and a separation of Austria from
Germany.
3. In determining reparations, the Allies estimated their losses and damages at $200 billion (U.S.).
Remembering the political costs of financial reparations after World War I, the Allies decided
that reparations consisting of payments “in kind” were less likely to imperil the peace after
World War II.
Germany was obliged to pay off only $20 billion in German property, current industry products,
and work force. The four occupying powers of Germany should take reparations from their
respective zones of occupation.
Because the Soviet Union had suffered greater loss than any of the other major powers,
provision was made for additional compensation to the Soviet Union. Nearly a quarter of
Soviet property had been destroyed during the Second World War. The Soviet Union would
receive a third of Germany’s ships and some industrial equipment as payment for war
damages.
The Cold War ultimately prevented the full payment.
4. Nazi war-criminals would be brought to trial.
5. The Polish Provisional Government of National Unity would be recognized and hold “free and
unfettered elections as soon as possible.”
6. Poland would be re-aligned. The Oder-Neisse line was established as the border of areas
administered by the government of Poland. The German population in these territories and in other
parts of Eastern Europe was to be transferred to Germany.
7. Rigid measures of control were designed to prevent Germany from ever again becoming a threat to
world peace:
- Germany would be disarmed and remilitarization would be forbidden.
- The Nazi Party, government and laws would be destroyed. “German education shall be so
controlled as completely to eliminate Nazi and militarist doctrines and to make
possible the successful development of democratic ideas.”
- The economy would be decentralized and reorganized with emphasis on agriculture and
peaceful domestic industries. During the period of occupation Germany shall be
treated as a single economic unit.
- German political life would be restructured based on democratic principles
8. The Council of Foreign Ministers was entrusted with preparing peace terms for Italy, Romania,
Bulgaria, Austria, Hungary and Finland.
The Potsdam Conference turned out to be the last conference among the Allies. Although the
Potsdam Conference was considered successful, many of the agreements reached were dishonored
within a year as a result of the growing rift between the Soviet Union and Western Europe.
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Slide 339
The Aftermath:
Map of Europe after World War I and World War II
Slide 340
The Aftermath (Breaker Slide)
Slide 341
The Aftermath:
The Nuremberg Trials (November 20, 1945 - October 1, 1946)
Teacher Notes:
● Given the realities of time and money, who should be judged? The people who gave the orders?
The people who carried out the orders? The people who simply stood by and watched it happen?
● Can justice ever be achieved after such horrific crimes?
Picture Top Right:
Front row, from left to right: Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel,
Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Walther Funk,
Hjalmar Schacht. Back row from left to right: Karl Doenitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Fritz
Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Franz von Papen, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Albert Speer, Konstantin van Neurath,
Hans Fritzsche.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Development of Procedural Policy
By the spring and summer of 1942, reports detailing the unspeakable horrors occurring in Nazi-
occupied Europe poured into London and Washington. The Europeans had learned much earlier
about the true nature of the Third Reich, and in fact, had tracked German war crimes from the moment
of their countries’ defeat. Yet even in late 1942, the Allies were not quite certain as how to proceed
against German criminality. Both London and Washington were reluctant to do anything tangible
before German surrender was more tangible.
The Soviets, in the meantime, set up an Extraordinary State Commission to investigate Nazi crimes on
Soviet territory and staged its own trials beginning in 1943 in the Caucasus region. The Soviet army
was the first to come upon the concentration camps when it liberated Majdanek (July 1944) and
Auschwitz (January 1945). Starting on November 27, 1944, and lasting for 6 days, the Polish
authorities put six SS guards from Majdanek on trial. They were found guilty of torturing, raping, and
killing prisoners. They were executed.
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A joint Allied policy first appeared in November 1943 when there were clear indications that the war
was being won. Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin announced that as soon as the war was over they
would bring the Nazi leaders to justice. Just how this was to occur was yet to be determined. At the
Teheran Conference (November 28 - December 1, 1943) Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin expressed
very different ideas of how justice should be served.
Stalin - Felt German military strength should be destroyed. The German General Staff should
be liquidated. The 50,000 or so of Hitler’s officers and technicians that support the
army should be rounded up and shot.
Churchill - Although opposed to mass executions, he supported a handful. He felt that a trial
would take too long and was inappropriate for ringleaders such as Hitler, Himmler,
Goering, Goebbels and Ribbentrop. Such a trial would degenerate into a platform for
Nazi propaganda. Better that the Nazi leadership be summarily executed.
Roosevelt - Received conflicting suggestions from his advisors. Secretary of War, Henry L.
Stimson urged a policy that would promote postwar Germany’s economic and
industrial development. All of those accused of war crimes would be dealt with in the
spirit of the Bill of Rights and “in a dignified manner consistent with the advance of the
civilization.” This would provide a record of the Nazi system of terrorism and the
efforts of the Allies to terminate the system and prevent its recurrence. On April 12,
1945, Roosevelt died without taking a stand on any policy. His successor, Harry S.
Truman, adopted Stimson’s plan.
Two weeks after the German surrender, an agreement was reached by the Allies to conduct joint trials
of those responsible for the murder of noncombatants. It was Henry Stimson’s plan that was adopted.
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The International Military Tribunal
On August 8,1945, the London Agreement was announced calling for the establishment of an
International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany for the trial of war criminals whose offenses had
no particular geographical location.
The city of Nuremberg, Germany was chosen over Munich because Nuremberg’s Palace of Justice
could be restored in time for the trials, while its cavernous, virtually undamaged jail could house the
Nazis awaiting trial, along with witnesses. Nuremberg was also the city where Hitler had evoked Nazi
mass hysteria and venomous xenophobia and where Goering, as President of the Reichstag, had
proclaimed the infamous Nuremberg Laws, which terminated the civil rights of German Jews and
demolished their ability to earn a livelihood. Nuremberg had also been the base of Julius Streicher
and his antisemitic paper, Der Stürmer.
The interrogation division of the American prosecution flew almost daily to Germany and
Austria, to Warsaw and Prague, to interview prospective defendants and witnesses. One visit
to Austria took us to the concentration camp at Mauthausen. We were seeking witnesses to
prove that Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the senior surviving SS officer who was likely to be a
defendant at Nuremberg, had personally observed the butchery going on at Mauthausen
during repeated visits. Though “only” a few hundred thousand had been killed at Mauthausen
as compared to millions at Auschwitz, this concentration camp was not just an ordinary death
factory. Mauthausen was infamous for the extreme cruelties and satanic tortures invented
and practiced by Franz Ziereis, its commandant. Ziereis himself had died before we arrived,
wounded mortally while trying to escape. Although we did talk to Ziereis’s wife and teenage
son.
Although I have forgotten the son’s name, my conversation with him is burned in my memory.
He was a fresh-faced and could have been an American kid by his looks, but not by his words
or experience. I asked him, “How did you get along with your dad?”
“My father was okay,” he said. “The only thing I have against him is that he gave me a rifle as
a present on my tenth birthday then had six prisoners lined up, and I had to shoot until they
were dead. That took a long time and it was very hard and I did not like it.”
I later found out that the gun was of a very small caliber and that Commandant Ziereis had
invented this particular pastime because he knew it took dozens of shots to kill prisoners this
way.
- Richard W. Sonnenfeldt, Chief Interpreter for the U.S. Prosecution,
Witness to Nuremberg
The International Military Tribunal lasted from November 20, 1945 until October 1, 1946. This was the
largest war crime trial in history. The majority of the proceedings dwelt on the aggressive war
conducted by Nazi Germany rather than the assault on the Jews and other non-Aryan minorities.
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The International Military Tribunal was organized as follows:
● 4 main judges (and 4 alternates):
Lord Geoffrey Lawrence - Great Britain
Frances Biddle - United States
Henri Donnedieu de Vabres - France
Major General I.T. Nikitchenko - Soviet Union
● 4 teams of attorneys representing the major Allied nations: France, Great Britain, Russia,
U.S.
● Justice Robert Jackson of the U.S. Supreme Court was named to lead the U.S.
prosecution.
● Decision was by a majority vote.
The International Military Tribunal tried only 22 of the central leaders of the Nazi party. The 4 counts
of the indictment were:
1. Conspiracy to Commit Crimes
Leaders, organizations, etc. who formulate a common plan are responsible for all acts
performed by any person in execution of such a plan.
2. Crimes Against Peace
Planning, preparing, starting or waging a war of aggression, or participating in a plan for such
a war.
3. War Crimes
The murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor of civilians in occupied territory, the
murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war, the killing of hostages, the destruction of cities,
owns and so on, not justified by military need.
4. Crimes Against Humanity
The murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts committed
against civilian groups on the basis of religion, race or politics.
The American prosecutors collected evidence for count #1, while their British counterparts took charge
of count #2. The French and Soviets shared the task of preparing evidence for the last 2 counts.
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Of the 22 that were tried, all but two pleaded “Not Guilty.”
The defense first claimed that the Tribunal had no legal authority. They said the court was just a way
for the Allies to take “revenge”; that it was a “show trial” to justify executing individual Nazis, when
really it was the government of Nazi Germany that was at fault. The defense argued the Führer-
prinzip, the Nazi “leadership principal.” That Hitler had been the absolute dictator. All orders given in
Germany were Hitler’s orders, and the punishment for not obeying was death. All other Nazis were
innocent; only Hitler could be held responsible. The defendant’s excuse was constantly repeated: “I
was only following orders.”
Seven key precedents were embodied in the decision of the IMT:
1. The initiating and waging of aggressive war is a crime.
2. Conspiracy to wage aggressive war is a crime.
3. The violation of the laws or customs of war is a crime.
4. Inhumane acts upon civilians in execution of, or in connection with aggressive war
constitute a crime.
5. Individuals may be held accountable for crimes committed by them as heads of state.
6. Individuals may be held accountable for crimes committed by them pursuant to superior
orders.
7. An individual charged with crime under international law is entitled to a fair trial.
The judges declared that all people are aware of certain basic laws such as the law against murder,
the law against enslavement, and the law against extermination. Duty to these human laws comes
before duty to any state or nation, and a person will not be forgiven for “following orders” in violation of
these laws. In fact, the higher a person is in military or governmental authority, the greater his or her
accountability.
Sentencing
12
Sentenced to hang on October 16, 1946.
Hermann Goering committed suicide before he could be executed.
Martin Bormann was tried in absentia, his whereabouts never determined.
7
Received prison sentences: 3 received life terms, 4 received 10-20 years.
3
Found not guilty.
Speaking of the Nuremberg defendants, Richard Sonnenfeldt, Chief U.S. Interpreter said:
The mediocrity, the lack of distinction of intellect, knowledge, or insight, of virtually all
defendants was appalling. At first I was surprised to find such lack of education and absence
of character. Shielded by their ignorance of history, familiar only with past German triumphs
and tales of Teutonic knights, ignorant of the rest of the world, unsuccessful in ordinary life,
driven by ambition without integrity, servile to their superiors and arrogant with all others, how
had these sycophants risen to such exalted positions? To serve a dictator, one must be
gullible and ambitious and have no scruples. One must not mind being insulted by a Fuhrer or
else have an intellect so deficient as not to notice insults. Who else would fawningly and
forever feed the vanity of a man who never listened but only spouted inane theories of
conquest, racism, and economic nonsense, no matter how hypnotic his delivery? The length
of service of these men and their closeness to Hitler was a perfect measure of their lack of
personal stature and morality.
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The 12 Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings
Since Nuremberg fell within the American zone of occupation, it was convenient to continue to use the
Palace of Justice for the subsequent trials between December 1946 and April 1949. During this time,
U.S. military tribunals tried almost 200 persons in 12 trials known as the Subsequent Nuremberg
Proceedings.
The following are the case names, charges and defendants of the 12 Subsequent Nuremberg
Proceedings:
Doctors & Medical Case:
23 Nazi physicians and administrators charged with conducting
inhumane experiments on German civilians and nationals of
other countries.
Milch Case:
Former German Field Marshall Erhard Milch charged with murder and
cruel treatment of POW’s.
Justice of Judges Case:
9 members of the Reich Ministry of Justice and 7 members of the
People’s and Special Courts charged with using their power as
prosecutors and judges to commit war crimes and crimes against
humanity.
Pohl/WVHA Case:
Oswald Pohl and 17 other members of the WVHA (Economic &
Administrative Office) charged with war crimes against P.O.W.’s.
Flick Case:
6 members of the Flick Concern, a group of industrial enterprises,
charged with using concentration camp inmates and P.O.W.’s for
well as plundering private property.
I.G. Farben Case:
24 defendants with I.G. Farben charged with plunder and spoliation of
private property in German-occupied territories.
Hostage Case:
12 defendants, officer in the German Armed Forces, charged with
murdering thousands of civilians in Greece, Yugoslavia and Albania,
committing acts of devastation in Norway and other countries, and
ordering the slaughter of P.O.W.’s.
R.U.S.H.A. Case:
14 defendants, officials of the Race and Settlement Office and the
Office for Strengthening of Germandom, charged with crimes against
humanity relating to murder, deportation, and torture on political,
racial and religious grounds.
Einsatzgruppen Case:
24 defendants, all members of the Einsatzgruppen, charged with
murder and ill-treatment of P.O.W.’s and civilians in occupied
countries.
Krupp Case:
Alfred Krupp and 11 other defendants, all members of Krupp
Industries, charged with enslavement and other war crimes.
Ministries Case:
21 defendants, including 3 Reich Ministers as well as other members
of the Nazi Party hierarchy, charged with waging wars of aggression,
violating international treaties, and committing various crimes of war
and crimes against humanity.
High Command Trial:
High ranking generals of the German Wehrmacht and members of the
High Command, all charged with participating in or planning the
execution of numerous atrocities committed in countries occupied by
the German forces during the war.
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Other War Crime Trials
In Germany, each of the Allied occupation administrations (U.S., France, Great Britain, and Soviet
Union) tried individuals accused of perpetrating crimes against Allied nationals in the territory of their
respective zones.
In the American zone of occupation in Germany, which included Dachau, 462 war criminals were
sentenced to death.
In the British zone, 240.
In the French zone, 104.
Leniency, which the war criminals themselves had never shown, was granted. Of the 806 Allied death
sentences imposed, only slightly more than ½ were carried out. Among them was both the owner and
the manager of the company that had manufactured Zyklon-B, used by the SS in Auschwitz and other
death camps.
Finally, other German officials and collaborators were captured and returned to the country in which
they perpetrated their crimes to be tried by local national tribunals. Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of
Auschwitz (not to be confused with Rudolf Hess that was tried at Nuremberg) was extradited to
Poland, where a separate trial devoted to Auschwitz was held. Norwegian proceedings were held
against wartime Prime Minister Quisling. French trials were held for Marshall Petain, head of the
Vichy Regime, and Pierre Laval, Petain’s prime minister.
In the 40 years following 1945, as many as 5,000 convicted war criminals were executed; 10,000 were
imprisoned.
Some War Criminals Escaped
Adolf Eichman, responsible for so much of Hitler’s Final Solution, went to Argentina where he was
captured by the Israelis in 1961 and executed in 1962. Adolf Eichmann was described by Rudolf
Hoess as the “only SS officer who was allowed to keep records” concerning liquidations.
Dr. Josef Mengele, the doctor who had conducted cruel experiments at Auschwitz, escaped to South
America and lived in hiding until his death.
Heinrich Muller, an important Gestapo chief, reportedly died when the Soviets captured Berlin; rumors
spread he was still alive and living in Argentina, and he was put on the list of most-wanted Nazis in
1973.
Martin Bormann, Hitler’s right-hand man, was never found.
Klaus Barbie, the SS “Butcher of Lyons,” was sentenced to life imprisonment by a French court in
1987.
In 1972, the Austrians finally got around to trying Walther Dejaco, the man who designed the gas
chambers.
Trials continue up to the present, both in Germany and elsewhere.
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Nazis in the United States
Immediately after the war, the U.S. government imported ex-Nazi scientists to work in the U.S. space
program. In 1948, the U.S. eased the immigrant quota system to allow World War II refugees from
Europe to come to America. By 1952, some 400,000 Europeans, many of them Jews, arrived. With
so many immigrants to process, records were not carefully checked, and Nazis could enter by just
inventing an imaginary past and presenting a few false papers.
In the 1960’s, the World Jewish Congress (WJC) compiled a list of 59 names and addresses of known
Nazi war criminals living in America. The list was given to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization
Service. Investigations began, but very little action was taken. By the mid-1970’s, 17 persons on the
WJC list had died of natural causes.
In 1974, Elizabeth Holtzman, a member of Congress, demanded that the Justice Department report on
Nazi investigations. Why were Nazi criminals not being deported to stand trial for their crimes? Her
campaign led to the creation of a special investigating unit within the U.S. Justice Department. The
Office of Special Investigations has since researched hundreds of cases. One ex-Nazi was living in
Detroit posing as a bishop in the Catholic church. Another was a Long Island housewife who had
once been a guard at the Majdanek concentration camp. She had hanged a girl for sport and beaten
another to death with a whip.
How many more Nazi criminals still live peacefully in the United States? It is difficult to know. Yet,
with the passage of time, bringing them to justice becomes a race against death.
Current Connections
In 2002, prosecutors for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda made connections between the
Julius Streicher case and the roles of Rwandan newspapers and radio prior to and during the 1994
genocide. In an interview with The New York Times, Stephen Rapp, the senior prosecutor on the case
said, “A key question will be what kind of speech is protected and where the limits lie. It is important to
draw that line.”
On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
Slide 342
The Aftermath:
Chart of Nuremberg Defendants
Slide 343
The Aftermath:
Chart of Nuremberg Defendants - continued
Slide 344
The Aftermath:
Chart of Nuremberg Defendants - continued
Slide 345
The Aftermath:
Rudolf Hoess Quote - Why he did it?
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Slide 346
Perspectives Triangle: Bystanders
Teacher Notes:
● Bystanders were the ordinary people who played it safe by complying with the law and avoiding
terrorizing activities.
● It is sometimes difficult to draw the line that divides the bystander from the perpetrator. This raises
the question whether there is such a thing as a passive onlooker. Perhaps not taking action is also a
decision, and therefore a form of action in itself. After all, non-action has ramifications and affects the
outcome.
● What was the responsibility of those who knew what was happening and chose not to get involved?
Slide 347
Bystanders
The Mauthausen concentration camp was established in Austria in 1938. Inmates were forced to work
at the infamous Vienna Ditch Stone Quarry where they were forced to carry heavy stones up a steep
flight of 186 steps. Here they were crushed by the heavy weight, beaten, and often pushed off the
cliffs. Many inmates were killed at this site.
The Austrian inhabitants in the area of Mauthausen witnessed the plight of the prisoners. Those who
lived beyond the quarry had to use a road leading through the camp compound in order to get into
town. They would traverse the camp escorted by guards. Although they were only passing through,
they were within the confines of this world and in the presence of absolute terror for a short while.
The existence of the camp brought economic benefits to the population. It created employment and
provided slave laborers, who were used by many enterprises and farms.
When Soviet prisoners of war broke out of the camp in February 1945, a time when it was clear that
the war was lost, the people in the area joined the camp guards in catching and killing the escapees.
Only two families are known to have helped the hunted Soviets.
Most of the bystanders - the residents of the area - chose to avert their eyes from the unpleasant and
disturbing sights. Many had internalized Nazi allegations that the inmates were criminals and
enemies. Most probably never really did ask themselves what the events behind the barbed wire
actually meant and whether it required them to take a stand.
Slide 348
Bystanders:
Quote from Bystander of Mauthausen
239
Slide 349
Perspectives Triangle: Rescuers
Questions to Consider:
● Why do you think so many people reacted with indifference to the plight of the Jews during the
Holocaust?
● What do you think motivates some people to help others and what prevents others from doing so?
Do you think these values are innate or learned?
● What insights can we gain from the history of the bystanders and rescuers of the Holocaust that will
help us formulate our responsibility as ethical human beings?
_______________________________________________________________________________
Bystanders were the rule. Rescuers were the exception.
Contrary to the bystander and the perpetrator, the rescuers regarded the Jews as fellow human beings
who came within the bounds of their universe of obligation. Most rescuers started off as bystanders in
the earlier stages of the persecution, but at some point there came a boundary they were not willing to
cross.
In most cases it was the Jew who turned to the non-Jew for help. The bystander was faced with a
situation in which he or she had to make an instant decision. This was usually an instinctive human
gesture, taken on the spur of the moment, and only then followed by a moral choice.
The price the rescuer had to pay for their actions differed from one country to another. In Eastern
Europe, the Germans executed not only the people who sheltered Jews, but their entire family as well.
Punishment was less severe in Western Europe. In Germany, strangely enough, there was no law
against hiding Jews, and people mostly risked detention, though some of those caught were put in
concentration camps. There are many documented cases of denunciations; demonstrating that
German society in general was hostile. This increased the risk and made it more difficult for ordinary
Germans to defy the conventions and rules of their society.
Most rescuers were ordinary people. Most of them were not idealists who wanted to solve the world’s
problems, but human beings who cared about the people around them. In most cases, they never
planned to become rescuers and were totally unprepared for the moment in which they had to make
such a far-reaching decision.
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Slide 350
Rescue (Initial Breaker Slide)
Teacher Notes:
People who risked their lives to rescue victims of Nazi oppression provide useful, important and
compelling role models for students. The qualities of rescuers and the feats they accomplished are
amazing life stories that we would certainly want our students to emulate.
It is important to remind students that less than ½ of 1% of the total non-Jewish population under Nazi
occupation helped to rescue the Jews. Given that only a small fraction of non-Jews under Nazi
occupation helped to rescue Jews, an overemphasis on heroic tales in a unit on the Holocaust can
result in an inaccurate and unbalanced account of the history. Similarly, in exposing students to the
worst aspects of human nature as revealed in the history of the Holocaust, you run the risk of fostering
cynicism in your students. Accuracy of fact along with a balanced perspective on the history must be
priorities for any teacher.
________________________________________________________________________________
Rescuers are those who, at great personal risk, actively helped members of persecuted groups,
primarily Jews, during the Holocaust in defiance of Third Reich policy. They were ordinary people who
became extraordinary people because they acted in accordance with their own belief systems while
living in an immoral society. It took great courage. The Nazis did everything they could to prevent
people from helping. People who hid Jews were often shot or sent to concentration camps
themselves. A person who did not report someone else for hiding a Jew faced the same penalties.
Sometimes the Nazis punished an entire family when one of its members helped a Jew. These
measures, however, did not stop everyone.
Rescue took many forms. Some rescuers acted on their own; others worked in cooperation with
family, neighbors and friends. Entire communities took the responsibility of sheltering Jews, and in the
case of Denmark, an entire nation rallied to prevent the deportation of its Jewish citizens.
Each rescue story is different. Yet, what rescuers had in common was a combination of awareness,
resourcefulness, empathy, vigilance, inventiveness, courage, compassion, and persistence.
First, a rescuer had to recognize that a person was endangered, something that was not
always clear because of the propaganda and the secrecy of the Nazis.
Second, rescuers had to decide whether or not to assume the responsibility of helping and risk
the potential consequences. Public hangings, deportation to concentration camps, and on-the-
spot shootings were very real consequences of helping enemies of the Third Reich.
Third, the rescuers had to take action. Sometimes the entire transformation from bystander to
rescuer took just seconds, and in certain cases, was not even a conscious decision.
Thousands survived the Holocaust because of the daring of these rescuers. Although in total their
number is statistically small, rescuers were all colossal people. Whether they saved a thousand
people or a single life, those who rescued Jews during the Holocaust demonstrated the possibility of
individual choice even in extreme circumstances. These and other acts of conscience and courage,
however, saved only a tiny percentage of those targeted for destruction.
Slide 351
Rescue:
What Motivated Rescuers?
241
Slide 352
Rescue (Breaker Slide)
Slide 353
Rescue:
Methods of Rescue
Slide 354
Rescue (Breaker Slide)
Slide 355
Rescue:
Individuals Who Rescued
When citizens stood by and did nothing, Jews were murdered; however, when citizens took it upon
themselves to act as rescuers, Jews had a chance.
Individuals who rescued Jews came from:
● all social classes
● all educational background
● all religious belief
● all political background
● all different degrees of antisemitism
But most shared some of these character traits:
● They were individualists.
● They had a history of doing good.
● They were independent.
● They shared a “matter-of-fact” attitude, i.e. “It was the only thing I could do.”
● Their help given was not based on rational thinking.
● They had a universalistic perception of mankind. They did not see a Jew, they saw only a person
needing help.
Some rescuers were even antisemitic - statements like “I don’t like Jews, but I can’t kill them,” are not
uncommon in accounts of rescue.
Irena Sendler (Sendlerowa)
Irena Sendler was the director of the Children’s Bureau of Zegota, a unit within the Polish underground
established to help Jews in hiding. As a health worker, she had access to the Warsaw Ghetto and led
hundreds of Jewish children out of the ghetto to safety. Some of the children were sedated and
carried out in potato sacks; others in coffins. Still others entered a church in the ghetto that had 2
entrances. One entrance opened into the ghetto, the other into the Aryan side of Warsaw. Children
entered the church as Jews and exited as Christians. When the Germans became aware of her
activities, she was arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo. Irena was tortured but refused to betray
either her associates or any of the Jewish children in hiding. She was sentenced to death but was
saved at the last minute when Zegota members bribed the Germans to halt the execution. She
escaped from prison, assumed a new identity and continued her work for Zegota. Sendler was
pursued by the Gestapo for the rest of the war.
By 1943, in addition to those in private homes, the Children’s Bureau found homes for 600 children in
public and religious institutions. Over time, some 2,500 children were registered by the Warsaw
branch of Zegota.
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Oskar Schindler
Oskar Schindler: drinker, womanizer, gambler, profiteer, briber, wheeler-dealer, Nazi. Not the
description of a saint, yet he saved 1,200 Jews.
After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Schindler took charge of an enamelware factory in
Krakow, Poland that made mess kits and field kitchenware for the German army. The contracts he
received from the German army brought in big profits. He settled into an upscale lifestyle with a
mistress. He dealt cleverly on the black market acquiring luxuries such as silk, furniture, jewelry,
clothing and liquor -- some for himself and some to seduce Nazis in high places.
The Nazi brutality and killing of Jews enraged Schindler, who was himself a Nazi. When he took over
the Krakow factory it had only 45 workers. As contracts came in, the number grew to 125. His
accountant, Itzhak Stern, was a Jew. Stern asked him to hire his Jewish friends and soon there were
150 Jewish employees.
In the spring of 1941, when the Nazis ghettoized the Jews of Poland, Schindler’s plant became a
haven for Jews. His employees could go in and out of the ghetto to work.
Sometime later, Schindler made a deal with the Germans to enlarge his factory, adding production of
anti-tank shells. He even added a night shift to take on even more Jews.
By 1942, Schindler’s factory employed 550 Jews, for whose labor he paid the SS a fixed rate of so
much per day per person. In the fall, Schindler traveled to Budapest to give Jewish leaders the first
full-scale report of the horrors occurring in Poland.
In March 1943, the ghetto of Krakow was closed. Those who could work were marched to the nearby
forced labor camp of Plaszow. The others were either shot or shipped to Auschwitz. Schindler had
been assured that his workers, now living in Plaszow, would arrive on time. But it was never so. He
came up with a bold idea - build a sub-camp where his workers could live in his own factory yard. He
would feed the Jews at his own expense and pay the cost of the building. The Plaszow commander
was thrilled to be able to make room in his camp.
Six new barracks were built to house 1,200 people. Most importantly there were no SS. No one died
of overwork or beatings.
In April 1944, the Soviets were moving west on the offensive. The SS was emptying the death camps
and destroying all traces. Plaszow was to be closed and Schindler’s sub-camp as well. The prisoners
would go back to Plaszow to await “relocation.” Schindler knew what that word meant - extermination.
He would not give in.
He asked to move his factory west to Czechoslovakia and take his skilled workers with him. It was
accepted. Schindler began preparing a list of people to be moved to the new plant - a “Schindler’s
List”. The new camp had been built at tremendous cost to Schindler, yet now he had no intention of
producing anything useful for the Nazis.
In mid-October 1944, 800 men and 300 women (who came later on a train) boarded freight cars.
Unfortunately, the women’s car had accidentally gone to Auschwitz. These Schindlerfrauen, as they
were called, spent weeks in Auschwitz until Schindler bribed their way out with liquor, hams and
diamonds.
On May 7, 1945, news of the German surrender was heard. Afraid of the approaching Soviets,
Schindler and his wife dressed in prisoner stripes, and eight Jews volunteered to travel with them to
protect them. They carried a letter attesting to the record of Schindler’s good deeds. Schindler was
given a farewell gift of a ring made of gold from the bridgework of a Jewish prisoner. On it was
inscribed the Talmudic verse:
Whoever saves a single soul, it is as if he saved the whole world.
243
Eventually, Schindler found safety with the American forces. Everything he owned was confiscated by
the Soviets. He was penniless. But his “family” - the Schindlerjuden (Schindler’s Jews) - would care
for him the rest of his life. In 1974, he died in Germany and at his request, was buried in the Latin
Cemetery in Jerusalem.
Schindler is responsible for saving 1,500 Jewish lives.
Miep Gies
During the Nazi occupation of Holland, this Austrian-born Dutch woman risked her life daily to hide
Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis. For more than two years, Miep helped the Franks and four
other people evade the Gestapo by bringing food, comfort and news of the world to their tiny hideout
in the canal-side building that housed the family business.
It all ended on August 4, 1944, when their hiding place was betrayed and the family was arrested by
the Nazis. A few hours later, wandering mournfully through the four small upstairs rooms, Miep
discovered the plaid, cloth-covered diary kept by young Anne.
By saving the diary from the debris left by the Nazis, Miep Gies made sure that Anne Frank’s name
was known around the world. After the Bible, it is the most widely read book in the world - for many
children, their first direct brush with the horrors of the Holocaust.
Corrie Ten Boom
During the Second World War, the Ten Boom home became a hiding place for fugitives and those
hunted by the Nazis. By protecting these people, Casper and his daughters, Corrie and Betsie, risked
their lives. This non-violent resistance against the Nazi-oppressors was the Ten Booms' way of living
out their Christian faith. This faith led them to hide Jews, students who refused to cooperate with the
Nazis, and members of the Dutch underground resistance movement.
In February 1944, the Gestapo arrested Corrie ten Boom, her father, her brother (Willem) and two
sisters (Betsie and Nollie), and other family members for their rescue efforts. After holding them briefly
in the penitentiary in Scheveningen, a seaside town close to The Hague, the Gestapo released all but
three of the ten Boom family members: Corrie ten Boom, her older sister Betsie, and her father Casper
remained in prison. Casper ten Boom became sick in prison and died in a hospital corridor only ten
days after the arrest. The sisters remained in the Scheveningen prison until June 1944, when officials
transferred them to an internment camp at Vught, in the Netherlands. In September 1944, the Nazis
deported Corrie and Betsie ten Boom to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany. In
Ravensbrück, the sisters managed to stay together until Betsie died that December.
The camp administration released Corrie ten Boom in late December 1944. She traveled across
Germany by train until she reached the Netherlands, where she reunited with surviving members of
her family.
Corrie Ten Boom documented her experiences in The Hiding Place.
244
American Friends Service Committee (Quakers)
The Quaker movement, also called the Society of Friends, was founded in England during the middle
of the 17th century. The group took its name from the "quaking" that is sometimes associated with the
agitation of religious feeling. The early Quakers were often persecuted, fined and put in jail for
violating religious and civil laws. They refused to attend established churches, to take oaths of office,
to pay tithes, or to bear arms. They insisted on holding meetings of their own and in proselytizing
even where it was forbidden.
During and after World War I the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a U.S.based Quaker
aid society, was instrumental in providing relief services in Germany and later throughout Europe.
These activities created a great deal of good will in Germany and elsewhere. In the early years of the
Nazi regime, AFSC activities on behalf of refugees were limited. This has been attributed to the
dilemma faced by Quakers who feared that speaking out against the persecution of Jews would
compromise their reputation in Germany, which they had built up over many years. After Kristallnacht,
the AFSC became more active in the refugee cause. In 1939, they championed the ultimately
unsuccessful Wagner-Rogers Bill that was introduced in the U.S. Congress to permit one-time entry of
20,000 children (under the age of 14) above the quota limit for German immigrants.
The AFSC supported many groups who helped refugees -- primarily Jewish children -- resettle from
Europe to the United States. The actions of the AFSC showed that interfaith activity on behalf of
European Jews could be successful.
Pastor Andre Trocmé
Le Chambon-sur-Lignon is a small village in the mountains of southern France. Most of the people of
the village are Huguenots, or French Protestants. The Huguenots had long been a minority in France,
which is mainly Catholic. As a result, they often were the victims of persecution themselves. Perhaps
their own persecution explains why the Huguenots in this small village could not turn away the Jews
who came to them for help.
The religious leader of Le Chambon was Pastor Andre Trocmé. He and his wife, Magda, organized a
network to hide Jews and to get them out of France, appealing to Catholics and Protestants to help.
Jewish children whose parents had been deported were hidden in children’s homes in the region.
One of the homes was run by Daniel Trocmé, a second cousin of the Pastor. In June 1943, the
Gestapo rounded up the children, arrested Daniel and sent him to Majdanek. Some Jewish children
survived and reported that Daniel had been gassed and incinerated in April 1944. It was the
Gestapo’s only successful raid on Le Chambon.
Most of the Jews did not stay in hiding, but were smuggled into Switzerland or Spain.
The people of Le Chambon saved over 5,000 Jewish men, women and children.
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Slide 356
Rescue (Breaker Slide)
Slide 357
Rescue:
Diplomats Who Rescued
Teacher Note:
Of the over 21,000 people recognized by Yad Vashem as “Righteous Among the Nations,” only 9 were
diplomats, but their actions were decisive in the saving of tens of thousands of Jews. Six of the nine
are represented here.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Feng Shan Ho
Dr. Feng Shan Ho was one of the first diplomats to save Jews by issuing them visas to escape the
Holocaust. He was responsible for saving thousands (estimated 18,000) of Jews in Nazi-occupied
Austria in 1938 and 1939.
Following the Anschluss in March 1938, all foreign embassies and legations in Austria were closed. In
May 1938, Ho was appointed the Chinese Consul General in Vienna (served 1938-1941). The
legation staff was reduced to Consul General Ho and one subordinate.
With the German takeover, Austrian antisemitism erupted in full force. The Jews of Austria were
increasingly in danger. Less than a month after the annexation, the first Austrian Jews were deported
to Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. They were told that if they emigrated immediately,
they would be released. Many Jews wanted to go to the United States, but even though the U.S. had
not filled its Austrian quota, it imposed stringent emigration restrictions. Those who wished to go
Palestine found that Britain, under Arab pressure, had severely reduced the quota for Jewish
emigrants. The plight of Austrian Jews was further exacerbated by the Evian Conference, which made
it evident that none of the 32 participating nations was willing to open its doors to Jewish refugees.
Vienna became the center for emigration of Austrian Jews. All foreign consulates in the city were
besieged by desperate Jews, but most did not offer help. The British consulate posted a sign saying
no visas would be issued; the French would not accept any visa applications; the Swiss demanded
that passports be stamped with the red "J" in order to bar them from crossing the border.
The “means” Consul General Ho used to help Jewish refugees was to issue them visas to Shanghai,
China. Shanghai, which was under Japanese occupation, did not require a visa for entry, but a visa -
as proof of destination - was necessary for Jews to leave Austria. Ho knew that Chinese visas to
Shanghai were actually used as means for people to get to the U.S., England and other destinations.
Consul General Ho practiced a "liberal" visa policy, authorizing the issuing of visas to any and all who
asked. Having been turned down by many consulates, Jews soon discovered that they could get visas
at the Chinese Consulate. For the next 2 years, the compassionate Chinese Consul General in
Vienna issued visas to any and all Jews who requested them. After exhausting their supply of official
forms, they even used ordinary paper stamped with the consular seal.
In 1973, after 4 decades in the diplomatic service, Feng Shan Ho retired to San Francisco. Once he
had retired, the Chinese Nationalists in Taiwan launched a political vendetta to discredit Ho publicly
with false allegations of a petty misappropriation of funds at his last posting. Ho presented evidence of
his innocence, but it was futile. The real reasons behind this political vendetta were never revealed.
Ho was denied a pension for his 40 years of service to China, and more than 2 decades later, his
name has not been cleared.
Why was Feng-Shan Ho willing to help the Jews of Austria when most others would not? His reason
was simple: “I thought it only natural to feel compassion and to want to help. From the standpoint of
humanity, that is the way it should be."
246
Aristedes de Sousa Mendes
After the Nazis had invaded France and began deportations of the Jews, thousands sought refuge.
Many were helped by the Portuguese Consul-General at Bordeaux, Aristedes de Sousa Mendes.
Nearly 100,000 Jews in the area had but one desire - to escape to Spain and into Portugal, a neutral
country. But the Portuguese government refused to grant entry visas to any refugees, especially to
Jews.
Mendes could not close his eyes. He took a great many Jews into his own home and thousands of
others lined up outside, hoping the visa policy would change. On his own volition, Mendes decided to
grant visas to all, even at risk of losing his position. He sat down in front of his house and for 3 days
stamped visas for thousands of Jews. His government learned of this and in a rage ordered him back
to Portugal.
Mendes saved the lives of more than 10,000 Jews. For defying orders, his government stripped him
of his post and his right to practice law. Though he had a family of twelve children, Mendes said
afterward that he had no regrets; he was proud of what he did:
If thousands of Jews can suffer because of one Catholic (he meant Hitler), then surely it is
permitted for one Catholic to suffer for so many Jews. I could not act otherwise. I accept
everything that has befallen me with love.
Mendes died in poverty in 1954.
Chiune (Sempo) Sugihara
Sugihara was the Japanese Consul to Kovno, Lithuania. Several thousand Jews who had fled Nazi-
occupied Poland were left stranded in Soviet-occupied Lithuania. Realizing that Lithuania would soon
be occupied by the Nazis as well, the Jews sought freedom in other countries. Sugihara wanted to
help. Japan, now allied with Germany, did not want to get involved. Sugihara realized that he could
supply the Jews with Japanese visas, legitimately or otherwise, but these would be transit visas only
and the holder would still need to declare a final destination. Curacao, a Dutch possession in the
Caribbean, was suggested by the Dutch Consul in Lithuania who had obtained a written statement
saying no visa would be required to enter the colony. With Japanese transit visas, the Jews could get
to Curacao.
Sugihara began issuing visas on his own accord, working day and night. The Soviet government
announced its plans to close the Japanese consulate in Lithuania. Sugihara continued to sign and
stamp Japanese transit visas until the moment of his departure. According to some witnesses, he
threw blank, stamped forms from his train window even as his train pulled away from the station.
Defying his government, Sugihara granted visas to as many applicants as possible - at least 3,500.
The Japanese government cited him for insubordination and stripped him of his post. He died in
Japan in relative obscurity.
In Japan, the Jews were treated without discrimination. When their transit visas expired, they were
allowed to leave Japan and go to Shanghai, China to wait out the war. Curacao, it turned out, was
closed to them. After the war, some returned and settled in Japan.
247
Jan Zwartendijk
Jan Zwartendijk from Rotterdam, Holland represented the Philips Corporation in Lithuania. A few days
before the Soviet occupation (June 1940), he became Acting Consul for the Netherlands.
A few Dutch Jews turned to their diplomatic representatives for help in obtaining a visa to somewhere
close to the U.S. Investigations revealed that visas were not required for the Dutch-controlled
Caribbean Islands of Surinam and Curacao since entry to them was rarely granted and if granted,
permission would be given by the local governor.
Zwartendijk knowingly wrote a half-truth into Jewish passports saying that visas were not required to
enter those islands. He failed to mention that entry was nearly impossible. These visas enabled
refugees to purchase a train ticket across the Soviet Union and survive the war in Japan or in
Shanghai. No one ever attempted to get to the Dutch Islands.
Harry Bingham
Bingham came from an illustrious family. His father (on whom the fictional character Indiana Jones
was based) was the archeologist who unearthed the Inca City of Machu Picchu, Peru, in 1911. Harry
entered the U.S. diplomatic service and, in 1939, was posted to Marseilles, France as American Vice-
Consul.
The U.S. was then neutral and, not wishing to annoy Marshal Petain's puppet Vichy regime, President
Roosevelt's government ordered its representatives in Marseilles not to grant visas to any Jews.
Bingham found this policy immoral and, risking his career, did all in his power to undermine it.
In defiance of his bosses in Washington, he granted over 2,500 U.S. visas to Jewish and other
refugees, including the artists Marc Chagall and Max Ernst and the family of the writer Thomas Mann.
He also sheltered Jews in his Marseilles home and obtained forged identity papers to help Jews in
their dangerous journeys across Europe. He worked with the French underground to smuggle Jews
out of France into Franco's Spain or across the Mediterranean and even contributed to their expenses
out of his own pocket. In 1941, Washington lost patience with him. He was sent to Argentina, where
later he continued to annoy his superiors by reporting on the movements of Nazi war criminals.
Eventually, Bingham was forced out of the American diplomatic service completely. Bingham died
almost penniless in 1988. Little was known of his extraordinary activities until his son found some
letters in his belongings after his death. He has now been honored by many groups and organizations
including the United Nations and the State of Israel.
248
Raoul Wallenberg
Raoul Wallenberg came from a wealthy Swedish banking family. Sweden was one of the few
European countries that was neutral during World War II. As a young man he worked at a family bank
in Haifa, Palestine and met refugees from Germany who told him about the sufferings of the Jewish
people. From that moment on, he felt deep empathy for them.
In 1938, after invading Austria, Hitler applied enormous pressure on the Hungarian monarchy. The
government appeased Hitler with some anti-Jewish decrees. When World War II began in 1939,
Hungary joined Germany as an ally. Hitler let her retain her “independence” and let her troops take
over some of the territories lost after World War II. Still, the Hungarian government avoided joining in
on the “Final Solution.” Thousands of desperate Jews from Nazi occupied Poland, Czechoslovakia
and other areas crossed into “independent” Hungary in hope of shelter.
By 1943, 800,000 Jews were in Hungary and the Nazis demanded they be surrendered for
deportation. The Hungarian government stalled until March 1944 when Hitler forced the issue and
sent in troops to occupy the country. The existing government resigned and a Nazi “puppet” regime
took over. It issued sweeping anti-Jewish decrees, set up ghettos, and began deportation. Adolf
Eichmann was the SS officer in charge.
By 1944, almost half a million Hungarian Jews had already been deported to the death camps in
Poland. Another 250,000 were still in the ghettos of Budapest awaiting forced removal to their terrible
fate. At about the same time, Raoul was approached by certain influential people to gain his
assistance. In the spring of 1944, the Swedish government sent Wallenberg as a special envoy with
diplomatic protection. His mission was to help the Jews of Hungary. The Swedes, the surviving
Hungarian Jews and the War Refugee Board of the U.S. all provided funds for Wallenberg’s mission.
Wallenberg reached Budapest (the capital) in July. He immediately began to help the remaining Jews
receive food and medical care. He also gave out specially designed passports and other papers to
about 16,000 Jews, putting them under Swedish protection. Thousands of lives were saved this way
and Wallenberg acquired the title of “Angel of Rescue.” To further refine his rescue missions, he
purchased several buildings in Budapest. Due to his persistence, the buildings were granted
extraterritorial rights similar to an embassy. At one point these buildings provided refuge to more than
5,000 Jews. Among his many feats were the establishment of hospitals, medical care centers,
orphanages, and soup kitchens for the rescued.
About 144,000 Jews survived in Budapest. Wallenberg is credited with saving approximately 70,000.
They were the only Jewish community of considerable size left in Europe.
Wallenberg’s story, however, has a tragic ending. It is thought that the Communist leaders thought
Wallenberg was an American spy because he had taken money from the U.S. War Refugee Board.
They couldn’t fathom why a Swede would be doing this. He was arrested and sent to a Siberian
prison. He was never seen again. The Soviet government refused to tell Wallenberg’s family or the
Swedish government exactly what happened to him. To this day, his fate remains a mystery.
NOTE: The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is located at 100 Raoul Wallenberg Plaza in
Washington, D.C.
249
Slide 358
Rescue (Breaker Slide)
Slide 359
Rescue:
Governments that Rescued
Bulgaria
Starting in March 1943, Jews in Bulgarian-occupied zones were deported as a result of German
pressure. But when the deportation order came for the Jews of pre-war Bulgaria, there was an outcry
from the Bulgarian people, including many Orthodox church leaders. Even King Boris III intervened.
As a result, all Jews in custody were released, and the deportation order was rescinded. Bulgaria was
the only country in Europe whose local Jewish population in 1945 was larger than it had been before
the war.
Denmark
Initially, the German occupation of Denmark was one of mutual cooperation. After the Germans
declared martial law in August of 1943 and revealed their intentions to deport the Jews of Denmark,
the public, the churches, and even King Christian X voiced their opposition. In anticipation of the
forthcoming deportations, the citizens of Denmark organized a massive rescue effort, ferrying the
endangered Jews across the sea to neutral Sweden. When the Germans began searching for Jewish
deportees, they found only 500 Jews, mostly old people that were too frail to make the sea journey.
These Jews were sent to Theresienstadt where the Danish authorities continued to monitor their
safety. As a result, most survived the war. The Danish Jews who had been ferried to Sweden
survived and even returned to find their homes and jobs waiting for them.
Note: According to popular legend, King Christian X of Denmark chose to wear a yellow star in
support of the Danish Jews during the Nazi occupation. In another version, the Danish people
decided to wear a yellow star for the same reason. In fact, unlike Jews in other countries under Nazi
rule, the Jews of Denmark were never forced to wear an identification mark such as a yellow star.
However, the legend conveys an important historical truth: both the King and the Danish people stood
by their Jewish citizens and were instrumental in saving the overwhelming majority of them from Nazi
persecution and death.
250
Finland
Before and during World War II there was almost no antisemitism in Finland, in fact, the Finnish
Government refused to condone the Nazis’ anti-Jewish platform. When the Soviet Union attacked
Finland in 1939, the country’s Jews joined the army to fight the Soviets. In 1941, Germany deployed
troops to northern Finland and Finland joined Germany in its attack on the Soviet Union. Some 300
Jews served in the Finnish army fighting with the Germans.
In mid-1942, when SS Chief Heinrich Himmler requested that the Finnish government hand over its
Jewish community, the Finns refused. Prime Minister Johann Wilhelm Rangell stated that the country
had but 2,300 respected Jewish citizens and the issue was closed to discussion. The Germans did
not press the issue, as they were afraid to lose Finnish cooperation against the Soviets.
Later that year, Gestapo Chief Heinrich Muller convinced the head of the Finnish State Police to
deport Jewish refugees. Undertaken in secret, the deportation plan was discovered by the Finnish
cabinet, which manages to stop it from being fully implemented. Nevertheless, eight Jews were
handed over to the Germans. Ultimately, only one of the eight survived. Many clergymen and
politicians condemned the deportation, and as a result, the Finnish government refused to surrender
any more Jews to the Germans.
Apart from that one incident and those Finnish Jews who died on the battlefield, the Jews of Finland,
both local and refugees, went through the war unharmed. The Finns did, however, hand over to the
Germans Soviet soldiers taken prisoner during the winter war in 1940 as part of scheme to exchange
prisoners. Among them were Jews who perished in German custody.
In the winter of 1944, the Finns began fighting the Germans, and successfully expelled German forces
from Finland.
Hungary
Hungary joined the Axis in November 1940 and even took part in the German invasion of Russia.
However, on April 17, 1943, when Hitler urged Hungary to allow the Jews to be “resettled,” Hungary
refused. This was the status quo until March of 1944 when the German army invaded the country.
The 750,000 Jews living within the extended borders were in immediate danger. Many were deported.
Italy
As long as Mussolini ruled Italy, no Jews were deported to death camps. Only when Germany
occupied Italy in 1943 were SS units able to move in, and the deportations to Auschwitz began.
Vatican
On October 16, 1943, the Germans searched Rome for Jews to be deported. There were more than
7,000. Pope Pius XII personally ordered the Vatican clergy to open the Sanctuaries of the Vatican to
all “non-Aryans” in need of refuge. 477 Jews were given refuge in the Vatican itself and another 4,238
Jews were given sanctuary in Church institutions throughout Rome. When the round-ups began, only
1,015 Jews were found and deported.
United States
It is said that the United States did “too little, too late.” In spite of that, the U.S. did rescue some Jews.
A private group known as The Emergency Rescue Committee, formed in 1940 and sent Varian Fry to
Europe and successfully rescued more than 1,000 refugees (only some were Jewish).
The War Refugee Board, a federal agency formed in 1944, played a crucial role in the rescue of as
many as 200,000 Jews. Enlisting the help of Raoul Wallenberg, approximately 70,000 Jews of
Budapest were saved, and Ruth Gruber assisted in the rescue of approximately 1,000 Jewish
refugees from Europe.
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Slide 360
Rescue (Breaker Slide)
Questions to Consider:
The medals awarded to rescuers by Yad Vashem are engraved with the Jewish Talmudic saying:
“Whosoever saves a single life, saves the entire universe.” Explain.
Slide 361
Rescue:
Chart of Righteous Among the Nations
Yad Vashem in Jerusalem is Israel’s national memorial to the approximately six million Jews who
perished in the Holocaust.
In 1963, Yad Vashem embarked upon a worldwide project to grant the title of “Righteous Among the
Nations” or “Righteous Gentiles” to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the
Holocaust. To this end, Yad Vashem set up a public committee headed by a retired Supreme Court
justice, which is responsible for granting the title. This project is the only one of its kind in the world
that honors, using set criteria, the actions of those individuals who rescued Jews during the war.
In general, when the data on hand clearly demonstrates that a non-Jewish person risked his (or her)
life, freedom, and safety in order to rescue one or several Jews from the threat of death or deportation
to death camps without receiving any monetary compensation, this qualifies the rescuer for serious
consideration to be awarded the "Righteous Among the Nations" title. This applies equally to rescuers
who have since passed away.
As of January 2006, 21,309 people have been recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations.”
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Slide 362
Rescue:
American Righteous Gentiles
Yad Vashem has named 3 Americans to its list of “Righteous Among the Nations”: Waitstill & Martha
Sharp and Varian Fry.
Waitstill and Martha Sharp
Waitstill was a minister in the Unitarian church in Wellesley, MA. His wife, Martha, was a noted social
worker. In 1939, the Sharps accepted an invitation by the Unitarian Service Committee to help
members of the Unitarian church in Czechoslovakia. Shortly after their arrival, Prague came under
Nazi control. Fearing possible arrest, they left Prague in June, 1940, landing in Portugal on a mission
to help refugees from war-torn France. They made their way into Vichy-controlled France, seeking
ways to help Jewish and non-Jewish refugees from Nazi terror. Lion Feuchtwanger, a world famous
German-Jewish author of historical fiction, had settled in France, together with other German anti-Nazi
intellectuals. He was wanted by the Nazis. Hearing of Feuchtwanger’s plight from Varian Fry, an
emissary for the U.S. Emergency Rescue Committee, Waitstill and Martha Sharp took it upon
themselves to organize Feuchtwanger’s escape. Using forged identity cards and bribes, Waitstill and
Martha successfully smuggled Feuchtwanger and his wife into Spain then Portugal and on to the U.S.
Martha then returned to Vichy, France to plead the case for a group of 9 Jewish children. All 9
children made it to the U.S.
Martha Sharp died in 1999. Waitstill had passed away in 1984. Both were honored posthumously on
June 13, 2006 at Yad Vashem.
Varian Fry
The cease fire agreement between Germany and France had stated that France was obligated to turn
over any anti-Nazi refugees on the Gestapo’s list - a large number of whom were Jews. In response
to this, an organization was established in the U.S. known as the Emergency Rescue Committee
(ERC), whose purpose was to aid intellectuals stranded in France and bring them to the U.S. In June
1940, the U.S. government agreed to provide entry visas to 200 intellectuals who were in danger of
being arrested. Varian Fry was selected to be the ERC representative in France. His job was to reach
Marseilles, which held the largest concentration of these refugees, and to find a way to get them out.
He had a list of 200 names of those eligible for visas and a sum of $3,000 on his person.
Arriving in Marseilles in August 1940, he summoned the refugees on his list. Rumor of his arrival had
already spread and hundreds of people came to ask for assistance. Fry decided to find ways - most
of which were illegal - to smuggle out these refugees who faced immediate danger of falling into
German hands. He rented an office and put together a staff to deal in legal as well as illegal
emigration - forging documents and smuggling refugees across border by land and sea.
As evidence mounted that Fry was operating illegally, the Vichy administration sought his removal
from the country. In this effort they were assisted by the U.S. State Department, which was seeking to
prevent American entry into the war for as long as possible. Not long after the Vichy government
obtained American cooperation in 1941, Fry was arrested and deported back to the U.S. after 13
months of operation. The ERC’s activities were halted indefinitely.
Fry estimates that his office dealt with some 15,000 cases by May 1941. Of these, assistance was
provided to approximately 4,000 people, over 1,000 of whom were smuggled from France in various
ways. Among the Jews Fry helped to smuggle were a number of well-known figures such as Hanna
Arendt (writer), Marc Chagall (artist), Jacques Lipchitz (sculptor), Siegfried Kracauer (film critic), Franz
Werfel (author), Peter Pringsheim (physicist) and many others. When asked as to his motives, Fry
responded that when he had visited Berlin in 1935, he saw SA men assaulting a Jew, and he felt he
could no longer remain indifferent.
253
Slide 363
Rescue:
Avenue of the Righteous, Yad Vashem
The name “Yad Vashem” means “a hand (or monument) and a name.” It is derived from the quote
from Isaiah 56:5:
I will give them in My house and in My walls, a monument and name better than sons and
daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall never be effaced.
At Yad Vashem there is a special avenue lined with carob trees (known for their sturdiness and
strength) leading to the Holocaust Museum. Plaques adjacent to each tree record the names of those
being honored along with their country of residence during the war. More plaques appear on walls of
honor in the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations.
This avenue is called the “Avenue of the Righteous” and each of the more than 21,000 trees planted
along the avenue and the hillside behind it was planted to honor the non-Jews who risked their lives to
save the Jewish people. This was a way for the Jewish people to pay a tribute to people who went out
of their way to help others.
254
Slide 364
America & the Holocaust (Initial Breaker Slide)
Teacher Note:
It is tempting to look back and declare what should have been done - to ask what was moral.
It is more difficult to look back and think about what was possible at the time.
____________________________________________________________________________
The rabbi and philosopher Emil Fackenheim once asked the distinguished Holocaust scholar Raul
Hilberg why the Nazis attempted to murder all the Jews. Hilberg responded:
They did it because they wanted to do it.
He then asked why America had not done more to save the Jews?
It didn’t, I would say, because it decided not to.
We all live with the consequences of that decision.
255
Slide 365
America & the Holocaust:
Antisemitism in the U.S. / Emergency Rescue Committee
Photo Right:
Right to left - Varian Fry briefing Andre Breton (poet), Andre Masson (painter), and Jacqueline Breton
on escape routes.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Throughout the war, the U.S. State Department insisted that the best way to save victims of Nazi
Germany’s policies was to win the war as quickly as possible. Rescue was not a priority, nor was it
clear to Allied policy makers how they could pursue large-scale rescue actions behind German lines.
Due in part to antisemitism, isolationism, the Depression and xenophobia, the refugee policy of the
U.S. State Department made it difficult for refugees to obtain entry visas.
Antisemitism in the U.S.
The U.S. in effect closed its gates to emigrants during the Nazi reign. This was due, in a large part, to
the strong antisemitic climate that existed in the U.S.
Leonard Dinnerstein, author of Antisemitism in America, observes:
FDR’s tenure in the White House coincided with the worst period of antisemitism in the history
of this country.
During this time Jews were actively discriminated against in universities where there were quotas for
Jewish students and outright bans on hiring Jewish faculty. Discrimination was equally virulent in
business and the professions. Even after America went to war, one study found that 30% of employee
advertisements in the New York Times and Herald Tribune expressed a preference for Christians.
Housing discrimination was widespread
1937 Roper Poll:
32% named Jews as the ethnic group to whom “you object.”
53% displayed signs of strong anti-Jewish feelings.
41% felt Jews had too much power in the U.S.
39% felt Jews should be treated like everyone else.
November 1938, Kristallnacht:
85% of U.S. opposed any change in our restrictive
immigration quotas.
December 1938:
94% of those polled disapproved of the Nazi treatment of
Jews in Germany.
1939 Roper Poll:
39% said Jews should be treated like everyone else.
53% said Jews were different and should be restricted.
10% said Jews should be deported.
1939 Wagner-Rogers Bill:
A one-time-only quota exemption that would have allowed
20,000 refugee children into the country (10,000
children a year for two years) was opposed by 61%
of those polled. The bill was killed in Senate
Committee.
1942:
1/6 of those Americans questioned thought Hitler was
correct to have “taken away the power of the Jews in
Germany.”
256
January 1943:
Polish Jewry had been destroyed and the rest of European
Jewry was on the verge of destruction.
A poll asked Americans a simple question:
Would it be a good idea, or a bad idea to admit more
refugees (i.e. Jews) after the war?
78% of the respondents answered it would be "a bad
idea.”
1944:
A survey of Americans identified "the most dangerous group
to the U.S." as:
1. Jews (24%)
2. Japanese (16%)
3. Germans (8%)
Summer 1944:
Pollsters asked a large sample of Americans which of the
following they would refuse to allow into the U.S.:
Germans, English, Japanese, Mexicans, Jews,
Chinese, Swedes, or Russians
46% wanted to ban the Jews
About the same time, 48% of those surveyed thought that
“Jews have too much power and influence in this
country.” This figure rose to 57% by Christmas.
Dinnerstein points out that Roosevelt was always alert to the public mood; he was sensitive to charges
that he presided over the “Jew Deal” - an administration run for the benefit of Jews. Because of this,
he rarely took steps to reform the nation’s highly restrictive - and strongly anti-Jewish - immigration
policy. When he did make attempts to do so, he was rebuffed by a staunchly conservative Congress.
Although it might have been impossible for Roosevelt to liberalize American immigration laws, critics
note that his administration never worked to ensure that the maximum number of refugees eligible to
enter the U.S. under the existing laws be allowed to do so.
David Wyman had this to say about President Roosevelt's reaction to the Jewish catastrophe in Nazi-
occupied Europe:
One of the key reasons Roosevelt didn't act, I'm convinced, and definitely the key reason the
State Department wouldn't act, was the fear of the antisemites in Congress, and the hell they'd
raise if any moves were made in that direction. The antisemitism in Congress was reflective of
the antisemitism in American society.
The man primarily responsible for overseeing America’s refugee policy during much of the war was a
zealous antisemite, Breckinridge Long of Missouri, the Assistant Secretary of State in Charge of the
Special Problems Division. Roosevelt appointed him to the position in 1940. One of Long’s
responsibilities was to supervise the State Department’s Visa Division. It was his fervent wish that
U.S. consuls abroad delay and obstruct the granting of visas even to those refugees who were
qualified for them under existing laws. As David Wyman pointed out in his book Paper Walls (1969),
consular officials received great praise from their superiors for refusing to approve visas for Jews; they
obtained no support for liberal interpretations of immigration policies.
Had Roosevelt made a firm decision that the quota slots provided for under the existing immigration
laws were going to be filled, it is quite possible that at least 75,000 more European refugees would
have been admitted to the U.S. between 1938 and 1944.
See slide #135, Chart of American Immigration.
257
Emergency Rescue Committee: May 1940
In May 1940, German forces overwhelmed the unprepared French forces. Throughout the 1930’s,
people had fled to France from Germany and other countries Hitler dominated. Now that the Germans
were in France, the refugees were panic stricken and tried desperately to find ways to escape. What
alarmed them most was the pact the French and the Germans signed. Article 19 of the armistice, or
the “surrender on demand” clause, required the French government in Vichy to surrender any German
nationals that the Nazis demanded. That meant that the refugees fleeing Germany or any of the
countries Hitler overran - including Czechoslovakia, Austria and Poland - were threatened with return
to Germany where they most certainly would be interned in concentration camps.
In New York, the news from France alarmed Americans who were concerned about the fate of these
refugees. The day after the armistice was signed, a group called the Emergency Rescue Committee
(ERC) met in New York to raise money to help the refugees caught in France. They were a private,
American relief organization including Karl B. Frank (an Austrian Jewish political activist who had
recently fled to the U.S.), Reinhold Niebuhr (Protestant theologian), Frank Kingdon (Methodist
churchman) and Raymond Gram Swing (radio commentator). The members of the ERC feared for the
lives of hundreds of anti-Nazi refugee intellectuals and artists who had fled the Reich and were now
trapped within the closed borders of Vichy France.
From the outset, the ERC enjoyed strong support from influential members of New York’s literary
community. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt also actively provided help, linking the ERC to the power
corridors of Washington. With that help, the ERC convinced President Roosevelt to authorize a limited
number of “emergency visas” that would enable several hundred refugees to come to the U.S.
Under the chairmanship of Frank Kingdon, the committee set itself the mission to locate a group of
approximately 200 prominent refugees and to arrange for their escape from France and transport to
America. The mission was intended to last approximately three weeks.
For their emissary to France, the ERC selected Varian Fry, an editor for the Foreign Policy Association
with ties to the International YMCA. This connection allowed Fry to secure a visa to France at a time
when they were difficult to obtain, as well as give him a cover for his rescue work.
Varian Fry traveled to France on August 3, 1940. His assignment was to help rescue people who
were in danger of persecution by the Nazis. He assisted refugees in acquiring visas and other
documents necessary for a quick escape, but was quickly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of people
who needed assistance. Fry responded by establishing a legal relief organization under the auspices
of the French government, using it as a cover in order to evacuate endangered refugees through
illegal means. These included falsified documents and clandestine escape routes.
During the 13 months that Fry actively aided refugees, he succeeded in helping more than 1,500 leave
Vichy France, in addition to providing support to some 2,500 others. Although many of the refugees
Fry helped were Jewish, the ERC did not offer aid specifically to Jews. The people it helped were
mostly political refugees (socialists, leaders of trade unions who opposed Hitler), artists, writers and
scholars who refused to be silenced by the Nazis. They included Hannah Arendt (writer), Marc
Chagall (artist), Wanda Landowska (harpsichordist) and Andre Breton (writer).
Upon his return to America, Fry continued to speak out about the plight of the refugees. He left the
ERC and began writing for The New Republic, a political magazine. Fry wrote regularly about the
U.S.’s restrictive immigration policies. After he gathered information about the Nazis’ efforts to wipe
out the Jews of Europe, he wrote an article titled “The Massacre of the Jews: The Story of the Most
Appalling Mass Murder in Human History.” In this piece which appeared in The New Republic in
December 1942, Fry called on the U.S. to allow unrestricted entry of all who were suffering at the
hands of the Germans. The article went largely unnoticed.
In 1942 the International Relief Association and ERC joined together to form the International Rescue
Committee, an organization that remains committed to refugee relief operations to this day.
Varian Fry was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations in 1994.
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Slide 366
America & the Holocaust (Breaker Slide)
Slide 367
America & the Holocaust:
Bund Report: June 2, 1942 / The Riegner Telegram- August 8, 1942
The Bund Report: June 2, 1942
The first detailed account of mass murder reached the West in June 1942. The report, prepared by
the Bund (Jewish socialist party) leadership in Poland, said that the Germans had “embarked on the
physical extermination of the Jewish population on Polish soil.” It described the Special Action
Groups, the mobile killing vans and the killing operations that had begun at Chelmno in December
1941. The number of victims was estimated at 700,000.
The first sentence of the Bund Report read:
From the day the Russo-German war broke out, the Germans embarked on the physical
extermination of the Jewish population on Polish soil.
The Report described the Germans’ tactics of driving Jews into a town square, a cemetery, or nearby
woods, having them dig their own graves, and then shooting them with machine guns or killing them
with hand grenades. It listed the numbers killed at specific locations: 30,000 in Lvov, 15,000 in
Stanslavov, and 5,000 in Tarnopol. One thousand Jews a day were being gassed in Chelmno, the
report said.
The details given in the Bund Report were precise, and, as we now know, accurate.
- Martin Gilbert, Holocaust historian
The Polish government-in-exile, which had received the report, disclosed its content to the British
Broadcasting Corp. The BBC broadcast the information on June 2, 1942. Four days later, the Polish
cabinet sent a note to the Allied governments stating that the “extermination of the Jewish population
is reaching an unbelievable scale, with the Nazis slaughtering tens of thousands of Jews in town
throughout Poland.”
On June 13, The New York Times published Goebbel’s pledge to “carry out a mass extermination” of
Jews in reprisal for Allied bombings of German cities, yet the paper had not yet written about the Bund
Report. The New York Herald Tribune was the only U.S. newspaper to give the story front page
prominence. Jewish organizations held protest rallies. The government did nothing. The general
consensus was that it could not be true - it was exaggerated; things like that did not happen in the 20th
century.
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The Riegner Telegram: August 8, 1942
The American press had reported Nazi violence toward Jews as early as 1933, and by 1938 it had
published reports of anti-Jewish measures such as the Nuremberg Laws and other incidents of
antisemitic violence. In 1941, as the magnitude of anti-Jewish violence increased, newspapers began
running descriptions of the Nazi mass murder of Jews, some even using the word “extermination” to
refer to these large-scale killings. However, it wasn’t until late 1942 that the American public received
official confirmation of these reports.
Though intelligence data and news reports revealed Nazi violence against Jews as early as 1933, and
a dramatic increase in that violence in 1941, scholars generally agree that the United States
government did not receive reliable confirmation of the full scope of the Nazis' "Final Solution" until
August, 1942.
On August 1, 1942, Dr. Gerhard Riegner, the World Jewish Congress representative in Geneva,
Switzerland, received information from a German source regarding a Nazi plan to exterminate all the
Jews of Europe. Due to the shocking and somewhat unbelievable nature of the report, Riegner
refrained from passing on this information until he investigated its source. The information had been
provided by an anti-Nazi German industrialist who had free access to top Nazi leaders.
One week later, satisfied with the reliability of the informant, Riegner took the information to the
American consulate in Geneva, where he asked the Vice-Consul, Howard Elting, Jr. to send the
information via the London Foreign office to Sidney Silverman, a member of the British Parliament and
via the U.S. State Department to Rabbi Stephen Wise, President of the World Jewish Congress and
America’s most prominent Jewish leader.
Silverman received the information. Rabbi Wise did not. The U.S. State Department did not forward it
to Rabbi Wise, deciding that the information was nothing more than a “fantastic war rumor.” It was
Silverman who ultimately sent a copy to Rabbi Wise in August 1942, who in turn passed the
information on to Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles at the State Department, again. Wise was
told not to talk to the press until the information could be confirmed.
Received alarming report that in Führer’s headquarters plan discussed and under
consideration, according to which all Jews in countries occupied or controlled by Germany
numbering 3.5-4 million should, after deportation and concentration in the east, be
exterminated … The actions planned for autumn; methods under discussion including prussic
acid.
Four months later, on November 24, 1942, Rabbi Wise was permitted to hold a press conference. He
disclosed that the State Department had investigated and confirmed reports about the Nazis'
extermination campaign against European Jews. A few weeks later, on December 17, the United
States, Britain, and ten Allied governments released a formal declaration confirming and condemning
Hitler's extermination policy toward the Jews. Despite the official status of these announcements,
most major newspapers in the United States minimized their importance by burying them on inner
pages. The New York Times, for example, allocated space on the front page for only the latter of
these official reports, relegating Wise's press conference to page ten.
Considered to have been the first official source of information regarding the mass murder of the Jews,
the cable set in motion a process that ultimately made the West at least partly aware of what was
happening.
Note on the Source of the Information:
It is now known, after many years of investigation, that the information on which the cable was based
was transmitted by Eduard Schulte, a Leipzig businessman who had official business in Switzerland
and used the opportunity to transmit information to the western Allies. He contacted a Swiss
intermediary, who in turn informed Dr. Benjamin Sagalowitz, a Jewish journalist who ran the Swiss
Jewish press agency. Sagalowitz conveyed the information to Riegner on August 1.
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Copy of Memorandum that Howard Elting forwarded to Rabbi Wise and Sidney Silverman:
MEMORANDUM
Subject: Conversation with Mr. Gerhart M. Riegner, Secretary of World Jewish Congress
This morning Mr. Gerhart M. Riegner, Secretary of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, called in
great agitation. He stated that he had just received a report from a German business man of
considerable prominence, who is said to have excellent political and military connections in Germany
and from whom reliable and important political information has been obtained on two previous
occasions, to the effect that there has been and is being considered in Hitler's headquarters a plan to
exterminate all Jews from Germany and German controlled areas in Europe after they have been
concentrated in the east (presumably Poland). The number involved is said to be between three-and-
a-half and four millions and the object is to permanently settle the Jewish question in Europe. The
mass execution if decided upon would allegedly take place this fall.
Riegner stated that according to his informant the use of prussic acid was mentioned as a means of
accomplishing the executions. When I mentioned that this report seemed fantastic to me, Riegner
said that it struck him in the same way but that from the fact that mass deportation had been taking
place since July 16 as confirmed by reports received by him from Paris, Holland, Berlin, Vienna, and
Prague it was always conceivable that such a diabolical plan was actually being considered by Hitler
as a corollary.
According to Riegner, 14,000 Jews have already been deported from occupied France and 10,000
more are to be handed over from occupied France in the course of the next few days. Similarly from
German sources 56,000 Jews have already been deported from the Protectorate together with
unspecified numbers from Germany and other occupied countries.
Riegner said this report was so serious and alarming that he felt it his duty to make the following
requests: (1) that the American and other Allied Governments be informed with regard thereto at once;
(2) that they be asked to try by every means to obtain confirmation or denial; (3) that Dr. Stephen
Wise, the president of his organization, be informed of the report.
I told Riegner that the information would be passed on to the Legation at once but that I was not in a
position to inform him as to what action, if any, the Legation might take. He hoped that he might be
informed in due course that the information had been transmitted to Washington.
For what it is worth, my personal opinion is that Riegner is a serious and balanced individual and that
he would never have come to the Consulate with the above report if he had not had confidence in his
informant's reliability and if he did not seriously consider that the report might well contain an element
of truth. Again it is my opinion that the report should be passed on to the Department for what it is
worth.
There is attached a draft of a telegram prepared by Riegner giving in his own words a telegraphic
summary of his statements to me.
Howard Elting, Jr.
American Vice Consul
American Consulate
Geneva, Switzerland
Note:
This report was inaccurate in its warning that the annihilation of the Jews was about to begin. Mass
murder had, in fact, been taking place since June 1941. The cable was nonetheless a crucial step in
the uphill battle that Rabbi Wise and others waged to convince the Allies to intervene.
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Slide 368
America & the Holocaust (Breaker Slide)
Slide 369
America & the Holocaust:
The Bergson Group
On the morning of November 25, 1942, a small but shocking article in The Washington Post caught
the attention of Peter Bergson, a young Jewish Palestinian who was staying in Washington, D.C. The
headline read “Two Million Jews Slain.” The story went on to explain that World Jewish Congress
Chairman, Rabbi Stephen Wise had confirmation from the State Department that the Nazis were
planning to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe.
Bergson and a handful of other young Palestinian Jews had arrived in the U.S. in 1940 hoping to
create a Jewish Army to aid in the establishment of a Jewish state. Their group was known as the
Committee for a Jewish Army (CJA). After reading this article, their focus became the rescue of
Europe’s Jews.
Unlike American Jewish leaders who were at times hesitant to be too vocal for fear of exacerbating
antisemitism, the “Bergson Boys” had no qualms about whom in America they offended. In addition,
they were unfettered by allegiances to existing political organizations. Consequently they enjoyed
greater success than most American Jewish activists.
The “Bergson Boys” took out ads in the papers demanding that the Allied countries “immediately
appoint an inter-governmental committee” to devise plans to end the Holocaust. Their unorthodox
methods horrified American Jewish leadership. They argued that foreigners had no mandate to speak
for American Jews. Government leaders in Washington and London were not pleased either. In fact,
the State Department repeatedly tried to have Peter Bergson drafted or deported. Bergson and his
followers remained undeterred.
December 13, 1942
America’s most popular broadcaster, Edward R. Murrow reported the following:
Millions of human beings, most of them Jews, are being gathered up with ruthless efficiency
and murdered…It is a picture of mass murder and moral depravity unequaled in the history of
the world. It is a horror beyond what imagination can grasp…There are no longer
‘concentration camps,’ we must speak now only of ‘extermination camps’.
We Will Never Die Pageant : March 9, 1943
On March 9, 1943, with the help of Academy Award-winning screenwriter Ben Hecht (Gone with the
Wind, Scarface), composer Kurt Weill and director Moss Hart, the “Bergson Boys” mounted a huge
pageant in New York City’s Madison Square Garden called We Will Never Die, which publicized the
plight of the Jews. The cast featured 200 rabbis, 200 cantors, 400 actors and 100 musicians. Edward
G. Robinson, Paul Muni, Sylvia Sydney and Luther Adler had the leading roles.
Forty thousand people turned out for the performance in New York dedicated to the murdered Jews of
Europe. With this success, the producers tried to schedule performances in dozens of other cities. In
Washington, Eleanor Roosevelt, 6 Supreme Court Justices and some 300 Senators and
Congressmen watched the drama. In all, some 100,000 people saw the pageant in six cities, yet it
failed to have the impact the producers had hoped for, partly because of the American Jewish
Community’s distrust of the CJA.
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Emergency Committee (EC) to Save the Jewish People of Europe: July 1943
With the U.S. government’s continuing lack of action, the “Bergson Boys were convinced that they
needed to step up both their propaganda campaign and their lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill. In July of
1943 they co-sponsored a six-day conference that took place in New York City. Fifteen hundred
people took part. At the conclusion of the meeting, participants formed the Emergency Committee
(EC), which was charged with launching a national publicity campaign and lobbying Congress to
create an independent agency devoted to saving Jews.
For Peter Bergson and the Emergency Committee, the dramatic evacuation of almost 7,500 Jewish
refugees from Denmark in October 1943 pointed to other possible rescue activities. The committee
published a full page ad in The New York Times with headline, “It Can Be Done.” The group’s efforts
culminated in November 1943 when members of Congress introduced a Bergson-inspired resolution
calling for creation of a U.S. government agency to rescue refugees. President Roosevelt fast-tracked
the process in January 1944 when he established the War Refugee Board, WRB. He did so in part
because Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau had demonstrated that there had been an
intentional cover-up of the reports of genocide from Europe and intentional obstruction of action by the
State Department.
To raise funds for their work, the Bergson Group organized an all-star “Show of Shows” at Madison
Square Garden on March 13, 1944. More than 20,000 people attended, including 150 servicemen
whose tickets were paid for by the famous Jewish boxer (and WWII hero) Barney Ross. The evening
featured skits and comedy routines by Bob Hope, Gracie Fields, Jimmy Durante, Ethel Merman, Zero
Mostel, Molly Picon and others. Milton Berle served as master of ceremonies. Musical numbers were
performed by Perry Como, the Andrews Sisters, the Count Basie Band, and others. The evening also
included a dramatic reading by Helen Hayes of a Ben Hecht poem about the Nazi massacres.
According to The New York Times, the “Show of Shows” netted $80,000 for the rescue campaign.
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Slide 370
America & the Holocaust (Breaker Slide)
Slide 371
America & the Holocaust:
Jan Karski (July 1943) / War Refugee Board (January 22, 1944)
Jan Karski (July 1943)
Jan Karski (born Jan Kozielewski) was an official in the Polish Foreign Office before the war. During
the war he became a liaison officer in the Polish underground conveying information between
underground authorities and the Polish government in exile in London. In the spring of 1942, he met
with leaders of the Jewish resistance and arranged to be smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto, as well as
into a transit camp so he could see first hand the extent of Nazi atrocities.
In February 1943, Karski took his information, including microfilm, to London. In July 1943 he arrived
in the U.S. where he met with President Roosevelt and other government officials. Karski said that 1.8
million Jews had already been killed in Poland and that in the next year and a half, the Jews of Poland
would “cease to exist.” Roosevelt responded that the military defeat of Germany would remain the
Allies’ primary objective.
Mr. Karski believed that he failed to move Roosevelt to any real action. John Pehle, who became the
head of the War Refugee Board, a federal agency that helped rescue and settle surviving Jews, said
that Roosevelt decided to establish the board as a consequence of his talks with his Polish visitor.
The Karski mission, said Mr. Pehle, “… changed U.S. policy overnight from indifference to affirmative
action.”
Polish authorities realized that Karski’s identity had become known in Germany. He therefore
remained in the U.S. where he promoted Poland’s cause and publicized information about the
Holocaust. In 1982 he was honored by Yad Vashem and designated as one of the Righteous Among
Nations.
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The War Refugee Board, WRB: January 22, 1944
By the end of 1942, the American State Department had confirmed reports of the systematic mass
murder of European Jewry. Roosevelt was under pressure to act.
In the meantime, word had leaked out that the U.S. State Department was not only not interested in
the refugee problem, but that they were actively suppressing information about the extent of the
Holocaust by sending instructions to their legation in Switzerland not to permit private Jewish agencies
to transmit such stories.
Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, brought a report to Roosevelt prepared by Treasury
aides that in effect accused the United States of acquiescing in mass murder because State
Department officials “have not only failed to use the Governmental machinery at their disposal to
rescue Jews from Hitler, but have even gone so far as to use this Governmental machinery to prevent
the rescue of these Jews.” To avoid the imminent scandal, Morgenthau suggested an agency be
established outside the State Department to handle the refugee policy of the U.S. Roosevelt quickly
established the War Refugee Board (WRB) on January 22, 1944.
The War Refugee Board was to deal with rescue, transportation, maintenance and relief; it was to deal
with civilians whose lives were endangered both in and out of Nazi-controlled territories. The WRB
worked with Jewish organizations, diplomats from neutral countries, and resistance groups in Europe
to rescue Jews from occupied territories and provide relief to inmates of Nazi concentration camps.
The agency, run by Executive Director John Pehle and a staff of 30, made plans to evacuate Jews and
other endangered people from enemy territory, find safe havens for them, send relief supplies to
concentration camps, and use psychological threats such as war crimes trials against the Germans to
stop deportations. The actual rescue programs were put into effect by a small number of WRB
workers stationed in Europe.
Officially, the WRB was given much authority. All U.S. government agencies were supposed to
cooperate with it; however, only the Treasury Department, led by Morgenthau, did its part. In addition,
the WRB was strapped for money: Roosevelt only allocated $1 million for organizational costs. The
board had to collect money from private Jewish organizations to fund the actual rescue programs.
WRB SENDS RAOUL WALLENBERG TO RESCUE JEWS: (see slide #357)
In the spring of 1944, the WRB set out to rescue Hungarian Jewry by attracting international attention
to the Hungarian government and putting pressure on them to stop deportations. The board also sent
Swedish diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg, and others to protect the Jews of Budapest.
The WRB, along with the World Jewish Congress, consulted with the Swedish government about
possible rescue efforts in Budapest. All three agencies agreed to send a young Swedish
businessman named Raoul Wallenberg to Hungary to attempt the rescue of the more than 200,000
remaining Jews in Budapest. Wallenberg handed out official-looking diplomatic papers to thousands
of Jews and saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from the extermination camps. Wallenberg is
credited with saving approximately 70,000 Jews in Budapest.
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WRB SENDS RUTH GRUBER TO RESCUE JEWS:
In June 1944, President Roosevelt announced his plan to create a free port at Fort Ontario in Oswego,
NY. Roosevelt extended an invitation to 1,000 European refugees who had been carefully screened
in terms of occupation, levels of education, and so on, to come to the U.S. as “guests.” This “guest
status” allowed him to circumvent existing immigration laws and quotas, but gave the refugees no
legal standing and required them to return to Europe once conditions were better.
The WRB, acting on Presidential orders, selected the precious few who would make the journey.
These 982 refugees from 18 different countries were mostly Jews, but also other groups that were
among Hitler’s victims.
The government officials making the selection chose families and survivors with skills that
could help run a camp in America. The first priority was refugees who had been in
concentration camps and escaped.
- Ruth Gruber
Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, sent Special Assistant Ruth Gruber to Italy to bring back the
refugees to America. Ruth Gruber, a young American Jewish journalist who worked for the U.S.
government, risked her life to escort these refugees to Fort Ontario. It took the group 2 weeks to cross
the ocean, fighting limited space conditions, seasickness and extreme heat. It was not a pleasant trip.
Along the way she played the role of protector, comforter, friend and teacher, and she worked
diligently for their rights once they arrived in the U.S.
While the Statue of Liberty brought tears to the eyes of the weary refugees, the train ride to Oswego
brought reminders of trips to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Barbed wire fences and military
personnel greeted them at their new home. Within the camp, the refugees lived under security
restrictions and were not allowed to work outside the camp. Refugee Walter Greenberg commented:
I felt deceived. I felt that I should have been free. I mean, I felt wonderful. I had doctors. I
had nurses. I had food. I came to school. Oswegonians were very kind … What good is it to
have all the amenities of life if one still isn’t free?
By the end of the war, the refugees had begun to rebuild their lives in the camp, and many dreaded
returning to Europe, where they had watched their families perish and where they no longer had a
home. This created a political nightmare for Roosevelt and others who genuinely wanted to allow
them to become “official Americans.”
Through political maneuvers, letter writing, and a little hope, the refugees and their American
supporters won the ultimate freedom for the refugees, American citizenship. Their freedom was
granted on December 22, 1945 by President Harry Truman.
The WRB had intended to create other such places of asylum, and thus also influence other countries
to provide sanctuary for World War II victims. Roosevelt, however, refused to establish any other
havens besides Oswego. This was the only attempt by the United States to shelter Jewish refugees
during the war. The journalist I. F. Stone remarked that Oswego was “… a kind of token payment of
decency, a bargain counter flourish in humanitarianism.”
OTHER WRB ACTIONS:
The WRB also lobbied Roosevelt to publicly condemn the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis. They
also argued that the U.S. army should bomb Auschwitz. This was never done.
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WRB ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
By the end of the war, almost 200,000 Jews had been rescued by the WRB. About 15,000 Jews and
more than 20,000 non-Jews had been evacuated from Nazi domain. At the very least, about 10,000
Jews were protected within Nazi-controlled territory by underground programs funded by the WRB.
The board removed the 48,000 Jews in Transnistria to safe areas of Romania. About 120,000 Jews
from Budapest also survived to in part to the WRB’s activities.
Despite its best intentions, the WRB was never able to accomplish what it was charged with doing
because of the lack of cooperation extended by the U.S. government and even President Roosevelt.
John Pehle, a Treasury Department official who lent his full energies to Jewish rescue, had this to say
about the War Refugee Board: "What we did was little enough. It was late...late and little.” One can
only speculate how many more might have been saved had the WRB been established in August
1942 when Gerhart Riegner’s message reached the U.S.
There are opposing viewpoints on the effectiveness of FDR’s humanitarian efforts regarding Jewish
refugees. According to historian William E. Leuchtenburg, FDR’s record on the Holocaust was
“shameful.” The U.S. government could not have prevented the Holocaust, but it took little advantage
of opportunities to help its victims.
Author Robert Herzstein is a little kinder by saying that whatever his failures in dealing with the
refugee issue, FDR was “the most consequential anti-Nazi leader of his time.” He quietly fought
antisemitism at home and took enormous political risks in preparing the U.S. to join the Allies at a time
when most Americans favored neutrality.
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Slide 372
America & the Holocaust (Breaker Slide)
Slide 373
America & the Holocaust:
Why Auschwitz Was Not Bombed?
Teacher Note:
From the beginning, America’s involvement in World War II was to stop Nazi aggression. The
salvation of those being persecuted was never a priority.
______________________________________________________________________________
For many, the failure to bomb Auschwitz II (Birkenau) in the summer of 1944 has become a symbol of
U.S. indifference to the fate of the Jews.
On April 7, 1944, two men escaped from Auschwitz - Rudolph Vrba and Alfred Wetzler. They made
contact with Slovak resistance forces and reported the killing process at the camp in detail. Their
report was forwarded to Western intelligence officials along with an urgent request to bomb the camps.
Part of this report made its way to the U.S. War Refugee Board (WRB) in July 1944; the remainder did
not arrive until November, although it could have been forwarded earlier had there been urgent
interest in receiving it.
Because of the Vrba-Wetzler Report, Jewish leaders in Slovakia, some American Jewish
organizations and the WRB all urged the Allies to intervene. Requests were made to Churchill and
American officials to bomb Auschwitz. All requests were denied.
It should be noted why the bombing of Auschwitz was a viable option:
1. Bombing was technically possible.
The question of bombing the crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau arose only in the late spring and
summer of 1944, more than two years after the gassing of Jews had begun, and at a time when more
than 90% of the Jews who were killed in the Holocaust were already dead. By this time, bombing the
camps was technically possible: information regarding the nature of the camps and their function was
available to those undertaking such a mission. German air defenses were weakened, and the
accuracy of Allied bombing was increasing. All that was required was the political will to do so.
The rail lines from Hungary were also well within range. On July 7, 1944, American bombers flew over
the railway lines to Auschwitz. On August 20, bombs were dropped on the I.G. Farben synthetic oil
factory less than 5 miles east of Birkenau. The factory was damaged but not destroyed. A second
bombing mission occurred on September 13. German oil reserves were a priority American target,
and the I.G. Farben plant ranked 9th on the target list.
We began to hear the airplanes. Almost at once the barracks began to shake. ‘They’re
bombing Buna (Buna was the German synthetic rubber factory at Auschwitz III that relied on
slave labor),’ someone shouted. I thought of my father: But I was glad all the same. To see
the whole works go up in fire - what revenge! … We were not afraid. And yet if a bomb had
fallen on the blocks it would have claimed hundreds of victims on the spot. But we were no
longer afraid of death; at any rate not of that death. Every bomb that exploded filled us with
joy and gave us new confidence in life.
- Elie Wiesel, Night
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2. Bombing would have saved lives.
By mid-summer 1944, Auschwitz remained the only functioning killing center. Hundreds of thousands
of Hungarian Jews were being deported there. A new railroad spur had been built directly into the
Birkenau camp, where more than half of the arriving Jews were sent directly to their deaths. As many
as 10,000 people a day were being killed in the gas chambers. The crematoria were so overtaxed that
bodies were being burned in pits with body fat fueling the flames.
Some argue that bombing the camps would have made no difference; that millions of Jews still would
have been killed. Destroying Crematoria II and III at Birkenau would have eliminated 75% of its killing
capacity at a time when it would have been difficult, if not impossible to rebuild. Without the
extermination facilities, the SS would have been forced to slow or altogether halt the deportations
while they resorted to other, less efficient means of killing.
The U.S. gave several reasons for not bombing Auschwitz:
1. Military resources could not be diverted from the war effort.
In January of 1944, the U.S. War Department had decided that army units would not be “employed for
the purpose of rescuing victims of enemy oppression” unless a rescue opportunity arose in the course
of routine military operation. In February, an internal U.S. War Department memo stated: “We must
constantly bear in mind that the most effective relief which can be given the victims of enemy
persecution is to insure the speedy defeat of the Axis.”
Note that the Allies did attempt to drop supplies of food, medicine and, in some cases, arms to support
the Warsaw Uprising, the fight of Polish non-Jews in 1944. Nothing comparable was attempted at
Auschwitz.
Tragically, by the end of June and beginning of July 1944, the vast majority of the Hungarian Jews
deported to Auschwitz had already died.
2. Too many civilians would be killed…it might even provoke more vindictive German action.
For the Allies, Auschwitz II (Birkenau) was a civilian target, not a military one, and the civilians at the
camp were not the enemy but persons imprisoned against their will. Defenders of the Allied policy
argue that Auschwitz should not have been bombed even if it were possible because many prisoners
would have been killed. It remains open to debate, even now, as to whether more people could have
been saved than might have been killed by bombing the camp. It should be noted that Birkenau
prisoners worked outside the camp, so the number of casualties would not have been as high as some
critics suggest.
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Slide 374
America & the Holocaust (Breaker Slide)
Slide 375
America & the Holocaust:
The New York Times
What kept American journalists from recognizing the significance of the systematic murder of six
million people?
● Worldwide carnage on an unprecedented scale obscured the plight of the Jews.
● There was skepticism bred by false reports of atrocities during the previous world war.
● The Roosevelt Administration downplayed the news.
● The New York Times, the leader in world news, failed to give the Holocaust adequate attention.
The New York Times played a critical role in the downplaying of the Holocaust in all media. It failed in
its journalistic responsibility. Not that it didn't cover the war -- it did, with exceptional professionalism;
it simply did not cover the Holocaust.
The Times deliberately de-emphasized news of the Holocaust, reporting it in isolated, inside stories.
The few hundred words about the Nazi genocide The Times published every couple days were hard to
find amidst a million other words in the newspaper. Times readers could legitimately have claimed not
to have known, or at least not to have understood, what was happening to the Jews. During the six
years of World War II, The New York Times published 1,186 stories about what was happening to the
Jews of Europe
or about 17 stories a month; however, these stories only made the front page 26
times out of 24,000 front-page stories, and most of those stories referred to the victims as “refugees”
or “persecuted minorities.” In only six of those stories were Jews identified on page one as the
primary victims.
On May 18, 1942, The New York Times reported from Lisbon that the Germans had machine-gunned
more than 100,000 Jews in the Baltic states, another 100,000 in Poland, twice that many in western
Russia. The news appeared on an inside page -- several inches of neutral copy.
On June 10, 1942, The New York Times carried a report from the World Jewish Congress that the
Germans had massacred 1 million Jews and that the Nazis had established a “vast slaughterhouse for
the Jews” in Eastern Europe. It was buried in the back pages of the newspaper. It was not until
December 18, 1942 that the paper ran a story about the atrocities in Europe on the front page.
On July 2, 1944, The Times published what it called "authoritative information" to the effect that
400,000 Hungarian Jews had been deported to their deaths, and another 350,000 were earmarked for
similar action. This news was published as four inches of copy on page 12.
The Times was making a statement with editorial judgments of this sort, and other editors, other
reporters, other news organizations, all took their cues from The Times. Everyone knew that its
foreign coverage set the standard. A perception then spread that if the Jewish-owned Times covered
the Holocaust in this skimpy manner, then so could they, with impunity.
Across the desks of the Associated Press and the United Press came stories from Europe about the
systematic killing of Jews, but few were put on the news agency wires for mass distribution. Few
newspapers published such stories. Aside from a paragraph here and there -- Time, Newsweek and
Life -- the national news magazines maintained a steady silence on the subject. In February 1943,
when the United States first disclosed the Nazi plan for the extermination of the Jews, The Reader's
Digest, American Mercury and Collier's allowed themselves a momentary flush of editorial excitement
-- then quickly resumed their detached approach to the story.
270
One exception to the rule occurred in late 1944, when Collier's and American Mercury published vivid
accounts of the slaughter of Polish Jews written by Jan Karski, a leader of the Polish underground who
had been an eyewitness to a Nazi killing camp. Karski had earlier informed Roosevelt in a private
meeting that "the Germans are out to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe."
Disappointed by the President's response, Karski decided to go public.
There was little radio coverage of the Holocaust. Hollywood, though populated by many Jewish
producers and writers, did many films on Nazi atrocities, but not one on the Holocaust. The very
popular newsreel, The March of Time, never touched on the killing of the Jews. One of the most
momentous events of the modern era was allowed to pass virtually without comment.
Personal relationships at the newspaper, the assimilationist tendencies of The Times' Jewish owner,
and the disposition of America citizenry, all led The Times to consistently downplay news of the
Holocaust. Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher during the war, had ancestors that came to America in
1695. Sulzberger considered himself to be a member of the establishment, an American, who just
happened to be Jewish. Sulzberger was an ultra-assimilationist, a civilized man who simply wanted to
avoid being categorized as a Jew.
Was it then any surprise that bylines, such as A.H. Raskin and A.M. Rosenthal appeared, rather than
Abraham Raskin and Abraham Rosenthal? Cyrus Sulzberger, a columnist covering the war, used his
clout as a member of the publisher’s family to discourage the hiring of too many Jewish reporters.
Daniel Schorr said that he was told in the early 1950’s that he would not be hired by The Times
because there were already too many Jews on the paper.
Decisions were made at The Times that ultimately resulted in the minimizing and misunderstanding of
modern history's worst genocide. News of Hitler's “Final Solution” was hidden from readers and -
because of the newspaper's influence on other media - from America at large. The Times’ judgment
that the murder of millions of Jews was a relatively unimportant reverberated among other journalists
trying to assess the news, among Jewish groups trying to arouse public opinion, and among
government leaders trying to decide on an American response. It partly explains the general apathy
and inaction that greeted the news of the Holocaust.
It is clear that had The Times and other news organizations decided that the extermination of the Jews
was important, the paper could have and should have highlighted it, regardless of whether it would
have saved lives. The press alone could not have altered the currents of public discourse that
swamped the news of the Jews’ destruction, and certainly a single newspaper by itself could not have
accomplished that. Still, The Times had a moral and professional obligation to do more than be swept
along with the tide.
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Slide 376
Monuments & Memorials:
Yad Vashem’s Memorial to the Deportees
Monuments and memorials are sites where individuals and nations go to remember and bear witness,
where individuals go to mourn and nations attempt to work out their relationship to their historical past.
They are places of individual, as well as national memory.
Since the Second World War, many thousands of monuments have been erected at the sites of the
mass murder of Jews and of the killing of individual Jews. In the last two decades of the 20th century,
the number of such monuments grew considerably.
Slide 377
Monuments & Memorials:
Janusz Korczak
Janusz Korczak was a teacher and a social worker who ran an orphanage in Warsaw, Poland. He
also did a weekly radio show for children and wrote a series of children's books in which the central
character was a boy king named King Matt.
The Germans occupied Poland in September 1939, and the Warsaw Ghetto was established in
November 1940. The orphanage was moved inside the ghetto. Korczak received many offers to be
smuggled out of the ghetto, but he refused because he did not want to abandon the children. Janusz
Korczak and the nearly 200 children and staff of his orphanage were sent to the Treblinka death camp
on August 5, 1942. According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Korczak marched with his
192 orphans to the Umschlagplatz (boarding area for the trains) with one child carrying the flag of King
Matt with the Zionist flag on the other side of it.
Memorial at Yad Vashem
This sculpture of the great Polish-Jewish educator Dr. Henrik Goldschmidt (known by his pseudonym,
Janusz Korczak, which he borrowed from the title of a book to use when he entered a writing contest
when he was 20) stands in the center of a group of children and shelters them with his body and his
outstretched, embracing arms. The figure of Korczak is considerably bigger than the figures of the
children. Only his face and hands are visible, uniting the group with their embrace. The children are
tall and skinny, their hands are long and lifeless, and their heads are drooping.
Every year on this date a memorial ceremony is held at the monument, attended by members of the
Korzcak Society in Israel, including several of the children under his care who survived the war.
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Slide 378
Monuments & Memorials:
Treblinka
The Treblinka memorial site was built between 1959 and 1963. In February 1960, the Warsaw
Regional Council selected the design of Polish sculptor Franciszek Duszenko and Polish architect
Adam Haupt for the Memorial Stone and the Symbolic Cemetery.
Located on a knoll at the top of a gentle slope, on the site of the former Treblinka extermination camp
is a large circular area with 17,000 stones of various sizes and colors set into concrete representing a
symbolic cemetery.
Some say the 17,000 stones represent the number of people who were murdered each day when the
camp was in full “production.” Others say the 17,000 stones represent the sites of the places from
which the murdered in Treblinka came from. There is only one stone with a personal name, and that
is Janusz Korczak.
130 of the stones have specific names of cities or towns from which the victims were deported to the
death camp. The largest stone is the one for Warsaw, from where the largest number of Jews were
transported to Treblinka. In 1940 the Jewish population of Warsaw and the surrounding area, about
400,000 people, were first crowded into a walled ghetto, then later sent to Treblinka and other camps.
According to historian Martin Gilbert, there were 265,000 Jews from Warsaw deported to Treblinka.
In the center of this “mass grave” lies a 26-foot granite memorial tombstone with a big crack in it
intended to express the wickedness of the place. This is located approximately on the spot where the
gas chambers once stood.
The back side of the memorial tombstone has a menorah on the top.
The sign at base of memorial tombstone reads "Never Again" in six languages.
Slide 379
Monuments & Memorials:
Plaszow Memorial
This monument at the former Plaszow concentration camp commemorates the victims who died there,
Polish Catholics as well as Jews. It was erected in 1964 and faces the city of Krakow, Poland in the
distance,.
The Plaszow camp, established in 1942, was initially a forced-labor camp for Jews. It later housed
Poles as well. The camp had factories, warehouses and a men’s camp and a women’s camp.
Thousands were killed there, mostly by shooting.
The German industrialist, Oskar Schindler, established an enamelware factory in Krakow, adjacent to
Plaszow. He attempted to protect his Jewish workers, some 900 people, from abuse in Plaszow and
from deportation to extermination camps.
The camp was destroyed as the Soviet army approached in the summer of 1944. The mass graves
were opened and the bodies were exhumed and burned.
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Slide 380
Monuments & Memorials:
Sculpture of Love and Anguish / Miami Beach, Florida
This memorial was commissioned in 1985 and executed by Kenneth Treister, sculptor, who has
described his intent as: "a large environmental sculpture...a series of outdoor spaces in which the
visitor is led through a procession of visual, historical and emotional experiences with the hope that the
totality of the visit will express, in some small way, the reality of the Holocaust." The dominant image
is the large, 42-foot-high bronze arm rising from the ground, with sculptured people climbing the arm
seeking escape.
A Garden of Meditation
Some artists depict the Holocaust only in the dimensions of its horrors, with concrete, metal and
barbed wire. The theme is broadened here to include a serene and peaceful garden ... dedicated to
the memory of the beautiful European culture and its six million Jewish souls ... now lost. The garden
is composed of a large plaza of Jerusalem stone, a 200-foot-diameter water lily pond, and a classic
semicircular colonnade and arbor... all set against a backdrop of a dense green palm forest.
The Sculpture of Love and Anguish
Portrayal of the Holocaust ... frozen in a patina bronze. A giant outstretched arm, tattooed with a
number from Auschwitz, rises from the earth, the last reach of a dying person. Each visitor has his
own interpretation ... some see despair ... some hope ... some the last grasp for life . . . and for some it
asks a question to God... “Why?”
A Series of Vignettes
130 bronze tormented figures precariously cling to the skin trying miraculously to escape. The entire
scene is a series of vignettes where families try to help each other in a final act of love. Caught in the
abyss, fathers help mothers ... mothers gather children ... children comfort babies ... all expressing the
mixed emotions of terror and compassion.
Sensing Both Love and Fear
The free-standing bronze figures surrounding the base are life-size so that the viewer becomes part of
the sculpture ... he touches and fondles ... he senses both love and fear.
Slide 381
Monuments & Memorials:
Shoes on the Danube Bank / Budapest, Hungary
The memorial was created by Gvula Pauer along the banks of The Danube River which divides the
city of Budapest into the “old town” sections of “Buda” and “Pest.” It is located on the Pest side of the
Danube Promenade near the Hungarian Parliament (shown on the slide).
Inaugurated in April 2005, this memorial consists of bronze casts of shoes commemorating those who
were shot along the banks of the Danube River during World War II. The shoes depict those left
behind by the victims when they were forced to take off their shoes before being shot and falling into
the icy waters.
Miklós Horthy, Regent of Hungary, resisted German demands for mass deportation of Hungarian
Jews, and most survived until 1944 when Horthy fell from power and was replaced by the fascist
Arrow Cross regime. In November 1944, the Arrow Cross ordered the remaining Jews of Budapest
into a closed ghetto. Jews who did not have protective papers issued by a neutral power were to
move to the ghetto by early December. Between December 1944 and the end of January 1945, the
Arrow Cross took as many as 20,000 Jews from the ghetto, shot them along the banks of the Danube,
and threw their bodies into the river.
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Slide 382
Monuments & Memorials:
Rosenstrasse Memorial / Berlin, Germany (Site of the Rosenstrasse Protest, March 1, 1943)
This memorial (called “Block Der Frauen” or “Block of Women”) is dedicated to the non-Jewish
German women who, in early 1943, came to Rosenstrasse to demand the release of their Jewish
husbands and relatives. It was dedicated in 1995 and carved by sculptor Ingeborg Hunzinger. The
imagery is of protesting and mourning women. The inscription on the rear reads: "The strength of civil
disobedience, the vigor of love overcomes the violence of dictatorship; Give us our men back; Women
were standing here, defeating death; Jewish men were free.”
The Nazis exempted Berlin Jews in mixed marriages from deportation until February 28, 1943. On
that day, the Fabrik-Aktion took place, where between 1,500 and 2,500 Jewish men were rounded up
and held in the Jewish community building on Rosenstrasse. For the next five days, unarmed and
unorganized, the wives protested their husbands’ arrest and secured their release from probable
death in government-sponsored concentration camps. Their unexpected release is usually cited as
linked to several causes:
(1) the demonstrators, mostly women, were not protesting against the Nazi regime, but the
Nazi violation of their own directives not to deport intermarried Jews and mischlinge
(half-Jews);
(2) some respect for women;
(3) the regime's wish to avoid a larger demonstration and avoiding a bloodbath in the center of
Berlin.
(See slide #298, Non-Jewish Resistance.)
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Slide 383
Monuments & Memorials:
Valley of the Communities / Yad Vashem / Jerusalem, Israel
The idea of commemorating the destroyed communities of Nazi Europe appears in the Martyrs and
Heroes Remembrance Law (1953):
A memorial authority, Yad Vashem, is hereby created in Jerusalem... for the communities,
synagogues, movements and organizations, public, cultural, educational, religious, and
charitable institutions that were destroyed and ruined by the evil stratagem to wipe the name
of Israel and its culture off the face of the earth.
This memorial was created by sculptor Peter Boiger. Located at the western edge of the Yad Vashem
complex, the Valley of the Communities (designed by Lipa Yahalom and Dan Zur and dedicated in
1992) is made up of over one hundred open-air sections separated from each other by walls of
Jerusalem stone. Seen in its entirety from above, the site looks like a maze of ruins, depicting a world
that has all but disappeared. The labyrinth of courtyards, walls, and dead ends that make the visitor
feel trapped and insecure.
At the entrance to the valley is the inscription:
This memorial commemorates the Jewish communities destroyed by Nazi Germany and its
collaborators, and the few which suffered but survived in the shadow of the Holocaust. For
more than one thousand years, Jews lived in Europe, organizing communities to preserve
their distinct identity. In periods of relative tranquility, Jewish culture flourished, but in periods
of unrest, Jews were forced to flee. Wherever they settled, they endowed the people amongst
whom they lived with their talents. Here, their stories will be told...
Each section in the valley represents a region in pre-War Europe with a large Jewish population. The
name of the region's main community is engraved in Jerusalem stone; the names of other
communities are inscribed on marble plaques. The words that appear in Hebrew characters are the
names of towns as they are known to the Jewish community. The Latin versions were the names
used by non-Jews. The script resembles that used on gravestones throughout Europe.
The layout of the Valley of the Communities roughly corresponds to the geographic map of Europe
and North Africa.
Over 5,000 communities are identified.
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Slide 384
Survivors:
Photo of Survivors in Birmingham, AL
What did it take to survive?
Primarily luck! Other survivors will attribute their survival to personal courage, resourcefulness,
strength, optimism or faith.
Slide 385
Survivors:
“Non Sequitur” Cartoon
Teacher Notes:
● Yom HaShoah
Yom HaShoah, “the day of the Shoah.” Shoah in Hebrew means “catastrophe.”
Yom HaShoah is the Holocaust Remembrance Day in most Jewish communities. It is a day set aside
for remembering the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Yom HaShoah was instituted in
1959 by Israeli law and is a national memorial day.
It is held in the early spring, on the 27th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan. According to the secular
calendar, this day usually falls in the month of April.
The original proposal was to hold Yom HaShoah on the 15th of Nisan, the anniversary of the Warsaw
Ghetto uprising (April 19, 1943), but this was the first day of Passover. The date was moved to the
27th of Nisan, which is eight days before Israeli Independence Day.
Most Jewish communities hold a solemn ceremony on this day, but there is no institutionalized ritual.
Lighting memorial candles and reciting the Kaddish (the prayer for the departed) are common.
● International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27)
In November 2005, the United Nations designated January 27th as Holocaust Remembrance Day.
This is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, 1945.
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Slide 386
The Children “A Loss of Infinite Possibility”
A poet has said that the death of a child is the loss of infinite possibility. The ultimate crime of the
Holocaust was the murder of children.
More than 1.5 million Jewish children under the age of 15 were murdered by the Nazis in their attempt
to achieve the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” In addition, the childhood of millions of
European children were irretrievably stolen.
Although the murder of the children was a deliberate attempt to destroy the Jewish future, the Nazis
did not target children for being children, but for being Jews. Caught up in the web of
incomprehensible events, they were the most vulnerable of all the victims of Nazism. Young children
could sense their parents’ anguish, even though they could not grasp their predicament. The
presence of children forced their parents to make impossible choices, what the literary critic Lawrence
Langer has called “choiceless choices.” Throughout Europe, parents had to decide if the family should
stay together and face the future, or go into hiding together or individually. Young children often
endangered their parents. A crying child could give away a clandestine hide-out and endanger the
lives of an entire group. Some children spent the war years hiding in basements or attics, passed from
family to family. They could not go outside or be seen in public. Others, because of the color of their
hair and the absence of an accent could pass as non-Jews. In the end, children were deported along
with their parents to concentration camps. Mothers and fathers could no longer protect their young.
At Auschwitz, children were often killed upon arrival. Parents who refused to be separated from their
children were sent at once to the gas chambers. Children born in the camp were generally killed on
the spot. Near the end of the war, in order to cut expenses and save on gas, an order was given to
place living children directly into the ovens or throw them into open burning pits.
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Slide 387
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