Learning About the Holocaust: A Student's Guide

Citation preview

Editorial Board Editor in Chief Ronald M. Smelser University of Utah Salt Lake City, Utah

Advisory Board Jeff Boyd West Essex Regional High School North Caldwell, New Jersey Paul Fleming Hume-Fogg Magnet High School Nashville, Tennessee Saul David Fript Latin School of Chicago Chicago, Illinois Carl Schulkin Pembroke Hill School Kansas City, Missouri

Editorial and Production Staff Pamela Willwerth Aue Project Editor Lisa Clyde Nielsen Research and Editorial Consultant Christine Slovey, Lawrence W. Baker Contributing Project Editors Nancy K. Humphreys Indexer Deanna Raso Photo Researcher Evi Seoud Assistant Manager, Composition Purchasing and Prepress Stacy Melson Buyer Randy A. Bassett Image Database Supervisor Robert Duncan Senior Imaging Specialist Kenn Zorn Product Design Manager Tracey Rowens Senior Art Director

Macmillan Reference USA Elly Dickason, Publisher Jill Lectka, Associate Publisher

Learning About the Holocaust Copyright (c) 2001 by Macmillan Reference USA All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Macmillan Reference USA 1633 Broadway New York, NY 10019

Gale Group 27500 Drake Road Farmington Hills, MI 48331

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00–062517 Printed in the United States of America Printing Number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Learning About the Holocaust: a student’s guide / Ronald M. Smelser, editor in chief. p. cm. Includeds bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN: 0-02-865536-2 (set) – ISBN 0-02-865537-0 (v. 1) – ISBN 0-02-865538-9 (v. 2) – ISBN 0-02-865539-7 (v. 3) – ISBN 0-02-865540-0 (v. 4) 1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)–Study and teaching (Secondary) I. Smelser, Ronald M., 1942D804.33 .L4 2000 940.53’18—dc21

00-062517

Contents VOLUME 1 List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii Recent Publications and Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxvii

A Aid to Jews by Poles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Aktion (Operation) 1005 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Aktion (Operation) Reinhard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Aliya Bet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 American Friends Service Committee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 American Jewish Organizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 American Jewry and the Holocaust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 American Press and the Holocaust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Anielewicz, Mordecai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Anti-Jewish Legislation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Antisemitism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Arrow Cross Party . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Aryanization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Atlas, Yeheskel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Auerswald, Heinz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Auschwitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Austria. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

B Babi Yar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Bach-Zelewski, Erich von dem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Badge, Jewish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Barbie Trial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Baum Gruppe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Belgium. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Belorussia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Bel⁄z˙ec . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Benoît, Marie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Bergen-Belsen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Berlin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Best, Werner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

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Bial⁄ystok . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Biebow, Hans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Bielski, Tuvia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Blobel, Paul. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Blum, Abraham. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Bogaard, Johannes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Bohemia and Moravia, Protectorate of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Bormann, Martin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Bothmann, Hans. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Boycott, Anti-Jewish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Buchenwald . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Budapest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Budzyn´ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

C Central Office for Jewish Emigration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Central Union of German Citizens of Jewish Faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Chel⁄mno . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Choms, Wl⁄adysl⁄awa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Christian Churches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Clauberg, Carl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Cohn, Marianne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Concentration Camps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Crimes Against Humanity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 Croatia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Czerniaków, Adam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

D Dachau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Dannecker, Theodor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Darquier de Pellepoix, Louis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Death Marches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Deffaugt, Jean. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Denazification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 Denmark. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Deportations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Dirlewanger, Oskar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 Displaced Persons, Jewish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 Dora-Mittelbau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 Drancy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 Dvinsk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

E Economic-Administrative Main Office . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 Edelstein, Jacob . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Eichmann, Adolf. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 Eicke, Theodor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Elkes, Elchanan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 Endre, László . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Erntefest (“Harvest Festival”) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 Euthanasia Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 Evian Conference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Extermination Camps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

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Contents VOLUME 2 Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x i i i

F Fascism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Feiner, Leon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Fighting Organization of Pioneer Jewish Youth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 “Final Solution” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Forced Labor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Frank, Anne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Frank, Hans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 French Police . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Freudiger, Fülöp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

G Gas Chambers/Vans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Generalgouvernement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Generalplan Ost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Genocide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Gens, Jacob. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Gestapo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Getter, Matylda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Glazman, Josef . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Globocnik, Odilo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Goebbels, Joseph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Great Britain. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Grodno . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Grosman, Haika . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Gross-Rosen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Grüninger, Paul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Gurs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Gypsies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

H Heydrich, Reinhard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Himmler, Heinrich. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Hirsch, Otto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Hitler, Adolf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Hitler Youth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Holocaust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Holocaust, Denial of the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Homosexuality in the Third Reich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Horthy, Miklós . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Höss, Rudolf. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Hungarian Labor Service System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Hungary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

I I. G. Farben . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

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J Jäger, Karl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Janówska . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Jeckeln, Friedrich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Jewish Brigade Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Jewish Fighting Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Jewish Ghetto Police . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 Jewish Law (Statut des Juifs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Joint Distribution Committee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 Judenrat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

K Kaltenbrunner, Ernst . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 Kamenets-Podolski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Kaplan, Josef. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 Kapo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Kasztner, Rezso˝ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Kharkov . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Kherson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Kielce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Kistarcsa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 Koch, Karl Otto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Kolbe, Maximilian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 Kommissarbefehl (Commissar Order). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Koppe, Wilhelm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Korczak, Janusz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Korherr, Richard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 Kovno . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Kowalski, Wl⁄adysl⁄aw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 Kraków . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Kramer, Josef . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Kristallnacht (“Night of the Broken Glass”) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Krüger, Friedrich Wilhelm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 Krumey, Hermann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

Contents VOLUME 3 Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

L Latvia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Laval, Pierre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Levi, Primo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Liebehenschel, Arthur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Liebeskind, Aharon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Literature on the Holocaust. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Lithuania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 L ⁄ ódz´ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

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L ⁄ ódz´ Ghetto, Chronicles of the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Lohse, Hinrich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Lösener, Bernard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Lublin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Lutsk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Lutz, Carl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Lvov . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

M Madagascar Plan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Majdanek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Mauthausen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Mayer, Saly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Medical Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Mein Kampf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Mengele, Josef . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Minsk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Mischlinge (Part Jews) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Mogilev-Podolski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Morgenthau, Henry, Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Müller, Heinrich. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Muselmann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Museums and Memorial Institutes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Mushkin, Eliyahu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

N Natzweiler-Struthof . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Nazi Party. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Nebe, Arthur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Netherlands, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Neuengamme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Nisko and Lublin Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Novak, Franz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Nuremberg Laws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

O Oberg, Carl Albrecht . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Office of Special Investigations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Ohlendorf, Otto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Operational Squads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Oradour-sur-Glane. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Organisation Schmelt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

P Paris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Partisans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Pechersky, Aleksandr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Pl⁄aszów . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Plotnicka, Frumka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 Pohl, Oswald . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Poland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Ponary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Prisoners of War. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 Protocols of the Elders of Zion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 Prützmann, Hans-Adolf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

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R Racism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Rasch, Emil Otto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Rauff, Walther . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 Ravensbrück . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 Rayman, Marcel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 Refugees, 1933-1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Reichenau, Walter von . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Reich Security Main Office . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 Rescue Committee of United States Orthodox Rabbis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Rescue of Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 Resistance, Jewish. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 Riegner Cable. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 Riga. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 “Righteous among the Nations” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Ringelblum, Emanuel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 Robota, Roza . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 Rosenberg, Alfred. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Rovno . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 Rumbula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

Contents VOLUME 4 Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

S Sachsenhausen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Schindler, Oskar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 SD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Sendler, Irena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Seyss-Inquart, Arthur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Simferopol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Skarz˙ysko-Kamienna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Slovakia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Sobibór . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Sousa Mendes, Aristides de . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Soviet Union. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Special Commando . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Sporrenberg, Jacob. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Sprachregelung. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 SS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 SS Death’s-Head Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Stahlecker, Franz Walter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Stangl, Franz. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Starachowice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 St. Louis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Streicher, Julius. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Stroop, Jürgen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Stuckart, Wilhelm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Stutthof. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

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Sugihara, Sempo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Survivors, Psychology of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Szenes, Hannah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

T Tarnów . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Tenenbaum, Mordechai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Ternopol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Theresienstadt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Transfer Point (Umschlagplatz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Trawniki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Treblinka. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Trials of the War Criminals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

U Ukraine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Ukrainian Military Police . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 United Partisan Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 United States Army and Survivors in Germany and Austria. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 United States Department of State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 United States of America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

V Vallat, Xavier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Vienna. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Vilna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Vitebsk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Volksdeutsche . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

W Wallenberg, Raoul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Wannsee Conference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 War Refugee Board . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Warsaw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Warsaw Polish Uprising. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Westerbork . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Wiesel, Elie. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Wiesenthal, Simon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Wirth, Christian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Wise, Stephen Samuel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Wisliceny, Dieter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Wolff, Karl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 World Jewish Congress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Y Yelin, Haim. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 Youth Movements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

Z Zamos´ c´ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Ziman, Henrik . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Zuckerman, Yitzhak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Zyklon B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

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Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Primary Source Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Nazi Party Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Official Laws, Orders, and Regulations of the Third Reich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Secret Nazi Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 Nazi Correspondence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 Jewish Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Life in the Ghettos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Testimony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Resources for Further Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 Photo Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Text Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

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List of Contributors The text of Learning about the Holocaust is based on the Macmillan Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, which was published in 1990. We have updated the material where necessary and added new entries, resource lists, and feature material. Here we wish to acknowledge the authors of the original and new material: Uwe Adam Jacques Adler Mikhael Agursky Gabriel E. Alexander Yitzchak Alperowitz Mordechai Altshuler Jean Ancel Yitzhak Arad Shlomo Aronson Pamela Willwerth Aue Gerry Azzata Zvi Bacharach David Bankier Avraham Barkai Yehuda Bauer Moshe Bejski Sarah Bender Michael Berenbaum Randolph L. Braham Christopher R. Browning Yehoshua R. Büchler Josef Buszko Daniel Carpi Constance Clyde Shalom Cholawski Yehoyakim Cochavi Asher Cohen Nava Cohen John S. Conway

Abraham Cooper Leonard Dinnerstein Barbara Distel Krzysztof Dunin-Wasowicz Benyamin Eckstein Leo Shua Eitinger Andrew Ezergailis Sidra DeKoven Ezhahi Henry L. Feingold Jörg Friedrich Yoav Gelber Haim Genizi Israel Gutman Esther Hagar Esriel Hildesheimer Ariel Hurwitz Eberhard Jäckel Yeshayahu Jelinek Patricia Dale Jones Felicja Karay Menahem Kaufman Hillel Klein Bronia Klibanski Joke Kniesmeyer Lionel Kochan Alfred Konieczny Deborah Kops Ryszard Kotarba Shmuel Krakowski Otto Dov Kulka Leszek Kubicki Zbigniew Landau Hagit Lavsky Lucien Lazare Sinai Leichter Dov Levin Deborah E. Lipstadt

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Franklin H. Littell Yaacov Lozowick Czesl⁄aw Luczak Czesl⁄aw Madajczyk Zygmunt Mankowski Michael R. Marrus Meir Michaelis Dan Michman Jozeph Michman Judith Millman Christine Miner Minderovic George L. Mosse Marian Mushkat Tikva S. Nathan Lisa Clyde Nielsen Akiva Nir Dalia Ofer Mordecai Paldiel Yael Peled (Margolin) Eli Pfefferkorn Falk Pingel Dina Porat Teresa Prekerowa Tsvi Raanan Joseph Rab Györy Ranki Shalom Robinson Jacqueline Rokhsar

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Herbert Rosenkranz Livia Rothkirchen Robert Rozett Adalbert Rückerl Adam Rutkowski Chaim Schatzker Karl A. Schleunes Gerard J. Senick Gitta Sereny Elisheva Shaul Menachem Shelah Victoria Sherrow David Silberklang Shmuel Spector Zeev Sternhell Christian Streit Uriel Tal Judith Tydor-Baumel Michal Unger Jehuda L. Wallach David Weinberg Aharon Weiss Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm David S. Wyman Leni Yahil James E. Young Efraim Zuroff

Preface Learning about the Holocaust: A Student’s Guide offers an introduction to the people, places, and politics of one of the darkest moments in twentieth-century history. Nearly 300 entries in four volumes cover topics that include the countries most involved in and affected by the Holocaust; the primary concentration and extermination camps in which millions of Jews and others were incarcerated and murdered; and the major political, ethical and moral themes that arise from the study of these events. More than 100 of the articles collected here focus on people—victims, survivors, perpetrators, resc uers. Some are famous; others are little known. Together, they represent the people whose lives were dramatically altered by a dangerous confluence of political, sociological, psychological, and economic forces. The entries are arranged alphabetically. Blind entries also appear alphabetically throughout the book to direct readers to topics sought. Entry titles usually appear in English with foreign-language terms appearing as blind entries. Margin definitions are provided for some terms that may be unfamiliar to readers just beginning their study of the Holocaust. Highlighted quotes are provided to draw reader attention to specific concepts, facts, or details within the main text. Framed margin text provides short sidebar information to supplement or complement the main entry. Longer sidebar features, including personal testimony, poetry, and explanatory material, appear within the main margin, set apart by a different type color and style. These important elements of the text are provided to help readers discover the human lives and experiences behind the historical facts of the time period. Wherever possible, the stories are told by the people themselves—victims, survivors, perpetrators, rescuers. Each entry includes embedded cross-references—terms that appear in bold small caps—to alert readers to other articles in Learning about the Holocaust which may be relevant to their study. In some cases, additional cross-references appear at the end of the articles. When foreign-language names and terms appear in the text, English translations are provided in parentheses. Each entry concludes with suggestions for further study. These include books, audiovisual resources, and internet sites, each of which has been carefully selected by editors familiar with the resources students need to complete multimedia presentations and research assignments. Students will also find several features designed to enhance their research experience. A timeline appears in the front of each volume that places key events of the Holocaust within the context of world events before, during, and after the years known as the Holocaust. A glossary appears in the appendix section of volume 4

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that provides quick reference to names, places, and other terms found throughout the entries. Students will also find a comprehensive list of resources suggested for further study in at the end of Volume 4. Finally, students will find examples of primary source documents from the Holocaust years, reproduced (in English translations) at the conclusion of Volume 4. These items represent a wide range of printed material that survived the war: Nazi reports that demonstrate an incredible propensity for keeping detailed records of horrific actions; diary entries written in Jewish ghettos that illuminate the courage of the persecuted; and excerpts from laws and other legal documents that exemplify the Nazis’ deliberate and unrelenting drive to “Aryanize” Europe. It is the hope of the editors and publishers that teachers and students will find Learning about the Holocaust: A Student’s Guide to be a balanced, accessible, valuable tool in their efforts to understand the lasting impact of the Holocaust.

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Introduction The twentieth century has been arguably the most violent in human history in terms of loss of lives. Millions of human beings have perished in the context of world wars, civil wars, and revolutions. Emblematic of this destructive century has been the Holocaust: the mass murder of millions at the hands of the Nazi regime during World War Two. This genocide would be shocking enough in any age, but it transpired in a modern era in a Western world, which viewed itself as civilized and evolved beyond such barbarity. Hence the often-raised question: how could it have happened? As the question suggests, many see the Nazi Holocaust as a throwback to barbarism in an otherwise civilized world, one in which we feel comfortable; one which is familiar. In this view, the Nazis were crazed villains venting their hatreds on helpless victims, men, women and children. The Nazis were, in a sense, latter day Huns. Virtually all scholars of the Holocaust, however, disagree. The opposite is true. The Holocaust was not an emotional pogrom. It was systematic, clinical, assembly line murder. The Nazis invented that most modern of sciences: thanatology—the science of producing death. The Holocaust is thus symptomatic of modern society itself and not of some earlier “uncivilized” world. Without the modern world and its essential characteristics the Holocaust is unthinkable. What are those characteristics? They include: the expanded powers of governments to undertake vast projects in the area of public policy; the rise of bureaucracy which is impersonal and routinized; and the emergence of the twin gods of science and technology, which have increasingly become divorced from moral and ethnical considerations. These were the prerequisites for the Holocaust. The major target of the Nazis—although by no means the only one—was the Jews. The ideological basis for the Nazis’ hatred for the Jews was the modern doctrine of antisemitism. Certainly, an important foundation for modern antisemitism was the centuries of Christianity, which in its popular hostility to the Jews developed a series of stereotypes and accusations which were deeply etched in the mass Western mind: the Jew as unbeliever, as moneylender, as well-poisoner, as ritual murderer, as Christ killer. The Nazis did not have to develop any stereotypes of their own. Western society had already done so for them. But for all that, the attitude of Western Christendom toward the Jews had always been profoundly ambivalent. The Jew might be hated, but he was also necessary. Part of the Christian mission was to need the Jew, who would hopefully one day convert and demonstrate

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that Christ’s own people accepted him as messiah—the ultimate act of legitimization. So, Christian moral strictures prevented an earlier annihilation of the Jew, despite deeply rooted antipathies. This ended in the modern world. In a secular age the legitimizing factor was no longer necessary. The Jew could disappear with impunity. Moreover, modern bureaucracies were increasingly impersonal and logical anyway; moral concerns were viewed as subjective and irrelevant. What was important were routine tasks carried out conscientiously with strict regard to efficiency and observation of rules of conduct. “Scientific management” became the watchword. And so it was that the Nazi mass murderer, far from being a crude throwback to barbaric times, a sadistic beast in black uniform, was, in reality, the buttoned-down collar organization man. The Nazi SS men were not a bunch of thugs; they were the university-educated elite of the country: businessmen, lawyers, doctors, academicians, engineers. The leaders of three of the four Einsatzgruppen (operational squads), which shot and killed a million people, held PhDs! Nor were they all sadists. Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, intentionally weeded out those who approached the task of mass murder with sadistic or pathological tendencies. And those who stole gold teeth from their victims for personal gain were ruthlessly punished. A task of such historic dimensions had to be carried out cleanly and above reproach. It was a task in which nearly every agency in the Nazi party, the German government, and the German economy was involved. It is profoundly disturbing to comprehend the extent to which executives in all three areas were intertwined in the system of terror. They were virtual carbon copies of each other in the German corporate economy, the slave labor camps, and the death camps. These men graduated from the same schools; they went on in-service seminars together; they collaborated in the same boardrooms and ran their enterprises by the same rules. I. G. Farben, the giant chemical combine, invested over a billion dollars in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps alone and hired 170 contractors to build a manufacturing plant to produce synthetic rubber at Auschwitz-Monowitz. It did so with the same logical reasoning that an executive today might use to consider transferring operations from Stuttgart to Singapore or from Philadelphia to Taiwan. Many other quite respectable firms were involved in the same process, as indicated by the recent compensatory agreement between German corporations and surviving slave laborers. During all this, scarcely a soul gave a second thought to the ethical implications of either slave labor or mass murder, or indeed, to any of the ends of the bureaucratic process in which they were involved. All that was necessary was that the task had been authorized; that the process had become routine; the victims dehumanized. All very modern. One observer has called this combination a “moral sleeping pill.” This last factor—dehumanization—is of particular importance, because who can imagine incarcerating and murdering a young girl—Anne Frank, for example— unless she had been made into something other than a delicate, precious human being with the promise of life before her. The Western world had long since created a Jewish “type, a “conceptual Jew.” This meant a set of characteristics which, lumped together, was called “Jewishness.” Such a powerful hold did this “conceptual Jew” have on the popular imagination, that antisemitism was possible in areas which had no Jews, among people who had never seen a Jew, but had a clear idea of what “Jewishness” was supposed to be. Thus, in their own minds, the Nazis, and their collaborators in other countries, were not exterminating sixteen-year-old Anne Frank, but world “Jewishness.” The terrifying lesson of the Holocaust, which we must ponder, is that, in the twenty-first century, powerful governments may separate a group of people from

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mainstream society as a matter of public policy, remove them from the circle of common humanity, deem them superfluous or dangerous, deprive them of their rights and citizenship, then their property, then their freedom and their dignity and, finally, their very lives, without setting off any moral alarm clocks. This would be possible, because these entirely modern methods separate, both psychologically and physically, perpetrator from victim. Nor is there any evidence that the perpetrators of such an enterprise, even if the enterprise goes awry, will ever pay much of a price for their actions. Executive and managerial skills are at such a premium in modern society that countless perpetrators were able to go on with business as usual. Only a small minority of Nazi war criminals had to face justice. Thousands were able to continue successful careers, then retire on full pensions with the respect of associates and neighbors. Could it happen again? It certainly could, because circumstances have not changed that much. Modern governments with huge bureaucracies still exist; communication and transportation technologies have only improved (remember the significance of trains in the Holocaust); chemical technology has proceeded apace (Zyklon B gas was vital in the killing centers); secular ideologies functioning as surrogate religions have survived to lend legitimacy to the killing. Future genocides will probably not involve Nazis and Jews. There are potential victims much closer than that in the Western world: the elderly, AIDS victims, ghettoized minorities. As you read and ponder the entries in these volumes, it would be useful to remember that the Holocaust took place long ago in far away places involving people who, for the most part, are no longer with us. Its lessons, though, are with us always. The material in these volumes cannot answer all the questions involved in examining a tragedy of this magnitude, of which it has been said that in the face of the Holocaust we can only stand silent and paralyzed. But we can offer the raw materials—factual entries, a sample of primary sources and photographs—which will enable the student to embark on the long journey of confronting man’s inhumanity to man.

METHODOLOGY AND CRITERIA These volumes have their origin in part in an Encyclopedia of the Holocaust published more than a decade ago. In revising that publication for a public school audience, it has been necessary to make substantial cuts in the original entries, involving both paring and elimination, in order that other features, including sidebars, might be added. It has been one of my tasks as editor in chief to make these hard decisions. In so doing, I have been mindful of the necessity of offering as comprehensive and balanced a coverage of the Holocaust as the reduced number of entries permits. Here I have been guided in part by that old journalistic maxim of providing the “who,” “what,” “when,” “where” and “why” of the matter. The criteria which I have chosen and about which the board of advisors largely agrees reflect these principles and I have tried to maintain balance and broad coverage within and among these criteria. First, since the general public—and especially young people— gain their initial access to history through biography, I have tried to preserve as much of this component as I could. Students will be able to familiarize themselves with a wide range of actors in this tragedy, including political leaders, Nazi managers of destruction, victims, Jewish and other resistance fighters, collaborators, and “righteous gentiles.” Thus, a number of names have been preserved which will not immediately ring any bells, but which are important to include as representative of these various groups. On the other hand, I have eliminated some names which are household words and this may cause some perplexity. Among the entries, for example, the reader will not find Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, DeGaulle, or Eisenhower, even though in many respects these men tower over this time period. My reasoning is, first of all, that this

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is not an encyclopedia of World War Two or of the Twentieth Century, but rather an encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Moreover, these leaders often appear within the limited role they played with respect to the Holocaust in other entries. Given their fame, there are also plenty of other reference works in which students can look up these historic personages. Secondly, I have tried to preserve entries on topics that are important as concepts, principles, and symbols. One of the tasks teachers undertake is getting students to grapple with moral, ethical, and legal problems which arise out of the Holocaust, including justice, injustice, discrimination, racism and racial violence, hate crime, and stereotyping. Thus, I have kept conceptual entries covering topics such as Antisemitism, Fascism, Christian Churches, Crimes Against Humanity, Forced Labor, Displaced Persons, and the Jewish Badge. Thirdly, I have carefully selected geographic sites of the Holocaust, also for balance and comprehensive coverage. My rule of thumb here has been: when a particular place—be it town, province, or country—is central to the Holocaust, I have left it in. When any of these are peripheral to the Holocaust, I have excluded them. These choices have been very difficult. Some very familiar places are not included (Bulgaria, Romania); some less familiar places are included (Bohemia-Moravia, Croatia) because of their centrality to the process. The same holds for cities (Bucharest and Brussels are out, Budapest and Berlin are in) and smaller places (Corfu is out, Budzyn´ is in). Overlapping this pattern of priorities is another one. That is, I see several countries as being of special importance both in being central to the Holocaust and in the emblematic role that they play in its complexity. These include France, Croatia, Poland, and the German-occupied parts of the Soviet Union and Hungary. In these cases I have not only preserved the main entry, but also other entries which relate to these countries. In this fashion, I have tried to achieve geographic breadth but also some depth. With respect to the main loci of the killing process in the Holocaust, I have tried to preserve the names of different kinds of camps, which give us a sense of their variety. Thus, I have included representative examples of killing centers, concentration/death camps, labor camps, assembly camps, and holding centers. Several camps were not central to the genocide but are household words and important symbols. For example, I have kept Dachau. Finally, because the vast majority of students who will be reading the encyclopedia are Americans, I have tried to preserve as many entries as possible which bear on this country’s reaction to the Holocaust, even though the “action,” as it were, takes place overwhelmingly in Europe. In some cases, though, I have bundled several entries into one and called for their abbreviation; American Jewish Organizations is such an entry. —Ronald M. Smelser Salt Lake City, Utah

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Recent Publications and Issues Since the publication of the original encyclopedia, a great deal has been published on the Holocaust as public interest in this tragedy has grown over the last decade. It would be impossible—and indeed inadvisable—to try to list all these more recent publications as part of this encyclopedia. However, it is important for the student who wants to read more widely and deeply, or who is undertaking a research project, to be aware at least of the most important works of recent years as well as of the major problems and issues which have caused debate among scholars of the Holocaust during that time. These works include translations of some important studies done abroad. Since new works are being published at a prodigious rate, what follows should be viewed as a snapshot in time. Some important general studies of the Holocaust include: Götz Aly, “Final Solution”: Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European Jews (London, Arnold, 1999); David Bankier, The Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion under Nazism (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1992); Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck (eds.), The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed and the Reexamined (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1998); Wolfgang Benz, The Holocaust (New York, Columbia University Press, 1999); Christopher Browning, The Path to Genocide: Essays on the Launching of the Final Solution (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992); Phillippe Burin, Hitler and the Jews: the Genesis of the Holocaust (London, 1994); David Cesarani (ed.), The Final Solution: Origins and Implementations (London, Routledge, 1994); John Dippel, Bound upon a Wheel of Fire: Why so many German Jews made the Tragic Decision to Remain in Nazi Germany (New York, Basic Books, 1996); Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York, Harper Collins, 1997); Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders (Harper Perennial Library, 1993); Marian Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998); John Roth, The Holocaust Chronicles: A History in Word and Pictures (Publications International, 2000); John Weiss, Ideology of Death: Why the Holocaust Happened in Germany (Chicago, Ivan R. Dee, 1996). Three works which deal with the ideological background of the Holocaust are: Klaus Fischer, The History of an Obsession: German Judeophobia and the Holocaust (New York, Continuum, 1998); Milton Shain, Antisemitism (London, Bowerean, 1998); Robert S. Wistrich, Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred (New York, Schocken, 1991).

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At the heart of the Holocaust lie the perpetrators, who, with a mixture of motives, unleashed the murderous genocidal policies of the Nazi regime. The prime perpetrator, of course, was Adolf Hitler. Although an enormous amount has been published on the dictator, several publications of recent years have added new dimensions to our understanding. Ian Kershaw’s two volume biography of Hitler is likely to become the definitive one: Hitler 1889–1936: Hybris (New York, Norton, 1998) and Hitler 1937–1945: Nemesis (New York, Norton, 2000). Hitler’s allimportant formative years are scrutinized in Brigitte Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna: A Dictator’s Apprenticeship (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998). Several authors who attempt to view Hitler from a number of intellectual and moral vantage points are: John Lukacs, The Hitler of History (New York, Alfred Knopf, 1997) and Ron Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler (New York, Random House, 1998). Hitler’s main henchmen have not been neglected in recent publications. Heinrich Himmler’s role in the Holocaust is examined by Richard Breitman in The Architect of Genocide (New York, Knopf, 1991). The most recent biography of Hitler’s Propaganda Minister is by Ralf Georg Reuth, Goebbels (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1993). Hitler’s armaments minister is examined in Dan van der Vat, The Good Nazi: The Life and Times of Albert Speer (New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1997). A collection of biographical sketches of 23 top Nazis can be found in Ronald Smelser and Rainer Zitelmann (eds.), The Nazi Elite (London, Macmillan, 1993). No overview of the perpetrators would be complete without the organizations in which Hitler’s agents functioned. The Holocaust, after all, was bureaucratic death. A number of important works on perpetrator organizations have appeared in recent years. George Browder has written two important studies on the development of the Nazi police system: Foundations of the Nazi Police State (Lexington, University of Kentucky Press, 1990) and Hitler’s Enforcers (New York, Oxford University Press, 1996). Two other studies focus in particularon the Gestapo, the muchfeared secret police: Robert Gallately, The Gestapo and German Society (Oxford, Clarendon, 1990) and Eric A. Johnson, Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews and Ordinary Germans (New York, Basic Books, 1999). Valdis Lumans in Himmler’s Auxiliaries (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press) examines the SS organization which tried to infiltrate, organize and resettle millions of ethnic Germans scattered over eastern Europe. Needless to say, the perpetrators have been less than forthcoming about their role. Exceptions are to be found in Rudolf Höss, Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz (Buffalo, Prometheus Books, 1992) and Ernst Klee, Willi Dreesen and Volker Riess (eds.), “The Good Old Days”: The Holocaust as seen by its Perpetrators and Bystanders (New York, The Free Press, 1991); a translation of many German documents and eyewitness accounts can be found in Danata Czech and Walter Laqueur (eds.), The Auschwitz Chronicles 1939–1945 (New York, Henry Holt, 1997). Classic studies of the perpetrators include Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York, Harper Collins, 1992) and Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000). A number of young German scholars, like Christoph Dieckmann, Christian Gerlach, Karin Orth, Dieter Pohl, Thomas Sandkuehler and Gudrun Schwarz have made effective use of the wealth of documentation coming out of the former Soviet Union to produce first rate case studies of the Holocaust in German occupied territories in the East. Most of these have not yet been translated, but a sampling is available in Ulrich Herbert, National Socialist

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Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies (New York, Basic Books, 1997). These works are a reminder that the Holocaust took place against the background of one of the most barbarous wars in history—that between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union—and that it was not just Nazi party officials who were involved in carrying out the Holocaust, but the German military as well. Important in bringing this story to light are the works of Omer Bartov, which include Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis and War in the Third Reich (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992); Murder in Our Midst: the Holocaust, Industrial Killing and Representation (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996); and The German Army and Genocide: Crimes Against War Prisoners, Jews and Other Civilians in the East (New York, New Press, 1999). Also important in this regard is Lucjan Dobroszycki and Jeffrey S. Gurock (eds.), The Holocaust in the Soviet Union (New York, M.E. Sharpe, 1993). The primary site both for exploitation of slave labor and for mass murder was the concentration camp, which came in a wide variety of forms, including killing centers, death camps, concentration camps, labor camps, and internment camps. Recent works which illuminate the sites of destruction include: Yitzak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1999); Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present (New York, Norton, 1996); Israel Gutman, Michael Berenbaum, Raul Hilberg (eds.), Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp (Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1998 reprint); David Hackett (ed.), The Buchenwald Report (Boulder, Westview, 1995); Wolfgang Sofsky, The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993); Tzvetan Todorov, Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camp (New York, Henry Holt, 1996); and Norbert Troller, Theresienstadt: Hitler’s Gift to the Jews (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1991). On the theme of slave and forced labor, see Ulrich Herbert, Hitler’s Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany under the Third Reich (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997). While the vast majority of the victims of the Holocaust were Europe’s Jews, recent work has reminded us that the Nazis’ racism was imbedded in a vast biomedical vision of cleansing destruction which involved other groups as well, especially the Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) and the mentally ill and handicapped. General works on the bio-medical vision and its implementation by the Nazi regime include: Götz Aly, Peter Chroust and Christian Pross (eds.), Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: ‘Euthanasia’ in Germany 1900–1945 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994); Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann (eds.), The Racial State: Germany, 1933–1945 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991); James M. Glass, “Life Unworthy of Life”: Racial Phobia and Mass Murder in Hitler’s Germany (New York, Basic Books, 1997). Victimization studies include Henry Friedlander’s classic study of the Nazi war on the handicapped The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill, North Carolina University Press, 1995). The murder of the “gypsies” is chronicled in Radu Ioamid, The Holocaust in Rumania: the Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944 (Chicago, Ivan R. Dee, 2000); Guenther Lewy, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000); Sybil Milton, “The Gypsies and the Holocaust” in The History Teacher Vol. 24, #4 (May 1991); Erika Thurner et al (eds.), National Socialism and Gypsies in Austria (Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 1998). On Nazi persecution of homosexuals see Gad Beck et al. (eds.), An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew

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in Nazi Berlin (Living Out) (New York, Henry Holt, 1999); Richard Plant, The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War against Homosexuals (New York, Henry Holt, 1988). Recently scholars have also pointed out the qualitative differences in male and female experiences during the Holocaust. Several accounts which focus on women’s experience are: Brana Gurewitsch (ed.), Mothers, Sisters, Resisters: Oral Histories of Women Who Survived the Holocaust (Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 1998); Dalia Ofer and Lenore J. Weitzman (eds.), Women in the Holocaust (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1998); Roger Ritvo and Diane Plotkin (eds.), Sisters in Sorrow: Voices of Care in the Holocaust (College Station, Texas A&M Press, 1998) and Carol Rittner and John Roth (eds.), Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust (New York, Paragon House, 1993). An important question in connection with the Holocaust remains that of resistance and collaboration. With the Nazis holding a virtual monopoly of force in occupied Europe, resistance was extremely difficult and often virtually impossible. One reason for this difficulty lay in the fact that very often in occupied countries, particularly until it became clear that the Germans were going to lose the war, the vast bulk of the population chose the path of accommodation, and occasionally, active collaboration with the Germans. Recent treatments of resistance, especially where it was the most difficult—among Jews in the East—include: Israel Gutman, Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1994); Jack Kagan and Dov Cohen, Surviving the Holocaust with the Russian Jewish Partisans (London, Valantine Mitchell, 1998); Dan Kurzman, The Bravest Battle: The Twenty Eight days of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (DaCapo Press, 1993); Hermann Langbehn, Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps 1938–1945 (New York, Paragon House, 1994); Ruby Rohrlich (ed.), Resisting the Holocaust (Oxford, Berg, 1998); Nahama Tec, Defiance: the Bielski Partisans: The Story of the Largest Armed Resistance by Jews during World War Two (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993). On the theme of collaboration see: Martin Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941–1944 (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2000); Richard Golsan, Memory, the Holocaust and French Justice: the Bousquet and Touvier Affairs (Hanover, University Press of New England, 1996); Isaac Levendel, Not the Germans Alone: A Son’s Search for the Truth of Vichy (Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1999). One of the very few bright lights in the Holocaust is the story of those who at great risk chose to save Jews. Their story—both on an individual as well as national level is told in: Gay Block et al. (eds.), Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust (New York, TV Books, 1998); Michael Bar–Zohar, Beyond Hitler’s Grasp: the Heroic Rescue of Bulgaria’s Jews (Adams Media Corporation, 2000); Eva Fogelman, Conscience and Courage: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust (New York, Anchor, 1994). One of the great contemporary issues is that of compensation: for lost life insurance policies and bank deposits of Holocaust victims; the attempts to rescue and restore to the families of original owners art which was looted by the Nazis during the war; and financial compensation to former slave laborers, whom the Nazis exploited in their war economy. Efforts in all three areas have taken the form of high profile international law suits and negotiations among governments and large corporations. There has been a sense of urgency in light of the swift passing of the generation of victims. In the area of art treasures see Hector Feliciano, The Lost Museum: the Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World’s Greatest Works of Art (New York, Basic Books, 1997); Lynn H. Nicholas, The Rape of Europe: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War (New York, Vintage, 1995); and especially the two studies by Jonathan Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich

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(Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1996) and The Faustian Bargain: the Art World of Nazi Germany (San Francisco, Getty Center for Education in the Arts, 2000). For the background of the gold and money question see Tom Bower, Nazi Gold (New York, Harper Collins, 1997); Adam LeBor, Hitler’s Secret Bankers: The Myth of Swiss Neutrality during the Holocaust (Secaucus, NJ, Birch Lane Press, 1997); Jean Ziegler, The Swiss, the Gold and the Dead: How Swiss Bankers Helped Finance the Nazi War Machine (New York, Penguin, 1998). A sensitive and controversial issue to this day, especially for Americans, is whether more could have been done to prevent the deaths of so many victims at the hands of the Nazis. Part of the response hinges on what the Allies knew about what the Nazis were doing and when they knew it. In addition, there is the question of what was politically and technologically possible had the Allies attempted to intervene in the killing process. The classic case for the failure of the Allies to intervene was made by Richard Wyman in his The Abandonment of the Jews. America and the Holocaust 1941–1945 (New York, Pantheon, 1984); see also Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies (London, Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1994); the counter case, that the Allies had done all that was feasible is represented in the recent study by William Rubenstein, The Myth of Rescue. Why the Democracies could not have Saved more Jews from the Nazism (New York, Routledge, 1997); the issue is explored by a number of scholars in Michael Neufeld and Michael Berenbaum (eds.), The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies have attempted it? (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2000.) On what the Allies knew about German activities see Richard Breitman, Official Secrets. What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew (New York, Hill and Wang, 1998). See also, Jean–Claude Favez, The Red Cross and the Holocaust (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000). Probably the most acrimonious debate among scholars in recent years concerning the Holocaust has centered around the work of Daniel Goldhagen. In his book Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York, Knopf, 1996), he asserted a collective guilt on the part of the German people for the death of the Jews, a guilt derived from a uniquely German kind of “eliminationist” antisemitism, deeply embedded in modern German culture, which caused ordinary Germans to take part with great enthusiasm in the task of mass murder of the Jews. His case study involved, interestingly enough, the same German police detachment which Christopher Browning had examined for his book Ordinary Men and about which he had derived totally different conclusions about motivation than did Goldhagen. Most scholars rejected Goldhagen’s conclusions as too simplistic, but the book resonated with a larger reading public. For a sober examination of the question see Robert Shandley (ed.), Unwilling Germans? The Goldhagen Debate (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1998); also Norman G. Finkelstein and Bettina Birn, A Nation on Trial: the Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth (New York, Owl Books, 1998). Among the most important sources for the student seeking insight into the Holocaust are diaries and memoirs, for they provide the unmediated voices of the victims both contemporaneously and retrospectively. Both have been appearing in ever increasing numbers in recent years and what follows is an important, but limited selection from their ranks. Among the diaries of paramount importance are Adam Czerniakow, The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to Doom, edited by Raul Hilberg (Chicago, Ivan R. Dee, 1999); Chaim Kaplan, Scroll of Agony: the Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan, edited by Abraham Katsh (Bloomington, Indiana University Presss, 1999); Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: a Diary of the Nazi Years, vol. I 1933–1941 and vol. II 1941–1945 (New York, Random House, 1998,

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2000); also The Diary of David Sierakowiak, edited by Alan Adelson (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996). The voluminous memoir and autobiographical literature includes; Alicia Appleman-Jurman, Alicia, My Story (New York, Bantam, 1990); L. Berk, Destined to Live: Memoirs of a Doctor with the Russian Partisans (Melbourne, Paragon, 1992); Sara Bernstein-Tuvel, The Seamstress (New York, Putnam, 1997); Helene Birenbaum, Hope is the Last to Die: A Coming of Age under Nazi Terror (Armonk, M.E. Sharpe, 1996); Livia Bitton-Jackson, I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing Up in the Holocaust (New York, Scholastic, 1997); Genevieve DeGaulle-Antonioz, A Dawn of Hope: A Memoir of Ravensbruck (New York, Arnold, 1999); Charlotte Delbo, Auschwitz and After (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1997); Magda Denes, Castles Burning (New York, Norton, 1997); Olga Drucker, Kindertransport (New York, Henry Holt, 1995); Lucille Eichengreen, From Ashes to Life: My Memories of the Holocaust (San Francisco, Mercury House, 1994); Ida Fink, A Scrap of Time and Other Stories (Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1995); Josey Fisher (ed.), The Persistence of Youth (Greenwood Press, 1991); Helen Fremont, After Long Silence: A Memoir (New York, Dell, 1999); Jana Renee Friesova, Fortress of My Youth (Tasmania, Telador, 1996); Richard Glazer, Trap with a Green Fence: Survival in Treblinka (Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1992); Gerda Weissmann Klein, All But My Life (New York, Hill and Wang, 1995); Etty Hellesium, An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork, 1941–1943 (New York, Henry Holt, 1996); Isabella Leitner, From Auschwitz to Freedom: Saving the Fragments (A Sequel) (New York, Anchor Books, 1994); Olga Lengyel, Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor’s True Story of Auschwitz (Chicago, Academy, 1995); Anita Lisker-Wallfish, Inherit the Truth: A Memoir of Survival and the Holocaust (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2000); Kurt Grübler (ed.), Journey through the Night: Jakob Littner’s Holocaust Memoir (New York, Continuum, 2000); Gerty Spies, My Years in Theriesenstadt (Amherst, NY, Prometheus, 1997); Harold Werner, Fighting Back: A Memoir of Jewish Resistance in World War Two (New York, Columbia University Press, 1992); Elie Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs and And the Sea is Never Full: Memoirs 1969 (New York, Alfred Knopf, 1995 and 1999 respectively); Binjamin Wilkornivsk, Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood (New York, Schocken, 1997). And finally, one must also mention the art, particularly children’s art, which came out of the camps. See Hana Volovkova (ed.), I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children’s Drawings and Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp, 1942–1944 (New York, Schocken, 1994). It has not been lost on scholars that over the years the Holocaust has been used in many ways for political and pecuniary purposes. Two authors who have pointed this out most dramatically are Tim Cole, Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler; How History is Bought, Packaged and Sold (New York, Routledge, 1999) and Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (New York, Verso, 2000). Finally, Peter Novick, in The Holocaust in American Life (New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1999), has demonstrated the importance of the Holocaust both as a defining moral symbol in American discourse and as a tool in shaping the identity of modern American Jews. —Ronald M. Smelser Salt Lake City, Utah

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Timeline: The Holocaust in the Context of World Events 1918 November 9: The Weimar Republic is established in Germany. November 11: The war that would come to be called World War I ends after four years. Germany is defeated. 1919 June 28: The Treaty of Versailles is signed. It establishes the League of Nations and punishes Germany for its aggression in World War I. September 16: Adolf Hitler joins the German Workers’ Party, precursor of the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party. 1920 January 16: The League of Nations convenes for the first time. August 8: National Socialist German Workers’ Party (known as the Nazi party) is founded. 1921 Adolf Hitler takes control of the National Socialist party. 1922 October 27: Benito Mussolini is appointed the premier of Italy. 1923 November 11: Adolf Hitler is arrested for his attempt to overthrow the German government in Bavaria in the Beer Hall Putsch. 1924 April 1: Adolf Hitler is sentenced to five years in prison for the Beer Hall Putsch. While there, he writes Mein Kampf. December 20: Hitler is released from prison after only eight months. 1925 April 26: Paul von Hindenburg is elected president of Weimar Republic (Germany). November 11: Adolf Hitler’s personal guard, the SS (Schutzstaffel), is founded. 1926 September 8: Germany joins the League of Nations. 1929 January 6: Heinrich Himmler appointed Reichsführer-SS. October 24: “Black Tuesday”—the U.S. stock market crash on Wall Street. The Great Depression begins and spreads around the world. 1930 September 14: In Reichstag (Parliament) elections, the Nazi party emerges as a serious new force in German politics, earning 107 seats in the 577-member Reichstag. In the face of massive unemployment, antisemitism in Germany intensifies and spreads throughout Eastern Europe.

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1932 April 10: Paul von Hindenburg is re-elected president of Germany, defeating challenger Adolf Hitler. July 31: In Reichstag elections, National Socialists (Nazis) become the largest party in Germany, taking 230 of 608 seats. November 8: Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected president of the United States. November 9: In Reichstag elections Nazis lose 2,000,000 votes and drop to 196 seats 1933 January 30: Adolf Hitler becomes the chancellor of Germany. February 28: After a fire in the Reichstag on February 27, the Nazis declare a state of emergency, suspending freedom of speech, restricting freedom of assembly, and ending freedom of the press. March 4: Franklin D. Roosevelt takes office for his first term as U.S. president. In his inaugural address, he says, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” March 23: Political prisoners arrive at Dachau. March 24: The Reichstag approves the Enabling Act, giving Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers. April 1: Nazis unleash a nationwide one-day boycott of Jewish businesses. April 7: Jews are expelled from the German civil service. April 11: Nazi definitions of “Aryan” and “non-Aryan” are adopted. April 26: The Gestapo is established. May 10: Nazis begin staging public book burnings, targeting works by political opponents and Jews. Eventually millions of books will be destroyed. July 14: The Nazi Party is named the only legal political party in Germany. July 20: An agreement (concordat) is signed between the Vatican and Nazi Germany. October 14: Germany leaves the League of Nations. 1934 January 26: Germany and Poland sign a ten-year pact of non-aggression. June 30–July 2: The Night of the Long Knives—also known as the Röhm Purge. Under Adolf Hitler’s orders, the SS purges the SA (Storm Troopers); many SA leaders are killed. July 20: The SS becomes an independent organization, with Heinrich Himmler as its chief. August 2: German president Paul von Hindenburg dies. August 3: Adolf Hitler becomes both president and chancellor. Soon all German officials and soldiers are required to swear allegiance to Hitler personally, not to the people or the country. At the September Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, Hitler proclaims his “Third Reich,” which he says will last for one thousand years. 1935 January 13: A plebiscite in the Saarland overwhelmingly favors returning to Germany. March 16: Hitler announces reintroduction of military conscription in violation of the Versailles treaty.

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September 15: The Reichstag passes the first two “Nuremberg Laws,” the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, which prohibit marriage and sexual intercourse between Germans and Jews and strip Jews of their remaining civil rights in Germany. These later serve as a model for the Nazis’ treatment of Gypsies. December 31: Jews are dismissed from the civil service in Germany. 1936 March 7: Germany sends troops into Rhineland, breaking the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. May 9: Italy defeats Ethiopia, which it invaded in October, 1935. July 18: A civil war erupts in Spain which will last for three years and foreshadows World War II. August 1: The Summer Olympic Games begin in Berlin. African American runner Jesse Owens wins four gold medals during the games, but Adolf Hitler refuses to recognize the spectacular achievement. October 25: The Rome-Berlin Axis Pact is signed, cementing an alliance between Adolf Hitler and Italian fascist leader Mussolini. 1937 March 14: In the face of increasing violence toward Jews in Europe, Pope Pius XI condemns racism and extreme nationalism in his encyclical “With Burning Concern.” July 16: Buchenwald concentration camp is opened. September 7: Hitler declares the end of the Treaty of Versailles. November 25: Germany and Japan sign a military and political pact. 1938 March 12–13: The Anschluss—Germany invades and annexes Austria. April 26: Jews are required to register their property and financial holdings. It is now illegal for Aryans to pretend to own businesses still run by Jews; the push for “Aryanization” of businesses and property increases. June 14: Jewish-owned businesses are forced to register with Nazi authorities. June 15: Fifteen hundred German Jews are put into concentration camps. July 6–13: Representatives of 32 countries meet at the Evian Conference in France to discuss the Jewish refugee and immigration problem. No solution emerges because virtually every country refuses to increase immigration quotas for Jews. July 25: Jewish physicians are limited to treatment of Jewish patients. August 17: Male Jews are required to add “Israel” to their names; female Jews must add “Sarah.” September 27: Jews may no longer work as lawyers. September 29: At the Munich Conference, the Allies appease Adolf Hitler, granting Sudetenland—part of Czechoslovakia—to Germany. October 15: Germany occupies Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland. October 20–21: Jews are first deported to Poland from Vienna, Hamburg, and Prague.

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November 9–10: The massive pogroms known as Kristallnacht explode across Germany and Austria. Synagogues are defaced and destroyed; Jewish homes and businesses are looted and vandalized. November 15: Jewish children may no longer attend German schools. December 3: Aryanization of Jewish businesses is mandated by law and carried out by force and intimidation. 1939 March 15–16: Germany invades Czechoslovakia. April 22: Italy and Germany cement their alliance by signing the Pact of Steel. May 15: The Ravensbrück concentration camp for women is established. May 19: The MacDonald White Paper issued by the British government strengthens limits on Jewish emigration to Palestine. August 23: The Germans and Soviets sign a non-aggression pact. September 1: Germany invades Poland. Within the month, Poland falls. September 2: Stutthof camp is established. September 3: Great Britain and France declare war on Germany. September 17: The Soviets invade eastern Poland, challenging the Germans. September 21: SS official Reinhard Heydrich orders the creation of Jewish ghettos and Judenrate (Jewish Councils) in occupied Poland. October 8: The first ghetto for Jews is established in Poland, in Piotrkow. October 12: The Germans establish the Generalgouvernement in Poland. November 23: Jews in occupied Poland are required to wear badges in the shape of the Star of David. December 5–6: Jewish property in Poland is seized by German authorities. 1940 January 25: Nazis select the town of Auschwitz as the location for a new concentration camp. February 12: The Nazis begin deporting Jews from Germany to occupied Poland. April 9: Denmark and Norway are invaded by the Germans. April 30: L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto, established in February, is sealed; more than 200,000 Jews are not able to leave. May 10: Germany invades the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and northern France. May 10: Winston Churchill becomes the prime minister of Great Britain. May 20: Auschwitz concentration camp is established. July 10: The Battle of Britain begins, with a major dogfight over the English Channel, and Germany’s blitzkrieg bombing of London. September 15: Battle of Britain Day—London is heavily blitzed by German bombers and fighter planes. The Luftwaffe meets with stiff resistance in the English Channel, resulting in an important Allied victory and turning point in the war.

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September 27: The Tripartite Pact—Japan joins Germany and Italy in the Axis alliance. October 16: Warsaw ghetto is established; the following month, it is sealed, holding in 400,000 Jews. 1941 March 1: Heinrich Himmler visits Auschwitz and orders an expansion that will increase capacity by at least 100,000 prisoners. March 3: Krakow ghetto is established. April 6: Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece. May 27: The German warship Bismarck is sunk by the British. U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt declares a national emergency in May because of events in Europe and Asia. June 22: Operation Barbarossa—the Germans invade the Soviet Union. July 8: Jews in the German-occupied Baltic countries are ordered to wear the Star of David badge. July 21: Hermann Göring appoints Reinhard Heydrich to develop a plan for carrying out the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”—the extermination of European Jews. August 14: The Atlantic Charter is signed by Great Britain and the United States; the document outlines basic principles of postwar global rights and responsibilities and forms the beginnings of what will one day be the charter of the United Nations. September 3: Zyklon B is first used in experiments at Auschwitz. September 6: The Vilna ghettos are established with 40,000 Jews. September 29–30: More than 33,000 Jews are massacred at Babi Yar. October 23: Jewish emigration from Germany is prohibited. November 24: Theresienstadt ghetto is established in Bohemia-Moravia as the Nazis’ “model” Jewish ghetto. Also this month, construction begins on Bel⁄z˙ec extermination camp. December 7: Japan attacks the United States at Pearl Harbor. Four days later, Germany and Italy declare war on the United States. The United States reciprocates by declaring war on the Axis powers. December 8: The Chel⁄mno extermination camp opens. Among its first victims are 5,000 Gypsies. 1942 January 20: At the Wannsee Conference, the Nazis coordinate plans for the “Final Solution.” January 21: The United Partisan Organization forms in Vilna. February 23: The Struma, an unsafe cattle boat carrying more than 700 Jewish refugees from a port in Romania, sinks after being refused entry into Palestine. June 1: Jews in the Netherlands, Belgium, Croatia, Slovakia, and Romania are ordered to wear the yellow Star of David badge. March: Sobibór and Bel⁄z˙ec camps are established. The first transfer of French Jews to Auschwitz occurs. Marshal Petain approves French collaboration with

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the Nazis. The United States starts supplying the Allies with war materials through the Lend-Lease Bill. May 27: SS official Richard Heydrich is wounded; he dies early in June. A week later, the Nazis avenge his death by destroying the town of Lidice, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (formerly Czechoslovakia). June 4–6: The Allies win the Battle of Midway. Japan’s eastward thrust is decisively thwarted. June 23: Systematic gassing begins at Auschwitz. July 19: Heinrich Himmler orders the start of Operation Reinhard. July 23: Treblinka camp opens. The first victims and prisoners are from the Warsaw Ghetto. The Jewish Fighting Organization (Z˙OB) is established in Warsaw. August 23: The battle for Stalingrad begins. Three months later, the Soviets launch a successful counteroffensive against the Germans. October 5: All Jews in concentration camps in Germany are to be sent to Auschwitz and Majdanek, on orders of Heinrich Himmler. November 11: In a crucial turning point victory for Allied forces, the Germans are defeated at El Alamein, Egypt. 1943 January 18–21: A major, armed act of resistance occurs in the Warsaw ghetto. January 29: All Gypsies in German-occupied territories are ordered arrested and sent to concentration camps. February 26: The first transport of Gypsies is placed in the “Gypsy Camp” at Auschwitz. March 5: Allied forces begin bombing Ruhr, a region central to Germany’s coal, iron and steel industries. April 19–30: At the Bermuda Conference, the Allies discuss the rescue of Jews in occupied Europe, but the talks are fruitless. Also this month, the BergenBelsen camp is opened. April 19: The Warsaw ghetto uprising erupts and continues through May 16. May 19: The Nazis declare Berlin Judenfrei (free of Jews). June 11: Heinrich Himmler orders the liquidation of the Jewish ghettos of Poland and the Soviet Union. June 22: German U-boats are withdrawn from the North Atlantic; the Allies win the Battle of the Atlantic. July 5: The Sobibór extermination camp is made a concentration camp. August 2: Prisoners at the Treblinka camp revolt; 200 escape, but the Nazis hunt them down. October 2: The Danes rescue more than 7,200 Jews from the Nazis. October 14: Prisoners at the Sobibór camp revolt; 300 escape. Of these, 50 survive. November 3: Erntefest (“Harvest Festival”) begins, in which 42,000 Jews are killed.

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1944 January 24: War Refugee Board is created in the United States. March 19: Germany invades Hungary; Hungarian Jews are required to wear the Star of David badge. During the next several months, more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews are deported to Auschwitz. June 6: D-Day: The Allies land in Normandy, France. Throughout the year, Allied forces penetrate into more and more parts of Europe. July 20: German officers fail in an assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler. July 24: Soviet troops liberate the Majdanek camp. July 28: The first major death march begins: Warsaw to Kutno. August 4: Anne Frank and her family are arrested in Amsterdam and sent to Auschwitz. Anne and her sister are later sent to Bergen-Belsen. September 1: Warsaw Polish Uprising begins and lasts until October 2 when the Polish Home Army is defeated by the Nazis. October 6–7: Prisoners in Special Commandos (Sonderkommandos) at Auschwitz stage an uprising. October 23: The Allies recognize Charles de Gaulle as the head of the provisional French government. October 30: The last gassings at Auschwitz-Birkenau take place. December 16–27: The Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg and Belgium—the Germans are defeated. 1945 January 1: Germans begin full retreat on the Eastern Front. January 17: Soviet troops enter Warsaw. January 18: Death March from Auschwitz begins. January 27: Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz-Birkenau. February 4–11: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin meet at Yalta as the Allied forces meet with increasing success worldwide. April 12: U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt dies and is succeeded by Harry S Truman. April 12: Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen camps are liberated. As more camps are released from Nazi control, the number of displaced persons (DPs) rises dramatically throughout Europe. April 28: Benito Mussolini is shot by Italian partisans. April 29: Dachau camp is liberated by American troops. April 30: In his Berlin bunker, Adolf Hitler writes his Last Will and Testament, then commits suicide. April–May: Allied troops liberate Dachau, Ravensbrück, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, and Theresienstadt camps. With liberation and the end of war in Europe, Displaced Persons (DP) camps are inundated. May 7: Germany surrenders unconditionally to the Allies. May 8: V-E Day—Victory in Europe.

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June 5: The victorious Allies divide Germany into four occupation zones. July 16: The first atomic bomb is tested, at Alamogordo, New Mexico. July 17–August 2: Allied leaders Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, and Joseph Stalin meet in Potsdam. August 6: The United States drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and, three days later, on Nagasaki. August 14: Japan surrenders. World War II is over. November 20: The Nuremberg War Trials begin in Germany. 1946 January 7: The United Nations holds its first meeting, in London. January 20: President Charles de Gaulle of France resigns. October 1: The Nuremberg War Trials conclude. October 16: The first convicted Nazi War criminals are executed by hanging at Nuremberg. December 9: Twenty-three former Nazi doctors and scientists are tried at Nuremberg. Sixteen are found guilty; seven are executed by hanging. 1947 June 5: The Marshall Plan is instituted, to help Europe rebuild. September 15: Twenty-one former SS Operational Squad leaders are tried at Nuremberg. Although fourteen of them are sentenced to death, only four who were group commanders are executed. 1948 May 14: The State of Israel is proclaimed. June 25: The U.S. Congress creates a Displaced Persons Commission. October 30: The first boatload of war refugees arrives in the United States. 1949 April 4: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization—NATO—is formed. May 23: West Germany becomes a separate state, under occupation forces. East Germany becomes a Soviet-bloc state later in the year. December 9: The United Nations approves the Genocide Convention. 1957 The last Displaced Persons (DP) camp closes. 1960 May 11: Adolf Eichmann is captured in Argentina. He is tried in Jerusalem starting on April 11, 1961. Found guilty, he is executed by hanging on May 31, 1962.

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Aid to Jews by Poles A number of factors made it extremely difficult for Poles to come to the aid of the Jews in P O L A N D during World War II, including the lack of contact between the Jews and the Polish environment; the longstanding A N T I S E M I T I S M that spread in certain circles of Polish society; the regime of terror in Nazi-occupied Poland, which was aimed at Jews and non-Jews alike; and the death penalty the Nazis applied in Poland for giving aid to Jews.

Forms of Help The most dangerous, and yet most frequent, form of help given to the Jews was the offering of refuge in private dwellings. Most people who gave refuge to Jews also provided them with financial assistance. The primary motivation for providing help was that of human compassion; devout Catholics felt obligated to abide by the commandment to “love thy neighbor.” Others acted out of ideological and political considerations. Some of those who helped Jews did so in return for financial reward, which was very high in certain cases. Those who gave help came from all walks of life. There were even a few cases in which antisemites helped Jews. Aid to Jews was extended mainly in two centers—W A R S AW (where 20,000 to 30,000 Jews were in hiding) and K R A K Ó W . At a later stage, aid in organized form was given by underground (that is, secret and non-government sanctioned) organizations, trade unions, and political parties—Democrats, Socialists, and Communists. In most of these cases, the beneficiaries of the aid were Jews who were members, or relatives of members, of one of these organizations. Some monasteries took in Jewish children; the Benedictine monastery near Vilna even extended aid to Jewish fighters. Some assistance was also provided by the Armia Krajowa, an underground military organization that operated throughout Poland while the Germans were in control. Individuals affiliated with the Armia Krajowa acted as intermediaries between Jewish and Polish military groups, centralizing contacts, smuggling arms, and providing limited military support during the W A R S AW G H E T TO U P R I S I N G . It is difficult to estimate how many people participated in and were saved by these types of aid. Historians estimate that tens of thousands of Jews were saved by the local population. Poles and, in eastern Poland, Belorussians and Ukrainians were among the “Aryans” who helped Jews; their numbers were estimated as ranging between

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AID TO JEWS BY POLES

160,000 and 360,000, that is, 1 percent to 2.5 percent of the population. A list drawn up by the Main Commission for Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland puts the number of non-Jews executed individually by the Germans for aiding Jews at 872, with several hundreds more murdered in mass executions (as when the Nazis burned down entire villages). Military aid given to Jews was minimal. The Jewish Military Union (Z˙ydowski Zwia˛zek Wojskowy), one of the Jewish fighting organizations in the Warsaw ghetto, and the larger J E W I S H F I G H T I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N , known as Z˙ OB, established connections with Armia Krajowa headquarters, hoping for help in the form of weapons. The Armia Krajowa planned an uprising against the Nazis that would take place only when the front line of battle was drawing near, since it did not believe that an earlier attempt stood any chance of success. The Z˙OB, on the other hand, felt that the Jews had no time to lose and that a revolt had to be attempted even if it was hopeless. The Armia Krajowa was also not convinced that the Z˙ OB really intended to fight against Nazis. For these two reasons, despite sharing the same ultimate goals, the Armia Krajowa did not provide the Z˙OB with much support.

partisan units

Groups who resist an invading army within the occupied territory.

During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a number of groups, including the Armia Krajowa, the Gwardia Ludowa (later called the Armia Ludowa, or Polish People’s Army), and the Socialist Fighting Organization carried out several actions to indicate solidarity with the Jews. They attacked German positions and helped several groups of ghetto fighters to make their way through the Warsaw sewers to the city’s “Aryan” side. At a later stage, when Jewish partisan units began to form, the Armia Krajowa refused to cooperate, believing that such units would have a pro-Soviet orientation. A constant source of danger to the Jews who had gone into hiding came in the form of blackmailers—gangs of robbers who roamed the countryside, blackmailing the Jews in hiding, extorting ransoms from them, and frequently also informing on them to the Germans. Poles who looked like Jews or gave help to Jews were also persecuted and turned in by the blackmailers. These blackmailers generally came from the lower strata of the population. It was difficult to fight them, since their victims could identify them only in rare instances. They were also despised by the Polish underground because they worked for the German police; underground tribunals often sentenced blackmailers to death for their activities. Several dozen such death sentences were carried out in 1943 and 1944, and as a result, the activity of the blackmailers diminished considerably.

Contacts Abroad The Jewish underground’s efforts to establish its own contacts with the outside world were generally unsuccessful. Beginning in 1942, however, two organizations received help from the Delegatura—the representatives, in Poland, of the Polish government-in-exile. One of these groups was the Bund, which was the League of Jewish Workers in Russia, Lithuania and Poland; the other was the Jewish National Committee, the political arm of the Z˙OB, whose couriers carried letters between Poland and England. The two Jewish organizations were able to transmit current affairs messages by radio to Jewish representatives on the Polish National Council. Funds contributed in London by international Jewish organizations were transmitted to Poland via parachute drops, along with funds for the Armia Krajowa and the Delegatura. In 1940 the Polish underground also began transmitting reports to London on the situation of the Jews. Some historians believe that these reports were deliberately delayed, especially those concerning the deportation of the Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the extermination camps. Other historians claim that the reports were transmitted

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AID TO JEWS BY POLES

TWO POINTS OF VIEW Poles were primarily persecutors of the Jews... Thousands of Polish Gentiles became involved in varying degrees in efforts to save Jews. We know that many Poles—hundreds apparently— lost their lives because of their actions on behalf of Jews. But the gallant record of those Poles who came to the assistance of Jews does not alter the fact that there also existed a malignant element in Polish society that was responsible for creating a hostile climate of opinion among broad sections of the Polish public concerning the rescue of the Jews. The[se] schmaltsovniks were a relatively large group in Poland. They operated on an organized basis and made a profession of the betrayal of Jews. —YISRAEL GUTMAN AND SHMUEL KRAKOWSKI, “THE POLES HELPED PERSECUTE THE JEWS”

Poles were victims along with the Jews... It is not known how many Poles actually aided Jews during the German occupation. For that reason, glib generalizations on the subject must be suspect. What is known, however, is that after the Germans ordered the Jews to live in ghettos, and especially after they unleashed the so-called “Final Solution,” Poles increasingly responded to the Jewish plight not only as an expression of pity for the Jews but also as an action of resistance against the hated Germans. Poles of all classes gave a variety of assistance to the persecuted Jews; food, shelter, and false documents were some of the more common types of aid... —RICHARD LUKAS, “THE POLES WERE FELLOW VICTIMS”

The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, Donald L. Niewyck, editor (Lexington, Massachusetts: D. C. Heath), 1992, p. 166 and p. 180.

promptly, and that it was the governments of the Allied forces who held them back. Ultimately, public statements made by the Polish government-in-exile and the testimony of emissaries from Poland played an important role in convincing the free world that the Germans were aggressively pursuing the annihilation of European Jewry.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Keneally, Thomas. Schindler’s List. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982. Lewin, Kurt I. A Journey Through Illusions. Santa Barbara: Fithian Press, 1993. Opdyke, Irene Gut. In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer. New York: Knopf, 1999.

Schindler’s List [videorecording]. MCA Universal Home Video, 1993. Tec, Nechama. When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

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AKIVA. SEE YOUTH MOVEMENTS. AKTION “ERNTEFEST.” SEE ERNTEFEST (“HARVEST FESTIVAL”). Aktion (Operation) 1005 When news of the Nazis’ mass killings of Jews began to emerge in the Allied countries, and when hastily buried corpses in the occupied S OV I E T U N I O N began to pose a serious health hazard in the early summer of 1942, officials in Berlin decided that an alternative plan must be devised to dispose of the thousands of bodies of victims; burying them in mass graves and open pits would no longer suffice. Aktion (Operation) 1005 was the code name for the large-scale plan that emerged. Aktion 1005 was intended to erase evidence of the murder of millions of human beings by the Nazis in occupied Europe. The units that carried out the plans were called Sonderkommandos (Special Commandos) 1005. Paul B LOBEL was appointed head of Aktion 1005. An architect by profession, and a member of the engineering corps in World War I (1914–18), Blobel developed systems for burning bodies on pyres, crushing the bones, and scattering the ashes. The operation began in June 1942 with attempts to burn the corpses in the C H E L⁄ M N O extermination camp. In the initial stage, Blobel supervised the burning of bodies in the A KTION R EINHARD extermination camps (B EL⁄ Z˙ EC , T REBLINKA , S OBIBÓR , in the Chel⁄mno camp, and at A USCHWITZ , until the crematoria were installed there. The second stage began in early June 1943. Aktion 1005 began eliminating evidence of mass graves in areas of the occupied USSR and Poland. The first site seems to have been the J A N Ó W S K A camp. The Sonderkommandos 1005 used this site as a training center to study and learn the methods which would be applied elsewhere. Each Sonderkommando 1005 consisted of several SD (Sicherheitsdienst, or Security Service) and Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police) officers, who supervised the work, and several dozen policemen from the German regular police who were charged with guarding the workers and the area. Pyres were built with thick wooden beams 23 to 26 feet (7 to 8 meters) long. The beams were soaked with a flammable liquid, and the exhumed corpses were placed in layers between them. In the extermination camps, railway tracks were used for the foundation of the fire. The labor was carried out by hundreds of prisoners, mainly Jews. The prisoners were divided into three groups: one group opened the graves and exhumed the bodies, the second group brought the corpses on stretchers and arranged them on the pyre, and the third group sifted the ashes, crushed the bones, collected any valuables overlooked earlier, and scattered the ashes. One or two prisoners were responsible for kindling the pyre and counting the corpses burned. One pyre at Janówska could burn about 2000 bodies a day. When work was completed at a site, the ground was plowed and replanted. Since Aktion 1005 was defined as a “Reich secret,” Germans in the unit had to sign declarations promising secrecy. Prisoners were killed upon completion of their work, unless they managed to escape. In early November 1943, the prisoners of the Sonderkommando 1005 in Janówska saw that their work was nearly done, so they planned an escape. On November 19, their plan was partially carried out. Of the scores of Jews who fled, a few individuals survived, including Leon Weliczker, who later published memoirs about the experience. When the Germans were defeated at Stalingrad and the retreat from the Ukraine began in 1943, Blobel sped to Kiev to organize the eradication of mass

4

AKTION (OPERATION) 1005

graves in that area. On August 18, Sonderkommando 1005-A began to remove the bodies at B A B I Y A R , aided by 327 prisoners, including about 100 Jews. On September 29 the prisoners learned that they were to be put to death the next day. Prisoners had already fashioned saws to cut their chains and made a key to open the gate behind which they were locked; an escape was planned for that night. At midnight, a group of 25 shouting prisoners stormed the guards; about 15 men reached freedom.

Centers of Aktion 1005 activity in German-occupied territories.

After Kiev, Sonderkommando 1005-A continued to burn bodies. The unit worked at K A M E N E T S - P O D O L S K I , until the approach of the Red Army. It transferred to Z A M O S´ C´ in the Lublin area, and finished in L⁄Ó D Z´ , then accompanied the last of the Jews from the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto to Auschwitz. Sonderkommando 1005-B supervised the burning of bodies in Dnepropetrovsk, in Krivoi Rog, and in Nikolayev and the surrounding area. On April 9, 1944, the unit was sent to R I G A . Aktion 1005 operations took place throughout occupied territories in the USSR and in the Baltic regions, including Belorussia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Ukraine. In Estonia bodies were burning at the Klooga camp and its subcamps as the Red (Soviet) Army approached. The Germans did not have time to set fire to all the pyres, and Soviet photographers were able to capture images of a pyre prepared for burning.

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AKTION (OPERATION) REINHARD

Aktion 1005 operations took place in the Bial⁄ystok district from mid-May until mid-July 1944. By mid-1944, as the Soviet army approached, Aktion 1005 operations were initiated in the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T , which covered occupied areas of Poland that had not already been incorporated into the Reich. Aktion 1005 activity in Yugoslavia was focused on the elimination of 80,000 corpses, including those of about 11,000 Jews. The operation began on November 6, 1943; about 68,000 bodies were burned before a prisoner escaped and word spread about the secret activities. Although Aktion 1005 did not completely erase evidence of the Nazi crimes, it did create an obstacle to determining the facts of those crimes, especially in drawing up statistics on the number of victims.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Drix, Samuel. Witness to Annihilation: Surviving the Holocaust, A Memoir. Washington: Brassey’s, 1994. “FAQs About the Holocaust—Shoah.” Yad Vashem Online. [Online] http://www. yad-vashem.org.il/holocaust/faq/gapfaqs.html (accessed on August 21, 2000). Schoenfeld, Joachim. Holocaust Memoirs. Hoboken, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 1985.

Aktion (Operation) Reinhard Aktion Reinhard was the code name for the Nazi plan to eliminate all the Jews in the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T (occupied Poland), as part of the “F I N A L S O L U T I O N .” The word “Aktion” may be translated in English as “Operation.” Aktion Reinhard was named after Reinhard H E Y D R I C H , the chief planner of the “Final Solution” in Europe, who was shot by members of the Czech underground on May 27, 1942; he died on June 4 of that year. As recorded in the minutes of the W A N N S E E C O N F E R E N C E of January 20, 1942, the objective of Aktion Reinhard was to kill the 2,284,000 Jews then living in the five districts of the Generalgouvernement—W A R S A W , L U B L I N , Radom, K R A K Ó W , and L VOV (Eastern Galicia). Preparations for Aktion Reinhard began in October and November 1941. Odilo G L O B O C N I K , SS and Police Leader in the Lublin district, was appointed by Heinrich H I M M L E R to head the program, with Hans Höfle as chief of operations in charge of organization and manpower. The operational headquarters was in Lublin, and its tasks included: 1. Overall planning of the deportations 2. Construction and operation of extermination camps 3. Coordination of deportations from each of the five districts 4. The extermination process in the camps 5. Confiscation of the victims’ possessions and valuables and appropriate disbursement of these items.

Aktion Reinhard Extermination Camps Three E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S were established to implement Aktion Reinhard: B E L⁄ Z˙ E C , S O B I B Ó R , and T R E B L I N K A . The camps had to be close to railways to facilitate transportation. For secrecy, they had to be in areas as remote as possible

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AKTION (OPERATION) REINHARD

from population centers. Also, in order to support the cover being used for the operation—that the Jews were being transferred to work “somewhere in the east,” in occupied Soviet territory—the camps had to be near the eastern border of the Generalgouvernement. The camps were constructed by Polish workers living in the area, augmented by Jews on forced labor. Those Jews became the first victims. The first camp to be set up, between November 1941 and March 1942, was in Bel⁄ z˙ec, on the Lublin-Lvov railway line. The killings there began on March 17, 1942. The camp at Sobibór, east of Lublin, was constructed in March and April 1942; the first Jews were killed there in early May 1942. The Treblinka camp, 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of Warsaw, was established in June and July 1942; murder operations there began on July 23, 1942, coinciding with the start of the mass deportation from Warsaw. Carbon monoxide was used in all three camps, generated by gasoline or diesel engines placed outside hermetically sealed gas chambers. The toxic gas entered the chambers through a system of pipes. The Aktion Reinhard camps were not equipped for the cremation of bodies, so the victims were buried in huge pits. At the end of 1942 and the beginning of 1943 the Nazis began burning the bodies in huge pyres through the operations of A K T I O N (O P E R AT I O N ) 1005, the purpose of which was to erase evidence of the murders committed in the camps. Hundreds of Jewish prisoners provided the manual labor necessary to maintain operations. As a rule, these prisoners were killed after working in the camps for several weeks or months; they were replaced by new trainloads of Jews being deported from their communities.

Aktion Reinhard Deportations D E P O R TAT I O N S to the extermination camps were based on the division of the Generalgouvernement into five districts. Where Jews ended up was determined in large part by their proximity to a given camp and to the railway line that led there. Jews from the Kraków and Lvov (Eastern Galicia) districts were sent to Bel⁄z˙ec; Jews from the Warsaw and Radom districts were sent to Treblinka; and from the Lublin district they were sent to Sobibór. This pattern, however, was subject to change; some of the Jews from the Lublin district were sent to Bel⁄z˙ec and Treblinka. The Nazis used uniform deportation methods throughout eastern Europe. Because the Jews were already concentrated in ghettos controlled by the Nazis, there was a structure in place to support the deportation efforts. The principal elements were surprise, speed, terrorization, and keeping the victims unaware of their real destination. In the large ghettos, many deportation operations took place over a period of weeks and months, for as long as was necessary to clear the ghetto of all its inhabitants. In the small ghettos, the Aktion Reinhard deportations were a one-time operation, taking a day or two. In either case, Jews who were elderly, sick or otherwise too feeble to walk were shot inside houses, in the street, or in hiding places where they had taken refuge. Anyone who offered resistance was also shot. The Jews who were removed from the ghetto were marched to the railway station, usually by foot, and loaded into freight cars. The cars were extremely crowded, sometimes containing as many as 150 persons each. Due to miserable conditions—overcrowding, lack of water and sanitation, intense heat in the summer and cold in the winter—many died on the way to the camps.

Aktion Reinhard and the War Effort When the Treblinka camp was put into operation in July 1942, deportations proceeded so rapidly that there were not enough trains available for both transports

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AKTION (OPERATION) REINHARD

and military requirements. The German army on the Russian front was in urgent need of all available train cars. However, Heinrich Himmler intervened to secure enough trains to continue deporting Jews from the Generalgouvernement.

D

eportations were announced shortly before they were to

take place. Judenrat leaders were

ordered to recruit a quota of Jews to be transferred to work camps in the east. The ghetto was encircled with a heavy guard of German security units, to prevent anyone from escaping. If the required quota was not met, German

In mid-July 1942, Himmler issued an order stating that the deportation of Jews from the Generalgouvernement was to be completed by December 31, 1942. The order, which required removing all the Jews from the ghettos, threatened to cause manpower problems for factories and workshops engaged in the war effort. Military officials in charge of war production objected to this plan because Jewish laborers were crucial to maintaining the output of essential supplies needed by the armed forces. According to data submitted by the army, out of the 1 million workers employed in its plants in the Generalgouvernement, 300,000 were Jews, and of these one-third were skilled craftsmen. As a result of the army’s appeal, some Jewish workers were allowed to remain in several of the large ghettos, at least temporarily.

and Ukrainian police broke into houses and courtyards where the Jews were hiding and dragged them out.

Results of Aktion Reinhard The deportations continued, and, according to German data, by the end of December 1942, fewer than 300,000 Jews remained in the five districts of the Generalgouvernement. The ghettos in these districts were liquidated—that is, all residents were removed and killed or sent to concentration camps—between January and June 1943. In the last few months of 1942, as deportations from the Generalgouvernement were coming to an end, the operation’s scope was extended to include Jews from the B I A L⁄ Y S T O K district, numbering some 210,000. Most of the Bial⁄ ystok Jews were deported to Treblinka, and several transports went to A U S C H W I T Z ; by August 1943 all the Jews of the Bial⁄ ystok district had been sent to extermination camps. From the Kraków district, the Jews were deported to Bel⁄ z˙ec until October 1942, and afterward to P L⁄ A S Z Ó W and Auschwitz. Not all of the murdered Jews in the Generalgouvernement died in the concentration and extermination camps; thousands were shot on the spot during deportation efforts. In the Lvov district alone, over 160,000 Jews were killed in their homes or on ghetto streets. In the course of Aktion Reinhard, the Germans seized a huge amount of property once owned by Jews. This included real estate—houses, buildings, industrial plants, and land. In addition, an enormous amount of personal and commercial property was left behind in homes and factories. The Jews being deported were allowed to bring with them certain items, including cash and valuables. All of these possessions were confiscated in the camps where the Jews were killed. In these and other ways, the vast majority of the earthly goods owned by Polish Jews passed into German hands. The Aktion Reinhard headquarters set up a special camp in Lublin as a warehouse for the possessions left behind by the victims of Treblinka, Sobibór, and Bel⁄ z˙ec. Jewish prisoners, mainly women, were employed in the warehouses. On December 15, 1943, the Aktion Reinhard headquarters submitted a report the set the value of confiscated Jewish possessions at more than 178 million reichsmarks, the equivalent of more than 71 million dollars. This does not include the value of the possessions appropriated by German officials, SS men, Ukrainian camp guards, police, and local residents. Aktion Reinhard began in mid-March 1942 and continued until early November 1943, when the last Jews in the M A J DA N E K , Poniatowa, and T R AW N I K I camps were murdered in an operation that was given the name E R N T E F E S T (“Harvest Festival”) by the Nazis. In all, more than 2 million Jews of the Generalgouvernement were killed in Aktion Reinhard.

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ALIYA BET

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Arad, Yitzhak. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. Blatt, Thomas Toivi. From the Ashes of Sobibor: A Story of Survival. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1997.

Escape from Sobibor [videorecording]. Live Home Video, 1991. Goldstein, Arthur P. The Shoes of Maidanek. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1992.

AKTION T4. SEE EUTHANASIA PROGRAM

Aliya Bet Aliya Bet is a Hebrew term used to describe the entry of persons into Palestine, during the first half of the twentieth century, without the legal means to enter. Aliya means “immigration”; Bet is the name of the letter “B,” and in the phrase Aliya Bet, the “B” represents the alternative to “A” (as in American speech one might refer to Plan A or Plan B). Although the literal translation is not “illegal immigration,” in this case the “A,” stands for the legal means of immigration, and the “B” stands for the alternative. This phrase was used colloquially to refer to both organized and independent efforts on the part of Jews to enter Palestine while it was under nonPalestinian and non-Israeli control—i.e., during the years preceding World War I and the following years, when Palestine had come under the control of Great Britain, which lasted until the birth of Israel in 1948. Prior to World War I, Jews tried to settle in Palestine, which was under the rule of the Ottoman Turks. Official entry was denied, but many Jews found alternate routes, by land and by sea, and Aliya Bet, in spirit though not yet in name, was born. In the years after the British military authorities took control of Palestine in 1917, new criteria were established for immigration. Between 1922, when the first definitive regulations were enacted, and 1939, when newly established criteria severely restricted Jewish immigration, the number of requests for admission far outnumbered the number of approvals. All Aliya Bet movements shared a common element: in all cases, large numbers of Jews felt a growing urgency to leave the countries of their residence, at a time when the rate of authorized immigration did not keep up with the demand. Whether the particular cause was economic, ideological, religious, or political, the pressures were so strong that people were willing to take enormous risks for the chance of safe (though illegal) arrival in Palestine. Throughout Europe, Zionist groups—whose primary goal was to see the creation of a homeland for Jews— encouraged Jews to relocate in Palestine. The established Zionist groups lobbied for increased immigration quotas, preferring to work only through legal channels. Gradually, however, newer Zionist groups began to assist Jews in relocating by “alternative” means. Many Jews attempted to enter Palestine on their own. In some cases, they entered legally, as tourists, and stayed on without official papers. Some took advantage of fictitious marriages, or used forged entry visas. Zionist groups often helped by arranging for the necessary documents. Some Jews tried to get to Palestine through eastern Europe by entering neighboring countries and crossing

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ALIYA BET

PALESTINE: DESTINATION FOR ZIONISTS AND OTHERS The Middle Eastern region known for many centuries as Palestine—and, since 1948, the State of Israel—is the Holy Land of three major world religious traditions. Judaism, the first known monotheistic religion, began there 3,700 to 3,800 years ago. Christianity arose 2,000 years ago. Islam appeared to the southeast, in Arabia, more than 1,400 years ago. For most Jews, modern Israel is the result of the fulfillment of God’s covenant to Abraham to grant them a homeland in Palestine. The Jews have held fast to this covenant during the centuries of their diaspora (“dispersion”) in foreign lands. The organized movement for a Jewish return to Palestine to fulfill the biblical promise is termed Zionism. The movement for a Jewish homeland was both spiritual and political. It was founded in the late 1800s by Theodore Herzl, a Jewish journalist from Vienna, Austria, who believed that the only hope for Jews to be free of persecution was to live together, separate from non-Jews. He proposed the establishment of a Jewish state. The Zionists hoped to buy land for Jewish settlement, but the Ottoman Turkish government then in control of Palestine would not allow them to do so. Still, small groups of Eastern European Jews managed to settle there. They formed communal agricultural settlements called kibbutzim out of the belief that hard work was essential to the Jewish return to the homeland, a “betrothal of toil.” This became a founding principle of the Jewish state. The British governed Palestine after World War I ended in 1918. The Zionists believed that the British would allow them to begin building a Jewish national home in Palestine. But the British feared Arab rebellion resulting from Jewish immigration, and they were unable to strike a com-

the borders illegally. There were also Aliya Bet group immigration efforts. These especially included entry by boat on unpatrolled shores, using old freighters. Conditions on these trips were generally difficult, and often dangerous, as well. Organized Aliya Bet efforts were made by Jewish groups, but they were also undertaken by private organizers who charged fees. The 1930s saw an explosion in the numbers of Jews wanting to enter Palestine as refugees and immigrants. In 1934, the first organized Aliya Bet voyages were undertaken by members of Zionist youth organizations who dreamed of establishing the Hebrew state in Palestine and who were unwilling to postpone their dreams while waiting for official paperwork. By 1937 and 1938, Nazi persecutions in Germany and Austria drove growing numbers of the general Jewish population, as well as Zionists, to participate in Aliya Bet.

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ALIYA BET

promise ground between the desire of two peoples—the Jews and the Arabs—for the same land. The Zionists’ quest became urgent when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party came to power in Germany—especially when the “Final Solution” was put in place during World War II. Zionist leaders called for unrestricted Jewish immigration into Palestine. Yet the British blocked Palestinian harbors and actually turned back crowded, leaking ships carrying desperate Jewish refugees from Europe. After the war, the British asked the United Nations to find a solution to the Palestine problem—a problem of “one land, two peoples.” A UN partition plan divided the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state, but Palestinian Arab leaders rejected it. The Jewish delegation approved the plan and, on May 15, 1948, announced the “birth of the new Jewish State of Israel.” The United States and Soviet Union recognized the new state, renamed Israel, even as the armies of five Arab states converged on it to “push the Jews into the sea.” Today Israel—about the size of New Jersey—has a population estimated to be around 6 million, including settlers in areas that were not part of the original UN plan. Most of the Israelis are Jewish—82 percent. Fourteen percent are Muslims, while 2 percent are Christians. It is a modern country with a uniquely rich history. The land has flourished. Due to their “betrothal of toil,” the Jews have made the desert bloom, and the country has a strong, diversified economy and a vibrant culture. The establishment of Israel has been a profound victory for the Jewish people—but not a peace. More than half a century after the birth of Israel, Jews and Palestinian Arabs have not yet found a workable, lasting solution to their differences.

During World War II, as demand for immigration to Palestine increased, the resources available for Aliya Bet diminished. Ships were more expensive, since the war provided ship-owners more lucrative business opportunities, and government ships were rarely available, and their use was more heavily restricted. Aliya Bet efforts also suffered from dissension within the Zionist movement, due to ongoing complaints that some organizers of Aliya Bet transports were exploiting the Jews’ circumstances in order to make large profits. Between 1941 and 1942, the Aliya Bet came to a complete halt. In 1943, as the Nazi plan to exterminate European Jewry became clear, the British authorities agreed to issue immigration permits to Palestine to any Jewish refugees who could reach Turkey. While this was not a solution for all potential immigrants, it did reduce the need for alternative immigration efforts. In 1944, new Aliya Bet efforts resumed, but public opinion was now on the side of those seeking refuge, so the efforts met with less resistance.

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ALIYA BET

British soldiers stand guard as Exodus 1947 passengers disembark from a damaged ship, Haifa, Palestine, 1947.

12

In the years immediately following the end of World War II in 1945, Aliya Bet reached record numbers, in large part because of the numbers of Holocaust survivors who decided to relocate to Palestine. The operation was now well organized and enjoying political support from the world’s Jewish community. Ships were safer and staffed by Aliya Bet volunteers; experienced people were available to quickly move refugees from ships and into Jewish communities, where they could be assimilated, undetected by British authorities. Of the 530,000 immigrants who entered Palestine until the establishment of the state of Israel, 25 percent—130,000 people—came by way of Aliya Bet. Most (104,000)

AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE

arrived by sea, in 136 boats; 52,000 of these were caught by the British and deported. Aliya Bet became the very heart of Zionist activity in the post-war years, focusing attention on the need to assure a safe future for Holocaust survivors and other Jews in a homeland of their own.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Gruber, Ruth. Exodus 1947: The Ship That Launched a Nation. New York: Times Books, 1999. Kaniuk, Yoram. Commander of the Exodus. New York: Grove Press, 1999.

American Friends Service Committee The Society of Friends, or Quakers, is a small religious group in the United States. The Quakers believe that God is within every person; this leads to a respect for all people that precludes participation in violence and war. Quakers also believe that religious experience and social concern are inextricably related. The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) was established by the Quakers in 1917 to provide the Society of Friends with a way to serve to humanity and a moral alternative to military service during World War I. Members of the AFSC in Quaker centers throughout the world engaged in relief work, community development, educational programs, and social-action projects. As its first project, the AFSC conducted a feeding program for 1.2 million German children suffering in the aftermath of World War I. As a result of this relief work, the Friends gained German goodwill, which, along with their non-partisanship and dedication to human need, later made it possible for them to intervene on behalf of victims of persecution during and preceding World War II. Even the Nazis treated them with respect. During the first years of Adolf Hitler’s regime, the scope of the AFSC’s work on behalf of refugees was surprisingly small, unlike that of the European Quakers. This was caused in part by fears that supporting the Jewish cause would seriously compromise the Quakers’ reputation in Germany. Their close relationship with Friends in Germany, whom they did not wish to offend or harm, also led to inaction. Therefore, American Quakers generally maintained public silence with regard to the Nazi anti-Jewish policy during the early years of Hitler’s rule. The institutionalized help of the AFSC began only after the K R I S TA L L N AC H T pogrom of November 1938. A Refugee Division was established, with headquarters

pogrom

in New York City, which offered services not already being provided through other agencies. Through hostels, American seminars, college workshops, and other educational projects, the AFSC concentrated on orientation and Americanization of refugees from Europe. These were only small pilot projects that demonstrated to the large relief agencies “the Quaker way” in which refugees should be treated. Although members of the AFSC enthusiastically labored on behalf of refugees, the rank and file of Quaker communities in the United States failed to contribute to the cause either financially or by absorbing refugee families.

A Russian word meaning “devastation” that came to be applied to organized violence against Jews, which was often encouraged and supported by government authorities.

For the AFSC operations abroad, the picture was quite different. As a “foreignminded” organization, the Foreign Service Section was much more effective than the Refugee Division. In response to a request from the American Jewish J OINT D ISTRIB -

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AMERICAN JEWISH CONGRESS

U T I O N C O M M I T T E E (JDC), the Quakers sent a commission to Germany in 1939 to explore the conditions under which Jews and anti-Nazi Christians were then living and to provide help if necessary. Indeed, from 1933 through the war, the warm relationship between the AFSC and Jewish agencies such as the JDC, and the Ouevre de Secours aux Enfants (Children’s Aid Society) in France was an example of interfaith and international cooperation on refugee matters. Although the AFSC devoted its major efforts to helping Christian refugees, Quaker assistance to Jewish refugees in Paris, Marseilles, Lisbon, and Madrid was significant, as well. The AFSC’s Foreign Service Section helped feed and rescue children in France, assisted refugees in neutral Portugal, and coordinated the work of relief agencies in Spain. Over the course of a decade the scope of its services for victims of Nazi persecution expanded from an expenditure of $17,000 in 1934 to $1,911,300 in 1944, with more than 200 paid workers and many volunteers.

During the Hitler era, Jews and “non-Aryan” Christians were the main beneficiaries of AFSC help, but after 1945 the Quakers focused their attention on helping Germans, Japanese, Indians, and Chinese, among others. In appreciation of its relief work for refugees during and after World War II, the AFSC, along with the British Service Council, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES American Friends Service Committee. http://www.afsc.org/ “Quakers.” Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance Online. [Online] http://motlc.wiesenthal.org/pages/t063/t06320.html (accessed on August 21, 2000). “Quakers’ Humanitarian Efforts Assisted Thousands of Refugees.” Holocaust Heroes. [Online] http://www.holocaust-heroes.com/quakers.html (accessed on August 21, 2000).

AMERICAN JEWISH CONGRESS. SEE WORLD JEWISH CONGRESS AMERICAN JEWISH JOINT DISTRIBUTION COMMITTEE. SEE JOINT DISTRIBUTION COMMITTEE

American Jewish Organizations In the years prior to World War II and during the war itself, Jewish organizations in many countries used their resources to try to support the Jews in Europe. Some groups provided refugee assistance; others engaged in political and public information activities to focus the world’s attention on the plight of European Jewry. Among the Jewish organizations with headquarters in the United States, three are particularly notable for their efforts and interactions: B’nai B’rith, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Jewish Conference. Another group active in the United States during those years, the American Jewish Congress, was an affiliate of an international organization (see W O R L D J E W I S H C O N G R E S S ).

B’nai B’rith B’nai B’rith, which has become an international Jewish organization, was founded in New York in 1843. It is the oldest secular Jewish organization in the

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AMERICAN JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS

United States. Its original mission was to blend humanistic Judaism with general human ideals. B’nai B’rith lodges and chapters sprang up in other countries, including Germany, where a B’nai B’rith order was established in 1882, in reaction to growing A N T I S E M I T I S M in that country. Reacting to signs of rising antisemitism in Europe, B’nai B’rith in the United States decided in 1913 to establish the AntiDefamation League (ADL), a body that is still in existence. During the pre-war years of the 1920s and early 1930s, the leadership of B’nai B’rith generally rejected public demonstrations and pronouncements against antisemitism, preferring to gain public support through less controversial activity. Even after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, B’nai B’rith president Alfred Cohen continued his policy of quietly seeking diplomatic and political assistance on behalf of the Jews, concerned about possible Nazi response to a threatened economic boycott against Germany by American Jews. However, this approach was rarely successful.

A

n early B’nai B’rith appeal asking the United States government to

protest against the persecution of Jews in Germany was rejected by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who said he was not prepared to interfere in Nazi Germany’s internal affairs.

On April 9, 1937, the Gestapo seized all the B’nai B’rith chapters in Germany, arresting the officers and conducting searches of their residences, confiscating the order’s assets, and liquidating its welfare institutions. A shocked Alfred Cohen appealed to Secretary of State Cordell Hull to protest to the German government on humanitarian grounds, but his appeal was turned down. Even then, Cohen remained opposed to public protest and boycott, still believing that “quiet diplomacy” could help the Jews of Germany. In May 1938 the election of Zionist Henry Monsky as president of B’nai B’rith signaled a change for the organization. Zionists supported the establishment of a homeland for Jews. Monsky supported assertive action; he endorsed a boycott of Germany and made it his policy to transform B’nai B’rith into a large-scale organization. A few months later, after the K R I S TA L L N AC H T pogrom took place in Germany (November 1938), Monsky took action to unite American Jewish leadership against the growing Nazi threat to European Jews. With the support of the Zionists, he established the American Jewish Conference; the rescue of European Jews became one of its primary goals.

American Jewish Committee The American Jewish Committee was founded in 1906 with the aim of protecting the civil and religious rights of Jews anywhere in the world. Although the group was originally limited to 60 members, membership was expanded to thousands between 1931 and 1944. The American Jewish Committee’s approach, similar to that of B’nai Brith under Alfred Cohen, was one of quiet diplomacy. It opposed open negotiations or criticisms of the government policy and refrained from joining rallies or demonstrations of protest. During World War II, the committee maintained its prewar diplomatic policy, but its willingness to participate in joint protests with other organizations increased after the United States entered the war in December 1941. From the late fall of 1942 to the early fall of 1943, the committee cooperated with the American Jewish Congress (an affiliate group of the World Jewish Congress) and other organizations to present rescue projects and postwar proposals to the government. The committee was among several groups that joined forces with one another as the American Jewish Conference in early 1943. However, the American Jewish Committee ended its involvement with the conference in October of that year, after the American Jewish Conference passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The Zionist leanings of the American Jewish Conference proved too dominant for the members of the non-Zionist American Jewish Committee.

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AMERICAN JEWRY AND THE HOLOCAUST

American Jewish Conference The American Jewish Conference was established as an umbrella organization in August 1943 to unite American Jewry for planning Jewish postwar policy. At the initiative of B’nai B’rith’s Henry Monsky, representatives of 32 national Jewish organizations resolved to convene a conference, to be named the American Jewish Assembly, with 500 delegates—375 elected and 12 appointed by cooperating organizations. A three-part agenda was to be addressed: (1) Jewish rights and status in the postwar world, (2) the implementation of Jewish rights regarding Palestine, and (3) the election of a delegates to carry out the assembly’s program in cooperation with Jewish representatives around the world. The rescue of European Jewry was added to the agenda in late July 1943, in response to reports of mass murders of Jews in Poland. The assembly was renamed the American Jewish Conference, in order to avoid Jewish nationalist overtones. However, non-Zionist groups such as the American Jewish Committee eventually resigned from the Conference because the group’s direction remained nationalistic in both theory and practice. The American Jewish Conference was never fully effective in its efforts to unite the diverse organizations of American Jewry in coordinated action on behalf of European Jews. Nor did it gain acceptance by the United States government as the representative of American Jewry on rescue, postwar, and Palestine issues. After the war, B’nai B’rith played an active role in addressing the problem of the Holocaust survivors. The American Jewish Conference and the American Jewish Committee remained influential in government circles for a time, as well. Both were designated by the State Department as consultants to the United States delegation attending the San Francisco Conference, at which the United Nations was founded in April 1945.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES “American Jewish Committee.” Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance Online. [Online] http://motlc.wiesenthal.org/pages/t000/t00049.html (accessed on August 21, 2000) “American Jewish Conference.” Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance Online. [Online] http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/pages/t000/t00051.html (accessed on August 21, 2000). Bauer, Yehuda. American Jewry and the Holocaust: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1939–1945. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981. “B’nai Brith.” Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance Online. [Online] http://motlc.wiesenthal.org/pages/t004/t00408.html (accessed on August 21, 2000). Feingold, Henry L. Bearing Witness: How America and Its Jews Responded to the Holocaust. New York: Syracuse University Press, 1995.

American Jewry and the Holocaust During the 1930s, when American Jewry became aware of the need to act on behalf of the Jews of Europe, it lacked organizational cohesiveness and could not speak with one voice to those with political and social power. Internal divisions among Jewish American organizations partly account for their political ineffectiveness during the years of the Holocaust. But even unified, American Jews probably would not have been able to drastically alter the wartime priorities of the United States, which did not include the rescue of European Jewry.

16

AMERICAN JEWRY AND THE HOLOCAUST

Disunity within American Jewry was first reflected in the diverse constituencies represented by two major American Jewish organizations: the American Jewish Committee—which represented the more Americanized, affluent, elements of the Jewish community, and the American Jewish Congress, which was more representative of the eastern European Jewish immigrants. The Committee was composed of wealthy, assimilated German Jews, who saw Judaism as a religion only. The Congress was composed of poor and middle-class, eastern European Jews who, though no longer Orthodox, still saw Judaism as a cultural and “national” community. These disparities characterized the entire spectrum of American Jewish organizations, so there was no true “American Jewish community” in the 1930s and 1940s. The common base in culture, language, and experience that might have evoked such a sense of communalism was not yet in place. Instead, there were small communities loosely grouped together as Jewish. Only in the eyes of American antisemites and in their rhetoric, which was strident during this period, were Jews in the United States a single unified entity. The organizations representing these two main groups of American Jews could not agree on how to interpret and respond to the threat posed to European Jewry by the National Socialist (Nazi) regime in Germany in 1933. The American Jewish Committee shared the widespread but erroneous idea that the responsibilities of power would tame Hitler and that the German population would provide a counterbalance to his ferocious A N T I S E M I T I S M . The committee advocated quiet, behindthe-scenes diplomacy to address the deteriorating condition of German Jewry.

B

ecause it determined that Arab support, or at least neutrality, was

necessary for Great Britain to wage its fight against Hitler, the British government modified its immigration policies and published the new policy in the so-called White Paper of 1939. This limited immigration to 15,000 Jews per year and established other obstacles to the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine during the World War II years.

In contrast, the American Jewish Congress advocated a more activist position, convinced that arousing public opinion could improve the situation. The Congress called for a continuing round of protest rallies. Neither agency’s strategy proved effective. The German Nazi regime was immune to moral persuasion and diplomatic reasoning, and American Jewish disapproval was of no concern to Nazi leaders. The Jewish communities represented by the American Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee differed not only in their approaches to Jewish faith and culture, and their responses to the rise of National Socialism in Europe; they disagreed on all major issues of political, cultural, and economic interest to American Jews during the Holocaust years. From the quest for a Jewish community in Palestine, to the distribution of philanthropic funds; from the dilemma of how to respond to the British White Paper of 1939 that severely restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine, to the question of whether or not a Jewish army should be established, American Jews did not share common views.

American Jews in Leadership Roles In the first part of the century, men like Louis Marshall, Jacob Schiff, and Justice Louis Brandeis assumed mainstream leadership positions in American society through the support of various Jewish organizations. They accepted their role as “prominent Jews” and served as spokespersons both for their Jewish communities and for the mainstream culture of which they had become a part. During the 1930s this pattern changed, as many American Jews were appointed in the Roosevelt administration. These newly appointed Jewish officials, who came from the legal establishment, organized labor, the business community, the news media, the universities, and the political parties themselves, included Sidney Hillman, a labor leader; Samuel Rosenman, a lawyer involved in Democratic politics; Justice Felix Frankfurter; Henry M O R G E N T H AU , Jr., who began his career with Franklin D. Roosevelt in New York state politics; and Herbert Lehman, an investment banker and governor of New York. Although these men were Jewish by heritage, they did

17

AMERICAN JEWRY AND THE HOLOCAUST

not generally practice the Jewish faith and they felt little obligation to represent American Jewry in word or deed.

T

he strident antisemitism of the 1930s traumatized the Jews

of America. Even the new visibility of Jews in high places in the Roosevelt administration could not counteract its effect on American Jews.

Earlier leaders, raised in a more culturally Jewish environment, had no doubt about their responsibilities to the Jewish interest. Those who reached the top during the Roosevelt period considered themselves Americans who happened to be Jewish. They would not risk their careers for a Jewish need. Yet it was through these people, who were only tenuously connected to the Jewish community, that the government addressed the needs of American Jewry. Since the support of these people was modest at best, the American Jewish community was essentially leaderless. Jewish leaders such as Rabbi Stephen S. W I S E could speak to the Roosevelt administration only through these nominal spokespersons. Not until Henry Morgenthau became convinced of the need for an official American response did he use his influence to establish the W A R R E F U G E E B OA R D ; this was the peak of the American rescue effort, and it didn’t occur until 1944. Despite its low level of leadership, the community was able to unify for limited objectives. The concerns of American Jews were eventually made known to Roosevelt, and in the area of philanthropy a tenuous unity was achieved when the United Jewish Appeal was established in 1939. Most importantly, the American Jewish J O I N T D I S T R I B U T I O N C O M M I T T E E , known in the Jewish world as “the Joint,” served the beleaguered Jewish community, even providing supplemental allotments of kosher food for Palestinian Jews serving in the British army. At the same time the Joint, working through proxy agencies in Europe, financed the rescue and sheltering of thousands of Jews in the neutral countries. The Joint was successful because it maintained the apolitical character mandated in its charter and was thereby able to avoid the conflicts dividing the otherwise highly politicized Jewish community. The true strength of American Jewry existed in philanthropy and rehabilitation, which united, rather than in politics and power, which divided.

Economic Depression and Social Discontent The Great Depression and its resulting domestic conditions were the principal factors in the Roosevelt administration’s response to the Holocaust. Recovery from the depression was the major preoccupation of government during the 1930s. During the critical years between 1937 and 1941, just before America entered the war, the economy was still in decline. Due to slow economic recovery, policymakers refused to rewrite restrictive immigration laws, which were administered to curtail the flow of refugees. These limited immigration policies made the role of rescue advocates more difficult. Many believed that the antisemitic rantings of demagogues like Gerald L. K. Smith and Father Charles Coughlin, who spoke to millions over the radio airwaves, were an omen that “it could happen here.” Although Jews had been welcomed into the ethnic urban coalition on which the strength of the Roosevelt administration was based, all was not well within that coalition. As a group, the Jews were emerging rapidly from the economic depression. This rapid recovery generated envy and resentment, further limiting the influence of Jews in leadership positions to advocate for Jewish interests that seemed to be in conflict with the interests of other Americans. The antisemitism of the 1930s in America also awakened the defensive instincts of many Jewish organizations. Much energy and money went into fighting domestic antisemitism, leaving proportionately less to use in alleviating the danger faced by European Jewry.

18

AMERICAN LITERATURE ON THE HOLOCAUST

Intracommunity disunity and strife were partly set aside when news of the “ F I N A L S O L U T I O N ” was received in the fall of 1942. But the American Jewish Conference, which was organized in 1943 by the major Jewish organizations to pursue a policy of unified action, was largely unsuccessful in bridging the political and cultural divisions within American Jewry. The role of the Bergson Group, an independent political Zionist organization, became a focal point of subsequent Holocaust dialogue.

The Bergson Group The “Bergson boys,” so called after their leader, Peter Bergson (a pseudonym of Hillel Kook), differed from other organizations. They were a group of Zionist Revisionists who came to the United States from Palestine, rather than a native product of the American Jewish community. Under several different names, the group variously advocated the creation of a Jewish army of stateless and Palestinian Jews and a militant rescue program based on the strategy of separating the rescue issue from the issue of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The Bergson group never became a mass organization, but it skillfully utilized the media and cultivated political leaders to promote its agenda. It demonstrated a flair for publicity that annoyed mainstream organizations that tried to silence the new organization, and in one instance, a proposal was made to government officials that the Bergson group be deported to Palestine. The Bergson Group’s rescue program was beyond the realm of political possibility. In retrospect, however, it is clear that the Bergson group had a realistic understanding of the disaster taking place in Europe. They understood that a “business-as-usual” attitude was not appropriate, given the scale of the catastrophe. Virtually every step of what turned into America’s policy toward rescue of European Jews, including the eventual creation of a special government agency with the specific objective of rescuing Jews (the War Refugee Board), had been proposed and then initiated by the Bergson group. During the years between 1933 and 1945, American Jewry’s message to decision makers was sometimes muddled, but the fact that it desperately wanted its European brethren to be saved was understood. The steps proposed were repeatedly rejected. They were interpreted as an interfering with the major American aim, which was to win the war.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bauer, Yehuda. American Jewry and the Holocaust: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1939–1945. Detroit: Wayne State University, 1981. Feingold, Henry L. Bearing Witness: How America and Its Jews Responded to the Holocaust. New York: Syracuse University Press, 1995. Feingold, Henry L. A Time for Searching: Entering the Mainstream, 1920–1945. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. Morrison, David. Heroes, Antiheroes, and the Holocaust: American Jewry and Historical Choice. New London, NH: Milah Press, 1995.

AMERICAN LITERATURE ON THE HOLOCAUST. SEE LITERATURE ON THE HOLOCAUST

19

AMERICAN PRESS AND THE HOLOCAUST

American Press and the Holocaust

Ironically, news released by the perpetrators [Germans] was given far greater prominence than the firsthand information being released by the victims.

The treatment given by the American press to the destruction of the Jews during World War II can best be described as a “sidebar.” This is the name given by journalists to a story that is secondary to the main story. The press coverage of the Nazi persecution of the Jews paralleled United States policy regarding refugee rescue. It simply was not an issue of primary importance. The press’s behavior reflected the United States’ attitude of “rescue through victory.” It was rare for more than an isolated newspaper to call for action to assist Jews. A great deal of information, including that about the “F I N A L S O L U T I O N ” and the systematic destruction of the Jews, was available long before the end of the war. Practically no aspect of the Holocaust remained unknown by 1945. However, significant information was often buried on the inside pages of newspapers. For instance, the June 1942 announcement that two million Jews had been killed as a result of planned annihilation was placed at the bottom of page 6 of the Chicago Tribune and given thirteen lines. Other major papers treated the story similarly. Many readers probably missed this story and similar ones published well inside the paper. Those readers who did see it probably assumed that the editors did not really believe it; had it been believed, a reader might have reasoned, it would have been more prominently placed. From the beginning of the Nazi regime, the press in the United States generally failed to take Hitler’s prewar and wartime threats against Jews seriously. Journalists, editors, and publishers generally did not recognize or acknowledge that A N T I S E M I T I S M was a keystone of Nazism. Consequently, what was done to the Jews was often attributed to opportunistic and political motives or to war-related privations. American reporters in Germany could transmit reports until December 1941. Although their movements in Germany were tightly controlled, they were still able to send out significant information. Some reporters pushed against the limits and went to the railway stations in order to listen to the conversations of soldiers on their way home from the front. These reporters always faced the threat of expulsion. After the United States entered the war, news of the fate of European Jewry was released primarily by governments-in-exile or Jewish sources. The press was inclined to discount this news because it came from “interested parties,” that is, the victims. Ironically, news released by the perpetrators was given far greater prominence than the first-hand information being released by the victims. During World War I, reporters had been told horror stories about the Germans. These propaganda-filled stories had left their legacy. In World War II, reporters doubted the reports of German atrocities because they seemed too similar to those exaggerated World War I reports. Sometimes reporters in Europe believed the news, while editors and publishers in the United States did not. Moreover, the number of victims made it more plausible for the press to dismiss the news as “beyond belief.” Stories detailing the deaths of several hundred people were sometimes given more credence than reports of the deaths of millions. The press’s behavior can be explained partly by the magnitude of the numbers, the absence of “independent” eyewitnesses, the inability to obtain confirmation from “impartial” sources, and the memory of World War I anti-German propaganda stories. Even when the Allies confirmed the news, reports were still buried in small articles on inside pages. The government’s desire to ignore the story also aided the press in suppressing the facts.

20

ANIELEWICZ, MORDECAI

While the unprecedented nature of the events made it easier, particularly at the outset, to discount this kind of news, by 1943 and certainly by the time of the destruction of Hungarian Jewry in 1944, a great deal of evidence had become available. Most reporters seemed to know about the Holocaust, and some papers published editorials lamenting what was happening. But they generally maintained their practice of placing the stories in inconspicuous places and reacting with minimal comment. It is impossible, of course, to determine whether increased press attention would have prompted the government to follow a different policy. There were, however, some newspapers and magazines that pursued the story of the fate of the Jews with persistence and energy. Among them were a disproportionate number of liberal publications, including P.M., The New Republic, The Nation, Commonweal, and the New York Post. Liberal journalists such as Dorothy Thompson, William Shirer, and Arthur Koestler paid attention, as well. The Hearst papers also focused on the story when they became strong supporters of a Zionist political organization (the Bergson Group; see A M E R I CA N J E W RY A N D T H E H O L O C AU S T ), which repeatedly demanded action on behalf of the Jews. In marked contrast to the behavior and reaction of the general press, the Jewish press in the United States believed the stories that were coming from Europe and treated the news with urgency and concern.

E

arly reports from the Nazi years sometimes received more

attention than did later, more horrifying news of death and atrocities. By mid-1943 the news of the persecution of the Jews was regarded as an “old story,” and therefore most newspapers carried it on inside pages.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES America and the Holocaust: Deceit and Indifference [videorecording]. PBS Video, 1994. Lipstadt, Deborah E. Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933–1945. New York: Free Press, 1986. Wyman, David S. The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. Wyman, David S., ed. America and the Holocaust. New York: Garland, 1989.

Anielewicz, Mordecai (1919 or 1920–1943)

Mordecai Anielewicz was a Jewish underground activist and the commander of the W A R S AW G H E T TO U P R I S I N G . He was born into a poor family living in a W A R S AW slum quarter of P O L A N D ; he graduated from the Laor Jewish secondary school and joined the Zionist Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir movement, where he distinguished himself as an organizer and a youth leader. On September 7, 1939, a week after the outbreak of World War II, Anielewicz fled Warsaw and, with the senior members of his movement, traveled to eastern Poland, assuming that they would join the Polish underground forces there. On September 17, however, the Soviet army occupied eastern Poland. Anielewicz reached the southern part of the Soviet-occupied area and tried to cross into Romania and establish a route for Jewish youth trying to get to Palestine. He was caught by the Soviets and jailed. When he was released, he decided to return to Warsaw— by then under German occupation. He stayed in Warsaw briefly and left for Vilna, which by then had been incorporated into Lithuania. It contained a large concentration of refugees from Warsaw, among them members of the youth movements and political parties. Anielewicz called on his fellow Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir members

21

ANIELEWICZ, MORDECAI

Mordecai Anielewicz (standing, right) with members of Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir.

to send a team of instructors back to German-occupied Poland, where they would resume the movement’s educational and political activities in the underground. He was the first to volunteer for this assignment. By January 1940, Anielewicz had become a full-time underground activist. As the leader of the Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir underground movement, he set up cells and youth groups, organized their activities, helped publish an underground newspaper, arranged meetings and seminars, and made frequent illegal trips outside Warsaw, visiting other communities and his movement’s chapters in the provincial ghettos. He also found time to study, especially Hebrew, and read history, sociology, and economics. During this period he began to express his views in lectures and in articles that he published in the underground press. Responding to the first reports of the mass murder of Jews in the east, in June 1941, Anielewicz began to concentrate on the creation of a self-defense organiza-

22

ANIELEWICZ, MORDECAI

tion in the ghetto. His first efforts to establish contacts with the Polish underground forces that were loyal to the Polish government-in-exile in London were unsuccessful. At the time of the mass D E P O R TAT I O N from Warsaw in the summer of 1942, Anielewicz was in the southwestern part of Poland, which had been incorporated into Germany. While there, he transformed the underground youth movements into an armed resistance movement. On his return to Warsaw after the mass deportation, he found that only 60,000 of Warsaw’s 350,000 Jews were left in the ghetto, and that the J E W I S H F I G H T I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N (Z˙ OB) in the ghetto lacked weapons and was in a dire situation, having suffered failures and lost members. Anielewicz quickly reorganized and reinvigorated the group. Following the mass deportation, there was far more support in the ghetto for the idea of armed resistance and its practical organization. Most of the existing Jewish underground groups now joined the Z˙OB. A public council, consisting of authorized representatives, was established in support of the Z˙ OB. In November 1942 Anielewicz was appointed commander of the Z˙OB. By January 1943 several groups of fighters, consisting of members of the pioneering Zionist youth movements, had been consolidated; contact had been established with the Home Army Command (Armia Krajowa), and a small quantity of guns and ammunition had been smuggled from the Polish side of the city.

“My life’s dream has come true; I have lived to see Jewish resistance in the ghetto in all its greatness and glory.” —Mordecai Anielewicz

On January 18, 1943, the Germans launched the second mass deportation from the Warsaw ghetto. Surprised by this action, the Z˙ OB staff was unable to plan a revolt. However, in one part of the ghetto the armed groups of Z˙OB fighters decided to act independently. There were two areas of Z˙OB resistance, with Anielewicz commanding the major street battle. The fighters deliberately joined the columns of deportees and, at a planned signal, attacked the German escorts at the corner of Zamenhofa and Niska streets, while the rest of the Jews fled from the scene. Most of the fighters belonging to the Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir group died in that battle, but Anielewicz survived. The resistance action taken on January 18 was significant, because four days later the Germans halted the deportation. The ghetto population interpreted this to mean that the Germans were drawing back in the face of armed resistance by the Jews. The following three months, from January to April 1943, were used by the Z˙OB for intensive preparations for the decisive test ahead, under the supervision of the organization’s headquarters, led by Anielewicz. On April 19, the eve of Passover, the final deportation of Warsaw Jews was launched, signaling the start of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. In the first few clashes, the Jewish resistance fighters held the upper hand and the Germans suffered losses. Clashes and street fighting in the ghetto lasted for three days. Once the Germans brought in a large military force, the few hundred Jewish fighters, armed only with pistols, had no chance of victory. They did not surrender, however. Neither, for the most part, did the Jews who were in the bunkers. The Germans resorted to burning down the ghetto, house by house, in order to destroy the bunkers. The fighting in the ghetto went on for four weeks. The Germans suffered constant losses. It wasn’t until May 16 that Jürgen S T R O O P , the commander of the German force, was able to report that the Grossaktion (“major operation”) had been concluded and the ghetto conquered. In the first days of the fighting, Anielewicz was in command, in the midst of the main fighting forces of the ghetto. When the street fighting was over, Anielewicz, his staff, and a large force of fighters retreated into the bunker at 18 Mila Street. When this bunker was destroyed on May 8, most of the members of the Z˙ OB, including Anielewicz, were killed. In his last letter, of April 23, 1943, to Yitzhak

23

ANNE FRANK HOUSE

Z U C K E R M A N (a member of the Z˙OB staff who was then on assignment on the Polish side), Anielewicz wrote: What has happened is beyond our wildest dreams. Twice the Germans fled from the ghetto. One of our companies held out for forty minutes and the other, for over six hours....; I have no words to describe to you the conditions in which the Jews are living. Only a few chosen ones will hold out; all the rest will perish sooner or later. The die is cast. In the bunkers in which our comrades are hiding, no candle can be lit, for lack of air....; The main thing is: My life’s dream has come true; I have lived to see Jewish resistance in the ghetto in all its greatness and glory. Kibbutz Yad Mordecai in Israel has been named after Mordecai Anielewicz, and is the site of a memorial in his honor.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Gutman, Israel. Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. Landau, Elaine. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. New York: Macmillan, 1992.

Shoah [videorecording]. New Yorker Video, 1999. Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: An Audio-visual Program from the Exhibition at Ghetto Fighter’s House [videorecording]. Ergo Media, 1993.

ANNE FRANK HOUSE. SEE FRANK, ANNE Anti-Jewish Legislation The Nazi party program adopted in Germany in February 1920 contained four anti-Jewish objectives: 1. Jews should not be citizens, and should have the legal status of foreigners; 2. Jews should not be public officials; 3. Jews should be barred from immigrating into Germany; 4. Any Jew who is the owner or editor of a German newspaper should be removed from that position. At the time, these demands were not new, nor could they be regarded as particularly radical. These views had been advocated by all pre-1914 anti-semitic parties and political groups, and they corresponded to the ideas widely held by the German population.

First Laws: 1933 There were three distinct and separate waves of anti-Jewish legislation. The first welled up in March 1933, and by April 7 had culminated in one of the major Nazi objectives—the enactment of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. This law authorized the dismissal of “non-Aryan” civil servants, except for those who had held that status since August 1, 1914, who had fought at the front for Germany in World War I, or whose father or son had been killed in action in that war. A “non-Aryan” was defined as a person “descended from non-

24

ANTI-JEWISH LEGISLATION

Aryan, and especially from Jewish, parents or grandparents,” even if only one parent or grandparent fit that category. This law became the model for measures excluding Jews from other occupations—for example, lawyers and tax consultants—and dismissing all “non-Aryan” employees. Doctors and dentists were barred from the panels of social-medicine institutions. Under a law that was passed on September 22, 1933, reestablishing a Reich Chamber of Culture, “non-Aryans” were removed from organizations and enterprises related to literature, the press, broadcasting, the theater, music, and art. The legislation barring Jews from certain professions and occupations was augmented by measures designed to make these occupations inaccessible to Jews in the first place. The first such measure was the Law against the Overcrowding of German Schools and Institutions of Higher Learning (April 7, 1933), which restricted the admissible number of “non-Aryan” students to a certain percentage of the total. All regulations governing training and examinations for state-controlled occupations contained an “Aryan clause,” which prohibited “non-Aryans” from sitting for final state examinations. This closed all such occupations to them. The “Aryan clause” was also introduced into the bylaws of professional organizations, societies, and clubs, and as a result it became increasingly difficult for Jews to protect their interests or take part in social activities.

G

erman Jews became trapped in a legislative net that, by the sheer

number of its rules as well as by its limited focus, had no precedent in the history of the treatment of minorities.

Financial aid was denied to Jews: Jewish high school and university students were no longer eligible for reductions of school fees, scholarships, or any other kind of assistance; and newly married couples were not granted the usual matrimony loans if one of the partners was “non-Aryan.” Another category of laws and regulations was designed to discriminate against the Jewish religion and hamper observance of its practices and customs. Jewish ritual slaughter of meat and poultry was outlawed as early as April 1933. Jewish judges could at any time be rejected, on grounds of bias. Increasing numbers of local authorities prohibited Jews from visiting public baths; Jewish students who did not attend classes on the Sabbath or Jewish holidays were penalized; and Jewish prisoners no longer had the right to receive kosher food. By mid-1935 these measures had severely restricted Jewish life in Germany. Jews, for the most part, maintained contact only with other Jews.

Nuremberg Laws: 1935 The second major wave of anti-Jewish legislation came on September 15, 1935, when the Reichstag, meeting in Nuremberg, passed two laws that provided for the final legal and social separation between German Jews and other Germans. Under the Reich Citizenship Law, the Jews were deprived of all voting rights and became Staatsbürger 2 Klasse (second-class citizens). One immediate effect of this law was the dismissal, by December 31, 1935, of all the Jewish civil servants, employees, and workers who still held their jobs. The broader function of the citizenship law was to serve as the legal basis for no fewer than thirteen additional decrees, each relating to a different set of circumstances. The other law passed that day was the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, which forbade marriage between Jews and nationals of German or kindred blood. In the wake of that law, a complicated classification system was created to define various degrees of Jewishness. These ranged from Volljude (full Jew) to Geltungsjude (person regarded as a Jew, even though he or she had two “Aryan” grandparents) to M I S C H L I N G E (partial Jew, i.e., a person of mixed blood). Mischlinge were further divided in turn into first and second degrees, with each degree having its own specified privileges, rights, and disabilities.

25

ANTI-JEWISH LEGISLATION

Sweeping Laws: 1938–1943

M

ore than 2,000 anti-Jewish measures were enacted in

Nazi Germany prior to January, 1937. This figure refers only to laws passed by the Reich and the larger states and provinces, and represents only a part of the total number of anti-Jewish regulations. When smaller political units and autonomous bodies are taken into account, the total number of anti-Jewish measures exceeds 3,000.

The third wave of anti-Jewish legislation concerned the remaining sphere of Jewish activity in German society: the economy. Though these laws began appearing during 1936 and 1937, the most extreme legislation followed the Nazi-sanctioned destruction of Jewish property and assets during K R I S TA L L N AC H T (November 9–10, 1938). On November 12, 1938, Nazi anti-Jewish legislation entered its final phase. A collective fine of 1 billion reichsmarks was imposed on the Jews as a body, as a penalty for the murder of a German diplomat in Paris, which was the feeble excuse given for the riots of Kristallnacht. Additionally, the Jews had to use their own resources to repair all damage they suffered in the rioting. The Measure for the Elimination of Jews from the German Economy completed the list of occupations from which Jews were barred; as of January 1, 1939, there was no occupation a Jew could join or practice unless he dealt only with Jews. In the period following November 9, 1938, more legislation was passed, in three different areas: 1. The first law allowed the seizure and confiscation of Jewish-owned assets (A R YA N I Z AT I O N , or “arisierung”), which was a legalized form of plunder by the state. 2. The separation of Jews from other Germans, in both location and time: Jews were forbidden to enter specific places or show themselves in public at certain times. Between February 1939 and April 1939 for example, they could no longer enter railway sleeping or dining cars; from April 1939 onward, local authorities were permitted to restrict Jews to specific houses or residential districts. 3. The concentration of all significant political affairs relating to “Jewish questions” in the hands of the SS organs, and the liquidation of Jewish institutions. On November 9, 1938, Hermann Göring received Hitler’s authorization to deal with all Jewish political affairs. This enabled him, on January 24, 1939, to appoint Reinhard H E Y D R I C H as chief of the C E N T R A L O F F I C E F O R J E W I S H E M I G R AT I O N (Zentralstelle Für Jüdische Auswanderung), which in practice gave the S S the power of decision on all matters affecting the Jews. In legislative terms, this situation was expressed in the Tenth Implementation Decree under the Reich Citizenship Law of July 4, 1939, which provided for the establishment of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland (Reich Association of Jews in Germany). This organization, responsible for the organization and implementation of emigration and all related matters, as well as for separate Jewish education and social welfare, was under the supervision and control of Heydrich in his capacity as chief of the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei) and SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service). Even prior to the outbreak of war, German Jews were trapped in a legislative net that, by the sheer number of its rules as well as by its limited focus, had no precedent in the history of the treatment of minorities. When war broke out, the existing regulations were extended in every possible direction and tightened. Jews were forbidden to leave their residences after 8:00 p.m. (September 1, 1939); their radio sets were confiscated (September 20, 1939); their food rations were reduced (December 7, 1939), as were their other rations (January 23, 1940); their purchases were restricted to limited hours and to certain stores; their telephones were taken away (July 19, 1940). From the beginning of the war, the Jews were put on forced labor. As of September 19, 1941, they had to wear a sign of their Jewishness in public (see B A D G E , J E W I S H ) and, with few exceptions, they were not permitted to use public transportation. On October 23 of that year, Jewish emigration was prohibited.

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The “F I N A L S O L U T I O N ”—launched in Germany with two transports of Jews to the east in October 1941—was reflected inside the Reich by the enactment of regulations that had the sole purpose of depriving the Jews of the last of their possessions, of discriminating against them in every possible way, and of taking from them whatever rights they still had left. The Jews who were deported to the east automatically lost their German citizenship (November 25, 1941). At the end of June 1942, the remaining Jewish schools were closed down. Germans who maintained friendly contacts with Jews ran the risk of having to spend three months in a concentration camp (October 24, 1941); German hairdressers were no longer permitted to have Jewish clients (May 12, 1942); and Jews were no longer allowed to keep “German” house pets. The final anti-Jewish law, dated July 1, 1943, stipulated that when a Jew died, his estate would be forfeited to the Reich.

Throughout Eastern Europe In the countries allied with Germany, or conquered and occupied by it, the extent and severity of anti-Jewish legislation depended on the regime and on the political and military pressure exerted by Germany—or, conversely, on the degree to which the country could convince Germany to respect its status under international law. Thus, after the annexation of Austria on March 13, 1938, no time was lost in applying Nazi racial legislation to Austria. The same applied, even more ruthlessly, to the Protectorate of B O H E M I A A N D M O R AV I A . The G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T (occupied Poland) enacted the harshest and most brutal anti-Jewish measures, which were passed months and even years before they were applied in the Reich itself. In the countries that were militarily defeated—France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Norway, Yugoslavia (Serbia and Croatia), and Greece—the local German military commander or the puppet regime generally introduced legal measures defining who was to be regarded as a Jew and eliminating Jews from economic life. This also occurred in the states allied with Germany (Italy, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary), although in such cases the Reich had to exert varying degrees of pressure to overcome the resistance shown by most of these governments. The only country under German control that enacted no anti-Jewish legislation was Denmark. They succeeded in saving most of their Jewish population when the Germans finally moved to deport Danish Jews in July 1943.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bachrach, Susan D. Tell Them We Remember: The Story of the Holocaust. Boston: Little, Brown, 1994. Hecht, Ingeborg. Invisible Walls: A German Family Under the Nuremberg Laws. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985.

The Nazis, a Warning from History [videorecording]. A&E Home Video, 1999. Newman, Amy. The Nuremberg Laws: Institutionalized Anti-semitism. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1999.

Antisemitism The term “antisemitism” refers to the opposition to and hatred of Jews throughout history. Its causes and its enduring nature are related to both Jewish beliefs and to the role played by Jews in the Western world.

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Religious Conflict Many think that the principal roots of antisemitism are found in the conflicts between Christianity and Judaism. According to this view, antisemitism derives its force and continuity over the centuries from Christianity. The conflict between the two religions is grounded in the issue of Jesus as the Messiah, and in the place of Judaism and the Jews in the Old and New Testaments. The Christian church accused Jews of deicide, the murder of a divine being. This guilt was considered collective; not only the Jews who lived at the time of Jesus’s crucifixion were considered guilty, but all the children of Israel, forever and ever. Christians were seen as personifying God’s truth and mercy, and Jews were perceived as sinful nonbelievers. Anxieties about Jews and negative images of them entered the folklore and culture of Christian peoples. Jews were negatively characterized as despising physical work, especially farming. Instead, they were alleged to prefer to make a living by loaning money and charging interest. (In some European languages the term “Jew” is synonymous with cheating and charging excessive interest.) Other erroneous stereotypes emerged, as well, which transcended religious differences and had no grounding in reality.

1789–1870 Enlightenment

A period during the 18th century when philosophers, writers, and other intellectuals questioned all aspects of knowledge and social discourse, seeking to understand the world through reason and scientific observation.

Modern antisemitism grew out of ideological and social developments during the period of the Enlightenment. In F R A N C E around the time of the French Revolution (1789), the “Jewish question” arose in connection with the principle that equal civil rights should be granted to all men, regardless of religion or origin. In the French National Assembly, the argument was made that these rights should be denied to the Jews because they were a nation, and not just a religious group. At the same time, the United States was a young nation founded under the principles of equality and the separation of church and state. Different ethnic and national groups lived in a society that tolerated pluralism—a diversity of religious and ethnic groups. This pluralism did not mean a partnership among equals, however. The white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who founded the United States, and their descendants, remained in positions of authority and they held key economic positions. In later years, during times of turmoil such as the Civil War and the period between the two world wars, restrictions on immigration and other forms of antisemitism were noticeable. American antisemitism often took the form of social rejection—a refusal to accept Jews into exclusive clubs and hotels. In the business world, some companies did not allow Jews to rise to senior positions. Antisemitism was keenly felt in the United States during the twentieth century until after the end of World War II. It was generally not brutal or violent, however, and never led to the passage of restrictive national laws specifically against Jews. Even at the height of the Great Depression in the United States, Jews were never blamed by the government for the financial crisis and massive unemployment as they were during economic hard times in Germany. Unlike the United States and France, the German nation was not established in order to further revolutionary ideals. It was founded in order to unite the German people into one strong national body. G E R M A N Y drew some of its inspiration and ideals from the German past and from spiritual and literary movements such as Romanticism, which embraced the traditions of medieval Germany. While the character of the French and American revolutions meant increased opportunities for people, in Germany, individualism and ambition were suppressed. It took several genera-

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tions before equal rights were granted to all Germans. As a result, Germans were unwilling to accept the equality of the Jews, even when it had been legally granted. From the early nineteenth century until the granting of full emancipation to the Jews in 1871, expressions of antisemitism never disappeared in Germany. Violent anti-Jewish writings continued to be published, such as those of Hartwig Hundt, who called for the deportation or destruction of the Jews. Even among the liberals who advocated changes in government and in society, there were severe critics of Jews. However, this period was marked by a continuous evolution toward emancipation. Jews who left the ghettos achieved success in finance (the best-known example is the house of Rothschild) and in intellectual endeavors. The poet and critic Heinrich Heine and the essayist Karl Ludwig Borne, although converts to Christianity, were influenced by their former Judaism. Equality evolved only as various prohibitions, such as those that forbade Jews to live in certain places or that limited them to certain professions, were eliminated. During the 1870s the granting of equal citizenship and legal rights to Jews was achieved throughout western and central Europe. In this hopeful period for Jews, antisemitism paradoxically appeared in a new form, and eventually it would bring disaster upon the Jews.

The New Antisemitism The new antisemitism was an ideology, or an integrated body of ideas. There was often no real connection to Jews or Jewish society. The new antisemitism was used to explain the complex and troubling problems of modern man and to reveal the sources of economic crises, political conflicts, war, and, in fact, all societal ills. This new form of an old prejudice was supposedly rational, based on objective scientific analysis of the Jewish role in society. The word “antisemitism,” which advocates chose as a label for their ideology, was meant to emphasize its difference from earlier Jew-hatred. The name “antisemitism,” which was taken from the Greek, was also intended to endow the ideology with a scientific basis. In actuality, antisemitism was never directed against other “Semites,” such as the Arabs, but only against the Jews. The new version of antisemitism was destined, in the twentieth century, to play a major and destructive role in the lives of Jews and all mankind. The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, tried to understand the meaning of the new antisemitism that played itself out between 1870 to 1944. He set forth his ideas in Antisemite and Jew (Réflexions sur la question juive), published in France in 1946. Sartre emphasized that it is not the antisemite’s personal experience with Jews that evokes his hatred toward them, but rather his tendency to see the source of his own personal failings in his abstract perception of Jews. The Jew is the available scapegoat. In the new antisemitism, Jews were identified with capitalism, modernism, and urbanization, all of which were economic and societal changes that seemed to threaten traditional ways of life. In Germany, Jews were regarded as the instigators and the beneficiaries of these disturbing changes. The new antisemitism in Germany found expression in the nationalist political völkisch movement, whose leaders believed that industrialization and modernism were undermining the spiritual and cultural uniqueness of the German people. Advocates of the völkisch movement specifically blamed Jews for undermining the German way of life. Those who challenged the emancipation of German Jews perpetuated negative stereotypes. It was said that Jews were not satisfied with equality and did not integrate quietly into a working society. They were accused of wanting to take over

emancipation

Granting of full rights.

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important but nonproductive branches of the economy. They were accused of “causing damage” in the fields of science, art, literature, and the press. According to their critics, the Jews destroyed good taste in Germany by engaging in imitation and superficial creativity. The composer Richard Wagner in his essay Das Judentum in der Musik (The Jews in Music), accused the Jews of lacking original creativity and destroying artistic taste. Other notable men contributed to the ongoing racist discussions. The Nobel prize-winning physicist Philipp Lenard distinguished between “German physics” and “Jewish physics”; the latter was represented by Albert Einstein and his theories. The new antisemites expanded the old claim that the Jews were “a nation within a nation.” Moderates complained that Jews had not ended their national separatism. They did not completely identify with the European nations in which they lived, and they continued to maintain ties of communication and solidarity with Jews in other lands. According to the extreme antisemites, this was evidence that the Jews had a secret international leadership that was plotting to take over the entire world. In pursuit of this goal the Jews supposedly promoted capitalism and liberal political ideologies that would destroy European nations.

Literary Expressions of Antisemitism In 1868 a novel, Biarritz, was published by Hermann Goedsche, under the pseudonym Sir John Redcliffe. Its first chapter described a secret meeting of the original twelve Jewish tribes at night in the Prague Jewish cemetery. There, during a strange ceremony accompanied by prayer, oaths, and fire, participants examined the progress made by the Jews in their efforts to take over the Christian world. Although this was a piece of fiction, Redcliffe (actually Goedsche), who in reality was a post office clerk, was lauded by antisemites as a courageous man who had uncovered a Jewish plot that threatened the entire Christian world. Other variations on Redcliffe’s story appeared in different forms, but the version that became most important and influential was the P R O T O C O L S O F T H E E L D E R S O F Z I O N . The Protocols had been disseminated in Russia since the beginning of the twentieth century. They were a transparent plagiarism of a parody of the French dictator Napoleon III written by Maurice Joly, a long-forgotten French author. The Protocols were initially used by the Russian secret police to redirect political unrest toward the Jews. The work was taken to the West by Russian emigrés at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution. When it reached Germany and other lands, the tales were accepted by many as the truth. Even the London Times seemed to believe the Protocols, although later it exposed them as a forgery. The Protocols and similar works found a receptive audience after a wave of revolutions that swept Europe during and after World War I. Jews were widely accused of leading those revolutions, especially the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. In fact, some prominent Jews did play important roles, including Leon Trotsky in Russia, Béla Kun in Hungary, and Rosa Luxemburg and Kurt Eisner in Germany. Their Jewish origins and those of other revolutionaries were emphasized, arousing suspicions among Europeans who had not previously been antisemitic.

Antisemitism in France, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Russia During the last decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the Jewish issue was part of the long debate between the republicans and royalists in France. The extremist author Eduard Drumont, who wrote prolifically,

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published antisemitic books and newspapers, and was widely read, raised the cry, “France for the French.” Racial ideas against Jews were never widely accepted in France, however. The “Jewish question” in France often focused on the differences between Jews who had been in France for a long time, were rooted in its culture, and had contributed to the French war effort, and foreign Jews who had arrived more recently. The latter were targets of discrimination and antipathy, especially in the time between the two world wars. The situation of Jews in states with one dominant national group, like Germany and France, differed from states where the Jews were one of many large minorities. In A U S T R I A , where Germans lost their dominant position after World War I, antisemitism was strong. In his book M E I N K A M P F , Adolf H I T L E R claimed that the Austrian city of V I E N N A was for him a school in antisemitism. The popular mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, openly expressed antisemitic ideas and knew how to sell them to the Catholic majority. Although antisemitism increased and was directed primarily toward Jews who came to Vienna from eastern Europe, it never played an important role in internal Austrian politics or Austrian foreign relations between the two world wars. When Austria was annexed to Germany in the Anschluss in 1938, however, anti-Jewish expression became commonplace. Numerous Nazi leaders who were extreme in the persecution and murder of the Jews were of Austrian origin. In H U N G A R Y , and in P O L A N D political antisemitism with an ideological tone increased in the late 1800s. Both countries had long-standing, brutal, and vulgar antisemitic traditions. In both countries, Jews, as a relatively high percentage of the urban population, controlled a high proportion of trade, finance, and the professions. Jews were still considered outsiders, and their attempts to preserve their cultural identity caused problems for them. After the Nazi rise to power in 1933, harsh public antisemitism became more acceptable. In Hungary and Romania fascist parties with clear antisemitic agendas were active. In Poland the right-wing parties and, eventually, the political camp in power, supported a mass exodus of Jews. The most extreme movements wanted to speed up such an exodus through violence and pogroms. The governing bloc, on the other hand, wanted to achieve this goal by political means. Hungary saw itself as an ally of Germany and in 1938 and 1939 it passed antisemitic and racial laws. In Romania pillaging, violence, and pogroms took place with the tacit approval of the government. What was the role of the people of the European nations, as compared to that of their leadership? In Poland, the general population did not take an active part in the annihilation of the Jews. The dominant attitude of the Poles, however, including those who resisted Nazi control, was one of indifference toward the murder of the Jews. Through no fault of the Polish people, most of the slaughter was carried out on their soil. Romanians participated actively in the mass murder, but in the last stages of the war they recoiled from handing over Jews for total destruction. In Hungary the situation for Jews during most of the war years was relatively tolerable until the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944, and the beginning of deportations of Jews to extermination camps. The Hungarian authorities helped in the work of annihilation, and much of the Hungarian population also played a shameful role.

pogroms

A Russian word meaning “devastation” that came to be applied to organized violence against Jews, which was often encouraged and supported by government authorities.

Russian antisemitism had special characteristics. For a long time antisemitism in Russia was government policy, and only small groups of Jews were permitted to play any part in the nation’s economic development. Waves of pogroms swept Russia during the 1880s, some of them initiated by the government. After the February 1917 revolution, however, Russian Jews were granted equal rights. Between the two

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This is an illustration from Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid und keinem Jud bei seinem Eid (Don’t Trust a Fox in the Chicken Coop or a Jew at His Word), a children’s book by Elvira Bauer published in Germany in 1936.

world wars, antisemitism in the Soviet Union was illegal, and therefore hidden. The roles filled by individual Jews in the Soviet regime contributed to a new kind of antisemitism, which during World War II and the Holocaust had a deadly effect in the Nazi-occupied areas of the Soviet Union.

Antisemitism in Germany Racial ideas were an important element of secular and political antisemitism in Germany. A racial label could be placed on the Jew after all the other obvious differences had disappeared: a Jew who dressed like a German or Frenchman, behaved like a German or Frenchman, spoke impeccable German or French, and became a patron of music, art, and literature could still be a target of hatred based on the unchangeable characteristic of race. In Germany, political antisemitism was first and foremost ideological in nature. It was claimed that Jews played a key role in social and political conflicts in Europe in the early 1900s. The brutality and violence of pogroms and persecutions that marked antisemitism in eastern Europe were not, at the beginning, part of German

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political antisemitism. In the future, however, Germany would disseminate a theory of racial antisemitism that would ignite a raging fire. The division of people into races seemed to agree with the famous naturalist Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. The development of racism in Germany resulted in part from Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s Darwinist theories. Chamberlain was an Englishman who became Germanized and believed that he had a mission to the German people. According to Chamberlain’s interpretation of Darwin, the Jews had declined over time. Based on his theory, neither King David nor Jesus was Jewish, and the great achievements ascribed to the Jews had actually been accomplished by gentiles. On the other hand, Chamberlain said, the Germans had developed into the elite Aryan race, and they enjoyed a spiritual superiority that enabled them to create great achievements. In Germany, racism, more than any other theory aside from nationalism, was the focus of National Socialism (Nazism). Anti-Jewishness in the Nazi period followed the directives laid down by Hitler in the 1920s. It was a consistent “rational” policy, supported by legislation. The Nazi anti-Jewish policies and propaganda relied on and perpetuated generations of erroneous but culturally accepted myths and fears about Jews. Nazism came to power as a form of German nationalism, rather than a platform for antisemitism, following Germany’s defeat in World War I and the crisis that followed. Yet antisemitism helped Nazis to gain power and win the hearts of the German masses. Even though the Nazis did not particularly emphasize antisemitism on the eve of their rise to power, it was a well-known element in their system of beliefs, and it was a critical factor in the lasting legacy of death and hatred left by the Hitler years.

P

olitical antisemitism existed throughout Europe before Hitler

introduced his brand of racist antisemitism. Poland and Hungary both had long-standing, brutal, and vulgar antisemitic traditions. After the Nazi rise to power in 1933, harsh public antisemitism became more acceptable everywhere. Political antisemitism did not lead directly and inevitably to Nazism, and the Nazi takeover of Germany was not mainly a result of antisemitism. However, the antisemitism that already existed in Europe was used by the Hitler to gain acceptance of his regime.

The “F I NA L S O L U T I O N ” grew directly out of the Nazis’ racist anti-Jewish ideology. The Nazis ultimately regarded the “Jewish question” as having only one answer: the total destruction and elimination of all Jews. As persecution by the Nazis against Jews continued, it reached the point of indiscriminate mass murder. Undoubtedly, this plan to eliminate the Jews was facilitated by the apathy, approval and collaboration that the Nazis found throughout Europe, even during the years of the “Final Solution” itself.

Postwar Antisemitism After World War II antisemitism was greatly weakened in the West, and the Western churches began to acknowledge the fatal mistake they had made in encouraging the Christian aspects of antisemitism. In the Soviet Union and its satellites, however, strong expressions of antisemitism recurred a few years after the end of the war, and in times of crisis and change antisemitism was once again employed as a tactical tool. Over the years antisemitism began to appear under the guise of “antiZionism.” Zionism was a movement that supported the establishment of a homeland for Jews. There are those who actively deny that the Holocaust occurred (see H O L O D E N I A L O F T H E ). This is certainly a form of antisemitism. Supporters of this movement try to eradicate or manipulate the truth in order to permit the resurrection of Jew-hatred as it existed in the past. There have been expressions of antisemitism in countries that have few Jews living in them; one such example was the widespread dissemination of antisemitic literature in Japan in the 1980s.

C AU S T ,

It is clear that the struggle against antisemitism requires constant vigilance to permanently remove this disease from the body of mankind.

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SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bachrach, Susan D. Tell Them We Remember: The Story of the Holocaust. Boston: Little, Brown, 1994.

Europa Europa [videorecording]. Orion Home Video, 1992. Goldhagen, Daniel. Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. Weiss, John. Ideology of Death: Why the Holocaust Happened in Germany. Chicago: I.R. Dee, 1996. Wistrich, Robert S. Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred. New York: Pantheon Books, 1991.

ARISIERUNG. SEE ARYANIZATION.

Arrow Cross Party fascist

Describes political systems in which power rests not with citizens but with the central government, which is often run by the military or by a dictator.

opposition party

A political party that does not have a majority in government representation, and is not in power.

The Arrow Cross Party (Nyilaskeresztes Párt) was a Hungarian fascist party and movement created by Ferenc Szálasi in 1937. Like all fascist organizations, the Arrow Cross Party was in favor of a dictatorship rather than a democractic government. The name Arrow Cross is also incorrectly used to refer to other parties (such as the party of the National Will and the Hungarian National Socialist party) that were also founded and led by Szálasi. Szálasi labeled his theories Hungarizmus. They were a hodgepodge of ideas— anticapitalist, anti-Marxist, nationalist (placing one nation above all others) and, most of all, aggressively antisemitic (see A N T I S E M I T I S M ). The movement’s leaders were ex-army officers, journalists, and middle-ranking government and county officials. Popular support for the party came mainly from officers, students, impoverished intellectuals, and urban and rural working class and poor people. In the 1939 national election, the only election in which the party took part, the Arrow Cross received over 25 percent of the vote and became the most important opposition party. Although the Arrow Cross advocated a pro-German foreign policy, the party was not included in Hungary’s pro-Nazi government, even after the German occupation of H U N G A R Y on March 19, 1944. In the fall of 1944, however, G E R M A N Y pressured Hungary to form a coalition government—one that consists of more than one party—led by the Arrow Cross Party. During the short Arrow Cross rule, eighty thousand Jews were expelled from Hungary. Most of them were women, and they left Hungary in a march to the Austrian border under harsh conditions. Many of the deportees died en route. During this time, several thousand Jews were murdered in the Hungarian city of Budapest, and their bodies were thrown into the Danube. The coalition government, and with it the influence of the Arrow Cross party, came to an end when the Soviet Union’s Red Army took Budapest in January 1945. After the war, Szálasi and most of the prominent Arrow Cross leaders were tried as war criminals by the Hungarian courts. The majority of the party members who had not been in leadership positions were reintegrated into civilian life.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Anger, Per. With Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest: Memories of the War Years in Hungary. Washington, DC: Holocaust Library, 1995.

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Karsai, Laszlo. “Photographs Documenting the Holocaust in Hungary.” Holocaust History Project. [Online] http://www.holocaust-history.org/hungarian-photos/ (includes text; accessed on August 22, 2000) Lacko, M. Arrow-Cross Men and National Socialists, 1935–1944. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1969.

Aryanization “Aryanization” (Arisierung) was the term used to denote the transfer of Jewishowned independent economic enterprises to “Aryan” German ownership throughout the Third Reich and the countries it occupied. The process had two stages: “voluntary” sales of Jewish-owned businesses, in the period from 1933 to 1938, which was a by-product of the exclusion of Jews from the economic life of the country; and forced transfer, under law, in the final phase of the “de-Judaization” of the German economy, following K R I S TA L L N AC H T (“Night of the Broken Glass”), the November 1938 pogroms.

“Voluntary” Stage At the beginning of 1933, there were some 100,000 Jewish-owned enterprises in Germany. About half of them were retail stores, dealing mostly in clothing, footwear, or furniture. The rest were factories and workshops, publishing firms, newspapers, and independent practices of medicine, law, and other professions. The “free professions” (those requiring higher education) were targeted as early as April 1933. The Nazi law “for the restoration of the career public service” (Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums) was the first to make Aryan descent a condition for public employment, and the condition also came to be applied to selfemployed doctors and lawyers. The campaign against the Jewish-owned retail trade consisted mainly of boycotts and intimidation, and was often accompanied by violence (see B OY C OT T, A N T I -J E W I S H ). In the early years of the Nazi regime, the economic boycott and exclusion process was less likely to affect Jewish firms that had international contacts and prestige, but this did not last. The process went on relentlessly, so that by the spring of 1938, nearly 70 percent of the Jewish enterprises in Germany had been liquidated.

pogroms

A Russian word meaning “devastation” that came to be applied to organized violence against Jews, which was often encouraged and supported by government authorities.

The “creeping” boycott actions affected mainly the Jewish retail trade. Of the more than 50,000 Jewish retail stores that existed in 1933, only 9,000 were left in 1938. On the other hand, factories and workshops, especially those that were laborintensive or export-oriented, were able to sustain themselves during the first few years of the Nazi regime and even to some extent to thrive on the general boom of the German economy. This was also true of the private Jewish banks, even though they had long been the centerpiece of derisive Nazi propaganda. Some Jewish enterprises continued relatively untouched for a number of reasons: the Nazi regime was concerned about unemployment; large industrial plants and stores were able to counteract the pressure; and the banks had international connections, which had to be maintained to protect German exports and the influx of foreign currency (of which there was a shortage). Jewish business owners were strongly pressured to sell their enterprises at a fraction of their value; they were threatened with economic boycott, physical attacks, even imprisonment in concentration camps and accusations by the G E S TA P O of hav-

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An SA member stands in front of a Jewishowned department store. The sign next to him reads “Germans defend yourselves; don’t buy from Jews!”

ing committed various crimes. These measures were generally used against small and medium-sized enterprises. More sophisticated means were used on the owners of large businesses, but there were also cases of wealthy owners being jailed or put in concentration camps and held until they agreed to give up their enterprises.

Compulsory Stage and Final Liquidation Compulsory Aryanization began immediately after the November 1938 pogroms. In large measure, it was the result of political developments and German war preparations. In 1938, legislation prohibited all independent economic activity by Jews, except for certain services that they could continue to render to Jews only. Jewish enterprises that had not yet been sold were put under a governmentappointed trustee, who was to “Aryanize” the enterprise. Compulsory Aryanization was applied to all Jewish businesses, factories, and workshops that were still in existence at the time. Apartment houses, however, were explicitly postponed to a later

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date, apparently because Jews would soon be restricted to living in Jewish-owned apartment houses (later known as judenhäuser). By the time Aryanization became compulsory, the process of eliminating the independent economic activity of Germany’s Jews had been underway for years. Compulsory Aryanization managed to liquidate the little that was left within the space of a few weeks. During 1938, pressure on Jewish enterprises, by boycott and harassment, intensified and was extended to include industrial manufacturing enterprises. The process of “voluntary” Aryanization and liquidation of Jewish enterprises was correspondingly accelerated. The more profitable and well-established of Jewish enterprises were highly attractive prizes to large, well-known German firms, as well as to individual Nazis intent on getting rich, and ordinary Germans. Reinhard H E Y D R I C H was put in charge of the Devisenfahndungsamt (Foreign Currency Investigation Bureau). He introduced special blocked accounts (Sperrkonten) for Jews, to make it easy to supervise these accounts and restrict their use.

Between 1933 and 1945, the vast majority of earthly goods owned by eastern European Jews passed into German hands.

The final liquidation of economic activity by German Jews had been carefully prepared to go into effect immediately after the November 1938 pogroms. The first step was to impose a collective contribution, the so-called Sühneleistung (“atonement payment”) in the amount of 1 billion reichsmarks (RM). This penalty payment took the form of a direct individual tax, in the amount of 20 percent of the declared capital, to be paid by every Jew who had assets of over 5,000 RM. In actuality, the rate was raised to 25 percent, and 1.25 billion RM were collected. In addition, the Reich authorities confiscated 250 million RM in insurance money due to Jews as compensation for the material damage caused to them in the pogroms. In the period from 1938 to 1941, 140,000 Jews were able to emigrate from Germany, leaving behind most of their property, most of which fell into the hands of the authorities on the spot, in the form of the Reichsfluchtsteuer (“escape tax”). The rest was kept in special blocked accounts in the name of the depositors. Jews who chose not to emigrate found their private assets, from early 1939, were kept in blocked accounts in special banks, from which the owners could draw only a fixed monthly sum, the minimum they needed for their living expenses. From 1939 until the summer of 1943, when the deportations to the extermination camps were completed, all the assets of Jewish communities that had been liquidated, or the proceeds from the sale of such assets, were turned over to the Reichsvereinigung (Reich Association of Jews in Germany). As long as emigration from Germany continued, the Jews who left the country were in effect forced to “donate” all their remaining property to the Reichsvereinigung. These funds were kept in a special “emigration account” that was under Gestapo control, and any withdrawal from it required Gestapo approval. On orders of the Gestapo, the German Jews selected for deportation also had to “donate” their remaining assets to the Reichsvereinigung, which in turn put the assets into a special account. Jews who were chosen for deportation to T H E R E S I E N S TA D T had to sign a Heimeinkaufsvertrag (“home purchase agreement”). According to this agreement, the Reichsvereinigung “promised” to take care of the deportees for the rest of their lives, in exchange for the deposit of a minimum of 1,000 RM, or, alternatively, their entire remaining assets. During the deportations to the east, all property of the deportees, as well as the money held in the special blocked accounts of emigrants, was to be confiscated (see N U R E M B E R G L A W S ). In actuality, this was one of the Gestapo’s manipulations to acquire the remnants of Jewish property in the country. The proceeds of this prop-

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erty were to finance the costs of the “F I NA L S O L U T I O N .” It was also clear that the Reichsvereinigung’s ownership of these accounts was a fiction and that in practice it could not withdraw the smallest amount without the special permission of the Gestapo representative. The deportees’ apartments were handed over to the city governments, while the contents of the apartments and the valuables of the former owners were passed on to the Finance Ministry. Works of art, libraries, and especially Jewish traditional items were forwarded to the collection that Alfred R O S E N B E R G had set up. Ultimately, most of what had been owned by eastern European Jews ended up under Nazi control, used to carry out Nazi policies.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES “They’ve Decided It’s Better to Tell the Whole Truth Now.” Business Week, Feb. 22, 1999. Weisberg, Richard. “The Role of French Banks During WWII and Its Aftermath.” Testimony Before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Banking and Financial Services, Sept. 14, 1999. [Online] http://www.house.gov/banking/91499rhw.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000).

Atlas, Yeheskel (1913–1942)

A physician and partisan commander, Yeheskel (Yehiel) Atlas was born in Rawa Mazowiecka, in the W A R S AW district. Atlas studied medicine in France and Italy. When war broke out in 1939, he was in Kozlovshchina, near Slonim, Poland, in the area occupied by the Soviet army. His parents and sister died in the ghetto there on November 24, 1941, five months after the Germans had conquered the area. Atlas stayed on, serving the farmers of the neighborhood as a physician and giving medical assistance to Soviet troops that had survived in the forest. When the Derechin ghetto was liquidated, on July 24, 1942, Atlas organized escapees into a Jewish partisan company under his command. On August 10, Atlas initiated an attack on Derechin in which 44 German policemen were captured and executed. The Soviet authorities wanted the “fighting doctor” to practice medicine for the partisans. However, after the Derechin attack the partisan leadership, recognizing his gifts as a tactician, did not want to lose him as a combat commander. Atlas and his men blew up a train on the Lida-Grodno line, burned down a bridge on the Neman River, and, on September 5, launched an attack on Kozlovshchina in which more than 30 Germans were killed.

Yeheskel Atlas

partisan company

A group of resistance fighters who used guerrilla tactics against the Nazis and operated in enemy-occupied territory.

The company of partisans gained fame throughout the region for its daring exploits and was mentioned in reports for its role in the Ruda-Jaworska battle of October 10, during which 127 Germans were killed, 75 captured, and a considerable amount of much-needed war material seized. Atlas also assisted a family camp that housed escapees from nearby ghettos and was known for assisting refugees in the wake of German atrocities. His personality, military exploits, and acts of revenge made a profound impression on both the Jewish and non-Jewish partisans in the region. On December 5, 1942, Atlas was wounded in a battle at Wielka Wola; after handing the command over to Eliyahu Lipshowitz, he died from his wounds.

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SUGGESTED RESOURCES Levine, Allan. Fugitives Of The Forest: The Heroic Story Of Jewish Resistance During The Second World War. New York: Stoddart, 1998.

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Resisters. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/resister.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000).

Auerswald, Heinz (b. 1908)

Nazi official Heinz Auerswald was the German commissar of the W A R S A W ghetto from May 1941 until November 1942. Auerswald was one of the “ghetto managers” in eastern Europe who worked to maintain the ghettos as a source of cheap Jewish labor during the period of time before the Nazi regime began to pursue the ultimate destruction of the Jews. Auerswald was a lawyer. He joined the SS in June 1933 but gained party membership only in the late 1930s. Performing his military service with the Schutzpolizei (the regular police), Auerswald was sent to WARSAW with a police battalion in the fall of 1939. He was soon transferred to the civil administration that was established to govern the occupied city. His first task was to oversee interactions with the VOLKSDEUTSCHE (ethnic Germans) of the city. He was later appointed commissar of the Warsaw ghetto, which had a population totaling at least 400,000 people. In his new capacity, Auerswald sought to foster a growing ghetto economy while simultaneously reducing the spread of epidemics. His first objective resulted in a more rational use of Jewish labor and marginally better conditions for Jewish workers. In the pursuit of his second objective, however, he enforced more restrictive ghetto boundaries, which intensified overcrowding, and he imposed the death penalty for Jews caught outside the walls. The diary of Adam C Z E R N I A K Ó W , Jewish leader and the head of the Warsaw J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council), reveals that on at least one occasion Auerswald spoke with Czerniaków as a fellow human being— treatment virtually without parallel in the history of the Holocaust. In the days immediately before the deportations began, however, Auerswald cynically denied to Czerniaków that any danger threatened the ghetto. Following the mass deportations from Warsaw to T R E B L I N K A between July and September 1942, Auerswald became the district administrator (Kreishauptmann) in the Ostrów area in November 1942 and was drafted into the army the following January. He was investigated by German judicial authorities in the 1960s but was not indicted as a Nazi war criminal.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Roland, Charles G. Courage Under Siege: Starvation, Disease, and Death in the Warsaw Ghetto. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Perpetrators. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/perps.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000)

39

AUSCHWITZ

“This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions”

Auschwitz Auschwitz (in Polish, Os´wie˛cim), was the largest Nazi C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P and E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P. Located 37 miles (60 kilometers) west of K R A K Ó W , Auschwitz was both the most extensive of some two thousand Nazi concentration and forced-labor camps, and the largest camp at which Jews were exterminated by means of poison gas (see Z Y K L O N B). On April 27, 1940, the head of the SS and German police, Heinrich H I M M L E R , ordered the establishment of a large new concentration camp near the town of Os´ wie˛ cim in Polish Eastern Upper Silesia, which had been annexed to the Third Reich after the German defeat of Poland in September 1939. The building of the camp in Zasole, the suburb of Os´ wie˛ cim, was started a short while later. The first laborers forced to work on the construction of the camp were three hundred Jews from Os´wie˛cim and its vicinity. Beginning in June 1940, the Nazis brought transports of prisoners into the camp. During the first period, most of them were Polish political prisoners. On March 1, 1941, the prison population was 10,900, most of it still Polish. Very soon Auschwitz became known as the harshest of the Nazi concentration camps. The Nazi system of torturing prisoners was implemented here in its most cruel form. In one of the camp’s buildings, the so-called Block 11, a special bunker was built for the severest punishments. In front of that building stood the “Black Wall,” where the regular execution of prisoners took place. Ironically, above the main gate of the camp was a large inscription that declared: “Arbeit macht frei” (Work leads to freedom). In March 1941, Himmler ordered the construction of a second, much larger section of the camp, which was located at a distance of 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) from

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AUSCHWITZ

to be separated, to be orphaned, to be shaved, to be degraded, to be humiliated, to be abandoned, to be intimidated, to be tortured, to be starved, to be dehumanized, to be worked to death, to be gassed, to be burned, to be annihilated . . . . —JUDY (WEISSENBERG) COHEN

Women & the Holocaust: Personal Poetry, http://interlog.com/~mighty/poetry/ poetry5.htm

the original camp. This was called Auschwitz II, or Birkenau. The original camp became known as Auschwitz I—the main camp (Stammlager). About two thousand Poles from the nearby villages were expelled from their homes, which were destroyed in order to build these two parts of the Auschwitz camp. A large expanse of about 15.5 square miles (40 square kilometers) was declared a prohibited area. In October 1941, the construction of barracks and other camp installations began in Auschwitz II. In the final stage, Auschwitz II was composed of nine subunits, which were isolated from one another by electrically charged barbed-wire fences. These components were designated as camps BIa, BIb, BIIa, BIIb, BIIc, BIId, BIIe, BIIf, and BIII. In March 1942 a women’s section was established in the main camp, Auschwitz I, but this was moved on August 16, 1942, to a section of Birkenau. The first groups of women to be imprisoned in the section in Auschwitz I were 999 German women from the R AV E N S B R Ü C K camp, and an equal number of Jewish women from Poprad, S L OVA K I A . By the end of March more than 6,000 women prisoners were being held in the new section. In nearby Monowitz a third camp was built, which was called Auschwitz III (Buna-Monowitz). The name Buna derived from the Buna synthetic-rubber works in Monowitz. Other subcamps affiliated with Monowitz were set up, and they too were included as part of Auschwitz III. In the course of time, another forty-five subcamps were built. Auschwitz II (Birkenau), which was the most populated camp of the Auschwitz complex, also had the most cruel and inhuman conditions. The prisoners of the Birkenau camps were mostly Jews, Poles, and Germans. For a time, the Gypsy family camp and the family camp of the Czech Jews were located there, as well. The G A S C H A M B E R S and the crematoria of the Auschwitz killing center operated in Birkenau. Auschwitz III (Buna-Monowitz and the other forty-five subcamps)

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Two boys, survivors of Auschwitz, display their tattooed arms in Haifa, Palestine, July, 1945.

were mainly forced-labor camps; the most important were Budy, Czechowitz, Gleiwitz, Rajsko, and Fürstengrube. The inmates, chiefly Jews, were worked to the point of total exhaustion for German business including I.G. F A R B E N , Oberschlesische Hydriewerke, Deutsche Gasrusswerke, and Erdöl Raffinerie.

The Process As the trains stopped at the rampa (railway platform) in Birkenau, the occupants were brutally and rapidly forced to leave the cars. They had to leave behind all their personal belongings and were made to form two lines, men and women separately. These lines had to move quickly to the place where S S officers were conducting the Selektion, directing the people either to one side for the gas chambers (the majority were sent there), or to the other, which meant designation for forced labor. Those who were sent to the gas chambers were killed that same day and their corpses were burned in the crematoria, or, if there were too many for the crematoria to process, they were burned in an open space. The belongings left in the cars by the incoming victims were gathered by a forced-labor detachment ironically called “Kanada” (so termed because Canada was a symbol of wealth to the prisoners). Under the strict supervision of the SS, those prisoners had to store the property in specially built warehouses, to be shipped later to Germany. Victims not sent to the gas chambers were sent to a part of the camp called the “quarantine.” But first they were taken to the camp’s bath, the “sauna.” There their clothes and every last personal belonging were taken from them, their hair was shaved off—men and women alike—and they were given striped prisoners’ garb. A prisoner in the quarantine, if not soon transferred to slave labor, could survive only for a few weeks. In the forced-labor camps the average life expectancy was extended

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A NAZI VIEW OF DEATH AT AUSCHWITZ In his autobiography, which was published in the United States as Commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss detailed the extermination system at

Auschwitz. Describing the gassing process in an unemotional, detached manner, Höss wrote, “It could be observed through the peephole . . . about onethird died straight away. The remainder staggered about and began to scream and struggle for air. . . . The time required for the gas to have effect varied according to the weather, and depended whether it was damp or dry, cold or warm. It also depended on the quality of the gas, which was never exactly the same, and on the composition of the transports which might contain a high proportion of healthy Jews, or old and sick, or children . . . those who were old or sick or weak, or the small children, died quicker than those who were healthy or young.”

to a few months. After that time, many of the prisoners became what was called in the camp jargon a M U S E L M A N N , a person so emaciated and weak that he could hardly move or react to his surroundings. It was no wonder that every prisoner tried to get out of quarantine as soon as possible. Most of the prisoners were sent to Auschwitz subcamps or other concentration camps; some were directed to different work in Auschwitz I or III. One of the most dreaded institutions in Auschwitz was the roll call (Appell), which occurred early in the morning and in the late afternoon after the inmates had returned from their places of work, but sometimes also in the middle of the night. The inmates were made to stand at attention, motionless, usually sparsely dressed, for many hours in the cold, in rain and snow. Whoever stumbled or fell was sent to be gassed. One of the most terrible tasks was that of the prisoners assigned to a special working group called the S P E C I A L C O M M A N D O (Sonderkommando). They were forced to work in the crematoria, burning the corpses of the victims who had been killed in the gas chambers on that day. Upon leaving the quarantine in Birkenau for forced labor in Auschwitz or in one of the subcamps, prisoners were registered and received numbers tattooed on their left arm. The same procedure applied to those prisoners who were directed straight to Auschwitz I; 405,000 prisoners of different nationalities were registered in this way. The vast majority of the Auschwitz victims, those who, upon arrival in Auschwitz II, were led to the gas chambers and killed there immediately, were not registered or accounted for in any way. Also not included in the registration were prisoners who were sent to work in other concentration camps not belonging to the Auschwitz system, such as G R O S S - R O S E N or S T U T T H O F . Still another group of unregistered prisoners were those who were designated for execution after a short stay in the camp. That group consisted mainly of hostages, Soviet army officers, and partisans. A day in the life of a prisoner, as many authors of concentration camp memoirs have so aptly described, was divided into a lengthy series of duties and commands. Some were dictated by camp routine, whereas others were unforeseen, a result of an order from above or an arbitrary outburst of violence on the part of the

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C

oncentration camp survivor Victor Frankl noted, “In

camp, a small time unit, a day, for example, filled with hourly tortures and fatigue, appeared endless.”

camp commandant. Some were directed against all the prisoners; others were aimed at an individual prisoner or a particular group of prisoners. All of the inmate’s physical and mental capacities were taxed in an effort to get through the torturous stages that constituted an ordinary day: waking at dawn, straightening one’s pallet, standing for morning roll call, traveling to work, hours of hard labor, standing in line for a meal, returning to camp, block inspection, and evening roll call. Any aberration or slip on the part of the prisoner—as a result of an incident in the work battalions or in the block, or a personal weakness or disease—very often meant death. Besides those who were selected for forced labor upon arrival at Birkenau, there was another, much smaller, group that was spared for the time being and not sent to the gas chambers. These were the people who were selected for pseudoM E D I C A L E X P E R I M E N T S . Many of these “experiments” were carried out on young Greek Jewish men and women. They underwent unbelievable suffering and torture. In July 1942, Himmler proposed instituting sterilization of Jewish women in Auschwitz. A German physician, Professor Carl C L AU B E R G , an SS officer who had initiated such experiments with Himmler’s permission at Ravensbrück, was given the task of establishing a similar experimental station for sterilizing women and for other criminal pseudo-medical experiments in Block 10 of Auschwitz I. Among the victims selected for these experiments were groups of twins (including children) and dwarfs. Clauberg was assisted by a group of Nazi physicians who also usually conducted the Selektionen on the railway platform in Birkenau. The best known of this group was Josef M E N G E L E , who earned the notorious nickname “the Angel of Death” in the camp. His own barbarous experiments were mainly carried out on infants and young twins and on dwarfs. On January 20, 1944, the total number of prisoners in Auschwitz was 80,839:18,437 in Auschwitz I; 49,114 in Auschwitz II (22,061 in the men’s section and 27,053 in the women’s section); and 13,288 in Auschwitz III (of whom 6,571 were in Monowitz). By July 12, 1944, 92,208 prisoners were being held, and by August 22, that number had risen to 105,168. In addition, 50,000 other Jewish prisoners were held in the satellite camps. The total number of prisoners in that period was 155,000. The prison population was constantly growing, despite the periodic changes resulting from mass deaths, and despite the high mortality rate caused by starvation, hard labor, contagious diseases, and the total exhaustion of the prisoners.

From Concentration Camp to Death Camp In his memoirs, Rudolf H Ö S S explained how Auschwitz was established as a killing center: In the summer of 1941, I cannot remember the exact date, I was suddenly summoned to the Reichsführer-SS, directly by his adjutant’s office. Contrary to his usual custom, Himmler received me without his adjutant being present and said, in effect: “The Führer has ordered that the Jewish question be solved once and for all and that we, the SS, are to implement that order.” “The existing extermination centers in the east are not in a position to carry out the large actions that are anticipated. I have therefore designated Auschwitz for this purpose, both because of its good position as regards communications and because the area can easily be isolated and camouflaged.” We discussed the ways and means of effecting the extermination. This could only be done by gassing, since it would have been absolutely impos-

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AUSCHWITZ

Prisoners’ orchestra performing for the SS-men in Auschwitz, Poland, 1941.

sible to dispose by shooting of the large numbers of people that were expected, and it would have placed too heavy a burden on the SS men who had to carry it out, especially because of the women and children among the victims. (Höss, pp. 183–184)

Building the Gas Chambers The first, relatively small gas chamber was built in Auschwitz I. Here the experimental gassing using Z Y K L O N B gas first took place, on September 3, 1941. The victims were 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 other prisoners chosen from among the sick. After that experiment, the firm J. A. Topf and Sons received a contract to build much larger, permanent gas chambers connected with very large crematoria in Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the mass exterminations were mainly carried out. Altogether four such installations—II, III, IV, and V—were built in Birkenau. Each had the potential to kill 6,000 persons daily. Electrically charged barbed-wire fences 13 feet (4 meters) in height were erected around both Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II. They were guarded by SS men, who staffed the many watchtowers and were equipped with machine guns and automatic rifles. In addition, Auschwitz II was surrounded by a network of canals 8 miles (13 kilometers) in length. The whole complex of Auschwitz I and II was, moreover, enclosed by a chain of guard posts, two-thirds of a mile (1 kilometer) out from the system of barbed-wire fences. The chain, called the cordon (Postenkette), was guarded by SS men with dogs; this unit was known as the dog battalion (Hundestaffel).

Staffing the Camps Auschwitz I, II, and III and the forty-five subcamps were overseen by one staff residing at the main camp, Auschwitz I. The commandants of the camp were, in turn, Rudolf Höss, Arthur L I E B E H E N S C H E L , Richard Baer, and again Rudolf Höss. They had the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel). The most important division, noted for the cruelty of its command, was the Political Division. The whole system was guarded by a specially organized regiment of the S S -

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D E AT H ’ S H E A D U N I T S , an SS Death’s Head battalion consisting of twelve guard companies, numbering at different times betweem 2,500 and 6,000 SS men.

T

he gas chambers were built to resemble shower rooms. The

arriving victims were told that they

would be sent to work, but that they first had to undergo disinfection and

The Nazi staff of the camp was aided by a number of privileged prisoners who were offered better food and conditions and more chances to survive, provided they helped to enforce the regime of terror on their fellow prisoners. These prisoners were K A P O S (prisoner orderlies), Blockälteste (block elders, responsible for a certain block of prisoners’ barracks), and Vorarbeiter (foremen, responsible for a group of prisoner workers).

to shower.

Mass Extermination As of March 1942, special trains organized by the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA) began arriving in Auschwitz-Birkenau almost daily, containing Jews from the occupied countries in Europe. Sometimes several, usually freight trains, arrived on the same day. In each of these trains, betwee one thousand and several thousand Jewish victims were forcibly brought in by the Nazis from the liquidated ghettos in Poland and other eastern European countries, as well as from countries in the west and south. The first victims of the mass murder in Birkenau were Jews from Silesia. At the end of March 1942, transports of Jews started arriving from Slovakia and F R A N C E ; in July, from the N E T H E R L A N D S ; and in August, from B E L G I U M and Y U G O S L AV I A . In October, transports from the T H E R E S I E N S TA D T ghetto began arriving; in November, transports from Greece and from the Ciechanów and B I A L⁄ Y S T O K regions of Poland followed. The first transport from B E R L I N arrived in January 1943. Throughout 1943, transports continued to arrive from various countries under Nazi rule. One transport, of September 8, 1943, contained over 5,ooo inmates from the Theresienstadt ghetto who, surprisingly, arrived as entire families; they were not led to the gas chambers but were interned in a section of Birkenau that came to be known as the Theresienstadt family camp. After a stay of six months in this camp the inmates were suddenly driven out to the gas chambers and killed. On May 2, 1944, the first transport of Jews from Nazi-invaded Hungary arrived, presaging the large wave that would begin arriving on May 16 and would continue until the second week of July. The transports from Hungary were followed by transports from L⁄Ó D Z´ , the last ghetto to be liquidated in Poland, which came to Birkenau throughout August 1944. Not only Jews but also about 20,000 G Y P S I E S were deported to AuschwitzBirkenau by the RSHA’s order of January 29, 1943. The vast majority of them were killed in the gas chambers. A few hundred Polish political prisoners were also murdered in the gas chambers.

Resistance Despite the severe conditions, the prisoners offered constant resistance to their oppressors. It took various forms, the most common being mutual help. However, there were also instances of physical resistance and sabotage. One unidentified Jewish woman, on arriving on October 23, 1943, in a transport from B E R G E N -B E L S E N together with women who were led to the gas chambers, pulled a pistol out of the hands of an SS man and shot two others. The other women also resisted; all of them were killed by the SS reinforcement that arrived immediately. A very common form of resistance was escape; 667 prisoners, most of them Poles, Russians, and Jews,

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AUSCHWITZ

NO AIR RAID ON AUSCHWITZ Jewish leaders in the free world demanded that the Allied powers bomb Auschwitz. This could well have stopped the continuation of the mass murders. As early as the fall of 1943, the Allied air forces could have destroyed the death installations in Auschwitz without much difficulty, from their newly conquered bases in Italy. In fact, they conducted bombardments of industrial targets in the vicinity of the camp. The destruction of Auschwitz by the Soviet forces would have been even easier. From July 1944, the Soviet front line was no more than 93 miles (150 kilometers) from Auschwitz. However, none of the Allied powers did anything to stop the mass murder in Auschwitz. No gas chamber was destroyed by the Allied air forces. Until soldiers helped liberate the camps, military personnel and equipment were not used in rescue efforts.

escaped under the most difficult conditions. However, 270 of the escapees were caught not far from the camp and afterward executed. Two young Jews, Alfred Wetzler and Walter Rosenberg (Rudolf Vrba), escaped on April 7, 1944. The two managed to reach Bratislava and contact some of the Jewish leaders still remaining there. They wrote a very detailed report on Auschwitz that was smuggled out to the free world. In 1943 a multinational resistance organization, called the Auschwitz Fighting Group, was formed by a group of Austrian prisoners. This group operated in the main camp and in Birkenau; Monowitz had a group of its own, and the two were in contact with each other. The resistance movement in the camp was active in many spheres: helping the prisoners with medicines and food; documenting the Nazi crimes against the prisoners; organizing escapes, sabotage, and political action; seeking to place political prisoners in positions of responsibility; and preparing for an uprising in the camp.

T

he platform at Auschwitz became the busiest railway station in all of

Nazi-occupied Europe, with one particular difference—namely, that people only arrived there, and never left again.

The prisoners that were part of the Special Commando (Sonderkommando) organized an uprising that took place on October 7, 1944, and destroyed at least one of the gas chambers. All the participants of that uprising died in battle. After the uprising, the SS discovered that a group of young Jewish women from the Monowitz camp, led by Roza R O B OTA , had smuggled out and supplied to the Special Commando the gunpowder that had been used in the uprising. Four of these women, including Robota, were executed on January 6, 1945. Prior to the uprising, the prisoners of the Special Commando accomplished another very important act of resistance: some of them managed to keep diaries, in which they described in detail the events at Auschwitz. These diaries were hidden in the ground. Discovered after the war, they provide the most significant, terrible, and authentic documents on Nazi barbarity in Auschwitz. The most important of these diaries are those of Zalman Gradowski and Zalman Levental.

Last Months Immediately after the Special Commando uprising ended in the fall of 1944, the killing in the gas chambers came to a halt, and Himmler gave orders to demol-

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O

ne of the best-known and most dramatic escapes from

Auschwitz was that of a Polish-Jewish couple, Mala Zimetbaum and Edward Galinski. They were caught and executed on September 15, 1944, in front of other prisoners who were forced to watch.

ish the crematoria. During November and December 1944, the technical installations of the gas chambers and crematoria I and II were dismantled, so that they could be transferred to the Gross-Rosen camp. Groups of Special Commandos, male and female prisoners alike, were assigned to clean up the crematoria pits. They were ordered to fill the pits with the human ashes from the crematoria, cover them with earth, and plant grass. Some of the warehouses containing the goods stolen from the Jews were hastily emptied. The valuable items were sent to Germany by train, and the rest was destroyed. Between December 1, 1944, and January 15, 1945, at least 514,843 items of men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing and underwear were shipped from the camp. In mid-January 1945, the Soviet army began to move toward Kraków and Auschwitz. The Nazis began a hasty withdrawal. The 58,000 prisoners, most of them Jewish, were driven out of the Auschwitz camps and put on D E AT H M A R C H E S . Most of them were killed during these marches; others were murdered even before the camps were evacuated. On the afternoon of January 27, Soviet soldiers entered Auschwitz. In Birkenau they found the bodies of 600 prisoners who had been killed by the Nazis hours before the camp was liberated. However, 7,650 sick and exhausted prisoners were saved: 1,200 in Auschwitz I, 5,800 in Auschwitz II—Birkenau, and 650 in Auschwitz III—Buna-Monowitz. The Germans had to withdraw so hastily that they could not force these last prisoners on the death marches. Their hurried retreat also prevented them from emptying the rest of the warehouses of the victims’ plundered property.

Conclusion Auschwitz was the largest graveyard in human history. The number of Jews murdered in the gas chambers of Birkenau is estimated at up to 1.5 million people: men, women, and children. Almost one-quarter of the Jews killed during World War II were murdered in Auschwitz. Of the 405,000 registered prisoners who received Auschwitz numbers, only about 65,000 survived. Of the 16,000 Soviet prisoners of war brought there, only 96 survived. According to various estimates, at least 1.6 million people were murdered in the killing center at Birkenau. After the war, several of the Nazis who had committed crimes in Auschwitz were put on trial in Poland and West Germany (see T R I A L S O F T H E W A R C R I M I N A L S ). The former camp commandant, Rudolf Höss, was tried in March 1947 in Auschwitz before a Polish court and sentenced to death on April 2, 1947. While in the Polish prison, Höss wrote his memoirs, which were published in Poland in 1956; they appeared in English in 1959. In November and December 1947, another trial took place in Kraków before a Polish court. Of the forty Nazis from Auschwitz indicted, twenty-three were sentenced to death and sixteen were sent to prison. Between 1963 and 1966 the so-called Auschwitz Trials I, II, and III took place in Frankfurt am Main before a court of the German Federal Republic. These ended with prison sentences for the twenty-two defendants accused of committing crimes in Auschwitz. Nine were sentenced to life imprisonment, and the others to terms ranging from three to nine years. The horrors of Auschwitz have become legendary, and the name itself has passed into international usage as a byword for all that is the worst in humankind.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Czech, Danuta. Auschwitz Chronicle, 1939-1945. New York: Henry Holt, 1997.

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“Image not available for copyright reasons”

Höss, Rudolf. Commandant of Auschwitz. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1959. Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.

Memory of the Camps [videorecording]. PBS Video, 1989. Weiss, Ann, ed. The Last Album: Eyes from the Ashes of Auschwitz-Birkenau. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000. Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Bantam Books, 1986.

I

n the warehouses, the Soviets found 350,000 men’s suits, 837,000

outfits for women, and large amounts of children’s and babies’ clothing. In addition, they found tens of thousands pairs of shoes and more than seven tons of human hair in paper bags, packed for shipping.

Austria Austria became an independent republic in 1918, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire broke up into its national components and the rule of the Habsburgs came to an end. Austria has an area of 32,432 square miles (84,000 square kilometers). Its population in 1937 was 6,725,000. Jews are believed to have lived in Austria for many centuries, since Roman times (c. 14 BC– c. second century AD). In the Middle Ages, there were periods when Jews enjoyed material and cultural prosperity. Those periods alternated with times of persecution and expulsions. In the modern era, Austria was one of the centers of the Jewish modernization process. Jews were integrated into the country’s overall culture. In 1867, they were granted equal rights. In the next decades, the Jewish population of Austria grew rapidly as a result of immigration from all parts of the empire. Newcomers converged on the capital, V I E N NA . Austria became a center of Jewish culture and the cradle of Zionism, a movement that sought a homeland for Jews in Palestine. At the same time, the country was one of the most intense centers of modern A N T I S E M I T I S M . The Jewish population in Austria reached its height during World War I (1914–1918), approaching 250,000, as a result of the influx of war refugees. After the war, the Jewish population declined, to 191,000 in 1934, and 185,000 in 1938.

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The Anschluss On March 11, 1938, the Nazi leader of G E R M A N Y , Adolf H I T L E R , sent his army into Austria. Two days later, the annexation (Anschluss) of Austria to Nazi Germany was announced in Vienna. Most of the population welcomed the Germans and the new political partnership. Their enthusiasm expressed itself in widespread rioting against Jews, and an almost total absence of resistance to the Nazis. The Austrian Nazis lost no time in following and exceeding the pattern, established by their fellow Nazis in Germany, of attacking Jews and expelling them from the country’s economic, cultural, and social life.

Map of Austria as annexed to Germany, November 1938.

This greater scope of Nazi violence and brutality in Austria was inspired by the top Nazi leadership. On March 18, 1938, the German minister of the interior, Wilhelm Frick, gave Heinrich H I M M L E R extraordinary powers. Himmler was allowed to operate in Austria beyond the limits set by law, in order to “preserve order and security.” The Jews were the focus of this attention. Himmler immediately set up a G E S TA P O headquarters in Vienna. He gave the Gestapo political and police authority in the regions of Vienna and Lower Austria. Chief of Police Reinhard H E Y D R I C H authorized Franz Josef Huber, the head of the Gestapo headquarters in Vienna, to establish Gestapo headquarters in other parts of Austria. In the following weeks, offices of the Jewish community and Zionist institutions in Vienna were closed down, and their officers were put in jail. More than 100 prominent Jews, including bankers and businessmen, were arrested and deported to D AC H AU . They were among the first two groups to be sent there from Vienna. In the first night following the Anschluss, the Gestapo launched an organized campaign of looting Jewish apartments and stealing anything of value. Soon after the Anschluss, Jews were dismissed from their jobs in theaters, community centers, public libraries, universities and colleges, and eventually in markets and slaughterhouses. On March 14, three Jews serving in the Austrian army refused to take an oath of loyalty to Hitler. As a result, all Jews were dismissed from the army. Jews still had to go through the humiliating process of reporting for the draft when they reached conscription age. They had to endure the army’s medical examination before they were publicly rejected for service because they were Jewish. In Graz, the Jewish synagogues were desecrated. In Vienna, the main synagogue was used as a place where Jews were subjected to torture. All over Austria, Jews were arrested and held in jail until they were ready to “voluntarily” sign over their property to the Nazis. In Graz, Jews were tortured and kept in jail for two months. The number of monthly suicides among Jews jumped from four in February 1938, to seventy-nine in March, and sixty-two in April.

G

estapo forces took artworks, rugs, furniture, and other

valuables from Jewish homes, and shipped them to Berlin. When their owners were arrested, the Gomperz and Rothschild art collections were sent to a museum in Linz, and to the private collections of Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring.

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Offices were set up for the seizure of Jewish property. Most of the 26,236 Jewish-owned businesses existing in Austria in March 1938 were modest enterprises. Still, they did not escape the furious drive for A R YA N I Z AT I O N (Arisierung) that marked the first few weeks of the Nazi takeover. Nor did they escape the robberies that took place in full daylight, often with police protection. According to figures published on July 21, 1938, almost all the Jewish-owned property in the provinces and 30 percent of the property in Vienna had already been seized. On June 29, all Jews and all partners in “mixed” marriages who were employed in private businesses—40,000 people—were dismissed from their jobs. The number of German “supervisors” of Jewish property rose from 917 in July 1938 to 2,787 that November. The number of businesses they were “supervising” rose from 1,624 in July to 5,210 in September. By the summer of 1939, some 18,800 Jewish enterprises had been closed down. According to Nazi estimates, the difference between the real value

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of the large Jewish-owned businesses and the total sum that their Jewish owners were paid for them amounted to more than 35 billion reichsmarks (RM). In one instance, a business valued at 500,000 RM, with debts of 50,000 RM, was “bought” for 20,000 RM. The Jewish owner was arrested on a charge of negligence in running the business, since he was unable to come up with the 30,000 RM needed to cover the debt.

I

n the first two months after the Anschluss, around 7,000 Jews

crossed the border to Switzerland or

Emigration

Italy. When these borders were closed

The emigration of the Jews from Austria was handled by Adolf E I C H M A N N . The executive director of the Vienna Jewish community, Dr. Josef Löwenherz, reorganized the work of the Jewish Community Office, on instructions from Eichmann. The office was reopened on May 2, 1938. The Vienna Jewish Community Office, the Palestine Office, and the provincial communities all had to submit periodic reports to Eichmann —biweekly, monthly, and bimonthly—with the emphasis on the progress being made in the emigration of the Jews.

to them, the Jews tried to go to countries in Western Europe. Sometimes border police forced the Jews back into Germany.

In addition to pressure from the top, there was terror in the streets. Efforts toward emigration from Austria were centered in Vienna. Community representatives and individuals trying to obtain necessary documents had to stand in long lines, night and day, in front of the municipal and police offices. There they were exposed to humiliation and tortures by N A Z I PA R T Y thugs, the H I T L E R Y O U T H (Hitlerjugend), and brutal security men. The Jews of Austria were not allowed to share in the arrangements made with the Jews of Germany—for a time the German Foreign Office allowed the German Jews to emigrate in an orderly fashion to Palestine and other countries, taking with them a portion of their assets. In August 1938, the C E N T R A L O F F I C E F O R J E W I S H E M I G R AT I O N (Zentralstelle Für Jüdische Auswanderung) opened offices in the Rothschild palace, which the Nazis had confiscated. Eichmann was in charge. By systematic bureaucratic methods, all the assets of Jews emigrating from the country were taken by the state. Most of the financing of the emigration was funded by the fees that every emigrant had to pay, in proportion to the assets that he or she declared. The American Jewish J O I N T D I S T R I B U T I O N C O M M I T T E E and Great Britain’s Council for German Jewry agreed to provide the foreign currency needed for travel expenses, and for the money that emigrants had to have upon arrival at their destinations. This was on condition that Eichmann provide an equal amount from the blocked account of the Jewish community, to be used for welfare services and for assistance to emigrants who did not have enough means of their own. In the period from May to July 1938, about 25 percent of the emigrants required full or partial assistance from the community. Between February and May 1939, fully 75 percent of Jewish emigrants needed this help. In the violent November 1938 K R I S TA L L NAC H T attacks on Jews and their property, Eichmann imprisoned Jews in C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S . This was a way to take money from them and to force them to speed up their emigration. When such people were released from the camps, they were given a time limit in which to make their emigration arrangements. If they were still in Austria after the limit had passed, they were imprisoned again. As a result, there was a growing number of instances when adults or heads of families emigrated and left behind elderly parents and children. The number of old or sick people who had no relatives to care for them grew to 25,000, and there was a comparable rise in the number of abandoned children. Following Kristallnacht, countries of Western Europe agreed to accept 10,000 children. But only 2,844 children, in forty-three groups, were able to make use of this offer from December 1938 to August 1939. Some of the children were later seized by the Germans when they occupied those countries, and died. Most of the children—2,262 of them—went to Britain.

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Styria Special treatment was granted by Eichmann to the Jews of Styria. The capital of Styria, Graz, was declared the capital of the Nazi uprising in Austria. Graz aspired to be the first Austrian city to become judenrein (“cleansed of Jews,” or “Jew-free”). In order to achieve this by April 20, 1939 (Hitler’s birthday), the chairman of the Zionist organization in Graz, Elias Grunschlag, was allowed to work closely with the Gestapo and the customs authorities to speed up the liquidation of debts owed by would-be emigrants and to deal with the passports and other documents required for emigration. Eichmann also agreed to allow the Jews of Styria to export property and machinery to Palestine. This arrangement, though, was not put into effect before November 1938, and thereafter its scope was greatly reduced.

Persecutions In the city of Wiener Neustadt, all non-Jewish landlords were ordered to evict Jewish tenants from their apartments. In Horn, the tombstones in the Jewish cemetery were desecrated in May 1938; and on September 18, the Jews had to leave the city without a day’s notice. The Jewish communities were impoverished to the extent that they had to close their rented prayer-houses. On August 7, they told the Vienna community that they were no longer able to take care of their needs. pogrom

A Russian word meaning “devastation” that came to be applied to organized violence against Jews, which was often encouraged and supported by government authorities.

In the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938 it was primarily the synagogues and the purification rooms (for washing the dead before burial) that were desecrated. In Klagenfurt the synagogue furnishings were destroyed by axes and Jewish apartments were vandalized. The impressive Graz synagogue with its cupola was blown up, as was the purification room, and 300 Jewish males were deported to Dachau. The worst pogroms took place in Innsbruck, where all the Jews were beaten up, an elderly Jewish couple were drowned, and the Zionist organization chairman and a wealthy merchant were murdered. Kristallnacht sped up the liquidation of the Jewish communities. By May 1939, twenty-seven out of thirty-three communities had been closed down. The Jews’ property was confiscated by the Nazis and sent to the Emigration Office in Vienna. On February 23, 1940, the authorities officially withdrew their recognition of the provincial Jewish communities. Before World War II began in 1939, with Germany’s invasion of Poland, 126,445 Jews emigrated from Austria. Of the 58,000 who were left, 32,000 required welfare assistance. Approximately 2,000 Jews managed to emigrate after the outbreak of war to other European countries until November 10, 1941. At that time, emigration of Jews was banned. Of the 55,505 Jews who had managed to emigrate from Austria to other European countries, 30,850 went to Britain. Fifteen thousand were caught by the Nazis in their Western European conquests, and deported to E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S . The number of emigrants to North America was 28,700 (82 to Canada); to Central and South America, 11,580; to Asia, 28,700 (18,120 to China, mainly Shanghai); to Palestine, 9,190; to Australia and New Zealand, 1,880; and to Africa, 650. All in all, approximately 128,500 Jews emigrated from Austria, to eighty-nine countries. With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, preparations for emigration from Austria continued and technical training in anticipation of a new life was maintained. More than 5,000 children studied in educational institutions under the auspices of the Jewish communities. Care was planned for some 24,000 aged and ailing people for whom emigration would not be possible. At the beginning of October 1939, after the conquest of Poland, 1,048 young and elderly people, some stateless

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Viennese pedestrians view a large Nazi sign posted on a restaurant window informing the public that this business is run by an organization of the National Socialist Party and that Jews are not welcome.

and some with Polish nationality, were deported to B U C H E N WA L D , where they were killed. Later in October, two more transports, totaling 1,584 people, were sent to Nisko (see N I S K O A N D L U B L I N P L A N ) from the vicinity of the Protectorate of B O H E M I A and M O R AV I A . Most of the deportees were expelled across the San River into the area conquered by the Soviet army. In February and March 1941, about 5,000 Austrian Jews were deported to the K IELCE district in Poland. They were murdered in 1942 in the B EL⁄ Z˙ EC and C HEL⁄ MNO camps. With the onset of mass expulsions in October 1941, 5,000 Jews were deported to L ⁄ ódz´, together with 5,000 G YPSIES (Romani) from the Burgenland district of Austria. Later that year, more than 5,000 were sent to the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto and another 3,000 to ghettos in the Baltic area. Following the W ANNSEE C ONFERENCE in January 1942, the deportations were accelerated: 3,200 Jews were sent to R I G A , 8,500 to M I N S K , and 6,000 to the Lublin region. In the second part of 1942, almost 14,000—nearly all of them aged—were deported to T H E R E S I E N S TA D T . When the Vienna community was dissolved in November 1942, only 7,000 Jews remained in Austria, most of them married to non-Jews. All those who were physically fit were put on forced labor. Deportations continued on a smaller scale, and Austria’s Jewish community virtually disappeared. In the second half of 1944, tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews were deported to Vienna and Lower Austria for forced labor. About 8,000 Jews, scattered among small labor camps in Vienna, were assisted by the remaining staff of the Vienna Jewish Hospital, which even opened a maternity ward. It also maintained the last traces of organized Jewish religious ritual in Vienna. At the end of

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BABI YAR

the war in 1945, only about 1,000 Jews survived in Vienna. Some were partners of mixed marriages. The Gestapo used a number of their children in sorting out the vast quantities of confiscated Jewish property. About one-third of the survivors remained alive by living under cover. More than 65,000 Austrian Jews died in the ghettos and Nazi camps of Eastern Europe. Only 1,747 returned to Austria at the end of the war. They were eventually joined by some of the Austrian Jews who had emigrated before the war. Most of the post-war Austrian community consisted of Jews who arrived from other countries, mainly from Eastern Europe, after the end of the war.

SEE ALSO YOUTH MOVEMENTS. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bukey, Evan Burr. Hitler’s Austria: Popular Sentiment in the Nazi Era, 1938–1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Kristallnacht: The Journey from 1938 to 1988 [videorecording]. PBS Video, 1988. Newman, Richard. Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz. Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 2000. Weiss, David W. Reluctant Return: A Survivor’s Journey to an Austrian Town. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.

Babi Yar Babi Yar (also spelled Babii Yar) is a ravine located in the northwestern part of Kiev, where the Jews of the Ukrainian capital were systematically massacred. At the southern end of the ravine were two cemeteries, one of which was Jewish. Kiev was captured by the German Army on September 19, 1941. Of its Jewish population of 160,000, some 100,000 had managed to flee before the German takeover. Shortly thereafter, from September 24 to 28, numerous buildings in the city center, which were being used by the German military administration and the army, were blown up. Many Germans (as well as local residents) were killed in the explosions. After the war, it was learned that a Soviet security police detachment that had been left behind in Kiev for the purpose of sabotage had carried out these operations. On September 26, the Germans decided that the Jews of Kiev would all be put to death in retaliation for the attacks on the German-held installations. The military governor, Major General Friedrich Georg Eberhardt and other high-ranking SS officers, including Friedrich J E C K E L N ; Dr. Otto R A S C H ; and Paul B L O B E L participated in making this decision. Blobel was in charge of S P E C I A L C O M M A N D O 4a, the unit that was assigned to implement the extermination of the Jews of Kiev. This unit consisted of SD Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst) and Security Police, or Sipo (Sicherheitspolizei) men; the third company of the Special Duties Waffen-SS battalion; and a platoon of the No. 9 police battalion. Police battalions Nos. 45 and 305 and units of the Ukrainian auxiliary police reinforced the unit. On September 28, notices were posted in the city ordering the Jews to appear the following morning, September 29, at 8:00 a.m. at the corner of Melnik and Dekhtyarev streets. The notice claimed they were being assembled there for their resettlement in new locations. The next morning, masses of Jews reported at the appointed spot. They were directed to proceed along Melnik Street toward the Jewish cemetery and into an area comprising the cemetery itself and a part of Babi Yar. The area was cordoned off by a

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BABI YAR

barbed-wire fence and guarded by Special Commando police, Waffen-SS men, and Ukrainian policemen. As the Jews approached the ravine, they were forced to hand over all the valuables in their possession, to undress, and to advance toward the ravine edge, in groups of ten. When they reached the edge, they were gunned down by automatic fire. Several squads of SD and Sipo personnel, police, and Waffen-SS men of the Special Commando unit did the shooting. The squads relieved one another every few hours. When the day ended, the bodies were covered with a thin layer of soil. According to official reports of the O P E R AT I O NA L S QUA D S (Einsatzgruppen), in two days of shooting (September 29 and 30), 33,771 Jews were murdered. In the months that followed, many more thousands of Jews were seized, taken to Babi Yar, and shot. Although some Ukrainians helped Jews go into hiding, a significant number informed on them to the Germans and gave them up. After the war, the officer in charge of the Sipo and SD bureau testified that his Kiev office received so many letters from the Ukrainian population informing on Jews “by the bushel” that the office did not have enough manpower to deal with them all. Jewish survivors and the Soviet writer Anatoly Kuznetsov also offered testimonial evidence of the betrayal of Jews by the Kiev population. Babi Yar served as a slaughterhouse for non-Jews as well. G Y P S I E S and Soviet were also murdered there. The Soviet research commission on Nazi crimes later estimated that 100,000 persons were murdered at Babi Yar.

P R I S O N E R S O F WA R

In July 1943, by which time the Soviet Union’s Red Army was on the advance, Paul Blobel came back to Kiev. He and Dr. Max Thomas, the SS officer commanding the SD and Sipo in the Ukraine, were assigned to erase all evidence of the massacres that the Nazis had perpetrated. The code name of this activity was A K T I O N ( O P E R AT I O N ) 1 0 0 5 . For this purpose, Blobel formed two special groups. Unit 1005-A was made up of eight to ten SD men and thirty German policemen, and was under the command of an SS officer named Baumann. In mid-August the unit began exhuming the corpses in Babi Yar and systematically cremated them. The Germans brought in 327 men, including 100 Jews, from the nearby Syretsk concentration camp to carry out this ghastly job. The prisoners were housed in a bunker carved out from the ravine wall. It had an iron gate that was locked during the night and was watched by a guard with a machine gun. The prisoners had chains bolted to their legs, and those who fell ill or lagged behind were shot on the spot. Bulldozers opened up the mass graves, and the prisoners were ordered to drag the corpses to cremation pyres, which consisted of wooden logs doused in gasoline on a base of railroad ties. The bones that did not burn were crushed, using tombstones the Nazis seized from the Jewish cemetery. The ashes were sifted to retrieve any gold or silver they might have contained. The cremation of the corpses went on for six weeks, beginning on August 18, 1943, and ending on September 19. When the Nazis were finished, no trace was left of the mass graves. On the morning of September 29, the prisoners learned that they were about to be put to death. They already had a plan for escape, and resolved to put it into effect that same night. Shortly after midnight, under cover of darkness and the fog that enveloped the ravine, twenty-five prisoners broke out. Fifteen escaped, but the others were shot during the attempt or the following morning. It took nearly twenty years after World War II ended for a memorial to be erected at Babi Yar. The demand for a memorial was first voiced after Nikita Krushchev became the premier of the Soviet Union in 1955. By that time, Babi Yar had become a place of pilgrimage. Among those who demanded a memorial were writers Ilya Ehrenburg and Viktor Nekrasov, but nobody took action. In 1961, the poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko published a poem, “Babi Yar,” which begins with the lines:

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BACH-ZELEWSKI, ERICH VON DEM

BABII YAR No monument stands over Babii Yar. A drop sheer as a crude gravestone. I am afraid. Today I am as old in years as all the Jewish people.... The wild grasses rustle over Babii Yar. The trees look ominous, like judges. Here all things scream silently, and, baring my head, slowly I feel myself turning gray. And I myself am one massive, soundless scream above the thousand thousand buried here. I am each old man here shot dead. I am every child here shot dead. YEVGENI YEVTUSHENKO

Early Poems, translated by George Reavey (London: Marion Boyars), 1989.

No gravestone stands on Babi Yar; Only coarse earth heaped roughly on the gash: Such dread comes over me. A year later, Dmitri Shostakovich set the poem to music, incorporating it into his Thirteenth Symphony. (Under pressure from the Soviet authorities, changes were made in the original text, and the amended text was used when the symphony was first performed in the Soviet Union.) Both the poem and the musical setting had a tremendous impact in the Soviet Union and around the world. More people demanded that a memorial be built at Babi Yar. But it was not until 1966 that architects and artists were invited to submit proposals and it took eight more years for the memorial to be built. Since 1974 a monument has stood in Babi Yar, but the inscription does not mention that Jews were among the victims there.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Anatolii, A. Babi Yar. Cambridge, MA: Robert Bentley, 1979. Melnyk, Eugenie. My Darling Elia. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999.

Bach-Zelewski, Erich von dem (1899-1972)

Born in Lauenburg in Pomerania, Bach-Zelewski was an SS commander in the N A Z I PA R T Y . He served as a private during World War I (1914–1918) and then

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joined the police. He became a member of the Nazi party in 1930 and the following year enrolled in the SS. After the Nazis’ rise to power, Bach-Zelewski’s career progressed rapidly. In 1938 he was appointed SS commander in Silesia, with headquarters in Breslau. After September 1939, the Polish part of Silesia was incorporated into his district of command and he was responsible for removing tens of thousands of Jews from the area. When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, BachZelewski became the Higher SS and Police Leader in central Russia, attached to the Central Army Group; in November of that year he was promoted to the rank of SSObergruppenführer (general) and general of police. His duties also included command of Einsatzgruppe B, which mass-murdered Jews in B E L O R U S S I A . In 1942, Bach-Zelewski was appointed Heinrich H I M M L E R ’s representative in the fight against the PA RT I S A N S , and from January 1943 he was the commanding officer of all the forces fighting the partisans in eastern Europe. Between August and October 1944 he commanded the forces that suppressed the W A R S AW P O L I S H U P R I S I N G . Bach-Zelewski’s police units became infamous for the mass murder of civilians and for the destruction of numerous villages and towns throughout P O L A N D and large parts of W A R S AW. From the end of 1944 he was in command of various army corps. After the war Bach-Zelewski appeared as a prosecution witness before the American military tribunal at the Nuremberg Trial, as well as at the Einsatzgruppen trial, at the trials of senior SS and army officers, and at the Warsaw trial of Ludwig Fischer, who had been governor of the Warsaw district. Bach-Zelewski was held in prison and in 1951 he received a ten-year sentence in a trial held in Munich, but was released after serving five years of his sentence. Re-arrested in 1958, he was sentenced at Nuremberg in 1961 to an additional four and one-half years.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Harris, Whitney R. Tyranny on Trial: The Evidence at Nuremberg. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1995. Landau, Elaine. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. New York: Macmillan, 1992.

Badge, Jewish The Jewish badge was a distinguishing sign that Jews in Nazi G E R M A N Y and in Nazi-occupied countries were forced to wear to identify them as Jews. This was not the first time in history that Jews were singled out for such identification and discrimination. Jews in ancient times were required to wear certain colors or shapes of clothes, shoes, hats, or scarves in order to humiliate them and to differentiate them from the rest of the population. The first to introduce such a sign were the Muslims, who in the eighth century decreed that all Christians, Jews, and Samaritans living in Muslim countries must wear clothes that set them apart from the Muslims. In Yemen such clothes were obligatory for Jews until the twentieth century. In Christian countries, distinctive signs for Jews were introduced in 1215. The idea of making Jews wear clothing or other items to identify them spread, and it became a means of shaming and humiliating Jews. The pointed hat, as a distinctive sign for Jews, is known to have been in use from the thirteenth century in various Germanic countries. Yellow as a distinguishing color for Jews had been

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decreed earlier, in Muslim countries, and the practice may have been taken over by Christian countries, though the reason for choosing this particular color is not clear. In modern times the Jewish badge was gradually abolished, disappearing altogether during the nineteenth-century Emancipation. Under the Nazis, the term “yellow badge” first appeared in an article written in reaction to the anti-Jewish boycott of April 1, 1933 (see B OY C O T T , A N T I - J E W I S H ). The article apparently referred to the slanderous and abusive inscriptions painted on the windows of Jewish-owned stores and businesses in “Operation Boycott” of April 1, and the relapse to medieval times that it signified. In the wake of the K R I S TA L L N AC H T pogrom of November, 1938, Reinhard H E Y D R I C H officially proposed that Jews be required to wear a badge or other a distinctive mark.

“The authorities have warned that severe punishment—up to and including death by shooting—is in store for Jews who do not wear the yellow badge, on back and front.” Bial⁄ystok Judenrat, July 26, 1941

Jewish Badge during World War II After Germany took control of P O L A N D in the fall of 1939, it was announced on December 1, 1939, that all Jews over the age of twelve living in the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T (occupied Poland) were to wear a white band at least 4 inches (10 centimeters) in width, with a blue Star of David inscribed on it. Ultimately, Jews were required to wear a yellow badge throughout Poland. When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, in June 1941, they quickly introduced the Jewish badge into the newly occupied areas. In B I A L⁄ Y S TO K , a city in Poland that had its own civil administration, the first announcement made by the J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council), on German orders, stated that all men, women, and children aged 14 and over must wear a yellow badge. Forcing the Jews to wear a distinctive sign enabled the Germans to recognize and harass Jews on sight, and was designed to create a gulf between the Jews and the rest of the population. The Jews were responsible for acquiring the badges and distributing them. In W A R S AW , warnings were posted in apartment buildings, reminding Jews not to forget the badge when they went out. An announcement by the Bial⁄ ystok Judenrat of July 26, 1941, stated: “The authorities have warned that severe punishment—up to and including death by shooting—is in store for Jews who do not wear the yellow badge, on back and front.” An amendment was added to the decree stipulating that the decree applied to Jews by “race” and was therefore also binding on converts to Christianity and their children. The converts living in Warsaw appealed to the Germans to be exempted from this shameful obligation. The Germans demanded a list of the persons requesting exemption, but on receiving it, they rejected the request. In October and November 1940, when the Warsaw ghetto was set up, the Germans used the list to round up the converts and force them to enter the ghetto with the Jews. Even when Jews were separated from the general population by confinement in ghettos, they were still required to wear their badges. In some ghettos distinctive badges were introduced for identifying Jewish police, doctors, Judenrat employees, and people who held jobs in one of the many official factories. The purpose of these additional badges was to replace the Jewish badge and give the bearer a sense of being better protected and more favored than the anonymous masses in the ghetto. But in May 1942 Jews in Warsaw were forbidden to wear additional badges and the use of special badges was confined to the Jewish police. Inside the Third Reich, the regulation requiring a yellow badge (a Judenstern, or “Jewish star”) to be worn by the Jews was enacted in September 1941, nearly two years after it had been imposed on the Jews of Poland. The regulation also applied to the Protectorate of B O H E M I A - M O R AV I A and officially also to the Polish areas

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In France the Yellow Star of David had the word “Juif” in Hebraic-looking letters at the center.

that had been incorporated into the Reich. The September 1941 regulation required all Jews over the age of six to wear a yellow six-pointed star, on the left side of the breast. The distinctive mark imposed on the Jews in Germany became an integral part of the preparations for the “F I NA L S O L U T I O N .” The Jewish badge was also adopted by Germany’s satellite states. In September 1941 a “Jewish code” became law in S L OVA K I A . Jews were required to wear a yellow badge, and only the president of the country could exempt anyone. German authorities ran into opposition when they tried to introduce the wearing of the badge in the occupied countries of western Europe and Vichy France. In December 1942 the Germans began pressuring the Vichy regime to impose the wearing of the yellow badge on the Jews of France—a preparatory step for the planned deportation and annihilation of the Jews of German-occupied western Europe. The Vichy government rejected the German proposal, arguing that the anti-Jewish measures being applied were adequate and that a distinctive sign for Jews would come as a “great shock” to the French people.

Vichy France

The region of France not occupied by Germany that was governed from the spa town of Vichy.

In the Netherlands Jews were required to wear a yellow star on the left side of their breast. In Belgium the same decree was issued. In occupied France the decree was issued, ordering all Jews aged six and over to wear a yellow star, but in the unoccupied zone of France the wearing of the yellow badge was not introduced, since the Vichy government continued to oppose the measure.

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In Bulgaria a yellow and black button was sewn on clothing to identify Jews.

Jews who left the badge at home when they went out or whose badges did not meet the regulations were subject to fines and prison sentences.

In the satellite states and states that were otherwise dependent on Germany, the Nazis used their power and influence to enforce use of the Jewish badge. In H U N G A R Y such pressure was applied in December 1942, but the government there was able to resist it. In March 1944, however, when the German army occupied Hungary, the first decision on Jewish affairs adopted by the new government was to impose the yellow badge on the country’s Jews. Romania applied the yellow badge in the new territories that it occupied. In Bulgaria, where there was strong opposition to anti-Jewish legislation and the persecution of the Jews, the government, in August 1942, decided to introduce a distinctive sign for Jews, in the form of a small yellow button. Even the wearing of that sign, however, was not strictly enforced, and most of the Jews in the country did not observe the order. In D E N M A R K the German authorities considered introducing the yellow badge, but they were well aware of the Danes unconditional resistance to anti-Jewish measures, and they did not risk making it mandatory.

Reaction to the Badge Reactions by Jews and non-Jews alike varied from country to country. In Poland, where a distinctive sign for Jews was first introduced, there was initially a considerable psychological impact, but this lessened as more severe measures were introduced. The threat of severe penalties accounted for the almost uniform observance of the wearing of the Jewish badge. The introduction of the Jewish badge in Germany was followed by a wave of suicides. Some Jewish sources report that there were a few instances of Germans’ dis-

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playing solidarity with the Jews in the matter of the yellow badge. An internal report mentioned the special problem of persons classified as Jews under the Nazi racist legislation who were Christians by religion. Congregants attending church services allegedly complained of having to sit next to persons wearing the yellow badge. In western Europe many Jews defied orders and did not wear the yellow badge. In occupied France more than 100,000 Jews were expected to wear the badge, but weeks after the order was issued, only 83,000 persons had came to pick up the badges. The French population opposed the yellow badge and found creative ways to dilute its negative power. For example, yellow became a fashionable color, and some people wore stars or other items to express solidarity with the Jews. Even the French police, which had a poor record in its treatment of Jews, either found it difficult to overcome the defiance of the order to wear the yellow badge, or did not care to collaborate in this effort. In the Netherlands there were many instances of demonstrative solidarity with the Jews. A Dutch underground newspaper printed 300,000 stars bearing the inscription “Jews and non-Jews are one and the same.”

Other Badges In the Nazi concentration camps, prisoners were marked by triangular patches in various colors (in the case of Jews, by a Star of David consisting of two triangles in different colors) and by letters, the purpose being to indicate the ethnic and national identity of the prisoner and the prisoner’s particular “offense.” Pink triangles were worn by those imprisoned on suspicion of homosexuality. Outside the camps, laws decreeing special distinguising marks applied only to Jews.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Keller, Werner. Diaspora: The Post-Biblical History of the Jews. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1969.

Barbie Trial Klaus Barbie (1913-1991), former head of the G E S TA P O (German Secret Police) in Lyons, F R A N C E , during World War II, was tried on criminal charges in Lyons, between May 11 and July 4, 1987. Barbie joined the Nazi party in 1932 and the S S , the elite guard of the N A Z I in 1935. He began working for the Gestapo in 1942, and in November of that year was posted to Lyons, where he served as the Gestapo chief for the next 21 months. During that period he personally committed or was responsible for numerous acts of violence, earning him the nickname “the Butcher of Lyons.” Among his most infamous acts was the torture of Jean Moulin, a hero of the French Resistance fighters who operated in secret against the Nazis. “Image PA R T Y ,

not available for copyright reasons”

After the war Barbie became a counterintelligence agent for the U N I T E D S TAT E S in Germany, working to prevent Germans from acquiring confidential information about the United States. In 1951 he emigrated to Bolivia, settling in La Paz. He acquired Bolivian citizenship in 1957, under the false name Klaus Altmann. In 1952 and again in 1954 Barbie was tried in absentia (in his absence) in France. Both times he was convicted of specific war crimes and sentenced to death. He was discovered in La Paz by the Nazi hunter Beate Klarsfeld in 1971. In the fol-

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lowing years the French government requested his extradition (surrender and deportation) many times. In 1983 the Bolivian government finally expelled Barbie and he was brought to France to stand trial.

French Resistance

A well-organized network of people in occupied and Vichy France who worked secretly against the German occupation forces

Barbie was charged with crimes against humanity. The charges included responsibility for a raid on the headquarters of a Jewish organization in Lyons, where about 85 Jews were arrested and later sent to A U S C H W I T Z and responsibility for the deportation of 44 Jewish children in hiding in the village of Izieu, east of Lyons. In all, Barbie was charged with responsibility for the deportation of 842 people from Lyons, about half of them Jews and half of them members of the French Resistance.

The Barbie trial was followed closely throughout the world. It aroused much controversy in France. Some Frenchmen feared it would raise questions about the French collaboration with the Nazis, especially regarding the arrest and killing of Jean Moulin. Others feared it might cause a new wave of A N T I S E M I T I S M . In connection with the trial some activists in Holocaust denial (see H O L O CAU S T, D E N I A L O F T H E ) tried to claim that Barbie’s behavior was no different from that of many of the Allied forces during the war and of a number of nations after the war. On July 4, 1987, Barbie was found guilty of crimes against humanity and was sentenced to life imprisonment, the maximum penalty under French law at the time.

SEE ALSO TRIALS OF WAR CRIMINALS. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bower, Tom. Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyons.” Pantheon Books, 1984. Finkielkraut, Alain. Remembering in Vain: The Klaus Barbie Trial and Crimes Against Humanity. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.

Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie [videorecording]. Video Treasures, 1995. Kahn, Annette. Why My Father Died: A Daughter Confronts Her Family’s Past at the Trial of Klaus Barbie. New York: Summit Books, 1991. Morgan, Ted. An Uncertain Hour: The French, the Germans, the Jews, the Klaus Barbie Trial, and the City of Lyon, 1940-1945. New York: Arbor House/Morrow, 1990.

Baum Gruppe The Baum Gruppe (Baum Group) was an anti-Nazi organization in Berlin, Germany. It was made up mainly of Jews who belonged to YO U T H M OV E M E N T S and who, during the N A Z I PA R T Y rule of Germany, joined the German Communist party or its youth organizations. Most of the group’s members were Communists, but there were also Zionists—those who advocated the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine—including members of the Youth Movements known as Werkleute, Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir, and Ha-Bonim. Out of thirty-two militant members, only four were over the age of 19 in 1933. The leaders of the group, Herbert Baum and his wife, Marianne, started their underground activity at the beginning of the Nazi regime in 1933.

Monument to the Baum Gruppe in the Weissensee cemetery, Berlin.

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In 1936, the Jewish members of the Baum Gruppe were instructed by the leadership of the Communist underground to set up an independent group and to start Communist “cells,” or small groups, in Jewish youth organizations. Between 1937 and 1942, the Baum Gruppe maintained links with all major similar groups in

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Berlin. Their activities included distributing illegal brochures and organizing educational evenings, political training courses, and cultural events. The group also worked to strengthen the morale of Jews due to be deported to the East. On May 18, 1942, several members of the group set fire to different areas of “The Soviet Paradise” (Das Sowjetparadies), an anti-Communist exhibit set up in Berlin by the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda. The group’s action was considered a major anti-Nazi event. Most members of the group were caught—either betrayed by an informer planted by the Gestapo or because of their lack of experience in underground work. Five hundred Berlin Jews were also arrested in revenge. Half of them were shot, and the others were sent to S A C H S E N H AU S E N , a concentration camp, and killed in the fall of 1942. Herbert Baum was tortured to death. The other members were arrested and put on trial between July 1942 and June 1943; most of them were executed. Nearly all the other members were later deported to the East and died in A U S C H W I T Z .

SEE ALSO RESISTANCE, JEWISH. SUGGESTED RESOURCES “Herbert Baum.” Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance Online. [Online] http://motlc.wiesenthal.org/pages/t005/t00573.html (accessed on August 25, 2000).

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Resisters. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/ holocaust/people/resister.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000).

Belgium The area that is now Belgium had no stable Jewish communities until the sixteenth century. By the end of the eighteenth century, Jews in Belgium had achieved equal rights. In 1830, when Belgium became an independent country, the Jews numbered just over 1,000. That number continued to grow, but most Jews were refugees, en route to overseas destinations, and not permanent residents. From the early 1920s, Belgian Jewry steadily grew in size as more Jews came from Eastern Europe, and, in the 1930s, from Nazi G E R M A N Y . On the eve of the Nazi invasion 66,000 Jews lived in Belgium (out of a total population of 8.3 million), but only ten percent of the Jews were Belgian citizens. The Jewish population was concentrated in four cities, Brussels, Antwerp, Liège, and Charleroi, but mostly in the first two. The immigrants spoke Yiddish, but French became the predominant language, especially among the younger generation. Among the Jewish political viewpoints in Belgium were the socialist trends—Zionist and non-Zionist, including the Bund —and other, more radical leftist ideologies. As a result, very close ties formed between the Jews and the Belgian leftist movements, a factor that greatly influenced the rescue efforts and the resistance during the Holocaust.

Bund

Jewish Socialist Party, dedicated to gaining equal rights for Jews.

German Occupation German forces invaded Belgium on May 10, 1940, and on May 28, the Belgian army surrendered. King Leopold III stayed in Belgium, but the prime minister and some of the cabinet members fled to London, where they established a government-in-exile on October 31, 1940. There were now two centers of official Belgian

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Belgium.

NETHERLANDS North Sea Antwerp Overpelt

WEST FLANDERS

Breendonck Mechelen

GRE

LIMBOURG

Dossin Camp

Louvain

EAST FLANDERS

ATER

Brussels

BRABANT

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Bomal

Liège

GERMANY

HAINAUT

Herstal

Charleroi

FRANCE

LU

XEM

miles

25

0

kilometers

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0

© Martin Gilbert 1982

Allies

The countries that fought against Germany during World War II.

T

he Jewish population of Belgium at the time of

the German invasion was 65,696; 34,801 Jews were imprisoned or deported, and of these, 28,902 perished, representing 44 percent of the total Jewish population.

authority, and neither recognized the authority of the other. The king, recognizing the new balance of power in the country, was inclined to cooperate with the Germans, and on one occasion even met with Adolf H I T L E R , but he refrained almost totally from overt activity. The government-in-exile supported the Allies. The Germans first set up a military administration, under General Alexander von Falkenhausen. In July 1944 a civil administration took its place. In early September 1944, Brussels and Antwerp were freed from Nazi control by Allied forces, and by early November all of Belgium was set free. However, when the Germans launched a new offensive in the Ardennes in December 1944, they reoccupied areas in the southeast. Finally, in January 1945, the last German troops were driven out. In Belgium, as in other places, the Germans enforced Nazi anti-Jewish policy: eliminating Jews from all influential positions, depriving them of their possessions and livelihood, putting them on F O R C E D L A B O R , isolating them from the rest of the population, and, finally, deporting them to their death. Here, however, the German administration served as a restraining factor on the volume, intensity, and tempo of the anti-Jewish measures. In the first two years of the occupation, before the deportations began, 18 antiJewish decrees and regulations were issued, at relatively long intervals, creating the impression that the measures were on the whole quite moderate. Two decrees announced October 28 defined who was to be regarded as a Jew under the law, ordered the Jews to conduct a census and draw up a list of all their enterprises and occupations, and eliminated Jews from the public administration, the legal and teaching professions, and the media. On May 31, 1941, Jews were ordered to display signs identifying their enterprises as Jewish and to declare their capital and other assets (including real estate). Limits were set on how much money they could withdraw each month from their bank accounts. Later that year, Jews were told they could only reside in the four major cities, and they were subject to a nightly curfew, from 8:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. A decree issued on November 25, 1941, established the Association of Jews in Belgium (AJB), to which every Jew had to belong. Within a week, all Jewish children were banned from the public schools, and the AJB was required to set up its

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own elementary and secondary schools. On January 17, 1942, Jews were forbidden to leave the country. In March, new decrees imposed special forced labor on the Jews. On May 27, Jews were ordered to wear the yellow badge that would identify them as Jews (see B A D G E , J E W I S H ).

Deportation In the summer of 1942 the deportation of Jews from Belgium was launched, in coordination with D E P O R TAT I O N S from the N E T H E R L A N D S and F R A N C E . Adolf E I C H M A N N ’ S section in the RSHA had made the preparations. The deportations continued for over a year, ending in September 1943. A small staff in the Bureau of Jewish Affairs in Brussels handled the deportations; the roundup of Jews and their actual deportation was carried out, for the most part, by the German field police. The vast majority of the deportees perished in A U S C H W I T Z ; some small groups were also sent to B U C H E N WA L D , R AV E N S B R Ü C K , and B E R G E N -B E L S E N .

Economic Measures Economic measures against the Jews were introduced toward the end of 1940. In November, Hermann Göring ordered the Belgian economy to be “Aryanized,” which meant that Jewish-owned businesses and assets had to be transferred to Aryan (non-Jewish) ownership. A R YA N I Z AT I O N was launched only in late 1941. In spring 1942, the systematic liquidation of Jewish businesses in the textile, leather, and diamond industries was set in motion. However, some large Jewish enterprises stayed in existence and kept their assets intact. A similar situation prevailed with Jewish-owned real estate.

The amount of property the Germans seized from Jewish homes covered about 3,531,450 cubic feet.

In 1942, during the period when Jews were being deported to C O N C E N T R A new decrees required the confiscation of property owned by German Jews and forbade the sale of real estate without special permission. T I O N CA M P S ,

The Germans confiscated the property of Jews who did not return to their homes or were deported, and plundered Jewish institutions and art collections, focusing on fine art and items of “ideological value” (such as Jewish religious and folklore objects and libraries). The seizure of personal property “for the good of the German people” was left to the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, and to the military administration in Belgium. According to one figure given in August 1944, the amount of property the Germans seized from Jewish homes covered about 3,531,450 cubic feet. Jews were also stripped of any remaining valuables in the Mechelen assembly camp, just before boarding the deportation trains.

Forced Labor Beginning in June 1942, Belgian Jews were exploited as a cheap source of labor, as part of a drive that the Germans were carrying out in all the occupied countries of Europe. Belgian Jews were employed primarily in the construction of fortifications along the coast of northern France; 2,252 people were put to work there. Other Jews were forced to work on German army construction projects, in clothing factories, at an arms factory, in stone quarries, and on agricultural projects.

Relations between the Jews and the General Population Relations between Jews and non-Jews in Belgium were complicated, even before the occupation. Certain factors made these relations more difficult: most

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Belgians were Catholic; there was a language war between the Flemings and the Walloons; and most Jews were recent immigrants whose outlook differed greatly from that of native Belgians. These factors were offset by the democratic character of the Belgian regime and by the rapid integration of the Jews in the economic life of the country and in some of its political movements. On January 10, 1941, the government-in-exile issued a statement that declared all the decrees of the German administration null and void and committed itself to restoring the stolen property to its rightful owners and to punishing Belgians collaborating with the Germans. Belgian officials refused to issue German orders to remove Jews from the economic life of the country, citing legal grounds. The Germans published the antiJewish decrees on their own, with the Belgian administrative staff cooperating in their implementation. In general, most Belgians reacted with apathy to the antiJewish legislation during the first two years of the occupation. But certain anti-Jewish decrees aroused a negative reaction among the population, and some official protests were even lodged. The protests did not affect German policy. Some radical right-wing Belgian organizations cooperated with the Germans, providing 400 volunteers for the SS who spread antisemitic propaganda and helped the authorities to implement their policies. In addition, Radio Bruxelles often broadcast anti-Jewish propaganda. On April 14, 1941, during Passover, a small group of Flemish antisemitic nationalists staged an anti-Jewish attack that became known as the Antwerp pogrom. Two synagogues and a rabbi’s house were damaged. The introduction of the yellow badge on May 27, 1942, led to numerous protests. City officials in Brussels refused to distribute the badge, as did the AJB. But officials in other cities, such as Antwerp, did not react in the same way. Most of the underground newspapers sharply denounced the decree and urged the population to show solidarity with the Jews. A number of people expressed sympathy for the Jews and many Belgians wore badges similar to the Jewish badge. These events may have been a turning point, as a result of which the Belgian population was more inclined to help the Jews when the deportations were launched. When the deportations began, in the summer of 1942, the Belgian resistance movement was not united and consisted of several groups, but there was wide support for resistance as such. As a result, as many as 80,000 persons (non-Jews) were able to go into hiding and avoid forced-labor. An illegal press existed with a wide circulation. An estimated 70,000 people, including many Jews, were organized in the resistance, out of a total population of 8 million. Despite its small size, the Communist party played a key role in resistance operations. Large sectors of the population, especially leftist party activists and church institutions (as well as individual Belgians not affiliated with any group), helped to conceal some 25,000 Jews from the Germans. Belgian Jews and Jews passing through Belgium were helped to flee to France and Switzerland. The Belgian Red Cross assisted many Jews by providing them with food parcels; in 1943, half the quantity of parcels earmarked for this purpose went to the Jews who were in hiding. The Catholic church helped to provide hiding places for Jews. Father Joseph André of Namur, of the regional seminary in Bastogne, and Bishop Louis-Joseph Kerkhofs of Liège; the bishop of Mechelen were particularly active as rescuers. Cardinal Joseph-Ernst van Roey, the highest church authority in Belgium, took certain cautious actions on behalf of Jews. When the deportations began, van Roey mediated for Jewish converts and the Jewish partners of mixed marriages, as well as on behalf of Jews who were Belgian nationals, and obtained their release. A few weeks later van Roey acted similarly on behalf of Rabbi Salomon Ullmann and AJB leaders who had been arrested and imprisoned. The queen of England, Elizabeth, also

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intervened on behalf of the Jews of Belgian nationality. In August 1942, she appealed to Hitler himself, through General von Falkenhausen. These kinds of efforts postponed the deportation of Jews who were Belgian nationals. However, as various government and church officials, including van Roey, restricted protection to Belgian nationals, it implied that the rest of the Jews (meaning most of the Jews of Belgium) could be abandoned. And although many people aided Jews in the deportation period, some Belgians turned them in to the authorities, and some radical right-wing organizations actively searched for Jews in hiding.

The Jewish Community During the fighting in May 1940, many Jews tried to escape to France and to Britain. Some reached southern France or even Spain; many others returned to Belgium after weeks of wandering. In the early months of the occupation, when no anti-Jewish action was taken, the Jews tried to rehabilitate their communal life and they formed aid committees in Brussels and Antwerp. For a while, the ousting of Jews from jobs in the public administration had little effect; few Jews had held such positions. The same applied to the initial anti-Jewish economic decrees. However, when the general economic situation deteriorated and Aryanization was launched in 1941, Jewish organizations found it difficult to meet the community needs, especially for welfare. The American Jewish J O I N T D I S T R I B U T I O N C O M M I T T E E sent some financial aid to the AJB, and, later, to the Jewish Defense Committee.

M

ost Jews living in Belgium were able to maintain a

tolerable standard of living up until the time of the deportations. At that point, a wide gulf opened between the Jews who were protected by their Belgian nationality and all the other Jews in Belgium.

Initially, education remained unchanged. Most young Jews attended public schools and remained in that system until April 1942, when Jews were expelled from the general school system. The community immediately established several schools and kindergartens, using the Brussels Central Synagogue, among other places. In the 1942–1943 school year, which opened after the deportations had started, the AJB-maintained school network shrank considerably in size. Outstanding religious schools, such as the yeshiva (rabbinical academy) at Heide, near Antwerp, remained open until the beginning of the deportations. Zionist YO U T H M OV E M E N T S in Brussels and Antwerp resumed their activities, albeit on a more modest scale, concentrating on educational training, cultural work, and mutual help, in cooperation with the official political parties and organizations. The various youth movements cooperated with one another and with other Jewish organizations in obtaining food in the vicinity and distributing it, and in running an agricultural training farm.

Rescue Operations and the Underground The Jews of Belgium were actively engaged in underground operations and efforts for their own rescue, often coming up with original ideas. By 1940 and 1941 the Germans were arresting Jews active in Communist organizations. Numerous Communists were seized by the Germans in June 1941, following the German attack on the S OV I E T U N I O N , and a considerable number of them were Jews. Also arrested, in 1941 and 1942, were Jews who had worked in the general underground press. Jews also operated and worked for underground newspapers published in Yiddish, French, and Dutch. Jews played a dominant role in the “Red Orchestra,” the spy ring operating for the Soviet Union, and they were among the members of the Front d’Indépendance, a Belgian organization, representing various groups, that called for armed resistance.

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Rescue initiatives on the part of Jews enabled a relatively large proportion of the Jews of Belgium to be saved.

In July 1942, a joint underground Jewish defense organization called the Jewish Defense Committee (CDJ) was formed to address the worsening situation of the Jews. A coalition of Jewish Communists and Zionist activists, among others, created the CDJ, which had important ties with the general resistance organizations as well as with the AJB. From 1942 to 1944, it played a central role in rescue and resistance operations. It also had contacts with the Catholic church and various other bodies, and engaged in fundraising. The organization’s main purpose was to find hiding places for Jews; its children’s section, in cooperation with the National Children’s Committee, headed by Yvonne Nèvejean, succeeded in hiding four thousand children. Large numbers of Jewish adults also had the CDJ’s help in finding a place to hide. Jewish armed resistance operations (some of which had no connection with the CDJ) had some impressive successes. In the summer of 1942, one operation aimed to seize the card index that the AJB maintained in its office. Resistance fighters then targeted Robert Holcinger, the official in charge of sending out the call-ups for deportation. The single most significant resistance operation carried out by the Jewish underground was the attack on a deportation train, on the night of April 19–20, 1943, containing a transport of Jews from the Mechelen camp headed for A U S C H W I T Z . This is the only recorded instance of an armed attack in Europe on a train taking Jews to their death. Individuals frequently escaped from deportation trains originating in the Mechelen camp. Such an escape first occurred on October 31, 1942. Of the 26,500 Jews who were deported from Mechelen, the total number of escapees was 571. In the April attack on Transport No. 20, 231 Jews escaped, of whom 23 were shot to death by the train guards. Most of the escapees jumped from the train as soon as they could. One group of 17 Jews was saved by the outside help of three persons— none of them affiliated with any organization—headed by a Jew. In addition, hundreds of Jews attempted to flee to Switzerland and southern France, and from there to Spain. Many dozens of Zionist youth movement members succeeded in such attempts.

After Liberation The rehabilitation of Belgian Jewry was a difficult and painful process. At first, Belgian authorities did not want the Jews who had not been Belgian nationals before the war to remain there. The restitution of Jewish property also ran into difficulties. Various Jewish organizations disagreed about the guardianship of the war orphans and what kind of upbringing they should have. Jews who came out of hiding after liberation attempted to reorganize the Jewish community. They formed the Central Jewish Committee for the Reconstruction of Religious Life in Belgium. Jewish chaplains in the Allied forces and the J E W I S H B R I G A D E G R O U P , which was posted to Belgium in early August 1945, played an important role after liberation. Soldiers of the brigade were involved in the renewal of Zionist activity and in the search for Jewish orphans and their return to Jewish life in Belgium. The Zionist parties and youth movements were reestablished after the war. Hundreds of war orphans and members of the Zionist youth movements left for Palestine, while others emigrated elsewhere. In Antwerp and Brussels, Jewish community life was restored, although on a much smaller scale than in the past.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Defonseca, Misha. Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years. Boston: Mt. Ivy Press, 1997.

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Isaacman, Clara. Clara’s Story. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1984. Loebl, Suzanne. At the Mercy of Strangers: Growing Up on the Edge of the Holocaust. Pacifica, CA: Pacifica Press, 1997. Rosengarten, Israel J. Survival: The Story of a Sixteen-year-old Jewish Boy. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999. Worch, Renee. Flight: A Jewish Family’s Valiant Struggle to Escape Nazi Occupation. Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah Publications, 1988.

Belorussia Independent since 1991, Belarus was formerly known as Belorussia, or the Belorussian SSR, one of the four founding entities of the S OV I E T U N I O N . Belorussia shared borders with P O L A N D , L I T H UA N I A , and L AT V I A . Belorussia’s people and culture had long been influenced by the military invasions and annexations of more powerful neighbors. During World War I (1914–1918), Belorussia was a battle zone, and after the war it was the scene of fighting between the Soviets and the Poles. In 1921, Belorussia was split up: the western part went to Poland and the eastern part became one of the Soviet Union’s socialist republics. On September 17, 1939, the Soviet Red Army entered western Belorussia and incorporated it into the Belorussian SSR.

Jewish Culture in Belorussia Jewish communities were founded in Belorussia as early as the fourteenth century, in Brest-Litovsk and G R O D N O . After the unification of Lithuania and Poland, the authorities encouraged the settlement of Poles and Jews in Belorussia. When Belorussia was incorporated into tsarist Russia, it was included in the Pale of Settlement, the area where Jews were permitted to reside. Belorussian Jews suffered from all the tsarist anti-Jewish decrees and from persecution and pogroms. In the wake of the 1881 pogroms and the subsequent anti-Jewish measures, Belorussian Jews emigrated to the West in large numbers. Belorussia was a center of Jewish religious studies, as was Lithuania. The two Jewish communities were very similar in their way of life and creativity. Renowned rabbinical academies (yeshivas) were established in Volozhin, Mir, and other centers. Belorussia was a center of the Hasidic pietistic movement, which stressed Bible study and personal religious experience, and of the opponents of the Hasidim, known as the Misnagdim. A high proportion of Belorussia’s Jews were manual workers, and a broad network of educational and mutual-aid institutions existed.

pogroms

A Russian word meaning “devastation” that came to be applied to organized violence against Jews, which was often encouraged and supported by government authorities.

Western Belorussia During the period following World War I, the Jews of the western part of Belorussia, then under Polish rule, were hit hard by the anti-Jewish policies of the Polish government. The economic well-being of the entire Jewish community was affected, which caused wide-spread poverty among Belorussian Jews. The entry of Soviet forces into western Belorussia on September 17, 1939 was a relief for the Jews, in view of the Nazi threat they had been facing. However, in 21 months of Soviet rule, the situation of the Jews deteriorated rapidly, undermining the very basis of Jewish existence. Many Jews lost their livelihood, Jewish public

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Belorussia during World War II.

institutions were dissolved, and the anti-Jewish animosity of the population grew to unprecedented dimensions. On the eve of the German invasion of the Soviet Union (June 22, 1941), 670,000 Jews were living in western Belorussia, including the Jews from western Poland who had taken refuge there. The German army advanced at lightning speed, occupying western Belorussia and reaching the old Polish-Soviet border within a week. A wave of pogroms, staged by the local population, swept over large parts of the region, much to the satisfaction of the Germans. From the very beginning, the Germans themselves launched one campaign after another in which 40 percent of the Jews of the Vilna, Novogrudok, and Polesye districts were murdered. The first wave of killings lasted until December 1941 and, as in other parts of the Soviet Union occupied by the Germans, they marked the beginning of the Nazi “ F I N A L S O L U T I O N ” . The mass murder came to a standstill during the winter of 1941–1942 because the Germans needed Jews as manpower in factories for warrelated labor. The economic situation in Belorussia and the harsh winter weather also obstructed the extermination program.

partisan operations

Underground resistance groups fighting against the Nazi regime.

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The second wave of mass murder began in the spring of 1942 and ended with the total annihilation of the Jews of western Belorussia. A rise in partisan opera-

BELORUSSIA

tions during that period prompted the Germans to accelerate the pace of extermi-

nation. According to German data, by the end of 1942 only 30,000 Jews were left in Belorussia (excluding the B I A L⁄ Y S T O K district). In the course of that year, most of western Belorussia’s ghettos—the restricted sections of cities in which Jews were forced to live—were liquidated; the inhabitants were forcibly removed to concentration camps. The last to suffer this fate were the ghettos of Glubokoye (August 20, 1943) and Lida (September 18, 1943).

The Jewish Underground The Jews of Belorussia responded to their oppression in various ways: exerting a daily effort to stay alive in the ghettos, going into hiding, escaping from the ghetto, and joining armed underground fighting units as PA R T I S A N S . Thousands of Jews went into hiding in bunkers and other secret places; 12,600 were known to have hidden in the sixteen ghettos for which data exist. Following the first wave of killings, underground organizations were set up. Some of these organizations were the continuation of the Zionist pioneering underground that had operated under the Soviet regime from 1939 to 1941. Members of the underground included adults, members of various Zionist youth movements, and students of the Hebrew Tarbut (Zionistoriented) schools and Yiddish schools. It is estimated that at least 25,000 Jews from the Vilna, Novogrudok, and Polesye districts fled to the forests to live in such partisan resistance groups. Forty-two of these underground groups had in their possession an arsenal of 500 rifles, 150 pistols, 35 machine guns, and 20 submachine guns.

Most of the Jews of Belorussia were murdered in pits near the towns where they had lived and were buried in mass graves on the spot.

The Jews of the Bial⁄ystok District The Bial⁄ystok district was incorporated into East Prussia on July 17, 1941, thus becoming part of the Reich. Bial⁄ ystok itself had a Jewish population of 60,000 to 70,000. When the Germans took the city in June of that year, they murdered two thousand Jews; several thousand more were killed in July. This was followed by a period of relative quiet in Bial⁄ystok. In the provincial towns of the Bial⁄ystok district, large-scale killings took place. Those who managed to escape from them took refuge in the city of Bial⁄ystok. The extermination of the surviving Jewish population of the Bial⁄ystok district began on November 2, 1942. At that point, the number of Jews was still quite substantial. They were rounded up and put in transit camps, and in November and December were taken to the T R E B L I N K A E X T E R M I NAT I O N CA M P . In early February 1943, a week-long extermination campaign was conducted in Bial⁄ystok. During this wave of killing, 12,000 Jews were murdered. Efraim Barasz, the J UDENRAT (Jewish Council) chairman, continued to believe that the ghetto would not be liquidated because the Germans needed the manpower it provided. On August 16, 1943, the Germans surrounded the ghetto. The uprising in the ghetto, commanded by Mordechai T ENENBAUM , with the participation of the Dror, Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir, Communist, and Betar resistance movements, went on for several days until the last of the fighters fell. More than 25,000 Bial⁄ystok Jews were transported to Treblinka, and 1,200 children from Bial⁄ystok were sent to A USCHWITZ . Another 2,000 Jews who had been in the “Small Ghetto” were sent to M A J DA N E K . A few Jews from Bial⁄ystok managed to escape and join the partisans; of these, 60 survived.

Eastern Belorussia Large Jewish communities existed in the cities of eastern Belorussia; indeed, in 1897, Jews had formed the majority of the population in these locations. However,

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BELORUSSIA

The Jews were left without water, food, fuel, and warm clothing, and in a temperature of minus 25 degrees centigrade.

because of integration and because Jews moved to other cities (including Moscow and Leningrad), the proportion of Jews in these cities decreased, and in the 1926 census they no longer constituted the majority of these urban populations. The October Revolution of 1917 posed new and basic problems for the Jews in eastern Belorussia. As members of the middle class they found themselves deprived of their sources of livelihood, their employment and social status, and their traditional way of life. Jewish culture and education came under sharp attack. The autonomous Jewish community framework was dissolved, and the only official Jewish body permitted was the Communist party’s “Jewish Section” (Yevsektsiya), which conducted an aggressive propaganda drive against traditional Jewish religious life. Jewish schools, academies, and synagogues were closed down. However, many Jews continued to observe traditional customs in the privacy of their homes, and the Zionist youth movements Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir and He-Haluts maintained their operations, clandestinely, until the late 1920s. M I N S K was the center of Yiddish culture and literature, and in the 1932–1933 school year, 36,650 Jewish children attended Yiddish schools. As Soviet purges were launched, however, the number of Jewish schools declined rapidly. Hundreds of secret Jewish schools were discovered and shuttered, and Jewish intellectuals were imprisoned, exiled, or executed. With the outbreak of World War II, the Germans speedily conquered eastern Belorussia. Minsk was taken on June 28, 1941. V I T E B S K fell on July 11. By July 16, German forces had reached Smolensk. Many Jews fled eastward to save their lives, but German parachute forces barred the roads, and most of the refugees who had gone in the direction of Orsha and Moscow were intercepted and had to turn back. Nevertheless, an estimated 120,000 Jews living in eastern Belorussia succeeded in escaping to the Soviet interior. The Germans immediately began a program of mass murder. The indifference of the population to the fate of the Jews encouraged the Germans to accelerate the massacres, and the difficulties they came to encounter on the front also served to increase the rate at which the extermination proceeded. Jews living in small towns and villages were moved into larger ghettos. In some places, such as Bobruisk and Slutsk, the ghettos were set up in the open country. In Lepel, Jews had to vacate their homes and move into the ghetto with only two hours notice. Each house, all without windowpanes, held thirty to forty persons. The Jews were left without water, food, fuel, and warm clothing, and in a temperature of minus 25 degrees centigrade. Similar conditions prevailed in other ghettos in the area. Reports submitted by the O P E R AT I O NA L S QUA D S (Einsatzgruppen) accused the Jews of “maintaining contact with the partisans.” Some reports cited reasons for killing the Jews such as “acts of sabotage,” “refusal to obey orders,” “offering resistance,” and so on. The reports also detailed the numbers of both Jews and partisans killed by the Operational Squads. By the end of 1941, the Jews of thirty-five ghettos had been murdered, including those in the major cities, where the Jewish population was concentrated. Together, they accounted for a third of the entire Jewish population of eastern Belorussia. The mass murder of Jews was carried out in huge pits that were prepared close to the ghettos. In the ghettos at Minsk, Pleshchenitsy, Gomel, Vitebsk, and Mogilev, the Germans used dushkovki—extermination vans (see G A S C H A M B E R S / V A N S ). In the Minsk ghetto, some ninety thousand Jews were murdered in ongoing killing sprees, including some at night. Between November 1941 and October 1942, 35,442 Jews from the Reich and the Protectorate of B O H E M I A A N D M O R AV I A were also brought to Minsk to be killed.

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˙ EC B E L⁄ Z

Belorussian Jews offered resistance in the various ghettos, and some fighters escaped to the forests. The Minsk ghetto had an underground organization that operated up to the very end. Approximately 10,000 Jews escaped from Minsk into the forest; at the end of the war, some 5,000 Jews went back to Minsk, most of them from the forest. They were later joined by Jews who, in the first few days of the war, had fled to the Soviet interior, and by Jews from other parts of the country. Throughout the war, the majority of the local population in all parts of Belorussia displayed an unfriendly attitude to the Jews; some, including Communist party activists, were extremely hostile. A very small minority showed a humane attitude, and some of these saved a few Jews.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Eckman, Lester Samuel. The Jewish Resistance: The History of the Jewish Partisans in Lithuania and White Russia During the Nazi Occupation, 1940–1945. New York: Shengold, 1977. Gitelman, Zvi, ed. Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. Radin, Ruth Y. Escape to the Forest: Based on a True Story of the Holocaust. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000. Tec, Nechema. Defiance: The Bielski Partisans. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Bel⁄z˙ec Bel⁄ z˙ec was an E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P in Poland. It was named for the small town in which it was located, in the southeastern part of the L U B L I N district. In early 1940, the Germans set up a camp there for Jewish F O R C E D L A B O R . These prisoners were used to build fortifications and dig anti-tank ditches for the German war effort. That camp was closed down at the end of the year. On November 1, 1941, as part of A K T I O N (O P E R AT I O N ) R E I N H A R D , the Germans began building an extermination camp at Bel⁄ z˙ec. The site they chose was near the railway station— about 1,620 feet (500 meters) away on a railway siding. It contained some of the anti-tank ditches that had been dug the previous year. These were destined to become mass graves for the Jews who were to be murdered in the camp. At first, the construction work was carried out by Poles from Bel⁄ z˙ec. These workers were later replaced by Jews who had been forced from ghettos in the neighboring towns. Of the S S men who were in charge of the camp construction and operation, most had taken part in the E U T H A N A S I A P R O G R A M , including the camp’s first commandant, Christian W I RT H . The staff included 20 to 30 German SS men. They held the command and administration positions and oversaw the extermination program. There were also between 90 and 120 Ukrainian men from the T R AW N I K I camp—all of them Soviet P R I S O N E R S O F WA R who had volunteered to serve the Germans. It was the Ukrainians’ job to stand guard over the camp and the extermination process. They were also to put down any resistance from Jews being taken off the incoming rail transports, and prevent any attempts at escape. Among the Ukrainian group there were also Soviet V O L K S D E U T S C H E (ethnic Germans) who held lower command posts. The German staff had their quarters outside the camp, while the Ukrainians were housed inside. The camp also used Jewish prisoners for various local jobs and services.

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˙ EC B E L⁄ Z

Plan of the Belzec concentration camp.

First Stage In its first stage the Bel⁄z˙ec camp had three G A S C H A M B E R S . They were located in barracks measuring 26-by-40 feet (8-by-12 meters). The structure had double walls, with sand in between them for insulation. It was divided into three rooms, each 13 by 26 feet (4 by 8 meters). The floor of the gas chambers and the walls, up to a height of over 3 feet (1 meter), were covered with tin sheets. A corridor led to the three doors of the gas chambers. Each door was 5 to 6 feet (1.8 meters) high and 3.5 feet (1.1 meters) wide; rubber strips were fastened to its sides so that it sealed hermetically when it was closed. The doors were made of hard wood, to resist pressure from inside the chambers, and could be opened only from the outside. Each gas chamber had an additional opening, for the removal of the corpses. There were pipes in the chambers through which the poisonous gas was pumped in. (See also G A S C H A M B E R S /V A N S .) By the end of February 1942, the gas chambers at Bel⁄z˙ec were ready for a test. Several groups of Jews were brought in from Lubycze Królewska for this purpose and put into the chambers. In addition to the Jews brought in from the outside, the

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Jewish prisoners who had been working on the construction of the camp were also gassed in this trial run. A 250-horsepower diesel engine was installed outside the gas chambers to generate the carbon monoxide gas and pump it into the pipes. This method came to be used throughout the period of the camp’s operation. By March 17, 1942, the main installations had been constructed and tried out, and the mass extermination program was launched.

The system was based on subterfuge and deception.

The Bel⁄ z˙ec camp was relatively small. It was square in shape, with each side measuring 886 feet (270 meters), and enclosed by a barbed-wire fence. Tree branches were attached to the fence to hide the inside of the camp from passersby, and trees were planted along the perimeter. There was a watchtower in each corner and one in the center of the camp, near the gas chambers. On the north side of the square was the gate through which the trains entered the camp.

From the time the prisoners

The camp was divided into two sections. The larger one was in the northwestern part, and the smaller in the eastern part. The larger one, Camp I, held the administration buildings, the staff quarters, the railway platform, and the track leading to it (which was long enough to hold twenty freight cars). The Jews who were taken off the freight cars were first assembled in an adjacent lot in which there were two barracks. In one of them the prisoners had to take off their clothes, while the other served as a storeroom. The smaller section of the camp, called Camp II, contained the gas chambers and the anti-tank ditches. This extermination area was separated from the rest of the camp by a fence. Between the barrack in Camp I (where the Jews undressed) and the gas chambers in Camp II, there was a path known as the “tube” (Schlauch). The path was 6.5 feet (2 meters) wide and several dozen yards long, fenced in on both sides. Along this path the Jews, now naked, were led to their death.

they were told that they

boarded the train to the moment the gas chamber doors closed behind them, were on their way to a labor camp.

Mechanics of Extermination Some young, physically fit males who arrived in the camp were put to work. In the early stage of the camp, this break delayed their death by a few days at the most. Then they, too, were sent to the gas chambers, and their places as workers were taken by new arrivals. Later on, for the sake of greater efficiency, groups of men numbering from 700 to 1,000 were kept alive for a longer period and forced to work in the extermination area. They were split up into work teams of various sizes, ranging from a few dozen to several hundred. One of the teams worked on the railway platform. These workers had to clean the freight cars that had carried the Jews, take down those people who were unable to get off on their own, and remove the bodies of those who had not survived the train ride. Another team was assigned to the area where the victims had to undress and leave their clothes and other belongings behind. This team was divided into several sub-groups for specific tasks, such as collecting the discarded items or sorting them. Others removed the yellow badges (identifying the wearers as Jews) from the clothes, and searched for money or valuables hidden in the clothes and other belongings. Another job for this team was to prepare all the clothes and other items for shipment to an outside destination. After a few months had passed, a new practice was introduced in the procedure leading to extermination: the women’s hair was cut off. (It was to be used in the manufacture of felt footwear.) This task, too, was assigned to one of the teams. The prisoners who made up the work teams stayed in several barracks in Camp I. They were housed with a group of artisans— tailors, cobblers, carpenters, and so on—who worked for the camp staff. Several hundred Jewish prisoners were assigned to Camp II. Their job was to remove the corpses from the gas chambers and bury them in the burial pits. A spe-

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cial group, nicknamed “the dentists,” had the job of extracting gold teeth from the mouths of the dead. At all times, the prisoners working in the camp were treated cruelly, by both the Germans and the Ukrainians. They might also be taken in a “selection” (Selektion), which meant immediate death. Only a handful of prisoners survived for more than a few months. The murdered prisoners were replaced by other Jews chosen from the new arrivals. In the first four weeks of operation, in March and April 1942, a total of about 80,000 Jews were murdered in the Bel⁄ z˙ec camp. They came from ghettos in the Lublin district and Eastern Galicia, including 30,000 from L U B L I N and 15,000 from LVOV . The Bel⁄z˙ec extermination process, as devised by Commandant Wirth, worked in the following way. A train consisting of forty to sixty freight cars would arrive at the Bel⁄z˙ec railway station. By that time, the prisoners on board had endured a trip lasting several hours—sometimes several days—under horrible conditions. There were no water or toilet facilities, and 100 to 130 Jews were packed into each car. Many did not survive the trip. When the train came to a halt, twenty of the freight cars, with a total of 2,000 to 2,500 Jews aboard, were detached from the train. The cars were attached to a locomotive that pulled them into the camp. Once inside, the Jews were ordered out of the cars, and one of the German officers announced that they had arrived at a “transit camp.” From there, the Jews thought, they would be moved to various labor camps. They were also told that they would now be disinfected and washed, and that they had to hand over any money or valuables in their possession. The men were separated from the women and children, and both groups were ordered to undress. With the Germans and Ukrainians shouting, threatening, and beating them, the Jews were then rushed into the “showers”—that is, the gas chambers. As soon as they were locked in, the engine was started and the carbon monoxide began to flow into the gas chambers. All those inside were killed within twenty or thirty minutes. At first, the whole process, from the arrival of the cars in the camp to the removal of the corpses from the gas chambers, took three to four hours. As time went on, more efficient methods were used, and it took only 60 to 90 minutes. While the twenty freight cars that had entered the camp were being cleaned and pulled out of the camp, twenty other cars loaded with prisoners took their place inside. The system was based on subterfuge and deception. From the time the prisoners boarded the train to the moment the gas chamber doors closed behind them, they were told that they were on their way to a labor camp.

Second Stage In mid-April 1942, the camp stopped operating for a month when the transports were temporarily halted. The murder operation was resumed in May. The transports that came in now also included Jews from the ghetto and district of K R A K Ó W . The German officers had learned that three gas chambers would not be enough to kill all the victims scheduled to be brought to Bel⁄ z˙ec. A decision was therefore made to build larger gas chambers. In order for the construction work to be carried out, the transports were discontinued for a month as of mid-June. The existing gas chambers were demolished. In their place, a new building, made of brick and concrete and containing six cells measuring 13-by-16 feet (4-by5 meters), was erected. In its center was a corridor, with three doors on each side for entering the gas chambers. Each chamber had another opening on the outside wall,

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through which the corpses of the victims were later removed. The new gas chambers could process 1,000 to 1,200 victims at a time—about half the number contained in twenty freight cars. Over the entrance to the building was a sign reading “Showers and Disinfection Rooms.” The transports of prisoners began again in the second week of July. They kept arriving on a regular schedule until December. From July to October, about 130,000 Jews were brought to the camp from the Kraków district, and about 225,000 from the L V OV area. There were also transports from the Lublin and Radom districts. Some of the transports to Bel⁄z˙ec brought German, Austrian, and Czechoslovak Jews who had earlier been deported from their countries to ghettos in Poland. The Germans were also planning to bring 200,000 Romanian Jews to Bel⁄z˙ec. This plan was not carried out, however, because the Romanian government refused to surrender Jews to the Germans. The total number of murder victims in Bel⁄z˙ec was 600,000. They were virtually all Jews, with a few hundred (or at most a few thousand) G Y P S I E S (Romani). This figure was confirmed by the Main Commission for Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland and was accepted by the judicial authorities of West Germany.

V

ery few people were able to escape from Bel⁄z˙ec, and only

one survived to tell the gruesome tale. Rudolf Reder spent four months in the camp and escaped in November 1942. After the war, Reder gave written testimony on what he had witnessed there. Apart from this one source, information on Bel⁄z˙ec has been difficult to come by, compared with evidence on the other extermination camps.

Obliteration of the Camp In December 1942, the transports to Bel⁄z˙ec and the extermination operation there came to an end. By this time, most of the Jews of the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T had been killed, and the SS authorities shut down the camp. S O B I B Ó R and T R E B L I N K A , two extermination camps that had been built after Bel⁄z˙ec, continued to function, as did A U S C H W I T Z -Birkenau. Between December 1942 and spring 1943, the Germans opened the mass graves in Bel⁄z˙ec. The bodies of the murder victims were dug up and then cremated. A special structure was put up to serve as a crematorium, made out of iron rails used for railways. Bones that resisted the flames were crushed. These remains, together with the ashes, were buried in the ditches from which the corpses had been removed. When the cremation of the bodies was completed, the camp was dismantled. All remaining visible traces of the mass murder of which it had been the scene were removed. The 600 Jewish prisoners who had been kept behind to work were sent to Sobibór, to be put to death there. After the camp was taken apart, farmers in the area swarmed over the site, looking for money and gold that the Jews were rumored to have hidden there in the ground. To put an end to this, the Germans posted a Ukrainian guard, converted the grounds into a farm, and gave it to the guard. The area was plowed under and sown, and trees were planted on it. In the summer of 1944, the Bel⁄z˙ec area was liberated by the Soviet and Polish armies. It is now a national shrine.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Arad, Yitzhak. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. Bahrampour, Tara. “History That’s Painful to Recall, Impossible Not to Tell.” New York Times, May 3, 2000.

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Benoît, Marie (b. 1895)

Vichy

The region of France not occupied by Germany and governed from the spa town of Vichy.

Father Marie Benoît in 1984.

Marie Benoît was a resident monk in the Capuchin monastery in Marseilles, F R A N C E , who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. In the summer of 1942, Benoît witnessed Vichy authorities rounding up thousands of non-French Jewish refugees and handing them over to the Germans for deportation to C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S (see D E P O R TAT I O N S ). He decided to devote himself to helping Jews escape from France to either Spain or Switzerland, both of which were neutral countries during the war. Under his guidance, the Capuchin monastery was transformed into the center of a widespread rescue network, turning out thousands of false baptismal certificates for fleeing Jews. The monastery worked with border smugglers and with various Christian and Jewish organizations. With the German occupation of Vichy France in November 1942, escape routes to Switzerland and Spain became more difficult to negotiate. The nearby Italian zone of occupation then became the principal escape haven. Journeying to Nice, France, Benoît met with General Guido Lospinoso, the Italian commissioner of Jewish affairs (sent to Nice by Benito Mussolini, under German pressure to institute anti-Jewish measures), and convinced him that the rescue of the 30,000 Jews in Nice and its surroundings was the divine order of the day. The general promised Benoît that the Italian occupation authorities would not interfere. Not satisfied with this commitment, and fearing the ultimate fate of the Jews in Nice, Benoît continued on to Rome for an audience with Pope Pius XII on July 16, 1943. Benoît outlined a plan for transferring the majority of the 30,000 Jews in the Nice region to northern Italy to prevent their falling into German hands. This plan was later expanded to provide for the Jews’ transfer to former military camps in North Africa, which was then in Allied hands. The new Italian government of Marshal Pietro Badoglio (Mussolini had been deposed on July 25, 1943) was prepared to help with this giant undertaking. However, the premature publication of the Italian armistice on September 8 and the immediate German occupation of northern Italy and the Italian zone of occupation in France spoiled the plan. Benoît then focused on helping Jews in Rome and its vicinity, using the Capuchin College inside the Vatican as his base of operations. He was elected a board member of Delasem (Delegazione Assistenza Emigranti Ebrei), the central Jewish welfare organization of Italy, to help provide food, shelter, and new identities to thousands of Jewish refugees in Rome and elsewhere. He extracted letters of protection and other important documents from the Swiss, Romanian, Hungarian, and Spanish diplomats and officials. These papers enabled thousands of Jews, under assumed names, to circulate freely in Rome. When Delasem’s Jewish president, Settimo Sorani, was arrested by the Germans, Benoît was named acting president. Even as his fame spread among Jews and non-Jews, Benoît himself had to escape several attempts by the G ESTAPO to arrest him. After Rome’s liberation in June 1944, Benoît was honored by the Jewish community at an official synagogue ceremony. France awarded him various military decorations and Israel, through Yad Vashem, bestowed on him the title of “R IGHTEOUS A MONG THE N ATIONS ” in 1966. After the war, Benoît returned to his religious duties.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES “Church More Vociferous in France.” Holocaust Heroes. [Online] http://www.holocaustheroes.com/church_in_france.html (accessed on August 26, 2000)

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Rescuers. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/rescuer.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000)

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Weisberg, Richard H. Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

Bergen-Belsen Bergen-Belsen was a camp in the C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P system of Nazi G E R It was located in Lower Saxony, northern Germany, near the city of Celle. The camp was officially established in April 1943 as a detention camp (Aufenthaltslager) for holding persons who were designated for exchange with German nationals in Allied countries whom the Germans wanted to repatriate. A prisoner-of-war camp on the site, Stalag 311, was partially cleared to make room for the new camp.

MANY.

From its inception, Bergen-Belsen was under the jurisdiction of the SS E CONOM M AIN O FFICE (WVHA), which was in charge of the administration of concentration camps. Its first commandant was Adolf Haas. Five hundred Jewish prisoners from the B UCHENWALD and N ATZWEILER camps were taken to BergenBelsen to work on the construction of the camp. They were not candidates for exchange and belonged to the construction detachment (Baukommando), whose task was to build facilities for the intake of the persons who, superficially at least, were candidates for exchange. In the course of the first eighteen months of the camp’s existence, five satellite camps were set up, unconnected with one another, as follows: IC -A DMINISTRATIVE

1. A “prisoners’ camp” (Häftlingslager) for the first 500 prisoners who had been brought in for construction of the camp. This was the first satellite camp to be built at Bergen-Belsen. Conditions in the camp were among the worst possible, and the mortality rate was very high. The camp was closed on February 23, 1944, and the few surviving prisoners were transferred to S ACHSENHAUSEN . 2. The “special camp” (Sonderlager). In mid-June 1943, two transports of Jews from P O L A N D (mainly from W A R S AW , L VOV , and K R A K Ó W ), totaling 2,400 persons, were taken to this camp; these were Jews who had protection papers (promesas) in their possession, issued by various—mostly South American— countries. In late October 1943, 1,700 of these Jews were deported to A U S C H W I T Z , where they were all immediately killed. Another 350 suffered the same fate in early 1944. This left 350 detainees in the camp, of whom 266 were in possession of immigration permits to Palestine, 34 were U N I T E D S TAT E S citizens, and 50 had South American papers. These prisoners were not assigned to work teams, and no contact was permitted between them and other groups of Bergen-Belsen prisoners. 3.The “neutral camp” (Neutralenlager). This camp contained two barracks in which 350 Jewish prisoners were housed from late July 1944 to early March 1945. The prisoners were nationals of neutral countries, among them 155 Spanish, 105 Turkish, 35 Argentine, and 19 Portuguese citizens. Conditions in this camp were better than in any other part of Bergen-Belsen. The prisoners here were not put to work, enjoyed better nourishment and sanitary conditions, and were treated by the SS with less cruelty than were prisoners in the other satellite camps. 4. The “star camp” (Sternenlager). This was the largest of the five satellite camps, containing eighteen barracks. It housed Jewish prisoners who ostensibly were designated for exchange (Austauschjuden, or exchange Jews). These prisoners did not wear the usual concentration camp uniform and were per-

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Jewish survivors standing in line for rations provided by the British Army after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen in 1945.

mitted to wear their own clothes, but they had to wear a yellow badge—a Magen David, or Star of David, from which came the name “star camp.” (See B A D G E , J E W I S H .) Men and women lived in separate barracks, but members of the same family were able to meet. Most of the prisoners in the “star camp” were Jews from the N E T H E R L A N D S . In the period from January to September 1944, eight transports from the W E S T E R B O R K camp in the Netherlands arrived in Bergen-Belsen, made up of 3,670 persons who were classified as “designated for exchange” (Austauschjuden). In the first half of 1944, the “star camp” also took in small transports of Jews from various other countries. These included 200 Jews from Tunisia, Tripoli, and Benghazi who until then had been held in the Fossoli di Carpi camp in Italy; 200 Jewish women from the D R A N C Y camp in F R A N C E , whose husbands were French prisoners of war being held by the Germans; and several hundred Jews from Yugoslavia and Albania. According to a count taken on July 31, 1944, the “star camp” contained a total of 4,100 Jewish prisoners classified as Austauschjuden. 5. The “Hungarian camp” (Ungarnlarger), which was set up on July 8, 1944, and held 1,684 Jews from H U N G A RY —the transport organized by Dr. Rezsö (Rudolf) K A S Z T N E R . Here, too, the prisoners wore their own clothes but were forced to display the yellow badge. Only a few of the Jews who were brought to Bergen-Belsen as candidates for exchange were in fact set free in exchange deals. On July 10, 1944, 222 Jews with immigration certificates to Palestine landed at the Haifa port. A few weeks later, on August 21, 318 Jews from the “Hungarian camp” reached Switzerland, followed by another 1,365 in December; on January 25, 1945, 136 Jews with South American papers also reached Switzerland.

From Detention Camp to Concentration Camp Beginning in March 1944, Bergen-Belsen gradually became a “regular” concentration camp. Prisoners from other concentration camps who were classified as

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Plan of the Bergen-Belsen camp. Headquarters of camp commandant and SS camp

Store house Latrine

Prisoners’ camp Vegetable storeroom Cistern Latrines

Kitchen 1

Cistern

Prisoners’ camp II Main road

Kitchen

“Star camp”

Cistern

Kitchen 2 Latrine

Workshops

“Hungarian camp”

Latrine

Shoe repair shop

Women’s large camp

Women’s small camp

Crematorium

ill and unfit to work were transferred to it. The first such group, 1,000 sick prisoners from the D O R A - M I T T E L B AU camp, came in late March. They were put into a new section of the camp where the sanitary conditions were extremely poor. They received no blankets, no medical attention, and only minimal food rations. Nearly all of them died within a short period; on the day of the camp’s liberation in April, 1945, only 57 of the original 1,000 were still alive. More transports of prisoners “unfit for work” kept arriving from various camps, up to the end of 1944, most of them made up of Hungarian Jews. The majority were housed in the former “prisoners’ camp,” where conditions were at their worst and the mortality rate was the highest. Of the several thousand prisoners brought to this section of the camp in 1944, 820 died in the period from April to June alone. Also transferred to this section of the camp were German convicts from the Dora camp, who were appointed

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A

nne Frank and her sister Margot were among the Jews brought

to the Bergen-Belsen women’s camp after it opened in August 1944. In March 1945 both girls died of typhus, a severe bacterial disease spread by body lice, which was then uncontrollable in the camp.

“block elders” and Kapos (see K A P O ), and who treated the Jewish prisoners under their authority with great brutality, causing their situation to deteriorate sharply. The prisoners also suffered from the sadistic practices of the camp doctor, Dr. Karl Jäger, who forced them to keep running for long stretches of time. In summer 1944 some 200 prisoners were killed by phenol injections. In August 1944 a new section was added, to serve as a women’s camp, consisting of twelve barracks; 4,000 Jewish women prisoners from Hungary and Poland were brought there, but after a short stay they were sent on forced labor to the Buchenwald and Flossenbürg satellite camps. Most of the women were sent back to Bergen-Belsen, sick or exhausted by the hard labor that had been forced on them. In September and October of 1944, transports of Jewish prisoners from the P L⁄ A S Z Ó W camp, and 3,000 Jewish women prisoners from Auschwitz, arrived at Bergen-Belsen; they were housed in the “star camp” in new barracks put up for them, with no water, no beds, and no other facilities of any kind. On December 2, 1944, the camp commandant, Adolf Haas, was replaced by Josef K R A M E R . A census taken that day showed that the camp population was 15,257 persons, of whom some 8,000 were women. Kramer’s first step was to convert Bergen-Belsen officially into a concentration camp. The residues of self-administration that still existed in the “star camp” were abolished, and the internal management of the camp was put into the hands of block elders and Kapos, as was done in all the other concentration camps. A final and complete deterioration of the prisoners’ living conditions in the camp set in when tens of thousands of prisoners poured in—survivors of the D E AT H M A R C H E S of prisoners who had been evacuated from camps in the east. These included 20,000 women prisoners from the Auschwitz and Buchenwald satellite camps, some of whom had passed through the G R O S S -R O S E N camp on the death march to Bergen-Belsen. Between January and March 1945 there were more death marches, which brought thousands of male prisoners from the Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald camps to Bergen-Belsen. The camp administration did not lift a finger to house the prisoners who were streaming in. Most of them had no shelter, and were without water and food. There was now total chaos in the camps, and a typhus epidemic was at its height; in the month of March alone, 18,168 prisoners perished in the camp, and the number of deaths for the period from January to mid-April was 35,000. On April 15, 1945, Bergen-Belsen was liberated by the British army. There were 60,000 prisoners in the camp, most of them in a critical condition. Thousands of unburied bodies were strewn all over the camp grounds. The sight shocked the British soldiers. The British had not anticipated such grim conditions and were not prepared to rescue so many stricken people. In the first five days following liberation, 14,000 persons died; another 14,000 succumbed in the following weeks. After liberation, Bergen-Belsen became the site of a D I S P L A C E D P E R S O N S ’ camp. The British army medical corps helped in the physical rehabilitation of the former prisoners. The displaced persons’ camp was in existence up to 1951, and the inmates, under the leadership of Josef Rosensaft, managed to organize a lively social, cultural, and political life in the camp. Forty-eight members of the staff of Bergen-Belsen, among them sixteen women, were tried by a British military court held in Lüneburg, Germany, from September 17 to November 17, 1945. Eleven of the accused—including the camp commandant, Josef Kramer—were sentenced to death, and on December 12, 1945, they were executed.

SEE ALSO TRIALS OF THE WAR CRIMINALS.

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Remains of a crematorium oven in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Photo taken after liberation of the camp, April 15, 1945.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Herzberg, Abel Jacob. Between Two Streams: A Diary from Bergen-Belsen. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Lasker-Wallfisch, Anita. Inherit the Truth: A Memoir of Survival and the Holocaust. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000.

Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals: The Belsen Trial. H. Fertig, 1983. Lindwer, Willy. Trans. Alison Meersschaert. The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank. New York: Random House, 1991.

Memory of the Camps [videorecording]. PBS Video, 1989. Oberski, Jona. Childhood. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983. Reilly, Joanne. Belsen: The Liberation of a Concentration Camp. New York: Routledge, 1998.

BERGEN BELSEN TRIAL. SEE TRIALS OF THE WAR CRIMINALS. Berlin Berlin was the capital of Prussia and then, from 1871 to 1945, the capital of G E R M A N Y . On the eve of World War II, Berlin’s population was at its peak—4.34 million. It was the second-largest city in Europe. Jews had been living in Berlin since the end of the thirteenth century. In 1573 they were expelled, and one hundred years later, in 1671, they returned and settled in the city. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Jewish population in Berlin kept growing, despite efforts by the kings of Prussia to limit their number. By the middle of the nineteenth century there were two thousand Jews in Berlin. The

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city was the first center of Haskalah, the Jewish cultural enlightenment movement; its most renowned exponent, Moses Mendelssohn, lived there.

U

nder Germany’s Weimar Republic (1918–1933),

Berlin was the center of culture. Many Jews became famous as actors, playwrights, film producers, musicians, artists, and journalists. In the professions, Jews distinguished themselves in medicine, and held posts in the city’s universities. Jews were also prominent as entrepreneurs.

In the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century, the Jewish population of Berlin increased greatly, reaching 142,000 in 1910. This rapid rise was the result of a mass immigration of Jews from the provincial towns and from Eastern Europe. A high percentage of the Berlin Jewish population was therefore made up of Jews from the east. The main offices of most of the national Jewish organizations in Germany were in Berlin. In 1923 Berlin’s Jewish community founded the Union of Jewish Communities in Prussia. The Jewish Berliners hoped this central organization would strengthen their community’s status and make it easier for German Jews to communicate with government authorities. By the late 1920s one-seventh of all the Jewish children were attending Jewish schools. For the Jewish students attending public schools, the community provided forty-eight Hebrew schools. The Jewish welfare office coordinated the operations of the various Jewish welfare organizations. The community maintained twentyfour regional welfare and youth offices, an office for aid to the disabled, twelve orphanages, dozens of day nurseries for the infants of working mothers, and a network of soup kitchens. The community also ran its own medical facilities, including a 350-bed hospital. In the early 1930s Berlin is estimated to have had 115 Jewish houses of prayer. While they enjoyed many successes, Jews also became the targets of antisemitic attacks (see A N T I S E M I T I S M ). In 1919 a wave of riots against Eastern Jews followed the murder of two leaders of a leftist organization: Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. Luxemburg was a Jew born in P O L A N D . In November 1923, an area of Berlin that was inhabited by Jews from eastern Europe was the scene of a pogrom, or organized violence. In 1926 Joseph G O E B B E L S was appointed the Nazis’ district party leader of Berlin. Goebbels exploited the February 1930 killing of Horst Wessel, a Nazi Storm Trooper in Berlin, to launch a campaign against the city’s Jews. On the Jewish New Year of 1931, Jews on their way home from synagogue were attacked in western Berlin. On the night of January 30, 1933, the SA celebrated Adolf H I T L E R ’s appointment as Reich chancellor by staging a torchlight parade in the streets of Berlin. Jews who had been active in anti-Nazi political parties and organizations fled the city. At this point the first wave of suicides hit the Jewish community, a phenomenon that was to repeat itself time and again for as long as the community continued to exist.

Anti-Jewish Activity, 1933–1939 The Jewish leadership of Berlin worked for the Jews’ continued existence as a religious minority within the framework of Nazi policies. At the end of 1933 an agreement was reached for the establishment of the Reich Representation of German Jews. Its head office would be in Berlin. The A RYA N I Z AT I O N of Jewish-owned businesses began in 1933. Business owners were systematically forced to turn over their assets and operations to non-Jewish ownership. This was accomplished through violence, threats, and legislation. On August 1, the Berlin-Lichtenberg municipality revoked trading licenses that had been granted to Jews. Until the K R I S TA L L N AC H T (Night of Broken Glass) pogrom,

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Students and Nazis at a book-burning in Berlin.

however, it was mainly the salaried employees who bore the brunt of the Nazis’ discriminatory policy in Berlin, and not Jewish businesses. Like the rest of German Jewry, the Jews of Berlin suffered from the Nazi restrictions and persecution campaigns. On May 30, 1937, a raid against Jews took place in the streets of Berlin, for all passersby to see. Less than a year later, on March 5, 1938, the Berlin Jewish community was no longer recognized as a public body. From August 1939 on, the community was classified, in legal terms, as a “Jewish religious society.” It was administered by a five-man committee and was supervised by the G E S TA P O until February 1943, when the society was dissolved on Gestapo orders. Kristallnacht occurred on November 9 and 10, 1938. On those two nights, most of the synagogues of Berlin were burned down, and other Jewish institutions were attacked. Jewish department stores were stormed and ransacked, and the shop windows of Jewish clothing stores were shattered, giving the pogrom its name. Dozens of Jews were murdered, and several thousand were arrested and taken to C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S . In the wake of Kristallnacht, twelve hundred Jewish commercial enterprises in Berlin were put up for Aryanization. After Kristallnacht, dozens more Jewish institutions were burned or closed down, including the rabbinical seminary and the Jewish community library and museum. Jewish manuscripts, documents, and books were confiscated from the libraries of Berlin universities. In addition, religious services were permitted in only four synagogues, and only one Jewish newspaper was allowed to be published. As of December 3, 1938, Jews were no longer free to move about as they liked. They were prohibited from entering government office compounds and from using bathhouses and public swimming pools. During the war, the only place where the Jews were allowed to take walks was the Weissensee Jewish cemetery, but eventually, even that was out of bounds. December 1938 saw the evacuation of Jews from residences in the prestigious parts of the city. The official excuse was the government’s plan for the rebuilding of

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Hundreds of Jews committed suicide rather than face deportation. In order to contain the panic, the publication of obituary notices was restricted.

Berlin. The Jewish community’s housing advisory office maintained records regarding the housing of Berlin Jews. Later, when the community was being liquidated, the data accumulated by that office was used to draw up the lists of Jews to be deported to their death (see D E P O RTAT I O N ). In the post-Kristallnacht period, the Jewish community leaders concentrated most on helping Jews emigrate from the Reich, and on keeping them safe until they could leave. There had been an upswing of Zionist activities since the start of the Nazi period; Zionists supported the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The Zionist publication Jüdische Rundschau played a major part, and He-Haluts and other Zionist youth movements gained substantial strength. Zionist activists, aided by representatives from abroad, helped organize immigration to Palestine.

Jews in Berlin, 1940–1943 At the outbreak of the war in 1939, an estimated 75,500 Jews were living in Berlin. In early 1941 some 74,500 Jews were still there. By the fall, another 1,350 had emigrated. On October 23, 1941, further emigration of Jews from Germany was prohibited. By that time, Jews were required to wear a yellow badge (see B A D G E , J E W I S H ). On the Day of Atonement in 1941, while Rabbi Leo Baeck was preaching, three top officials of the Jewish community were called out of the synagogue and summoned to Gestapo headquarters. There they were told of an impending operation during which a substantial number of Jews would be evacuated from Berlin and deported, or sent out of the country. The community was ordered to immediately submit up-to-date lists of the city’s Jews, including their addresses, and to turn the Levetzow Street synagogue into a transit camp for one thousand evacuees. Later, other assembly points were established as well. Hundreds of Jews committed suicide rather than face deportation. In order to contain the panic, the publication of obituary notices was restricted. Some Jews tried to go into hiding (a number of them were helped by German organizations), and others tried to escape to neighboring countries. The Gestapo had a network of Jewish informants that succeeded in locating many Jews who had disappeared in order to avoid deportation. The first transport left Berlin on October 18, 1941, taking some 1000 Jews to the L⁄Ó D Z´ ghetto, and from there to their deaths. From that day until January 20, 1942, the day of the W A N N S E E C O N F E R E N C E , 10,000 Jews from Berlin were ⁄ ódz´. deported to their deaths. Their destinations were R I G A , M I N S K , K OV N O , and L The first transport for the T H E R E S I E N S TA D T ghetto left Berlin on June 6, 1942; the first to go straight to A U S C H W I T Z left Berlin on July 11 of that year. In May 1942, Jewish Communist underground fighters exploded a fire bomb at the anti-Soviet exhibition “The Soviet Paradise.” set up in Berlin by the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda. In retaliation, 500 Jews were seized; 250 were shot to death on the spot and the other 250 were deported to the S A C H S E N H AU S E N camp. The Haluts underground in Berlin ordered its members to go into hiding. In June, the services provided by the Jewish community were curtailed; the schools were closed down, and some of the community staff were deported to the extermination camps. Alois Brunner, Adolf E I C H M A N N ’s deputy, was not satisfied with the rate at which the deportations were being carried out. He took personal charge of the deportations in November and December of 1942. In December, when some of the Jews summoned for deportation had not reported, a corresponding number of Jews were seized in the Jewish community offices and put on the deportation train or shot to

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death on the spot. It is estimated that during 1942, the number of Jews in Berlin was reduced from 55,000 to 33,000. On January 28, 1943, the Gestapo ordered the Berlin Jewish community legally liquidated—utterly destroyed. The massive deportations of February and March 1943 had Auschwitz as their destination. The number of Jews left in Berlin in March of that year is estimated at 27,260, which by the following month had gone down to 18,300. Goebbels noted in his diary on April 11, 1943, that “Berlin’s liberation from the Jews” was one of the regime’s most important political achievements. By June, only 6,800 Jews were left in the city. On June 10, the offices of the Jewish community, as well as of all other Jewish organizations in Berlin, were closed down and the remaining employees were deported to their death. The capital of the Third Reich was declared judenrein (“cleansed of Jews”). Not all of Berlin’s Jews were killed, however. It is estimated that 4,700 Jews married to Aryans survived, plus another 1,400 Jews who had gone into hiding. In addition, 1,900 Jews returned to Berlin, having survived the extermination camps.

SEE ALSO GERMANY. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Gross, Leonard. The Last Jews in Berlin. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982. Kuehn, Heinz R. Mixed Blessings: An Almost Ordinary Life in Hitler’s Germany. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988.

The Lost Children of Berlin [videorecording]. A&E Home Video, 1997. Orbach, Larry. Soaring Underground: A Young Fugitive’s Life in Nazi Berlin. Washington DC: Compass Press, 1996.

The Wannsee Conference [videorecording]. Home Vision, 1987.

Best, Werner (1903–1989)

Nazi official Werner Best was a senior member of the SS and Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei, called Sipo), and a German government representative in occupied D E N M A R K from 1942 to 1945. Born in Darmstadt to a family of officials, Best studied law and in 1929 was appointed a judge in the Hessian Department of Justice. He entered the N A Z I PA R T Y in 1930 and the SS in 1931. In 1933, very soon after the Nazi seizure of power in Germany, he was appointed state commissioner for the Hessian police force and police president for the province. He was promoted rapidly in subsequent years, becoming legal adviser to the G E S TA P O and deputy to Reinhard H E Y D R I C H and Heinrich H I M M L E R . From 1935 to 1940 he was bureau chief in the head office of the S D (Security Service) in Berlin. From September 1939 to June 1940 Best headed Section II of the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA). Then for two years (June 1940 to August 1942) he directed the military administration attached to the High Command in occupied France. His tasks included the suppression of the French Résistance and the “de-Judaizing” of France. From November 1942 until 1945, Best served in the powerful, diplomatic role of German plenipotentiary in occupied Denmark. There is some evidence that he tried to avert the impact of the “F I NA L S O L U T I O N ” on the Danish Jews, almost all of whom escaped to Sweden.

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In 1949 Best was sentenced to death by a Danish court, but this was commuted to twelve years’ imprisonment. He was in fact released in 1951, whereupon he returned to Germany and became legal adviser to the Stinnes group of firms. A Berlin D E NA Z I F I CAT I O N court fined him 70,000 marks in 1958 as punishment for his role in the leadership of the SS. In 1969 he was arrested on charges of mass murder in Poland, based on his role as head of the Reich Security Main Office, but he was released on grounds of health in 1972. The charges were never formally withdrawn.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES “October 1943: The Rescue of the Danish Jews from Annihilation.” Royal Danish Embassy. [Online] http://www.denmarkemb.org/okt43.htm (accessed on August 26, 2000).

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Perpetrators. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/perps.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000).

BETAR. SEE YOUTH MOVEMENTS. Bial⁄ystok Bial⁄ystok is a city in northeastern PO L A N D , the seat of the district of that name. Records of Bial⁄ystok’s existence date back to the 1300s. In 1807, it was handed over to the Russians. Between the two world wars, from 1918 to 1939, it was part of independent Poland. The presence of Jews in Bial⁄ ystok is first mentioned in the mid-1600s. Bial⁄ ystok grew into a great regional center as a result of the growth of the textile industry in the 1800s. From a population of 400 at the beginning of the 1800s, the city had grown to 61,500 by 1913. Its Jewish community also flourished. Jews made up from 66 to 75 percent of the total population by 1913. In the inter-war period, the Jewish population dropped, to between 50 and 60 percent. The first Jewish factory was established in 1850; by 1912, almost 90 percent of the textile factories in the city were Jewish-owned. In World War I (1914–1918), most of the factories were destroyed. Of the new factories and stores opened between 1921 and 1939, Jews owned 75 percent. The Jewish community had an intensive educational and cultural network.

Bial⁄ystok Under Occupation Bial⁄ ystok was occupied by the Germans on September 15, 1939. Just a week later, on September 22, it was handed over by the Germans to the Soviet Union, which held it for the next twenty-one months. On June 27, 1941, Nazi Germany took Bial⁄ystok for the second time and 2,000 Jews were burned alive, shot, or tortured to death. That day, which the Jews came to call “Red Friday,” marked the beginning of the end for the Jews of Bial⁄ystok. In the first two weeks of the German occupation, Jews were attacked repeatedly, and another 4,000 were murdered in an open field near Pietraszek. They were members of the intelligentsia, Communists, and other political figures. Two days after the occupation, the military commander of the city summoned Bial⁄ ystok’s chief rabbi, Dr. Gedaliah Rosenmann, and the chairman of the Jewish Community Council, Efraim Barasz, to his office. He ordered them to form a

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J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council). This first Judenrat of Bial⁄ystok was made up of twelve members, all well-known public figures. A month later, a new Judenrat, twice the size, was established. Barasz was the acting chairman. A ghetto was set up and, on August 1, 1941, some 50,000 Bial⁄ystok Jews were confined there (including some from the Bial⁄ ystok district, outside the city itself). They were packed into a small area, a newly developed non-Jewish neighborhood. It was split into two parts: east and west, divided by the Bial⁄a River.

June 27, 1941, which the Jews came to call “Red Friday,” marked the beginning of the end for the

The Bial⁄ystok Ghetto

Jews of Bial⁄ystok.

The ghetto rapidly became a center of industry. It was a supply base for essential items required by the occupation authorities—and a constant target of German plunder and pillage. Most of the Jews worked in ghetto industries; a relatively small number worked in German establishments outside the ghetto. The ghetto had about ten factories and a large number of workshops, making a large variety of items. The Germans made up the orders for the items to be manufactured—the German army’s requirements figured prominently in these—and passed them on to the Judenrat for implementation. In addition to these “legal” manufacturing operations, the ghetto also had an underground, “illegal” industry, which turned out products for the use of the ghetto inhabitants themselves. There was an open trade in clothes, leather goods, and textile products, as well as other items, which were exchanged for food. Other kinds of transactions also took place, based for the most part on smuggling. The Judenrat had income from the tax that every shopkeeper had to pay it for goods sold. In mid-1942, though, the Gestapo ordered the Judenrat to put an end to such commercial activities in the ghetto. The German administration supplied the ghetto population with its meager rations, which were distributed through the Judenrat. The flow of supplies was uneven, except for bread, which did appear on a more or less regular basis. In order to increase the quantity of food, the Judenrat encouraged the residents to grow vegetables and fruit on plots of land it owned (the former sites of buildings that had been destroyed and cleared of their ruins). These plots were called “Judenrat gardens.” In the fall of 1941, on orders given by the German authorities, the Judenrat transferred 4,500 inhabitants of the ghetto to the town of Pruzhany, about 62 miles (100 kilometers) south of Bial⁄ ystok. These were the sick, the unskilled, and the unemployed—the poorest among the ghetto population. Some of them made their way back to Bial⁄ystok, but most were killed when the Pruzhany ghetto was liquidated by the Nazis in January 1943. From the beginning, the Judenrat had to deal with many difficult and complex tasks. In the ghetto, there were several soup kitchens, two hospitals, two clinics, three pharmacies, a first-aid organization, two schools, a law court, and other institutions. A J E W I S H G H E T TO P O L I C E force (Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst) was also set up by the Judenrat. It was staffed by 200 men.

Resistance in the Ghetto Under the German occupation, the Jewish YO U T H M OV E M E N T S , whose activities had come to an almost complete stop under the Soviets, resumed their activities. By early 1942, active “cells,” or groups, of the various movements existed in the ghetto, including Communist and Zionist groups. They hoped to create a united front against the Germans, but these groups—which were often rivals—had trouble agreeing on direction and action.

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Deportation of Jews from Bialystok.

In August 1942, however, a headquarters was established for the first united “underground” in the Bial⁄ ystok ghetto. In November of that year, Mordechai T E N E N BAU M arrived in Bial⁄ystok, on behalf of the Zionist Dror movement. Efforts to create a single organization continued until shortly before the liquidation of the ghetto, but only in July 1943 did a united underground come into being, with Tenenbaum as its commander. On Tenenbaum’s initiative, a secret archive was established, on the model of the W A R S A W ghetto’s Oneg Shabbat. The archive was in operation until April 1943. It collected testimonies and descriptions of events, as well as announcements issued by the Judenrat and reports of its meetings. These documents were saved and they provide an invaluable source of information on life in the ghetto. From February 5 to 12, 1943, an SS “operation” (Aktion) was conducted in the ghetto. Two thousand Jews were shot on the spot, and 10,000 were deported to T R E B L I N K A . Fighters of the youth movements suffered many losses, and some were also sent to Treblinka. In August 1943, Berlin issued the final order for the end of the ghetto. Odilo G L O B O C N I K was assigned the task of liquidating it. On the nights of August 15–16, the Bial⁄ystok ghetto was surrounded by three rings of armed German soldiers and SS men, assisted by Ukrainians. One SS unit entered the ghetto and put the factories under guard. The previous night, Efraim Barasz, acting head of the Judenrat, had been summoned by the Gestapo. He was told that the ghetto inhabitants were going to be moved to L U B L I N . He was warned that the move had to proceed in an orderly fashion and that no resistance would be tolerated. Barasz tried in vain to have the order reversed. The next morning, August 16, 1943, the ghetto population awoke to find an announcement from the Judenrat posted on the walls—the Jews were ordered to report for imme-

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diate evacuation. The size of the ghetto population on the eve of liquidation was around 30,000. At this moment—when tens of thousands of confused and exhausted Jews, with as many of their belongings as they could carry, were making their way to the assembly point on Jurowiecka Street—the underground rose in revolt. According to a pre-arranged plan, at 10:00 a.m. the various cells of the underground took up their assigned positions, where they were to be issued weapons and launch an attack. The plan was for the main force to attack the Germans along the Smolna Street fence, in order to break the German lines and create a gap through which the fighters would make their escape to the forest. Diversionary attacks were to be made at four other streets, along the route where the Jews were making their way to the assembly point. The fighting was planned for the eastern side of the ghetto, where the command post of the revolt, as well as their supply of arms and the fighters’ bunker were located. Leaflets were passed out urging the population to disregard the evacuation order and not to go to the assembly point. The fighting in the ghetto went on for five days, from August 16 to 20. The main battle in the first two days was fought over the Smolna Street fence. The fighters had only a few arms at their disposal, and more than 300 died each day in battle. When the revolt was at its height, a large German force entered the ghetto, supported by armored cars and tanks. Realizing that the struggle inside the ghetto was lost, a group of fighters retreated into a bunker, planning to make their way to the forest and continue the battle from there. But on August 19, Germans came upon the bunker and surrounded it. All the seventy-two fighters in it, except for one, were shot to death. The next day, the fifth day of fighting, the ghetto fighters were defeated. Mordechai Tenenbaum and Daniel Moszkowicz, who had led the uprising, were forced to retreat from the fighters’ last stronghold. There is no definite information on how they met their death, but it appears that they committed suicide.

I

n December 1942, small groups of armed men had escaped from the

ghetto. By the summer of 1943, after the uprising, 150 fighters from the Bial⁄ystok ghetto had joined the partisan units and engaged the Germans in a long series of raids. A number of young Jewish women, who had remained in Bial⁄ystok posing as “Aryans” and had acted as messengers, kept in contact with these units. In some instances, partisan units made up of Bial⁄ystok Jews received aid from the Polish and Belorussian population.

The D E P O R T A T I O N S from the ghetto began on August 18 and went on for three days. During that time, most of Bial⁄ ystok’s Jews were deported. Some were sent to Treblinka, where they were murdered. Others were deported to M A J D A N E K , where they went through an immediate “selection” (Selektion). Those who were “selected” as physically fit were taken to the Poniatowa camp, Bliz˙yn, or A U S C H W I T Z . A train with 1,200 Bial⁄ ystok children aboard was sent to T H E R E S I E N S T A D T . One month later, these children ended up in Auschwitz. In Bial⁄ ystok itself, a “small ghetto” was left, containing 2,000 Jews. Three weeks later, it was liquidated. Its occupants were sent to Majdanek, among them Efraim Barasz. They were murdered in Majdanek, as were the remnants of Bial⁄ ystok’s Jews, in the mass killing that took place in that camp on November 3, 1943 (see E R N T E F E S T ). In December 1942, small groups of armed men had escaped from the ghetto. By the summer of 1943, after the uprising, 150 fighters from the Bial⁄ystok ghetto had joined the partisan units and engaged the Germans in a long series of raids. A number of young Jewish women, who had remained in Bial⁄ystok posing as “Aryans” and had acted as messengers, kept in contact with these units. In some instances, partisan units made up of Bial⁄ystok Jews received aid from the Polish and Belorussian population. Some 200 Jews from Bial⁄ ystok survived in the German camps, and several dozen were saved by hiding on the “Aryan” side of the city. Sixty fighters who had escaped to the forests and joined up with the partisans were also saved. Bial⁄ ystok was liberated by the Soviet army in August 1944.

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Hans Biebow (center), Nazi head of the L⁄ódz´ ghetto administration.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Wisniewski, Tomasz. Jewish Bialystok and Surroundings in Eastern Poland. Ipswich, MA: Ipswich Press, 1998. Zable, Arnold. Jewels and Ashes. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1991. Zabuski, Charles S. Needle and Thread: A Tale of Survival from Bialystok to Poland. Popincourt Press, 1996.

Biebow, Hans (1902–1947)

Hans Biebow was the head of the L⁄Ó D Z´ ghetto administration. Born in Bremen, ⁄ ódz´ ghetBiebow was a businessman and a member of the N A Z I PA RT Y. When the L to was established in the spring of 1940, Biebow was put in charge of the “ghetto administration” (Ghettoverwaltung), with a staff of 250 German officials. Thanks to his personal ties with Reinhard H E Y D R I C H , chief of the SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service), and with Arthur Greiser, governor of the Warthegau—the name by which western Poland was known after it was annexed by Nazi Germany, Biebow enjoyed wide powers in administering the ghetto. By exploiting the manpower in the ghetto factories he established and by robbing the Jews of their property, Biebow extracted great profits. He also personally made sure that the ghetto was sealed and that the inhabitants would starve. Then he set up special warehouses where the personal possessions and clothing of the victims of the C H E L⁄ M N O extermination camp were stored, sorted, and sent to Germany for use by the German population. Biebow helped organize the transports of Jews to Chel⁄ mno from L ⁄ ódz´ and from the ghettos in the provincial towns of the Warthegau. These deportations began in December 1941 and continued throughout 1942. However, to maintain the flow of profits from the ghetto factories, Biebow ensured the ghetto’s continued existence until the summer of 1944 when it was decided that the ghetto would be completely liquidated. Biebow then became very active in organizing transports to

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the Chel⁄ mno and A U S C H W I T Z E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S and in the ghetto’s final destruction in August. After August 1944, Biebow remained in L ⁄ ódz´, through January 1945, to supervise the removal to Germany of possessions left behind by the ghetto inhabitants. Following the war, Biebow was tried by a Polish court in L ⁄ ódz´, sentenced to death, and executed.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Grossman, Mendel. My Secret Camera: Life in the Lodz Ghetto. San Diego: Gulliver Books, 2000.

Lodz Ghetto [videorecording]. PBS Home Video/Pacific Arts Video, 1992. Sender, Ruth Minsky. The Cage. New York: Alladin, 1997.

Bielski, Tuvia (1906–1987)

Tuvia Bielski was a Jewish partisan commander (see P A R T I S A N S ). Bielski came from a family of farmers in Novogrudok, P O L A N D . At the age of seventeen he joined the Zionist pioneering movement, whose primary goal was to see the creation of a homeland for Jews, and in 1928 he was drafted into the Polish army, where he rose to the rank of corporal. He married in 1930 and settled in the village of Subotnik, where he opened a textile store. In September 1939 the area was annexed to the S OV I E T U N I O N . With the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, Bielski went into action. When the Germans invaded the region he fled to the forest, and from there to the village where he was born. After his parents and other members of their family were slaughtered in the Novogrudok ghetto, Bielski and his brothers Zusya, Asael, and Aharon, escaped to the forests. Securing arms, they created a seventeenmember partisan core consisting mostly of members of Bielski’s family. Elected as commander, Tuvia Bielski sent emissaries to the ghettos in the vicinity, inviting the members to join his group. Hundreds of the surviving Jews in the ghettos of the Novogrudok region—men, women, and children—streamed into Bielski’s camp, and his “family” of partisan guerilla fighters grew rapidly.

Tuvia Bielski.

For Bielski, the saving of Jewish lives was a supreme objective. His band of partisans inspired terror in the Novogrudok region as it took revenge on the Belorussian police and the farmers who massacred Jews. The German authorities offered a reward of 100,000 marks for assistance in capturing him. With the creation of the band of Jewish partisans in the Naliboki Forest, Bielski won the trust of the Soviet partisan unit in the vicinity, and particularly of its commander. Bielski opposed the Soviet unit’s plan to take away his 150 fighters, leaving him with a civilian camp of refugees, and in order to frustrate this aim he made his camp a maintenance base for the Soviet fighters. His group was not a partisan band in the regular sense but a Jewish community in the forest, with a synagogue, a law court, workshops, a school, and other community structures. In the summer of 1943, the Germans initiated a massive hunt through the Naliboki Forest in order to destroy the partisan forces, and in particular Bielski’s band. The partisans retreated to the densest part of the forest, and the commander of Bielski’s area ordered the reduction of the unit to include only single people with weapons; married men, women, and children were ordered to abandon the area where

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the unit had been staying and not follow the fighters to the center of the forest. Knowing that this instruction was a death sentence for the civilians in his group, Bielski disobeyed, retreating deeper into the forest with his entire band. The fighters protected the civilians until they were able to emerge safely from the forest, evading the Germans who surrounded it. In the summer of 1944, with the liberation of the area, Bielski and his 1,230-strong partisan band, known as “Kalinin,” marched into the town of Novogrudok. Asael Bielski was killed in battle as a soldier in the Soviet army at Königsberg in 1944. After the war Bielski returned to Poland. That same year, in 1945, he immigrated to Palestine, and in 1954 he settled in the United States with his two surviving brothers.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Radin, Ruth Y. Escape to the Forest: Based on a True Story of the Holocaust. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000.

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Resisters. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/resister.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000). Tec, Nechema. Defiance: The Bielski Partisans. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

BIRKENAU. SEE AUSCHWITZ. BLOBEL KOMMANDO. SEE AKTION (OPERATION) 1005.

Blobel, Paul (1894–1951)

Paul Blobel became an SS officer in charge of special killing forces during World War II. Born into a Protestant family, Paul Blobel attended a vocational school, where he learned construction and carpentry. During World War I (1914–1918) he volunteered for the army and served in the engineering corps. After the war he resumed his studies, became an architect, and settled in Solingen. In the economic depression that hit Germany in the early 1930s Blobel lost his job and could not find any other employment. He joined the Nazi party in October 1931, and in January 1932 enlisted in the SS. In March 1933 he entered service with the Stapo (Staatspolizei) in Düsseldorf, and on June 1, 1934, he transferred to the SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service). with the rank of Untersturmführer and was appointed SD officer for the Düsseldorf area. He advanced rapidly in the SS hierarchy and became a Standartenführer on January 30, 1941.

Paul Blobel.

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At the beginning of June 1941, Blobel was summoned to Pretzsch, a town on the Elbe northeast of Leipzig, where candidates for service in the O P E R AT I O N A L S Q UA D S (Einsatzgruppen) gathering to be deployed in German-occupied territory in the S OV I E T U N I O N . Blobel was appointed commanding officer of Sonderkommando (S P E C I A L C O M M A N D O 4a of Einsatzgruppe C, which was assigned to the U K R A I N E . At the head of this unit Blobel went from Sokal to Kiev by way of Volhynia, killing Jews in towns and villages along the route. When Kiev was captured by the Germans, he entered the city with his unit and carried out the murder of Kiev’s

BLUM, ABRAHAM

Jews at B A B I YA R , on September 29 and 30, 1941. His last major activity in that area took place in K H A R KOV . His unit murdered 21,685 Jews in Drobitski Yar at the end of December 1941. On January 13, 1942, Blobel was released from his post for reasons of health— he suffered from a liver ailment that was aggravated by his excessive drinking. When he recuperated he was called to the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA) and put in charge of A K T I O N ( O P E R AT I O N ) 1005, the goal of which was to obliterate the traces of the mass murders committed by the Germans. Blobel established his headquarters in L⁄Ó D Z´ ; his direct superior was the Gestapo chief, Heinrich M Ü L L E R , in Berlin. Until the fall of 1943, Blobel cremated bodies on huge pyres to eradicate evidence of Nazi mass killings. The first experiments with this method were carried out in C H E L⁄ M N O . The permanent camps, such as A U S C H W I T Z , were later equipped with crematoria. In the fall of 1943 Blobel set up special units, the Sonderkommandos 1005, to dig up and cremate bodies from the mass graves in the German-occupied parts of the Soviet Union. The work was done by Jews and other prisoners who were killed when their work in a given place was done. Some of these prisoners, especially the Jews, succeeded in escaping, notably in Babi Yar, J A N Ó W S K A , the Ninth Fort in Kovno, P O N A R Y , and Grabowka, near B I A L⁄ Y S T O K . At the end of October 1944, when their tasks were completed, the German personnel who had served in the Sonderkommandos 1005—men of the SD and German regular police (Ordnungspolizei)—all joined Operational Squad “Iltis,” a new unit commanded by Blobel. It was posted to Carinthia, on the Austro-Yugoslav border, to take part in fighting against the Yugoslav PA RT I S A N S . Blobel was arrested after the war and was one of the principal defendants in The Einsatzgruppen Case (Trial 9) at the Nuremberg Hearings. He was sentenced to death in 1948 and hanged at the Landsberg prison in Bavaria on June 8, 1951.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Arad, Yitzhak. The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads. Washington, DC: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1989. Bachrach, Susan D. Tell Them We Remember: The Story of the Holocaust. Boston: Little, Brown, 1994. “What Were the Einsatzgruppen—FAQs About the Holocaust—Shoah.” Yad Vashem Online. [Online] http://www.yad-vashem.org.ilholocaust/faq/gapfaqs.html (accessed on August 22, 2000).

Blum, Abraham (1905–1943)

Abraham Blum (“Abrasha”) was a Bund leader and member of the J E W I S H F I G H T I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N (Z˙ ydowska Organizacja Bojowa; Z˙ OB) in W A R S A W . Blum was born in V I L N A into a middle-class family, attended a Yiddish secondary school, and graduated with a degree in construction engineering from a Belgian institute. As a young man he became active in the Bund’s youth movement. In 1929 he moved to Warsaw and became a full-time party activist. In the 1930s he was a member of the national board of the Bund youth movement, Zukunft (Future), and was active in the Bund-sponsored school network.

Bund

Jewish Socialist Party, founded in 1897 to seek equal rights for the Jewish population.

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In the early days of World War II, Blum was one of the few Bund leaders who did not leave Warsaw. He played a central role in the Bund’s clandestine operations as soon as they were launched, and helped run the party’s soup kitchens, underground press, welfare services, and political indoctrination efforts. In the spring of 1942, Blum supported the idea of forming a united fighting organization that included cooperation between the Bund and the Zionist groups. In the report on the Bund’s underground operations, Getto Walczy (The Ghetto Fights), published in 1945, Marek Edelman described Blum as “the spiritual father of our resistance … the only person [in the Bund] able to control the situation [during the mass deportation from Warsaw].” Edelman wrote: “We owe it to him that we survived that terrible period.” In October 1942 the Bund joined the Z˙ OB, and Blum was appointed the party’s representative on the coordinating committee of the Bund and the Jewish National Committee, the two bodies that formed the political leadership of the Z˙ OB. He rejected an offer to cross over to the “Aryan” side, despite the fact that his wife and children had gone into hiding there. During the W A R S AW G H E T T O U P R I S I N G in April 1943, Blum was among a group of young people that succeeded in escaping from the ghetto and reaching the Polish side by way of the city sewage system. For several days he was in hiding in the Kampinos Forest, and from there he returned to Warsaw. When his hiding place there was discovered, he tried to escape through a fourth-floor window by tying bed sheets together and climbing down, but the sheets tore; Blum fell and was injured. He was seized by the Germans and taken to the G E S TA P O , and all further trace of him was lost.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Gutman, Israel. Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. Landau, Elaine. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. New York: Macmillan, 1992.

Shoah [videorecording]. New Yorker Video, 1999. Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: An Audio-visual Program from the Exhibition at Ghetto Fighter’s House [videorecording]. Ergo Media, 1993.

Bogaard, Johannes (1891–1974)

Johannes Bogaard was a Dutch farmer in Nieuw Vennep (Haarlemmermeer), southwest of Amsterdam, who was responsible for the rescue of some three hundred Jews. Bogaard, known locally as “Uncle Hannes” (“Oom Hannes”), hid fugitive Jews on his farm, as well as on the farms of relatives and friendly neighbors, for long periods of time. Born into a strict Calvinist family of limited means, he was taught by his father to respect the Jews as the people of the Bible. After the deportation of Jews from the N E T H E R L A N D S began in July 1942, the entire Bogaard family of farmers devoted themselves to helping Jews escape the Nazi dragnet. When Jews in need of help were referred to Bogaard, he traveled to Amsterdam once or twice a week to fetch the persons threatened with deportation and persuade them to follow him and place themselves in his care. Most were hidden in the vicinity of his farm, although at times there were up to one hundred Jews on

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his family’s farm alone. He also collected money, ration cards, and identification papers from friends and acquaintances. In November 1942 the Dutch Nazi police raided the Bogaard farm, capturing three Jews. Two more raids followed in the succeeding months, in which several dozen Jews were apprehended and a policeman was killed. Johannes’s father, one of his brothers, and his own son Teunis were taken to a German concentration camp, where they perished. By the end of 1943, Johannes Bogaard, until then operating largely on his own initiative, was able to link up with underground organizations, but most of his help still came from his own family. As the danger of detection by the authorities increased, most of the Jews in his charge were moved to other locations in the countryside for safe refuge. Bogaard probably saved more Jews, almost single-handedly, than any other person in the Netherlands. He was recognized by Yad Vashem as “R I G H T E O U S A M O N G T H E N AT I O N S ” in 1963.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Moore, Bob. Victims and Survivors: The Nazi Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, 1940–1945. London and New York: Arnold, 1997.

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Rescuers. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/rescuer.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000).

Bohemia and Moravia, Protectorate of On March 15, 1939, the German armed forces occupied the Czechoslovak territories of Bohemia and Moravia; the next day, Adolf H I T L E R claimed the territories for G E R M A N Y , renaming them the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. These territories had been part of the First Czechoslovak Republic, established in 1918, following World War I, after the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. They remained part of the Second Czechoslovak Republic during its short history from late September, 1938, until the German takeover in 1939. The territory surrounding Bohemia and Moravia was known as the Sudetenland. This region had been annexed to Germany in 1938, foreshadowing the Nazi actions of 1939 in the neighboring territories. Although the new Czech government was officially headed by Czech president Emil Hacha, all other government leadership posts were filled by Reich (German) officials, and the Czech government was subordinate in every way to the political, economic, and military interests of its German “protectors.”

Jews in Bohemia and Moravia On the eve of the German occupation, there were 136 Jewish religious congregations in the regions known as Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia (which lay to the northeast and bordering on P O L A N D ). The Jewish population, defined by “race” as outlined in the N U R E M B E R G L AW S numbered 118,310. Immediately after the occupation, a wave of arrests was launched. Targeted were Czech public figures, refugees from Germany, and Czech Jews. Anti-Jewish violence took place right from the start of the occupation; synagogues were burned and Jews were attacked and rounded up in the streets on various charges. Among

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Bohemia and Moravia annexed March 15, 1939.

the instigators of vicious harassment against the Jews was an organization known as Vlajka (The Flag), a most extreme fascist group. In June 1939, Adolf E I C H M A N N arrived in Prague, the capital city, where he established the Central Office for Jewish Emigration to encourage Jews to leave the Protectorate. Before emigration was banned in October 1941, it is estimated that more than 26,600 Jews were able to leave the country-legally or illegally. Some escaped to P O L A N D , or emigrated to the U N I T E D S TAT E S or South America; 2500 managed to reach Palestine. Others moved to G R E AT B R I TA I N , D E N M A R K , or the N E T H E R L A N D S for agricultural training as part of a Zionist Y O U T H M OV E M E N T effort to prepare for life in a Jewish homeland in Palestine. As in other territories would later be occupied by the Germans, the Jews in the protectorate were required to relinquish their financial holdings and other assets such as jewelry, real estate, and business interests through the A RYA N I Z AT I O N . The total value of Jewish assets seized by the Germans in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia has been estimated at a half-billion dollars. By September 1939, the Germans were at war and conditions worsened dramatically for the Jews of the protectorate. Jobs were lost; curfews and restrictions on freedom of movement were imposed. Basic necessities available to the non-Jewish population, including food and clothing, were denied to Jews. Arrests increased, and hostages were sent to concentration camps. In October 1939, the first forced removal of large groups of Jews took place; around 3000 men were sent to “retraining centers” in the Nisko settlement in the Lublin area (see N I S K O A N D L U B L I N P L A N ). Over the next months, Jewish children were banned from schools; Jews were not allowed to use telephones or public transportation; and the burden of providing for the welfare of the Jewish community fell upon the Jews themselves.

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Deportations Under the Nazi authority of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration, the Jewish Religious Congregation (JRC) of Prague served as the Jewish community’s administrative organization. Although the group was responsible for maintaining daily life among the Jews, it also, gradually, was forced to work on behalf of the German authorities. The JRC was forced to gather Jews for F O R C E D L A B O R , oversee the seizure of Jewish assets, and assist in D E P O R TAT I O N S of Jews headed for C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S . Any refusal to cooperate was punishable by death. Early in September 1941, the JRC was ordered to take a census of the Jewish population. The 88,105 Jews identified in this census were ordered to wear the yellow sign of their Jewishness (see B A D G E , J E W I S H ). They were isolated from the rest of the population. Before long, transports of Jews from the protectorate were being sent to the concentration camp at T H E R E S I E N S TA D T ; the Nazi plan was to send the Jews there until many of them died, after which time the remainder would be sent to their deaths at camps in the east. First, five transports were sent from Prague to L⁄Ó D Z´ ; other Jews went to M I N S K and R I G A . Most were annihilated in the camps of C H E L⁄ M N O , B E L⁄ Z˙ E C , T R E B L I N K A , and M A J DA N E K . Some were massacred in K OV N O . From November 1941 to March 1945, 122 trains carrying 73,608 persons were sent from the protectorate to Theresienstadt. A majority (60,399) were sent to A U S C H W I T Z and other extermination camps between 1942 and 1944; only 3227 were alive at war’s end. In retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard H E Y D R I C H in Prague in May 1942, a special transport of 1000 Czech Jews was sent to Poland on June 10. They were ordered to dig their own graves before they were killed. The final mass transport of “full” Jews left Prague in 1943. The only Jews who remained in the protectorate were members of the Jewish council and their families, as well as Jewish partners in mixed marriages; they numbered 6,795, as of the end of December 1944. In late January and early February of the next year, 4,243 were sent to Theresienstadt. The day Czechoslovakia was liberated (May 5, 1945), the number of registered Jews in the protectorate was 2,803. Of more than 92,000 Jews living in Bohemia and Moravia before deportations began, it is estimated that more than 78,000 perished during the Holocaust.

After the Holocaust Before their deportation to the extermination camps, Jewish community leaders managed to save from destruction numerous articles of the religious and cultural heritage of the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia. The Nazis intended to display such items at a Central Museum of the Extinguished Jewish Race. Instead, it became a rich collection of Judaica at the Jewish Museum of Prague, a legacy of the 77,297 Jewish victims whose names are inscribed on the walls of the Pinkas Synagogue.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Iggers, Wilma Abeles, ed. The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: A Historical Reader. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993. Keneally, Thomas. Schindler’s List. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982.

Schindler’s List [videorecording]. MCA Universal Home Video, 1993.

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Bormann, Martin (1900–1945?)

Martin Bormann was a Nazi leader and the close aide of Adolf H I T L E R . Born in Halberstadt, Bormann interrupted his high school studies to enlist in the artillery toward the end of World War I (1914–1918), but the war ended before he reached the front. Following the war Bormann joined the Deutsche Freikorps, a paramilitary organization of volunteer fighters, and carried out acts of violence along the Latvian border after Latvia declared itself independent. Subsequently, Bormann became active in the illegal, paramilitary nationalist Frontbann organization, created by Ernst Röhm, and participated in one of its political assassinations. In 1923 he was arrested for this, and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment. In prison he became acquainted with Rudolf H Ö S S , future commandant of the A U S C H W I T Z extermination camp. After Bormann’s release in 1925, he joined the N A Z I PA R T Y and the SA (Sturmabteilung; Storm Troopers) in Thuringia, and in 1926 was appointed head of Nazi press affairs and deputy SA commander of the region. In 1928 he rose to the rank of Gauleiter—district leader—of Thuringia. Known in the Nazi party as an active fund-raiser, he was appointed treasurer at the party center in Munich.

“Image not available for copyright reasons”

With the Nazi rise to power in 1933, Bormann was elected to the Reichstag (German parliament) and became head of the office of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy in the party. From this time on Bormann remained at the center of Nazi power around Hitler and was responsible for all financial and administrative affairs. He was always in the shadow of the Führer, excelling as a planner and a behind-thescenes man, but not as a public speaker.

In 1941, Bormann’s power increased and then in 1942 he was appointed head of the party secretariat and of the party staff, with the rank of Reichsminister, (Minister of the Reich). In 1943, when he became Hitler’s secretary, Bormann also controlled Hitler’s appointments calendar, sometimes preventing important figures such as Hermann Göring, Joseph G O E B B E L S , Heinrich H I M M L E R , and Albert Speer from approaching the leader. As the war continued and became Hitler’s principal occupation, Bormann’s status grew. He was charged not only with party affairs but also with the domestic affairs of Germany. In particular, Bormann was active in operations such as the E U T H A NA S I A P R O G R A M , the war against the church, the pillage of art objects in the occupied countries of eastern Europe, and the expansion of forced-labor programs (see F O R C E D L A B O R ) throughout Europe. Above all, Bormann was the zealous executor of the persecution and extermination of the Jews. He signed the series of anti-Jewish edicts ordering the deportation of the Jews to the east (see D E P O R TA T I O N S ), the concentration of power in Jewish affairs in the hands of the SS, and the concealment of the massacre as the “transfer of the Jews to labor in the east.” Bormann was appointed commander of the People’s Army (Volkssturm), a militia group created toward the end of the war, in October 1944. His desire for greater personal power did not cease even after Hitler entered his bunker in Berlin. In the last stage of Nazi rule, Bormann tried to have Göring executed, was a witness to Hitler’s marriage to Eva Braun a day before their suicide, and observed the suicide of Goebbels and his family. After Hitler’s death, Bormann allegedly tried to conduct negotiations with the Soviets, but after becoming convinced that these were hopeless he gave the order to escape from the bunker. With that he vanished. On October 29, 1945, Bormann was

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indicted in absentia with the other Nazi leaders by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, and on October 1, 1946, he was sentenced to death in absentia . Bormann’s fate is uncertain. According to unreliable testimony, he was killed by a Soviet shell or committed suicide, and according to rumors that spread in the 1960s he escaped to South America, perhaps to Paraguay. In early 1973 a West German forensic expert determined that one of two skeletons discovered in West Berlin during excavations in 1972 was that of Bormann. Despite some continuing doubt from scholars, on the basis of this determination, Bormann was officially declared dead.

in absentia

Without the defendant being present for trial or sentencing.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES The Disappearance of Martin Bormann [videorecording]. Set Productions, 1998. Farago, Ladislas. Aftermath: Martin Bormann and the Fourth Reich. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974.

Hitler’s Henchmen [videorecording]. Windsong/La Mancha, 1991. Stevenson, William. The Bormann Brotherhood. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1973.

Bothmann, Hans (1911–1946)

Hans Bothmann was the commandant of the C H E L⁄ M N O extermination camp in central Poland. Bothmann joined the H I T L E R Y O U T H (Hitlerjugend) movement in November 1932 and the SS in June 1933. In September 1939, following the invasion of P O L A N D , he was assigned to the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei) in Poznan´. He was appointed commandant at Chel⁄mno in the spring of 1942, replacing Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Herbert Lange. Bothmann directed the mass killing operations in the camp until March 1943, when the transports of Jews to Chel⁄mno were discontinued. The next month Bothmann, together with 85 members of the camp staff, was transferred to Yugoslavia, where he formed S P E C I A L C O M M A N D O (Sonderkommando) Bothmann, which participated in SS operations against the Yugoslav PA RT I S A N S —underground anti-Nazi fighting groups. In the late spring of 1944, Bothmann and his unit were ordered back to Chel⁄mno to renew the gassing operations (see G A S C H A M B E R /V A N S , which continued through June and July. In August, Special Commando Bothmann took part in the liquidation of the L⁄Ó D Z´ ghetto. It was then assigned to A K T I O N (O P E R AT I O N ) 1005, in which the corpses of the victims at Chel⁄mno were burned to wipe out evidence of the killings that had taken place there. In January 1945 Bothmann escaped to western Germany, where he was captured by the British. On April 4, 1946, he hanged himself in prison.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Perpetrators. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/ holocaust/people/perps.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000). “What Was the First Extermination Camp?—FAQs About the Holocaust—Shoah.” Yad Vashem Online. [Online] http://www.yad-vashem.org.il/holocaust/faq/gapfaqs.html (accessed on August 22, 2000).

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SA men distributing boycott pamphlets to German pedestrians in Berlin, Germany, April 1, 1933.

Boycott, Anti-Jewish The boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933, was the first national action against the German Jews after the Nazi seizure of power on January 30 of that year. The boycott was declared by the Nazi party on March 28, 1933. In the first months after the Nazi rise to power, the actions of the SA (Sturmabteilung; Storm Troopers) had received extensive publicity and aroused public protests throughout the world. Although Jewish institutions and organizations generally took a cautious line, afraid that aggressive protests would harm Jews in Germany, the worldwide Jewish community openly objected to the Nazi platform of A N T I S E M I T I S M . In response, the 1933 economic boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany was described as an action of both reprisal and warning against world Jewry. The declaration opposed what the Nazis called Greuelpropaganda, literally “horror propaganda,” about the policies of the Third Reich, and demanded an end to an economic boycott abroad against the “New Germany.”

April 1, 1933 The anti-Jewish boycott was organized initially as a N A Z I PA RT Y operation initiated by Propaganda Minister Joseph G O E B B E L S . Julius S T R E I C H E R was designated head of the organizing committee. Despite a short period of preparation, everything was planned down to the last detail. At 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, April 1, the boycott was to begin simultaneously in every city and town, down to the smallest village. In fact, actions started in several places on the previous day or evening—a direct continuation of the harassment and confiscation that had been going on continuously in the weeks preceding the official boycott. Following the party’s instructions, guards of uniformed, sometimes armed, Nazis were placed in front of every

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store and business owned by Jews, and their clients were prevented from entering. Trucks patrolled the streets, carrying uniformed Nazis and Storm Troopers who bore signs and slogans proclaiming: “Germans! Defend yourselves! Don’t buy from Jews!” An effort was made to avoid open violence in the main streets of the large cities, but in more remote places there were many incidents, such as the shattering of store windows, the pillaging of stores, and physical assaults on Jewish businessowners. Despite the order not to harm the businesses of Jewish foreign nationals, many attacks did occur, especially on Jews of eastern European origin. Besides retail stores, the Jewish professionals were a specific target of boycott activities. Guards were placed at the doors of the offices of Jewish lawyers and doctors. In several cities, uniformed gangs of Nazis broke into law courts and forcibly expelled Jewish judges and prosecutors, both government employees and private lawyers. On the day before the boycott, the ministers of justice in Prussia and Bavaria had already sent the Jewish jurists “on vacation” and had forbidden them to enter the law courts “in order to guarantee their safety and to maintain public order.”

Pressure to Rescind the Boycott Attempts were made to annul the boycott declaration through international government and economic pressure. Jewish and non-Jewish organizations abroad published announcements rejecting the Nazi accusations of “horror propaganda” and proclaiming an economic boycott against German exports. In Germany, too, the declaration aroused concern in economic circles over possible harmful consequences, especially in light of high unemployment and economic depression there. On the afternoon of Friday, March 31, a meeting took place in Adolf H I T L E R ’s office in Berlin to discuss the possibility of canceling the boycott scheduled for the following day, on the condition that the governments of G R E AT B R I TA I N and the U N I T E D S TAT E S publish official announcements condemning the Greuelpropaganda. Possibly due to these pressures, the boycott—initially declared for an unlimited period—ended, by government decree, after just one day. In addition, the hope was expressed that those spreading Greuelpropaganda abroad had learned their lesson. There was no conflict between the intentions of the party, which declared the boycott, and those of the government, which announced its cessation. Joseph G O E B B E L S , a key supporter of the boycott, declared at a party mass meeting on the evening of March 31 that the boycott would be stopped after one day and would be renewed on April 4 if the Greuelpropaganda abroad did not cease. It is the opinion of some scholars that the Nazi leadership organized the boycott day as a “safety valve” for pressures from rank-and-file party members, particularly SA members, who demanded radical steps against the activity of the Jews in the economy, as promised in the Nazi party platform. According to this interpretation, the aim of the boycott was to allow postponement of these steps (1) until the stabilization of the Nazi regime and (2) because of Germany’s uncertain financial situation and international position. In fact, the boycott was a clear and explicit starting point for a process of harassment and oppression that was designed to undermine the basis of the economic existence of German Jewry. Acts of terror, discrimination, and forcible confiscation of property, which previously could have been interpreted as “individual” or “isolated” acts of violence, were sanctioned through the boycott by the highest party and government institutions. The boycott of April 1, 1933, led the way for legislation passed on April 7, 1933, against Jewish professionals and government employees. It also served as the official opening of the administrative and propaganda campaign against all economic activity among German Jewry.

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SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bachrach, Susan D. Tell Them We Remember: The Story of the Holocaust. Boston: Little, Brown, 1994. Barkai, Avraham. From Boycott to Annihilation: The Economic Struggle of German Jews, 1933–1943. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1989. “Images: The Nazification of Germany, 1933–39.” A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/gallery/NR1935.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000).

Buchenwald Buchenwald C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P was one of the largest on German soil, with 130 satellite camps and extension units. The camp was situated on the northern slope of Ettersberg, a mountain 5 miles (8 kilometers) north of Weimar, in Thuringia. It was established on July 16, 1937, when the first group of prisoners, consisting of 149 persons, mostly political detainees and criminals, was brought to the site. The name “Buchenwald” was given to it by Heinrich H IMMLER on July 28, 1937. Buchenwald was divided into three parts: the “large camp,” which housed prisoners with some seniority; the “small camp,” where prisoners were kept in quarantine; and the “tent camp,” set up for Polish prisoners sent there after the German invasion of P O L A N D in 1939. Besides these three parts were the administration compound, the S S barracks, and the camp factories. The commandants were SS officers Karl K O C H and Hermann Pister. Large groups of prisoners began to arrive in the camp shortly after its foundation, and by the end of 1937 there were 2,561 prisoners, most of them “politicals.” In the spring of 1938 the number of prisoners rose rapidly as a result of the operation against “asocial elements,” the victims of which were taken to Buchenwald. By July 1938 there were 7,723 prisoners in the camp. Another 2,200 from Austria were added on September 23, 1938, all of them Jews. An additional 10,000 Jews were imprisoned after K RISTALLNACHT (November 9–10, 1938), and at the end of November the camp prison population exceeded 18,000. By the end of the year, most of the Jewish prisoners were released, and the camp population had dropped to 11,000. The outbreak of war was accompanied by a wave of arrests throughout the Reich, which brought thousands of political prisoners to Buchenwald. This was followed by the influx of thousands of Poles, who were housed in the tent camp. As of 1943, following the completion of armament factories in the vicinity of the camp, the number of prisoners grew steadily: to 63,048 by the end of 1944 and to 86,232 in February 1945. In the eight years of its existence, from July 1937 to March 1945, a total of 238,980 prisoners from thirty countries passed through Buchenwald and its satellite camps; of these, 43,045 were killed or perished in some other fashion there (this figure includes Soviet prisoners of war).

Jews at Buchenwald The first transports of German Jews arrived in the spring of 1938, followed by Austrian Jews and the Kristallnacht prisoners. The Jews were treated with extraordinary cruelty, forced to work fourteen to fifteen hours a day, generally in the infamous Buchenwald quarry, and enduring abominable living conditions. The Nazis’ object at this point was to exert pressure on the Jews and their families to emigrate

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Prisoners in their civilian clothes, standing at call in Buchenwald concentration camp.

from Germany within the shortest possible time. Thus, in the winter of 1938–1939, 9,370 Jews were released after their families, as well as Jewish and international organizations, had made arrangements for their emigration. In the short while that the Kristallnacht detainees were imprisoned at Buchenwald, 600 were killed, committed suicide, or died from other causes. The number of Jewish prisoners rose again after the outbreak of the war, when Jews from Germany and the Protectorate of B O H E M I A and M O R AV I A were brought to the camp; in September 1939, there were about 2,700 Jewish prisoners at Buchenwald. On October 17, 1942, an order was issued calling for all Jewish prisoners held in the Reich to be transferred to A U S C H W I T Z . The Jews in Buchenwald, except for 204 essential workers, were sent to that concentration and extermination camp. In 1944, transports of Hungarian Jews began coming to Buchenwald from Auschwitz; after a short stay in the main camp most of them were distributed among the satel-

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Prisoners of Buchenwald.

lite camps, where they were put to work in the armament factories. Beginning on January 18, 1945, when Auschwitz and other camps in the east were being evacuated, thousands of Jewish prisoners arrived in Buchenwald. The Auschwitz evacuees included several hundred children and youths, and a special barrack, which came to be known as “Children’s Block 66,” was put up for them in the tent camp. This block housed more than six hundred children and youths, most of whom survived. The Jewish prisoners were deprived of the privileges and exemptions granted to the other inmates, and Jewish prisoners were used for M E D I CA L E X P E R I M E N T S .

Resistance at Buchenwald Resistance cells were formed in Buchenwald from the first years of its existence. In 1938, one was established by members of the German Communist party in the camp, among whom were some of that party’s most prominent figures. At first, the aim of the resistance cells was to plant their members in the central posts available to inmates, to support one another, and to have a say in developments in the camp. Up to the end of 1938 the internal administration of Buchenwald was, for the most part, in the hands of the criminal prisoners. When it was discovered that the criminals and some of the SS personnel were involved in corruption and stealing (from the Kristallnacht prisoners), the camp administration removed the criminal prisoners from most of their posts, and their influence gradually passed into the hands of the political prisoners. Some resistance cells, mainly those belonging to the Left, managed to plant some of their members in key positions held by prisoners in the internal camp administration, thereby facilitating their clandestine activities. Later, following the outbreak of the war and the influx into Buchenwald of political prisoners from the occupied countries, more resistance groups were formed, on the basis of nationality. The resistance movement in Buchenwald scored some impressive successes, primarily in the acts of sabotage it carried out in the armaments factories where Buchenwald prisoners worked. Underground members also smuggled arms and ammunition into the camp.

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Liquidation of Buchenwald On April 6, 1945, as Allied forces continued to press toward victory, the Germans began evacuating the Jewish prisoners. The following day, thousands of prisoners of various nationalities were evacuated from the main camps and the satellite camps. Of the 28,250 prisoners evacuated from the main camp, 7,000 to 8,000 either were killed or died by some other means in the course of the evacuation. It is estimated that 25,500 prisoners from the satellite camps and the main camp died during the evacuation of Buchenwald. In the final days of the camp’s existence, resistance members who held key posts in the internal administration sabotaged SS orders for evacuation by slowing down its pace. As a result the Nazis failed to complete the evacuation. By April 11, 1945, most of the SS men had fled from the camp. The underground did not wait for the approaching American forces to take control but did so themselves, together with armed teams of prisoners, in the process trapping several dozen SS men left in the camp. On that day, some 21,000 prisoners were liberated in Buchenwald, with 4,000 Jews among them, including about 1,000 children and youths. In 1947, thirty-one members of the Buchenwald camp staff were tried for their crimes by an American court. Two of the accused were sentenced to death, and four to life imprisonment.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bender, Benjamin. Glimpses: Through Holocaust and Liberation. North Atlantic Books, 1995. Hackett, David A., ed. The Buchenwald Report. Westview Press, 1995.

Memory of the Camps [videorecording]. PBS Video, 1989. Werber, Jack. Saving Children: Diary of a Buchenwald Survivor and Rescuer. Transaction, 1995. Wiesel, Elie. Night. Bantam Books, 1986.

Budapest Budapest is the capital of H U N G A RY . It is situated on both banks of the Danube River and consists of the united cities of Buda, Óbuda, and Pest. The first settlement on the site was the Roman colony of Aquincum. In 1872 the united city of Budapest was formed; it became the capital of independent Hungary in November 1918. In 1941, the population was about one million. A grave from the Roman period is evidence that there were Jews in Aquincum. From the twelfth century there was a constant Jewish presence in Buda, except for some short periods during the thirteenth century. Between the world wars, some 200,000 of Hungary’s 450,000 Jews resided in Budapest, making it one of the most important urban Jewish population centers in Europe. It was the center of Hungarian Jewish life, and Jews, in turn, made significant contributions to the cultural, political, and economic life of the city. Beginning in 1938, during the years when harsh, anti-Jewish laws were in force, the predominantly middle-class Jewish community suffered greatly, especially from unemployment. By 1940 the Jewish community of Budapest supported 17,000 of its members with $100,000 in aid. Nevertheless, although the situation of the rest of European Jewry deteriorated during the course of World War II, Budapest Jews lived in relative comfort until the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944.

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A Budapest apartment designated for Jews is marked with a Star of David, 1944.

Some five thousand refugees from G E R M A N Y , A U S T R I A , and later P O L A N D began to arrive in Budapest in the late 1930s. A number of Jewish relief organizations, including the American Jewish J O I N T D I S T R I B U T I O N C O M M I T T E E (JDC), assisted these refugees. The JDC provided $47,000 in aid during the first six months of the war. When Jews were deported (forcibly removed) from S L OVA K I A beginning in March 1942, large numbers of them began escaping to Hungary. Most of the 6,000 to 8,000 Slovak refugees eventually came to Budapest.

Under German Occupation Once the Germans invaded and occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944, the situation of Budapest Jewry deteriorated drastically. A central Jewish council was established to govern Budapest Jews and to inform the provincial Jewish councils, beyond the city, about government orders. For the Jews, life was severely restricted

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in Budapest, as it was throughout Hungary. On March 22, for example, there was an order calling for the closing of Jewish shops. This affected 18,000 Jewish stores in the city. Hundreds of Jews were rounded up and confined in the K I S TA R C S A camp. On April 12, after Allied air raids were conducted on the city, the deputy interior minister, László E N D R E , ordered the Jewish community to turn over, within twentyfour hours, 500 apartments to non-Jews who had been left homeless by the bombing. Before the day was over, the Nazi leader Adolf E I C H M A N N had raised that number to 1,500. The Jews from the provinces outside Budapest were gathered by the Nazis and deported between mid-April and July in 1944. The Jews of Budapest were not put into a ghetto during this first wave of deportations from Hungary. Instead, between June 17 and 24, the Hungarian authorities scattered the Jews around the city among 2,639 buildings, which were marked with a Star of David. Shortly thereafter, 17,500 Jews were sent from the outskirts of Budapest to A U S C H W I T Z . On July 7 the Hungarian head of government, Miklós H O RT H Y , ordered all further deportations to be stopped. For the time being, the remaining Budapest Jews were saved. During the lull in the deportations, the Jews of Budapest continued as best they could, struggling to keep alive. Many looked for ways to protect themselves from future deportations. Most often, they tried to acquire false certificates stating they were baptised. Or they applied for official government exemptions from all antiJewish laws in effect. Some groups, like the Relief and Rescue Committee and the Zionist YO U T H M OV E M E N T S , continued the rescue activities they had begun during the deportations. When Horthy announced that his government was withdrawing from its alliance with Germany on October 15, Budapest Jewry was exultant. Horthy’s regime fell immediately, however. In its place, a Nazi-backed government, dominated by the A R R OW C R O S S P A RT Y and led by Ferenc Sz´alasi was established. The Jews faced their gravest peril. During the first days of the new administration, some 600 Jews were murdered in Budapest. Soon afterward, Jews were drafted to build fortifications. On November 8, deportations were resumed. Over 70,000 Jews were taken to the Óbuda brickyards, and from there were marched out of the city on foot toward the Austrian border. The Foot March (Fussmarsch), as this deportation was known, continued through December. In the meantime, on November 13, the Arrow Cross ordered the establishment of a ghetto.

During December 1944 and January 1945, random acts of Arrow Cross Party violence increased. Between 10,000 and 20,000 Jews were shot along the banks of the Danube, their corpses making the river run red.

By December 2 most of Budapest’s unprotected Jews had been placed within the boundaries of the ghetto. It had four main entrances. The ghetto was divided into ten districts, each with a district commander. A ghetto police force was also established. Unlike other such forces under Nazi occupation, it never became involved in the process of deportation. Public kitchens and a hospital also served the ghetto residents. During December 1944 and January 1945, random acts of the Arrow Cross Party’s violence increased. Between 10,000 and 20,000 Jews were shot along the banks of the Danube, their corpses making the river run red.

Diplomatic Intervention During the Szálasi period, diplomats from neutral countries and organizations made great efforts to rescue Budapest Jewry. They included Friedrich Born (international Red Cross), Raoul W A L L E N B E R G (Sweden), Per Anger (Sweden), Carl L U T Z (Switzerland), Angelo Rotta (representing the Pope), Valdemar Langlet (Swedish Red Cross), and Asta Nilsson (Swedish Red Cross). They were joined in their efforts by members of Jewish relief organizations, members of the Zionist

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youth movement, and other non-affiliated Jews. Christian organizations and a number of convents and monasteries also aided Jews. The focus of these rescue efforts was to ensure that the Jews stayed out of the hands of the Nazis and Arrow Cross, and that they had sufficient food, shelter, and fuel. The goal was to keep help them stay alive until the expected arrival of the Soviet Union’s Red Army. The diplomats often protested to the government about the terrible treatment of the Jews. With the help of various Jewish rescuers, food, medicines, and fuel were obtained and distributed. In order to safeguard Jews from deportation, many were given protective documents in the name of neutral governments and agencies. The Swiss issued 7,800, the Swedes 4,500, the Vatican 2,500, the Portuguese 700, and the Spanish 100. About 100,000 documents were forged and distributed by the Zionist youth. Jews who were fortunate enough to receive protective documents were placed under diplomatic protection. Often they moved to embassies and in the city. The largest of these protected buildings was the “Glass House” on Vadasz Street and the building next door. These shelters were under the protection of the Swiss and housed over 3,000 Jews. Special houses were also set up for children. Between 5,000 and 6,000 Jewish children were saved from Arrow Cross rampages. In addition, the diplomatic documents were used to bring deportees back to Budapest before they reached the Hungarian border. In early November of 1944 a special international ghetto was set up for those who had protective documents and for their families. The protected status of the houses was not always honored, however, and many fell victim to Arrow Cross violence. By December 26, 1944, the army of the S OV I E T U N I O N had completely encircled Budapest. On January 18, 1945, Pest was taken, and on February 13 Buda fell to the Soviet Red Army. At that time, of the 120,000 Jews that remained, about 70,000 were in the ghetto, about 25,000 were under diplomatic protection, and another 25,000 were hidden, often with false papers. In the post-World War II period, Budapest remained the center of the diminished Hungarian Jewish community. As of the end of the 1980s, about sixty thousand of Hungary’s eighty thousand Jews resided in the capital.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Anger, Per. With Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest: Memories of the War Years in Hungary. Washington, DC: Holocaust Library, 1981.

Good Evening Mr. Wallenberg [videorecording]. Orion Home Video, 1994. Handler, Andrew, ed. Young People Speak: Surviving the Holocaust in Hungary. New York: Franklin Watts, 1993.

Budzyn´ Budzyn´ was a forced-labor and C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P in P O L A N D . It was named for a village and estate in the L U B L I N district, 3 miles (5 kilometers) northwest of the town of Kras´ nik. In the mid-1930s, Poland had established a militaryindustrial complex on the site, including an aircraft industry. G E R M A N Y took over these enterprises following its occupation of Poland in September 1939. A F O R C E D L A B O R camp was set up in Budzyn´ in the summer of 1942, and 500 Jews were taken there from the neighboring towns. In the fall, 400 prisoners of war were added from the Kon´ ska Wola camp and from the camp on Lipowa Street in

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Lublin. In May 1943, after the W A R S AW G H E T TO U P R I S I N G had been put down, 800 Jews from Warsaw were brought in. By mid-1943, the camp had a prisoner population of 3,000, including 300 women and children. The inmates worked in the military factories, in construction, and in general services. The camp commandant, an S S officer named Feiks, mistreated the prisoners and from time to time killed some of them. In the fall of 1942, some 100 prisoners—sick or old people, and children— were taken to the B E L⁄ Z˙ E C extermination camp and murdered there. In August 1943, another 200 prisoners from Budzyn´, classified as sick and unfit for work, were sent away, this time to M A J DA N E K , to be killed. Two months later, in October, Budzyn´ became a concentration camp and was attached to Majdanek. On February 8, 1944, dozens of prisoners were killed when their Ukrainian guards opened fire on them. Conditions in the camp were relatively bearable, due in part to the influence of a prisoner of war named Noah Stockman, who was the “camp elder.” In one instance, several groups of children acquired weapons by stealing them from the military factories. They then escaped to the forests, where they joined the PA R T I S A N S . As camp elder, Stockman managed to persuade the camp administration to refrain from taking harsh retaliatory measures against them. For the Jewish religious holiday of Passover in 1944, again owing to Stockman’s influence, unleavened bread was baked in the camp and a Seder ceremony was held. At the beginning of May of that year, the evacuation of the camp began, and prisoners were sent in groups to Mielec, Ostrowiec, and Wieliczka, among other places.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Browning, Christopher R. Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Ferencz, Benjamin B. Less than Slaves: Jewish Forced Labor and the Quest for Compensation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979.

Voices of the Shoah: Remembrances of the Holocaust [sound recording]. Rhino Records, 2000.

BUNA-MONOWITZ. SEE AUSCHWITZ. CATHOLIC CHURCH. SEE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. Central Office for Jewish Emigration The Central Office for Jewish Emigration (Zentralstelle Für Jüdische Auswanderung), was established by the German Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei, or Sipo) and SD (Sicherheitsdienst, Security Service) to oversee the emigration and expulsion of the Jews of A U S T R I A and of the Jews of the Protectorate of B O H E M I A A N D M O R AV I A . The V I E N NA office of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration (Zentralstelle) was established on August 26, 1938, by the Reich commissioner for Austria, Josef

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Bürckel. It was headed by Adolf E I C H M A N N , who was posted to V I E N N A for this assignment. Eichmann introduced the methods that were later to be applied to the expulsion of Europe’s Jews. To carry out his task, Eichmann concentrated all the Jews of Austria in Vienna, fixed deportation quotas (and put the burden of filling them on the Jewish community leaders), and forced the wealthier Jews to finance the costs of expelling Jews who had no means of self-support. Following a recommendation made by Reinhard H E Y D R I C H , and approved by Adolf H I T L E R , a similar establishment was set up in Germany; this office was headed by Heydrich. On January 30, Heydrich advised that the new office, to be named the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration (Reichszentrale für Jüdische Auswanderung) would be headed by Heinrich M Ü L L E R , chief of Section II of the G E S TA P O . Heydrich originally planned to establish branch offices in B E R L I N , Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Breslau, but this was not carried out. After the Nazi occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, a Zentralstelle on the model of the one in Vienna was set up in Prague, on July 26, 1939. The new office was run by Hans Günther, who had been Eichmann’s deputy in Vienna, but Eichmann was in charge of both the Vienna and the Prague offices. The new office followed the pattern worked out in Vienna, adapted to local conditions, and eventually handled the expulsion of the Protectorate Jews to T H E R E S I E N S TA D T . When P O L A N D was occupied by the Nazis, Heydrich charged Eichmann with the task of expelling the population of those parts of western Poland that were being annexed to Germany. On December 21, 1939, Heydrich appointed Eichmann “officer in charge of all Security Police affairs relating to the clearance of the eastern areas.” Eichmann was transferred to Berlin, where he was also put in charge of the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration (Reichszentrale) the offices in Vienna and Prague were put under the central office in Berlin. The staff Eichmann had recruited to implement Heydrich’s orders was incorporated into the Reichszentrale and became a regular section of the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA). Its designation at first was Section IV D 4, later changed to IV B 4; this was the section that was to trap Europe’s Jews and deport them to extermination camps.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Calic, Edouard. Reinhard Heydrich: The Chilling Story of the Man Who Masterminded the Nazi Death Camps. New York: Morrow, 1985. Moser, Jonny. “Nisko: The First Experiment in Deportation.” Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance Online. Translated by Hanna Gunther. [Online] http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/resources/books/annual2/chap01.html (accessed on August 27, 2000)

Central Union of German Citizens of Jewish Faith The Central Union of German Citizens of Jewish Faith (Centralverein Deutscher Staatsbürger Jüdischen Glaubens; CV) was an organization that aimed to promote the political and social equality of the Jews of G E R M A N Y , while at the same time fostering their German identity. It was active between 1893, when an antisemitic movement was on the rise in Germany, and 1938. Initially, the Jewish community had some reservations about the organization, but not for long. The number of members rose from 2,000 in 1894 to 72,500 in 1924. At the peak of its activity the

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CV, as it was called, was the largest organization of German Jews, and regarded itself as their representative. Until World War I (1914–1918) the organization worked mainly through legal channels and provided information in an almost apologetic manner. In the face of rising antisemitism after World War I, the CV did more work through political channels. Contacts were made with parties and organizations that supported the German republic, and opposed extreme German nationalism, especially the National Socialist ideals of the N A Z I PA RT Y . Alongside this political activity, the CV’s informational activity expanded. Its monthly journal, Im Deutschen Reich, which had been published since 1894, merged in 1922 with the long-standing Jewish journal Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums and was renamed Zeitung-CV. This was distributed to non-Jewish as well as Jewish subscribers. A political and literary biweekly, Der Morgen, served the intellectual community. In 1929, a special archive was established to collect information on Nazi activities and intentions. It became the most complete collection of its kind in Germany, and provided information to newspapers and political parties. Until September 1930 the CV worked in partnership with the Zionists, who wished to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. That alliance eventually ended due to philosophical disagreements. The CV encouraged Jews to identify themselves as Germans; it thought of Jewry as a religious and spiritual identity, and not a political one. As a result, it adopted a negative attitude toward Zionism. Some of the CV’s younger leaders, however, demanded that the CV approve of efforts under way to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Eventually most of the CV representatives at the head of the important institutions for German Jewry were pro-Palestine. As the Nazis rose to power, the CV’s “defense” activities were inadequate. The Zeitung-CV tried to protect German Jews by making declarations such as, “We shall be on our guard and firmly defend ourselves, in accordance with the constitution, against any effort to encroach on our rights.” It continually reminded President Paul von Hindenberg and the German conservatives participating in Hitler’s government of their duty to defend the rights of all citizens without regard to religion. At the same time, the CV established a legal office. The organization recognized that only through legal channels could the rights of the Jews truly be defended. The CV launched a major campaign to distribute information within its own organization and to Jewish communities. German Jews, eager for encouragement and guidance, paid attention to what they had to say. The CV leadership tried to soothe the community and encourage its attachment to the German homeland. But after the anti-Jewish boycott of April 1, 1933 (see B OY C OT T, A N T I -J E W I S H ), the CV adopted a new policy of encouraging independent Jewish organization and activity. CV members also helped sponsor the Reich Representation of German Jews, which encouraged cooperation between various Jewish organizations. The CV organized independent educational and religious activities. For a short time, it even hoped that it could persuade the the Nazi government to recognize the Jews of Germany as an independent group. These hopes were shattered by the new government’s unrelenting hostility. The CV’s change of attitude toward independent Jewish activity could be seen in the Zeitung-CV, which expanded, added sections, and began to publicize German Jewish activities. In the fall of 1935, the N U R E M B E R G L AW S were passed. Since German Jews no longer had civil rights, CV was obliged to change its name to the Central Union of

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Jews in Germany. The organization began focusing on emigration and vocational training as its chief priorities. The CV ceased to exist as an independent group after the violent, antisemitic K R I S TA L L NAC H T disturbances in November 1938. Like other Jewish bodies, the CV was incorporated into the compulsory new central organization, the Reich Association of Jews in Germany, established on July 4, 1939. Its representatives continued to occupy central positions in the leadership of German Jewry.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES “The Position of the German Jews, as Seen by Alfred Wiener, of the Leadership of the Centralverein.” Yad Vashem Online. [Online] http://www.yadvashem.org.il/holocaust/documents/16.html (accessed on August 27, 2000).

CENTRALVEREIN DEUTSCHER STAATSBÜRGER JÜDISCHEN. SEE CENTRAL UNION OF GERMAN CITIZENS OF JEWISH FAITH.

CHAMBON-SUR-LIGNON. SEE LE CHAMBON-SUR-LIGNON. Chel⁄mno Chel⁄mno (in German, Kulmhof) was an extermination camp (see E X T E R M I N A T I O N C A M P S ) located in the village of Chel⁄ mno, 47 miles (70 kilometers) west of L⁄Ó D Z´ , in German-occupied P O L A N D . Chel⁄mno was the first Nazi camp in which mass executions were carried out by means of gas. It was also the first site for mass killings within the framework of the “F I N A L S O L U T I O N ” outside the area of German occupation in the S OV I E T U N I O N . The camp was destined to serve as a center for the extermination of the Jews in the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto and the entire Warthegau region (of Poland), which had been annexed to G E R M A N Y . A total of 320,000 people were put to death in the Chel⁄mno camp. The camp was set up on two sites, 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) apart: (1) the camp in the Schloss, an old palace inside the village, which served as a reception and extermination center for the victims and as a residence for the camp staff; and (2) the Waldlager, a camp in the adjacent Rzuwowski Forest, in which mass graves and cremation ovens were later found. To administer and operate the camp, a special unit was set up, called S P E C I A L C O M M A N D O (Sonderkommando) Kulmhof. It was also known as Special Commando Lange and, later, Special Commando Bothmann. The unit was named after its first commandant, Herbert Lange and, from March 1942, Hans B OT H M A N N . Special Commando Kulmhof consisted of members of the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei; called Sipo) and the regular uniformed police (Schutzpolizei). Twenty members of Sipo held central posts in the camp. Around 120 of the regular uniformed police were divided into secondary units. Some of the regular police (the Transportkommando) operated mainly at the nearby Powiercie railway station, which is where most of the victims were brought. This group’s job was to reinforce the German guard that had accompanied the prisoners and to transport the prisoners in trucks to the Schloss camp.

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Jewish deportees from the L⁄ódz´ Ghetto on their way to Chel⁄mno are being transferred from a closed passenger train to an open car train at Kol⁄o train station, c. 1942, Kol⁄o, Poland.

Another group (the Schlosskommando) guarded the Schloss camp and participated in the killing process. A third group of regular police (the Waldkommando) operated in the forest camp. It formed two barriers to make sure that no one approached the camp or saw what was happening inside. This unit also supervised the unloading of the victims’ corpses, their burial, and, later, their cremation. Special Commando Kulmhof was directly subject to the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA) in B E R L I N . Several Nazi officials in the area were also involved with the affairs of the camp: these included the governor of the Warthegau region—the name by which western Poland was known after it was annexed by Nazi Germany—Arthur Greiser; the S S commander in the ⁄ ódz´ ghetto administration, Hans Warthegau, Wilhelm K O P P E ; and the head of the L B I E B OW . Members of the camp staff received a special increase in their wages. The prisoners were generally brought in freight trains, to the Kol⁄ o junction. From there they were transferred to another train. It ran on a narrow-gauge track that led to the Powiercie station. Sometimes the victims were taken in trucks straight from their homes to Chel⁄mno. The transports were always heavily guarded by German police; a twelve-car train of transports from the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto was accompanied by a special unit consisting of 155 German police. The victims were first assembled in the courtyard. They were reassured that they were being sent to a “work camp” and were to wash while their clothes were being disinfected. They were then taken in groups of 50—men, women, and children together—to the ground floor of the Schloss, where they were told to undress. Here their valuables were collected in baskets that would supposedly be marked with their names. The victims were then taken to the cellar, past signs reading “To the Washroom.” From there they were escorted to an enclosed ramp, made of boards, that slanted downward. At the end of the ramp stood a gas van with its doors open (see G A S C H A M B E R S /V A N S ). The moment the victims entered the ramp, the Germans forced them, with blows, to run toward the bottom and into the van. They had no choice but to enter it.

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F

rom each batch of prisoners who reached Chel⁄mno, a few were

selected to replenish a group of thirty to forty prisoners who were forced to work as gravediggers. These men had

to take the fresh corpses out of the gas vans and bury them in mass graves.

Beginning in December 1941, three gas vans were operated in the Chel⁄ mno camp. They were Renault trucks, two of medium size and one larger. They were hermetically sealed inside and had double back doors. On the outside, they looked like furniture delivery vans. The space within the van was from 13 to 15 feet (4 to 5 meters) long, 6.75 feet (2.2 meters) wide, and 6.5 feet (2 meters) high. Fifty to seventy people were crammed into each van, which was lined inside with galvanized tin. A wooden lattice was laid on the tin floor. Under it, a hole had been drilled and a metal pipe was soldered into the hole. On the outside of the truck, the other end of this pipe was connected to a flexible exhaust pipe. Carbon monoxide was pumped into the van through this pipe. After the van had been filled with people, the driver closed and locked the doors, entered the truck’s cab, and switched on the motor. Within ten minutes, the victims inside suffocated from the gas. Once they were dead, the pipe was detached from its connection with the vehicle, which was driven to the Waldlager camp. Here there were three clearings, separated by avenues of trees, in which four mass graves were located. As of the summer of 1942, there were also two crematoria, 32.5 feet (10 meters) long and 16 to 19 feet (5 to 6 meters) wide. Once the crematoria were built, bodies were burned instead of buried. Until then, though, prisoners were forced to bury bodies daily. At night, the gravediggers were taken back to the Schlosslager and held in a locked room under heavy guard. These prisoners made many attempts to escape, and two of them succeeded: Moroka Podchlebnik and Jacob Grojanowski (this may have been a pseudonym). Grojanowski, who arrived at Chel⁄ mno on January 6, 1942, escaped on January 19. At the end of that month, he managed to reach the W A R S AW ghetto. Once there, he gave very detailed information on what was happening in the camp to a group headed by Emanuel R I N G E L B L U M . Grojanowski’s report was passed on to the Polish underground, which sent it to the Polish government-in-exile. In this way, all the details about the Chel⁄mno camp were known in London by June 1942. The first transports to Chel⁄mno began on December 7, 1941. The camp began to operate on the following day. The first victims were Jews from the communities in the area. The early victims also included 5,000 G Y P S I E S (Romani) who had been imprisoned in a separate section of the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto. ⁄ ódz´ ghetto began. Between In January 1942, the D E P O R TAT I O N S from the L January 16 and 29, 10,003 Jews were taken from the ghetto and killed at Chel⁄mno. From February 22 to April 2, another 34,073 were deported to Chel⁄mno. In May, 11,680 were sent; and in September, 15,859. These numbers included Jews from G E R M A N Y , A U S T R I A , Czechoslovakia, and Luxembourg who had first been relocated to the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto. In addition, 15,000 Jews sent from the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto to forced-labor camps in the Warthegau region—the name by which western Poland was known after it was annexed by Nazi Germany—were put to death. In the course of 1942, Jews from all the other 36 places of Jewish settlement in the Warthegau region were transported to Chel⁄mno for extermination. A few hundred Poles were also sent there, as well as Soviet P R I S O N E R S O F WA R and 88 Czechoslovak children from the village of Lidice. The clothes and other possessions brought by the victims to Chel⁄ mno were shipped to warehouses in the town of Pabianice. These items were then distributed or sold to the German population of the Warthegau. In March 1943, the transports to Chel⁄ mno came to an end, since the entire Jewish population of the Warthegau, except in the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto, had been exterminated. The Nazi authorities dismantled the camp, and the Schloss was demolished.

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“This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions”

The camp staff was transferred to Yugoslavia and incorporated into the “Prinz Eugen” Division of the Waffen-SS (the armed forces of the SS), which fought the Yugoslav partisans. In April 1944, in order to facilitate the liquidation of the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto, the Nazis renewed their extermination activities at Chel⁄ mno. Hans Bothmann and other members of Special Command Kulmhof were brought back from Yugoslavia for this purpose. They were joined by new camp staff, including deputy commander Walter Piller. The camp was re-created in the former Waldlager. Two huts were built to receive the victims. There were also two new crematoria. On June 23, 1944, transports to Chel⁄mno from the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto began anew. By July 14, another 7,176 persons had been killed. To speed up the liquidation of the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto, the Nazis halted the transports to Chel⁄ mno and began to send the ghetto’s surviving residents to A U S C H W I T Z , where the pace of extermination by Z Y K L O N B gas was ten times faster. Special Commando Kulmhof was transferred to L ⁄ ódz´ to assist in the liquidation. In September 1944, the men of Special Commando Kulmhof returned to Chel⁄mno. With another unit, they oversaw the digging up and cremation of the corpses, since a decision had been made to obliterate all signs of the mass murders. The work was done by a group of fifty Jewish prisoners. On the night of January 17, 1945, as the S OV I E T U N I O N army was approaching, the Nazis abandoned Chel⁄mno. As they began executing the forty-eight Jewish prisoners remaining in the camp, the inmates resisted, and three managed to escape. The others were killed. From 1947 to 1950, trials were held in Poland of two staff members of the camp, Walter Piller and Hermann Gielow. Both were sentenced to death. Later, from 1962 to 1965, a trial of twelve of the camp’s staff was held in West Germany.

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Three of them were sentenced to thirteen years of imprisonment, and one to seven years. The others received only light punishment.

A

fter the war, a detailed description of Chel⁄mno, what happened

there, and the daily life of the Nazi staff was given to the American

authorities by Heinrich May, a former Nazi who was a forest inspector in the

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Berland-Hyatt, Felicia B. Close Calls: Memoirs of a Survivor. Washington, DC: Holocaust Library, 1991. “What Was the First Extermination Camp?—FAQs About the Holocaust—Shoah.” Yad Vashem Online. [Online] http://www.yad-vashem.org.il/holocaust/faq/gapfaqs.html (accessed on August 22, 2000)

same region.

CHILDREN. SEE FRANK, ANNE; KORCZAK, JANUSZ; RESCUE OF CHILDREN.

Choms, Wl⁄adysl⁄awa 1891–1966

Wl⁄adysl⁄awa Choms was a Polish rescuer of Jews during the Holocaust. Choms headed the L V OV branch of Zegota (the Polish Council for Aid to Jews), a Polish underground organization. Before the war, she headed the municipal welfare department in Drogobych, and was active in fighting A N T I S E M I T I S M in Lvov. When the Germans occupied Lvov in June 1941, she became very involved in charitable work on behalf of impoverished Jews. Collecting jewelry and money from wealthy Jews, she created a fund for extending aid to less fortunate Jews. Aid came in various form, including the forging of false documents for Jews living outside the ghetto boundaries and the provision of money, food, and medical care for Jews inside and outside the ghetto. Choms also rescued Jewish children and adults from the ghetto and transferred them to safe shelters in convents and with private families. About sixty Jewish children were under her personal supervision. Sought by the Germans, Choms was constantly on the move, always changing her name and address. In November 1942, while she was supervising a rescue network in Lvov, Choms was elected by the Warsaw-based Zegota to establish and head a local branch in Lvov. Choms was nicknamed the “Angel of Lvov” by her Jewish beneficiaries. She continued her charitable activities until November 1943. When her personal safety was increasingly in danger, she was sent to Warsaw by her underground superiors. After the war, Choms learned that her son, a pilot in the British Royal Air Force, had been shot down and killed in 1941. (Her officer-husband and son had fled to England to enlist in the struggle against Nazi Germany). She was recognized by Yad Vashem as “R I G H T E O U S A M O N G T H E N AT I O N S ”.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES “Photo Album.” Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance Online. [Online] http://motlc.wiesenthal.org/albums/palbum/p04/a0233p3.html (accessed on August 27, 2000). Tec, Nechama. When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

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Williams, Sara. “Remembering the Women Who Resisted the Third Reich.” Holocaust Remembrance Project. [Online] http://www.hklaw.com/holocaust/essays/1996/962. htm (accessed on August 27, 2000).

A

Christian Churches Christian-inspired anti-Judaism has historically created great hostility against the Jews. Early Christian theologians labeled the Jews Christ-killers. This and other misleading charges against the Jews became a part of Christian teachings for many centuries. They provided religious “justification” for repeated acts of persecution and violence against Jews. This religion-inspired prejudice led to the social and physical segregation of Jews in ghettos and as minorities throughout the early centuries of Christian Europe. It brought about widespread expulsions of Jews from Christian countries such as Spain and England. It also laid the groundwork for the repressive and often murderous policies of the Catholic Inquisition.

mong the few Christian protests against Adolf Hitler’s

persecution of Jews were the writings of the Protestant theologian Karl Barth and Pope Pius XI’s 1938 statement, “Antisemitism is inadmissible. We are all spiritually Semites.” Antisemitism endured, however, and Christian theology provided no adequate defense against the escalating violence and mass murders of the Holocaust.

In the 1500s, Protestantism was heavily influenced by the rabid anti-Judaism of German Reformation leader Martin Luther. This contributed to frequent persecution of Jews, and their expulsion from German territories and city-states. Some of the followers of French theologian and reformer John Calvin, however, showed more respect for the Jews, as the originators of the sacred scriptures. During the 1700s and 1800s, Western Europeans became more accommodating in their teachings and Christian attitudes toward Jews. But the old religious prejudices remained a powerful part of daily life, especially in Eastern Europe. Other forms of A N T I S E M I T I S M , based on social, economic, racial, or national ideas, began to replace the religious prejudices. The stereotypes of earlier centuries and the religious vocabulary of anti-Judaism became loaded with political and racist connotations. The antisemitic propaganda of the early twentieth century and the formation of openly anti-Jewish political parties in G E R M A N Y , F R A N C E , and A U S T R I A became visible demonstrations of these prejudices. Only a few Christian protests were voiced against the extremism of these racist views.

Roman Catholicism Catholic attitudes toward the Nazi persecution of the Jews were ambivalent throughout the rule of Adolf H I T L E R (1933–1945) in Germany. The Nazi regime signed an agreement with the Vatican—the seat of power of the Catholic church— in July 1933. This was called the Reich Concordat. This agreement limited German Catholic opposition to Hitler’s regime, even when the Nazis’ pursuit of their totalitarian goals led them to break with the Concordat and to persecute the church. Nazi ideology and racism in general were condemned in the papal encyclical “With Burning Concern” (Mit brennender Sorge) of March 1937. Still, German Catholic sympathy for the Jews was evident only in individual cases, notably for converted Catholics of Jewish origin. Opposition was expressed more toward the Nazis’ methods than toward their repressive policies. The attitudes of leading German Catholics were characterized by deep-rooted hostility to Jews, strong expressions of national loyalty, and the desire to protect their own church institutions. These attitudes led to silent submission in the face of the blatant antisemitism of the N U R E M B E R G L AW S of 1935 and the K R I S TA L L NAC H T pogrom of 1938.

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A Jewish child in hiding (fifth from left) stands among a group of Polish children dressed up for their First Communion.

In general, the Protestant church was slow to respond to the Nazi persecution of the Jews.

The Catholic church’s continued attempts to find common ground with the Nazi regime kept it from making any forcible protests against the “F I NA L S O L U T I O N ”— the Nazis’ plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe. During the war, the German Catholic bishops took no clear stand in support of the Jews. Reports of violence against Jews, and even mass murders, were disbelieved or were met with indifference. The Catholics did, however, strongly protest the Nazi E U T H A N A S I A P R O G R A M . They also complained about Nazi plans to annul marriages between Christians and Jews. These protests did provide protection for a few people in “mixed” marriages. During the war years, the Vatican’s policy under Pope Pius XII (1939–1958) was to pursue a peaceful settlement by diplomatic means. German bishops were reluctant to challenge the German government; this contributed to the Vatican’s passivity in face of the Nazi crimes. Stronger interventions were made on behalf of the victims of the war where other governments were more open to church pressure, such as in S L OVA K I A , H U N G A RY , and Romania. The Vatican condemned antisemitic laws passed in these countries, protested the deportations of Jews, and demanded that the rights of all Catholics be respected. These efforts helped to save a minority of the Jewish populations in those countries. Direct assistance by the Vatican in obtaining documents for people to emigrate to Catholic countries (in Latin America, for example) was only modestly successful. No efforts were made to work with other relief agencies, either Protestant or Jewish. In I TA LY , a Vatican protest against German deportations of Italian Jews was made only after the first roundup of Jews in Rome in October 1943. Similar interventions in Yugoslavia were limited in their success. Throughout German-occupied Europe, Catholic reactions were highly varied. In Italy, the Vatican and Catholic clergy played a significant role in helping and hiding Italian Jews. In France, long-standing antisemitism and hostility toward the influx of foreign Jews often resulted in indifference to the plight of the Jews. However, many younger French clergy regarded assistance to the Jews as part of their resistance to the Germans. The French Catholic leaders were divided in how to respond. More sympathetic attitudes came about after the first deportations of the Jews in the summer of 1942 and the occupation of southern France in November of that year. Many individual efforts were made to hide Jews, especially children, or to organize escape routes to Spain or Switzerland.

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In P O L A N D , the Nazi campaign of terror included measures designed to take advantage of the widespread Catholic dislike of Jews. The Nazis first physically separated the Jews from the general population, then killed them. They also persecuted Catholic clergy and suppressed Catholic organizations. Taken together, these measures limited any public Catholic protest. Still, a number of rescue attempts were made, especially efforts by religious orders to save children. In Slovakia, the Parliament included many members of the clergy and the country’s president, Jozef Tiso, was a priest. Harsh antisemitic measures, including deportations, were approved by the government in 1941 and 1942. Not until later in 1942, under pressure from the Vatican, did Slovak Catholics show more sympathy for the plight of the Jews. In Hungary, widespread indifference marked the stance of the Catholic population, and no public protests from the Catholic hierarchy were issued. Some individuals were helped—mainly Jewish converts to Catholicism. By contrast, in the N E T H E R L A N D S and B E L G I U M , the Catholic clergy took many steps to help Jews. The long centuries of religious antisemitism had taught Catholics contempt for the Jews. Catholics viewed the Jewish people as being outside their circle of obligation. In the face of Nazi persecution and murder, assistance to Jews was prompted more by the dictates of Christian charity than of solidarity. The events of the Holocaust did not lead at the time to any revision of Catholic teachings. But the impact of the Holocaust was to produce major changes in Catholic attitudes toward the Jews from the Second Vatican Council Declaration on the Jews (1965) onward.

T

he young theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was virtually alone

in recognizing Nazi persecution of the Jews as a central issue for Christians. He actively organized efforts to help a limited number of Jews escape into exile and was outspoken about Christianity’s responsibility to stand up against the Nazi regime. He was executed in 1944, charged with conspiring to assassinate Hitler.

Protestantism The main branch of Protestantism to support the Nazi campaign against the Jewish people was the German Christians movement. This group formed the radical wing of German Lutheranism, which supported Hitler personally and was victorious in the church elections of July 1933. However, the German Christians movement lost favor in the wider church, and it did not influence the implementation of the Nazis’ plans. In comparison to the German Christians, the rival Confessing Church rejected all Nazi efforts to control its teachings or to expel converted Jews from church office or membership. Still, leading figures of the Confessing Church, such as Martin Niemöller, exhibited the traditional Lutheran antisemitism, based on religious ideology. Most German Protestants did not challenge the right of the state to enact discriminating laws against the Jews. They also raised no objections to the initial Nazi measures taken against non-Christian Jews, though many shared the widespread public feelings of outrage against the excesses of the Kristallnacht pogrom. Their illusions about the nature of the Nazi regime, as well as their national and political loyalties, meant that protests were made solely in defense of the church’s autonomy, or on behalf of Jewish converts. During the war, these feelings were only heightened. The Confessing Church sponsored the work of Pastor Heinrich Grüber in setting up a relief organization, mainly to promote emigration of Jewish Protestants. This organization was tolerated, if not approved, by the Nazis. But in 1940, the Nazis sent Grüber to a concentration camp (see C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S , and further rescue efforts had to be made in secrecy. In Württemberg, a group of Confessing Church pastors offered sanctuary to Jews. In 1943, the bishop of Württemberg, Theophil Wurm, made a strong if belated series of protests against the mass murders of Jews and others. In particular, he urged the abandonment of plans to deport and murder those Jews who still remained in Germany as partners or children of

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Christian Germans. The sense of moral outrage against these annihilations was a factor in the creation of the ill-fated German resistance movement, led mainly by Protestants. Above all, the absence of any widespread public protest against the “ F I N A L S O L U T I O N ” indicated the success of the Nazi attempt to invalidate the Jews as an object of concern for German churches.

Vichy

The region of France not occupied by Germany and governed from the spa town of Vichy.

The Reformed, or Calvinist, Churches of France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Hungary were more sympathetic to Judaism on religious grounds. In addition, their own history of resisting persecution helped them to identify with the Jewish victims of Nazism. Leading French Protestants objected to the anti-Jewish measures of the Vichy regime of southern France, which collaborated with the Nazis. Relief efforts in C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S , such as G U R S , and escape routes to Spain and Switzerland, were organized by CIMADE (Commission Inter-Mouvements auprès des Evacués), a French Protestant youth movement. Thousands of Jewish refugees were hidden in remote Protestant villages such as L E C H A M B O N - S U R LIGNON. In Switzerland, the Geneva headquarters of the World Council of Churches became a center for relief efforts to help Jews escaping from other parts of Western Europe. The council worked closely with Jewish organizations spread the word about the extent of Nazi atrocities. The Dutch and Danish Protestant churches also assisted in rescue efforts. In Britain, strong leadership was given by the archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, and by Bishop George Bell of Chichester. Both raised public concern for the Jews’ fate and urged the government to allow more refugees to enter the country, whether Christian or not. But the government maintained wartime restrictions on refugees, and it refused to change its policy on immigration into Palestine. Relief efforts were hindered by the failure of the German Protestants to take a stronger stand, and the absence of a well-organized international Protestant agency. Only after 1938 were effective international measures taken, and these were cut short by the outbreak of war the following year. The recognition that Protestant indifference was due largely to prejudicial stereotypes became the chief motivation in the post-war Protestant reassessment of Christian relations with the Jewish people.

After the Holocaust Since the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945, Christian churches have become more sensitive to the problem of antisemitism. Modern antisemitism—that is, antisemitism used as a political and ideological tool—has been widely condemned by church assemblies and courts of justice. Since World War II ended, Nazism and political antisemitism have been readily condemned in most Western churches, along with other forms of racial prejudice. There has been no parallel development in the Eastern churches. But there is still little evidence that the churches’ officials and courts have come to terms with Christianity’s contribution to the attempted destruction of the Jews. The greatest progress has been made in local congregations and parishes. Even resolutions against “antisemitism” and “racism” are usually cast in such form as to make it clear that the unpleasant acts were something that was done by other people. Still unthreatened by any deep and insightful repentance, both theological and cultural antisemitism are alive in most of the Christian world—including circles that readily condemn what they call “racial prejudice,” “anti-Judaism,” or “anti-Semitism” (that is, political antisemitism).

SEE ALSO RACISM.

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SUGGESTED RESOURCES Cornwell, John. Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII. New York: Viking, 1999.

The Cross and the Star: Jews, Christians, and the Holocaust [videorecording]. First-Run Features, 1992. Ericksen, Robert P., ed. Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1999. Weisbrod, Robert G. The Chief Rabbi, the Pope, and the Holocaust: An Era in Vatican-Jewish Relations. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1992. Weiss, John. Ideology of Death: Why the Holocaust Happened in Germany. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1996.

CHRONICLES OF THE /LÓDZ´ GHETTO. SEE L/ÓDZ´ GHETTO, CHRONICLES OF THE.

Clauberg, Carl (1898–1957)

Carl Clauberg was the infamous SS physician remembered for his experiments in sterilizing Jewish women at the A U S C H W I T Z extermination camp during World War II. Clauberg was born at Wupperhof and served in the infantry during World War I (1914–1918). He later studied medicine at the German universities of Kiel, Hamburg, and Graz, qualifying as a doctor in 1925. He had a successful medical career and in 1937 was appointed professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the University of Königsberg. At the same time he was chief doctor at a women’s clinic in Upper Silesia, and published numerous papers in his specialty. An enthusiastic Nazi, Clauberg joined the party in 1933 and rose to the rank of Brigadeführer (brigadier general) in the SS. The Nazi sterilization program was initiated in 1941, and in 1942 Heinrich H I M M L E R entrusted Clauberg with its experimental implementation at Auschwitz. He had the cooperation of internee doctors there (including the Polish camp doctor, Wl⁄adysl⁄aw Dering, whose experiments were later the subject of a famous libel case in England in 1964). The experiments at Auschwitz lasted until 1944. They involved sterilization by means of injections into the womb, which caused unimaginable suffering to the victims, who were Jewish and Gypsy women. Clauberg conducted similar experiments in the women’s concentration camp of R AV E N S B R Ü C K in 1945. Arrested by the Russians at the end of the war, Clauberg was tried in 1948 for his role in the “mass extermination of Soviet citizens.” He was sentenced to twentyfive years’ imprisonment, but was released in 1955 under the German-Soviet prisoner repatriation agreement. Clauberg showed no regrets for his experiments, and even boasted of his “scientific achievements.” At the initiative of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, an action to prosecute Clauberg was launched in the West German courts. The council accused Clauberg of “having caused severe bodily harm” to Jewish women. The Kiel police put him under arrest, but he died in a hospital shortly before the date of the trial.

SEE ALSO MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS, EXTERMINATION CAMPS, CONCENTRATION CAMPS.

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SUGGESTED RESOURCES Aly, Gotz. Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

In the Shadow of the Reich: Nazi Medicine [videorecording]. First-Run Features, 1997.

Cohn, Marianne (1924–1944)

A French Jewish underground activist, Marianne Cohn was born in Mannheim, G E R M A N Y . Cohn was a member of the Eclaireurs Israélites De France (French Jewish Scouts) and in 1942 joined the Mouvement de la Jeunesse Sioniste (Zionist Youth Movement). She belonged to the underground network sponsored by both organizations, which smuggled into Switzerland Jewish children whose parents had been expelled from France. On June 1, 1944, Cohn was seized by a German patrol, together with a group of twenty-eight children, and all were imprisoned in the town of Annemasse. The underground succeeded in establishing contact with Cohn and devised a plan to get her out of jail, but she was not prepared to escape, fearing that the children would suffer if she were to do so. On July 8, two members of the Nazisponsored French militia broke into the prison, took Cohn out, and killed her with an ax. The children were all saved.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Marianne Cohn.

Berson, Robin Kadison. Young Heroes in World History. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999.

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Resisters. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/resister.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000). A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Rescuers. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/rescuer.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000).

COMMISSAR ORDER. SEE KOMMISSARBEFEHL. Concentration Camps Concentration camps are camps in which persons are imprisoned without regard to the accepted rules of arrest and detention. Although the term “concentration camp” is sometimes used as a generic term for Nazi camps, not all the camps eventually established by the Nazis were designated as concentration camps. The extensive Nazi camp system also included labor camps, transit camps, prisoner-ofwar (POW) camps, and E X T E R M I NAT I O N CA M P S . This entry focuses on the network of concentration camps. Political adversaries and persons considered socially or racially undesirable were imprisoned in such camps. F O R C E D L A B O R performed by the prisoners became a central element of the imprisonment. During World War II the concentration camps also played a part in the Nazi fight against the resistance movements,

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and some camps (such as A U S C H W I T Z and M A J DA N E K ) were centers for the systematic extermination of Jews, G Y P S I E S , Soviet P R I S O N E R S O F WA R (POWs) and other groups in the Reich and the occupied territories.

Main camps in the Third Reich and the Nazi occupied territories.

The history of the concentration camps can be divided into three periods: (1) 1933 to 1936; (2) 1936 to 1942; and (3) 1942 to 1944–1945.

From 1933 to 1936 In the earliest period, the concentration camps were used primarily to incarcerate internal political adversaries. Special places of detention for political prisoners

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Concentration camps were an essential part of the Nazi regime of oppression.

were created following the raids that were carried out after the Reichstag (German Parliament building) fire of February 28, 1933, which marked the start of the Nazi dictatorship. Because the Nazi party blamed members of the Communist party for setting the fire that destroyed the Reichstag, the first prisoners to be housed in concentration camps were Communist Party members. They were joined by members of the trade unions and the Social Democratic party after these were outlawed on May 2 and June 21, 1933, respectively. At the end of July, when the first wave of arrests came to an end, a total of 27,000 persons were being held in “protective custody.” To cope with this large number of political detainees, Germany’s police and judicial authorities, as well as the S A (Sturmabteilung; Storm Troopers) and S S , established special detention centers (their precise number cannot be determined). In Prussia alone there were twenty separate detention camps for “preventive protective custody” prisoners. In the spring of 1934 these camps were put under the authority of Heinrich H I M M L E R , who was also in charge of the political police in the various states of the Reich. This meant that the regular police, the courts, and the SA no longer exercised any control over the concentration camp prisoners, who were now under the control of the SS. On July 4, 1934, Himmler appointed Theodor E I C K E , the commandant of the D AC H AU concentration camp, as Inspector of Concentration Camps and SS Guard Units. These guard units became known as SS-D E AT H ’ S -H E A D U N I T S , so-named for the death’s-head symbol they wore on the collar of their uniforms. Eicke determined the prisoners’ daily routine, the methods of punishment, and the duties of the SS guards. He stressed what he considered to be the proper relationship between the guards and the prisoners, calling the latter “the enemy of the people.” Eicke’s system was accepted, with variations, in all the concentration camps, and in the course of time many of his subordinates occupied key positions in the camps. Most of the small “protective custody” camps established in 1933 were now abolished. In September 1935 the official concentration camps were Dachau, Lichtenburg (on the Elbe, in the Prussian province of Saxony), Sachsenburg (in the state of Saxony), Esterwegen (in eastern Friesland, Prussia), and Oranienburg and Columbia Haus (near B E R L I N ). A total of about 6,000 prisoners were held in these camps. Beginning in the autumn of 1933, persons other than “political” prisoners were also put into concentration camps. They included tramps and beggars, who in the Nazi jargon were dubbed “asocial elements,” as well as persons with several previous criminal convictions, the habitual criminals. This reduced the percentage of political prisoners in the camp system to about 75 percent by 1936. At a certain stage, a discussion was held in the Nazi hierarchy on whether the camp system should be continued, in light of the consolidation of the regime. Hitler decided the argument by supporting those who favored the continuation of the camps. The number of detainees fell in 1935 and 1936, but later grew again as new categories of prisoners, such as the asocials, were imprisoned.

From 1936 to 1942 The war preparations and the war itself led to an expansion of the concentration camp system. Except for Dachau, the camps established in the initial period were dissolved or put to other uses, and new and larger concentration camps were set up in their place: S A C H S E N H AU S E N (1936), B U C H E N WA L D (1937), M AU T H AU S E N and Flossenbürg (1938), R AV E N S B R Ü C K , the concentration camp for women (1939), Auschwitz (1940), and N AT Z W E I L E R (1941). In June 1940 N E U E N G A M M E , which until then had been a Sachsenhausen satellite camp, became an independent camp, and in May of 1941 G R O S S -R O S E N became independent as

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Entrance to Auschwitz I featured the phrase, “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work makes one free).

well. In February 1942, S T U T T H O F , which had been under the authority of the police and SS chief in Danzig, became a regular concentration camp. At the beginning of the second period, the Dachau camp’s capacity was enlarged to accommodate six thousand prisoners. In addition to these detention installations, which were officially designated as concentration camps, there were also hard-labor and “reeducation” camps, run by the Security Police (also called Sipo), the Ministry of Justice, and even private enterprises. Late in 1941 C H E L⁄ M N O began operating as an extermination camp, and in the spring of 1942 the extermination camps T R E B L I N K A , S O B I B Ó R , and B E L⁄ Z˙ E C were established as part of A K T I O N (O P E R AT I O N ) R E I N H A R D . AuschwitzBirkenau (Auschwitz II) and M A J DA N E K , which were existing concentration camps, had extermination centers established within them as well. These sites became the main places in which the Jews of Europe were killed. Chel⁄mno and the three Aktion (Operation) Reinhard camps were not part of the concentration camp system, whereas Auschwitz and Majdanek were both concentration camps and extermination centers. All the prisoners who were not killed immediately upon arrival in these two camps were considered concentration camp inmates.

Once liberated, many former prisoners were unable to free themselves from the anguish of their experience in the concentration camps.

In June 1936 Himmler assumed the newly created position of Reich Leader of the SS and Chief of the German Police. Three years later, in October 1939, the criminal police and the political police (the G E S TA P O , which was responsible—among other things—for making arrests and transferring concentration camp prisoners) were both incorporated into the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA). In his capacity as chief of the German police, Himmler was able to increase the number of nonpolitical prisoners incarcerated in concentration camps, especially habitual criminals, tramps, beggars, and Gypsies, and also homosexuals (see H OMOSEXUALITY IN THE T HIRD R EICH ) and convicted prostitutes. In taking charge of nonpolitical prisoners in such large numbers, the SS chiefs also had economic considerations in mind. The implementation of the Four-Year Plan, the objective of which was to prepare the army and the economy for war, led to a labor shortage especially in the area of construction. For this reason the SS sought to exploit the concentration camp prisoners for military and civil construc-

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tion projects, and thereby to reinforce its own standing. Camps that were established in 1937 or later had a quarry or brickyard near them, where the prisoners were put to work. The SS also set up its own factories for this purpose. Beginning in the summer of 1938, and reaching a peak in the wake of the K R I S TA L L N A C H T pogrom, Jews were interned in the camps solely because they were Jews. The rise in the number of nonpolitical prisoners, and the intensified level of persecution during the period of war preparations led to a constant increase in the number of concentration camp prisoners during the second period. When the war broke out there were about 25,000 prisoners in the camps; thereafter, there was a steep rise in their number, far exceeding the camps’ capacity. At the end of 1941 the concentration camps contained some 60,000 prisoners. In the wake of the Anschluss in March 1938—the annexation of A U S T R I A to G E R M A N Y —prisoners from Austria, and later from the annexed areas of Czechoslovakia, were sent to the concentration camps. Prisoners from all the occupied countries followed, although the great majority were from P O L A N D . These were primarily political and Jewish prisoners. However, the raids against actual or presumed resistance fighters (especially in Poland) were so sweeping that all segments of the population were affected. With the expansion of the war into the S OV I E T U N I O N , the concentration camp population was swelled by Russian POWs. Most of them were soon killed in the K O M M I S S A R B E F E H L (Commissar Order) extermination operations, for which special arrangements were made for carrying out prisoner executions. By the spring of 1942, in Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen alone, about 21,500 Soviet POWs had been shot to death. In the meantime a small gas chamber had been built in Auschwitz I (the main Auschwitz camp), and experiments with Z Y K L O N B gas were carried out in it. Some 600 Soviet POWs and 250 other prisoners were killed during the course of these experiments. All told, by May 1942 approximately 15,000 additional Soviet POWs had died in Auschwitz and in the SS POW camp at L U B L I N ; some were shot to death, while others perished from the intolerable conditions.

From 1942 to 1944–1945 In the third period, concentration camp prisoners were systematically drafted for work in the armaments industry. The Germans suffered great losses in the fighting, especially on the eastern front, which forced the Nazi leadership to draft growing numbers of Germans from the labor force into the army. Their places were mostly taken by F O R C E D L A B O R from the occupied territories and, to a lesser degree, concentration camp prisoners. Previously, forced labor in the concentration camps had been a method of punishment and persecution intended to humiliate the prisoners and lead to their deaths through overwork. Now, concentration camp prisoners were to be put at the disposal of state-owned and private companies that needed manpower for arms production. The newly created SS E C O N O M I C -A D M I N I S T R AT I V E M A I N O F F I C E (WVHA) established a large number of satellite camps in the vicinity of industrial plants, which were put under the control of the existing main camps. The reorganization of the armaments industry by Minister of Armaments Albert Speer also led to a corresponding change in the SS structure. Its two central departments, Budget and Construction and Administration and Economy were merged into the WVHA, with Oswald P O H L in charge. The oversight of concentration camps was also taken over by this office as its Section D, headed by Richard Glücks. Section D was largely independent of the WVHA.

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CONCENTRATION CAMP EXISTENCE From having an identification number tattooed on one's arm upon arrival, as was the practice in Auschwitz, to sleeping in barracks filled to overflowing, which was common in many camps, life in a Nazi concentration camp was designed to be difficult and demoralizing. Jews and other prisoners were required to stand at roll calls that could last for hours. Survivors of most camps recall long days at hard labor, but in some locations and at some times, there was no work to do. Prisoners were required to stand all day long, doing nothing, unable to sit, walk, or return to their barracks. In A Time to Speak, Auschwitz survivor Helen Lewis tells how she and other prisoners “evolved a system of squatting down when and where we could, while some of us acted as lookouts.” Sometimes camp guards invented meaningless work for inmates to do, such as transferring rocks from one place to another by hand, and then moving them all back again. The smallest infraction of the rules could earn a beating—or death. Concentration camp inmates lived under the constant shadow of unpredictability.

In the third period the SS did not establish any additional central concentration camps. However a number of existing camps that had not yet been under the control of the concentration camp inspectorate were taken over and run as such. These included the small Niederhagen camp, whose inmates were drafted to enlarge the Wewelsburg assembly site for the SS elite; the Vught and P L⁄ A S Z Ö W camps; the Kaiserwald camp; Majdanek, which had previously been the SS POW camp in Lublin; and the B E R G E N -B E L S E N camp for Jewish internees. In October 1944 Dora, which had been a Buchenwald satellite camp, became an independent camp, D O R A M I T T E L B AU (Nordhausen). The prisoners in Dora were employed in the production of V-2 rockets. In the meantime, the Auschwitz and Majdanek camps were integrated, in 1942, into the systematic extermination of Jews. The SS oversaw the installation of gas chambers there, and most of the Jews deported to these camps were killed on arrival, especially children, women, the old, and the weak. Entire communities of Jews were brought to Auschwitz: from the N E T H E R L A N D S in 1942 and 1943, from S L OVA K I A between 1942 and 1944, from Greece in 1943, and from Hungary and various parts of Poland, Germany, F R A N C E , B E L G I U M , and other countries in 1944. In Auschwitz the Jews were sent to the new section, Birkenau, which originally had been planned to house Soviet POWs; a large area there was used for female prisoners. Only a few of the other concentration camps had gas chambers installed in them. These were used for a limited time only and on a much smaller scale than in Auschwitz and Majdanek. By far, most of the prisoners in the third period were Jews, Poles, and Soviets. A large proportion of the Soviets had first been drafted as forced foreign laborers (see F O R C E D L A B O R ). Their presence in the concentration camps was a punishment for violating the exceptionally harsh rules that were applied to the workers from the east. Next, by number, were the French, the Italians (after Italy’s surrender), and the Yugoslavs. In the fall of 1944, as the war fronts were drawing near, the camps were gradually closed and the prisoners sent on long D E AT H M A R C H E S to other camps still in existence.

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Conditions

Living conditions in the concentration camps varied greatly among the camps and from one period to another.

In the first period, prisoners were rarely incarcerated longer than a year, and the housing, food, and working conditions were tolerable, compared to the later years. The deaths that occurred were usually the result of deliberate maltreatment, or of SS and SA men shooting to death prisoners against whom they had a personal grudge. In the second period the mortality rate rose as a result of maltreatment, the kinds of work the prisoners were assigned, the more primitive working conditions that prevailed, and the physical exertion called for in the quarries, as well as undernourishment and overcrowding in the barracks. Most of the victims were Poles, Russians, and Jews, but the so-called Spanish fighters—men who had fought on the republican side in the Spanish Civil War—also had only a very slight chance of surviving between 1940 and 1942, especially in Mauthausen. Up to the outbreak of the war in September 1939 the best conditions (relatively speaking) were found in Dachau; the worst in Mauthausen. Between October 27, 1939, and February 18, 1940, Dachau was cleared of prisoners and served as a training camp for the Waffen-SS—the military branch of the SS. After that it took in chiefly prisoners from other camps who were in poor physical condition, and as a result the mortality rate rose rapidly there too. In 1943 living conditions for most concentration camp prisoners improved slightly, despite the large new intake, and the differences among the camps were less pronounced. The demands of the armaments industry and the wish to exploit the labor potential of the prisoners more rationally forced the SS, and the companies involved, to improve their treatment of the prisoners and provide them with adequate nourishment. Such improvement, however, applied only to places where the prisoners’ work required technical knowledge and skill; in the construction projects—of which there were many—the general decrease in the mortality rate was not felt. In Auschwitz and Majdanek, the decrease did not apply to every sector: at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which contained the Jewish prisoners, the mortality rate remained at an extremely high level, whereas in the Auschwitz camp as a whole it decreased from 15 percent in March 1943 to 3 percent in August. As the camps were liquidated in anticipation of a Nazi defeat, however, the rate rose again, to unbelievable heights. Historians can only estimate the total number of people who perished in the concentration camps, not including those sent directly to extermination centers. Existing documentation accounts for more than 450,000, but the real number may be assumed to have been from 700,000 to 800,000. Eugen Kogon’s estimate (in The Theory and Practice of Hell) of 1.2 million seems too high. On the other hand, his figure for the total number of concentration camp prisoners, 1.6 million, appears reliable. As far as is known, the highest total number of prisoners held at any given time was 714,211, the figure registered by the SS in January 1945.

Camp Routine The prisoners had little choice in their daily life. The SS dictated the day’s course of events, down to the smallest detail. Violations of orders in the camp were severely punished—by flogging, solitary confinement, withholding food rations, and so forth. Some prisoners were assigned positions supervising their fellow inmates and working in the camp administration, as room, block, and camp “elders” and as “kapos” (see K A P O ), who were in charge of work crews. Prisoners also worked in the camp kitchen, in the hospital, and in the office. The way these prisoners carried out their jobs was of great importance for the prison population as a whole.

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Some were just as brutal as the SS and exploited their positions for their own benefit only. Others made efforts to mitigate the SS terror regime and to protect prisoners who were in danger. The prisoners were categorized by the SS according to their national origin and the grounds for which they had been put into the concentration camps. Each category had its own conditions of imprisonment, which in turn affected the chances of survival. The different categories were identified by the color of the badges worn by the prisoners on their clothes. The prisoners—especially the “politicals” (the “reds”) and the criminals (the “greens”)—competed with one another for the assignments that carried influence. As a rule, German prisoners held the top posts; in Auschwitz, the Polish prisoners also played an important role. Soviet prisoners and Jews (irrespective of their nationality) had very little chance of obtaining any appointment. The criteria applied by the SS to the different categories were determined by its racist ideology.

Composition of Prisoners In the first period the composition of the prison population was relatively homogeneous; most were anti-Nazis. It was therefore much easier for prisoners at that time to establish solidarity among themselves than in the following years. In the second period, the struggle for survival encouraged the emergence of cliques, who cheated and fought one another in efforts to obtain a share of the little food and inadequate accommodation available. On the other hand, there were also illegal groups of prisoners who organized mutual help; the first to do so were the German Communists in the camps. These illegal groups exercised more influence in the third period, during which living conditions in the camps underwent temporary improvement. They managed to smuggle their members into important assignments and into the camp administration. Other groups, especially those made up of Soviet POWs, engaged in sabotage in the arms factories. In some camps, underground “international” prisoners’ committees were set up; they made it their task to prepare for their self-liberation when the front line came closer.

The fate of the prisoners depended to a large extent on their practical skills, ideological views, and past social ties.

Most of the newly arrived prisoners had to fend for themselves. They could expect harsh punishment and maltreatment from the SS if they committed an error. Only in rare instances was it possible for the other prisoners to help the new arrivals, or even to sympathize with them. There was also a certain understandable tension between newcomers and old-timers familiar with the conditions, who had undergone a long period of adaptation and survival to attain a certain status in the camp. For the new prisoner the first shock was usually his (or her) total humiliation as a human being: prisoners relinquished all personal possessions, their hair was shorn, and they were given identification numbers in place of their names. At Auschwitz, this was tattooed permanently on their arms. This enormous psychological burden, added to the strenuous physical labor, the terrible living conditions, and the brutality of those in charge, made the danger to one’s life greatest in the first few months, when many perished. However, if a prisoner had skills that could be put to practical use and was therefore attached to a work gang with a relatively easy assignment, or if that prisoner belonged to a social or ideological group that kept together in the camp (such as the Communists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or the conservative national resistance groups among the Polish prisoners), he or she might find protection, escape harassment, and learn basic camp protocol from experienced prisoners. Some camps, such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Stutthof, contained separate sections for women, and Ravensbrück was entirely a women’s camp. The humiliation,

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loss of personal identity, absence of the most elementary sanitary conditions and of any privacy, and the cutting off of their hair had an especially damaging effect on the women prisoners, which led to a high rate of collapse and death among them. Sometimes there were children and youth in the camps. Their distress was especially intense, but often the hardest and most veteran prisoners took pity on them and tried to protect them.

From the very beginning, the treatment meted out to Jews was worse than that given other prisoners.

Jews in the Camps There were also tensions between the different ethnic groups, with Jews at the bottom of the ladder. During the first period the Jews were a relatively small group in the camps. In Dachau, for example, only 10 percent of the prisoners were Jews. Most of them belonged to the outlawed organizations of the labor movement or had been taken into “protective custody” because of their political activities. This situation changed in the second period, and as a result of the raids against “asocial” elements ordered by Himmler in 1936, as many as one-third of the persons taken to the camps were Jews. This was one of a series of intensified anti-Jewish measures introduced that year, resulting in a rapid deterioration of the situation of the Jews in Germany. Beginning with Dachau, the number of Jews in the concentration camps rose to between 15 percent and 20 percent of the camp population. A new height was reached in the wake of the November 9, 1938, Kristallnacht pogrom, when within a few days 36,000 Jews were detained in the Reich (including Austria). Of these, 11,000 were taken to Dachau, between 10,000 and 12,000 to Buchenwald, and about 6,000 to Sachsenhausen, creating catastrophic congestion in these camps. No single group endured such sufferings in the pre-war period as did the Jews on that occasion. As early as 1933, the Jewish share in the prisoners’ mortality rate at Dachau was disproportionately large. In the second period, conditions in the camps for Jewish prisoners deteriorated drastically. Following the mass influx of Jews in November 1938, the overall mortality in all the concentration camps multiplied rapidly, and most of the victims were Jews. The SS exploited the terrible conditions in the camps to force the Jews to emigrate from Germany. As a rule, at that time any Jewish prisoner who could produce an emigration visa was set free, and by the spring of 1939 most of the Jews who had been brought to the camps in November 1938 had been released. Once the war broke out, Jews taken to concentration camps had little chance of survival. The groups of Polish Jews imprisoned in Buchenwald and in Mauthausen were nearly all annihilated within a few months. In the fall of 1941, when a medical commission carried out a selection of certain categories of prisoners in the camps, weeding out the feeble, the sick, and the “politicals” (whom the SS particularly disliked) to send them to gas chambers under the E UTHANASIA P ROGRAM , the percentage of Jewish prisoners among those selected was extremely high. In the conditions prevailing during the second period, Jewish prisoners were rarely able to form groups of their own. Many, especially the German Jews, had the word Jude stamped on their clothes by the SS. For the individual Jewish prisoner this mark of identification had a variety of social and ideological meanings: some of the Jews among the prisoners were Social Democrats or Communists who had abandoned their Jewish religious practice and faith; others had been close to traditional right-wing parties and were rooted in national bourgeois ideology; still others were strictly Orthodox Jews. Even before the arrival of the Polish Jews, the German Jewish prisoners had a varied social background. This was now reinforced by the “national” differences between the two communities, the Polish and the German. At first the strongest

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Prisoners of Auschwitz greet their Russian liberators in January 1945.

bond between them was the persecution from which they all suffered. The perilous conditions of life and the careful watch the SS kept over the Jewish prisoners during the second period as a rule precluded the emergence among the Jews of the kind of group cooperation and core associations that the “politicals” and the “criminals” had managed to create. Nevertheless, in some of the concentration camps, and also in Auschwitz, illegal Jewish groups engaged in mutual assistance and in activities of a political nature. Even among the S P E C I A L C O M M A N D O (Sonderkommando) prisoners in Birkenau, who were part of the concentration camp but worked in the extermination center, an underground group was organized, and in October 1944 a revolt broke out in the camp. In the third period, the deportation of the Jews from the Reich to ghettos and camps in the east also had consequences for the Jews in the concentration camps in Germany. An order issued by the WVHA on October 5, 1942, called for all the concentration camps on the soil of the Reich to be made judenfrei (“free of Jews”). The Jewish prisoners were deported mostly to Auschwitz and Lublin (Majdanek), where they suffered the same fate as the other Jews sent to those camps. It was not until 1944 that some of Hungary’s deported Jews, instead of being sent to extermination camps, were put on a march to the Reich for forced labor there. The majority of them were caught up in the chaos of the evacuation marches. Once liberated, many former prisoners were unable to free themselves from the anguish of their experience in the concentration camps. Months, and often years later, they still felt the detrimental effects on their mental and physical health, which in some cases was irreparably damaged. Among the symptoms were a frequent inability to establish close contact with others, to hold a regular job, or to sustain a marital and family relationship, in addition to sleep disorders, anxiety attacks, body tremors, and gastritis. Some of the more typical of these symptoms have been described in the medical literature as the “concentration camp syndrome,” although its precise manifestations and frequency of occurrence remain in dispute.

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Effects of the Camps Research on the effects of imprisonment in concentration camps—some of it based on personal experience—has often taken the form of psychoanalytical studies. These seek to analyze the behavior of concentration camp inmates and to explain such phenomena as the formation of groups and the rivalry among them, emotional insensitivity, and the adoption of patterns of behavior that might aid in survival. Best known is The Informed Heart, by Bruno Bettelheim, who maintains that the prisoners adopted the standards of the SS, or at least had to build up a kind of schizophrenic conscience in themselves. While the rules laid down by the SS in the camps had to be observed by the prisoners to ensure their survival, there always existed groups of prisoners who adhered to their own set of standards and behaved accordingly. They often had to restrict such behavior to underground and “illegal” activities, with the result that not all their fellow prisoners were aware that such standards of behavior did indeed exist in the camps.

SEE ALSO MUSELMANN; SURVIVORS, PSYCHOLOGY OF. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Byers, Ann. The Holocaust Camps. Springfield, NJ: Enslow, 1998. Gilbert, Martin. The Boys: The Story of 732 Young Concentration Camp Survivors. New York: Henry Holt, 1997. Lace, William W. The Death Camps. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1998. Langbein, Hermann. Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps, 1938–1945. New York: Paragon House, 1994.

The Nazis, a Warning from History [videorecording]. A&E Home Video, 1999. “Shadow of Fear: Concentration Camps.” ChannelOne.com. [Online] http://www. channelone.com/news/special⁄nazis/camps.html (accessed on August 27, 2000). Spielberg, Steven. The Last Days. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999.

CONFERENCES. SEE EVIAN CONFERENCE; WANNSEE CONFERENCE. CRACOW. SEE KRAKÓW. Crimes Against Humanity The major war criminals of the European Axis countries (including Germany, Italy, and Hungary) were charged with offenses in three categories of crimes: crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The main prosecuting entity was the International Military Tribunal (IMT), which conducted the Nuremberg Trials.

Three Categories of Crimes “Crimes against peace” is a category that includes not only the initiation and conduct of war, but also acts committed in times of peace, such as planning and preparation of aggression. Among the offenses defined as “war crimes” were violations of the laws or customs of war, such as murder, ill-treatment, deportation, forced labor, or wanton

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These prisoners, standing in the forest handcuffed to each other, are about to be executed by German guards. Buchenwald, Germany.

destruction not justified by military necessity. The IMT found that such acts, including also ill-treatment of civilian populations and prisoners of war, had been committed by Adolf H I T L E R and his cohorts in total disregard of the fundamental principles of international law, and had been based instead on cold-blooded, criminal considerations. The IMT therefore decided to deal with the entire category of war crimes in great detail and to determine the individual defendants’ guilt for such crimes. Included in the tribunal’s deliberations were acts of murder and ill-treatment of prisoners of war and civilian populations, especially the persecution of Jews. “Crimes against humanity” were defined as applying to acts against any civilian population—including the population of the country that commits the acts, and commits them on its own soil—at any time, in times of peace as well as in times of war. Acts of persecution toward Jews and others were included in “crimes against humanity,” even if they were committed before the war but were connected to preparations for the war. Article 6(c) of the IMT charter defines crimes against humanity as “murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war; or persecution on political, racial, or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.” Therefore, the IMT was empowered to try crimes against humanity only if they were perpetrated in the execution of or in connection with war crimes or crimes against peace. Some of the acts defined as war crimes—such as murder, ill-treatment, and deportation—were also defined as crimes against humanity. These acts, however, were deemed war crimes only when they were a violation of the laws and customs of war, affecting the rights of fighting forces and the civilian population in occupied territory or in the course of warlike actions.

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Distinguishing Characteristics of Crimes Against Humanity Certain features distinguish crimes against humanity from other crimes. They include the extraordinary brutality and diversity of means that the Nazis used to commit these crimes, the unprecedented policy of persecution and extermination on which they were based, and the fact that while initially they were related to a policy of aggression, they exceeded by far the definition of war crimes in the traditional sense. The victims of the Nazi crimes against humanity included populations for which the laws and customs of war provide no protection—such as nationals of neutral countries, stateless persons, nationals of countries that were partners in the Axis, and, of course, nationals of Germany itself. Above all, most of the victims of the Nazi crimes against humanity were Jews, who, prior to the Nuremberg Trial, were not deemed to have protection based on international law. Every crime is an offense not only against the victim, but also against the established order of the country in which it takes place—the country as a social organization that includes all its citizens, irrespective of color, political views, and origin. Similarly, every international crime, especially when it is a crime against humanity, is an attack on the international community as a whole, threatening the safeguards of its peace, and indeed its very existence. Nevertheless, what distinguishes crimes against humanity from the other categories of crimes is their “inhumanity,” rather than the injury they inflict upon “humanity” as a worldwide community. This was why they were designated as crimes against “humanity” in the abstract sense of the term. However, acts defined as crimes against peace or war crimes can also be regarded as crimes against humanity, since the planning and carrying out of aggression prepares the conditions for inhumane offenses against human rights.

T

he victims of the Nazi crimes against humanity included

populations for which the laws and

customs of war provide no protection: nationals of neutral countries, stateless persons, and nationals of Germany itself. Above all, most of the victims were Jews, who, prior to the Nuremberg Trial, were not deemed to have protection based on international law.

Principles of International Law The dictates of human conscience have long been regarded as one source of international law. Thus, the Petersburg Declaration of 1868 stated that the dictates of humanity must take precedence over the needs of war; and the fourth Hague Convention (1907) specified that in situations not specifically provided for in the convention, the civilian population and the fighting forces would also be protected by the principles of humanity and the dictates of society’s conscience. This principle has since been reconfirmed time and again in various international treaties and conventions, such as the 1949 Geneva Convention and the 1977 Supplementary Protocols. The IMT extended this principle to apply also to criminal acts that are not war crimes, in order to provide protection to every civilian population and to all individuals, irrespective of their nationality and their country’s policy and laws. Evidently, the principle is valid under all circumstances and takes precedence over every national law and every bilateral or multilateral international agreement. It is a universal and cogent principle, which is not subject to challenge and cannot be deviated from by unilateral decision. It can be changed or replaced only by a humanitarian principle that is of an even higher order (as stated in the 1969 Vienna Convention on Treaties). This means that, in formal terms, the definition of inhumane acts as being criminal in nature does not depend on the legal system or established policy of the country in which such acts occur.

Challenges to the Principle of Crimes against Humanity Some critics discount these aspects of crimes against humanity and crimes against peace. They have therefore challenged the justice and the very nature of the

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Nuremberg Trial because it included these categories in the stated principles upon which it based the indictment. They argue that such acts were political acts, for which those who committed them cannot be held accountable, as heads of sovereign entities who were not subject to any other entity or to any law other than a law declared as valid by their own state. It is true that in a certain respect the crimes defined by the IMT charter are of a political character, since their planning, preparation, and execution were possible only in the framework of operations, guidelines, initiatives, and decrees emanating from and authorized by the political administration of a state. This, however, is no reason to treat the persons responsible for these crimes as political criminals in the accepted sense of that term, since their acts were linked to the theory of R AC I S M and to other inhumane concepts that have no precedent in the annals of mankind.

The dictates of human conscience have long been regarded as one source of international law.

One restriction that the IMT charter did impose was that in order for crimes against humanity to be tried, they had to be related to war crimes or crimes against peace, either as side effects of such crimes or in support of them. Many legal experts and human-rights activists seek to abolish this restrictive condition in the codification of international criminal law. They point out that while this condition applied to those tried at the Nuremberg Trial and the Tokyo trial of major Japanese war criminals, it should not be applicable to other criminals charged with crimes against humanity. Consequently their prosecution should not be linked to war crimes or crimes against peace. In most of the trials the Allies held in their zones of occupation in Germany, the judges generally held defendants responsible for crimes against humanity only when the acts were committed in the preparation of aggression or in violation of the laws and customs of war. This was so in the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings, held by the Americans, in which the Nuremberg Military Tribunals tried Nazi judges, industrialists, and O P E R AT I O N A L S Q UA D S (Einsatzgruppen) personnel, among others. Those who call for the complete separation of the concept of crimes against humanity from war crimes and crimes against peace seek to endow this concept with the status of a human-rights principle that would protect all human beings at all times and under all conditions, completely independent of warlike events.

SEE ALSO BARBIE TRIAL; TRIALS OF THE WAR CRIMINALS. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Finkielkraut, Alain. Remembering in Vain: The Klaus Barbie Trial and Crimes Against Humanity. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.

Judgment at Nuremberg [videorecording]. MGM/UA Home Video, 1989. Stave, Bruce M. Witnesses to Nuremberg: An Oral History of American Participants at the War Crimes Trials. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998. Taylor, Telford. The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir. New York: Knopf, 1992.

Trial of Adolf Eichmann and Hitler and the Nuremberg Trials [videorecording]. Columbia Tristar, 1996.

Croatia During World War II, Croatia (Nezavisna Drzˇ ava Hrvatska, or Independent State of Croatia; NDH), was a state in Y U G O S L AV I A between April 1941 and May

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Croatia, 1941–1945.

1945. Its capital was Zagreb. The state had a population of 6.3 million people, of whom 3.3 million were Catholic Croats, 1.9 million Orthodox Serbs, and 700,000 Muslim Croats. There were 170,000 Germans, 75,000 Hungarians, 40,000 Jews, 30,000 Romani (G Y P S I E S ), and 100,000 members of other minorities.

Serbian Minority Croatia was a “puppet state” created by the Germans and the Italians on April 10, 1941, as part of their plan to take dismantle Yugoslavia. Ante Pavelic´, the leader of the Ustasˇ a movement, was made head of state. Ustasˇ a was a secessionist movement; it wanted Croatia to be independent. Shortly after taking control, the Ustasˇa, with the support of many Croatians, started what it called “the purge of Croatia from foreign elements.” The main purpose was the elimination of the Serbian minority. In a brutal terror campaign, more than half a million Serbs were killed. A quarter-million were expelled from Croatia, and 200,000 were forced to convert to Catholicism. The drive in the summer of 1941 to exterminate and dispossess the Serbs was one of the most horrendous episodes of World War II. The murder methods applied by the Ustasˇa were extraordinarily primitive and sadistic. Thousands of people were hurled from mountaintops; others were beaten to death or had their throats cut. Entire villages were burned down. Women were raped, and people were sent on D E AT H M A R C H E S in the middle of winter. Still others starved to death.

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Jews The Jews of Croatia lived mainly in the larger cities. In Zagreb, there were about 11,000 Jews. In Sarajevo, there were 10,000; in Osijek, 3,000; and in Bjelovar, 3,000. The NDH regime categorized the Jews as one of the “foreign elements” that had to be purged, and the Ustasˇa’s German supporters encouraged the persecution of Jews. In pursuing this course, the Ustasˇa wanted both to please the Germans and to acquire the Jews’ property—its motivation was not ideological A N T I S E M I T I S M .

Anti-Jewish Legislation Just a few days after taking control of Croatia, the Ustasˇa enacted anti-Jewish laws. Most of them were based on the precedents set in Nazi G E R M A N Y , the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T , and S L OVA K I A . These were racial statutes on the model of the N U R E M B E R G L AW S . The statutes defined who was a Jew and stripped the Jews of their civil rights. Most of the laws dealt with economic affairs. Jewish-owned businesses and real estate were “nationalized”—taken over by the government. Jewish civil servants were dismissed from their jobs, and Jewish professionals such as lawyers and doctors were prohibited from dealing with non-Jewish clients. Collective fines, which had to be paid in gold or its equivalent, were imposed on the Jewish communities. Before long, the Jews were the victims of an unbridled, country-wide campaign of plunder and pillage. Everyone who stood to profit took part—trade unions, youth organizations, sports clubs, the armed forces, and government officials of all ranks. Ordinary citizens also took part in this campaign wherever they could. In fact, at least half of the Jews’ property apparently never reached the state treasury but remained in the hands of individual Croatians.

M

ost of the Jews of Croatia belonged to the middle class.

They were civil servants, merchants, and professionals such as doctors and lawyers. Croatian Jews had their own school networks, weekly newspapers, welfare organizations, and youth groups.

In the first few months of Ustasˇa rule, other laws were passed, mostly by local authorities, designed to restrict the Jews’ freedom of movement and the places where they could live. In May 1941, the Jews had to begin wearing the yellow badge (see B A D G E , J E W I S H ) with the letter Zˇ (from Zˇidov, “Jew”) prominently displayed on it.

Roundup, Incarceration, and Murder The first arrests made among the Jews were meant to prevent the rise of any anti-government organizations. Among those arrested were 100 Jewish youngsters who had been active in Zionist youth movements in Zagreb, as well as the Jewish lawyers in that city. Both groups were taken to C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S , where most of them were killed. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the situation of the Jews worsened further. On June 26, Ante Pavelic´ issued a decree that set off a mass arrest of Jews. The onslaught on the Jews of Zagreb had begun a few days earlier, on June 22. By the end of the month, several hundred Jewish families had been seized and, for the most part, put into the Pag and Jadovno concentration camps. In July, smaller communities were targets of the violence. This was followed, at the beginning of August, by a drive against the Jews of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the first stage, those living in small towns were arrested. At the end of the month, the Jews of Sarajevo were the targets. The roundup of the Jews took longer than expected and was completed only in November 1941. The concentration camp of Jasenovac was constructed in August 1941; after its completion most Jews were sent there.

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As long as the Croatians continued to kill Jews, the Germans did not interfere.

By the end of 1941, two-thirds of Croatian Jewry had been taken to Croatian concentration camps. Most were killed immediately upon arrival or soon after. The only Jews not yet been imprisoned were regarded as essential to the state’s economy, were married to non-Jews, or had personal ties to members of the ruling clique. Some Jews also managed to flee to the Italian zone of occupation. In an interview with a German newspaper at the end of the summer of 1941, Pavelic´ declared: “The Jews will be liquidated within a very short time.”

German Role in Deportation and Extermination Croatian Jews, for the most part, were murdered by fellow Croatians, but there is no doubt about the role played by the Germans. From the beginning of Ustasˇ a rule, the Germans supervised the “solution of the Jewish question.” For example, the German ambassador in Zagreb—Siegfried Kasche, a zealous antisemite—pressured the Croatian leaders to lose no time in killing all the Jews in the country. He urged his colleagues in Berlin to make sure that the Jews in the Italian-occupied zone were seized and subjected to the same fate as Jews in the other parts of Croatia. German involvement grew at the beginning of 1942, when it looked like the Croatians might call a halt to the killing. At the W A N N S E E C O N F E R E N C E of January 20, 1942, the Germans proposed to the Croatians that they transfer the Jews of Croatia to Eastern Europe. In the spring of 1942, the Croatians agreed to arrest the Jews, take them to the railways, and pay the Germans for the cost of transporting the prisoners to the E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S in the East. In return, the Germans agreed that the property of the Jewish victims would go to the Croatian government. A Nazi official was sent to Zagreb to take charge of the deportation. Between August 13 and 20, 1942, five trains left Croatia for A U S C H W I T Z with 5,500 Jews aboard. Half were from the Tenje concentration camp; the rest were from the Loborgrad camp and from Zagreb and Sarajevo. In two trains on May 5 and 10, 1943, a group of 1,150 Jews was deported to Auschwitz, including the leaders of the Zagreb and Osijek Jewish communities. Of the thousands of Croatian Jews who were deported to Auschwitz, only a few dozen survived.

Italian Protection Most of the Croatian Jews who survived owed their lives to the Italians. In their zone of occupation (the Dalmatian coast, Albania, and Montenegro), the Italians resolutely protected the Jews. Some 5,000 Jews were saved by the Italians in Yugoslavia. In the summer of 1943, all the Jewish refugees in Dalmatia were put into a camp in Rab. Following Italy’s surrender in September 1943, the area was liberated by PA R T I S A N S , and most of the Jews were moved to liberated areas in the center of the country. Those who were fit to perform military service joined the partisan army, while the others were protected by the fighting forces.

Catholic Church Between the two world wars, the Catholic Church in Croatia had been a staunch supporter of Croatian nationalism. The Vatican had always supported the stand of the Croatian Church and had encouraged Croatian separatism. The Ustasˇ a extermination drive against Serbs, Jews, and G Y P S I E S (Romani) presented the Church with a dilemma. Many Catholic priests, mainly of the lower

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rank, took an active part in the murder operations. Generally speaking, the reaction of the Catholic Church was a function of military and political developments affecting Croatia. When the NDH regime was weakening and the war was drawing to an end, protests by the Church against Ustasˇa crimes became more and more outspoken. This was not the case in the earlier stages. The Vatican followed a similar line. In the early stage, the Croatian massacres were explained in Rome as “teething troubles of a new regime” (the expression of Monsignor Domenico Tardini of the Vatican state secretariat). When the course of the war was changing, the leaders of the Catholic Church began to criticize the Ustasˇa, but in mild terms. It was only at the end, when Allied victory was assured, that Vatican spokesmen came out with clear denunciations. In some instances, Croatian clergy did help Jews. Their main effort was to save the lives of the Jewish partners in mixed marriages, and most of these did in fact survive. The Church also helped the Zagreb Jewish community provide food, medicines, and clothing for Jews in the concentration camps.

Communities Jewish communities in Croatia were severely restricted in their activities during the Holocaust, mainly because most of them were liquidated at an early stage. The Sarajevo community ceased functioning at the beginning of 1942, and the Osijek community by the middle of that year. Only the Zagreb community remained in existence throughout the war. It is estimated that 30,000 Jews were murdered in Croatia—80 percent of its Jewish population.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Cornwell, John. Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII. New York: Viking, 1999. Crowe, David, and John Kolsti, eds. The Gypsies of Eastern Europe. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1991.

CRYSTAL NIGHT. SEE KRISTALLNACHT (NIGHT OF THE BROKEN GLASS). CZECHOSLOVAKIA. SEE BOHEMIA AND MORAVIA; SLOVAKIA. Czerniaków, Adam (1880–1942)

Adam Czerniaków was head of the Warsaw J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council). He was born in W A R S AW , Poland to a middle class family. He completed his chemical engineering studies in 1908. Later, he taught at the Jewish community’s vocational school in Warsaw and served in various administrative posts in independent P O L A N D . For many years Czerniaków represented Jewish artisans in several Polish organizations. From 1927 to 1934 he was a member of the Warsaw Municipal Council, and in 1931 he was elected to the Polish Senate. Before World War II, he was a member of the executive council of the Jewish community. But in his public career between the wars the Jews did not regard him as a leader, since he was not a member of any political party and had trouble expressing himself in Yiddish.

Adam Czerniaków.

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During the first week of the war, the chairman of the Jewish community’s council was one of the many who fled Warsaw. On September 23, in the midst of the siege of the city, Czerniaków noted in his diary that the mayor and commissar for civil defense, who had remained, appointed him “head of the Jewish religious community in Warsaw.” On October 4, a few days after the city’s surrender and the beginning of the German occupation, Czerniaków wrote: “I was taken to Szucha Avenue, where I was ordered to add twenty-four people to the community council and to serve as its head.” The official titles used by Czerniaków until the middle of 1941 were Head of the Judenrat and President of the Jewish Religious Community of Warsaw. From the middle of May 1941, his functions and authority in the ghetto paralleled those of the mayor in the Polish part of the city. The first Judenrat (Jewish Council), established in October 1939, consisted of twenty-four members who were prominent within Jewish society and outstanding individuals in political organizations. Most of the party activists included in the first Judenrat left Warsaw and traveled abroad during the first month of the occupation, when it was still possible to leave. Czerniaków had this opportunity, but he refused to leave and sharply criticized the leaders who fled the city. The Jewish community in Warsaw during the interwar period had provided for religious and educational needs and for relief work. After the ghetto was established, in October 1940, the scope of the Judenrat’s activities widened considerably. It had to deal with matters of food, work, health, housing, and sanitation—functions normally carried out by the municipality and the state authorities. The structure and bureaucracy of the Judenrat also broadened considerably. At one point during the ghetto period it had twenty-five different departments and 6,000 workers, as compared to 530 in the prewar Jewish community. The Judenrat clerks, particularly in the higher administration and the police force, included agents planted by the German authorities and those willing to help the Nazis at any price. Czerniaków despised these people, but he realized that they were a necessary evil. Groups arose in the ghetto that for various reasons tried to oust Czerniaków. Some of them had the support of members of the German police and the SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service). All these attempts failed since Czerniaków was supported by the civil authorities. The Jewish underground activitists severely criticized Czerniaków and the Judenrat’s policy. In studies of the Warsaw ghetto, much attention has been devoted to evaluating Czerniaków’s activities. An analysis of this material shows that Czerniaków worked to prevent the direct intervention of the German authorities, and sought to organize the internal affairs of the Jews with a minimum of outside involvement. This approach made possible clandestine economic activity, such as the illegal smuggling of food. There is no proof that Czerniaków maintained contact with the Jewish underground or sided with secret political activities. On the other hand, he persistently promoted education for the ghetto’s children, and strove to save Jews in danger of being put to death. During the years of Czerniaków’s tenure as Judenrat head, he came into daily contact with the German police and the civil authorities. Until the ghetto was set up, Czerniaków was permitted to maintain contact with the Poles in the Warsaw municipality, chiefly the Polish mayor, Julian Kulski. In his contacts with the Germans, Czerniaków sought ways to influence them and arouse some sort of sensitivity to and consideration for the ghetto situation. These attempts were fruitless. He was twice beaten by the Germans and suffered many direct insults. Czerniaków gained a certain measure of understanding through his ties with the ghetto commis-

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sar, Heinz A U E R S WA L D , but Auerswald misled Czerniaków in the end by not revealing the real facts of the mass deportation. Chroniclers and diarists of the Warsaw ghetto are divided as to Czerniaków’s personality and characteristics. His critics saw in Czerniaków an assimilator who mixed with assimilators, a man lacking close contact with the Jewish masses, who tended toward absurd public ceremonies in the midst of the grim reality of the ghetto. However, people who worked with Czerniaków praised the man and his qualities. He did indeed place assimilators in key positions, as when he made Joseph Szerynski (a police officer who had converted to Christianity) commander of the ghetto police. But the accusation of a tendency toward self-aggrandizement and hollow ceremony is unfounded. It is generally accepted that Czerniaków had great personal decency and good intentions. A member of the underground and a leader of the ghetto fighters, Mordechai T E N E N B AU M (Tamaroff), noted in his diary that there were only three truly honest persons among the heads of the Judenrat, one of whom was Czerniaków. Unlike the Judenrat leaders Mordechai Chaim R U M KOW S K I and Jacob G E N S , Czerniaków was not guided by personal ambition, and was willing to cooperate with the Nazis only up to a point.

assimilator

One who blends in with the mainstream culture; in Jewish terms, one who identifies more closely with the culture of residency than with the culture of ethnicity.

Refusing to help in the roundup of Jews destined for deportation, Czerniaków committed suicide at 4:00 p.m. on July 23, 1942. According to one version, a note was found on his desk addressed to his wife, saying: “They are demanding that I kill the children of my people with my own hands. There is nothing for me to do but to die.” His death was interpreted as the protest of a man who was not prepared to cross the line between conducting ghetto activities and handing over Jews. In the mid-1960s, Yad Vashem received Czerniaków’s wartime diary, which he kept regularly from September 6, 1939, until the day of his death. It consists of eight notebooks with 1,009 small pages in chronological order. The fifth notebook, covering the period between December 14, 1940, and April 22, 1941, has been lost. Czerniaków’s diary, published in Hebrew, English, German, and Polish, is one of the most important surviving documents from the period of the Holocaust. It casts light on the man who stood at the head of the Warsaw Judenrat, provides a wealth of information about people and events, and reveals many details concerning the nature of the German rule over the Jews.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Czerniakow, Adam. The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to Doom. Chicago: I. R. Dee, reprint 1999. Tushnet, Leonard. The Pavement of Hell. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1972.

Dachau Dachau was one of the first Nazi C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S . It was located in the small town of Dachau, Germany, about 10 miles (15 kilometers) northwest of Munich. The location was chosen because it was the site of an empty weapons factory from World War I, which provided the needed space. It had room for 5,000 prisoners. The first group of prisoners was brought to Dachau on March 20, 1933. The inmates were guarded by state police until the camp was taken over by the SS on April 11. Theodor E I C K E became the commandant of Dachau in June 1933. He set up the organization for the camp, with detailed rules and regulations. Later, Eicke was

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Private companies hired slave laborers from the camps. They paid a daily rate per prisoner to the SS; the prisoners, however, received nothing.

appointed inspector general for all the Nazi concentration camps. He used Dachau as the basic model for the organization of the other camps. The very existence of the concentration camps spread fear among the people. This was an effective tool in silencing opponents of the Nazi regime. Dachau was a useful training ground for the SS. At the camp, SS members learned to view people with different beliefs as inferior. They were trained to deal with them with indifference-not even hesitating to kill when the occasion arose. The transformation of the N AZI PARTY ’s terror system into bloody reality began in Dachau. When Dachau opened, only known political opponents of the Nazis were imprisoned. Communists, Social Democrats, and a few monarchists—groups that had passionately opposed one another (as well as the Nazis) before 1933—now found themselves together behind barbed wire. Beginning about 1935, it was usual in Nazi Germany for all people who had been condemned in a court of law to be taken automatically to a concentration camp after they had served their prison sentences. The first Jewish prisoners came as known political opponents of the Nazis. At Dachau, as elsewhere, they were treated even worse than the other prisoners. Gradually, more and more groups were imprisoned. There were Jehovah’s Witnesses, who resisted the draft; and G Y P S I E S (Romani), who, like the Jews, were classified as racially inferior. Clergymen who resisted the Nazi regime were also imprisoned, as were homosexuals (see H O M O S E X UA L I T Y I N T H E T H I R D R E I C H ). Many others were imprisoned for criticizing the Nazis. Dachau was always a camp for political prisoners. These prisoners, who had been there first, held most of the key positions in the “prisoners’ internal government.” This system was put in place by the SS. The internal government ran the daily life in the camp, and it kept criminal prisoners from reaching positions that would give them power over the others. In 1937 and 1938, a new camp was built (with prisoner labor) next to the old buildings of the weapons factory. The new camp had thirty-two barracks; an entrance building, containing the offices of the SS administration; the kitchen, workshops, showers, and so on; and a camp prison. The camp was surrounded by a water-filled ditch, fortified by an electrified barbed-wire fence. Guards in seven watchtowers monitored the grounds. In the summer of 1938, several thousand Austrian prisoners were brought to Dachau. Their arrival marked the beginning of the deportations that would reflect the course of the war. Transports were sent to Dachau from each country as it was invaded by the German army. Prisoners included resistance fighters, Jews, some clergymen, and others who refused to cooperate with the Germans. When the camp was eventually liberated, inmates from more than thirty countries were found in Dachau.

Jews at Dachau The number of Jewish prisoners increased as the Nazis developed a complex system for persecuting the Jews. After the violent pogrom (attack) known as K R I S TA L L N A C H T on November 9–10, 1938, more than 10,000 Jews from all over Germany were interned in Dachau. Those who could prove their intention to leave Germany were released. At that time, in fact, most Jews were let out of the camp within a few months of detention. But when systematic murder of the Jews began in 1942, Jewish prisoners were transported from Dachau and the other camps in Germany to the mass E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S in German-occupied P O L A N D . Later, thousands of Jewish prisoners, mostly from H U N G A R Y but also from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and the S OV I E T U N I O N , were brought to Dachau’s sub-

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Prisoners working on a rifle production line in the SS-owned munitions factory in Dachau, Germany.

sidiary camps. When Dachau and its subcamps were liberated by Allied forces in April 1945, about 30 percent of the inmates were Jewish.

Life at Dachau

T

here was no mass extermination program with poison gas at the

All prisoners went through the same process when they entered the camp. They left all legal status behind. Their possessions were taken away, their hair was shaved off, and they were dressed in striped uniforms. They were given a number to identify them, and were given a colored triangle to wear to show which category of prisoner they were. The daily routine was one of work, hunger, exhaustion, and fear of the brutal, sadistic SS guards. The value of the free labor that the prisoners provided (the only cost involved was that of their tiny food rations) was quickly recognized and ruthlessly exploited.

Dachau camp. But out of 206,206

At first, besides managing and maintaining the camp, the Dachau inmates worked in handicraft industries set up within the camp. They also did hard labor in “branch detachments” outside the camp. They built roads, worked in gravel pits, and drained marshes. Over the course of the war, the labor available in the concentration camps became increasingly important for the German weapons industry. The network of camps, which gradually extended over the whole of Central Europe, took on huge proportions. Dachau alone had many smaller camps. It also had 36 large subsidiary camps in which up to 37,000 prisoners worked almost exclusively on weapons. Private companies hired slave laborers from the camps through the SS E C O N O M I C -A D M I N I S T R AT I V E M A I N O F F I C E (Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt; WVHA). The prisoners received no pay. Those who became sick were sent back to the main camp; this usually meant death. The companies received new, healthier laborers until these too could no longer meet the demands of the work.

marches, will never be known.

prisoners registered, there were 31,591 recorded deaths, most of them during the war. The true total number of Dachau-related deaths, including victims of individual and mass executions and the final death

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Aerial view of prisoner barracks at Dachau.

Medical Experiments In Dachau, as in other Nazi camps, M E D I CA L E X P E R I M E N T S were performed by SS doctors on helpless inmates. Dr. Sigmund Rascher played a key role in the “decompression” or “high-altitude” experiments. The supposed purpose was to examine the effect of a sudden loss of pressure or lack of oxygen, such as that experienced by army pilots whose planes were destroyed and who had to make parachute jumps from great heights. From March to May 1942, about 200 inmates were used for these experiments. According to the eyewitness testimony of the prisoners’ nurse, at least 70 or 80 of them died. Rascher also worked on a series of “freezing experiments,” which began in August 1942. Their purpose was to learn how pilots shot down at sea who suffered from freezing could be quickly helped. Out of the 360 to 400 prisoners used in these experiments, 80 to 90 died. Professor Claus Schilling opened a malaria experimental station in the Dachau camp. He hoped to discover possible methods of immunization against malaria. For this purpose, he had about 1,100 inmates infected with the disease. The exact number of deaths from this experiment is not known. The survivors returned to their work in the camp after the disease had subsided and many, physically weakened from the malaria, then fell victim to other illnesses. A variety of other medical experiments were performed on Dachau prisoners. There was a tuberculosis experimental station; extreme infection and respiratory distress were artificially induced in a group of prisoners to test and compare the effects of various remedies. There were attempts to make seawater drinkable, and experiments with medications to stop bleeding.

Dachau Killings The systematic killing of prisoners who were sick and unable to work began after the official end of the E U T H A NA S I A P R O G R A M on September 1, 1941. During

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the winter of 1941–1942, “invalid transports” went from Dachau to the Hartheim castle, near Linz, which had served as an asylum for the insane before the war. There, 3,166 inmates from Dachau were gassed. A gas chamber (see G A S C H A M B E R S /V A N S ) was built in Dachau in 1942, but it was not put into use. Dachau was used as an execution site for political opponents of the Nazis from 1934 onward. In addition, mass shootings of Soviet P R I S O N E R S O F WA R (POWs) took place there from October 1941 to April 1942. These inmates were murdered on an SS shooting range located outside the camp grounds. The exact number of these victims cannot be determined, since they were not listed in camp files. Later, Soviet prisoners of war were taken into the powerful forced-labor system (see F O R C E D L A B O R ). After that, executions were carried out individually until the end of the war.

Last Days of Dachau In the last months before the liberation, the prisoners at Dachau lived in extremely inhumane conditions. Huge transports were constantly arriving from other Nazi camps, which were being evacuated in the face of the advancing Allies. During this period, up to 1,600 prisoners were crowded into barracks intended for 200. In early 1945, more than 100 inmates—and for a time more than 200—died each day of the typhus epidemic that had been raging in many of the camps since December 1944. An underground camp committee was organized to try to help the prisoners and, if necessary, to organize resistance to SS plans of action. On April 26, 1945, there were 67,665 registered prisoners in Dachau, among them 22,100 Jews. On that day, more than 7,000 of them were forced, under SS guard, to march south. During the march, anyone who could walk no further was shot. Many others died from hunger, cold, or exhaustion. At the beginning of May, American troops overtook the remnants of the prisoners on the march; the SS guards had disappeared shortly before. After the war, it was learned that plans had existed to kill all the inmates with bombs and poison.

The last transports to Dachau during 1945 brought human beings who were, for the most part, reduced to skeletons, and exhausted literally to the point of death.

On April 29, 1945, Dachau was liberated by the Seventh Army of the U N I T E D S TAT E S armed forces. Forty former members of the camp’s SS staff were tried by an American court at Dachau between November 15 and December 14, 1945. Of the forty accused, thirty-six were sentenced to death.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES George, Charles H. Journey to Dachau: An American Soldier’s Odyssey. New York: Vantage Press, 1996.

Memory of the Camps [videorecording]. PBS Video, 1989. Ryback, Timothy W. The Last Survivor: In Search of Martin Zaidenstadt. New York: Pantheon Books, 1999.

Voices of the Shoah: Remembrances of the Holocaust [sound recording]. Rhino Records, 2000.

Dannecker, Theodor (1913–1945)

Theodor Dannecker was an SS officer who specialized in organizing the deportation of Jews from Nazi-occupied Europe. Born in Tübingen, Dannecker was a

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Vichy

The region of France not occupied by Germany that was governed from the spa town of Vichy.

lawyer by training but in 1937 became a member of Adolf E I C H M A N N ’s staff and later an essential collaborator in carrying out the “F I NA L S O L U T I O N .” He was sent to P A R I S in 1940 by Eichmann’s bureau (IV B 4) as head of its French branch. There, Dannecker worked directly under Eichmann and supervised the preparation of lists of French Jews who were later arrested in May and August of 1941. The following year, Dannecker prepared a set of rules governing the deportation of French Jews and “stateless” Jews in France who were not effectively protected by a foreign power. He constantly urged the Vichy government to accelerate the deportations to the east, surprising even Vichy officials with the vehemence of his hatred for Jews. Eichmann recalled Dannecker to B E R L I N at the end of 1942 for abuse of office, and in January 1943 he was transferred to Bulgaria, where he organized the deportation of eleven thousand Jews from Macedonia and Thrace. In October 1944 Eichmann appointed him Jewish Commissioner in I TA LY , where he remained until the end of the war. He committed suicide in an American prison camp at Bad Tölz in December 1945.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Josephs, Jeremy. Swastika Over Paris. New York: Arcade, 1989. Lewendel, Isaac. Not the Germans Alone: A Son’s Search for the Truth of Vichy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999.

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Perpetrators. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/ holocaust/people/perps.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000). Weisberg, Richard H. Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

Darquier de Pellepoix, Louis (1897–1980)

Louis Darquier (pseudonym: Louis Darquier de Pellepoix) was the French coordinator of the Vichy regime’s anti-Jewish program from 1942 to 1944. Notorious for his outspoken antisemitism, Darquier was chosen to head the Vichy government’s Office for Jewish Affairs in May 1942, succeeding Xavier V A L L AT , whom the SS in F R A N C E found too moderate. At this point, the Nazis were about to begin the massive deportation of Jews from France to A U S C H W I T Z . Darquier helped coordinate these D E P O R TAT I O N S , and worked closely with the German authorities in P A R I S . Quite apart from its brutality and its persecution based upon biological racism, Darquier’s administration was characterized by corruption and incompetence. The Germans requested his removal, and he left office in February 1944. Darquier fled to Spain, where he lived until his death.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Josephs, Jeremy. Swastika Over Paris. New York: Arcade, 1989. Weisberg, Richard H. Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

DAUGAVPILS. SEE DVINSK. 148

DEATH MARCHES

DEATH CAMPS. SEE EXTERMINATION CAMPS. Death Marches Death marches (in German, Todesmärsche) were forced marches of long columns of prisoners under heavy guard, over long distances, and under intolerable conditions during World War II (1939–1945). The prisoners were brutally mistreated during these marches, and many were killed outright by their guards. The term “death march” was coined by prisoners in the Nazi C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S .

Death Marches, 1940–1943 Most death marches took place in the final stage of the war, when concentration camps were being evacuated. However, marches occurred fairly often throughout the war. The first forced march organized by Germany’s SS forces took place in German-occupied P O L A N D , in early 1940. On January 14, 800 Jewish prisoners of war from the Polish army were removed from a camp in L U B L I N . A few days later, escorted by a troop of SS men mounted on horses, they were marched in bitter cold to Bial⁄a Podlaska, a distance of approximately 62 miles (100 kilometers). All along the route the Nazis killed prisoners, individually and in groups. Only a few dozen of the 800 Jews survived to reach their destination.

Forced marches during the last two weeks of the war are believed to have cost the lives of tens of thousands of prisoners.

Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, hundreds of thousands of Soviet P R I S O N E R S O F WA R were marched from one camp to another. Many were murdered on the road or at pre-arranged slaughter sites. In July and August 1941, tens of thousands of Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina were marched to Transnistria (a part of U K R A I N E transferred to Romanian rule after the German invasion). Thousands were shot to death along the way by their guards. Tens of thousands of Jews were forced on marches when the ghettos of Eastern Europe were being liquidated in 1942 and 1943. Many of them were being moved to larger ghettos or other “collection points” many miles away. For the most part, these were their last steps before they were deported to the E X T E R M I N AT I O N CA M P S . On the way, many of the Jews were murdered by their German escorts or by auxiliary police (Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and others).

Death Marches in 1944 The liquidation of the concentration camps began in the summer of 1944. At the time, the S OVIET U NION ’s Red Army was challenging the Germans in the East, while other Allied forces were landing in Western Europe. The first camps to be evacuated were those in the Baltic countries and in eastern and central P O L A N D . In Western Europe, the N AT Z W E I L E R -S T R U T H O F camp, in Alsace, F R A N C E , was also emptied at this time. Most of the moves were made by rail and, in the case of the Kaiserwald camp, also by boat. Some of the prisoners, however, were forced on foot marches. The first major death march began on July 28, 1944, when the camp on Gesia Street in W A R S AW , Poland, was evacuated. This camp had been established on the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto as an extension of the M A J DA N E K camp network. When it was evacuated, the camp held some 4,400 Jews from various countries, most from Greece and H U N G A R Y . About 3,600 prisoners were forced to march to Kutno, a

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A forced march of prisoners through a village from Dachau to Wolfratshausen, Germany.

distance of 81 miles (130 kilometers). During the march, anyone too weak to keep up the pace was shot. No food was supplied to the marchers, nor were they allowed to stop for a drink of water. About 1,000 prisoners were murdered on the march to Kutno. When the remainder reached their destination, they were put on a freight train, ninety persons to a car. Several hundred died on the train, and the rest—who now numbered fewer than 2,000—arrived at D AC H AU on August 9. Even harsher and longer was the march from the Bor camp in Yugoslavia. About 4,000 Jewish prisoners were taken out of that camp, put on the road to Belgrade, and marched for eight days, during which they received hardly any food. From Belgrade they were marched to Hungary. Most of the prisoners were killed on the way, and no more than a few hundred survivors were left when the column reached Hungary, where they were sent to the Oranienburg camp by train. One of the murdered prisoners was the Hungarian Jewish poet Miklós Radnoti, who composed his last poems on the march.

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The death march from Budapest began on November 8, 1944, and lasted an entire month. Some 76,000 Jews—men, women, and children—were made to walk to the Austrian border, escorted by Hungarians. Thousands were shot to death en route, and thousands more starved to death or succumbed to cold and disease. Several hundred were saved by neutral diplomats such as Raoul W A L L E N B E R G , who pulled Jews out of the columns, put them under his protection, and escorted them back to Budapest. The columns of Jews were sent to various concentration camps, mainly Dachau and M AU T H AU S E N . In November 1944, SS official Heinrich H I M M L E R ordered the end of murder by gas at A U S C H W I T Z . This was a turning point in the Nazi policy toward the Jews, and was due to Germany’s imminent defeat in the war. The Jews were, therefore, included among the other camp inmates in the continuous evacuation operation.

Death Marches in 1945 In January 1945, the remaining concentration camps in Poland were emptied. In that month, large death marches were launched, mainly from Auschwitz in the south and S T U T T H O F in the north. The Germans began evacuating Auschwitz and its satellite camps on January 18, 1945; some 66,000 prisoners, mostly Jews, were marched to Wodzisl⁄ aw. There they were put on freight trains and transported to various concentration camps, usually G R O S S -R O S E N , B U C H E N WA L D , Dachau, and Mauthausen. At least 15,000 people perished in that march. On January 21, 1945, 4,000 prisoners, most of them Jews, left the Blechhammer camp on foot. On February 2, they reached Gross-Rosen, and left for Buchenwald by train a few days later. During the foot march, at least 800 prisoners were murdered. The evacuation of the Stutthof camp complex was exceptionally brutal. On the eve of the evacuation, in the middle of January 1945, these camps had a prisoner population of 47,000, more than 35,000 of them Jews. Most of them were women. On January 20, the Seerappen camp in East Prussia, a satellite of Stutthof, was evacuated; 1,400 Jewish women and 100 Jewish men were put on the road. The next day, they were joined by convoys from other satellite camps in the area, making a total of 7,000 Jews—6,000 women and 1,000 men. The march took ten days, and during its course 700 Jews were murdered. On January 31, the convoy arrived on the shores of the Baltic Sea. The same day, the Nazis drove all the prisoners into the sea and machinegunned them. Only thirteen persons are known to have survived this massacre. The first evacuation of the main Stutthof camp was launched on January 25, 1945. That facility contained 25,000 prisoners, half of whom were Jewish women. Another 20,000 were in various Stutthof satellite camps; most of these were included in the death marches. The main route led from Stutthof to the town of Lebork (Lauenberg), where the convoy halted because the area was encircled by Red Army troops. The surviving prisoners were sent back to the main camp. The large satellite camps contained 6,000 Jewish women prisoners. Of these, 90 percent were murdered on the death marches following the evacuations. The evacuation of the main camp of Gross-Rosen and its satellites began in early February 1945. A total of 40,000 prisoners were moved out. Thousands were murdered en route. The rest were put into the Mittelbau, Flossenbürg, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Dachau, B E R G E N -B E L S E N , and S AC H S E N H AU S E N camps. Of the 20,000 Jewish prisoners doing forced labor in the Eulengebirge camps, nearly all were killed, most of them either just before the evacuation or during the death march in February 1945.

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A column of prisoners on a death march from Dachau concentration camp in April 1945.

I

n mid-March 1945, Nazi Germany still held 700,000 prisoners in

concentration camps, among them 200,000 women. Approximately 40,000 SS men were still employed in running the concentration camps and escorting the death marches.

In March and April 1945, the American and British armies were advancing in the west and the Soviet Army in the east. Squeezed between them, the Germans evacuated one concentration camp after the other, moving the prisoners into the territory still under German control. In those last two months of Nazi Germany’s existence, at least a quarter-million prisoners, men and women, were sent on death marches. Some of these marches lasted for weeks. The graves of the murder victims and the others who perished on the highways were spread over central Germany and western Austria. In that final phase, the evacuation of the camps was generally a combined operation: The prisoners made their way partly on foot and partly by train. The train trip was no less harsh or cruel than the foot march; the prisoners suffered from lack of food and water and from intolerably foul air in the cars, which held an average of seventy people each. Some of the death marches in the final months of the war were particularly brutal. In late March and early April 1945, masses of prisoners were moved out of Buchenwald camp and its satellites and were sent on long-distance marches. On April 3 and 4, for example, a convoy of prisoners from the Nordhausen camp was forced to march to Flintsbach-am-Inn, a distance of 549 miles (885 kilometers). Another convoy from Nordhausen marched to Bergen-Belsen, 214 miles (345 kilometers) away. A group from Ohrdruf was sent to Dachau, a march of 245 miles (395 kilometers). On April 4, a convoy left Halberstadt for Giessen, 316 miles (510 kilometers) away. In the evacuation of the main Buchenwald camp, the first convoy left on April 6. It consisted of 3,100 Jewish prisoners, of whom 1,400 were murdered on the way. In the next few days, some 40,000 prisoners left the camp; of these, 13,500 were murdered during the march. Twenty-one thousand prisoners remained in Buchenwald, among them a few Jews. Rehmsdorf was one of the last of the Buchenwald satellite camps to be evacuated, on April 13. Some 4,340 Jewish prisoners left the camp, but no more than 500 reached their destination, T H E R E S I E N S TA D T . The rest were murdered en route or died from other causes.

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The evacuation of the D O R A -M I T T E L BAU camp started on April 1. Most of the prisoners were marched to Bergen-Belsen, a march lasting about two weeks. In one of the convoys, the prisoners were forced into a barn that was then set on fire. The next day, when American forces reached the site (near the town of Gardelegen), they found hundreds of burned corpses. On April 25, 1945, there were about 4,500 prisoners in Stutthof, among them 1,700 Jews, when the final evacuation of the main camp began. This was the continuation of the January death marches from the Stutthof satellite camps. Since the area of the camp was surrounded by Soviet forces, the Germans removed the prisoners by sea, on ferryboats. Two hundred Jewish women prisoners were first driven to the seashore and shot to death. Prisoners who tried to hide in the barracks were forced out, and the barracks were set on fire. Of the 4,000 prisoners who left on five ferry-boats, 2,000 drowned or were shot to death by the Germans on the open sea. In the two evacuation operations of the Stutthof camps and the ensuing death marches, 26,000 prisoners perished. At the end of April, about two weeks before Nazi Germany’s final surrender, death marches were launched from Flossenbürg, Sachsenhausen, N E U E N G A M M E , Magdeburg, Mauthausen, R AV E N S B R Ü C K , and several of the Dachau satellite camps. The marches of these last two weeks are believed to have cost the lives of tens of thousands of prisoners. On one short stretch alone, between Gunskirchen and Mauthausen, a distance of 37 miles (60 kilometers), thousands of prisoners were buried, most of them Jews from Hungary. In another spot, near the town of Eisenerz, a mass grave was discovered after the war—it contained the bodies of 3,500 prisoners who were on a death march to Mauthausen. The evacuations and death marches were kept up literally until the Third Reich’s last day. The final camp from which prisoners were sent on a death march was at Reichenau, in the Sudetic Mountains; this took place on May 7, the day on which Germany surrendered to the Allies. Approximately a quarter of a million prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps were murdered or otherwise died on death marches between the summer of 1944 and the end of the war.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bachrach, Susan D. Tell Them We Remember: The Story of the Holocaust. Boston: Little, Brown, 1994. Greene, Joshua M., ed. Witness: Voices from the Holocaust. New York: Free Press, 2000. Kimmelman, Mira Ryczke. Echoes from the Holocaust: A Memoir. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997. Rabinovici, Schoschana. Thanks to My Mother. Translated by James Skofield. New York: Dial Books, 1998.

Voices of the Shoah: Remembrances of the Holocaust [sound recording]. Rhino Records, 2000.

Deffaugt, Jean Jean Deffaugt was the mayor of Annemasse, a French town on the Swiss border where many clandestine escape routes for fleeing Jews converged. Deffaugt regularly visited Jews who were caught by the Germans while trying to cross the border and incarcerated in an annex of the Pax Hotel, where they had to withstand brutal

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interrogation by the G E S TA P O . He collected food, medicines, blankets, and other supplies, which he brought to the Gestapo prison to deliver to the inmates. Deffaugt pleaded with the Gestapo on behalf of the imprisoned Jews. As he later reminisced, “I was afraid, I admit. I never mounted the Gestapo stairways without making the sign of the cross, or murmuring a prayer.” On one occasion, the Gestapo agreed to release into Deffaugt’s care a group of children under the age of eleven, arrested while on their way to the border, on the basis of the following statement: “I, Jean Deffaugt, mayor of Annemasse, acknowledge receiving from Inspector Mayer, chief of the Security Services, eleven children of Jewish faith, whom I pledge to return at the first order.” Deffaugt soon placed them in the hands of a Father Duret, who hid them in Bonne-sur-Menoge until the Allied liberation in the following weeks. When the town of Annemasse was liberated by the U NITED S TATES Army, all the children were reunited by Deffaugt and turned over to Jewish hands. Jean Deffaugt was recognized by Yad Vashem as “R IGHTEOUS AMONG THE N ATIONS ” in 1965.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Klarsfeld, Serge. French Children of the Holocaust: A Memorial. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Rescuers. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/rescuer.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000).

DEGESCH. SEE TRIALS OF THE WAR CRIMINALS; ZYKLON B. Denazification “Denazification” was the deliberate, but flawed, process of eliminating Nazism and its influence from the political and cultural fabric of Europe and punishing its practitioners in the aftermath of World War II. In February 1945, six months before the end of World War II, the three participants of the Yalta Conference— Franklin D. Roosevelt, president of the U N I T E D S TAT E S ; Winston Churchill, prime minister of G R E AT B R I TA I N ; and Joseph Stalin, leader of the S OV I E T U N I O N — jointly that they were “determined to wipe out the N A Z I PA RT Y , Nazi laws, organizations, and institutions, remove all Nazi and militarist influences from public office and from the cultural and economic life of the German people, and take such other agreed measures in G E R M A N Y as may be necessary for the future peace and safety of the world.” The Yalta statement signified that the Allies were aiming, above all, at a radical reform of Germany’s political institutions by the systematic elimination of all of their Nazi and militarist elements.

The Potsdam Agreement The Potsdam Agreement, which was signed on August 2, 1945, by the leaders of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union, contained the following declaration: All members of the Nazi party who have been more than nominal participants in its activities and all other persons hostile to Allied purposes are to be removed from public or semi-public office and from positions of responsibili-

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ty in important private undertakings. Such persons shall be replaced by persons who by their political and moral qualities are deemed capable of assisting in developing genuine democratic institutions in Germany. By the time the Potsdam Agreement was signed, many of those who were to be removed from office according to the above declaration were already being held in custody. Long before the occupation of Germany had been accomplished, the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces had drawn up lists of persons who were subject to “mandatory arrest” on the assumption that they had taken part in Nazi crimes. When the war ended, these lists were extended to include persons thought to be particularly dangerous because of their prominent positions in Nazi organizations, the Wehrmacht, the administration, and the economy. A total of 178,000 persons were placed under “mandatory arrest” by the three western Allies (Britain, France, and the United States) and put into internment camps. In the Soviet-occupied zone, more than 67,000 persons were detained. In German resistance circles, it was agreed as early as 1943 that, in principle, two things would happen when the war was over and the Hitler dictatorship had collapsed: all Nazi elements would have to be eliminated from public life, and persons who had taken part in the crimes of the Nazi regime would be put on trial. Shortly after the Allied occupation of Germany, German opponents of the Nazi regime began to organize in various places to undertake such “self-purge” operations on their own; however, these attempts were generally stifled by the military administrations of the western Allies.

It was agreed as early as 1943 that two things should happen when the war was over and the Hitler dictatorship had collapsed: all Nazi elements would have to be eliminated from public life, and those who had taken part in the crimes of the Nazi regime would be put on trial.

Implemention of Denazification Plans Neither the Yalta statement nor the Potsdam declaration contained any guidelines for implementing the announced policy of ridding Germany of Nazism and militarism. The result was that each zone had its own policy in this area, depending on the specific interests and goals of the occupying power. In the American zone, two influences were at work among the military administration: on the one hand, there was a desire to reeducate the German people for life in a democratic society, while, on the other hand, there was a belief in collective German guilt and, as a corollary, a general distrust of Germans that did not differentiate between supporters and opponents of the Nazi regime. In the British zone, the prevailing inclination was to institute a radical purge of Nazi and militarist influences. F R A N C E , which had not taken part in either the Yalta or the Potsdam conferences, also subscribed to the principle that Nazi elements had to be removed, but in the French zone the issue was never accorded the degree of importance that it had in the American or even in the British zone. France’s goals were to weaken Germany, its traditional enemy, by decentralizing Germany’s political framework and by exploiting the resources still to be found in the French zone of Germany for the restoration of the French economy, which had declined sharply as a result of the war. From the start, denazification measures in the Soviet zone were designed to serve the Soviets’ main objective—restructuring society in accordance with Communist principles. Persons suspected of having taken part in Nazi crimes were taken into custody and some were exiled to the east. However, most of the rank-and-file members of Nazi organizations were not affected by the denazification measures, provided they showed that they were prepared to participate in the creation of a Communist society, such as by joining the Communist party.

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O

ne of the flaws in the denazification pro-

cess was the inconsistency that emerged in the treatment of similar cases under different occupation

In order to avoid too many differences in their respective denazification policies, the four powers issued a regulation on January 12, 1946, through the Allied Control Council for Germany, that outlined uniform denazification guidelines to be applied across Europe and the Soviet Union. Attached to the regulation was a list of offices and positions from which former Nazis were barred. If these guidelines had actually been observed, denazification measures would have been much harsher than they were in practice. However, it was too late for that. Developments had reached the point where the trend toward moderation could no longer be reversed by a Control Council regulation, especially in the French and British zones.

zones. Naturally, this was regarded as unjust. The timing of denazification was also a problem. The less serious cases were dealt with earlier, when the sentences imposed were relatively severe, whereas the more serious cases were delayed due to their complexity. By the time they reached trial, the Allies were no longer as concerned about denazification as they had been earlier in the process. The result was that the greater offenders escaped with relatively light sanctions.

Classification of Former Nazis A subsequent Control Council regulation, dated October 12, 1946, required that former Nazis be classified in one of five categories: 1. Major offenders 2. Offenders (activists, militarists, profiteers) 3. Lesser offenders 4. Followers 5. Persons exonerated Persons in categories 1 to 4 were subject to punishments, or some form of “reparation,” that included the following possibilities: detention in a labor camp, for terms ranging from two to ten years (major offenders); banning from employment; confiscation of property; loss of pension rights; special deductions from current income; and restriction of voting rights. Some leniency was built in to this regulation. For example, people in category 4 who were born after January 1, 1919, were exempt from reparation through a “youth amnesty.” In the French zone, other amnesties were announced in 1947 and 1948 which were available to those classified as “followers.” The basis for the classification was a questionnaire that was filled in by the person to be denazified. The respondents were required to give personal data and divulge their activities during the Nazi regime and their association with Nazi organizations. If the questionnaire showed grounds for incrimination, the case came before a panel of three people (one professional jurist, as chairman, and two lay judges) for decision. The Control Council regulation provided for the presumption of guilt; it was up to each presumed Nazi to prove his or her innocence. In view of the difficulties encountered in the denazification process, the occupying powers soon sought to transfer implementation to the Germans. At a 1947 meeting in Moscow (the Four-Power Foreign Ministers’ Conference), the recommendation was made that responsibility for implementing the denazification regulations of 1945 should be transferred to the Germans, while the supreme authority on the subject would remain with the military structures of the various occupying powers. In this way, denazification was handed over to the German authorities in 1947 and 1948.

The End of Denazification Changes in the international climate and the ensuing deterioration in relations between East and West reduced the interest of the powers in denazification. In March 1948, denazification was brought to an abrupt end in the Soviet zone. On October 15, 1950, the West German parliament (Bundestag) recommended to the

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German states that they suspend current classification procedures affecting categories 3, 4, and 5; abstain from introducing any new procedures; and abolish the existing bans on practicing certain professions, on the blocking of bank accounts or other assets, and on the restriction of voting rights. The Bundestag also recommended the granting of pardons to those who had been sentenced to serve in labor camps. The German states complied with these recommendations by various laws enacted in the period from 1950 to 1954, thereby bringing denazification to an end. According to an (incomplete) table made by the West German Ministry of the Interior at the end of 1949, a total of 3,410,728 sentences of punishment and reparation were imposed during the years of denazification. Denazification had been launched with great zeal, but it ran out of steam when neither the procedures laid down nor the authorities charged with its implementation proved adequate for the task. Needless to say, Nazi activists who had committed the gravest crimes in the occupied countries did not admit to them in their questionnaires. More often than not, they passed unharmed through the denazification process. On the other hand, it was not rare for persons who had been only nominal party members—those who had succumbed to pressure from superiors in order to hold on to their jobs and who had only held minor “honorary” posts in the party—to have severe sanctions applied to them. Numerous questionnaires were forged, and discrimination as well as denunciations occurred quite frequently. Since the motivation in these cases was based on personal and economic rather than political grounds, denazification was put in an even more questionable light. In the end, it was not only those who were subjected to denazification who opposed it. The process itself came to be rejected, even by opponents of the Nazi regime.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bower, Tom. The Pledge Betrayed: America and Britain and the Denazification of Postwar Germany. New York: Doubleday, 1982 [also known as Blind Eye to Murder]. Eisenberg, Carolyn Woods. Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944-1949. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Gaab, Jeffrey S. Justice Delayed: The Restoration of Justice in Bavaria Under American Occupation, 1945–1949. New York: Peter Lang, 1999.

Denmark Denmark is the southernmost of the Scandinavian countries that include Finland, Norway and Sweden. Jews settled in Denmark in the late seventeenth century; in 1814 they were granted citizenship, and in 1849, under the constitution adopted that year, they received full rights. Denmark’s Jews belonged to the lower and upper middle class and many made a name for themselves in science, literature, the arts, and journalism, or held senior posts in banking and government administration. The rate of mixed marriages was among the highest in the world. In the twentieth century most of Denmark’s 6,000 Jews lived in the capital, Copenhagen. During the 1930s the Jewish community of Denmark, like that of every country bordering on Germany, was called upon to assist Jewish refugees. In 1940 a special group, the May Fourth Committee, was established by the community to care for the refugees, which it did in cooperation with several non-Jewish committees

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B

oth the Danish government and the people expressed their opposition

to antisemitism and joined the Jewish community to combat displays of antisemitism in Danish policy and daily life.

that had been formed for the same purpose. One special project was an agriculturaltraining program set up in cooperation with the Zionist pioneering movement HeHaluts. The Ministry of Agriculture issued a special permit for this program that enabled 1,500 young people to work on farms and some to engage in fishing as well. On the whole, however, Danish policy on refugees was reserved; as in other European countries, it differentiated between “political” refugees and other kinds— the “other kinds” being the Jews. Political refugees—most of whom were Social Democrats or Communists—were supported by the Danish Social Democrat party’s Matteotti Foundation, and were given preference as far as residence and work permits were concerned. On behalf of the government, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Social Affairs handled refugee affairs. Between 1934 and 1938 the laws and regulations applying to refugees became increasingly restrictive, and non-Scandinavians encountered great difficulties in entering the country and even more so in trying to obtain work permits. Most of the Jewish refugees who did succeed in reaching Denmark—their number is estimated at 4,500—did not remain, and left the country for overseas destinations. When the Germans occupied Denmark on April 9, 1940, 1,500 Jewish refugees were still in the country, including several hundred Zionist agricultural pioneers (halutsim). During the 1930s, the Danish parliament debated government policy on the refugees. Conservative parties called for a reduction in their number and a ban on further entries into the country, while the liberal groups expressed disapproval of government policy on the issue. In the first years following the German occupation, the situation of the Jews remained unchanged—unlike that in other countries occupied by the Nazis. In contrast to the Norwegians, the Danes did not offer any real resistance to the Germans, and reached agreement with the German government on the continued operation of the country’s democratic administration. They followed a so-called policy of negotiations, under which the Danish government, and even the Danish army, remained in existence; only the conduct of foreign affairs was no longer in Danish hands. Relations between the two countries were still on a diplomatic basis, and the German minister to Copenhagen, Cecil von Renthe-Fink, remained in his post. The agreement between the Danish government and the occupation authorities contained a provision committing the Germans to refrain from causing harm to the Jews. The Danish government continued to protect Danish Jews even in times of crisis between the government and the Germans, and the Danish people resolutely resisted occasional German pressure on the Jewish issue, as well as the efforts of the small Danish N A Z I PA R T Y to stir up A N T I S E M I T I S M . In the winter of 1941–1942, a public debate was held on the “Jewish question.” The moderator, Hal Koch, a professor of theology, called on the Danish people to reject out of hand any suggestion that they discriminate against the Danish Jews, not only because justice and honor demanded it, but also because it was required to preserve Danish liberty and the rule of law. The Danish people and the Danish government stood fast on this issue. Their decisiveness persuaded the Germans that for the time being it would be preferable not to touch the Danish Jews. At the W A N N S E E C O N F E R E N C E , Martin Luther, representing the German Foreign Office, proposed that the Scandinavian countries be excluded for the time being from the “ F I N A L S O L U T I O N ” because of the attitude of the local populations toward the Jews, and the small number of Jews in those countries. The Germans took it for granted that the issue would be resolved after victory had been achieved. This policy remained in force when von Renthe-Fink was replaced, in the fall of 1942, by Dr. Werner B E S T .

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A Danish-Jewish family is taken to Sweden aboard a Danish fishing boat, in October 1943.

A change came in the spring of 1943. With the growing strength of the Allied forces on the battlefronts, Danish resistance operations began and gathered momentum. Strikes and acts of sabotage created tension between the Danes and the Germans, and the “Jewish question” was put on the agenda. Throughout this period, and from the beginning of the occupation, the Jewish community had kept a low profile and its quiet life was not seriously disturbed. However, members of the Y O U T H M OV E M E N T He-Haluts showed greater sensitivity, became aware of the changing situation, and made plans for escaping from the country. An attempt by some of the young people to reach the coast of southern Europe by hiding under train carriages failed; on the other hand, a group of He-Haluts fishermen on Bornholm Island obtained a boat and used it to flee to Sweden. The Germans learned of the escape and issued a stern warning to the Danish government, which passed it on to the Jewish community. This incident caused friction between the Jewish community—which bore part of the cost of maintaining the Zionist training farms—and the He-Haluts trainees, with the community leaders threatening to take action if such attempts were repeated. In late August 1943, a crisis erupted between the German authorities and the Danish government when the latter refused to accede to new German demands. The Danish government resigned, and the German military commander in Denmark declared a state of emergency. Werner Best regarded this as an opportune moment for proposing to B E R L I N that the Jews of Denmark be deported. Best probably thought that his proposal would bring German police reinforcements to Denmark and that this would effectively bolster his own position, which had suffered as a result of the crisis. It turned out that Best himself was not sure that his proposal should be carried out, fearing that it would compromise his own relations with the Danes. On the night of October 1–2, 1943, the German police began arresting Jews. Reports of the planned deportation of the Jews were leaked to various Danish circles by several German sources. The reaction was instantaneous. The Danes alerted the Jews, helping them move into hiding places and from there make their way to

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the seashore, and, with the help of Danish fishermen, cross into Sweden. At first this was an unorganized and spontaneous operation, but soon the Danish resistance joined in and helped to organize the massive flight that followed the Swedish government’s proclamation that it was ready to take in all the refugees from Denmark. In Denmark, all groups of the population went into action in order to save the Jews. Dozens of protests poured into the offices of the German authorities from Danish economic and social organizations; King Christian X expressed his firm objection to the German plans; the heads of the Danish churches published a strong protest and used their pulpits to urge the Danish people to help the Jews; and the universities closed down for a week, with the students lending a hand in the rescue operation. The operation went on for three weeks, and in its course 7,200 Jews and some 700 non-Jewish relatives of theirs were taken to Sweden. The costs of the operation were borne partly by the Jews themselves and to a large extent by contributions made by the Danes. The Danish resistance movement grew in size and strength as a result of the successful rescue effort and was able to keep open a fairly reliable escape route to Sweden. Rolf Günther—Adolf E I C H M A N N ’s deputy, who had come to Copenhagen in order to organize the deportation of the Jews—failed in his mission. The Danish police not only refused to cooperate with Günther but also helped the rescue operation. An order was also issued prohibiting German police from breaking into apartments in order to arrest Jews. Despite all these efforts, some 500 Jews were arrested and sent to T H E R E S I E N S TA D T . The Danish public and the administration (which continued to function after the government had resigned) did not give up their concern for the fate of their Jewish countrymen in Theresienstadt. They sent food parcels to them and had the Danish Foreign Ministry bombard the Germans with warnings. The ministry also put forward a demand that a Danish delegation be permitted to visit the detainees in the Theresienstadt camp. Eichmann exploited this Danish demand by setting up a fake “model ghetto” in Theresienstadt when a Danish delegation, together with International Red Cross representatives, visited Theresienstadt in the summer of 1944. However, the fact remains that the Danish Jews were not deported to A U S C H W I T Z , and in the end were included in a Swedish Red Cross operation in which Scandinavian nationals were transferred from concentration camps to Sweden, in the spring of 1945, before the war came to an end. The Danish people’s responses to Nazi atrocities represent an exercise of high moral and political responsibility, outstanding and exceptional for the time in which it took place. They consistently refused to discriminate against their Jewish fellow citizens and to surrender them, or the refugees among them, to the Germans. They launched a rescue operation to transfer the Jews to a safe haven in Sweden. They also offered unwavering support and protection to the Theresienstadt deportees, and stood firm in their convictions, despite the threat of retaliation.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Flender, Harold. Rescue in Denmark. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963. Goldberger, L., ed. The Rescue of the Danish Jews: Moral Courage under Stress. New York: New York University Press, 1987. Levine, Ellen. Darkness Over Denmark: The Danish Resistance and the Rescue of the Jews. New York: Holiday House, 1999. Paldiel, Mordecai. The Path of the Righteous: Gentile Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust. Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1993. Petrow, R. The Bitter Years: The Invasion and Occupation of Denmark and Norway, April 1940–May 1945. New York: Morrow, 1974.

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The Power of Conscience [videorecording]. Direct Cinema, 1994. Yahil, L. The Rescue of Danish Jewry: Test of a Democracy. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1969.

DENYING THE HOLOCAUST. SEE HOLOCAUST, DENIAL OF. DEPARTMENT

OF

STATE.

SEE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT

OF

STATE.

Deportations The Nazis used to mass deportations to remove Jews from the Reich and from occupied nations and to transport them to ghettos, camps, and killing centers. As early as September 1919, Adolf H I T L E R wrote of the need for systematic measures in G E R M A N Y to achieve “the removal of the Jews altogether.” Thus, from the beginning, the physical removal of the Jews from Germany in one way or another was basic to Hitler’s approach to the “Jewish question.” But it was not until the mid1930s that at least one party organization, Reinhard H E Y D R I C H ’s SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service), a branch of Heinrich H I M M L E R ’ S S S , began to formulate policy based on this axiom. The SD declared that the final goal of Nazi Jewish policy was to leave Germany “cleansed” or “free” of Jews (judenrein; judenfrei). This was to be achieved through intensifying pressure on Jews to emigrate. With the annexation of A U S T R I A in March 1938, the SD was first able to experiment freely in this regard, when Adolf E I C H M A N N established the C E N T R A L O F F I C E F O R J E W I S H E M I G R AT I O N in V I E N N A . However, Eichmann’s methods still constituted forced emigration or expulsion rather than deportation.

First Deportations The first experiment in actual mass deportation of Jews was carried out in the fall of 1938. In March of that year, P O L A N D had decreed that Polish citizens living abroad who did not have their passports renewed with a special stamp by October 31 would be denationalized. The Germans realized that they would soon have on their hands as many as 70,000 resident Polish Jews, who, without valid passports, would be unable either to return home or to emigrate further. As the deadline approached, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop urged the police to take preventive action. The G E S TA P O rounded up about 17,000 Polish Jews on the night of October 28, 1938, in order to deport them to Poland. The Poles closed their border on October 31, trapping most of the unfortunate deportees in a no-man’sland in the area of Zb¸aszy´n. Their fate became the subject of prolonged GermanPolish negotiations. Deportation without control of the area of reception had proven to be a fiasco. The conquest of Poland in September 1939, however, offered the shapers of Nazi Jewish policy precisely what they had lacked the previous year. Almost immediately, they made plans for large-scale deportations of Jews from the ever-expanding Third Reich into German-occupied Poland—to a L U B L I N Reservation, in particular (see N I S K O A N D L U B L I N P L A N ). The first such deportations, in October

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1939, were organized by Eichmann and involved five trainloads of Jews from Vienna; Mährisch-Ostrau, in the Protectorate of B O H E M I A A N D M O R AV I A ; and Katowice, in the newly incorporated territory of Eastern Upper Silesia. They were transported to a transit camp at Nisko, on the San River, from which most of the deportees were chased over the demarcation line into the Soviet zone. However, Jewish deportations were only part of a much broader scheme approved by Hitler at that time. This involved the resettlement of ethnic Germans (V O L K S D E U T S C H E ) from the Soviet sphere and the deportation of all Poles from the incorporated territories, as well. Eichmann was named the SS expert in charge of “Jewish affairs and evacuations,” coordinating the outgoing deportations of Poles and Jews. Chaotic conditions, conflicting priorities, and “wild deportations” (the Nazis’ term), characterized German-occupied Poland, and the systematic deportation of the Jews failed once again. Eichmann’s Nisko operation was canceled, and the deportation of Jews from the incorporated territories into the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T was repeatedly postponed. Most of those deported by the Germans at this time—over 380,000 into the Generalgouvernement by March 1941, according to SS statistics— were Poles rather than Jews. In addition, several hundred thousand Jews—stripped of their homes, livelihood, and human dignity—fled eastward on their own.

Vichy

The region of France not occupied by Germany and governed from the spa town of Vichy.

In the summer of 1940, Madagascar replaced the Lublin Reservation as the prospective goal of Jewish deportation, but this plan too proved impracticable (see M A DAG A S C A R P L A N ). Jewish deportations remained sporadic and tied to other population movements. When more than 70,000 “undesirable” Frenchmen (including, of course, French Jews) were deported from Alsace-Lorraine into Vichy F R A N C E , the district leaders of neighboring Baden and Saarpfalz exploited the opportunity to make their own territories judenfrei by deporting their 6,500 German Jews as well, on October 22 and 23, 1940. And when a renewed wave of deportations into the Generalgouvernement was undertaken in early 1941, 5,000 Jews from Vienna and some 4,000 from the incorporated territories were included, until the whole resettlement action was suspended during preparations for the German invasion of the S OV I E T U N I O N . Thus, although total removal of the Jews through deportation was the centerpiece of Nazi strategy in the first eighteen months of the war, in reality such moves comprised only a small fraction of Nazi deportation programs in this period.

Finding Destinations for Deportees With the invasion of the Soviet Union and the O P E R AT I O N A L S Q UA D S ’ massacres of Soviet Jewry, Nazi Jewish policy shifted from expulsion to mass murder. But the mobile firing-squad methods used in the Soviet Union could not be employed on European Jews; they could not be shot down in the streets of Amsterdam, P A R I S , or Salonika as they were behind the front in the Soviet Union. Hence the Nazis came to a decision that Jewish deportations would be not an end in themselves, but the means of bringing the Jews to killing centers in the east. However, in late September 1941, before these centers were constructed, Hitler ordered that Germany be cleared of Jews by the end of the year. Between mid-October and midDecember, some fifty thousand German Jews were deported either to L⁄Ó D Z´ or to the occupied areas of the Soviet Union. Many of the latter group were shot on ⁄ ódz´ arrival in R I G A or K OV N O ; meanwhile, space was made in the overcrowded L ghetto when deportations of its inhabitants to the first extermination camp, at nearby C H E L⁄ M N O , began in December 1941. But a deportation program on the scale necessary to clear Germany, Poland, and other European countries of their Jews could not begin until the major E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S (B E L⁄ Z˙ E C , S O B I B Ó R , T R E -

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BLINKA,

A U S C H W I T Z , and, later and on a much smaller scale, M A J DA N E K ) were ready to go into full operation, between March and July of 1942.

Structure and Strategy for Deportations The intended victims (see W A N N S E E C O N F E R E N C E ) were scattered throughout Europe in countries with varying degrees of sovereignty, many of them not under German occupation. The victims in Poland were already ghettoized and under total German control, but deportation of Jews from other parts of Europe would be a far more complex problem. Eichmann had gained considerable experience in both “Jewish affairs” and “evacuations,” and his department, Section IV B 4 of the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA), became the coordinating center of these deportations to the extermination camps. Eichmann had only a small staff directly under him (12 to 13 officials plus secretarial help in the Berlin office), but it was nonetheless a far-reaching network. The German embassies in many occupied and allied states already had “Jewish advisers” who were in close contact with Eichmann. Himmler had also established his own police networks in areas under German military control, and here Eichmann had direct access to the local Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei; called Sipo). The task of Eichmann’s small outfit was to get others to perform the functions vital to the deportation program; thus a number of other agencies were of great importance.

J

ews were booked as passengers (one-way group fares, children half

price, and infants under four free) but were transported as cargo, in freight cars. The railways carried nearly three million people to obscure destinations from which clothing and luggage, but no people, returned.

Vital logistic support was provided by the Transport Ministry; the German Railways under its jurisdiction, supervised by State Secretary Albert GanzenMüller; and the German Railway’s Polish auxiliary, the Ostbahn. Securing “special trains” for the Jews despite the immense demands made on German rail capacity throughout the war was crucial. For deportations within Poland, the local Sipo made arrangements directly with the Ostbahn. For all other deportations in Europe, Eichmann’s deputy Rolf Günther and Eichmann’s transportation expert, Franz N OVA K , worked with German Railway authorities. The Foreign Office was another important agency in the deportation program. Its Jewish desk had long offered advice concerning the foreign-policy implications of Nazi Jewish programs, especially when foreign Jews were involved. Now it secured the right to be consulted by the SS concerning the “F I NA L S O L U T I O N ” in all European territories of the German sphere where foreign-policy considerations still had to be considered. The Jewish desk of the Foreign Office worked zealously to facilitate the smooth implementation of the deportation program in many ways: urging preparatory anti-Jewish legislation, on the German model; negotiating agreements on the fate of Jewish property; exercising diplomatic pressure to assist Eichmann’s representatives in attaining final agreement for the deportations, local help in conducting roundups, and in some cases even money to pay for deportation costs; and smoothing out complications arising from the presence of large numbers of Jews with foreign citizenship, who required special consideration if embarrassing incidents were to be avoided. The actual deportations required the involvement of many other elements. In Poland, special ghetto-clearing units had to be mobilized and assembled for each operation. Even a single deportation from a German city was a major undertaking. The entire police force was mobilized; a large assembly area, usually the cargo depot, was taken over and sealed off for the day. Large numbers of municipal officials were involved: representatives of the Finance Office collected property inventories, liquidated property, and turned the proceeds over to officials of the Tax Office; personnel of the Labor Office collected workbooks; and those from the Housing Office collected keys and disposed of vacant apartments. In foreign coun-

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Jews from the L⁄ódz´ ghetto board deportation trains for the Chel⁄mo death camp.

tries the process was even more complicated, because allied and satellite governments had to be persuaded to perform not only all these essential functions of the deportation itself but also the preliminary steps of definition, registration, marking, expropriation, and concentration.

Deportation for Extermination By the spring and summer of 1942, the extermination camps were ready and the full-scale deportation program of the “Final Solution” commenced. The onslaught against the Polish ghettos began in southern Poland in March, continued in Warsaw in July, and reached a climax in the fall, when the extermination camps (some of them now equipped with new, larger gas chambers) were virtually flooded with deportees beyond their killing capacity. In the Warthegau—the name by which western Poland was known after it was annexed by Nazi Germany—deportations from L ⁄ ódz´ were carried out from mid-January until mid-May and again in September, while in the intervening summer months all the other ghettos of the Warthegau were systematically liquidated. By fall, only those Jews capable of physical labor were still alive in the Warthegau. Added to this stream of victims sent from the ghettos to the extermination camps were the first deportations from other parts of Europe. In mid-February 1942 the Slovak government was approached with a request for 20,000 strong, young Jews for labor in the east, a proposal it eagerly accepted. In March, Eichmann requested the deportation initially of 1,000 and then of an additional 5,000 French Jews; this too encountered no difficulties. Full-scale deportations then quickly followed, as Germany informed S L OVA K I A of its willingness to take all of the remaining Slovak Jews, of whom 58,000 were deported by the end of the summer. In July 1942, mass deportations began from France, B E L G I U M , and the N E T H E R L A N D S , at first composed primarily of foreign Jews in order to facilitate local cooperation and acquiescence. In August, some 5,500 Croatian Jews were added to the deportations, though most of the Jews in C R OAT I A were in fact killed locally by the native fascist Ustasˇ a. And in November, more than 500 Norwegian Jews were rounded up and deported.

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A second wave began in early 1943. Deportations continued from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, along with a trickle from Norway and Croatia, but the center of German attention shifted to the Balkans. Through the efforts first of the Foreign Office and then of Eichmann’s traveling representative, Theodor D A N N E C K E R , an agreement was reached with Bulgaria, which rounded up and handed to the Germans over 11,000 “alien” Jews from Macedonia and Thrace. Plans to deport native Bulgarian Jews as well foundered, however, as domestic opposition emerged and Germany’s prospects for victory began to dim after the defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943. Indeed, wherever Germany had to rely on foreign collaborators, its leverage in extracting cooperation in deporting Jews began to weaken in the postStalingrad era. Romania had cooperated with the operations of Operational Squad D along its Russian front and had carried out its own deportation of the “alien” Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina to Transnistria, where most of them perished. However, the Romanians now backed out of deporting their “own” Jews. Similarly, the Italian authorities protected the Jews in the Italian occupation zones of coastal Croatia, southern Greece, and southern France from the German onslaught. But the majority of Greek Jews lived in Salonika, in northern Greece. This region was occupied by the German military, which provided all the help Eichmann and his local representatives, Dieter W I S L I C E N Y and Alois Brunner, needed to deport 46,000 Greek Jews between March and May of 1943. The attempt to deport Jews from D E N M A R K in October 1943 failed when the local population first hid the Danish Jews and then smuggled them to nearby Sweden. In the same month, however, following the German occupation of I TA LY , 1,000 Jews were deported from Rome to Auschwitz.

“A

ll Jews everywhere shared the same fate, old and young, rich

and poor, beggars and princes, children and their grandparents, all had to disappear.” —ELIE WIESEL

Elie Wiesel, “The Holocaust as Literary Inspiration,” in Dimensions of the Holocaust (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press) 1977, p. 6.

In 1944, even when the war was clearly lost, deportations continued from western Europe, northern Italy, and the former Italian occupation zone in Greece. Deportations were also resumed in 1944 from S L OVA K I A and from the last remaining ghetto, in L ⁄ ódz´ . But all of this was dwarfed by the single largest deportation operation of the “Final Solution”—the attempt to destroy Hungarian Jewry. Following the German occupation of H U N G A RY in March 1944, Eichmann mobilized his entire team of experts and descended on Budapest. Once again willing collaborators were found, who helped to concentrate and deport 437,000 Jews between mid-May and early July of that year, before the head of state, Miklós H O R T H Y , reasserted himself and brought an end to the deportations, which could proceed only with Hungarian cooperation. Ultimately, a large number of the victims of the Holocaust fell prey to starvation and disease in the ghettos, to German mobile firing squads, or to brutal murder by local fascists. But for the majority, deportation was the essential step that brought them to their death in the Nazi G A S C H A M B E R S and labor camps.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Ayer, Eleanor H. In the Ghettos: Teens Who Survived the Ghettos of the Holocaust. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 1999. Greene, Joshua M., ed. Witness: Voices from the Holocaust. New York: Free Press, 2000. Hilberg, R. The Destruction of the European Jews. Student text. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985. Seliger, Mark, and Leora Kahn, and Rachel Hager, eds.When They Came to Take My Father: Voices of the Holocaust. New York: Arcade, 1996. Sender, Ruth Minsky. The Cage. New York: Macmillan, 1986.

Voices of the Shoah: Remembrances of the Holocaust [sound recording]. Rhino Records, 2000. Warsaw Ghetto Uprising [videorecording]. Ergo Media, 1993.

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DIRLEWANGER, OSKAR

Dirlewanger, Oskar (1895–1945)

A senior SS officer and war criminal, Dirlewanger was born in Würzburg. He studied political science and specialized in commerce; he was an officer in World War I (1914–1918) and was wounded and awarded the Iron Cross. From 1919 to 1921 he served in various units of the Freikorps, a militia-like corps of paramilitary fighters, which led to his arrest on two occasions. In 1923 he joined the N A Z I PA RT Y for the first time; in 1926 he joined it once more, and on March 1, 1932, he made it final. He was arrested in July 1934 for indecent behavior and sentenced to two years in prison. From 1937 to 1939 he served as a volunteer in the German “Condor” Legion, which fought on Franco’s side in the Spanish Civil War. In July 1940 Dirlewanger was accepted by the SS. At his own suggestion, he set up and trained a S P E C I A L C O M M A N D O (Sonderkommando) within the SS D E AT H ’ S H E A D U N I T S (Totenkopfverbände), made up of individuals who had been convicted of poaching and other offenses. In early 1941 Dirlewanger and his special SS battalion were sent to the L U B L I N district under the command of Odilo G L O B O C N I K . Here Dirlewanger became commandant of a Jewish labor camp in Dzikow, supervised the construction of fortifications on the Bug River in the B E L⁄ Z˙ E C region, and then fought against the Polish partisan movement (see P A RT I S A N S ) in the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T . In late February 1942 he and his unit were posted to B ELORUSSIA to combat the partisans in that area. In Belorussia, Dirlewanger and those under his command outdid the other Nazis in the mass murder of the civilian population. Because of his extraordinarily brutal activities, an investigation was launched against Dirlewanger. Although the findings were submitted to an SS court, he was not put on trial. In March 1944 Dirlewanger was promoted to SS-Standartenführer (rank of colonel) in the Waffen-SS, and in August of that year he was posted to W A R S AW to help quell the W A R S AW P O L I S H U P R I S I N G , where he again made a name for himself with his great brutality; that same month he was promoted to SS-Oberführer (brigadier general). Late in 1944 he was posted to S L OVA K I A with his unit to suppress the Slovak National Uprising. Dirlewanger died in Althausen under mysterious circumstances in June 1945.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Eckman, Lester Samuel and Chiam Lazar. The Jewish Resistance: The History of the Jewish Partisans in Lithuania and White Russia During the Nazi Occupation, 1940–1945. New York: Shengold, 1977. MacLean, French. The Cruel Hunters: SS-Sonderkommando Dirlewanger, Hitler’s Most Notorious Anti-partisan Unit. Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 1998.

Displaced Persons, Jewish With Nazi Germany’s surrender on May 8, 1945, the war in Europe finally came to an end. For months, Allied troops had been liberating the Nazi concentration and death camps (see C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S and E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S ) as they defeated German forces throughout Europe. The continent was in tatters, and millions of displaced persons (DPs) had nowhere to go. Their lives had been

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completely uprooted, and they needed help starting anew. The British, American, and French (but not the Soviets) set up camps throughout Europe in territories formerly occupied by Germany, where the DPs could obtain food, shelter, medical care, access to information about their loved ones, and help in resettling. These camps were designed to be temporary “processing centers” providing assistance in the immediate aftermath of the war. No one expected the camps to be in operation as late as seven years later, as was the case.

Allied Preparation Anticipating the problem of DPs, the Allies had established the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in 1943 to help the DPs until they could be sent on their way. Leaders of the Allied Expeditionary Forces and UNRRA had defined their respective duties. The army, which was in charge, agreed to provide food, shelter, clothing, medical supplies, and security to the DP assembly centers. UNRRA agreed to administer the camps and provide additional supplies, as well as recreational facilities, health and welfare services, and amenities, along with self-help programs, counseling, and vocational guidance, along with professional and technical personnel. Later on, in 1946, UNRRA also agreed to operate a records office and tracing bureau, to prepare statistics and research reports, and to supervise educational programs; the army retained ultimate responsibility for DP care, movements of United Nations citizens and DPs, and overall management of the camps.

Plans Meet Reality There were nearly 100,000 Jewish DPs when the war ended, and they were soon joined by another 150,000 Jews fleeing A N T I S E M I T I S M in P O L A N D , Russia, H U N G A RY , and Romania. Together, they became known as the she’erit ha-pleta—the “surviving remnant” of European Jewry. Unfortunately, this surviving remnant was larger than had been predicted or expected, and Jews were not the only displaced persons seeking assistance. Assembly centers were vastly overcrowded, and the UNRRA could supply only about half as many workers as it needed. Jewish DPs stayed in these centers because they had nowhere to return to—their homes, property, and communities had been destroyed by the Germans or taken over by the local population in their absence. In addition, the antisemitism that had essentially supported the Nazi persecution of the Jews had not abated, and throughout Europe, Jews were discouraged, through violence and continued persecution, from returning to the cities and villages where they had once thrived.

Living Conditions Survivors living in DP camps found that liberation from Nazi control did not necessarily mean freedom from oppression. The DP camps were makeshift operations set up in villages, former Germany military facilities, and even former Nazi camps. Living conditions were often as poor and supplies as meager as they had been during the concentration camp years. The UNRRA personnel and programs, largely coordinated by administrators in the U N I T E D S TAT E S , were not prepared to meet the specific needs of the east European refugees. In the summer of 1945, U.S. President Harry S. Truman sent a delegation headed by Earl G. Harrison to investigate conditions of the Jews in the DP camps in the American zone in Germany. The group found Jewish DPs were living under guard in centers that included former concentration camps, sometimes alongside

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their former Nazi tormentors. Some military personnel treated the displaced persons as criminals. Housing, medical, and other facilities were inadequate, and many DPs still wore old concentration camp uniforms because they had no other clothing. No efforts were being made to reunite families or help survivors find lost relatives, and DPs were unable to send or receive mail. The Harrison Commission report stated, “We appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them, except that we do not exterminate them.” Following the Harrison mission and the implementation of his recommendations, living conditions in the American zone improved considerably, compared to those in the British zone. Jewish DPs in the American zone were treated as a special group that had its own requirements and were put into separate camps, where they had extensive autonomy. At their request, they were allowed to live outside the camps, and German properties were set aside for that purpose. Jewish welfare agencies were able to expand their operations. A special adviser on Jewish affairs was appointed to American military headquarters in Germany. Most of the survivors in the British zone continued to be concentrated in the former B E R G E N - B E L S E N camp. Conditions for Jewish DPs under British control remained generally uncomfortable, due in part to the political conflict brewing over the relocation of Jews to countries outside Europe, especially to British-controlled Palestine.

Resettling Displaced Persons The goal of most Jewish DPs was resettlement outside of Europe. Many were particularly interested in migrating to Palestine, with the hope of establishing a homeland there for the Jews. The United States put pressure on G R E AT B R I TA I N to loosen restrictive immigration limits on Palestine; Great Britain expected the United States to increase American immigration quotas; and Arab countries objected to increased emigration of Jews to the Middle East. Around the world, countries were willing to help resettle non-Jewish DPs to fill booming post-war jobs in agriculture, mining, and domestic work, but Jewish DPs were not welcome. In the United States, legislators influenced by cultural antisemitism, and the fear that Jewish immigrants would bring Communist ideology into American society, drafted restrictive immigration legislation that would have eliminated most eastern European Jewish DPs from consideration as immigrants. When both houses of Congress passed the Displaced Persons’ Act of 1948, more than three years after the war had ended, President Truman, who disapproved of the racist and antisemitic intent of the bill, signed it reluctantly. Then, to implement the legislation, he appointed a commission that interpreted the bill’s dictates very broadly, thus circumventing the anti-Jewish intentions of the senators and representatives who approved the bill. Relocation to the United States thus became a possibility for more Jewish DPs.

Jewish Community in DP Camps In the years following the war, as politicians around the world wrestled with the resettlement question, Jewish DPs remained in European camps awaiting their opportunity to emigrate. While they worked toward that goal, the Jews established the trappings of community in the camps, including schools, newspapers, and cultural groups. More than 70 newspapers were published throughout Europe, mostly in Yiddish and Hebrew. Aided by J E W I S H B R I G A D E G R O U P soldiers and emissaries of the Jewish Agency and of the Palestine Jewish community, and by the different welfare agencies, an extensive Jewish school system grew to include nursery schools;

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elementary schools; two high schools (one in Munich and one in Bergen-Belsen); educational institutions for the ultrareligious, teachers’ seminars for women, and several Talmudic academies (yeshivas); and a vocational training network.

Ceremony marking the departure of the 50,000th displaced person to the United States (July 13, 1949).

The End of the DP Program The problem of the DPs went on for years because Britain was slow to realize that it would have to relinquish control of Palestine, and the United States was even slower in realizing that unless it attempted to receive DPs, the problem would not go away. All nations expected the United States to take the lead. The fact that so many DPs were Jews also complicated the matter. When the State of Israel was founded in 1948, more than 100,000 Jewish DPs emigrated there, despite continuing obstacles and hardships. Others dispersed to the Americas and other parts of the world, although immigration laws everywhere made this an arduous process, as well. Between 1945 and 1952, the United States accepted

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about 400,000 DPs, of whom an estimated 20 percent were Jewish. About 100,000 DPs were admitted to Great Britain; the percentage of Jews is not known. All together, it is estimated that 136,000 Jewish DPs ended up in Israel. Most of the DP camps were closed by 1952; the last Jewish camp in Germany disbanded in 1953.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES America and the Holocaust: Deceit and Indifference [videorecording]. PBS Video, 1994. Halamish, Aviva. The Exodus Affair: Holocaust Survivors and the Struggle for Palestine. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998. “Jewish Displaced Persons.” Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance Online. [Online] http://motlc.wiesenthal.org/pages/t018/t01826.html (accessed on August 27, 2000).

The Long Way Home [videorecording]. Simon Wiesenthal Center, 1997. Sachar, Abram Leon. The Redemption of the Unwanted: From the Liberation of the Death Camps to the Founding of Israel. New York: St. Martin’s, 1983.

Dora-Mittelbau Also known as Dora-Nordhausen, Dora-Mittelbau was a C O N C E N T R AT I O N in the Harz Mountains, 3 miles (5 kilometers) from Nordhausen, Saxony (now in eastern G E R M A N Y ). The Dora-Mittelbau camp was first mentioned on August 27, 1943, as an external unit of the B U C H E N WA L D concentration camp. On October 28, 1944, it became a major concentration camp under its own name. It had twenty-three branches, most of them nearby, inside a restricted military area.

CAMP

Thousands of prisoners were transferred to Dora-Mittelbau in the second half of 1943, mostly from Buchenwald. They were put to work digging underground tunnels that were to serve as the site of a huge plant for the manufacture of V-2 missiles and other arms. Until the plant was put into operation (in the late spring of 1944), the 10,000 prisoners working on the site had no living quarters. They were housed inside the tunnels under unbearable conditions, deprived of daylight and fresh air for weeks at a time. They had to work at a murderous pace, in twelve-hour shifts. The unspeakable sanitary conditions and lack of safety precautions led to a death rate much higher than that in any other concentration camp in Germany. Only after production began was a camp of wooden barracks constructed in DoraMittelbau; the prisoners were transferred there in the summer of 1944. That fall, when maximum production was reached in the camp, Dora-Mittelbau had a permanent population in the main camp of more than 12,000 prisoners. Another 20,000 were in the satellite camps. When construction was completed and the plant went into operation, thousands of Jewish prisoners from various countries were brought to Dora-Mittelbau. They were treated with great brutality and were assigned the most physically demanding jobs. As a result, they died at higher rates than any other group of inmates in the camp. Jewish prisoners who were exhausted and could not keep pace with the work were sent to A U S C H W I T Z and M AU T H AU S E N in special transports, to be killed there. The first group of prisoners sent to Dora-Mittelbau from Buchenwald included several people who had been active in the underground organization in Buchenwald. Together with other inmates at Dora-Mittelbau, they formed an

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One of the underground tunnels where V2 missiles were manufactured in the DoraMittelbau concentration camp.

underground organization. Their purpose was to sabotage the work of the camp and slow it down. When production began in 1944, these sabotage operations were intensified. The underground activists were able to seriously damage the manufacturing process and upset the timetable for the delivery of weapons badly needed by the Germans in the final months of World War II. Large numbers of prisoners were jailed on charges of sabotage; many were killed during their interrogation or were subsequently executed. More than 200 prisoners suspected of sabotage, including several of the underground leaders, were hanged in public. On April 1, 1945, the Nazis began the evacuation of the camp. Within several days, most of the prisoners had been taken out, with the majority transferred to B E R G E N -B E L S E N . Thousands were murdered on the way. At one point, near the village of Gardelegen, several thousand prisoners—mostly Jews—were crowded into a barn that was set afire, burning them all to death. Others died of disease after they finally reached Bergen-Belsen, on the very eve of liberation.

“The same way, with the same pleasure as you shoot deer, I shoot a human being. When I came to the SS and had to shoot the first three persons, my food didn’t taste good for three days, but today it is a pleasure. It is a joy for me.” —Hans Karl Moeser, Dora-Mittelbau SS Officer

On March 25, 1945, Dora-Mittelbau and its satellites contained 34,500 prisoners. Two weeks later, on April 9, the camp was liberated by G R E AT B R I TA I N forces. They found only a few prisoners remaining. Between August 7 and December 31, 1947, an American military tribunal, which was independent of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, tried nineteen former staff members of the Dora-Mittelbau camp. Fifteen of them were found guilty. The protective-custody camp leader, S S officer Hans Karl Moeser, was sentenced to death by hanging. In his trial statement, he said: “The same way, with the same pleasure as you shoot deer, I shoot a human being. When I came to the SS and had to shoot the first three persons, my food didn’t taste good for three days, but today it is a pleasure. It is a joy for me.” The other defendants received sentences that ranged from five years to life imprisonment.

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SUGGESTED RESOURCES Beon, Yves. Planet Dora: A Memoir of the Holocaust and the Origins of the Space Age. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997. Faber, David. Because of Romek: A Holocaust Survivor’s Memoir. El Cajon, CA: Granite Hills Press, 1997.

Drancy Drancy was a transit and detention camp for the Jews of F R A N C E , from which they were sent to F O R C E D - L A B O R and E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S . The camp was established in August 1941 in the northeastern P A R I S suburb of Drancy. It was situated in a four-story concrete building, which before the war had served as police barracks. There was a 10-foot lookout tower at each of its four corners. The camp was under twenty-four-hour guard by French policemen armed with machine guns. The outer road had a barbed-wire fence on each side. Four satellite camps were later added; they housed the artworks, valuable furniture, household goods, and books that were confiscated from Jews who had been arrested and deported. The camp was able to hold 4,500 prisoners. From August 21, 1941, to August 17, 1944 (liberation day), some 70,000 prisoners passed through Drancy. On June 22, 1942, the first transport, consisting of 1,000 Jews, left Drancy for A U S C H W I T Z Birkenau. The last one left Drancy about two years later, on July 31, 1944. Between these two dates a total of sixty-four transports left Drancy, with 64,759 Jews aboard. The vast majority went to Auschwitz. Of the Jews who went to their death from Drancy, more than 20,000 were native French, 15,000 were Polish, and 6,000 were German nationals.

Organization and Administration The organization and structure the Drancy camp were modeled along the lines of Nazi C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S . Its history can be divided into two distinct periods: During the first period, from August 21, 1941, to July 1, 1943, it was administered by the French. During the second, from July 2, 1943, to August 17, 1944, it was run by the Germans. Although three high-ranking French police officers ran the camp during the first period, it always under the control of the German Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei; called Sipo) and S D (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service) commanders in France. On July 2, 1943, Alois Brunner took charge of the camp, removing all the French commanders from their posts. He ran the camp with the help of four S S officers. The inmates’ conditions deteriorated greatly during this time and an intensive effort was made to deport a larger number of Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Under Brunner’s administration, prisoners were assigned functions previously performed by the French police. The members of this internal police service played an important role in the life of the camp. At the beginning of August 1944 the Allied forces, including Britain and the United States, reached Paris. On the night of August 15, the Germans in Drancy hastily burned all the camp documents. The next day they fled, leaving 1,542 prisoners behind them. On August 17, the consul general of Sweden, Raoul Nordling, took over control of the camp and asked the French Red Cross to care for the inmates. The camp was liberated.

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Deportation of the Brin family from Drancy.

Prisoner Life at Drancy Solidarity and mutual help became the rule among the Drancy prisoners, in an early manifestation of resistance. The first escape took place within ten days of the camp’s establishment. From August 21, 1941, to August 17, 1943, there were 41 successful escapes, and an untold number of unsuccessful attempts. In September 1943 the prisoners began digging an escape tunnel, through which all the prisoners would be able to disperse. Running 4.5 feet below the surface, the tunnel began underneath the camp commandant’s office. From there it passed under the barbedwire fence. The planned exit was an underground air-raid shelter beyond the camp boundary. Seventy prisoners worked in three shifts on the tunnel, day and night. On November 8, 1943—when no more than 98 feet remained to be excavated (a day’s work)—the Germans discovered the tunnel. As punishment, many prisoners were executed, among them the leader of the camp underground organization, Robert Blum. The food rations in the camp were tiny, and the prisoners were severely undernourished. The shortage of food was a constant problem, with the daily ration ranging from 600 to 800 calories per person. The situation improved after mid-November, 1942, with the help of French Jewish organizations and the Red Cross. Food parcels were also received in the camp from the families of the prisoners. However, once Brunner took over, these supplies dwindled noticeably. The Jews’ cultural and religious life persisted in Drancy despite the difficult conditions. Religious customs were observed, and hundreds of prisoners attended prayer services. The Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) and the Day of Atonement

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(Yom Kippur) were celebrated in the camp synagogue, which was established in September 1941. Many prisoners also attended regular Sabbath services. On July 20, 1942, the Germans prohibited any further Jewish religious observance. Many cultural activities took place in the camp, including a variety of concerts and literary evenings. Books were smuggled in, and a school was set up for the children. The school continued to function in secret even after January 1943, when it was officially closed down on German orders. Men, women, and children were among the prisoners detained in Drancy and deported from there. Among the most famous were the French poet Max Jacob, who died in the camp in 1944; Pierre Masse, a French senator; the ballet director René Blum; the writer Tristan Bernard; Marcel Dassault, an aircraft builder; and Jankiel Handelsman and Joseph Dorembus, who were later among the organizers of a mutiny in Auschwitz-Birkenau, on October 7, 1944. After the war a monument was erected, at the place where the camp’s front gates once stood, to commemorate the Jews who were deported to the extermination camps from Drancy.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Butler, Hubert. The Children of Drancy. Westmeath, Ireland: Lilliput Press, 1988. Josephs, Jeremy. Swastika Over Paris. New York: Arcade, 1989. Klarsfeld, Serge. French Children of the Holocaust: A Memorial. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

DROR (DEROR). SEE YOUTH MOVEMENTS. DÜNABURG. SEE DVINSK. Dvinsk Dvinsk is a city in southeast L AT V I A , on the Western Dvina River. In 1935 the Jewish population of Dvinsk numbered 11,116, of a total of 45,160 people. In June 1940, L ATVIA was incorporated into the S OVIET U NION . On June 26, 1941, four days after their invasion of the Soviet Union, the Germans occupied the city of Dvinsk. Within several days, all the Jewish males aged 16 to 60 were assembled in the main square and taken to prison. For a week they were subjected to torture and F O R C E D L A B O R . Then the Germans began killing them. By July 16, according to official German accounts, 1,150 Jews had been murdered. Latvian police and volunteer helpers burned down the synagogues—sometimes while Jews were inside or after they had been forced to enter. Only two synagogues were left intact. In the second half of July, a decree was issued requiring the Jews to wear a yellow badge (see B A D G E , J E W I S H ).

The Ghetto During the last week of July, the Jews were relocated into a ghetto. The site chosen for this purpose was the Latvian military barracks on the banks of the Dvina

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River, north of the city. The place was unfit for human habitation: it had no running water or other sanitary facilities, and it was much too small for the number of Jews crowded into it. A few days later, thousands of Jews were brought into the ghetto from the neighboring towns of Griva, Kra¯slava, Preil¸i, Viski, and Lı¯vanı¯. By early August, between 14,000 and 16,000 Jews were packed into the ghetto. A J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council) was put in charge, and its various subcommittees tried to improve the housing and sanitary conditions. The ghetto had a Jewish police force, a hospital staffed by fifteen doctors and many other personnel, a pharmacy, an orphanage, and a burial society. After setting up the ghetto, the Germans embarked upon the systematic murder of its population, with the assistance of the Latvian police. According to official German accounts, a total of 9,012 Jews were killed in just a little over a month. By the end of August 1941, 7,000 Jews were left in the ghetto, most of them workers employed by the German army or surviving members of the Jewish police force and their families.

I

n late July or early August 1941, hundreds of elderly Jews were

murdered. Not long after, thousands of Jews from the neighboring towns were shot to death in pits prepared in the Pogulanka Forest, 5 miles from the city. Then in August, thousands of Dvinsk Jews were murdered in the Pogulanka Forest, including 400 children from the ghetto orphanage.

On November 7, 1941, a mass murder campaign (Aktion) was launched that lasted for two days. Between 3,000 and 5,000 Jews were murdered at Pogulanka Forest. The first to be killed were the old, the ill, and orphans. Next came people who were unemployed or whose work was not essential in German eyes. “Essential” workers had been issued special pink passes on the eve of the mass murder. Their turn came at the end. In late November, the ghetto was put under strict quarantine because an epidemic had broken out. The quarantine was in force for four months. While it lasted, the ghetto was cut off from its sources of supplies. Many people died of starvation. When the quarantine was lifted in the spring of 1942, 1,000 Jews were left in the ghetto. They included the ghetto staff and members of their families, and a few who had managed to escape the mass murder, among them children hidden by local farmers. Half of these Jews lived in the ghetto and the others in their workplaces. On May 1 the ghetto and the several hundred Jews who were in it at the time were destroyed. Only 450 Jews were left in Dvinsk. These were mostly young men and women with no family ties, and a few orphaned children. Many of the young people acquired guns and practiced using them. Some tried to escape in order to join the guerilla fighters in nearby B E L O R U S S I A , but most were unsuccessful.

Deportation In late October 1943 the Germans moved the surviving Jews of Dvinsk to the Kaiserwald camp. Some Jews resisted arrest with the arms they had, but only a few managed to escape. Several dozen Jews were left in the city, working for the security police. On the eve of the German withdrawal from Latvia in 1944, they, too, were taken to the camps. In April of that year, the Germans opened the mass graves in the pits at Pogulanka Forest and burned the corpses in an effort to obliterate the traces of their crimes against the Jews of Dvinsk. On July 27, 1944, the Soviet Union’s Red Army occupied Dvinsk. About 20 Jews were found there; they had survived by hiding. By 1946, 2000 Jews had once again gathered in the city. They established an official Jewish community organization, synagogue, cemetery, Yiddish drama circle, and Jewish culture society. In the years that followed, the Jewish community in Dvinsk dwindled in size once more, and its cultural activities were discontinued. In 1972 the Jewish cemetery was closed. A memorial for the Nazi victims, which the authorities put up in the city, makes no mention of Jews.

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SUGGESTED RESOURCES Ezergailis, Andrew. The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941–1944. Washington, DC: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1996. Reproduced in part at http://vip.latnet.lv/LPRA/Ezergailis_ preface.html Press, Bernhard. The Murder of the Jews in Latvia, 1941–1945. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999. Schneider, Gertrude, ed. The Unfinished Road: Jewish Survivors of Latvia Look Back. Praeger, 1991.

Economic-Administrative Main Office The Economic-Administrative Main Office (WVHA; Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshaupt-AMT) administered the economic activities of the S S , and was based in B E R L I N . It was formed on February 1, 1942, and was headed by the SS commander Oswald P O H L . Among the WVHA’s responsibilities was the operation of the C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S . The camps were included under the WVHA’s authority because the Nazi organization planned to use camp prisoners as factory and construction workers in the manufacture of weapons and other war-related industries. The section within the WVHA that was in charge of the camps negotiated contracts with industrial firms for the use of concentration camp prisoners. These contracts spelled out the number of prisoners to be employed by the company, the kind of work the prisoners would perform, the food and accommodations they would receive, and the money that the firms would pay the SS per prisoner for each day worked. By hiring out its Jewish prisoners, the SS was increasing its contribution to Germany’s war economy. At first these work arrangements improved living conditions for the majority of the prisoners, but not for long. On the one hand, the WVHA management was constantly trying to raise the prisoners’ productivity. On the other hand, no attempts were made to give the prisoners better accommodations and nourishment or proper training and supervision. Instead, the WVHA resorted to brute force and severe punishments in an effort to raise the prisoners’ work output, exhausting them in the process. This was of little concern to the WVHA, however, since the concentration camps received an endless supply of prisoner workers from the occupied territories of the Reich (Nazi German empire). The prisoners who worked on construction projects suffered more than those employed in the manufacture of valuable technical products. On September 15, 1942, Pohl agreed to supply Albert Speer (Hitler’s chief architect and minister for weapons and war production) with “fifty thousand ablebodied Jews” for the A U S C H W I T Z extermination camp. Pohl played an important role in expanding Auschwitz into a huge industrial and extermination complex. As far as the WVHA was concerned, Jews were “subhumans” who were there to serve the Nazis’ economic and political purposes. In the summer of 1944, the WVHA had trouble supplying the concentration camp commanders with even the minimum of food and clothing for the prisoners. At the same time, it arranged for even more work projects. Albert Speer was concerned about the growing influence of the WVHA in the weapons industry, and in October 1944 he ordered that any further use of prisoners must have his personal approval. This did not prevent him from approving the use of prisoners to transfer

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German weapons manufacturing plants to bombproof mines. This operation resulted in the death of many of the prisoners who worked in the project.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Browning, Christopher R. Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

The SS. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1989.

Edelstein, Jacob (1903–1944)

Jacob Edelstein was the chairman of the J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council) in the T H E R E S I E N S TA D T ghetto. Born in Gorodenka, Galicia, he received a religious Zionist upbringing. Zionists support the establishment of a homeland for Jews. During World War I (1914–1918) his family moved to Brno, the capital of Moravia, and from 1926 he was active in the Tekhelet-Lavan and He-Haluts Zionist Y O U T H M OV E M E N T S . In 1929 he was elected Tekhelet-Lavan representative at the HeHaluts main office, and in 1933 he was appointed head of its Palestine Office in Prague. In the summer of 1937 Edelstein emigrated to Palestine. Disappointed with that situation, he returned to Prague after just three months. There he resumed his work as director of the Palestine Office. When Germans marched into Prague on March 15, 1939, the members of the Zionist leadership of Czechoslovakia decided it was their duty to stay on and not abandon the Jewish population at a time of crisis. Edelstein became the leading personality in the Zionist leadership. He was put in charge of emigration to Palestine, and before long he was the official representative of the Jews in contacts with the Germans. Until he was sent to Theresienstadt on December 4, 1941, Edelstein left the country for several trips abroad, with the G E S TA P O ’s permission, to look for ways and means to speed up the emigration of Jews. In May 1939 he visited Palestine, in November he was in Trieste, I TA LY , and at the end of that month he was in V I E N NA ; in February 1940 he spent two days in Geneva and from there went to B E R L I N . He visited Bratislava in the fall of 1940, and in March 1941 he went to Amsterdam. In each of these places Edelstein met with the Jewish community leaders and the Zionist leadership, shared his information with them, and warned them of possible future developments. He had several opportunities to stay abroad rather than return to Czechoslovakia, but he always went back to Prague.

Jacob Edelstein.

On October 18, 1939, Edelstein, with a group of one thousand men from Moravská Ostrava, left for Nisko, south of L U B L I N , as part of a German plan for the “resettlement” of Jews in the Lublin district (see N I S K O A N D L U B L I N P L A N ). This plan ended in failure, and some of the deportees were returned to their place of origin. Edelstein went back to Prague in November 1939. His Nisko experience convinced him that he must do everything in his power to ensure that the Jews of Czechoslovakia would not be sent to P O L A N D ; he had seen what was in store for Jews in German-occupied Poland. It was now his major goal to persuade the Germans to let the Jews stay in the Protectorate of B O H E M I A -M O R AV I A and to utilize them as manpower. Jewish labor as a means of saving Jewish lives became the core of Edelstein’s policy. Accordingly, he made numerous proposals to the Nazi authorities suggesting that they utilize Jews as laborers.

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In October 1941 the Germans decided to establish the Theresienstadt ghetto as a temporary way to deal with the Jews of the Protectorate and to provide a base from which deportations could take place. The Jewish leadership, headed by Edelstein, believed that the founding of Theresienstadt was the successful result of their efforts to keep the Jews in the Protectorate. They did not know that Theresienstadt was only a temporary arrangement. Edelstein arrived at Theresienstadt on December 4, 1941, and became the first chairman of its Judenrat. Under his leadership, the Judenrat’s emphasis in the ghetto was on educating the young and making the ghetto a productive establishment. In January of 1943 Edelstein was dismissed from his post by the Germans, on the charge that there was a discrepancy between the registered population of the Theresienstadt ghetto and the actual figure. On December 18, 1943, he was deported to A U S C H W I T Z , where he and his family were shot to death on June 20, 1944. Edelstein’s activities in Theresienstadt have been the subject of dispute. Those who find fault with him charge him with cooperating with the Nazis and with misreading the facts of the situation. Their criticism is directed at his policy, but his personal honesty and integrity have never been argued. Others regard Edelstein as a hero who sacrificed himself for the sake of his people.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bondy, Ruth. “Elder of the Jews”: Jakob Edelstein of Theresienstadt. New York: Grove Press, 1989. Roubickova, Eva Mandlova. We’re Alive and Life Goes On: Theresienstadt Diary. New York: Henry Holt, 1998.

Eichmann, Adolf (1906–1962)

Adolf Eichmann was the Nazi official who played a central role in organizing the anti-Jewish policies that resulted in the “ F I N A L S O L U T I O N .” Eichmann was born in Solingen, in the Rhineland, but when his mother died when he was eight years old, the family—the father and five children—moved to Linz, A U S T R I A . Eichmann did not complete secondary school. After holding several different jobs, he became a traveling salesman for an American oil company, Vacuum Oil. In 1933 he had a work-related motorcycle accident in which he was seriously injured, and was dismissed from his job. Meanwhile, the previous year an acquaintance, Ernst K A LT E N B R U N N E R , had persuaded Eichmann to join the Austrian National Socialist party, and eventually also the S S . When the SS was outlawed in Austria in 1933, Eichmann, now unemployed, moved to G E R M A N Y where he enlisted in the Austrian unit of the SS and went through military training. He then served for a while at the D AC H AU concentration camp.

“Image not available for copyright reasons”

In October 1934 Eichmann volunteered to work in the central office of the SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service) and moved to Berlin. The SD was then headed by Reinhard H E Y D R I C H , with Heinrich H I M M L E R as chief of police. Eichmann came to regard the solution of the “Jewish question” in the Third Reich as his life mission. Eichmann was one of the chief planners and implementers of SS anti-Jewish operations. When the SD and the G E S TA P O joined in an effort to speed up the emi-

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gration of the Jews from Germany, Eichmann was sent in 1937 to Palestine and Egypt on a fact-finding mission. Eichmann’s conclusion was that increased immigration of Jews into Palestine was not desirable, since the establishment of a Jewish state was not in the interest of the Third Reich. Following the annexation of Austria to Germany in March 1938, Eichmann was sent to V I E N NA to organize the emigration of the Jews. His organizational talent and his ability to put Nazi ideals into practice soon surfaced. Eichmann evolved a method of forced emigration that consisted of three elements: undermining the economic condition of the Jews by confiscation of their property; terrorizing them by the use of force; seizing control of Jewish communal institutions and forcing their leaders to cooperate (a foretaste of the J U D E N R AT ). In August 1938, to streamline the emigration process, Eichmann set up the C E N T R A L O F F I C E F O R J E W I S H E M I G R AT I O N (Zentralstelle Für Jüdische Auswanderung). The purpose of this office was to strip the Jews of their belongings, forcing them to seek emigration to some other country with the help of some Jewish organization (mainly the J O I N T D I S T R I B U T I O N C O M M I T T E E ). Eichmann also took direct action to expel Jews, forcing some of them into a no-man’s-land across the Austrian border. Contrary to his previous doubts concerning Jewish immigration into Palestine, he began cooperating with the Jewish organizations that were running A L I YA B E T (“illegal” immigration). When the Germans seized control of B O H E M I A A N D M O R AV I A , Eichmann introduced the system of forced emigration to Prague, and, in the summer of 1939, he established in the Czech capital a Central Office for Jewish Emigration, modeled after the Vienna office.

Whenever possible, Eichmann blocked any opportunity for saving Jews.

Eichmann’s Influence Grows During 1938 and 1939, Eichmann’s authority increased rapidly. The R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA) was created by Himmler in September 1939 and headed by Heydrich. Meanwhile Eichmann was appointed head of the Jewish section in the Gestapo, whose chief at the time was Heinrich M Ü L L E R . In 1939 and 1940, Eichmann played the central role in the expulsion of Poles and Jews from the Polish areas that had been incorporated into the Reich (see D E P O RTAT I O N S ). He had already established the pattern for the mass expulsion of Jews in an operation in which Jews from Vienna and Czechoslovakia were deported to Nisko (see N I S KO A N D L U B L I N P L A N ). In October 1940, Eichmann personally led the expulsion of 6,500 Jews from Baden-Pfalz and the Saar district to the south of F R A N C E . Eichmann’s idea was to create a huge police-controlled ghetto on Madagascar, a tropical island off the coast of Africa. His operation was probably connected to the M A DAG A S C A R P L A N that was being prepared by the German Foreign Ministry. At that point, Eichmann was in undisputed control of the Jewish populations of Germany, the Ostmark (Austria), and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. From time to time he summoned the leaders of these Jewish populations to his office in Berlin to give them his orders, especially concerning the issue of forced emigration—orders that were then carried out under the watchful eye of Eichmann’s representatives in the respective locations. He had a network of officials in most of the German-occupied countries and in the satellite states, where they served as “advisers” to the governments, their task being to promote the implementation of anti-Jewish policies. Only the Scandinavian countries—D E N M A R K , Norway, and Finland—had no Eichmann representatives. The more prominent of the representatives were Alois Brunner, Theodor D A N N E C K E R , Dieter W I S L I C E N Y , and Roll Günther (Eichmann’s deputy).

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Eichmann and the “Final Solution”

By October 1940, Eichmann was in undisputed control of the Jewish populations of Germany, the Ostmark (Austria), and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

Eichmann’s activities intensified with the decision to execute the “final solution of the Jewish question,” and the acceleration of the war against the S OV I E T U N I O N . Eichmann began prohibiting the emigration of Jews from the European continent, and he quit cooperating with the organizers of Aliya Bet. In October 1941, the emigration of Jews was prohibited by order of Himmler, and the deportation of Jews from Germany to the east began. Preparations for mass murder had begun even earlier, in the summer of 1941, when Eichmann, on Himmler’s order, held talks with Rudolf H ÖSS , the commandant of A USCHWITZ , on the practical details of the mass murder. In October 1941 Eichmann, now a lieutenant colonel, took part in more discussions on the implementation of the “Final Solution.” Since Eichmann was the officer in charge of transporting the Jews of Europe to the extermination sites, Heydrich asked him to organize the W A N N S E E C O N F E R E N C E . Eichmann sent invitations to the various officials, drafted Heydrich’s address to the conference, and took down the minutes. All government bodies that had a part in the “Final Solution” participated, and the implementation of the operation was outlined. Following the conference, Eichmann called in his representatives from the various countries to plan the details of carrying out the operation. In 1942 and 1943, the years in which Jews from all over Europe were being deported to the extermination camps in P O L A N D , Eichmann’s office was responsible for issuing orders about the time and place of departure of the transports, the number of deportees, and so on. Rules were laid down on rounding up the Jews, seizing their homes, and confiscating their property. Eichmann saw to it that in Germany itself, his section would benefit from the jewelry and other valuables stolen from the Jews. Eichmann managed the details of the undertaking and maintained a regular timetable for the deportation trains going to the extermination camps. The schedules were coordinated with the railway authorities in each country. He made several visits to the camps and was well versed in the murder procedure. Eichmann was not directly involved in the extermination actions in Poland or the areas that had belonged to the Soviet Union, nor did he take any part in the activity of the O P E R AT I O NA L S QUA D S (Einsatzgruppen). However, through his representatives, he was active in all the other European countries where Jews were being sent to their death. A problem that confronted Eichmann and his associates was the treatment of the partners of mixed marriages and their progeny (see M ISCHLINGE , or Part Jews). While there were many discussions on the subject, the issue was never completely resolved.

Extermination of Hungarian Jewry

Adolf Eichmann, seated in the bullet-proof box during his trial on April 24, 1961, flanked by two men in uniform.

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Although he was responsible for coordinating many such operations, it was only in H U N G A R Y that Eichmann was personally in charge of the deportations. Immediately after the occupation of the country by German forces on March 19, 1944, Eichmann arrived in Hungary, accompanied by a large team of aides that he had assembled at the M AU T H AU S E N camp in preparation for the invasion. Between May and early July, he deported 440,000 Jews from all the provinces that were then part of Hungary, with the cooperation of the Hungarian authorities. Although the Hungarians stopped the deportations in early July, Eichmann was able to resume his murderous operations by October 1944, following the A R R O W C R O S S P A R T Y ’s political takeover in Hungary. When it was no longer possible to send the Jews to Auschwitz by train, since the murders in the gas chambers there had stopped and the eastern front had drawn near, Eichmann put 76,000 Jews on D E AT H M A R C H E S to Austria, from which they were to be sent to forced-labor camps in Germany.

EICKE, THEODOR

While in Hungary, Eichmann encountered various plans to rescue the Jews. One such effort was the rescue work carried out by Raoul W A L L E N B E R G , in conjunction with other representatives of neutral countries, which continued despite everything Eichmann did to sabotage it. Another rescue attempt was the “Blood for Goods” plan, which involved a proposal to set Jews free in exchange for a supply of trucks and other goods needed by the Germans. In the Europa Plan conceived in Slovakia, Jews were to be released in return for a large payment in U.S. dollars. Whenever possible, Eichmann blocked any opportunity for saving Jews. In two instances Eichmann was forced to agree to the liberation of some Jews: in the “Repatriation” plan, which primarily affected Jews of Spanish origin trapped in Greece, and in the program for the exchange of Jews and Germans.

E

ichmann used the Theresienstadt ghetto as a concentration camp

for Jews from Czechoslovakia and Vienna and for Jews of privileged status and those over sixty. He tried to project Theresienstadt as a “model ghetto” to satisfy the inquiries of international authorities. After altering

After the War When the war ended, Eichmann went into hiding and then, like other SS men, fled to Argentina. He lived there with his family until May 1960, when he was captured by the Israeli Security Service and brought to Israel. In April 1961 he was put on trial before the district court in Jerusalem. He was found guilty and sentenced to death, and on June 1, 1962, Eichmann was executed by hanging. His body was cremated and the ashes scattered over the sea. The trial created a debate about Eichmann’s character. Some argued that Eichmann was a very ordinary individual who was not motivated by any special hatred of Jews, and that all he did—as he himself claimed—was to carry out the orders received from his superiors, within the general framework of Nazi bureaucracy. Others believe that Eichmann was the personification of the spirit of inhumanity in Nazism and its ability to conceive of and carry out its “Final Solution.”

its appearance with temporary improvements, he showed it to Red Cross commissions as an example of a typical Jewish ghetto to refute published reports of Nazi atrocities. The so-called “ghetto for the aged” was, however, no more than a transit camp, from which a great many trains left for extermination camps.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin Books, 1994. Harel, Isser. The House on Garibaldi Street: The First Full Account of the Capture of Adolf Eichmann. New York: Viking Press, 1975.

The Hunt for Adolf Eichmann [videorecording]. A&E Home Video, 1994. Reynolds, Quentin James. Minister of Death: The Adolf Eichmann Story. New York: Viking Press, 1960.

The Trial of Adolf Eichmann [videorecording]. PBS Home Video, 1997.

Eicke, Theodor (1892–1943)

Theodor Eicke was the commandant of concentration camps and of S S D E AT H ’ S - H E A D U N I T S (Totenkopfverbände). Born in Hüddingen, Eicke served in the German army from 1909 to the end of World War I in 1918 and then became a police informant. He joined the N A Z I PA R T Y and the SA (Sturmabteilung; Storm Troopers) in 1928, and in 1930 transferred to the S S . Eicke was close to SS chief Heinrich H I M M L E R and he was promoted rapidly. In June 1933 he was appointed commandant of the D A C H AU concentration camp, with the rank of Oberführer (brigadier general). In this post he introduced his own methods in the administra-

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tion of the camp, the torture of prisoners, and the manner in which the SS-Death’s Head Units camp guards conducted themselves. These methods, which were exceptionally cruel, became standard for all the C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S in G E R M A N Y . Eicke played a key role in the “Night of the Long Knives” (Nacht der langen Messer) on June 30, 1934, when the top echelon of the SA was wiped out. Eicke himself shot the SA chief, Ernst Röhm, after the latter refused to commit suicide. The following month, Eicke was appointed chief of the concentration camps’ administration and of the SS guard formations. In November 1939 he became commander of the Totenkopf Division of the Waffen-SS—the military branch of the SS. Under his command, the division took part in the fighting in F R A N C E and on the eastern front. The division’s first criminal action was the murder of some 100 British prisoners of war in France on May 26, 1940; many such acts followed. Eicke was killed on the eastern front on February 16, 1943, while serving as an SS-Obergruppenführer (lieutenant general) in the Waffen-SS.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Hohne, Heinz. The Order of the Death’s Head; the Story of Hitler’s S.S. New York: CowardMcCann, 1970.

Memory of the Camps [videorecording]. PBS Video, 1989.

Elkes, Elchanan (1879–1944)

A Jewish physician, Elchanan Elkes was chairman of the Jewish Council of Elders, the Nazi-initiated Jewish governing body, in the K OV N O ghetto in L I T H UA N I A . He was born in the Lithuanian village of Kalvarija, close to the German border. Elkes received a traditional Jewish and Hebrew education. While still a youngster, he was sent to K OV N O to attend school. He completed his medical studies in Königsberg, G E R M A N Y , and for seven years was village doctor in Berezino, in B E L O R U S S I A . During World War I, Elkes served as a medical officer in the Russian army, and he received numerous decorations. From the early 1920s, he headed the internal-medicine department in the Bikkur Holim Jewish hospital in Kovno. Elkes was reputed to be one of the best doctors in L I T H UA N I A ; among his patients were heads of state and diplomats.

Elchanan Elkes (l), chairman of the Council of Elders in the Kovno ghetto, with Dr. Moshe Berman. Photograph taken by Zvi Kadushin, the Kovno photographer whose clandestine camera recorded life in the ghetto.

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Elkes was a Zionist—one who supported the idea of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine—and he was close to members of He-Haluts, an association of pioneering Zionist youth. During the period of Soviet rule in Lithuania (1940–1941), Elkes was physician to Moscow’s representative in Lithuania. He made use of his contacts there to help obtain exit permits for thousands of Polish Jewish refugees who were stranded in Lithuania. On June 24, 1941, the Germans captured Kovno. Thousands of Jews were arrested and murdered by the invaders and their Lithuanian collaborators. The remaining 30,000 Jews were ordered to move into a restricted area that would become known as the Kovno ghetto, and to choose a head for a newly established Council of Elders. On August 4 an emergency meeting was called, which was attended by twenty-eight leaders from all walks of Jewish life in the city. Elkes was nominated unanimously for the position and, with a heavy heart, he accepted it. He was sixty-two years old and in failing health.

ENDRE LÁSZLÓ

Elkes headed the Council of Elders from the time it was founded until it was disbanded. All who came into contact with him were impressed by his moral stature and devotion to the Jewish cause, his courage and dignity in his dealings with Nazi officials, his unpretentious manner when he was with fellow Jews, and his modest way of life. Elkes was highly respected by the Jewish ghetto population; his personal qualities contrasted sharply with the corruption and haughtiness shown by other members of the Council. Elkes approved of anti-Nazi underground activities in the Kovno ghetto. Despite the danger involved, he helped organize supplies for the members of the General J E W I S H F I G H T I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N (JFO) who had escaped from the ghetto to fight with anti-Nazi partisan groups in the forests. Elkes’s commitment to resistance influenced other members of the Council of Elders to support the JFO.

“E

very opportunity for resistance should be exploited, especially

in matters of honor.” —Elchanan Elkes

In early July, 1944, when the Red Army was not far from Kovno, the Nazis transferred the Jews of the Kovno ghetto to G E R M A N Y . Elkes risked his life and appeared before the ghetto commandant, Wilhelm Göcke, to urge him to drop the transfer plan. Göcke bluntly refused, but he allowed Elkes to leave unharmed. A few days later the ghetto was evacuated. Elkes was transferred, with many of the surviving Jews, to the Landsberg concentration camp in Germany, where he was put in charge of the hospital hut. Soon afterward he fell ill. He died on October 17, 1944. About a year before his death, while still in the ghetto, Elkes sent his children in England a final testament in Hebrew. He wrote: “With my own ears I have heard the awful symphony of weeping, wailing, and screaming from tens of thousands of men, women, and children, which have rent the heavens. No one throughout the ages has heard such a sound. Along with many of these martyrs I have quarreled with my Creator, and with them I cried out from a broken heart, ‘Who is as silent as you, O Lord’” (a bitter allusion to a well-known prayer, “Who can compare to you, O Lord”).

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Elkes, Joel. Dr. Elkhanan Elkes of the Kovno Ghetto: A Son’s Holocaust Memoir. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 1999.

Kovno Ghetto: A Buried History [videorecording]. The History Channel, 1997.

EMIGRATION. SEE ALIYA BET; MADAGASCAR PLAN. ENDLÖSUNG. SEE “FINAL SOLUTION.” Endre, László (1895–1946)

One of the leading figures of Hungarian Nazism, László Endre played a prominent role in many ultrarightist organizations and was the founder of the “Race-protecting Socialist Party” (A Fajvédo˝ Szocialista Párt). In 1919 he was appointed constable and in 1923 chief constable of Gödöllo˝, a position he held until the end of 1937, when he became deputy prefect of Pest county. He developed and maintained close contacts with the German Nazis, and began a close personal relationship with Adolf E I C H M A N N after Hungary’s occupation by the Germans on

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László Endre (l) with unidentified person.

March 19, 1944. Endre served as undersecretary of state in the Döme Sztójay puppet government’s Ministry of the Interior, a position he held between April 9 and September 5, 1944. In this role, Endre was among those chiefly responsible for the destruction of Hungarian Jewry. He fled with the retreating Nazi forces, but was captured by the Americans and extradited to Hungary in October 1945. Tried as a war criminal, he was hanged on March 29, 1946.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Anger, Per. With Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest: Memories of the War Years in Hungary. Washington, DC: Holocaust Library, 1981. Handler, Andrew, ed. Young People Speak: Surviving the Holocaust in Hungary. New York: Franklin Watts, 1993.

ENGLAND. SEE GREAT BRITAIN. ENTERDUNGSAKTION. SEE AKTION (OPERATION) 1005. Erntefest (“Harvest Festival”) Erntefest, meaning “Harvest Festival,” was the code name for an SS operation to exterminate the last surviving Jews of the T R AW N I K I , Poniatowa, and M A J DA N E K

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E R N T E F E S T ( “ H A R V E S T F E S T I VA L” )

“This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions”

camps. All of these camps were located in the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T —the areas of P O L A N D that were occupied by the Germans but not annexed to the Third Reich. The date chosen for Erntefest was November 3, 1943. The timing was influenced by the uprising of Jewish prisoners in the S O B I B Ó R death camp a few weeks earlier, on October 14. Heinrich H I M M L E R , the head of the SS, was concerned that there might be more uprisings in the Generalgouvernement. He thus gave the order to kill all the Jews working in the area on forced labor. Implemention of the order was entrusted to Jacob S P O R R E N B E R G , the Higher SS and Police Leader of the L U B L I N district. On the eve of the operation, Poniatowa held some 15,000 Jews. Trawniki had 8,000 to 10,000, including women and children; most of them had been taken to the camp from the Warsaw ghetto, during and after its liquidation. Eighteen thousand Jews remained in Majdanek. Erntefest was carried out as a military operation. Thousands of SS personnel and police, including Waffen-SS military units, were mobilized from all over the area. In order to avoid resistance, Erntefest was launched at the same time in all three camps; it came as a complete surprise to the prisoners. At dawn on November 3, the Trawniki and Poniatowa camps were surrounded by SS and police forces. The Jews were taken out of the camps in groups and shot to death in nearby pits that had been dug especially for this purpose. In Trawniki, background music blared forth from loudspeakers that had been set up especially to drown out the sound of the shooting. In Majdanek, the Jews were separated during the morning roll call from the rest of the prisoners. They were then taken to pits that had been dug next to the camp’s southern fence a few days earlier, and shot to death. Two powerful loud-

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speakers broadcast loud dance music. On the same day, Jews from other labor camps in Lublin—from the old airfield, the armament workshops, and elsewhere— were brought to Majdanek and shot to death next to the same pits. A total of 17,000 to 18,000 Jews were murdered in Majdanek on that single day. In Poniatowa, members of a Jewish underground group offered resistance when they were about to be taken to the pits. They set fire to some barracks, but their resistance was crushed. In all three camps, Jews tried to hide in the barracks, but they were caught, either on November 3 or on the days that followed, and put to death. Hundreds of Jews were left behind in each camp in order to burn the bodies of the victims. When the job was done, they, too, were murdered. Between 42,000 and 43,000 Jews were murdered in the Erntefest operation. This was the final widespread Nazi killing operation to take place in the Generalgouvernement area, and it brought A K T I O N R E I N H A R D to an end.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Goldstein, Arthur. The Shoes of Majdanek. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1992. Kimmelman, Mira Ryczke. Echoes from the Holocaust: A Memoir. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997.

ETHNIC GERMANS. SEE VOLKSDEUTSCHE. Euthanasia Program

The Euthanasia Program encountered astonishingly few misgivings on religious, moral, or legal grounds.

The term “euthanasia” is generally used to describe “mercy killings,” but it was employed by the Nazis to describe their systematic killing of various groups of individuals. Before 1933, it was not unusual for German medical professionals to bring about death in certain borderline cases, especially in hospitals and nursing institutions. Doctors and nurses with strong conservative-nationalist or religious convictions ignored the clear provisions of criminal law against such acts and “assisted death” with relative impunity. When Adolf H I T L E R came to power in 1933, it was soon apparent what the Nazis had in mind when they used terms like “the nation’s health” and “racial hygiene”: the creation of a master race (Herrenvolk). This master race would exude health and be superior in mind and body to all others. In addition, the master race would claim the right to world rule for itself for all time to come. This was to be achieved by multiplying those who were regarded as healthy and racially superior, and by eliminating individuals who belonged to foreign races, those who were not needed for the superior development of the German people, and anyone who was sick or weak. Hitler wanted the H I T L E R Y O U T H to be “as hard as steel, as strong and pliant as leather, and as fast as greyhounds.” He was less concerned about the mental superiority of the “people of poets and thinkers,” presumably because he regarded intellect as a natural attribute of the Germans. As long as the Nazis confined themselves to the forced sterilization of “Rhineland bastards” (the children fathered by black troops serving in the post-World War I occupation forces), the “hereditary diseased,” and “habitual criminals,” they encountered surprisingly little resistance. Neither was there any objection to the forcible confine-

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A document dated September 1, 1939 from Adolf Hitler authorizing the use of mercy killing for those with incurable illnesses.

ment of “asocial elements,” “idiots,” “shirkers,” and the disabled. When the war broke out, there was no protest against the field hospital that military doctors set up to filter “war neurotics”; likewise, there was no opposition to the formation of battalions made up exclusively of persons suffering from diseases of the ear, the heart, or the kidneys. Doctors threatened “malingerers” that they would be put into concentration camps or “probation units” (made up of convicted criminals who had been pardoned so that they could be sent to the front). Such threats were actually carried out, and they served as a means to eliminate weakness in the race. When the battle of Stalingrad was drawing to its end, only front-line troops received food rations; those not strong enough to have withstood the demands of battle were left to starve. In addition, as many as 40,000 wounded and sick troops were not given medical treatment.

Planning the Euthanasia Program The critical point came when doctors and medical aides were asked, unequivocally, to participate in the murder of at least some of their patients. This was the

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By the end of 1940, 26,459 patients had been put to death, and in the first eight months of 1941, an additional 35,049 were “disinfected.”

essence of the euthanasia policy that Hitler entrusted to Reichsleiter Philip Bouhler, Dr. Karl Brandt, and doctors of their choice for implementation in the fall of 1939. The Euthanasia Program was headquartered in B E R L I N in an office at Tiergartenstrasse 4. This address led to the Nazi code name—T4—that was applied to institutions and personnel involved with the Euthanasia Program. In 1941 and 1942, T4 specialists were transferred to the east, where the program of exterminating Jews allowed them to practice on an immense scale the skills they had acquired in gassing and other forms of mass murder. Judging by available records, the Euthanasia Program encountered astonishingly few misgivings on religious, moral, or legal grounds. This may have been due to a sophisticated personnel policy, secretive methods, and the mentality of the men in charge of the institutions, who were not inclined to lodge public protests or to take part personally in the operation. Disciplinary problems were avoided by spreading killing assignments over a relatively large number of staff. There was ample opportunity for relaxation and entertainment, which enabled staff members to take their minds off their work, and a strong effort was made to keep the operation secret. In order to blunt any remaining humane feelings, hard liquor was always available and plentiful. Frequent vacations, free of charge, were granted at choice resorts in A U S T R I A for staff members and their families; in addition, there were special allowances and bonuses and various other benefits. The result was that the turnover of personnel in the T4 institutions was extraordinarily low, and no serious conflict ever developed between management and staff. Institutions where the management was unwilling or reluctant to cooperate in the operation had their patients transferred elsewhere, where no such difficulties were encountered. Even under the conditions that prevailed at the time, the Euthanasia Program was an illegal enterprise. However, the euthanasia doctors, Karl Brandt and his team, made ample use of the authorization they had been given by Hitler. German government bureaucrats who believed it was the state’s responsibility to protect, rather than attack, the weakest members of society had little influence against the Nazi party agenda to “purify” the race. The doctors who carried out the Euthanasia Program were seen by those in opposition to the program as career-minded, unprincipled, and unscrupulous individuals who were willing to take risks and not bothered by legal niceties.

Implementing the Euthanasia Program It is estimated that, up to 1939, some 200,000 to 350,000 persons had been sterilized; beginning in 1939, many of these people fell victim to the Euthanasia Program. Some escaped that fate, either because it was felt that their sterilization had rendered them harmless or that they could still be useful as manpower, or because their families had made special efforts to bring them home before it was too late. On the other hand, many of the victims of the program who were gassed, shot to death, or killed by lethal injections had not been previously sterilized; these included children and patients found in hospitals and various other institutions in territories occupied at a later stage. The first large-scale euthanasia action is thought to have taken place in Pomerania and western Prussia shortly after the Polish campaign. During 1940, four euthanasia institutions went into operation: Grafeneck, in January; Brandenburg, in February; Hartheim, in May; and Sonnenstein, in June. In the first half of the year, 8,765 persons were gassed in these four institutions, three-quarters of them in May and June, a time when world attention was focused on the Battle of France. By the end of 1940, a total of 26,459 patients had been put to death, and in

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the first eight months of 1941, an additional 35,049 were “disinfected.” These figures were given by the accounting section of T4’s head office.

Euthanasia Disguised Growing criticism of the Euthanasia Program—including a sermon given by Bishop Clemens Galen in Münster on August 3, 1941—caused Hitler to bring it to an official end. However, the operation was continued up to the end of the war, under a more effective camouflage. By September 1, 1941, the date of its official termination, 70,273 people had been “disinfected,” according to T4 figures. Another figure given by T4 was the number of beds that had been made available for other purposes up to the end of 1941: 93,521. Following the transfer of the Euthanasia Program staff to A K T I O N R E I N H A R D , its functions were taken over, temporarily, by different institutions. Due to limited data, it is not possible to determine precisely how many lives were lost directly as part the Euthanasia Program. Its victims included homosexuals, foreign workers, residents of homes for the aged, residents of welfare institutions, and concentration camp prisoners. As early as August 1942, Bishop Ludwig Sebastian of Speyer, in notes prepared for a conference of bishops held in Fulda that month, stated: “Far more than 100,000 people have been the victims of euthanasia. Men over seventy are no longer to receive medicine. Who is worth being kept alive at all? Only a Nazi.” In the Nuremberg Trial, the number of euthanasia victims was estimated at 275,000.

SEE ALSO MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Burleigh, Michael. Death and Deliverance: “Euthanasia” in Germany c. 1900–1945. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Dawidlander, Henry. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Gallagher, Hugh Gregory. By Trust Betrayed: Patients, Physicians, and the License to Kill in the Third Reich. New York: Henry Holt, 1990.

In the Shadow of the Reich: Nazi Medicine [videorecording]. First-Run Features, 1997. Lifton, Robert Jay. The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. New York: Basic Books, 1986.

Evian Conference The Evian Conference was an international gathering that was convened to address the problem of Jewish refugees. It was held in Evian, F R A N C E , on the shore of Lake Geneva, in July 1938. From 1933 through 1937, about 130,000 Jewish refugees fled G E R M A N Y . For the most part, this stream of Jews leaving the country was orderly. The refugees were able to take some property with them, and they were generally able to resettle in other countries. The extreme persecution of Jews that followed Germany’s takeover of A U S T R I A in March 1938 rapidly changed the nature of the refugees’ exodus from Germany, as well as from Austria. More Jews wanted to leave, but there were new obstacles in finding places to go. Within eleven days of the annexation, President Franklin D.

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K ristallnacht signaled to the world that Jews could no longer live where the Nazis ruled. At the Evian Conference, the world had already shown that it would not make room for those Jews.

Roosevelt proposed an international conference with the two-fold purpose of (1) easing the emigration of refugees from Germany and Austria; and (2) establishing a new international organization to work for an overall solution to the refugee problem. A primary motivation for the U N I T E D S TAT E S D E PA RT M E N T O F S TAT E , which had first suggested the conference, was a selfish one. The State Department wanted to reduce the pressure, exerted by some Americans, for more liberal immigration laws. Roosevelt made it clear from the start that no country would be expected to change its present policies significantly. The United States, he pointed out, contemplated no increase in its immigration quotas (limits on the number of people admitted). From July 6 to 15, 1938, delegates from thirty-two countries, including the U N I T E D S TAT E S , G R E AT B R I TA I N , France, six smaller European democracies, Canada, several Latin American nations, Australia, and New Zealand, met at the French resort town of Evian. In the opening public speech of the conference, an American delegate, Myron C. Taylor, stated that the United States would contribute to the solution by making the existing quota for German and Austrian immigrants—27,370 per year—fully available. (Up until that time the quota had been underused.) As the sessions proceeded, delegate after delegate followed the American representative in excusing his country from taking on a larger total of refugees. The British representative declared that British territories overseas were already overcrowded, were not suited to European settlement, or were unable to accept many refugees because of political conditions. Some areas, such as parts of East Africa, might offer possibilities, he thought, but only for limited numbers. Palestine, which was then under British control and the desired destination for Zionist Jews, was completely excluded from the Evian discussion by the British representative. England itself, he said, was completely populated and in the midst of an unemployment problem, and therefore not available for immigration. The delegate from France stated that his country would do what it could, but it had already reached “the extreme point of saturation as regards admission of refugees.” The Belgian emissary reported that the same situation prevailed in his nation. The Netherlands could receive more immigrants only as the refugees who were already there moved to permanent settlements. Australia could not encourage refugee immigration because, said the delegate, “as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one.” New Zealand’s representative maintained that on account of economic problems, only a limited number could be accepted into his land. Due to the lingering effects of the Great Depression in North America, Canada would not accept additional immigrants, either. For most Latin American countries, unemployment was the main reason given for keeping immigration at a low rate. The tiny Dominican Republic, one of the last countries to report, stood alone offering encouragement to Jewish refugees, and volunteering to contribute large but unspecified areas where they could settle and farm the land. An American news correspondent accurately reflected the tone of the conference: “Myron C. Taylor … opened proceedings: ‘The time has come when governments … must act and act promptly.’ Most governments represented acted promptly by slamming their doors against Jewish refugees.” Before adjourning, the Evian Conference established the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (ICR) and commissioned it to work on two fronts. One task was to “approach the governments of the countries of refuge with a view to developing opportunities for permanent settlement.” The other job was to persuade Germany to allow an orderly emigration, and specifically, to permit refugees to take with them a reasonable amount of their property.

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Hotel Royale in Evian, France, site of the International Conference on Refugees in July 1938.

The ICR, however, received little authority and almost no funds or support from its member nations. It is not surprising that it therefore had virtually no success in opening countries to refugees. The coming of war in September 1939 cut short its efforts to arrange with Germany for refugees to bring some property out with them. The committee soon slipped into inactivity. It was immediately evident that the Evian Conference had accomplished virtually nothing. Even as the conference closed, most observers agreed that it had failed in its main task—finding places where the refugees could go. As a result, the conference crushed the hopes of hundreds of thousands of European Jews, who had hoped that the nations at Evian would save them from an increasingly impossible situation. The Evian Conference was a watershed event. At the conference the Western democracies made it clear that they were willing to do almost nothing for the Jews of Europe. Soon afterward, K R I S TA L L N AC H T (Night of Broken Glass), which took place in the autumn of 1938, signaled to the world that Jews could no longer live where the Nazis ruled. At Evian, the world had shown that it would not make room for those Jews. Thus 1938 became a turning point in the coming of the Holocaust. By the year’s end, the world knew the Jews had to emigrate. Germany was still pressing the Jews to leave, and the Jews themselves were now anxious to do so. But the world’s doors, closed at Evian, remained shut throughout World War II. In the midst of the Holocaust, the United States and Great Britain held another conference to consider helping the Jews of Europe. The delegates to the Bermu-

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da Conference of April 1943 clearly knew that the Jews were being systematically exterminated. They, too, decided to do next to nothing.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bachrach, Susan D. Tell Them We Remember: The Story of the Holocaust. Boston: Little, Brown, 1994. Mendelsohm, John. Jewish Emigration from 1933 to the Evian Conference of 1938. New York: Garland Publishing, 1982. Pomerantz, Jack. Run East: Flight from the Holocaust. Bloomington: University of Illinois Press, 1997.

The existence of the

Extermination Camps

extermination camps was classified as top secret in the Third Reich, and the SS coordinated an elaborate system of diversion and deception around them.

Extermination camps were Nazi camps in occupied Poland in which millions of Jews were murdered, as part of the “F I N A L S O L U T I O N of the Jewish question in Europe.” These camps had a single goal: the absolute elimination of the Jews, irrespective of age or sex. In contrast to the procedure at other camps, prisoners were not evaluated upon arrival in a selection process known as Selektionen (with some exceptions in A U S C H W I T Z -Birkenau). Everyone brought to an extermination camp, including persons fit for work, was murdered. For this reason, such camps have sometimes been called “death factories.” The systematic mass murder of Jews began when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, on June 22, 1941. In the first phase, carried out primarily by the SS O P E R AT I O NA L S QUA D S (Einsatzgruppen), hundreds of thousands of Jews were shot to death. This method of killing, however, proved too slow for the Germans, and too difficult to keep secret. Thus, senior SS officers devised a different murder technique, that of gassing. This was not without precedent; the lethal use of gas had already been implemented in the Nazis’ E U T H A NA S I A P R O G R A M . An experiment in murdering human beings with poison gas was made on September 3, 1941, in the main camp of Auschwitz. Six hundred Soviet prisoners of war were forced into a hermetically sealed cell into which crystals of Z Y K L O N B gas were thrown; all the prisoners were soon dead of asphyxiation. Following this successful experiment, and others, in Auschwitz and elsewhere, the SS authorities in charge of the “Final Solution” made plans to construct extermination camps that would use gas for the murder operations. Thus, instead of killing the Jews where they lived throughout Europe, the Germans decided to bring them to extermination camps, all in occupied Poland: Auschwitz-Birkenau (Auschwitz II), C H E L⁄ M N O , B E L⁄ Z˙ E C , S O B I B Ó R , and T R E B L I N K A . Auschwitz-Birkenau was also a concentration camp; here, in some cases,Selektionen were made among the incoming transports. During this process, some of the arrivals were “selected” for work or to be sent on to other camps. Some scholars also classify the M A J DA N E K concentration camp as an extermination camp because there was a period when transports arriving there were handled as they were in Auschwitz, and murdered by gassing. The first extermination camp, at Chel⁄ mno, in the L / ódz´ district, was put into operation on December 8, 1941. In that camp the victims were killed in gas vans (see G A S C H A M B E R S / V A N S ). The operation functioned uninterruptedly until April

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EXTERMINATION CAMPS

Extermination camps in Poland.

1943, was then closed for over a year, and reopened for a short while in the summer of 1944. Some 320,000 people are estimated to have been murdered there. Auschwitz-Birkenau began operating as an extermination camp in March 1942. At its height, there were four gas chambers using Zyklon B, as well as crematoria. Until it was closed in November 1944, up to 1.5 million Jews were murdered there, as were tens of thousands of G Y P S I E S and Soviet prisoners of war. Bel⁄ z˙ec, Sobibór, and Treblinka were established as part of A K T I O N ( O P E R A R E I N H A R D , the murder operation aimed at the Jews of the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T , in Poland. These extermination camps used carbon monoxide gas generated by a gasoline or diesel engine. Bel⁄ z˙ec was in operation from March to December 1942, and some 600,000 Jews were murdered there; Sobibór, from April 1942 to October 1943, with 250,000 murdered; and Treblinka, from July 1942 to August 1943, with 870,000 victims. TION)

The existence of the extermination camps and their operations were classified as top secret in the Third Reich, and the SS coordinated an elaborate system of diversion and deception around them. The camps were concealed, first of all, from the prospective victims, but also from the local population and from German authorities not directly involved in the “Final Solution.” From the outside the sites had the appearance of labor or concentration camps, and the gas chambers looked as though they contained showers and disinfection rooms. The Jews who were to be sent to the camps were told that they were going to labor camps somewhere in the east; when they arrived at their destination, they were informed that they had come to a transit camp or labor camp, and that they were to take a shower while their

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clothes were disinfected. As a further means of hiding the truth, the women and children were separated from the men. The actual murder operation generally lasted fifteen to thirty minutes. The bodies of the victims were removed from the gas chambers by crews of Jewish prisoners and cremated. Some Jews boldly attempted to escape from the extermination camps. Most escape attempts ended in failure, but a few succeeded, and the survivors revealed the truth about the camps to the outside world. Uprisings took place in Treblinka on August 2, 1943, and in Sobibór on October 14 of that year; in each instance, hundreds of prisoners fled the camps. On October 7, 1944, Jews of the AuschwitzBirkenau S P E C I A L C O M M A N D O (Sonderkommando), who worked in the gas chambers and crematoria, revolted. The majority of those who escaped during these outbreaks were captured and killed. The extermination camps were under the jurisdiction and administration of the SS. Auschwitz-Birkenau was attached to the E C O N O M I C -A D M I N I S T R AT I V E M A I N O F F I C E ; WVHA, which controlled most of the concentration camps in the Third Reich. The other extermination camps were administered by the SS chiefs in their respective districts. Command, administration, and guard duties within the camps were in the hands of the SS; in Bel⁄z˙ec, Sobibór, and Treblinka, the guard unit was made up of Ukrainians most of them Soviet prisoners of war. Manual labor in the camps, which included the removal of corpses from the gas chambers and their interment or cremation, was carried out by Jews selected from among the arrivals to the camps. These workers were themselves eventually murdered, as well, and replaced by new arrivals. A total of some 3.5 million Jews were murdered in the extermination camps, as well as tens of thousands of Gypsies and Soviet prisoners of war.

SEE ALSO AUSCHWITZ, BEL⁄Z˙EC, CHEL⁄MNO, GENOCIDE, MAJDANEK, SOBIBÓR, AND TREBLINKA SUGGESTED RESOURCES Feig, Konnilyn G. Hitler’s Death Camps. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1981. Wigoder, Geoffrey, ed. The Holocaust. Danbury, CT: Grolier Educational, 1996. Rice, Earle. The Final Solution. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1998.

Shoah [videorecording]. New Yorker Video, 1999.

EXHUMATION OPERATION. SEE AKTION (OPERATION) 1005.

194

Fascism Fascism is a political and cultural movement that arose in twentieth-century Europe. Fascism, in political form and ideology, ruled I TA LY from 1922 to 1945. The term was later applied to similar political regimes and beliefs in other countries. Fascism encourages elitism and rejects materialism, calling for absolute political rule, with no pretenses toward principles of democracy. For fascists, the state, or government, is the expression of national unity. The state is responsible for control of society and the economy. Thus, it is anti-individualist. Fascism claims to purify, strengthen, and revitalize the state, in which the individual is no more than a cell in the collective entity. Fascism rejects the theory of “natural rights” and the individualist view of society. For the fascist ideologists, both those from the beginning of the twentieth century and those of the 1930s, liberalism and Marxism are ideologies of social warfare. Fascists believe that both of those systems destroy the natural unity of the nation. Fascism’s proclaimed purpose is to restore society’s solidarity and unity. It developed as an expression of the rapid modernization processes that Europeans experienced in the late 1800s. Many profound social and economic changes occurred in the Western world at that time, and fascism was a reaction to those changes.

Roots of Fascism in Europe Italian Benito Mussolini was attracted to these new political thoughts in the early 1900s. He belonged to a movement known as “revolutionary syndicalism,” which gradually transformed into fascism. In Mussolini’s eyes, World War I (1914–1918) demonstrated the sweeping power of nationalism and provided the opportunity to put socialism into practice. Thus the emerging ideology of fascism had found a leader; the war provided the social and psychological conditions for its practical application. World War I opened up new vistas for the functions of the state. It proved that the state was able to control the economy, the means of production, and labor relations. The war showed that governments could dictate the basic elements of economic planning and mobilize all sections of society for a concentrated national effort. The war also revealed the great extent to which people were prepared to accept state authority, to forego their freedoms, to accept what was in effect a dictatorship, and even to sacrifice their lives. In other words, total war demonstrated that the national state was able to control the individual in every part of life. It showed

1

FASCISM

F

ascism does away with all institutions or organiza-

tions that express multiple ideas and beliefs—parliaments, political parties, a free press, and a choice of educational opportunities.

that totalitarianism—whose initial ideological features had been outlined by earlier theorists—could really exist. Italy’s revolutionary syndicalists, including Mussolini, were the first to have the opportunity to translate that lesson into terms of political victory and the seizure of power. Fascist beliefs were found throughout Europe. They differed from place to place, depending upon the particular cultural, social, and political circumstances. However, even the vast differences between the industrial centers of Northern Europe and the agricultural areas of Southern Europe could not hide the common denominator of fascism in all these countries.

Elements of Fascism Fascism came up with two tools to maintain “the unity of the nation”— corporatism and the totalitarian state. “Corporatism” symbolizes fascists’ belief in the power of politics to dominate market forces and class interests. The corporatist system is designed to allow the authoritarian state to plan the economy and settle labor relations and the differences between social classes. Once political and personal rights and freedoms are outlawed, the workers’ right to organize is also canceled. Corporatism puts an end to the power of special interests and allows the social and economic system be controlled by the state. It represents the real basis on which the totalitarian state rests. The authoritarian state seeks to control every sphere of life—politics, the economy, society, and culture. It does away with all institutions or organizations that express multiple ideas and beliefs—parliaments, political parties, a free press, and a choice of educational opportunities. It demands not only discipline but also identification and unconditional readiness for sacrifice. Indeed, totalitarianism is the cornerstone of the fascist revolution’s ideology. For Mussolini and others, the totalitarian state signified the beginning of a new era, an era in which the state has absolute priority over the individual. The individual exists only to perform his or her duty and is only a means to an end—the state’s achievement of the goals it sets itself. This means the end of liberal culture. It follows that the fascist revolution is a total revolution, a moral and spiritual revolution, which creates a new order for all sectors of society.

Influence of Fascist Ideology Mussolini, in his work The Fascist Doctrine (on which he collaborated with philosopher Giovanni Gentile), left no doubt that the state should embrace all spheres of human activity, organize them, and determine what their content should be. There was no aspect of society’s life that was not political, and there was therefore nothing that could be excluded from the state’s grip. In this sense, fascist ideology was truly revolutionary. It provided a complete alternative to the established order. Fascism’s idealism and appeal to the emotions provided the instruments for a total revolution. This revolution of the spirit had a tremendous appeal in those days all over Europe, especially among young people who had only contempt for the political and economic world of their parents. In fact, the influence of fascist ideology went far beyond the hard core of its founders and devoted followers. Much wider circles, to one degree or another, were drawn to its promise of a violent rebellion of spiritual forces and basic instincts, of primitive and unrestrained reaction against routine and convention. To many, the clarity of

2

FASCISM

“Image not available for copyright reasons”

dictatorship seemed a more natural form of government than the messy give-andtake of a democracy. The impact of the fascist revolution was felt all over Europe, though politically, Italy was the only true fascist state. But, like any other ideology, fascism ran into a constant struggle with reality. It was extremely difficult to overcome social and economic interests and the influence of the traditional centers of power—the monarchy, the church, and high finance. As is true in every other movement, fascism was also forced into various compromises, which saved Italy from becoming an entirely totalitarian state.

T

o many disillusioned by postWorld War I politics and

economics, the clarity of dictatorship seemed a more natural and preferable form of government than the messy give-and-take of a democracy

Still, in the case of Italian Fascism, the correlation between ideology and practice was very high. The abolition of parliamentary and democratic institutions, along with deliberate and planned violence, political murder, and the physical or political crushing of the opposition, were all expressions of the fascist system’s essential character. Mobilizing the masses—through marches, mass rallies, militias, and uniformed youth movements—was an effective translation into practice of the theories taught by some of Europe’s greatest scientists. Thus a new political culture

3

FEINER, LEON

was born, in which the state came before the individual and could demand of the individual whatever sacrifice it wanted. In the economically depressed conditions that prevailed in Europe in the 1920s and the 1930s, this political culture gathered destructive force. No society was immune to it. Interest in fascism was not limited by social class, educational level, age, religion, or origin. Everywhere, in all sectors of society and in all religious groupings, there were people ready to accept fascism as a legitimate and original third way, with a stature equal to that of Marxism and liberalism.

Fascism and Antisemitism It is important to note that A N T I S E M I T I S M was not a basic element of fascist ideology. This was the great difference between fascism and Nazism. Nazi ideology was based on the doctrine of biological determinism, in which hatred of Jews was a central element. In fascism, antisemitism differed from place to place. Italian Fascism, in its early period, was generally free of antisemitism; it developed in its later stages, gradually and often as a result of external events. The 1938 Italian racist legislation resulted from the growth of extremist nationalist trends in Italian Fascism as well as from Italy’s relationship with Nazi G E R M A N Y .

Vichy

The region of France not occupied by Germany and governed from the spa town of Vichy.

There were fascist groups in F R A N C E (such as Action Française) whose ideology differed only slightly from that of Nazism, and others that were practically untouched by antisemitism. As World War II approached, however, the antisemitic dimension in French fascism increased in strength. By October 1940, the Vichy government, which was not formally a fascist government, introduced racist laws closely resembling the N U R E M B E R G L AW S . British fascism was extremely antisemitic, as was fascism in B E L G I U M , Romania, and H U N G A R Y . Spanish fascism, in contrast, was free of antisemitism. Italy had an official anti-Jewish policy that followed the introduction of racist legislation. But the persecution and hatred of Jews never came close to that in Central and Eastern Europe.

SEE ALSO GREAT BRITAIN; RACISM. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Blum, George P. The Rise of Fascism in Europe. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998. Delzell, Charles F. Mediterranean Fascism, 1919–1945. New York: Walker, 1971. Eatwell, Roger. Fascism: A History. New York: Allen Lane, 1996. Laqueur, Walter. Fascism: Past, Present, Future. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Mussolini, B. Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions. New York: H. Fertig, 1968. Payne, Stanley G. A History of Fascism, 1914–1945. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.

Feiner, Leon (1888–1945) Bund

The Jewish Socialist Party, which was founded in 1897; members of the Bund worked for equal rights for Jews and many took part in underground resistance activities during World War II.

4

A Bund activist and member of the Jewish underground in P O L A N D , Feiner was born in K R A K Ó W and studied law at the Jagiellonian University there. As a longtime member of socialist movements and a Bund activist in independent Poland, he frequently defended leftist political activists in court. Feiner came from a background of assimilated Jews, so his cultural identity was more Polish than Jewish, but his loyalty to the Bund, as well as the increasingly anti-Jewish policy that

FIGHTING ORGANIZATION OF PIONEER JEWISH YOUTH

Poland was pursuing, brought him closer to the Jewish masses and made him want to share their fate. In the second half of the 1930s he was imprisoned in BerezaKartuska, a Polish concentration camp in which a large number of opposition figures, of various shades of political opinion, were held. When the war broke out, Feiner fled to the Soviet-occupied part of Poland, only to be put in prison. Following the German conquest of the area in 1941, he escaped and made his way back to W A R S A W . There he lived under an assumed identity on the Polish (“Aryan”) side of the city and was an underground representative of the Bund and of the Jews in the ghetto. When the Bund joined the J E W I S H F I G H T I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N (Z˙ydowska Organizacja Bojowa; Z˙OB), Feiner was appointed Bund representative on the “Aryan” side. With Abraham Berman (who represented the Jewish National Committee), Feiner formed the coordinating committee for contacts with the Polish underground. Feiner drafted and sent most of the Bund’s reports and messages to London and the United States. In the fall of 1942 Jan Karski, a member of the Polish underground who was sent to London in its behalf, took a message from Feiner addressed to Samuel Zygelbojm, for transmission to all the Jews in the free world. Feiner asked Zygelbojm to tell the Jews “to lay siege to all important offices and agencies of the British and the Americans, and not to move from there until these Allied powers give guarantees that they will embark upon the rescue of the Jews. They [the demonstrators] should abstain from food and water, waste away before the eyes of the apathetic world, and starve to death. By doing so they may perhaps shock the conscience of the world.”

Leon Feiner.

In the last few months of 1942, Feiner helped establish a Polish organization for giving aid to Jews and trying to rescue them. This project had been initiated by various Polish circles—Catholics, liberal intellectuals, and representatives of moderate and liberal political parties. From January 1943 to July 1944 Feiner was deputy chairman of Zegota, the Polish Council for Aid to Jews, and was its chairman from November to December 1944, until the liberation of Warsaw in January 1945. After the liberation, Feiner, who was terminally ill, was transferred to L U B L I N , the temporary seat of Poland’s new regime. One month later he died.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Korbonski, Stefan. The Polish Underground State: A Guide to the Underground, 1939–1945. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978.

Rescue and Resistance: Portraits of the Holocaust. New York: Macmillan Library Reference USA, 1999. A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Rescuers. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/ people/rescuer.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000). A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Resisters. http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/ resister.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000).

Fighting Organization of Pioneer Jewish Youth The Fighting Organization of Pioneer Jewish Youth (He-Haluts ha-Lohem) was created in K R A K Ó W in mid-August 1942, as a Jewish underground organization; not in order to save lives but out of a desire “to die as Jews without the shame of dying as slaves.” The initiative for its creation came from the pioneer youth movement Akiva, which was also the guiding force in its activity. Other members came from such Jewish youth organizations as Dror, Ha-Shomer ha-Dati, Ha-

5

FIGHTING ORGANIZATION OF PIONEER JEWISH YOUTH

Shomer ha-Tsa’ir, and the Pioneer Youth Organization (see Y O U T H M OV E M E N T S ). He-Haluts ha-Lohem had about one hundred members.

The aim of the group was to undermine the selfconfidence of the authorities, destroy weapons and support

The organization was formed after the deportation of about 6,000 of the Jews of Kraków in June 1942 (see D EPORTATIONS ), when news had arrived of mass slaughter in parts of German-occupied eastern P O L A N D and the S OV I E T U N I O N . It was led by a four-member command: Aharon L IEBESKIND , who was responsible for obtaining arms; Avraham Leibovich (“Laban”), a member of Dror, who was appointed treasurer; Shimshon Draenger, who was in charge of the “technical office” for forging official documents; and Manik Eisenstein, a member of the Pioneer Youth Organization.

systems, and injure as many Germans as possible.

Planning for Resistance He-Haluts ha-Lohem kept in close contact with the J E W I S H F I G H T I N G O R G A Organizacja Bojowa; Z˙OB) in W A R S AW , but was independent in determining the timing and the place of its actions. The group intended to undertake anti-Nazi action primarily outside the ghetto, in order to hide their Jewish identity so that responsibility for their actions would not be placed on the ghetto, and thereby lead to the ghetto’s liquidation. ˙ ydowska N I Z AT I O N (Z

There were several reasons for this method of struggle: 1. The organization felt a sense of responsibility for the ghetto’s fate; it was better for all the Jews if no link could be established between the sabotage activities outside the ghetto and residents inside. 2. The ghetto in Kraków was small. Between the June 1942 deportation and December of the same year the ghetto area had been reduced twice; there were few hiding places inside. 3. The Kraków ghetto population was small and unstable. After June 1942 many of the residents were not from Kraków. As strangers to the members of the local underground, they were sometimes considered unreliable. 4. The creation of a labor camp in Pl⁄aszów, near the city, gave many of the Jews a sense of hope for survival. Without a feeling of desperation, it was difficult to obtain resistance support from most ghetto inhabitants. 5. Since Kraków was the capital of the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T , the area outside the ghetto offered many sabotage possibilities. Furthermore, it was not impossible to operate in the “Aryan” part of the city with a handful of men and a meager supply of weapons. The aim of the group was to undermine the self-confidence of the authorities, to harm their position, and to injure as many Germans as possible. Many preparations were made for the armed struggle. Forged documents were prepared to ensure freedom of movement for members of the organization. Money for guns came from the sale of forged documents and by “expropriations” (forcible collection of money from rich Jews). Weapons were also acquired by attacking German soldiers in the middle of the night on the city boulevards. Membership in HeHaluts ha-Lohem was increased by adding members from youth movements, principally Akiva and Dror, in cities close to Kraków. He-Haluts ha-Lohem was organized by groups of five, each with a commander in contact with the principal command.

Carrying out the Plans On September 20, 1942, the first group of five went out to the forests in the Rzeszów district. Operations were not successful; expected support from a Polish underground group never materialized.

6

“FINAL SOLUTION”

In October a group was sent to the forests in the De˛bica area. This attempt also ended in failure and in severe battle losses. From then on, the organization chose to limit opposition activities to Kraków itself. There were also plans to organize support in Warsaw and L V OV , where members could take refuge after carrying out their activities. Until November 1942, operations within the ghetto consisted of attacks on German soldiers and G E S TA P O men, seizure of their weapons, and surveillance of informers in order to liquidate them. A second fighting organization, which operated in the ghetto, carried out similar activities and also sabotaged German installations in the city and its surroundings. During that period, the ghetto served as a base for operations outside the ghetto. After members of the command had been traced, the location was transferred to the “Aryan” part of the city, and members of the organization were dispersed outside the ghetto. A large-scale operation was planned for December 22, 1942, just before Christmas, when the city would be flooded with German soldiers on holiday leave. This was to be executed with the help of several groups, including the Polish Workers’ Party. The targets of the action were cafés in the center of town where the German soldiers passed their time. Best known was the Cyganeria, which was attacked with homemade hand grenades. The Germans announced twenty dead and wounded. None of the attackers was injured in the attack, but about twenty He-Haluts haLohem fighters, returning to their base in the deserted Jewish hospital, walked into a Gestapo ambush and were taken to the Montelupich Prison. Among those captured was command member “Laban”; Aharon Liebeskind was killed in the struggle. That action concluded the organization’s operations in the city. Activity was renewed in the Wisnicz Forest after the escape on April 29, 1943, of Shimshon Draenger and Gusta Draenger, two of the primary leaders, from the Montelupich prison, where they had been held since January 1943. The Draengers and Hillel Wodzisl⁄ awski, a member of the command from Wisnicz, worked to assemble any remaining fighters. In November 1943, after its leaders were captured by the Germans, the He-Haluts ha-Lohem organization ceased to exist. Only fifteen members of He-Haluts ha-Lohem survived. Almost all of them emigrated to Israel.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Cohen, Asher. The Halutz Resistance in Hungary 1942–1944. New York: Institute for Holocaust studies at the City University of New York, 1986.

The Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum of the Holocaust and Resistance. [Online] http://www.amfriendsgfh.org/Docs/gfh.html (accessed on August 28, 2000) Rescue and Resistance: Portraits of the Holocaust. New York: Macmillan Library Reference USA, 1999. A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Resisters. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/ people/resister.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000).

“Final Solution” The “Final Solution” (in German, Endlösung) was the Nazis’ program to solve their “Jewish question”—what to do with the Jews?—by murdering every Jew in Europe. The program was started by Adolf H I T L E R in the summer of 1941. At that

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“FINAL SOLUTION”

time, Germans were flush with their military successes in Europe and their expected victory over the S OV I E T U N I O N .

Evolution of the Concept

T

he emergence of the “Final Solution” as both a con-

cept and a program was a complex phenomenon shaped by Hitler’s antisemitic beliefs, by the nature of the Nazi regime, and by the changing circumstances in which the Nazis found themselves.

The “Final Solution” was the result of a long evolution of policy stemming from Nazi A N T I S E M I T I S M . Hitler first expressed a “solution” to the “Jewish question” in 1919. Once he and his N A Z I PA R T Y won power in Germany in 1933, they tried to force Jewish emigration. When World War II started in September 1939 with Germany’s invasion of P O L A N D , the Nazis planned mass expulsions of Jews. They made the leap to mass murder with the assault by the O P E R AT I O NA L S QUA D S (Einsatzgruppen) on Soviet Jews in 1941. Each new direction in Jewish policy evolved as the Germans encountered new obstacles in their drive for totalitarian control over Europe. In the very earliest document of Hitler’s political career—a letter written on September 16, 1919, to Adolf Gemlich—he expressed the view that the “Jewish question” would be solved not through emotional antisemitism and pogroms (attacks) but only through an “antisemitism of reason.” This would lead to a systematic legal struggle to deprive the Jews of their privileges and classify them as foreigners. He wrote: “The final goal, however, must steadfastly remain the removal of the Jews altogether.” The “Jewish question” remained central for Hitler in the 1920s. For Nazis, he declared, it was the “pivotal question.” The Nazi party was determined to solve it “with well-known German thoroughness to the final consequence.” For the most part, the “final consequence” was expressed in terms such as “removal,” “expulsion,” and “exclusion.” But on occasion Hitler’s language was more ominous. He made the analogy between the tuberculosis bacillus, which had to be destroyed, and the Jew— the “racial tuberculosis” which had to be removed if the German people (Volk) were to recover their health. On one occasion in 1922, he fantasized about publicly hanging every Jew in Germany and leaving the bodies dangling until they stank. Such statements indicate the depth of Hitler’s obsession with the Jews. He viewed them as the source of all of Germany’s historical misfortunes and current problems. In fact, he saw the Jews as the “greatest evil.” He was determined to get rid of the Jews in one way or another. Hitler’s statements also reveal his violent and murderous tendencies. In the 1920s, though, they did not form a grand design, blueprint, or decision for the “Final Solution” of 1941 to 1945— the comprehensive and systematic mass murder of all European Jewry. In the early 1930s, the Nazi Party did little preparation for its Jewish policy. After it took power in 1933, various Nazi factions pursued different and often conflicting policies. Hitler generally favored making laws to bring about systematic discrimination—the “antisemitism of reason” of the Gemlich letter— over the public violence of pogroms and “wild actions.” But there was not any expression of what had been so common in Hitler’s statements during the early 1920s—namely, the determination of the final goal of Nazi Jewish policy. Few Nazis seemed to be looking ahead to where the persecution of the Jews might lead. In the SS, however, as early as 1934, a report for Heinrich H I M M L E R on the “Jewish question” emphasized the need to work toward a total emigration of Jews from Germany. Emigration then became the centerpiece of SS Jewish policy. But it remained a “voluntary solution” until Germany annexed A U S T R I A (the Anschluss) in March 1938. Then Adolf E I C H M A N N , the “Jewish expert” of Reinhard H E Y D R I C H ’s S D (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service), was sent to the Austrian capital, V I E N N A . He

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“FINAL SOLUTION”

organized assembly-line procedures for speeding up and forcing Jewish emigration.

Forced Emigration and Economic Isolation for the Jews In 1938, expulsion began to define Nazi Jewish policy throughout Germany. Soviet Jews were ordered out of the country in the spring, followed by Polish Jews in the fall. Hermann Göring began the systematic A RYA N I Z AT I O N (transfer of ownership from Jewish to non-Jewish) of Jewish property. This radical step threatened to pauperize the Jews—to strip them of their financial resources within months, making emigration even more difficult. Joseph G O E B B E L S made his bid for power over Nazi Jewish policy by setting off the massive K R I S TA L L N A C H T pogrom of November 9 and 10, 1938.

E

leven million Jews, from Ireland to the Urals and from

Scandinavia to Spain, were the intended victims—in short, every Jew in Europe.

In the wake of Kristallnacht, the Nazis moved to organize their various Jewish policies into a cohesive whole. Göring announced Hitler’s instructions to the Nazi leaders gathered before him on November 12, 1938: “The Jewish question is to be summed up and coordinated once and for all and solved one way or another.…; If the German Reich should in the near future become involved in conflict abroad then it is obvious that we in Germany will first of all make sure of settling accounts with the Jews.…” In the following months, Hitler approved plans for the resettlement of German Jewry. Göring established the Reich C E N T R A L O F F I C E F O R J E W I S H E M I G R AT I O N , using Eichmann’s Vienna experiment as a model. The office was placed under Heydrich’s control, with the charge that the “emigration of the Jews from Germany [was] to be furthered by all possible means.” In a speech to the Reichstag (parliament) on January 30, 1939, Hitler scolded countries that criticized Germany’s treatment of its Jews, for their own reluctance to accept Jews as immigrants: “The world has sufficient space for settlements.” If, however, war broke out first, “then the result will not be the Bolshevization [communization] of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”

Hitler’s Priorities Were these threats a literal statement of Hitler’s intention to kill the Jews upon the outbreak of war? He may have had other motives. Hitler may have been pressuring governments that he thought to be under Jewish influence to accept Germany’s Jewish refugees, and not to interfere with its destruction of Czechoslovakia. Or he may have wanted to give his followers the idea that to solve the “Jewish question,” a policy more radical than emigration would be needed after the outbreak of war. Several facts support this second interpretation. First, less than two weeks before the Reichstag speech, Hitler made the same threat to the Czech ambassador, Frantisˇek Chvalkovsky—an unlikely person in whom to confide premeditated mass murder, but an entirely appropriate target for diplomatic pressure. Second, when war did break out in September 1939, Hitler did not immediately begin the systematic mass murder of the Jews under German control. Instead, with his clear approval, Nazi Jewish policy became more radical in a different way; solving the “Jewish question” still meant removing the Jews one way or another. The conquest and breakup of Poland brought an additional 2 million Jews into the German sphere, including more than half a million in the “incorporated territories” annexed directly to Nazi Germany. In addition, 7 million Poles lived in the incorporated territories. If the “Jewish question” was one major obsession in

9

“FINAL SOLUTION”

H

itler let it be known that there was no longer enough terri-

tory in Poland to spare any for

deported Jews. Another solution to the “Jewish issue” would need to be developed.

Hitler’s world view, the conquest of “living space” (Lebensraum) in Eastern Europe was the other. Poland thus presented a major challenge to the Nazis. According to a plan approved by Hitler in late September 1939, the Poles and Jews of the incorporated territories were to be expelled into a region called the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T . The very concept of Polish nationhood was to be erased through the “liquidation” (including physical destruction) of the Polish intelligentsia, considered the bearers of Polish nationalism. The incorporated territories were to be repopulated with ethnic Germans (V O L K S D E U T S C H E ) sent from the Baltic countries and eastern Poland. Those areas had been surrendered to the Soviets as the price of the NaziSoviet Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939. As for the Jews, they were to be expelled not just from the incorporated territories but from all of Nazi Germany, into a reservation on the outer edge of the German empire. At that time, this was the L U B L I N region, on the demarcation line with Soviet-occupied eastern Poland.

The “Jewish Question” Becomes More Complicated The Nazis set in motion a massive upheaval among the populations, but Hitler’s overall plan could not be realized. Very quickly, D E P O R TAT I O N S of Jews from within Germany’s pre-war boundaries were forbidden. Deportations of Jews from the incorporated territories were scaled down. Priority was given to deporting Poles, whose farms, businesses, and homes could be turned over to incoming ethnic Germans. By the spring of 1940, Hitler had decided that the Lublin Reservation was no longer the target of a solution to the “Jewish question” (see N I S K O A N D L U B L I N P L A N ). There was not enough territory in Poland to spare for the Jews. Himmler was receptive to this hint. In late May 1940, he gave Hitler a memorandum discussing the treatment of the populations of Eastern Europe. He included the notion of expelling all the Jews to some colonial territory in Africa. Other Eastern Europeans not suitable for “Germanization” were to be turned into slave laborers. Concerning this systematic eradication of the ethnic composition of Eastern Europe, Himmler concluded: “However cruel and tragic each individual case may be, this method is still the mildest and best, if one rejects the Bolshevik [Communist] method of physical extermination of a people out of inner conviction as unGerman and impossible.” Hitler judged Himmler’s proposals “very good and correct.” Within weeks, this notion of expelling the Jews overseas was cemented in the form of the M A DAG A S CA R P L A N , which Hitler discussed with Italy’s leader Benito Mussolini in late June. For a short time, the Madagascar Plan was the centerpiece of Nazi Jewish policy. Then, the plan became impossible to carry out, as the Germans were defeated in the Battle of Britain in September 1940. The Lublin Reservation project and the Madagascar Plan were important stages in the evolution of Nazi Jewish policy. Shortly before the war, a Foreign Office circular had noted, in reference to the large Jewish populations in Poland, Hungary, and Romania: “Even for Germany the Jewish question will not be solved when the last Jew has left German soil.” Germany now had direct control over much of Europe and a growing list of unequal alliances with countries that were not directly occupied. The Nazis considered the “Jewish question” no longer a German issue, but a European issue. They believed that German domination of the continent obligated them to solve this problem in a fundamental way. The removal of the Jews altogether—once Hitler’s prescription for Germany—was now the unquestioned center of the Nazis’ commitment throughout Europe. Clearly, with schemes such as the Lublin and Madagascar programs, the Nazis had already become used to the idea of an enormous loss of life among the Jews.

10

“FINAL SOLUTION”

This changing mentality among the Nazis was reflected in their increasing references to a “final solution to the Jewish question.” In June 1940, Heydrich referred to the Madagascar Plan as a “territorial final solution.” Beginning in September 1940, Eichmann’s staff routinely referred to “the doubtless imminent final solution to the Jewish question” when refusing to permit Jewish emigration from any country in Europe other than Germany. They wanted Germany to be the first judenrein (“cleansed of Jews,” or “Jew-free”) nation in Europe. By 1940, therefore, even before mass murder became the goal of Nazi Jewish policy, the Nazis were already thinking about the “Jewish question” in a way that was both “final” and trans-European.

From Expulsion to Extermination Large-scale, systematic mass murder as a way of dealing with “problems” was becoming commonplace in Nazi Germany. It was already accepted that Poland was to be “de-nationalized” through the systematic liquidation of the Polish intelligentsia. At the same time, Hitler initiated the killing of Germans who were mentally ill or had genetic diseases. They were deemed “unworthy of life” and were put to death. This was referred to as the E U T H A N A S I A P R O G R A M , but it was a forced program. It had nothing to do with any voluntary request of the victims to be released from their suffering. In its technology—which included the use of carbon monoxide in enclosed spaces (see G A S C H A M B E R S / V A N S )—and bureaucratic system of operation, this murder program suggested the mass murder of the Jews that was soon to follow.

D

Germany’s preparations to invade the Soviet Union in the spring of 1941 sped up the movement toward the mass murder of European Jewry. The invasion promised to increase the conditions of the vicious circle in which the Germans had entrapped themselves. Each new military success increased the number of Jews under their control, whom they were committed to get rid of through a “final solution” of one kind or another. With the formation of the Operational Squads, systematic mass murder as a method of solving the Nazis’ “Jewish question” began.

lived in any part of German-controlled

uring 1940, the Nazis began to realize that the answer to the

“Jewish question” would have to be found outside European territory. Each new military success increased the number of Jews under their control, and they were committed to get rid of them through a “final solution” of one kind or another. The Third Reich could never be free of Jews as long as Jews Europe.

Even then, though, the evolution to the “Final Solution” was not yet complete. The Operational Squads were targeted against Jews in the newly occupied territories only. The squads moved into their tasks gradually, as their commanders tested the limits of their men and of army cooperation, as well as the helpfulness of local people. Only in late July or early August 1941 did all the mobile killing units begin the systematic mass murder of all Jews in the Soviet territories, including women and children. At this point, Hitler was at the height of his success. The German army had torn through Soviet defenses and encircled huge numbers of Soviet troops. It had destroyed most of the Soviet air force and rampaged through two-thirds of the distance to Moscow. Victory seemed within reach, and Hitler expected to have all of Europe at his feet. In the excitement over the conquest of Poland, he had approved plans for a massive population reorganization on Polish territory, including the expulsion of Jews to the Lublin Reservation. With victory over France, he had approved the Madagascar Plan. Now, with the expected victory over the Soviet Union, the last barriers fell away. Precisely when and how instructions were given is not known, but Göring, Himmler, and Heydrich now knew what Hitler expected of them. On July 31, 1941, Heydrich visited Göring and had him sign an authorization to prepare and submit “an overall plan of the organizational, functional, and material measures to be taken in preparing for the implementation of the aspired final solution of the Jewish question.”

11

“FINAL SOLUTION”

Strategy for Mass Murder If the notion of the “Final Solution” was now clear to the leading Nazis, the means of accomplishing it were not. The Operational Squads had run across many problems. The most important were the lack of secrecy, the psychological impact on the killers, and the inadequacy of the killing methods in relation to the number of intended victims. The firing-squad method had not worked well in the Soviet Union. It was even less suitable for murdering the rest of European Jewry. The Nazis thus chose to become pioneers of mass murder in an uncharted land. The past offered no suitable landmarks; but in the fall of 1941, new killing techniques were developed. The physical setting of the C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S , the killing methods of euthanasia, and the deportation techniques of the population-resettlement programs were combined to create a system of E X T E R M I N AT I O N CA M P S . In relative secrecy, a small number of workers using assembly-line techniques could kill millions of victims in these camps. The prisoners would be brought trainload by trainload, day after day, to these factories of death. The bureaucratic organization that coordinated the process would be separated from direct contact with the killing process, but still accepting of the idea that the Jews had to be removed one way or another. It would perform on a business-as-usual basis all the many tasks necessary to uproot millions of people and ship to their death. The German population in general, accepting the notion of the Jew as an enemy of the state, looked on with indifference.

Implementing the “Final Solution” In the fall of 1941, steps were taken to turn the idea of a “final solution to the Jewish question” into reality. The deportation of the German Jews began in midOctober. The first gassing experiment was conducted in A U S C H W I T Z in early September. Construction of two extermination camps at B E L⁄ Z˙ E C and C H E L⁄ M N O was started in late October or early November. The first mass murder of German Jews took place in K OV N O and R I G A about a month later. The first extermination camp, at Chel⁄mno, began full-time operations in early December. The last step in turning the idea of the “Final Solution” into reality was the W A N N S E E C O N F E R E N C E of January 20, 1942. At this conference, Reinhard Heydrich and his “Jewish expert,” Adolf Eichmann, met with the secretaries of the state ministries. Most of those attending were already aware that Jews were being killed, but here the full scope of the mass murder program was revealed—the goal was to get rid of every Jew in Europe. Heydrich requested the support of the state secretaries. He was pleasantly surprised by their enthusiasm for the project. The “Final Solution” was first developed as a program to be carried out following Germany’s expected victory over the Soviet Union, but it endured through Germany’s changing fortunes of war. In 1942, with victory postponed, the Nazis claimed that the “Final Solution” had to be completed during the war to avoid an outcry from abroad. In 1944, with their fortunes in decline, they rushed to finish their gruesome task—to achieve a victory in their racial war that a military defeat could not undo. Nazi Jewish policy was shaped by a number of factors and evolved toward the “Final Solution” in fits and starts over many years. But in the end, it was the most important legacy, indeed the epitome, of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

SEE ALSO GENOCIDE; RACISM; SPRACHREGELUNG. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Breitman, Richard. The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution. New York: Knopf, 1991.

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FORCED LABOR

Browning, Christopher R. The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Friedlander, Henry. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Public Opinion Under Nazism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1996. Rice, Earle. The Final Solution. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1998.

Forced Labor The Nazis relied on the use of forced labor to build and operate concentration and extermination camps, and to maintain a steady flow of workers for factories and other industries that supported the war effort. Some of these laborers were voluntarily “recruited,” and later deported, from occupied countries within the Reich. Others were Jews whose slave labor in the ghettos and labor camps of P OLAND also contributed to the Nazi war machine and to their own extermination at the hands of their Nazi oppressors.

Imported Workers Laborers from Germany’s satellites or occupied territories who were brought to work in the Reich were called Fremdarbeiter, literally, “foreign workers.” The idea of importing workers for forced labor was conceived in B E R L I N even before the attack on Poland in September 1939. The idea was first put into practice in A U S T R I A , after the Anschluss—the Nazi-driven unification of Austria and Germany—in March 1938. Some 100,000 Austrian civilians, including 10,000 engineers, were taken to work in Germany. The German authorities in charge of employment policy worked out a detailed program for drafting workers from German occupied territories. The plan included harsh methods of recruitment for use in Poland and the occupied Soviet areas. Far more lenient methods were used in the other countries under German occupation or in the satellite countries. The first contingents of forced laborers were needed to replace the millions of Germans who had left the work force to be drafted into the army, and to eliminate the need to impose emergency labor drafts on Germans themselves. As the war dragged on with no end in sight, foreign workers were needed to meet the growing needs of the armaments industry and the economy in general. Initially, the Germans tried to persuade people in the occupied countries to volunteer for work in Germany. Those who were ready to do so, mostly the unemployed and refugees who were in dire economic straits, were promised all sorts of material benefits by the Germans.

Mandatory Forced Labor Immediately after the outbreak of the war, the Germans put P R I S O N E R S O F (POWs) to work to support the German economy, deliberately ignoring international law forbidding this practice. As early as the autumn of 1939, 340,000 Polish POWs were working for the Third Reich.

WA R

In the spring of 1940, the Germans introduced compulsory measures in the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T , including conscriptions—forced enlistments—of work-

13

FORCED LABOR

Female prisoners perform forced labor in a factory owned by the AGFA camera company.

G

erman victories in the first phase of World War II and the occu-

pation of many lands which followed provided plenty of potential workers to exploit for Nazi purposes.

ers, the seizure of those who hadn’t been exempted from such conscription, and the withholding of food rations from those who refused to work. In August 1942, a decree was enacted that implemented a policy of Zwangsverpflichtung, or forced labor, in all occupied countries and POW camps. In western European countries, the local authorities sometimes helped the Germans recruit workers. This was done in exchange for the release of POWs by the Germans or for a change in the status of POWs to that of foreign workers in Germany. By 1942, the German drive to recruit foreign workers had become a sophisticated and brutal manhunt, one that met with growing opposition and was an important element in the rise of organized resistance movements in Nazi-occupied Europe. Although millions of people were conscripted for work in Germany between 1942 and 1944, reports of poor working conditions and brutal treatment, combined with growing signs of an impending German defeat, made it increasingly difficult to find enough workers to meet growing German demands. The German retreat in the east and the shrinking area under Nazi control also reduced the number of workers available to meet German economic needs.

Living Conditions for Foreign Workers The majority of foreign laborers were brought from Poland and the S OV I E T U N I O N . The rest were drafted in F R A N C E , Czechoslovakia, the N E T H E R L A N D S , B E L G I U M , and Norway. Among the satellite countries and Germany’s allies, I TA LY was the only one to provide foreign workers in significant numbers. The percentage of foreign workers employed by the German economy never came up to German expectations, but it grew progressively. By late 1944, the number of foreign laborers (including POWs) reached approximately nine million. One of every five workers

14

FORCED LABOR

in Germany was a foreigner, and one of every four tanks and every fourth aircraft manufactured in Germany was produced by foreign workers. The people responsible for maintaining work force and production were well aware that living conditions, wages, and general treatment of foreign workers all had a direct bearing on recruitment difficulties and production problems. However, in most instances, the actual supervision of the laborers was in the hands of the police—the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police or Sipo) and the Foreign Workers section of the G E S TA P O —and they were guided by racist principles, partisan considerations, and a xenophobic fear and hatred of strangers and foreigners, not by general principles of human resource management.

N

ot surprisingly, promised benefits rarely materialized, and

the Nazis came to the conclusion that voluntary efforts would never provide the number of foreign workers needed for the building of the Third Reich.

The treatment of laborers from eastern Europe differed sharply from that of the laborers from western Europe in terms of living and working conditions. Poles and Russians, who were from the east, were regarded as inferior—in racist terms, they were Untermenschen, or “subhumans”—and, as a rule, they were put on hard physical labor and subjected to harsh control, humiliation, and severe penalties. They had to wear an identifying sign on their clothes, P for Poles and Ost (east) for the Russians. They were not permitted to leave their lodgings after working hours; to use public transportation; to attend cultural events or visit places of entertainment or restaurants frequented by Germans; or even to participate in the same church services as Germans. The pay they received for their work was especially low. Germans were warned not to have any social contact with Poles or Russians and, above all, to abide by racial purity, that is, to shun sexual intercourse with them. Germans who violated racial purity standards were charged with Rassenschande (race defilement), which carried the sentence of death. Although they, too, complained of being treated like slaves, conditions for foreign workers from the west were much better. Their employers, especially the farmers who had foreigners working for them, often disregarded the strict rules on the treatment of foreign laborers laid down by the Nazi party, especially since these laborers were indispensable to them. Additionally, as Nazi defeats increased the need for more laborers, the Germans had to consider improving the treatment of foreign workers. Eventually, some changes were implemented. Racist considerations precluded the sending of Jews to Germany as foreign workers. The few Jews who did infiltrate the ranks of workers coming to Germany from various countries made every effort to avoid being identified as Jews. Masses of Jews who were working as forced laborers in the occupied countries or as prisoners in concentration camps were taken away from their places of work and deported to the extermination camps. And, at a time when Germany was suffering from a severe shortage of manpower, millions of Russian POWs were dying of starvation, ill treatment, and deliberate murder.

Jews as Forced Laborers Jews of occupied Poland were drafted for forced labor from the beginning of World War II until its end. As soon as the German army entered Poland in September 1939, Jews were forced to clear roadblocks and debris and to pave roads. German military forces played an active role in forcibly recruiting Jews for such work, seizing them at random on the streets or dragging them out of their homes, and maltreating them while they were at work. Often the only purpose for subjecting Jews to forced labor was to degrade them. In such cases, Jews were compelled to carry out physical exercise or hard physical tasks that had no practical purpose at all, and were subjected to beatings and to harassment such as the cutting off of their beards.

15

FORCED LABOR

A child laborer works at a machine in a Kovno ghetto workshop.

On October 26, 1939, compulsory labor laws were announced for the G E N E R of eastern Europe occupied by German forces. The law applied to Jewish males aged 14 to 60. Subsequently, the law was extended to apply also to women and to children between 12 and 14. In the period from October to December 1939, compulsory labor was also introduced by locally issued decrees for Jews living in those parts of Poland incorporated into the Reich.

A L G O U V E R N E M E N T —regions

The Nazi policies of racism and mass killings were detrimental to the Reich’s total war effort.

By mid-January 1940, Governor-General Hans F R A N K ordered full implementation of the law of October 26, 1939. The decrees required compulsory labor, by all Jews—men and women alike—from the ages of fourteen to sixty, whether or not they had employment of their own. The compulsory service was scheduled to extend over two years, but it could be prolonged “in case the desired re-educational goal had not been achieved in that period.” So as to put the laws into practice, the Germans ordered all Jews aged 14 to 60 to register; this process was to be enforced by the Jewish Councils (see J U D E N R AT ). In addition, Jews were forced into temporary labor assignments, such as removing snow, loading goods that the Nazis had confiscated from Jews, and building walls around areas earmarked as ghettos, where Jews were required to live.

Labor Camps and Ghettos As time went on, special labor camps were put up for Jews, who were personally drafted to work in them. They were housed in barracks and they worked under very harsh conditions. In the Lublin district, twenty-nine such camps were in operation by July 1940. In August of that year, 20,000 Jews between 19 and 35 were ordered to report to labor camps. Many chose to disregard the call-up, despite the heavy risks involved, because of the intolerable conditions of life and work in the camps. The inmates were exposed to humiliation, beatings, and being pursued by vicious dogs. Frequently the men on forced labor had no living quarters assigned to them and had to sleep under the open sky; they also did not receive even minimal

16

FORCED LABOR

food rations. Those working on outdoor projects sometimes had to stand in water during their work. Many people perished in the camps; others were completely exhausted when they returned home from the camps and were permanently disabled. Out of 6,000 men from the W A R S AW ghetto sent to the labor camps, 1,000 were no longer fit for work within two weeks. In certain ghettos, such as L⁄ Ó D Z´ , the entire population was on forced labor and the ghettos themselves were turned into labor camps. In addition, many Jews also worked in German factories in Poland and in ghetto workshops, especially in the months preceding the liquidation of the ghettos. At the end of 1940 more than 700,000 people were on forced labor in Poland. That number dropped to 500,000 in 1942 and a little over 100,000 in mid-1943. Reasons for the decrease include the high mortality rate in the ghettos and the Nazi destruction of the Jewish population. Conditions of work in places other than labor camps differed from one to the other; all had in common a ten- to twelve-hour workday and the total absence of social benefits and vacations.

Forced laborers were paid little or nothing for their work. The rule concerning Jews was that their pay had to be lower than that of other nationalities.

Pay for Forced Labor Forced laborers were paid little or nothing for their work. The rule concerning Jews was that their pay had to be lower than that of other nationalities. Even when minimum wages were paid, substantial deductions were made for various purposes, as determined by the Germans. In B I A L⁄ Y S T O K , for example, the deductions amounted to 50 percent of the total, and for the work on the Frankfurt-Posen highway, as much as 80 percent was deducted from the pay. Where wages were paid, they were also so low that the recipients could not buy any extra food on the black market, which meant that they starved like all the others. In these ways, the German policy on forced labor by Jews, and on the wages for such labor, contributed directly to the physical destruction of the Jews.

The End of Forced Labor After most of the Jews had been killed, those remaining in the ghettos were forced to keep on working in various ways. Some labored in the workshops; some sorted out the possessions of murdered Jews for use by Germans; and some worked in other institutions and factories, serving the needs of the Reich. Factories that employed Jews had to pay substantial sums to the Security Police. In turn, the Jews had to pay bribes in order to obtain employment, which they sought to do by any means in the belief that this would save them from deportation to the EXTERMINATION CAMPS . In mid-1942 and in April and May of 1943, some of the Jews in the Generalgouvernement ghettos were taken to labor camps at T RAWNIKI and Poniatowa, where they were put to work in various workshops. In November 1943, the Germans murdered ⁄ ódz´, forced labor was kept up forty thousand Jews in these camps (see E RNTEFEST ). In L longer than anywhere else, until the ghetto was liquidated in August 1944.

SEE

ALSO CONCENTRATION CAMPS, EXTERMINATION CAMPS,

RACISM.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Axelrod, Toby. In the Camps: Teens Who Survived the Nazi Concentration Camps. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 1999. Birnbaum, Jacob. I Kept My Promise: My Story of Holocaust Survival. Lexington, MA: Jason R. Taylor Associates, 1995.

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Browning, Christopher R. Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Ferencz, Benjamin B. Less than Slaves: Jewish Forced Labor and the Quest for Compensation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979.

Voices of the Shoah: Remembrances of the Holocaust [sound recording]. Rhino Records, 2000.

France

A fter the economic and political uncertainties of the prewar period, the French were ready for a period of national renewal. As part of its “new order,” the Vichy began to curb the influence of “foreigners” in the country, encouraging the harassment of Jews and various refugee groups.

From the 1870s until 1940, France was governed as a republic; this period in France’s history is, in fact, designated as the Third Republic. The country had never had a constitution, but it was governed by constitutional laws. In June 1940, France was defeated by the German army and an armistice (peace agreement) was signed with G E R M A N Y . Under this agreement, France was divided into two areas: the occupied zone, which fell under direct German occupation, and the unoccupied zone, where the French National Assembly took up new headquarters in the spa town of Vichy, in the south of France. The occupied zone, which included P A R I S , encompassed the entire Atlantic and English Channel coasts and contained the more fertile regions in western, northern, and eastern France. The Vichy regime, or simply Vichy, as it is sometimes called, was in name, at least, the government in charge of the whole country; the Vichy leaders generally maintained cooperative relations with the Nazi occupation forces.

France During the Vichy Regime and Nazi Occupation Following the armistice with Germany in 1939, the National Assembly voted to suspend the constitutional laws by which France had been governed. Marshal Philippe Pétain was granted full powers as head of state by the National Assembly. Minister of State Pierre L AVA L worked diligently to bring Pétain and Adolf H I T L E R together. Their eventual meeting at Montoire from October 22 to 24, 1940, proved that Vichy’s “national revolution” included a policy of collaboration with Germany. France, under the “new order,” was to become part of the New Europe under Hitler’s direction. Since the Third Republic and its liberal principles no longer existed, the Vichy regime embarked on a policy of returning the country to the ideals of prerevolutionary France. The regime replaced the French revolutionary principles of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” with the more nationalistic principles of “work, family, and homeland.” In this effort, the Vichy government clearly reflected French public opinion. After being defeated by Germany, the French were ready for a period of national renewal. Pétain’s nationalistic call for a “new order” inspired by work, family and homeland was resoundingly welcomed by almost all elements of French society, including the Catholic church, which welcomed Pétain’s efforts to bring France back to what the it regarded as pure Christian principles. As part of its “new order,” the Vichy methodically began to curb the influence of “foreigners” in the country, encouraging the harassment of Jews and various refugee groups. Despite the general approval of efforts to revitalize French national pride, support for the Vichy regime was not universal. Beginning in the summer of 1941, after Germany invaded the S OV I E T U N I O N , French Communists and Socialists became increasingly dissatisfied with Vichy. This failed to change the Vichy goal of cooper-

18

FRANCE

Vichy France and Occupied France.

ating with Nazi Germany. Indeed, the Vichy agreed to enact intensified A N T I -J E W I S H L E G I S L AT I O N in the occupied zone. French officials were instructed to grant the German occupying forces all necessary assistance in making mass roundups of Jews in the summer of 1942. This was not well received. More and more French citizens protested against their government, among them leading figures in the Catholic and Protestant churches. Resistance activity, spurred on by increasing German repression and Vichy concessions, grew considerably. By early November 1942 the Vichy zone had been occupied by the German and Italian forces. Although it was relatively peaceful, the German occupation had a negative effect on living conditions in France. The French people were increasingly taxed by the armistice agreement as occupation costs rose to approximately 500 million francs a day. In addition, France’s food and raw materials were siphoned off for the war effort, causing shortages and economic hardships. More troubling was the growing number of French workers sent to Germany; by 1943 at least 700,000 had been deported for F O R C E D L A B O R . Nevertheless, Laval did not reconsider his course of action. Convinced that Germany would prevail in the war, he believed it was in the long-term interest of France to continue to support the Third Reich. The Italian occupation ended with the fall of Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, in 1943. The Allied landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944, signaled the end of the German occupation. The liberation of France came two months later. As the leader of the Free French movement Charles de Gaulle marched triumphantly into Paris, Pétain, Laval, and other Vichy officials fled to Germany. They would later be returned to Paris and tried for treason.

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“Image not available for copyright reasons”

Jews in France There is evidence that Jews have lived in France since the first century A.D. In 1306, 100,000 Jews were expelled from the country, although France had been a center of Jewish learning for nearly two centuries. Over several centuries, Jews returned to the region, and by the eve of the French Revolution (1789), the Jewish community in France numbered 40,000. The largest concentration was in Alsace-Lorraine. Jewish integration into French society had proceeded more or less smoothly, although there were occasional anti-Jewish episodes. Throughout the nineteenth century many Jews migrated to Paris, making it the center of Jewish life in France. In the period between the world wars, immigrants from eastern Europe also flocked to Paris, while thousands of Jewish refugees from Germany sought refuge in the city in the 1930s. At the onset of World War II, two-thirds of French Jews lived in Paris. Based on their countries of origin, there were many philosophical, social, and political differences among them.

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A sign announcing the conscription of Jews in Vichy, France, 1941.

In the 1930s France began to reassess its open-door policy toward Jewish immigrants. There was general pressure to put a stop to Jewish immigration and to annul Jewish rights. Though stringent restrictions against refugees were gradually introduced and internment camps were set up for them, Jews retained their civil rights until the fall of France and the establishment of the Vichy regime. In the summer of 1940, when France fell to German control, about 350,000 Jews lived in the country, more than half of whom were not French citizens. Among these were tens of thousands of Jewish refugees from B E L G I U M , the N E T H E R L A N D S , and Luxembourg, some of whom had fled Germany several years earlier. Persecution of these Jews began almost immediately.

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Deportations and Persecution

T

he deportation of French Jews to camps in eastern Europe from

1942 to 1944 was the culmination of two years of aggressive persecution. Jews had been subjected to antiJewish laws, economic isolation, imprisonment, harassment, and registration with the local police.

Compared with other nations occupied by the Nazis, France retained an unusual amount of autonomy. Throughout the entire period of the deportations of Jews, France had a French government, based in Vichy; a head of state (Marshal Pétain); an administration at least nominally responsible for the whole of the country; and a powerful police force. The Germans needed and received a great deal of assistance from the French to carry out their plans against the Jews. After the war, defenders of Vichy claimed that the work of this government limited the number of Jewish deportees from France. However, close examination of the German record, as well as research on the role of Vichy and its agencies, tells a different story. The deportation of the Jews to camps in eastern Europe from 1942 to 1944 was the culmination of two years of aggressive legislation and persecution. Jews were subjected to anti-Jewish laws, economic isolation, imprisonment, and registration with the local police. In October 1940, the Vichy government issued the comprehensive J E W I S H L AW (Statut Des Juifs) in October 1940. It also established a central agency for coordinating anti-Jewish legislation and activity, the General Office for Jewish Affairs. The Vichy leadership believed that the Germans would be grateful to the French for pursuing their own anti-Jewish policy, and would respond by giving them more autonomy. At the same time, the French were anxious to see that any property confiscated from the Jews did not fall into the hands of the Germans. Therefore, the Vichy regime launched an extensive program of A R YA N I Z AT I O N —conversion of Jewish assets to non-Jewish ownership-in July 1941. The objective was to keep formerly Jewish property in France. In practice, “Aryanization” simply meant the confiscation of Jewish possessions by the state. It developed into a vast property transfer, involving some 42,000 Jewish businesses, buildings, and other properties. Without personal or business assets, and barred from working in their professions, thousands of Jews were turned into penniless refugees in France. Foreign Jews were particularly vulnerable, and were especially victimized by both the Germans and Vichy. Thousands were forced into labor camps or interned, often in conditions that approached the Nazi C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S of the 1930s. The first victims of the Holocaust in France died in these camps; their number eventually reached about 3000. After the W A N N S E E C O N F E R E N C E of January 1942, at which they received tacit support for their pursuit of a Jew-free Europe, the Nazis prepared to remove Jews from France and other western European countries. At the end of April, Pierre Laval became head of the French government under Marshal Pétain. On June 11, German officials decided to make regular deportations of Jews from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Demands for cooperation were made to the Vichy government. After deliberations, Laval and the French cabinet agreed to help. Throughout the summer and fall of 1942, Jews were rounded up in both the occupied and unoccupied zones. Most of the work was done by the F R E N C H P O L I C E . On July 16 and 17, in one of their most cruel operations, they rounded up 12,884 Jews in Paris. Some 7,000 of them—families with small children—were crowded for days in the Vélodrome d’Hiver sports arena with no food, water, or sanitary facilities. Elsewhere, parents were torn from their children, and the victims were packed into cattle cars and shipped to the transit camp at D R A N C Y , just outside Paris. In all, 42,500 Jews were sent eastward from France in 1942, perhaps onethird of them from the Vichy zone.

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The D E P O R TAT I O N S of the summer and fall of 1942 stirred the first serious opposition to Vichy. The roundups of Jews could scarcely be concealed, and the people bitterly disapproved of the separation of families. A split developed in the Catholic church, which had been solidly behind Pétain. Highly placed clergymen now made their first open protest against the anti-Jewish activity of the regime. Further difficulties arose as the deportations gradually moved beyond Jewish immigrants to include French Jews as well. The Vichy regime had agreed to deport foreign Jews from both zones, but the authorities were soon pressured to send more Jews in order to fill the Nazis’ deportation quotas. Even Laval dragged his feet; in August 1943 he refused to strip French Jews of their citizenship in order to facilitate their deportation. Despite these occasional protests and difficulties, the deportations continued. The last convoys left France in the summer of 1944.

“I

n the course of the first two years of the Occupation, Le

Chambon became the safest place for Jews in Europe.”

Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There (New York: Harper Torchbooks), 1994, p. 129.

Thousands of Jews were assisted by a small number of sympathetic French people, often at great risk to the rescuers. Many were French Protestants, themselves a somewhat harassed minority in France. Help and sanctuary also came from the Quakers, the American Jewish J O I N T D I S T R I B U T I O N C O M M I T T E E (known as the Joint), the YMCA, the Catholic Témoignage Chrétien, and Jewish resistance networks. An outstanding example of rescue work took place at the Protestant village of L E C H A M B O N -S U R -L I G N O N , which developed a kind of underground railway, smuggling several thousand Jews to safety. In all, over 77,000 Jews from France were either killed in concentration camps in P O L A N D or died while in detention. Approximately 70,000 went to A U S C H W I T Z , and the rest to other camps—M A J DA N E K and S O B I B Ó R , and a few dozen to B U C H E N WA L D in August 1944. The “F I NA L S O L U T I O N ” in France was a Nazi project from beginning to end. Few of the French advocated the killing of Jews, and only a small number of extremists in Paris ever carried antisemitism to the murderous dimensions of Hitler and his associates. There is no evidence, however, that Vichy authorities attempted in a concerted way to limit the deportations. Most of the officials at Vichy shared in the widespread anti-Jewish mood of 1940. The plight of the Jews was of secondary consideration; preserving as much French autonomy as possible under Nazi occupation was the primary interest, and that required a high level of collaboration with the Nazis. Recent research, therefore, rejects the theory the Vichy regime pursued a consciously plotted strategy to save as many Jews as possible.

Jewish Responses to Persecution When the Germans invaded France in May 1940, more than 100,000 Jews fled to the unoccupied region in the south, among them Jewish leaders and rabbis. After the armistice was signed on June 22 and the French leadership called on Frenchmen to return to the north, as many as 30,000 Jews are reported to have returned to the occupied zone. During the initial months of confusion after the armistice, another 30,000 Jews crossed the southern French border in the hope of finding refuge abroad. The process of reorganizing the Jewish community slowly began in the fall of 1940. Jews had varied and contradictory opinions about the possibility of Jewish life under Nazi occupation and Vichy rule; the native Jews and those who had emigrated from eastern Europe had rarely agreed on issues before the Nazi occupation, and this did not change in the face of Nazi control. By January 1941, Jewish leaders of both groups had been pressured, by the SS officials in charge of Jewish affairs, to create an umbrella organization known as the Coordinating Committee of Jewish

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Thousands of Jews were assisted by a small number of sympathetic French people, often at great risk to the rescuers.

Welfare Societies. The Jewish leadership was concerned about the growing poverty within the Jewish community. But not all Jews felt that the Coordinating Committee was a good idea. Many sensed that working on the committee involved cooperation with the Germans on some level. Immigrant Jews, in particular, were not in favor of this. They stopped participating on the committee, thereby worsening relations within the community. The contrasting attitudes between immigrant and native Jews with regard to the Coordinating Committee were reflected in the emergence of resistance activity. Far more Jewish immigrants than native Jews had gravitated toward resistance groups during the first 18 months of the occupation; they feared even the slightest association with the Germans. The more established sectors of the native community preferred to wait and count on the French authorities for support. In the south of France, where massive migration had increased the Jewish population to approximately 150,000, the needs of the Jewish community were also urgent. Jews had flocked to the major cities—Lyons, Marseilles, Toulouse—and to hundreds of smaller ones. Former leaders of the Jewish community resettled in Lyons and Marseilles and gradually began to map out plans for relief. In the south, too, conflicts and lack of trust characterized relations between native and immigrant Jews. Despite the flood of antisemitic legislation initiated by the Vichy regime, most Jews in the region trusted the Vichy leadership, and took a “wait and see” attitude rather than engaging in resistance activity. Individual and community attention centered on coping with the daily difficulties of life. As the war progressed, however, and Nazi intentions against the Jews became more apparent, opposition within the community grew. The deportations that began in March 1942 jolted the community, sending Jews into a frenzied search for refuge from the Nazis and the French police. Jews began to seek hiding places in thousands of French villages and rural communities, aided by the local population. Thousands more attempted to cross over the border to Switzerland. More than 27,000 Jews were caught and deported by Germans that summer. Countless families were separated, and many were left homeless. These events accelerated Jewish resistance tendencies in both the north and the south. Encouraged by French protests and humanitarian actions, Jewish relief groups encouraged Jews to resist the authorities. Some Jewish organizations turned to illegal activity—removing Jewish children to Christian homes and monasteries, forging identification papers and documents, aiding Jews in hiding and in crossing the border to Spain and Switzerland. These activities antagonized the Jews who still preferred to operate within the law. French Jewry’s predicament deteriorated still further in the wake of the German occupation of the south in November 1942. Some 2000 foreign and native Jews were seized in a large-scale roundup in Marseilles at the end of January 1943. More roundups followed in Lyons and other southern cities. As many as 30,000 Jews fled to the Italian occupied zone by September 1943. With the Italian defeat and subsequent German takeover of these regions, however, this was no longer a safe harbor. Thousands of Jews were rounded up by the German net; thousands of others avoided arrest by immediately going into hiding. Jews who remained under German occupation, in the north and south, experienced varying conditions during this period. Parisian Jews enjoyed some relief after the traumatic days of July 1942. They did not experience another major roundup, but many left the city to hide in small villages and hamlets. By mid-1944, only

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15,000 Jews lived openly in the capital. Many of them continued to receive relief in one form or another from Jewish organizations. In the German-occupied south, where Gestapo efforts to increase deportations were supported by the French militia, Jews were often on the run. In 1944, Jewish leaders set aside their ideological differences in order coordinate resistance activity among the Jewish groups.

Reconstruction of French Jewry After the Holocaust, French Jewry confronted the massive task of rebuilding Jewish culture and community. Parisian Jewry was weakened seriously by the loss of approximately 50,000 members. Throughout France, Jews mourned the complete disappearance of hundreds of small communities. In addition, many large settlements were reduced to a mere handful of Jewish families. However, in comparison with other European Jewish communities, the situation of French Jewry was far from hopeless. French Jews had experienced the Holocaust, but they had survived in large enough numbers to reassert themselves after the war. The unending stream of Jewish survivors fleeing D I S P L A C E D P E R S O N S ’ camps and emerging from hiding—more than 35,000 in the first three years after the war—meant that France would soon contain the largest Jewish community on the Continent.

A

divided community at the outset of the war, French Jewry found

itself both weakened and reoriented by the war’s end. The Jewish community had lost around 78,000 Jews and harbored thousands of broken families in its midst. But the trend in 1944 toward organizational unity would serve the community well in the very difficult period of reconstruction to come.

The Jewish community in post-war France faced many challenges, but three consumed most of its energy and interest: the restoration of stolen Jewish property; the care and feeding of refugees; and the plight of children who had lost their parents. Despite intense efforts, French Jewry had only limited success in reclaiming the businesses and other property of deportees. More successful were the activities of the Jewish Committee for Social Action and Reconstruction, which was able to feed and house nearly three-quarters of the 40,000 Holocaust survivors who sought refuge in France. Thanks to the efforts of relief and advocacy organizations for children, nearly 100 institutions were created to care for orphaned children and to reintegrate them into the community. While the French Jewish community was able to provide foster parents for orphans, however, it had little success in recovering Jewish children adopted by non-Jews during the war. During the post-war years of 1940s and 1950s, the Jews of France managed to create new institutions and rehabilitate the tens of thousands of broken men and women who returned from the Nazi E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S and emerged from hiding. Nonetheless, the differences that created division in the pre-war years reemerged. In addition to negotiating these renewed tensions, the Jews of France had to come to terms with the painful reality that the majority of the French people, as well as its government, had not actively opposed the Nazi’s intended destruction of the Jews. French Jewry in the 1940s and early 1950s lacked confidence in its future. Though far from dead, the French Jewish community seemed to be marking time, waiting, as it had done in the past, for a fresh infusion of immigrants. This in fact took place, beginning in the mid-1950s, with the influx of Jews from North Africa.

SUGGESTED READING Josephs, Jeremy. Swastika Over Paris. New York: Arcade, 1989. Klarsfeld, Serge. French Children of the Holocaust: A Memorial. New York: New York University Press, 1996. Lazare, Lucien. Rescue as Resistance: How Jewish Organizations Fought the Holocaust in France. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

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Lewendel, Isaac. Not the Germans Alone: A Son’s Search for the Truth of Vichy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999. Weisberg, Richard H. Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

Frank, Anne Anne Frank’s Family

“N

ever have we heard one word of the burden

which we certainly must be to them, never has one of them complained of all the trouble we give.…They put on the brightest possible faces, bring flowers and presents for birthdays.… although others may show heroism in the war or against the Germans, our helpers display heroism in their cheerfulness and affection.” Anne Frank, writing in her diary about those who helped her family remain hidden.

Anne Frank’s father, Otto Heinrich Frank (1889–1980), was born in Frankfurt, G E R M A N Y . He grew up in a liberal Jewish environment, attended high school, and trained for a while at Macy’s department store in New York City. During World War I, Frank was a reserve officer in the German army. After the war, he started his own business, with mixed success. In 1925, Frank married Edith Holländer, the daughter of factory owners in Aachen. The couple had two daughters, Margot Betti (born February 16, 1926) and Annelies Marie (born June 12, 1929), who was called Anne. Soon after the Nazis came to power in January 1933 and the first anti-Jewish measures were announced, the Frank family decided to leave Germany. Otto Frank went to Amsterdam. He knew the city well from frequent visits and had several good friends there. After he found an apartment, the rest of his family joined him. Frank set up a company, Opekta, that made and distributed pectin for use in homemade jams and jellies. In 1938, Frank started a second company, Pectacon, with Hermann van Pels, who had recently fled to Amsterdam from Osnabrück in Germany with his wife Auguste and son Peter. Pectacon specialized in the preparation of spices for sausage making. Anne and Margot Frank quickly adapted themselves to their new life. They learned Dutch and attended the local Montessori school. The Franks joined the liberal Jewish congregation of Amsterdam. Their relatively carefree existence came to an end on May 10, 1940, when the Germans invaded and occupied the Netherlands. The invasion was soon followed by anti-Jewish measures. In October of that year, a law was passed that required all Jewish-owned businesses to be registered. With the help of non-Jewish friends and colleagues, both of Otto Frank’s companies, Opekta and Pectacon, were “Aryanized” on paper—that is, the ownership was transferred from Jewish to non-Jewish control, and the businesses continued. Another law stipulated that Jewish children could attend only Jewish schools, so Anne and Margot switched to the Jewish Lyceum. Meanwhile, Otto Frank had begun preparations to go into hiding, if this proved necessary. Little by little, the family’s possessions were brought to the vacant annex of Frank’s office at Prinsengracht 263. Four employees were informed of his plans—Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, Elli Voskuijl, and Miep Gies (born Hermine Santrouschitz)—and they agreed to help the Frank family. Miep had worked with Otto Frank for years and had become his closest associate. Born in Vienna, she was one of the many thousands of Austrian children who were taken into Dutch foster homes to improve their health after World War I. Miep had stayed on, and in 1941 she married Jan Gies. The Franks’ plans to go into hiding went into high gear on July 5, 1942, when Margot received a registered letter from the Nazi C E N T R A L O F F I C E F O R J E W I S H E M I G R AT I O N (Zentralstelle Für Jüdische Auswanderung). Margot, then sixteen

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Otto Frank with daughters Margot (left) and Anne (front).

years old, was ordered to register for what the letter called “labor expansion measures.” After consultation with the van Pels family, the Franks decided to go into hiding immediately. They moved into the annex the next day, followed a week later by the van Pels family and their fifteen-year-old son Peter. On November 16, 1942, they were joined by an eighth onderduiker (literally, “one who dives under”), the dentist Fritz Pfeffer, who had fled from Berlin in 1938. These eight people were to spend two years living in a few cramped rooms fashioned from a warehouse attic. Since food and clothing had become scarce and could be bought only with coupons, which Jews in hiding could not obtain, the four helpers in the office managed somehow to buy enough supplies to feed and clothe eight additional people, often at great risk to their own lives.

E ight people spent more than two years in a few cramped attic rooms. Only one survived what followed.

The Jews Are Betrayed On August 4, 1944, the SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service) in Amsterdam received an anonymous phone call—it has never been established from whom— with information about Jews in hiding at Prinsengracht 263. A police van immediately drove to the Prinsengracht, and the eight Jews were found and arrested. A

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policeman named Silberbauer demanded money and jewelry; in order to hide these, he emptied an attaché case full of papers, which he threw on the floor. Among these papers was Anne Frank’s diary. Also arrested were Kleiman and Kugler, two of the employees who had assisted the families. After the police left, Miep Gies and Elli Voskuijl went back to the annex to pick up many personal items, such as photographs, books, and other papers. They retrieved Anne’s diary pages and put them away until Anne’s return. A few days later, all of the furniture and clothing was hauled away from the annex, a customary procedure after an arrest. During the arrests, Miep Gies had realized that Silberbauer, like herself, came from Vienna. This may have been why he did not arrest her, although he made it clear that he suspected her of having helped the Jews. The next day, Miep sought him out to see if there was a way that the prisoners could be set free, but Silberbauer indicated that there was nothing he could do. Kugler and Kleiman were taken to the concentration camp in Amersfoort in the N E T H E R L A N D S . Kleiman suffered a hemorrhage of the stomach, and was sent home in September 1944 through the intervention of the Red Cross. Kugler was able to escape while being transported in March 1945; he remained in hiding until the liberation of the Netherlands in May of that year.

After the Annex The Jewish prisoners arrived at the W E S T E R B O R K transit camp on August 8, 1944. Every week, a full trainload of prisoners left from there for the extermination camps. On September 3, the last transport to leave Westerbork for A U S C H W I T Z departed. According to the meticulously kept transport lists, there were 1,011 people on board, among them the Franks, the van Pels family, and Pfeffer. When they arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 549 of the prisoners were gassed immediately. Hermann van Pels was one of these. Edith Frank, her daughters Margot and Anne, and Auguste van Pels were interned in the women’s block. Pfeffer was the next to die. He is listed in the death book of the N E U E N G A M M E camp on December 20, 1944. Edith Frank perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 6, 1945. It has not been established where and when Auguste van Pels died, but it is assumed that it was at the end of March or early April, somewhere in Germany or Czechoslovakia. Peter van Pels was one of the many thousands of prisoners who were put on D E AT H M A R C H E S because of the advancing Russian army. He died shortly before the liberation in May 1945 in the M AU T H AU S E N camp in Austria. Anne and Margot were sent to B ERGEN -B ELSEN at the end of October 1944. This camp filled up with thousands of prisoners from other camps that were being vacated as the Russians advanced. Housing, food, and medicine were totally inadequate, and many prisoners weakened from hunger and the cold. A typhus epidemic took many victims. Margot died of typhus around the beginning of March; Anne, who believed that both her parents had perished, died a few days later, also of typhus. Two sisters from Amsterdam who had been with the Frank sisters in both Westerbork and Auschwitz later stated that they had carried Anne’s body from the sick barrack. She was buried in one of the mass graves at Bergen-Belsen. Otto Frank was the only survivor of the eight who hid in the attic. The Soviet army liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, and Frank returned to Amsterdam the following June. After Anne’s death had been confirmed, Miep Gies returned to Otto Frank the papers that she had kept.

Anne’s Diary On June 12, 1942, her thirteenth birthday, Anne received a red-checked diary from her father. That same day, Anne wrote on the first page: “I hope I shall be able

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“Image not available for copyright reasons”

to confide in you completely, as I have never been able to do in anyone before, and I hope that you will be a great support and comfort to me.” In letters to an imaginary friend, Anne painted a picture of herself and her personal development in the context of the problems and fears of eight Jews trying to hide from deportation, unknowingly writing what would become one of the most famous accounts of life in hiding from Nazi persecutors. The frightening news about the developments on the outside reached those in hiding through the radio and through their helpers. Still, those in hiding tried to lead a normal life. For Anne as well as Margot and Peter, this meant doing homework with the help of their old schoolbooks and new books borrowed from the library by Miep and Elli. Fear of discovery created enormous pressure on those in hiding. During the day, they could not move around or use the bathroom because not everyone in the office below was aware of their presence. The close quarters and constant tensions were often too much for Anne. On October 29, 1943, she wrote: I wander from one room to another, downstairs and up again, feeling like a song-bird whose wings have been brutally clipped and who is beating itself in utter darkness against the bars of its cage. “Go outside, laugh, and take a breath of fresh air,” a voice cries within me, but I don’t even feel a response any more; I go and lie on the divan and sleep, to make the time move quickly, and the stillness and the terrible fear, because there is no way of killing them. Anne described conflicts with her mother, her special relationship with her father, her sexual development, and her efforts to improve her character. She fell in love with Peter but later wrote about her disappointment in him. Anne’s diary is also a monument to the helpers who struggled to obtain food and clothing and provided spiritual support for two years: Our helpers are a very good example. They have pulled us through up till now and we hope they will bring us safely to dry land. Otherwise, they will have to share the same fate as the many others who are being searched for. Never have we heard one word of the burden which we certainly must be to them, never has one of them complained of all the trouble we give.

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They all come upstairs every day, talk to the men about business and politics, to the women about food and wartime difficulties, and about newspapers and books with the children. They put on the brightest possible faces, bring flowers and presents for birthdays and bank holidays, are always ready to help and do all they can. That is something we must never forget; although others may show heroism in the war or against the Germans, our helpers display heroism in their cheerfulness and affection. On March 28, 1944, Anne heard a British radio report about a plan to gather diaries and letters about the war. “Of course, they all made a rush at my diary immediately,” she wrote the following day. “Just imagine how interesting it would be if I were to publish a romance of the ‘Secret Annex.’ The title alone would be enough to make people think it was a detective story.” On May 11, she wrote: Now, about something else: you’ve known for a long time that my greatest wish is to become a journalist some day and later a famous writer. Whether these leanings towards greatness (of insanity?) will ever materialize remains to be seen, but I certainly have the subjects in my mind. In any case, I want to publish a book entitled Het Achterhuis [The Annex] after the war. Whether I shall succeed or not, I cannot say, but my diary will be a great help. Anne prepared a list of pseudonyms for possible publication: Van Pels became Van Daan, Pfeffer became Dussel, and so on. Anne observed herself and her environment, made plans for the future, commented and criticized, and did not spare herself in that regard. In the high- pressure situation of the annex, she changed from a shy young girl to a young woman. Superficial comments about girlfriends and admirers made place for philosophical statements about herself and the world around her. One of the last entries in the diary is from July 15, 1944: That’s the difficulty in these times: ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us, only to meet the horrible truth and be shattered. It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet, I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions, and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquillity will return again. In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out. Yours, Anne. Apart from the diary, Miep also saved two other works that Anne created: a book of stories, “Stories and Adventures from the Annex,” and the “Book of Beautiful Phrases,” in which Anne had copied quotations that had pleased her. When Otto Frank showed some of the passages from Anne’s diary to some friends, they persuaded him to find a publisher. The historian Jan Romein published an article in which he related his emotions on reading parts of the diary. Shortly thereafter, the publisher Contact approached Otto Frank and The Annex appeared in June 1947. For many people, Anne’s diary is their introduction to the Nazi persecution of the Jews. In 1950, it appeared in Germany and France, and in 1952 in the United States and England. For the American edition, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in the preface: “This is a remarkable book. Written by a young girl—and the young are not

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ANNE FRANK’S DIARY STILL GETS HEADLINES The influence of Anne Frank’s diary is such that those who try to deny the Nazis’ crimes also denounce the diary as a fraud. In order to counter such efforts, in 1986 the Rijksinstituut for Oorlogsdocumentatie (Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation) in Amsterdam published an annotated edition of both versions of Anne’s diary, the earlier edition with passages deleted by her father, because he deemed them too personal, and a later, complete version. Several pieces from her “Story Book” were also added to the diary. The English translation of the annotated diary appeared in 1989. In 1998, Cor Suijk, a Holocaust survivor and friend of the Frank family, revealed that even after the “complete” diary was published in 1989, five unpublished pages were still in his possession. Asserting that the pages had been given to him by Otto Frank before his death in 1980, Suijk released excerpts of the missing information, including unflattering descriptions of Otto and Edith Frank’s marriage, to an Amsterdam newspaper. At the time of his announcement, Suijk indicated that the pages would only be published in their entirety in exchange for increased financial support for his Holocaust awareness work in the United States, through the Anne Frank Center USA in New York. Suijk’s control of the pages, as well as their authenticity, have remained controversial issues among Holocaust scholars and publishers.

afraid of telling the truth—it is one of the wisest and most moving commentaries on war and its impact on human beings that I have ever read.” The diary has been published in more than 50 editions; the total number of copies printed amounts to more than 25 million in 55 languages. Dramatic presentations have also reached a large public. The stage version by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, The Diary of Anne Frank, premiered on Broadway on October 5, 1955, and received the Pulitzer prize for the best play of the year. The film version followed in 1959. In 1996, Jon Blair produced the film Anne Frank Remembered, which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Film. After Otto Frank’s death, the rest of Anne’s papers went to the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation. The diary itself is on loan to the Anne Frank House and is on display there. The copyright is owned by the independent Anne Frank Foundation in Basel. Anne’s wish—“I want to live on, even after my death”—has become a reality. Throughout the world, she has become a symbol of the millions of victims of the Holocaust.

The Anne Frank House After the publication of The Annex, many visitors found their way to the house at Prinsengracht 263, which was still being used as an office. In 1957, there

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“Image not available for copyright reasons”

were plans to raze the house to make room for a new building, but public outcry prevented this action. The owner of the building then donated the house to the newly established Anne Frank Foundation on condition that the building be open to visitors. The museum opened its doors in 1960. It was Otto Frank’s wish that the museum not become a memorial to Anne but instead contribute to an understanding of prejudice and discrimination. For that reason, a primary goal of the museum is to educate visitors about the destructiveness of A N T I S E M I T I S M and R AC I S M . The Anne Frank Foundation maintains a documentation center on antisemitism and racist groups in Western Europe and the United States. It produces teaching aids and organizes traveling exhibits in various languages. The foundation also has an office in New York City.

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SUGGESTED RESOURCES Anne Frank Remembered [videorecording]. Columbia TriStar Home Video, 1996. Frank, Anne. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. New York: Bantam Books, 1993. Gies, Miep. Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987. Muller, Melissa. Anne Frank: The Biography. Translated by Rita and Robert Kimber. New York: Henry Holt, 1998. Rol, Ruud van der. Anne Frank, Beyond the Diary: A Photographic Remembrance. New York: Viking, 1993.

Frank, Hans (1900–1946)

Hans Frank was a lawyer and Nazi official who served as the governor-general of P O L A N D from 1939 to 1945. Frank graduated from a Munich Gymnasium (high school) in 1918. He displayed his commitment to militant nationalist and rightwing politics by joining the Epp Freikorps (a paramilitary group commanded by Ritter von Epp) in 1919 while he was pursuing the study of law at the universities of Kiel and Munich. In 1923 he joined the Storm Troopers (Sturmabteilung; SA) and N A Z I P A R T Y , and took part in Hitler’s ill-fated Beer-Hall Putsch in Munich. He fled briefly to A U S T R I A , then returned to G E R M A N Y to finish his doctorate at the University of Kiel in 1924.

Beer-Hall Putsch

A failed attempt at a government takeover in Bavaria on November 8, 1923.

In 1926, Frank left the Nazi party in protest against Hitler’s renunciation of German claims over the South Tyrol, only to rejoin a year later. His career in the party then flourished as he became attorney to various party members, most prominently defending Hitler in his many libel cases and serving as defense counsel in the 1930 Leipzig trial of three Nazi army officers. He also handled the very delicate matter of researching Hitler’s family tree for possible Jewish ancestors. After Hitler took power, Frank’s usefulness rapidly diminished. A middle-class intellectual who was never admitted to the inner circle of Nazi leaders, Frank remained oblivious to Hitler’s open aversion to law, lawyers, and any procedures that threatened to curtail his own freedom of action. He was appointed to numerous “official” posts that had little power during 1933 and 1934. From 1934 to 1941 he was president of the Academy for German Law, with the self-assigned task of reformulating German law on the basis of National Socialist principles. When Germany conquered Poland in September 1939, the eastern third of the country was occupied by the S OV I E T U N I O N (in accordance with the secret terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact), the western third was annexed to the Third Reich, and the central region became a German-occupied territory known as the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T . Hans Frank, the legal expert of the Nazi party and Hitler’s personal lawyer, was appointed governor-general. From that point on, Frank generally played a major role in implementing Nazi racial policies in eastern Europe. As leader of the Generalgouvernement, Frank wanted to build up a strong power base for himself while retaining Hitler’s favor. However, Hitler’s practice of presiding over a chaotic system of “institutional Darwinism”—leaving his various subordinates to engage in a constant internal struggle for power and jurisdiction and keeping for himself the role of indispensable arbiter and pacesetter—was incompatible with Frank’s passionate vision of logic, order, and “unity of administration.”

Hans Frank in Nazi uniform.

33

FRANK, HANS

Hans Frank (l) and General Field Marshal Wilhelm reviewing troops, October 1940.

In his desire to build up his own power base, Frank preferred a policy of economic stabilization, better treatment of the Poles, and an integration of the Polish people into the Third Reich. However, in an effort to remain in Hitler’s good graces, and so as not to be upstaged by his rival, Heinrich H IMMLER , Frank often veered suddenly to support policies of radical brutality and destructiveness toward the Poles. In one shift of policy, he alternately opposed and supported the influx of Poles and Jews expelled from the “incorporated territories.” On the one hand he approved the self-sufficiency of ghetto economies and encouraged the rational use of ghetto labor, while on the other, he supported the starvation and then mass murder of the Jews. Ultimately, Frank’s loyalty to Hitler and his own ambition could not be reconciled. He saw himself as the head of the model “crusader kingdom” in Germany’s expansion to the east, while Hitler saw the Generalgouvernement as the racial dumping ground, the slave-labor reservoir, and finally the slaughter yard of the Third Reich. Since Himmler’s views more closely approximated those of Hitler, Frank’s defeat was inevitable. On March 5, 1942, Frank was summoned before a tribunal consisting of Himmler, Hans Heinrich Lammers, and Martin B O R M A N N . He was stripped of all jurisdiction over racial and police matters in the Generalgouvernement, yet he retained his now-powerless position as governor-general. Perhaps hoping to force Hitler to relieve him from this humiliating position, Frank delivered a series of lectures at four German universities in the summer of

34

FRENCH POLICE

1942, denouncing the emasculation of German justice by the police state. He also sent Hitler a long memorandum criticizing SS policies in Poland. “You should not slaughter the cow you want to milk,” he concluded. Hitler relieved Frank of all his party positions and forbade him to speak publicly within the Reich, but refused to accept his numerous letters of resignation. Thus Frank remained as governor-general until he fled as Russian troops approached. He took with him the many volumes of his official diary that have since become a major source for historians of the Third Reich and an important document for the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. Frank was tried among the major war criminals in the Nuremberg Trial, and hanged at Nuremberg.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES “Hans Frank.” A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/document/DocFrank.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000). “Individual Responsibility of Defendants: Hans Frank,” in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (vol. II). USGPO, 1946. [Online] http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/Frank.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000).

French Police After F R A N C E was defeated by G E R M A N Y in 1940, the northern part of the country was occupied by Germany, and the southern part was governed by the Vichy administration, which was a German ally. The entire French Police force, including the section serving in the German-occupied zone, functioned under the authority of the Vichy government. About 130,000 policemen served in the French police force, 30,000 of them in P A R I S . They included special branches such as intelligence, which gathered information about the enemy, and squads for suppressing the anti-German Resistance activists. In contrast to this large French police force, the German force numbered at most around 3,000 police. Their performance was hampered by their inability to speak French and their unfamiliarity with the terrain in which they were stationed. As a result, the Germans assigned to the French police the tasks of maintaining public order, preventing subversive activities, suppressing crime, and implementing the German anti-Jewish policy. On July 16 and 17, 1942, 13,000 Jews were arrested in Paris, among them 4,000 children, as well as old people and the handicapped and ill. They were concentrated mainly in the Vélodrome d’Hiver, a closed structure in which even basic amenities had not been prepared. There were, for example, no toilet facilities. The arrests were made by 9,000 French policemen who were brought in for this operation. More than 10,000 Jews who were supposed to be arrested managed to leave their homes in time to escape; some of them had been warned by humane police officials. In July 1942 Carl Albrecht O B E R G , a leader of the German police and S S in France, and René Bousquet, chief of the Vichy police, signed an agreement. It spelled out the authority of the French police and the quantities of weapons and equipment they would be allowed. Until the summer of 1943, the Oberg-Bousquet agreement was easily enforced, and the French police cooperated with the Germans. The French police force confiscated the Jews’ property and businesses, conducted mass arrests, and made sure that the Jews wore the yellow Jewish badge (see

35

FREUDIGER, FÜLÖP

B A D G E , J E W I S H ) and that their identity cards were stamped with the word Juif (“Jew”). The police force was also responsible for the construction and operation of the C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S , and the French police provided armed guards to escort the trains transporting deported Jews to the German border. In the camps supervised by the French police, negligence, corruption, unsanitary conditions, and poor medical services were common. A special police section in Paris was active in the destruction of underground Communist partisan (guerilla) units, which included a large number of Jews. In the summer of 1943, thousands of young Frenchmen were notified that they would be recruited for F O R C E D L A B O R in Germany. In protest, groups of PA RT I S A N S were organized throughout the country. While attacking the occupation police force, they did not inflict as much damage on the French police. As a result, the French police gradually stopped arresting Jews, and the French administration in the D R A N C Y concentration camp was replaced by the G E S TA P O (German secret police). In 1944, Joseph Darnand, head of the French fascist militia, was appointed chief of police in place of Bousquet. From then on the operations against the Jews were performed by the brutal militia forces, which carried out their tasks against the Jews of France efficiently, and without mercy.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Lewendel, Isaac. Not the Germans Alone: A Son’s Search for the Truth of Vichy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999. Weisberg, Richard H. Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

Freudiger, Fülöp (1900–1976)

Fülöp Freudiger was an Hungarian Jewish leader born in B U DA P E S T to a wellto-do family that had been elevated to the nobility by Emperor Franz Josef. Freudiger succeeded his father, Abraham, as the head of the Orthodox Jewish community of Budapest in 1939. As a founder and leading figure of the Orthodox Relief and Rescue Committee of Budapest in 1943 and 1944, he helped many of the foreign Jewish refugees who were illegally in H U N G A RY . After the German occupation of the country on March 19, 1944, he was appointed to the Central Jewish Council (Központi Zsidó Tanács), the J U D E N R AT of Budapest. With the help of Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandelof Bratislava, Freudiger was able to establish a close relationship with Dieter W I S L I C E N Y of the S P E C I A L C O M M A N D O (Eichmann Sonderkommando) shortly after the Germans occupied Hungary. He also received from Weissmandel a copy of the A U S C H W I T Z Protocols (a report by two Auschwitz escapees), and distributed information about the mass killings taking place at Auschwitz to Jewish and non-Jewish leaders in Hungary. By bribing Wisliceny, Freudiger succeeded in rescuing eighty prominent Orthodox Jews from various ghettos in Hungary. With Wisliceny’s aid, he and his family escaped to Romania, on August 9, 1944. Freudiger later settled in Israel, where his role in the Central Jewish Council (Judenrat) and his escape were subjects of controversy. He served as a prosecution witness in the Eichmann Trial in 1961.

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GAS CHAMBERS/VANS

SUGGESTED RESOURCES “Affidavit of Dieter Wisliceny,” in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression., vol. VIII. USGPO, 1946. [Online] http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/Wisliceny.htm (accessed on August 30, 2000) Handler, Andrew, ed. Young People Speak: Surviving the Holocaust in Hungary. New York: Franklin Watts, 1993.

Gas Chambers/Vans The use of lethal gas was a Nazi method for “efficient” mass murder. Both mobile and stationary gas chambers were used for this purpose by the Nazis. The first recorded instance of mass murder by gas took place in December 1939, when an SS S P E C I A L C O M M A N D O (Sonderkommando) unit used carbon monoxide to kill Polish mental patients. The following month, Viktor Brack, head of the E U T H A NA S I A P R O G R A M , decided to use pure carbon monoxide in his euthanasia institutions, since it had already been tested successfully. After the “F I NA L S O L U T I O N ” was set in motion in the summer of 1941, gassing was introduced as a method for the mass murder of Jews. The method was launched in December 1941 at C H E L⁄ M N O . Mobile vans had been built and equipped for this specific purpose—a project that the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA) had been working on since September of that year. Unlike the method used for the euthanasia murders, the exhaust gas from the trucks was piped into the closed van. Depending on the size of the truck, 40 to 60 people could be gassed at a time. A total of 20 such mobile gas chambers were built. Most of them were used by the four OPERATIONAL SQUADS (Einsatzgruppen) deployed on Soviet soil.

“I

have had the vans ... disguised as housetrailers.... [They] had

become so well known that not only the authorities but the civilian population referred to them as the ‘Death Vans’ as soon as one appeared.”

—From an SS report on the use of gas vans in Kiev, May 1942

Gas Vans On June 2, 1942, a Nazi report noted that the vans were an effective tool in the extermination of Jews: “Since December 1941...97,000 persons have been processed with the help of three vans, without a single disruption.” Fifteen gas vans were in regular operation in German-occupied Soviet territory. They were also used elsewhere, although documentary evidence detailing locations and dates is scarce. It is known that gas vans were employed to kill Jews in Yugoslavia and at the L U B L I N and M A J DA N E K camps. The gas vans were used to empty prisons or to assist in the liquidation of the ghettos. After several months of operation, the vans developed operational problems due to technical deficiencies. There were also frequent breakdowns in transit, due to the condition of Soviet roads, and the SS men assigned to unload the vans began to experience severe mental stress. Ultimately, although about 700,000 people were murdered through their use, the gas vans did not meet Nazi expectations as effective instruments for the trouble-free killing of masses of people. For that purpose, stationary gas chambers proved more efficient.

Gas Chambers The first stationary gas chambers were put up at the B E L⁄ Z˙ E C camp, in February 1942. There were several trial gassings with carbon monoxide cylinders and exhaust

37

GAS CHAMBERS/VANS

Photograph of the rear side of a gas chamber, black furnace at right, taken at Majdanek after the camp was liberated in 1944.

T

he Nazis sought to camouflage the killing operation until the

victims were just steps away from their deaths. In Treblinka, not only were the gas chambers designed to appear as shower rooms, but the camp featured flower beds, as well. In an attempt to create what on the surface appeared to be a pleasant environment, they practiced complete deception.

gas. The exhaust gas was chosen as the better alternative, since it was cheaper and did not require special supplies. The next month, regular killings began at Bel⁄ z˙ec, by means of three gas chambers in a single wooden barrack. S OBIB ÓR camp was next, in May. But here, the installation was a brick building, with concrete foundations, that contained the gas chambers. T REBLINKA was the third and last of the A KTION (O PER ATION ) R EINHARD EXTERMINATION CAMPS in the G ENERALGOUVERNEMENT . In the summer and fall of 1942, the capacity of the extermination camps was greatly increased. The existing gas chambers were enlarged, and new ones were added. In the ten gas chambers of Treblinka, 2,500 people could be put to death in a single gassing round, lasting an hour. The victims were forced to enter with their arms raised so that as many people as possible could be squeezed into the chambers. Babies and small children were thrown on top of the human mass. The tighter the chambers were packed, and the warmer the temperature inside the chamber, the faster the victims suffocated. All the gas chambers in the extermination camps were disguised as shower rooms to fool the victims. Each of the Aktion Reinhard killing centers operated in approximately the same way. When a transport arrived at the well-camouflaged station, the prisoners were evaluated in a Selektion, which determined whether they would die immediately or after they had performed useful work for the camp administration. A few of the victims were selected to form a special command; these prisoners would later perform the task of removing and burying the bodies of the dead. A handful of victims with special skills were chosen to work in the repair shops that serviced the camp SS staff and their Ukrainian helpers. The vast majority went through an assembly-line procedure, moving along the various camp stations, at which they surrendered any valuables left in their possession, undressed, and had their hair cut off. This procession ended in the gas chambers. Men were separated from women and children, in part to keep up the pretense that the prisoners would actually take showers and be disinfected, and in part to minimize resistance. Once the victims were dead, the members of the special command removed their bodies from the gas chambers and buried them. (Later on, the bodies were cremated, instead of buried.)

38

GENERALGOUVERNEMENT

After a time, the men of the special command were killed as well. They were replaced by new prisoners from later transports.

From Carbon Monoxide to Zyklon B In their search for a more efficient means of extermination, the Nazis experimented with other forms of poison gas, and also with electrocution. When electrocution was found to be impractical, gassing experiments with Z Y K L O N B took place at A U S C H W I T Z . The experiments were performed on Soviet P R I S O N E R S O F WA R , in preparation for the mass murder of Jews in the adjoining Birkenau camp. Zyklon B proved far better than diesel-exhaust gas, and Auschwitz camp commandant Rudolf H Ö S S decided to use it exclusively. A crystalline form of hydrogen cyanide, Zyklon B turned to gas immediately upon contact with oxygen, giving off deadly fumes that killed everyone in the gas chamber. Depending on weather conditions, especially temperature and humidity, the murder operation in the Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers took from 20 to 30 minutes. According to Höss: “In all the years, I knew of not a single case where anyone came out of the chambers alive.” The gassing facilities at Auschwitz were repeatedly enlarged, to keep up with the thousands of people sent there to die. After an inspection of the AuschwitzBirkenau facilities in the summer of 1942 by SS head Heinrich H I M M L E R , the decision was made to build more efficient crematoria. The ovens were connected to the gas chambers in Birkenau. The use of the new combined gas chambers and crematoria considerably speeded up the murder process in Auschwitz, which soon became Nazi Germany’s main killing center. In Majdanek, mass murder by gassing was introduced in September 1942 with the use of carbon monoxide cylinders. Zyklon B was used instead, beginning in the spring of 1943. Some of the major C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S also had gas chambers, even if they were not operated mainly as mass extermination sites. One each was in operation in M AU T H AU S E N (beginning in the fall of 1941), N E U E N G A M M E (September 1942), S A C H S E N H AU S E N (March 1943), S T U T T H O F (June 1944), and R AV E N S B R Ü C K (January 1945). All of them used Zyklon B.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Borowski, Tadeusz. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. New York: Viking Press, 1967. Reprint, New York: Penguin, 1992. Müller, Filip. Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers. New York: Stein and Day, 1979. Reprint, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999.

Shtetl [videorecording]. WGBH Video, 1996.

GEHEIME STAATSPOLIZEI. SEE GESTAPO. Generalgouvernement The Generalgouvernement was an administrative unit established by the Germans on October 26, 1939. Made up of the occupied regions of P O L A N D that had not been incorporated into the Reich, this was an area with a total population of twelve million. The full official designation was Generalgouvernement für die

39

GENERALGOUVERNEMENT

Besetzten Polnischen Gebiete (General Government for the Occupied Areas of Poland), and it was only in July 1940 that the shortened name came into use. The Germans had used this name previously, when they occupied Poland in World War I and set up an administration there, also called the Generalgouvernement. The Generalgouvernement area was divided into four districts, K R A K Ó W , W A R S A W , Radom, and L U B L I N , which in turn were split into subdistricts. The administrative center was Kraków. In the summer of 1941, following the German attack on the S OV I E T U N I O N , Galicia became the fifth district, adding between three million and four million to the population. The Nazis permitted only a few Polish institutions to function; among them were the bank that issued the country’s currency, the Polish Police, and the Central Relief Committee. All of them operated under the strict supervision of the occupation authorities. Heading the Generalgouvernement was the governor-general, Hans F R A N K . As of May 1940, Frank operated through the Generalgouvernement administration, headed by Josef Bühler. The S S and police were headed first by a high-ranking SS officer, Friedrich K R Ü G E R , and then by Wilhelm K O P P E .

Destruction of Polish Culture

Generalgouvernement, January 1940.

Wehrmacht

Regular combined German armed forces.

The occupation authorities believed that the task of the Polish population of the Generalgouvernement was to obey the Germans and work for them. At first the Poles were regarded as a reservoir of manpower, to be exploited for the needs of the Reich. Later, the Germans considered a number of projects, such as the establishment of colonies, “Germanization,” expulsion of the population of Z A M O S´ C´ , and identification of those Poles who were of German origin. The Nazis used extreme terrorization to gain the obedience of the Polish population. For every German killed by the underground, 50 to 100 Poles were executed. Of exceptional cruelty were two terror actions that the Germans carried out. The first was Special Action Kraków in November 1939, in which 183 staff members of schools and colleges in Kraków were arrested while attending a meeting with the German police. They were deported to S A C H S E N H AU S E N , from which many never returned. The other action took place in LVOV , where 38 Polish professors were executed shortly after the Wehrmacht entered the city. The Germans destroyed Polish cultural and scientific institutions, and instituted a large-scale program of plundering artistic and archeological treasures. In the economic sphere, the Poles were left only with small industries and work on the land. Heavy food quotas were levied on the villages, and trade in foodstuffs was prohibited, so that urban Poles were restricted to the starvation diet provided by the food rations. As a result, the Poles engaged in widespread food smuggling. The Ukrainians in the Generalgouvernement were intended by the Germans to provide a counterweight to the Poles. The Ukrainians in the Generalgouvernement received certain concessions not extended to Ukrainians in their native land, which had also come under Nazi control. Their living conditions even improved, in comparison with the prewar situation. The Jewish people of the Generalgouvernement, numbering 1.8 million, were the victims of the same discriminatory decrees imposed on Jews elsewhere. Their property was confiscated, and they were drafted for forced labor. From early 1940, the Jews were imprisoned in ghettos, where they suffered from severe shortages and were isolated from the rest of the world. In the spring of 1942 the Germans began deporting the Jews from the ghettos to E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S in the Lublin district, and by 1944 all the ghettos in the Generalgouvernement were liquidated. By

40

GENERALPLAN OST

early August 1944 a part of the Generalgouvernement—the area between the Vistula and Bug rivers—was liberated by Soviet forces and the Polish National Liberation Council had been formed, with its center in Lublin. The rest of the Generalgouvernement was set free in January 1945, by the Soviet Army.

SEE ALSO AKTION (OPERATION) REINHARD. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Altshuler, David A. Hitler’s War Against the Jews—The Holocaust: A Young Reader’ Version of the War Against the Jews 1933–1945 by Lucy S. Dawidowicz. New York: Behrman House, 1978. Ayer, Eleanor H. In the Ghettos: Teens Who Survived the Ghettos of the Holocaust. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 1999. Roland, Charles G. Courage Under Siege: Starvation, Disease, and Death in the Warsaw Ghetto. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Shoah [videorecording]. New Yorker Video, 1999.

Generalplan Ost Generalplan Ost (General Plan East) was the Nazis’ long-range plan for expelling millions of people—Jews and non-Jews alike—from the central area of eastern Europe and settling it with Germans. Versions of the plan were drawn up by at least two separate departments of the Reich, which functioned independently of one another. In July 1941, Professor Konrad Meyer-Hetling, head of the planning section in the Reich Commissariat for the Strengthening of German Nationhood, submitted proposals for the settlement of Polish territories that had been incorporated into the Reich (German empire). Describing these proposals as “preliminary suggestions for Generalplan Ost,” he addressed them to Heinrich H I M M L E R , who headed the Reich Commissariat. The final version of the plan was presented by MeyerHetling in an exhibition called “Planning and Construction in the East.” The plan was published in book form in 1942.

G

eneralplan Ost was a variation of the overall Nazi plan to claim

and utilize European territory for Aryan purposes.

The earliest mention of the Reich’s plans for eastward expansion was made by Reinhard H E Y D R I C H in a speech he made in Prague in October 1941, after his appointment as Reich Protector of B O H E M I A A N D M O R AV I A (which had been part of Czechoslavakia). Heydrich predicted that Germany would take over eastern Europe in stages. Negative remarks about this plan were made in a memorandum drawn up by Erhard Wetzel, one of the German officials in charge of racial policy. In February 1942, Wetzel identified a section of the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (RSHA) as the source of Generalplan Ost, rather than Meyer-Hetling’s planning section. Wetzel knew that the RSHA was working on an overall plan for the territories in the east, which included the eventual settlement of 31 million people in that region. Adolf H I T L E R hoped that within ten years, four million Germans would be settled in the east. The number would increase to ten million within twenty years. Wetzel’s memorandum—presented as an expert opinion—was highly critical of the RSHA’s plans and questioned the expertise of the plan’s author. In his opinion, the figure given by the RSHA for the current population of the eastern territories was too low, and the estimate of the number of people who would be available for

41

GENERALPLAN OST

W

hen Generalplan Ost was first conceived, the population of

the areas to be resettled by Germans

settlement in the east was too optimistic. He also questioned whether the RSHA’s analysis of the racial makeup of those living in the territories was scientifically accurate. Finally, he expressed reservations about the proposal that Poles be resettled in western Siberia; he thought this would be against the interests of the Reich. Despite these doubts, however, Wetzel’s memorandum supported the aim of Generalplan Ost, which was to transform central-eastern Europe into a German colony.

was estimated at 45 million, and the number of Jews among them at 5 million to 6 million. Of the 45 million, 31 million were classified as “racially undesirable” and were to be expelled to western Siberia. A small number were to be put to work in the administration of the vast expanses of Russia.

The Plan Generalplan Ost was considered a reflection of Himmler’s views, and it was to be implemented after the war over a period of 30 years. The first ten million settlers in the east were to come from German territories and non-German countries in Europe with German populations. The territories designated for resettlement were the occupied areas of P O L A N D , the Baltic states, B E L O R U S S I A , the Soviet districts of Zhitomir and K A M E N E T S -P O D O L S K I , a part of the Vinnitsa district of the U K R A I N E , the Leningrad district, the Crimea, and parts of the Dnieper River basin. According to Generalplan Ost as drawn up by the RSHA, about 80 percent of the population of Poland, 64 percent of the population of the western Ukraine, and 75 percent of the population of Belorussia would be expelled and resettled. The rest of the local population was to stay in place; most to be Germanized, or forced to adopt German customs. Himmler stated that they would “either be absorbed or killed.” The RSHA version of Generalplan Ost was an elaboration of Hitler’s idea of expelling and resettling elsewhere the population of Polish territories that were incorporated into the Reich. On Himmler’s orders, the Reich Commissariat for the Strengthening of German Nationhood began active preparations for Generalplan Ost in late January of 1942. With Meyer-Hetling in charge, the Commissariat established the legal and economic principles on which the future reconstruction of the east was to be based, and included the settlement of the Crimean peninsula. The project was to be completed within 25 years after the end of the war. Priority would be given to agricultural settlement. The urban population would be kept at a minimum, especially in the north. Meyer-Hetling estimated the costs of the project at 45.7 billion reichsmarks. The funds would come from various sources, including special taxes levied on the conquered countries. Himmler responded immediately to the plan when it was presented to him, demanding that the length of time allowed for its implementation be reduced from 25 years to 20. In September 1942 Himmler mentioned the establishment of settlement bases as far east as the Don and the Volga rivers in Russia. In 1942 Meyer-Hetling presented to Himmler a detailed plan, including a financial estimate. Again Himmler gave the subject his immediate attention. This time he demanded that the area to be colonized include the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T , the Baltic states, Belorussia, the Crimea (including K H E R S O N ), and the Leningrad district. On Himmler’s orders, Meyer-Hetling hastily revised and completed the plan, which now became the Master Plan for the colonization of the east. In its new version, the area earmarked for settlement by Germans was larger than in the RSHA’s version of Generalplan Ost. In early 1943, the RSHA arranged for a meeting about Meyer-Hetling’s plan. The area in which the plan was to be carried out now comprised 270 thousand square miles, an increase from 225 thousand square miles to plan for in 1938. Among the subjects that came up at the meeting was the transfer of the existing population in the area earmarked for German settlement: six million to seven mil-

42

GENOCIDE

lion people were to be moved from the Polish area incorporated into the Reich; ten million from the Generalgouvernement; three million from the Baltic states; six million to seven million from the western Ukraine; and five million to six million from Belorussia. The Jews were singled out for “total removal,” by which the Nazis meant extermination. In the first decade of the plan’s operation, the “racially undesirable” population was to be removed, presumably to be followed, in the second decade, by the “politically undesirables.” The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was not included in the immediate plans of resettlement. After the battle of Stalingrad, Himmler rapidly lost interest in having a definitive version of the plan drawn up. In addition, following his proclamation of total war, Hitler ordered a halt on the planning of all postwar projects, including this one. The work on Generalplan Ost and the Master Plan coincided with the period when massacres in eastern Europe were at their height. Millions of Soviet prisoners of war and millions of Jews were being murdered. In 1941 and 1942 several million people were killed in Poland and in the occupied areas of the S OV I E T U N I O N . During that period, one million Poles and two million Ukrainians were sent to the Reich to work in F O R C E D L A B O R . Another two million Poles were Germanized. German authorities had also begun settling Germans in several of the areas designated for that purpose in Generalplan Ost. They were encountering some resistance in that operation and running into difficulties caused by the military situation. About 30,000 Germans from L I T H UA N I A who had been waiting to be resettled in the Polish territories of the Reich were sent to the southwestern part of Lithuania instead. Between November 1942 and August 1943, Poles living in the southeastern part of the L U B L I N district (the so-called Z A M O S´C´ region) were expelled from their homes and replaced by Germans. Germany was able to carry out, almost in full, the “ F I N A L S O L U T I O N ” —the murder of the Jews, whom the Nazis regarded as their main racial enemy. This operation cost the lives of millions of people. Generalplan Ost demonstrates that there were other racist plans that provided for the expulsion of many peoples, especially Slavs. These plans had only begun, with full implementation planned for after the Germans had won the war.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES “Hitler’s War: Hitler’s Plans for Eastern Europe.” Holocaust Awareness. [Online] http://www.dac.neu.edu/holocaust/Hitlers_War.htm (accessed on August 23, 2000). Scheffler, Wolfgang. “The Forgotten Part of the ‘Final Solution’: The Liquidation of the Ghettos,” in Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual, vol. 2 (1997). [Online] http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/resources/books/annual2/chap02.html (accessed on August 23, 2000).

Genocide Genocide, from the Greek word genos, meaning “race,” and the Latin word caedes, meaning “killing,” refers to the liquidation—complete elimination or annihilation—of a people. The term “genocide” was first introduced by Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish legal scholar, who used it at a 1933 conference of fellow jurists in Madrid, Spain. Lemkin further defined and analyzed it in books that he wrote during World War II. On December 9, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a

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convention for “the prevention of genocide and the punishment of the organizers thereof.” The term is now widely used in legislation, international conventions, legal judgments, and scientific and general literature. It is generally applied to the murder of human beings by reason of their belonging to a specific racial, ethnic, or religious group, unrelated to any individual crime on the part of such persons, the intention of the murderer or murderers being to cause grievous harm and destroy the specific group. Lemkin pointed out that the crime of genocide need not mean the immediate and total destruction of the group. It may also consist of a series of planned actions designed to destroy basic components of the group’s existence, such as its national consciousness, its language and culture, its economic infrastructures, and the freedom of the individual. The United Nations Genocide Convention specifically mentions the following actions, which, when carried out against a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group in order to destroy that group, in full or in part, meet the definition of genocide: 1. Killing persons belonging to the group 2. Causing grievous bodily or spiritual harm to members of the group 3. Deliberately enforcing upon the group living conditions that could lead to its complete or partial extermination 4. Enforcing measures designed to prevent births among the group 5. Forcibly removing children from the group and transferring them to another group As indicated by this list of crimes, a close link exists between these actions and many of the crimes dealt with by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg that were defined as “ C R I M E S AG A I N S T H U M A N I T Y .” These crimes included murder, cruel treatment, and persecution on racial and ethnic grounds that were not directed against individuals or groups of individuals as such, but rather had the purpose of destroying the very existence of the group or groups to which the victims belonged. The IMT did not seek to determine the guilt of the accused brought before it for the crime of genocide, since that crime was not listed in the London Agreement under which the IMT was established. However, the charge of genocide was included in the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings and in several of the trials of Nazi criminals held in P O L A N D . (See T R I A L S O F T H E WA R C R I M I NA L S ). Among these were the trial of Amon Goeth, the liquidator of the Kraków and Tarnów ghettos and a commandant of the P L⁄ A S Z Ó W camp; and the case of Rudolf H Ö S S , the commandant of A U S C H W I T Z -Birkenau. A Polish court announced its verdict against Arthur Greiser, the former German administrator in the Warthegau region of Poland, on July 9, 1946. The court defined several of the crimes committed by Greiser against the Polish people as “genocide.” These included: 1. Placing Poles in a special unlawful category with regard to rights of possession, employment, education, and the use of their native tongue, and applying a special criminal code to them 2. Religious persecution, having the characteristics of genocide, of the local population, by mass murder and the imprisonment of Polish clergy (including bishops) in concentration camps; reduction of the availability of religious facilities to a bare minimum; and destruction of churches, cemeteries, and church-owned buildings

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3. Genocide-like actions against cultural and educational treasures and institutions 4. Humiliating the Polish people by treating them as second-rate citizens, and differentiating between the Germans as the “master race” and the Poles as the “servant race” The Polish court also determined that Greiser had ordered or cooperated in actions designed to cause criminal harm to the lives, well-being, and property of thousands of Polish residents of the occupied area and had made it his objective to carry out a total genocide-like attack on the rights of small and medium-sized ethnic populations, on their national identity and culture, and on their very existence. The government of Israel joined the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, and on the basis of that convention enacted, in 1950, the Genocide Prevention and Punishment Law 5710-1950. The definition of genocide in that law follows that of the United Nations Genocide Convention. Israeli legislation also used that definition in another law, the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law 5710-1950. That law was first used against a Nazi criminal in the trial of Adolf E I C H M A N N . It contains the definitions of crimes against humanity and war crimes as laid down in the London Agreement on the establishment of the International Military Tribunal, and it also contains the definition of “crimes against the Jewish people.” The latter is defined as applying to any one of the following actions, carried out with the intent of exterminating the Jewish people, totally or partially: 1. Killing Jews 2. Causing grievous bodily or mental harm to Jews 3. Placing Jews in living conditions calculated to bring about their physical destruction 4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births among Jews 5. Forcibly transferring Jewish children to another national or religious group 6. Destroying or desecrating Jewish religious or cultural assets or values 7. Inciting hatred of Jews Like the Polish definition in the Greiser case, and in other cases, the Israeli law mentions the concept of cultural genocide, but in the main it refers to the special form of crimes against humanity as contained in the N U R E M B E R G L AW S , and particularly to the specific form in which genocide was in fact carried out, especially against the Jewish people. The crime against the Jewish people was a crime against that people only, since it was committed against Jews only. Nevertheless, in formal legal, as well as in social, terms, and in its political and moral aspects, the crimes against the Jewish people were also crimes against the principles of humanity and an offense against the whole of mankind, by seeking to remove from its midst one of its component parts. The experts on the subject all agree that genocide is a component of the Holocaust. However, historians point out that the Nazi crime against the Jewish people was unique and extended far beyond genocide, by virtue of the planning that it entailed, the task forces allocated to it, the killing installations set up for it, and the way the Jews were rounded up and brought to extermination sites by force and by stealth. Above all, the Nazi crime exceeded the boundaries of genocide in its charge against Jews as a whole of being a gang of conspirators and pests whose physical destruction must be carried out for the sake of society’s rehabilitation and the future of mankind.

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On November 4, 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation that made the United States the 98th nation to ratify the United Nations Genocide Convention.

SEE ALSO “FINAL SOLUTION”; RACISM. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Benz, Wolfgang. The Holocaust: A German Historian Examines the Genocide. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Breitman, Richard. The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution. New York: Knopf, 1991. Friedlander, Henry. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Genocide [videorecording]. Simon Wiesenthal Center, 1981. Lifton, Robert Jay. The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. New York: Basic Books, 1986.

Gens, Jacob (1905–1943)

Jacob Gens was head of the J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council) in the V I L N A ghetto. Gens was born in Illovieciai, a village in the Sˇiauliai district of L I T H UA N I A . In 1919, when Lithuania was fighting for its independence, he volunteered for the Lithuanian army and was sent to an officers’ training course. He graduated as a second lieutenant, and was sent to the front to join the fight against Poles. He served in the army until 1924. He then enrolled in Kovno University, earning his living as a teacher of Lithuanian and of physical education in the Jewish schools of Ukmerge and Jurbarkas. Three years later, he became an accountant in the Ministry of Justice in K OV N O . He completed his university studies in law and economics in 1935. In the late 1930s, as an officer in the reserves, he was sent to the staff officers’ course and promoted to captain. In July 1940, when Lithuania became a Soviet republic, Gens was dismissed from his post. Gens feared that he was in danger of being arrested in a campaign that was being waged against anti-Soviet elements, and he moved to Vilna. A Lithuanian friend helped him obtain work as an accountant in the municipal health department.

Jacob Gens.

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When the Germans occupied Vilna in late June 1941, his Lithuanian friend, who headed the health department, appointed Gens director of the Jewish hospital. At the beginning of September, when a ghetto was set up in Vilna, Anatol Fried, chairman of the Judenrat, who had become acquainted with Gens while a patient in the Jewish hospital, appointed Gens commander of the ghetto police. Gens set up the police force, organized it, and made it into an orderly and disciplined body. The Jewish police were assigned a role in the Nazi Aktionen (operations) that were conducted in the ghetto from September to December 1941, in which tens of thousands of Jews were murdered. According to most of the evidence available, Gens, within the framework of his job, did his best to help the Jews. He became the predominant personality in the ghetto and its provisional governor. His direct contact with the German authorities, bypassing the Judenrat, added to his prestige among the Jews in the ghetto. Gens involved himself in employment and cultural activities as well as other aspects of ghetto life.

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In July 1942 the Germans dismissed the existing Judenrat and appointed Gens head of the ghetto administration and sole representative of the ghetto (Ghettovorsteher), thereby making his position official. Gens promoted the idea of “work for life,” meaning that the survival of the ghetto Jews depended on their work and productivity. He believed that efforts had to be made to gain time and keep the ghetto in existence until Germany was defeated in the war, and that this could be achieved by working for the Germans. He constantly sought to increase the number of Jews in such positions. In the last few months of the ghetto’s existence, 14,000 people out of the total ghetto population of 20,000 were employed inside or outside the ghetto. On one occasion, Gens was ordered by the Germans to send the Vilna ghetto police to the Oshmiany ghetto, to carry out a Selektion and to hand over 1,500 children and women who were not employed. Instead, Gens delivered to the Germans 406 persons who were chronically ill or old. He justified this action to the Jews by claiming that if the Germans and the Lithuanians had done the selecting, they would have taken the children and the women, whom he wanted to keep alive for the sake of the future of the Jewish people. Gens’s attitude toward the ghetto underground was ambivalent. On the one hand, he maintained contact with the underground leaders and declared that when the day of the ghetto’s liquidation arrived, he would join them in an uprising; but on the other hand, when the underground’s activities endangered the continued existence of the ghetto, he opposed it, and he complied with a German demand to hand over to them the underground commander, Yitzhak Wittenberg. The process of liquidating the ghetto had been set in motion in August and September 1943, and Gens knew that his life was in danger. His Lithuanian wife and his daughter were both in Vilna, where they lived outside the ghetto. He had several offers from his Lithuanian relatives and friends to leave the ghetto and take refuge with them, but he refused, believing that in his role he was engaged in a mission on behalf of the Jewish people. On September 14, 1943, nine days before the final liquidation of the ghetto, Gens was summoned to the Gestapo. The previous day, he had been warned that the Germans were planning to kill him, and had been urged to flee. He refused, believing that his escape would mean disaster for the Jews who remained in the ghetto. Gens reported to the Gestapo on September 14, and at 6:00 P.M. he was shot to death in the Gestapo courtyard. News of his death reached the ghetto at once, and the Jews who were still alive mourned his passing. Gens’ belief that if the ghetto were productive its Jews would be saved proved baseless; but under the terrible conditions prevailing at the time, he did his best, as he understood it, to save as many as possible.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Dawidowicz, Lucy S. From That Place and Time: A Memoir, 1938–1947. New York: W. W. Norton, 1989. Tushnet, Leonard. The Pavement of Hell. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1972.

Germany Jews in Germany The first Jews came to Germany in Roman times, settling in the cities along the Rhine. From the tenth century on, records show a continuous history of Jews.

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By the late Middle Ages the Jewish population of Germany was united. The German Jewish community became one of the centers of spiritual creativity among European Jewry, and the cradle of the Yiddish language. Jews gained prominence in commerce. However, there was widespread persecution of Jews over the centuries and, in various parts of Germany, entire Jewish communities were destroyed. Some of the worst persecutions took place during the Crusades (especially in 1096) and during the period of the Black Death (1348–49), when bubonic plague killed millions of Europeans. From the fifteenth century, and especially during the Protestant Reformation, Jews lost ground. They were expelled from most of the large German cities. Some stayed in Germany, moving to small communities; others moved to the newly emerging centers of Jewish population in eastern Europe. Throughout the nineteenth century, Jews struggled for social and political emancipation. They reached that goal when Germany was unified in 1871. Jews in Europe were revitalized by a number of developments in the nineteenth century, including the rise in modern scholarly study of Judaism and Jewish history; the growth of new religious movements in Judaism; the rapid urbanization of the Jews; and the integration of Jews into modern society and economic life. Jews contributed to cultural life, social and political philosophy, the economy, and even political life in Germany.

Antisemitism However, many Germans opposed these developments. By the 1870s they had organized politically to promote A N T I S E M I T I S M —which in its modern form also included R A C I S M as a basic ingredient. Antisemitic political parties won support.

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Although its influence waned toward the end of the nineteenth century, antisemitism continued to flourish in economic, social, and academic organizations. It penetrated the major political parties and became a factor in the struggle between the national conservative and democratic socialist camps over the future political character of German society. In response, German Jews in imperial Germany established political organizations for the defense of the Jews’ civil rights, including the C E N T R A L U N I O N O F G E R M A N C I T I Z E N S O F J E W I S H F A I T H (Centralverein Deutscher Staatsbürger Jüdischen Glaubens). Also in the 1890s, the German Zionist Organization was formed and its leaders became influential in the World Zionist Organization. The Zionist movement was centered on the goal of creating a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. During and after World War I, as imperial Germany collapsed and was replaced by the democratic regime of the Weimar Republic (1918–33), there was unprecedented integration of Jews in every sphere of life, including the theater, music, visual arts, philosophy, and science. Among the 38 Nobel prize winners in Germany up to 1938, nine were Jews. Jews were active in political and public life and held major posts in the democratic and socialist parties. Not surprisingly, antisemitism in politics and private organizations also increased during this period.

The most radical among the antisemitic movements and political parties in the early 1920s was the relatively small National Socialist party. Its platform called for the elimination of Jews from various spheres of life.

By the early 1920s, Jews were being blamed in many circles for Germany’s defeat in World War I and for the economic and social crises that struck the Weimar Republic after the war, climaxing in the terrible inflation of 1922 and 1923. Antisemites criticized the presence of Jews from eastern Europe who had immigrated to Germany before, during, and after the war. The most radical among the antisemitic movements and political parties was the relatively small National Socialist party, which had been founded in Bavaria in 1919. Its platform boldly called for the abolition of civil rights for Jews and the elimination of Jews from various spheres of life. The propaganda speeches and publications of the party’s leaders, especially those of Adolf H I T L E R , presented a radical antisemitic ideology that did not stop short of demands for the “total elimination of the Jews” and called for the “extermination” of the Jews mit Stumpf und Stiel (“root and branch”). When the German economy and republic stabilized in 1924, antisemitic parties temporarily lost strength and their membership in the Reichstag (Parliament) dropped from 40 to 14.

Weimar Republic Years (1918–33) In 1925, according to census figures, there were 564,379 Jews living in Germany, representing 0.9 percent of the total population. About 377,000 lived in six large cities that also had the largest Jewish communities: B E R L I N , Frankfurt, Hamburg, Breslau, Leipzig, and Cologne. Approximately 90,000 Jews lived in the smaller cities. The remaining 97,000 lived in over a thousand towns and villages with a population of less than 10,000. Most Jews belonged to the middle class and were self-employed, in various branches of business and in the professions. Jews had become assimilated, as shown by the growing number of mixed marriages, secessions from the organized Jewish community, and conversions to Christianity. Despite assimilation, the activities of Jewish political, religious, and social organizations were maintained and even expanded during the Weimar era. New political and social organizations were added to the Centralverein, the Zionist Federation, the Orthodox and Liberal organizations, and the German Jews’ Aid Society, which already existed. The major new organizations were the Reich Union of Jewish

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Frontline Soldiers; left- and right-wing Zionist parties such as the Jewish People’s Party; youth and sports organizations; and student groups.

The Nazis turned the “Jewish question” into a major issue in their struggle against the democratic regime.

Religious and general Jewish studies taught in the rabbinical seminaries in Berlin and Breslau were broadened and intensified. The influx of Jewish scholars and intellectuals from eastern Europe, coupled with the revival of Jewish consciousness among the established Jewish population, had turned Germany into a great center of modern Jewish scholarship and culture. The Jewish population began to take an increased interest in Jewish learning and adult Jewish education centers thrived. Jewish periodicals and Jewish publishing houses played an important role in Jewish life. In the final years of the Weimar Republic, as Germany was hard hit by the global economic crisis, the National Socialist party gained power. In 1928, the Nazis had won only 3 percent of the vote. However, in September 1930, in the first elections that took place during the economic crisis, their share jumped to 18 percent, and in July 1932 to 37 percent of the vote. With 230 members in the Reichstag, the Nazis became the largest party. As the Weimar era drew to a close, antisemitism profoundly affected Jewish life. It was a major part of the N A Z I PA R T Y ’s violent struggle for power, and its effects went beyond the desecration of synagogues and Jewish cemeteries, and personal attacks on individual Jews. The Nazis turned the “Jewish question” into a major issue in their struggle against the democratic regime. As a result, not only was their position in German society impaired, the Jews themselves underwent a crisis of Jewish consciousness and began to reexamine their Jewish identity.

From 1933 to 1938 In January 1933, on the eve of Hitler’s rise to power, the Jewish population of Germany numbered 522,000 Jews by religion. However, the Nazis used racial criteria to define, identify, and persecute Jews through legislation and violence; by their racial definition, the number of Jews in Germany was 566,000. On January 30, President Paul von Hindenberg appointed Adolf Hitler Reich chancellor (prime minister). Immediately, Hitler’s National Socialist (Nazi) party and its paramilitary organizations—primarily the SA (Sturmabteilung; Storm Troopers) and the SS—began to seize, by violence where necessary, all government and public institutions. Their goal was to transform Germany into a totalitarian state under the control of the National Socialist Party. They terrorized opponents of National Socialism, targeting members of opposing political parties, intellectuals, and especially Jews. As their major target, Jews were subjected to public humiliation and arrested. Jewish public officials and persons in positions of authority were forced to quit their jobs, especially at the universities and the law courts. The Nazis made plans to seize Jewish property and boycott all Jewish businesses and services. The anti-Jewish boycott of April 1, 1933 marked the first time the new regime openly took discriminatory action against a part of the country’s citizens. This event deeply shocked Germany’s Jews and evoked a sharply hostile reaction from world public opinion. The boycott was halted after one day, but anti-Jewish laws were enacted. These laws began abolishing equal rights for Jews, reversing a principle established by the German constitution in 1871. The Enabling Law, passed on March 24, 1933, had given the government absolute dictatorial powers. This emergency law was used to abolish democratic freedoms for all citizens, along with Germany’s independent political parties and organizations. This process of “Nazification” led to the reorganization

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of all spheres of public and official life, including control of the media and all forms of publication, and a wide-ranging purge of civil and public service agencies. The Nazis enforced anti-Jewish policy by means of laws, decrees, administrative terror and “spontaneous” acts of terror. The regime encouraged general hostility toward Jews by the population. The early anti-Jewish laws included the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. The racist basis of that law, expressed by the “Aryan paragraph,” became the foundation for all anti-Jewish legislation passed before the enactment of the N U R E M B E R G L AW S in the fall of 1935. Other laws restricted the practice of law and medicine by Jews and limited the number of Jews in educational institutions, in cultural life and journalism. Only Jews who had served as frontline soldiers in World War I were excepted from these laws. Nazi legislation formalized the ideology of discrimination against the Jews and put policy into action. At the same time, it served as a means of restraining “spontaneous” terror and stabilizing the status of the Jews in Germany. Some officials advocated such “stabilization,” fearing that Germany’s international standing and efforts to restore the economy would be adversely affected by the appearance of unrestrained Nazi action against the Jews. This “restraint” would not last indefinitely.

A

dolf Hitler readily acknowledged that the Nazi

Party had used Germany’s democratic, representative form of government as a means to achieve its goal of establishing a totalitarian regime that would eradicate principles of democracy from Germany.

The regime terrorized its opponents by arresting and imprisoning them in Jews made up a high percentage of the detainees and were singled out for particularly cruel treatment, which often resulted in death. Thousands of Jews fled from Germany. A census taken in June 1933 shows that during the first six months of that year, about 26,000 Jews “by race” had left the country. By the end of 1933, 63,000 Jews had emigrated. C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S .

The German people did not uniformly support the regime’s policy against the Jews, and while there was broad agreement on the need to find a “solution” to the “Jewish question,” there were also reservations about using violence. There were also individual cases of solidarity with the Jews. However, the leadership of institutions such as the Protestant and Catholic churches, made few public protests. Their objections referred primarily to the thousands of Christians of Jewish origin who were affected by the racist legislation. Jews also reacted differently on an individual and organizational level. Their social and political status had suffered a tremendous blow, but their existing organizational network was scarcely touched—indeed, new organizations developed. Their forced separation and isolation from the general society did not diminish the continuing existence of the Jews’ own institutions, but individuals and families were devastated by the uncertainties brought on by the Nazi regime. Nonetheless, the organizational structure of German Jewry adapted to changing conditions. In 1932 Jewish organizations throughout Germany had begun to form a national federation; it made its first public appearance in the Third Reich in May 1933. In September of that year, a truly representative and comprehensive national organization was established, which was called the Reich Representation of German Jews, under the leadership of Rabbi Leo Baeck and Otto H I R S C H . The Reich Representation of German Jews intended to represent the Jews of Germany in interactions with German authorities and with Jews in other countries. The new organization assumed leadership of the Jewish population and coordinated a wide range of new activities. It expanded educational opportunities for youth and adults, especially through the work of the Jewish Center for Adult Education, which dealt with vocational training and retraining, welfare operations, economic assistance, employment assistance, and preparing for emigration. The group assumed responsibility for communication with the authorities on matters pertaining to Jew-

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O

n an individual basis, Jews were tremendously troubled. There

were many suicides and emigration

increased as Jews saw the foundations of their existence collapsing.

ish security. On several occasions, as when the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer (The Attacker) published a special issue on the blood libel—the accusation that Jews kill gentiles to obtain their blood for Jewish rituals—the Reich Representation of German Jews reacted with public protests. Despite the emergence of umbrella organizations, different political and religious factions still competed for influence and representation within German Jewry. The main split was between the mainstream Jews and the Zionist movement. The mainstream focused on the struggle for Jewish existence and the preservation of Jewish rights in Germany. The Zionists’ primary goal was to prepare the Jews for a new life in the national home in Palestine. The Zionist movement was gaining popularity, particularly among Jewish youth. The authorities, mainly the G E S TA P O and the SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Secret Service), closely watched all public activities by Jews and restrained mainstream activities that encouraged German Jews to stay in the Reich. The Zionist movement was generally able to carry on with little interference. Despite National Socialism’s sharp opposition to the establishment of a separate Jewish state, the Nazis believed the work of the Zionists would hasten the emigration of Jews from Germany. In June 1934, Hitler staged a killing spree in which the top officials of the SA and a number of opposition leaders were executed. This purge strengthened the conservative and antisemitic elements in the government. It also shifted the balance of power to agencies like the SS. Heinrich H I M M L E R , chief of the SS and the Gestapo, seized control over all police forces in the Reich. The Nazis created special sections in the Gestapo and SD to deal with the “Jewish question.” A new drive of violence against the Jews was launched in 1935. It was orchestrated by Joseph G O E B B E L S and Julius S T R E I C H E R , who organized massive rallies and published propaganda designed to incite hostility against the Jews of Germany. Persons accused of having committed “race defilement,” that is, sexual intercourse between Jews and “Aryans,” were denounced and publicly humiliated. Various German regions passed local anti-Jewish legislation, forbidding Jews to display the German flag, for example, and outlawing marriages between Jews and Aryans. More and more Jews left the provinces, where they suffered the most, to take up residence in the large cities. The terror campaign peaked in the summer of 1935 and was one of the factors leading to the enactment of the N U R E M B E R G L A W S in September. Designed to restore “law and order” while meeting the demands of radical party members for implementation of the original antisemitic planks in the Nazi platform, the Nuremberg Laws were constitutional laws. They included the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, and contained the Nazi’s new definition of the term “Jew,” based on race. This definition was the basis for all subsequent anti-Jewish legislation until 1943, when a final decree was enacted denying Jews the protection of the courts. Secret government and party reports revealed that the German population had mixed reactions to the Nuremberg Laws. Hitler had described the laws as a possible framework for the continued existence of the Jews in Germany, so some people regarded them as a solution of sorts, providing for racial, social, and cultural segregation of the Jews from the German people. Other individual Germans objected to the wide-ranging discrimination on ethical, religious, or intellectual grounds; some made their criticism known. Yet a third group, consisting mainly of radical Nazi party members, found the Nuremberg Laws too moderate and called for a more far-reaching solution of the “Jewish question,” including violence. The church leadership took no public stand on the laws, despite the fact that the laws also affected thousands of converts.

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“Image not available for copyright reasons”

The SD’s Section for Jewish Affairs was also reorganized in 1935, with Herbert Hagen as section chief and Adolf E I C H M A N N as his deputy. This section would ultimately seek complete control of Jewish affairs in the Reich and beyond its borders. In 1936, when the Olympic games were held in Berlin, there was a temporary relaxation in public anti-Jewish activity. The Jews had managed to create a pattern of life that could be maintained even under a racist totalitarian regime. However, a new and sweeping antisemitic policy was being formulated. Hitler’s secret memorandum on the Four-Year Plan, which he wrote in August 1936, contained an ideological and political section in which he called for an all-out war against Judaism as a driving motive in Germany’s future foreign policy and its preparations for the war against the S OV I E T U N I O N that was sure to come within four years. In late 1936 and early 1937 the SD’s Jewish section drafted a document that spelled out the practical details of this policy, which called for further isolation of Jews from the econo-

I

n the area of cultural activities, the Cultural Society of German Jews

was founded in July 1933. Its goals were to find employment for the many newly-unemployed Jewish artists and intellectuals and to serve as the cultural center for the Jewish population.

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In 1936, when the Olympic games were held in Berlin, there was a temporary relaxation in public antiJewish activity. However, Hitler’s new and sweeping antisemitic policy was being formulated as part of his Four-Year Plan.

my and the use of officially organized terror to pressure Jews to leave Germany. This policy was implemented on an informal basis in the second half of 1937, mainly by A RYA N I Z AT I O N (Arisierung)—the usually forced conversion of Jewish business enterprises to non-Jewish ownership. In 1937, there were signs of opposition to the Nazi regime from various sectors of German society, including the churches. Pope Pius XI issued the German-language encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (With Burning Concern), which was distributed all over Germany. The encyclical denounced Nazi neo-paganism and the cult of racism, but it did not explicitly condemn the persecution of the Jews. In response, the regime staged numerous show trials of clergy, who were imprisoned in concentration camps. Secret official reports showed that disapproval of and outright opposition to the regime, even within the ranks of the military, were becoming a threat to its stability. Consequently, Hitler introduced drastic changes in the top echelons of the army and the ministries of war and foreign affairs. These foreshadowed radical changes in both internal and foreign affairs. In March 1938, Germany “annexed” A U S T R I A in what was called the Anschluss. In September, the Sudetenland (a portion of Czechoslovakia) was annexed. These were both part of Hitler’s new plan for Europe. His plan also included the creation of the Protectorate of B O H E M I A A N D M O R AV I A out of the occupied western part of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, and, finally, the invasion of P O L A N D in September 1939, which marked the beginning of World War II. On January 30, 1939, Hitler declared: “If international-finance Jewry in Europe and elsewhere once again succeeds in dragging the nations into a world war, its outcome will not be the Bolshevization of the globe ... but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.” In 1938 the Third Reich further radicalized its anti-Jewish policy, which was applied in the newly acquired territories. There were new laws and decrees, mass arrests of Jews, and a variety of “spontaneous” and official terror actions. On March 28, 1938, a law was passed that abolished the legally recognized status of the Jewish communities. On April 26, a new decree ordered the registration of Jewish property, and on June 15, 1,500 Jews were imprisoned in concentration camps. Other antiJewish laws passed at this time forbade Jews to practice medicine (June 25); ordered male Jews to assume the name Israel, and female Jews, the name Sarah (August 17); forbade Jews to practice law (September 27); and stipulated that the passports of Jews be marked with a capital J, standing for Jude (October 5). On October 28, 1938, 15,000 to 17,000 Jews of Polish nationality were expelled from Germany. The Polish government refused to admit them into Poland. They were trapped in the no-man’s-land between the two countries. People all over the world heard about their bitter fate. On November 7, Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish youth whose parents were among the expelled Jews, shot Ernst vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris. The Nazis used this act as the pretext for an organized pogrom against the Jews, which took place November 9 and 10 in every part of Germany and in the areas it had annexed that year (Austria and the Sudetenland). In this pogrom, which came to be called K R I S TA L L N AC H T , or “Night of Broken Glass” (so named from the shattering of the windows of Jewish enterprises), hundreds of synagogues and thousands of Jewish businesses were burned down, destroyed, or damaged. Some 30,000 Jews were put into concentration camps, and almost one hundred Jews were murdered. After this pogrom, the Nazi regime imposed a collective fine of one billion marks on the Jews and enacted a new series of harsh laws and regulations. Jews were eliminated from the German economy (November 12); Jewish pupils were expelled from public schools (also on November 12); Jews were restricted from most public

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German men walk past the broken window of a Jewish-owned business in Berlin, Germany on November 10, 1938, following the Kristallnacht pogrom of the night before.

places (November 28); and all Jewish newspapers and periodicals were ordered shut down (there were 65 newspapers and periodicals and 42 organizational bulletins with a total monthly circulation of 956,000). All Jewish organizations were dissolved, leaving only the Reich Representation of German Jews, the Cultural Society of German Jews, and, temporarily, the Palestine Office of the Zionist organization. The only paper permitted to be published was the Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt, the semi-official newspaper of the Reich Representation. German public reaction to the Kristallnacht pogrom, like that to the Nuremberg Laws, was diverse. The disapproval voiced focused primarily on the damage caused to German property and the German economy, and only in small degree on the moral aspect of the terror directed against the Jews and the destruction of their property. Once again the church leadership did not take a public stand, although a few individual clerics denounced the riots. The underground German Communist party condemned the pogrom in its newspaper.

I

n addition to laws, decrees, and government-sanctioned violence

directed toward the Jews in 1938, there were “spontaneous” and “unofficial” acts of persecution, including the destruction of Jewish property, the expulsion of Jews from smaller population centers, and the desecration and destruction of synagogues, among them the main

From 1938 to 1945

synagogues at Munich and at Nuremberg.

Before the end of November 1938 the Reich Representation for German Jews resumed its activities, helping Jews to emigrate from Germany and obtaining the release of concentration camp prisoners. In February 1939 a new organization was formed with representatives from all over Germany. The new Reich Association of Jews in Germany, would focus on emigration, Jewish education, and welfare. At the time, the German authorities supported the present authoritative, centralist Jewish organization. On July 4, 1939, a law was passed granting recognition to the Reich Association of Jews in Germany. However, the government required that all Jews by race, as defined in the Nuremberg Laws, must belong to the new organization. It was further put under the supervision of the Ministry of the Interior, and, therefore, under the control of the SS. In 1938 and 1939, emigration of Jews from Germany reached new heights— 49,000 in 1938 and 68,000 in 1939—despite increasing difficulties. Emigration

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Cities that participated in the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9, 1938.

Baltic Sea

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Chemnitz Frankfurt Plauen

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Augsburg

Linz Munich Bad Vöslau Salzburg AUSTRIA Graz Klagenfurt

Baden Eisenstadt Wiener Neustadt

Innsbruck

HUNGARY

© Martin Gilbert 1982

The outbreak of the war set off a new round of antiJewish decrees and regulations affecting nearly every sphere of life for Jews living in Germany.

obstacles included new restrictions on entry in many countries, restrictions on immigration to Palestine, and the failure of the E V I A N C O N F E R E N C E . The Reich Association of Jews in Germany continued to support Jewish emigration even after the war broke out, routing emigrants through neutral Spain and Portugal to the Western Hemisphere; through the Soviet Union to East Asia; and through I TA LY and the Balkan states to Palestine by means of A L I YA B E T (“illegal” immigration). In October 1941, however, all Jewish emigration was prohibited. Economically, Jews were suffering greatly, and the Reich Association for Jews in Germany faced enormous social welfare problems. The German Jews had been deprived of their jobs, the average age of the Jews remaining in Germany was quite high, and money was needed to help impoverished Jews who could not afford to pay their own emigration costs. The main source of funds came from a progressive tax imposed on Jews who still had property in their possession, including Jews who were about to emigrate. The Reich Association also continued to receive financial assistance from American Jewish welfare agencies, until America’s entry into the war in December 1941. As more countries became involved in the war, the Germans expanded their policy of Jewish persecution, applying it in occupied and annexed countries. Jewish persecution differed from one country to another, but its ultimate aim was the same everywhere—the “ F I N A L S O L U T I O N ” of the “Jewish question.” In Germany itself the outbreak of the war set off a new round of anti-Jewish decrees and regulations affecting nearly every sphere of the Jews’ life. One decree prohibited Jews from leaving their homes after dark and placed certain sections of cities out of bounds to them. Another reduced their allocation of rationed foods and restricted their purchases to certain shops and certain times of day. Other decrees, by the dozen, ordered the Jews to hand over their jewelry, radios, cameras, electrical appliances, and any other valuables in their possession. In September 1941 all Jews aged six and above were ordered to wear the Judenstern (the Jewish star;

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Germany, November 1942. Leningrad besieged

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Danzig Sachsenhausen Ravensbruck

Amsterdam BergenBelsen

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Sobibór Babi Yar Lvov

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Buchenwald Theresienstadt

NatzweilerStruthof

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© Martin Gilbert 1985

see B A D G E , J E W I S H ), and Jews were no longer permitted to use public transportation. In contrast to the situation in most other countries of Europe, no ghettos were created in Germany; the isolating of the Jews was achieved by imposing residential restrictions that forced them out of their homes and concentrated them in “Jewish buildings.” Jews who were declared “fit for work” were put on forced labor, and the Nazis continued to arrest individual Jews and send them to concentration camps. The persecution of the Jews through myriad decrees and regulations was formally ended, in July 1943, by a superseding decree that denied Jews any protection of the law and placed them under the exclusive jurisdiction of the security services and the police. The first deportations of Jews from Germany took place in February 1940 (see N I S KO A N D L U B L I N P L A N ). These deportations ended in the spring, but that summer, after the victory over F R A N C E , the Nazis decided to deport the Jews to Madagascar (see M A DAG A S C A R P L A N ). In October 1940, in one night, all the Jews of Baden, the Palatinate, and the Saar district—7,500 persons—were deported to France, most of them to the G U R S camp, and from there to E X T E R M I NAT I O N CA M P S

In the fall of 1941, the operational squads began killing masses of Jews in German-occupied Soviet territory. The first phase of the total annihilation of the Jews of Europe had begun.

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in the east. In October 1941 the systematic deportation of masses of Jews from Germany was launched. Beginning in the fall of 1941, the procedure for the mass deportations usually consisted of rounding up Jews and taking them to special assembly points in the large cities. Lists of deportation candidates were compiled by the Gestapo. In many places the local Jewish community was ordered to distribute the deportation orders to its members. In the fall of 1941, the O P E R AT I O N A L S Q UA D S (Einsatzgruppen) were killing masses of Jews in the German-occupied Soviet territory. The first phase of the total annihilation of the Jews of Europe had begun. Some of the deportees from Germany were killed upon their arrival in the ghettos (as in Riga and Minsk). In 1942 and 1943, German Jews were deported by the tens of thousands directly to extermination camps, mainly to A USCHWITZ . Some 42,000 Jews from Germany, mostly elderly people and those with “privileged status,” were sent to the T H E R E S I E N S TA D T ghetto; the majority either perished there or were deported to the extermination camps. Even before the systematic mass annihilation started, several hundred Jews were murdered between 1939 and 1941 inside Germany, through the EUTHANASIA PROGRAM . Despite the progressive radicalization of the Nazi policy on the Jews, the Association for Jews in Germany continued to function throughout the war. It faced unprecedented challenges, especially with the onset of the mass deportations in 1940. Most of the Jewish population in Germany lacked the basic necessities of life. The association had to provide emergency housing for the thousands of Jews who had been evicted, and particularly for those evacuated from medical institutions and old-age homes. Until the summer of 1942, when the Jewish school system closed down, on orders issued by the Gestapo, schools were provided by the association. The association also continued to support the agricultural training farms of the Zionist movements. These establishments, too, were gradually closed down in 1942 and 1943, during the mass deportations.

Germans and “The Final Solution” The Nazi extermination of the Jews should be seen as part of a larger concept. The Nazis intended to restructure the face of Europe by exterminating and subjugating entire sectors of the population and by uprooting millions of people from their homes, mainly in eastern Europe (see G E N E R A L P L A N O S T ). During the war, in addition to the Jews, the Nazis also murdered G Y P S I E S , the chronically and mentally ill in Germany itself, Soviet prisoners of war, and intellectual and political elites in Poland and in the Soviet Union. The attitudes of the German people regarding the “solution of the Jewish question” remained fairly constant throughout the war years. The growing isolation of the Jews during the war, prior to their deportation, was due in part to an absence of concern on the part of the German population about what was happening to the Jews. But even at that stage, particularly before the start of the mass deportations, there was pressure by some nationalist groups for a more extreme anti-Jewish attitude in Germany, along the lines of the policy that had been introduced in Poland by this time. These Germans wanted further restrictions on the Jews in day-to-day life. They wanted them to wear the Jewish badge, and they called for the expulsion and liquidation of the Jews. Others, however, had reservations about the treatment of the Jews, especially with respect to the introduction of the yellow badge and the first deportations to the east. Their concerns were heightened after reports about the mass murder of

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Jews in eastern Europe began filtering back to the population. These reservations were expressed primarily in the educated circles of the middle class, among religious Germans, and in the lower ranks of the clergy. As throughout the Holocaust, the church leadership did not protest. After the German defeat at Stalingrad and the massive air raids on German cities in 1943, Germans were more likely to express strong disapproval in response to continuing reports of the mass murders of Jews. It is also clear that thousands of Germans risked their lives and the lives of their families to extend help to Jews, thus saving some of the Jews who had gone into hiding. On the whole, however, it appears that the majority of the German people maintained a passive attitude toward the fate of the Jews.

Conclusion Of the 566,000 Jews (as defined by race) who lived in Germany when Hitler came to power, some 200,000 fell victim to the Nazi extermination policy and another 300,000 were saved, mostly by emigrating from the country. The actual number of Jewish emigrants from Germany between 1933 and 1945 was 346,000. This figure includes 98,000 who escaped to European countries conquered later by the Nazis; of these, an estimated 70,000 were deported during the Nazi occupation, along with Jews from those local populations. Around 5,000 of these deportees survived the war. Approximately 137,000 Jews were deported directly from Germany, of whom about 9,000 survived. The number of German Jews who died includes several thousand Jews who were murdered in the euthanasia program or who committed suicide. In addition to the 20,000 Jews surviving the war in Germany (15,000 in the open, mostly M I S C H L I N G E (Part Jews), and 3,000 to 5,000 who went into hiding), another 5,000 survived in the Theresienstadt ghetto and 4,000 in other concentration camps. In 1933, Rabbi Leo Baeck said, “The Third Reich has put an end to a thousand years of Jewish history in Germany.” These prophetic words proved true to an unimaginably tragic extent.

SEE ALSO TRIALS OF THE WAR CRIMINALS, YOUTH MOVEMENTS. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bar-On, Dan. Legacy of Silence: Encounters with Children of the Third Reich. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989. Feldman, George. Understanding the Holocaust. Detroit: UXL, 1998. Friedländer, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997. Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Knopf, 1997. Kaplan, Marion A. Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Gestapo “Gestapo” is a shortened form of the German words “Geheime Staatspolizei,” meaning Secret State Police. They were the secret state police, first of Prussia, and later the Third Reich. The Gestapo became the Nazis’ main tool of oppression and destruction.

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Members of the Gestapo arresting suspects in Berlin during World War II.

The Prussian Gestapo (1933–44) The Gestapo originated in the political department of the police headquarters in Berlin during the Weimar Republic. At that time, the department served the government as a domestic intelligence agency. The political police became a semiofficial federal bureau of investigation during the 1920s. When Adolf H I T L E R became the chancellor of Germany, Hermann Göring was made the interior minister of Prussia, and also head of the Prussian political police. Göring appointed Rudolf Diels its first executive director. Diels transformed the organization into the police-intelligence tool of a totalitarian dictatorship. He helped purge “politically unreliable elements” and Jewish officials. He also established a semi-independent headquarters, the Gestapa (Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt), comprised of low-level but experienced Prussian bureaucrats. Under Hitler’s leadership, the government passed the emergency regulations of February 28, 1933, which gave the Gestapa complete freedom to impose “protective custody” upon anyone, to prevent undesirable political activities, and to wiretap political suspects and follow all their activities. The torture and execution of prisoners without regular legal proceedings remained illegal, but it often took place in makeshift SA (Sturmabteilung; Storm Troopers) and SS bunkers and C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S already in existence. On April 11, 1933, the Gestapa was separated entirely from the overall police structure. The First Gestapo Law, of April 26, 1933, officially gave Diels the

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authority of an independent state political-police commissioner. However, Diels’ power was reduced as the SA and SS steadily gained more control. The Second Gestapo Law, of November 30, 1933, made Göring head of the political police and Diels directly responsible to him. The secret police now became officially known as the Gestapo. Free to act without fear of legal or administrative lawsuits, the Gestapo assumed direct control over its field branches. Specially trained, ruthless bureaucrats produced regular intelligence reports on political and ideological “enemies of the Reich.” In 1934, a Jewish Section was established in the Gestapa.

The Gestapo under Himmler and Heydrich Under Heinrich H I M M L E R and Reinhard H E Y D R I C H , the Gestapo played an important role in the unification of the SS and the police. First, Himmler established SS control over the political police and concentration camps in Bavaria in early 1933. Later he imposed this model on all the German states, including Prussia, where as Göring’s deputy he took over the Gestapo on April 20, 1934. He made Heydrich its director. Later in the year, Himmler was made the chief of all the political police in Germany. Although all German concentration camps came under the control of the SS, the Gestapo had the power to send its victims to them. Moreover, through a “political section” in the camps’ headquarters, the Gestapo could order that prisoners be released, tortured, or executed. Similar treatment awaited its victims in its own basements. To circumvent the criminal code that forbade torture and murder, the Gestapo adopted methods, tested in the D AC H AU concentration camp, of fabricating natural causes of death or informing the inmates’ families that the prisoners had been “shot while trying to escape.” In June 1936 Himmler officially became the chief of all the German police; he now controlled both the concentration camps and the police. Himmler reorganized the police system, with Hitler’s consent, so that he gained complete independence from the state and the Reich bureaucracy. He set up two main branches of the police force, the Order Police, or Orpo, and the Security Police, or Sipo. The Orpo was the “regular” police and included the Protection Police—the uniformed officers, the rural police, the firefighting police, and various technical and auxiliary services. Sipo was composed of the Gestapo and the Criminal Police. The Gestapo and the field units (now renamed Staatspolizeileitstellen; state regional headquarters) took over all the German political-police agencies. After Himmler’s takeover, the Gestapo grew enormously with the recruitment of personnel lacking the traditional qualifications for public service. From the time of Himmler’s takeover until September 1939, when the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA) was established, the structure of the Gestapo stayed the same. Division I handled organization and finance, including legal matters. Its director between 1935 and 1939 was Dr. Werner B E S T , an SS lawyer and SD (Security Service) executive. Division II, under Heydrich’s direct control, was the main body of the Gestapo. Under Heinrich M Ü L L E R , Section II 1 was charged with fighting the “enemies” of the regime, which included the Communists, Social Democrats, the outlawed trade unions, monarchists, and anti-Nazi ultraconservatives. Special sections dealt with Austrian matters, Jews, other religious groups, Freemasons, and immigrants. Division III was the counterintelligence unit. Between November 1937 and October 1938, special Gestapo-SD units were trained to terrorize and Nazify foreign countries. After Adolf E I C H M A N N drove Jews from A U S T R I A later in 1938, Müller, with Eichmann as executive,

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assumed control of the forced emigration of the Jews from all Nazi-controlled territories. Following K R I S TA L L N A C H T (November 9–10, 1938), the Gestapo became the main instrument of the regime’s anti-Jewish policies.

The Gestapo during World War II (1939–45) In 1939 the Gestapo, as part of the Sipo, was fused with the SD to form the RSHA. Thus, young, ruthless, and fanatical SD agents such as Eichmann became Gestapo officers; the academics, lawyers, and old-style Prussian civil servants either were pushed aside or integrated themselves into the spirit and practices of the SSinfested civil service. With the creation of the RSHA, the Gestapo was expanded, with the border police now coming under its auspices. When the war began, the Gestapo took part in the enslavement of “inferior races,” “pacifying” and subduing the occupied territories in the west, persecuting the Jews, and, finally, carrying out a major role in the “ F I N A L S O L U T I O N .” Throughout this period, Müller was the head of the Gestapo and Eichmann was the head of the Jewish section. The Gestapo’s main tool remained the “protective custody” procedure, which allowed the agency to act freely against “enemies of the Reich.” These activities were carried out on orders by Heydrich; by his successor, Ernst K A LT E N B R U N N E R ; by Müller; or by RSHA section chiefs such as Eichmann. The Gestapo did not even take the trouble to place Jews and G Y P S I E S in the category of “enemies of the Reich” but rather rounded them up, stole their property, deprived them of their citizenship, and finally deported them. The Gestapo could commit such acts with impunity. Its position above the law and its special political mission were spelled out in an RSHA decree of April 15, 1940: “The powers required by the Gestapo for the execution of all measures necessary to their task stem not from specific laws and ordinances, but from the overall mission allotted to the German police in general and the Gestapo in particular in connection with the reconstruction of the National Socialist State.” In the occupied territories, local Gestapo representatives harassed the Judenräte and took their members hostage, perfected a special jargon of deceit (see S P R AC H R E G E L U N G ), and supervised the phasing out of the ghettos. They also pressured satellite countries to deport their Jews. Eichmann’s Jewish section and his field representatives generally arranged deportations to concentration and extermination camps. In particular, Eichmann maintained direct control over the special camp in T H E R E S I E N S TA D T and the Special Commando that deported most of Hungarian Jewry to A U S C H W I T Z in 1944. Persecuting defenseless Jews and maintaining control through terror, the Gestapo relentlessly served Hitler and the goal of remaking the world in the Nazi image. Millions of Germans accepted the Gestapo in its initial phase, collaborated with it later, and supplied the military-organizational framework that made Gestapo atrocities possible.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Aubrac, Lucie. Outwitting the Gestapo. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993. Crankshaw, Edward. Gestapo: Instrument of Tyranny. New York: Viking Press, 1956. Reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1994. Delarue, Jacques. The Gestapo: A History of Horror. New York: Paragon House, 1987. Gellately, Robert. The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

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Getter, Matylda (d. 1968)

Sister Matylda Getter was mother superior of the W A R S A W branch of the Order of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary, a Polish religious order that carried on educational work, mainly among orphans, and cared for the sick in hospitals. In 1942, Sister Matylda decided to accept all the Jewish children fleeing from the Warsaw ghetto who were brought to her and to shelter them in the order’s many locations, but especially in its branch at Pludy, about 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) outside Warsaw, on the right bank of the Vistula River. It is estimated that Sister Matylda was instrumental in rescuing several hundred Jewish children from certain death, despite her own frailty as an elderly woman ill with cancer. Her principal aim was not to gain new souls for the church, but to rescue human lives. She was accused by some of unnecessarily endangering the lives of the many non-Jewish orphans in the order’s homes by harboring Jewish children in their midst. Her reply was that by virtue of the Jewish children’s presence, God would not allow any harm to befall the other children. Special precautions were taken to remove children who were too obviously Jewish-looking for temporary shelter elsewhere when Sister Matylda was alerted to possible Gestapo raids on the orphanages. When time proved too short for this, children with a more Jewish appearance would have their heads or faces partially bandaged, to look as though they had been injured. After the war, the children were released to their parents or relatives. Sister Matylda Getter was posthumously recognized by Yad Vashem as “R I G H T E O U S A M O N G T H E N AT I O N S .”

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bauminger, Arieh L. The Righteous Among the Nations. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1990.

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Rescuers. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/rescuer.htm (accessed on August 24, 2000).

Glazman, Josef (1913–1943)

Josef Glazman was a Jewish underground and partisan leader, born in the town of Alytus, in southern L I T H UA N I A . Glazman was given a nationalist and traditional upbringing and was active in the Betar Zionist youth movement. In 1937 he was appointed Betar leader for Lithuania, retaining the post until July 1940, when the Soviets dissolved all Jewish political movements in the country. In the first phase of Soviet rule in Lithuania, from July 1940 to the end of June 1941, Glazman was one of the underground leaders of the Revisionist party. When the Germans occupied Lithuania, Glazman was in V I L N A , where he was arrested and sent on forced labor in nearby Reise. In early November of 1941 Glazman returned to the Vilna ghetto, where he organized an underground group made up of Betar members. In order to aid his underground activities he joined the J E W I S H G H E T TO P O L I C E , and at the end of November 1941 he was appointed its deputy chief.

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Josef Glazman.

Glazman was one of the founders of the U N I T E D P A R T I S A N O R G A N I Z AT I O N (Fareynegte Partizaner Organizatsye, FPO) of the Vilna ghetto and participated in its founding meeting on January 21, 1942. He became the FPO’s deputy commander, and was in charge of its intelligence section and commander of one of its two battalions. His official post as deputy chief of the Jewish ghetto police assisted the underground’s operations. Glazman also took an active part in the ghetto’s educational and cultural activities. In June 1942, when the ghetto administration was reorganized, Glazman left the police and was appointed head of the ghetto housing department within the J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council). Glazman’s relations with Jacob G E N S (chief of the ghetto police and, as of July 1942, ghetto head) were strained because of Glazman’s underground activities and their differences over policy. At the end of October 1942, Glazman was arrested on Gens’s orders and dismissed from his post. He was released in mid-December 1942 after being jailed for several weeks. In June 1943 he was again arrested and sent to

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the Reise labor camp, also on Gens’s orders. The FPO and ghetto police fought over his arrest. A few weeks later, Glazman was returned to the ghetto. In July, Glazman left the ghetto, leading the first group of FPO members into the forest in order to establish a partisan base. On the way they fell into a German ambush and during the fight the group lost a third of its men. At the end of July, Glazman and his men reached the Naroch Forest, where he formed the Revenge (Nekama) Jewish partisan unit of the partisan brigade commanded by Fyodor Markov. At the end of September the Soviet command decided to dissolve the Jewish unit. As a result of this decision, the unit also lost most of its weapons. Glazman and a group of his comrades joined the Lithuanian partisan command. At this time the Germans launched a determined drive against the partisans in the Naroch and Kozhany forests. Glazman and a group of 35 Jewish partisans tried to break through to the Rudninkai Forest in the south in order to join up with FPO members who had gone there from the Vilna ghetto. On October 7, 1943, a superior German force surrounded Glazman and his men. In the fierce struggle that followed he and his comrades were killed; only one member of the group, a young girl, was saved.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Partisans of Vilna [sound recording]. Chicago: Flying Fish, 1989. Porter, Jack Nusan, ed. Jewish Partisans: A Documentary of Jewish Resistance in the Soviet Union During World War II. Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982.

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Rescuers. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/rescuer.htm (accessed on August 24, 2000).

Globocnik, Odilo (1904–1945)

Odilo Globocnik was a senior S S commander and a principal participant in the extermination of Polish Jewry. Born in Trieste to an Austrian-Croat family of minor officials, Globocnik was a contractor by profession. He joined the N A Z I PA R T Y in A U S T R I A in 1931 and the SS in 1934. His illegal activity on behalf of the party caused him to be imprisoned several times. Before the annexation of Austria to G E R M A N Y in 1938, Globocnik was already active in the formation of Nazi factory cells in the provinces of Austria. In 1936 he was appointed provincial party leader in Carinthia. He earned rapid promotions in 1938: to colonel in March, and to state secretary and Gauleiter (district leader) of V I E N N A in May. He lost this position in January 1939 because of financial wrongdoing, but was pardoned by Heinrich H I M M L E R , and in November 1939 was appointed district SS and Police Leader for the L U B L I N district of P O L A N D and promoted to the level of major general in the SS. In 1941 Himmler entrusted Globocnik with the planning and establishment of police- and SS-fortified strongholds in Poland, and he was made head of all death camps that year. In 1942, Globocnik was given the responsibility of implementing A K T I O N ( O P E R AT I O N ) R E I N H A R D . He used the camps of B E L⁄ Z˙ E C , S O B I B Ó R , T R E B L I N K A , and M A J DA N E K to carry out a fourfold task: the exploitation of the Jewish work force, the extermination of Jews, the acquisition of the real

Odilo Globocnik.

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estate of the murdered Jews, and the seizure of their valuables and movable property. More than two million Jews were killed during Aktion Reinhard, and property to valued at 178 million Reichsmarks was seized and turned over for the benefit of the Third Reich. In August 1943, as a result of differences with other Nazi party and SS leaders, Globocnik was transferred to Trieste. He committed suicide in May 1945 after being taken captive by British troops at the end of the war.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES The SS. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1989. A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Perpetrators. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu /holocaust/people/perps.htm (accessed on August 24, 2000). Williamson, Gordon. The SS: Hitler’s Instrument of Terror. Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International, 1994.

Goebbels, Joseph (1897–1945)

Joseph Goebbels, who would become the Nazis’ chief propagandist, was born in Rheydt, in the Rhine district, into a poor and pious Catholic family. He studied at the University of Heidelberg and earned a doctorate in literature and philosophy. After failing in his attempts to become a writer, Goebbels discovered his talents as a propagandist and speaker for the N A Z I PA RT Y , which he joined in 1924. Before long he became one of Adolf H I T L E R ’s most ardent admirers and in 1926 was appointed Gauleiter (district leader) of Berlin, his assignment being to win over the capital for the party. In 1928 he was elected to the Reichstag (a house of the German Parliament). Two years later he was also appointed the party’s chief of propaganda. He then ran the Nazis’ stormy election campaigns from 1930 to 1933. On March 13, 1933, soon after Hitler came to power, Goebbels was appointed minister of propaganda and public information. He imposed Nazification upon the country’s artistic and cultural life, working through the branches of the ministry that reported to him. He controlled the media, and it was at his prompting that “un-German” books were burned on May 10, 1933. Goebbels was also one of the creators of the “Führer” myth, an important element in the Nazis’ successful bid for the support of the masses. Joseph Goebbels.

By the time the Nazi regime was firmly established, Goebbels’s position had weakened. Once the political forces that had opposed the Nazis were destroyed, Goebbels no longer had an “enemy” to fight (except for the Jewish “enemy”), and Hitler was angered by the frequent crises in Goebbels’s marital life, fearing that they might cause damage to the party’s image. When the war broke out, Goebbels assumed a key role in psychological warfare, and when the situation on the fronts took a turn for the worse, he again played a central part in the leadership. Once again in Hitler’s good graces, Goebbels was appointed to the task of propagandizing and mobilizing the population for the war effort. Goebbels was the father of modern propaganda in a totalitarian state. The propaganda he spread was remarkably filled with defamations, libels, and lies; he was

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convinced that people would believe the lies if only they were repeated often enough, and the bigger the lie, the better chance it had of being believed. Goebbels’s propaganda always incited hate against some enemy. He was fanatic in his A N T I S E M I T I S M , but his hatred of Jews was also based on the utilitarian value of exploiting antisemitism to further his propaganda aims. Goebbels was relentless in depicting “the Jew” as the principal enemy of the German people. It was Goebbels who conceived the idea of the K R I S TA L L N A C H T (“Night of the Broken Glass”) pogroms in November 1938, and it was he who gave the event the name by which it continues to be known. Following these pogroms, he used his influence to drastically reduce organized Jewish activities and freedom of movement. Once the war began, he launched a concerted effort to greatly diminish living conditions for the Jews of Berlin. The first D E P O RTAT I O N S of Berlin Jews, in October 1941, were carried out to fulfill an express promise that Goebbels had given to Hitler, to make Berlin judenrein (“cleansed of Jews”) as soon as possible. When Hitler committed suicide in the besieged capital, Goebbels refused to accept the position of Reich chancellor, to which he was appointed in Hitler’s will. On May 1, 1945, Goebbels and his wife, Magda, dressed their six children, ages four to twelve, in white party outfits and then ordered an SS doctor to give them lethal injections. Goebbels and his wife then committed suicide by ordering an SS man to shoot them.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Goebbels, Joseph. The Goebbels Diaries. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1948. Reprint, New York: Penguin, 1983. Heiber, Helmut. Goebbels. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1972. Reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1983.

Hitler’s Henchmen [videorecording]. Windsong/La Mancha, 1991. Reuth, Ralf Georg. Goebbels. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993.

GORDONIA. SEE YOUTH MOVEMENTS. Great Britain World War II began with G E R M A N Y ’s invasion of P O L A N D in September 1939. At the time, although Britain’s political and economic interests stretched around the world, from East Asia through India, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and to the North Sea, Britain was unable to defend its huge empire on its own. British politicians were aware of Britain’s fundamental weakness. The huge human and material losses of World War I (1914–18) were still keenly felt, and until 1936 there was little public support for a serious military-rearmament program. Not surprisingly, British foreign policy attempted to soothe, or appease, potential enemies and worked to gain friends among neutral countries by meeting their demands. After the complete German takeover of Czechoslovakia, however (against the agreement reached at the Munich Conference of September 1938), Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain reversed his government’s foreign policy based on appeasement. He decided to offer a mutual-defense pact to Poland in order to avoid German aggression against that country.

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Unprepared for War

By May 1940, Britain was the only country in Europe still fighting Adolf Hitler. Despite their isolation and increasingly desperate situation, the British refused all negotiations with the Germans.

The British army was too weak and unprepared for war to present any meaningful threat to Germany. When war began in September 1939, there were only two fully trained divisions in the United Kingdom. Other British troops were spread out among the colonies, including almost 17,000 in Palestine. Still, Britain (together with its ally, F R A N C E ) declared war on Germany two days after Germany invaded Poland. Poland quickly fell to the Germans and the months that followed were popularly called the “phony war.” There were no more German advances until May 1940. Britain used this period to dramatically improve its military strength. Although the United States was technically neutral in the war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt promised that American supplies would be available to Great Britain. The British dominions—Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand—and India also declared war on Germany. However, they were too far away from the main theater of action in Europe to help much until the fighting spread to North and East Africa and to Asia. Britain’s most significant ally was France. The two countries’ strategy was based on a combined use of their navies to prevent German control of the seas. This was essential, since Germany needed to import materials over water. In May 1940, the Germans moved against B E L G I U M , Luxembourg, and the N E T H E R L A N D S . Germany also invaded France. Soon afterward, I TA LY joined Germany as an Axis power and declared war on Great Britain. Britain was the only country in Europe still fighting Adolf H I T L E R , but the British refused all negotiations with the Germans. The successful evacuation of 200,000 British troops from France at Dunkirk (Dunquerke), in June 1940, allowed Britain to prepare for an expected German invasion of the British Isles. During this period of crisis, the government of Neville Chamberlain was replaced by a national coalition led by Winston Churchill. The new prime minister announced that Britain would continue fighting until the defeat of Germany. Between August and October 1940, the Luftwaffe (the German air force) failed to defeat the British Royal Air Force in the prolonged Battle of Britain. Still, Britain’s overall situation was bad. The fall of France to Germany had deprived Britain of the support of the French navy and troops. Italy’s entry into the war complicated Britain’s position in the Middle East, Africa, and India. Great Britain’s isolation was eased by the growing willingness of the United States to support the British war effort. In March 1941, the U.S. Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act, allowing the United States to supply Britain with weapons under a leasing arrangement. This acknowledged that an eventual British victory against Hitler was important to American security. The growing political alliance between the two powers was expressed in the Atlantic Charter of August 14, 1941. After the German air force lost the Battle of Britain, Hitler abandoned his plan to invade the British Isles and turned his attention to the S OV I E T U N I O N . On June 22, 1941, “Operation Barbarossa” began. German troops invaded the Soviet Union from the Baltic Sea south to Romania. Despite Prime Minister Churchill’s strong anti-Communist beliefs, he immediately offered Soviet leader Joseph Stalin supplies and weapons. Hitler’s decision to strike out to the East—to fight a war on two fronts—transformed the nature of World War II. It especially relieved the pressure on Britain and on British positions in the Middle East. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the official declaration of a state of war between the United States and Japan (followed soon after by the German declaration of war

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against the United States), meant that the war had become truly global. Britain was no longer alone.

An Allied Effort By the beginning of 1942, a “grand alliance,” led by Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, had been formed. Several basic principles guided their joint, “Allied” effort against the Axis. First, the war against Germany was given priority over the war in the Pacific, despite the rapid advance of Japanese forces. With many German troops fighting on the Soviet front, Great Britain and the United States worked to open a second European front against the Germans as soon as possible. Three remaining principles of the Allies’ policy toward Germany eventually had major implications for the relief and rescue of European Jewry. First of all, a blockade of supplies to occupied Europe was recognized as an essential weapon against the German war effort. Secondly, it was agreed that there would be no negotiations with Hitler. This was to reassure Stalin that Britain and America would not join with the Germans in a joint effort to destroy the Soviet Union. Although there were contacts with the Germans by means of neutral states and the International Red Cross on various humanitarian issues, the principle of “no negotiations” prevented any serious consideration of German proposals for the ransom of Jews. Finally, the Allies agreed that they would fight until the unconditional surrender of Germany and the Axis.

The Allies—Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union—agreed to fight until the unconditional surrender of Germany.

The tide of war turned in late 1942. The German advance into Russia was halted at Stalingrad in October, and the German forces were defeated at El Alamein in November. These events marked the beginning of the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany.

War’s Effects at Home The impact of the war was far-reaching in Britain. As large numbers of men were enlisted in the army, women entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers. The important role played by organized labor in the war effort, and the central role of the Labour party in the coalition government, led to demands for social reform. The desire for change was reflected in the results of the elections held right after the end of the war in Europe. Despite Churchill’s popularity as a war leader, his Conservative party lost the elections in July 1945 to the Labour party. The head of the Labour party, Clement Attlee, became prime minister. (Churchill later returned as prime minister, in 1951.) World War II also transformed Britain’s dependent empire. The mystique of British power and supremacy diminished as colonies in East Africa were occupied by Italian forces and in Asia by the Japanese. Even after the Japanese had been defeated, Britain was not able to reestablish its authority in a number of colonies. In other parts of the empire, political concessions were granted to nationalist forces to secure their support during the war effort. These changes led to the effective loss of the empire by the mid-1950s. The war marked the end of Britain’s role as a great power.

Appeasement of Nazi Germany Great Britain’s policy toward Germany in the period between the two world wars, especially in the second half of the 1930s, was one of appeasement. “Appeasement” was originally a positive term, describing an effort to establish peace between antagonistic

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World War II marked the end of Great Britain’s role as a global empire.

countries. After World War II, however, the term acquired a negative sense, being linked, by association with British policy, with weakness in the face of aggression. An agreement with Hitler, signed by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain at the Munich Conference in September 1938, came to be viewed as the lowest point of appeasement. It surrendered Czechoslovakia, a friendly and free country, to Nazi Germany, whether out of cowardice or foolish blindness concerning Hitler’s true aims. Britain’s appeasement policy was adopted many years before the N A Z I P A RT Y ’s rise to power with its policy of aggression. It was a direct result of the peace agreements at the end of World War I, and in particular of the Treaty of Versailles. Even during the Versailles Conference, the harsh terms dictated to the Germans worried the British and Americans. They debated whether to aim for a peace treaty, in a spirit of appeasement, or to insist on harsh terms. The second option was chosen, which produced a sense of guilt and sympathy toward Germany among many of the politicians involved. Appeasement toward Germany was also historically in the national interests of Britain; maintaining peace through the post-war renewal of economic ties in Europe, especially with Germany, was necessary in restoring and maintaining international trade. British politicians tended to see the Nazis’ rise to power as a result of the harsh policy toward Germany. Their negative feelings about Nazism, however, did not change their appeasement policy. As German strength grew, Great Britain increased its efforts for good relations. Various proposals were made for the economic appeasement of Germany: the granting of colonies in Africa, trade agreements, and even military agreements. But Germany adopted a policy of presenting “done deals” that modified the terms of the peace treaty. For example, it abolished military restrictions and moved its army into the demilitarized Rhine region. Up to 1937, Britain practiced a policy of “passive appeasement,” simply accepting Hitler’s aggressive actions. When Chamberlain became prime minister in May 1937, he started a policy of “active appeasement.” He tried to prevent war through cooperation with Germany. Relations between Czechoslovakia and Germany deteriorated, however, and by mid-September 1938 the danger of war seemed imminent. Chamberlain went to meet with Hitler in Germany. Before the talks, the British government had decided to give autonomy to the Germans within Czechoslovakia. At the meeting, however, Hitler and Chamberlain immediately agreed on the annexation of areas of Czechoslovakia to Germany. The Munich Agreement was signed after two weeks of talks. At that time, the attempt to appease Germany by putting pressure on an independent state (Czechoslovakia) was not seen in Britain as a weak or treacherous act, but as a bold step to save Europe from war. But when Hitler introduced new demands, doubts grew in Britain about the morality and the usefulness of this act of appeasement. In Parliament, Winston Churchill, a longtime critic of appeasement, harshly criticized the Munich Agreement. Both in Parliament and in the press, the agreement was attacked as a shameful giving-in that would encourage further acts of aggression from Hitler. This was confirmed when Hitler violated his pledges and occupied all of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. Appeasement now appeared to be a complete failure. Chamberlain was obliged to change his policy. He guaranteed support to Poland and Romania, which were expected to be Hitler’s next victims. Still, he did not abandon hope of salvaging peace by maintaining contact with leading figures in Germany. Even after Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, when he was forced to declare war on Germany, Chamberlain did so reluctantly, unconvinced of the need to fight.

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Fascism in Great Britain Beginning in 1923, a number of fascist organizations came and went in Britain. With the formation of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) by Sir Oswald Mosley in 1932, FA S C I S M in Britain took an important step forward. But the extremism of the fascist Nazi Germany lost the BUF some support, as did its involvement in political violence and its A N T I S E M I T I S M . There were violent street clashes between fascists and anti-fascists. With the government’s 1936 ban on the wearing of uniforms in public, growth of the BUF (whose hallmark was the wearing of a black shirt) was further hindered. Economic recovery in the course of the 1930s did not help the BUF’s cause. Even so, Mosley’s movement was active until World War II, and Mosley continued to attract large crowds at public meetings. The outbreak of the war soon resulted in the restriction of fascist activity. In early 1940, leading members of the BUF, including Mosley, were interned under a law that allowed the government to hold people who had had associations with enemy powers. Arnold Leese, another prominent fascist, was among the other internees. By the end of the war, fascism in Britain had become associated with the excesses of Nazi Germany.

Negative feelings about Nazism did not change the policy of appeasement. As German strength grew under Hitler, Great Britain increased its efforts to maintain good relations, until war on Germany was declared in September 1939.

Jewish Refugees Between 1933 and 1945, Great Britain was an important country of refuge for Jews fleeing Nazi-controlled Europe (see R E F U G E E S , 1 9 3 3 – 4 5 ). For its size, Britain gave shelter to a significant number of Jews during the Holocaust. Britain had a liberal tradition of granting asylum to refugees, and it was the preferred country of immigration. Others sought temporary refuge there while waiting to emigrate elsewhere. A third group looked to Britain as the entry point for the territories in Britain’s large dependent empire. British immigration policy, however, like that of many countries, changed in response to events. The first wave of refugees arrived in Britain in the months after Hitler’s rise to power in January 1933. Church groups, in particular the Quaker Society of Friends, were active on their behalf. The Parliament was sympathetic to these first victims of Nazism. Because Britain did not border on Germany, the number of refugees arriving there shortly after the Nazi seizure of power was small. In December 1933, there were only 3,000; and in April 1934, just 2,000. Would-be refugees met with many difficulties, mainly due to the immigration laws of 1919 (the Aliens Law), which remained in effect until 1938. The government made no distinction between refugees and other immigrants. It required financial guarantees on the refugees’ behalf and pledges that they would remain in Great Britain only temporarily. The official attitude toward Jewish refugees was affected by the government’s policy of non-intervention in Germany’s internal matters. The humanitarian approach to the refugees, supported by groups outside the government, was seen as harming Britain’s political and economic interests. But after Germany’s annexation of Austria in March 1938 (the Anschluss), Great Britain became a haven for many refugees. The coordination of ways to help refugees reached its height in the year before World War II began, as did the rate of immigration. Among the non-Jewish public, there was a great deal of support for Jews who had escaped from Nazi Germany. However, many refugees discovered pockets of hostility, such as among the trade unions. Aggressive German actions in 1938 (the Anschluss in March, the German occupation of the Sudetenland that October, and K R I S TA L L NAC H T in November) brought British immigration policy under intense pressure. Pressured by pro-refugee groups and members of Parliament, and embarrassed by international response to the

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Jewish refugee children arrive in Great Britain.

Britain’s humanitarian approach to refugees, supported by agencies outside the government, was criticized as harmful to Britain’s political and economic interests.

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British campaign against Jewish immigration into Palestine, Britain made it easier for refugees to enter. But with the outbreak of war in September 1939, all immigration into Britain and the British Empire from enemy or enemy-controlled territory was banned. Jewish refugees continued to reach Britain after 1939, but in very small numbers. Later, as the tide of war turned, the restrictions on entry were partly lifted. Eventually, more than 10,000 unaccompanied refugee children, most of them Jewish, reached Great Britain from Central Europe. (See R E S C U E O F C H I L D R E N .) Until the outbreak of the war, more than 80,000 Jewish refugees reached Great Britain, and 55,000 remained there. In addition to 10,000 children, some 14,000 women entered the country as domestic help. In a special camp, Kitchener, in Richborough, Kent, 5,000 people who needed immediate shelter were housed during an 18-month period from the end of January 1939. The government gave them a group entrance visa and waived the normal regulations for passports and individual permits. Jewish organizations in Great Britain were concerned about the refugee problem early on. Various groups guaranteed care and financial support. As the numbers of desperate refugees increased, however, thousands of applicants had to be turned away. In addition to generous contributions to support children and various refugee-aid organizations, British Jews gave personal bonds that enabled thousands

GRODNO

of refugees to enter Great Britain and guaranteed their support once they arrived. Many volunteers worked in relief organizations. With the outbreak of war, refugee children were evacuated, along with British children, to the Midlands and Wales. The treatment of refugees at this time became worse. Following the outbreak of hostilities, all Germans and Austrians in Great Britain, including Jewish refugees, were defined as “enemy aliens.” The war caused mass hysteria and open hostility toward the refugees. The government, with the full support of the public and the press, opened internment camps for aliens from Germany and Austria in the early summer of 1940. Within several weeks, about 30,000 were interned in camps—most of them Jewish refugees who unhesitatingly supported the Allies. Later in the summer of 1940, the government took an additional step that had great ramifications: It deported aliens from Great Britain. Only after the scandals and disasters resulting from the D E P O RTAT I O N S (such as the sinking of the ship Arandora Star carrying deportees, with great loss of life) did the injustice and the futility of the policy became evident. Shortly thereafter, the government changed its policy, canceling deportations and returning some of the deportees to Great Britain. Within a year, almost all of the internees were released and were integrated into British society. Thousands of them joined the British army in the war against the Nazis.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bolchover, Richard. British Jewry and the Holocaust. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Bower, Tom. The Pledge Betrayed: America and Britain and the Denazification of Postwar Germany. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982. Breitman, Richard. Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew. New York: Hill and Wang, 1998. Wasserstein, Bernard. Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Reprint, New York: Leicester University Press, 1999.

Grodno Grodno is a city in the western part of B E L O R U S S I A (now called Belarus). In the period between world wars, Grodno was part of P O L A N D ; in September 1939 it was occupied by the Red Army and annexed to the S OV I E T U N I O N . Grodno had one of the oldest and largest Lithuanian Jewish communities, with a Jewish population of 25,000 people. It took pride in its numerous social and cultural institutions and was a center of Zionism. On the first day of their invasion of the Soviet Union, June 22, 1941, the Germans reached Grodno. As soon as they entered the city, they put all Jews aged 16 to 60 into forced labor. In July of that year, 80 Jews belonging to the intelligentsia were put to death. The Germans administratively transferred Grodno from Belorussia to the district of B I A L⁄ Y S TO K , and annexed it, in March 1942, to East Prussia. On November 1, 1941, the Germans ordered the establishment of two ghettos, ghetto “A” for skilled workers and ghetto “B” for “nonproductive” Jews. The ghettos became the centers of educational, cultural, communal, and youth movement activities, with the participation of community leaders, educators, and members of Zionist YO U T H M OV E M E N T S .

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Because of its location, between V I L NA and Bial⁄ystok, Grodno became a center for the Jewish underground. It was one of the first places to hear reports of the large-scale massacres at P O NA RY . At the beginning of 1942 an underground movement was founded in the Grodno ghetto. Its membership base combined non-Zionist and Zionist youth movements, and the Communists. The pioneering Zionist movements wanted to fight inside the ghetto, whereas the Communists urged escaping from the ghetto into the forests to fight as PA R T I S A N S —paramilitary groups organized for sabotage, revenge, and assassination attempts against the Nazi forces and sympathizers. Mordechai T E N E N B AU M twice went to Grodno trying to set up an underground that would encompass all the Jewish movements, from the revisionist Zionists to the Communists. He had some success, and some of the underground activists were transferred to the Bial⁄ystok ghetto. On November 22, 1942, 2,400 Jews from Grodno were taken to A U S C H W I T Z . While this D E P O R TAT I O N was underway, Zerah Silberberg, one of the Zionist activists in the Bial⁄ ystok underground, went to Grodno to train the underground commanders and try to establish unity among the youth movements. An additional 2,000 Jews were deported from Grodno at the end of November 1942; their destination was Kielbasin, a transit camp for later deportation to EXTERMI N AT I O N CA M P S . A second transport of Jews from Grodno to Kielbasin followed in early December. The underground had a plan to assassinate the German commander of ghetto “B,” but failed to carry it out. Five members were sent to the forests; four died there and the one survivor returned to the ghetto, declaring that Jews without weapons could not survive in the forest. The determination to stay in the ghetto and fight gained in strength among the underground members, but some groups of Jews continued to escape into the forests. Several women members of the underground who had set up a workshop for forging documents were moved to Bial⁄ystok on orders of the underground, to serve as liaison officers. Two underground members set an ambush one night for the commander of ghetto “B,” but they were shot before they could draw their guns. Another assassination attempt, whose target was the commander of ghetto “A” and the superior of the commander of ghetto “B,” Kurt Wiese, also failed. In a deportation that came to an end on January 22, 1943, 10,500 Jews were taken to Auschwitz. Many of the deportees jumped off the trains, and some of these made their way to the Bial⁄ystok ghetto. The last group of Jews to be deported from Grodno, numbering some 500 persons, was taken to Bial⁄ ystok. The flight to the forests, mostly on an individual basis, continued in the winter of 1943, the destination being the nearby forests of Nacha and Augustów. The non-Jewish partisan units did not accept these escapees, and hunger and cold forced some of them to return to the Grodno ghetto. A number of young people from Grodno who had gone to Bial⁄ystok left that ghetto for the forest in August 1943 and operated in the areas under the name “White Furs,” mainly taking revenge on local peasants who had collaborated with the Germans. The group finally managed to join a Soviet partisan unit, and fought with it up to the liberation. Grodno was liberated by the Red Army on July 14, 1944. Approximately two hundred Jews were still alive, including partisans and persons who had survived or who came back to Grodno from other places in the Soviet Union.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Gitelman, Zvi, ed. Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

Lost Jewish Worlds: the Communities of Grodno, Lida, Olkieniki, Vishay. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1996.

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GROSMAN, HAIKA

Haika Grosman.

Grosman, Haika (b. 1919)

Haika Grosman was an underground activist and partisan. Born in B I A L⁄ Y S T O K , Grosman became a member of the Zionist youth movement, HaShomer ha-Tsa’ir, at an early age. At the outbreak of World War II she moved to V I L N A to help organize members of the pioneering Zionist YO U T H M OV E M E N T S in that city. Following the German invasion of the S OV I E T U N I O N (June 22, 1941), Grosman returned to Bial⁄ ystok, where she became one of the organizers of the underground movement there.

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Posing as a Polish woman, she went on many underground missions to various cities and ghettos, including the W A R S A W ghetto. She belonged to the “Antifascist Bial⁄ ystok” cell and, along with five other young women who posed as Poles, she gave assistance to the Jewish underground and to the partisans who were then organizing themselves in the forests around the area. She participated in the Bial⁄ ystok ghetto revolt in August 1943, and became a member of a local Jewish partisan unit. After liberation, Grosman served as the Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir representative in the institutions set up by the remnants of the Jewish population in P O L A N D . She settled in Israel in 1948, joining Kibbutz Evron in western Galilee. Grosman became politically active in Israel and was a member of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) from 1969 to 1981, and again from 1984. She is the author of People of the Underground (published in English as The Underground Army, 1988), which contains memoirs and chapters on the struggle of the Bial⁄ystok Jews.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Partisans of Vilna [sound recording]. Chicago: Flying Fish, 1989. Porter, Jack Nusan, ed. Jewish Partisans: A Documentary of Jewish Resistance in the Soviet Union During World War II. Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982.

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Resisters. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/ people/resister.htm (accessed on August 24, 2000).

Gross-Rosen Gross-Rosen was a C O N C E N T R A T I O N C A M P established in the summer of 1940 as a satellite camp of S AC H S E N H AU S E N . It was located near the granite quarry of Gross-Rosen, in Lower Silesia, a region of German-occupied territory. On May 1, 1941, Gross-Rosen became an independent concentration camp; it remained in operation until mid-February 1945. At first, the camp prisoners were put to work in the quarry, which was owned by the SS German Earth and Stone Works. Prisoners also worked in the construction of the camp, which was accelerated in the summer of 1943. A large number of subcamps soon followed. The number of prisoners grew steadily, from 1,487 in 1941 to 6,780 in 1942. There were 15,400 prisoners in 1943, and 90,314 in 1944 (not allowing for the fact that many prisoners were counted twice). On the eve of the camp’s liquidation, there were 97,414 inmates. In its final stage, Gross-Rosen had a prison population of 78,000 (52,000 men and 26,000 women), representing 11 percent of all the prisoners then in Nazi concentration camps. A total of 125,000 prisoners of different nationalities passed through Gross-Rosen. It is estimated that 40,000 of them perished in the camp and in the evacuation transports.

Jews at Gross-Rosen Jews were the largest group among the victims in Gross-Rosen. Beginning in late 1943, 57,000 Jews were brought there, including 26,000 women. The assignment of Jews to the camp, and their use as labor for the German war economy, resulted from a reorganization of the SS methods for exploiting Jews and from the

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evacuation of the P L⁄ A S Z Ó W and A U S C H W I T Z -Birkenau camps. The Jews were distributed among satellite camps outside the main camp. The first Jewish prisoners to arrive in Gross-Rosen were sent there from D A C H A U and Sachsenhausen. In 1942, small groups of Jews, 100 in all, arrived from Poland’s Radom district, from the prison in T A R N Ó W , and from Sachsenhausen and B U C H E N WA L D . They were housed in Block 4, which was run by German convicts. Among these convicts were several particularly brutal sadists and murderers. The living and working conditions of the Jewish prisoners were extraordinarily harsh and inhumane. The work in the quarry and the construction of the camp were backbreaking. Prisoners were also used for special work assignments during what were supposed to be their hours for rest. The Jewish prisoners were not permitted to establish contact with one another; each prisoner was restricted to his or her own block. They were also denied medical attention. Before long, their health had deteriorated and they were completely exhausted. The death rate was high. Among the survivors, some were Muselmänner (see M U S E L M A N N )—inmates on the verge of death. In December 1941, 119 of these became victims of the E U T H A NA S I A P R O G R A M . The high death rate continued in 1942. Prisoners classified as “disabled” were sent to Dachau. The last 37 Jewish prisoners were transferred to Auschwitz on October 16 of that year, in the course of an operation designed to remove Jews from all camps in Germany. For a period of twelve months, Gross-Rosen was judenfrei (“free of Jews”)—a Nazi goal.

Most of the Jewish prisoners in Gross-Rosen were from Poland and Hungary, but others were from Belgium, France, Greece, Yugoslavia, Slovakia, and Italy.

In October 1943, however, more Jewish prisoners were brought to GrossRosen, this time in larger groups and transports. The first such group consisted of 600 prisoners moved from the Markstadt labor camp to Fünfteichen, a new GrossRosen satellite camp. They were put to work there in Krupp factories. Another group of 600 Jewish prisoners was put at the disposal of I. G. F A R B E N , to work in factories at Dyhernfurth, where poison gas was to be produced. More groups came in March 1944, beginning an uninterrupted flow of Jewish prisoners that continued until January 1945. Additional Gross-Rosen satellite camps were put up to accommodate them. Most of the Jewish prisoners were from P O L A N D and H U N G A R Y , but others were from B E L G I U M , F R A N C E , Greece, Yugoslavia, Slovakia, and I TA LY . The Jewish prisoners of Gross-Rosen were distributed among more than 50 satellite camps, called labor camps (Arbeitslager). Some of these satellite camps were put up when Gross-Rosen took over a number of forced-labor camps (Zwangsarbeitslager). A total of 28 such camps were taken over by Gross-Rosen. Of these, 20 were kept in operation as Gross-Rosen satellite camps. The prisoners from the remaining eight camps were transferred to existing satellite camps. Most of the camps were for men or women only. A second group of completely new satellite camps for Jews was eventually put up. More transports of prisoners came in to meet increased demand for weapons, and, later, upon the partial evacuation of the Pl⁄aszów and Auschwitz camps. Especially notable among these camps were 12 that made up the “giant labor camp” (Arbeitslager Riese) complex, all for men. Established from April to June 1944, they were a labor reserve for the construction of Adolf H I T L E R ’s underground home. These camps held 13,000 Jews, most of them from Hungary. The hard labor involved in building underground passages, roads, and so forth, together with the poor living conditions and total lack of hygiene, soon caused a large number of prisoners to become Muselmänner. As a result, 857 prisoners too weak to work were sent from these camps to Auschwitz, on September 29 and October 19, 1944. The death

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rate in the giant labor camp complex was exceptionally high. At least 3,068 prisoners died there.

D

uring World War II, Gross-Rosen grew from a small work camp

occupied by 100 laborers housed in wooden barracks to a sprawling complex of 70 satellite camps housing between 80,000 and 90,000 prisoners who worked primarily in the German munitions industry, poison gas factories, and in the nearby quarry.

In some other satellite camps for Jewish prisoners, the inmates worked in armaments and other factories. The women, distributed over 42 satellite camps, came mostly from Poland and Hungary. They arrived from Poland in late 1944, when Pl⁄aszów, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and the L⁄ Ó D Z´ ghetto were evacuated (the last via Auschwitz). They also came from Hungary in transports that first passed through Auschwitz-Birkenau. The prisoners in 13 of these camps worked in textile factories; in one camp, in the aircraft industry; and in another, in an armaments factory. The conditions in the women’s camps were less harsh; out of 5,000 prisoners, 58 died—a relatively small number. Other satellite camps for women were put up at different times. Before 1944, there were no large transfers of Jewish prisoners from Gross-Rosen to other concentration camps. Records show only the transfer of some 200 Muselmänner to Auschwitz and of 400 prisoners to Buchenwald. But there were frequent transfers from one satellite camp to another to meet current requirements of the war economy, and, at a later stage, as part of the gradual liquidation of Gross-Rosen.

Evacuation of Gross-Rosen In the first phase of the evacuation—the last ten days of January 1945—the satellite camps on the eastern bank of the Oder River were liquidated. The men’s satellite camps located there were moved to the main camp. Most of the prisoners in the women’s camps were transferred to concentration camps deep inside Germany. The prisoners were evacuated by foot, in what came to be known as D E AT H M A R C H E S , in the cold of winter and without food. Many prisoners perished on those marches, but no accurate estimate can be made of their number. The ultimate fate of many prisoners remains unknown. The main camp, Gross-Rosen itself, was evacuated in early February 1945, and the remaining satellite camps after that. The prisoners in the main camp were evacuated by rail. But the condition of the cars that were used (they normally carried coal) and the lack of food caused the death of many people after a few days in transit. The prisoners of the satellite camps were evacuated on foot. Those of the Bunzlau camp, for example, were on the march from February 12 to March 26, 1945, with 260 dying en route. During the evacuation of the Gross-Rosen camps, 3,500 Jews—mostly women—were moved to B E R G E N - B E L S E N . Some 5,565 were moved to Buchenwald; 489 to Dachau; 4,930 to Flossenbürg; 2,249 to M AU T H AU S E N ; and 1,103 to D O R A - M I T T E L B A U . The N E U E N G A M M E camp also took in a small number of women prisoners. Including the transfers made in 1944, at least 19,500 Jewish prisoners were moved from Gross-Rosen to other camps in Germany. Those totaled 35 percent of the total number of Jewish prisoners in Gross-Rosen. The fate of the other 37,500 has not been established so far; some of them, no doubt, were included in the evacuation. The number of Jewish prisoners in the Gross-Rosen camp complex who did not survive is unknown, except in the case of the giant labor camp complex. About half of the Jewish prisoners in the satellite camps are known to have been left behind. The surviving prisoners in these camps were liberated by Soviet troops on May 8 and 9, 1945. Twenty of the women’s satellite camps were liberated; in 13 of them, 9,000 women survived. In Langenbielau, 1,400 surviving Jews were recorded upon liberation. In Brünnlitz, 800 had survived; and in Waldenburg, 600.

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Even from these incomplete figures it is clear that a large proportion of the prisoners lived to see the Nazi regime’s downfall. When the satellite camps were liberated, Jewish committees were formed in them. They took the prisoners under their care, especially the many who were sick. They obtained food and clothing and helped to return prisoners to their countries of origin.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Preissinger, Adrian. Death Camps of the Soviets, 1945–1950: From Sachsenhausen to Buchenwald. Ocean City, MD: Landpost Press, 1994.

Grüninger, Paul (1891–1972)

As the local police commandant of the Saint Gall canton in Switzerland, on the Austrian frontier, Paul Grüninger was responsible for assisting thousands of Jewish refugees. After A U S T R I A ’s annexation by G E R M A N Y in March 1938, the stream of Jewish refugees seeking to leave the Reich increased, and many sought to gain access to Switzerland. The Swiss government, however, closed its borders to Jewish refugees. Grüninger was instructed on August 18, 1938, to refuse entry to refugees fleeing Germany for racial reasons. Confronted by an unending wave of Jewish refugees at his border post, he defied his government’s instructions and allowed all the Jews crossing the border at his checkpoint to enter the country. As a cover up, he predated official seals in the refugees’ passports to indicate that their holders had entered the country prior to the August 1938 government ruling. Thus, from August through December 1938, when he was summarily suspended, Grüninger allowed some 3,600 persons (according to the state prosecutor’s records) to illegally enter Switzerland.

Paul Gruninger (l) in police uniform, February 15, 1934.

Alerted by the German diplomatic staff in Bern, the Swiss government began investigating Grüninger’s activities in January 1939, and charges were filed against him. Found guilty of insubordination, he was sentenced in 1941 to a stiff fine and the forfeiture of all retirement and severance payments. Grüninger was later denied access to other suitable positions in the government and the private sector, and he was never fully accepted or forgiven by the Swiss government. In 1971, he received recognition from Yad Vashem as one of the “R IGHTEOUS A MONG THE N ATIONS .”

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bauminger, Arieh L. The Righteous Among the Nations. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1990.

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Rescuers. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/rescuer.htm (accessed on August 24, 2000).

Gurs Gurs was the first detention camp to be established in F R A N C E , and one of the largest. The Gurs camp was 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the Spanish border and

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Women prisoners stand behind a barbedwire fence at the Gurs detention camp in Gurs, France, 1942.

10 miles (16 kilometers) from the town of Oloron-Sainte-Marie, on the plateau overlooking the lower Pyrenees. The Gurs camp was set up in April 1939, coinciding with the collapse of the Spanish republic, and the first prisoners to be detained in it were Spanish soldiers who had fled to France in the wake of Francisco Franco’s victory; among them were Jewish volunteers of the International Brigade. In early 1940 some 4,000 German and Austrian nationals—most of them Jews—were interned in Gurs, as were leaders of the French Communist party who had denounced the war against G E R M A N Y . Between October 22 and 25, 1940, four months after France had surrendered, the German authorities—in violation of the armistice with France— deported to Gurs the entire Jewish population of Baden and the Palatinate, as well as Jews from some locations in Württemberg. Some 7,500 Jews were included in Aktion Bürckel, named after Josef Bürckel, the Gauleiter (district leader) of Alsace-Lorraine. All the non-Jewish German nationals and pro-Nazis had been released from Gurs in mid-July 1940, shortly after the French defeat. The French Communists were set free at the end of October 1940; of the Jews, 2,000 were released in stages between November 1940 and August 1942, and emigrated overseas. Conditions in the camp were very harsh: the sanitary arrangements were primitive, there was a shortage of water, and all the detainees suffered constantly from hunger. In the winter of 1940–41, 800 detainees died in epidemics of typhoid fever and dysentery that broke out in the camp. A total of 1,167 detainees were buried in the Gurs cemetery, as well as 20 who were non-Jewish Spaniards. Despite the harsh conditions in the camp, many cultural activities took place and on a very high level—concerts, theater performances, lectures, and exhibitions. There were also courses of instruction in Hebrew, French, English, Jewish history, the Bible, and the Talmud, and thousands of prisoners attended religious ceremonies and prayer services on the holy days.

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Around 6,000 Jewish prisoners were deported from Gurs to A U S C H W I T Z Birkenau and S O B I B Ó R by way of the D R A N C Y camp, the first transport leaving Gurs on August 6, 1942, and the last in the fall of 1943; by December 29, 1943, no more than 48 Jews were left. The camp was liberated in the summer of 1944. French poet Louis Aragon said of the Gurs camp: “Gurs is a strange sound, like a moan stuck in the throat.”

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Josephs, Jeremy. Swastika over Paris. New York: Arcade, 1989. Weisberg, Richard H. Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

Gypsies Gypsies, who are also called Romani, have been living in Europe since the fifteenth century. They are a people who are bound by a common language and culture, and—until the twentieth century—by a nomadic way of life. The Gypsies were among the groups singled out by the Nazi regime for persecution. While there are differences of opinion about their early history, most scholars assume that the Gypsies originated in India and were in Iran by the fourteenth century. By 1438, they had reached H U N G A R Y , and had entered Serbia and other Balkan countries in southern Europe. From there they spread into P O L A N D and Russia, and by the sixteenth century, they reached Sweden, G R E AT B R I TA I N , and Spain, where they settled in fairly large numbers. While some Gypsies became Muslims or Eastern Orthodox (Christians), most European Gypsies became Roman Catholics. They kept many of their pre-Christian beliefs alongside their new religion. The Gypsies’ oral language has many dialects, and only in recent times has it become a written language. Prejudice and animosity toward Gypsies was (and continues to be) widespread. Their professions were dictated by their wandering way of life and by the fact that in their adopted countries, most were not allowed to obtain land. They usually bought and sold horses and other animals, engaged in trades, were skilled at making things out of gold and silver, and played music. Fortune-telling, for which they gained a wide reputation, was usually a sideline. Gypsies were frequently accused of stealing and dishonesty, largely because of their nomadic lifestyle and foreign language. Like Jews, they became scapegoats and were the object of murderous official policies. For example, Prussian king Frederick William I decreed in 1725 that all Gypsies over 18 were at risk of being killed. In spite of all the prejudice against Gypsies, their music and poetry inspired famous artists, such as composer Franz Liszt. In many ways, Gypsies shared with Jews the dubious honor of being the quintessential strangers in an overwhelmingly settled Christian Europe. When a modern industrial society developed in Europe, the Gypsies were out of place in the eyes of the authorities. In 1899 Bavaria, a state in southeastern G E R M A N Y , established a special office in Munich for Gypsy affairs. It was the center for anti-Gypsy policies in Germany until the Nazi period. In February 1929, this Munich office became a Central Bureau for the Nazis, and had close ties to a similar office in Vienna. That same year, new laws allowed the police to coerce Gypsies into forced labor conditions, against their will. Similar regulations were in effect in other European countries.

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A Gypsy (Roma) couple, sitting in an open area at the Belzec concentration camp.

The Gypsies occupied a special place in Nazi racist theories. The basic attitude of the Nazi regime was extremely hostile: The Nazis subscribed to old prejudices against Gypsies, and they idealized a “pure” Germanic society with a settled, peasant lifestyle. This ideal was the opposite of the Gypsies’ way of life. In the eyes of the regime, the Gypsies were “asocials”—work-shy, alien individuals who did not fit into the new society that was to be built. One could not very well doubt the “Aryan” parentage of the closely knit Gypsy families, but to Germans they were also “people of different blood” (Andersblütige). According to a report submitted to Nazi leader Heinrich H I M M L E R in 1941, there were some 28,000 Gypsies in Germany, and an additional 11,000 in Austria. Most of these Gypsies belonged to the Sinti and Lalleri tribes.

Anti-Gypsy Legislation When the N U R E M B E R G L AW S were passed in September 1935, the interpreters of these decrees (which deprived Jews of many civil rights) applied them to Gypsies as well as Jews. In 1936, groups of Gypsies were delivered to the D AC H AU camp as “asocials.” At this time a racist theorist, Dr. Robert Ritter, was invited to set up a center that eventually was called the Research Office for Race Hygiene and Population Biology. Ritter was to examine the Gypsy population from the Nazis’ racial perspective and propose solutions for what to do with them. According to Ritter and his co-workers, an examination of some 20,000 Rom showed that over 90 percent should be considered M I S C H L I N G E (of mixed blood). This solved the problem of having to deal with an “Aryan” minority; the Nazis simply denied that the Gypsies were “Aryans.” Ritter proposed that the Nazis prevent Gypsies from mixing with people of “German blood” and separate “pure” Gypsies from Mischlinge Gypsies. He also suggested performing sterilizations on the latter, and putting them in forced-labor camps. Both “pure” and Mischlinge Gypsies were considered “asocial.” By making this assumption, the Nazis maintained an element of continuity with traditional European discriminatory thought. According to Himmler’s decree of December 14, 1937, “preventive” arrests could be made of persons who, while not guilty of any criminal act, “endangered the communality by their asocial behavior.” Administrative regulations implementing this decree, which were issued on April 4, 1938, specified that it was directed against “beggars, vagabonds (Gypsies), prostitutes ... without a permanent residence.”

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“This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions”

It soon became clear to the Nazis that this provision was too broad and could not be implemented. Another regulation went into effect on March 1, 1939, which clarified Himmler’s policies and underlying ideas. To deal with what he labeled “the Gypsy plague,” Himmler called for a separation between Gypsies and Germans, and between “pure” and Mischlinge Gypsies. The way of life of both categories of Gypsies would be regulated by the police. Nazi racial policies became increasingly harsh, and after the Nazi conquest of Poland in September 1939, the fate of the German Gypsies became tied up with that of the Poles and Jews. At that time, Reinhard H E Y D R I C H issued instructions for the removal of 30,000 Gypsies from all of Germany to the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T , along with the removal of Poles and Jews from the newly occupied western Polish territories. This order may have been designed to remove all Mischlinge Gypsies from Germany, but by April 1940, the Nazi governor of the Generalgouvernement, Hans F R A N K , had received only 2,500 Gypsies, who came from the western territories. These Gypsies were mostly released in Poland.

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Attitudes toward the Gypsies became more brutal as time went on. In the fall of 1941, 5,007 Austrian Gypsies of the Lalleri tribe were deported to the L⁄ Ó D Z´ ghetto. They were among those murdered in the C H E L⁄ M N O extermination camp in early 1942. There were no known survivors. In addition, 3,000 Austrian Gypsies were placed in concentration camps.

Solutions for the “Gypsy Problem” By early 1942, roughly two-thirds of the 28,607 German Gypsies had been classified by Ritter: 1,079 were defined as “pure,” 6,992 as “more Gypsy than German,” 2,976 as “half-breeds,” 2,992 as “more German than Gypsy,” and 2,652 as “Germans who behaved as Gypsies.” Others were still being investigated. From the Nazi point of view, the “problem” of how to deal with the Gypsies could be solved with this intricate classification system. The result, according to Nazi logic, would be murder for some Gypies, and more regulations for others. “Pure” Gypsies would not be excluded from society (i.e., murdered). And so on October 13, 1942, Himmler issued a clarification concerning pure “Sinti Gypsies for whom in the future a certain freedom of movement is to be permitted.” Mischlinge, “who are good Mischlinge in the Gypsy sense, are to be reintroduced into racially pure Sinti Gypsy clans.” For these “pure” or relatively “pure” Gypsies, there would be appointed nine chiefs, who would supervise them. According to a document of January 11, 1943, over 14,000 Gypsies were to be included under this lifesaving provision. As for the others, Himmler issued a clear order on December 16, 1942, indicating that they were to be sent to A U S C H W I T Z . Exceptions would be made for those who were “socially adapted,” specifically, those who were former Wehrmacht (German army) soldiers or “war industry workers in important positions.” For Gypsies in these exempted categories, sterilization was proposed. Himmler’s regulations were neater on paper than when put into practice. In reality, the distinctions between these groups of Gypsies were not that clear, and it is unlikely that German statistics on Gypsies and “Germans wandering about in the Gypsy manner” were very accurate. In addition, the documents regulating exceptions were not always followed faithfully. Auschwitz survivors have related stories of Gypsies—good Nazis and loyal Germans, some of officer rank—who were weeded out of German army units and sent to Auschwitz. Others were apparently not touched. It depended on the zeal of the local commander or the civilian party boss, and on his interpretation of the instructions. Nor were the Gypsies shipped to Auschwitz all German citizens; some were from the Balkans. The first large transport of Gypsies arrived in Auschwitz on February 26, 1943. At the same time, a Gypsy family camp was established in Birkenau. The number of Gypsies in the Auschwitz “Gypsy camp” is believed to have been about 20,000. Living, or rather existing, in the most indescribable conditions, a great many of them died from starvation, epidemics, and “medical experiments,” such as Josef M E N G E L E ’s experiments with twins. On August 2, 1944, 2,897 Gypsies were gassed as part of the destruction of the Gypsy family camp. Practically all the women and children were killed. Some of the men were sent to slave-labor camps or other concentration camps to do vital war work. Others were recruited into the regular German armed forces to clear away mines or perform other dangerous jobs, from which only a fraction returned.

Gypsy Treatment Throughout Europe The total number of German and Austrian Gypsies who were deported and/or interned in camps was about 23,500. Most of them were eventually killed.

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A group of Gypsy prisoners sit on the ground in an open field, awaiting instructions from their German captors in Bel⁄z˙ec.

Before the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, 13,000 Gypsies lived in the territories that soon became the Protectorate of B O H E M I A A N D M O R AV I A . About half escaped to S L OVA K I A before the Nazis began to deport Gypsies. Some 4,000 were sent to Auschwitz between July 1943 and May 1944. Only a few hundred Czech Gypsies survived the war. Information about the fate of the Gypsies in the rest of Europe is sketchy. According to one source, a total of more than 200,000 were killed in all of Europe. This may be a low estimate. In Yugoslavia, Gypsies were murdered together with Jews by the Ustasˇ a regime; possibly as many as 90,000 Gypsies were killed in Yugoslavia alone. In the occupied areas of Europe, the Nazis generally confined Gypsies and later transported them to Germany or Poland to work under forced labor conditions or to be killed. Apparently Bulgaria, D E N M A R K , Finland, and Greece were the only countries where the Gypsies escaped this treatment. In the N E T H E R L A N D S , Gypsies, like the Jews, were interned in W E S T E R B O R K , a transit camp, and from there sent to Auschwitz. Gypsies from L U X E M B O U R G and B E L G I U M were sent to Auschwitz as well. Before the Nazi occupation of F R A N C E , French authorities had already restricted the movement of Gypsies. After the defeat of France in June 1940, Gypsies from the regions of Alsace and Lorraine were interned in a camp at Schirmeck, where they were kept separate from “asocials” and “criminals.” Shortly before Christmas 1941, they were deported. In unoccupied France, 30,000 Gypsies were interned under the supervision of Xavier V A L L AT and the Ministry for Jewish Affairs. Later, most were sent to camps in Germany, including B U C H E N WA L D , Dachau, and R AV E N S B R Ü C K , where between 16,000 and 18,000 perished. Gypsies were interned in Algeria as well; 700 were restricted to the Maison Carrée area near Algiers. Gypsies in I TA LY , like the Jews, had a mixed experience. Often persecuted, many were also saved by the Italians. Before the war, the authorities rounded up Gypsies and put them on islands in the Venice region, off the mainland. Later, some were sent to Germany to work in forced labor or to extermination camps. Others,

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H

einrich Himmler’s November 1943 directions regarding

the treatment of Gypsies included the following: “(1) Settled Gypsies and part Gypsies are to be treated as citizens of the country. (2) Nomadic Gypsies and part Gypsies are to be placed on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps. In cases of doubt, the police commanders will decide who is a Gypsy.”

who managed to escape the Ustasˇ a massacres in nearby Croatia, were sheltered there by the authorities. In the fall of 1943, when the Germans took over territories that the Italians had held in Yugoslavia and Albania, they interned the Gypsies and sent some to Buchenwald, M AU T H AU S E N , and other camps. Although the Hungarians planned to intern Gypsies in labor camps as early as February 1941, the policy was never fully implemented. After the A R R O W C R O S S P A R T Y coup in October 1944, persecution of Gypsies began in earnest in H U N G A R Y . Germans and Hungarian collaborators rounded them up, deporting some together with Hungarian Jews. It is thought that about 31,000 Gypsies were deported within a few months, and only three thousand returned. The sources for these figures, however, have not been verified. The large Romanian Gypsy population was not subjected to an extermination policy. According to a postwar Romanian People’s Court, however, tens of thousands met their death as a result of expulsion. In 1941 and 1942, about 25,000 Gypsies from the Bucharest area were sent to Transnistria, and others were sent to the Ukraine. Slovak Gypsies were treated somewhat better than those in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. On January 18, 1940, they were drafted, along with young Jewish men, into labor brigades. In 1941, orders were issued to expel them from their quarters in most towns and villages in Slovakia, but these orders were carried out inconsistently. Slovak fascists, however, massacred hundreds of Gypsies. Most Gypsies in Poland faced deportation to concentration and extermination camps. Beginning in September 1944, the majority of those remaining in the ghettos were killed. About 25,000 persons, or two-thirds of the Polish Gypsies, died during the Nazi occupation. In Estonia, L I T H UA N I A , and L AT V I A , known as the Baltic States, and in the S OV I E T U N I O N , Gypsies were murdered by the O P E R AT I O N A L S Q UA D S (Einsatzgruppen). A report by the secret army field police dated August 25, 1942, stressed the need to “ruthlessly exterminate” bands of wandering Gypsies. Gypsies were murdered along with Jews at B A B I Y A R , in the Ukraine. In May 1943, Alfred R O S E N B E R G , the minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories, proposed that the Gypsies be concentrated in special camps and settlements. They were not, however, to be “treated as Jews.” Himmler’s instructions regarding treatment of Gypsies distinguished between “settled” Gypsies and “nomadic” ones; the latter were singled out for harsher treatment. The distinction between settled Gypsies and nomadic Gypsies was applied only in the Baltic states and the occupied areas of the Soviet Union. Some settled Gypsies in the Soviet Union were drafted into labor brigades or sent to concentration camps. The Nazis’ slaughter of wandering groups of Gypsies in the Baltics and Soviet Union seemed illogical, since the “pure” Gypsies they wished to spare were probably nomadic. On the other hand, there is no evidence that the Germans tried to find and spare settled Gypsies, or conduct special campaigns to find and register wandering Gypsies with the aim of murdering them. A confused picture of Nazi conduct emerges. In Germany, the Nazis murdered those whom they saw as Mischlinge, while they mostly spared the “pure” Gypsies. In the rest of Europe, the Nazis did not have a very clear policy: Wherever they found wandering clans of Gypsies, they murdered them because they were “asocials,” as Otto O H L E N D O R F , commander of SS-Einsatzgruppe D, said at his trial. The Nazis’ treatment of the Gypsies was in keeping with their general way of thinking: Gypsies were not Jews, and therefore there was no need to kill all of them. Those Gypsies

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who were of “pure blood” or who were not considered dangerous on a racial level could continue to exist, but under strict supervision. The Mischlinge were doomed to death. The difference between the fate of the Gypsies and that of the Jews is clear. The Jews were slated for total annihilation, whereas the Gypsies were sentenced to selective mass murder on a vast scale. Even today the Gypsies are still a persecuted minority, and research about their history in the Nazi period is in an early stage.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Friedman, Ina R. The Other Victims: First-person Stories of Non-Jews Persecuted by the Nazis. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Ioanid, Radu. The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies Under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000. Lewy, Gunther. The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Ramati, Alexander. And the Violins Stopped Playing: A Story of the Gypsy Holocaust. New York: Franklin Watts, 1986.

HALUTS YOUTH MOVEMENTS. SEE YOUTH MOVEMENTS. “HARVEST FESTIVAL.” SEE ERNTEFEST (“HARVEST FESTIVAL”). HA-SHOMER HA-TSA’IR. SEE YOUTH MOVEMENTS. HEBREW LITERATURE ON THE HOLOCAUST. SEE LITERATURE ON THE

HOLOCAUST.

HE-HALUTS YOUTH MOVEMENTS. SEE YOUTH MOVEMENTS.

Heydrich, Reinhard (1904–1942)

Reinhard Heydrich was the head of the Nazi Security Police; Sipo, the S D (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service), and later, the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA). He was a key person in planning and implementation of the anti-Jewish policies of the Third Reich, including strategies for the “F I NA L S O L U T I O N ”. Heydrich was born in Halle, a provincial Saxon town, to a family of musicians. His father was an opera singer and the director of a conservatory. In his youth Heydrich was exposed to his father’s devotion to the music of Richard Wagner, his mother’s stern discipline, and the worship of the authority of the state and its rulers. He was given the false notion that he was partly of Jewish origin.

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Commissioned as an ensign and trained as a navy signal officer, Heydrich was discharged from the navy in April 1931. A naval court of honor found him guilty of misconduct toward a female friend, whom he had mistreated. Frustrated by the rules of civil society, Heydrich, who initially had regarded the N A Z I PA R T Y with contempt, was introduced by a family friend to Heinrich H I M M L E R . Himmler made him an intelligence officer and charged him with the organization, in 1931, of the SS espionage and surveillance apparatus, the SD. Freed from the restraints of navy discipline and the civil code of behavior, Heydrich’s ruthlessness, cynicism, and ambition were fully applied to this task. Inquiry into his alleged Jewish ancestry showed the rumor to be false, but his superiors blackmailed him with this suspicion, which guaranteed his loyalty. As SD chief, Heydrich was entrusted with the information-gathering, blackmail, and intrigue needed to establish Himmler’s control over the secret state police, the G E S TA P O . At the same time, Heydrich became executive director of the Bavarian political police, the nucleus of the Gestapo system under Himmler. The SD and the Gestapo, of which Heydrich later became executive director, were instrumental in establishing the Nazi system of terror. These groups executed the leaders of the Storm Troopers (Sturmabteilung; SA) on June 30, 1934.

Reinhard Heydrich.

pogroms

Organized and often officially sanctioned violent attacks on Jews and their property.

Heydrich played a role in purging the German army high command in 1938, and also helped plant the false information that led to Joseph Stalin’s purge of the Red Army’s high command. Reflecting Himmler’s fanatical race ideology, the SD developed into a political network of espionage and warfare, promoting ever more radical and deadly solutions to the “Jewish question,” such as violent pogroms and forced emigration. In 1936 Heydrich was made chief of the Gestapo and the Kripo (Kriminalpolizei), retaining separate control over the SD. As Gestapo chief, Heydrich had unlimited power to send “enemies of the Reich,” including Jews, to C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S . He encouraged competition between the SD and the Gestapo, which under his control vied with each other to carry out Adolf H I T L E R ’s Jewish policies. They also competed with other party elements. Under Joseph G O E B B E L S ’ influence, they were encouraged to implement “solutions” to the “Jewish question,” such as the assembly-line deportation organized primarily for Jews in A U S T R I A and Czechoslovakia. In K R I S TA L L N AC H T (Night of the Broken Glass), the pogrom of November 9 and 10, 1938, which was instigated by Goebbels, the SA Storm Troopers and the Nazi party took the lead. Heydrich, assisted by Heinrich M Ü L L E R and using prepared lists, saw to it that thousands of Jews were arrested by the Gestapo and SS. On January 24, 1939, Hermann Göring established the Reich’s C E N T R A L O F F I C E F O R J E W I S H E M I G R AT I O N (Zentralstelle für Jüdisch Auswanderung). This transferred the implementation of the Reich’s Jewish policy to the SS, and Heydrich was the chief administrator of this policy. When war broke out in 1939, Heydrich was in charge of the O P E R AT I O N A L S Q UA D S (Einsatzgruppen). In a special decree of September 21, 1939, he ordered them to isolate all Polish Jews into areas of cities called ghettos and to establish within each ghetto a Jewish administrative unit called the J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council). Heydrich unified the Gestapo and SD within the framework of the newly established RSHA, giving ruthless SD functionaries, such as Eichmann, complete executive power in their anti-Jewish actions. Heydrich was instrumental in such schemes as the N I S K O A N D L U B L I N P L A N and the proposed mass deportations to Madagascar (see M A DAG A S CA R P L A N ). In 1941, prior to Hitler’s assault on the S OV I E T U N I O N , Heydrich arranged with the army high command to make military assistance for the Einsatzgruppen in

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Russia. This was to facilitate the immediate annihilation of the Jews and Soviet officials in the Russian areas that were soon to be occupied. On July 31 of that year, Göring, on Heydrich’s urging, charged him with implementing the “final solution of the Jewish question” in all German-controlled territories throughout Europe. To carry out this task, Heydrich required the cooperation of the Reich’s other departments. He convened a meeting of top officials at Wannsee, a Berlin suburb (see W A N N S E E C O N F E R E N C E ), on January 20, 1942, to confirm the program for the planned extermination. Although Heydrich had direct access to Hitler and was given increasing power, it is not known to what extent he alone initiated the rationale and the methods adopted for the “final solution.” Late in 1941, Heydrich was rewarded for his anti-Jewish terror and extermination campaign by being appointed acting governor of the Protectorate of B O H E M I A A N D M O R AV I A . Attacked by Czech resistance fighters in an ambush near Prague, Heydrich died on June 4, 1942. Five days later the Germans retaliated by leveling the Czech village of Lidice; murdering all of its male inhabitants and shipping the remaining women and children to concentration camps.

SEE ALSO AKTION (OPERATION) REINHARD. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Calic, Edouard. Reinhard Heydrich: The Chilling Story of the Man Who Masterminded the Nazi Death Camps. New York: Morrow, 1985. Cowdery, Ray R. Reinhard Heydrich: Assassination. USM, 1994. MacDonald, C. A. The Killing of Reinhard Heydrich: The SS “Butcher of Prague.” New York: Da Capo Press, 1998.

Himmler, Heinrich (1900–1945)

Heinrich Himmler was Reich Leader (Reichsführer) of the S S , head of the G E S TA P O and the Waffen-SS, minister of the interior from 1943 to 1945, and, next to Adolf H I T L E R , the most powerful man in Nazi Germany. Himmler was born in Munich, Germany, into a middle-class Catholic family. His father was a schoolteacher with rigid views. Educated at a secondary school in Landshut, Himmler joined the army in 1917 as an officer cadet, but never served in active duty. After his discharge he studied agriculture and economics at the Munich School of Technology. He worked briefly as a salesman and as a chicken farmer in the 1920s. During this period he maintained close contact with the newly formed N A Z I PA R T Y . Himmler took part in the Hitler Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 at the side of Ernst Röhm. Himmler joined Röhm’s terrorist organization, the Reich War Flag (Reichskriegsflagge), and held various positions in the region of Bavaria. “Image

not available for copyright reasons”

Himmler became assistant propaganda leader of the Nazi party in 1926. He joined the SS in 1925, and became its head in 1929. The SS, which originally numbered 200 men who served as ’s personal security force, became a key element in the power structure of the Nazi state under Himmler’s leadership. Himmler was elected a Nazi Reichstag deputy in 1930, and immediately after the Nazi seizure of power in January 1933 was appointed police president in Munich and head of the political

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H is role in strategizing the executions of the Holocaust years makes Himmler one of the most horrific mass murderers in history.

police throughout Bavaria. This gave him the power base to extend SS membership, organize the SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service) under Reinhard H E Y D R I C H , and secure their independence from Röhm ’s Storm Troopers (Sturmabteilung; SA). In September 1933 Himmler was appointed commander of all the political police units throughout the Reich (except Prussia). The following year, Himmler was appointed deputy head of the Gestapo in Prussia. He was instrumental in crushing the abortive SA putsch of June 1934, which eliminated Röhm and the SA as potential rivals for power and opened the way to the growth of the SS as an independent force. The next stage in Himmler’s rise to power came in 1936, when he won control of the entire police force throughout the Third Reich, with the title of Reichsführer-SS and Head of the German Police. He created a state within a state, using his position to terrorize his personal enemies and all opponents of the regime. Himmler established the first C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P at D A C H AU in 1933. The organization and administration of the camps continued to be the work of the SS. Himmler was inspired by a combination of fanatic racism and a belief in occult forces. His concern for “racial purity” led to the encouragement of special marriage laws that would further the systematic birth of children of perfect “Aryan” couples, and also to the establishment of the Fountain of Life (Lebensborn) institutions at which girls, serving as prostitutes for SS men, were selected for their perfect Nordic qualities. Himmler aimed to create an aristocracy of the “master race,” based on his concepts of the virtues of honor, obedience, and courage. By recruiting “Aryans” of different nationalities into the Waffen-SS, he worked to establish a pan-European order of brotherhood, owing allegiance to Hitler alone. The war gave Himmler the opportunity to work toward his goal of the elimination of Jews and Slavs as “subhumans.” Himmler was a master of efficiency, utterly lacking in scruples, and an extremely competent administrator. He suffered, however, from psychosomatic illnesses that took the form of intestinal cramps and severe headaches. Himmler was squeamish, and on one occasion he almost fainted at the spectacle of a hundred Jews, including women, being shot to death on the Russian front. This physical weakness helped lead to the introduction of poison gas as “a more humane means” of execution. In October 1939 Himmler was appointed Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of German Nationhood, and was given absolute authority in the newly annexed part of P O L A N D . This entailed responsibility for the replacement of Poles and Jews by V O L K S D E U T S C H E (Ethnic Germans) from the Baltic states. By the time of the invasion of the S OV I E T U N I O N in 1941, Himmler controlled all the organs of police and intelligence power, and through the SS he dominated the concentration and E X T E R M I N AT I O N CA M P S in Poland. His Waffen-SS (the military branch of the SS), with its 35 divisions, was practically a rival army to the Wehrmacht—the regular German combined armed forces. He also controlled the political administration in the occupied territories. As minister of the interior in 1943, Himmler gained jurisdiction over the courts and the civil service. He used these powers to exploit Jews and Slavs as slave laborers, to gas millions of Jews, and to institute pseudoM E D I C A L E X P E R I M E N T S on Jews, Gypsies, and other “asocial elements” to determine their resistance to extremes of cold and decompression. The killing of the Jews represented for Himmler the fulfillment of a mission. The “ F I N A L S O L U T I O N ” was the means to achieve the racial supremacy of the “Aryan” and purify the world of contamination by subhumans. His four O P E R A T I O N A L S Q UA D S (Einsatzgruppen) in the east were the “agents of death” when the SS established the extermination camps of B E L⁄ Z˙ E C , S O B I B Ó R , and T R E B L I N K A in the spring of 1942. After the July 1944 bomb plot on Hitler’s life, Himmler received

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even further advancement, as commander in chief of the Reserve Army and commander of Army Group Vistula. Toward the end of the war, aware of the inevitable German defeat, Himmler made a number of gestures, apparently hoping to ingratiate himself with the Allies. He approved negotiations in Budapest that would have allowed the release of Hungarian Jews in return for trucks supplied by the Allies. In November 1944, he tried to conceal the evidence of mass murder in the extermination camps and permitted the transfer of several hundred camp prisoners to Sweden. He also tried to initiate peace negotiations with the Allies through the head of the Swedish Red Cross. Himmler ordered a stop to the mass murder of Jews at this time, and proposed that Germany surrender to U.S. general Dwight D. Eisenhower in western Europe while continuing the struggle in the east. This proposal infuriated Hitler, who stripped Himmler of all his offices. Even Admiral Karl Dönitz, who succeeded Hitler in the last days of the war as head of the German government, rejected Himmler’s services. After the German surrender, Himmler assumed a false identity and tried to escape, but he was captured by British troops. He committed suicide on May 23, 1945, before he could be brought to trial as one of the major war criminals.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Breitman, Richard. The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution. New York: Knopf, 1991.

Hitler’s Henchmen [videorecording]. Windsong/La Mancha, 1991. Padfield, Peter. Himmler: Reichsführer-SS. New York: Henry Holt, 1991. Russell, Stuart. Heinrich Himmler’s Camelot: Pictorial/Documentary. KressmannBackmeyer, 1999.

Hirsch, Otto (1885–1941)

Otto Hirsch was the chairman of the Reich Representation of German Jews, an organization formed in the early 1930s to help protect the interests of Jews living in G E R M A N Y during the rise of Nazi A N T I S E M I T I S M . Hirsch was born in Stuttgart, the capital of Württemberg, and studied law. He joined the civil service, first on the municipal and later on the provincial level. In 1919 Hirsch represented Württemberg at the Weimar National Assembly and the Paris Peace Conference. Active in Jewish affairs, he became one of the leaders of the C E N T R A L U N I O N O F G E R M A N C I T I Z E N S O F J E W I S H F A I T H (Centralverein Deutscher Staatsbürger Jüdischen Glaubens), and was among its members advocating that the Union promote Jewish settlement in Palestine. Hirsch was on the committee that helped establish the Jewish Agency, a Zionist organization; he also belonged to the Committee of Friends of the Hebrew University and the Provincial Council of Württemberg Jews, whose chairman he became in 1930. A meeting with Martin Buber aroused his interest in adult education, and on Hirsch’s initiative a Lehrhaus (Bet-Midrash, or Jewish house of study) was established in Stuttgart, with Buber as one of its lecturers. Hirsch headed the Lehrhaus board along with Jews representing a variety of political and religious perspectives.

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In 1933 Hirsch was among the founders of the Reich Representation of German Jews which, upon orders from the German authorities, became known in 1939 as the Reich Representation of Jews in Germany. As chairman, he played a major role in the organization’s activities, which included providing economic aid to Jews, offering vocational training and retraining, expanding the Jewish network of schools, and enabling Jewish emigration. He also helped establish and operate the Center for Jewish Adult Education, which was headed by Buber. Hirsch was a courageous leader of the Reich Representation of German Jews, deftly managing interaction with the German authorities. He guided the organization through internal problems, successfully mediating between opposing views and conflicting demands. Experienced in organization and budgeting, he was the liaison with Jewish aid organizations abroad, especially the British Council for German Jewry and the American J O I N T D I S T R I B U T I O N C O M M I T T E E , gaining their full confidence as a representative of German Jewry. In the summer of 1935 Hirsch was arrested for the first time, in connection with a sermon that the Reich Representation of German Jews had written to be read in all the synagogues of Germany on the Day of Atonement. Refusing to go into hiding at the time of the K R I S TA L L N A C H T (“Night of the Broken Glass”) pogroms in November 1938, Hirsch was arrested for a second time and held for two weeks in the S AC H S E N H AU S E N concentration camp. On resuming his work, he focused most of his efforts on emigration and rescue. His plan was to establish transit camps for refugees in Britain and other countries. He hoped that this would facilitate and speed up the release of the many thousands of Jews who had been arrested in Germany and accelerate rescue efforts. He held numerous meetings in Britain and the United States in 1938 and 1939 with representatives of aid organizations and government officials, and was the Reich Representation of German Jews delegate to the E V I A N C O N F E R E N C E . On February 16, 1941, Hirsch was again arrested, and a few months later was taken to the M AU T H AU S E N concentration camp, despite the fact that his wife had obtained an entry visa for him to the United States. He was tortured to death in the camp, and his family was later informed by the camp administration that he had died on June 19, 1941. After the war, memorials to Otto Hirsch were established in his native city of Stuttgart and in Shavei Zion, a settlement in northern Israel founded by Jews from Württemberg.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES “The Position of the German Jews, as Seen by Alfred Wiener, of the Leadership of the Centralverein.” Yad Vashem Online. [Online] http://www.yad-vashem.org.il/holocaust/ documents/16.html (accessed on August 23, 2000). “Reichsvereinigung.” Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance Online. [Online] http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/pages/t064/t06453.html (accessed on August 23, 2000).

Hitler, Adolf (1889–1945)

Adolf Hitler was the leader of the Third German Reich (Nazi Germany). Born in Braunau, A U S T R I A , he was the son of a customs official. Hitler spent his youth in the country of his birth. He dropped out of high school in 1905. Two years later,

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Adolf Hitler with a member of the Nazi Youth.

Hitler took the entrance test for the Vienna Academy of Art’s School of Painting, and failed. His mother died that year of breast cancer. In 1908 Hitler made Vienna his home, living on the small sums of money he could earn selling his sketches and doing odd jobs. A N T I S E M I T I S M was widespread in Vienna at the time. According to Hitler, this period of his life in Vienna shaped his views, and especially his concept of the Jews, though he may already have been an antisemite by then. In 1913 Hitler moved to Munich, Germany. When World War I broke out in 1914, he volunteered for the Bavarian army. He served as a message runner in B E L G I U M and F R A N C E and was promoted to private first class. Hitler was awarded medals for bravery, including the Iron Cross, First Class, in 1918. In October of the same year, he was temporarily blinded in a British gas attack, and in the military hospital he learned of Germany’s collapse. It was then and there, by his own admission, that Hitler decided to enter politics. He wanted to fight the Jews, whom he blamed for betraying Germany and ultimately bringing about its defeat. After his return to Munich, Hitler served as a political spokesman and agent for the Bavarian army. In his first political document, he stated that the final goal of

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W

hen Hitler left school at the age of sixteen, he spent

many untutored hours reading

German history and mythology, dreaming of becoming an artist, and nurturing what would become a lifelong disdain for formal higher education and intellectualism. A fruitless and bitter struggle to succeed as an artist in Vienna followed. During these years, he began to publicly articulate his anger and hatred toward Jews, Marxists, democracy, and other

antisemitism must be “the total removal of the Jews.” In 1919 he joined a small antisemitic political party that eventually took the name National Socialist Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or NSDAP; see N A Z I PA RT Y ). The party’s 1920 platform called for all the Jews of Germany to be deprived of their civil rights and for some of them to be expelled from the country. Hitler gained attention as a public speaker, and in 1921 became the party chairman. In November 1923 he led an attempt to bring down the government by force, for which he was sentenced in 1924 to five years’ imprisonment in a fortress. During his imprisonment in Landsberg, Hitler dictated the first volume of his book M E I N K A M P F (My Struggle). He was released after only nine months. In 1925 he reestablished the National Socialist party and created the SS (Schutzstaffel, or Protection Squad) to serve as the party’s fighting force. That same year, the first volume of Mein Kampf was published; the second one followed in 1926. Another book, written by Hitler in 1928, was published long after his death. Entitled Hitler’s Second Book, it explains the grounds for Hitler’s antisemitism, which was based on race theory (see R AC I S M ). Antisemitism was, Hitler pointed out, at the center of his political thought.

social and political targets. Remarkably, despite his generally unkempt appearance, people listened.

chancellor:

Prime minister.

Hitler’s Rise to Power Hitler aimed to use constitutional means to gain a majority in parliament. Then he intended to destroy the constitution. In 1928 the National Socialist party ran in the Reichstag (one of the houses of parliament) elections for the first time, receiving only 2.8 percent of the votes. In the Reichstag elections of July 1932, however, the National Socialist party received 37.3 percent, the highest it ever obtained in free elections. It became the largest political party represented in the Reichstag. On January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor which gave him sweeping powers. After a suspicious fire in the Reichstag on February 27, he suspended basic civil rights in Germany. On March 5, parliamentary rule was abolished. Antisemitic riots took place that month, culminating in the boycott of April 1, 1933 (see B OY C O T T , A N T I - J E W I S H ). A law was passed on April 7 eliminating Jews from public life in Germany. On July 14, all other political parties were dissolved, and the Nationalist Socialist Workers’ Party became the only recognized party in the land. A few weeks later, Hitler became commander in chief of the Wehrmacht (German army), and assumed the title of Leader and Reich Chancellor. He was now the dictator of Germany. Under his direction, the buildup of arms increased, as did the persecution of the Jews. The N U R E M B E R G L AW S were adopted on September 15, 1935, depriving Jews of their citizenship, barring them from some professions, and forbidding marriage between Jews and people with Germanic family backgrounds. Many other decrees issued by Hitler or in his name led to the exclusion of the Jews from German society. By the end of 1937 about 150,000 Jews had left Germany— approximately one-third of the country’s Jewish population. After the Germans took over Austria by force on March 13, 1938, nearly 200,000 Jews were added to the Reich; one quarter of them left the country within six months. In October, some 17,000 Jews of Polish nationality were expelled from Germany and sent to Poland. This was soon to be followed by the November K R I S TA L L N AC H T (“Night of the Broken Glass”) pogrom, several days of organized violence against Jews, their homes, and their businesses.

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Hitler’s Antisemitism Hitler thought of Jews as a source of danger to Germany and to humanity in general. He believed Jews played a key role in democracy, liberalism, and socialism—political ways of thinking that Hitler abhorred. Hitler felt that the Jewish spirit was influencing western European civilization. As early as the 1920s, in Mein Kampf, Hitler presented the Jews as the world’s foremost enemy: [The National Socialist movement] must open the eyes of the people concerning foreign nations and must over and over again recall who is the real enemy of our present world. In place of the insane hatred for Aryans …; it must condemn to general wrath the evil enemy of humanity as the true creator of all suffering.… It must see to it that, at least in our country, the most deadly enemy is recognized and that the struggle against him, like an illuminating sign of a brighter epoch, also shows to the other nations the road of salvation of a struggling Aryan humanity. On January 30, 1939, Hitler declared in the Reichstag that a new world war would lead to the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe. World War II officially began on September 1 of the same year, when the Germans invaded Poland. They immediately embarked upon the destruction of Jews in that country, although for a while this was done in a haphazard way. At about this time Hitler ordered the systematic killing of the mentally ill with toxic gas (see E U T H A NA S I A P R O G R A M ).

Eliminating the Jews In September 1939, Hitler approved of a plan to expel the Jews from Germany into the Polish territories that had been taken over by the Reich. He informed Alfred R O S E N B E R G that he wished to concentrate all the Jews from the territories under German rule in an area between the Vistula and Bug rivers. This area in central Poland, known as the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T , would be a kind of Jewish transit camp, from which Jews would be sent to other destinations. The systematic killing of Jews, which was known as the “F I N A L S O L U T I O N ,” began after the German invasion of the S OV I E T U N I O N on June 22, 1941. Hitler’s political strategy was to gain what he called “living space” (lebensraum) for the German people by acquiring new land and destroying the Jewish people. These two goals were the roots of his deadly legacy. The first massacres of Jews in the Soviet Union were carried out by the O P E R A (Einsatzgruppen) in June 1941; the killing was then extended to include the rest of the Jews in Europe. On April 2, 1945, Hitler boasted that he had “exterminated the Jews of Germany and central Europe.” His political testament of April 29, 1945, ended with a call for “merciless resistance to the universal poisoner of all nations—international Jewry.” The following day he committed suicide in Berlin.

T I O N A L S Q UA D S

Decision Making and Jewish Policy Under Hitler The Nazis believed in what they called the Leadership Principle; it involved the exercise of absolute authority from above and absolute obedience from below. The Nazis assumed that this sort of iron discipline and maximum efficiency would be an improvement over the more chaotic decision-making process that characterized the Weimar Republic. After 1933 many German institutions, including schools and universities, adopted the Leadership Principle to emphasize their allegiance to

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the new regime. Hitler was glorified by the principle because it made him the source of all wisdom and the universal giver of orders. Historians have discovered that the decision-making process of the Third Reich was considerably more chaotic than the Leadership Principle would suggest. Hitler’s work habits alone were too unsystematic to allow him to run a smoothly functioning decision-making apparatus. In addition, his interests were not broad enough for him to perform the role of a universal giver of orders. He concentrated his attention most consistently and effectively in matters of foreign policy, rearmament, war, and the architectural reconstruction of Berlin. Hitler’s work habits were erratic. He was at times capable of working for weeks at a pace that left his aides exhausted, but these bouts of frenzied activity would be followed by weeks of lethargy. During these periods of lethargy, aides had difficulty getting him to perform even the most routine chores. Hitler was not good at delegating responsibility. If he did not want to supervise a policy area himself, he usually did not assign the responsibility to a subordinate, either. The result was often a competitive struggle among ambitious subordinates who were eager to demonstrate their competence to Hitler and rise to the top ranks of the Nazi leadership. The most successful in this fight for survival, such as Hermann Göring and Heinrich H I M M L E R , wound up in charge of vast empires. Those who were less able or less ambitious, like Alfred Rosenberg or Wilhelm Frick, had to be satisfied with a less prestigious rung on the Nazi ladder. Hitler’s strong, charismatic personality enabled him to maintain his authority over his subordinates. Although he rarely did so, Hitler could at any time intervene in any of the innumerable disputes between these ambitious underlings. He sometime did so with brutal swiftness. This was learned the hard way by Ernst Röhm and the Storm Troopers (Nazi military) leadership: on the night of June 30, 1934, Röhm and others were murdered on Hitler’s orders. Controversies about the Nazi decision-making process and Hitler’s role in it have been widespread among scholars of the Holocaust. Some believe that the rivalries among Hitler’s subordinates actually made the Nazis’ policies against the Jews more extreme, propelling them from the A N T I -J E W I S H L E G I S L AT I O N of 1933 to the N U R E M B E R G L AW S of 1935, the A R YA N I Z AT I O N of Jewish-owned properties, the D E P O R TAT I O N S of 1938 and 1939, and the “Final Solution.” These scholars see Hitler primarily as the figure of authority who heartily approved of this process of persecution—a process in which he only occasionally played a directing role. According to this line of thinking, many of the Nazis’ actions against the Jews were not part of a well-thought-out plan, but rather the result of rivals striving to out-do one another in currying favor from their leader. Other scholars suggest that Nazi Jewish policy was from its beginning the product of long-term Nazi intentions. They point to statements made by Hitler from the 1920s about his intention to solve “the Jewish problem” by physical annihilation. In their view, Hitler and his underlings hid their murderous intentions until time and circumstances in 1941 were ripe for the “Final Solution” to be implemented. It is clear to scholars on both sides of this debate that Hitler paid less attention to the details of Jewish policy than he did to foreign policy, rearmament, or war. It is interesting to study his role at several critical turning points in the making of Jewish policy: The notorious Nuremberg Laws of September 1935 and the infamous Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938 came about by accident, rather than as a result of long-range planning. In the case of the Nuremberg Laws, the racist idea that people of Germanic background and Jews should no longer be allowed to marry

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was long part of Nazi ideology. Hitler made a sudden decision at the Nazi party rally in Nuremberg in 1935 to present a law forbidding such marriages. The officials called upon to draft the legislation were caught off guard, and had to improvise. The circumstances leading to the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938 demonstrate a similar inclination on Hitler’s part to act impulsively. On November 7 a Jewish youth, upset over the deportation of his parents from Germany, shot and killed a German diplomat in Paris. This inspired Propaganda Minister Joseph G O E B B E L S , who was eager to gain additional influence in Jewish policy, to make a proposal to Hitler: He suggested that the Storm Troopers be set free all across Germany as an act of vengeance against the “Jewish crime in Paris.” The result was a brutal night of murder, rioting, and looting. Decrees issued two days later confiscated one-fifth of the property of every German Jewish family. The Nazis announced those decrees as punishment, but in fact they had been ready for some time beforehand. Nevertheless, their sudden implementation was the result of Hitler’s impulse. In this way, a significantly new stage in Nazi Jewish policy was inaugurated. With this information in mind, it may be possible to understand more fully the implementation of the “Final Solution” in 1941. No one has found a document with Hitler’s signature calling for the mass murder of Jews. Some scholars think this is simply the result of the chaotic way in which the Nazi system functioned. The order could have been delivered orally. And perhaps by 1941, the system no longer required an order from Hitler to set the machinery of murder in action. Another possibility is that Hitler and the Nazi leaders deliberately tried to keep the order secret, either by delivering it orally or marking it “Destroy after reading.” Alternatively, such a document might have been destroyed by an act or accident of war. There is no debate among scholars, however, about Hitler’s responsibility for the decision to implement the “Final Solution,” even if its execution was carried out largely by the elaborate SS machinery under the command of Himmler.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Hitler [videorecording]. History Channel/A&E Home Video, 1996. Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. Reprint, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. Rosenbaum, Ron. Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil. New York: Random House, 1998. Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960. Reprint, 1990. Spielvogel, Jackson J. Hitler and Nazi Germany: A History. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1988. Reprint, 1996. Thomsett, Michael C. The German Opposition to Hitler: The Resistance, the Underground, and Assassination Plots, 1938–1945. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997.

Triumph des Willens [Triumph of the Will] [videorecording]. Connoisseur Video Collection, 1992.

Hitler Youth Hitlerjugend, or The Hitler Youth (HJ), was the National Socialists’ organization for children and young adults. The HJ had its origins in the Jungsturm Adolf Hitler (Adolf H I T L E R Boys’ Storm Troop), an offshoot of the SA (Sturmabteilung; Storm Troopers) that was founded in 1922 and changed its name to Hitlerjugend in

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Hitler Youth identification card.

1926. Originally a movement for boys only, it began to admit girls in 1928 in a separate organization. In 1930, this organization became known as the Bund Deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls; BDM). In 1931, Baldur von Schirach was appointed Reich Youth Leader (Reichsjugendführer) of the Nazi movement. Schirach’s immediate goal was to bring the different youth organizations in the party under a single authority. In addition to the BDM, these organizations included the League of Nazi Students and the German Young Folk (Deutscher Jungvolk), which inducted youngsters at the age of ten. Schirach achieved his goal when he was appointed Jugendführer des Deutschen Reiches (Youth Leader of the German Reich) in June 1933. By 1935, the HJ was a huge organization, comprising 60 percent of the country’s youth. Like the Deutscher Jungvolk, the HJ admitted children at the age of ten. Its membership was organized into two age brackets, from ten to fourteen and from fourteen to eighteen. The organizational chart devised by Schirach followed the military pattern, involving squads, platoons, and companies. The companies were within territorial formations based on districts that corresponded with the N A Z I PA R T Y ’s geographic divisions. They were all subject to the authority of the Reich Youth Leadership.

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The HJ and its organizational form were expressions of Hitler’s ideology, in which children represented the reserve manpower that would ensure the continued existence of the “Thousand-Year Reich.” Nazi educational doctrine was based on Hitler’s anti-intellectualism and on a preference for body building at the expense of the mental and intellectual development of the individual. One of the guiding principles of Nazi education was to keep young people in constant action and to constantly spur them to activism. This was the system to which a boy was subjected from the moment he entered the HJ until he became a soldier or an SS man. He was equipped not only with a uniform, but with a bayonet as well. When boys reached 19, they were drafted into the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labor Service), which stressed physical work and iron discipline. Thousands of these youngsters were put to work on the land. As soon as they had completed the compulsory term in the Labor Service, the young men enlisted in the armed forces. This process enabled the Nazi party to control and supervise German youth from the ages of ten to twenty-one. The objectives of the girls’ organization, the BDM, were based on becoming the Nazi ideal woman. The values girls were to learn included obedience, performance of duty, self-sacrifice, discipline, and physical self-control. Two-thirds of the time that girls spent in the BDM was taken up with sports and one-third with ideology. German girls were taught that their primary role in life was to become mothers of genetically healthy Aryan children, whom they would educate, in turn, in the spirit of National Socialism. The BDM members were indoctrinated with “racial pride” and with the consciousness of being pure “German women” who would shun any contact with Jews. During the war, the BDM became increasingly involved in the war effort, at the expense of ideological training. In the HJ, political and ideological indoctrination played a much larger role than in the BDM. The activities in which the HJ members were engaged overshadowed the formal education that they were receiving and estranged them from their families; quite often the youngsters became their family’s Nazi propagandists—not to mention their ideological supervisors. The propaganda used for the implanting of Nazi ideas also drew on the mass media, and sophisticated methods were employed to gain the support of German youth for the HJ ideals. The film Hitlerjunge Quex (Hitler Youth Quex) is a typical example of the Nazi style of brainwashing. Produced in 1933, the film tells the life story of a boy who is strongly influenced by Nazi ideas. Many of the young men who were converted to Nazi ideology during their membership in the HJ absorbed the poison of hatred through their training and activities. When they grew up, they became agents of the “Final Solution”—murderers by conviction.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Dvorson, Alexa. The Hitler Youth: Marching Toward Madness. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 1999.

Heil Hitler! Confessions of a Hitler Youth [videorecording]. Ambrose Video Publishing, 1991. Heyes, Eileen. Children of the Swastika: The Hitler Youth. Brookfield, CT: Millbrook Press, 1993. Keeley, Jennifer. Life in the Hitler Youth. San Diego: Lucent Books, 2000. Rempel, Gerhard. Hitler’s Children: The Hitler Youth and the SS. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

HITLERJUGEND. SEE HITLER YOUTH. 99

HOLLAND

HOLLAND. SEE NETHERLANDS, THE. Holocaust The word “holocaust” is derived from the Greek holokauston, which originally meant a sacrifice, or offering to God, which was totally burned by fire. Over time, the word was used to describe the killing of masses of human beings in great numbers. By the 1950s, the term “holocaust” was used primarily to refer to the Nazis’ destruction of the Jews of Europe and of other groups of people during World War II. The Hebrew term sho’ah and the word “holocaust” have become linked to the attempt by the Nazi German state to destroy European Jewry during World War II. The use of the Hebrew word sho’ah to denote the destruction of Jews in Europe during the war first appeared in the booklet “The Holocaust of the Jews of Poland,” published in Jerusalem in 1940 by the United Aid Committee for the Jews of P O L A N D . The booklet contains reports and articles on the persecution of Jews in Eastern Europe since the beginning of the war, as reported by eyewitnesses. Some of these witnesses were leaders of Polish Jewry. Up to the spring of 1942 the term sho’ah was rarely used. The Hebrew term that was first used to describe the persecution and murder of Jews was hurban, which is similar in meaning to the word “catastrophe.” It has a historical meaning for Jews because the word was used in reference to the destruction of the Temple. Leaders of the Zionist movement, who supported the establishment of a Jewish state in Israel, and intellectuals in Palestine began using the word sho’ah in reference to the destruction of European Jewry. One of the first to give the term a historical perspective was Jerusalem historian Ben Zion Dinur (Dinaburg). In the spring of 1942, he stated that the Holocaust was a “catastrophe” that symbolized the unique situation of the Jewish people among the nations of the world.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Adler, David A. We Remember the Holocaust. New York: Henry Holt, 1989. Gilbert, Martin. Never Again: A History of the Holocaust. PresUniverse, 2000. Gutman, Israel, ed. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. New York: Macmillan, 1995.

The Last Days [videorecording]. PolyGram Video, 1998. Shoah [videorecording]. New Yorker Video, 1999. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. [Online] http://www.ushmm.org/ (accessed on August 23, 2000).

Holocaust, Denial of the The phrase “denial of the H O L O C AU S T ” refers to efforts to deny or misrepresent the events that came to be known as the Holocaust. Attempts to deny the Holocaust began even before World War II (1939–45) ended. Since then, denials have been spread systematically, and in various ways, in many countries. The phenomenon includes:

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1. denials of the fact that the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis ever took place; 2. statements that Jewish losses have been grossly exaggerated; 3. denials that the Holocaust was the result of deliberate policies of Adolf H I T L E R and his N A Z I PA RT Y ; and 4. the trivializing claim that the Holocaust was not unique and that there had been earlier such events, even precedents that had served as models for the Holocaust.

Who are the deniers and revisionists? What kind of people are they, and why do they do this?

The phrase “denial of the Holocaust” also refers to the suppression of facts and the destruction of pieces of evidence documenting the mass murder.

Methods of Denial People who deny the Holocaust use various methods to persuade others to their points of view. The most extreme among the deniers claim that the German authorities never planned to murder the Jews of Europe. They even say that no E X T E R M I NA T I O N C A M P S were built and operated. They argue that there is no truth to the charges that a murder apparatus designed and run by the Nazis slaughtered up to six million Jews by deliberate, sophisticated methods. Other deniers do not totally deny the facts, but they deny that the murder was as thorough and as extensive as it actually was. Also included among those who seek to deny the whole truth of the Holocaust are those who may be called “revisionists.” Revisionists—among them genuine scholars and historians—do not reject proven facts. But they do try to reduce the degree of responsibility held by the top Nazi levels and Hitler himself. They describe the Holocaust as an event that was essentially no different from earlier mass slaughters, such as those perpetrated by Joseph Stalin in the S OV I E T U N I O N . Another form of denial is the “partial denial.” It is more sophisticated than extreme denial methods. As a result, partial denial can be viewed as more dangerous. Partial deniers try to weaken the power of historical facts by casting doubt on the numerical data, the credibility of documents and witnesses, and so forth. Those who adopt this approach also aim at total denial of the Holocaust. But they think that it is easier to reach this goal by questioning the reliability of various details in the total historical picture. This method poses as a revisionist approach that examines each event on its own merits. “Partial revisionists” include some people who regard the total denial as ineffective and damaging. Other partial revisionists believe that the propaganda material circulated by the most radical deniers addresses itself to the most uneducated audience, as well as members who hold extremely conservative political viewpoints. These partial revisionists also think, though, that articles posing as respectable theoretical discussions will reach an intelligent audience interested in studying the subject. One of the most widespread tactics of revisionists is to question the legitimacy of the Nuremberg Trial (see T R I A L S O F T H E WA R C R I M I NA L S ). That war-crimes trial is attacked from various legal angles, including by critics who do not question the facts of the Holocaust. One major approach relates to the Soviet participation in the trial and the ban on trying crimes committed by the Soviets. This argument was raised by many critics of the International Military Tribunal. Revisionists use it to cast doubt on the reliability of the many documents that served the prosecution as the basis for its case. In truth, however, the documents collected for the trial, along with the actual proceedings of the trial, are among the best-known, most widely circulated, and most reliable collection of primary source information.

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Revisionists also question the number of victims. Revisionists try to downplay the real number of victims and to sow doubt and confusion on this issue. They quote misleading pre-war population figures, or even invent statistics, to argue that the millions of Jews who were murdered did not even exist. Revisionists have also proposed a variety of theories concerning the present whereabouts of European Jews from the Nazi era. Another target for revisionists is the enormous wealth of material examining and documenting the Holocaust years and the Nazi crimes. Nazi individual and party activities were recorded down to the last detail. Documents include official Nazi papers and thousands of diaries, testimonies, and memoirs. Very few events of historical dimensions have left behind such an enormous mass of documentation. The Nazis habitually put everything on paper, whatever the subject, even on the most confidential matters. And while part of the documentation was destroyed in the last stages of the war, large quantities fell into the hands of the victorious powers. Contrary to the usual practice with official records, this material was not subjected to a long freeze before its release to the general public, and it has been readily available for research and publication. Among the most revealing documents are those from the war itself—the office diary kept by Hans F R A N K , the head of the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T ; a book written by Hitler in 1928 and shelved (Hitler’s Second Book); the diaries of Joseph G O E B B E L S ; the speeches of Heinrich H I M M L E R , and his recently published desk calendar; and the minutes of the W A N N S E E C O N F E R E N C E on the implementation of the “F I N A L S O L U T I O N .” Among the important sources of information from after the war are the statements made by the many thousands of Nazi criminals in their interrogations and during their court trials. Also very revealing were the autobiography and other notes of Rudolf H Ö S S , the commandant of A U S C H W I T Z . Revisionists can not explain away or reject this huge accumulation of documents. They argue that diaries and testimonies of Jews are not believable, because Jews are an interested party. Thus, revisionists dismiss whatever Jews said or wrote down as one big lie. They also reject testimonies given by non-Jews, and documents forwarded from the German-occupied countries during the war (especially from P O L A N D ), that provide a record of events. These, they say, are biased and written under pressure from Jews. Revisionists take advantage of any contradiction or distortion in the documentation. Thus, when some witnesses let their imagination run free and incorrectly claim that the D AC H AU concentration camp had working gas chambers (see G A S C H A M B E R S / VA N S ), revisionists pounce on this discrepancy to say that if some details in the evidence given by witnesses are incorrect, then the whole story of the Holocaust must be nothing but a pack of lies. Generally, though, revisionists realize that such wholesale denials on their part weaken their case, and so they concentrate on seeking to discredit particular aspects. For example, one revisionist argued that it was impossible to use Z Y K L O N B gas regularly in one place, as was the case in Auschwitz, and that therefore the story of the use of gas in Auschwitz is not true. Another revisionist tried to prove that it is impossible to cremate human bodies at the rate that this was done in the extermination camps. He based his conclusion on a comparison with the time it takes to cremate bodies in ordinary crematoria operating under normal conditions.

Motives of Deniers and “Revisionists” Who are the deniers and revisionists? What kind of people are they, and why do they do this? Another question is, do they know the truth, yet deliberately fabri-

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cate a web of lies? A careful analysis of their writings indicates that prominent revisionists know the truth. Their arguments carefully avoid the obvious weak points that could reveal them as liars. How they build their arguments shows that they are aware of the truth, but are trying to distort and suppress it. Altogether, only a few dozen people are involved in preparing denial material. They write books and articles, hold conferences, and quote one another to create the impression that they represent a legitimate historical school. They have an international organization of sorts coordinating their activities. The organization distributes books and pamphlets from country to country and from continent to continent, and operates groups in different countries. The organization also establishes channels to reach various sectors of the population. One of the revisionists’ major problems is winning serious academic status for their arguments and their publications. They need this recognition in order to gain entry to universities and colleges and capture the attention of students and educators. A revisionist center in California specializes in these efforts. It conducts international conferences of revisionists and seeks to have them invited to prestigious universities. It publishes a journal using the style and format of authentic scholarly journals. Other major centers of revisionist activities are in Sweden, G E R M A N Y , F R A N C E , England, Argentina, and Australia.

Attempts to deny the Holocaust have had the unintended effect of arousing interest in the subject and a desire to learn more about the facts of the Holocaust.

Revisionists’ motivations are varied. Some are Nazi activists who are using the denial of the Holocaust to repair the Nazi image. Some have joined because of their bitter hatred of communism and Communists—a hatred so extreme it forces them to adopt an apologetic position on Nazism. The A N T I S E M I T I S M of some of the revisionists is so extreme that they will use any means to attack Jews. Most belong to neo-Nazi and neo-fascist movements. These movements have received little respect, largely because of the revelation of the horrors of the Holocaust. It is not surprising, then, that the present-day fascists and their sympathizers seek to hide or erase the truth about the Holocaust, which blocks their quest for power. The arguments of revisionists have, however, received attention and acquired influence. In some quarters they may have an impact among young people who learn nothing about the Holocaust. It is natural that people who are hearing about the Holocaust for the first time refuse to believe that such horrible events could have occurred. Those who seek to deny that such events did take place, or to discredit them in one way or another, find a ready audience in these people. At some educational institutions, revisionist ideas have been given strength by holding them forth as counter-arguments to accepted historical facts concerning the Holocaust. Revisionists also claim the right to be given access to the media. When no notice is taken of them, they complain that the principles of democracy and freedom of speech are being violated and that they are the victims of a conspiracy. In some cases, when revisionists used provocative means to promote their ideas, their attempts failed. In California, for example, they announced in 1980 and 1981 that they would give a prize to any person who could prove that murder by gassing was committed at Auschwitz. Revisionists were brought to court and sharply criticized for their action. Some countries have outlawed the revisionists’ publications. Revisionists have also been put on trial in some places. In most cases, the judgment has gone against them. But there have also been instances when judicial authorities refused to take a clear stand on such issues as the murder methods used in the Holocaust or the dimensions of the Holocaust, on the grounds that these are historical matters that a court of law is not competent to judge. Attempts to deny the Holocaust have also led to vigorous counter-action. The denial attempts have had the unintended effect of arousing interest in the subject and a

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desire to learn more about the Holocaust. They have spread awareness of the Holocaust and of the need to protect humanity from the scourge of RACISM and GENOCIDE .

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Butz, Arthur R. The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. Torrance, CA: Institute for Historical Review, 1976. Reprint, 1992. “The Leuchter Report: Holocaust Denial and The Big Lie.” The Nizkor Project. [Online] http://www.nizkor.org/faqs/leuchter/ (accessed on August 23, 2000). Lipstadt, Deborah E. Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. New York: Macmillan, 1993. Shermer, Michael. Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? Los Angeles: Martyrs Memorial and Museum of the Holocaust, 1996. Reprint, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Stern, Kenneth S. Holocaust Denial. New York: American Jewish Committee, 1993.

HOLOCAUST LITERATURE. SEE LITERATURE ON THE HOLOCAUST. HOLOCAUST MARTYRS’ AND HEROES’ REMEMBRANCE AUTHORITY. SEE YAD VASHEM. HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS.

SEE SURVIVORS, PSYCHOLOGY

OF;

UNITED STATES ARMY AND SURVIVORS IN GERMANY AND AUSTRIA.

Homosexuality in the Third Reich In 1871, when the Prussian-dominated German Empire was established, there was a law that classified homosexuality as “an unnatural form of licentiousness,” which could mean a prison term for persons caught in such an act. Under the democratic Weimar Republic in G E R M A N Y (1919–33), the issue became a subject of free public discussion, and the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee was established for the defense of homosexuals. Even in that period the N A Z I P A R T Y denounced homosexuality in no uncertain terms, declaring it a deviation from normal sexual behavior that placed the main emphasis on the sensual, pleasurable element of sex life to the detriment of the natural increase in population, the nation’s strength, and a proper family life. Sexual relations, according to the Nazi view, “serve the reproductive process, their purpose being the preservation and continued existence of the Volk [the pure German race, society and culture], rather than the provision of pleasure to the individual.” Homosexuality, in males and females, was not only an egotistic form of sex life; it also harmed the strength of the Volk, and was therefore incompatible with the ideal of racial purity. In March 1933 the Nazi party launched a wave of “protective custody” (Schutzhaft) arrests of hostile political elements and opponents of the Party; this included persons who were known for their activities on behalf of homosexuals. In 1935, the penal code against homosexuality was made even more stringent than it had been under the previous government; now even the friendship between males that was based on homosexuality, and not just the homosexual act itself, was made an offense. In August 1936 arrests were made in several large cities, in places where homosexuals

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were known to congregate. The attitude toward homosexuals was that they were asocial elements who should be put in prison. Persons who were found to be “recidivist” (repeat) and “chronic” homosexuals were incarcerated in CONCENTRATION CAMPS . The Nazi position on homosexuality, however, was inconsistent. Officially, homosexuality was sharply denounced, but its practice in certain Nazi circles was tolerated or ignored. This was the case with Ernst R Ö H M , chief of the S A (Sturmabteilung; Storm Troopers) and a Hitler confidant, who was a known homosexual, as were several of his aides in the SA command. Political opponents took the Nazis to task over Röhm’s homosexuality, but Hitler chose to ignore his close aide’s sexual preference. It was only after the “Night of the Long Knives” (June 30–July 1, 1934), when Röhm and a group of his SA cohorts were murdered by Nazi Party operatives following a political confrontation within the Nazi leadership, that Röhm’s homosexuality was mentioned as one of the reasons for his murder. The charge of homosexuality was also used to get rid of prominent figures who were no longer regarded as desirable. In 1938, the chief of the general staff, Gen. Werner Freiherr von Fritsch, was dismissed from his post because he disagreed with Hitler’s political and military plans. The official reason given, however, was that he had been discovered to be a homosexual—a libel invented by the G E S TA P O . Under Nazi rule, tens of thousands of persons were punished on the charge of homosexuality. Thousands of them (some sources put the figure at 10,000 or more, but no precise figure is available) were imprisoned in concentration camps, where they were forced to wear pink triangular patches (rosa Winkel). Many of the homosexuals imprisoned in the camps perished there. Shortly before the end of the war, some of them were set free and drafted into frontline service with the Wehrmacht (combined German armed forces). This step, of course, violated the Nazi principle on the issue. Persecution of homosexuals was restricted to the Reich and the areas annexed to it. There is no evidence of Nazi-instigated drives against homosexuality in the occupied countries.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Beck, Gad. An Underground Life: The Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999. Friedman, Ina R. The Other Victims: First-person Stories of Non-Jews Persecuted by the Nazis. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Grau, Gunter, ed. The Hidden Holocaust: Gay and Lesbian Persecution in Germany 1933–45. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997. Heger, H. The Men with the Pink Triangle. Boston: Alyson Publications, 1980. Reprint, 1994.

The Pink Triangles: The Persecution of Gays During World War II [videorecording]. Facing History and Ourselves, 1989. Plant, Richard. The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War against Homosexuals. New York: Henry Holt, 1986. Rector, F. The Nazi Extermination of Homosexuals. New York, 1981.

Horthy, Miklós (1868–1957)

Miklós Horthy was regentregent: Head of state of H U N G A R Y from 1920 to 1944. In general, Horthy’s rule was generally characterized by official and semiof-

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ficial A N T I S E M I T I S M . Between 1938 and 1941, Horthy authorized increasingly harsh and comprehensive anti-Jewish laws. Nevertheless, in 1942 and 1943, while facing Adolf H I T L E R ’s challenge, he rejected German pressure to impose even harsher measures in Hungary, such as the excluding Jews from all economic activities, forcing Jews to wear the Jewish star (see B A D G E , J E W I S H ), concentrating Jews in ghettos, and deporting all Jews to C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S and E X T E R M I N A T I O N CA M P S . After the German occupation of Hungary (March 19, 1944), Horthy nominated a government totally subservient to the Nazis, giving it unlimited authority for all anti-Jewish measures. Some 500,000 Jews never returned from the deportations that followed.

Miklós Horthy.

On July 7, however, Horthy ordered the deportations stopped, and one week later, on July 14, 1944, he proposed that several categories of Jews in Hungary be allowed to emigrate, primarily to Palestine. The public offer was made soon after Horthy halted the deportations of Jews from Hungary early that month under pressure from the Allies. The Swedes and the Americans in particular had appealed to Horthy to ameliorate the suffering of the remaining Hungarian Jews—in effect, the Jews of B U DA P E S T . Three weeks later, the Germans allowed the Hungarians to inform the western Allies and neutral nations of the offer. According to the plan, 1,000 children, as well as 8,243 holders of immigration certificates to Palestine and their families, would be allowed to leave Hungary for Palestine. Four days later Imre Tahy, the Hungarian official in Bern, informed Carl Burckhardt of the International Red Cross about the offer. He added two important clauses: Jews who had parents in Sweden or who maintained business relations with Sweden could go either to Palestine or to Sweden; and the Germans had agreed to the offer. In truth, however, the Germans were not at all willing to allow substantial emigration from Hungary. The British, the Americans, and the Jewish Agency took the offer at face value, and the Jewish Agency urged the western Allies to accept it. Throughout the summer and fall, the United States sought to convince neutral governments in Europe and Latin America to provide a haven for any Jews who might succeed in leaving Hungary. As a result, Schutzpasse (safe-conduct passes issued by the neutral governments), some of which had already surfaced in Budapest, were issued by representatives of neutral governments to tens of thousands of Jews who were considered potential citizens of a number of neutral and Western countries, including Palestine. No Jews, however, were actually allowed to leave Hungary during the summer and early fall through the so-called Horthy Offer, because of German opposition. On October 15, Horthy was deposed by the Germans and replaced as head of state by Ferenc Szálasi, the leader of the brutal fascist A R R O W C R O S S P A R T Y . With Horthy’s ousting, his plan for saving Hungarian Jews had no chance of succeeding.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Fenyo, Mario D. Hitler, Horthy, and Hungary; German-Hungarian Relations, 1941–1944. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1972. Horthy, Miklós. Memoirs. New York: Robert Speller, 1957 Reprint, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978. Sakmyster, Thomas L. Hungary’s Admiral on Horseback: Miklós Horthy, 1918–1944. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

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Höss, Rudolf (1900–1947)

Rudolf Höss, born in Baden-Baden, G E R M A N Y , was the camp commandant of A U S C H W I T Z . When World War I broke out Höss volunteered for service, even though he was under age. On his return to Germany after the war he joined military organizations known as Freikorps in East Prussia and the Baltic states. He later participated in terrorist actions against the French occupation forces in the Ruhr (a region of Germany) and against the Poles in the 1921 struggle for Silesia. In November 1922, Höss joined the N A Z I PA R T Y while attending a reunion of members of the Rossbach Freikorps in Munich. In June 1923 he was arrested in the Ruhr district for participating, with a Freikorps underground group, in the murder of a German teacher who had collaborated with the French. Although he was sentenced to a ten-year prison term, Höss was pardoned by 1928. As soon as he was released he joined the Artamanen Society, a nationalist group that advocated work on the land and settlement of Polish territory in the east. Höss and his wife, Hedwig, were also members of Artamanen, and worked at recruiting members for militant Nazi organizations, mainly the SS.

Rudolph Höss after the conclusion of World War II.

In 1933, on instructions from the Nazi party and local estate owners, Höss formed an SS cavalry unit. In June 1934 he joined the SS for active service, at the suggestion of Heinrich H I M M L E R , who was one of the leaders of the Artamanen Society. From December 1934 until May 1938 Höss held various positions in the administration of the D A C H AU concentration camp. There he trained under Theodor E I C K E , the first commandant of the camp. Then in May 1940 Höss was posted to Auschwitz, appointed Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel), and became the actual founder of the camp and its first organizer and commandant. In the summer of 1941, Höss began preparing the camp for the extermination of masses of human beings. As of January 1942 he led the killing operations at AuschwitzBirkenau. A report about the Auschwitz exterminations, written by Höss while under investigation after the war in a K R A K Ó W jail, opens with the following words: In the summer of 1941—I cannot state the precise date—I was summoned by the adjutant’s office to Berlin, to report to Reichsführer-SS [Chief of the SS] Himmler. Without his aide-de-camp present—contrary to his usual practice—Himmler said to me: “The Führer has ordered the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question.’ We, the SS, are charged with the execution of this task. I have chosen the Auschwitz camp for this purpose, because of its convenient location as regards transportation and because in that area it is easy to isolate and camouflage the camp. I first thought to appoint one of the senior SS officers to this task, but then I changed my mind because of the problems of the division of authority that such an appointment would run into. I am herewith charging you with this task. This is a strenuous and difficult assignment that calls for total dedication, regardless of the difficulties that will arise. Further practical details will be conveyed to you by Sturmbannführer [Major] Adolf E I C H M A N N of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt [Reich Security Main Office], who will soon get in touch with you. The offices concerned will hear from him at the appropriate time. You must keep this order absolutely secret, even from your own superiors. After your talk with Eichmann let me know what arrangements you propose to be made.”

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On December 1, 1943, Höss was appointed chief of Section 1D of the SS E C O M A I N O F F I C E (WVHA—Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt). In late June of 1944 he was sent back to Auschwitz, on a temporary assignment, to preside over the murder of the Jews of H U N G A R Y . In what was called Aktion (Operation) Höss, 430,000 Jews were brought to Auschwitz in 56 days, to be annihilated there. In recognition of his “outstanding service” in the C O N C E N T R A T I O N CA M P S , Höss was awarded war crosses classes I and II, with swords. After the fall of the Reich, Höss assumed the name Franz Lang. He was released from a prisoner-of-war collection point and put to work in agriculture. N O M I C - A D M I N I S T R AT I V E

In March 1946 Höss was recognized, arrested, and handed over to the Polish authorities, in keeping with the agreement on the Extradition of War Criminals. He was taken to W A R S AW and from there to Kraków, where his case was investigated. In the Kraków jail where he was held in 1946 and 1947, Höss wrote an autobiography. He also wrote a series of notes about the SS commanders in the concentration camp and those who were in charge of putting the “F I NA L S O L U T I O N ” into effect, including a profile of Eichmann. The supreme court in Warsaw sentenced Höss to death, and he was hanged in Auschwitz on April 16, 1947.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Browning, Christopher R. Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Höss, Rudolf. Commandant of Auschwitz: The Autobiography of Rudolf Höss. Cleveland: World Publishing, 1960. Reprint, London: Phoenix Press, 2000. Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity. New York: Summit Books, 1986. Reprint, New York: Collier Books, 1993.

Hungarian Labor Service System After the adoption of the major anti-Jewish laws in H U N G A R Y in 1938 and 1939, the Jews of military age (20 to 48) were classified as “unreliable” and therefore labeled unfit to bear arms. Instead, Hungarian Jews were drafted into special labor service units under the Hungarian Labor Service System (Munkaszolgálat). They were organized into military formations under the command of Hungarian army officers and, instead of guns, were supplied with shovels and pickaxes. These units were employed primarily in construction, mining, and fortification work for the military in Hungary proper as well as in Serbia, the Hungarian-occupied parts of Eastern Galicia, and the U K R A I N E . Along the front lines, they were used for constructing trenches and tank traps, maintaining roads, and clearing minefields. In addition to providing labor support for military operations, the drafted laborers worked in industries supporting the war effort. As of the summer of 1940, Hungarian Jewish labor servicemen worked at companies including the Manfred Weiss Ammunition Works in Csepel, the Polgari Brewery of Kobanya, the Air Defense Works in B U DA P E S T , the Parquet and Furniture Plant in Budapest, and the Hungarian Car and Machine Works in Gyo˛r. Beginning in June 1943, Hungarian Jewish forced laborers were sent to work in the copper mines at Bor in Serbia; 6,000 Jews, Seventh-Day Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses were forced to work there until September 1944. Some of the laborers were brought back to Mohács in October of that year. At Crevenka, during their journey back from the copper mines, the SS lined up more than 700 of the drafted laborers and shot them.

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Jewish conscripts in Hungarian Labor Service System Brigade 108/56 (September 1941).

The legal basis for the labor service system was provided by Hungary’s Law No. 2 of March 11, 1939, which dealt with general national defense and security issues. On the surface, the legal provisions were not necessarily discriminatory. Originally persons conscripted into labor service were to receive the same pay, clothing, and rations as those in the armed forces. However, after the outbreak of World War II, and especially after Hungary declared war on the S OV I E T U N I O N on June 27, 1941, the condition of the Jewish labor servicemen deteriorated. Many of the non-Jewish officers and guards attached to the Jewish labor companies became increasingly antisemitic, and the treatment of the Jewish servicemen became more blatantly violent. Jewish laborers were gradually deprived of their uniforms and army boots, and were compelled to wear discriminatory badges—yellow armbands for Jews and white armbands for converts—that made them easy targets for abuse. The severity of the treatment varied from unit to unit and from place to place, depending on the attitude of the officers and guards in charge. The situation was particularly tragic in many of the frontline units, especially in the Ukraine. There, far from the scrutiny of the central governmental and military authorities, many officers and guards (often joined by German military and SS elements) were abusive toward the labor servicemen under their authority. They mistreated them, withheld or stole their already meager rations, gave them inadequate housing, and forced them to remain for long periods without any kind of shelter.

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Many of the labor servicemen had to perform their duties without adequate clothing or shoes. Some were subjected to brutal “sports” after a long workday, for the entertainment of the troops. Others were doused with water and commanded not to move until the cold of the Ukrainian winter caused the water to freeze on them. By 1942, 100,000 men had been drafted into these units, with over 50,000 of them outside Hungary’s borders, mostly in the Ukraine. During the winter of 1942–43, as the Soviet forces gained the upper hand, thousands of the laborers were killed and thousands more were taken captive by the Russians. During a chaotic retreat, the Hungarian soldiers killed many of the Jews and stole whatever they could from them. According to official Hungarian reports about 25,400 men fell or were captured at this time. It is estimated, however, that there were more than 40,000 casualties among the laborers in the Ukraine by the end of 1943, with about 20,000 prisoners falling to the Red Army and the rest dying during the fighting or perishing from maltreatment, hunger, cold, and disease. Ironically, when the “F I NA L S O L U T I O N ” program was launched, soon after the German occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944, the labor service system became a refuge for many thousands of Hungarian Jewish men threatened with deportation and almost certain death. This change came about primarily for two reasons: there was a need for labor in Hungary itself, and there was pressure from Hungarian government and military officials who supported Regent Miklós H O R T H Y ’s desire to break out of the alliance with Nazi Germany and who were able to exploit the need for labor to help some labor servicemen. After the A R R O W C R O S S P A R T Y came to power in October 1944, men from these work sites, as well as many others, were transferred into the hands of the Nazis. Many thousands were sent to Germany, supposedly on loan, for work on projects of interest to the Nazis. Many thousands more were marched to the Austrian border to build the “East Wall” for the defense of V I E N N A . Relatively few of these “laborers” survived the Nazi captivity. Most of the Jewish labor servicemen who fell into Soviet hands were treated as prisoners of war, and were released as Hungarian or Romanian nationals only after the peace treaties with Hungary and Romania were signed in February 1947.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Handler, Andrew, and Susan Meschel, eds. Young People Speak: Surviving the Holocaust in Hungary. New York: Franklin Watts, 1993.

Hungary After Adolf H I T L E R ’s rise to power in G E R M A N Y in 1933, the Hungarian government formed an alliance with him, for political and economic reasons. Germany soon became Hungary’s main trading partner. Hitler offered German support for Hungary’s desire to expand its territory. In return, Hungary offered Nazi Germany economic and political advantages. Axis powers

Countries aligned with Nazi Germany, including Italy and Japan, and later Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia.

110

With the 1938 Munich Agreement, the relationship paid off, as Hungary received part of a former territory from Czechoslovakia. This convinced some Hungarian politicians that the Axis powers would play a leading role in Europe for the next several decades. Others, however, were afraid of a strong Germany, and they were concerned about the brutality of the Nazi system. Count Pál

HUNGARY

Teleki, who became Hungary’s prime minister in March 1939, tried to maintain some distance from Hitler and did not join the war effort later that year. And during the first months of the war, the Hungarian government allowed more than 100,000 Polish refugees to find shelter in Hungary, which also did not please Hitler.

1940–43 Since the end of World War I (1914–18), Hungary had wanted the return of Transylvania, which was 33 percent Hungarian and about 55 percent Romanian. In August 1940, the foreign ministers of Germany and I TA LY signed an agreement that allowed the Hungarians to take possession of northern Transylvania and its 2.5 million inhabitants. Most Hungarians regarded this as a major foreign policy success. Several months later, Hungary joined the Tripartite Pact, which bound Germany, Italy, and Japan together. This sealed Hungary’s formal military and political alliance with Nazi Germany as part of the Axis. At home, the Hungarian government also made changes that were agreeable to the Germans. The fanatic leader of the A R R OW C R O S S P A RT Y , Ferenc Szálasi, was released from prison. A ban prohibiting government workers from joining extremist parties was lifted. And a new political party, which closely followed the N A Z I PA RT Y ’s platform, was formed. In December 1940, in a show of independence, Hungary signed a pact of “eternal friendship” with Yugoslavia, which was not yet dominated by Hitler. But three months later, after a military takeover there by anti-Tripartite Pact forces, Hitler decided to invade Yugoslavia. He offered territorial rewards to the Hungary’s head of state, regent Miklós H O RT H Y , if he would join the invasion. Horthy accepted. In the wake of these events, Prime Minister Teleki committed suicide. His successor, László Bárdossy, sent Hungarian troops to assist the Germans in Yugoslavia a few days after the German invasion. As a result, Hungary received territory with a population of more than 1 million (36 percent Hungarian). Another major decision was to join the Germans in their war against the S O V I E T U N I O N . The Hungarians joined the new offensive on June 26, 1941. And in December 1941, in another fateful move, the Hungarians declared war on the United States. This led to a British declaration of war on Hungary and the breaking of all major links with the West. The ill-fated Hungarian declaration came while Germany was suffering its first significant defeat in the Soviet Union. Hungary soon found itself isolated, committed to a long war, and at the mercy of increasing Nazi pressure. Instead of being a partner, the nation was becoming more and more a satellite of Germany. In January 1942, the Germans pressed Hungary to send most of its troops to the Soviet Union, and the Hungarians obeyed. Some members of the Hungarian ruling elite began to view Bárdossy as being too subservient to Germany. Horthy appointed a new, more cautious prime minister, Miklós Kállay, in March 1942. The Axis powers were defeated at Stalingrad. On January 13, 1943, the Red (Soviet) Army broke through the Hungarian lines, resulting in the loss of 150,000 of the 200,000 Hungarian soldiers. Prime Minister Kállay began to work on getting Hungary out of its alliance with Nazi Germany. No more troops were sent to the Soviet front in 1943, and preparations were made to allow more political freedom at home. Peace feelers were put out to the West. The Germans were aware of this change in attitude, but they did not interfere as long as Hungary maintained its eco-

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The Hungrian Gendarmerie.

nomic agreements and as long as the British and U.S. armies were far from its borders. Still, as early as September 1943, the Germans prepared a contingency plan for the military occupation of Hungary.

German Occupation, 1944

A

s the Arrow Cross Party was turned loose, Hungary was

in total chaos. The country was looted, and whatever could not be sent to Germany was destroyed.

Hitler decided to move against Hungary in March 1944, and he told Horthy of the plan. Horthy was afraid that if he did not obey, Romania would take part in the occupation. Thus, the Hungarians did not resist the Germans. On March 19, German soldiers entered Hungary, and a government that the Nazis considered reliable was set up under the former Hungarian ambassador in Berlin, Döme Sztójay. Horthy himself withdrew from public affairs, and various “experts” arrived from Germany to put Hungary back on a pro-German course. Sztójay’s government began carrying out Germany’s orders. All anti-Nazi parties and politicians were eliminated. The government also mobilized 300,000 soldiers to try to resist the advance of the Red Army, which was less than 62 miles (100 km) from the Hungarian border. In August, Horthy replaced Sztójay with General Géza Lakatos. Lakatos’s government continued the earlier policy of seeking a way for Hungary to pull out of the war. A few attempts with the Western Allies failed, but Hungary did reach an agreement with the Soviet Union. Hungary agreed to give up territories gained through its alliance with Germany and to turn against the Nazis.

Rise of the Arrow Cross Party On October 15, 1944, Horthy decided to carry out his planned change of course. The announcement was made, but the Germans had made contingency plans. They blocked Horthy’s move, taking his son prisoner and threatening Horthy with his death if the reversal were carried out. The Germans replaced Horthy with Arrow Cross party leader Ferenc Szálasi, and Arrow Cross men took over strategic positions throughout the country.

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The Arrow Cross began a reign of terror, plundering, pillaging, and murdering. Szálasi promised to send 1.5 million soldiers to the Russian front, intending to draft all males and females between the ages of 12 and 70 into the army or labor brigades. Factories were dismantled and sent to Germany, along with livestock. The population was ordered to retreat with the fascist troops in the direction of Germany. In November, political prisoners were turned over to the Nazis, who sent them to C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S , where most of them died. As the Soviet forces overran Hungary, a handful of complete troop formations surrendered to them. Tens of thousands more Hungarians avoided being drafted and deserted from the army. To stop this, Szálasi ordered summary trials and executions. Signs of active opposition also increased by November, when the Soviets had taken two-thirds of the country. But on the whole, there was little organized Hungarian armed resistance.

M

ost Hungarian Jews lived in relative safety until the German

occupation of Hungary, which brought with it all the violence, destruction, and anti-Jewish legislation that characterized Nazi control over the Jews elsewhere in Europe.

In January 1945, a Hungarian armistice agreement was signed with the Soviet Union. On January 17, the Pest section of Budapest fell to the Red Army. Buda succumbed less than a month later. By April 4, 1945, no more Germans were fighting in Hungary.

Jews during the Holocaust According to the census of 1941, Hungary had a Jewish population of 725,007, representing 4.94 percent of its total population of 14,683,323. There were approximately 100,000 converts and Christians of Jewish origin. Jewish settlement in the area of what is now Hungary goes back to Roman times. In the modern period, the Jewish community of Hungary became highly integrated into the economic and cultural life of the country. For the most part, this Hungarian national identification remained quite firm, despite the increased A N T I S E M I T I S M that marked the years between the world wars. It continued to influence the response of Hungarian Jews to their situation during World War II. The “Jewish question,” which had emerged earlier in Hungary, became prominent during the 1930s. Demands for its “solution” came from a variety of pro-Nazi political groups and from the heads of the C H R I S T I A N C H U R C H E S . The anti-Jewish climate was encouraged by the mass media, especially the largely German-financed press. In addition, the Hungarian armed forces were among the most radical and aggressive hotbeds of antisemitism in Hungary. In the late 1930s, Hungary adopted a number of anti-Jewish laws that restricted Jews’ roles in the economy and society of the country. One major anti-Jewish law (May 1939) identified the Jews in racial terms—a process that culminated in the racial law of 1941, which resembled Germany’s N U R E M B E R G L AW S . Hungary also introduced (1939–40) a system designed for Jewish men of military age: the H U N G A R I A N L A B O R S E R V I C E S Y S T E M (Munkaszolgálat). Close to 42,000 Hungarian Jews perished in these mobile forcedlabor units before the German occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944. Before the occupation, Hungarian Jewry also suffered as many as 18,000 other losses. Of these, around 17,000 were “alien” Jews seized by the Hungarian authorities in July and August 1941 and deported to a site near K A M E N E T S - P O D O L S K I . Most them were massacred there by S S troops under the command of Friedrich J E C K E L N . More than 1,000 Jews were murdered in Novi Sad (Ujvidék) and other areas of the Délvidék region in early 1942 by Hungarian military and gendarmerie units “in pursuit of partisans.” (See P A RT I S A N S .) Most Hungarian Jews lived in safety until the German occupation. The government consistently rejected German demands that Hungary follow the other

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Nazi-dominated countries in Europe by implementing the “F I N A L S O L U T I O N ” program. It was for this reason, among others, that the Jewish leadership was convinced that Hungary would retain its independence to the end. These illusions were shattered when Germany intervened militarily. The occupation forces included a S P E C I A L C O M M A N D O (Sonderkommando) headed by Adolf E I C H M A N N . It provided guidance and technical assistance for the speedy implementation of the “Final Solution” program. More anti-Jewish decrees were put into place. They provided, among other things, for the isolation, marking, plundering, ghettoization, and deportation of the Jews. The isolation of the Jews began with travel restrictions and the confiscation of telephones and radios. It was completed with forcing them to wear the yellow badge (see B A D G E , J E W I S H ), which made them easy targets for antisemites. Next, Jewishowned businesses and offices were taken over. Jews’ personal property, including their valuables, bank accounts, and jewelry, were also taken. On April 16, the Jews of Carpathian Ruthenia and northeastern Hungary were ordered into ghettos. At the crack of dawn, they were ordered to pack and leave their homes within a halfhour. Their dwellings were looted soon afterward. In the rural areas, the Jews were normally first ordered into the local synagogues or community centers, and a few days later transferred to ghettos in the county seats. In some cities, the ghettos were established in the Jewish sections. In others, they were set up in brickyards or idle factories. In still others, the Jews were forced to “set up camp” in neighboring forests under the open sky. The ghettos were closed off and were guarded by both local policemen and gendarmes brought in from other parts of the country. The ghettos lasted only two to six weeks. The conditions there were horrible, including a lack of food and adequate sanitary facilities. The Jews, especially those perceived as well-to-do, were treated cruelly by police and gendarmes searching for “hidden wealth.” The 434,351 Jews who were deported mostly from the countryside ended up in A U S C H W I T Z -Birkenau. They were deported between May 15 and July 9, 1944, from 55 major ghettos and concentration centers, in 147 trains composed of sealed freight cars. Most of the Hungarian Jews were gassed in Birkenau soon after their arrival. Miklós Horthy halted the deportations on July 7, but the “de-Judaizers” continued their operations for two days, liquidating the Jewish communities in western Hungary and around the capital. Jews remained only in the capital, Budapest. A few transports, with about 21,000 Jews from the southern part of Hungary, were directed to Strasshof near Vienna, to be “put on ice” pending the outcome of Zionist-SS negotiations. Most of these Jews survived the war. Budapest’s Jews had been confined since June 1944 to living in special buildings designated with a yellow star. That anxiety-filled but relatively safe period ended on October 15 of that year, when the Arrow Cross Party came to power. Thousands of Jews, mostly women, were forced to march to a region near Nazi Germany to build fortifications for the defense of Vienna. Terror was rampant, with armed Arrow Cross gangs roaming the streets, robbing and killing Jews. Many of the victims were taken to the banks of the Danube, where they were shot and thrown into the river. Early in December, during the Soviet siege of Budapest, close to 70,000 Jews were ordered into a ghetto that was established in the Jewish section, near the Dohány Street synagogue. Although this period was relatively short-lived (Budapest was liberated on January 17–18, 1945), the people in the ghetto suffered horribly. Thousands died as a result of disease, starvation, and the cold. In total, the Hungarian Jewish community lost 564,500 lives during the war, including 63,000 before the German occupation.

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The plight of the Jews during the Arrow Cross era was eased by the heroism of many. Resisters saved many lives by forging and distributing various types of documents, and by supplying the ghetto with food. Similar rescue activities were undertaken by the representatives of the neutral states, above all Raoul W A L L E N B E R G of Sweden and Carl L U T Z of Switzerland. Many Jews, especially children, owed their lives to the activities of those associated with various Christian orders and agencies of the International Red Cross.

SEE ALSO YOUTH MOVEMENTS. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Anger, Per. With Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest: Memories of the War Years in Hungary. New York: Holocaust Library, 1981. Reprint, 1995. Handler, Andrew, and Susan Meschel, eds. Young People Speak: Surviving the Holocaust in Hungary. New York: Franklin Watts, 1993. Jackson, Livia Bitton. I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing Up in the Holocaust. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. Schimmel, Betty. To See You Again: A True Story of Love in a Time of War. New York: Dutton, 1999. Wallenberg, Raoul. Letters and Dispatches, 1924–1944. New York: Arcade, 1995.

I. G. Farben I. G. Farben (IGF) was a German corporation, a conglomerate of eight leading German chemical manufacturers, including Bayer, Hoechst, and BASF (BadischeAnilinund Sodafabrik), the largest such firms in existence at the time. As early as World War I these firms had established a “community of interests” (Interessengemeinschaft; thus the initials I. G.). They merged into a single company on December 25, 1925, creating the largest chemical enterprise in Europe and, in fact, the whole world. Its share capital in 1926 was 1.1 million reichsmarks. Its turnover increased from 1.2 million reichsmarks in 1926 to 3.1 billion in 1943. On the German market IGF had a monopoly, and it was the country’s largest single exporter. The first chairman of its board was Dr. Karl Bosch, who had previously been the chief executive officer of BASF. Costly innovations, such as the production of synthetic fuel from coal and of synthetic rubber (Buna) from coal or gasoline, convinced IGF, at the time the economic crisis came to an end, that the company should establish close ties with Adolf H I T L E R . Early on, Hitler had become aware of the opportunity for G E R M A N Y to become independent of imports of raw materials, thanks to the production processes in IGF’s possession. To be profitable, the new IGF products needed a guaranteed market, and Hitler indicated that he would be ready to guarantee state purchase of these products, in appropriate quantities. Because the products of the great chemical conglomerate were an indispensable element in the Nazi re-armament program, the contacts between IGF’s management and the government became increasingly close. This relationship occurred despite the presence on the IGF board of several Jewish members, and despite the fact that Nazi propaganda continued to attack IGF as an example of an international Jewish firm that was exploiting its workers. At a meeting of leading German industrialists with Hjalmar Schacht, Hermann Göring, and Heinrich H I M M L E R , held on February 20, 1933, IGF contributed 400,000 reichs-

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marks to the N A Z I PA R T Y . It was the largest single contribution in a total sum of 3 million reichsmarks raised at this meeting for the Nazi party’s election campaign.

I

n 1933, the directorial board of I. G. Farben included several

Jewish members, and Dr. Karl Bosch, chief executive officer of the company, objected to the firing of Jewish scientists from the company. Within four years, no Jews held executive positions or seats on the board of directors, and most of the board members had joined the Nazi Party. I. G. Farben would, before long, become an important partner with the Nazi regime in the destruction of the Jews of east Europe.

The Four-Year Plan proposed by Hitler in 1936 was designed to prepare all of German industry for war. The plan further enhanced IGF’s influence. A member of IGF’s board, Carl Krauch, was given a leading position in the organization headed by Göring that had the task of implementing the Four-Year Plan. By that time the company was also adapting itself to the regime’s ideological requirements. In 1933 Bosch had still objected—although in vain—to the removal of Jewish scientists from the company and from various other scientific institutions. Nevertheless, by 1937 no Jews were left in executive positions in the IGF or on its board of directors. The majority of the remaining board members joined the Nazi party. Using economic and political blackmail, IGF took over important chemical factories in the areas annexed to the Reich or occupied by it. Bosch resigned his post as chief executive officer in 1935 and was instead elected chairman of the board. His successor as chief executive officer was Hermann Schmitz, a member of the BASF board. After Bosch’s death in April 1940, Krauch took his place as board chairman, adding this position to the different posts he held in the Four-Year Plan administration. More than anyone else, Krauch personified the link between private industry and growing government involvement in economic life during the Nazi period. In connection with the economic preparations for the forthcoming war against the S OV I E T U N I O N , the IGF board, with government support, decided to establish additional facilities for the production of synthetic fuels. The board decided on A U S C H W I T Z , in Upper Silesia, as the place where the new installations were to be located. Auschwitz was chosen not only because of its convenient proximity to the railway and to coal mines but, more importantly, because the C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P offered IGF up to 10,000 prisoners for work on the construction of the new plant. Board members Otto Ambros and Heinrich Bütefisch were responsible for the Auschwitz plant in their capacity as the officers in charge of Buna and gasoline, respectively. Dr. Walter Dürrfeld became general manager. At first, the plant management protested against the maltreatment of the prisoners working in the plant and their poor physical condition, but Dürrfeld eventually went along with the SS. In the middle of 1942 a new section of the concentration camp (AuschwitzMonowitz) was established, close to the site of the IGF factory, to house the prisoners working there and thereby save the time-consuming daily march from and to the main camp. The prisoners’ performance, however, never came close to IGF expectations and was always considerably inferior to that of free workers. Only small quantities of synthetic fuel were actually produced. The location of this factory at Auschwitz was not IGF’s only Auschwitz connection, however. Z Y K L O N B gas, used in Auschwitz for the killing of Jews, was a product of DEGESCH, a firm in which IGF had a decisive share. In the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings, the United States, as the occupying power, conducted trials against the top officers of three major industrial concerns— Krupp, Flick, and I. G. Farben. In the IGF trial the accused were the chairman of the board, Carl Krauch, and several of his associates, including Dürrfeld. The major charges were: (1) preparing and waging aggressive war; (2) crimes against humanity, by looting the occupied territories; and (3) enslaving and murdering civil populations, prisoners of war, and prisoners from the occupied territories. All the defendants were acquitted of the first count; nine were found guilty of the second; and Krauch, Fritz ter Meer, Ambros, Bütefisch, and Dürrfeld were found guilty of the third. The decisive factor against the last four defendants was their role in the construction of the Auschwitz installations. The tribunal did not find the IGF board criminally involved

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Panel of judges (l to r) James Morris, Curtis Grover Shake, Paul M. Hebert, Clarence F. Merrell (and a lower tier of unidentified men) presiding at the I. G. Farben trial, Nuremberg Trials, August 27, 1947.

in the poison-gas deliveries made by the DEGESCH company. The sentences of eight years each, imposed on Ambros and Dürrfeld, were the most severe. By 1951, however, all the IGF officers convicted had been released from prison. Under Allied Control Council Law No. 9, of November 30, 1945, IGF assets were seized by the Control Council, which in turn handed them over to the four occupying powers. They were instructed that installations for the manufacture of war material were to be destroyed, certain plants were to be appropriated as war reparations, and the entire conglomerate was to be broken up. The IGF plants existing in the Soviet zone of occupation were nationalized. In the Western zones, however, no change of ownership ever took place. Basically, the conglomerate was broken up into its original three major component parts—Bayer, BASF, and Hoechst—whose balance sheet, by the end of the 1950s, already exceeded that of the original IGF. The final IGF Liquidation Act, of January 21, 1955, removed all the remaining restrictions imposed by the Allies. Many of the former top officers of IGF, including Ter Meer and Ambros, were soon again in leading positions in the German chemical industry. In a 1953 decision, a court of the Federal Republic of Germany established the principle that a Jewish prisoner who had been forced to work for IGF in Monowitz had a right to sue the company for compensation. Following this decision and after lengthy negotiations, the residual company—I. G. Farben in Liquidation—agreed to put 27 million deutsche marks at the disposal of the Jewish Material Claims Conference to cover the claims of all Jewish forced laborers and prisoners who had been compelled to work at Monowitz. The payment was described as having been made on a purely voluntary basis and was not to be interpreted as an admission of guilt. IGF did not pay any compensation to non-Jewish forced laborers and prisoners. The issue was raised again in the late 1990s when U.S. attorneys representing former slave laborers threatened class action lawsuits against many German businesses that had used slave labor. On July 6, 2000, after protracted negotiations, the German Parliament passed a bill setting up a $5 billion compensation fund to be paid for equally by industry and the German government.

SEE ALSO FORCED LABOR.

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IMMIGRATION TO PALESTINE

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Borkin, Joseph. The Crime and Punishment of I. G. Farben. New York: Free Press, 1978. Hayes, Peter. Industry and Ideology: I. G. Farben in the Nazi Era. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Reprint, 2000. United Nations War Crimes Commission. “The Zyklon B Case; Trial of Bruno Tesch and Two Others.” Law-Reports of Trials of War Criminals. [Online] http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/ WCC/zyklonb.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000).

IMMIGRATION TO PALESTINE. SEE ALIYA BET; ST. LOUIS. IMT. SEE TRIALS OF THE WAR CRIMINALS. INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL.

SEE TRIALS

OF THE

WAR CRIMINALS.

Italy The Jewish community in Italy is the oldest continuous settlement of the Jews in Europe, dating back well over 2,000 years. Italian Jews in Sardinia gained rights as citizens in 1848; by 1870, that emancipation extended to the whole peninsula. Italian Jews had more security, opportunities, and acceptance than in many other countries. They were fully integrated into Italian society and politics and had access to careers in the diplomatic corps, the civil service, and the army—careers generally closed to them elsewhere in the West. Until 1936, fourteen years after Benito Mussolini seized power, antisemitism was not part of the mainstream of Italian life and Jews were generally assimilated into Italian society. Jews made up only about one tenth of one percent of the total population, and without Jewish immigration from eastern Europe, there was little interest in or need for a separate Jewish “community” identity. Italy itself contributed to this level of assimilation through the “universalistic” nature of Italian nationalism (which, until 1938, was defined in cultural and not in “racial” terms) and a blend of respect for individual Jews and disregard for Judaism as a religion and as an ethical system. This subtly encouraged Italian Jews to identify themselves more as Italian than as Jewish.

Benito Mussolini.

Countercurrents of Jewish cultural revival surfaced in Italy early in the twentieth century. Zionism emerged, Jewish periodicals proliferated, and a Jewish youth movement was founded. These signs of Jewish “separatism” sparked criticism, which increased with the advent of F A S C I S M . Some Fascists believed that Jewish internationalism threatened the “monolithic unity” of the future Fascist state. Mussolini denounced “Jewish” Bolshevism and “English” Zionism in his newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia and he warned Italian Jews not to stir up antisemitism in the only country where it had never existed.

The Fascists Seize Power Italian Jewish leaders expressed some alarm when the Fascists seized power on October 30, 1922. The international Jewish press and some world Zionist leaders

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Map of Italy showing the locations of concentration camps during World War II.

charged the new regime with antisemitism. Members of the Italian government assured Jewish leaders that Fascism was free from antisemitic tendencies; this was consistent with established Fascist principles. Fascist policy toward the Jews can be divided into four periods: (1) a phase of outwardly cordial relations (1922–32); (2) a transitional phase of ambivalent posturing (1933–36); (3) a six–year span of increasingly violent antisemitism (1937–43); and (4) the final period of German domination (1943–45).

I

n 1923 Mussolini emphatically declared: “The Italian government

and Italian Fascism have never had any intention of following, nor are

CORDIAL RELATIONS In the decade after Mussolini seized power, the civil and

following, an antisemitic policy.…”

religious rights of the Jewish minority were respected. Mussolini condemned racism and antisemitism. The government issued a series of decrees that gave a coherent and unified legal status to Italian Jewry and provided a stable financial base for Jewish religious, cultural, and charitable activities. T R A N S I T I O NA L P H A S E Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 ushered in a period of

change. For the next three years, Mussolini alternated declarations and acts in favor of the Jews with unofficial antisemitic moves and expressions of sympathy for the German position. No anti-Jewish measures were enacted during these three years. A N T I S E M I T I S M I N C R E A S E S In 1936, as G E R M A N Y and Italy intervened in the

Spanish Civil War and strengthened their alliance, the Italian government’s policies toward Jews began to reflect Hitler’s policy, even though these partners disagreed about Hitler’s doctrine of Nordic superiority, which had anti-Italian as well as antiJewish implications. Racial laws were finally issued in 1938, making it clear that

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n response to rising Zionist activity in Italy during the 1920s and

1930s, Mussolini warned Italian Jews not to stir up antisemitism where it had never before existed, implying that by drawing attention to their political, religious, and cultural differences, the Zionists would be responsible for whatever anti-Jewish response might occur.

Mussolini had committed to adopt antisemitism in the interest of unity with Hitler and Nazism. The Fascist race laws turned out to be an unsuccessful attempt to adapt German racial theories to Italian conditions. The result was a weakened version of Hitler’s N U R E M B E R G L AW S that antagonized Italian and Western opinion, alienated the Catholic church, and still displeased the Germans. When Italy entered into World War II on June 10, 1940, anti-Jewish legislation and propaganda intensified. However, Germany and Italy still disagreed about certain matters, including Fascist Jewish policy. Mussolini needed German economic and military aid too much to back away from his anti-Jewish legislation, but he retained some independence in carrying out Italy’s anti-Jewish policy. This explains why Italian-occupied territories in F R A N C E , Yugoslavia, and Greece became havens of refuge for persecuted Jews. Mussolini approved of security measures against hostile Jewish elements but he refused to deport Italian citizens to the east. And Hitler, though determined to impose his anti-Jewish obsession throughout Europe, including Italy, chose not to jeopardize relations with Rome on this question until after the Italian armistice with the Allies on September 8, 1943. “FINAL SOLUTION” APPLIED TO ITALY Three important facts help to explain

how the Holocaust unfolded in Italy. First, most Italian Jews lived in the north part of the country—the part of Italy that came under German control in 1943. Second, Hitler decided, against the advice of his experts, to restore Mussolini to power in 1943. The creation of a Fascist puppet republic made it possible to implement the “Final Solution” in Italy. Third, Hitler backed away from his intent to forcibly occupy the Vatican. This was the only decision Hitler took after the Italian “betrayal” that helped the Jews, for it enabled the Catholic church to save thousands of Jewish lives.

Concentration Camps in Italy Before World War II began, C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S did not exist in Italy. Persons suspected of acting against the Fascist regime were exiled to remote villages; political prisoners served their terms in regular prisons or special wings of such prisons. This changed when Italy entered the war on June 10, 1940. Non-Italian Jews who had not complied with the expulsion order issued in 1938 were arrested in large numbers. Men, women, and children were thrown into jail with no charges brought against them. On September 4, the Ministry of the Interior ordered 43 concentration camps to be established, for the imprisonment of enemy aliens and Italians suspected of subversive activities. The prisoners in these camps included thousands of Jews who were foreign nationals or stateless persons, and 200 Italian Jews who openly opposed the Fascist regime. Prisoners in the Italian camps fared better than those in Nazi camps elsewhere in Europe. Families lived together, there were schools for the children, and a broad program of social welfare and cultural activities was in place. For the most part, the prisoners were assigned only to jobs that were related to the camp itself. The fall of the Fascist regime on July 25, 1943, and Italy’s surrender to the Allies on September 8, 1943, were dramatic turning points. The country was split into two; the Allies controlled the south and the Germans held the central and northern parts. Many Jewish prisoners in Fascist concentration camps were liberated, since most of the camps, including the largest one, were situated in the Allied-controlled southern districts. On the other hand, most of Italy’s Jews, who were concentrated in Rome and the north, were caught in the German-occupied part of Italy.

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The Germans began to seize Jews in all the major northern cities, where they had been living peacefully. In a single day—October 16, 1943—the Germans arrested more than 1,000 persons in Rome. Throughout October and November, similar actions took place in Trieste, Genoa, Florence, Milan, Venice, Ferrara, and other cities. Jews were held first in local jails, then confined to concentration camps, usually in Fossoli di Carpi and Bolzano. When a certain number of prisoners had been collected, they were deported to E X T E R M I NAT I O N CA M P S , mainly to A U S C H W I T Z ; a few went to B E R G E N -B E L S E N while political prisoners were sent to M AU T H AU S E N . The Fascist satellite state took increasingly harsher actions against the Jews, whom they now called aliens “belonging to an enemy nation.” On November 30, 1943, the state called for all Jews to be put in concentration camps and their property confiscated. By then most Jews had either fled for their lives or had been imprisoned or deported. In Italy, the Germans avoided issuing special anti-Jewish decrees, such as the wearing of the yellow badge (see B A D G E , J E W I S H ) or the establishment of ghettos and Judenräte (Jewish councils). They focused on arresting and deporting Jews.

I

In contrast to conditions in other Nazi camps, life at Fossoli was

relatively civilized. Jewish prisoners lived in several barracks, men and women separately; they were allowed to care for their children, even the infants and those who were without parents. Prisoners could keep the few possessions they had brought and did not have to wear prison garb.

Between September 8, 1943, and April 1945, the Germans conducted massive manhunts for Jews. More than 20 percent of Italy’s Jews were imprisoned in Italy for weeks or months prior to being deported to the extermination camps. Conditions in transit and concentration camps varied. Some were labor camps; others were transit camps where the Jews were held pending deportation. The Fossoli camp, established in 1940 to house prisoners of war, was located near Carpi, north of Modena. After Italy surrendered, Fossoli was handed over to the Germans, who soon filled it with Jews—individuals and families—who were destined for deportation. Political prisoners and Italian army personnel who refused to serve under the Fascist satellite state were also confined here, in separate barracks. Before it was enlarged, Fossoli had room for only 800 prisoners. Between November 1943 and the end of 1944, at least 3,198 Jews—more than a third of the number deported from Italy—passed through Fossoli. German officers ran this camp, with the help of SS men and Fascist militia. Although the camp’s conditions were generally tolerable, it was not completely without the violence and starvation that characterized Nazi concentration camps, however. The Germans established the Bolzano camp in late 1943 or early 1944. It had the largest capacity of all the concentration camps in Italy, housing as many as three thousand prisoners at a time. In 1944, most of the prisoners and the administrative staff of the Fossoli camp were moved to Bolzano. Several transports left Bolzano for Auschwitz and then for concentration camps in Germany (R AV E N S B R Ü C K and Flossenbürg). The last transport apparently left on January 25, 1945; thereafter, no more than eight hundred prisoners remained, including several dozen Jews. Bolzano was liberated at the end of April 1945, before the Germans could remove the prisoners. In its layout and established procedures, Bolzano was more like a typical German labor camp than any other camp in Italy. On arrival, the prisoners had to go through the usual routine: their hair was shaved, their possessions were seized, and their clothes were exchanged for prison uniforms. Every prisoner had to sew a triangular patch on his or her clothing displaying a registration number. The prisoners were put on hard forced labor inside and outside the camp, working in the fields, making railway repairs, digging tunnels near the camp, and so on. Only the political prisoners classified as “dangerous” were not put to work, for security reasons. The La Risiera di San Sabba camp near Trieste was not an extermination camp in the standard meaning of the term, but this camp did have a crematorium. It was

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A unit of Italian Blackshirts (SS men) stands at attention holding spades during a fascist demonstration.

used for burning the corpses of prisoners who had been executed or had died under torture. The camp was housed in an abandoned rice processing plant that had occasionally been occupied by the Italian soldiers. After Italy surrendered to the Allies, Trieste was put under the direct and exclusive German control. Two notorious SS officers, Odilo G L O B O C N I K (a native of Trieste) and Franz S TA N G L , operated in this zone at different times. SS officer Christian W I R T H served as camp commander from the fall of 1943 to May 1944; he was followed by Dietrich Allers, who had been director of the German euthanasia campaign in 1939. All the camp staff was German, except perhaps for a few Ukrainian auxiliaries. More than 20,000 prisoners passed through La Risiera. Several thousand persons were murdered, generally by having their skulls cracked with heavy clubs. Their bodies were burned in the crematorium. Several dozen Jews were killed at La Risiera; some 650 were deported to Auschwitz or, as of the end of 1944, to camps in Germany. The last transport left the camp on January 11, 1945. Between September 15, 1943, and January 30, 1944, at least 3,110 persons of Jewish “race” were shipped from Italy to Auschwitz; 2,224 are known to have died in the Holocaust. Between February and December 1944, at least another 4,056 were deported to the east; 2,425 of them lost their lives. About 2,700 Italian Jews were deported from various other areas. Others were murdered in Italian prisons and internment camps for individual infractions, in retaliation for the acts of other Jews, or as group punishment by the authorities.

Collaboration and Aid Given At the trial of Eichmann in 1961, it was stated that “every Italian Jew who survived owed his life to the Italians.” But while it is true that Italian “Aryans” of all classes saved most of the Jewish survivors, it is also true that Italians contributed to the persecution and death of many Italian Jews. Italian collaborators with the Germans included the men of the Fascist Black Brigades and the volunteers of the Italian SS. They helped the Germans round up thousands of Jews, question them, and

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deport them. Some Italian civilians betrayed Jews in hiding in exchange for monetary rewards. Even some Jews betrayed their own peers. Nonetheless, during World War II the Italians, more than most other Europeans, extended aid to the Jews. From the onset of the war to mid-1942, the Italian authorities protected Jews of Italian nationality living in German-occupied territories or in countries in the German sphere of influence. Italians in occupied France took particularly forceful actions, saving thousands.

I

talian diplomats, Army officers and Italian police officers stood firm on

protecting Italian “nationals,” whether Jewish or not.

From mid-1942 to September 1943, Italians witnessed the arrest, roundup, and deportation to the east of entire Jewish populations in France, Belgium, and Greece, and saw with their own eyes the unspeakable atrocities committed against Jews in C R OAT I A . Moreover, they had heard rumors of what was happening in eastern Europe. Many of the Italian military personnel and Italian diplomats serving in these places were outraged, and persuaded their superiors in Rome to help Jews, whatever their nationality, who were seeking asylum in the Italian zones of occupation. Thus, genuine rescue operations were launched in areas under the supervision or control of the Italian army: in Dalmatia-Croatia, where 5,000 Jews found refuge; in southern France, where at least 25,000 had gathered; and in Athens and the Greek islands, where 13,000 Jews had congregated. At least 40,000 Jews who were not Italian nationals found refuge. The Italians treated them humanely and did not hand them over to the Croats, the Vichy police, or the Germans, despite unceasing demands and protests. The Germans repeatedly pressured Italian military officials and diplomats to hand over the Jews to them. On at least two occasions, Mussolini was ready to yield; he even agreed to surrender the Jewish refugees from Croatia. But the high-ranking diplomats and officers who would have had to implement this order refused. After the Italian government surrendered to the Allies on September 8, 1943, Jews in Italy feared for their lives. Until the day of liberation, the German occupation forces hunted them down mercilessly. In this period of endless terror, Jews desperately needed help. Many Italians, including a substantial numbers of Italian clergy, responded, helping them cross the borders to neutral territory or hiding them in homes, remote villages, and monasteries. At the time of the armistice in 1943, there were some 44,500 Jews in Italy and the Greek island of Rhodes, about 12,500 of them foreigners. By the war’s end, at least 7,682 of these had died in the Holocaust. Of the 8,369 deportees who have so far been identified, only 979 returned to Italy after the war, including a baby born at Bergen-Belsen. In addition, at least 415 Jews survived imprisonment or detention in Italy itself. A few escaped while on their way to the extermination camps. But although about four-fifths of the Jews of Italy survived the war, Italian Jewry suffered a grievous blow. Thousands emigrated; many of those who remained were physically and spiritually broken. The habit of Jewish life had been interrupted, and in many places its very setting had disappeared, leaving Italian Jewry a shadow of its former self.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Caracciolo, Nicola. Uncertain Refuge: Italy and the Jews During the Holocaust. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995. Herzer, Ivo, ed. The Italian Refuge: Rescue of Jews During the Holocaust. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989. Levi, Primo. The Reawakening. Boston: Little, Brown, 1965. Reprint, New York: Macmillan, 1993.

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Stille, Alexander. Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism. New York: Summit Books, 1991. Zuccotti, Susan. The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue, and Survival. New York: Basic Books, 1987. Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.

Jäger, Karl (1888–1959)

An SS officer, Karl Jäger was born in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Following an early career in business, he joined the N A Z I PA R T Y in 1923 and the SS in 1932. From 1935 he served in Ludwigsburg, Ravensburg, and Münster, successively. In Münster, where he was assigned in 1938, he was appointed chief of the SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service). After serving in the occupied Netherlands for a time, Jäger was appointed commanding officer of Einsatzkommando 3 in Einsatzgruppe (Operational Squad) A, which was attached to an army corps in northern Soviet Russia (see O P E R AT I O N A L S Q UA D S ). He later became commander of the Security Police and SD for the General Commissariat of L I T H UA N I A in K OV N O . In this capacity, Jäger was in charge of the extermination of the Lithuanian Jews, as witnessed by the reports that he submitted. In a report dated December 1, 1941, Jäger stated: “There are no more Jews in Lithuania, except for those in three small ghettos, Sˇiauliai, Kovno, and V I L NA .” In another report, of February 9, 1942, Jäger summed up the killings accomplished by the unit under his command: 136,421 Jews, 1,064 Communists, 653 mentally ill persons, and 134 others. Among the 138,272 victims there were 55,556 women and 34,464 children. In the fall of 1943 Jäger was reassigned to Germany and was appointed chief of police in Reichenberg, in the Sudetenland. When the war ended he succeeded in assuming a false identity and became a farmer. In April 1959 he was arrested, and on June 22 of that year he committed suicide in his cell.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Gitelman, Zvi, ed. Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Perpetrators. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/perps.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000).

Janówska Janówska was a labor and E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P located in the suburbs of L V OV , in German-occupied U K R A I N E . In September 1941, the Germans set up a factory on Lvov’s Janówska Street, to meet the needs of the German army. Soon after, they expanded it into a network of factories as part of the German Armament Works, a division of the SS. These factories used the Jews of Lvov as forced labor. In September 1941, some 350 Jews worked there; by the end of October, they numbered 600. At that point, the factories’ status underwent a change: The area became a restricted camp, enclosed by barbed wire, which the Jews were not permitted to leave. In November

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The Janówska camp orchestra played while the inmates set out to work and when they returned. It was established by the Germans, who amused themselves by mocking and humiliating the inmates.

1941, the Germans asked the Lvov J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council) to supply more workers for the camp, but the Judenrat chairman, Dr. Joseph Parnes, refused. As a result, he was executed. In 1942, the labor in the camp was intensified, and its inmates were used in metalwork and carpentry. The prisoners were also given jobs with no practical purpose, such as digging trenches and moving loads from one place to another. In this way, the Nazis hoped to break them in body and spirit before sending them to their death. In the wake of Nazi violence against the Jews of Lvov in March 1942, several hundred more Jews were put into the camp. When the mass deportation of Jews from Eastern Galicia (a part of Ukraine) to the B E L⁄ Z˙ E C extermination camp began in March 1942, the role of the Janówska camp changed. From time to time, groups of Jews from towns and villages in the area were held there before being sent on to the death camp. Inside Janówska, periodic “selections”—selektionen—classified some as fit for work. These inmates stayed behind, while the other prisoners were sent to die at Bel⁄z˙ec. Later that spring, the camp was enlarged and it became more like a C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P , with beatings and killings, starvation and disease. The Lvov Judenrat, working with the prisoners’ families, organized a committee that sent food to the camp. Only a fraction of the food reached the prisoners, however; most was taken by the camp staff. Following more brutal SS campaigns against the Jews in Lvov in the summer of 1942, thousands more prisoners were added to the camp population. By mid-1943, Janówska, while still functioning as a labor camp, was being turned into an extermination camp. Fewer prisoners were working in the factories. In addition, the length of stay of newcomers was shortened, with most being taken directly to places of execution on the city outskirts. In the middle of May 1943, more than 6,000 Jews from Janówska camp were murdered. The harassment and killing of Jews continued unabated. Despite the reign of terror in the camp, there were cases of mutual help and even efforts at organizing resistance. The prisoners especially tried to help the ill, so that they could recover and not be put to death immediately. In the middle of 1943,

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underground activists smuggled in arms with the help of inmates who worked outside the camp, hoping to offer armed resistance when the camp was about to be liquidated. The liquidation did begin in November 1943, and it has been suggested that the Germans moved up the date in order to avoid a general uprising in the camp. While the Jewish underground did not have the time to organize a full-scale revolt, some prisoners attempted armed resistance while being taken to the execution sites. On November 19, a revolt broke out among the group of prisoners known as Sonderkommando (Special Commando) 1005 (see A K T I O N [O P E R AT I O N ] 1005), whose task it was to collect and cremate the bodies of the victims. Several of the guards were killed. Some among the Sonderkommando escaped, but most were caught and executed. While no precise figures are available on the number of Jews who perished in the Janówska camp, estimates suggest that tens of thousands of Jews died there.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Kaplan, Helene C. I Never Left Janówska. New York: Holocaust Library, 1989. Wells, Leon Weliczker. The Janówska Road. London: Cape, 1966. Reprint, Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1999.

JDC. SEE JOINT DISTRIBUTION COMMITTEE. Jeckeln, Friedrich (1895–1946)

Born in Hornberg, Germany, Friedrich Jeckeln joined the N A Z I PA R T Y in the 1920s; by 1930 he was an SS officer with the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer (general). Following the German invasion of the S OV I E T U N I O N in June 1941, Jeckeln was appointed Higher SS and Police Leader on the southern front, which included the occupied areas of the U K R A I N E . On September 1, 1941, the units under his command slaughtered at least 14,000 Hungarian Jews who had been deported to the K A M E N E T S -P O D O L S K I area. From July to October of that year they participated in the massacre of the Jews of Kiev at B A B I Y A R and in the mass killings at R OV N O and Dnepropetrovsk. On October 11, Jeckeln was appointed Higher SS and Police Leader on the northern front and in Ostland, which encompassed the Baltic countries—L I T H UA N I A , L AT V I A , and Estonia—and parts of B E L O R U S S I A . Jeckeln was in charge of the annihilation of the Jews of R I G A in November and December 1941, including the Jews from Germany and A U S T R I A who were sent to that city in the last months of 1941. In Operation Malaria, carried out in early 1942, the anti-partisan units under his command in Belorussia liquidated many ghettos and slaughtered tens of thousands of Jews. After the war, Jeckeln was arrested by the Allies and handed over to the Soviet Union. He was tried in Riga before a Soviet military court, which sentenced him to death by hanging on February 3, 1946. The sentence was carried out immediately. Friedrich Jeckeln.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Press, Bernhard. The Murder of the Jews in Latvia, 1941–1945. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999.

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Schneider, Gertrude. Journey into Terror: Story of the Riga Ghetto. New York: Ark House, 1979. Reprint, Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000.

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Perpetrators. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/ holocaust/people/perps.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000).

JEWISH BADGE. SEE BADGE, JEWISH. Jewish Brigade Group The Jewish Brigade Group was a group of the British army, composed of Jewish volunteers from Palestine. Formed in September 1944, the Jewish Brigade Group fought on behalf of the Allied forces in I TA LY from March to May 1945. The origins of the brigade can be traced back to the earlier stages of World War II. When the war began, Chaim Weizmann, as president of the World Zionist Organization, offered the British government the full cooperation of the Jewish people in the war effort, and began negotiations to create a Jewish fighting force within the British army. The British were at first reluctant. But in the summer of 1940 they changed their minds, hoping that by forming a Jewish force, they could achieve greater support in American public opinion for a policy of assistance to Britain, which was then alone in its efforts to fight G E R M A N Y . In October 1940 the War Cabinet decided to establish such a force, amounting initially to one division. Most of the recruits were to come from the neutral United States and from refugees. Palestine would provide this division with a nucleus of commanding staff to safeguard its national-Zionist character.

Was it fair to deny the Jews the right to fight their oppressors, when the Allies were doing practically nothing to stop the mass murder?

The talks with Weizmann on the establishment of the division dragged on inconclusively until March 1941. In the meantime the war situation changed considerably. The threat of invasion to the British Isles faded, while the Middle East and the Balkans became Britain’s principal theater of war. The British generals in the Middle East were apprehensive of the likely Arab reaction to the establishment of a Jewish division. Britain’s prime minister, Winston Churchill, was persuaded first to postpone implementation for a few months, and then to cancel it altogether in October 1941. With the occupation of Europe by the Nazis and the imminent entry of the United States into the war, the whole idea of a Jewish formation within the British army had to be modified. It was to be completely based on volunteering in Palestine. In July 1940 the British renounced their earlier idea of mixed Jewish-Arab units, and accepted the principle of Jewish companies in most supporting units of the ground forces. At the same time, the Jewish Agency agreed to help recruit 2,500 individuals for ground crews of the Royal Air Force and to form Jewish Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps companies. In September 1940, the British responded to another Jewish request and created the Jewish infantry companies known as the “Buffs” and several Jewish anti-aircraft and coastal artillery batteries as a part of the garrison in Palestine. About 3,000 of the volunteers who had enlisted at the beginning of the war were dispatched to Greece in early 1941. About 100 were killed in action and 1,700 were captured by the Germans in the campaigns of Greece and Crete. The remainder were evacuated to Egypt. Under the growing threat to Britain’s position in the Middle East, enlistment increased in the spring of 1941.

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A

lthough the Jewish Brigade Group was not the first Jewish unit to

take part in combat, it was the first

and only Jewish formation to fight in World War II under the Jewish flag, recognized as representing the Jewish people.

The recruitment campaign reached its peak in July 1942. Under pressure from American and local public opinion, on August 6, 1942, the British declared the establishment of the Palestine Regiment, consisting of three Jewish battalions and one of Arabs. The low status of the Palestine Regiment disappointed the Yishuv— the Jewish population in Palestine—and recruitment began to dwindle. Many soldiers asked for transfer into supporting units, which at least served nearer the front lines in Egypt and the Western Desert, and sometimes participated in the fighting. The news of the extermination of the Jews in Europe, which reached Palestine in November 1942, had little influence on enlistment in the army. Eighty percent of the 30,000 recruits joined the army in the first half of the war, and only one-fifth enlisted in the following years. The Holocaust had more impact within the ranks, particularly among the soldiers of the infantry battalions and artillery batteries stationed in Palestine. Against the official stance of the Jewish Agency, they then demanded to be dispatched out of the country and sent to the front, where they would be able to take their revenge on the Nazis and assist the surviving remnant of European Jews upon its liberation. The demand persisted throughout 1943. New Zionist proposals in the summer of 1943 for the creation of a fighting force were not connected with the Middle East and its sensitive equilibrium between Arabs and Jews. This time the British were more responsive. Although the generals still had several misgivings, moral considerations carried more weight than before. It did not seem fair to deny the Jews the right to fight their oppressors, when the Allies were doing practically nothing to stop the mass murder. Churchill exercised all his personal authority in favor of accepting the Zionist proposal and urged his colleagues to approve it. On July 3, 1944, the British War Cabinet decided that although the formation of a Jewish division was not logical on practical grounds, the creation of a brigade should be immediately and positively considered. The cabinet decision opened the way to intensive talks, resulting in an official communiqué by the War Office on September 20, 1944, announcing the formation of the Jewish Brigade Group. Brigadier Ernst Benjamin was appointed its commanding officer, and the Zionist flag was officially approved as its standard. The three infantry battalions of the brigade assembled near Alexandria, Egypt. In early November they sailed for Italy. The brigade took part in the early stages of the final Allied offensive in Italy in April 1945 and then was withdrawn for reorganization. Its casualties at the front totaled 57 killed and about 200 wounded, including non-Jewish personnel. After the termination of hostilities, the brigade was stationed in Tarvisio, near the border triangle of Italy, Yugoslavia, and A U S T R I A . Several missions set out from Tarvisio to eastern Europe and to the D I S P L AC E D P E R S O N S ’ camps in Austria and Germany. Soon the brigade became a source of attraction for the surviving Jewish youth from all over the continent. During the two-month sojourn in the region, about 150,000 Jews were smuggled to Tarvisio, where they were hospitalized and fed by the soldiers until their eventual transfer by the Jewish transport units to the refugee centers farther south. In July 1945, the brigade moved to B E L G I U M and the N E T H E R L A N D S . About 150 soldiers were secretly dispatched to conduct organizational and educational work in the displaced persons’ camps, and to assist in the preparations for “illegal” immigration to Palestine (see A L I YA B E T ). Other soldiers concentrated on illegal arms purchase for the Hagana (the Jewish underground military organization in Palestine). Despite last-moment attempts by the Jewish Agency to prolong the brigade’s existence, the British were determined to disband it according to their demobilization plan, and this was accomplished in June and July of 1946.

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Thirty thousand Jews volunteered in Palestine for service in the British army between 1939 and 1946. They sustained 700 fatalities; 1,769 were taken prisoner; several thousand were wounded; and 323 were decorated or mentioned in dispatches. Five thousand served in the Jewish Brigade.

SEE ALSO RESISTANCE, JEWISH. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Beckman, Morris. The Jewish Brigade: An Army with Two Masters, 1944–1945. Sarpedon, 1998.

In Our Own Hands: The Hidden Story of the Jewish Brigade in World War II [videorecording]. Chuck Olin Associates, 1998. Morris, Henry. We Will Remember Them: A Record of the Jews Who Died in the Armed Forces of the Crown, 1939–1945. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1989. Reprint, London: AJEX, 1994.

JEWISH COUNCIL. SEE JUDENRAT. Jewish Fighting Organization The Jewish Fighting Organization (Z˙ydowska Organizacja Bojowa; Z˙OB) was a Jewish armed group. It was established in W A R S A W on July 28, 1942, when mass D E P O R TAT I O N S from the ghetto were in full swing. The group allowed the Jews to defend themselves and offer armed resistance to the Nazi enemy. First to join the Z˙OB were the pioneering Y O U T H M OV E M E N T S —Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir, Dror, and Akiva. The first command of the Z˙OB consisted of Yitzhak Z U C K E R M A N , Josef K A P L A N , Zivia Lubetkin, Shmuel Braslav, and Mordechai T E N E N B AU M . Arie Wilner was deputized to be the organization’s representative with the Polish underground, to establish contacts with the underground’s fighting organizations and obtain assistance from them.

The Early Struggle for Unity The political groups in the Warsaw ghetto began discussing the formation of a military defense organization in March 1942. The talks were in reaction to a number of circumstances, including reports of massacres being carried out by O P E R A T I O N A L S Q UA D S (Einsatzgruppen) in Soviet territories occupied by the Germans in the second half of 1941. There were also reports on the emergence of the U N I T E D P A RT I S A N O R G A N I Z AT I O N (Fareynegte Partizaner Organizatsye) in V I L NA , and eyewitness accounts of the mass murders taking place in the C H E L⁄ M N O camp. The Warsaw ghetto factions and their leaders had been unable to reach agreement because some believed that Warsaw Jews were not in danger of being deported. They felt that even if that danger did materialize, the greater part of the ghetto population might escape, whereas military organization and resistance in the ghetto might lead to its immediate and total liquidation . Until the deportations, the Bund (Jewish Socialist Party) representatives opposed any separate Jewish organization, believing that the Jews should join the general Polish underground. For a long time the Bund members also opposed forming part of a general Jewish organization together with Zionist and bourgeois groups, their political antagonists. For these

liquidation

The emptying of a Jewish ghetto through deportations and violence.

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reasons, and because the Polish underground elements refused to recruit Jews to their ranks or to establish their own branches in the ghetto, a broadly based fighting organization could not be created prior to the deportations.

Zionists

Members of a social and political movement promoting the creation of a homeland for Jews in Palestine.

The first such fighting organization to be set up in the Warsaw ghetto was the Antifascist Bloc. Formed at the end of March and in early April 1942 by the Communists, it also attracted factions from the Zionist left. The Zionists in the bloc assumed that the Communists had the support of the S OV I E T U N I O N along with access to military power and equipment that could arm and strengthen the defense organization in the ghetto. It turned out, however, that the Communists in the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T territory had no direct link with the Soviet Union, they possessed few resources of their own, and they had little status among the Polish population. The Communists wanted to use the ghetto as a manpower reserve for partisan operations, and did not support resistance in the ghetto itself. The Zionists, and especially the Zionist youth movements, disagreed, believing that the struggle in the ghetto was the main purpose of any defense organization. Soon it became obvious that the Communists’ promises to transfer groups of fighters from the ghetto to partisan units in the forests were groundless. The Communist organization had no territory established there and all their attempts to transfer people to the forests ended in disaster. Then on May 30, 1942, several Communist activists in the ghetto were arrested, one of whom had come from the Soviet Union and taken charge of the military arm of the Antifascist Bloc in the ghetto. The arrests were the result of their political activities as Communists and had nothing to do with the bloc. However, the arrests caused shock and fear among the movements that had joined the bloc, and ultimately led to its dissolution.

Warsaw Ghetto Deportations The great wave of deportations from the Warsaw ghetto took place from July 22 to September 12, 1942. Nearly 300,000 Jews were uprooted from the ghetto and 265,000 of them were taken to the T R E B L I N K A extermination camp. The Z˙OB came into being on July 28, and called on the Jews in the ghetto to stand up for themselves and resist deportation. But the fear-ridden population was concerned only with survival. Because of the lack of weapons and the atmosphere of terror in which the deportations took place, the Z˙OB was unable to carry out any large-scale attacks or revenge actions. However, several small-scale actions took place. On August 20 a member of Z˙ OB shot and severely wounded Joseph Szerynski, the commandant of the J E W I S H G H E T T O P O L I C E , which had taken an active part in the deportations. Z˙ OB members set fire to several warehouses belonging to German factories in the ghetto, and in various places they interfered with the hunt for the Jews. On September 3 the Z˙OB suffered losses when two of its leaders, Josef Kaplan and Shmuel Braslav, were captured and killed. That same day, the Z˙OB’s pitiful collection of arms—five pistols and eight hand grenades— fell into German hands. In the eyes of many of the Z˙OB members this setback was a decisive blow. Only the encouragement of senior members Yitzhak Zuckerman and Arie Wilner prevented the others from giving up. The two leaders argued that after the mass deportation there would be a lull, which could be used for re-arming and planning a revolt. When the wave of deportations came to an end, the Z˙OB’s methods and its standing among the remaining population underwent a change. Some 55,000 Jews were left in the ghetto, 35,000 of whom were recognized as workers in factories that belonged to the Germans and were under German supervision. The other 20,000

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had succeeded in eluding deportation and gone into hiding. The tension of the preceding months was gone and was replaced by a sense of anticlimax. The survivors missed their family and friends, and now that they knew what was happening in Treblinka, they realized they, too, were living on borrowed time and their end was near. Many regretted not having offered resistance to the deportations, and insisted that they would fight if an opportunity arose again.

New Life for the Jewish Fighting Organization With new interest from the remaining Jews, the Z˙OB entered a new stage of growth and entrenchment. In October 1942 negotiations with the underground political groups were concluded. A broader Z˙OB emerged, now composed also of Po’alei Zion Zionist Socialists, Po’alei Zion Left, the Bund, Gordonia, Ha-No’ar ha-Tsiyyoni (The Zionist Youth), and Communists, in addition to the founding pioneering Zionist youth movements. For a while, Betar and the Revisionist Zionists also belonged to the Z˙OB, but internal disagreements led to the Revisionist camp’s secession and the establishment of their own military formation, the Jewish Military Union (Z˙ydowski Zwia˛zek Wojskowy; Z˙ZW). Individuals from other political groups also joined the Z˙ZW, as did some who had not previously belonged to any underground organization. In this period of intensive operations there was great tension and frequent confrontation between the Z˙OB and the Z˙ZW, and they were on the verge of armed clashes. In the end, however, representatives of the two bodies held talks and reached a settlement in which the Z˙ZW agreed to coordinate any action it was planning with the Z˙OB. A strategic plan was also agreed upon regarding armaments, arms procurement, and the division of sectors and positions in the ghetto between the two organizations. All was in preparation for the struggle that would be waged when, as expected, the Germans renewed the deportations. Mordecai A N I E L E W I C Z (of HaShomer ha-Tsa’ir) was appointed the commander of Z˙OB. The other members of the command were Yitzhak Zuckerman (Dror), Berk Schajndemil (Bund; later replaced by Marek Edelman), Yohanan Morgenstern (Po’alei Zion Zionist Socialists), Hersh Berlinski (Po’alei Zion Left), and Michael Rosenfeld (Communists). The Zionist factions that had joined and supported Z˙OB decided to set up a civilian body as well, made up of well-known leaders. This was established as the Jewish National Committee (Z˙ydowski Komitet Narodowy). It played an important role in legitimizing the Z˙OB in the final stages of the ghetto’s existence, collected funds for the procurement of arms, and gave Z˙OB the authority of a general Jewish organization representing the Jews before the Polish underground leaders. Oneg Shabbat, the underground archive established by Emanuel R I N G E L B L U M , became affiliated with the National Committee.

Beyond the Ghetto’s Borders The Z˙OB was created in Warsaw, which was the center of its operations. From the very beginning, however, the Z˙OB made efforts to spread the concept of resistance and preparation for a revolt to the provinces, especially to cities with a strong underground core. In pursuit of this objective, Mordechai Tenenbaum was dispatched to B I A L⁄ Y S TO K , where he brought about the unification of the Jewish forces and led the uprising there. Zvi Brandes and Fruma P L O T N I C K A were sent to Zagl⁄e˛bie (Be˛dzin), and Avraham Leibovich (“Laban”) to K R A K Ó W . The Z˙OB’s principal emissary on the “Aryan” side of Warsaw was Arie Wilner, who was assisted by Adolf Abraham Berman of Po’alei Zion Left and Leon F E I N E R

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of the Bund. Wilner was able to establish ties with both the Home Army (Armia Krajowa; AK), the military arm in P O L A N D of the Polish government-in-exile in London, and the People’s Army (Armia Ludowa), the Communists’ fighting force among the Poles. The AK recognized Z˙OB officially, but did not provide much in the way of weapons to the group. The AK did train Z˙OB members to make their own hand grenades out of explosives. One of the first operations undertaken by the Z˙OB, even before its base was broadened, was to purge the ghetto of elements that had assisted the Germans in the deportations: the J E W I S H G H E T TO P O L I C E commanders and spies who reported to the Germans on developments in the ghetto. Before the first uprising, which took place in January 1943, Jacob Lejkin (the acting chief of the Jewish police at the time of the deportations) was executed. Later, in the wake of the uprising, such activity was intensified. Dr. Alfred Nossig, once an active Zionist who had become a Nazi informer, was also killed. The Z˙OB’s original aim had been simply to take revenge, but their punitive actions also struck fear into the hearts of other collaborators and neutralized them. In the last weeks of the ghetto’s existence, the Z˙OB was firmly in control of ghetto life, having subdued both the J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council) and the Jewish police.

SEE ALSO RESISTANCE, JEWISH. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Gutman, Israel. Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. Landau, Elaine. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. New York: New Discovery Books, 1992.

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Resisters. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/ people/resister.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000). “Zydowski Zwiazek Wojskowy.” Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance Online. [Online] http://motlc.wiesenthal.org/pages/t088/t08818.html (accessed on August 22, 2000).

Jewish Ghetto Police The Jewish Ghetto Police (Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst) were referred to by the Jews as the “Jewish police.” These police units were organized in Jewish communities on orders of the Nazi occupying forces throughout eastern Europe. In every occupied city or region, the Jews were ordered to form an administrative committee called the J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council). This was usually in anticipation of concentrating all the Jews into areas known as ghettos. The leaders of the Judenrat were then forced to organize the Jewish ghetto police force, according to guidelines from the Germans. Whereas the Judenrat itself, although also created on German orders, often contained elements of voluntary association, the Jewish police force was strictly a German-initiated phenomenon. There was no precedent in the life of the Jewish community for the existence of a separate Jewish police force. According to the German guidelines Jewish ghetto police personnel should have a high degree of physical fitness, some military experience, and secondary or higher education. In practice, however, these guidelines were not always observed. From the very beginning many Judenräte (Jewish Councils) were apprehensive

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Jewish police in Lublin.

about the way these police units would function. They suspected that the Germans would eventually have direct supervision of the police and use them to implement their own anti-Jewish policies. Aware of this danger, many Judenräte tried to attract to the police young Jews who would be loyal to the Jewish community. At first, some recruits did tend to join the police force because it gave them an opportunity to serve their community. But there were other reasons for joining. As members of a protected organization, recruits were immune to being seized for forced labor. Police service also offered greater freedom of movement and more possibilities of obtaining food. There was a certain degree of power that came with their role as police agents. A study of the records of more than 100 Jewish police officers in the G E N E R A L reveals that the Judenräte did not succeed in their efforts to ensure that the police had public credibility. Seventy percent of the men who served in the police force had taken no part in Jewish community life before the war, and some 20 percent were refugees and strangers to the ghetto population. Only 10 percent had participated in community affairs in the prewar period. The Germans themselves often made sure, when a police unit was set up, that it would be headed by men who GOUVERNEMENT

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T

here were a few benefits for members of the Jewish

ghetto police: the possibility of increased freedom, larger food

rations, and protection of family members from deportations persuaded some men to volunteer for these jobs.

would blindly follow orders. The Jewish police force was perceived by many Jews as a potential danger to the community. Some of the Jewish YO U T H M OV E M E N T S and Jewish political parties did not permit their members to enlist in the police, recognizing that the priorities of the German-controlled Jewish police were in conflict with the pro-Jewish priorities of their underground organizations. The size of a Jewish police force depended on the size of the Jewish community it served. Thus, in W A R S AW the Jewish police at first numbered 2,000, in LVOV 500, in L⁄ Ó D Z´ 800, in K R A K Ó W 150, and in K OV N O 200. There was no uniform structure for the police units. In the large ghettos, the commanders held officer rank and the units were made up of subdivisions and district stations. The policemen were identified by the different caps they wore and by the unit’s designation inscribed on their armband, the yellow badge that they, like all other Jews, had to wear (see B A D G E , J E W I S H ). In the small ghettos where a police unit consisted of a few men only, no such organizational differentiations were made.

Police Duties The duties carried out by the Jewish police can be divided into three categories: 1. Duties in response to specific German demands as conveyed via the Judenrat 2. Duties related to the Judenrat’s activities among the Jews that were not directly related to German demands 3. Duties related to the Jewish population’s needs The first two categories included collecting ransom payments, personal belongings and valuables, and taxes; searching out people for forced labor; guarding the ghetto wall or fence and the ghetto gates; escorting labor gangs who worked outside the ghetto; and, as time went on, conducting random seizures of persons to be sent to labor camps and participating in the roundup of Jews for mass D E P O RTA T I O N S . The Judenrat was often ordered by the Germans to supply ghetto inhabitants or their financial “contributions” for specific purposes; the Jewish ghetto police were enlisted to ensure that the quotas were met. Meeting the peace-keeping or regular police needs of the ghetto or community was of secondary priority to the first two classifications of duty. The isolation of the Jewish population in ghettos and their exclusion from standard public services created serious health and welfare problems. Early on, it was the role of the Jewish police to attend to the sanitary conditions of the community and assist in the distribution of food rations and general assistance to the needy. They also helped in the control of epidemics, and in the settling of disputes—all this, of course, in addition to complying with German demands. The ghetto population appreciated the Jewish police for these public-welfare activities. However, even at an early stage, there were signs of corruption and misconduct among the Jewish police.

Dilemmas As time passed, the ability of the Jewish police to spend time on community living conditions was reduced. As their roles demanded that they take harmful actions against their peers, as in rounding up Jews for deportation, many Jewish police chose to quit the force. Some quit in an overt manner, as a way to express their identification with their families and with the Jewish population as a whole. Most of those who did so lost their immunity to deportation, and were subsequently sent to the extermination camps.

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But not all Jewish police felt that kind of pressure from the Jewish community. They stayed on their jobs up to the final phases of the ghettos’ existence, submitting to German authority and obediently following orders. When this happened in a ghetto, the Jewish police took on an entirely different character. As Jews resigned, the Germans recruited new men into the force, as both officers and rank and file. Generally, these men had no commitment at all to the Jewish population. Among the new Jewish police personnel were criminals, opportunists, and refugees with no ties or loyalties to the surviving remnants of the local Jewish community. In ghettos where the Judenrat was not willing to submit blindly to German orders, the Jewish police gained in strength, often taking over the Judenrat or usurping its administrative role.

The Underground The attitude of the Jewish police toward ghetto underground activists took on three different forms: 1. The most common relationship was one of tension. In several ghettos— such as those of Be˛ dzin, Sosnowiec, Kraków, and Warsaw—the Jewish police tried to do away with the underground, although not all members of the police in these places took part in such efforts. The underground rarely trusted the Jewish police. In Warsaw, in August 1942, during the mass deportations, the Jewish police commander, Joseph Szerynski, was attacked by the underground and seriously wounded. His successor, Jacob Lejkin, was assassinated in October of that year, on orders of the J E W I S H F I G H T I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N .

underground activists

Those who joined or formed illegal organizations designed to undermine the Nazi authorities; some, but not all, were Zionists or Communists.

2. Sometimes the Jewish police followed a policy of nonintervention in the activities of the underground that took on the form of “benign neglect.” 3. In some ghettos, such as Kovno, the Jewish police gave active help to the underground, and some policemen were also members of clandestine organizations.

Conclusion When the war ended, the conduct of the Jewish police in the ghettos came under investigation by groups of survivors. In Munich, 40 Jewish policemen were found guilty of improper conduct and were ostracized by the Jewish public. In Israel, several policemen were charged under the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law. A few were convicted but most were acquitted, as the courts took into account the extraordinary circumstances under which the Jewish policemen in the ghettos had been forced to function.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Trunk, Isaiah. Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe Under Nazi Occupation. New York: Macmillan, 1972. Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.

Jewish Law (Statut des Juifs) The Statut des Juifs, translated as “Jewish Law,” was a set of anti-Jewish legislation passed by the Vichy government of F R A N C E in October 1940 and June 1941. The laws applied to all of France despite the fact that at the time the Germans occupied only the northern three-fifths of the country—not the southern portion where

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the Vichy government was headquartered. Vichy’s first comprehensive anti-Jewish statute, of October 3, 1940, defined a Jew as a person with three grandparents “of the Jewish race,” or with two Jewish grandparents if the spouse was also Jewish. In its explicit reference to race, the Vichy definition of Jewishness was both harsher and more inclusive than the policy set by the Germans in the occupied zone of France and elsewhere. The law went on to provide the basis for drastically reducing the role of Jews in French society. It excluded Jews from top positions in the French civil service, the officer corps of the army, the ranks of noncommissioned officers, and all professions that influence public opinion—teaching, the press, radio, film, and theater. Jews were permitted to hold menial public-service positions, provided they had served in the armed forces between 1914 and 1918 or had distinguished themselves in the military campaign of 1939 and 1940. The statute also called for a quota system to limit the presence of Jews in the liberal professions, including law and medicine. Formulated purely on French initiative, the law was prepared by the Justice Ministry of Raphaël Alibert, a militant anti-Semite, friend of the monarchist Action Française movement, and the formulator of the Vichy motto “Travail, Famille, Patrie” (Work, Family, Fatherland). The Vichy regime’s efforts to broaden the principles of this statute and to tighten some of its provisions led to a second Statut des Juifs, on June 2, 1941. It emerged from Xavier V A L L AT ’s General Office for Jewish Affairs, and was carefully drafted in a series of cabinet meetings and consultations with Justice Minister Joseph Barthélemy. After more clearly defining who was a Jew, and tinkering with the provisions for the removal of Jews from public posts, the law opened the way for a massive purging of Jews from the liberal professions, commerce, and industry. Only a handful of well-established French Jews could benefit from the exemptions provided by the statute. Even Jewish men who had served in France’s military and survived captivity as prisoners of war were not exempt from this decree. Keenly attentive to detail, Vallat was careful to close every loophole, to ensure that no Jew escaped the jurisdiction of the anti-Jewish program. Never fully satisfied with the handiwork of the General Office for Jewish Affairs, the coordinator of the anti-Semitic legislation worked on a new Statut des Juifs during the fall and winter of 1941, but this law was never enacted. Mean-spirited and filled with contradictions on the matter of race and religion, the statutes at the heart of the Vichy regime’s policy toward the Jews reflected the legalistic approach of the government and its hatred toward all Jews, whether or not they were French citizens.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES: Josephs, Jeremy. Swastika Over Paris. New York: Arcade, 1989. Weisberg, Richard H. Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

JEWISH YOUTH MOVEMENTS. SEE YOUTH MOVEMENTS. Joint Distribution Committee The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC; also known as the Joint) was established in 1919 by American Jewry’s overseas relief and rehabilitation agency to aid European Jews economically and in their emigration efforts. As early

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SIMILAR NAME, SEPARATE ORGANIZATION There were many relief agencies worldwide that sought to aid the Jews of Europe during the Nazi reign of terror. The Joint Rescue Committee—not to be confused with the Joint Distribution Committee—was established by leaders of various organizations in the Jewish community in Palestine (Yishuv), to contribute to this effort. This committee’s early work focused on providing emergency food supplies and immigration certificates to Jews in the Polish ghettos. The committee was expanded from four members to twelve in 1943, in recognition of the need to centralize all European rescue and assistance efforts undertaken by the Yishuv. Despite internal divisions, the committee remained active because the participating organizations knew that the situation of European Jews was too complex for any one of them to act effectively alone. By 1945, the Joint Rescue Committee’s efforts focused on helping war refugees. The committee disbanded shortly before the establishment of the state of Israel.

as 1930, it became clear to some Joint leaders in Europe that mass emigrations would be forthcoming as the National Socialists, with a vehemently antisemitic agenda, began to gain favor in G E R M A N Y . However, no one was, at that point, able to imagine the scope of the horror that would overtake European Jewry in just a few years’ time. Additionally, American Jews were feeling the effects of the economic crisis of 1929, so funds for early intervention and assistance programs were not available, anyway. The central figure in the committee during the World War II years was Joseph J. Schwartz, who became head of the Joint’s European operation. When the war broke out, the Joint became a major factor in an overall effort to help European Jews find new means for economic survival in Europe. At the same time, it aided in the emigration of those who could not stay there in what it hoped would be an organized exodus. Some of its funds went to support the eastern European communities, which were in a far worse economic situation than even German Jewry during the first years of Adolf H I T L E R ’s regime.

Activities of the Joint Distribution Committee The Joint’s activities centered on raising money to fund rescue and rehabilitation programs and to assist self-help and underground resistance activity in Europe. Until the United States entered the war, in December 1941, the Joint sent food and money by various means to P O L A N D ; after the American entry into the war, the committee was forbidden to help “enemy” countries. Several thousand Jews were evacuated from L I T H UA N I A to East Asia, largely with Joint support. In W A R S AW , a very active Joint committee under the leadership of Yitzhak Gitterman raised funds by promising repayment in dollars after the war (these promises were later honored). Children’s centers, hospitals, and house committees providing social, cultural, economic, and moral support were established under the Joint’s supervision in the Warsaw ghetto. Educational services were funded by the Joint. The Joint office in Warsaw also provided funds for armed resistance, both in Warsaw and in B I A L⁄ Y S TO K .

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The Joint funds were used to provide aid to French Jews and to support orphanages, hospitals, and public kitchens. Schools, theaters, and study groups received aid, as did efforts to help Jews obtain false identity papers and cross international borders. Small groups of surviving Jews were supported in B E R L I N in 1944, and the remnants of the community in Zagreb were helped. Parcels were sent to a number of C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S and to the ghetto of T H E R E S I E N S TA D T . Other aid efforts took place as circumstances allowed. The Joint became a very active participant in the attempts to rescue Slovak Jewry. Some Polish Jews were smuggled into S L OVA K I A , where the Joint supported work camps that were to provide relative safety for their inmates. The Joint also supplied large sums of money, channeled through Switzerland, to aid Romanian Jewry. Joint funds went to save what was left of the Bessarabian and Bukovina Jews who had been expelled to the southern U K R A I N E (Transnistria) in 1941. In H U N G A RY , after the March 1944 occupation of that country by the Germans, funds were made available to establish children’s shelters and were given to neutral diplomats to provide aid to Jews. Raoul W A L L E N B E R G received the money he needed from the Joint, as did Carl L U T Z , the Swiss vice-consul in Budapest, both of whom used the funds to help rescue Jews through diplomatic channels. In Hungary, particularly in late 1944, the Joint’s help became crucial in saving the remnants of Hungarian Jewry until Budapest was liberated.

Expenditures of the Joint The Joint Distribution Committee sent funds totaling $12.29 million in 1938–39, and $11.9 million in 1940–41. The decrease resulted from the American Jews’ disinterest in what was happening in Europe, despite tireless fund-raising efforts on the part of the committee. In 1942, the crucial year of the Holocaust, the committee had $6 million at its disposal for European relief, but funds could no longer be transferred to Europe except under crippling conditions. Switzerland was slated to be the main center for distribution of funds, with Saly M AY E R as its representative. However, in 1942–43, owing to disagreements between the American and Swiss governments, no funds could be transmitted to that country. Global expenditures increased in 1943 to $8.9 million, to $14.8 million in 1944, and to $26.8 million in 1945. Tragically, by that time most of European Jewry had been murdered. Nevertheless, the funds did help some of those who had a chance of survival.

American Jewry and the Work of the Joint The Joint’s operations, on the whole, were the main way in which American Jews aided their European brotherhood during the Holocaust. After the war, the conscience of American Jews was finally stirred up, and selfaccusations were made regarding what had not been done during the Holocaust. Perhaps as a result of this, the Joint, working together with the United HIAS Service and other organizations, became the central Jewish agency supporting survivors in the D I S P L AC E D P E R S O N S ’ camps in Germany, Austria, and I TA LY , and in Poland, Hungary, Romania, and elsewhere. Between 1946 and 1950, the sum of $280 million was spent (compared to $169 million between 1914 and 1945), and quantities of food were sent to supplement the official rations. Also provided were clothing, books, and school supplies for children, cultural amenities, religious supplies, and much more. In addition, vocational training centers were supported. After the establishment of Israel in May 1948 the Joint became responsible for bringing immigrants there. Until 1949, it also funded the social activities in the detention camps that the British

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Jewish displaced persons in Athens try on new shoes supplied by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

had set up in Cyprus. The Joint’s work with survivors terminated with the closing of the last displaced persons’ camp (Föhrenwald) in 1957, and with the committee’s participation in the Claims Conference, which received and administered German reparation funds to Holocaust survivors after 1953. Without the Joint, the survivors’ fate would have been much bleaker than it was.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bauer, Yehuda. American Jewry and the Holocaust: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1939–1945. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981. Milton, Sybil, ed. American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, New York. New York: Garland, 1995.

Judenrat A Judenrat (plural, Judenräte) was a “Jewish Council” established by the Nazis in many of the communities of occupied Europe. Judenräte were first set up in the Jewish communities of P O L A N D , under the orders of Reinhard H E Y D R I C H . Heydrich issued the instructions on September 21, 1939—just weeks after G E R M A N Y ’s invasion of Poland. Hans F R A N K , the head of the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T , saw that the orders were fulfilled. According to Heydrich’s guidelines, the members of the Judenräte would be fully responsible for carrying out German policies regarding the Jews. The Jewish Councils would be made up, “as far as possible, of influential people and rabbis.” Including leading community members in the Judenräte had two purposes: to make

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sure that German orders were put into place to the fullest possible extent, and to discredit Jewish leadership in the eyes of the Jewish population.

“I

t is the duty of the Judenrat … to receive the orders of the German Administration. It is

responsible for the conscientious carrying out of orders to their full extent. The directives it issues to carry out these German decrees must be obeyed by all Jews and Jewesses.” Hans Frank, “Regulation for the Establishment of the Judenräte,” November 28, 1939.

Under Frank’s order, the Judenrat was to have 12 members in places where the Jewish population was 10,000 or less. In larger towns or cities, there would be 24 members. The councils were to be elected by the members of the community, but the council members themselves were to choose their chairman and vice-chairman. The results were subject to the approval of German district or city officials—thus, the elections were actually meaningless. On some occasions, though, members of the Jewish communities did have a say in determining the composition of the councils. In some cases, Jewish activists refused to join the Judenräte, because they were suspicious—with good reason—of how the Germans would use them. But generally, local Jewish leaders did become members of the councils, either under Nazi pressure or because they thought they were best able to represent their communities in dealing with the German authorities. This reasoning met with approval from the Jewish population.

Decisions on Implementation Once the Judenräte were established, the Germans lost no time in presenting them with daunting tasks. The councils were ordered to draft people for forced labor, take a census of the Jewish population, evacuate apartments and hand them over to Germans, pay fines or ransoms, confiscate valuables owned by Jews, and so on. In most cases, the Judenrat members tried to delay or negotiate the administrative and economic measures imposed by the Germans. However, traditional methods used for dealing with the authorities, such as lobbying officials and utilizing personal contacts, were not of help under the totalitarian Nazi regime. The Judenräte believed that by complying with the Germans’ early demands, they would impress upon the Nazis the vital importance to the Germans of the Jewish community. In this way, they hoped to avoid or moderate some of the blows, to gain time, to ward off or delay punishments, and perhaps even to persuade the Germans to reconsider their Jewish policy, to view the Jews as a reservoir for the manpower the Germans sorely needed. In the meantime, the Jews hoped, the war would end in a German defeat. It took a while before these theories and assessments were put to the test—until the mass deportations of 1942, when the true nature of German policy became increasingly obvious.

Providing Basic Needs Judenrat members were also involved in providing the community with its basic needs. The war destroyed the Jewish economic structure, which had already been shaky. There had always been Jews requiring public assistance, but the hardships created by the German occupation were unprecedented. Tens of thousands of Jews were displaced from their homes and became refugees, without a place to live or a source of food. Jews were no longer covered by the general public services and required their own health services and public institutions, such as homes for the aged, orphanages, and, in part, educational institutions. The Judenrat’s efforts to ease the plight of the Jewish population were among the ways in which it sought to counter the Nazi policy of starving communities and breaking their resistance. However, some Judenrat activities displayed instances of protectionism, favoritism, misuse of public trust for personal advantage, and so on. Such practices caused bitter resentment and were harshly criticized.

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An unidentified Judenrat official, sitting at the desk in his office, gathered with other employees of the area.

More functions were imposed upon the Judenräte by the Germans with the ghettoization of the Jews. The Judenräte were expected to oversee the transfer Jews from their homes into the areas allotted for the ghettos, provide living quarters for the new inhabitants, maintain public order, and prevent smuggling. Some of these duties were carried out by the J E W I S H G H E T TO P O L I C E (Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst), an internal police force mandated by the Germans. Under ghetto conditions, which separated the Jews from the general population, the hardships became much worse. Large sections of the Jewish community faced starvation. It was the Judenrat’s responsibility to distribute the meager food rations permitted by the Germans. In a number of ghettos, the Judenräte tried to obtain more food by buying provisions on the black market or on the “Aryan” side, or by trading products manufactured in the ghetto. SELF-HELP As a result of starvation, overcrowding, and the lack of basic sanitary

facilities, diseases spread in the ghetto. The Germans welcomed the resulting rise in the Jews’ death rate, but held the Judenrat responsible for making sure that contagious diseases did not cross the ghetto borders. The Judenrat set up hospitals and clinics and organized other forms of medical aid. In some cases, the Judenrat worked with voluntary organizations to contain and treat disease, with varying success.

“

… the Council has become the sole representative and mediator

between the Jewish population and the authorities.… The Council has become the central place where all the various Jewish affairs are organized.” —From a Jewish newspaper published with the approval of the German authorities. Gazeta Zydowska, No. 46, December 23, 1940.

C O M P L I A N C E O R R E F U S A L ? Beginning in 1940, the Judenräte were given the task of providing forced labor for the camps that were being set up by the Nazis. This was a fundamental change from previous assignments. It did not mean sending people on forced labor in or near their place of residence, where they could return in the evening to their community and family. It meant total separation and transfer to remote locations where a much harsher regime was in force—a regime that many prisoners could not endure for long.

The Judenräte had to decide how to meet these German demands. They usually did supply the required quota of able-bodied young men as workers for the labor camps, causing friction with the community when people had to be seized on the streets for deportation to the camps. In the initial stages of forced-labor deportations, the Judenräte tried to maintain contact with the members of their community imprisoned in the camps, sending them food, clothing, and medicines. But when German policy became even harsher, the contact was broken off. In some cases councils

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refused to supply quotas for the labor camps. When Joseph Parnes, chairman of the Judenrat in LVOV , refused to send men to the J ANÓWSKA camp, he was killed.

“T

he Community Council—the Judenrat, in the language of the Occupying Power—is an

abomination in the eyes of the Warsaw Community.… It was not elected by the Community, but reached its position of power through appointment and with the support of the Nazi Authorities.…” From the diary of Chaim A. Kaplan, April 23, 1941 MORESHET ARCHIVES, D.2.138.

As time went on and Nazi policy approached the next phase, that of mass extermination of Jews, the Judenräte had very little room left for maneuvering between the needs of the Jewish population and the demands made by the Germans. Judenrat members had to decide where to draw the line—Would following German orders help the overall community’s struggle for survival? There were bitter discussions on this issue both within and outside the Judenräte. The decisions taken by the Jewish Council members and the answers they gave to this crucial question differed from one council to the next in substance. They also depended on the specific moment when they had to be made. The pattern of behavior of Judenrat members fell into four categories: 1. Refusal to cooperate with the Germans, even with regard to economic measures or other relatively mundane issues; 2. Compliance with extreme measures of a material nature, such as the seizure of property, but absolute refusal to hand over human beings; 3. Resignation to the destruction of some Jews, on the assumption that this would enable other members of the community to be saved; 4. Compliance in full with all German orders, without any consideration for their effect on the Jewish public, and with concern only for one’s own personal interests. Most Judenrat members died either before the mass SS “operations” (Aktionen) took place, or during the deportations to E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S . In very many cases, they were murdered for refusing to comply with German orders. In the first phase of the existence of Judenräte, the chairmen (or, at least, some of them) were responsible leaders who looked after the interests of the Jewish community and did not give in to German pressure. Those who followed them—that is, those who assumed their posts after the original chairmen had been dismissed or killed—were, for the most part, German appointees. They were less sensitive to the needs of the people. In the final stages of mass extermination and relentless terror, these Judenrat chairmen almost always carried out Nazi orders. In their search for ways to prevent, slow down, or reduce the onslaught upon their communities, many Judenräte adopted a policy of “rescue by labor.” They tried to convince the Nazis of the importance, for Germany, of the continued existence of the Jewish community, as a source of labor. As the war went on and the economy required additional manpower, authorities in charge of the production of military equipment and supplies wanted to use Jewish labor. This was not a rejection of the Nazis’ “F I NA L S O L U T I O N ” policy to exterminate the Jews of Europe. It was simply a practical decision based on the prevailing conditions. But there were Judenräte that saw opportunities in such circumstances that could be exploited to save Jews. They were resigned to the hopelessness of trying to save the entire Jewish community, but they felt they might salvage a part of it by providing laborers who would be kept alive as long as they could work.

Resistance Relations between the Judenrat and the resistance movements—the Jewish underground and fighters’ organizations in the ghettos—were highly complex. They varied from place to place. Many Judenräte were opposed to the idea of armed resistance (see R E S I S TA N C E , J E W I S H ) or of fleeing to the forests to join the

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PA R T I S A N S .

Some members believed that resistance activities in the ghetto would endanger the entire community, in view of the rule of “collective responsibility” that the Nazis had introduced. This created tension in many ghettos where the Judenrat and the underground competed for influence. In some places, feelings ran high enough for violent clashes to erupt. Some Judenräte supported the concept of resistance, but felt it should be used only when it was clear that the community was about to be liquidated. Others helped the resistance without reservations of any kind, and some even took a leading part in uprisings.

National and Local Function As the war progressed, the Germans and their allies continued to establish Judenräte. In the areas of Eastern Europe where the Germans exercised direct control, the Judenräte were local institutions and, for the most part, had no contact with one another. Some of the Judenräte held authority in one location only, while others administered Jewish communities throughout a district or even an entire country. In some parts of Europe, the councils were set up as country-wide institutions, or were gradually given that responsibility. This affected the way they functioned, their relations with the Germans and the local governments, and their ties with the Jewish population.

Historical View The role played by the Judenräte in Jewish public life during the Holocaust is one of the most controversial issues relating to the period. Some historians believe that the institution of the Judenrat weakened the inner strength of the Jewish communities. Others think that the Judenräte reinforced the Jews’ power of endurance in their struggle for survival. Scholarship has been divided. At one time there was strong, indiscriminate condemnation of the Judenräte. Closer analysis of the various elements that made up the councils’ activities has resulted in more examination of the different phases of Nazi policy on the “Final Solution,” changes that took place in the composition of the Judenräte, and the effect of these changes on the conduct of Judenrat members. New efforts have been made to understand how the Judenrat used its limited authority—given to it by the Germans with the sole aim of enabling it to carry out German orders—for the good of the Jewish population; how it acted during the mass deportations; how Judenrat members viewed resistance and rescue efforts; and other issues. An objective assessment of all these elements permits a more realistic and accurate historical evaluation of the Judenrat.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES “Judenrat.” The Jewish Student Online Research Center. [Online] http://usisrael.org/jsource/Holocaust/judenrat.html (accessed on August 22, 2000). Trunk, Isaiah. Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe Under Nazi Occupation. New York: Macmillan, 1972. Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.

JÜDISCHER CENTRALVEREIN. SEE CENTRAL UNION OF GERMAN CITIZENS OF JEWISH FAITH (CENTRALVEREIN DEUTSCHER STAATSBÜRGER JÜDISCHEN GLAUBENS).

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Kaltenbrunner, Ernst (1903–1946)

Ernst Kaltenbrunner was a Nazi politician who was born in Ried im Innkreis (Upper Austria) and attended school in Linz. After studying chemistry and law in Prague and elsewhere, he practiced as a lawyer. He joined the National Socialist party and the SS in 1932. In 1934 and 1935, Kaltenbrunner was imprisoned in A U S T R I A on a charge of high treason. Upon his release, he headed the SS in that country from 1935 until 1938. After the Anschluss (the forcible annexation of Austria to G E R M A N Y ), Kaltenbrunner, now a major general, was promoted to the post of under-secretary of state for public security in the Ostmark, as Austria was renamed by the Nazis, and he remained there until 1941. During the same period, Kaltenbrunner was a member of the ReichstagGerman parliament of elected representatives. Together with District Leader Josef Bürckel, Kaltenbrunner was responsible for the C E N T R A L O F F I C E F O R J E W I S H E M I G R AT I O N (Zentralstelle Für Jüdische Auswanderung) in Vienna, headed by Adolf E I C H M A N N . By the time Eichmann was transferred to Prague in April 1939, 150,000 Jews had emigrated from Austria. After Reinhard H E Y D R I C H ’ S was mortally wounded in an assassination attempt on May 27, 1942, Kaltenbrunner was appointed head of the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (RSHA). Heydrich died on June 4. Kaltenbrunner was formally named his successor as chief of the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei) and the S D (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service) on January 30, 1943. With Heinrich H I M M L E R , Kaltenbrunner was one of the main initiators of A K T I O N (O P E R AT I O N ) R E I N H A R D and assumed much of the responsibility for the implementation of the “F I NA L S O L U T I O N ” from 1942 to 1945, although few documents from that time period record his activities in this connection. The same is true for his participation in the E U T H A NA S I A P R O G R A M . This may be partly attributed to Himmler’s growing tendency to reserve the credit for himself. Evidence exists, however, of Kaltenbrunner’s role as instigator of the deportation from T H E R E S I E N S TA D T in 1943 of Jews unfit for work, and of Bulgarian Jews. Kaltenbrunner ensured that many of his department heads appeared to be more important than they actually were in the power structure of the RSHA. His personal assistant was an SS officer who in 1941 had been responsible for the murder of at least 60,000 Jewish men, women, and children in Lithuania. Kaltenbrunner allowed others to assume credit for actions that he could later disavow knowledge of, apparently because he believed that, in contrast to many of his subordinates, he had a very real chance to survive after the end of the war. Even at his trial, Kaltenbrunner attempted to play the part of someone who simply followed orders and “had absolutely no idea.” Nevertheless, on October 9, 1946, the International Military Tribunal sentenced him to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on October 16. The so-called Kaltenbrunner reports are a collection of reports on the interrogations conducted by the G E S TA P O after the attempt on Hitler’s life of July 20, 1944. They were drawn up for Martin B O R M A N N , on Kaltenbrunner’s orders, by an improvised RSHA unit headed by SS-Obersturmbannführer lieutenant colonel Walter von Kielpinski. According to historians, the reports were the result of “thousands of investigations” carried out by some 400 RSHA officials operating in eleven groups that took part in suppressing the attempted coup.

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Bodies of Jews massacred at KamenetsPodolski.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Conot, Robert E. Justice at Nuremberg. New York: Harper & Row, 1983. Sprecher, Drexel A. Inside the Nuremberg Trial: A Prosecutor’s Comprehensive Account. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1999. Taylor, Telford. The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir. New York: Knopf, 1992.

Kamenets-Podolski Kamenets-Podolski is a city in Ukraine where mass killings of Jews, mostly from H U N G A R Y , took place in August 1941. Shortly after Hungary declared war on the S OVIET U NION , on June 27, 1941, a plan was devised by Ödön Martinides and Árkád Kiss. They were two leading officers of the National Central Alien Control Office (Külföldieket Ellenórzó Országos Kozponti Hatosag; KEOKH), the agency with jurisdiction over foreign nationals living in Hungary, to “resettle” the Polish and Russian Jews in the Hungarian-administered part of “liberated” Galicia. Under Decree No. 192-1941, adopted on July 12, and a subsequent secret directive of the KEOKH, a drive was begun to deport “the recently infiltrated Polish and Russian Jews in the largest possible number and as quickly as possible.” Among the “alien” Jews rounded up that month were also a considerable number of Hungarian Jews who could not prove their citizenship simply because their papers were not immediately available. Other Hungarian Jews were caught up in the turmoil. In the Transcarpathian Ukraine, an area inhabited by Orthodox and Hasidic Jews, many Jewish communities were uprooted in their entirety. Since the Jews were rounded up hastily, usually in the dark of night, very few of them could take along adequate provisions. The “alien” Jews were packed into freight cars and taken to Körösmezö, near the Polish border. From there, they were transferred across the border at the rate of about 1,000 a day. By August 10, approximately 14,000 Jews had been handed over

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to the SS. An additional 4,000 were transferred by the end of the month, when the operation was completed. From Körösmezö the Jews were first taken to Kolomyia, and then marched in columns of 300 to 400 to Kamenets-Podolski. Their fate was decided on August 25 at a conference held at the Vinnitsa headquarters of the General-quartiermeister-OKH, where SS-Obergruppenführer (lieutenant general) Friedrich J E C K E L N assured the conference attendees that he would complete the liquidation of the Jews by September 1, 1941. The Aktion (Operation) took place on August 27 and 28 near the city and claimed (according to Jeckeln’s Operational Report USSR No. 80) 23,600 Jewish lives. This was the first five-figure massacre in the Nazis’ “F I NA L S O L U T I O N ” program. Of these, 14,000 to 18,000 Jews were from Hungary. The remainder were local.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Gitelman, Zvi, ed. Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. “Jews in the Soviet Union.” The Jewish Student Online Research Center. [Online] http://usisrael.org/jsource/Holocaust/sutoc.html (accessed on August 21, 2000).

Kaplan, Josef (1913–1942)

Josef Kaplan was a leader of the W A R S AW Jewish underground and a founder of J E W I S H F I G H T I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N (the Z˙ydowska Organizacja Bojowa; Z˙OB). He was born in Kalisz, a city in western Poland, into a poor family and a strict religious atmosphere. Early in his youth he was drawn to secular education and culture. He joined the Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir Zionist youth movement in the town, attracted by the political zeal of its members and their vision of a homeland for Jews in Palestine. As an adult, in the late 1930s, he was one of the leaders of the Zionist movement in Poland. During the first few days of World War II, in September 1939, Kaplan joined the flood of refugees to the east, and took charge of the illegal border-crossing point at Lida on the Polish-Lithuanian border. Early in 1940 Kaplan returned to Nazi-occupied Poland to take charge of the underground movement, Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir. From then on, Kaplan devoted all his time to the underground. He consolidated the movement’s structure in the various ghettos and ensured the continuation of agricultural training even on a clandestine basis; he published and distributed underground newspapers, and was his movement’s representative in the overall Jewish underground organizations and institutions. In the spring of 1942, Kaplan organized a group of Jews to fight against the Nazis. He took part in the activities of the Antifascist Bloc in Warsaw and, in July of that year, in establishing the Z˙OB in Warsaw. On September 3, 1942, during the mass deportation of Jews from Warsaw, the Nazis caught Kaplan in the act of preparing forged documents for a group of fighters who were about to join the partisans, and he was killed.

Josef Kaplan.

Irena Adamowicz

A Polish woman who served as a liaison officer coordinating efforts among various ghetto underground movements.

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Kaplan kept a diary, but it was not preserved. Irena Adamowicz , who knew him well, described him in the following terms: “The activist who had been likable but quite average turned into a great man, very strong … and very calm. He was an excellent organizer and an ideal underground operator, painstaking and resourceful in all humdrum day-to-day affairs, and with a clear and inspiring approach to matters of principle, of life and death.”

KAPO

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Roland, Charles G. Courage Under Siege: Starvation, Disease, and Death in the Warsaw Ghetto. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Stewart, Gail. Life in the Warsaw Ghetto. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1995.

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Resisters. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/resister.htm (accessed on August 21, 2000).

Kapo Kapo, from the Italian word capo, meaning “chief” or “boss,” was the term used in the Nazi C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S for an inmate appointed to head a work gang (Kommando) made up of other prisoners. The term “Kapo” is sometimes also used to refer to any prisoner who was given an assignment and collaborated with the Nazis, and, beyond that, for any Nazi collaborator . In the German-occupied countries and in the camps, however, only the bosses of prisoner work gangs were referred to as Kapos. At the workplaces, the work gangs were split up into smaller groups, each headed by a foreman (Vorarbeiter) responsible to the Kapo.

collaborator

A person who assisted the enemy authorities, i.e., the Nazis.

Generally, Kapos were not skilled workers. Their job was to escort the prisoners to their place of work and make sure that they did their tasks properly. But work as such was generally not the major objective in the camps. The real purpose was to break the prisoners in mind and spirit. Kapos, therefore, were an instrument by which a regime of humiliation and sheer physical cruelty was imposed upon the prison population. Striped prisoner’s jacket that originally belonged to a German Kapo (trustee).

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Many Kapos mistreated prisoners in a criminal fashion and were put on trial after the war. In numerous other instances, however, the Kapos just pretended to be strict with the prisoners and tried to handle them as humanely as possible, under the circumstances. But at all times a deep gulf divided the ordinary camp inmates from the Kapos and other supervisors. The Kapos’ clothing was relatively warm, they had enough to eat, and they had their own reserved section in the prison barracks (the “block”). These privileges were unthinkable for the regular prisoners, and the differences in living conditions naturally affected the relationship between the groups.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Kapo [videorecording]. Jerusalem: Set Productions, 1999. Tisma, Aleksandar. Kapo. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993.

The Trial of Adolf Eichmann [videorecording]. PBS Home Video, 1997.

Kasztner, Rezso˝ (1906–1957)

Hungarian journalist and lawyer Rezso˝ (Rudolf or Israel) Kasztner was a Labor Zionist activist, first in his hometown of Cluj and then, after the annexation of Transylvania by H U N G A RY in 1940, in Budapest. In early 1943 he became the vice chairman of the Relief and Rescue Committee of Budapest of the Zionist movement. The committee tried to warn others about what was happening to Jews in Poland and elsewhere. Jews in Hungary did not feel threatened, however, in spite of the accounts of Polish Jewish refugees arriving in Hungary after 1942. Despite internal dissension, the committee tried to prepare for the inevitable German occupation, even attempting to organize armed resistance. There was little interest in resistance on the part of the Hungarian Jewish community. Perhaps this was due to growing anti-Jewish hostility on the part of the general population, or it may have been related to the fact that most young Jewish men were compelled to serve in the labor service system under Hungarian army control (see H U N G A R I A N L A B O R S E R V I C E S Y S T E M ). Whatever their reasons, many in the Jewish community felt that resistance was not in the best interests of Jews as a whole, and they generally ignored Kasztner’s warnings. The Germans occupied Hungary in March 1944. Kasztner believed that the only way to save Hungarian Jews was to negotiate with the Germans. Consequently, money was paid to the SS for the release of large numbers of Jews in return for trucks and other materials (the operation was called “Blood for Goods”). At the end of June 1944, a train with 1,684 Jews left Hungary, ostensibly for Spain or Switzerland; it was, however, directed to the B ERGEN -B ELSEN camp, where these Jews were interned. On the train were Kasztner’s family and friends from Cluj, along with representatives from all political and religious factions, and wealthy people who had paid to be included. Kasztner’s idea was that this exodus would serve as a precedent for undoing the murder program, and that more trains would follow. However, none did. In July 1944 SS officer Kurt Becher received Heinrich H I M M L E R ’s permission to negotiate with Kasztner. The first meeting, on August 21, 1944, led to Himmler’s order to refrain from deporting the Jews of Budapest, and 318 Jews in BergenBelsen from the “Kasztner train” were released to Switzerland. In December of that year the remainder of the Bergen-Belsen internees were also sent to safety. Himm-

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ler’s willingness to make these lifesaving gestures was likely related to the impending German defeat. Perhaps Himmler and the German negotiators hoped that these gestures of decency might place them in a more favorable position with the Allied victors. After the war, Kasztner was called to Nuremberg (see T R I A L S O F T H E WA R C R I M I N A L S ) to help prosecute Nazi criminals. His written testimony in favor of Becher undoubtedly helped to save the latter from a closer investigation. In 1954, Kasztner filed a lawsuit against one Malkiel Grünwald, who had accused him of being a traitor and causing the deaths of many Jews. The trial, in Israel, became instead a trial of Kasztner himself. The judge accused Kasztner of having “sold his soul to the devil.” This referred to the negotiations with the Nazis, and to the trainload of Jews he arranged to have sent to safety, which was seen as an avenue of rescue for Kasztner’s relatives and friends. He was also accused of not warning Hungarian Jews of impending disaster and of covering up for the Nazis after the war. The Israeli Supreme Court was debating Kasztner’s appeal when he was murdered by nationalist extremists. In a final verdict, the court posthumously exonerated Kasztner from all accusations except the charge that he had helped Nazis to escape from justice. In retrospect, it seems evident that Kasztner’s attempt to save Jews through negotiation was the only avenue of action available to him, and that by putting his own family members on that train in 1944 he likely persuaded many others to board it. In any case, he saw this as a breakthrough for future rescues. Perhaps the most unfounded charge against him was that Kasztner did not warn Hungarian Jewry. Kasztner was not a well-known Jewish leader, and he had no authoritative position through which to warn anyone. In Cluj, where he was known, even important local citizens failed to convince most of the Jews that danger was near.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Hecht, Ben. Perfidy. New York: Messner, 1961. Reprint, New London, NH: Milah Press, 1997.

Rezso˝ Kasztner Memorial. [Online] http://www.kastnermemorial.com/ (accessed on August 21, 2000).

KAUNAS. SEE KOVNO. Kharkov Kharkov was the second-largest city in the Ukrainian SSR (now the independent state of U K R A I N E ) at the beginning of World War II. According to the 1939 census, the city had a Jewish population of 130,200, one-sixth of the total number of Kharkov citzens. In the summer of 1941, when the Germans were approaching the city, many of its inhabitants fled, including the majority of the Jewish population. After Kharkov was captured by the Germans on October 23, 1941, it became the headquarters of the German Sixth Army. It remained under a military government throughout the German occupation and did not become part of Reichskommissariat Ukraine. The military government issued all decrees concerning the city, including those affecting the Jews. On November 3, 1941, the military government announced that, of the meager food rations that would be available, Jews would receive only 40 percent. The daily bread ration was set at 150 grams (5.25 oz), but

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Jews received only 60 grams (2 oz). Hostages were taken daily, and most were Jews. They were either shot or hanged. On November 26, S P E C I A L C O M M A N D O (Sonderkommando) 4a arrived in Kharkov, headed by Paul B L O B E L . This meant the murder of more Jews. They were seized in groups from streets and houses and taken to the Hotel International. There they were tortured, and then murdered, mostly in gas vans. (See G A S C H A M B E R S / VA N S .)

P

risoners were not permitted to have water or food. They had

to bribe the guards for these things. They were forbidden to leave the sheds at night, though there were no sanitary facilities inside.

On December 14, 1941, the military governor of Kharkov ordered the city’s Jews to assemble on the site of a nearby tractor plant by December 16. The plant was situated 7.5 miles (12 km) from Kharkov, and the Soviets had removed all its equipment before their retreat. In order to terrorize the Jews, Special Commando 4a murdered 305 Jews, on the pretext that they had been spreading false rumors. The sheds in which the prisoners were housed had no doors, windows, or heating facilities, and the winter of 1941–42 was severe. Many died from cold, disease, and hunger. Only three weeks after the establishment of this ghetto, the liquidation of the Jews of Kharkov was set in motion. On the first day, “volunteers” were called for work in Poltava and Lubny, located west of Kharkov. The 800 men who reported for the trip were taken by truck to a nearby site, the Drobitski Ravine, where they were murdered in pits that had been prepared in advance. In the following days more Jews were taken to the same site, by truck or on foot, and murdered. Gas vans were also used for killings. The mass slaughter was carried out by men of Special Commando 4a, assisted by members of German Police Battalion 314 and Waffen-SS soldiers, who were probably from S S D E A T H ’ S - H E A D U N I T S (Totenkopfverbände). Following the war, a special committee investigated Nazi crimes in Kharkov and opened the burial pits in the Drobitski Ravine. The committee issued a report that stated that 15,000 people had been murdered there. However, according to evidence given at the trial of the officers and men of Special Commando 4a by the intelligence officer of the German Sixth Army (to which the Special Commando had been attached), the actual number of victims, as he had heard it from Blobel himself, was 21,685. This figure includes all the Jews killed from the beginning of the German occupation until early January 1942, when the liquidation of the Jews of Kharkov was completed. The city was liberated on February 16, 1943, reconquered by the Germans, and liberated again on August 23. A few Jews survived, because they had gone into hiding with the help of local inhabitants.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Glantz, David M. Kharkov 1942: Anatomy of a Military Disaster. Rockville Centre, NY: Sarpedon, 1998. Restayn, Jean. The Battle for Kharkov, Winter 1942/1943. Manitoba: J. J. Fedorowicz, 2000.

Kherson Kherson is the capital of the district by the same name in U K R A I N E , which was formerly a republic of the S OV I E T U N I O N . Jews lived in Kherson from its founding in the eighteenth century. On the eve of World War II there were more than 15,000 Jews in a city population of 167,108.

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By the time Kherson was captured by the Germans on August 19, 1941, twothirds of its Jewish population had been evacuated or had fled the city on their own. In the first few days of the occupation, the Jews were ordered to form a “Jewish committee,” a J U D E N R AT , which was to register all the Jews between August 24 to 27. On August 25, the Jews were ordered to wear a Jewish star (see BA D G E , J E W I S H ) on their chests; they were also forced to hand over to the German administration all of their money and valuables. When the registration was completed, the Jews were all concentrated in a ghetto, the only region of the city where Jews were permitted to live. Between September 16 and 30, 1941, the 5,000 Jews left in the city of Kherson were taken to a ditch outside the city and murdered. The Kherson district contained the self-governing Jewish subdistricts of Kalinindorf, Stalindorf, and Nay Zlatopol. There were Jewish collective farms in these subdistricts. The farms were what remained of the Jewish agricultural settlements that had been established there in the second half of the nineteenth century. On the eve of World War II, these three subdistricts had a Jewish population of 35,000, most of whom were farmers. The fate of the Jews living in the collective farms can be deduced from the course of events in the Stalindorf subdistrict. In the second half of September 1941, groups of Jewish men were murdered by Nazis on several collective farms. Heavy fines were imposed on the Jews. They were robbed of their belongings, and the community property of the collective farms was confiscated. Early in the spring of 1942 the Jewish farmers were told to sow potatoes and grow vegetables for the German administration. In April, many Jewish men were drafted and put into eight labor camps, to work on the construction of the DnepropetrovskZaporozhye highway. The old men, women, and children left behind in the collective farms were rounded up and killed on May 29. On December 5, 1942, all the men were put into the Lyubimovka camp, where they were murdered or died as a result of hard labor and disease. The Kherson region was liberated in mid-March 1944. Surviving Jewish farmers who returned, expecting to rehabilitate their farms, found them occupied by Russians and Ukrainians. Jews appealed unsuccessfully to the authorities in Kiev to restore the Jewish subdistricts. When the war ended they were officially abolished.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Gitelman, Zvi, ed. Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

Kielce Kielce is the district capital in southeast P O L A N D , situated north of K R A K Ó W and south of Radom. The Jewish community of Kielce was established in 1868, but only at the turn of the century did many Jews begin moving there from the neighboring townships. By 1921 the Jews in the city numbered 15,550, about one-third of the total population. According to the 1931 census, the number of Jews in Kielce was 18,083. By 1939 the Jewish population was estimated at 24,000. The city was captured by the Germans on September 4, 1939, a few days after the outbreak of World War II, and anti-Jewish atrocities began immediately: seizure of property and possessions, heavy fines, forced labor, the taking of

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Child’s identification card for breakfast rations from a soup kitchen in the Kielce ghetto, run by the Judenrat (Jewish Council); May, 1941, Kielce, Poland.

hostages, beatings, and killings. The first head of the J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council) in Kielce, Dr. Moses Pelc, was soon sent to A U S C H W I T Z . He was replaced by the industrialist Hermann Levy, who served the Germans until the liquidation of the ghetto. Levy was murdered by the SS in September 1942. The Kielce ghetto was established early in April 1941 in accordance with an official order issued by Hans Drechsel, the German civilian administrator of the city. By the end of 1941 there were 27,000 Jews in the Kielce ghetto, including 1,000 deportees from Vienna who were brought to Kielce, and several thousand who were brought from neighboring small towns and more distant areas around Poznań and L⁄ Ó D Z´ . The able-bodied males were used by the Germans as laborers in the local stone quarries. Others worked in the ghetto as tailors, shoemakers, and carpenters, and at other trades. Between April 1941 and August 1942, when the ghetto was liquidated some 6,000 Jews died of hunger, cold, and typhus within the ghetto confines. In January 1942 seven Jews were shot for trying to leave the ghetto. Several other executions had taken place in the preceding summer, especially of activists and community leaders. Under the command of two SS officers, Ernst Karl Thomas and Hans Geier, the liquidation of the ghetto began on August 20. The violent removal of Jews lasted until August 24, when all the Jews, with the exception of 2,000 who were young and healthy, were loaded on freight trains and sent to T R E -

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BLINKA.

The sick Jews and the children of the Jewish orphanage had been killed by the Germans before the deportation. Some 500 Jews managed to escape.

The remaining 2,000 Jews of Kielce were placed in three labor camps in Kielce: Hasag-Granat (quarries, workshops, and munitions), Henryków (carpentry), and Ludwików (foundry). A projected revolt was aborted by an informer. In August 1944 the surviving inmates were sent to B U C H E N WA L D or Auschwitz. The last surviving group, consisting of 45 Jewish children, was taken to the Jewish cemetery and killed there by the Germans. When the Soviet army captured Kielce on January 16, 1945, only two Jews remained of what had once been a 20,000-strong community. However, during the 18 months that followed, about 150 Jews—former residents who had survived the camps or were hiding in the forests, along with Jews who had never lived in Kielce—gradually gathered in the former Jewish community building at No. 7 Planty Avenue. Most of them lived on funds sent by the J O I N T D I S T R I B U T I O N C O M M I T T E E , forming a kibbutz and waiting for an opportunity to go to Palestine. The hatred of the Poles toward the Jews was so intense that whenever a former Jewish resident appeared in town he was greeted with the words: “What? You are still alive? We thought that Hitler killed all of you.” Rumors spread that masses of Jews would soon return to reclaim their former houses and belongings. The incitement culminated at the end of June 1946 when a woman ran through the streets shouting that the Jews on Planty Avenue were killing Polish children and drinking their blood. Another rumor was spread that a Polish boy had been killed in the basement of the community building and his blood used to make matzoth.

kibbutz

Communal farm or settlement, often organized by Zionists seeking the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

On July 1, 1946, mobs began gathering around the building. When the police were called in, all they did was confiscate the few licensed weapons that the Jews had. Appeals to the church dignitaries were dismissed with the excuse that they could not intercede for the Jews because the latter had brought communism into Poland. On July 4 the mob attacked and massacred 42 Jews and wounded about 50 more. The central Polish authorities in Warsaw sent in a military detachment and an investigation committee. Order was quickly restored, and seven of the main instigators and killers were executed. The missing Polish boy was soon found in a nearby village. Thus, the thousand-year history of the Jews of Poland came to a disgraceful end with a medieval-style pogrom—a planned, violent, and organized attack. This event touched off a mass migration of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Poland and other countries of eastern and central Europe who had somehow survived World War II and the Holocaust. In 1946 the tomb with the names of the 42 victims that had been erected in the Kielce Jewish cemetery was destroyed by the local Poles. It was rebuilt in 1987, and an iron fence placed the cemetery. The monument for the 45 children killed in 1944 was rebuilt as well.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Blumenfeld, Laura. “50 Years After the Lie; In Poland, a Ceremony of Peacemaking Finds Feelings Are Still Raw.” Washington Post, July 15, 1996. Perlez, Jane. “50 Years After Pogrom, City Shrinks at Memory.” New York Times, July 6, 1996.

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Jews being rounded up by the SS and taken to the Kistarcsa camp (after 1944).

KIEV. SEE BABI YAR.

Kistarcsa Kistarcsa was a camp located 9 miles (5.6 km) northeast of B U DA P E S T , H U N Before the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944, Kistarcsa was an internment camp for political prisoners and other detainees. With the start of D E P O R TAT I O N S from Hungary in the spring of 1944, Kistarcsa became a transit camp from which Jews in the Budapest area were sent elsewhere for extermination, primarily to AU S C H W I T Z . G A RY .

During the 1930s, the head of state of Hungary, Miklós H ORTHY , had imprisoned political opponents (among them Jews) in Kistarcsa and several other camps. After World War II broke out in 1939, Jewish refugees who managed to obtain legitimate papers were also held there. The five buildings of the Kistarcsa camp, which were originally meant to house 200 prisoners, soon became overcrowded with 2,000 Jews. When G E R M A N Y occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944, the SS began rounding up Jews. They were first held in railway stations in various Budapest suburbs. From there, they were transferred to Kistarcsa. During the German occupation, the

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SS took over the camp, but it was administered directly by the Hungarian police. By all accounts, the camp commandant, István Vasdenyei, was humane and did whatever he could to ease the plight of the Jews under his control. He cooperated with various Jewish relief organizations that cared for the inmates. The first transport of 1,800 Jews left the camp for Auschwitz on April 29, 1944. Adolf E I C H M A N N sent eighteen more trainloads from Kistarcsa to Auschwitz before Horthy stopped the deportations on July 7 of that year. Furious at Horthy’s intervention, Eichmann tried to send another train on July 15. Acting on information from Vasdenyei, Horthy turned back the transport before it reached the Hungarian border. On July 19, Eichmann sent Franz N OWAK and a special team of deportation experts to the camp. They sent 1,200 Jews to Auschwitz on what was the last deportation train from Kistarcsa. About 1,000 Jews stayed in the Kistarcsa camp until it was dismantled on September 27, 1944. Its remaining inmates were sent to various labor camps in Hungary.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Handler, Andrew, and Susan V. Meschel, eds. Young People Speak: Surviving the Holocaust in Hungary. New York: Franklin Watts, 1993.

KOCH, ILSE. SEE KOCH, KARL OTTO. Koch, Karl Otto (1897–1945)

Karl Otto Koch participated in the German military administration as a commandant of numerous concentration camps. Koch was born in Darmstadt, where he attended a commercial secondary school and became a bank clerk. Toward the end of World War I he was wounded and captured by the British, and was a prisoner of war until October 1919. In 1930 he became a member of the Nazi party and a year later joined the S S . He held senior command posts in the Sachsenburg, Esterwegen, and Lichtenburg (Prettin) concentration camps in 1934, and the following year was appointed commandant of the notorious Columbia Haus, a prison in B E R L I N . In 1936 Koch was commandant of the Esterwegen and S AC H S E N H AU S E N concentration camps. In May 1937 he married Dresden-born Ilse Köhler (1906–1967). On August 1 of that year Koch was appointed commandant of the newly established B U C H E N WA L D camp. His wife was made an overseer in the same camp. Before long she became notorious for her extreme cruelty to the prisoners and for her nymphomania, which she vented on the SS guards in the camp. In September 1941 Karl Otto Koch was appointed commandant of M A J DA N E K , which was then a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp run by the Waffen-SS in L U B L I N . Under his tenure the camp was greatly enlarged, and civilian prisoners, including Jews, were brought in. Crematoria were constructed, and many more prisoners were killed. In July 1942, after a mass outbreak from the camp, Koch was suspended and put on trial before an SS and police court in Berlin, but was acquitted in February 1943. He then held administrative posts in postal-service security units, only to be arrested again in August of that year on charges of embezzlement, forgery, making threats to officials, and “other charges.” The last apparently referred to murders for which he was responsible that went beyond existing orders, and to his hobby of

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Karl Otto Koch, commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, with his wife Ilse and their son and dog.

collecting patches of tattooed human skin and shrunken human skulls. His wife was also arrested as an accomplice to her husband. It was she who selected the living prisoners whose skin she wanted, after they were killed, for her own collection and for use in making lampshades. In early 1945 Karl Otto Koch was sentenced by the Supreme Court of the SS in Munich, and in April of that year he was executed. Ilse Koch was acquitted and went to Ludwigsburg to live with her two children and her husband’s stepsister. She was arrested by the Americans on June 30, 1945, tried in 1947, and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1949 she was released under a pardon granted by Gen. Lucius D. Clay, the military governor of the American zone in G E R M A N Y . Under pressure arising out of hearings held by a U.S. Senate committee, she was immediately re-arrested upon her release, and in January 1951 was again sentenced to life imprisonment, by the State Court in Augsburg. In September 1967 she committed suicide in her prison cell.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Hackett, David A., ed. The Buchenwald Report. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995.

Memory of the Camps [videorecording]. PBS Video, 1989. A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Perpetrators. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/perps.htm (accessed on August 21, 2000).

Kolbe, Maximilian (1894–1941)

Maximilian Kolbe was a Polish monk, philosopher, and priest, who, because of his work during the German occupation, was canonized a Catholic saint. Kolbe was born in Zdun´ska Wola, in the L⁄ Ó D Z´ district. His Christian name at birth was

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Raymond and at the age of seventeen he entered the Franciscan order and became Friar Maximilian. In 1912 he went to Rome to study theology and philosophy. Kolbe founded the Order of the Knights of the Immaculata in 1917, and was ordained a priest the following year. He returned home to P O L A N D in 1919. In Poland, which by then had gained independence, Kolbe served as a priest. In 1927 he founded the City of the Immaculata (in Polish, Niepokalanow), a center near W A R S A W that was to disseminate the Catholic faith in the spirit of the Virgin Mary; membership at the center grew to more than seven hundred followers. In 1930, in spite of being afflicted with tuberculosis, Kolbe went to the Far East, along with several assistants, to establish a Catholic mission in Nagasaki, Japan. The new mission was modeled on the Niepokalanow Center in Poland. Kolbe named it Garden of the Immaculata. In 1936 Kolbe was summoned back to Poland, where he was appointed head of the Niepokalanow Center and its operations. His special interest was the center’s publications network, which included a monthly, a youth magazine, and a popular daily newspaper. Kolbe was very active in spreading his religious views and his social ideas. Consequently, he gained a reputation for piety and devotion. Early in the German occupation, Father Kolbe was arrested and removed from Niepokalanow, but by December 1939 he was allowed back to his “city,” where he set up an institution for the care of refugees from Poznan´ and its environs and, it was reported, also extended help to Jewish refugees. In February 1941 Father Kolbe was again arrested and imprisoned. Three months later he was deported to A U S C H W I T Z . According to eyewitness accounts by other prisoners, Father Kolbe remained true to his faith and sought to bring comfort to other victims. In July 1941, a prisoner from Kolbe’s block succeeded in escaping from the camp. As punishment the SS decided to execute every tenth prisoner in the block. Standing in line next to Kolbe was a Polish man by the name of Gajowniczek, who was slated to be one of the victims. When the man cried out, “What will happen to my wife, to my children?” Kolbe stepped out of the line and declared that he wanted to take Gajowniczek’s place. The Germans agreed, and Kolbe was moved to a starvation cell, where he was later put to death with a phenol injection.

Maximilian Kolbe in 1982.

In 1971 the Vatican proclaimed the beatification of Father Kolbe (a step below sainthood), and in October 1982 he was canonized as a saint of the Catholic church. Since 1971, and with even greater intensity after his canonization, a debate has raged in Poland, A U S T R I A , the United States, and Britain concerning Kolbe’s true personality and work. Some claimed that while Kolbe was to be admired for what he did in his life and for his act of self-sacrifice, he had also been contaminated with antisemitic views, and the newspapers he published had an anti-Jewish slant. An examination of these claims showed that the newspapers published under Kolbe’s supervision, and especially the daily, which had had a wide circulation, did have a strong antisemitic flavor. While Kolbe had made attempts to restrain the daily’s extreme antisemitism, his own letters and writings had an antisemitic tone. In addition, Kolbe had justified the exclusion of the Jews from the Polish economy. Kolbe’s brand of antisemitism was not racist, and he preached that the Jews should convert. Some of his expressions against Jews, however, were quite extreme, and his writings contain references to the anti-Jewish P R OTO C O L S O F T H E E L D E R S O F ZION.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Mohan, Claire Jordan. St. Maximilian Kolbe: The Story of the Two Crowns. Worcester, PA: Young Sparrow, 1999.

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Stone, Elaine Murray. Maximilian Kolbe: Saint of Auschwitz. New York: Paulist Press, 1997. Treece, Patricia. A Man for Others: Maximilian Kolbe, Saint of Auschwitz, in the Words of Those Who Knew Him. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1982.

Kommissarbefehl (Commissar Order)

commissars

Communist officials assigned to military units; their function was to reinforce Communist Party principles and ensure loyalty.

The Kommissarbefehl (Commissar Order) was the order issued by the German army that instructed all personnel involved in the attack on the S OV I E T U N I O N to immediately kill all political commissars in the Red Army who fell into German hands. The guidelines that Adolf H I T L E R gave the Wehrmacht (Armed Forces) for the attack on the Soviet Union (Operation “Barbarossa”) ordered leaders to plan the attack not only from its military aspects but from the ideological aspect as well. Thus, the attack was to include the physical destruction of political activists and those who promoted Communist ideals. On June 6, 1941, two weeks prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Armed Forces High Command) issued the Kommissarbefehl. It must be expected that the treatment of our prisoners by the political commissars of all types, who are the true pillars of resistance, will be cruel, inhuman, and dictated by hate.… Therefore, if captured during combat or while offering resistance they must on principle be shot immediately. This applies to commissars of every type and position, even if they are only suspected of resistance, sabotage, or instigation thereto. According to the Directive for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia, … in their capacity as officials attached to enemy troops, political commissars … will not be recognized as soldiers; the protection granted to prisoners of war … will not apply to them. After having been segregated they are to be liquidated.… Commissars seized in the rear area of the army group … are to be handed over to the Einsatzgruppen [see O P E R AT I O NA L S QUA D S (Einsatzgruppen)] or Einsatzkommandos of the Sicherheitspolizei [Security Police]. The order was signed by Gen. Walter Warlimont and its issue was authorized by Gen. Wilhelm Keitel, the Armed Forces High Command chief of staff. It was based on the Order on Jurisdiction in the Operation “Barbarossa” Area of May 13, 1941, which gave the army and the S S wide powers and opened the door to the establishment of a regime of terror and tyranny in the Soviet territories occupied by the Germans. The Kommissarbefehl and the order of May 13 were both in violation of international conventions on the treatment and rights of prisoners of war and civilians in occupied territories. With other orders of the same type, the regular combined German military forces became accomplices in the Nazi war crimes committed in the Soviet Union. A few days after the Kommissarbefehl was issued, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, chief of the Army High Command, issued guidelines giving every officer the authority to decide on the execution of commissars who had been made prisoners of war. Commissars were executed as soon as they were identified as such, whether on the front, when they were taken prisoner, or in prisoner-ofwar camps. In the summer of 1941 Keitel ordered that all copies of the Kommissar-

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befehl that had been distributed to the various army headquarters be destroyed, in an effort to remove evidence implicating the army in war crimes.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bailey, Ronald H. Prisoners of War. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1981. “Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars, the Kommissarbefehl (Commissar Order).” Destruction of European Jewry Explanatory Timeline. [Online] http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/destrtim.htm (accessed on August 21, 2000). “June 6: Commissar Order.” Yad Vashem Online. [Online] http://www.yadvashem.org.il/holocaust/chronology/3941right.html (accessed on August 21, 2000).

Koppe, Wilhelm (1896–1975)

Wilhelm Koppe was a senior S S commander in occupied P O L A N D . Born in Hildesheim, Koppe served in the German army in World War I. Following the war he was a merchant and shopkeeper. In August 1930 Koppe became a member of the Nazi party, and in 1932 he joined the SS. The following year, he was elected to the Reichstag (Parliament). Rising rapidly in the SS, he was made a Brigadeführer (brigadier general) in August 1934 and a Gruppenführer (major general) in September 1936. On October 26, 1939, Koppe was appointed Higher SS and Police Leader in the Warthegau (the Poznan´ region), a post he held until November 9, 1943. Koppe was one of the leading figures in the establishment of the C H E L⁄ M N O extermination camp, where 320,000 people were killed. He was also instrumental in the liquidation of the ghettos in the Warthegau, as the western region of Poland was renamed after its annexation by G E R M A N Y . In January 1942 he was promoted to Obergruppenführer (general), and in November 1943 he became the Higher SS and Police Leader in the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T . After the war, Koppe lived in West Germany under the assumed name “Lohmann” and worked as a factory manager. His real identity was discovered in 1961, and he was arrested and brought to trial in West Germany. The proceedings against him were discontinued in 1966, and he was released on medical grounds.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Korbonski, Stefan. The Polish Underground State: A Guide to the Underground, 1939–1945. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978. Wiesenthal, Simon. Krystyna: The Tragedy of the Polish Resistance. Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 1991.

Korczak, Janusz (1878 or 1879–1942)

Janusz Korczak (pen name of Henryk Goldszmit) was a physician, writer, and educator. Korczak was born in W A R S AW , P O L A N D , the son of an assimilated Jewish

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Janusz Korczak, standing with pupils at the Rozyczka summer camp in 1938.

family. His father, a successful attorney, became mentally ill when Korczak was eleven, greatly affecting the family both emotionally and financially and influencing the direction of Korczak’s life. As a medical student at Warsaw University, Korczak associated with liberal educators and writers in Poland. When he entered into a medical practice, he did his best to help the poor and those who suffered the most; he also began to write. His first books, Children of the Streets (1901) and A Child of the Salon (1906), aroused great interest. In 1904 he was drafted into the Russian army as a doctor. Korczak worked in a Jewish children’s hospital and took groups of children to summer camps, and in 1908 he began to work with orphans. In 1912 he was appointed director of a Jewish orphanage in Warsaw. Throughout his life, an influential partner in his work was Stefania Wilczyn´ska, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family who dedicated her life to the care of orphans.

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Korczak wrote about the emotional life of children and advocated that children be respected. Children were to observed and listened as independent human beings, not as extensions of their parents. In Korczak’s view, “to reform the world” meant “to reform the educational system.” In 1914 Korczak was called again for military service in the Russian army, and it was in military hospitals and bases that he wrote his important work How to Love Children. After the war he returned to Poland and to his work in the Jewish orphanage. The 1920s were a period of intensive and fruitful work in Korczak’s life. He was in charge of two orphanages, he served as an instructor at boarding schools and summer camps and as a lecturer at universities and seminaries, and he wrote prolifically. In the late 1920s, he fulfilled one of his dreams by establishing a newspaper written for and by children. In the mid-1930s, Korczak’s fortunes changed dramatically. Following the death of Polish dictator Józef Pil⁄sudski, political power shifted to radical right-wing and openly antisemitic circles. Korczak was removed from many of his professional positions. As a result, he took a growing interest in the efforts of Zionists to establish a Jewish community in Palestine. He was particularly interested in the educational achievements of the kibbutz movement, which promoted cooperative work, learning, and living arrangements. From the beginning of World War II, Korczak became active among the Jews and Jewish children. At first he refused to acknowledge the German occupying forces and refused to wear the yellow badge (see B A D G E , J E W I S H ). As a consequence, he spent some time in jail. When the economic situation worsened and the Jews of Warsaw were imprisoned in the ghetto, Korczak concentrated his efforts on meeting children’s basic needs for food and shelter in the orphanage. By now an elderly man, the only thing that gave him the strength to carry on was the duty he felt to preserve and protect his orphanage. Polish friends reported that they went to Korczak in the ghetto and offered him asylum on the Polish side, but he refused, not willing to save himself and abandon the children. During the occupation and the period he spent in the ghetto, Korczak kept a diary. At the end of July 1942, when the deportations were at their height—about ten days before he, the orphans, and the staff of the orphanage were taken to the T R A N S F E R P O I N T (Umschlagplatz)—Korczak wrote the following entry: “I feel so soft and warm in the bed—it will be hard for me to get up.… But today is Sabbath—the day on which I weigh the children, before they have their breakfast. This, I think, is the first time that I am not eager to know the figures for the past week. They ought to gain weight (I have no idea why they were given raw carrots for supper last night).” On August 5, the Germans rounded up Korczak and his two hundred children. A witness to the orphans’ three-mile march to the deportation train described the scene to historian Emanuel R I N G E L B L U M as follows: “This was not a march to the railway cars, this was an organized, wordless protest against the murder.… The children marched in rows of four, with Korczak leading them, looking straight ahead, and holding a child’s hand on each side.… A second column was led by Stefania Wilczyn´ ska; the third by Broniatowska (her children bearing blue knapsacks on their backs), and the fourth by Sternfeld, from the boarding school on Twarda Street.” Nothing is known of their last journey to T R E B L I N K A , where they were all put to death.

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SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bernheim, Mark. Father of the Orphans: The Story of Janusz Korczak. New York: Dutton, 1988. Korczak, Janusz. Ghetto Diary. New York: Holocaust Library, 1978. Lifton, Betty Jean. The King of Children: A Biography of Janusz Korczak. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988.

Korherr, Richard (b. 1903)

Richard Korherr was a German writer and statistician. Born in Regensburg, Korherr succeeded academically and his early statistical publications earned him high praise. In 1928 he joined the staff of the Reich Bureau of Statistics, transferring in 1930 to the Bavarian Bureau of Statistics. Korherr’s book Geburtenrückgang (Decline in the Birth Rate) was well received; Benito M U S S O L I N I personally translated it into Italian, and it also appeared in a Japanese translation. The 1936 edition of the book had a foreword by Heinrich H I M M L E R . From 1935 to 1940 Korherr was director of the Würzburg municipal bureau of statistics and also lectured at the local university. As of 1934, he was also in charge of the section of statistics and demographic policy in the headquarters of Rudolf Hess, then the deputy Führer. In May 1937 Korherr joined the Nazi party. In 1937 and 1938 Korherr published Untergang der alten Kulturvölker (Decline of the Historical Civilized Peoples), and in 1938 an atlas, under the title Volk und Raum (People and Space). On December 9, 1940, Korherr was appointed chief inspector of two statistical bureaus, both of which were in Himmler’s domain. In December 1942 he began processing data for the “F I NA L S O L U T I O N ” of the “Jewish question” in Europe, a task in which he was assisted by a Dr. Simon, a Jew who was the statistician of the Reich Association of Jews in G E R M A N Y . Korherr also used material supplied by Adolf E I C H M A N N ’s section in the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA). The result of this work was the Korherr Report, whose subject was the extermination of the Jews of Europe; in 1943 and 1944 he updated the report every three months. In his trial in Jerusalem, Eichmann stated that the Korherr Report had served him in the planning stages of the extermination effort, helping him determine how many Nazi forces would be needed to liquidate various concentrations of Jews, how many railway cars would be required, and which destinations to use for Jews from various areas. After the war Korherr tried to diminish the importance of the report that bore his name, claiming that the statistical data were false, because they had been based on inflated figures given in the Einsatzgruppen (Operational Groups) reports. Korherr was given a post-war position with the West Germany Ministry of Finance, but he was dismissed following the publication, in 1961, of Gerald Reitlinger’s book The Final Solution, in which the Korherr Report figured prominently.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Breitman, Richard. The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution. New York: Knopf, 1991.

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Friedlander, Henry. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Rice, Earle. The Final Solution. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1998.

Kovno Kovno (Kaunas in Lithuanian) is a city in central L I T H UA N I A , situated at the convergence of the Neman and Neris rivers. The city was founded in 1030 by Koinas, a Lithuanian prince, and named after him. In 1795 Kovno was part of the Polish-Lithuanian territory that was annexed by Russia, and from 1842 it was a district capital. Between 1920 and 1939 Kovno was the capital of independent Lithuania. In 1940 all of Lithuania was incorporated into the S OV I E T U N I O N ; in 1991 Lithuania declared itself an independent state. For the Jews of eastern Europe, Kovno was an important spiritual and cultural center. It was the site of the famous Slobodka yeshiva , and was also renowned for its extensive Zionist activities and for its Hebrew school system, ranging from kindergartens to teachers’ training colleges.

yeshiva

An Orthodox Jewish seminary for rabbinical studies.

In 1939 approximately 40,000 Jews lived in Kovno, constituting nearly onequarter of the city’s total population. During the Soviet rule, from 1940 to the German invasion in 1941, the Hebrew educational institutions were closed down and most of the Jewish social and cultural organizations were liquidated. Of the city’s five Yiddish dailies, only one remained in existence, and that had become an instrument of the Communist party. On June 14, 1941, a week before the German invasion, hundreds of Jewish families were rounded up and exiled to Siberia. Among them were factory owners, merchants, public figures, and Zionist activists and leaders.

Establishing the Ghetto Kovno was occupied on June 24, 1941, the third day of the invasion. Several thousand Jews fled the city and headed for the interior of the Soviet Union, many losing their lives during their escape. Even before the German entry into the city, bands of Lithuanians had been taking violent action against the Jews. The murder of Jews continued when the Germans occupied the city and took charge of the killings. Thousands of Jews were moved from the city to other locations, such as the Seventh Fort (one of a chain of forts constructed around Kovno in the nineteenth century), where they were first brutally mistreated by the Lithuanian guards and then shot to death. A total of 10,000 Jews were estimated to have been murdered in June and July of 1941. A civilian administration set up by the Germans, with SA–Brigadier General Hans Kramer as city commissar, issued a whole range of anti-Jewish decrees. The Jews were given one month to move into the ghetto that was being established. The assigned area consisted of two parts, the “small ghetto” and the “large ghetto,” both situated in the Kovno suburb of Slobodka, on either side of the main thoroughfare. A barbed-wire fence, with posts manned by Lithuanian guards, was erected around the ghetto. The gates of the ghetto were watched by German police.

Forced Labor and Mass Murders When the ghetto was sealed off in August 1941, it contained 29,760 Jews. In the following two and a half months, 3,000 Jews—men, women, and children—

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I

n November 1942, 14-year-old Tamarah Lazerson described a

part of daily life after electricity was no longer available in the Kovno ghetto: “My room is dark and unheated. At seven o’clock, and sometimes even earlier, I’m in bed. These are my worst hours. Memories overwhelm me and there’s no way to shake them off.” Tamarah Lazerson, in Children in the Holocaust and World War II: Their Secret Diaries, Laurel Holliday, ed. New York: Pocket Books, 1995, pp. 128–29.

were killed. On October 28 the “big Aktion” (Operation) was staged, during which 9,000 persons (half of them children) were taken to the Ninth Fort and murdered. The killings were then discontinued and a prolonged period of relative calm set in, which lasted until March 1944. Of the 17,412 Jews now left in the ghetto, most of the adults were put on forced labor, mainly in military installations outside the ghetto. They were under constant pressure and harassment. Two thousand Jews, most of them skilled artisans, were organized into “brigades” for jobs related to the war effort. Another 4,600 Jews worked in the ghetto workshops, with no Germans or Lithuanians guards in attendance. Instead of wages, the Jews were given food rations, which in fact were on a starvation level. To stay alive, the ghetto inhabitants sold off their remaining possessions and used the proceeds to buy the food that was being smuggled into the ghetto at great risk. The so-called quiet period offered some recovery time during which the Jews’ basic care improved somewhat. There were still punitive measures, however. In February 1942 the Jews were ordered to hand in all their books, manuscripts and other printed materials. In August the synagogues were closed down and public prayer services were outlawed. The bureau of education and the schools were ordered closed, except for the vocational-training schools. Bans on bringing food into the ghetto and on possessing cash were strictly enforced. Hundreds of people were deported to R I G A or sent to work camps in various parts of Lithuania.

Internal Administration

partisans

Anti-Nazi paramilitary forces organized in secret to resist the occupation.

Life inside the ghetto was administered by the Council of Elders of the Kovno Jewish Ghetto Community (Ältestenrat der Jüdischen Ghetto Gemeinde Kauen). It was chaired by Dr. Elchanan E L K E S , a well-known physician and public personality, with Leib Garfunkel, a lawyer and veteran Zionist leader, acting as his deputy. Most of the members of the Kovno Ältestenrat were selected through direct elections by the Jewish community members. Forced labor and the maintenance of public order were the responsibility of the Jewish police, which had a complement of about 150 men. Appointments to the police and supervision of the force were in the hands of the Ältestenrat. A department of health, welfare, culture, and the like was maintained by the Ältestenrat. It provided various services to the ghetto population and managed public institutions such as a hospital and medical clinic, a home for the aged, a soup kitchen, a school, and an orchestra. There were concerts, lectures, literary evenings, and other cultural events. Even in the ghetto, Kovno Jews maintained their tradition of Torah study and of cultural and educational activities and mutual help, exceeding the opportunities sponsored by the Ältestenrat. Political parties were also active, initially by trying to locate their members and come to their aid. This led to the formation of Matsok (the Hebrew acronym for Zionist Center Vilijampole, Kovno), which was headed by several members of the Ältestenrat (Council of Elders) and its staff. They maintained contact with the anti-Nazi underground that existed in the ghetto. The Ältestenrat departments also provided considerable aid to the members of the underground who left the ghetto to join the partisans in the forests. In this, as well as in other social and communal aspects, the Kovno ghetto was an unusual phenomenon that has no parallel in the annals of the behavior of Jews under Nazi occupation.

From Ghetto to Concentration Camp On orders of Heinrich H I M M L E R , a concentration camp regime was instituted in the Reichskommissariat Ostland ghettos on June 21, 1943. In the autumn of 1943, the

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Kovno ghetto became a central concentration camp. Four thousand inhabitants of the ghetto were transferred to small camps, situated in Kovno’s suburbs or its vicinity, in places such as Aleksotas, S˘anc˘iai, Palemonas, Ke˙dainiai (Keidan), and Kaisˇiadorys. On October 26, 1943, 2,800 Jews were moved to work camps in Estonia. An exceptionally cruel blow was dealt to the ghetto on March 27, 1944, when 1,800 persons—infants, children, and elderly men and women—were dragged out of their homes and murdered. Also executed were 40 officers of the Jewish police, killed for having given direct aid to the anti-Nazi underground in the ghetto. Among those put to death were Moshe Levin, the police chief, and his deputies Yehuda Zupovitz and Ika Grinberg. The remaining police became a J E W I S H G H E T TO P O L I C E ( Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst) under the direct control of SS men. The Ältestenrat was abolished, and Dr. Elkes was appointed Judenältester (senior Jew), a position devoid of any real authority, although he retained his moral authority among the Jews.

Anti-Nazi Underground Groups of young people belonging to the Zionist Y O U T H M OV E M E N T S resumed their activities, with the emphasis on the struggle against the Nazis. Encouragement to pursue these underground activities was given by Irena Adamowicz, a Polish woman who acted as a liaison for the underground movements in the W A R S AW and V I L N A ghettos and visited Kovno in July 1942. The Communists were also quite active in the anti-Nazi struggle, through the Antifascist Struggle Organization, which was headed by Chaim Y E L I N . Members of this organization sought to acquire weapons and also to establish contact with the Soviet partisans in the forests. In the summer of 1943 the Zionists and the Communists established a joint body, the General Jewish Fighting Organization (Yidishe Algemeyne Kamfs Organizatsye; JFO). Its purpose was to organize operational units and help them escape from the ghetto so that they could join the partisans. At its height, the JFO had about 600 members. Some were given military training, including instruction in the use of arms, by officers of the Jewish police. In September 1943 the JFO established a direct link with the partisan movement in Lithuania, thanks to the help of a Jewish woman parachutist, Gesja Glazer (“Albina”), who made a secret visit to the ghetto. This new connection enabled the JFO to send armed teams of members to the Augustów forests to set up partisan bases there. The cost of this venture was heavy, however. Out of 100 JFO members who took part, 10 were shot to death, 15 died in prison, and 14 were taken to the Ninth Fort. At the end of 1943, 170 JFO members, split into 8 groups, left the ghetto in trucks they had secretly obtained from their Lithuanian drivers, and headed for partisan bases in the Rudninkai Forest. Most of them joined the Kovno battalions of the Lithuanian partisan movement. Altogether, some 350 Kovno Jews, most of them members of the JFO, left the ghetto in order to join the partisans. About 100 of them died en route or were killed in action.

Liquidation of the Ghetto On July 8, 1944, as the Red Army was approaching Kovno, the German authorities began transferring the Jews to concentration camps inside G E R M A N Y . Many Jews went into hiding in underground bunkers that they had prepared for just this purpose. The Germans used bloodhounds, smoke grenades, and firebombs to force the Jews out into the open. In the process, some 2,000 Jews died, by choking or burning, or as a result of the explosions. Only 90 were able to hold out in the bunkers and live to see the Red Army enter Kovno on August 1, 1944. About 4,000

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Kovno Jews were taken to Germany, the majority going either to the Kaufering or the S T U T T H O F concentration camps. In October 1944 they were joined by a number of Kovno Jews who had been held in camps in Estonia. When the camps were liberated, nearly 2,000 Kovno Jews had survived. Together with those who had held out in various hiding places in Kovno and the vicinity, they accounted for 8 percent of the 30,000 Jews who had made up the original population of the ghetto. After the war, the survivors were joined by Kovno Jews who came back from the Soviet interior. By 1959, 4,792 Jews were living in Kovno, approximately 2 percent of the city’s population. Many of Kovno’s Jews emigrated to Israel.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Klein, Dennis B., ed. Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto. Boston: Little, Brown, 1997.

Kovno Ghetto: A Buried History [videorecording]. History Channel, 1997. Tory, Avraham. Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.

Kowalski, Wl⁄adysl⁄aw (1895–1971)

Wl⁄adysl⁄aw Kowalski was a Pole who saved Jews during the Holocaust. Kowalski was a colonel in the Polish army but by the time of the German occupation, he had already retired. He was the W ARSAW representative of the Dutch-based Philips company. Nazi G ERMANY ’s interest in the Dutch-owned company facilitated the mobility of its foreign representatives, affording Kowalski the freedom to travel around in all parts of Warsaw, including the closed-off Jewish ghetto. His first opportunity to help Jews took place in September 1940, outside the ghetto, on the “Aryan” side, when he encountered Bruno Borl, a ten-year-old boy who was wandering the streets of Warsaw, seeking food and shelter. Kowalski took the boy home, fed and cared for him, and provided him with a new identity complete with home with friends. This led to a series of bolder undertakings. Two brothers named Rubin, a lawyer and a dentist, were helped to relocate after their hiding place was uncovered by an informer. Exploiting his freedom of movement, Kowalski smuggled seven Jews out of the Warsaw ghetto in February 1943 by bribing the Polish guards at the gates, and found safe havens for the Jews on the “Aryan” side. In November of that year he helped a family of four move from the Izbica area to a safer place with friends in Warsaw. He also offered refuge to twelve Jews in his Warsaw home. Roman Fisher, a construction worker whom Kowalski had rescued, built an underground shelter with material that Kowalski secretly brought with him inside large (and heavy) suitcases. From late 1940 until August 1944, Kowalski paid for the upkeep of those for whom he had arranged hiding places. The group hiding in his home manufactured toys that Kowalski sold in the market, thus helping to defray costs. After the suppression of the W A R S A W P O L I S H U P R I S I N G in October 1944, and the forced evacuation of all the Warsaw residents by the Germans, Kowalski converted a basement in a ruined building into a bunker and hid there along with 49 Jews. Their daily ration consisted of three glasses of water, a small amount of sugar, and vitamin pills. They stayed hidden for 105 days and by the time they were liberated by the Russians in January 1945, they were reduced to eating fuel. More than 50 Jews were helped by Kowalski during the occupation period.

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In 1947, Kowalski married one of the Jewish women he had rescued, and they emigrated to Israel in 1957. In 1963 he was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the “R I G H T E O U S A M O N G T H E N AT I O N S .”

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bauminger, Arieh L. The Righteous Among the Nations. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1990.

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Rescuers. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/ people/rescuer.htm (accessed on August 21, 2000)

Kraków Kraków is a city in southern P O L A N D , the country’s third largest and one of the oldest. Kraków dates from the eighth century, and in the eleventh century it became the residence of the Polish princes. Between 1320 and 1596 it was the capital of the kingdom of Poland. From the early fourteenth century, Kraków was one of the most important Jewish communities in Europe. In 1495 the Jews of the city were expelled to Kazimierz, a new town being built nearby that eventually became a sector of Kraków, and the history of the Jews in the two places became closely intertwined. In 1867 Jews were given the right of residing in every part of the city. Beginning in the Middle Ages, Kraków was an outstanding center of Jewish learning and culture in Europe. During the Swedish invasion, from 1655 to 1657, the Kraków Jewish community experienced much suffering, but after the city was liberated the community gradually regained its strength. From 1815 to 1846 Kraków and its surroundings constituted a free republic, and the Jewish community prospered. Subsequently, in the period from 1846 to 1918, when the city was part of Austrian-ruled Galicia, the Jewish community grew and progressed further, with a thriving cultural and social life. In independent Poland, between 1918 and 1939, Jewish life flourished in Kraków more than ever, although in the years preceding the outbreak of World War II the Jewish community suffered from the increase of A N T I S E M I T I S M in the country. In 1540, Kraków had a Jewish population of 2,100. The numbers of Jews in the city continued to increase throughout the years. By 1939 the Jewish community had grown to 60,000, out of a total population of about a quarter of a million.

Nazi Occupation Kraków was occupied by the German army on September 6, 1939, and the persecution of the Jews was launched immediately by one of the O P E R AT I O N A L S Q UA D S (Einsatzgruppen) specially trained for these campaigns of violence. On October 26 the occupation authorities declared Kraków the capital of the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T (the territory in the interior of occupied Poland), and the persecution of the Jews was intensified. All future anti-Jewish decrees would be announced from this new center of the German occupation government. A Jewish committee was organized in the early stage of the occupation, and on November 28 it was declared a J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council). The chairman of the Judenrat was Dr. Marek Bieberstein, with Dr. Wilhelm Goldblatt as his deputy. In the summer of 1940 both men were imprisoned by the G E S TA P O . Dr. Artur Rosen-

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Entrance gate into the Krakow ghetto, c. 1940, Krakow, Poland.

zweig was appointed the Judenrat’s new chairman. On December 5 and 6, the Germans conducted a sweeping terror operation in the Jewish quarters, mainly to raid Jewish property. Several synagogues were burned down on this occasion. On May 1, 1940, a decree was issued placing the city’s boulevards and major squares out of bounds to Jews. That same month the expulsion of Kraków Jews to neighboring towns was launched. By March 1941, 40,000 Jews had been expelled and no more than 11,000 were left in the city. While the expulsions were taking place, the victims were robbed of all their property.

The Ghetto On March 3, 1941, the Kraków district governor, Otto Wachter, published a decree on the establishment of the ghetto. It was located in Podgorze, a section in the southern part of the city. The ghetto was sealed off on March 20, within a wall and a barbed-wire fence. It covered an area of no more than 656 by 437 yards (600 by 400 meters). In addition to the Kraków Jews, several thousand Jews from neighboring communities were also packed into the ghetto, mainly from Skawina, Wieliczka, and Rabka. In late 1941, 18,000 Jews were imprisoned in the ghetto. The worst problems were the overcrowding (four to five persons to a room) and the poor sanitary conditions. Several organizations within the ghetto tried to alleviate the suffering of the Jews. Among them were the Jewish Social Self-Help Society, later called the Jewish Aid Agency, and the Federation of Associations for the Care of Orphans, or CENTOS.

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Jews selling their possessions, Krakow ghetto, 1940.

On March 19, 1942, the Germans launched what they called an Intelligenz Aktion, a terror operation directed at the political and civic leaders in the ghetto. Some 50 prominent Jews were seized in this operation and were taken to A U S C H W I T Z , where they were killed.

Deportations On May 28 the ghetto was tightly sealed off and the Germans began deporting Jews to the B E L⁄ Z˙ E C extermination camp. Taking part were special detachments of the Gestapo, the Schutzpolizei (regular uniformed police), and a Waffen-SS unit stationed at De˛bica. The Aktion continued until June 8, and when it ended 6,000 Jews had been transported to Bel⁄ z˙ec, while 300 had been shot to death on the spot. Among the victims were poet Mordecai Gebirtig and Judenrat chairman Artur Rosenzweig, who had refused to carry out the Germans’ orders. The Judenrat was

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liquidated, and the Germans replaced it with a Kommissariat, another form of administrative unit.

A

s they did in other ghettos, the Germans established several

factories inside the ghetto to exploit the cheap labor now available. Several hundred Jews from Kraków were also employed in factories situated outside the ghetto, and they were daily escorted to and from their work.

Following this Aktion the ghetto area was reduced by half, although it still had a population of 12,000. In mid-October 1942 the Jewish Kommissariat was ordered to compile a list of 4,000 ghetto inmates for yet another deportation. When the order was ignored, the Germans launched a second Aktion, on October 27 and 28, using their usual terror tactics to round up 7,000 Jews for deportation. In addition, they shot 600 Jews on the spot. Most of the deportees were sent to Bel⁄z˙ec, and the rest to Auschwitz. In the course of this Aktion the sick, the elderly, and the orphaned children were liquidated. When the Aktion was over the ghetto area was further reduced, and what remained was divided in two. The first part, known as “A,” contained the Jews who were working, and the second, “B,” the rest of the ghetto prisoners. On March 13, 1943, the residents of part “A,” 2,000 in number, were transferred to the P L⁄ A S Z Ó W camp. The following day, March 14, an Aktion took place in which part “B” was liquidated. Some 2,300 Jews were taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp and killed there in the gas chambers (see G A S C H A M B E R S / VA N S ), and 700 Jews were killed on the spot. Of the Jews who were transferred to Pl⁄aszów, only a few hundred survived.

The Resistance Movement From the start, there were underground resistance organizations operating in the Kraków ghetto. Among the most prominent were the Akiva and Ha-Shomer haTsa’ir Zionist YO U T H M OV E M E N T S . In the initial stage the underground operations concentrated on education and mutual help. The Jewish underground also published a newspaper, He-Haluts ha-Lohem (The Fighting Pioneer). In October 1942 the J E W I S H F I G H T I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N (Z˙ ydowska Organizacja Bojowa; Z˙OB), a united underground organization independent of the Warsaw Z˙OB, was formed. Its goal was to conduct an armed struggle against the Nazi occupiers. Heading the organization were Zvi Bauminger, Aharon L I E B E S K I N D , Gola Mira, Shimshon Draenger, and Gusta (Justyna) Draenger-Dawidson. The Jewish Fighting Organization decided not to prepare for an uprising inside the ghetto, where the restricted space offered no chance at all for an armed struggle. Instead they opted to move the fighting to the “Aryan” side of Kraków. Some ten operations were launched outside the ghetto, the most famous being the attack on the Cyganeria café in the center of the city, which was frequented by German officers. Eleven Germans were killed in this attack and 13 wounded. Attempts to engage in partisan operations in the vicinity met with difficulties caused by the Jewish underground’s isolation and the hostile attitude displayed by the local units of the Armia Krajowa (the Polish Home Army), which did not take kindly to Jewish partisan operations. The Jewish underground suffered heavy losses, and in the fall of 1944 those remaining decided to cross the border into S L OVA K I A and from there to make their way into Hungary. This plan succeeded, and members of the Kraków Jewish Fighting Organization continued their resistance operations in B U DA P E S T , where they joined the Ha-No’ar ha-Tsiyyoni (Zionist Youth) organization. On the “Aryan” side of Kraków, a branch of Zegota (Council for Aid to Jews) was active from the spring of 1943. The Zegota branch aided several hundred of the Kraków Jews who escaped. After the war about 4,000 survivors of the ghettos and concentration camps, most of them former residents of Kraków and its vicinity, settled in the city, remaining there for a short while. In 1946 thousands of Jews who had fled to the Soviet

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Union at the beginning of the war and were now returning to Poland made their home in Kraków, where the Jewish population rose to 10,000. Several Jewish institutions were established, including a branch of the Jewish Historical Commission (the forerunner of the Warsaw Jewish Historical Institute). Most of these Jews emigrated from Poland between 1947 and 1951 in response to new, post-war waves of antisemitism. After 1968 only a handful of Jews were left in Kraków.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Lobel, Anita. No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War. New York: Greenwillow Books, 1998. Peleg, Miryam. Witnesses: Life in Occupied Kraków. New York: Routledge, 1991.

Schindler’s List [videorecording]. MCA Universal Home Video, 1993.

Kramer, Josef (1906–1945)

Josef Kramer served as commandant of the B E R G E N - B E L S E N camp. Born in Munich in 1906, he joined the Nazi party in 1931, and a year later became an S S man. His concentration camp career began in 1934, in D AC H AU , where he was first assigned as a guard. Advancing rapidly, he held senior posts in a number of concentration camps, including S AC H S E N H AU S E N and M AU T H AU S E N . For several months in 1940 he served as aide-de-camp to Rudolf H Ö S S , the commandant of A U S C H W I T Z . From April 1941 to May 1944, Kramer was commandant of the N AT Z W E I L E R -S T R U T H O F camp. In May 1944 he was again posted to Auschwitz, and was put in charge of the gas chambers and crematoria in Auschwitz II-Birkenau. On December 2 of that year he was appointed commandant of Bergen-Belsen. Following his arrival there, Bergen-Belsen officially became a concentration camp, and conditions deteriorated sharply. When the camp was liberated, Kramer was arrested by the British and put on trial, together with 44 other members of the camp staff, among them 15 women. The trial, which took place in Lüneburg, lasted from September to November 1945. Kramer was sentenced to death, as were ten others of the accused, and was executed on December 12, 1945.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES

Josef Kramer, in a mug shot taken before his trial in front of a British Military Tribunal.

Herzberg, Abel Jacob. Between Two Streams: A Diary from Bergen-Belsen. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals: The Belsen Trial. New York: H. Fertig, 1983. Memory of the Camps [videorecording]. PBS Video, 1989. Reilly, Joanne. Belsen: The Liberation of a Concentration Camp. New York: Routledge, 1998.

Kristallnacht (“Night of the Broken Glass”) Kristallnacht was a huge pogrom—a planned, violent, and organized attack— against Jews throughout G E R M A N Y and A U S T R I A on November 9 and 10, 1938. Although the German government presented it as a spontaneous outburst provoked

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Fire officials examine the exterior of the Fasanenstrasse Synagogue after it was burned by Nazis in anti-Jewish riots during Kristallnacht.

by the assassination of Ernst vom Rath, the third secretary of the German embassy in Paris, by a seventeen-year-old Polish Jew, Herschel Grynszpan, it was in reality an orchestrated event. The name Kristallnacht comes from the German word Kristallglas (beveled plate glass). It refers to the shattered windows of Jewish shops.

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Kristallnacht occurred after a series of smaller attacks against Jews and their property in Germany and Austria following Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria (the Anschluss) in March 1938. The Nazis had made practical and legal preparations for the A RYA N I Z AT I O N (Arisierung) of Jewish property—a move to transfer ownership from Jewish to non-Jewish hands that was intended to fatten Germany’s treasury. Aryanization involved many decrees and laws that affected the Jews’ public and personal status and increased their segregation from the general public. Using “infractions” of the law supposedly committed by Jews and “unemployment” of Jews as pretexts, or excuses, the G E S TA P O and the SS made massive arrests of Jews. Those arrested were imprisoned in the C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S of D A C H AU , B U C H E N WA L D , and S AC H S E N H AU S E N . Beginning in July 1938, these camps were readied to receive an even greater number of Jews. The Nazis also encouraged assaults on Jewish businesses and synagogues. The authorities increasingly pressured Jews to leave German territory, even though the government’s emigration policies made it very difficult. More and more individual Jews and entire groups were forcibly expelled. On October 28, 1938, about 17,000 Polish Jews were driven into a no-man’s-land between Germany and Poland. The greatest number of them were left stranded near the border town of Zba˛szyn´. Herschel Grynszpan’s parents were in this group, and news of their situation drove the desperate youth to his act of revenge against the Nazi regime that provided the opportunity for the Nazi’s dramatic show of force that came to be known as Kristallnacht. After Grynszpan’s shooting of vom Rath on November 7, an inflammatory editorial appeared in the Völkischer Beobachter, the official N A Z I P A R T Y publication. Sporadic rioting against Jews started the next day. On the afternoon of November 9, vom Rath died. That same evening, at a Nazi party meeting in Munich, Joseph G O E B B E L S publicly hinted—apparently with the consent of Nazi leader Adolf H I T L E R —that this was the hour for action against the Jews. Instructions to that effect were immediately sent out to all parts of Germany and Austria. Crowds were encouraged by the Nazi forces called the SA (Sturmabteilung; Storm Troopers) to attack Jews and their property. A mass frenzy broke out. Synagogues were destroyed and burned, windows of Jewish-owned stores were shattered—the broken glass littering the sidewalks—and the demolished stores were looted. Jewish homes were targeted, and in many places Jews were physically attacked. About 30,000 Jews—especially those who were influential and wealthy—were arrested and thrown into concentration camps, where they were treated with great cruelty by the SS. This was the first time that riots against the Jews of Germany had been organized on such a broad scale, accompanied by mass arrests. Though the violent onslaught was officially terminated on November 10, in many places it continued for several more days. In Austria, it started only on the morning of November 10, but the attacks against Jews were especially fierce there. There were many arrests, and 4,600 Jews from Vienna were sent to Dachau. SS forces were officially forbidden to take part in the rioting, but these orders were ignored. SS official Reinhard H E Y D R I C H reported on November 11 that 815 shops, 29 department stores, and 171 dwellings of Jews had been burned or otherwise destroyed, and that 267 synagogues were set ablaze or completely demolished. (In fact, this was only a small fraction of the number of synagogues actually destroyed.) The same report refers to 36 Jews killed and the same number severely injured. Later, however, it was officially stated that the number killed was 91. In addition, hundreds perished in the concentration camps following their imprisonment.

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Kristallnacht was followed by administrative and legal orders issued to complete the process of Aryanization. The orders were meant to speed up the Jews’ emigration, to isolate the Jews completely from the general population, and to abolish official Jewish institutions. The Jewish community was fined under the pretext of “reparation” for the murder of vom Rath. The government also took the payments made by insurance companies to cover their losses, while at the same time making the Jewish property owners liable for the repairs. Additional economic steps were set in motion during the following months. The Kristallnacht prisoners in the concentration camps who were still alive were released early in 1939 for immediate emigration or for the Aryanization of their property, often for both. The Western press and public were harshly critical of Kristallnacht, but this did not affect the Nazis. President Franklin D. Roosevelt recalled the U.S. ambassador to Germany as a protest. The German ambassador to the United States was recalled home as well, because of “American interference in internal German affairs.” Debate continues about the causes and results of Kristallnacht, but there is no doubt that the pogrom was an important turning point. It was the Nazis’ first experience of large-scale anti-Jewish violence, and it was a first step toward the eradication of the Jews in Germany.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Kristallnacht: The Journey from 1938 to 1988 [videorecording]. PBS Video, 1988. More than Broken Glass: Memories of Kristallnacht [videorecording]. Ergo Media, 1989. Read, Anthony. Kristallnacht: The Nazi Night of Terror. New York: Times Books, 1989. Thalmann, Rita. Crystal Night: 9–10 November 1938. London: Thames and Hudson, 1974.

Krüger, Friedrich Wilhelm (1894–1945)

A senior SS commander in occupied P O L A N D , Friedrich Krüger was born in Strasbourg. He served in the German army in World War I. He became a N A Z I PA R T Y member in 1929, joining the SA (Storm Troopers) in 1930 and transferring to the SS in 1931. The following year he was elected to the Reichstag, and in January 1935 he was promoted to the rank of Obergruppenführer (general). From October 4, 1939, to November 9, 1943, Krüger was the Higher SS and Police Leader in the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T . As such, he was responsible for the liquidation of all the ghettos in the Generalgouvernement and for the operation of the B E L⁄ Z˙ E C , S O B I B Ó R , and T R E B L I N K A extermination camps, where 1,720,000 Jews were murdered. In May 1942, Krüger was given the additional title of secretary of state for security in the Generalgouvernement administration, and also became “Himmler’s Representative for the Strengthening of Germandom in the Generalgouvernement.” In the latter function he was responsible for the expulsion of 110,000 Poles from the Z A M O S´ C´ area and the settlement of Germans in their place. Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger.

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In May 1944, Krüger was appointed commander of the “Prinz Eugen” division of the Waffen-SS, which fought against the partisans in western Yugoslavia. On May 9, 1945, the day after Germany’s surrender, he committed suicide.

KULMHOF

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Rice, Earle. The Final Solution. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1998.

Shoah [videorecording]. New Yorker Video, 1999.

Krumey, Hermann (b. 1905)

Born in Mährisch-Schönberg, Moravia, Hermann Krumey joined the SS in 1938. From November 1939 to May 1940 he served in the Waffen-SS in the Posen (Warthegau) headquarters of the Higher SS and Police Leader. Between May 1940 and March 1944 he was a member of the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei) in L⁄ ÓDZ´ . In the summer of 1941, Krumey was sent from L ⁄ ódz´ to Croatia to take part in concentrating Jews in camps. In 1942 he helped arrange at least six transports from the Z A M O S´ C´ area to A U S C H W I T Z . He also assisted in deporting the Jews of L ⁄ ódz´ to extermination camps, and in deporting Poles farther east. Krumey entered H U N G A RY with the occupation forces on March 19, 1944, as a leading member of Adolf E I C H M A N N ’s Special Commando (Sonderkommando). In this capacity, he played an important role in organizing Hungary’s J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council), the Zsidó Tanács, and in laying the groundwork for the destruction of Hungarian Jewry. In June 1944, in the wake of negotiations between Eichmann and the Relief and Rescue Committee of Budapest, close to 21,000 Jews were transferred to Strasshof, a concentration camp in Austria. Krumey became the head of the Special Commando assigned there. Most of these Jews survived the war. He was arrested by the Allies in Italy in May 1945, but was not prosecuted. Rezso˛ (Rudolf) K A S Z T N E R , the Zionist leader involved in the negotiations with the SS in Hungary, signed an affidavit on Krumey’s behalf on May 5, 1948, and Krumey was released. He was again arrested in 1960, and after a trial in Frankfurt in 1965 was condemned to five years’ hard labor, on February 3. Following an appeal by the prosecution, a new trial was held in 1968–69, and Krumey was condemned to life imprisonment on August 29, 1969. The conviction was upheld by the Federal Court of Karlsruhe on January 17, 1973.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES “German Occupation.” Jewish History of Hungary. [Online] http://www.heritagefilms.com/HUNGARY.html (accessed on August 21, 2000).

Lodz Ghetto [videorecording]. PBS Home Video/Pacific Arts Video, 1992.

KULMHOF. SEE CHEL⁄ MNO.

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“LANGUAGE REGULATION.” SEE SPRACHREGELUNG. Latvia Latvia is located on the Baltic Sea, situated between Estonia to the north and Belarus (formerly B E L O R U S S I A ) and L I T H UA N I A to the south. Between 1918 and 1940 it was an independent republic. During the course of World War II, Latvia experienced three invasions and subsequent occupations: the S OV I E T U N I O N occupied Latvia in June 1940, the Germans invaded in June 1941, and in 1944 the Soviet army expelled the Germans, retaking Latvia. After nearly a half century as part of the Soviet Union, Latvia once again became an independent republic in 1991. Latvia’s main regions are Livonia (central Latvia), with the capital, R I G A ; Kurland in the southwest, with the major city Liepa¯ja; and Latgale in the east, with D V I N S K (now Daugavpils). Jews first arrived in Kurland and Livonia in the sixteenth century. At the beginning of the twentieth century about 200,000 Jews lived there, but expulsions, emigration, and the World War I military campaigns cut their numbers to less than half. During the first years of Latvia’s post-World War I independence, the Jews, who then constituted about 5 percent of the population, enjoyed equal rights in almost every sphere. Like the other minorities in Latvia, they were granted broad educational and cultural autonomy. During its period of independence between the two world wars, Latvia had close economic ties with G E R M A N Y , fostered by an influential German minority. In 1934 a right-wing revolution brought about a definite deterioration in the Jews’ situation.

Soviet Occupation On October 5, 1939, Latvia was forced to allow the Soviet army to establish bases in its territory. In June 1940 the Soviet army took over Latvia, and a month later the country was declared a Soviet republic. During this occupation, attempts were made to have Latvia conform to the Soviet pattern. National and local civilian administrative bureaus were destroyed, the military and civilian leadership was eliminated, and Latvia’s economy was nationalized. All farms over 74 acres (30 hectares) were divided into lots of 25 acres (10 hectares) in preparation for collectivization. On June 14, 1941, about 19,000 Latvians, among them 5,000 Jews, were deported to Siberia.

1

LATVIA

Latvia, September 1944.

While the Soviet occupation was imposed by force, the Soviets did manage to enlist the sympathy, if not the outright support, of about one-tenth of the population. The overwhelming majority of those who served in the Soviet-controlled civil administration and police were Latvian gentiles. Although the number of Jews working in the Soviet administration in the cities was considerable, it was less than their percentage in the general population. According to a 1935 census, 94,000 Jews lived in Latvia; however, at the time of the German invasion in June 1941, only some 70,000 remained in the country. About 4,000 left Latvia before the Soviet occupation, 5,000 (heads of the Jewish community and members of the cultural and economic elite) were deported to Siberia by the Soviets, and up to 15,000 managed to escape to the Soviet interior ahead of the advancing German army. Of the 70,000 remaining Jews, it is estimated that not more than 3,000 survived the Nazi massacres. In addition to native Latvian Jews, about 20,000 Jews from A U S T R I A , Czechoslovakia, and Germany were deported to Latvia. Of them, only about 1,000 survived the war.

Nazi Occupation In their massive invasion of the Soviet Union, June 22, 1941, the German forces swept into Latvia’s frontier. Riga was occupied on July 1, and it took the

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LATVIA

Wehrmacht (German combined military forces) just ten days to clear Latvia of Soviet troops. Under the command of General Franz Walter S TA H L E C K E R , Einsatzgruppe A entered Latvia along with the Wehrmacht. Within hours, Stahlecker’s troops began killing Latvia’s Jews and other “enemies” of the Nazi regime, specifically Communists and G Y P S I E S . Latvia became an integral part of Reichskommissariat Ostland and was called General Commissariat Latvia. The general commissioner appointed by the Germans for Latvia was Dr. Heinrich Drechsler. He headed a local administration composed of Latvians. The German occupation of Latvia was brutal. Although numerous Latvians, especially those who had suffered under the Soviets, greeted the German forces as liberators, the Germans entered Latvia with plans to exploit Latvian economic and labor resources. It is known that as many as 2,000 of Latvia’s 4,000 Gypsies, as well as all the patients of mental hospitals, were killed. According to estimates made by a Latvian resistance organization, as many as 20,000 Latvian Communists and members of the national resistance also lost their lives. In addition, tens of thousands of Latvians were put in prison, tortured, or deported to Germany. Throughout the period of German occupation, Latvia’s jails were filled to capacity. The Latvian SS Legion numbered 80,000 men, and an additional 30,000 men in the Latvian police corps were deployed against the Soviet army.

T

he difficulty of earning a living during the second half of the

1930s drove many young Jews from the villages to the large cities of Riga, Liepa¯ ja, and Dvinsk, where two-thirds of the Jews lived on the eve of the first Soviet occupation.

Purging Latvia of Jews The murder of the Jews in Latvia was carried out in three main stages. The first was from July to October 1941, when about 30,000 Jews from Latvia’s provincial towns and about 4,000 more Jews from Riga were killed. The second stage was from November to December 1941, during which most of the Jews living in the ghettos of the larger cities—Riga, Dvinsk, and Liepa¯ja—were annihilated. In October 1941, a change in command of the SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service) took place. The main force of Einsatzgruppe A left Latvia for Leningrad, and the police duties for Latvia were taken over by the Higher SS and Police Leader Friedrich J E C K E L N , who had excelled in the killing operations in the U K R A I N E . Jeckeln, like all the Higher SS and Police Leaders, had been given special authority by Heinrich H I M M L E R , and he arrived in Riga with a plan to “empty the ghetto.” In the so-called Jeckeln Aktion, which took place on November 30 and December 7, 1941, about 25,000 Jews from the Riga ghetto were killed in the R U M B U L A Forest. (Jeckeln was convicted and hanged in Riga in 1946 for his part in this operation.) Initially, Germany hadn’t intended to use Latvian troops against the Soviets. Part of Heinrich Himmler’s and Reinhard H E Y D R I C H ’s plan, however, was to enlist Latvians in the murder of Jews and Communists. Although the commanders of Einsatzgruppe A supervised the killing of Jews, local and national Latvian police units were integrated into the implementation of the “F I N A L S O L U T I O N .” These units frequently carried out the killings themselves. The major Latvian killing unit, which took part in numerous operations in Riga and in the provinces during the war, was led by Viktor Arajs (who was sentenced in 1979 to life imprisonment and died in 1988). His 400-man unit, known as the Arajs Commando, played a major role in the killings in the Bikernieki Forest near Riga, the Latvian provincial areas, the Ukraine, Belorussia, and Russia. Perhaps as many as 30,000 Latvian Jews were slaughtered by the Arajs Commando. The total number of Latvians who actively participated in the killing operations is impossible at present to determine; however, it is clear that more than 2,000 Latvians served the SD in various capacities.

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LAVAL, PIERRE

The third stage of planned extermination lasted from January 1942 until July of that year, and during this period as many as 14,000 of the 20,000 Jewish deportees from Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Germany were killed. Most of these Jews were killed in the Bikernieki Forest and at other locations in the vicinity of Riga. At the beginning of 1943 only about 5,000 Jews remained in the ghettos of Riga, Dvinsk, and Liepa¯ja, and in a few labor camps, the largest of which was Kaiserwald. Starting in the fall of 1943, the remaining Jews in the cities were moved to Kaiserwald. Sporadic killings continued until the end of the war. The largest burial grounds of the massacred Jews are in the Rumbula and Bikernieki forests. Altogether, there are perhaps as many as 60 mass grave sites of murdered Jews in Latvia. During the late summer of 1944, as the Soviet forces were approaching Riga, the remaining Jews in Latvia were transported to Germany, mostly to the S T U T T H O F camp. Most were marched to work in the German interior under blizzard conditions in early 1945, as the Soviet army closed in on the German forces. Numerous people died on the way from hunger and exposure. Out of the entire Latvian Jewish community only about 150 survived by hiding with the help of Latvian gentiles, and several dozen Jews who had fought with partisan units also survived. No more than 1,000 Latvian Jews returned from camps in Germany. After the war some 13,000 Jews who had been refugees and exiles in the Soviet interior returned to Latvia. Another 20,000 Jews from other parts of the Soviet Union joined them. In 1970 there were 36,592 Jews in Latvia, and by 1987 about one-third of them had emigrated to Israel.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Ezergailis, Andrew. The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941–1944. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1996. [Online] http://vip.latnet.lv/LPRA/Ezergailis_preface.html (accessed September 1, 2000). Gitelman, Zvi, ed. Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Bloomington Indiana University Press, 1997. Press, Bernhard. The Murder of the Jews in Latvia, 1941–1945. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999. Schneider, Gertrude, ed. The Unfinished Road: Jewish Survivors of Latvia Look Back. New York: Praeger, 1991.

Laval, Pierre (1883–1945) collaborator:

One who cooperates with the enemy.

Pierre Laval was a French politician and collaborator with the Germans. He was head of the French Vichy government from 1942 to 1944, during the years when the Nazis occupied F R A N C E . Laval was twice premier (1931–1932 and 1935–1936) before becoming vice-premier of the Vichy government, which operated in the portion of France not occupied by German forces, immediately after its establishment in 1940. Dismissed on December 13 of that year by the premier, Philippe Pétain, Laval was recalled to office in May 1942 with the help of Hitler. He formed a new cabinet and served as chief of government, continuing in that position until the end of the war. Laval was known as a pragmatist rather than an ideologue, and he championed an agreement with Hitler and the Germans. French fortunes, he argued, were

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LE CHAMBON-SUR-LIGNON

linked with those of a strong G E R M A N Y . Consequently, he attempted to comply with Nazi requests on matters he felt were not crucial to French national interests. Among these was the Jewish issue. Believing that he could win the confidence of the occupation authorities by satisfying their demands for foreign Jews, Laval agreed to assist the Germans in rounding up foreign-born Jews and removing them from France in 1942. He coordinated the actions of the F R E N C H P O L I C E and government with the Nazis’ machinery of destruction. In response to those who said that the Jews were being murdered, Laval adhered rigidly to the propaganda of the SS: the Jews were being sent to work camps in the east. In 1943, when the failure of his policies was becoming evident, the outcries against the D E P O RTAT I O N S were growing, and the Nazis’ most cruel measures increasingly involved native French Jews, Laval’s interest in collaboration declined. Although he gradually lost control of events, Laval believed until the end that his program had succeeded. “Image

not available for copyright reasons”

Laval was tried after the war for plotting against the security of the state and for conducting intelligence with the enemy, and was sentenced to death after a short, poorly run trial. Having failed in a suicide attempt, he was executed in October 1945.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Brody, J. Kenneth. The Avoidable War: Pierre Laval and the Politics of Reality, 1935–1936. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1999. Chambrun, Rene de. Pierre Laval: Traitor or Patriot? New York: Scribner, 1984. Warner, Geoffrey. Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France. New York: Macmillan, 1969.

Le Chambon-sur-Lignon Le Chambon-sur-Lignon was a French town in the Haute-Loire department in southern F R A N C E that became a significant source of shelter and protection for thousands of Jews during the Nazi occupation. The town’s overwhelmingly Protestant population responded to the plea of Pastor André Trocmé to extend aid to fleeing Jews and shelter them in private homes and outlying farms, as well as in public institutions in Le Chambon and nearby localities. Pastor Trocmé, who with his wife, Magda, initiated and presided over this vast rescue operation with the help of interdenominational organizations. The pastor has been described as the “charismatic leader” and “living spirit” of Le Chambon, and his wife as the “motor” of the large operation. Trocmé always responded to calls for help to hide Jews in danger of detection by the German police, even when this jeopardized not only his own life but those of his wife and children and members of his community. Refugee Jews were housed in public institutions and children’s homes or with local townsmen and farmers, for various periods of time. With the help of others, such as Pastor Edouard Théis, director of the Collège Cévenol, some were taken on dangerous treks through France and under assumed French names to the Swiss frontier. They were secretly smuggled across the borders and into the waiting hands of other Protestant supporters on the Swiss side; the rescue partners on the Swiss side were extremely important because the Swiss authorities invariably drove back Jews who openly tried to cross into Switzerland. Daniel Trocmé, a cousin of André Trocmé, directed the children’s home Maison des Roches at Le Chambon. He was betrayed, reportedly by a German officer stay-

5

LEMBERG

ing at a military convalescent home in Le Chambon, and was arrested on June 29, 1943, and taken to Moulins for interrogation. He readily admitted his role in the rescue of Jewish children, and was sent to the B U C H E N WA L D concentration camp, where he perished in April 1944. André Trocmé was also arrested by Vichy authorities but he was released, although he refused to sign a statement agreeing to stop giving further help to Jews. It is estimated that some 3,000 to 5,000 Jews found shelter in Le Chambon and its surrounding area at some time between 1941 and 1944.

“This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions”

Asked about his motivations in extending aid to Jews, one Le Chambon resident responded: “We were doing what had to be done. It was the most natural thing in the world to help these people.” The rescue operation was remarkable in that an entire community banded together to rescue Jews, seeing this as their Christian obligation. Pierre Sauvage, born in Le Chambon to Jewish parents who were refugees there, produced a documentary film, Weapons of the Spirit, about the rescue operation. André Trocmé, Daniel Trocmé, and Edouard Théis, as well as thirty-two other residents of Le Chambon and its neighboring area, have been recognized by Yad Vashem as “R I G H T E O U S A M O N G T H E N AT I O N S .”

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Matas, Carol. Greater Than Angels. New York: Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1998. Rittner, Carol, and Sondra Myers, eds. The Courage to Care: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust. New York: New York University Press, 1986.

Weapons of the Spirit [videorecording]. First Run/Icarus Films, 1988.

LEMBERG. SEE LVOV. Levi, Primo (1919–1987)

Primo Levi.

Primo Levi, born in Turin, I TA LY , became an Italian Jewish author and chemist. In October 1938, when Levi was a first-year student of chemistry, the leadership of the Italian Fascist party adopted a policy of R AC I S M , and by November, racial laws had been enacted in the country. Until then, being Jewish had been for Levi “a slight and insignificant difference.” This was the first time that he felt a wall of separation rising between him and the community in which he was living. In September 1943 he earned a doctorate in chemistry, despite the difficulties he encountered as a Jew. Following Mussolini’s downfall and the government’s surrender to the Allies, the Germans seized control of the greater part of Italy. Levi fled to the mountains in the north. He had planned to join an anti-Fascist partisan group, but in December 1943, before his partisan unit became consolidated, he was caught by the Fascist militia. Under questioning, Levi admitted that he was Jewish, and was imprisoned in the Fossoli transit camp. In February, 1944 he was deported to A U S C H W I T Z . Levi spent ten months as a prisoner in Auschwitz, one of the few Jews from Italy to survive Auschwitz. Fortunately, an Italian civilian working in Auschwitz provided him with some extra food. Also, Levi knew some German and at one point he was taken on to work as a chemist in the Buna Works synthetic-rubber factory, an Auschwitz satellite camp. Due to these unusual circumstances, Levi was spared

6

LEVI, PRIMO

“This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions”

many of the difficulties of camp life. In the latter part of January 1945, on the eve of the evacuation of the Auschwitz camp complex, Levi fell ill. He was not put on the death march (see D E AT H M A R C H E S ) and was liberated by the Soviet forces that entered the camp on January 27. When Levi was released from Auschwitz, he did not go back to his home in Italy. Instead, for nine eventful and difficult months, he wandered through P O L A N D , the U K R A I N E , and B E L O R U S S I A . His account of his experiences in Auschwitz and his observations about life in the camp were published in English as Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity (1961). The book’s original title was Se questo è un uomo (If This Is a Man). Levi eventually returned to Turin and his profession as a chemist, and worked in an industrial plant. He raised a family and lived in his ancestral home. He was haunted, however, by the experience of Auschwitz; as he described it, Auschwitz “had been, first and foremost, a biological and social experiment of gigantic dimensions.” Levi was one of the few survivors of the C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S who was intellectually equipped to observe and analyze the behavior of human beings in the reality of Auschwitz. Survival in Auschwitz, written in 1947, was Levi’s first book on his life in the camp. It was not well received, and a prominent Italian publisher had, in fact, rejected it. It took several years for Levi’s talent to be appreciated. Levi had the ability to perceive the inhumane with human eyes, and to present the horror authentically in a style that avoided angry outbursts and generalizations. In 1963 he pub-

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LIEBEHENSCHEL, ARTHUR

lished La tregua (The Lull; published in English as The Reawakening, 1965). This is a picaresque story rich in detail, with colorful characters and adventures that the author had gathered in his encounters with people from many countries. The experience of meeting with simple people of various origins was part of a rehabilitation process that enabled him to resume living. As time went on, Levi’s Jewish identity developed more fully and found its expression in Il sistema periodico (The Periodic Table; 1984), in which the different chemical elements, which played such an important role in Levi’s mind, meet with the world of his forefathers and with his own experience as a man and as a Jew. Primo Levi came to be widely acknowledged as an outstanding writer. His books have been translated into many languages, and he is regarded as one of the great Italian writers of his time. Sadly, Primo Levi committed suicide in April, 1987 without leaving behind any explanation.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Anissimov, Myriam. Primo Levi: Tragedy of an Optimist. New York: Overlook Press, 1999. Levi, Primo. The Drowned and the Saved. New York: Summit Books, 1988. Levi, Primo. The Reawakening. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity. New York: Collier Books, 1986.

Liebehenschel, Arthur (1901–1948)

Arthur L I E B E H E N S C H E L was a senior SS officer and the commandant of concentration camps. Born in Posen (now Poznan´), Liebehenschel studied public administration and economics, and after World War I he served as a sergeant major in the German army, the Reichswehr. In February 1932 he joined the N AZI PARTY and in August 1934, the SS, where he served in the SS-D EATH ’ S -H EAD U NITS (Totenkopfverbände). Liebehenschel served as an assistant in the Columbia Haus (in B E R L I N ) and Lichtenburg (near Prettin) camps. He then held senior administrative posts in the Death’s-Head Units headquarters, in the Inspectorate of C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S , and, as a senior director, in the S S E C O N O M I C - A D M I N I S T R AT I V E M A I N O F F I C E (Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt; WVHA). On November 10, 1943, Liebehenschel was appointed commandant of the A U S C H W I T Z extermination camp, and on May 19, 1944, commandant of M A J DA N E K . When that camp was evacuated, he was given a senior post in the Manpower Main Office. After the war, Liebehenschel was arrested by the Americans and extradited to P O L A N D . He was put on trial in Kraków, sentenced to death, and executed on January 24, 1948.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Goldstein, Arthur. The Shoes of Majdanek. Lanham, MA: University Press of America, 1992.

Arthur Liebehenschel at his trial in Kraków.

Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity. New York: Collier Books, 1986.

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Perpetrators. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/ holocaust/people/perps.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000).

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LIEBESKIND, AHARON

Liebeskind, Aharon (1912–1942)

Aharon Liebeskind (“Dolek”) was an underground fighter and the leader of the F I G H T I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N O F P I O N E E R J E W I S H Y O U T H (He-Haluts ha-Lohem) group in K R A K Ó W , Poland. Born in Zabierzow, a village near Kraków, Liebeskind studied law at Kraków University. In 1938 he became secretary of the Akiva movement, a Zionist and Hebrew cultural organization which he had joined at the age of 14. In early 1939 he was appointed national secretary of Akiva and went to live in W A R S A W , although he retained his home in Kraków and continued to lead the movement there. He also managed to complete his doctoral dissertation. His job kept him in Warsaw until the outbreak of the war. From the onset of the German occupation of P O L A N D , Liebeskind was convinced that the Jews would not be able to live under the occupation regime, and he did all he could to get the members of his movement out of Poland. A charismatic figure, much admired by his fellow members and disciples, he did not accept an immigration certificate to Palestine for himself, so as not to abandon his family and followers in time of trouble. In December 1940 Liebeskind was put in charge of an agricultural and vocational training program in the Kraków area, sponsored by the Jewish Self-Help Society, which had its main offices there. He utilized his position to promote the activities of the Jewish underground in the city, which he had founded and led. Using the society’s official stationery, he distributed leaflets and arranged money transfers to the members of the underground. Liebeskind also arranged for the financing of the Kopaliny training farm, headed by Shimshon Draenger, which served as a cover for underground operations. His post enabled him to move around and thereby to maintain and strengthen contact with fellow members in various locations. The deportation of Jews from the Kraków ghetto in June 1942 convinced Liebeskind that the only course of action left was that of armed struggle, even though there was not much hope of survival. He is credited with saying, “the Jewish fighters are fighting for three lines in history.” He initiated the establishment of a broadly based fighting organization in Kraków, forging ties with the other leaders of the He-Haluts (pioneer) youth organizations in the city. An especially close tie existed between Liebeskind and Avraham Leibovich (“Laban”) of the Dror movement, another Zionist organization, and the two became the commanders of the resistance organization, the Fighting Organization of the Pioneering Jewish Youth. When the authorities began to pursue him, in November 1942, Liebeskind and the organization’s headquarters moved to the “Aryan” part of the city. From there he renewed contact with the Polish Communist Workers’ party (PPR) and with its Jewish unit. Liebeskind’s aim was to launch a large-scale attack on the Germans inside Kraków. On December 22, 1942, The Fighting Organization of the Pioneering Jewish Youth and the Jewish unit of the PPR attacked German targets in Kraków. They inflicted many casualties on the Germans, but following the attack, the headquarters and most of the members of the Fighting Organization fell into German hands. On December 24 Liebeskind was caught in the headquarters bunker and killed in a hand-to-hand fight.

Aharon Liebeskind.

Zionist

A political movement that promoted the creation of a homeland for Jews in Palestine.

SEE ALSO YOUTH MOVEMENTS.

9

LITERATURE ON THE HOLOCAUST

SUGGESTED RESOURCES

S

ince the Nazi presence during World War II polluted neither

the American language nor American soil, factors other than first-hand

Cohen, Asher. The Halutz Resistance in Hungary 1942–1944. New York : Institute for Holocaust Studies of the City University of New York : Distributed by Columbia University Press, 1986.

The Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum of the Holocaust and Resistance. [Online] http://www. amfriendsgfh.org/Docs/gfh.html (accessed on September 1, 2000). Rescue and Resistance: Portraits of the Holocaust. New York: Macmillan Library Reference USA, 1999.

experience of war and mass murder necessarily influence the American encounter with the subject of the Holocaust.

Literature on the Holocaust For the most part, Americans have confronted the H O L O CAU S T only vicariously, through the experiences and expressions of others, although American soldiers who fought in Europe and the refugees who settled in the U N I T E D S TAT E S certainly have personal memories which influence their perspectives on the topic.

Jewish Culture in American Literature Emotional responses toward the Jewish catastrophe shifted in the long aftermath of the war. They reflect changing perceptions of the place of the Jew in the Western mind, as well as changing definitions of the American self in relation to its European roots. Of course, distinctions should be made between specifically Jewish literature in America and literature written by Americans who had no direct or indirect connections with the civilization that was destroyed. American identity was—and continues to be—carved out in juxtaposition with the European past and European culture. However, the specifically Jewish culture of central and eastern Europe began to be an ingredient in American consciousness only from the beginning of the twentieth century, when masses of Jews from Russia and P O L A N D migrated westward. In the decades that followed, an ethnically specific, almost “regional” Jewish literature evolved in America. It was nourished by memories of the European homeland, by the flourishing of Yiddish culture in large urban centers, and by the drama and conflicts of the immigrant experience. By the mid-1940s, a first generation of native sons and daughters had emerged to claim their literary birth-right. So distinctive was their stake in American culture—and so estranged had many of them become from Jewish communities elsewhere in the world—that in February 1944 the editors of the journal Contemporary Jewish Record could conduct a symposium on the centrality of Jewish writing in the United States without making any direct reference to the mass murder that had already reached its final stages in Nazi Europe. In response to the questions posed by the editors of the symposium, the writer Delmore Schwartz insisted that “the fact of being a Jew became available to me as a central symbol of alienation” and poet Isaac Rosenfeld wrote that the Jew is a “specialist in alienation.” The editorial presumption that the children of Jewish immigrants had reached the “front ranks of American literature” and the Jewish writer’s assumption of what would become the rather fashionable posture of “alienation” were both a far cry from any identification or even empathy with the actual suffering of Jews in Europe who were, quite literally, alien and outcast. A generic memory rather than an active historical consciousness seems to have fostered a sense of Jewish marginality among these writers. It became more of an

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LITERATURE ON THE HOLOCAUST

“This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions”

existential dilemma, a voluntary moral stance, rather than a historically determined condition. The editors of this 1944 symposium noted “A N T I S E M I T I S M ” in passing as if it were a kind of social disease. The Jewish fiction that appeared during the immediate postwar years evinces a similar psychosocial approach to racial prejudice as an indwelling but intangible threat. For example, Arthur Miller’s Focus, Saul Bellow’s The Victim, and Laura Hobson’s Gentleman’s Agreement all revolve around the Jew

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LITERATURE ON THE HOLOCAUST

who, having been identified (or misidentified) primarily by his appearance, is isolated as a social scapegoat. Two of the themes that dominate this fiction of the 1940s will reemerge later: that of the mistaken (or ambiguous) identity of the Jew based on external traits and that of the social role of the Jew as victim or sacrifice.

T

Literary Responses to the Holocaust he first specific American encounter with the fate

of the Jews of Europe can be found in the stories and poems of American soldiers who encountered traces of starvation, disease, torture, and mass

Specific literary responses to the Holocaust would eventually be shaped by three processes that related only marginally to the events that had taken place in Europe: 1. the return of the American soldiers who had participated in the defeat of G E R M A N Y and the liberation of the E X T E R M I NAT I O N CA M P S ; 2. the arrival and growing impact of large numbers of survivors; and 3. the trial of Adolf E ICHMANN , which took place some sixteen years after the war.

murder when they helped to liberate the concentration camps at the end of the war.

S O L D I E R - L I T E R AT U R E Examples of “soldier-literature” include William Hoffman’s The Trumpet Unblown and Stefan Heym’s The Crusaders. The horrifying sight of piles of mutilated, undifferentiated corpses so exceeded the grasp of the imagination of even the soldier hardened to death and disfiguration on the battlefield that words could barely contain their impressions. For instance, in Randall Jarrell’s poem “A Camp in the Prussian Forest” (1948), the very syntax is mutilated in the effort to convey unprecedented reality: “Here men were drunk like water, burnt like wood.” In much of this writing, the shock of the encounter is so great that it even precludes the normal compassionate response to tragedy. The soldier-literature did succeed in making Americans more aware of the camps, but it would take many years for the subject to achieve human scale in the imagination. VICTIM TESTIMONY In the decade or so following the war, while the historical

evidence mounted, a certain cultural numbness continued to prevail, resembling in its effect a conspiracy of silence. The Diary of Anne Frank helps to illustrate the slowly evolving attitudes toward this subject throughout the 1950s. At first the book was rejected by several editors in the United States who were convinced that there would be no market for it because the “public shie[s] away from such material.” Likewise potential producers of the dramatic adaptation claimed that audiences would not “come to the theater to watch on the stage people they know to have ended up in the crematorium; it would be too painful” (Levin, The Obsession). Eventually, both the book and the play reached audiences numbering probably in the millions. But it may be that the published version of the Diary—and to an even greater extent the American-written and American-produced play based upon it—enjoyed the popularity they did precisely because they did not contain any scenes of horror or computation of loss and because of their comfortable affirmation of the ultimate triumph of the forces of good over evil. Ten years after the concentration camps were liberated, audiences who should have known better were eagerly applauding Anne’s final statement that “it will all come right,” and embracing a drama that had largely sanitized the story of its Jewish particularity (see Bruno Bettelheim’s “The Ignored Lesson of Anne Frank” in Surviving). A satiric example of how Anne Frank has entered the myths of American culture in the most benign way can be found in Philip Roth’s The Ghostwriter (1979). The narrator, an aspiring Jewish writer, has fallen in love with a beautiful refugee whom he believes to be Anne Frank (somewhere in the American imagination, that is, she is still alive). He brings his fiancée home to meet his parents, who ask the natural question: “Is she Jewish?” “Yes, she is,” he answers sheepishly. “But who is

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LITERATURE ON THE HOLOCAUST

she?” “Anne Frank.” It is in the satirized Hollywood fantasy of such a happy ending that the implications of the refrain “it will all come right” can be appreciated. E I C H M A N N T R I A L The trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961 marked a turning point in worldwide Jewish consciousness and had a two-pronged impact on the American imagination. In the first place, as people analyzed Eichmann’s psyche and his political function in the Nazi machine, material became available to writers that had previously been cast into the safe realm of a “demonic otherness.” Additionally, survivor testimony at the trial demonstrated the poetic potential of the individual’s struggle against the collective fate.

Author Hannah Arendt’s theory of the banalization of evil (Eichmann in Jerusalem), influenced a new literary approach whereby Nazi evil could be tamed and incorporated into the human drama. In the two decades following the Eichmann trial, a kind of “fascination with Nazism” (see Saul Friedländer’s Reflections of Nazism) came to inform both popular and serious culture in America and in Western Europe. At the level of lowbrow fiction and film, it fed sensationalist, sadomasochistic fantasies (see Alvin Rosenfeld’s Imagining Hitler); at the level of serious literature and drama, it probed the capacity for evil in Everyman. Numerous European-produced movies and plays explored the average citizen’s collaboration with Nazism as a natural social phenomenon—an indictment of the system rather than of any of the individuals serving it. These were very well received by American audiences (Klaus Mann’s Mephisto; C. P. Taylor’s Good). Several American novelists and playwrights expressed variations on that theme through an elaborate confusion of identities. In William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice, the presumption of the banality and universality of the Nazi mentality crystallizes in the person of Nathan, a Jew whose sadistic conduct toward Sophie, the (non-Jewish) concentration camp survivor, cannot be differentiated from that of Hitler’s henchmen. In fact, in the same novel, the historical Nazi, Rudolf H Ö S S , commandant of A U S C H W I T Z , appears as rather pleasant and eminently human. Along similar lines, Robert Shaw’s The Man in the Glass Booth, modeled after the Eichmann trial, confounds and universalizes Nazi identity by presenting the main character as a Jew posing as a Nazi posing as a Jew. This principle of interchangeable identities dissolves the gap between victims and victimizers, between the human and the demonic (see also Arthur Miller’s Incident at Vichy). Whereas the sensational appearance of the Nazi has a primarily titillating effect in pornographic literature, the admission of the Nazi bureaucrat into the family of man resonates quite differently in the serious work of the imagination. Consistent with the twentieth-century American tendency to approach behavior on psychological rather than moral grounds, this strategy leaves nothing out of bounds or unapproachable. The most extreme expression of this theme may be Jerzy Kosinski’s novel The Painted Bird, in which a child—normally represented as the last bastion of innocence, even in a war-torn world—is so utterly corrupted by his environment that, as an act of revenge or gratuitous violence, he derails a trainload of peasants. Whatever humanizing effects it is meant to have on the encounter between the self and its darkest impulses, the leveling of the human tendency for evil also contributes to a blurring of the lines of historical accountability.

Survivor Stories Parallel and in some respects contrary to these developments has been the emergence (also in the wake of the Eichmann trial) of survivor voices, many of which had fallen silent after they reached American shores.

13

LITERATURE ON THE HOLOCAUST

T

he procession of witnesses who testified at the Eichmann trial

seemed for the first time to show Holocaust victims as individuals, not anonymous statistics of the Nazi machine. They also highlighted the pathos of the victim’s lonely struggle for survival.

Elie W I E S E L ’s was one of the first and most enduring of the survivor voices. Although he writes in French, the impact of his novels and his public presence is most keenly felt in the United States, which he made his home after leaving Europe. Wiesel’s first book, Night, is both an act of confession and commemoration and a claim for the historical foundation of all the fiction to come. As autobiography, it stretches the genre to its very limits, tracing not the growth but the utter collapse of the integrity of all life-support systems surrounding the young adolescent. In Night the American reader encountered the kind of text that Anne Frank might have written had she survived Bergen-Belsen; it is not a story in which it “all comes right.” The narratives of survival, autobiographical and fictional, proliferated and reached wide audiences in America in the decades following the Eichmann trial. The survivor—as writer and as persona—began to emerge as a new kind of hero against a landscape of mass murder. This literature is a far cry from the stories of successful immigrants that make up the melting-pot saga of early twentieth-century America, the Horatio Alger tales of impoverished new Americans who reconstruct their lives in the land of freedom and promise. Nevertheless, they owe much of their impact to the American elevation of the individual in his or her struggle against circumstance. A few of these narratives were written in English by survivors who had mastered the language of their adopted country (Ilona Karmel’s An Estate of Memory); the others reached American readers in translation. American-born Jewish writers may have found in these autobiographical fictions a set of literary conventions that would enable them to enter previously uncharted regions (E. L. Wallant’s The Pawnbroker; Saul Bellow’s Mr. Sammler’s Planet; Susan Fromberg-Schaeffer’s Anya). The Pawnbroker (1961) is one of the earliest fictional attempts to reconstruct the postwar life of the survivor in America; the way in which the embittered Sol Nazerman is finally able to confront his repressed memories of torture and loss and to enter a space normally reserved for heroes in American fiction is to become, along with his assistant (“Jesus”), a kind of expiatory Christ figure. The Jew as sufferer and as sacrificial victim thus reemerges schematically in the 1960s and 1970s in the portrait of the survivor or refugee (see also the fiction of Bernard Malamud).

Object Lessons Shaping Cultural and Human Identity Over the years the events in Europe, which had been, for most American Jews, just beyond the orbit of their own experience and had in fact tested the boundaries of their own identity (see, for example, Philip Roth’s early story “Eli the Fanatic”), became a focus of identification with the remnants of Jewish collectives elsewhere. After a generation or two of deliberate disengagement from the European motherland, the idea of “peoplehood” is reaffirmed partly through the imaginative return to ruined communities in Eastern Europe. But all these processes are disciplined by the larger context in which the minor dramas of an ethnic subculture are being played out. American culture has largely resisted sectarian efforts to mythicize the Holocaust—primarily through monumental acts of commemoration—as a cluster of events somehow central to the American ethos or collective memory. In the Israeli context, the narratives by and about survivors encounter and are included in a powerful national myth of catastrophe and regeneration. In contrast, the survivors and their dead are assimilated into American culture primarily as individuals whose stories are read as object lessons in the power and limits of the human spirit in the face of adversity.

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LITHUANIA

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Aaron, Frieda W. Bearing the Unbearable: Yiddish and Polish Poetry in the Ghettos and Concentration Camps. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990. Clendinnen, Inga. Reading the Holocaust. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Kremer, S. Lillian. Witness Through the Imagination: Jewish-American Holocaust Literature. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989. Kremer, S. Lillian. Women’s Holocaust Writing: Memory and Imagination. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. Lang, Berel, ed. Writing and the Holocaust. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1988. Meredith, James H. Understanding the Literature of World War II: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999.

Lithuania Lithuania, southernmost of the Baltic States, was a republic of the S OV I E T U N I O N from 1940, until declaring its independence in 1991, except for the period of German occupation between 1941 and 1945. The country’s history can be traced to the thirteenth century when the Lithuanians, who fought the Slavs and the German Teutonic Order, founded a strong state. Between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries Lithuania became a great power, extending from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea including within its territories what is today Belarus, most of the areas of the U K R A I N E , and broad expanses of western Russia. The majority of the inhabitants of Lithuania were then Slavs. In the late fourteenth century Lithuania became allied with P O L A N D , and in 1569 the two countries united, with Lithuania as the lesser partner in the united state. In the third partition of Poland, in 1795, Lithuania was annexed to Russia. Between World War I and World War II, however, it was an independent country. Lithuania was in conflict with Poland (which in 1920 occupied V I L NA , the historic capital) and later with G E R M A N Y , because Lithuania controlled Memel (Klaipe˙da), most of whose inhabitants were Germans and which had special status as an autonomous territory. Independent Lithuania suffered from economic and social problems, had many national minorities (constituting about a fifth of all the inhabitants), and was politically unstable. After a military coup in 1926, Antanas Smetona became president and leader of the fascist Iron Wolf (Gelezinis Vilkas) organization, and Augustinas Voldemaras was prime minister. In 1929 Voldemaras was dismissed, and Smetona became sole ruler.

German Occupation On March 23, 1939, Germany annexed Memel. The agreements between Germany and the Soviet Union in the wake of the Nazi-Soviet Pact placed Lithuania in the Soviet sphere of influence, and on October 10 of that year, Lithuania was compelled to permit the establishment of Soviet bases on its territory. Vilna, together with a surrounding area of about 3,475 square miles (9,000 square kilometers), was restored to Lithuania (from Poland) on October 30. On June 15, 1940, the Soviet army assumed control of Lithuania, and about seven weeks later the country was officially annexed to the Soviet Union as the Lithuanian SSR. A number of underground groups formed in reaction to the Soviet occupation of the country. One of these extremist nationalist groups was the Lithuanian

15

LITHUANIA

I

n the first years of Lithuanian independence after World

War I, the Jews enjoyed national and cultural autonomy, and a Jewish minister was responsible for their affairs. Even after this autonomy was repealed in 1924, the Jews continued to maintain their own Hebrew and Yiddish educational network. However, the authorities began to systematically exclude the Jews from various sectors of the economy, and there was strong antisemitism in the country. Between the two world wars more than 20,000 Jews left Lithuania, almost half of them emigrating to Palestine.

Activist Front (Lietuviu Aktyvistu Frontas), which strongly supported Nazi Germany. On June 14, 1941, the Soviets exiled tens of thousands of Lithuanians, who were defined as “enemies of the people” and whom the Soviets considered politically or socially unreliable. About a week later, on June 22, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union and occupied all of Lithuania; Lithuanian underground activists followed in the wake of the retreating Soviet army. In the few days it took to occupy Lithuania, most of the leaders and activists of the Soviet rule and of the Lithuanian Communist party fled into the Soviet Union, along with many citizens who did not wish to remain under Nazi occupation. Most of the gentile Lithuanians welcomed the Germans, and many collaborated with them. Nonetheless, their hope of renewed political independence was disappointed. Lithuania became part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland (Reich Commissariat for Ostland), and its name was changed to General District of Lithuania (Generalbezirk Litauen). It was headed by a German Generalkommissar who had a ministerial council (Generalrat) consisting of well-known Lithuanian personalities. The Lithuanian national army was not rebuilt, and several of its former officers and soldiers were incorporated into the Lithuanian police battalions. In the wake of the German collapse on the Stalingrad front, the relations of the Lithuanians with the Nazi occupation authorities deteriorated. When the Soviet army returned to Lithuania in the summer and fall of 1944, however, many Lithuanians fled to Germany. With the German expulsion from Memel in January 1945, Nazi rule in all parts of Lithuania came to an end, and Lithuania became once more a Soviet republic. When Vilna and its vicinity were returned to Lithuania in October 1939, the Jewish population of the country grew by about 100,000. This number included an additional 15,000 refugees from occupied Poland, bringing the total number of Jews to approximately a quarter of a million, about 10 percent of the overall population in Lithuania at that time. Frustrated by the 1939 Nazi agreement with the Soviet Union, which took away Lithuanian sovereignty, the Lithuanian people greatly increased attacks on Jews and Jewish property. With the entry of the Lithuanian army into Vilna, pogroms were conducted against the Jews with the blessing of the new government, and hundreds of Jews were injured.

Jews in Lithuania

Zionist

A political movement that promoted the creation of a homeland for Jews in Palestine.

Jews lived in Lithuania beginning in the fourteenth century. From the seventeenth century onward, the country’s yeshivas (rabbinical academies) attained worldwide fame. In the nineteenth century Lithuania was a center of many Jewish religious and cultural trends. From the end of the nineteenth century onward, it was also a seat of strong Zionist thinking and support for Zionist organizations. In the wake of the tsarist-instigated pogroms of 1881 and 1882, many Lithuanian Jews emigrated, principally to the U N I T E D S TAT E S and also to South Africa. Of the masses of Jews who were expelled from Lithuania to Russia during World War I, many never returned. About 150,000 Jews lived in independent Lithuania after World War I.

Lithuanian Jewry Under Soviet Rule The situation of Lithuanian Jewry changed dramatically when the country became a Soviet republic. On the one hand, the Jews were given appropriate representation in the government bodies, the institutions of higher education were opened to them, and they were allowed to join the local and central official estab-

16

LITHUANIA

lishment, previously closed to them. On the other hand, they were affected significantly by Soviet economic policies. For example, 83 percent of the commercial establishments and 57 percent of the factories that were nationalized belonged to Jews. The Hebrew educational system, encompassing 80 percent of the Jewish pupils, was abolished. The renowned rabbinical academies of Telz, Slobodka, Kelme, and other places were closed down. Jewish workers were compelled to work on the Sabbath and on Jewish holidays, violating their religious beliefs. Political bodies were also closed, apart from the Communist organizations, and almost all the cultural and welfare institutions were shut down with many of their leaders and activists arrested. In the June 14, 1941, mass deportation of “enemies of the people,” about 7,000 Jews were exiled to Siberia and other areas of Soviet Asia, 3 percent of all the Jews in Lithuania, as compared to only 1 percent of the rest of the population. Deported heads of families were interned in labor camps and many died as a result of the harsh conditions.

I

n July and August 1941 the overwhelming majority of the Jews in

the provinces were slaughtered. From September to November, most of the Jews in the large cities, who had been forced into in ghettos, were liquidated in a similar fashion.

Although the Jews suffered greatly and were severely oppressed under Soviet rule, the Lithuanians regarded them as supporters of the Soviet regime that had enslaved their country. The Lithuanian Activist Front agitated against the Jews. The bulletins it circulated before the anticipated Nazi invasion contained concrete threats against the Jews. Upon the invasion in June 1941, many Lithuanian Jews desperately attempted to flee for their lives in the wake of the retreating Soviet army. However, because of German shelling, difficulties in crossing the old Soviet border, and attacks by Lithuanian underground groups, only about 15,000 Jews succeeded in reaching the Soviet Union. More than a third of these fought the Nazis actively. The overwhelming majority of Lithuanian Jewry, about 220,000 people, remained in their homes. During the Soviet occupation and before the German occupation, the Lithuanians carried out vicious pogroms against the Jews. According to findings based on reliable testimonies from 214 localities, pogroms occurred in at least 40 places, where hundreds if not thousands of Jews were killed and injured. In at least 25 localities, rapes took place, and in 36 areas, rabbis and other community leaders were cruelly abused.

Lithuanian Jews Under German Occupation The wave of murders and assaults grew with the entry of the German forces, and principally of the O P E R AT I O N A L S Q UA D S (Einsatzgruppen). On July 3, 1941, a systematic program of exterminating all of Lithuanian Jewry began. Many of the stages of the extermination, such as confining and guarding the victims, then transporting them to the massacre sites, were carried out by Lithuanian soldiers and policemen. Before being killed, the victims were made to perform physical exercises, to sing and dance, or to strike each other in front of their Lithuanian neighbors, public figures, and heads of the local intelligentsia, who took great delight in this spectacle. In forty-eight localities, individual Jews offered concrete or symbolic resistance. But only in a few instances did any of the victims succeed in escaping from the murder site. By late 1941 only 40,000 Jews remained in all of Lithuania, and they were concentrated in four ghettos—those of Vilna, K OV N O , Sˇiauliai, and Sˇvencˇionys—and in several labor camps. About eight hundred Jews from the towns of western Lithuania were in a labor camp at Heidekrug, in the Memel district. In 1943 the survivors were transferred to A U S C H W I T Z and from there to W A R S AW , to work on clearing the ruins of the ghetto. In the summer and fall of that year the ghettos of Vilna and Sˇvencˇionys were liquidated, and those of Kovno and Sˇiauliai became concentration camps, with branches in their vicinities. Approximately 15,000 Jews were transferred

17

LITHUANIA

Lithuanian militiamen watch the arrival of Jewish women who were brought from the Kovno ghetto.

to labor camps in L AT V I A and Estonia, where they died. About 5,000 Jews, principally old people, women, and children, were directly sent to extermination camps. In the second half of 1943 and early in 1944 more than 2,000 Jews escaped from the ghettos and camps. About half of them joined partisan units. The rest, mainly families, found hiding places in monasteries and in the homes of non-Jews in cities and towns. Shortly before withdrawing from Lithuania in the summer of 1944, the Germans transferred about 10,000 of the Jews of Kovno and Sˇiauliai to concentration camps in Germany. Many who attempted to resist were murdered. Numerous Lithuanian collaborators and killers of Jews accompanied the retreating Nazis. When Germany surrendered in May 1945, few Lithuanian Jews interned in the concentration camps remained alive. The overall number of Lithuanian Jews who survived in the area under Nazi rule is estimated at 8,000. In places under Soviet rule, about 10 percent of all the Jews living in Lithuania in early 1941 survived, including the fighters in the ranks of the PA RT I S A N S . Soon after the liberation of Lithuania, in the second half of 1944, the Soviet authorities made great efforts to uncover mass-murder sites of P R I S O N E R S O F WA R and civilians, and through inquiry commissions to determine circumstances of the slaughter and the number and identity of the victims. At some of the sites monuments were erected with inscriptions in Russian and Lithuanian. The victims were generally commemorated only as Soviet citizens, without mention of their ethnic affiliation. In a few places, after repeated requests to the authorities, Jewish survivors who had raised money were allowed to erect monuments with inscriptions in Yiddish and in Hebrew.

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L Ó D Z´

Postwar Years In the early postwar years and later, many of the Lithuanians who had collaborated with the Nazi occupation authorities were identified, including many of the murderers of the Jews. Some were tried and received sentences ranging from a defined period of imprisonment to execution. The Lithuanians and other killers who had fled to Germany and to countries overseas were tried in absentia. Some of them not only found refuge but also integrated successfully into the life of their adopted countries. Only in the 1980s did the American, Canadian, and Australian governments begin to pursue the killers of the Jews, and several were brought to trial. Lithuanian immigrants in these and other countries fiercely opposed exposing the collaborators and perpetrators of the crimes. Financial, political and legal efforts were made to prevent the trials from taking place.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Birger, Zev. No Time for Patience: My Road from Kaunas to Jerusalem. New York: Newmarket Press, 1999. Gitelman, Zvi, ed. Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

Kovno Ghetto: A Buried History [videorecording]. History Channel, 1997.

L⁄ódz´ L ⁄ ódz´, a city in P O L A N D , is located about 75 miles (121 kilometers) southwest ⁄ ódz´ was 2,800, of whom 400 of W A R S AW , the capital. In 1827 the population of L were Jews. The city grew rapidly as a result of the development of industry, especially textiles. The Jewish population also grew considerably. Before long L ⁄ ódz´ became Poland’s second largest city, next only to Warsaw, and the city’s Jews came to compose the second largest Jewish community in Poland, after Warsaw. By 1857 the L ⁄ ódz´ population was 25,000, including 2,900 Jews. At the end of the nineteenth century it was 300,000, a third being Jews. On the eve of World War II the population had risen to 665,000, of which 34 percent (223,000) were Jews. The Jews contributed much to the growth of the city. Many of the industrial enterprises were founded by Jews, and more than 50 percent of the Jewish population derived their livelihood from industry. This economic class of industrial workers accounted for much of the L ⁄ ódz´ Jewish community’s unique character. L ⁄ ódz´ was also an important center of Jewish culture. Its network of Jewish schools included three Hebrew secondary schools, and numerous yeshivas . There were libraries, Jewish theaters, and sports clubs. Outstanding intellectuals, scientists, and artists lived in L ⁄ ódz´, among them poets and writers as well as painters and musicians. Before the outbreak of World War II, the city had two Yiddish and two Polish daily newspapers. There was a great deal of political and social activity among L ⁄ ódz´ Jewry.

B

rutal persecution of the Jews began as soon as L⁄ódz´ was occupied. The

riots, the abduction of people for forced labor, and the harassment of passersby in the streets all soon led to the collapse of the economic and social life of the Jews in the city. Jewish public and cultural institutions were abolished overnight.

yeshivas

Centers for rabbinical studies.

Early Stage of Nazi Occupation On September 8, 1939, the Germans occupied L ⁄ ódz´ , making it part of the Warthegau (western Poland after its annexation to G E R M A N Y ). On April 11, 1940,

19

L Ó D Z´

Jewish policeman and a German soldier direct people across the main street which divided the L⁄ódz´ ghetto.

the occupiers renamed the city Litzmannstadt (after the German general Karl Litzmann, who had conquered it in World War I). The German authorities began to issue one decree after another designed to make life miserable for the Jews. On September 18, 1939, a number of decrees were put into effect that struck at the heart of the economic life of the Jews. All Jewishowned bank accounts were blocked, and Jewish cash holdings were restricted. Jews could no longer engage in the textile business, and Jewish enterprises were confiscated and taken over by Germans. Jews could no longer use public transportation, could not leave the city without special permission, and were not allowed to have cars, radios, and various other items in their possession. Synagogue services were outlawed, and Jews had to keep their shops open on Jewish holidays. On October 13 and 14, 1939, the Germans appointed a J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council), which was to operate under the strict supervision of the G E S TA P O . Mordechai Chaim R U M KOW S K I was chosen as its chairman. On November 9, when L ⁄ ódz´ was officially annexed to the Reich, the German terrorization of the Jews and Poles intensified. The Germans destroyed all the synagogues in the city, among them the magnificent Reform Synagoga and the Altschule synagogue, dating from 1809. On November 17 Jews were forced to wear yellow badges (see B A D G E , J E W I S H ) in the form of a Star of David. From the very beginning of the occupation Jews were subject to expulsions. In the first few weeks hundreds of Jewish apartments were confiscated and their tenants deported. On November 12 a decision was made to launch mass D E P O R TA T I O N S , which were to affect 30,000 Jews and an equal number of Poles. By March

20

L Ó D Z´

1940, 70,000 Jews had left the city, among them those who fled by choice. However, most of the Jews were deported by the Germans, who intended to reduce the Jewish population substantially or even remove it completely.

By September 1942 the

Establishing the Ghetto

ghetto had become a single

On December 10, 1939, a secret order was issued for the establishment of a ghetto in the northern section of L ⁄ ódz´, where the Jewish Baluty slum quarter was situated. In early February 1940 Jews from the other parts of the city were moved to the ghetto area, a process accompanied by intensified robbery, harassment, and murder.

large forced-labor camp: 90

The ghetto comprised an area of 1.54 square miles (4 square kilometers), of which only .96 square miles (2.5 square kilometers) was built up. Approximately 164,000 L ⁄ ódz´ Jews were forced in. In 1941 and 1942 some 38,500 Jews from outside L ⁄ ódz´ were moved in. Ultimately, the population in the ghetto totaled 204,800 Jewish men, women, and children. The density of population in the ghetto area was several times as great as it had been before the war.

percent of its population was employed in the factories, and only a few children and old people were still to be found.

Nazi Administration The running of the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto was in the hands of a ghetto administration ⁄ ódz´, Section headed by Hans B I E B O W . The Gestapo section for Jewish affairs in L IV B 4, was also involved in the administration. On May 25, 1940, Biebow issued orders for factories to be set up in the ghetto. Exploiting the Jews of the ghetto as very cheap labor, these factories were to serve the Nazis as a source of easy profits. The Jews in the ghetto, cut off as they were from all other possible sources of livelihood, were prepared to work for no more than a loaf of bread and some soup. The German authorities allowed the Judenrat, and primarily its chairman, Rumkowski, wide powers in the organization of the ghetto’s internal life. The Judenrat’s main task was to organize the operation of the factories. It regarded the establishment of factories as the only possible means of saving the ghetto population from unemployment and starvation. The services provided by the Judenrat involved housing and sanitation, as well as the distribution of the small quantities of food permitted by the German authorities. Until October 1941 the Judenrat ran a school system, consisting of 45 elementary schools and two secondary schools, which were attended by 15,000 pupils. Five hospitals were in operation in the ghetto up until the summer of 1942. Internal order in the ghetto was maintained by the Judenrat’s J E W I S H G H E T T O P O L I C E (Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst). The Judenrat also administered a prison.

Living Conditions in the Ghetto The L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto had a high mortality rate owing to the extremely poor conditions. The worst affliction of all, however, was starvation. This was the chief problem the ghetto had to contend with throughout its existence. The average daily food ration per person was less than 1,100 calories. Some 43,500 persons—21 percent of all the inmates—died in the ghetto from starvation, cold, and disease. The mortality rate reached its peak in 1942. The smaller number of deaths from “natural” causes in 1943 was due to the fact that by then most of the children and elderly people had died or been deported. Even so, the 1943 mortality rate was six times that in the prewar period.

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L Ó D Z´

DEPORTATION These diary excerpts recall the devastating deportation from the L⁄ódz´ ghetto of the sick, the elderly, and the children under ten. Friday, September 4, 1942. The deportation of children and old people is a fact. This morning the ghetto received a horrifying shock: What seemed improbable and incredible news yesterday has now become a dreadful fact. Children up to the age of ten are to be torn away from their parents, brothers and sisters, and deported. Old people over 65 are being robbed of their last life-saving plank, which they have been clutching with their last bits of strength—their four walls and their beds. They are being sent away like useless ballast.… All hearts are icy, all hands are wrung, all eyes filled with despair. All faces are twisted, all heads bowed to the ground, all blood weeps.… People say: The children are to be taken from their parents as early as today.…They are to be sent away—where?… There are children who do indeed understand. In the ghetto, ten-year-old children are mature adults. They already know and understand what is in

Deportations Even more devastating than the mass deaths and the hunger from which the ghetto population suffered were the deportations. In the first stage, from December 1940 to June 1942, deportations were to forced-labor camps outside the ghetto, and from there the Jews were sent on to extermination camps. Generally speaking, the Jews imprisoned in the ghetto were not aware of the final destination of the deportations nor of the fate awaiting the deportees. From January to May 1942, the deportations from the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto went directly to the C H E L⁄ M N O extermination camp. Upon their arrival there, all deportees were killed with poison gas (see G A S C H A M B E R S / V A N S ). The German authorities forced Rumkowski to draw up the lists of candidates for deportation. Rumkowski tried vainly to persuade the Germans to reduce the number of deportees. Between September 5 and 12 of 1942, a second deportation operation to Chel⁄mno took place. This time the Germans did not require lists from the Judenrat: German forces entered the ghetto, blocked off one section after another, and dragged the Jews out of their homes, using extremely brutal methods in the process. Then, in a heart-breaking episode for the Jews, the Germans chose for deportation those who were less fit for work—children, the elderly, and the infirm. Nearly 20,000 Jews were then deported to Chel⁄ mno. Hundreds more were murdered on the spot, while the deportation was in progress. The Germans proclaimed a general

22

L Ó D Z´

store for them. They may not as yet know why they are being torn away from their parents—they may not as yet have been told. For the moment it’s enough for them to know that they are being torn away from their devoted guardians, their fathers and their loving and anxious mothers. It’s hard to keep such children in one’s arms or to take them by the hand. Such children go out into the streets on their own. Such children weep on their own, with their own tears. Their tears are so sharp and piercing that they fall upon all hearts like poisoned arrows. But hearts in the ghetto have turned to stone. They would rather burst but they can’t, and this is probably the greatest, the harshest curse.…

Saturday, September 5, 1942. It has begun.

It’s only a few minutes after 7 a.m. now. All the people, practically the entire ghetto, are on the street. Whose nerves don’t drive them out? Who can sit at home? Who has peace of mind? Who can just sit with his arms folded? No one!… —JOSEF ZELKOWICZ: DAYS OF NIGHTMARE

A Holocaust Reader, Lucy S. Dawidowicz, editor (New York: Berhman House), 1976, pp. 298–309.

curfew in the ghetto, a Gehsperre (ban on movement), and that week of bloody murder came to be known as the Sperre by the surviving ghetto inhabitants, a term that became deeply imbedded in their memory. Between September 1942 and May 1944, when the final liquidation of the ghetto was undertaken, there were no more deportations to extermination camps. In effect, the ghetto had become a single large forced-labor camp: 90 percent of its population was employed in the factories, and only a few children and old people were still to be found. The ghetto population at the end of that period, in May 1944, was 77,000.

Ghetto Activities and the Underground The ghetto as a whole was isolated from the world and had no contacts with any outside organization, either with Jews in other ghettos or with the Polish underground. However, throughout its existence, the ghetto was the scene of animated illegal political, public, and cultural activities. Public activities in the summer and fall of 1940 concentrated on a search for solutions to the enormous problems of unemployment and lack of food. Mass demonstrations were held to put pressure on the Judenrat to distribute the small amount of food supplied to the ghetto on a more evenhanded basis. These strikes went on as long as the ghetto existed.

23

L Ó D Z´

The underground organizations in the ghetto were helpless in the face of the deportations to the extermination camps. Although no clear-cut information on the existence of such camps had come to their knowledge, the Jews of the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto sensed the danger faced by the deportees. The underground organizations sharply denounced the Judenrat, and Rumkowski in particular, for having drawn up the lists of candidates for deportation in the first half of 1942. Rumkowski’s policy was condemned, but the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto underground was unable to come up with any alternative.

Liquidation In the spring of 1944 the Nazis decided to liquidate the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto, and they reactivated the Chel⁄mno extermination camp with this purpose in mind. On June 23 the deportations to Chel⁄ mno were resumed, on the pretext that they were forced-labor transports to Germany. The method used in early 1942 was revived, and the Judenrat was again forced to organize the transports. By July 15, 7,176 persons had been transferred to Chel⁄mno to be killed there. After August 7, the destination of the deportations was A U S C H W I T Z . The transports were organized in haste, and the operation took on the form of an evacuation. Section after section of the ghetto was cleared and searched for people in hiding. Each section was then declared out of bounds, and anyone found there was sentenced to death. The ghetto population resisted only passively, the Jews making desperate efforts to avoid deportation in the hope that the city would soon be liberated by the advancing Soviet army. The last transport left the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto on August 30, 1944. By then, 74,000 persons had been deported to Auschwitz. Six hundred Jews were put into a camp on Jakuba Street, where they were forced to collect the possessions of the Jews who had been deported and prepare them for transmission to Germany. The camp came to be known as the Aufräumungskommando (“tidying-up detachment”). The Nazis planned to kill all the prisoners in the Jakuba Street camp before retreating from the area, and they had prepared pits for this purpose in the Jewish cemetery grounds. The prisoners became aware of these plans, and at the appropriate moment they managed to escape and take refuge in the ghetto area. By then numbering about 800, these prisoners were finally liberated by the Soviet army, on January 19, 1945. No precise figures are available for the number of L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto inmates who survived the concentration camps, although estimates range from 5,000 to 7,000. For several years after the war, L ⁄ ódz´ contained the largest concentration of Holocaust survivors in Poland. In late 1945 it had a Jewish population of 38,000. In that period, L ⁄ ódz´ was also the leading center of the public and cultural activity of Polish Jewry. In the waves of emigration that took place in 1946–1947, 1956–1957, and 1967–1969, however, nearly all the Jews left L ⁄ ódz´ , and only a few hundred elderly Jews remained in the city.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Ayer, Eleanor H. In the Ghettos: Teens Who Survived the Ghettos of the Holocaust. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 1999. Grossman, Mendel. My Secret Camera: Life in the L⁄ódz´ Ghetto. San Diego: Gulliver Books, 2000.

L⁄ódz´ Ghetto [videorecording]. PBS Home Video/Pacific Arts Video, 1992. Sender, Ruth Minsky. The Cage. New York: Alladin, 1997.

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L⁄ódz´ Ghetto, Chronicles of the This chronological record of events in the L⁄ Ó D Z´ ghetto was started and maintained by the archivists of the J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council) in order to document the Nazis’ unprecedented campaign of hate and terror against the Jews in P O L A N D . The team consisted of journalists, writers, and scholars. Outstanding among them were a journalist, Julian Zucker (whose pen name was Stanisl⁄aw Czerski); an engineer, Bernard Ostrowski; an ethnographer, Joseph Zelikowicz; and Dr. Abraham Shalom Kamenetzki, a biblical scholar. The chronicles were initiated in January 1941 and were kept up without interruption until July 30, 1944. The chronicles were written in Polish until September 1942. But the chronicles’ contributors, like other ghetto inhabitants, fell victim to starvation and disease, and they were gradually replaced by Jews who had been deported to the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto from other European countries. As a result, Polish was replaced by German, as a new team made up of Jews from Czechoslovakia and A U S T R I A , headed by Dr. Oskar Rosenfeld and Dr. Oskar Singer, inherited the record-keeping tasks.

Fragment from an album secretly produced by chroniclers in the L⁄odz´ Ghetto: a collage entitled “45,000 deportees from the ghetto vanish without a trace.”

Entries in the chronicles were based on documents and information provided to the archive by the various departments of the Jewish ghetto administration, on the instructions of Mordechai Chaim R U M KOW S K I , head of the Judenrat. The daily entries usually included a weather report; statistical data on births and deaths; a list

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L Ó D Z´ G H E T T O , C H R O N I C L E S O F T H E

JEWISH GHETTOS IN THE THIRD REICH In the march toward their “Final Solution“—the extermination of European Jewry—the Nazis segregated and exploited the Jews who came under their administration, forcing them to live in controlled areas called ghettos. There were about 400 such “Jewish quarters.” In some smaller communities of German-occupied Poland and the conquered Soviet territories, such as Latvia, the Jews were closely monitored by the Nazis, but were able to remain in their homes in so-called open ghettos. The open ghettos seemed at first like a haven from the upheaval of the war, but their residents were among the first to be shipped off to the Nazi concentration and death camps.

In the ghettos surrounded by guarded walls and fences, the Jews were crowded into unbelievably cramped housing. The ghettos were usually located in the poorest, most dilapidated sections of cities, such as in L⁄ódz´ and Warsaw, Poland. Jews were forced to leave behind their homes and businesses, and most of their belongings, often at a moment’s notice. Their property was then looted and seized by the Nazis. Several million Jews were dealt with in this way.

The Germans ordered that Jewish councils be set up to administer daily life in the ghettos. Food was rationed and in most cases was extremely limited; malnutrition and outright starvation were commonplace. In some ghettos the Jews were able to supplement these rations through bartering or smuggling but there was rarely enough food to go around. Unsanitary conditions prevailed, and there was little medicine or fuel for heating and cooking.

of criminal arrests; a food distribution list; data on health conditions; official statements and announcements; and reports on places where Jews were working, on raids, on expulsions, and on executions. From time to time, the chronicles included articles on life in the ghetto and on the mood of the population, vignettes of everyday life, rumors, and even jokes. The chronicles are an important authentic source, encompassing nearly all aspects of life in the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto. They are not, however, to be regarded as a document that contains the true and full history of the ghetto. The authors and contributors were supervised by Rumkowski’s personal staff and lived in the shadow of the Nazi threat. They had to use cautious and restrained language, even when describing assaults and harassment, expulsions, robberies, and murders. The social life of those Jews in the ghetto who did not belong to the official “establishment” was almost completely ignored. The chronicles that were saved after the liquidation of the ghetto consist of some two thousand typewritten pages. They are now held in part by the Jewish His-

26

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As the Germans hoped, the hideous living conditions took their toll on the Jewish population. People literally froze to death in the winter, and contagious diseases such as typhus and dysentery were rampant. The Jews were progressively and systematically weakened by intolerable conditions and brutal forced labor. They were also isolated not only from the larger surrounding communities but also from Jews in other ghettos. As much as possible, the residents of the ghetto tried to create a semblance of normal life. Soup kitchens opened, small cultural events were held, and clandestine schools were operated. Underground resistance organizations were also formed as the deadly aim of the Nazis became clear. Significant uprisings eventually occurred in some ghettos, notably in Warsaw, but the efforts of the resistance groups were severely hampered by lack of access to arms and information. Records of life in the Jewish ghettos, including the Chronicles of the L⁄ódz´ Ghetto, offer poignant and contemporary perspectives on the daily lifeand-death struggles the Jews confronted under Nazi rule. Written archives, supplemented by survivor testimony and records from Nazi sources, reveal that conditions from one ghetto to another were remarkably similar, varying more in degree than in type of discomfort and hardship. Deportations from the ghettos began as early as December 1941, but the Nazi push to empty the Jewish ghettos began in earnest in the summer of 1942. Within two years, more than two million Jews had been deported from the ghettos to die. The Nazis were well on the way toward achieving their “Final Solution.”

torical Institute (Z˙ ydowski Instytut Historyczny) in W A R S A W and in part by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York. A photostatic copy is kept in the Yad Vashem archives in Jerusalem. Parts of the chronicles were published in Poland in 1965 and 1966, and an extensive selection taken from all parts of the chronicles was published in English translation in the U N I T E D S TAT E S in 1984.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Dobroszycki, L., ed. The Chronicle of the L⁄ódz´ Ghetto, 1941–1944. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. Grossman, Mendel. My Secret Camera: Life in the L⁄ódz´ Ghetto. San Diego: Gulliver Books, 2000.

L⁄ódz´ Ghetto [videorecording]. PBS Home Video/Pacific Arts Video, 1992. Sierakowiak, Dawid. The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the L⁄ódz´ Ghetto. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Trunk, Isaiah. Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe Under Nazi Occupation. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.

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LOHSE, HINRICH

Lohse, Hinrich (1896–1964)

Reichstag

The German Parliament.

Hinrich Lohse was a German politician and wartime Reich Commissioner for the Baltic and B E L O R U S S I A n areas. He was born at Mühlenbarbek, in SchleswigHolstein. Lohse studied commerce and worked as a clerk in a savings bank. He took part in World War I and years later, in 1925, he was appointed Gauleiter (district leader) for Schleswig-Holstein. He was elected a member of the Prussian Chamber of Deputies in 1928 and of the Reichstag in 1932. In 1933 he was promoted to the Prussian State Council and to the presidency of the province of Schleswig-Holstein. The following year he was made a Lieutenant General in the SA (Sturmabteilung; Storm Troopers). Between 1941 and 1944 Lohse functioned as Reich Commissioner for the Ostland, with his headquarters in R I G A . This was the period when, under his supervision, the “ F I N A L S O L U T I O N ” was implemented in the Baltic and Belorussian areas. Lohse instructed his subordinates that Jews, who were now restricted to designated ghettos, were to receive the bare minimum of food rations necessary to sustain life, until the machinery for the “Final Solution” was fully operative. Nonetheless, the mass shootings in the V I L N A ghetto and elsewhere led him to question whether “all Jews, regardless of age or sex, or their usefulness to the economy (for instance, as skilled workers in the Wehrmacht’s ordnance factories), were to be liquidated.” When he was informed that this was indeed the case, Lohse acquiesced. He was arrested in 1945 and sentenced in 1948 to ten years’ imprisonment, but was released in 1951 on grounds of ill health.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Gitelman, Zvi, ed. Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1997. Rice, Earle. The Final Solution. San Diego, CA: Lucent Books, 1998.

Lösener, Bernard (1890–1952)

Bernard Lösener was the Rassereferent (“racial expert”) of the German Interior Ministry from 1933 to 1943. In this post, Lösener helped draft twenty-seven antiJewish decrees. The most important among them were the N U R E M B E R G L AW S of 1935 and the subsequent legal definitions that made distinctions among those who were only part Jewish (“hybrids,” or M I S C H L I N G E ), in effect exempting quarter Jews and secularized half Jews from the full brunt of persecution. After the war, Lösener recalled how he was summoned at the last minute to bring his Interior Ministry files to the 1935 Nazi party rally, where the drafting of the Nuremberg Laws took place over a hectic weekend. His detailed firsthand account of this event has frequently been cited, especially by those historians who emphasize the unplanned and evolutionary nature of Nazi Jewish policy. Lösener was the son of a minor judicial official. He served as a soldier throughout World War I (1914–1918) and then attended the University of Tübingen. Lösener passed his civil service examinations and became a customs official in 1924.

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He joined the N A Z I PA R T Y in December 1930. In April 1933, when experienced officials with party credentials were in short supply, Lösener was summoned from his obscure customs post to the Interior Ministry in B E R L I N . By his own account, Lösener became quickly disillusioned with the Nazis, for two reasons: the inclusion of even one-quarter Jews among those banned from the civil service, and the party’s intervention in the internal affairs of the Evangelical church. Like many others, Lösener claimed that he clung to his post to prevent worse from happening and to save those who could still be saved. By his own admission, this meant accepting the impossibility of doing anything for “full Jews,” and doing everything possible to prevent quarter and half Jews, as well as the latter’s parents living in mixed marriages, from being equated with full Jews. It also meant not allowing himself to show open opposition to these laws and basing his professional behavior on the foundation of Nazi ideology, despite the “internal aversion” and “shame” he felt. Two factors distinguish Lösener’s apologies from those of others. First, he did in fact work consistently, tenaciously, and with considerable success to prevent Mischlinge and Jews in mixed marriages from being affected by the regime’s anti-Jewish measures. According to his calculations, this saved as many as 100,000 part Jews and 20,000 Jews in mixed marriages from deportation. Second, unlike others who clung to their posts allegedly to prevent worse, but in fact steadily accommodated themselves to the escalating violence, Lösener had a limit beyond which he would not go. When he learned of the December 1941 massacres of the first German Jews deported to R I G A , he requested a transfer from his post as Rassereferent. Eventually, in March 1943, he was appointed as a judge. Lösener was arrested in November 1944 for hiding a couple implicated in the July 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler. He was expelled from the party for “treason,” but survived his Berlin imprisonment until liberation. After two subsequent arrests—first by the Russians and then by the Americans—and submitting to D E N A Z I F I CAT I O N proceedings, he was briefly employed by the German mission of the American Jewish J O I N T D I S T R I B U T I O N C O M M I T T E E in 1949. He then resumed government employment until his death in 1952.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Newman, Amy. The Nuremberg Laws: Institutionalized Anti-semitism. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1999.

Lublin Lublin, a center of industry, communications, and culture, is a city in eastern P O L A N D and the capital of the district bearing that name. Jews lived in Lublin, one of Poland’s oldest cities, from the fourteenth century, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was the hub of Jewish learning in the country. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Lublin was the scene of important Hebrew and Yiddish cultural activities, and Jewish organizations and political parties flourished there. On the eve of World War II, the city had a Jewish population of some 40,000 out of a total of 122,000. In the first few weeks of the war, thousands of Jews fleeing the German advance found refuge in Lublin. Some of these refugees and several hundred of the town’s

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Jewish residents moved even farther east, into territory that was annexed to the S OV I E T U N I O N shortly thereafter. The Jewish Community Council helped the refugees. From the beginning of September 1939 until the eighteenth of that month, when the Germans occupied the city, the Jews participated in resistance efforts against the invading German forces. Jewish groups removed the debris caused by German bombing, acted as firefighters, and dug defense trenches.

German Occupation

A

s soon as the Germans entered Lublin, they began seizing

Jews for forced labor, humiliating

them, inflicting bodily harm on them, and confiscating their property.

The Germans lost no time persecuting the Jews of Lublin when they entered the city, beating and robbing them, humiliating them, and discriminating against them in any way possible. By November 1939 the Jews were driven out of the main street, Krakowskie Przedmies´ cie, and their apartments were seized; they were ordered to wear a sign of their Jewishness (see B A D G E , J E W I S H ), and their movements in certain areas, both inside and outside the city, were restricted. Lublin was linked to the Nazis’ plan to create the Lublin Reservation, an enclave in which all the Jews of the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T and other parts of Poland annexed to the Reich, as well as those from the Reich itself, were to be concentrated (see N I S K O A N D L U B L I N P L A N ). By February 1940, 6,300 deportees had arrived in Lublin under this program, including a group of 1,300 Jews from Stettin. But the plan was implemented in a haphazard fashion, lacking coordination with the various branches of the German administration, and in April 1940 it was dropped. Lublin, however, remained a center where the policy of mass deportation and extermination on Polish soil was carried out. It was the headquarters of Odilo G L O B O C N I K , the head of A K T I O N (O P E R AT I O N ) R E I N H A R D , who was responsible for the operation of death camps in the eastern part of the Generalgouvernement. The M A J DA N E K concentration and extermination camp was situated in a Lublin suburb (See C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S and E X T E R M I NAT I O N C A M P S ). Following the German occupation, the Jewish Community Council continued to function, with hardly any change from its pre-war composition. It broadened its range of activities in response to German demands and the new needs of the Jewish population. The council had to provide the Germans with daily quotas of F O R C E D L A B O R and to collect and surrender valuables, furniture, and other items of household equipment. In the Jewish community itself, the council provided aid to the needy and to refugees. On occasion, it intervened with the German authorities for the release of hostages and prisoners, and to reduce fines and ease other economic measures that had been imposed on individuals or on the entire Jewish population.

The Judenrat On January 25, 1940, the council officially became a J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council), consisting of twenty-four members. Few changes in personnel were made; the membership continued to include people who before the war had belonged to a range of political parties. Heading the Judenrat was Henryk Bekker, an engineer, but its outstanding personality was the deputy chairman, Mark Alten. The Judenrat maintained the policy previously pursued by the Jewish Community Council. It built up a broad network of welfare institutions and soup kitchens and made special efforts to provide orphanages and institutions for abandoned children. It also invested much effort in providing health services, setting up two 500-bed general hospitals and a 300-bed hospital for contagious diseases, with outpatient clinics.

30

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As German policy toward the Jews became harsher, however, the Judenrat found it increasingly difficult to maneuver between compliance with German demands and taking care of the vital needs of the community. In 1940, the Germans stepped up their demands for forced labor, and they seized an increased number of people on the streets for this purpose. Individual Jews and the Judenrat tried to find employment opportunities in factories that were important to the German economy, hoping in this manner to gain immunity from random capture. In this way, many Jews came to be employed in the workshops of the German Armament Works (Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke), located in the prisoner-of-war camp at 7 Lipowa Street. In the summer of 1940, the Germans began rounding up Jews and taking them to work camps outside the city, mainly for labor on the Soviet border. The Judenrat was also ordered to provide laborers for these camps; its compliance led to tension between it and the Jewish population.

An elderly Jew in Lublin being humiliated by a German soldier cutting his beard.

Deportations In preparation for the establishment of a ghetto in the spring of 1941, the Germans ordered part of the Jewish population of Lublin to be deported. From March 10 until the end of that month, 10,000 Jews were expelled from Lublin; 1,250 were deported to Rejowiec, 2,300 to Siedliszcze, 3,200 to Sosnowiec, and the rest to other localities in the area. In these places the deportees faced enormous economic difficulties and suffered from appalling housing conditions.

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A

lthough they described the deportation as “voluntary

evacuation,” the Germans in fact exerted great pressure in order to

The ghetto was established at the end of March 1941, with a Jewish population of over 34,000. On April 24 the Germans issued a decree forbidding Jews to leave the ghetto, except for those who had special passes or were part of work crews employed outside. In the summer of 1941, a typhus epidemic broke out in the ghetto. Medical teams and a special health service did what they could to control the disease, but they were severely hampered by the prevailing conditions—starvation, overcrowding, and a lack of medicines.

achieve their goal.

Extermination Lublin Jews were among the first selected to be the victims of the gas chambers at the B E L⁄ Z˙ E C extermination camp. Their deportation began on March 17, 1942, and proceeded at a rate of 1,400 people per day, the quota fixed by the Germans. Some of the German units and their Ukrainian helpers were positioned on the ghetto perimeter to foil any attempt at escape, while others made house-to-house searches within the ghetto. The Selektionen for deportation took place at assembly points. In the initial stage, the passes held by Jewish skilled workers were honored by the Germans, but the workers’ families were not exempt. Most of the Jews who had gone into hiding in the ghetto or had crossed over to the “Aryan” sector of the city—some 500 persons—were caught by the Germans; all were murdered on the spot. The Aktion came to an end on April 20. Thirty thousand Jews had been deported from Lublin, most of them to their death at Bel⁄ z˙ec, and the rest were killed in the forests near the city. On March 31, while the Aktion was in full swing, the Germans reduced the size of the Judenrat by half, from 24 to 12, and named Mark Alten as chairman. Some of those not reappointed were deported to Bel⁄ z˙ec. Opinions differ concerning the conduct of members of the Judenrat, especially of Alten. Some informed persons have expressed understanding for the Judenrat’s policy and emphasize its efforts on behalf of the community. Others have criticized the members for being out of touch with the people, for personal arrogance, and for capitulating too easily to the Germans. Some of the Jewish police also have been sharply criticized for their behavior.

The “Small Ghetto” Following the Aktion of March and April 1942, the surviving members of the community, now numbering only 4,000, were moved to Majdan Tatarski, a suburb of Lublin. One section of the suburb was emptied of the Poles who lived there and was surrounded by a fence. In this area, dubbed the “small ghetto,” the Germans interned the remaining Jews. Conditions were intolerable; some of the prisoners did not even have a roof over their heads. From the first day of the existence of the “small ghetto,” the Germans went on a murder rampage. There were lineups and sporadic raids to identify those Jews who did not possess work passes, and many of these “illegals” were killed on the spot. The population of the “small ghetto” was gradually destroyed. In an Aktion on September 2, 1942, 2,000 Jews were sent to their death at the Majdanek camp. The pattern was repeated on October 25, when 1,800 more Jews were sent to their death in Majdanek. In May 1943 several dozen craftsmen who had been employed by the Germans were murdered. In July 1944, shortly before their retreat from Lublin, the Germans killed the last remaining Jewish workers who had been held in Lublin Fortress, where they were employed in small workshops serving the German garrison troops.

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After Lublin was liberated on July 24, 1944, the city became an assembly point for survivors from the city and its vicinity, for Jewish partisans in the area east of Lublin, and for Jews who had taken refuge in the Soviet Union at the beginning of the war. Until the liberation of W A R S A W in January 1945, Lublin was the provisional capital of Poland, and it was there that the central institutions of the surviving Jewish community established themselves. A branch of the Jewish Community Cultural Society, a national institution recognized by the Polish government, existed there until 1968. The Jewish community came to an end in the early 1970s, and only a few Jews continue to live in Lublin.

partisans

Underground resistance groups fighting against the Nazis.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bronowski, Alexander. They Were Few. New York: Peter Lang, 1992. Frank, Jacob. Himmler’s Jewish Tailor: The Story of Holocaust Survivor Jacob Frank. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999.

LUBLIN RESERVATION. SEE NISKO AND LUBLIN PLAN. L⁄UCK. SEE LUTSK. Lutsk Lutsk (In Polish, L ⁄ uck) is a city in the U K R A I N E and one of the most ancient cities in the former S OV I E T U N I O N . Between the two world wars, Lutsk was the capital of the Volhynia district in independent P O L A N D ; in September 1939 it was occupied by the Red Army and annexed with all of eastern Poland to the USSR (Soviet Union). Jewish settlement had begun there in the late fourteenth century. On the eve of World War II, 18,000 Jews lived in the city, out of a total of 41,000 residents. During their rule over Lutsk, from September 1939 until June 1941, the Soviets nationalized the economy and liquidated the Jewish institutions and organizations.

B

etween June 1941 and February 1944, the Germans murdered

nearly all of the Jews of Lutsk. By the time the camp was liberated, only 150 Jews remained alive in the city.

Jews under German Occupation From the first day of their invasion of the Soviet Union, on June 22, 1941, the Germans bombed Lutsk, destroying about 60 percent of its buildings and killing many citizens, including a large number of Jews. On June 25 the Germans entered the city. The following day, Ukrainians conducted a pogrom during which they robbed the Jews, beat them, and killed several of them. Young Jews tried to organize a defense against the rioters. On June 27 special German forces trained to rout out Jews and Communists in newly occupied areas reached Lutsk and found the corpses of many prisoners in the local jail, including numerous Ukrainians who had been killed by the Soviets before their retreat. The German military government and the heads of the nationalist Ukrainian community accused the Jews of murder. In reprisal, they seized 300 Jews, whom they put to death on June 30. On July 2, Jewish men between the ages of 16 and 60 were summoned for work; about 2,000 of them were taken to the ruins of the Lubart fortress and murdered. German soldiers from occupation units stationed in the city participated in the murder. In late July the Germans appointed a twelve-member J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council), made up mainly

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of former communal workers. Valuables, radio receivers, and other items were confiscated, and the Jews had to pay fines in gold, silver, goods, and commodities.

Labor Camp and Mass Murders On October 19 the S S created a labor camp in Lutsk where they imprisoned 500 men. The Jews were moved on December 11 and 12 to a ghetto in the poorest part of the city, where they lived in overcrowded conditions with poor sanitation. On March 18, 1942, several hundred young Jews were sent to Vinnitsa to build Hitler’s staff quarters. When the work was completed, all were killed, except for three who escaped to Transnistria and were saved with the help of Jews from Romania. Between August 20 and 23 of 1942, 17,500 Lutsk Jews were taken outside the city and shot to death alongside pits prepared by a special S D (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service) unit. On September 3 another 2,000 or so Jews, who were seized or found in hiding places, were murdered. The only Jews now remaining in Lutsk were those in the labor camp.

Revolt On December 11, 1942, the Jewish camp elder learned that they were to be put to death the next day. A revolt was quickly organized, led by the prisoner in charge of the carpentry shop and the tinsmith Moshe. In addition to several revolvers and sawed-off shotguns that the Jews possessed, they prepared axes, knives, iron rods, bricks, and acid. On December 12 the Germans surrounded the camp, but when they tried to enter, they encountered a hail of bullets, bricks, and acid. Several of the attackers were wounded, and the face of the German commander was burned by acid. The Germans brought several armored vehicles and opened fire. After several hours, when most of the rebels had fallen, the Germans succeeded in entering the camp and murdered the remaining Jews, except for several who hid and escaped. Lutsk was liberated on February 5, 1944. Since most of the city had been burned and destroyed, and since the front was not far away, most of the 150 survivors went to R OV N O .

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Retseptor, Yoysef. “Once There Was a Town Named Lutsk and It Was Destroyed,” in Seyfer Lutsk (Memorial Book of Lutsk). Former Residents of Lutsk in Israel, 1961. [Online] http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/lutsk.html (accessed on September 1, 2000).

Lutz, Carl (1895–1975)

Carl (Charles) Lutz was a Swiss diplomat who heroically rescued Jews in H U N in 1944. Born in Switzerland, Lutz studied in the U N I T E D S TAT E S , and in 1935 served as head of the Swiss consulate in Tel Aviv. At the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, he interceded on behalf of the 2,500 German settlers in Palestine who were being deported as enemy aliens by the British. This act placed him in a good position years later with German authorities in Hungary. On January 2, 1942, he arrived in B U DA P E S T to represent the interests of the United States, the GARY

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United Kingdom, and other countries that had severed relations with Miklós H O R T H Y ’s Hungary, a member of the Axis nations. During the fall of 1942, as the representative of British interests, Lutz, in coordination with Moshe (Miklós) Krausz (who represented the Jewish Agency in Budapest), drew up lists of children and gave them certificates of immigration to Palestine. Nearly 200 children and their adult chaperones were able to leave for Palestine before the German occupation of Hungary. When the Germans invaded Hungary on March 19, 1944, Lutz invited Krausz to move into a Swiss office and continue his work from there. Under Lutz’s protection, Krausz continued to promote various schemes for immigration to Palestine, and other related rescue projects. The protection of Hungarian Jews using documents that certified them as foreign nationals had begun before the German occupation. The Geneva representative of the El Salvadoran government had granted papers to thousands of Hungarian Jews certifying them as Salvadoran nationals. Lutz, who also represented Salvadoran interests in Budapest, was responsible for the distribution of these certificates. Also, various diplomats in Budapest and abroad, including Lutz, pressured the Hungarian government to stop the deportations that had begun in mid-May. Early in July, Horthy ordered the deportations stopped, and soon thereafter declared his government’s willingness to allow some 7,500 bearers of certificates to leave for Palestine. The stage was now set to bring these Jews under Swiss protection.

Carl Lutz.

With the help of Krausz, a group of fifty Jews was assembled to work with Lutz. Photos were collected from four thousand persons, and Lutz issued four collective passports, each with one thousand names. Each person was then issued a “protective letter” guaranteeing that person’s safety until his or her eventual departure for Palestine. To add as many people as possible to these protective letters, Lutz interpreted the permits as representing family units and not individuals. Eventually, protective letters were drawn up for 50,000 Jews. At the same time, Lutz instructed the recently arrived Swedish diplomat Raoul W A L L E N B E R G on the best uses of the protective passes, and gave him the names of government contacts with whom to negotiate. This idea served as a model for various types of protective letters issued by other neutral countries and by the International Red Cross. In addition, after the pro-Nazi A R R O W C R O S S P A R T Y came to power in mid-October of 1944, the Zionist youth underground manufactured and distributed tens of thousands of false documents, perhaps more than 100,000, mostly in the name of Switzerland. Owing to the proliferation of false protective papers, the authorities pressured Lutz and Wallenberg to affirm the validity of the documents they had distributed. Lutz acquiesced to prevent the collapse of the entire rescue project. Late in November, he and his wife sorted out the bearers of legitimate passes from those holding forged. In the meantime, Lutz and other neutral diplomats interceded to have the new Hungarian government recognize the protective documents, using as bait the recognition of the regime by their governments. With the establishment of two ghettos, one for holders of protective passes and one for the rest of the Jews, Lutz procured 25 high-rise apartment buildings for concentrating the people under his protection. The Glass House, where the document preparation took place, and its annex also became a refuge for about 3,000 Jews. During the notorious death march (see D E AT H M A R C H E S ) of November 10 to 22, 1944, when over 70,000 Jews were forcibly marched toward the A U S T R I A n border under the most inhumane conditions, Lutz and his fellow diplomats interceded on behalf of many Jews. Lutz made use of Salvadoran certificates still in his possession, following the deportees on their march and filling in many of their names on

35

LVOV

the documents. Those saved in this way were allowed to return to Budapest, which was already under siege by the Red Army. Ernst K A LT E N B R U N N E R , the G E S TA P O head, in a dispatch to the German Foreign Ministry complained about the disappearance of many Jews on this march as a result of intervention by the Swiss diplomats, as well as by the representatives of Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and the Vatican. With the tightening of the Soviet siege of Budapest in December 1944, all foreign diplomatic representatives were ordered to leave the beleaguered capital. Maximilian Jaeger, the head of the Swiss legation in Budapest, had already departed on November 10. But Lutz, not willing to abandon his protégés, decided to remain behind. Over 30,000 Jews (out of a total of some 100,000) with various protective passes—Swiss, Swedish, Red Cross, and Vatican—were housed in the so-called international ghetto. Lutz later related that a German diplomat revealed to him that the Arrow Cross had received instructions not to harm the protected houses so long as Lutz remained in Budapest, as a token of G E R M A N Y ’s gratitude to him for having looked after the interests of German expatriates in Palestine in 1939 and 1940. For three months thereafter, Lutz, along with his wife and a group of Jewish refugees, lived a precarious existence in the basement of the abandoned, but bombarded, British diplomatic headquarters, almost without food and water. When the Russians stormed the building, Lutz jumped through the window and managed to reach Buda, the section of the city occupied only in February 1945. In 1965, Lutz was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the “ R I G H T E O U S A M O N G T H E N AT I O N S .”

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Anger, Per. With Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest: Memories of the War Years in Hungary. Washington, DC: Holocaust Library, 1981. “Carl Lutz; Swiss Diplomat Who Saved Jews in WWII.” Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance Online. [Online] http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/gallery/pg38/pg4/pg38482.html (accessed September 1, 2000). “‘The Righteous Among the Nations’ of Swiss Nationality.” Task Force Switzerland. [Online] http://www.switzerland.taskforce.ch/W/W2/W2c/c6_ei.htm (accessed on September 1, 2000).

Lvov Lvov (in Polish, Lwów; in German, Lemberg) is a city in Eastern Galicia, now capital of an oblast (district) in the western part of the U K R A I N E , an independent republic that was once part of the S OV I E T U N I O N . An industrial and cultural center, Lvov was founded in the thirteenth century. From 1772 to 1918 it was under Austrian rule, and in the interwar period it was a provincial capital in independent P O L A N D . The population was 340,000 in 1939, when its Jewish population of 110,000 made it the third largest Jewish community in the country. Active antisemitism was widespread, partly because the Poles and the Ukrainians each accused the Jews of helping the other. On the eve of World War II, Jewish Lvov was a center of culture and education and of vigorous political activity by the Jews of many religious, political, and philosophical traditions including Orthodox Jews, Zionists, Bundists, and Communists.

36

LVOV

Three weeks after the outbreak of the war, the Soviets entered Lvov and annexed it to the Soviet Union, along with the rest of Eastern Galicia. The Soviet authorities disbanded community institutions, outlawed political parties, nationalized factories, large holdings, and wholesale businesses, restricted retail trade and organized artisans into cooperative societies. Cultural life, however, remained lively. Some 100,000 Jewish refugees from German-occupied western Poland crowded into Lvov. In the summer of 1940 many of them were expelled to the remote regions of the USSR. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, about 10,000 Jews escaped from Lvov, together with the Red Army, which was retreating from the city.

German Occupation On June 30, 1941, the Germans occupied Lvov. The killing of Jews began that same day, committed by Einsatzgruppe C (see O P E R AT I O N A L S Q UA D S ), German soldiers, Ukrainian nationalists, and bystanders caught up in the fervor of violence. As they had in the city of L U T S K just days before, the Germans and the Ukrainians spread a rumor that the Jews had taken part in the execution of Ukrainian political prisoners whose bodies had been discovered in the dungeons of the the Soviet political police). In four days of rioting, ending on July 3, 1941, 4000 Jews were murdered. On July 8, Jews aged 14 and older were ordered to wear on their right arm a white badge with a blue Star of David (see B A D G E , J E W I S H ). From July 25 to 27 the Ukrainians again went on the rampage, murdering 2000 more Jews. At the end of July 1941, a temporary Jewish committee was established, made up of five prominent community leaders. Within a short time the committee was enlarged and became a J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council), with Dr. Joseph Parnes as chairman. Throughout the period he was in office, Parnes stood up for the interests of the community. That August, the Jews of Lvov were ordered to pay a ransom of 20 million rubles. The Germans took hostages to ensure payment, and killed them, even though the money was paid at the appointed time. During the summer of 1941, Jewish property was plundered, the Jews were put on forced labor, synagogues were burned down, and Jewish cemeteries were destroyed. In the fall, the Germans intensifed their demands for Jewish forced labor for road work and for the construction of bridges and military camps. In September a Jewish police force was established, under the Judenrat. Its duties, in the initial period, consisted of keeping order and ensuring cleanliness in the streets inhabited by Jews, confiscating valuables at the Germans’ command, and escorting persons who were on their way to forced labor. Parnes, the chairman of the Judenrat, was killed by the Germans at the end of October, when he refused to hand over Jews who were to be moved to the J A N Ó W S K A camp, then being established. Abraham Rotfeld took his place.

The Ghetto On November 8, 1941, the Germans announced the establishment of a ghetto , giving the Jews until December 15 to move into the area allocated for this purpose. In the course of the move to the ghetto, 5,000 elderly and sick Jews were killed as they were about to cross the bridge on Peltewna Street. The move was not completed by the allotted time, but many thousands of Jews were herded into the Zamarstynów and Kleparów quarters, in which the ghetto was set up. During the winter of 1941–1942, the Germans began sending Jews to labor camps at Laszki Murowane, Hermanów, Vinniki, Jaktorów, Kamionka Strumilowa, and Skole. In

ghetto

A restricted part of a city where Jews were required to live under Nazi supervision.

37

LVOV

Soldiers standing over the bodies of Jews in Lvov, July, 1941.

February 1942 Abraham Rotfeld died, and the Germans appointed Henryk Landsberg to take his place as Judenrat chairman. In March 1942, the Judenrat was ordered to prepare lists of Jews who were to be sent to the east, allegedly to work there. A delegation of rabbis appealed to Landsberg to refuse to cooperate with the Germans in preparing the lists and rounding up the people on them. Landsberg refused, claiming that if the Germans themselves were to carry out the deportation, far more people would be killed. In this Aktion (operation), which began on March 19 and continued until the end of the month, 15,000 Jews were taken to the B E L⁄ Z˙ E C extermination camp. In the spring of that year, the Jews of Lvov tried to find jobs in factories that performed an essential function for the German economy, hoping thereby to be exempt from future deportations. On July 8, 7,000 Jews who could not produce a certificate of employment were seized by the Germans and deported to the Janówska camp, where they were murdered. A month later, on August 10, the “Large Aktion” was launched, lasting until August 23. During this time, 50,000 persons were sent to Bel⁄z˙ec. At the beginning of September 1942 Jews who were still living outside the ghetto were herded inside, the ghetto area was greatly reduced, and what remained was sealed off. The Germans hanged Landsberg and a group of Judenrat employees, as well as the Jewish policemen. Eduard Eberson was appointed Judenrat chairman in place of Landsberg. In November, 5,000 to 7,000 “unproductive” persons were removed from the ghetto, some of them to be sent to the Janówska camp and the rest to Bel⁄ z˙ec. Toward the end of 1942, the ghetto came to resemble a labor camp. The inhabitants were assigned lodging in buildings according to their place of employment. Those who possessed no employment card were hunted down systematically and, when caught, were put to death in groups.

Labor Camp In January 1943 the ghetto officially became a labor camp, a Julag (Judenlager, or “Jewish camp”). At the beginning of that month, 10,000 Jews were executed,

38

LVOV

having first been classified as “illegals” because they could show no employment card. On January 30 the Judenrat was disbanded, and most of its members were murdered. An Oberjude (chief Jew) was appointed head of the Julag to serve as liaison between the surviving inmates of the ghetto-camp and the authorities. On March 17, 1,500 Jews were murdered, most of them in the Piasky area near the city, and at the same time some 800 Jews were deported to A U S C H W I T Z . In May 1943 the slaughter of the remnant of the community was speeded up. Jews were lined up for evaluation at their workplaces; only those classified as “vitally important” were permitted to stay; the rest were killed.

I

n 1939, Lvov was the third largest center of Jewish population in the

Ukraine. By June 1943, most of Lvov’s Jews had been deported and murdered.

Liquidation and Resistance On June 1, 1943, the final Aktion was undertaken, to liquidate the ghetto— Julag. German and Ukrainian police units surrounded the ghetto and closed every avenue of escape. Additional police units entered the ghetto to round up all the inhabitants. At this point the Germans and their Ukrainian helpers encountered resistance. The Jews threw hand grenades and Molotov cocktails at them and fired on them. Nine persons, Germans and Ukrainians, were killed, and twenty were wounded. The Germans did not dare enter the buildings; instead, they blew them up or set them on fire, in order to kill those who were inside or force them to come out of their hiding places and give themselves up. In the course of liquidating the ghetto, the Germans seized 7,000 Jews, whom they deported to the Janówska camp, where they were soon put to death. In the ghetto area itself about 3,000 Jews met their death. The liquidation process came to an end on June 2, 1943, but as late as July, searches were still being made for Jews hiding in the ghetto ruins. As of mid-1942, and especially in the wake of the “Large Aktion,” efforts were made in the Lvov ghetto to organize an underground. Groups of young people tried to obtain weapons so as to be able to offer armed resistance. Toward the end of 1942, one such group attempted to escape from the ghetto into the nearby forest, where they planned to set up resistance centers against the Germans and their helpers. The attempt failed, and most of the members of the group were killed en route. Nevertheless, more efforts were made to reach the forests situated in the Brody area. In one such attempt, the Germans apprehended the vehicle in which one of the groups was traveling and captured all of its passengers. The driver, a Pole who had undertaken to transport the group to their destination, was suspected of having informed on them to the Germans. While there was no organized and consolidated resistance movement in the Lvov ghetto, in many instances various forms of action were taken against the Germans and their helpers. One of the Jewish police units attempted to organize resistance to the Germans. An organized resistance group headed by Tadek Drotorski was active in one of the labor camps, on Czwartakow Street, where hundreds of Jews were employed. When the Germans picked up the group’s trail, in March 1943, Drotorski shot and killed a German policeman. An underground news sheet was also published in the ghetto. During March 1943 there were more and more attempts to break out of the Julag in order to reach the forest and establish contact with the partisans active in the area. Among those who tried to escape was the Yiddish poet Jacob Schudrych, who managed to reach the forest, only to die there.

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MADAGASCAR PLAN

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Kahana, David. Lvov Ghetto Diary. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990. Marshall, Robert. In the Sewers of Lvov: A Heroic Story of Survival from the Holocaust. New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1991. Peck, Jean M. At the Fire’s Center: A Story of Love and Holocaust Survival. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998.

“I hope completely to erase the concept of Jews through the possibility of a great emigration of all Jews to a colony in Africa or elsewhere.” —Heinrich Himmler, 1940

Madagascar Plan During the summer of 1940, Nazi policy makers responsible for finding a solution to the “Jewish question” began formulating a plan to expel all European Jews to the island of Madagascar, off the southeast coast of Africa. The ultimate impracticality of the Madagascar Plan led the Nazis to decide that a “F I N A L S O L U T I O N ” to the Jewish question would have to use means other than expulsion. Between World War I and World War II, the idea of expelling Jews to Madagascar, then to a French colony, was put forward in Britain by the noted antisemites, Henry Hamilton Beamish and Arnold Leese, and in the N E T H E R L A N D S by Egon van Winghene. In 1937 the Poles, who wished to encourage the emigration of a large number of Jews, received permission from the French to send a three-man investigative commission comprised of Major Mieczysl⁄aw Lepecki, Leon Alter, and Solomon Dyk to Madagascar to explore the possibility of settling Polish Jews there. Lepecki thought that 40,000 to 60,000 Jews could be supported in the cooler highlands, but Alter felt the island could accommodate a maximum of only 2,000 Jews. In addition to the Polish and French governments, the British government and even the J OINT D IS T R I B U T I O N C O M M I T T E E briefly toyed with the notion of resettling Jews in Madagascar. It is not surprising, therefore, that the idea appealed to the Nazis as well.

Resettlement Plans Anschluss

The annexation of Austria by Germany.

In early 1938, just ten days before the Anschluss , Adolf E I C H M A N N was instructed to collect material for a “foreign-policy solution” to the Jewish question (as was being negotiated by P O L A N D with F R A N C E concerning the possibility of transferring Polish Jews to Madagascar). Various Nazi leaders mentioned the idea during the next few years. However, it did not catch fire until the summer of 1940, when multiple factors made the Madagascar Plan a solution eagerly grasped at by frustrated Nazis. In the spring of 1940, Heinrich H I M M L E R ’s cherished dream of expelling the Jews and Poles from the incorporated territories of western Poland into the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T clashed with the economic arguments of Hermann Göring and the governor general, Hans F R A N K . They believed that resettlement should be subordinated to the interests of the war economy and the receptive capacity of the Generalgouvernement. The imminent victory over France, however, gave Himmler the opportunity of reviving his plan through a direct appeal to Hitler. Himmler’s memorandum “Some Thoughts on the Treatment of the Alien Populations in the East” as discussed with Hitler on May 25, 1940, one week after German troops had reached the English Channel and trapped the units of the Allied armies at Dunkerque. Himmler argued for removing all the “ethnic mush” of Germany to the Generalgouvernement, where citizens would be reduced to a denationalized status i.e., all rights and privileges of citizenship removed.

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MADAGASCAR PLAN

As for the Jews in particular, Himmler wanted an even more drastic and comprehensive solution: “I hope completely to erase the concept of Jews through the possibility of a great emigration of all Jews to a colony in Africa or elsewhere.” Concerning this systematic eradication of the Jews of eastern Europe, Himmler concluded: “However cruel and tragic each individual case may be, this method is still the mildest and best, if one rejects the Bolshevik method of physical extermination of a people out of inner conviction as un-German and impossible.” Hitler found Himmler’s plans “very good and correct” and permitted Himmler to inform his rivals that the Führer had “recognized and confirmed” them as having official approval. Himmler’s vision of expelling the Jews to an African colony was attractive for a number of reasons. The prospect of imminent victory over France and Britain seemed to place the colonies of France and merchant shipping of Britain at Germany’s disposal. Occupation of additional territories in western Europe brought hundreds of thousands of additional Jews into German control; meanwhile, resettlement of even the half-million Jews in the incorporated territories on a L U B L I N Reservation had proved impractical (see N I S KO A N D L U B L I N P L A N ).

“T

his … would prevent the possible establishment in

Palestine by the Jews of a Vatican State of their own.… Moreover, the Jews will remain in German hands as a pledge for the future good behavior of the members of their race in America.”

Excerpt from Franz Rademacher’s proposed Madagascar Plan, July 3, 1930.

The Proposal In late May 1940, Hitler approved Himmler’s general idea of expelling the Jews to some African colony, but it was left to the Jewish expert of the German Foreign Office, Franz Rademacher, to turn the Madagascar Plan into a concrete proposal. Rademacher proposed on July 3, 1940, that Germany exploit the victory over France to send at least some, if not all, Jews out of Europe—“to Madagascar, for example.” Hitler almost immediately took up the idea. At a conference on June 18 concerning the fate of the French empire, Hitler and Ribbentrop informed Benito Mussolini and the Italian foreign minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, of Germany’s intention to settle the European Jews in Madagascar. Hitler repeated this intention to Grand Admiral Erich Raeder two days later. Himmler’s deputy, Reinhard H E Y D R I C H , quickly asserted his jurisdiction in “a territorial final solution” to the Jewish question. From then on work on the Madagascar Plan was to proceed in both the Foreign Office and the SS. News of the plan rapidly spread to the German occupation authorities in the east. Later that month, Adam C Z E R N I A K Ó W , head of the J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council) in W A R S AW , recorded in his diary that an SS man had blurted out “that the war would be over in a month and that we would all leave for Madagascar.” Governor General Frank was greatly relieved to receive word not only that the impending forced transfer of Jews into his territory was now canceled, but those currently in his area would be removed as well. In the Generalgouvernement, ghetto construction was halted as pointless, in view of the Führer’s new plan. Moreover, the expulsion of the L⁄ Ó D Z´ Jews into the Generalgouvernement, repeatedly postponed and most recently rescheduled for August, was canceled once again, and the German authorities there faced the prospect of having to keep their Jews until the Madagascar Plan could be out into effect. Meanwhile, work went forward feverishly in B E R L I N under the auspices of both Rademacher in the Foreign Office and Eichmann, Heydrich’s expert for Jewish affairs and evacuations, who had been working since the outbreak of war on expelling Jews and Poles from the Third Reich into the Generalgouvernement. Rademacher consulted various authorities and developed a plan involving numerous German agencies: the Foreign Office would handle negotiations with both France and Britain for the peace treaty, as well as with other European countries for regulating their participation; the Office of the Four-Year Plan would coordinate

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MAJDANEK

T

he failure of the Nisko and Lublin resettlement plan made the idea

of exporting Jews to Madagascar very appealing to top Nazi leaders who were seeking a viable answer to the Jewish question in Europe.

the utilization of Jewish property; the Führer Chancellery would coordinate transportation; propaganda would be handled by Goebbels internally and by the Foreign Office abroad; and the SS would be in charge of collecting the Jews in Europe and administering the island “super-ghetto.” Eichmann also conducted extensive research, sending members of his staff to the Tropical Institute in Hamburg and the French colonial archives in PARIS . He met with a group of German Jewish leaders in early July 1940 and ordered them to prepare within twenty-four hours a list of considerations that would have to be taken into account for evacuating four million Jews from Europe at the end of the war. Consultation with them came to an abrupt end, however, when they showed enthusiasm only for the destination of Palestine, which Eichmann explicitly ruled out. In contrast to the Foreign Office plan, which provided for broad participation, the SS version that emerged by the end of the summer placed the entire direction of the project—from finance to transport to security and even to diplomatic negotiations—under Heydrich. The differences between Foreign Office and SS versions of the plan were never reconciled, for work on it came to an abrupt halt with Germany’s failure in the Battle of Britain in September 1940. The Madagascar Plan died with Germany’s unexpected setback in the skies over G R E AT B R I TA I N . Hitler faced a new strategic dilemma, and Nazi Jewish policy would be caught up in his decision to break out of this dilemma through an attack on the S OV I E T U N I O N . The ensuing “war of destruction” against the Soviet Union would unleash a war of destruction against the Jews as well. The Madagascar Plan has sometimes been dismissed by historians as a misleading reflection of Nazi intentions because of its brief existence and its seeming weakness in contrast to the monumental horrors that followed. But in the summer of 1940, Nazi leaders were not engaged in an elaborate sham; they were making real decisions based on the Madagascar Plan as a reality of Nazi Jewish policy. Though not yet the “Final Solution”—the compulsive and comprehensive program to kill every Jew whom the Nazis could lay their hands on—the Madagascar Plan still implied massive losses among the Jewish population.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Browning, Christopher R. Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. “Madagascar Plan.” The Jewish Student Online Research Center (JSOURCE). [Online] http://us-israel.org/jsource/Holocaust/Madagascar.html (accessed on September 2, 2000).

Majdanek Majdanek (sometimes spelled Maidalnek) was first a CONCENTRATION CAMP and later an E X T E R M I N AT I O N CA M P run by the Waffen-SS, a military branch of the SS. Majdanek was located in a suburb of L U B L I N , P O L A N D . It was called the Majdan Tatarski camp, or Majdanek for short. The camp was established on the orders of Heinrich H I M M L E R , following an agreement with the Wehrmacht—the regular German armed forces—under which some Soviet P R I S O N E R S O F WA R would be handed over to the SS and put at the disposal of the program for the “Germanization” of the East. Lublin district SS and Police Leader Odilo G L O B O C N I K played a decisive role in the establishment of Majdanek.

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MAJDANEK

Until 1943, the camp’s designation was Prisoner-of-War Camp of the WaffenSS Lublin. It was not, however, confined to any particular category of prisoners. Its main function was to destroy enemies of G E R M A N Y . The camp was also meant to take part in the extermination of the Jews, as well as the deportation and “resettlement” of inhabitants of the Z A M O S´ C´ region. The Majdanek camp covered about 667 acres of uncultivated land on a highway. It had a double barbed-wire fence connected to a high-voltage transmission line, with nineteen watchtowers, each 26.5 feet (8.8 meters) high, equipped with mobile searchlights and 130 lighting fixtures. The camp was divided into five sections, each serving a different purpose— one, for example, was for women prisoners. In all, there were 227 structures in Majdanek. There were twenty-two prisoner barracks, two of which were used for administration and supplies. Majdanek also had seven gas chambers and two wooden gallows, as well as a small crematorium. Next to the camp were workshops, storehouses, buildings for coal storage, laundries, and so on. A large crematorium, containing five furnaces, was added in September 1943. The section reserved for the SS forces contained their barracks, a casino, and the camp commandant’s offices. The plans for the camp provided for the eventual construction of barracks for 250,000 prisoners, the establishment of industrial plants, and the construction of additional gas chambers and a more efficient crematorium. By the time the camp was liberated, only 20 percent of these plans had been put into effect.

“A

t Maidanek no one could be neutral: either you were

victim or executioner. Anyone in authority who failed to take advantage of his privilege to beat inmates undermined his status in the camp elite.” Alexander Donat, “Surviving Slave Labor at Maidanek,” in The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, Donald L. Niewyck, editor (Lexington, Massachusetts: D. C. Heath and Company) 1992, p. 98.

The first group of prisoners arrived in Majdanek in October 1941. It was followed by groups from Soviet prisoner of war camps and from other concentration camps. Among the other groups imprisoned in Majdanek were Poles who had been seized in raids or had been held elsewhere. There were also Jews from Poland and other European countries, Polish farmers who had been expelled from the Zamos´c´ region, and residents of B E L O R U S S I A (present-day Belarus) and U K R A I N E . In April 1943, several tens of thousands of Jews from W A R S AW and, later, from B I A L⁄ Y S TO K , were sent to the camp. Records reveal that prisoner transports to Majdanek carried approximately 250,000 people. Of them, 100,000 were Poles, 80,000 Jews, 50,000 Soviets, and 20,000 of other national origins. In addition to the murders by lethal gas (see G A S C H A M B E R S /V A N S ), mainly of Jewish inmates, mass shootings were carried out in the camp and nearby areas. In 1941 and 1942, sick Soviet prisoners of war were shot to death. In April 1942, some 2,800 Jews were murdered this way, as were several thousand other prisoners of different nationalities that spring, 300 Soviet army officers in the summer of 1943, and another 18,000 Jews in November 1943, in the “ E R N T E F E S T ” (Harvest Festival) Aktion, or “operation.” Majdanek had many satellite camps: these were located at Bliz˙yn, in the K I E L C E district; at B U D Z Y N´ , near Kras´ nik; in Lublin (two labor camps); in Pul⁄awy; in Radom; and in Warsaw, on Gesia Street. The commandants of the Majdanek camp were Karl Otto K O C H (September 1941 to July 1942), Max Koegel (August to October 1942), Herman Florsted (October 1942 to September 1943), Martin Weiss (September 1943 to May 1944), and Arthur L I E B E H E N S C H E L (May to July 22, 1944). Resistance movements were active in Majdanek at various periods. Several escapes were arranged by individuals and groups. Polish aid organizations, such as the Polish Red Cross, the Central Welfare Council, and the Polish resistance movement, extended help to the Polish prisoners. In July 1944, in the face of the Soviet army’s advance, Majdanek was liquidated. About 1,000 prisoners were taken away, half of them reaching A U S C H W I T Z . Before abandoning the camp, the SS staff destroyed documents and set fire to the buildings and the large crematorium. In

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LIVING CONDITIONS In the following excerpt, a Holocaust survivor describes a particular aspect of life at Majdanek (Maidanek). What was called a latrine consisted of a wooden box with handles at both ends similar to what hod carriers use to transport cement. Only one such box was assigned to each barrack, which might house two or three hundred inmates, and sometimes as many as five hundred. The overwhelming majority of the camp inmates suffered from diarrhea and almost everyone also had weakness of the bladder, so that the latrine was soon filled and overflowing. The stinking puddles on the floor were nauseating and when men had to wade through them barefoot because they had been thoughtless enough not to put on their wooden shoes, it was worse. But barefoot or shod the inmates trotting to and from the latrine soon tracked the entire barracks up with filth. To add to the dreadful stench the crowd around the latrine was usually noisy, and for our first few nights at Maidanek we found it very hard to bear. Afterward nothing could disturb our sleep. —ALEXANDER DONAT

Alexander Donat, “Surviving Slave Labor at Maidanek,” in The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, Donald L. Niewyk, editor (Lexington, Massachusetts: D. C. Heath and Company) 1992, p. 91.

their rush to withdraw before the Soviet troops arrived, the Germans failed to destroy the gas chambers and the larger part of the prisoners’ barracks. In July 1944, a special Polish-Soviet Nazi Crimes Investigation Commission began to investigate the crimes that had been committed at Majdanek. On September 16 of that year, it published its report in Polish, Russian, English, and French. In November 1944, six SS men who had served at Majdanek were tried in Lublin. Four of them were sentenced to death, and two committed suicide before sentence was passed. This was the first trial of the Majdanek camp staff. But only a few of the 1,300 staff members of the camp were ever brought to trial. From 1946 to 1948, a trial was held in Lublin of ninety-five SS men who had been at Majdanek, most of them as guards. Seven of the accused were sentenced to death, including the women’s camp commandant, Else Ehrich. The rest received long terms in prison. From 1975 to 1980, sixteen former Majdanek staff members, including six women, were tried in Düsseldorf, West Germany. The most important of those accused were Hermann Kackmann, an officer at the camp headquarters; Hermine Braunsteiner, supervisor of the women’s camp; Heinrich Schmidt, the camp physician; and an SS staff member, Hildegard Lachert, whom the prisoners had nicknamed “Blutige Brigide” (Bloody Brigide). Close to 500,000 prisoners, from 28 countries and belonging to 54 different nationalities, passed through Majdanek during its existence. It is believed that of these people, some 360,000 perished. Sixty percent of them died as a result of the brutal conditions in the camp—starvation, exhaustion, disease, and beatings. Forty

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Prisoner barracks in Majdanek.

percent were executed or put to death in gas chambers. Some of the prisoners were taken to the gas chambers immediately upon arrival in the camp. In October 1944 a national museum was established on the site of Majdanek. It maintains the remains of the camp as well as a permanent exhibition, administers an archive, publishes Zeszyty Majdanka (Majdanek Journal), and edits research works on the history of the camp. A Majdanek Preservation Society provides financial support for the museum.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Goldstein, Arthur. The Shoes of Majdanek. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1992. Kimmelman, Mira Ryczke. Echoes from the Holocaust: A Memoir. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997. Rybak, Rywka. Rywka Rybak: A Survivor of the Holocaust. Cleveland, OH: Tricycle Press, 1993.

Mauthausen Mauthausen was a C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P near an abandoned stone quarry about 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the town of Mauthausen, in Upper A U S T R I A . It was created soon after Nazi G E R M A N Y annexed Austria (the Anschluss) in March 1938. The first prisoners were brought to the camp on August 8 of that year. They were put to work in the construction of the camp and at the quarry. Most of the prisoners brought to Mauthausen in the first year of its existence were criminal offenders. The rest were what the Nazis referred to as “asocial elements”—people the Nazis considered undesirable for one reason or another. Almost all were transferred from the D AC H AU camp. The first group of prisoners was accompanied by 88 guards from Dachau’s S S - D E AT H ’ S - H E A D U N I T S (Totenkopfverbände). In 1938, a total of 1,100 prisoners arrived. The first political prisoners, also from Dachau, arrived in May 1939. Soon afterward, groups of politi-

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cal prisoners were brought from jails in Czechoslovakia. Late in September, the Dachau “Punishment Squad” arrived at the camp. In December 1939, there were 2,666 prisoners, almost all Germans, interned in Mauthausen.

1940–1942

I

n 1942, Mauthausen was designated the concen-

tration camp destination for Nazi prisoners deemed to be “incorrigible” in other locations.

During 1940, about 11,000 new prisoners were recorded in the camp’s “book of numbers,” along with their camp numbers. There were some German prisoners from the camps of S AC H S E N H AU S E N (1,032) and B U C H E N WA L D (300). They were all transferred to Gusen, the first Mauthausen subcamp. Gusen was set up in early 1940 about 3 miles (5 kilometers) from Mauthausen as a branch of the main camp; its prisoners worked at cutting stone in the two Gusen quarries. That year, the number of prisoners in Mauthausen reached 3,833. Seven shipments of Spanish prisoners arrived in 1941, and their number in the camp reached 7,241. Many Jews were also sent that year, together with groups of Czech prisoners. On May 12, the first Jews from the N E T H E R L A N D S arrived. On October 20, an initial 4,205 Soviet P R I S O N E R S O F WA R arrived. Of them, about 2,000 were transferred to the nearby Gusen subcamp. That year, Mauthausen received a total of 18,000 new prisoners. The death rate was very high. In 1942, in addition to Czech, Dutch, Soviet (civilians and prisoners of war), and Yugoslav prisoners, inmates also arrived from F R A N C E , B E L G I U M , Greece, and Luxembourg. A new category of prisoners, those in “protective custody,” were transferred from various prisons. A first transport of 218 such prisoners reached Mauthausen on November 26 from the Regensburg jail. Altogether, 13,000 new prisoners came to the camp in 1942. On August 19 of that year, Nazi official Reinhard H E Y D R I C H had the concentration camps divided into various categories. Only Mauthausen and Gusen were placed in the most harsh classification. All prisoners in protective custody who were considered incorrigible—who showed negative behavior—were to be sent there.

1943–1945 The stream of prisoners of different nationalities continued throughout 1943. That year, 21,028 new prisoners were recorded. Only a few of them were Jews. Some 8,334 prisoners were entered in the records as having died in Mauthausen and Gusen, along with 147 prisoners of war. In addition, many victims were killed by order of the G E S TA P O immediately upon their arrival at the camp. These people did not go through the registration procedures. In 1944, the number of prisoners reaching Mauthausen increased a great deal. Many subcamps were built, and the new prisoners were sent to them. A record 65,645 new prisoners were listed in the “book of numbers.” At its height in 1944, the prisoner population reached 114,524. Beginning in May, the camp received large transports of Jews from “selections” (Selektionen) in A U S C H W I T Z . In May and June, four such transports brought a total of 7,500 prisoners. On August 10, a shipment of 4,589 Jewish prisoners came from the P L⁄ A S Z Ó W camp. The last large transport in 1944 arrived in late September, bringing 6,449 prisoners, of whom half were Jews. According to the camp’s records, a total of 13,322 Jewish males and 504 Jewish females entered Mauthausen in 1944. That year, 3,437 Jews died there. On January 25, 1945, the first transport of Auschwitz evacuees reached Mauthausen. In one week, about 9,000 prisoners from various countries arrived, most of them Jews. Thousands of prisoners were also transferred from Sachsenhausen,

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G R O S S - R O S E N , and other camps. They were sent to the Mauthausen satellite camps. In April, another gigantic flow of Jewish prisoners, who had been transferred from their native H U N G A RY to camps along the Austrian-Hungarian border, reached Mauthausen. A total of 24,793 new prisoners were recorded in the camp books in 1945.

P

risoner number 139,157 was recorded on May 3, two days

before the liberation of Mauthausen.

Structure of the Camp The entire Mauthausen camp covered about 37 acres (150,000 square meters). The camp was divided into the prison camp, the command area, and the S S dwellings. The prison camp occupied the main part of the camp area, with three sections. Camp No. 1 was the residential camp, with twenty wooden huts, including quarantine huts for incoming prisoners. Camp No. 2, the workshop area, contained four huts; from early 1944 onward, this was also a quarantine area. Camp No. 3, built in the spring of 1944, contained six huts at first. Beginning in the summer of 1944, the sick and debilitated prisoners were moved there before being killed. Each hut was designed to hold 300 prisoners, but usually double that number, or even more, were packed into them. Opposite the main gate was the assembly ground. The prisoners had to gather there and stand for the morning and evening roll call, and certain prisoners were taken there to be killed in the presence of all the others. On one side of the assembly ground were three stone buildings. Two were used for the camp services (kitchen, showers, and laundry). The third housed the prison and the gas chamber, which was disguised as a shower (see G A S C H A M B E R S /V A N S ). Beneath the prison was the crematorium, where dead bodies were burned. In a nearby cell, prisoners were shot. Outside the camp enclosure was the “Russian camp,” which was converted into the camp hospital in the spring of 1943. About a month before the liberation, in April 1945, a tent camp was set up outside the camp enclosure, with fourteen large tents. It was set aside for Hungarian Jews. It was also a place for Jews from the entire network of Mauthausen camps to stay in until they were taken to Gunskirchen.

Living Conditions Until the war started in September 1939, the routine in Mauthausen resembled that of other concentration camps in Germany. Apart from the crushing labor, the conditions of Mauthausen were not so severe at that time. With the start of the war, the nature of the camp and its operation changed radically. Within a short time, the number of prisoners increased–from 994 in late 1938 to 2,666 in December 1939. Mauthausen became a concentration camp and killing center for “undesirable political elements” in Nazi Germany. It also became a liquidation center for people opposed to the new regimes in the German-occupied countries. From mid-1940 onward, most prisoners were no longer German. The camp absorbed about 7,500 Spanish prisoners and members of the International Brigades who had fought alongside the republican soldiers in the Spanish Civil War. Eight thousand Polish prisoners were also brought to the camp, mainly from the intelligentsia. These arrests were part of the effort to paralyze the leadership in occupied P O L A N D . The same policy was adopted with the Czechs. With the change in the composition of the prisoners came a drastic worsening of conditions. Their treatment and punishments became more severe. The food rations were cut, and the prisoners were severely overcrowded. This caused a deterioration of the sanitary conditions, a spread of typhus and dysentery epidemics, and a consequent marked increase in the

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death rate. In 1939, some 445 deaths were recorded; in 1940, 3,846 prisoners died in the camps of Mauthausen and Gusen.

I

n 1939, 445 prisoners died at Mauthausen and its satellite,

Gusen. In 1940, the death toll rose to 3,846.

Another essential change occurred in the operation of the camp following a decision to expand military industry in the camps. Because of the severe shortage in the labor force, the Nazis needed more efficient work from the concentration camp prisoners. From the fall of 1943, most of the Mauthausen prisoners were put to work in the war industry. They worked mainly in digging underground tunnels to house factories for rocket assembly and production of plane parts. The camp population increased dramatically: from March to December 1943, the number of prisoners in Mauthausen and Gusen grew from 14,800 to 26,000. The maximum number, recorded in March 1945, was 84,000. Most of the prisoners in Mauthausen who held supervisory and other posts were criminal offenders. The camp authorities encouraged them to treat the ordinary prisoners harshly. They had complete control over the lives of the inmates under their command. The main jobs held by prisoners were those of camp elder and his deputies, and camp registrar. The work in the camp was supervised by the K A P O s. The inmate blocks were under the authority of the block elders, block registrars, and room elders. All these prisoners were rewarded with a large number of privileges.

Prisoners by National Groups The Poles were the largest national group at Mauthausen. The first Polish prisoners arrived on March 9, 1940. Another nine transports arrived that year. All were sent to Gusen. In 1944, after the W A R S AW Polish Uprising was put down, the last groups of Poles arrived. Poles of German origin (V O L K S D E U T S C H E , or ethnic Germans) who declared their loyalty to the German race were released. The Polish students and members of the underground resistance in the first transports were killed in the fall of 1940. The camp’s record of the dead lists 30,203 Poles, including many Polish Jews. Altogether, there were nearly 50,000 Poles in the Mauthausen camps. Czech prisoners arrived mainly in 1941 and 1942. They were mostly political prisoners, including Jews, Communists, and intellectuals. In the first months of 1942, three transports arrived bringing 970 prisoners. They were soon killed by the block elders and the Kapos. After the shooting in Prague of Reinhard H E Y D R I C H by the Czech underground on May 29, 1942, some 253 Czechs were taken to Mauthausen and killed. The women among them were taken in groups to the gas chamber. Most of the Czech prisoners were murdered in the three months following Heydrich’s assassination. Altogether, about 5,200 Czechs arrived at the camp. The number who survived is unknown. The majority of the Soviets were prisoners of war. They lived in separate huts set up in an area known as the “Russian camp.” Of the 5,000 who arrived in the first shipments, no more than 80 were still alive in March 1942. One group of Soviet inmates were the prisoners of Operation K—officers or noncommissioned officers who had escaped and been recaptured. At Mauthausen, these prisoners were held under particularly harsh conditions, and many died within a few weeks. In February 1945, about 500 of them rebelled. They succeeded in breaking out of the camp enclosure. In a rapid operation that took place with the participation of the local inhabitants, all the escapees were caught or killed, except for eight, who survived the war. In addition, there were large groups of French, Italian, and Yugoslav prisoners in the camp at different times, as well as German prisoners. Of the 7,500 Spanish republicans, about 4,200 died in the camp in 1941 and 1942.

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Fate of the Jews Until the spring of 1941, only a few Jews arrived at Mauthausen. Most died within a short time, as a result of the work at the quarry and from maltreatment. Then entire groups of Jews began arriving. The first consisted of Czech Jews who were brought with the transports of Czech political prisoners. The SS officers, the Kapos, and the block elders treated this group of Jews harshly, and all soon died. In 1941, a second group, consisting of about 900 Jews, arrived from the N E T H E R L A N D S . They had been taken as hostages after protests in the Dutch cities against the German occupation. Late in that year, only nine of this group remained alive. Not one of them survived until liberation.

Six thousand naked prisoners being held in the Mauthausen camp courtyard. After 24 hours, 140 had died.

From mid-1944 on, far larger groups of Jews began to arrive. The 6,000 Hungarian Jews brought to work in the Mauthausen camps after selections at Auschwitz in May and June were followed by 4,600 Jews from the Pl⁄aszów camp. These Jews too were treated far more harshly than the other prisoners. They worked digging tunnels for the munitions factories. The work was conducted in three shifts, at an extremely fast pace. No effort was made to spare the labor force. After a month or two, they were broken men who could hardly put one foot before the other. Each month, thousands of new prisoners arrived to replace those who had died. Because of the extremely bad conditions that the Jews were forced to live in, starvation and diseases accounted for more than 95 percent of the deaths.

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MAUTHAUSEN

Jews were treated more harshly than other prisoners at Mauthausen and their extreme living conditions accounted for many deaths.

From January 25, 1945, with the general evacuation of Auschwitz, a second wave of transports began to arrive at Mauthausen. The majority of the 9,000 new prisoners were Jews. Most were sent to work digging underground tunnels at various subcamps. The last large group consisted of Hungarian Jews. Beginning in the fall of 1944, tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews had been sent to build a line of military fortifications along the border between Austria and Hungary. As the fighting front drew near in March and April 1945, the camps there were evacuated, and the prisoners were sent by foot to Mauthausen. Many died during the evacuation. They were housed in a tent camp, where they slept on the muddy earth in greatly overcrowded conditions. There was no running water or toilets, and they were given very little food. Epidemics of typhus and dysentery soon broke out, causing many deaths. On April 9, when there were already more than 8,500 prisoners in the tent camp, the transfer to this camp of all the Jewish prisoners in the main camp and in Gusen was begun. An estimated 3,000 prisoners died in the tent camp. On April 16, the first group of inmates was taken from there to the Gunskirchen camp, about 37 miles (60 kilometers) west of Mauthausen. The rest of the prisoners were transferred to Gunskirchen in two groups, a few days apart. They were taken by forced march. All who faltered on the way were shot down on the spot.

Liquidation Stage In the second half of 1944, the stream of prisoners brought to Mauthausen increased. The death rate rose to huge dimensions. According to the official camp records, 24,613 prisoners died between January and May 1945. The actual number of dead was far greater, however, since the frequent transfers made exact record keeping impossible. Transports arrived from the camps that had been evacuated: Gross-Rosen, B E R G E N -B E L S E N , D O R A -M I T T E L B AU , N E U E N G A M M E , Buchenwald, R AV E N S B R Ü C K , Sachsenhausen, and other small camps. In late March and April 1945, the prisoners from the satellite camps were marched to the main camp. All those who could not march were killed with phenol injections, and their corpses were buried in the camps. The main camp was now full to overflowing, a place of total disorder. The severe overcrowding and reduced food rations hastened the death of many. In the hospital, cases of cannibalism were documented. The crematoria could not burn all the corpses, and a gigantic grave was dug near the camp enclosure to hide 10,000 bodies. At the same time, the Germans began to burn documents. They also released favored prisoners, particularly criminal offenders, inmates of long standing, and those holding posts in the camp. Prisoners of Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, Belgian, and French nationality were released and handed over to the International Red Cross, which took them to Switzerland. The Jews were all transferred to Gunskirchen under the most severe conditions. The prisoners interpreted this act as a step toward their slaughter. On May 3, a police unit from V I E N N A took over guarding the camp. The following day, work stopped, and the SS officers left the camp. One officer killed all the prisoners working in the crematorium and in the bunker, with a single exception. Late the next morning, American army tanks entered Mauthausen. The prisoners opened the gates and the camp was liberated.

Tatooed survivors in a barracks in Mauthausen.

50

It is estimated that 199,404 prisoners passed through Mauthausen. It is believed that 119,000 of them died, of whom 38,120 were Jews. This number includes the victims at the Hartheim castle. From August 1941 to October 1942, and from April 1944 to the end of that year, sick and debilitated prisoners and “undesirable” prisoners, including Jews, were regularly sent from the network of

MAYER, SALY

Mauthausen camps to the Hartheim castle near Linz, to be killed in the gas chamber there. The suffering of the Mauthausen internees has been expressed in the Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis’s Ballad of Mauthausen, based on a work by the Greek Jewish poet Jacob Kambanelis.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Frister, Roman. The Cap: The Price of a Life. New York: Grove Press, 2000. Horwitz, Gordon J. In the Shadow of Death: Living Outside the Gates of Mauthausen. New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1990. Weitz, Sonia Schreiber. I Promised I Would Tell. Facing History and Ourselves, 1993.

Mayer, Saly (1882–1950)

Saly Mayer was a Swiss Jewish leader and a representative on the J OINT D ISTRIB U T I O N C O M M I T T E E (JDC). He made his living as a lace manufacturer, and retired in the 1930s. An elected representative of a liberal-democratic party in his native Saint Gall in 1921, he was in municipal administration until 1933. Mayer was active in the Saint Gall Jewish community, founding a modern welfare organization there. He became secretary of the Federation of Swiss Jewish Communities (SIG; Schweizerischer Israelitischer Gemeindebund). He assumed the presidency of the SIG in 1936, and held the position until late in 1942, when he was forced out, due in part to the perception that he had not negotiated a generous enough immigration policy for Jewish refugees wishing to enter Switzerland. His close contact with the Joint Distribution Committee resulted in his being appointed its representative in Switzerland in 1940.

A

lonely, conservative, pedantic, and suspicious man, Mayer was

independent and not known for maintaining good relationships with the leaders of various Jewish organizations in Switzerland and throughout Europe.

During Mayer’s presidency, the SIG joined the W O R L D J E W I S H C O N G R E S S , and was actively involved in negotiations regarding the partition of Palestine in 1937. In 1938, following the occupation of Austria by German forces, a stream of 3,000 to 4,000 Austrian Jewish refugees began arriving in Switzerland. Mayer tried to negotiate to provide asylum to Jews fleeing Nazi persecution in Austria. Political and social circumstances were not in his favor. The Swiss Jewish community already numbered about 18,000, and Swiss public opinion strongly supported the antirefugee stance held by the government. Despite his efforts on behalf of the refugees, Mayer was later criticized for not doing more to ease the restrictive Swiss policy on Jewish immigration. As SIG president, Mayer was responsible for communicating with the JDC European office in Lisbon, and assisting refugees in Switzerland. Little money was available at first: $6,370 in 1940 and $3,030 in 1941. Mayer suggested that money be sent from the United States, through the Joint Distribution Committee, to support the increasing number of Jewish refugees in Switzerland. Mayer received $235,000 early in 1942 and $1,588,000 late in 1943. In 1944 he received $6,467,000, and between January and May 1945, another $4,600,000. Of this, he spent $1,913,000 in Switzerland in 1944, and about another $1 million in the first months of 1945, leaving something over $4,500,000 to spend for refugees elsewhere, primarily in Hungary, Romania, France, and Shanghai. But though funds had increased since earlier years, there was never enough to meet demand, and the refugee organizations in each country obtained much less for saving lives than they needed.

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In the summer of 1942, the Slovak underground Jewish leadership approached Mayer requesting ransom money to save Jewish lives. In November and December of the same year, negotiations began in Slovakia for a larger ransom payment (the Europa Plan), which was supposed to save western and southeastern European Jews from deportation. Mayer at first saw these offers as simple extortion demands, but he changed his mind in the spring of 1943 and sought to provide the money. He did this illegally and without the support of other JDC leaders. In 1944, Rezso˝ K A S Z T N E R , the Hungarian Jewish negotiator, suggested that Mayer negotiate with the Nazis for the ransom of Hungarian Jews. Mayer was told by the United States authorities that he should negotiate but not offer either money or goods, and that he had to report to the United States legation on his moves. The Swiss gave him identical instructions, and forbade the Nazis to cross into Swiss territory. The JDC told him he was not their representative in these talks. Mayer nevertheless engaged in the negotiations between August 21, 1944, and February 5, 1945, with SS officer Kurt Becher and his representatives. Kasztner also attended most of these meetings. As a result of these efforts, Heinrich H I M M L E R abandoned plans to deport the Jews of B U DA P E S T , and Mayer succeeded in arranging for a meeting between Becher and a representative of the American W A R R E F U G E E B OA R D in Switzerland on November 5, 1944. After the war, Mayer was accused of acting without consulting the other Jewish organizations, and of not standing up for Jewish demands strongly enough. The Hungarian Jewish negotiators accused him of not supplying the money and goods that the Nazis demanded. These accusations seem to have little substance. Mayer turned his Hungarian Jewish colleagues into bitter enemies because he suspected them—wrongly—of financial dishonesty. Mayer continued to serve as liaison for the JDC in central Europe after the war, and he sent food parcels to D AC H AU and other places in south Germany immediately upon their liberation. He also intervened, not always effectively, in the reconstitution of JDC committees in Hungary and Romania. Gradually, his role diminished, and although he was much praised by the JDC for his work, he retired. SS officer Kurt Becher and other Nazis had approached Mayer after the war, seeking his help to escape American justice, but he managed to evade them. He died before he could write his memoirs.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bauer, Yehuda. American Jewry and the Holocaust: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1939-1945. Detroit: Wayne State University, 1981. Milton, Sybil, ed. American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, New York. New York: Garland, 1995.

Medical Experiments Experiments on human beings are an accepted practice in medical research. But they are generally governed by strong restrictions. They must not be intended for “pure” research—research that does not have the immediate purpose of developing a new medicine or treatment. They also must not have the sole purpose of advancing the researcher’s career. Human beings may be involved only in those phases of an experiment for which they are absolutely essential. High-risk medi-

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cines and experimental treatments may be tried out only when no cure exists and where an illness is already fatal. Under no circumstances may a person in good health be deliberately infected with a dangerous disease in order to try out a new medicine or treatment. Low-risk experimental medicines and forms of treatment may be tried out on people who are in good health. This may be done on a voluntary basis only, and the volunteer must be fully informed of all possible risks. Accidents do occur in medical experiments on human beings; the subject’s health might be damaged, or even death may result. But under no circumstances may bringing about these results be a deliberate, essential element of the experiment.

T

he universal code of “medical ethics” is based on the equality of

every person in human society. It morally and personally obliges every medical doctor to safeguard the health and life of

In Nazi G E R M A N Y and German-occupied countries, between 1933 and 1945, medical experiments were carried out in which these fundamental rules and the general standards of medical ethics were ignored. At least seventy pseudo-medical research projects of various kinds were conducted in Nazi C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S between September 1939 and April 1945. These projects involved medical experiments performed on human beings against their will. At least 7,000 people are known to have been subjected to these experiments; other cases are believed to have occurred, but neither documentary nor testimonial evidence has been presented to verify how many victims were affected.

every human being: “Strengthen my body

Government medical services were involved in these experiments, as were the army medical corps and the medical services of the S S . As soon as Hitler came to power in 1933, he put all the health and medical services in Germany under a single national authority. In 1942, he named Karl Brandt, a member of his staff, chief of all medical services in the country, including those of the military and the SS. Hitler authorized Brandt to plan, direct, and supervise all medical services. Medical institutions conducted experiments and treatments that went against the code of medical ethics and were designed to serve Nazi ideology, which had a strong element of R AC I S M . This ideology promoted the exclusive advancement of the “Aryan” race. It rejected equality—and even the right to exist—of races and groups that were viewed as “inferior.” Among these other groups were the Jews, the special target of Nazi hatred. (See also A N T I S E M I T I S M .)

(1135–1204)—a rabbi, philosopher, and

and soul so that they may at all times be ready for untiring efforts, on behalf of the rich and the poor, the good and the bad, the beloved and the hated; let me see in every patient man only, for man he is.” This passage, from the “Doctor’s Prayer,” is attributed to Maimonides physician.

Racisim and Nazi Medical Practice The Nazis introduced racist-inspired measures relating to the field of medicine. A law was passed to prevent people with genetic diseases from having children. In 1935, a law was passed to protect the “German people’s” genealogical heritage, as well as the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor. To satisfy this racist policy, German doctors and other medical personnel carried out the following measures: 1. The sterilization, between 1933 and 1937, of 200,000 young men and women who were found to have supposedly genetic diseases; 2. The killing of 90,000 mentally and chronically ill people in the E U T H A NA S I A PROGRAM; 3. The establishment of departments for genetic research and for genetic, anthropological and genealogical surveys of the entire “non-German” population to which the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor applied. The purpose was to identify people who qualified as being of “pure Aryan” blood. Some 200 German medical doctors were stationed in the concentration camps where Nazi medical experiments took place. Universities and research institutes in Germany and A U S T R I A planned their research projects and advised the camp doctors in their work. Their laboratories received blood samples and human tissue for examination from these experiments.

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Cruel and murderous experiments were performed by qualified and experienced doctors, in cold blood and in the name of science.

Every medical experiment had to have the approval of SS head Heinrich H I M M L E R . At first, every application had to be submitted directly to Himmler. Beginning in 1944, Dr. Ernst Robert Grawitz, chief medical officer of the SS, screened the applications first. He solicited “expert” opinions before passing them on to Himmler. One, from a medical viewpoint, was from Dr. Karl Gebhardt, Himmler’s personal physician and chief surgeon of the SS and police. The other opinion, from Richard Glücks and Arthur N E B E , had to do with the victims to be chosen for the proposed experiment. The medical experiments fell into two broad categories: (1) experiments whose objectives satisfied professional medical ethics and the purposes of medical practice, but whose methods broke with moral law; (2) experiments whose very purposes violated medical ethics and that could not meet the accepted norms of medical research.

Immorality of Methodology The first category of experiments consisted of two groups: experiments related to survival and rescue, and those involving medical treatment. SURVIVAL AND RESCUE Survival and rescue experiments were designed to test the human potential for survival under harsh conditions and adaptation to such conditions, and to determine how to save lives. Experiments involved high altitudes, freezing temperature, and the drinking of seawater. They were conducted by the Luftwaffe (the German air force) in cooperation with the SS, on prisoners in the D AC H AU camp.

High-altitude experiments were meant to learn the maximum altitude at which air crews of damaged aircraft could be saved. They also examined what equipment air crews needed in order to save themselves at an altitude of 13 miles (21 kilometers). (That was the maximum altitude reached by Allied aircraft at the time.) The victims of these experiments were put into pressure chambers that duplicated the conditions prevailing at 13-mile altitudes—low pressure and a lack of oxygen. The experiments were carried out with the knowledge that, for the most part, human beings cannot function properly at an altitude of 3.7 miles (6 kilometers) and above without a supply of oxygen. Under conditions that simulated parachuting from an altitude of 8 miles (13 kilometers) without an oxygen supply, the victims went through spasms and lost consciousness. Beginning at 9 miles (15 kilometers), they had breathing problems. There were cases in which victims stopped breathing altogether. Still, the experiments, without an oxygen supply, went on to an altitude of 13 miles. Some 200 Dachau prisoners were used for these experiments, and seventy to eighty lost their lives as a result. The experiments were carried out by Dr. Siegfried Ruff and Dr. Hans Romberg, civilian doctors from the German Experimental Institute of Aviation in B E R L I N , and by Dr. Sigmund Rascher, an air force doctor and SS officer. The freezing experiments were designed to learn the most effective method of treating people who were in a state of shock after prolonged immersion in freezing seas or exposure to dry cold. The victims of the first of these experiments were put into a tank of ice water and kept there for 70 to 90 minutes, or as long as it took for them to lose consciousness. At this critical stage, they were taken out of the freezing water. Attempts were then made to restore their normal body temperature, by various means. No painkillers were used to relieve the victims’ suffering. About 300 people were used in these experiments. Eighty to ninety of them lost their lives.

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A prisoner in a parachute harness is deprived of oxygen during low-pressure experiments. Clockwise from top left: breathing through a mask in a decompression chamber; in convulsive seizures caused by anoxia (severe oxygen deficiency); limp stage; and unconscious in the chamber. These photographs are from the files of doctors at Dachau.

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Some experiments explored humans’ exposure to dry cold. The victims were put naked into the snow-covered courtyard of the experiment compound. They were kept there for nine to fifteen hours, from 6:00 in the evening to 9:00 the next morning, at a temperature of 8.4°F (–6°C). Their terrible screams of pain were ignored, and they were given no means of relief. But their screaming had the effect of forcing these experiments to be discontinued, because they disturbed the civilian population living near the Dachau camp. The dry-cold experiments were carried out by Professor Ernst Holzlöhner and Dr. E. Finke of Kiel University, who had been drafted to the air force for this purpose, and by Dr. Rascher. Experiments were performed on 60 prisoners, providing new information on the proper treatment of cold victims. The experiment with salt water was designed to establish a reliable method of making seawater drinkable. The aim was to improve the chances for survival of air crew or naval personnel stranded in the sea. The experiment was conducted on 44 people, 41 of them G Y P S I E S (Romani). The main purpose was to learn the chances of survival when the only liquid available to drink was seawater, or seawater whose taste had been improved by a chemical agent (named Berkatite), without any change in the salt content. The experiment was conducted in series of 15-day periods. During those times, the victims were forced to drink .53 to 1.06 quart (.5-1.0 liters) of seawater or Berkatite per day. Dr. Wilhelm Beiglböck, an air force adviser, was in charge. The experiment confirmed what was already known—that there was no difference between seawater and Berkatite as far as their dehydrating effect on human beings was concerned. MEDICAL TREATMENT The Nazi experiments for medical treatment consisted of

three main categories: (1) experiments relating to the treatment of battle injuries; (2) those relating to the treatment of victims of gas attacks; and (3) those testing immunization compounds or medicines for the prevention or treatment of contagious and epidemic diseases. One experiment for the treatment of war wounds took place in the R AV E N S camp. The victims were 75 Polish political prisoners, all women. The experiment’s purpose was to establish the effectiveness of sulfanilamide in preventing infection and putrefaction from taking place in limbs as a result of wounds. The doctor in charge was Dr. Gebhardt, who had been the attending physician of Reinhard H E Y D R I C H after he was attacked by an assassin. When Heydrich died of his wounds, it was hinted that he could have been saved if enough sulfanilamide had been available. Himmler asked Gebhardt to prove, by experiment, that sulfanilamide was not effective against putrefaction caused by gangrene (the immediate cause of Heydrich’s death). A special effort was made to induce severe infections in the bodies of the victims. When Dr. Grawitz learned that there had not yet been deaths in the experiment, he demanded that the infections be worsened. As a result, five women died because they were not given proper surgical treatment, since the experiment demanded that only sulfanilamide be used. The remaining women were ill for a long time and were disabled for life. Infection by gangrene bacilli is a frequent occurrence in battle wounds, so the purpose of the experiment was justifiable. But the methods used turned it into a criminal act. BRÜCK

Another series of experiments relating to war wounds involved the treatment of fractures and the transplantation of bones, muscles, and nerves. Dr. Gebhardt conducted these experiments on Polish women prisoners at Ravensbrück. The purpose was to find solutions to problems in the treatment of severe wounds in the upper and lower limbs. At first, the leg bones of physically sound young women were broken, and they were given various treatments. In later experiments, entire bones and other tissues were extracted in order to transplant them into patients at the SS hos-

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pital in Hohenlychen. In fact, whole limbs were amputated from the prisoner victims for transplants. These amputations were carried out on mentally ill prisoners, who were then put to death. The experiment cost the lives of 11 out of the 24 victims; the rest were maimed for life. Yet another war-wounds experiment tested the effectiveness of the biochemical treatment of infected wounds. In this experiment, pus was injected into the soft tissue of the victims in order to generate infected wounds. This took place in the Dachau hospital. The victims were 20 German prisoners and 40 prisoners of other nationalities, and cost the lives of 19 of them. Experiments relating to second- and third-degree burns were conducted at A U S C H W I T Z , while B U C H E N WA L D was the scene of experiments dealing with phosphor burns caused by incendiary bombs. Another experiment in the treatment of wounds was designed to test the effectiveness of blood-coagulating agents. This experiment was carried out by Dr. Rascher at Dachau. The specific substance being tested was Polygal 10, which is taken orally to stop bleeding resulting from wounds or after surgery. To conduct the experiment, four victims were shot point-blank in parts of the body that are prone to heavy bleeding, after they were forced to swallow a certain amount of Polygal. The victims died instantly. This bizarre experiment replaced the simple method, used by hospitals, of determining the effectiveness of a coagulating agent by measuring the duration of bleeding and the time it takes for the blood to coagulate. Experiments on the treatment of chemical-warfare victims were conducted throughout the war. In March 1944, however, Hitler ordered Karl Brandt to intensify medical research on the effects of chemical warfare. As a result, all studies conducted in this field became part of Nazi Germany’s overall research program on gas warfare. In 1939, experiments on the use of mustard gas were carried out in the S AC H S E N H AU S E N concentration camp by Dr. Walter Sonntag and Dr. Heinrich Baumkötter. At the same time, Dr. August Hirt was conducting experiments in this field, on a larger scale, at the Ganzweiler camp. Of the 220 persons he used as subjects, 50 died as a result of the experiments. Ganzweiler was also the scene of experiments in the treatment of phosgene poisoning. (Phosgene is a gas that causes suffocation; if absorbed in large doses, it leads to death by asphyxiation.) These experiments, which tested the effectiveness of hexamethylene tetramine, were carried out by Professor Otto Bickenbach, a member of the Strasbourg University faculty. At the N E U E N G A M M E camp, 150 prisoners were made to drink water containing chemical-warfare substances, as part of a research project for the purification of drinking water. There were other experiments in this field, but no details concerning them have come to light. Another area of experiments had to do with the immunization and treatment of infective and epidemic diseases such as malaria, infective hepatitis, and typhus. The malaria experiment was a civilian venture. It was carried out at Dachau by Dr. Claus Schilling. The experiment used 1,200 prisoners, most of them Catholic priests, and cost the lives of 300 to 400 people. Of them, no more than 30 died of the disease itself. The others died from overdoses of the medicines that were being tried out on them. Infective hepatitis was the subject of experiments at Sachsenhausen, carried out by Dr. Arnold Dohmen, as well as at the Natzweiler and Buchenwald camps. In some of these experiments, it was expected that the human subjects would die. For these, Dr. Grawitz asked Himmler to put at his disposal Jewish prisoners, who were already condemned to death. Following the invasion of the S OV I E T U N I O N by the Germans in June 1941, typhus fever became widespread among the German army. From 1941 to the end of the war, a broad program of experiments was conducted at Buchenwald and Ganzweiler to test the effectiveness of various immunization inoculations. Hundreds of prisoners were used in these experiments, and hundreds died as a result.

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In the typhus experiments at Buchenwald, one group of “test persons” (TPs, in SS usage) was inoculated with various serums then in general use. A second “control” group was not inoculated. A third group was infected with the disease at the start of the experiment, to serve as a “bank” for live viruses to be used in the infecting of other victims with the disease. As a rule, typhus is transmitted by fleas, which carry the virus. When the experiments were started, the “natural” means of transmission was tried out. Later, the “test persons”—those who had been inoculated, as well as the control group, who had not been inoculated—were infected by having blood from a typhus patient injected into their bodies. Of the 729 people used in the experiment, 154 died as a result. Of the 120 people who had served as a live-virus bank, 90 died. Another set of typhus-immunization experiments began at Ganzweiler in late 1943, by Professor Eugen Haagen of Strasbourg University. Haagen asked for 300 physically fit prisoners of military age, of whom he selected 90. Using a live-virus serum that he had developed, Haagen infected both the non-immunized control group and the immunized group. His experiments cost the lives of 30 people. Among other experiments involving contagious and epidemic diseases was one related to yellow fever. This disease was widespread in North Africa, where German forces were fighting. In the experiment, 485 people were inoculated with a yellowfever serum to test its effectiveness. Other experiments dealt with smallpox, paratyphoid A and B, cholera, diphtheria, and influenza. Tuberculosis experiments were conducted on 114 “test persons” at Dachau and on 100 men and 20 children at Neuengamme. Ganzweiler was the scene of immunization experiments on 1,700 people relating to diseases of an unknown nature. The above experiments were for the most part carried out on behalf of the army or civilian health authorities, and at their request. Many other experiments, however, simply served the interests or the medical specialization of the doctor who devised and conducted them.

“Racial” Experiments The second broad category of experiments—those that violated medical ethics—involved (1) experiments designed to provide biological and physiological findings to support the Nazi ideology based on differences between the “Aryan” race and other races; and (2) experiments to further the aims of Nazi Germany’s ideological policy by medical means—that is, to bring about the destruction of the Jews. Three types of experiments were conducted to provide biological evidence to support Nazi racist ideology: experiments on dwarfs and twins; serological (bloodrelated) experiments; and a study of the skeletons of Jews. The experiments on dwarfs and twins were carried out by Dr. Josef M E N G E L E at Auschwitz. The only firsthand evidence on these experiments comes from a handful of survivors and from a Jewish doctor, Miklós Nyiszli, who worked under Mengele as a pathologist. The victims were twins and dwarfs, ages two and above. Mengele subjected them to clinical examinations, blood tests, X-rays, and anthropological measurements. In the case of the twins, he drew sketches of each twin, for comparison. He also injected his victims with various substances and dripped chemicals into their eyes (apparently in an attempt to change their color). He then killed them himself by injecting chloroform into their hearts, to carry out comparative pathological examinations of their internal organs. Mengele’s purpose, according to Dr. Nyiszli, was to establish the genetic cause of the birth of twins. The goal was to develop a program to double the birth rate of the “Aryan” race. The experiments on twins affected 180 people, adults and children.

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Mengele also carried out a large number of experiments in the field of contagious diseases (typhoid and tuberculosis) to find out how human beings of different races withstood these diseases. He used Gypsy twins for this purpose. Mengele’s experiments combined scientific research with the racist and ideological aims of the Nazi regime. The serological experiments, conducted by Professor Werner Fischer of the Koch Institute for Contagious Diseases and Dr. Karl Georg Horneck, were intended to prove that there were serological differences among the races—that is, differences in blood serum. The experiments were carried out on Gypsies in the Sachsenhausen camp. Similar experiments had been conducted earlier by the same doctors. In 1938, Fischer had made a comparative study of the blood serum of whites and blacks; and in 1941, Horneck had made such a study of black P R I S O N E R S O F WA R .

F

rom the scanty information available, it appears that Mengele

expected the victims’ deaths and that this anticipated result formed a central element in his experiments.

The project on skeletons of Jews was carried out by Dr. August Hirt at Strasbourg University. His purpose was to prove the racial inferiority of “JewishBolshevik commissars” by means of an anthropological study of their skeletons. For this experiment, 115 Jews in a good state of health were selected and killed in gas chambers. Their corpses were sent to the anatomical institute at Strasbourg University, where Hirt hoped to show that communism and Judaism affect the structure of the skeleton, and thus to demonstrate the inferiority of the human beings concerned. Experiments designed to support Nazi ideological policy included those involving methods of mass sterilization and of killing individuals as well as masses of human beings. From the very beginning of Hitler’s rule, sterilization was part of Germany’s health policy. As early as 1933, a program was launched in Germany to sterilize all genetically diseased, retarded, and alcoholic individuals, so as to protect the well-being of the “Aryan” race. Similar programs were put into effect in some of the German-occupied countries.

Sterilization Experiments in mass sterilization began in 1942. They were not designed as a means of installing the “Aryan” race as the future ruler of the world. Instead, they aimed to provide an alternative to the immediate destruction of the Jews and of other people who, according to Nazi racist ideology, should not be permitted to live. Such a method would also enable the Nazis to interfere as little as possible with the M I S C H L I N G E (persons of “mixed blood”) and use them to meet labor requirements. The sterilization experiments were carried out on Hitler’s own initiative, but Hitler was also responding to proposals made by several doctors who had a professional interest in them. They suggested to Hitler that sterilization could serve as a powerful weapon in the total war against Nazi Germany’s enemies. Dr. Horst Schumann, in Auschwitz, first sterilized men, women, and children by means of radiation. He exposed them to large doses of X rays, which caused severe burns. He then removed the men’s testicles and sent them to a Breslau institute for examination. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people of different nationalities were used in these experiments. Most of them were sent to the gas chambers soon afterward, since their radiation burns made them unfit for work. Sterilization experiments were also conducted on women and children in Ravensbrück. Viktor Brack, the author of this group of experiments, suggested to Himmler that the method be used on 3 million Jews—out of the total of 10 million earmarked for extermination— provided they were fit and could be used as forced laborers (see F O R C E D L A B O R ). Other sterilization experiments were carried out at this time by Professor Carl C L AU B E R G at Auschwitz and Ravensbrück. Their aim was to study mass steriliza-

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tion by one-time injection of a chemical substance into the womb. Thousands of women were used in this experiment; most of them Jewish, and the rest were Romani (Gypsy) women. Himmler had asked Clauberg how much time it would take to sterilize 1,000 women by means of an efficient, speedy, inexpensive, and dependable method. Clauberg found that by using the method he had devised and tested, a team consisting of one doctor and ten assistants could sterilize up to 1,000 people a day. Clauberg used a routine gynecological examination to inject a chemical into the womb that had the effect of totally destroying the lining membrane of the womb and severely damaging the ovaries. The second stage of the experiment was to surgically remove the damaged ovaries and send them to Berlin for study. Clauberg’s experiment resulted in the permanent sterilization of the victims and in irreversible damage to their wombs and ovaries. During the war, sterilization programs were also carried out in the occupied countries. These programs were based on racist grounds. In 1942, a number of doctors and political figures—including Clauberg—suggested to Himmler that nonsurgical experiments in mass sterilization be carried out in the concentration camps. Mass sterilization, they argued, would be the answer both to the labor requirements for the war effort (by keeping the concentration camp prisoners alive for this purpose) and to the major objective of Nazi racist policy: the rapid and total destruction of all the Jews of Europe.

Military Tribunals On October 25, 1946, The Medical Case, tried by the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, opened. Twenty-three defendants, including twenty doctors, were put on trial. Many had held senior posts in the administration or the army. Sixteen were found guilty under Allied Control Council Law No. 10, providing for the punishment of war crimes and crimes against peace and humanity. All the defendants were accused of C R I M E S AG A I N S T H U M A N I T Y , and of several other crimes under that law. They were found guilty of planning and executing experiments on human beings against their will, in a cruel and brutal manner involving severe torture, and of the deliberate murder of some of the victims, in cold blood and with full awareness of the seriousness of their deeds. The Nuremberg Military Tribunals found that the medical experiments were crimes that served the ideological objectives of the Nazi regime. They also found that none of the many experiments carried out by the Nazis was of any scientific value. Five people who had played a central role in the medical experiments were not tried at Nuremberg. Ernst Grawitz committed suicide in 1945, Carl C L AU B E R G was tried in the Soviet Union, Josef M E N G E L E escaped to South America, and Horst Schumann disappeared and has not been traced. Siegmund Rascher was executed on Himmler’s orders in February 1945 for falsely claiming that his wife gave birth to children after age forty-eight. During the 1950s and 1960s, other German physicians who had been involved in experiments in concentration camps were brought before German courts, tried, and in a number of cases, convicted. Among them was Dr. Heinz Baumkötter, former SS doctor at Sachsenhausen.

SEE ALSO TRIALS OF THE WAR CRIMINALS. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Aly, Gotz. Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

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Caplan, Arthur L., ed. When Medicine Went Mad: Bioethics and the Holocaust. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press, 1992.

In the Shadow of the Reich: Nazi Medicine [videorecording]. First-Run Features, 1997. Lifton, Robert Jay. The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. New York: Basic Books, 1986. Matalon Lagnado, Lucette. Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz. New York: Morrow, 1991.

Mein Kampf Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”) is volume one of a book written by Adolf H I T L E R when he was imprisoned in G E R M A N Y in the mid-1920s, after he tried to take over the government. It was published in July 1925, under the title “A Reckoning” (Eine Abrechnung). The second volume, “The National Socialist Movement” (Die nationalsozialistische Bewegung), was published in December 1926 (although the book gives 1927 as the year of publication). Since 1930, all editions have been published as a single volume under the title, Mein Kampf. By 1945, some 10 million copies had been put in circulation, and the book had been translated into sixteen languages. Since then, it has appeared in several translations, but no new German edition has been published. Over the years, Mein Kampf went through some corrections, mostly of style and a few of fact, but only one substantial change was made: The editions that came out in 1930 and later state that the leaders of lower rank in the N A Z I PA RT Y would no longer be elected but would be appointed by the next higher rank. Volume one was meant to be Hitler’s autobiography and volume two to show how the Nazi party came into being. The book as a whole, according to the preface, was to set forth Hitler’s aims and beliefs. The autobiographical information, however, is largely untrue and incomplete. In the same way, the “history” of the Nazi party, described in the second volume, is altered by Hitler’s ideological statements. While the book deals with many aspects of politics, Hitler’s views on Germany’s foreign policy are described in detail. His goals were to first establish political alliances with I TA LY and Britain, then to go to war against F R A N C E . Through these alliances, Hitler hoped to create conditions that would allow Germany to capture territory in Eastern Europe and Soviet Russia that would serve as Lebensraum (“living space”) for the German people.

A bound copy of Mein Kampf.

The book also contains the basics of Hitler’s deadly plans for the Jews. Beginning in 1919, Hitler had called for the removal of the Jews from Germany. By this he generally meant that they should emigrate or be expelled from the country. In the book, however, he demands that the Jews be killed, and he claims global significance for this demand: “No people can remove this fist ‘of the international Jew’; from its throat, unless it uses the sword.…; This must necessarily be a bloody process.” Hitler complains that the German government missed the opportunity of “mercilessly exterminating” the Jews at the beginning of World War I. He also argues that Germany would not have lost the war if it had “used poison gas” on 12,000 to 15,000 Jews. Opinions vary on the importance of Mein Kampf. Some scholars believe that the book was only propaganda. Others find that it contains a clear statement of Hitler’s goals, especially when considered in the light of the policies he actually pursued after he rose to power in Germany in 1933.

SEE ALSO ANTISEMITISM; RACISM.

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SUGGESTED RESOURCES Fleming, Gerald. Hitler and the Final Solution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Staudinger, Hans. The Inner Nazi: A Critical Analysis of Mein Kampf. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981. Wistrich, Robert S. Hitler’s Apocalypse: Jews and the Nazi Legacy. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985.

Mengele, Josef (1911–1978?)

Josef Mengele was a German medical doctor and SS officer. Mengele was born in Günzburg, G E R M A N Y . In 1935 he was awarded a Doctorate in Philosophy by the University of Munich, and in 1938 an M.D. degree from the University of Frankfurt. He was a member of Stahlhelm, an extreme right-wing and antisemitic organization, from 1931 to 1934. Mengele joined the N A Z I PA R T Y in 1937 and the SS in 1938. From June 1940 he served in the Waffen-SS medical corps, and in August of that year he was appointed an Untersturmführer (second lieutenant). In May 1943 he was promoted to Hauptsturmführer (captain) and was posted to the A U S C H W I T Z extermination camp, where he remained until its evacuation on January 18, 1945. Mengele spent much of his time on pseudoscientific M E D I CA L E X P E R I M E N T S and also on the Selektionen (selection procedures) of Jews who were brought to the camp. In the course of these Selektionen, most of the Jews were immediately sent to their death in the G A S CHAMBERS . The rest were put on FORCED LABOR in CONCENTRATION CAMPS . Mengele’s pseudoscientific experiments, in which he used human beings as guinea pigs, dealt primarily with infants and young twins, and with dwarfs. The experiments involved the maltreatment of the prisoners in various ways, such as the excision of their genital organs and a variety of harmful injections into the veins or directly into the heart. When Auschwitz was evacuated, Mengele was transferred to the M AU T H AU S E N concentration camp; when that camp was liberated on May 5, 1945, all trace of him was lost. In mid-1949 he turned up in Argentina, where he was given asylum. Mengele’s criminal actions were documented at the Nuremberg Trial and in the trials of the Nazi criminals who had functioned at Auschwitz (see T R I A L S O F T H E W A R C R I M I N A L S ). In 1959 the West German authorities issued a warrant for his arrest, and in 1960 the West German Foreign Ministry asked Argentina for his extradition, but Mengele succeeded in escaping to Brazil and from there made his way to Paraguay. According to some sources, he was drowned in December 1978, in Brazil, but the veracity of this has been questioned. In June, 1985, a coffin believed to be Mengele’s was opened in Embu, Brazil. In 1992, an international panel of forensic experts declared the remains to be those of Josef Mengele.

SEE ALSO OFFICE OF SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Astor, Gerald. The “Last” Nazi: The Life and Times of Dr. Joseph Mengele. Chicago: D. I. Fine, 1985.

Josef Mengele: The Final Account [videorecording]. Set Productions, 1998.

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“Image not available for copyright reasons”

Matalon Lagnado, Lucette. Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz. New York: Morrow, 1991. Nyiszli, Miklos. Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account. New York: Arcade, 1993. Posner, Gerald L. Mengele: The Complete Story. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986.

Minsk Minsk is the capital of Belarus, which from 1919 until 1991 was known as the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (see B E L O R U S S I A ). In 1926 the Jewish population of Minsk was 53,686; by June 1941 the number had grown to 80,000, constituting one-third of the city’s population. Only a number of Jews managed to escape from the city in the six days between the German invasion of the S OV I E T U N I O N and the conquest of Minsk on June 28, 1941. German parachutists had been dropped east of the city, and they intercepted thousands of Jews who were trying to flee and forced them to return. When the civil administration was established by the Germans, Minsk became the headquarters of Wilhelm Kube, the Generalkommissar (general commissioner; chief administrator) for Belorussia.

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On July 8, 1941, the Germans killed 100 Jews in Minsk, and thereafter, they murdered Jews singly or in groups daily. On July 20, the Germans ordered the creation of a ghetto made up of thirty-four streets and alleys, as well as the Jewish cemetery. Jews from Slutsk, Dzerzhinsk, Cherven, Uzda, and other nearby places were brought into the ghetto. Married couples with one non-Jewish partner were also put into the ghetto, as were their children. Altogether, 100,000 persons were rounded up and put behind the ghetto walls. The next month, 5000 Jews from the ghetto were seized and murdered. The surviving Jews were forced to pay ransom, to report every Sunday for roll call, and to wear a yellow badge (see B A D G E , J E W I S H ) on their back and chest, as well as a white patch on their chest with their house number. Shortly after the ghetto was established a J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council) was put in place, with Eliyahu (Ilya) M U S H K I N at its head. Its seven departments—welfare, housing, supplies, health, workshops, labor, and registration—were responsible for meeting the day-to-day needs of the Jews as well carrying out German orders in the ghetto. Mushkin cooperated with the anti-Nazi underground movement, however, and in February 1942 he was arrested and hanged. In an Aktion (operation) on November 7, 1941, the Germans rounded up 12,000 Jews and murdered them in nearby Tuchinka. Shortly afterward, the houses in which the murdered Jews had lived were filled with Jews recently deported from G E R M A N Y . A second Aktion took place on November 20, in which the Germans murdered 7,000 Jews, also in Tuchinka. After the two Aktionen, the ghetto underground activists intensified their activities, preparing for escapes to the forests and widening its network of hiding places in the city. On March 2, 1942, the Germans launched a third Aktion. They ordered the Judenrat to hand over 5,000 Jews, but on orders of the underground, the Judenrat did not comply. The Germans then began shooting Jewish workers on their way back from their places of work outside the ghetto and carried them off, killing more than 5,000 people, among them the children of the Shpalerna Street orphanage. When the Germans asked that the leader of the underground, Hersh Smolar, be surrendered to them, the Judenrat chairman produced Smolar’s bloodstained identity card as proof that he was dead. The Germans also instituted night Aktionen, resorting to them with increasing frequency in the spring of 1942. In one such night Aktion, on April 2, about 500 people were murdered. Between July 28 and 31, 1942, the Germans killed some 30,000 Jews, among them the German Jews who were in a separate ghetto in Minsk. The Germans forced Jaffe address the crowd and try to allay their fears, but when trucks with gas engines burst upon the square where they had assembled, Jaffe cried out: “Jews, the bloody murderers have deceived you—flee for your lives!” Jaffe and the ghetto police chief were among the victims of that Aktion, following which only 9,000 Jews were left in Minsk. The Germans replaced the Judenrat with an administrative committee that would carry out Nazi orders. In August 1943 a transport of Minsk Jews left for the S O B I B Ó R extermination camp. On September 10, 2,000 Jews were sent to the labor camp at B U D Z Y N´ , near L UBLIN . During the final Aktion, on October 21, 1943, the last four thousand Jews were killed, at Maly Trostinets. When Minsk was liberated on July 3, 1944, only a small number of those who had gone into hiding during the final Aktion remained alive.

The Ghetto Underground In August 1941 an underground force was established in the ghetto, with Hersh Smolar as one of its founders. The founding group formulated the under-

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The hanging of two partisans in Minsk in October, 1941. At left is Masha Bruskina, a 17-year-old Jewish girl.

ground’s goal, which was to escape into the forests and fight in the ranks of the partisans . Initial activities included forming a network of underground fighters, finding ways to get news from the front, setting up a secret printing press, and developing contacts with sympathizers in the non-Jewish parts of the city. The ghetto underground had nearly 450 members, organized into cells. In this period the underground also hoarded weapons. At the beginning of September 1941 a representative of the partisans came to the ghetto and asked for money, which Mushkin, head of the Judenrat, supplied. In early 1942, regular contact was established with the partisans in the forests; the ghetto underground sent groups of its members out to establish its own partisan bases there. Following the third Aktion, in March 1942, the great escape into the forests began. The majority of the escapees headed to the southeast of Minsk, or to the northwest of the city, and set up partisan bases there. Most of the guides for the groups that fled the city were children from the ghetto, ranging in age from 11 to 14. Minsk Jews established seven partisan units. An estimated 10,000 Jews fled to the forests, the majority losing their lives on the way.

partisans

Anti-Nazi resistance fighters who carried out acts of sabotage and assassination.

Jews from the Reich in Minsk Between November 1941 and October 1942, a total of 35,442 Jews from Germany and the Protectorate of B O H E M I A A N D M O R AV I A were deported to Minsk. Most of them were taken by train directly to Maly Trostinets and murdered there. The first of these transports arrived in Minsk in November 1941; it was made up of Jews from Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, B E R L I N , Brünn (Brno), Bremen, and V I E N NA . They were housed in a separate ghetto, adjoining the main Minsk ghetto. The ghetto of the Reich Jews was divided into five sections, according to the places from which they came—Hamburg, Berlin, the Rhineland, Bremen, or Vienna. There was little contact between the main Minsk ghetto and the Reich ghetto. The German Jews were killed in the major Aktion of July 28 to 31, 1942; on March 8, 1943; and in the fall of 1943. Some were sent to the Budzyn´ labor camp. Only ten Reich Jews were still alive in Minsk when the city was liberated.

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SUGGESTED RESOURCES Rokhman, Leyb. The Pit and the Trap: A Chronicle of Survival. New York: Holocaust Library, 1983. Smolar, Hersh. The Minsk Ghetto: Soviet-Jewish Partisans Against the Nazis. Washington, DC: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1989.

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Resisters. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/resister.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000).

Mischlinge (Part Jews)

G

enerally, the policy was to absorb the Mischlinge of

the second degree into the German nation, whereas those of the first

The word Mischlinge (part Jews) literally means “hybrids.” The N U R E M B E R G L A W S of September 1935 initially mentioned only Jews and Germans. But in November 1935, when the concept of a “Jew” was defined in the first implementation ordinance of those laws, a third group appeared: those who were neither Jews nor Germans—the Mischlinge. The census of 1939 showed that 72,000 Mischlinge of the first degree and 39,000 of the second degree were still living in G E R M A N Y .

degree were equated with Jews.

Categorizing Mischlinge Mischlinge of the first degree, or half Jews, were those who had two Jewish grandparents, did not belong to the Jewish religion, and were not married to a Jewish person as of September 15, 1935. They had the rights of regular German citizens, although they were limited by a series of regulations. For example, they could marry only Mischlinge of the first degree. Marriage with a German or with a Mischlinge of the second degree required a special permit from the Ministry of the Interior and the party chancellery, which was almost never granted. As of 1940 Mischlinge of the first degree were excluded from military service and, as of 1942, from high schools. They were also barred from employment in the armaments industry and from taking part in Germany’s trade representations abroad. Mischlinge of the second degree, or quarter Jews, were those with one Jewish grandparent. They were subject to certain limitations in professions requiring full German origins, but were drafted into the army and were allowed to marry Germans, but not quarter, half, or full Jews. In all other matters they were treated like German “Aryans.” This category also included mixed marriages. Consequently, as of April 8, 1940, soldiers married to Mischlinge of the second degree were treated like them, and those married to Mischlinge of the first degree or to Jews were treated like Mischlinge of the first degree. At the end of 1941, proposals were made that all Mischlinge of the first degree be sterilized. The W A N N S E E C O N F E R E N C E considered a proposal of allowing those Mischlinge scheduled to be deported to remain in Germany if they submitted voluntarily to sterilization. The compulsory sterilization of all Mischlinge was also suggested at the conference. But the question of what policy should be adopted toward the Mischlinge was never resolved because of the Nazis’ fears of the possible repercussions among the large number of German relatives of the Mischlinge. The only Mischlinge killed were inmates of the C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S who had been arrested in the 1930s. These people were transferred to A U S C H W I T Z at the end of 1942. A similar lack of consistency characterized the Mischlinge policy in conquered countries. When Dutch Jews were ordered to register in January 1941, the order also included those Dutch people who had one Jewish grandparent. Such quarter Jews were not relocated to Amsterdam or deported. Dutch Jews were allowed to

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petition the General Commission for Administration and Justice for the Occupied Netherlands Territory for exemption from the status of full Jew and half Jew. Countless applications flooded the commission. Many were handled by Dr. Hans Georg Calmeyer, who was extremely lenient and accepted 75 percent of the applications for serious consideration. He also recommended that those Jews whose applications were under consideration not be sent to a “Jewish camp” (that is, deported), because if their petitions were to be granted, all their property would have to be restored to them. Another aspect of the treatment of Mischlinge in the N E T H E R L A N D S arose in the context of marriages between Jews and “Aryans.” The 8,610 registered Jewish partners in these unions were essentially given the option of deportation or undergoing sterilization to prevent them from bringing further Mischlinge into the world. Nevertheless, while 2,562 submitted to sterilization, half of them men and half women, many were killed anyway. After the ghettoization of Polish Jewry, Mischlinge of all degrees were also put in the ghettos. In S L OVA K I A , however, they were exempted from deportation to E X T E R M I NAT I O N CA M P S .

F

or Adolf Hitler, the question of the status of Germans of partial

Jewish descent was of paramount importance because of his obsession with “racial purity.”

Hitler’s Interest in Mischlinge Hitler’s personal concern regarding the status of the Mischlinge in Germany rested on his racist belief that all Mischlinge were a menace and that the complete assimilation of foreign blood was impossible. “Families,” he argued, “even if they have only a minute quantity of Jewish blood in their veins, regularly produce, generation by generation, at last one pure Jew.” For this reason, applications made by Jews for a change in their status, a process known as “equalization,” were handled by the Ministry of the Interior, and all potential approvals had to be referred to Hitler. His decision was then sent directly to the Mischlinge. For this reason too, on February 20, 1944, Hitler expressly ordered that all Mischlinge cases be dealt with by his deputy, Martin B O R M A N N , and submitted to himself for final approval. Hitler’s intervention was also required when a number of Mischlinge received, compliant with the racial legislation, a racial classification different from that corresponding to their biological condition. In all these cases, Hitler’s personal decision was needed to clarify the status of the individual concerned. This was true also of mixed marriages involving Mischlinge. However, Hitler’s personal intervention could still lead him at times to contradict his own principle. While saying in private conversations that he was convinced that Germany would harm itself by accepting Mischlinge into the army, and that exemptions from the status of full Jew or half Jew should therefore be reduced to a minimum, he exempted some 260 officers or their wives who were Mischlinge of the first degree. Similarly, by 1942, some 340 Jews had been equalized by him with Mischlinge of the first degree. By means of legal trickery, he also granted the status of half Jew to some 3,000 people considered Jews. After the attempt on his life on July 20, 1944, Hitler’s obsession with Jewish influence intensified. As a result, he ordered that civil servants who were Mischlinge, or who were married to Jews or Mischlinge, could no longer hold high governmental office, even if their partners had previously been equalized with “Aryans.” This new regulation affected a wide range of people in important posts, among them an ambassador and a high official in the Ministry of Churches. The drafting of Mischlinge into the armed forces was of great concern to Hitler as well. A decree of April 8, 1940, declared that only he could grant permits to Mischlinge to serve in the army. The same motive inspired his order that a second-degree female Mischlinge required his permission to marry if the groom was in active service. Hitler was obviously even stricter regarding membership in the N A Z I PA R T Y , which was meant to be a mainstay of racial purity. The hunt for Mischlinge in the

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party ranks was much more thorough than demanded by state law, and expulsions from the Nazi party included Mischlinge even up to the fifth degree. However, those Mischlinge who had proved their merit prior to 1933 and when there was also only a small degree of Jewish blood were permitted to remain in the party. The problem was dealt with individually only in exceptional cases, as when the person involved had been unaware of his Jewish ancestry and had been active in the party for years. All applications for exemptions had to go through Hitler. Hitler also issued general instructions that the offspring of political leaders were not to marry Mischlinge, even if the latter had received equal status with Germans.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Koehn, Ilse. Mischling, Second Degree: My Childhood in Nazi Germany. Puffin Books, 1990. Kuehn, Heinz R. Mixed Blessings: An Almost Ordinary Life in Hitler’s Germany. University of Georgia Press, 1988. Newman, Amy. The Nuremberg Laws: Institutionalized Anti-semitism. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1999.

Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany. W. W. Norton, 1996.

MIXED MARRIAGES. SEE MISCHLINGE. Mogilev-Podolski Mogilev-Podolski is a town on the Dniester River, in the Vinnitsa district of the U K R A I N E , across the border from the Romanian district of Bessarabia. In 1926 Mogilev-Podolski had a Jewish population of 9,622, 41.8 percent of the total. On July 19, 1941, it was occupied by German and Romanian forces. Thousands of Jews were murdered. The town remained under Nazi control until the S OV I E T U N I O N invaded in March of 1944, as part of the Allied war effort against Adolf H I T L E R and the Axis powers of G E R M A N Y , I TA LY , and the countries aligned with them. Mogilev-Podolski was an assembly point for Jews expelled from Bessarabia and Bukovina, in Romania. It was also an important crossing point to the region between Romania and Ukraine known as Transnistria. The Romanian town of Atachi, through which the expelled Jews had to pass, faces Mogilev-Podolski on the Romanian bank of the Dniester. During the days preceding the Nazi occupation, tens of thousands of Jews tried to escape by migrating north from Bessarabia and Bukovina to the Soviet interior. Many were caught by advancing German forces and forcibly returned to the regions along the Dniester.

columns

Row after row of prisoners on forced marches.

In the fall of 1941, when the first group of Jews from Romania was deported to Mogilev-Podolski, there were 25,000 Jews already in the town, including many who ended up there after their failed escape. By November many columns of Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina had passed through the city. A total of 55,913 expelled Jews passed through Mogilev-Podolski between September 15, 1941, and February 15, 1942. Thousands of people were packed into the transit camp at Mogilev-Podolski, which consisted of decrepit and filthy barracks. Conditions were so intolerable that every day many people committed suicide. The Romanian camp guards abused the Jews mercilessly. Thousands of Jews who were not permitted to stay in MogilevPodolski were driven out and forced to walk to villages and towns in the district or to cross the Bug River, where they faced conditions even worse than in Mogilev-

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Podolski. Some 15,000 expelled Jews stayed in Mogilev-Podolski, despite the ban imposed by the authorities, either by bribing authorities or because their work was beneficial to the local or district economy. The Jews who managed to stay organized themselves into groups, based on their community of origin. One of them, Shimon Jegendorf, from Ra˘da˘ut¸i, was an engineer by profession, and he was able to repair and reactivate the local electric power station, as well as a foundry and other factories. This led to many job openings, and 2,000 to 3,000 Jewish workers and their families were granted residence permits. The rest of the Jews in the city, numbering some 10,000, lived with the constant threat of deportation hanging over their heads. The Romanian officials in charge in the district were hostile and cruel to the Jews. There were also German military units stationed in Mogilev-Podolski, supervising the Jews working on the construction of a bridge across the Dniester. These Germans mistreated the Jews and frequently executed them for minor offenses. About 2,000 male Jews were sent away on F O R C E D L A B O R , escorted by Romanian police guards who treated them harshly. Some were transferred to areas under German control, and many perished or were shot to death. In December 1943, the Mogilev-Podolski ghetto held 12,836 deportees from Bukovina, 348 from Bessarabia, and 3,000 local Jewish inhabitants. In March 1944 the Jewish leadership in Bucharest obtained permission to bring 1,400 orphans back to Romania. Most of the other deportees were unable to flee to Romania in time. When the city was liberated by the Soviet army, on March 20, 1944, many of the male Jews were drafted on the spot, given several weeks of training, and sent to the front or to work in coal mines. Of those who stayed in Mogilev-Podolski, many lost their lives when the Germans shelled the city. In the spring of 1945 most of the deportees were permitted to return to Romania; those who had survived the forced labor in the Soviet Union came back in 1947. The number of survivors in Mogilev-Podolski was relatively large because of the town’s proximity to Romania, the Jews’ own self-help organization, and the aid they received from the Jews in Romania.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Arad, Yitzhak. The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads. Washington, DC: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1989. Gitelman, Zvi, ed. Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

MONOWITZ. SEE AUSCHWITZ. MORAVIA. SEE BOHEMIA AND MORAVIA, PROTECTORATE OF. MORESHET. SEE MUSEUMS AND MEMORIAL INSTITUTES. Morgenthau, Henry, Jr. (1891–1967)

Henry Morgenthau, Jr. was an American statesman. As secretary of the treasury of the U N I T E D S TAT E S , Morgenthau was the highest-ranking Jew in the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. During the period of the H OLOCAUST , Mor-

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genthau influenced Roosevelt on the subject of the American rescue effort. In addition, he helped inspire the creation of the W AR R EFUGEE B OARD in January, 1944.

M

orgenthau’s diaries show that he blamed the State Department

for thwarting efforts to admit even the small number of Jews who were legally entitled to enter under the immigration law. His subordinates informed him of a deliberate effort to turn off the flow of information detailing the implementation of the “Final Solution.” He complained to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, until he realized that Hull was uninformed and uninterested in the issue.

Morgenthau was born in New York City into a prominent German Jewish family. After earning a fortune as a banker and real-estate developer, his father entered politics and was active in the Democratic party. The elder Morgenthau also served as American ambassador to Turkey from 1913 to 1916. Henry Morgenthau, Jr. studied agronomy at Cornell University. His family bought a large working farm in New York State, not far from the home of Roosevelt. A link between the Morgenthaus and Roosevelts had already been established through their common interest in the Democratic party. Years later, Morgenthau moved to the top of American politics as an integral part of the Roosevelt entourage, and a firm bond of friendship developed between the two men. In 1928, after Roosevelt was elected governor of New York State, he appointed Morgenthau chairman of the agricultural advisory commission. Two years later he became conservation commissioner. Some of the innovative policies of the New Deal’s agricultural program have their roots in this period. In 1933 Morgenthau was named to the Federal Farm Board and the Farm Credit Administration, and in 1934 he was appointed to the Cabinet as secretary of the treasury. His subordinates in the Treasury Department, John W. Pehle, Josiah E. DuBois, Jr., and Randolph Paul, alerted Morgenthau to the fact that the State Department was blocking refugee immigration (see U N I T E D S TAT E S D E PA RT M E N T O F S TAT E ), which ultimately led to some meaningful action on behalf of Jewish refugees. Through the Treasury’s control of export licenses, Morgenthau maintained a far-reaching influence in the foreign relations area, especially American policy toward the “New Order” in G E R M A N Y . Early on, Morgenthau sensed the danger the National Socialists posed for world peace, and he advocated military preparedness. During the ambassadorship of William E. Dodd in B E R L I N , Morgenthau refused to issue a license for the sale of helium to Germany. The later conflict between the State Department and the Department of the Treasury over rescue policy is best understood in the context of Morgenthau’s intrusions into the foreignpolicy area, resulting in a rivalry between him and Cordell Hull, the secretary of state. Although Roosevelt shared the view that the State Department was generally ineffective, he essentially agreed with the department on the low priority that should be given to the “Jewish question” during the war. After the E V I A N C O N F E R E N C E in 1938, Roosevelt requested that Morgenthau chair the President’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees, but Morgenthau refused. At that time, Morgenthau was unaware of what Berlin had in store for European Jewry. By the fall of 1942, as bits of news about the Nazi anti-Jewish depredations began to filter back to Washington, Morgenthau’s uneasiness grew. By mid-1943, Morgenthau was showing signs that the destruction of European Jewry was having a considerable impact on him. In January 1944, Morgenthau’s assistant, Josiah Du Bois, Jr., handed him his “Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews,” which documented the State Department’s “willful failure to act.” After toning down the more dramatic phrasing of the brief, and changing its title to “A Personal Report to the President,” Morgenthau convened Benjamin V. Cohen and Samuel Rosenman, two presidential advisers who were Jewish, to deliver the report together with him to the president on January 16, 1944. Following that visit Roosevelt established the War Refugee Board. Several Jewish organizations have claimed credit for mobilizing Morgenthau in the rescue cause. Whatever the case, it came too late to help millions of Jewish victims of the Nazi death machine.

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Henry Morgenthau, Jr., at his desk in the U. S. Department of Treasury.

Shortly before Germany’s surrender, Morgenthau published his book, Germany Is Our Problem (1945) where he explained his plan for the “pastoralization” of the former Reich. Morgenthau’s fear was that a re-built Germany could bring on World War III. Roosevelt’s successor, Harry S Truman, thought Morgenthau’s plan was impractical. The recovery of Europe could not be managed without Germany playing its customary role. Morgenthau soon resigned his post and became deeply involved in Jewish causes. He was recruited by Henry Montor to become general chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, a position he held between 1946 and 1950. Morgenthau is given credit for successfully organizing its first 100,000,000 dollar fund-raising campaign. He also drew much closer to the Zionist consensus that now held sway in the American Jewish community. In 1950 he accepted the chairmanship of the board of governors of the Hebrew University, and a year later he followed Montor to the Israel Bond Organization and the American Financial and Development Corporation for Israel. At the time of Morgenthau’s death in 1967, he was fully immersed in Jewish causes.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Blum, John Morton. Roosevelt and Morgenthau. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970. Everest, Allan Seymour. Morgenthau, the New Deal, and Silver; A Story of Pressure Politics. New York: Da Capo Press, 1973. Morgenthau, Henry. Mostly Morgenthaus: A Family History. New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1991.

Müller, Heinrich (1900–?)

Heinrich Müller was a loyal H I T L E R supporter who became chief of the G E S TA P O . After attending elementary school, Müller was apprenticed to the Bavarian Aircraft Works in Munich. In 1917 he volunteered for the air force; he became a

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A

s joint directors in the Gestapo organization, Gerhard Flesch

and Heinrich Müller were responsible for Gestapo subdivisions overseeing a wide range of functions, including goodconduct certificates, the file registry, the identification service, the Nazi party and its affiliated organizations, the security of weapons and explosives, and special duties—surveillance and assassinations.

fighter pilot on the western front in April 1918, and was awarded several distinguished-service medals. In June 1919 he was discharged as a noncommissioned officer. He began working at the Munich police headquarters in December 1919. In the spring of 1929 he passed with distinction the examination for the intermediate level of the police force, and before long he was the Munich police headquarters expert in the fight against communism and related “leftist” movements. Müller was a hard and ambitious worker who on occasion disregarded the law, according to evidence given by the N A Z I PA R T Y district administration in 1936. Under the Weimar Republic, his political affiliation fluctuated between the German National Popular Party and the Bavarian People’s Party; rumor had it that in 1933 he and some of his colleagues opposed handing over the Munich police administration to the SA (Sturmabteilung; Storm Troopers) and the SS. Before long, however, Müller became one of the most important aides to Reinhard H E Y D R I C H , the new Bavarian police chief. This was a result of his intimate knowledge of the Communist party and of the German section of the Comintern (the Third Communist International), and his familiarity with Soviet police methods. Müller’s reports also gained Heinrich H I M M L E R ’s attention; this won him promotion to the rank of senior police secretary, on May 1, 1933, and, on November 16, 1933, to senior secretary of the criminal police. In 1935, he was appointed controller of the criminal police. In 1936, to ensure that no problems arose in the relations between the Bavarian political police and the Gestapo and SS, Müller, who was not a party member, was appointed a member of the SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service). Soon afterward, Heydrich was appointed Gestapo chief, and he took Müller along with him, together with his former superior, Gerhard Flesch, appointing them joint directors responsible for the suppression of hostile elements. Flesch and Müller oversaw Gestapo action against organizations fully or partially associated with communism and Marxism, including the trade unions. They were also in charge of Gestapo subdivisions that monitored religious organizations, Jews, Freemasons, and emigrants; protective-custody and C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S ; economic, agricultural, and social policies; and nonpolitical organizations. Müller’s phenomenal rise to power, however, began after the suppression of the so-called Röhm Putsch on June 30, 1934, the “Night of the Long Knives.” Four days later Müller was promoted to SS-Obersturmführer (first lieutenant) and put in charge of senior officials. On January 30, 1935, Müller rose to the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer(captain); on April 20, 1936, to SS-Sturmbannführer (major); and on January 30, 1937, to SS-Standartenführer (colonel). In June of that year, he was given the rank of senior administrative councillor and criminal police councillor, against the recommendation of the Munich-Upper Bavaria Police District Administration, although by then he had been in charge of the Gestapo office for a year. From September 1939 to the end of the war, Müller was head of Section IV (Gestapo) of the R E I C H M A I N S E C U R I T Y O F F I C E (RSHA; Reichssicherheitshauptamt) and deputy commander of the Security Police and the SD. He was responsible to Heydrich and, after Heydrich’s assassination, to his successor, Ernst K A LT E N B R U N N E R . Müller was one of the most powerful men in the Nazi state terror system, but he stayed out of the limelight. On April 20, 1939, he became an SS-Oberführer (brigadier general) and on December 14, 1940, an SS-Brigadeführer (major general); two days later he was also promoted to Generalmajor of the police. On November 9, both Müller and Arthur N E B E were appointed to the rank of SS-Gruppenführer (lieutenant general) and to the equivalent rank in the police. On October 15, 1944, Müller, the ex-pilot, was awarded the Knight’s Cross with crossed swords, the highest German award offered during World War II, in

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recognition of his services in the merciless pursuit of those who participated in the July 20, 1944, plot against Hitler. These included some of Müller’s friends, such as Count Wolf Heinrich von Helldorf, Arthur Nebe, Hans Gisevius, and Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg. Müller remained loyal to Adolf H I T L E R to the end in the bunker where Hitler spent his last weeks. All trace of Müller was lost on April 29, 1945. Rumors that he had escaped to Brazil or Argentina persisted, and he was placed on a list of “most wanted Nazis” in 1973.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Douglas, Gregory. Gestapo Chief: The 1948 Interrogation of Heinrich Müller (3 vol.). Los Angeles, CA: Bender, 1996–98. Gellately, Robert. The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Johnson, Eric A. The Nazi Terror: Gestapo, Jews and Ordinary Germans. New York: Basic Books, 1999.

Muselmann Muselmann is German word that translates literally as “Muslim”; the term was widely used among prisoners in C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S to describe peers who were on the verge of death from starvation, exhaustion, and despair. Many prisoners reached this stage soon after their arrival in a camp, due to their inability to adapt to the conditions and the difficulties of accepting the harsh regime. Often, these individuals had belonged to the intelligentsia or the well-to-do classes, and had come to the camps from countries that still had a measure of economic well-being and individual liberty. The psychological shock of daily life in a concentration camp was as lethal to these men and women as the physical hardships were. Others fell victim to extreme hunger, physical overexertion, and corporal punishment. Many prisoners were sick, but they sought to hide their condition, fearing that their admittance to the camp hospital would lead to their being designated for death. Muselmänner (the German plural form of Muselmann) were past the point of trying to hide their condition. They could be identified by such characteristics as a lack of flesh on their bodies, tight yellow skin over their bones, a dull and expressionless look in their eyes, and the inability to stand upright for any length of time. They were indifferent to their surroundings, apathetic, and listless. The Nazis in charge of the camps regarded them as undesirables, since they were incapable of working. Most of the prisoners avoided contact with Muselmänner, as well, afraid that this condition could be in store for them. A person who had reached the Muselmann stage had no chance of survival, and did not remain alive for more than a few days or weeks. The origin of the term has not been established; some have attributed it to a certain similarity between a concentration camp Muselmann and the image of a Muslim prostrating himself in prayer.

“B

y August many had deteriorated badly, both

physically and mentally.… we could only guess at their state of mind, because they had stopped communicating with others and were locked inside themselves: they had become the living dead of the camps.”

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Leipceiger, Nathan. “Remembering the Holocaust: A Concentration Camp Survivor Recalls His Liberation.” Maclean’s, Jan. 23, 1995.

Helen Lewis, A Time to Speak (New York: Carroll & Graf) 1994, p. 71.

Matzner, David. The Muselmann: The Diary of a Jewish Slave Laborer. Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1994.

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Museums and Memorial Institutes

H

olocaust Remembrance Day (Yom ha-Sho’ah) is observed

according to the Jewish calendar on 27 Nisan, which falls during the period when the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising took place, late April to early May. In Israel this is an official memorial day. The main ceremony takes place at Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem, and other events are held throughout the country. Pupils in Israeli schools also commemorate the day. In the United States the day is observed in many cities, communities, and college campuses, with an official ceremony in Washington, DC. The Polish government sponsors a memorial ceremony on April 19.

In Israel, the U N I T E D S TAT E S , and Europe, there are many museums and other memorial institutions devoted to the period of World War II and the H O L O CAU S T . These memorial sites have been established by survivors’ groups and soldiers’ organizations, by synagogues and churches, by families and individuals, by private funds and public allocations. Some of the memorial sites have been built in response to the Jewish injunction to remember, others help fulfill a government’s need to explain a nation’s past to itself. The aim of many memorial institutions and occasions is to educate people of younger generations and to help them develop a sense of shared experience, destiny, responsibility, and meaning for the future. The first memorial sites were the places of destruction themselves. In October 1944, Soviet liberators made the concentration camp at M A J DA N E K , near L U B L I N in P O L A N D , the first memorial and museum of its kind. The only other extermination camp to be left partially standing, at A U S C H W I T Z -Birkenau, was also made a state memorial. Its barracks were converted into national pavilions, and the ruins of its gas chambers were left untouched to recall their former reality. In addition to the memorials and museums located at the sites of former camps in Poland and G E R M A N Y , memorials ranging from elaborate statues and mausoleums to simple plaques now mark some of the sites of D E P O RTAT I O N S , destroyed synagogues, and razed Jewish cemeteries throughout Europe. In many instances, survivors returned to their former homes in Poland and Germany only long enough to erect memorials to their lost families and communities, before moving on. Among the most famous museums and memorial institutions are two in the United States—The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and The Simon Wiesenthal Center—and one is in Israel—Yad Vashem.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Located only 400 yards from the Washington Monument, at the heart of the National Mall in Washington, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is America’s national institution for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history. The world’s largest and most comprehensive Holocaust museum, it also serves as the United States’ memorial to the millions of people murdered during the Holocaust. The museum, which came into being through a unanimous act of the United States Congress in 1980, is designed to be a permanent and powerful reminder to the American people and to the world that humankind must guard forever against the danger of another Holocaust. The museum is also an educational institution dedicated to teaching children and adults, through multimedia presentations, publications, and curriculum resources, and facilitating scholarship on the Holocaust through the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. The USHMM’s permanent exhibition, titled The Holocaust, tells the story of Nazi terror. While it focuses on the six million Jews who were murdered, the museum also tells the tragic story of G Y P S I E S , Poles, Soviet P R I S O N E R S O F WA R , homosexuals, the handicapped, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other victims of Nazi persecution. In addition, it recognizes the American liberators of the E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S and tells another story—about the failure of the free world, including the United States, to stop the Holocaust. Changing exhibits focus on various Holocaust topics. The Wexner Learning Center offers research opportunities with access to

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text, images, maps, music, survivor testimony, and film, via multimedia computers. Special exhibits for children between the ages of eight and eleven are also available. The USHMM opened its doors in 1993. Since then, it has become one of the most-visited museums in Washington, D.C. Located a half-block south of Independence Avenue, the building, adjacent to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, extends the entire length of the block between Fourteenth Street SW and Raoul Wallenberg Place (formerly Fifteenth Street SW). The building comprises 225,000 square feet of floor area on five levels above ground, and a below-ground concourse. The Hall of Witness serves as the museum’s central gathering place, through which visitors pass to all parts of the building. This large, solemn hall, illuminated by natural light, resonates with symbolic references to the Holocaust. A deep crack, a symbol of the rupture of civilization during the Holocaust, runs down one wall of the hall. The Hall of Remembrance, a hexagonally-shaped, skylit memorial projecting from the museum, is a spiritual space, designed as an area for contemplation and reflection as well as for public ceremonies. Along the hallway walls there are niches for candles —universal symbols of remembrance. The hexagon evokes the memory of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum offers many internet-based resources and services, as well. The museum’s internet website (see Suggested Resources, below) offers a comprehensive online learning center featuring free access to texts, bibliographies, timelines, and classroom curriculum materials. In addition, virtual exhibits from the museum’s permanent and traveling collections, featuring multimedia interactive learning activities, are available.

The Tower of Faces in the permanent exhibition at the United States Holocaust Museum.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center The Simon Wiesenthal Center, named for the Viennese Nazi-hunter Simon W I E S E N T H A L , was established in Los Angeles in 1977 by its founder and dean, Rabbi Marvin Hier. In 1979 a museum developed by Holocaust historian Efraim Zuroff was opened. More than 20 years later, the Simon Wiesenthal Musuem of Tolerance is a hands-on, experiential learning center visited by thousands of students and individuals every year. Housed in a five-level structure that includes theaters, an auditorium, multimedia work stations and research areas, the Museum of Tolerance features permanent and traveling exhibitions. The Simon Wiesenthal Center includes more than a museum. With offices around the world, the center is supported by more than 400,000 members in its work on behalf of Holocaust remembrance, the defense of human rights and the Jewish people. Since its establishment, the Wiesenthal Center has focused on political issues related to the Holocaust and has specialized in the use of mass media to educate the public about the events of World War II. Its major campaigns have included efforts to cancel the statute of limitations on war crimes in West Germany, and attempts to force South American governments such as those of Paraguay and Chile to surrender leading Nazi criminals (Dr. Josef M E N G E L E and Walther R AU F F ). The center has also been instrumental in uncovering hundreds of Nazi collaborators of eastern European origin who escaped to Western democracies, and in convincing the governments of G R E AT B R I TA I N , Australia, and Canada to investigate this issue and prosecute the criminals found in those countries. More recent efforts include work on behalf of Holocaust survivors who are entitled to, but have little ability to retrieve, financial reparations awarded to them.

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In 1982, the Wiesenthal Center’s documentary Genocide was awarded an Oscar as the best documentary film of the previous year. In 1997, the center produced an Academy Award-winning documentary called The Long Way Home, which examines the plight of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust trying to rebuild their lives during the post-war years of 1945–1948. The center has also videotaped more than four hundred hours of testimony by Holocaust survivors and liberators. A key component in the outreach and education mission of the Simon Wiesenthal Center is its Internet-based Simon Wiesenthal Center Multimedia Learning Center Online (see Suggested Resources, below) featuring more than 3000 searchable text documents, tens of thousands of images, teacher and curriculum resources, virtual exhibits, special document collections, and access to many of the resources of the Museum of Tolerance.

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem (The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority) is an Israeli national institution that commemorates the Jews who fell victim to the Holocaust. Yad Vashem was first proposed in September 1942, by Mordecai Shenhavi. He recommended “the commemoration of the Holocaust in the Diaspora, and of the participation of the Jewish people in the Allied armies.” He also proposed the name Yad Vashem (meaning “a monument and a name”), from Isaiah 56:5: “I will give them, in my house and in my walls, a monument and a name, better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall never be effaced.” On May 2, 1945, Shenhavi submitted his idea to the Jewish National Institutions in Jerusalem. This led to a recommendation that a center in Jerusalem be established that would include an eternal light for the victims; a registry of their names; a memorial for the destroyed Jewish communities; a monument for the fighters of the ghettos; a memorial tower in honor of all the Jewish fighters against the Nazis; a permanent exhibit on the C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S and extermination camps; and a tribute to the “R I G H T E O U S A M O N G T H E N AT I O N S ”. In February 1946, Yad Vashem opened an office in Jerusalem and a branch office in Tel Aviv; preliminary planning was begun. The outbreak of the Israeli War of Independence in May 1948, however, brought Yad Vashem planning and operations to an almost complete standstill. In 1950, planning for Yad Vashem resumed. A hill in west Jerusalem was chosen as the site for the memorial. A building to house the archives, the library, and the administrative offices was completed in 1957, and Yad Vashem moved in that same year. On April 13, 1961, the Hall of Remembrance was dedicated, symbolizing the 6 million Jews killed. The walls of the Hall of Remembrance are made of huge basalt slabs and it has a tent-shaped roof (hence its Hebrew name, Ohel Yizkor, or Tent of Remembrance). Alongside the Tent of Remembrance is the Historical Museum, which contains a permanent exhibition of authentic photographs, artifacts, and documents relating to the Holocaust and heroism. The Hall of Names, which was dedicated on April 7, 1968, holds the pages of testimony in which the names of the Holocaust victims are registered by surviving relatives and friends. In 1982, the building with an art museum and an auditorium was opened to the public. Three years later, the Soldiers’, Partisans’, and Ghetto Fighters’ Monument was dedicated. A monument to the millions of Jews who perished in the extermination camps is situated on the northwestern edge of the large plaza between the museum and the Hall of Remembrance. And in 1987, the Children’s Memorial was dedicated, commemorating the 1 .5 million Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust.

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Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, Jerusalem, Israel.

The Yad Vashem Archive contains millions of pages of documents, testimonies, and memoirs in many languages. It is one of the largest and most important collections relating to the Holocaust. The library’s volumes, mainly dealing with the Holocaust period, also include works on the growth of modern A N T I S E M I T I S M , FA S C I S M , and Nazism; on the background of World War II; and on the fate of the Holocaust survivors. Educational programs affiliated with Yad Vashem include the International School for Holocaust Studies, which opened in 1999, with course offerings in eight languages and more than 90 faculty members; seminars, conferences, and publications for educators; curriculum materials for classroom use; and online resources available through the Yad Vashem Internet website (see Suggested Resources, below). One unique feature of Yad Vashem is the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations. A public committee was appointed by Yad Vashem to determine who was entitled to the “Righteous Among the Nations” medal. The award is given to those non-Jews who, at the risk of their own lives and for humanitarian reasons, saved the lives of Jews. Most of the trees along the avenue have been planted by the rescuers themselves; the first trees were planted on May 1, 1962. The Yad Vashem site in Jerusalem continues to evolve in its mission to preserve the memories of the lives lost during the Holocaust. As part of an initiative called Yad Vashem 2001, the entire museum complex will be expanded in an area that is about three times larger than the current site. The new archive and library building, which opened in March 2000, will include more documents from Europe, additional videotaped interviews with Holocaust survivors and previously uncollected rare artifacts belonging to those who lived during the Holocaust era. In addition, the project calls new historical and art museum spaces, as well as for the complete computerization of Yad Vashem’s documentation system, which includes millions of names of Jewish victims in the Hall of Names, making Yad Vashem’s retrieval system among the most advanced and accessible to the public worldwide. Yad Vashem has become a major national shrine, and more than 2 million people, from Israel and abroad, visit it every year. A visit to Yad Vashem is part of the program for official guests on state visits to Israel.

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SUGGESTED RESOURCES Abells, Chana Byers. The Children We Remember: Photographs from the Archives of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, Jerusalem, Israel. New York: Greenwillow Books, 1986. Arad, Yitzhak. The Pictorial History of the Holocaust. New York: Macmillan, 1990. Cole, Tim. Selling the Holocaust; From Auschwitz to Schindler: How History Is Bought, Packaged, and Sold. New York: Routledge, 1999. Gilbert, Martin. Holocaust Journey: Traveling in Search of the Past. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Saidel, Rochelle G. Never Too Late to Remember: The Politics Behind New York City’s Holocaust Museum. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1996.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center Online. [Online] http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/ (accessed on September 4, 2000). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. [Online] http://www.ushmm.org (accessed on September 4, 2000). Weinberg, Jeshajahu. The Holocaust Museum in Washington. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1995.

Yad Vashem Online. [Online] http://www.yad-vashem.org.il/ (accessed on September 4, 2000). Young, James Edward. The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

Mushkin, Eliyahu (d. 1942)

Eliyahu Mushkin was the chairman of the Minsk J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council) and a supporter of its underground and the local PA R T I S A N S . A native of M I N S K , Mushkin was an engineer and a member of the local government staff. Shortly after the Germans occupied Minsk at the end of June 1941, Mushkin was appointed Judenrat chairman because of his knowledge of German or, according to one version, because he was recommended for the post by a member of the city council. Mushkin lost little time in establishing contact with the Minsk ghetto underground. He was helpful in aiding Jews to escape from the ghetto, and he supplied the partisan units in the area with money, medicines, and equipment. Mushkin exercised a decisive influence on the attitude of the other members of the Judenrat, which for all practical purposes became the executive arm of the underground and carried out its decisions. Mushkin was able to warn the underground of impending dangers, and the Jews respected him. His close contacts with the underground, coupled with the duties that the German authorities imposed on him, put Mushkin in a precarious situation. He had to be extremely careful, and could not afford to trust even some of his own staff. In February 1942 Mushkin was arrested under circumstances that are not entirely clear. One report was that he was charged with attempting to bribe a G E S TA P O officer to release a Jewish prisoner. According to another version, he was arrested when someone informed on the Judenrat to the Gestapo, revealing that the Judenrat was helping the partisans. A third version is that Mushkin had given refuge to a German officer who sought to avoid frontline service, and that it was this officer who gave him away. Mushkin was tortured and, a month after his arrest, he was hanged. The members of his family were killed during one of the night-time killing sprees known as “night Aktionen.”

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SUGGESTED RESOURCES “Jews in the Soviet Union.” The Jewish Student Online Research Center. [Online] http:// us-israel.org/jsource/Holocaust/sutoc.html (accessed on September 4, 2000). Smolar, Hersh. The Minsk Ghetto: Soviet-Jewish Partisans Against the Nazis. Washington, DC: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1989.

Natzweiler-Struthof Natzweiler-Struthof was a C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P near the town of Natzweiler, in Alsace, F R A N C E . One of the smallest concentration camps, it was located 31 miles (50 kilometers) south of Strasbourg, on a hill in the Vosges Mountains. It was established after Nazi official Albert Speer had been on an inspection tour of France, which G E R M A N Y had recently occupied. While there, he noted the presence of granite deposits in the Natzweiler area. The German Earth and Stone Works Ltd., an SS company, promptly followed up on Speer’s observations. By the fall of 1940, the company had launched a project to quarry the granite, with the work to be done by prisoners. The first batch of prisoners—300 German nationals—arrived on the site in May 1941. At that time, construction of the camp had not been completed. The prisoners were assigned temporary housing in the former Hotel Struthof. The number of prisoners increased at a slow pace, as compared to the rate of growth in other concentration camps. It was only on August 15, 1942, that Natzweiler became available for routine assignment of prisoners by the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA). By the end of 1943, there were 2,000 prisoners in the main camp. Most labored in arms production. At no time were more than 500 inmates put to work in the quarries, a project that turned out to be costly. In the summer of that year, several sheds were erected in the quarry area. These served as workshops in which prisoners overhauled Junkers aircraft engines. In the same area, deep tunnels were dug to provide space for underground factories that would be safe from air attacks. The Natzweiler camp was expanded in 1944, as part of Nazi efforts to relocate vital armaments plants to underground facilities. Natzweiler also had several new satellite camps on German soil, mainly in Baden-Württemberg. One of these camps was in Neckarelz, where a gypsum mine was converted into an intricate tunnel system. Daimler-Benz Aircraft moved its engine plant there from the B E R L I N area. This was a joint project undertaken by Daimler-Benz, the Natzweiler camp, and the Ministry of Armaments. Another satellite was Leonberg, near Stuttgart, where, in the spring of 1944, the Messerschmitt Aircraft Company put an unused highway tunnel to new use. Leonberg started operations with 1,500 prisoners; their number rose to 3,000 within a year. Yet another satellite was the Schörzingen camp, established in February 1944 to extract crude oil from oil shale. This was one of the Nazi regime’s desperate, lastminute efforts to bounce back from the losses of raw materials caused by the ongoing German retreat from the East and by bombing from the air. At the end of 1944, more than 1,000 prisoners were working in Schörzingen, and the plan was to bring in another 4,000. The total number of prisoners in the Natzweiler satellites in October 1944 was 19,000. In Natzweiler itself, the number had risen to between 7,000 and 8,000. During the course of 1944, members of the French Résistance were among the prisoners

French Résistance

An organized, underground effort on the part of French citizens to fight back against the German occupying forces in their country.

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brought to Natzweiler. Most of them were killed immediately. In a special category were the so-called NN (Nacht Und Nebel) prisoners. They were chosen by the SS for road construction and work in the quarries, where conditions were at their worst. An RSHA order of September 24, 1944, had decreed that “all Germanic NN prisoners” were to be transferred to Natzweiler. The death rate was exceptionally high for this group, due to harsh working conditions and the abusive treatment of the prisoners. In August 1943, a gas chamber was built in Natzweiler, in one of the buildings that had formed part of the hotel compound. The contractors for the project, Waffen-SS Natzweiler, left behind a rare document in which, unlike the coded terminology generally used by the Nazis, specific mention was made of “the construction of a gas chamber at Struthof.” This clear language appears in a bill for the job that the SS sent to the Strasbourg University Institute of Anatomy. The director of that institute was Professor August Hirt. At least 130 prisoners were transferred from A U S C H W I T Z to be killed in the Natzweiler gas chamber for his collection of skeletons. Most of these prisoners were Jews. Another member of the Strasbourg University faculty, Professor Otto Bickenbach, also took advantage of the Natzweiler gas chamber, to conduct experiments on prisoners with antidotes of phosgene, a poisonous gas. These victims were G Y P S I E S (Romani) who had been transferred from Auschwitz the previous year to serve as human guinea pigs for SS doctors experimenting with antityphus injections. The main camp was disbanded in August and September 1944, but most of the satellites were evacuated only in March 1945. The prisoners were sent on D E AT H M A R C H E S , in the general direction of D AC H AU . In 1989, a memorial plaque was placed on the wall of the Natzweiler-Struthof crematorium in memory of the Jews who were put to death at the camp.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Koestler, Arthur. Scum of the Earth. New York: Hippocrene, 1991. Weisberg, Richard H. Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

NAZI-DEUTSCH. SEE SPRACHREGELUNG. Nazi Party The Nazi party was in power in G E R M A N Y from 1933 to 1945. It was formally known as the National Socialist German Workers’ party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; NSDAP). Founded on January 5, 1919, the Nazi party had its origins in the Political Workers’ Circle (Politischer Arbeiterzirkel), a small rightwing group. This group met beginning in November 1918 under the leadership of Anton Drexler, a locksmith, and Karl Harrer, a reporter. Rabid A N T I S E M I T I S M — hatred toward Jews—characterized its meetings. This hatred of Jews, and the murderous governmental policies that eventually stemmed from it, would become more central to the Nazi party as time went on. In 1919, under Drexler, this circle became the German Workers’ party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei). Its foundation marked the beginning of the development of politically organized National Socialism. In early 1920, it was renamed the NSDAP.

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Nazi party members fill a stadium at a party meeting in Nuremberg, 1937.

Adolf H I T L E R joined the party on September 12, 1919, and became its leader in 1921. The party was banned in 1923, as a result of Hitler’s failed “Beer Hall Putsch”—his attempt to take over the German government. The ban lasted until 1925, when the Nazi party was re-founded. The party remained in existence until September 20, 1945. On that date, soon after Germany’s defeat in World War II (1939–1945), the victorious Allies declared the party illegal. The Nazi party had an authoritarian structure, based on what was termed the “leadership principle” (Führerprinzip). All authority and responsibility flowed downward from the top levels. At its head stood the “leader” (Führer), Hitler.

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HATRED IN A NEW GENERATION After the death and devastation that Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party forced on millions of people in Europe, it is hard to believe that Nazism could be embraced by anyone. However, there are neo-Nazi groups— also called white supremacists, skinheads, Aryan supremacists, or whiterights groups—that have revived the spirit and harsh rhetoric of Nazism. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is a long-established and well-known American hate group that attacks blacks, Catholics, and Jews. The group’s primary target has historically been African Americans. In recent years, their message has focused on the perceived need for “white rights” protection from government policies of non-discrimination. Neo-Nazi groups are generally located in the United States and Canada, in Germany, Austria, and France, and in Australia. Neo-Nazis focus most of their vitriol on Jews, praising the philosophy and tactics Hitler and his henchmen used to rid the world of people they considered inferior to themselves. As a rule, the Neo-Nazi groups do not have many members—perhaps a few thousand in each of the countries where organized groups exist—but their voices are widespread. They abuse the concept of

Beneath him was the leader’s deputy. The political organization of the party was run by the eighteen highest-ranking party officials; most of them also held other high government posts. The next thirty-two highest-ranking Nazi party officials were responsible for the party’s smaller, regional operations. Its affiliated groups included the SA (Sturmabteilungen; Stormtroopers) and the S S (Schutzstaffel, meaning “defense unit”; also called black-shirts). Another major Nazi group was the H I T L E R Y O U T H (Hitlerjugend). There were also labor groups and teachers’ unions. This diffuse and widespread organization helped Hitler to keep a firm grip on power. It led to harsh rivalry among the Nazi officials, which allowed Hitler to reserve all the main decisions for himself. The Nazi party was of little political consequence in the early 1920s, but it grew steadily in the following decade. Germans were suffering from a loss of international prestige due to their defeat in World War I (1914–1918), and their economy was in shreds. Poverty and unemployment were widespread. Germans, desperate, began to look for different political solutions to their problems. Hitler and the Nazi party spoke to this deep dissatisfaction among the German citizens, bitterly criticizing the existing democratic form of government, the Weimar Republic.

Reichstag

German Parliament.

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The Nazi party also blamed “International Jewry” for Germany’s economic woes, thus providing the Germans with a convenient scapegoat, or target, for their anger and frustration. The party’s strength grew dramatically, and in January 1933, Hitler was named chancellor of Germany. In elections in March of that year, the Nazi party won control of the Reichstag . Shortly thereafter, Hitler declared all other political parties illegal.

NAZI PARTY

“free speech” to promote messages of hate in the media, through public demonstrations, and on the Internet. The relative anonymity and virtually unlimited reach of the Internet has greatly increased hate groups’ ability to spread their propaganda. They monitor discussions in public newsgroups and chat rooms to recruit members; they bash participants whose views differ from their own, and court those whom they believe can be manipulated. To spread their messages of hate, they prey especially on young people who seem lonely, confused, or emotionally fragile. The twisted arguments of Holocaust deniers and revisionists are used to try to persuade others to accept their point of view. Wherever they are, and whatever names they are known by, these are all “hate groups.” They promote intolerance, prejudice, and violence against people who are different from themselves. The most common targets are Jews, blacks, and immigrants, but Latinos, Asians, homosexuals, and Catholics may also be recipients of organized hatred when they constitute a minority in a country or region.

The Nazi party’s membership among ordinary German citizens increased from some 6,000 in 1922 to 8.5 million in 1945. Much of the party’s popularity was based on mass mobilization: rallies, demonstrations, and other forms of political expression. Under Hitler, the Nazi party was the only legal political party in Germany, and the Nazis’ yearly rallies in Nuremberg became the public center of Germany’s political life. The party’s “platform” of 25 major objectives was published in 1920. It was formulated by Hitler and Drexler and included militaristic, nationalistic, social, economic, and antisemitic clauses. Point 4 of the party program, for example, stated that only the German “people” (Volk) could be citizens of the state—and only people of “German blood,” regardless of religious affiliation, could be Volk. This meant, among other things, that no Jew was regarded as a “member of the nation” (Volksgenosse). Other groups singled out for severe discrimination included G Y P S I E S and the disabled; Jews, however, were universally victimized with particular brutality. These Nazi policies were to lead eventually, in World War II (1939–1945) and the Holocaust, to the deaths of millions of people.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Brustein, William. The Logic of Evil: The Social Origins of the Nazi Party, 1925–1933. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Fischer, Klaus P. Nazi Germany: A New History. New York: Continuum, 1995. Lace, William W. The Nazis. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1998. Nardo, Don. The Rise of Nazi Germany. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Noakes, J., and Pridham, P., eds. Nazism, 1919–1945: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts. New York: Schocken Books, 1990.

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NAZI WAR CRIMINALS. SEE TRIALS OF THE WAR CRIMINALS.

Nebe, Arthur (1894–1945)

Arthur Nebe was an officer in the Reich criminal police. In World War I (1914–1918) he volunteered for the army and in 1916 he was promoted to the rank of second lieutenant. He was discharged from the army in March 1920 as a regimental adjutant in the engineering corps, with the rank of lieutenant. Nebe began studying law and legal medicine at Berlin University, and in April 1920 his candidacy to the criminal police was accepted. On July 1, 1923, despite initially failing the examination, he was appointed commander of the criminal police, thanks to the intervention of two officers, one of whom was Dr. Bernhard Weiss, deputy commandant of the Berlin police.

antisemite

A person who discriminates against those who are Jewish and their culture.

After World War I the criminal police in Prussia were not highly regarded, and the Nazi press, led by Joseph G O E B B E L S , began to mock Weiss, who was of Jewish origin. Nebe, now dealing mainly with murder and drug cases, also made fun of Weiss behind his back. In June 1931 Nebe joined the SS, in July the N A Z I PA R T Y , and in November the SA (Sturmabteilung; Storm Troopers). In 1932 he formed Nazi party groups among the Berlin criminal-police officers. A racist and nationalist career officer who joined the Nazis only after their impressive victories in the elections, Nebe tried to create the impression that he had always been an antisemite , and he took advantage of the political situation in order to advance to the top of the operative branch of the state police. On April 1, 1933, Nebe was accepted to serve in the G E S TA P O , with the rank of Kriminalrat (criminal-police commissar). About six months later, on October 1, he was promoted to the rank of Regierungsrat (government adviser), and two months later to the rank of Oberregierungsrat (chief government adviser). In 1936 Nebe rose to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer (Major), and on June 30, 1937, to director of the Reich criminal police, thus becoming head of the united police (Kripo) of all G E R M A N Y . In 1938 he rose to the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel), and then to that of SS-Standartenführer (Colonel). Nebe was made an SSOberführer (Brigadier General) on April 20, 1939. On December 14, 1940, Nebe rose to the rank of Generalmajor der Polizei, and about two weeks later, to that of Brigadeführer (Major General) in the SS. Nebe volunteered as a participant in the O P E R AT I O NA L S QUA D S (Einsatzgruppen) that helped invade the S OV I E T U N I O N , and in August 1941 he commanded Operational Squad B on the central front. The units under his command are estimated to have killed more than 45,400 people, mostly Jews, by late October of that year. Nebe’s involvement in killing on behalf of the Nazis began with his role in the E U T H A NA S I A P R O G R A M , which he was associated with from its outset. He personally transmitted Viktor Brack’s instructions to Dr. Albert Widmann to help the Führer’s Chancellery find suitable mass killing methods. In September 1941 Nebe again summoned Widmann, instructing him to find out whether explosives could be used as effectively as firearms in the mass killing of Jews in the M I N S K vicinity, and whether this could be accomplished without attracting attention. Nebe was perhaps not the loyal Nazi he appeared to be; he established and maintained contact with members of the German opposition movement, including

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Ludwig Beck and, later, Hans Oster. Nebe eventually became one of the most important informers for the opposition movement. He retained this contact through his friend Hans Bernd Gisevius, who served in the Gestapo, the Ministry of the Interior, and the consular service in Switzerland, and who in 1943 and 1944 was an informer for the Americans. After the failed attempt on the life of Hitler in July 1944, Nebe took part in the arrests of the conspirators, but after three days, on July 23, 1944, he disappeared. On January 16, 1945, after a simulated suicide attempt, he himself was arrested and implicated in the assassination attempt. He had already been expelled from the Nazi party on a charge of treason. He was first demoted to the rank of private in the SS, and then finally expelled. He was sentenced to death by hanging. Before the sentence was carried out on April 3, 1945, Nebe managed to leave perplexing “confessions” that implicated many acquaintances and associates in serious crimes.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Arad, Yitzhak. The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads. Washington, DC: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1989. Burleigh, Michael. Death and Deliverance: “Euthanasia” in Germany 1900-1945. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Thomsett, Michael C. The German Opposition to Hitler: The Resistance, the Underground, and Assassination Plots, 1938–1945. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997.

NEO-NAZISM. SEE HOLOCAUST, DENIAL OF. Netherlands, The Jews have lived in the area known today as the Netherlands (often called Holland, which is actually a region of the country) for many hundreds of years. They were subjected to terrible persecution in the Middle Ages. But from the late 1600s, the Jews of the Netherlands enjoyed general tolerance and safety. At the time of its occupation by the Germans in 1940, the Netherlands had a Jewish population of 140,000, representing 1.6 percent of the total population. Amsterdam, the capital city, had the largest Jewish community in the Netherlands—in 1940, about half of the country’s total Jewish population. The Nazi treatment of the Amsterdam Jews and the status given to Amsterdam’s Jewish Council (the Joodse Raad; see also J U D E N R AT ) affected all the Jews of the Netherlands. The growth of Nazism in G ERMANY and of similar racist movements in other European countries also had an effect on the Netherlands, leading to manifestations of ANTISEMITISM .

From 1933 to 1940 After Adolf H I T L E R and his N A Z I PA R T Y came to power in Germany in 1933, many people (Jews and non-Jews) from Germany moved to the Netherlands. Dutch Jews hated the Nazis and wanted to express their feelings with actions, not just words. To prevent them from taking potentially dangerous actions and to find a solution for the refugee problem, the Committee for Special Jewish Affairs was established. Before long, care of refugees and emigration assistance became the

The Netherlands.

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T

hrough legislation and economic isolation, Jews were eventually

committee’s main activities. Refugees who had entered the country illegally were held in camps. In 1939, W E S T E R B O R K was put up for this purpose, in the village of that name, to be maintained by the Committee for Special Jewish Affairs. From 1939 to 1940, a total of 34,000 refugees entered the Netherlands. Of these, 15,174 were still there when the Germans invaded the country in May 1940.

excluded from the public life of the Netherlands in virtually every way.

May 1940 to Mid-1941 On May 9–10, 1940, the Germans invaded the Netherlands. Great panic seized the Jews; many tried to flee to Britain or to the south, and several dozen Jews committed suicide rather than face the persecution they expected would take place. In the first few months, the Germans behaved in a restrained manner, trying to gain popularity among the Dutch population, who were stunned by the course of events. At Hitler’s express order, a civil administration was installed in the Netherlands, under SS administration. A Dutch administration existed side by side with the German administration. Since Queen Wilhelmina and the Dutch government had fled to Britain and set up a government-in-exile there, the main secretaries of the government ministries constituted the highest Dutch authority in the Netherlands. On November 4, 1940, an order was given for all Jewish civil servants to be “suspended” from their jobs. The Nazis ordered that Jewish-owned or -controlled businesses be registered. This registration was a first step toward “A RYANIZATION ”—the transfer of all economic assets to non-Jewish ownership. On January 10, 1941, a decree was issued under which all Jews, and any person with a Jewish grandfather or grandmother, had to be registered. A total of 159,806 persons registered, 19,561 of them the offspring of mixed marriages (see M ISCHLINGE ). These measures, and others that followed, convinced the Jews that an authoritative body should be formed to serve as the leadership of Dutch Jewry. So in December 1940, the Jewish Coordinating Committee was created. The German occupation of the Netherlands led to a decline in the economic situation and threw many people out of work. The Dutch administration, under pressure from the Germans, forced the unemployed to take up work in Germany. This caused much resentment among their families, and the clandestine and antiNazi Communist party sought to exploit this mood among the population by staging strikes and public demonstrations. Members of the Dutch Nazi party were also dissatisfied. They had hoped that the Germans would entrust the power in the Netherlands to them, thereby enabling them to purge the country of Jews. The German authorities, however, restrained the Dutch Nazis and did not permit them to run riot. In early 1941, the Dutch Nazis decided to take matters into their own hands, launching an anti-Jewish campaign of their own. In the Jewish quarter, Jews and non-Jews organized to resist the Nazi attacks. In February 11, during a march organized by the Dutch Nazis, a clash took place that cost the life of one of the Nazi Storm Troopers. The Germans reacted by sealing off the Jewish quarter. A week later, German police entered a Jewish café. The owner, who mistook the police for Dutch Nazis, put into motion a prearranged plan, in which ammonium gas was sprayed on them. In the wake of that incident, the Jewish quarter was blockaded and young Jewish men were hunted down; 389 people were arrested and taken to B U C H E N WA L D concentration camp. Fifty of them died within three months, and the others were deported to M AU T H AU S E N . Of the whole group, only one person survived the ordeal. In September 1941 more Jews were arrested and sent straight to Mauthausen. The arrests and the brutal treatment of the prisoners by the German police shocked the people of Amsterdam. Communist activists used the occasion to call a

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Jewish books and ritual objects hidden behind a plastered niche in the Meijerplein synagogue in Amsterdam, uncovered by the Germans.

strike on February 25. The strike soon encompassed all sectors of the population, and the entire transportation system, the large factories, and the public services came to a standstill. It also spread to other cities in the region. The Germans were taken by surprise and sent out large forces to suppress it. This strike had far-reaching consequences. The German administration no longer had any doubts about the failure of their plan to gain support for Nazi ideology among the Dutch population. The events of February 1941 led to a harsher anti-Jewish policy.

Separation The first step toward implementation of the Nazis’ “F I N A L S O L U T I O N ” was the separation of the Jews from the general population. In the summer of 1941,

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Jews in the Netherlands were barred from public places. A night curfew and limited shopping hours were imposed on them. Jews were allowed to use public transportation by special permit only, and then only if space was available. In August, all Jewish students were ordered removed from public schools and put into special Jewish schools to be set up for this purpose. As for the universities, no new Jewish students had been admitted since early 1941; the exclusion of Jews at this level would apply to those already enrolled in 1942. On September 15, 1941, Jews were barred from public assemblies, museums, libraries, public markets, the stock exchange, and so on. Certain halls, stores, and boardinghouses were designated for Jews only, and placed out of bounds to non-Jews.

Organized Plunder The next step toward the “Final Solution” was to confiscate personal property and valuables from the Jews. The first German agency to embark upon this in the Netherlands was the Rosenberg Special Operations Staff. Alfred R O S E N B E R G ’s men were interested mainly in acquiring public and private Jewish libraries. Rosenberg also received Hitler’s permission to seize the household furniture left behind by the Jews who were deported and to distribute it among the German population in the eastern territories. This operation (called Aktion M, for Möbel, furniture) was of enormous dimensions. From the Netherlands alone, in a single year, 17,235 apartments (9,981 in Amsterdam) were emptied of their contents. But Rosenberg’s was an independent operation, not part of the plunder program carried out by the German administration in the Netherlands, which eventually stripped Jews of all their money and property.

Deportation In late 1941, the Germans told the Jewish Council that camps were being opened to which “unemployed” Jews would be sent for work. In reality, this was a step toward eventual deportation. The camps were German F O R C E D - L A B O R camps, and the Jews endured much harsher conditions than those of Dutch workers. Not only unemployed Jews were sent to the camps. Those with jobs were also affected, when the Germans canceled their work permits and thereby turned them into “unemployed” people. Strong pressure was put on the Jewish Council to fill the constantly increasing quota for workers. At first the Council refused to submit, but later it cooperated. The deportation plan also provided for the removal of the Jews from all the provinces, with most to be gathered together in Amsterdam. This phase was launched on January 14, 1942, beginning with the town of Zaandam. The Dutch nationals among the Jews were ordered to move to Amsterdam, while those who were stateless were sent to the Westerbork camp. Not all the Jews were permitted to move to Amsterdam; a new camp was set up, near Vught, as an alternative to Amsterdam or Westerbork. Another step designed to ensure that no Jew escaped the German net was the introduction of the yellow badges (see B A D G E , J E W I S H ). All Jews were required to wear them; any person caught without the badge after the appointed day was threatened with deportation to Mauthausen. The Dutch population disapproved of this humiliation of the Jews, and some of them expressed their feelings by wearing, in public, a yellow badge of their own. This particular protest movement, however, did not last for long. The yellow badge was soon overshadowed by far more ominous developments.

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Jews in Amsterdam on their way to the collection point for deportation (1943).

On June 26, 1942, the Germans declared that “the Jews of the Netherlands will be employed by the police in labor camps in Germany—men, women, and entire families.” From that point on, the Nazi-administered C E N T R A L O F F I C E F O R J E W I S H E M I G R AT I O N had the decisive say on Jewish policy. The German administration decreed that at first, young Jews, for the most part of German origin, would be sent to the labor camps; each would receive an individual notification and would have to register with the Jewish Council. The Amsterdam Jews panicked, and only a small number registered. In order to frighten the Jews into registering, a large manhunt was conducted when the date for the first transport drew near. In this manhunt, 540 Jews were arrested and held as hostages. Still, the quota that had been fixed for the first three transports was not filled. When the trains arrived at Westerbork and the camp commandant realized that he was 400 Jews short of the 2,000 he was to move to the Auschwitz-Birkenau E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P , he made up the shortage with prisoners from Westerbork. The removal of entire families, including the old and the very young, left no doubt that the term “employed by the police” was no more than an effort to camouflage what was really the deportation of Dutch Jewry. Large sectors of the population reacted with fury to this development. The country’s churches took an unprecedented unified stand in protest. They called upon all clergy to read the text of their protest at the following Sunday’s services. The German administration put heavy pressure on the churches to call off the public protest, and the Protestant churches gave in. But the Catholic archbishop, Johannes de Jong, insisted that the protest telegram to the Germans’ commissioner, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, be read out. The Germans retaliated by arresting all Jewish converts to Catholicism—201 people, some of them monks and nuns—and deporting them to Auschwitz. The public protests had no effect on the Germans, who continued to send Jews to Westerbork and from there to A U S C H W I T Z and S O B I B Ó R . The German plans were helped by the Dutch agencies’ readiness to cooperate. Despite the visible disapproval of some segments of the population, the municipal administration, railway workers, and Dutch police, with few exceptions, all contributed to the roundup of the Jews and their expulsion from the country.

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T

he Germans had a plan for relieving some of the

congestion at Westerbork: in a single month, the Germans sent 7,463 Jews to their death in extermination camps in the East. Soon afterward, the deportations to Westerbork were resumed at an accelerated pace.

On October 2, 1942, a countrywide operation was launched to speed up the pace of deportation. All the Jewish men in labor camps in the Netherlands were transferred to Westerbork, where they were joined by their families from Amsterdam—a total of 12,296 people. The Westerbork camp could not possibly accommodate such a large number, and overnight, conditions there became utterly unbearable. To reduce the numbers of detainees at Westerbork, the Germans raised the quota for the trains taking Jews to the East. In May 1943, the rate of D E P O RTA T I O N S was accelerated. When the supply of Jews for deportation ran dry, another wide-ranging manhunt took place. In this operation, on June 20, 1943, some 5,524 Jews were arrested. By that summer, only a small remnant of Jews was left. On the eve of the Jewish New Year, September 29, 1943, the last roundup took place. At that time, 2,000 Jews, including the Jewish Council leaders and senior staff, were taken to Westerbork. The deportations were based on a systematic method and proceeded gradually, enabling groups or individuals to have their deportation postponed or speeded up. Very few Jews deported from the Netherlands survived the H O L O CAU S T .

Hiding Out and Escaping By the summer of 1942, Jews who had not responded to calls for deportation had to go into hiding. Their number grew, especially in 1943. In the early stages, they used their personal contacts with non-Jews to find hiding places. Later, groups and organizations were formed for the purpose. It is believed that about 25,000 Jews went into hiding, of whom about one third fell into German hands. Among these was the family of Anne F R A N K . About 4,500 children were hidden; only a very few were discovered by the Germans. Non-Jews who were caught giving refuge to Jews in their homes were not executed, but they were sent to Nazi concentration camps, where many perished.

After the Holocaust The reintegration of the Jews into Dutch society after the end of the war in 1945 was a lengthy and painful process. The Netherlands had suffered more from the German occupation than any other country outside Eastern Europe, and its shattered economy needed to be rebuilt. Antisemitism in government and business circles led to a tendency not to permit the Jews to regain the positions they had held before the war. The Jews also had to fight to recover their property. A bitter struggle was waged over the war orphans. The groups that had specialized in hiding the children felt that they should be the ones to take care of them now that the war was over. They succeeded in having a royal decision passed in their favor, and then a law, authorizing a committee (made up largely of Christians) to determine which orphans should stay with the families that had saved them and which should be put under Jewish guardianship. Of the 3,481 children registered with the committee, 1,540 were restored to their parents, or to one of them. In the end, 360 children (17.5 percent of the orphans) remained with non-Jewish families. In two widely publicized cases, the Christian families refused to follow the courts’ decision to give up the children, and smuggled them out of the country. collaborated

Helped the enemy.

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Several trials were held of Jews who had collaborated with the Germans. The resistance organizations and the Dutch government-in-exile had planned to conduct trials against Germans who had committed crimes in the Netherlands and against Dutch collaborators. However, due to the staggering number of suspects (130,000) and the conciliatory policy adopted by the postwar Dutch government,

NEUENGAMME

only a fraction of these cases reached the courts. A total of 242 Germans were tried, of whom 203 were sentenced. Of these, 18 were sentenced to death; only five of them were actually executed. The death sentences of three defendants who had been tried for their crimes against the Jews were commuted to life imprisonment. But when the government wanted to release them in 1972, the storm of public protest forced the government to reverse the decision. In January 1989, the last two remaining prisoners, Ferdinand aus der Fünten, who oversaw mass roundups of Jews, and Franz Fischer, who was responsible for the deportation of 13,000 Dutch Jews to extermination camps, were granted amnesty by the Dutch government. This pardon led to angry demonstrations in many parts of the country. Of the Dutch collaborators, many of whom had tortured their victims, only four were executed. The collaborators who were sentenced to prison, including those sentenced to life terms, were pardoned after a relatively short time and released.

SEE ALSO TRIALS OF WAR CRIMINALS. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Camp of Hope and Despair: Witnesses of Westerbork, 1939–1945 [videorecording]. Ergo Media, 1994. Frank, Anne. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. Bantam Books, 1993. Friedman, Carl. Nightfather. New York: Persea Books, 1995. Hillesum, Etty. An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941–1943. New York: Pantheon, 1983. Moore, Bob. Victims and Survivors: The Nazi Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, 1940–1945. New York: Arnold, 1997.

Neuengamme Situated near Hamburg, G E R M A N Y , Neuengamme was initially an annex of the S AC H S E N H AU S E N concentration camp. Eventually Neuengamme itself had many satellite camps. The first group of prisoners arrived at Neuengamme on December 13, 1938; their task was to build the camp. They were housed in a former brick factory. That very factory was the reason for the establishment of a concentration camp in Hamburg, which before then had only temporary, small camps (Wittmoor and Fuhlsbüttel). The SS wanted to reactivate the brick factory and use its products in building the huge public structures that were being planned for the city. In April 1940, the German Earth and Stone Works Ltd. (Deutsche Erd-und Steinwerke GmbH), an SS company, signed an agreement with the city of Hamburg that provided for a substantial expansion of the brick factory, the digging of a canal to connect the factory with a tributary of the Elbe River, and a train track siding to link it to the railway network. All of this work was to be done by prisoners. As a result of the agreement, barracks were put up and more prisoners were brought in, the total reaching about 1,000. Beginning in the fall of 1941, thousands of Soviet P R I S O N E R S O F WA R were brought there as well. Soviet prisoners eventually became the largest national group in the camp, numbering 34,500, including 5,900 women. Neuengamme became an independent concentration camp in June 1940. In 1942, private firms such as the well-known Walther weapons factory established branches at Neuengamme. Numerous annexes to the camp were set up at various

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centers of the armament industry, especially the Bremen and Hamburg shipbuilding and machine works. They were also established in Hannover and in the industrial area of Brunswick, which adjoined the Volkswagen Company (the current site of Wolfsburg) and the Hermann Göring Works (today the location of the town of Salzgitter). By 1945, there were seventy Neuengamme annexes. Most of the new prisoners were put into these satellites. In 1944, the main camp had a prisoner population of 12,000; about twice that number were in its satellites. Beginning in the summer of 1944, large transports of Jewish prisoners were brought in, mainly from H U N G A RY and P O L A N D . Some 13,000 Jews prisoners passed through the main camp and its annexes (among them 3,000 women) in 1944 and 1945. It is estimated that 106,000 prisoners were sent to Neuengamme during its existence. The death rate there was high, in comparison to those of other C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S situated in Germany, and especially in the early years, when the brick factory was being reactivated. It is believed that at least 55,000 prisoners perished in Neuengamme and its annexes. The main camp was evacuated in the second half of April 1945, following the evacuation of most of the annexes.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Concentration Camp Memorial Neuengamme. [Online] http://www.hamburg.de/Neuengamme/welcome.en.html (accessed on September 5, 2000). “Neuengamme.” The Jewish Student Online Research Center (JSource). [Onlinel] http:// www.us-israel.org/jsource/Holocaust/Neuengamme.html (accessed on September 4, 2000).

“NIGHT OF THE BROKEN GLASS.” SEE KRISTALLNACHT (NIGHT OF THE BROKEN GLASS).

Nisko and Lublin Plan The Nisko and Lublin Plan was conceived by the Nazis as a territorial solution to the “Jewish question.” The plan was to forcibly relocate the Jews living in the expanding Third Reich to the Lublin area in the eastern extremity of Germanoccupied P O L A N D . This idea dominated planning and policy-making in SS circles between September 1939 and March 1940. The Nazi victory over Poland in September 1939 brought nearly 2 million Polish Jews under German control, including more than a half million in the “incorporated territories” that were annexed to G E R M A N Y in early October, including Danzig, West Prussia, Poznan´, and Eastern Upper Silesia. At the same time, the war made it more difficult for Jews to leave German-occupied territories through emigration. The Germans decided to use Polish territory as a “dumping ground” for Jews of the Third Reich, which then included A U S T R I A , the Protectorate of B O H E M I A A N D M O R AV I A , and the “incorporated territories.” In 1939 Adolf E I C H M A N N set up an agency in Prague to oversee the emigration of the Jews of the newly acquired Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (as he had done in V I E N NA ). Eichmann and Higher SS and Police Leader, Franz S TA H L E C K E R ,

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originated the idea of “resettling” Jews in Poland in September 1939. Reinhard H E Y D R I C H gave his approval. Other Nazi leaders, including Hitler, agreed. When Heydrich met with Eichmann and the O P E R AT I O NA L S QUA D S (Einsatzgruppen) commanders on September 21, he told them Hitler had approved a plan to concentrate Polish Jews in the cities as a short-term goal. The secret, long-term goal was to deport them eastward into territory not intended for Germanization and even to expel some of them into Soviet territory. On September 28, 1939, a new agreement between Nazi Germany and the S OV I E T U N I O N made the Lublin region available to Germany, while yielding L I T H UA N I A to the Soviets. Immediately, this new extremity of the German empire became the target spot for relocating the Jews, and the concept of the “Lublin Reservation” emerged.

Germanization

The Nazi plan to “convert” some populations to German culture by eradicating all aspects of the original culture and placing them under German rule.

The plans for a Lublin Reservation were part of a wider scheme for the racial restructuring of eastern Europe. The Nazis intended to expel not only Jews and G Y P S I E S but also Poles from the incorporated territories, and resettle these regions with ethnic Germans (V O L K S D E U T S C H E ) repatriated from the Soviet sphere. Himmler was charged with both repatriating (bringing back) the ethnic Germans and eliminating alien populations in the Reich. In October, G E S TA P O chief Heinrich M Ü L L E R instructed Eichmann to oversee the expulsion of 70,000 to 80,000 Jews to the designated areas. Eichmann arranged for D E P O R TAT I O N S from Vienna and Mährisch Ostrau, (today called Ostrava), and Eastern Upper Silesia. In Mährisch Ostrau, Jewish engineers, carpenters, and artisans were “recruited” and told to bring their tools with them. Jewish firms were to supply food and building materials. The Nazis tried to give the process a voluntary character and the evacuees were forced to sign a statement saying they had volunteered for a “retraining camp.” In Vienna the Jewish leaders were also informed that they were to prepare a list of 1000 to 1200 working men for deportation.

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H

itler’s goal of reassembling all “Aryan” Europeans on

German soil would have led to the relocation of whole cities and villages of ethnic Germans from their homes outside Germany, with or without their permission, and the isolation of “undesirable” populations in remote regions of the Reich.

On October 18, the first transport of 901 Jews left Mährisch Ostrau. The deportees were marched from the train station at Nisko to a swampy meadow near Zarzecze and put to work setting up barracks. The next day, the best workers were selected from the group, and the rest were marched eastward and dispersed throughout the Lublin district. Transports of 875 Jews from Katowice and 912 Jews from Vienna departed on October 20 and were treated similarly upon arrival. Eichmann believed that his experimental transports to the transit camp at Nisko were the prelude to a general deportation of all Reich Jews. By mid-October he was referring to “continuous” transports that would soon leave Germany itself as well. On October 19, however, Müller notified him that all deportations to Poland required explicit approval from B E R L I N . When he inquired about the situation, Eichmann’s deputy was informed that “every transport of Jews had to be stopped.” Eichmann hurried to Berlin, where he did secure approval for a transport of 672 Jews from Vienna that left on October 26, and a combined transport of 400 Jews from Mährisch Ostrau and 1,000 from Katowice that left on October 27, but that was all. No further transports were sent to Nisko, although the camp remained. Eichmann blamed the abrupt halting of the Nisko experiment on the opposition of Hans F R A N K , the governor-general of Poland, but this seems unlikely. Himmler later claimed he had made the decision himself, on the basis of “technical difficulties.” These “technical difficulties” were probably related to problems Himmler faced in finding jobs and housing for the ethnic Germans from the Baltic. The first contingent arrived in Danzig in mid-October 1939. At the end of that month, Himmler ordered that 550,000 Jews and 450,000 Poles be deported within four months in order to make room for the incoming Baltic Germans. In a swift and brutal operation that December, 87,000 Poles and Jews were deported from the Warthegau. This deluge of penniless refugees certainly aroused the opposition of Hans F R A N K , leading to a temporary postponement of further Jewish deportations, as well as a curtailment of Polish deportations. Despite his objections, however, it is not likely that he was influential enough to cause this decision to be made. At a meeting on February 12, 1940, with Hermann Göring, Frank, and Arthur Greiser, the Nazi district leader of the Warthegau, Himmler still spoke of the Lublin region as “destined to become the Judenreservat” (reservation for the Jews), and deportations were subsequently scheduled for August. But by March 1940 Hitler was expressing doubt about this plan. He noted that the “Jewish question” really was a space question that was difficult to solve, particularly since there was no space at his disposal. The establishment of a Jewish state around Lublin was not a solution. German attention thus shifted to the possibility of expelling the European Jews to a distant territory overseas, with particular focus on the island of Madagascar (see M A DAG A S CA R P L A N ). The inmates who were left at Lublin, when the Lublin Reservation plans collapsed in 1939, suffered through a winter of hard labor and harsh weather. In April 1940, higher SS and police leader in the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T , Friedrich Wilhelm K RÜGER ordered the camp dissolved. The remaining 501 Jews who had not been expelled throughout the Lublin area were returned to Austria and the Protectorate.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Hilberg, R. The Destruction of the European Jews. 3 vols. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985.

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Moser, Jonny. “Nisko: The First Experiment in Deportation.” Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance Online. [Online] http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/resources/books/ annual2/chap01.html (accessed on September 4, 2000). Reynolds, Quentin James. Minister of Death: The Adolf Eichmann Story. New York: Viking Press, 1960.

Novak, Franz (1913–)

Franz Novak helped Adolf E I C H M A N N in the deportation of Jews to their death. A native of Wolfsberg, in A U S T R I A , Novak joined the H I T L E R Y O U T H in 1929 and became a N A Z I PA RT Y member in 1933. In July 1934 Novak was involved in the Nazi-staged plot to overthrow the Austrian government, during which Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss of Austria was assassinated. Novak had to flee the country, taking refuge in G E R M A N Y . As punishment, the Austrian government took away his citizenship. After Austria was annexed by Germany in 1938, Novak returned to V I E N N A . There he was assigned to the SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service) and became a senior staff member of the C E N T R A L O F F I C E F O R J E W I S H E M I G R AT I O N , which was headed by Eichmann. At the time, the office had the task of forcing Jews to emigrate from the country. Novak joined Eichmann in setting up similar offices in B E R L I N and, later, in Prague. When Eichmann was appointed head of a section of the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E and launched the extermination of the Jews, Novak was put in charge of the transportation subsection. There he helped order the trains that took Jews from the ghettos and from western Europe to E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S and C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S . In 1944 he played a very active role in deporting the Jews of H U N G A RY to their death.

Franz Novak.

After the war, Novak went into hiding in Austria under a false name. In 1957 he reverted to his real name, but the Austrian police took no action against him, even though his name was on the list of wanted war criminals. Several years later, during Eichmann’s highly publicized trial in Israel for his war crimes, Novak’s share in the “ F I N A L S O L U T I O N ” was revealed. He was arrested in 1961. In 1964 he was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment; after that decision was appealed, the Austrian Supreme Court ordered a retrial. At the second trial, which took place in 1966, Novak was acquitted and set free.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES “Testimony of Franz Novak,” The Nizkor Project [Online] http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/e/eichmann-adolf/transcripts/Testimony-Abroad/ Franz-02.html (accessed on October 1, 2000.

NOWAK, FRANZ. SEE NOVAK, FRANZ. NSDAP. SEE NAZI PARTY. 95

NUREMBURG LAWS

Nuremberg Laws

T

he Nuremberg Laws legitimized the Nazis’ campaign of

antisemitic riots and arrests of Jews,

The Nuremberg Laws were constitutional laws announced with great public fanfare at the annual N A Z I PA RT Y rally in 1935. They became the basis for the progressive legal exclusion of Jews from German life and formed the foundation of the Nazis’ anti-Jewish policy.

which had been taking place prior to 1935. They also laid the foundation for all the decrees that would follow, leading ultimately to the point at which the Jews were no longer protected by any laws of the Reich.

Two Laws There were two Nuremberg laws, which were proclaimed at a special session of the Reichstag (the lower chamber of the German parliament). The first one, known as the Reich Citizenship Law, stated that only Germans or people with related blood could be citizens of the Reich, or German empire. German Jews lost their political rights through this law, while the “Aryan” Germans, who were supposedly descended from the ancient nomadic Aryans, were declared citizens of the Reich. The Reich Citizenship Law was supplemented by government orders issued between November 1935 and July 1943 that systematically excluded the Jews from German life. The second of the two laws, the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor, prohibited sexual intercourse and marriage between Jews and Germans, the employment of German maids under the age of forty-five in Jewish households, and the raising of the German flag by Jews. The new racial laws had a symbolic function, dramatizing the exclusion of Jews from German society. The Nuremberg Laws have been described by some scholars as the result of a hasty, last-minute decision on the eve of the Reichstag convention in Nuremberg. According to a number of historians, Hitler had meant to deliver an address on foreign policy in front of the diplomatic corps. However, because of an unexpected change, this was not feasible. Hitler, needing to fill an empty time slot during this festive occasion, decided instead to devote his speech to the Jewish question. He ordered the laws to be drafted quickly. Nazi experts on the Jewish question were brought to Nuremberg and told to create a law regulating marriages between Jews and Germans. Hitler chose one out of four drafts. This theory of how the Nuremberg Laws originated is based on testimony by Bernard L Ö S E N E R , the expert on Jewish affairs in the Ministry of the Interior. Lösener testified at the postwar Nuremberg trials, where an international court brought indictments against those accused of war crimes. It seems more likely, however, that the Nuremberg Laws, even if they were drafted hastily were not merely an improvisation, but rather the implementation of on-going policy. The laws were directly related to the Nazis’ party platform and the principles outlined in Hitler’s writings.

Classification of Jews a Priority The need to clarify and define the status of the Jews in G E R M A N Y had become urgent. Regional governmental officials and the G ESTAPO had repeatedly asked for an official clarification of Germany’s policy toward the Jews; the absence of a clear-cut policy had resulted in clashes between party activists and government officials. The unrest of the spring and summer of 1935 aroused expectations within the party that there would be antisemitic legislation. The situation became particularly pressing when anti-Jewish rioting erupted in the summer of that year. The party and the public were demanding that the Jewish question be explicitly defined and made public. Three main issues dominated the discussion: the exclusion of Jews from German citizenship; marriage and sexual relations between “Aryans” and Jews; and the

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boycotting of Jewish enterprises. By early 1935 several leading Nazi officials, including Wilhelm Frick, the Reich minister of the interior, had announced that the government was going to revoke the citizenship of the Jews of Germany. Hjalmar Schacht, the minister of economics, hinted that various anti-Jewish Laws and decrees were being prepared in order to coordinate all governmental antisemitic measures. On September 12, the head of the Reich Medical Association, Gerhard Wagner, announced the intention of promoting a law for the protection of German blood. All of this took place before Hitler supposedly made a last-minute program change at the Reichstag convention in 1935 and had the Nuremberg Laws drafted. Regardless of the circumstances surrounding their origin, the passage of the Nuremberg Laws legalized anti-Jewish activity while controlling the violence, so to speak, and limiting anti-Jewish acts to those defined by laws and decrees. This led to frustration among the more extreme party members or followers, who wanted no limits placed on their behavior toward Jews. Their resentments were to break out in November 1938 with the renewed anti-Jewish riots known as K R I S TA L L NAC H T .

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Hecht, Ingeborg. Invisible Walls: A German Family Under the Nuremberg Laws. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985. Newman, Amy. The Nuremberg Laws: Institutionalized Anti-semitism. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1999. Noakes, Jeremy, and Geoffrey Pridham. Documents on Nazism 1919–1945. New York: Viking Press, 1974. ”The Nuremberg Laws.” American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. [Online] http://www.usisrael.org/jsource/Holocaust/nurlaws.html (accessed on September 5, 2000).

NUREMBERG MILITARY TRIBUNALS. SEE TRIALS OF THE WAR CRIMINALS.

NUREMBERG TRIAL. SEE TRIALS OF THE WAR CRIMINALS. NYILASKERESZTES PÁRT. SEE ARROW CROSS PARTY. Oberg, Carl Albrecht (1897–1965)

Carl Albrecht Oberg was an S S officer. Born in Hamburg, Oberg served in World War I and earned several military decorations. In 1920 he took part in the nationalist attempt at a coup d’état (the “Kapp putsch”). In the early 1920s he was the liaison man in Schleswig between the nationalist organizations and the German army (Reichswehr). He worked for several months in 1926 at a tropical-fruit trading company and was then unemployed until 1930, when he acquired a tobacco stand in Hamburg.

coup d’état

Takeover of the government.

In 1932 Reinhard H E Y D R I C H took Oberg along with him to Munich and then to B E R L I N . Oberg became Heydrich’s right-hand man in the SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service). He rose quickly through the ranks and by 1935 was a Standarten-

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führer (Colonel). In 1938 he was the commanding officer of an S S battalion in Mecklenburg, and in January 1939 he became chief of police in Zwickau. In September 1941 he was appointed SS and Police Leader in the Radom district of the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T . There he was responsible for the massacring of Jews and the drafting of Poles for F O R C E D L A B O R . He was promoted in March 1942 to Brigadier General, and on May 12 of that year he was posted to P A R I S as Higher SS and Police Leader in occupied F R A N C E . Oberg was responsible for putting into effect the order for wearing the yellow Jewish badge (see B A D G E , J E W I S H ), for severe measures against the French Résistance, and, above all, for applying the “F I N A L S O L U T I O N ” to the Jews of France. On Oberg’s orders some 75,000 Jews from France were deported to the E X T E R M I NAT I O N CA M P S in P O L A N D . Only a few thousand of them survived. In August 1944 he was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer (Lieutenant General) and police general. In December of that year, Oberg was posted to the command of a military unit that was part of an army formation commanded by Heinrich H I M M L E R . In June 1945, Oberg was arrested by the Americans and sentenced to death. On October 10, 1946, he was extradited to France, and on October 9, 1954, was again sentenced to death. This was reduced to life imprisonment on April 10, 1958. Under a presidential amnesty his sentence was further reduced, on October 31, 1959, to 20 years’ imprisonment with hard labor. In 1965 Oberg was granted a pardon by President Charles de Gaulle and was repatriated to G E R M A N Y , where he died the same year.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Josephs, Jeremy. Swastika Over Paris. New York: Arcade, 1989. Weisberg, Richard H. Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

Office of Special Investigations The Office of Special Investigations (OSI) was created by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1979 to investigate individuals accused of having committed H O L O CAU S T -related crimes between 1933 and 1945. The OSI is responsible for detecting, investigating and taking legal action to denaturalize and deport or otherwise remove such individuals or prevent them from entering the U N I T E D S TAT E S . (The United States lacks jurisdiction to prosecute these cases criminally, primarily because the events took place on foreign territory.) The unit assists the U.S. Immigration & Naturalization Service (INS) and the Department of State in screening applicants for entrance to the United States and petitioners for naturalized U.S. citizenship. Axis criminals

Those who were associated with the Axis powers in World War II, including Germany, Italy, and Japan and their satellite nations.

The OSI is also responsible for helping to extradite accused Axis criminals found in the U.S. to stand trial abroad. Defendants in OSI cases are individuals against whom the unit has amassed proof of complicity in the Axis regimes’ perpetration of acts of persecution, such as the mass murder of Jews, and other C R I M E S AG A I N S T H U M A N I T Y . United States law prevents the entry into the United States of anyone who was involved in Nazi or Axis persecution, whether as immigrants or as visitors. As part of the OSI’s responsibility to enforce these laws, the office has provided the names of more than 60,000 suspected Axis persecutors to the visa denial and border con-

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trol “watchlists” maintained by the U.S. Immigration & Naturalization Service, the Department of State and the U.S. Customs Service. Prior to the creation of the OSI, the federal government’s efforts in Nazi cases were handled by INS and by U.S. Attorney offices around the country. However, in large part because these agencies lacked the historical and other highly specialized expertise to investigate these complex cases, their efforts were notably unsuccessful. In the 34 years between the end of World War II and the establishment of the OSI, just one Nazi persecutor was denaturalized (Hermine Braunsteiner-Ryan), and she and just one other Nazi persecutor (Ferenc Vajta) were removed from the United States by federal prosecutors; numerous cases were lost. Congressional hearings in 1977 and 1978 and two General Accounting Office (GAO) studies documented this history and also established that several federal agencies had even employed Nazi suspects and provided immigration assistance to some of them.

D

espite the OSI’s increased and successful research and

investigative activity since the mid1990s, it is clear that the World War II investigation and prosecution program will eventually be phased out, as the pool of suspects and witnesses dwindles due to the unavoidable ravages of age and illness.

By contrast, the OSI has succeeded, to date, in denaturalizing more than sixty Nazi persecutors and in removing fifty such persons from the United States. It thought to be the most aggressive, effective, and successful Nazi-hunting organization in the world. In 1987, the OSI placed former United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim on its watchlist, which prohibits entry into the United States, after his 1986 election as president of A U S T R I A . In 1992, the unit also documented and verified the death of Dr. Josef M E N G E L E , the infamous Nazi doctor remembered for his M E D I CA L E X P E R I M E N T S on prisoners at A U S C H W I T Z . Recent years have seen a continuing increase in the OSI’s activity under its director, Eli M. Rosenbaum. During 1994, for example, the unit filed seven new cases in federal courts, its highest single-year total in a decade. The principal reason for this escalation has been the dissolution of communist rule in eastern and central Europe at the beginning of the 1990s, which resulted in the opening up to OSI personnel of archives previously sealed by communist authorities in the former S OV I E T U N I O N and its satellites. These archives house what is probably the largest existing volume of captured Axis documentation. This wealth of evidence has suddenly and unexpectedly become available during the final years in which it can be put to law enforcement use, and OSI’s multilingual personnel—like their counterparts in Germany, Canada, England and elsewhere—are involved in an unprecedented race against the clock to examine as many of these records as possible while the suspects are still living. These newly available records have enabled OSI to build compelling cases against existing suspects and also to locate additional suspects in the United States. In 1996, the OSI undertook a large-scale research and investigative project in support of an initiative ordered by President Clinton to trace the fate of gold and other assets looted by the Nazis. The OSI has served as the lead Justice Department representative in that inter-agency effort, which has been led by Under Secretary of State Stuart Eizenstat. Most significant among the investigative breakthroughs made by the OSI is the uncovering of information at the U.S. National Archives that led to long-elusive proof that gold confiscated from Nazi victims was (1) transferred by Germany to Switzerland during the war; and (2) included in gold that was shipped to the Tripartite Gold Commission by U.S. occupation authorities in postwar Germany, for distribution to European central banks. The OSI also found captured German documents revealing that the Nazis devised and implemented a secret program of shipping to Switzerland jewelry taken from Jews. This jewelry (explicitly identified in the documents as “Jewish jewelry”) was sent by diplomatic pouch to German diplomatic personnel in Berne, where it was retrieved by a German agent who then used it to purchase industrial diamonds essential to the German war effort. The OSI

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staff also succeeded in tracing the surviving records of the Reichsbank Precious Metals Department, which had been unseen for nearly five decades. In September 1997, OSI’s “Holocaust Assets” team received the Assistant Attorney General’s Award for Special Initiative, in recognition of their accomplishments. The first inter-agency report on this 1996 initiative was publicly released in May 1997 by Under Secretary Eizenstat to near-universal worldwide acclaim. The second inter-agency report was released in June 1998, and it focused primarily on the wartime and postwar conduct of Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Turkey and Argentina, as well as on allegations that gold of the wartime Axis government of C R OAT I A had been transferred to the Vatican. Under Secretary Eizenstat praised OSI’s work on the project as “pioneering and quite remarkable.” Following enactment in October 1998 of the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act (P.L. 105-246), the OSI undertook major responsibility within the newly-established Nazi War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group to assist in the unprecedented government-wide effort to locate, declassify and disclose to the public classified documents pertaining to Nazi criminals and to transactions in plundered assets of Holocaust victims. This compliance effort is an on-going process. The OSI has won the Founders Award of the American Association of Immigration Lawyers and similar awards from numerous organizations representing Holocaust survivors, including the 1995 Holocaust Memorial Award of the Holocaust Survivors and Friends Education Center. In 1997, the Anti-Defamation League named OSI the first recipient of its newly established annual International Human Rights Award, created to recognize those who have “contributed in a profound and exemplary manner to the cause of justice on behalf of victims of human rights violations.” Among the most successful cases filed by the OSI have been the following: Otto Albrecht von Bolschwing (aide to Eichmann), Andrija Artukovic (Justice and Interior Minister of Croatia; the only cabinet-level Axis official ever known to have entered the United States after the war), Aleksandras Lileikis (Chief of the Lithuanian Security Police for the V I L N A [Vilnius] Province), and Arthur Rudoph (Nazi slavemaster who later headed the Saturn V rocket program for NASA).

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Ashman, Charles. The Nazi Hunters. New York: Warner Books, 1990. Levingston, Steven. “The Executioner’s Trial.” Boston Globe Magazine, Nov. 8, 1998. ”Not Finished Yet: Hunting for Nazis.” The Economist, Feb. 1, 1997.

Ohlendorf, Otto (1907–1951)

Otto Ohlendorf was one of the Nazi administrators responsible for the extermination policy against the Jews. Born in the Hannover district, Ohlendorf studied law and economics, and joined the N A Z I PA R T Y and the S S in 1925 and 1926, respectively. In the early 1930s he was a lecturer at several economics institutions, and was active in party organizational affairs and propaganda. He joined the S D (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service) in May 1936 and took up a senior post. In September 1939 he became chief of the SD Inland (Interior) section in the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (RSHA; Reichssicherheitshauptamt).

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Ohlendorf was appointed commander of Einsatzgruppe (Operational Squad) D in June 1941. He was often cited as a model young man who had dedicated himself and his abilities to the party and to Nazi ideology, and who had become head of an Operational Squad that had murdered at least 90,000 people. By June 1942 the unit under Ohlendorf’s command had moved along the Black Sea coast and through the Crimea and Northern Caucasia, killing masses of Jews and other Soviet citizens as it went from place to place. For this service in the S OV I E T U N I O N , the Armed Forces High Command awarded Ohlendorf the Military Service Cross, Class 1, with swords. In November 1943 Ohlendorf was appointed deputy director general and chief of the foreign-trade section in the Reich Ministry of Economic Affairs, in addition to his SD post. A year later he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general in the SS. After the war, Ohlendorf was the chief defendant in the Nuremberg Military Tribunals’ Case No. 9, the Einsatzgruppen Case. In January 1946 he appeared as a witness in the Nuremberg Trial of major war criminals, tried by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. In reply to the prosecutor’s question as to what order the O P E R AT I O N A L S Q UA D S (Einsatzgruppe) had been given, Ohlendorf replied, “The order was to liquidate the Jews and the Soviet political commissars in the Einsatzgruppen area of operations and on Russian territory.” Asked whether “to liquidate” meant “to kill,” Ohlendorf answered: “Yes, I mean to kill.” In his own trial, Ohlendorf explained why the Jews had to be murdered. Asked whether Jewish children also had to be murdered, Ohlendorf’s answer was that this was unavoidable “because the children were people who would grow up, and surely, being the children of parents who had been killed, they could constitute a danger no smaller than that of the parents.”

Otto Ohlendorf, SS major general of Himmler’s Einsatz Commandos (standing in front of microphone, wearing headphones).

Ohlendorf was sentenced to death, and on June 8, 1951, he was hanged in the Landsberg prison.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Arad, Yitzhak. The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads. Washington, DC: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1989. Gitelman, Zvi, ed. Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. Mendelsohn, J. Punishing the Perpetrators of the Holocaust: The Brandt, Pohl and Ohlendorf Cases. New York: Garland, 1982.

Operational Squads The Operational Squads (Einsatzgruppen) of the Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst; SD) and the Security Police (Sipo) were mobile killing units operating in German-occupied territories during World War II. Operational Squads were intelligence units of the police forces that accompanied the invading army. They made their first appearance during the Anschluss in March 1938.

Anschluss

The annexation of Austria to Germany.

They reappeared in the invasions of Czechoslovakia, in March 1939, and of P O L A N D , on September 1 of that year. In the invasions of Austria and Czechoslovakia, the Operational Squads were to act as mobile offices of the SD and the Sipo until such time as these organizations established their permanent offices. They followed immediately behind the Wehrmacht military units, and, as in the Reich, they assumed responsibility for the

Wehrmacht

The regular German army.

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Einsatzgruppen (Operational Squads).

security of the political regime. In the Sudetenland (a part of Czechoslovakia), the Operational Squads worked with the military forces to find and imprison “Marxist traitors” and other “enemies of the state.”

Preliminary Organization Six Operational Squads were organized for use in the Polish invasion. Five were to accompany the invading German armies, and the sixth was to operate in the Poznan´ area, which was to be incorporated into the Reich and called the Warthegau. Each Operational Squad was subdivided into several Einsatzkommandos, one for every army corps. There were 15 Einsatzkommandos, each with 120 to 150 men. Operational Squad personnel were recruited from among the SD, Sipo, and SS, on a regional basis. The Operational Squads followed foreign operations policies issued by the Sipo and SD. These had been developed as early as August 1939 by Reinhard H E Y D R I C H , head of the R EICH S ECURITY M AIN O FFICE (RSHA; Reichssicherheitshauptamt), and by Generalquartier-meister Eduard Wagner, the Wehrmacht representative in that office. The basic instruction was to fight hostile elements at the rear of the frontline units. A more detailed description of the Operational Squads’ mission appears in the following order of the day issued by the Eighth Corps: “To conduct counterespionage, to imprison political suspects, to confiscate arms, and to collect evidence that is of importance to police intelligence work.” In practice, “combating hostile elements” came to mean carrying out terror operations on a grand scale against

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Jews and the Polish intelligentsia. Around 15,000 Jews and Poles were murdered through these actions. On September 21, 1939, Heydrich sent a high-priority note to the Operational Squad commanders outlining instructions for the treatment of Jews in the conquered territories. The Jews were to be rounded up and restricted in large communities situated on railway lines; Judenräte (Jewish councils; see J U D E N R AT ) were to be established; and operations of any kind against the Jews were to be coordinated with the civil administration and the military command. On November 20 of that year, on orders from B E R L I N , the Operational Squads’ functions were terminated; former members were absorbed by the permanent SD and Sipo forces in occupied Poland. However, when plans were made for the attack on the S OV I E T U N I O N , they were reassigned among four Operational Squads that were reestablished as A, B, C, and D.

Invasion of the Soviet Union (June 1941) During the planning of Operation “Barbarossa,” Adolf H I T L E R emphasized that the impending war with the Soviet Union would be a relentless struggle between two completely opposed ideologies. It would require military victory, but also the ability to root out and destroy those who promoted the ideology of Communism. He specifically meant that anyone connected to the Soviet political and ideological system—commissars, as they were termed by Hitler—must be found and eliminated. Hitler entrusted this job to Heinrich H I M M L E R , chief of the S S (Reichsführer-SS)and of all German police organizations. Decree 21, Hitler’s order for Operation “Barbarossa,” in the section “Instructions for Special Areas,” states:

W

ith General von Brauchitsch’s order, the Wehrmacht relieved

itself of the task of carrying out mass murder, and restricted its involvement to

In areas where military operations are being conducted, the Reichsführer-SS, in the name of the Führer, will assume the special duties required for setting up the political administration.… In the discharge of these duties the Reichsführer will operate independently and on his own authority.… The Reichsführer will ensure that the pursuit of his objectives will not interfere with military operations. Details will be worked out directly between the High Command and the Reichsführer-SS.

logistics and military action. In reality,

General Walther von Brauchitsch, the commander in chief of the army, ordered special units of the SD to fulfill those special security police assignments that went beyond the scope of military operations. The guidelines read, in part: “The special units will operate in the rear of the fighting forces and their task will be to seize archives, to obtain lists of organizations and anti-German societies, and to look for individuals such as exiled former political leaders, saboteurs, and the like; they will uncover any existing anti-German movements and liquidate them; and they will coordinate their activities in these areas with the military field-security apparatus.” The order added that while the Sipo and the SD (including the Operational Squads) would be operating on their own responsibility, as far as logistics were concerned they would be attached to the armed forces and would depend upon the latter for housing, rations, transport, communications, and other matters. The order further provided that the special units were empowered to take administrative action against the civilian population, on their own responsibility but in cooperation with the military police, and with the approval of the local Wehrmacht commander.

over individuals or groups of persons

however, cooperation between the Wehrmacht and the Operational Squads occasionally went beyond the provisions of the agreement; sometimes regular military units had to stand guard who would soon die at the hands of the Operational Squads, or they guarded the sites where the executions would take place.

Organizing and Training the Operational Squads Early in May 1941, the candidates for the Operational Squads were assembled in the training school near the German border. Most had come from the RSHA,

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whose manpower division had ordered the SD and the Sipo to select suitable men for this purpose. Another group of candidates came from the Sipo senior officers’ training school in Berlin. Yet another group, of 100 men, had been attending an officer candidates’ school of the Kriminalpolizei (Criminal Police), and were sent from there. The commanding officers of the Operational Squads—the Einsatzkommandos— and the S P E C I A L C O M M A N D O s (Sonderkommandos) were chosen by Himmler and Heydrich from a list prepared by the RSHA. Most were senior officers of the SD. The radio operators, clerks, interpreters, drivers, and others of the Operational Squads were recruited from among the staff of the RSHA and the SS. Each of the reestablished Operational Squads had sub-units, which were usually either the Einsatzkommandos or the Special Commandos. The first commander of Operational Squad A, SS-Standartenführer (Colonel) Dr. Franz Walter S TA H L E C K E R , commanded about 1,000 men. Operational Squad A was attached to Army Group North. Its area of operations covered the Baltic States (L I T H UA N I A , L AT V I A , and E S TO N I A ) and the territory between their eastern borders and the Leningrad district. The first commander of Operational Squad B, SS-Brigadeführer (Brigadier General) Arthur N E B E , had 655 men under his command. The Operational Squad was attached to Army Group Center, and its operational area extended over B E L O R U S S I A and the Smolensk district, up to the outskirts of Moscow. The first commander of Operational Squad C, SS-Standartenführer (Colonel) Dr. Emil Otto R A S C H , had 700 men under his command. The Operational Squad was attached to Army Group South and covered the southern and central U K R A I N E . Operational Squad D, commanded by SS-Standartenführer (Colonel) Professor Otto O H L E N D O R F , had a complement of 600 men. It was attached to the Eleventh Army and operated in the southern Ukraine, the Crimea, and Ciscaucasia (the Krasnodar and Stavropol districts). At first glance it appears that the relatively small units had a very large area to cover. However, when they were engaged in mass-murder operations, large forces of German police battalions and local auxiliary police battalions—Ukrainian, Belorussian, Latvian, or Lithuanian—assisted the Operational Squads. At times they also had Wehrmacht follow-up troops at their disposal. In June 1941, Heydrich outlined the policy that was to guide the Operational Squads in carrying out their assignments, among them the implementation of the Führer’s order to liquidate the Jews. On July 2, 1941, the senior SS and police officers that had been designated to act as Operational Squad commanders in the various parts of the Soviet Union received written instructions from Heydrich, which contained the following passage: The following is the gist of the highly important orders that I have issued to Einsatzkommandos of the Sipo and the SD, with which these two services are called upon to comply;… 4) Executions. The following categories are to be executed: Comintern officials (as well as all professional Communist politicians); party officials of all levels; and members of the central, provincial, and district committees; people’s commissars; Jews in the party and state apparatus; and other extremist elements (saboteurs, propagandists, snipers, assassins, agitators, etc.).

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German soldiers of the Waffen-SS and the Reich Labor Service stand and watch as a member of Einsatzgruppen D prepares to shoot a Ukrainian Jew kneeling on the edge of a mass grave filled with corpses, 1942.

The order regarding the “Jews in the party and state apparatus” affected, in practice, all the Jews in the Soviet Union. Operational Squad Report No. 111 of October 12, 1941, did in fact make it perfectly clear that the purpose was to kill all Jews.

The Operational Squads’ Itineraries The Operational Squads began their march into the Soviet Union, just behind the German army. Operational Squad A started out from East Prussia, and its units—the Special Commandos and Einsatzkommandos—rapidly spread out across Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. On June 25, Operational Squad A headquarters entered K OV N O at the same time as the advance formations of the army, and at the beginning of July it moved to R I G A . Next, Operational Squad A and several of its sub-units advanced toward Leningrad, to be able to enter the city along with the Totenkopf Division of the Waffen-SS. When the Leningrad front stabilized, Opera-

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EYEWITNESS AT THE BABI YAR SLAUGHTER OF KIEV JEWS From a statement of truck driver Höfer, a witness at Babi Yar: “The Jews were led into a ravine which was about 150 meters long, 30 meters wide and a good 15 meters deep. Two or three narrow entrances led to this ravine .… When they reached the bottom of the ravine they were… made to lie down upon Jews who had already been shot. This all happened very quickly. The corpses were literally in layers. A police marksman came along and shot each Jew in the neck with a submachine gun at the spot where he was lying. When the Jews reached the ravine they were so shocked by the horrifying scene that they completely lost their will.” “.… The moment one Jew had been killed, the marksman would walk across the bodies of the executed Jews to the next Jew, who had meanwhile lain down, and shoot him. It went on in this way uninterruptedly, with no distinction being made between men, women and children. The children were kept with their mothers and shot with them.” “The Good Old Days,” in The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders, Ernst Klee, Willi Dreesen, and Volker Riess, editors. (New York: The Free Press), 1991, pp. 64-65.

tional Squad A was basically disbanded, and some of its personnel were used to establish and staff the regional SD and Sipo offices. Operational Squad B started in W A R S A W . Some of its units passed through V I L N A and G R O D N O on the way to M I N S K , where they arrived on July 5, 1941. Other units belonging to Operational Squad B passed through Brest-Litovsk, Slonim, Baranovichi, and Minsk, and from there proceeded to southern Belorussia: M O G I L E V - P O D O L S K I , Bobruisk, and Gomel, advancing as far as Briansk, Kursk, Orel, and Tula. All along their route, they murdered masses of people—Jews, G Y P S I E S , Communist activists, and P R I S O N E R S O F W A R . Operational Squad C made its way from Upper Silesia to the western Ukraine, by way of K R A K Ó W . Two of its units, Einsatzkommandos 5 and 6, went to L V OV , where they organized a pogrom against the Jews with the participation of Ukrainian nationalists. Special Commando 4b organized the mass murders at T E R N O P O L and Zolochev, and then continued east. On September 29 and 30, Special Commando 4a, commanded by Paul B L O B E L , committed the mass slaughter of Kiev Jews at Babi Yar. This unit was also responsible for the murder of K H A R KOV ’s Jews, in early January 1942. Einsatzkommando 6 marched to the east and liquidated numerous towns. Einsatzkommando 5 was then broken up into SD and Sipo teams and sent to Kiev and R OV N O , the capital of Reichskommissariat Ukraine. In Rovno, these teams launched a large-scale Aktion (Operation) at the beginning of November 1941, in which most of the Jewish inhabitants were murdered. Operational Squad D was attached to the Eleventh Army. During its advance it carried out massacres in the southern Ukraine (Nikolayev and K H E R S O N ), in the

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Crimea (S I M F E R O P O L , Sevastopol, Feodosiya, and other places), and in the Krasnodar and Stavropol districts (Maykop, Novorossisk, Armavir, and Piatigorsk).

Operation Squad Results By the spring of 1943, when the Germans began their retreat from Soviet territory, the Operational Squads had murdered 1.25 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of other Soviet nationals, including prisoners of war. Jewish prisoners of war were separated from the rest and put to death. The Operational Squads shot their victims in ravines, abandoned quarries, mines, antitank ditches, or huge trenches that had been dug for this purpose. The shootings, especially of women and children, had a devastating effect on the murderers’ mental state; even heavily drinking hard liquor (of which they were given a generous supply) could not alleviate this stress. This was one reason the RSHA in Berlin, in August 1941, chose to look for an alternative method of execution. This was found in the form of mobile gas chambers, or gas vans (see G A S C H A M B E R S /V A N S )—heavy trucks with hermetically sealed chambers into which the trucks’ exhaust fumes were piped. Within a short time these trucks were supplied to all the Operational Squads. The Operational Squads performed their murderous work in broad daylight and in the presence of the local population. Only when the Germans began their retreat was an effort made to erase the traces of their crimes. This was the job of Special Commando 1005 (see A K T I O N [O P E R AT I O N ] 1005): to open the mass graves, dig up the corpses, cremate them, and spread the ashes over the fields and streams. Despite such efforts, the Operational Squads left behind an immense record of their deeds, in the form of summary reports drawn up in Berlin on the basis of detailed reports submitted by the various units in the field. Among the most comprehensive of these summary reports was the Report of Events in the USSR, which was first issued on June 23, 1941, and was continued until Report No. 195, dated April 24, 1942. Next, and in continuation, came the Reports from the Occupied Eastern Territories, which began on May 1, 1942, and were kept up until May 21, 1943. In addition, there were the reports on the operations and the situation of the SD and Sipo in the USSR, covering the period from June 22, 1941, to March 31, 1942.

After the War After the war, the Operational Squad leaders were tried at the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings, in the ninth trial conducted by the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. The trial, The United States of America v. Otto Ohlendorf et al., began on July 3, 1947, and ended on April 10, 1948; there were 24 defendants. Fourteen were sentenced to death, seven to periods of imprisonment ranging from 10 years to life, and one to the time already served. Two were not tried or sentenced. Four of the defendants were actually executed, and 16 had their sentences commuted or reduced to periods extending from the time already served to life imprisonment. One defendant was released, one died of natural causes, one committed suicide, and the execution of one was stayed because of the defendant’s insanity. Following the establishment of the Central Office of the Judicial Administrations of the Länder) at Ludwigsburg, West G E R M A N Y , more than 100 additional indictments were handed down against Einsatzkommando commanders, officers, noncommissioned officers, and privates. In the ensuing trials no death sentences were passed, since the Federal Republic of Germany had abolished capital punishment.

SEE ALSO “FINAL SOLUTION.”

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SUGGESTED RESOURCES Arad, Yitzhak. The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads. Washington, DC: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1989. ”The Einsatzgruppen.” American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. [Online] http://www.usisrael.org/jsource/Holocaust/einsatztoc.html (accessed on September 6, 2000). Gitelman, Zvi, ed. Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

OPERATION “ERNTEFEST.” SEE “ERNTEFEST” (HARVEST FESTIVAL). OPERATION 1005. SEE AKTION (OPERATION) 1005. OPERATION REINHARD. SEE AKTION (OPERATION) REINHARD. Oradour-sur-Glane Oradour-sur-Glane was a French village in the Limoges area, the entire population of which was killed by SS men during the German occupation of F R A N C E . After the Allied landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944, there was an upsurge in anti-Nazi activity by partisan rebel groups all over F R A N C E , and German army convoys traveling on French roads had to contend with extensive interference. The Germans resorted to deterrent and revenge operations in which they struck out at civilians before partisan groups in and around the villages could cause damage to roads, German troops, and railways. In one of these operations, on June 10, 1944, an SS unit arrived at Oradour, rounded up all the residents—634 men, women, and children—and forced them into the village church. Then they set the church afire, and all the people inside were burned to death. There were no survivors. After the war, Oradour was rebuilt and resettled. Its name became a symbol of the brutality that marked the German occupation of France.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Farmer, Sarah Bennett. Martyred Village: Commemorating the 1944 Massacre at Oradoursur-Glane. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Kruuse, Jens. War for an Afternoon. New York: Pantheon Books, 1968. Mackness, Robin. Massacre at Oradour. New York: Random House, 1989.

Organisation Schmelt Organisation Schmelt is the name commonly used to refer to a system of for the Jewish population of Eastern Upper Silesia (a region of P O L A N D under German occupation). It operated from 1940 to 1944 in the ghettos and labor camps and was set up and administered by Albrecht Schmelt, Heinrich H I M M L E R ’s Special Representative of the Reichsführer-SS for the Employment of FORCED LABOR

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ORGANISATION SCHMELT

These burned ruins were all that was left of Oradour-sur-Glane after the Nazis killed the inhabitants and set fire to their houses.

Foreign Labor in Upper Silesia. Schmelt, who was the chief of police in Breslau, was appointed to this post to coordinate all programs to exploit Jewish labor. Local authorities were under orders to support his efforts completely. By the end of 1940 Schmelt had forced certain Judenräte (Jewish councils) to draw up lists of all Jews who were fit to work, making the J U D E N R AT members personally responsible for producing those on the list, under the threat of disbanding the Judenrat and dispatching its members to labor camps. In 1940, Organisation Schmelt began setting up forced labor camps for Jews. These were located in the vicinity of important war-essential German industries in Upper Silesia and Zagl⁄e˛bie Da˛browskie, or on their premises. Before long, Organisation Schmelt extended its operations beyond the borders of the region designated by Himmler, and organized labor camps in Lower Silesia and the Sudetenland as well. Schmelt had made agreements with each German plant specifying conditions of employment, wages, and the internal organization of the labor camps. The Jews chosen for these assignments typically had to report to a local transit camp and were threatened with arrest and withdrawal of ration cards from their families if they failed to comply.

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he Jews chosen for forced labor assignments through

Organisation Schmelt were threatened with arrest and withdrawal of ration cards from their families if they refused their assignments.

In March 1941 Himmler decided to use labor from the Organisation Schmelt camps for constructing the plants that were under Albert Speer’s administration. As a result, large numbers of Jews, eventually numbering four thousand, worked in the construction of the hydrogenation plant at Blechhammer. Additional forced-labor camps were established at Gleiwitz (Gliwice) for the construction of a soot-processing plant, at Miechowitz (Miechowice) and Ober Lazisk (Laziska Górne) for electronics factories, at Ratibor (Racibórz) for a light-metals plant, and at Fünfteichen (Miloszyce), near Breslau, for the construction of the Krupp Ordnance Factory (Bertha-Werk Fünfteichen). Numerous camps were built at important railway junctions where new tracks were being built to serve military requirements. At least seventeen camps were established in the Opole district, along the projected route of the Breslau-Gleiwitz highway that was under construction.

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By April 1942, forty forced-labor camps for Jewish prisoners were in existence and six more were being set up; the total number of prisoners in the camps was sixty-five hundred. While it existed, Organisation Schmelt established 93 forcedlabor camps in Upper Silesia. Of these, 48 contained a fairly small women’s section. Thirty-six camps were exclusively male, and six were exclusively female. Fifty camps were built in Lower Silesia and seventeen in the Sudetenland. There were at least 160 Organisation Schmelt camps. In early 1943, 50,570 Jewish prisoners were employed in the enterprises of Organisation Schmelt. At first, only Jews from Zagl⁄ e˛ bie Da˛ browskie were sent to the camps, but when the Organisation Schmelt plants became more important for the military, Jews from the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T as well were dispatched to the Organisation’s camps. In 1942, Speer obtained Himmler’s consent to choose 10,000 Jews from the transports being sent from western Europe (from D R A N C Y , Mechelen, and W E S T E R B O R K ) to A U S C H W I T Z -Birkenau. Later, the Organisation Schmelt officials stopped such transports on their own initiative, to exchange Jews unfit for work—and, at times, dead Jews—for Jews in good physical condition. The Auschwitz camp commandant repeatedly protested, and Schmelt finally put a stop to it. Jewish prisoners in the Organisation Schmelt camps usually shared the fate of all the other concentration camp inmates. From the beginning, these camps had been devised as a temporary measure. Late in 1941, in light of the order that had been issued to kill all Jews, it was expected that the camps, as well as the workshops employing Jews, would be targeted for liquidation and the Jewish prisoners would be sent to Auschwitz. Only when the military authorities intervened with the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (RSHA; Reichssicherheitshauptamt) and with Himmler was this liquidation postponed to a later date. In 1943 Himmler decided to liquidate the plants and forced-labor camps and to deport the Jews working there to Auschwitz. An exception was made for camps whose prisoners were working for the most essential armament and ammunition factories, but these camps were now supervised by the administration of the C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S in Auschwitz or G R O S S -R O S E N . Adolf E I C H M A N N supervised the entire process of liquidating the camps, which lasted until mid-1944. Twentyeight camps in Lower Silesia and the Sudetenland were attached to Gross-Rosen. In Upper Silesia the prisoners of at least fifteen camps were put at the disposal of the Auschwitz camp authority. Jewish prisoners were transferred to Blechhammer from four of the other camps.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Axelrod, Toby. In the Camps: Teens Who Survived the Nazi Concentration Camps. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 1999. Browning, Christopher R. Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

OSI. SEE OFFICE OF SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS. O´S WIE˛ CIM. SEE AUSCHWITZ. PALESTINE. SEE ALIYA BET. 110

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Paris On the eve of World War II, Paris was the home of about 200,000 Jews. Only a quarter were French-born. The majority were eastern European Jews who had immigrated to F R A N C E both before and after World War I (1914–1918); they had created a vast network of institutions in their adopted country, with a vibrant Yiddish cultural and political atmosphere. Several thousand refugees from G E R M A N Y , A U S T R I A , and Czechoslovakia added additional diversity to the Jewish community in Paris after Adolf H I T L E R ’s rise to power and his annexations. A heterogeneous community with a variety of political and cultural orientations, Parisian Jewry lacked unity as it entered World War II.

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hroughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries many Jews

migrated to Paris, making it the center of Jewish life in France.

The German invasion that began on May 10, 1940, was followed by a massive exodus of citizens from northern France. Within six weeks France was defeated and an armistice agreement was reached that left the country divided: the north came under German occupation, while in the south, a new French government was established at the spa town of Vichy under the authoritarian leadership of Marshal Philippe Pétain. Believing in the Nazi promise of stability and normalcy for both parts of France under the Vichy leadership, hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen who had fled to the south decided to return to the occupied zone. Some 20,000 to 30,000 Jews joined the migration back, among them community leaders and activists. Jewish organizations were slowly reestablished. Immigrant community activists, Zionists, and Bundists (Jewish socialists) were unified through the Fédération Des Societés Juives De France; this coalition was represented by the Amelot committee. The Communists formed a special underground organization known as Solidarité. The synagogues reopened, and schools run by the French Jews soon opened, as well. By October 1940 the Vichy government began implementing antisemitic policies and issuing wide-ranging anti-J E W I S H L AW s. In late September a required census of Jews showed that there were 150,000 Jews in Paris. This was followed by the A RYA N I Z AT I O N of Jewish enterprises—the forced transfer of ownership of business and financial assets from Jewish to non-Jewish control. From September 1940 Theodor D A N N E C K E R , the Germans’ “Jewish expert,” began demanding the centralization of all the Jewish organizations. Prompted by awareness of the community’s material needs and assured by Dannecker that he would not interfere, the Coordinating Committee (CC) of Jewish Welfare Societies was established in January 1941. All the organizations accepted centralization on this basis except for the Communists. In March, Dannecker brought in two men from V IENNA to run the Jewish organization, causing a division among member groups of the CC. In May 1941 Dannecker ordered, on the basis of a Vichy law, the first internments: 3,700 Jewish men were rounded up and sent to Pithiviers and Beaune-La-Rolande (Loiret). Now, in addition to distributing 60,000 monthly meals, the CC’s various agencies needed to help these men and their families. In August further tension ensued when the CC refused to fulfill Dannecker’s demand for 6,000 men for FORCED L A B O R . In reprisal, Dannecker ordered the internment of 4,300 French and immigrant Jewish men in the newly established camp at D RANCY , northeast of Paris. The continuous “Aryanization” of thousands of Jewish enterprises had already caused severe unemployment problems. These internments further contributed to the deteriorating economic situation of the community. The order to surrender radios, bicycles, and telephones, and the bombing of seven synagogues in October, heralded worse to come. The activities of the French Résistance led the Germans to

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he order requiring Jews to wear yellow stars provoked

widespread public resentment among the French, who found creative ways circumvent this discriminatory act against the Jews in their midst. Yellow became a fashionable color, and some people wore stars or other items to express solidarity with the Jews. Even the French police, not known for their courteous treatment of Jews, did not care to collaborate in this effort.

repatriated

Sent back to one’s country of origin or citizenship.

take repressive measures against the Jews in December 1941: a fine of 1 billion francs was imposed and 750 French Jews were interned, from a group of 1,000 hostages who were being threatened with deportation. The Union Générale Des Israélites De France (UGIF), established by Vichy on November 29, 1941, on German orders, was held responsible for payment of the fine. When the year ended, Jews were no longer allowed to leave Paris or to change their address. By then, some 9,000 Jewish men had been interned and 10,000 had fled to the Vichy zone. The year 1942 began with an ordinance forbidding Jews to leave their homes between 9:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. In March the first deportation took place, consisting of the 1,000 hostages; in June those previously interned were also deported. The B E R L I N decision of June 1942, ordering preparations for mass D E P O RTAT I O N S , led to new measures: Jews were ordered to wear the yellow star (see B A D G E , J E W I S H ), and Jews were prohibited access to all public places. After detailed planning among German and French officials, the stage was set for a major operation in Paris. Mass arrests of foreign Jews, regardless of sex, age, or physical condition, began on July 16. Thousands of French police rounded up 13,000 Jews and interned them in the Vélodrome d’Hiver sports arena. They were taken to Drancy before being deported to A U S C H W I T Z . Dannecker had expected to deport 28,000 Jews, but 15,000 had evaded arrest. Apart from escaping to the Vichy zone or hiding, the only way a Jew could survive was to obtain an identity card that served as a protective pass, either by working for German industry or through employment with the UGIF. By early 1943 there were only 60,000 “legal” Jews left in Paris: 30,000 had been deported, thousands had fled or gone into hiding, and some 3,000 from Turkey, H UN GARY , I TALY , and neutral countries had been repatriated . As fewer Jews were available to meet deportation quotas, the Germans ordered arrests in children’s homes, homes for the aged, and the Rothschild Hospital. Mid-1943 was a critical period: worker identity cards no longer provided protection, the UGIF was forced to release most of its foreign employees, and even Jews of mixed marriages were interned. Solidarité, committed to the armed struggle, had been decimated by the G E S TA P O . The French Jewish group known as Amelot, which was dedicated to helping those in hiding, saving children, and distributing forged papers, was weakened by leadership losses. In June 1943, SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Alois Brunner increased the tempo of deportation, and took control of Drancy away from the French administration. When the UGIF refused to carry out Brunner’s order to make arrests, its vice president André Baur and many of its longtime leaders and members were deported. Early in 1944, when only 7,000 immigrant Jews and at least that many French Jews still resided openly in Paris, even French Jews, who had previously been exempt from deportation orders, filled convoys. Jewish organizations once again realigned and formed new umbrella committees, but the UGIF continued separately to offer certain services and maintain its network of children’s homes. The Allied armies landing on the coast of France in June 1944 held out hope for those remaining, but deportations continued unabated. On July 31, Brunner ordered the deportation of almost 300 children seized a week earlier from UGIF homes. On August 5, 1944, all but one of the children pictured at right were killed upon their arrival at Auschwitz. Paris was freed on August 25, 1944, and the remaining 1,400 Jews at Drancy were saved. Estimates of the number still left in Paris vary between 20,000 and 50,000. Of the 150,000 present at the October 1940 census, fully one third were no longer alive to celebrate the liberation. Parisian Jewry demonstrated a very diverse response to the cataclysm of Nazi occupation and the Vichy collaboration. Hundreds fought in the August 1944 insurrection, and hundreds were executed or otherwise died after being deported

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for engaging in resistance activities. More than 3,000 children and countless adults, had been saved through Jewish relief committees, while the UGIF continued to distribute aid until the very end. With the liberation, Parisian Jewry began to rebuild its shattered community and its organizational structure, returning to the political and ideological diversity that had marked it prior to World War II.

This picture was taken on December 18, 1943, in the courtyard of a public school in the Paris suburb of St. Mandé, the location of the girls’ orphanage. Of the twenty children pictured here, only one survived deportation which occured in the early hours of July 31, 1944.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Aaseng, Nathan. Cities at War: Paris. New York: Macmillan, 1992. Adler, Jacques. The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution: Communal Response and Internal Conflicts, 1940–1944. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Josephs, Jeremy. Swastika Over Paris. New York: Arcade, 1989. Neray, Ruth Bindefeld. To Auschwitz and Back: My Personal Journey. Sudbury, MA: Sudbury Press, 1997.

Partisans In World War II (1939–1945), partisans—paramilitary fighting groups that fought against the Nazis in German-occupied Europe—operated mainly in Eastern

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P

artisans are self-organized fighting forces operating

in enemy-occupied territory, usually using guerrilla tactics.

Europe and in the Balkan countries. This form of war-time resistance grew from the tension between having to obey and cooperate with the occupying power, and the reluctance to do so. For individuals, cooperation with the Nazis of G E R M A N Y meant obeying their orders, working for them, and surrendering to them money and property. Such cooperation was widespread and unavoidable in occupied Europe. It took some time before the individual citizens of each occupied country came to feel the urge to upset the enemy’s plans and interfere with them. When they reached that stage, they acted by evading orders, committing sabotage, failing to fulfill production quotas, and avoiding or refusing to go to Germany for F O R C E D L A B O R . Such steps inevitably led to outright resistance. Many of those who offered resistance were motivated by hatred of R AC I S M , violence, N A Z I PA RT Y ideology, and the methods used by the Nazis. Organized resistance—on political, national, or religious grounds—passed through several phases. Since partisan groups were outlawed, they resorted to secret, “underground” operations. Political parties in the resistance movement began propaganda operations. They circulated underground newspapers, organized strikes, and tried to sabotage the enemy’s efforts. There was generally little cooperation among the different groups. In the final stage of resistance—the stage of guerrilla warfare and armed struggle—these differences sometimes led to violent clashes. In most places, the final stage of resistance began when the war reached a turning point in late 1942 and early 1943. The Nazis were suffering more defeats, and their forces were vulnerable to partisan activity. Anticipating the war’s end, various national political movements began to jockey for position in the postwar era. Thus they intensified their respective armed confrontations against the occupier. The struggle for power among the political factions also led to more serious confrontations between rival movements, as occurred in Yugoslavia, Greece, and P O L A N D .

Partisan Organizations and Methods In Poland, the H O M E A R M Y (Armia Krajowa), an underground military organization, was created at the very beginning of the occupation (in 1939). On more than one occasion its leaders decided not to put their main force into action. They preferred to save it for a decisive test against the Nazis, toward the end of the war. The Home Army was in sharp conflict with the Polish Communists when they set up their own underground organization, in early 1942. For the non-Communist Poles of the Home Army, there was no difference between the Germans and the Soviets—both were enemies who had occupied their land. In some of the occupied countries, resistance to the Nazis was confined to attacks against specific Nazi officials, or to one-time special operations involving a sensitive security target. No attempt was made to train combat units and put guerrilla forces into the field on an ongoing basis, to take up street fighting, or to engage the enemy in some other form. In many countries, such as the Protectorate of B O H E M I A A N D M O R AV I A , the resistance avoided guerrilla warfare because of the great risk of retaliatory action, which would take many lives. Polish partisans frequently operated in units that were called out for a specific mission or for a period of training. Afterward, they returned to their homes and civilian pursuits. They used the same methods to vanish from the scene when the Germans combed the forests in their search for partisans. There were many Jews among the partisans of different countries. In some Eastern European countries, however, they faced overwhelming persecution by the general population. This situation made it very hard to be an effective partisan

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fighter. For example, they did not dare to approach local people for food and information, as non-Jewish partisans could. And when they did join a partisan unit, they were not put on an equal footing with other partisans. Outside Eastern Europe, Jews who wanted to join the partisan forces faced a different situation. In the Balkan states (Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Greece), Jews were accepted as equals into fighting organizations. In Western Europe, including F R A N C E and I TA LY , many Jews joined the underground fighters’ ranks not particularly as Jews, but as citizens of the country fulfilling their duty, or out of loyalty to a particular political and ideological movement. When the stage of the “F I NA L S O L U T I O N ” was reached, Jewish participation in partisan operations became part of a hopeless struggle and a determination for revenge. Partisan activity by Jews was significant in the Baltic states and the V I L NA area, in B E L O R U S S I A and western U K R A I N E (which in the interwar period had been part of Poland). It is estimated that 20,000 to 30,000 Jews were in the partisan units in the forests of the region. A combination of factors made this possible. The heavily wooded terrain was suitable for establishing partisan bases in, and many of the Jews were from the area and knew it well. At a later stage of the war, most partisan units there were under Soviet command and accepted Jews into their ranks (except for Polish and Ukrainian units, which on occasion were hostile to Jews).

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uerrilla warfare is the war of the weak and oftentimes ill-armed

against superior forces that have heavy and sophisticated arms at their disposal. Guerrilla forces, however, usually have the advantages of familiarity with the area, the sympathy of the population, and the ability to use hit-and-run tactics.

In June 1942, a central headquarters was established for the entire partisan movement in the Soviet territories occupied by the Germans. It became the channel through which means of communication, arms, equipment, and other supplies were provided to the partisans. The number of partisans grew rapidly, and their operations were now coordinated and mutually supportive. The partisans eventually reached a high standard of organization and discipline. They were well equipped and took part in many combat operations. The partisan units tormented the enemy by interfering with communications, attacking groups of soldiers, and punishing Nazi collaborators (people who helped the Nazis). Above all, they instilled fear into the German soldiers, giving them the sense of being surrounded by hostility. The partisans were increasingly effective fighters. In 1944, partisans in the East began to fight with military forces on the front, or tried to liberate areas in anticipation of the advancing Soviet army.

Belorussia There were no partisan operations of large dimensions in the countries of Western Europe, except for France and Italy. Most partisan activity occurred elsewhere in Europe. Belorussia (present-day Belarus) had the largest concentration of partisans in Eastern Europe. Partisans began to operate there as early as the summer of 1941. Most of them were Soviet army troops whom the Germans had cut off and who were roaming the villages and forests. A few were Communist party activists who had fled their homes when the Germans entered the area. Belorussia’s wide expanses of forest and swamp were ideal for large-scale partisan operations. By late August 1941, according to Soviet sources, some 230 partisan units were in existence. In late 1941, Belorussia had 5,000 partisans. In the spring of 1942, thousands of automatic rifles and artillery pieces were supplied to the partisans in Belorussia from inside the S OV I E T U N I O N . The partisan units soon formed into brigades, and a Belorussian partisan headquarters was set up. The partisan units provided a safe haven for some of the Belorussian people who were threatened with deportation or death by the Germans. The scope of partisan activities expanded greatly—in 1943, about 60 percent of Belorussia was an area of partisan actions. During the German retreat from Belorussia in the summer of 1944,

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Group portrait of a Jewish partisan unit operating in the Lithuanian forests.

the partisans carried out large joint operations with the Soviet army. They blew up railway tracks in the German rear and harassed enemy units during their withdrawal. By 1944, there were 374,000 partisans in Belorussia, of whom 91,000 were in family camps in the forests. The partisan movement in Belorussia included Belorussians, Russians, Jews, Poles, Georgians, Slovaks, and other groups. The number of Jewish partisans in the area ranged from 12,000 to 15,000—the largest concentration in the Jewish partisan movement.

Lithuania In Lithuania, the partisan movement came into existence much later than in Belorussia. This relatively late development resulted from the deep hatred that most of the Lithuanian population had toward the Soviet Union. In addition, in the

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early part of the war, Lithuania was far away from the fighting front in the East. It was from Lithuania, however, that the call rang out for Jews to rise up against the Nazis in the ghettos and to create a Jewish partisan movement. This call was contained in the manifesto that Abba Kovner published in the Vilna ghetto on the night of December 31, 1941. Three weeks later, the U N I T E D P A RT I S A N O R G A N I Z AT I O N (Fareynegte Partizaner Organizatsye; FPO) was created in Vilna. The Lithuanian partisan movement contained some 850 Jews, representing 10 percent of its total strength. The largest concentration of Jewish fighters from Lithuania came into existence in the Rudninkai Forest. The Jewish partisans were under the authority of the Soviet Lithuanian partisan movement. They sent couriers to the labor camps in Vilna to bring in more Jews from there. By the end of October 1943, there were 250 people at the Jewish partisans’ base. They undertook sabotage actions against roads, bridges, and electricity and telephone poles. Jewish partisans also sabotaged Vilna’s power station and water supplies. Some of their operations were designed to obtain arms and food supplies. On July 13, 1944, the Jewish partisans took part in the liberation of Vilna.

D

uring the extermination and murder of Jews that went on in the

western Ukraine in the summer of 1942, many groups of armed Jews organized their own partisan units and escaped into the forests and mountains. In Volhynia, some 1,000 Jewish fighters, in 35 to 40 groups, kept fighting on their own before joining up with the Soviet partisan movement late that year. Some eventually died in heavy fighting.

Ukraine A large Soviet partisan movement arose in the northern part of Ukraine, with its wide expanses of forests and swamps. From the very first days of the occupation, these forest areas provided refuge to Jews who had fled the Nazis’ extermination campaign, and to Jewish prisoners of war, who were also targeted by the Nazis for death. Both refugees and POWs joined the partisan units that began to organize in Ukraine as early as July 1941. Specific information on the role played by the Jews is scarce. Many Jews did not identify themselves as such, and so only a part of the story is known.

The Generalgouvernement A large-scale underground movement existed in the Jewish communities and ghettos of Poland (part of the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T ). While this movement showed initiative and daring in many areas, it did not have great success in guerrilla warfare or in the partisan struggle outside the cities. The reasons why the Jewish partisan struggle in Poland failed to reach large dimensions are complex. First, central Poland is thinly wooded, in comparison with the great forests of the East. Second, the strong military resistance (the Home Army) did not make use of guerrilla tactics early on against the Nazis, saving most of its strength for the final stages of the war. The Home Army did not encourage Jews to escape into the forests, and most unit commanders were not willing to accept Jews into their ranks. The fascist partisan faction National Armed Forces (Narodowe Sil⁄y Zbrojne)—which remained, for most of the period—outside the Home Army, was extremely anti-Semitic. Some of its members even murdered Jews who escaped to the forests. Some Home Army partisans were sincerely concerned about the fate of the Jews and tried to defend them in the forests, but their numbers were small and their power limited. The Polish Communists were more friendly to the Jews. Unlike the Home Army, the Communists wanted to begin an immediate struggle with the Nazis. The Jews were a natural ally in this goal. Also, the Communists and the political left in general were somewhat more sensitive to the fate of the Jews. The third reason why Jewish partisan participation was limited in the Generalgouvernement was timing. While the Nazi extermination campaign was at its height (from the spring of 1942 to the spring of 1943), the partisan movement was still weak. By the

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Rachel Sacher Rudnitsky, a cantor’s daughter from Warsaw who fought as a partisan in the forests near Vilna, shortly after its liberation.

time it gained in size and strength and included elements friendly to the Jews, very few Jews were left. Those still alive were imprisoned in labor and concentration camps. According to data published by the Poles, about 25,000 people took part in the partisan movement in the Generalgouvernement. The number of Jews who succeeded in escaping and finding shelter in villages, forests, and mountains was apparently in the tens of thousands. Of them, only 2,000 ended up as armed fighters in the forests, and 3,000 wandered the forests and villages. The rest were caught and killed, or died in the wild.

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Slovakia In S L OVA K I A , the Zionist Y O U T H M OV E M E N T S , as well as members of the Communist party, played a key role in organizing resistance “cells.” These groups were to go into action in the event of the resumption of deportations. Such cells existed in all the labor camps. In early 1944, contact was established between these cells and the Slovak National Council. When the S L OVA K I A N N AT I O N A L U P R I S I N G broke out in late August of that year, the members of these cells joined it, along with other Jews who had not previously belonged to resistance cells. Twenty-five hundred Jews participated in the Slovakian uprising, of whom 1,566 were partisans, representing 10 percent of the total number of partisans in Slovakia. Five hundred Jews fell in the uprising; of these, 269 were partisans—that is, one out of every six Jewish partisans who took part.

Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Greece In Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Greece, Jews were accepted into the ranks of the partisans as equals. No separate Jewish units, or units of a Jewish character, existed in these countries. The number of Jewish partisans there was relatively large, especially in Yugoslavia, where the partisan movement was the most important among all the German—occupied countries. The number of Jews who joined the Yugoslav partisans is especially impressive. They had to overcome great difficulties to make their way to the remote areas where the fighting took place. Also, by the time the Yugoslav partisans launched their struggle (in the fall of 1941 and, with greater strength, in the second half of 1942), most of the country’s Jews had already been killed. The list of Jews who served in the resistance movement contains 4,572 names; of this number, 3,000 served in combat units. A total of 1,318 Jews fell in battle. Some 150 were awarded the First of the Fighters medal, and ten Jews received the National Hero award, the highest decoration that Yugoslavia had to offer.

SEE ALSO RESISTANCE, JEWISH. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Anflick, Charles. Resistance: Teen Partisans and Resisters Who Fought Nazi Tyranny. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 1999.

Jewish Partisans of World War II [videorecording]. Aleph Productions, 1985. MacLean, Alistair. Partisans. New York: Ballantine Books, 1984 (fiction). Smolar, Hersh. The Minsk Ghetto: Soviet-Jewish Partisans Against the Nazis. Washington, DC: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1989.

PART JEWS. SEE MISCHLINGE. Pechersky, Aleksandr (b. 1909)

Aleksandr (Sasha) Pechersky was the leader of the S O B I B Ó R uprising. Born in Kremenchug, in the U K R A I N E , as a child Pechersky moved to Rostov-on-Don, where he graduated from a music conservatory. He became a bookkeeper, but was

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also active in drama and music circles. He served in the Red Army, holding the rank of second lieutenant. When the Germans attacked the S OV I E T U N I O N , Pechersky was drafted and posted to the front. In September 1941 he was promoted to lieutenant. He was taken prisoner the following month and contracted typhoid fever. Because the Germans shot all Soviet prisoners of war who were sick, he managed to conceal his illness and turn up for the prisoners’ daily roll calls. In May 1942 Pechersky escaped, along with four other prisoners, but they were all caught. Contrary to the usual German procedure, they were not shot but were sent to a penal camp, in Borisov. It was there, when Pechersky had to undress, that he was identified as a Jew, a fact he had previously managed to hide from the Germans. On August 20, Pechersky was transferred to an SS camp in M I N S K , in which some 100 Soviet Jewish prisoners of war were held, together with several hundred Jewish civilians from the Minsk ghetto. He stayed there for more than a year. On September 18, 1943, the Minsk ghetto was liquidated and Pechersky was sent to the Sobibór extermination camp, with 2,000 Jews from the ghetto and the SS camp. They reached Sobibór on September 23. Pechersky was one of 80 Jewish prisoners of war who, on arrival in the camp, were selected for construction work. The rest of the transport was killed by exposure to lethal gas [see G A S C H A M B E R S /V A N S ]. Shortly after Pechersky’s arrival in Sobibór, he was contacted by the camp underground. As an officer, he agreed to take over the command of the underground and to lead it in an uprising. During the next three weeks Pechersky reorganized the underground, making the prisoners of war its core and planning the uprising. On October 14, 1943, under Pechersky’s command, most of the SS men in the camp were killed and a mass escape from the camp took place. With a group of prisoners of war, Pechersky succeeded in crossing the Bug River, and on October 22, he made contact with Soviet PA R T I S A N S in the Brest area. He joined the partisans and fought in their ranks until the summer of 1944, when the Soviet army advanced into the area and the partisans joined up with the regular army units. Pechersky, now fighting in the Soviet army, was badly wounded in August 1944, and was hospitalized for four months. On recovering, he was discharged and returned to his hometown, Rostov, where he settled. Pechersky was the chief witness for the prosecution in the trial, held in Kiev in the spring of 1963, of 11 Ukrainians who had served as guards in the Sobibór camp. His account of the Sobibór uprising was published in Yuri Suhl’s They Fought Back (1957) and in The Fighting Ghettos, (1967) edited by Meyer Barkai.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Escape from Sobibor [videorecording]. Live Home Video, 1991. Rashke, Richard L. Escape from Sobibor. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982.

Pl⁄aszów Originally a forced-labor camp, the Pl⁄aszów camp was established in 1942 in a suburb of K R A K Ó W . Its official designation was the Pl⁄aszów Forced-Labor Camp of the SS and Police Leader in the Kraków District. In January 1944, Pl⁄aszów became a concentration camp.

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The construction of the camp began in the summer of 1942. It was built within the Kraków city limits, on a site that included two Jewish cemeteries, other Jewish community property, and the private property of Polish residents who had been evicted. From time to time the camp was enlarged. Its maximum size, in 1944, was 200 acres (81 hectares). It was encircled by an electric double-apron barbed-wired fence 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) in length. The camp was divided into several sections—the German quarters, the factories, and the camp itself. The camp was further divided into men’s and women’s sections, with separate subsections in each for Poles and Jews.

Jewish women pulling hopper cars of quarried stone at the Pl⁄aszów concentration camp, Kraków, Poland, 1944.

The Kraków ghetto was liquidated in 1943, on March 13 and 14. Most of the Jewish inhabitants were deported to B E L⁄ Z˙ E C . During the liquidation, about 2,000 Jews were murdered in the Kraków streets (and buried in a mass grave in Pl⁄aszów). The rest of the Jews of the Kraków ghetto—some 8,000 people—were put into Pl⁄ aszów camp. In early July, a separate camp for “retraining by work” was established within the Pl⁄aszów camp. This “retraining” camp was meant for Polish prisoners. Those Poles charged with disciplinary infractions were held there for several months; those charged with political offenses were given unlimited terms of “retraining.” The Polish “retraining” camp also contained several dozen Romani (Gypsy) families, including small children (see G Y P S I E S ). The number of prisoners held in Pl⁄aszów varied from time to time. Before the Kraków ghetto was liquidated, the camp contained 2,000 people. In the second half of 1943, however, 12,000 people were imprisoned there. In May and June 1944, the number of prisoners was at its height—22,000 to 24,000, including 6,000 to 8,000 Jews from H U N G A RY . There were 1,000 Polish prisoners in the early stage; that figure jumped to 10,000 after the W A R S AW P O L I S H U P R I S I N G . Pl⁄ aszów also contained German criminal prisoners, who had various camp duties. The number of “permanent prisoners” (that is, inmates who were given per-

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sonal numbers) is estimated to have been 25,000. There was also an unknown number of “temporary” prisoners and hostages. Amon Goeth, the camp commandant from February 1943 to September 1944 (one of five men to hold the post), was the person responsible for most of the heinous crimes committed in the camp, including mass murder, selections, working people to death, and individual murders. Until 1944 most of the camp guards were Ukrainians in Nazi service. When Pl⁄aszów became a concentration camp, 600 SS men from the SS D E AT H ’ S -H E A D U N I T S (Totenkopfverbände) took over. While still functioning as a forced-labor camp, Pl⁄aszów was the scene of mass killing of Jews. When the SS took over, Poles who had been sentenced for political crimes were taken there and shot to death. It is estimated that some 8,000 people, individually and in groups, were murdered in Pl⁄aszów. In mid-1944, as the S OV I E T U N I O N ’s Red Army was drawing near, work was begun on the breakup of the camp. Some of the surviving prisoners were transferred to other labor camps. Others were deported to E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S . In late May, 2,000 Jewish prisoners were deported to A U S C H W I T Z , where they were gassed to death. In September 1944, the Polish section of the camp was liquidated. The SS also tried to erase the traces of the crimes that had been perpetrated in the camp. They had the mass graves opened, and the bodies were exhumed and then burned in heaps. On January 14, 1945, the last prisoners were evacuated from Pl⁄ aszów and sent to Auschwitz.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Graf, Malvina. The Kraków Ghetto and the Pl⁄ aszów Camp Remembered. Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1989. Novac, Ana. The Beautiful Days of My Youth: My Six Months in Auschwitz and Pl⁄ aszów. New York: Henry Holt, 1997.

Plotnicka, Frumka (1914–1943)

Frumka Plotnicka was a leader of the F I G H T I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N O F P I O N E E R J E W I S H Y O U T H (He-Haluts ha-Lohem) underground in P O L A N D . Born in Plotnicka, near Pinsk, she was also a member of the youth movement Freiheit (Dror). Late in 1938 she worked at the Dror main office in W A R S AW . When World War II broke out, Plotnicka, along with most of the people in the hakhsharot (Zionist training farms), moved to Kovel, in Soviet-occupied eastern Poland, in the hope that from there they would find a way of reaching Palestine. In 1940 she was one of a group of Dror headquarters members who were asked to return to the German-occupied area to reorganize Dror as an underground movement. Basing herself in Warsaw, Plotnicka tried from the beginning of the invasion of the S OV I E T U N I O N in June 1941 to consolidate and strengthen the Haluts underground movements throughout occupied Poland, even visiting nearly inaccessible ghettos. In September 1942 she went to Be˛dzin on a mission for the J E W I S H F I G H T ˙ ydowska Organizacja Bojowa; Z˙OB), to assist in setting up a I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N (Z self-defense organization there. She was in contact with several people and organizations in Switzerland and S L OVA K I A and with the Rescue Committee of the Jewish

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Agency in Turkey, to which she passed information about the situation in occupied Poland. Plotnicka rejected opportunities, such as moving to Slovakia or obtaining documents as a foreign national, to save her life. On August 3, 1943, she died in battle, together with the last group of fighters in Be˛dzin.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Anflick, Charles. Resistance: Teen Partisans and Resisters Who Fought Nazi Tyranny. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 1999.

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Resisters. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/resister.htm (accessed on August 22, 2000).

POGROMS. SEE KIELCE; KRISTALLNACHT (NIGHT OF THE BROKEN GLASS).

Pohl, Oswald (1892–1951)

Oswald Pohl was the head of the German E C O N O M I C -A D M I N I S T R AT I V E M A I N O F F I C E (Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt; WVHA) during World War II. He joined the N A Z I PA RT Y in 1926 and the SS in 1929, reaching the rank of Standartenführer (Colonel) in 1934. His organizational skills caught the attention of Heinrich H I M M L E R , who brought Pohl to prominence in 1935 as chief of administration in the SS-Hauptamt (SS Main Office). In 1939 Pohl was promoted to the rank of ministerial director of the Ministry of the Interior, where he rapidly developed SS economic enterprises with the help of sympathetic specialists from German industry. These activities were grouped together in 1942 as the WVHA, and Pohl’s position made him one of the most powerful members of the SS structure. He was responsible for a work force of more than half a million concentration camp prisoners, some of whom were also “leased out” to private industry. Pohl was in charge of overseeing all the prisoner work programs. In effect, it was Pohl who masterminded the “economic” aspect of the program to exterminate the Jews, as part of Himmler’s emphasis on the effectiveness and financial independence of the SS. Pohl ensured that all the personal possessions of the murdered Jews—clothing, gold tooth fillings, wedding rings, jewelry, and so on—were sent back to G E R M A N Y and turned into cash or otherwise utilized commercially. Under Pohl, prisoner labor was turned into a financial asset for the SS. At the end of the war Pohl went into hiding, but he was found and arrested in May 1946. In 1947 he was condemned to death for C R I M E S AG A I N S T H U M A N I T Y , war crimes, and membership in a criminal organization. After a number of appeals he was executed in 1951.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Browning, Christopher R. Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Ferencz, Benjamin B. Less than Slaves: Jewish Forced Labor and the Quest for Compensation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979.

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Poland The Poles are a Western Slavic people who created a unified state in the tenth century and adopted Roman Catholicism. In the course of Poland’s thousand-year existence, its territory has alternately expanded and contracted. Numerous powers in the region, including Russia, A U S T R I A , and G E R M A N Y , have ruled the country during its long, tumultuous history. After World War I (1914–1918), Poland became an independent nation. But this status was fragile, and Poland was forced to seek alliances among the powers in Europe. In 1934, its leadership signed a treaty with Germany, meant to protect Poland’s independence. But it did not take into account the fact that Adolf H I T L E R , the head of Germany and its N A Z I PA R T Y , viewed Poland only as a “satellite” or peripheral state at best. A violent clash between the two countries was inevitable.

Germany Attacks Poland On September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland and World War II began. Germany had many advantages over Poland. The Polish state was surrounded by German military forces in the west, north, and south. In addition, Germany had superior military equipment. On September 3, 1939, G R E AT B R I TA I N and F R A N C E declared war on Germany, in response to the attack on Poland. However, they did not take any military measures that could have led to fighting on a second front and a reduction of the pressure on Poland. On September 6, Romania, an ally of Poland, declared itself neutral in the conflict. As a result, Poland stood alone in the face of German aggression and, despite its heroic resistance, was conquered. On September 28, W A R S A W surrendered, and the last battle was fought in the early days of October. A total of 66,000 Polish troops fell in the battles, and 133,000 were wounded. German losses were 16,000 dead and missing, and 30,000 wounded. Sixteen thousand Polish and Jewish civilians and P R I S O N E R S O F WA R were killed in more than 700 mass executions carried out by German military forces and the Nazis’ O P E R A T I O N A L S Q UA D S (Einsatzgruppen). Despite their devastating defeat, however, the heads of the Polish government and army did not officially surrender. Until October 26, 1939, German-occupied Poland was in the hands of a military administration. Thereafter, Germany annexed parts of western and northern Poland, and formed a civil administration, known as the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T , in the remaining areas of Poland held by Germany. More than 22 million inhabitants of Poland were now under German occupation. Over 10 million of them lived in the territories annexed by Nazi Germany, including 600,000 to 1 million Germans and 600,000 Jews. The rest, some 12 million people, including 1.5 million Jews, lived in the Generalgouvernement. On September 17, Soviet forces entered eastern Poland, which the Soviets regarded as parts of B E L O R U S S I A and U K R A I N E . By then, it was clear that the war had been decided in favor of the Germans. The Soviets met with little spontaneous resistance from Polish units. The Polish High Command had ordered the Polish army not to fight the Soviet army, except when Polish units were being attacked. An agreement between the S OV I E T U N I O N and Germany, signed on September 28, fixed the final border between the two countries. The Soviets seized an area of 75,675 square miles (196,000 square kilometers), with a population of 4 million to 5

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million Poles and 1.2 million Jews. The non-Polish population, including the Jews, gave the Soviet units a warm welcome.

Administrative Divisions of Poland under German Occupation, 1939–1945.

The Polish Leadership On September 17, 1939, in view of the new situation that had arisen in their country, the top Polish leaders decided to leave and cross into Romania. There they were interned, as a result of German pressure. These leaders were then replaced by Polish leadership based in France. When France fell, in June 1940, the former leaders of the Polish government moved to Great Britain to form a government-inexile. Most of the Polish army in France, however, did not escape in time. The Pol-

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ish forces either fell into German hands or crossed the border into Switzerland, where the soldiers were interned.

N

azi policy in occupied Poland focused on eliminating

Poland as a nation, through the

destruction of Polish culture and society.

Volksliste

A list of groups of people who were to be accepted into the Third Reich as Germans.

Polish Government under Occupation In September 1939, the central Polish government institutions dissolved. Before long, they were reestablished as underground organizations, by the Polish government-in-exile and the Polish underground authorities in Poland: the Delegatura (the Polish government’s representation on Polish soil) and the National Council (Krajowa Rada Narodowa). As far as the Germans were concerned, the Polish state had ceased to exist both legally and politically. The Germans felt that they could thus rule at will, without taking into account the fact that the Polish government was continuing the war abroad. In the areas incorporated into Nazi Germany, the Polish administration, local government units, and all existing Polish organizations were liquidated, and new administrative units were established. The men appointed by Hitler as governors were to “Germanize” the areas under their control, by expelling Poles and placing selected parts of the population on the Volksliste and accepting them as “ethnic Germans,” or (V O L K S D E U T S C H E ). Germans were to be settled there. By the end of 1939, some 90,000 Jews and Poles had been expelled from the annexed areas into the Generalgouvernement. During the entire German occupation, 900,000 persons were expelled—not counting the Jews who were deported for extermination. In their place, 600,000 Germans from other parts of Poland and from other countries of Eastern Europe were settled in these areas, together with 400,000 Germans from the German state. The Poles who were temporarily permitted to stay were treated as subhumans. They were not allowed to live in the same place as Germans or to associate with them (except in their place of work), and they were robbed of all their property and personal belongings. Nazi occupation policy was implemented by the administrations of the occupied areas; the S S , police, and Waffen-SS; and the Wehrmacht units stationed there. In 1942, these numbered 500,000 troops; in 1944, there were between 600,000 and 1.1 million. Neither side was prepared to cooperate with the other. The conquerors had no interest in such a relationship, since their plan was to transform Poland into German Lebensraum (“living space”). The Poles generally felt hatred toward their conquerors. The basic goal of Nazi policy was to destroy Polish society so that Poland would cease to exist as a nation. The means used to achieve this goal were: (1) the destruction of the Polish leadership; (2) the murder of people regarded as present or potential enemies of Nazi Germany; (3) the murder and extermination of “undesirable” racial and other groups (Jews, G Y P S I E S , and sick people, the last by means of the E U T H A NA S I A P R O G R A M ); (4) the use of harsh measures against the population wherever the Nazis encountered resistance; (5) the provision of food in quantities just large enough to enable the Poles to perform hard labor; (6) the reduction of the population; and (7) the allotment of a role for the Poles in the “General Plan East” The Jews were at first separated from the Polish population and imprisoned in ghettos and camps. Later, they were nearly all killed in the “ F I N A L S O L U T I O N ” . The loss of life in Poland as a result of the fighting and of actions taken by the occupying authorities was 6 million—half of this number Jews. The expulsions affected 1.2 million people; 500,000 people were expelled after the W A R S A W P O L I S H U P R I S I N G . Some 2.5 million were sent to work in Germany. More than 2 million Poles were included in the Volksliste, which meant that the military draft was applied

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to them. The loss of life among the civilian population was ten times that suffered by the fighting formations.

The Church under the Occupation The attempt to destroy the Polish nation also included the religious sphere of Polish life. In the eyes of the German authorities, the Catholic church in Poland was an integral element of the Polish people and the Polish state. For this reason, in the areas incorporated into Nazi Germany, the Polish elements in the church were liquidated, so that the church became a German institution. Many churches were turned into warehouses or stripped of their contents. During the war, close to 3,000 Christian clerics were killed in battle, 900 were shot to death, and 1,345 perished in C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S .

W

orst among the crimes committed by Nazis in

occupied Poland was the murder of the Jews.

The Evangelical church, in the areas annexed by the Reich, was well disposed toward the Nazi authorities. Churchmen of German origin who were known for their loyalty to Poland, however, suffered harsh treatment.

Organized Terror During the September 1939 fighting, terror was practiced on an organized basis, but its methods differed from place to place, depending on its purpose— short-range or long-range—and on the organization of the various occupation agencies. In the areas incorporated into Nazi Germany, the terror used against the Polish population between 1940 and 1945 was more or less uniform, with slight variations in its intensity. In the Generalgouvernement, there were marked differences in the degree of violence used, and also in the methods applied, depending on the military and political situations and the effectiveness of the methods used. The Generalgouvernement authorities employed terror on a large scale. When they could not control or suppress the population, the terror frequently took the form of mass beatings and manhunts. The German retreat from occupied Poland was also accompanied by the murder and massacre of prisoners. The Nazis set up their largest internment camp system on Polish soil, including a number of E X T E R M I NAT I O N CA M P S and concentration camps where Jews were systematically exterminated. The total included 1,798 labor camps and 136 refugee camps. Transit camps for deportees were also used as killing sites, as were several prisons and ghettos. Poles were also imprisoned in nearly every concentration camp. The highly efficient Nazi camp system affected every aspect of the prisoners’ lives, achieving its purposes by exposing prisoners to intolerable living conditions, forcing them to work to the very limit of their strength, meting out cruel punishments, holding lengthy roll calls in freezing cold, and generally seeking to humiliate the prisoners in every possible way.

Polish Areas Annexed to the Soviet Union, Lithuania, and Slovakia

collectivized

The areas occupied by the Soviet Union after September 17, 1939, were incorporated into Belorussia and Ukraine. The land was confiscated, industry and banks were nationalized, and agriculture was collectivized . Soviet policy toward the various ethnic groups was designed to win the support of the non-Polish population. Most of the Jews rapidly adjusted to the new situation, and they took part in the new adminis-

Transformed from a system of privatelyowned farms to a governmentsupervised enterprise of production and distribution, generally under a communist system of government.

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tration. The Poles, as a result, became distrustful of the Jews, which only added to the Poles’ long-standing A N T I S E M I T I S M . This attitude was exploited by Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda after the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941.

P

olish resistance took the form of individual and public self-defense, and opposition to orders issued by the occupation authorities.

The areas that the Soviet Union had occupied in September 1939 were captured by the Germans during their invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. A new territorial district, B I A L⁄ Y S TO K , was created, with a population of 1.7 million. It received a status similar to that of the Polish areas incorporated earlier into Nazi Germany. On July 30, 1941, the Polish government-in-exile and the Soviet Union signed a treaty in which they agreed to cooperate in the war against the Germans. Agreement was also reached on the creation of a Polish army on Soviet soil. However, the expectations raised by this agreement were never fulfilled.

The Polish Resistance Movement The German occupying forces suppressed the Poles with the utmost severity. After an initial period of uncertainty about how to respond to the German occupation, Polish resistance to the Nazis became widespread. More than 300 underground political and military groups were formed. There were two major underground political movements. One consisted of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), together with the Delegatura. The other included the People’s Guard (Gwardia Ludowa) and its successor, the People’s Army (Armia Ludowa, together with the National Council (Krajowa Rada Narodowa). Resistance by individuals and organized groups became a way of life. Economic sabotage reinforced patriotic feelings. Resistance activities included: (1) active sabotage, especially on lines of communication; (2) a well-organized military intelligence system; (3) P A R T I S A N units; (4) uprisings (such as the Warsaw Polish Uprising); (5) an underground press; and (6) an underground educational network.

The Jews in Poland Jews have lived in Poland for a thousand years. Over the centuries, they have often been subjected to persecution, even massacres, resulting from intense antisemitism. After World War I ended, the Allied leaders had required Poland (and other countries in Eastern and Southeastern Europe) to sign a treaty for the protection of the ethnic and religious rights of minorities. The Polish struggle for independence from 1918 to 1920 was accompanied by anti-Jewish riots in hundreds of cities and towns. Two basic elements determined the Polish attitude toward the Jews after World War I. One was the size of the Jewish population, which in the newly independent Poland constituted 10 percent of the total, rising as high as 30 percent in the major cities. The other issue was the key role allegedly played by the Jews in Poland’s economy. Many Poles believed that a “Polonization” of economic life in the country’s cities and towns was necessary. This hostility was heightened by the devastating worldwide economic depression of the 1930s, which hit Poland very hard. When the Polish leadership tightened the country’s relations with Nazi Germany, it adopted a clear anti-Jewish policy. The government criticized brutal acts of violence against the Jewish minority—but gave its blessing to an anti-Jewish economic boycott. The pre-invasion Polish government assigned high priority to the accelerated emigration of Jews and reduction in the size of the country’s Jewish population. More extreme groups tried using violent methods, such as starting anti-Jewish riots, to force the Jews to emigrate. Although broad political circles, composed of socialists and liberals, publicly attacked antisemitism and joined the Jews in the struggle

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A Jew wearing a ritual prayer shawl, surrounded by Nazis. Two cut off his earlocks while others look on with amusement.

for their rights and in their self-defense actions, the idea of depriving the Jews, or at least a large proportion of them, of the right to live in Poland had wide support among the population in the second half of the 1930s. At the time of the German invasion of Poland, Jews became targets of violent discrimination by both their Polish neighbors and the German occupying forces.

I

n the summer of 1940, Jews were forbidden to emigrate from Poland.

No more than 2,000 to 3,000 Jews were

World War II Immediately after the Germans overwhelmed Poland in September 1939, a wave of riots and murders followed, perpetrated by the Operational Squads that accompanied the German forces. The “actions” (Aktionen) of the Operational Squads struck Poles, too. But even in their first blows, the Jews were singled out.

able to leave Poland legally. Most of them were well-to-do or had good connections.

On the eve of the war, Poland had a Jewish population of 3.3 million, 1.2 million of whom lived in the areas that came under Soviet control. From early September 1939 to February and March 1940, there was an ongoing flow of refugees from the German-controlled part to the eastern, Soviet-held part. Several sources estimate that

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E

arly on, Jews were rounded up in city streets for jobs such as carry-

ing loads, working in military barracks, and clearing the streets of the rubble caused by the air raids. The random seizures and assaults brought Jewish life to a virtual standstill. As a result, the Judenräte in large cities offered to supply the Germans with a fixed quota of workers, if the roundups in the streets were discontinued. This was the beginning of the Jewish labor gangs. They were paid for their work not by the

“This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions”

Germans but by the Jewish community.

300,000 Jews, mostly young males, took this route. Some of the refugees returned to the west after a short stay, tired of living as refugees, or wanting to be reunited with their families. After this phase, and until the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the German-occupied part of Poland had a Jewish population of 1.8 million to 2 million, of whom 1.5 million were in the Generalgouvernement. J E W I S H P O L I C Y The first directives about the treatment of the Jews in Poland

were issued by Reinhard H E Y D R I C H , in a special letter addressed to the Operational Squad chiefs dated September 21, 1939. The policy on the Jews was to be implemented in two stages: an immediate operational stage, and a long-range stage defined as a “final aim” (Endziel). This second stage was not discussed in detail, though the Operational Squads chiefs were warned that the very existence of such a “final aim” must be kept strictly secret. There were three immediate measures: 1. The expulsion of the Jews from the northwestern districts to the area that was designated to form the Generalgouvernement, and their concentration in the large cities, near major rail junctions;

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2. The establishment of Ältestenräte (“councils of elders”) or Judenräte (Jewish Councils) in the Jewish communities, to consist, when possible, of “influential personalities and rabbis,” where such people were still to be found, to provide direct administration of Jewish life under the supervision of Nazi forces; 3. The taking into consideration of German economic interests, especially the requirements of the army, by the German officials in charge of the expulsions and evacuations. Jews whose continued presence was economically essential were to be left in place until further notice. On November 25, 1939, Hitler officially announced the end of the military administration and the establishment of the Generalgouvernement, with Hans F R A N K as its head. Frank began his term of office by issuing a series of anti-Jewish orders. In the late autumn, decrees were published that, among other things: (1) ordered all Jews ages ten and above to wear a white armband with a blue Star of David on the right sleeve of their inner and outer garments as of December 1; (2) prohibited Jews from changing their place of residence without permission from the local German administration; and (3) introduced F O R C E D L A B O R for the Jews. Jewish stores and Jewish-owned enterprises had to be marked with a Star of David. In January 1940, Jews were barred from traveling by train except by special permit. The purpose of these decrees was to humiliate the Jews, restrict their freedom of movement, and isolate them from the rest of the population.

F

rom its very start, the anti-Jewish campaign was not confined to

official decrees. Other actions by the authorities were sometimes far worse. Soldiers in uniform rounded up Jews on the streets for various temporary jobs and often assaulted them, especially those wearing traditional garb. They also grabbed goods from Jewish homes and the shelves of Jewish stores without paying for them and seized Jewish apartments, evicting the rightful residents.

T H E J U D E N R AT Within a short time, Judenräte were established in all parts of German-occupied Poland. These Jewish Councils were the German authorities’ main instrument for implementing their policy on the Jews. Most of the Judenrat members (some of whom had been forced to accept the appointment), as well as the Judenrat chairmen, believed that they would be able to serve the interests of their community and protect it as best they could. The Judenrat was the only institution permitted to appear on behalf of individual Jews and the Jewish community. It was the only channel of communication between the Jews and the authorities in a situation in which the Jews had lost all traces of their civil and legal status.

Each Judenrat operated on its own, in its respective community, and without any umbrella organization or other type of coordinating body. The Judenrat chairman were torn between protecting the people of the ghetto and protecting themselves; the Germans executed Judenrat chairmen who refused to carry out decrees designed to inflict grave harm upon the Jews. More information about the Judenräte and their role in Jewish communities in Poland during World War II can be found in the J U D E N R AT entry. F O R C E D L A B O R A N D PAU P E R I Z AT I O N The history of the Jews of Poland

under German occupation is divided into two distinct periods. The first was from the outbreak of war in September 1939 to the middle of 1941. At that point, the Germans launched their mass murder campaign, after their attack on the Soviet Union and the conquest of territories in the East. In the Generalgouvernement and the areas incorporated into Nazi Germany, the first phase lasted until early 1942. In parts of Zagl⁄ e˛ bie and Silesia, it lasted until the second half of that year. Once the German administration was installed in the occupied areas, the Jews there were smothered with decrees and regulations designed to humiliate, isolate, or rob them. Jews were confined to hard labor only. For this work they received minimal pay—if any—that was completely inadequate for the barest necessities of life. The confiscation and liquidation of Jewish and Polish factories and businesses began as early as September 1939. In January 1940, the Jews were ordered to regis-

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Poland’s largest Jewish communities on the eve of World War II.

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olish Jews tried to convince themselves that Germany

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ter their property with the local authorities. In addition to factories, business enterprises, workshops, and houses, goods and valuables found in homes and in warehouses were also taken by the Nazis. Jews who did not own the kind of property that was officially subject to seizure were not safe from being robbed. Furniture, pianos, books, valuables, and artworks were removed from Jewish apartments. Even the apartments themselves were sometimes taken from their Jewish residents. Most of the Jewish breadwinners in Poland who were salaried workers—laborers, business employees, clerks, teachers, and most of the professionals—were left without work or any alternative source of income. They had a hard time surviving on their savings and money from selling their valuables. From the very beginning of the occupation, refugees and the very poor suffered from hunger. On October 26, 1939, Hans F R A N K issued a decree proclaiming that every Jewish male of working age was subject to forced labor. This became the basis for sending Jews to labor camps. At first many volunteered for the camps, assuming that they would receive the food they needed and a minimum standard of living conditions. When the true—and dreadful—situation in the Nazi camps became known, volunteering came to an abrupt end. Forced recruitment took its place. By early 1941 some 200 Jewish labor camps were in operation. Tens of thousands of Jews were forced to work there. The work consisted of flood control; construction of roads, defense works, and buildings; and agriculture. Because of the intolerable living and working

POLAND

conditions, laborers in the camps were sapped of their strength. Epidemics broke out, and a high death rate resulted. GHETTOIZATION Unlike the Judenräte, which were established under a central directive and on short notice, the process of confining the Jews to ghettos was a lengthy one. Sealed-off ghettos with an internal Jewish government of sorts, an economic life, and essential services were introduced only in Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, and the Soviet Union. The first ghetto of this era was established in October 1939, in Piotrków Trybunalski. For most of the time, it was an open ghetto. The first large ghetto, in L⁄ Ó D Z´ , was sealed off in May 1940. In the Generalgouvernement, the ghettos were set up in 1940 and 1941—the Warsaw ghetto in November 1940, L U B L I N and K R A K Ó W in March 1941—and in Zagl⁄e˛bie, this happened as late as 1942 and 1943, when the Nazis’ mass extermination of Jews was already well underway. Ghettos were generally set up in the occupied Soviet territories soon after the occupation in 1941.

G

Ghettos were guarded differently from place to place. German, Polish, and Jewish policemen were posted at the Warsaw ghetto gates. In L ⁄ ódz´ , which was completely sealed off from non-Jewish areas, German police guarded the ghetto from the outside, and Jewish policemen patrolled inside the fence. Attempts to leave some closed ghettos were punishable by death. In the smaller ghettos, the guard consisted of one German policeman or several local policemen.

dangerous) to get in and out. People

Living conditions inside the ghettos were largely determined by the degree to which the ghettos were segregated and sealed off, and by the size of their population. The worst off were the two most populated ghettos, Warsaw and L ⁄ ódz´ ; in 1940 and 1941, a total of 600,000 Jews were imprisoned in these two alone. In his diary, Nazi Joseph G O E B B E L S called the ghettos “death boxes.” But were the ghettos intended to be a primary tool for liquidating the Jews, or were they created as a Nazi tool of controlling the Jewish population?

hettos differed from one place to another, although the sites

selected for the ghettos were almost always the most crowded and neglected sections of the cities. The L⁄ódz´ ghetto was totally sealed by fences and barbed wire, and it had its own currency, which was totally worthless outside the ghetto. The Warsaw ghetto was enclosed with a wall, but it was possible (though took the risk in order to smuggle in food and manufactured goods. But in many smaller cities, the Jewish ghettos were open, with only a sign to indicate their boundaries.

In November 1941, Hans Frank noted that qualified Jewish workers in the Generalgouvernement could be useful for German industry. He and other senior Nazis argued that these Jews should be permitted to work, while “appropriate arrangements should be made” for the rest. In August 1942, Hans Frank declared: “Nothing much has to be said about the fact that we are starving 1,200,000 Jews to death; that is self-evident, and if the Jews do not die from hunger, anti-Jewish decrees will have to be speeded up, and let us hope that this is what will happen.” By the time this was said, the “Final Solution”—the Nazis’ plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe—was already underway. This makes it difficult to state that ghettoization was meant as a consistent policy for eradicating the Jews. The local German authorities were not at all troubled by the huge death rate among the Jews (especially among Jews who were not working for them). But there is no evidence of a full-fledged, specific plan to bring about the physical liquidation of the Jews during the ghettoization stage—that is, in 1940 and 1941. In fact, in 1940, the Nazi top leadership was still toying with the idea of mass D E P O R TAT I O N S of Jews to Madagascar (see M A DAG A S C A R P L A N ). In any case, the definitive decisions on the fate of the Jews were made on the top level, in B E R L I N .

Jewish Ghetto Life Most of the Polish Jews who had been leaders at various levels—in the parliament, the municipal government, and Jewish communal life—left Poland during

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A

t first, underground activities did not lead to confrontation with

the Nazi authorities. The Germans were not interested in what the Jews were thinking, or in their political divisions.

the fighting in September 1939, or in the first few months of the occupation. They believed that they were endangered by their past activities, since the Nazi regime would likely first seek out those who had publicly expressed their antiNazi views. As a group, the Jews who remained were well aware that the German Nazi regime was extremely anti-Jewish. Still, it was impossible for anyone to imagine where Nazi policy on the Jews would lead. And yet, after generations of discrimination and persecution, the Jews of Poland were better prepared for adversity than the Jewish communities in Western Europe.

The Nazis evidently did not imagine that Jews were capable of forming an

SOCIAL WELFARE At the beginning of the occupation, Jewish political, social, and

underground that could interfere with

cultural organizations ceased to exist. Although no specific announcement to this effect was made, anything not expressly permitted had to be viewed as prohibited. The need for mutual help and social welfare prompted the first efforts to reorganize. Many Jews were called upon to take in refugees, to repair war damage, and to lend aid to the thousands of persons affected by the war. Social workers had not joined the exodus of public figures, and most of the leaders of the American Jewish J O I N T D I S T R I B U T I O N C O M M I T T E E (known as the Joint) had also stayed behind. As an American organization, the Joint was somewhat off limits to the Nazis, and it had funds at its disposal. Its officials began to set up aid centers, beginning with soup kitchens, where a bowl of soup and a piece of bread were given to the hungry. Welfare institutions for children and for the sick were also reactivated, and an aid network for refugees was established.

the occupation authorities. Only when they discovered that the Jews were maintaining contact with the Poles did the Nazis become furious.

Representatives of the self-help organization sponsored by the Joint went out from Warsaw to the provincial cities, and representatives of remote Jewish communities came to Warsaw to seek help. At first the self-help effort was very important, but the money eventually ran out. The funds received up to late 1941 were not enough to cover even minimum welfare needs. After the U NITED S TATES entered the war in late 1941, money from American sources could no longer be sent legally. The financial assistance given by the Joint in 1940 was higher than in the following year, 1941—the year of distress, hunger, and mass starvation. But the Joint leaders did not give up. They appealed to Jews in the ghettos who had money hidden away to lend some of it to the Jewish Mutual Aid Society, with the assurance that the loan would be repaid when the war was over. This method was risky for both of the parties involved. Although it provided additional financial resources for the self-help organization, it could not meet the growing needs. Emanuel R I N G E L B L U M expressed the dilemma, writing in May 1942: “What to do? To give a spoonful to everybody, in which case nobody will stay alive, or to hand it out in generous portions—in which case only a few could benefit?” C U LT U R A L AC T I V I T I E S Illegal cultural activities in the ghettos of Poland took

many forms. In Warsaw, Kraków, and elsewhere, the authorities did not permit schools for Jewish children. Only in the 1941–1942 school year were elementaryschool classes allowed in the Warsaw ghetto. In place of legal schools, a network of secret study “cells” operated, on the elementary and secondary levels. Warsaw also had clandestine secondary schools. Lectures on forbidden subjects were given in the ghettos, orchestras played and choirs sang, and theaters performed plays from the classical Jewish repertoire and sketches dealing with current life. Many diaries were kept in the ghettos. The diarists included writers, public figures, Jews who had never before tried their hand at writing, and even children. The diaries that have been preserved, written in different languages and styles, document the life of the Jews in the ghettos.

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“This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions”

The Jews also refused to follow the Nazis’ anti-religious decrees. In the Warsaw ghetto, public prayer services were prohibited. In Kraków, the synagogues were closed down. Still, the Jews continued to pray in prayer quorums and to observe the religion’s dietary laws. P O L I T I CA L O R G A N I Z AT I O N S Many leadership functions were carried out by underground political organizations. Political party representatives were active in two spheres: political information and mutual help. Party activists maintained contact by means of postal services (which functioned to some degree in the ghettos), and they even established contact with foreign countries. The underground organizations also published clandestine newspapers.

Special soup kitchens for children kept them busy with games and some instruction.

More intensive and more important were the activities carried on by the and the younger age groups of the political parties. Among them, the Zionists worked to train and educate the young generations for the challenges that lay ahead when the war was over. They also began to organize themselves for possible resistance, and they tried to persuade other Jews to join in that effort. Y O U T H M OV E M E N T S

Jews and Poles At first, contacts between the Jewish resistance and the main Polish underground were negligible. The central organs of the Polish underground—the Delegatura and the Home Army—had no contact with the Jews. Jewish citizens of Poland were not asked to participate in any way whatsoever in the Polish underground’s institutions. Nor did the situation move the Polish underground to take any action on behalf of the Jews, even though it was active in many fields all over the country and had considerable human and financial resources. Individual Poles, in some cases, did maintain contact with their Jewish friends and helped them, as did some Polish groups that had contacts with Jewish organizations in the past. For the most part, the Jews of Poland were left to stand before the Nazis alone, unarmed, and without the support of the Poles. Until the stage of total physical extermination, most of the Poles were indifferent to the fate of the Jews. This was due in part to the war conditions, the suffering, and the Nazi terrorization of Poles as well as Jews. Antisemitism also had an important impact on the behavior of the Polish population during the occupation. Apathy was not the only response, however. At one end of the spectrum were Poles eager to take over Jewish property and businesses. At the other were Poles who overcame their antisemitic attitudes toward the suffering Jews and supported them.

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Preparations for the “Final Solution”

T

he largest and most dreadful deportation to take place on

the soil of occupied Poland was from the Warsaw ghetto.

In late 1939 and early 1940, Jewish emigration from German-held territory was still allowed. An attempt was made to concentrate Jews in the Lublin Reservation (see N I S K O A N D L U B L I N P L A N ). In the summer of 1940, the German Foreign Office and the G E S TA P O produced the M A DAG A S CA R P L A N , under which the Jews of Europe were to be deported to that distant island in the Indian Ocean, to be held there under German control. But the Madagascar Plan was not feasible, due to the situation in the war zones and on the high seas. According to some sources, the Germans also considered a plan to deport the Jews into the remote expanses of the Soviet Union. This plan had to be abandoned when the German military advance was brought to a halt within European Russia. The Nazis in the occupied countries also did not show a clear-cut resolve in the first years to physically destroy the Jews. It is clear, though, that for the Nazi authorities, the anti-Jewish measures and regulations that they were implementing at the time—the separation of the Jews from the general population, the elimination of Jews from economic life, the drafting of Jews for forced labor, and their imprisonment in ghettos—did not represent the limit of their planned actions against the Jews and their ultimate goal. Even the ghettos were no more than an intermediate station. More radical measures were being considered that could only mean the total elimination of the Jews. Generalgouverneur Hans Frank, whose statements on the fate of the Jews were always inspired by Hitler and other the top Nazi officials, remarked at a meeting of the Generalgouvernement in December 1941: “To be quite honest, the Jews have to be disposed of, one way or another.”

Extermination Operations The Germans attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. For Hitler, this was the right moment to intensify his policy against the Jews, and the Operational Squads were sent to commit mass murder by shooting, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews. This marked the beginning of the utter destruction of European Jewry. From the Russian war front, the campaign of death was extended to Poland and the other German-occupied areas of Europe. The German authorities in each country participated, under a special task force responsible for planning and execution. EXTERMINATION CAMPS On December 7, 1941, the first camp in which gas was

⁄ ódz´, in a Polish used for killing was put in operation, at C H E L⁄ M N O , northwest of L area that had been incorporated into Nazi Germany. The first victims of that camp, Jews from the small towns of Da˛bie, Sompolno, and Kol⁄o, were killed the next day. On December 15, the first Jews were deported from the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto to Chel⁄mo, marking the beginning of a process that continued, with some breaks, until May 15, 1942. During this phase of deportations, 55,000 Jews were taken to Chel⁄mno, in 66 transports. In October and November 1941, preparations began for the murder of the Jews in the Generalgouvernement, including the Jews of L V OV and Eastern Galicia—a total Jewish population of 2 million. In the first half of 1942, three more extermination camps were established as part of A K T I O N ( O P E R AT I O N ) R E I N H A R D : B E L⁄ Z˙ E C , S O B I B Ó R , and T R E B L I N K A . The Jews of Eastern and Western Galicia were taken to Bel⁄z˙ec. The Jews of L U B L I N district were sent to Sobibór. The Jews of Warsaw and Radom districts and the Bial⁄ystok district, for the most part, were deported to Treblinka. Bel⁄z˙ec, the first of these death camps, was put into operation on March 17, 1942. According to a Nazi

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report, about 50 percent of the Jews of Lvov district—a total of 252,989 people— had been deported by November 10, 1942. In March 1942, some 15,000 Jews from Lvov were deported, followed by another 50,000 in August 1942. During March and April 1942, Jews from a number of towns and cities in Galicia were deported, from such places as Stanisl⁄ awów, Drogobych and Kolomyia. The second wave included tens of thousands of Jews from Przemys´l, T E R N O P O L , and elsewhere.

A

t the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, the

Generalgouvernement state secretary,

D E P O RTAT I O N S F O R D E AT H O R F O R C E D L A B O R Between mid-March and

Dr. Josef Bühler, asked that the “Final

mid-April, the Jews of Lublin were deported, and that ancient Jewish community was liquidated. Some 2,500 to 3,000 people were murdered on the spot. Thirty thousand were deported, mostly to Bel⁄ z˙ec. Four thousand Jews were left in the “residual ghetto,” in the suburb of Majdan-Tatarski. On August 16, in an action against the Radom Jewish community, 18,000 Jews were deported.

Solution” begin in the Generalgouvernement.

In May 1942, the mayor of Kraków announced that only 15,000 Jews whose presence was essential for the economy would be permitted to stay there. The rest, some 40,000 people, were ordered to get out of the city within three months. During May and June 1942, about 6,000 Jews were deported to Bel⁄ z˙ec. In a second wave of violent deportations in October, another 7,000 Kraków Jews were sent to Bel⁄z˙ec, and 600 were murdered on the spot. In the fall of 1942, similar events took place in the Bial⁄ystok district. The first deportation from the city of Bial⁄ystok was carried out in February 1943. The largest and most dreadful deportation to take place on the soil of occupied Poland was that from the Warsaw ghetto. It began on July 22, 1942, and lasted until mid-September. This operation cost the lives of 300,000 persons, with most of the victims sent to Treblinka. In the towns and cities of Zagl⁄ e˛ bie, the Jews were subject to the forced labor operations of O R G A N I S AT I O N S C H M E LT . Beginning in late 1940, SS officer Albrecht Schmelt was in charge of the exploitation of the Jewish labor force on behalf of the SS. As chief of the organization that bore his name, Schmelt presided over a network of labor camps in Upper and Lower Silesia and the Sudetenland. Tens of thousands of Jews worked there. Organisation Schmelt also had at its disposal factories that had been put up in the cities and ghettos, in which Jews were working for the German war effort. Conditions in these camps and factories were very harsh, and the pay received by the Jews did not cover their minimum needs. But working for the organization protected the Jews for a relatively long time from deportation. In May 1942, the extermination of the Jews of Zagl⁄ e˛ bie was launched. The method used by the “Schmelt men” was to purge the “unproductive elements” and deport them. This was a turning point for the Jews of Zagl⁄e˛bie. A general “selection” (Selektion) was made among the Jews of Be˛ dzin, Sosnowiec, and Da˛ browa Gornicza, and 11,000 of them were deported to the extermination camps. After this, most of the remaining Jews worked for Organisation Schmelt. The deportations were resumed in early 1943, and the Zagl⁄e˛bie Jewish communities were gradually liquidated, with the Jews deported to A U S C H W I T Z . In August 1943, the last mass deportation took place. The few survivors who were left were also eventually sent to Auschwitz, and the liquidation came to an end by January 1944. From April to September 1942, the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto was relatively quiet. This was the period when the ghettos in the Warthegau region were being emptied of Jews and liquidated. The Jews from those ghettos who were fit to work were moved to the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto. In September, the so-called Sperre Aktion was carried out in L ⁄ ódz´. In its brutality and severity, this action exceeded anything that had been experienced in other ghettos. The target figure for the deportation was 20,000, to consist of children under ten and elderly people over sixty-five. Babies were taken out of their mothers’ arms,

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POLISH RESPONSE TO THE “FINAL SOLUTION” How did the Poles react to the murder, on Polish territory, of millions of

G

erman forces entered the L⁄ódz´

Jews who were Polish citizens? The Polish underground did not carry out

ghetto, blocked off one

any military action to help the Jews or to sabotage the Nazi deportation

section after another, and dragged the

and murder operations. But neither did it take any action to free the non-

Jews out of their homes, choosing for

Jewish Poles from any of the camps where they were imprisoned. Tens of

deportation mainly those who were of

thousands of Jews escaped from the ghettos and sought refuge or some

no value as workers—young children,

means of existence in Polish cities and villages. In and around Warsaw,

the elderly, and the ill. More than

for example, 20,000 Jews looked for a safe haven. For Poles, saving Jews

16,000 Jews were then deported to

was much more difficult and dangerous than in any of the occupied

Chel⁄mno. Their survivors were left

countries of Western Europe. Thousands of Jews also escaped to the

behind, heart-broken at the brutal loss of

forests. But because there was no organized Polish partisan movement,

so many loved ones.

and because of the general hostility toward Jews in the rural areas, most of the escapees could not save themselves. Before the fall of 1942, no public organization existed in Poland to extend help to the Jews. Whatever help was given was personal, political, or given in exchange for large sums of money. In late 1942 and early 1943 a provisional council for aid to the Jews was set up; this became the permanent Council for Aid to Jews (Rada Pomocy Z˙ydom, known as Zegota). Several thousand Jews were taken care of and protected by Zegota. It was made up of Poles belonging to the Polish political Center and Left, some of whom were totally dedicated to their task. Thousands of Poles risked their lives to help Jews, and later they were officially recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations.” Many Poles paid with their lives for saving Jews. People who helped Jews also jeopardized the members of their households. In many cases, the Germans killed family members of Poles who had saved Jews or had tried to do so. For more information about Polish response to the plight of the Jews, see

AID

TO

JEWS

BY

POLES.

and when the action was over, 16,000 people had been deported. After the Sperre Aktion, the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto became a labor camp in which the entire population worked for the Germans. The German authorities in L ⁄ ódz´, and in the entire Warthegau, who at first had set their sights on a swift liquidation of the ghetto, were now benefiting from it. Not only were they in no hurry to evacuate or destroy it, they even resisted efforts by the SS to absorb the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto into its concentration camp system. As a result, the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto, which originally had been one of the first designated for liquidation, remained in existence longer than any other ghetto in Eastern Europe. The liquidation of ghettos or parts of them in the Generalgouvernement continued throughout 1943. By the beginning of 1944, none of the ghettos were left. Under a special order issued by Hans Frank on June 3, 1943, the Jews and Jewish affairs were handed over to the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei). This put an end to the tension

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between the civil administration on the one hand, and the SS and police on the other, over the control of the Jews. With this order, Frank acknowledged that with the “Final Solution” underway, the SS and police were the sole authority determining the fate of the Jews. The only differences that still existed among the German authorities concerned the disposal of Jewish property—that is, which authority had the right to claim ownership of the possessions stolen from the Jews or left behind by them. German factory owners were not happy about being deprived of the Jews’ labor. They objected as best they could, but not much attention was paid to them. The German armed forces—the Wehrmacht—also benefited from the Jews’ work, mainly the manufacture of items of equipment required by the military. In September 1942, the subject of Jewish manpower came up at a meeting held in Hitler’s headquarters. On that occasion, Hitler agreed to permit Jewish workers to be kept in the Generalgouvernement on a temporary basis. As a result, the SS heads were forced to stop killing Jews regarded as essential or fit for work in late 1942 and early 1943. The condition, however, was that the Jewish workers had to be held in SS-supervised camps and that their wages would go to the SS. It was also made clear that this was a temporary arrangement and that these Jews, too, would have to be eliminated in the near future.

T

he Aktion (Operation) Reinhard task force planned and organized

the roundup of Jews and the deportations, and ran the extermination camps. The task force also robbed Jews of what was left of their property. At a later stage, it employed some of the Jews in the SS labor camps of the Lublin district, in workshops equipped with machinery and work tools that had once been the property of the victims.

A number of camps now came into existence in which Jews were put to work— Poniatowa and T R AW N I K I in the Lublin district; camps in the cities of Radom and Cze˛ stochowa; P L⁄ A S Z Ó W , near Kraków; and the J A N Ó W S K A camp, near Lvov. In addition, in the concentration and extermination camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau and M A J DA N E K , not all Jews were murdered on arrival. Some who were fit for work were assigned to concentration camps as manpower reinforcements. In early 1943, some 250,000 Jews of the Generalgouvernement were still being kept in camps (including 55,000 to 60,000 Jews in the Warsaw ghetto). The temporary exploitation of Jews as manpower, however, did not hold up the extermination process. On November 3, 1943, all camps for Jews in the Lublin district were liquidated, including Poniatowa and Trawniki, in the action known as the E R N T E F E S T (“Harvest Festival”). According to official records, 42,000 Jews were murdered on the spot. Massacres continued into November 1944. By then, the hopeless situation of the Germans on the war front caused Heinrich H I M M L E R to order a stop to the murders in Auschwitz-Birkenau, and to try to use the surviving Jews as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the West. All he had left to negotiate with were some tens of thousands of Jews, out of the millions who had been persecuted throughout Europe. It is sometimes argued that the Germans deliberately chose Poland as the location for the extermination camps and implemention of the “Final Solution” because widespread antisemitism among the Poles held out the promise of local support for such deeds. There is no firm foundation for this argument, and other factors appear to have influenced the choice. Poland had a total occupation regime, under which no independent Polish authorities were allowed to function. The Germans did not have to ask the Poles or any Polish authorities whether they accepted the establishment of such camps on their soil. It may also be assumed that the Nazis chose Poland as the site for most of the extermination camps because millions of Jews were concentrated there and in other nearby countries of Eastern Europe. In addition, it was easier to keep atrocities secret from the general population in this geographic region than it would have been in Western Europe.

Resistance Experience in modern times has shown that people are unlikely to rise up in rebellion against a totalitarian regime of unrestrained terror, under which there is no

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T

he question continues to be asked, “To what extent did

the Jews of Poland know what was in store for them?” During the deportation stage, many of the victims had not yet heard the rumors about wholesale murder taking place in the camps. Or if such rumors had reached their ears, they did not trust them. Even those who had received reports on the extermination camps found it hard to believe that there was truly an elaborate program for the total destruction of the Jews of Europe.

chance of achieving any concrete result such as rescuing lives or overthrowing the oppressors. Such passive submission was widespread in Nazi-occupied countries, and not exclusively among the Jews. Even when the reality of the Jews’ fate in death camps and labor camps became known, the majority of Jews were reluctant to stand up to the Nazis (see R E S I S TA N C E , J E W I S H ). For one thing, many Jews had trouble believing that Hitler could actually intend to murder millions of Jews. In addition, devout Jews were reluctant to resort to the use of force. Finally, from a practical standpoint, what could unarmed, disenfranchised Jews do in the face of Nazi terror? The idea of offering armed resistance, and being prepared to die in a last hopeless battle against the murderous enemy, was conceived by the Jewish youth movements in V I L NA , and from there it spread. It led to the emergence of a strong resistance organization in Warsaw. Resistance activity there culminated in the W A R S AW G H E T TO U P R I S I N G . The majority of the Jews admired the fighters’ heroism and longed for revenge against the Nazis. But they were inclined to share the views of the Judenräte; or they felt that their first responsibility was to keep the family intact as long as possible. The great achievement of the ghetto fighters was that under conditions of the most extreme oppression and the disintegration of all public and social structures, the Jews were able to produce fighters who were motivated and guided by national and idealistic human imperatives. Another way of fighting the Nazis was to join the PA R T I S A N S or family camps in the forests. Jews who had fought in the ghettos and had survived the final struggle there often took this as a next step in resistance. In addition, large numbers of Jews living close to extensive tracts of forests and swamp areas in eastern Poland joined partisan groups. Another form of struggle waged by Jews came in the form of uprisings in the Nazi camps. Revolts were made by S P E C I A L C O M M A N D O (Sonderkommando) units. These were groups of Jewish prisoners who were forced to work in the extermination camps or in the killing installations at Treblinka, Sobibór, and Birkenau. In Treblinka and Sobibór, some members of groups that rebelled and broke out of the camps survived to tell the tale. The Birkenau rebels who operated in the vast Auschwitz camp complex were caught by the Nazis, and all were shot to death. During the war, the Jews of Poland were able to maintain only loose contact with the free world. A few attempts were made to smuggle foreign citizenship papers (mainly South American passports) to Jews in the German-occupied areas. Some of the bearers of such documents were killed in Auschwitz.

After the War At the war’s end in May 1945, only 380,000 Jews of Poland had survived. This number includes Jews who managed to leave Poland at the beginning of the war for the West or for neighboring countries (excluding the Soviet Union), as well as several thousand who served in the Soviet army. This figure encompasses all the survivors among the Jews who were living on the soil of Poland when the war broke out and it represents less than 12 percent of the Jews of Poland.

pogrom

A violent, organized, and often government-sanctioned attack against Jews and their property.

140

The maximum number of Jews registered in Poland in the postwar period was 240,489, in June 1946. Many had no intention of staying in Poland; they planned to emigrate to other countries. After the war, Poland was the scene of sharp confrontations and strong antisemitism under the regime forced upon the country by the Soviet military and government. The violent post-war campaign against Jews reached its most serious point in a pogrom in K I E L C E in July 1946. Forty-two Jews

PONARY

were murdered, including children and pregnant women. For the Jews, the Kielce pogrom was a traumatic event, and it greatly accelerated their emigration to the West. By the end of 1947, only 80,000 Jews were left in Poland.

SEE ALSO LITERATURE ON THE HOLOCAUST; MUSEUMS AND MEMORIAL INSTITUTES; TRIALS OF THE WAR CRIMINALS. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Hoffman, Eva. Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. Kugelmass, Jack, ed. From a Ruined Garden: The Memorial Books of Polish Jewry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. Lasker-Wallfisch, Anita. Inherit the Truth: A Memoir of Survival and the Holocaust. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000.

Schindler’s List [videorecording]. MCA Universal Home Video, 1993.

I

n Poland, a country where Jews had been dwelling for a thousand years,

only two Jews are left out of every thousand who lived there before the war broke out in 1939.

Steinlauf, Michael. Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997. Weiner, Miriam. Jewish Roots in Poland. Secaucus, NJ: Miriam Weiner Routes to Roots Foundation, 1997.

POLICE, GERMAN. SEE GESTAPO. Ponary Ponary is a site near V I L N A , in L I T H UA N I A , where mass exterminations took place. Originally a resort, Ponary was situated in a wooded area 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) from Vilna, on the highway to G R O D N O . In 1940 and 1941 the Soviet authorities excavated large pits at Ponary in which they planned to install fuel storage tanks, but they left the area before the project was completed. During the German occupation, the pits were used for the massacre of tens of thousands of Jews from Vilna and the surrounding area, as well as of Soviet P R I S O N E R S O F WA R and other inhabitants who were suspected of opposing the Nazis. The victims were brought to Ponary on foot, by road, and by rail, in groups of hundreds or even thousands, and were shot to death in the pits by SS men and German police, assisted by Lithuanian collaborators. The mass murder of Jews at Ponary was launched at the end of June or the beginning of July of 1941, and continued until the beginning of July 1944. During the early stages the victims were buried on the spot, in the existing pits. In September 1943 the Nazis began opening the pits and burning the corpses, in an effort to destroy the evidence of their crime. Some eighty Jewish prisoners were put on this gruesome job. On April 15, 1944, these prisoners made a daring escape attempt. Most of them were killed, but fifteen got away and joined the PA RT I SANS in the Rudninkai Forest. Estimates of the number of persons who were murdered at Ponary range from 70,000 to 100,000; the great majority of the victims were Jews.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Dawidowicz, Lucy S. From That Place and Time: A Memoir, 1938–1947. New York: W. W. Norton, 1989. Gitelman, Zvi, ed. Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

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PORTUGAL

The killing operation at Ponary. Victims were herded into a narrow circular passage between the construction planks of an unfinished fuel-tank site. They were guarded by civilian Lithuanian collaborators.

PORTUGAL. SEE SOUSA MENDES, ARISTIDES DE. Prisoners of War A prisoner of war (POW) is someone who is captured during a war; the term is most often applied to a person in the armed forces who has been captured by the enemy. During World War II, the prisoners of war who suffered most at the hands of the Nazis were Jewish and Soviet soldiers.

Jewish Prisoners of War During World War II approximately 200,000 Jewish soldiers belonging to the various Allied armies fell into German hands. The kind of treatment these Jewish

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prisoners of war received depended on which army they were serving in. Jewish soldiers from the armies of Western countries (the U N I T E D S TAT E S , G R E AT B R I TA I N —including the Jewish units from Palestine—F R A N C E , Canada, and Australia) were treated no differently than their non-Jewish comrades. The Germans were far more cruel toward the Jewish POWs from the Polish army who were captured in September 1939, when Hitler invaded P O L A N D . These Jews were systematically killed in stages and almost totally annihilated. Jews serving in the S OV I E T U N I O N ’s Red Army suffered immediate and total annihilation.

Identification tags for a prisoner of war interned in an unidentified German POW camp during World War II.

Jewish POWs from the Polish Army Some 60,000 to 65,000 Jewish soldiers were taken prisoner by the Germans in September 1939. Wherever they were found they were terrorized by the Germans. Generally, they were separated from the rest of the prisoners while still at assembly points and at temporary transit camps. From these places, the prisoner soldiers were taken to POW camps for enlisted men. In these camps, the Jews were separated from the other POWs and placed in a section where accommodations and food rations were greatly inferior to those

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D

uring the winter of 1939–1940 most of the Jewish prisoners of

war were forced to stay in unheated and overcrowded tents without bathroom facilities.

in the rest of the camp. In fact, their conditions were no different from those of concentration camp prisoners. The food rations they received were extremely meager and left them constantly hungry. Thousands died from starvation. German camp guards tortured the Jewish POWs. A great many prisoners perished from cold and from torture. In late 1939 the Germans began releasing prisoners of war who had come from the German-occupied territories of Poland. The Jewish prisoners were taken to the ghettos then being established in occupied Poland. There they all perished together with the rest of the Jewish ghetto population when the ghettos were destroyed. Of the 60,000 Jewish enlisted men who were taken prisoner in the September 1939 battles, no more than a few hundred survived the war. One thousand Jewish officers were taken prisoner in September 1939, and most of them were saved from extermination. Although they too were separated from their Polish fellow officers, they did not suffer the same fate as the enlisted men. The Jewish officers were put into POW camps for officers. Jewish officers were put into separate barracks or into a separate section of a barrack. Their situation was worse than that of the Polish officers, but most of them survived. In the last few months of the war, however, as the Allied armies approached, the Germans transferred the officer camps into the interior part of G E R M A N Y . The prisoners were hurried along for hundreds of miles, they were starved and harassed, and the feeble and weak among them were shot to death. No figures are available for the number of officers killed on these D E AT H M A R C H E S .

Jewish POWs from the Red Army About 85,000 Jewish soldiers serving in the Red Army were taken prisoner. Once they were identified as Jews, they were all killed without exception, soldiers and officers alike. The killing of the Jewish POWs took place in various ways. Generally, as soon as a large number of prisoners had been taken, an identification roll call was held. Sometimes this occurred right before the soldiers were to be admitted to a camp. All those identified as Jews were killed on the spot, before the rest of the prisoners were taken in. Thousands of non-Jewish prisoners mistaken by the Germans for Jews were also killed.

Palestinian Jewish POWs More than fifteen hundred Jews from Palestine who volunteered to serve with the British army were captured by Axis forces during World War II. The majority were captured during the fighting in Greece and Crete in the spring of 1941. Most of them eventually reached POW camps and labor detachments, where prisoners worked, in Germany. At first, the Germans were uncertain how to treat captive Jewish soldiers in British uniform. Eventually, with the support of their British comrades in the camps, Palestinian Jews were given the same treatment as all captured British soldiers. The Germans probably were afraid that if they harmed Palestinian Jewish POWs, the British would harm German POWs in revenge. As a result, the vast majority of Jewish Palestinian POWs survived their imprisonment. Most were liberated when Germany surrendered at the end of the war.

Soviet Prisoners of War After Jews, Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) were the second largest group of victims of Nazi extermination policy. About 5.7 million Red Army personnel fell

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into German hands between June 22, 1941, and the end of World War II. By January 1945, 3.3 million (57.5 percent of the total) had perished. By comparison, out of 235,000 Anglo-American POWs captured during the war, 8,348 (3.6 percent) were dead by the war’s end. German policy on the Soviet POWs could be rationalized by an existing legal issue. The Soviet Union had not approved the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War. Nor had it committed itself to the 1907 Hague Convention on the Rules of War. Since the Soviet Union had not approved of these international agreements, the German government claimed that it was therefore under no obligation to treat Soviet prisoners of war according to these conventional standards.

I

n many camps the Soviet prisoners of war were forced to live in holes

dug in the ground or in huts made of foliage.

One of Germany’s major war strategies was to take advantage of Soviet agricultural resources. The Germans knew that as a result, millions of Soviet people would starve to death. Soviet POWs were destined to be the first victims. Even before the invasion of the Soviet Union was launched, the leadership of the Wehrmacht (German army) agreed that the Soviet prisoners would be given “no more than the bare essentials,” as far as their food rations were concerned. Reports from the late summer and fall of 1941 show that in many prison camps, the desperate POWs tried to assuage their hunger by eating grass and leaves. Tens of thousands of Soviet men lost their lives en route to the POW camps. Most of the prisoners captured in 1941 had to march across hundreds of miles, and thousands of prisoners who were too exhausted to continue were shot to death on the spot. When Soviet POWs were transported by train, the Wehrmacht’s high command permitted only open freight cars to be used. This meant an enormous loss of life during the winter months. Hardly any preparations were made for housing the POWs. All the Germans did was put up a barbed-wire fence around a designated camp site. The POWs were expected to construct their own housing, using the most primitive means. By February 1942, about 2 million of the 3.5 million prisoners captured in 1941 were dead. From the very beginning, the treatment of Soviet prisoners was guided by Nazi opposition to Communist principles and philosophy. Red Army soldiers were described as dangerous and devious. German troops were called upon to take “energetic and ruthless action” and “use their arms” unhesitatingly “to wipe out any trace of resistance.” Prisoners trying to escape were to be shot without warning. There is evidence that German Wehrmacht soldiers and civilians tried to improve the treatment of the Soviet prisoners. They were unable to prevail against Nazi orders, however. In the middle of July 1941, General Hermann Reinecke, officer in charge of prisoner-of-war affairs in Wehrmacht leadership, and Reinhard H E Y D R I C H , as chief of the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA) came to an agreement regarding Soviet POWs. They decided that the Einsatzkommandos of the Security Police and the SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service) would seek out the “politically and racially intolerable elements” among the Soviet prisoners, and kill them. This amounted to an enormous rise in the number of Soviet victims, since these “intolerable elements” included intellectuals, Communists, and Jews. Estimates of the number of victims of this operation range from at least 140,000 to 500,000. Under the Reinecke-Heydrich agreement, the Einsatzkommandos ultimately murdered all Jews among the Soviet POWs. The A U S C H W I T Z -Birkenau and M A J DA N E K E X T E R M I NAT I O N CA M P S had originally been constructed to handle Soviet POWs. But by January 1942, only a few hundred of the Soviet prisoners who had originally been brought to Auschwitz—

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out of a total of 10,000—were still alive. Heinrich H I M M L E R decided to fill the camps with 150,000 Jews, instead, thus turning these camps into part of the machinery dedicated to the murder of the Jews.

F

ive factors can account for the extraordinarily high mortality

rate among Soviet POWs: starvation; inhumane accommodations; extremely

In September 1941 Karl Fritzsch, the deputy commander of Auschwitz, killed approximately six hundred Soviet POWs in experiments with the Z Y K L O N B pesticide. Based on the outcome of his efforts, Zyklon B became the lethal gas of choice used to kill millions during the H O L O CAU S T (see G A S C H A M B E R S /V A N S ).

harsh transportation methods; excessively abusive daily treatment; and the deliberate murder, on orders from Adolf Hitler, of Soviet POWs.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bailey, Ronald H. Prisoners of War. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1981. Baron, Richard. Raid! The Untold Story of Patton’s Secret Mission. New York: Putnam, 1981.

The Great Escapes of WWII [videorecording]. A&E Home Video, 1997. Reid, P. R. Colditz: The Full Story. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987.

PROTECTORATE OF BOHEMIA AND MORAVIA. SEE BOHEMIA AND MORAVIA, PROTECTORATE OF.

PROTEKTORAT BÖHMEN

UND

MÄHREN.

SEE BOHEMIA-

MORAVIA.

PROTESTANT CHURCHES. SEE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. Protocols of the Elders of Zion The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a forged document from the late nineteenth century that falsely claims to reveal a Jewish plot to take over the world. The term “protocols” means record of proceedings, as in minutes of a meeting. The document was adapted from a satire of Napoleon III written by Maurice Joly and published in Brussels in 1864. The Protocols have been reprinted many times, appearing with different introductions and commentaries.

Freemasons

Members of a fraternal order dating back to the 1700s that was committed to the ideas of religious tolerance and the equality of all people. Hitler banned the Masons in Germany, charging that they were responsible for economic distress and the events leading to World War I.

146

According to the text and the commentaries, the Jews had a plan to achieve domination of the world. They would disrupt European society with the help of political and economic systems such as socialism, communism, and anarchy. At the same time, they would manipulate the price of gold to create a financial crisis, gain control of the media, and encourage prejudice against other religions. If they encountered opposition, the Jews would supposedly construct railways and underground passages from which cities could be blown up. Once in power, they would demand unswerving obedience to a Jewish king. In all of these schemes, the Jews were supposedly going to be aided by the Freemasons . A novel with similar themes was published in 1868, a few decades before Protocols first appeared. Entitled Biarritz, it was written by Hermann Goedsche and published in B E R L I N . The author was given the pseudonym Sir John Retcliffe (later changed to Readclif). In one chapter the representatives of the twelve ancient tribes of Israel have a gathering, held once every hundred years, where they report on the

PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION

progress of their plot to take over the world. At the end of the session a speech is made by a represenative of the tribe of Levi. He expresses the hope that at the next gathering, one hundred years hence, the Jews will be the “princes of the world.” This speech, which came to be known as the “Rabbi’s Speech,” was an important element of the Protocols and was published widely both before and after they became popular. Similar ideas were publicized in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century, especially in the books of Osman Bey. The Protocols were apparently written in 1894 at the time of the widely publicized Dreyfus affair in F R A N C E . This political scandal involved the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish military officer accused of treason. The author of the Protocols was Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovski, head of the foreign branch of the Russian secret police based in P A R I S . The French Right wanted a document showing that Alfred Dreyfus was part of a supposed conspiracy. Russians wanted to use the Protocols to support their antisemitic policies. In 1903 a tsarist agent, Pavolaki Krushevan, published an abridged version of the Protocols in a pamphlet entitled Program for World Conquest by the Jews. The version that was to make the greatest impact was the one published in 1905 by Sergei Nilus in the third edition of his popular book The Great in the Small: The Antichrist Considered as an Imminent Political Possibility. When opponents of the Russian Revolution fled to the West, they brought the Protocols with them. In 1919, a German-language edition of the Protocols was published under the pseudonym Gottfried zur Beck. Soon the Nazis began to make use of the book. Between 1919 and 1923 their propagandist, Alfred R O S E N B E R G , also a Russian emigré, wrote five pamphlets about the conspiracy. A N A Z I PA R T Y edition was published in 1933.

Cover of a French edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, c. 1934.

In the 1920s the Protocols made their first appearance in the U N I T E D S TAT E S . A number of newspapers publicized their contents, linking the Jewish conspiracy to Russian communism. Among them was Henry Ford’s paper, The Dearborn Independent, which published a series of articles based on the Protocols in the summer of 1920. The newspaper printed 500,000 copies of them in book form, and called it The International Jews: The World’s Foremost Problem. In June 1927 Ford denied responsibility for the articles and tried to take the book out of circulation, but in the meantime it had been translated into six languages. In Britain, the Protocols were published by most of the major newspapers in 1920. Even the London Times treated them seriously, publicizing them in their edition of May 8, 1920. But when their own correspondent showed the document to be a forgery, the Times published this revelation in a large headline on August 18, 1921. From then on the Protocols were discredited in G R E AT B R I TA I N . Between the world wars, numerous editions of the Protocols were published throughout the world in Polish, Romanian, Hungarian, Czech, Serbo-Croatian, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Flemish, Swedish, Latvian, and Arabic. During World War II, editions also came out in Norwegian and Dutch. Two trials were held before World War II in which the Protocols were declared to be a forgery: in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in 1934; and in Bern, Switzerland, during 1934 and 1935. The Protocols and the ideas contained in them became deeply rooted. It is clear that many leading Nazis, including Adolf H I T L E R , Heinrich H I M M L E R , and Alfred Rosenberg believed them. For Hitler, with his perverse logic, the fact that Jews claimed the Protocols were a forgery was proof that they were genuine. Hitler once boasted that he had learned much from the Protocols: “political intrigue, techniques, conspiracy, revolutionary disruption, camouflage, diversion, and methods of organization.” Alfred

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The Protocols of the Elders of Zion provided a justification for the attempted annihilation of the Jewish

Rosenberg’s philosophy, as set out in his book the Myth of the Twentieth Century, is also firmly rooted in his acceptance of the “truth” of the Protocols. Undoubtedly, such ideas brought many Germans and other Europeans into the Nazi way of thinking. After World War II, the Protocols continued to be published throughout the world. The book fostered a hatred of Jews, particularly in the Middle East and the former Communist-bloc countries. New editions have also been published in many South American countries, as well as in Spain, I TA LY , and Japan. The ideas put forth by the Protocols have been the staple of those who have sought to deny the H O L O CAU S T (see H O L O CAU S T, D E N I A L O F ).

people. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bronner, Stephen Eric. A Rumor About the Jews: Reflections on Antisemitism and the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. Segel, B. W. A Lie and a Libel: The History of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

Prützmann, Hans-Adolf (1901–1945)

Hans-Adolf Prützmann was an SS officer. Born in Tolkemit, in the Elbing district of East Prussia, Prützmann joined the N A Z I PA R T Y in 1929 and, a year later, the SS. He advanced rapidly in the police and in 1934 was promoted to the rank of major general. In 1938 he became a senator in Hamburg, and he was subsequently appointed the Higher SS and Police Leader in the Nordsee district. In April 1941 he was advanced to the rank of lieutenant-general of the police. On the day of the German invasion of the S OV I E T U N I O N , June 22, 1941, Prützmann was appointed Higher SS and Police Leader for the Heeresgruppe (Army Group) North. On October 31 of that year, he was transferred to the Southern Command in the U K R A I N E . Two years later, on October 22, 1943, he also became Higher SS and Police Leader for the Reichskommissariat Ukraine (the portion of Ukraine under German control). Werwolf bands

Paramilitary guerilla forces made up of uniformed Germans who went underground posing as resistance fighters in Allied-controlled territories. This operation was launched as Germany neared defeat in World War II.

When the war was drawing to an end in the last quarter of 1944, Prützmann was given various special assignments, such as organizing the Werwolf bands and supervising the special intelligence service. He was also appointed commander in chief of C R OAT I A . At the end of the war he committed suicide after being captured by the British.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Ezergailis, Andrew. The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941–1944. Washington, DC: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1996. [Available in part online] http://vip.latnet.lv/LPRA/Ezergailis_preface.html (accessed on September 11, 2000).

PSYCHOLOGY OF SURVIVORS. SEE SURVIVORS, PSYCHOLOGY OF. QUAKERS. SEE AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE. 148

RACISM

Racism Racism is a belief that the race of an individual greatly influences his or her ability, inclinations, appearance, and behavior. According to this way of thinking, there are superior and inferior races. The word “race” has been used since the Renaissance to describe groups that have common physical characteristics, such as skin color, bone structure, or facial features. The theoretical foundations of racism were laid during the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries. Between the mid-nineteenth century and the end of World War I, racism gained in strength and acquired a clearer and betterdefined direction. In the period between the wars, political mass movements in Europe, especially National Socialism (Nazism) in G E R M A N Y , were heavily influenced by racist theory. Racism continued into the years following World War II. Its supporters were subdued, however, by the public’s reactions to the crimes committed by the Nazis in the name of racism.

Early Concepts At the end of the eighteenth century, philologists believed that language was an expression of a common past. Their research seemed to confirm that Sanskrit, an ancient language spoken in India, and ancient Persian, which was spoken in Iran, are related to many European languages. They believed that a people they called “Aryan” migrated long ago from Asia to Europe and brought a language with them, which these scholars called Indo-European or Aryo-European.

philologists

Scholars who study the roots of language and literature.

These scholars claimed that the Aryan past of contemporary Europeans was an indication of their superiority. A link was established between Germanic peoples, in particular, and Aryan prehistoric people. The philologists described the Aryans as courageous, manly farmers who led a solid family life. This historical myth of virtuous Aryan ancestors handily provided Europeans with “proof” of their moral and national superiority Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau (1816—1882) repeated a version of this myth. He argued that the “pure” language of the Aryans proved they could rise above the materialistic aspects of life. At that time, Jews were did not enjoy full citizenship in many of the European nations in which they lived. Those who opposed making Jews full citizens argued that they were by nature incapable of speaking the language of the European nation in which they lived (they often spoke Yiddish). This trait, they said, had historical roots and reflected the Jews’ materialistic character. Philology and the historical myth of Aryan strength of character led to various conclusions. Some believed that any races that had not shared the Aryans’ common past did not have the necessary qualities for self-government. In the U N I T E D S TAT E S , the Anglo-Saxon myth was strong. Anglo-Saxons are descendants of the Germanic people who conquered England in the fifth century. Theodore Roosevelt, in his popular work The Winning of the West, praised the vitality of the Germans, who “went forth from their marshy forests” to conquer the American continent. The study of race really belongs to the field of anthropology, rather than philology. Anthropologists came up with a more accurate definition of race, and at the same time made its own contribution to the rise of racism. The classification of mankind into races was introduced in the 1700s, when nations were first classified according to the color of their inhabitants’ skin and the shape and size of their bodies. People who shared similar characteristics of color, size, and shape made up a

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American athlete Jesse Owens, running in the 200 meter race at the 11th Olympics in Berlin, August 2, 1936. He won four gold medals and broke world speed records during the Games, but Adolf Hitler refused to recognize his accomplishments because he was black.

race. This, however, led to a more dangerous assumption: that a person’s outward appearance and physical measurements reflected his spiritual qualities.

Growth and Spread of Racist Ideology Gobineau’s Essay on the Inequality of Human Races, written in the 1850s, was based on anthropology and philology. He claimed that the problems of the modern age were the result of racial corruption and that because the Aryan race was no longer pure, it was gradually losing its age-old superiority. As evidence of this racial corruption, he pointed to the worldwide rise of democracy and government by the majority. Gobineau’s work foreshadowed the direction that racism would take during the twentieth century. Carl Gustav Carus, a contemporary of Gobineau, took racist theory a step further. He was interested in identifying the ideal race, and he concluded that people of such a race were light-skinned, had blond hair and blue eyes, these qualities reflecting the forces of the sky and the sun. The notion of Aryan beauty based in part on the symbolism of nature gained particular significance in Germany. From the second half of the nineteenth century, A N T I S E M I T I S M served as the basis for racist views. The reason was simple: Jews were seen as embracing a foreign culture in the heart of Europe. They dressed differently, prayed differently, and spoke a different language (Yiddish). While they were restricted to living in ghettos

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they had not aroused much interest. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, when Jews were given full civil rights, attitudes toward them changed. When Jews were able to compete with their Christian neighbors in the same economic and social worlds, their enemies accused them of remaining distinct, despite their new freedom. Many Jews, both those who lived in the ghetto and those who had migrated to western Europe, chose to continue wearing their traditional clothes. The men wore beards and sidelocks, and they made a strange and mysterious impression on the peoples of central and western Europe.

T

he Jews were accused of being “a state within a state,” separate

from the European cultures in which they lived.

Those who believed in racial differences and in the existence of a Jewish conspiracy tended to support the idea of a race war as well. The naturalist Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, which he proposed during the second half of the nineteenth century, seemed to provide a scientific basis for this notion. Some racists believed that humans enacted Darwin’s principle of the survival of the fittest through race wars. The French philosopher Vacher de Lapouge connected Gobineau’s ideal of Aryan superiority with eugenics. Eugenics is a science that deals with improving hereditary qualities of a race or, in the case of animals, of a breed. In Germany, racial eugenics became popular, and many ideas were put forward as to how the superior race might reproduce under ideal conditions. This line of thinking reached its climax in Nazi Germany with the SS-sponsored Fountain of Life experiment. In order to ensure racial purity, carefully selected men and women who possessed authentic Aryan qualities were paired together for the sake of having children. Programs of this sort also considered the use of mercy killings. Under the Nazis (see E U T H A N A S I A P R O G R A M ), the mentally ill and the physically deformed were killed. The justification was that these individuals represented the degeneration of the superior race. In the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century, blacks were the victims of the same types of charges that were leveled against the “inferior” Jewish race in Europe. Assumptions about character were made on the basis of external appearance. Fears of black men having children with white women led to lynchings, during which black men were killed by angry mobs. Racism gathered strength everywhere before World War I, perhaps most of all in F R A N C E , where national socialist movements appealed to the lower classes. France’s most significant contribution to racism during this period was the P R OTO C O L S O F T H E E L D E R S O F Z I O N . The Protocols were supposedly the minutes of a secret meeting attended by the leaders of international Jewry. At that meeting, a plan was drawn up for for Jews to dominate the world “by cunning and by force.” These minutes had in fact been created by Frenchmen in P A R I S in collaboration with the Russian secret police. The purpose of the forgery was to provide “evidence” of a Jewish conspiracy. Theories about a Jewish conspiracy spread wildly after World War I. In the United States, for example, Henry Ford gave the Protocols a wide circulation. Refugees from Bolshevik (Communist) Russia introduced the Protocols into Germany, where they were adopted by the political Right. Hitler, for example, believed them to be true.

Racism and Politics After World War I, attempts were made to put racist theories into practice. Political movements used racism as a tool for waging war against their enemies. In this respect there was no difference between National Socialism (see N A Z I P A R T Y ) in Germany, the Iron Guard in Romania, and the Ustasˇ a in C R OAT I A . In the nineteenth century the racists had confined themselves to theory, but in the

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A

ntisemitism was not just addressed toward culturally separate Jews.

Assimilated Jews who adopted modern lifestyles were also looked upon as a subversive element. As the field of finance opened up during the 19th century, Jews became successful in this one area of professional life that was open to them. Jewish families such as the Rothschilds and the Pereiras were able to accumulate great wealth. Some Europeans, however, regarded this success as proof of the existence of a criminal Jewish conspiracy.

period after World War I, the leaders of racist movements took part in political action and resorted to violence. Leaders of racist movements were no longer content with removing the Jews from the economic and social life of their country. They called for their destruction. During the short period that the Iron Guard was in power in Romania (1940–1941), Anti-Jewish pogroms, or organized violence, were renewed. Similar atrocities committed by the racist political movements in H U N G A R Y and Croatia offer evidence that wherever racism flourished, violence followed. In these countries, racist movements succeeded in attracting the lower classes to their ranks just as they were becoming a strong political force. In central Europe, which had strong Socialist and Communist parties, racism after the war attracted mainly the middle classes. But in A U S T R I A and Bohemia, the first large groups to join Hitler’s National Socialism came from the working class. The racist goal of G E N O C I D E (mass murder) was achieved by the Nazis through a systematic process, rather than through uncontrolled and random violence. It is easy to identify the principal measures undertaken to create the first officially racist state in Europe. The N U R E M B E R G L AW S (1935) provided the legal basis for separating the Jews from everyone else. The laws also furthered the evolution of racism by precisely defining “Jewishness” on a genetic basis—something that had not been done before in racist doctrines. According to the Nuremberg Laws, a Jew was someone with at least three Jewish grandparents. A person who had two Jewish grandparents was defined as a Mischling (a person of mixed blood; see M I S C H L I N G E ). This category was doomed to become extinct because Mischlinge were not allowed to procreate with either Jews or Aryans. The same laws also gave a legal definition of an “Aryan”: a person whose paternal and maternal grandparents all belonged to the Aryan race. In order to become a member of the elite S S corps, a person had to provide evidence of pure Aryan ancestry dating back to the period before 1850. Racism thus became an integral part of the legal system of a major European nation. As the Nazis began implementing the “F I NA L S O L U T I O N ”—the destruction of the Jews—they looked for cooperation from Germany’s satellite states. It was a test of the strength of racisim in Europe during that period. The conservative-minded dictators in some of those states at first resisted Nazi demands to hand over their Jews. In Romania, Marshal Ion Antonescu issued orders for the deportation and extermination of Jews, but when it seemed the Nazis would lose the war, he reversed himself and tried to change the outcome of his earlier decisions. In Hungary, Admiral Miklós H O R T H Y held out against Nazi pressure until the German occupation of his country. In the West, Marshal Philippe P É TA I N surrendered to the Germans the foreign Jews who had taken refuge in France, but tried to save the native French Jews from deportation. In the West, resistance to racism was stronger, because Nazi influence on the fascist movements there had never struck deep roots. F A S C I S M in western Europe followed the example of I TA LY , which had no racist policy before 1938. When the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini did adopt such a policy, the purpose was to revitalize his tired regime and cement an alliance with Germany. Although Italian Jewry went through difficult times and suffered many humiliations, the policy of genocide was carried out only under the German occupation. Italian public opinion never did accept racist ideas. Among the Western Allies, Britain reserved its racist inclinations for the empire’s colonial population. In Russia, antisemitism appeared sporadically during the war, but

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it was opposed by official Soviet policy. In the United States, where the Nazis’ antisemitic racism was strongly opposed, racism against blacks nonetheless persisted.

Racism after World War II After the World War II, racism was generally not an accepted element of any government’s policy. One exception was South Africa, where racism became the official policy of the state. In the United States, racism was not a government policy, but the practice of segregation continued. The civil rights struggle in the 1960s finally obtained full voting rights and greater equality for blacks. Widespread anti-Jewish discrimination in employment and in hotels and vacation resorts ended earlier, in response to the H O L O CAU S T . There were sporadic outbursts of anti-Jewish racism in France during the Algerian war. Racism was revived in both France and England as a result of immigration from their former colonies in Africa and Asia. In the Middle East, some Arab nations used racism as a weapon against the Jewish state of Israel. Racist stereotypes continue to shape the attitudes of people worldwide, both overtly and subconsciously. Old historical roots still play a vital role in modern nationalism. People still view with suspicion and fear the differences they perceive between their own community and the outside world.

A

s a nation, Germany embraced middle-class values, and

respectability was a very important consideration. For the policy of race war to succeed, it had to be in the hands of a respectable movement, not one that supported a policy of pogroms, as did the Iron Guard. Instead, National Socialists began a process of dehumanizing the racial enemy. When attacks were finally launched, the victims no longer seemed to be human beings—they were the embodiment of evil.

SEE ALSO GENOCIDE. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bachrach, Susan D. Tell Them We Remember: The Story of the Holocaust. Boston: Little, Brown, 1994.

Jetzt—Nach So Viel Jahren [Now—After All These Years]. Arthur Cantor, 1982. Massaquoi, Hans J. Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany. New York: W. Morrow, 1999. Ross, Stewart. Racism in the Third Reich. Batsford, 1992.

Rasch, Emil Otto (1891–1948)

An S S official and Operational Squad commander (see O P E R AT I O N A L S QUA D S ), Emil Otto Rasch was born in East Prussia. Rasch served as a lieutenant in the German navy during World War I, and from 1918 to 1923 he studied at several universities, earning the degree of doctor of law and political affairs. For ten years he was an attorney for various companies. He became a member of the N A Z I PA RT Y in September 1931, and in 1933 joined the SS. When the Nazis came to power, Rasch was appointed mayor of Radeberg and then of Wittenberg. In 1936 he was taken on the staff of Section I of the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (RSHA; Reichssicherheitshauptamt). He became chief of the state police of Frankfurt am Main in 1938, and from March to May of that year he was also head of security for Upper Austria. For five weeks in early 1939, he headed the Security Police and SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service) in Prague. After that he became chief of the Security Police and SD in Königsberg, East Prussia. In May 1941, Rasch was appointed commander of Einsatzgruppe (Operational Squad) C. The next month his unit followed Army Group South on its way to the U K R A I N E , where it carried out numerous operations in which tens of thousands of

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Jews were murdered. The bloodiest and most infamous of these killing sprees was at B A B I YA R in Kiev. In September of that year Rasch was ordered back to B E R L I N , owing, he later claimed, to difficulties he had had with the Reichskommissar for the Ukraine, Erich Koch, and to differences with Heinrich H I M M L E R . He became manager of the Continental Oil Company, a post he held until the end of the war. After the war, Rasch was arrested and put on trial before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. He died of natural causes in prison early in 1948, before the case ended.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Anatolii, A. Babi Yar. Cambridge, MA: Robert Bentley, 1979 (fiction). Wiesenthal, Simon. Babi Yar 1941–1991: An Educational Remembrance. Out of print.

Rauff, Walther (1906–1984)

Walther Rauff was a professional naval officer who became a Nazi official. He enjoyed a promising military career until a sordid divorce dimmed his career prospects and caused him to resign from the service in December 1937. He was then taken into Reinhard H E Y D R I C H ’s SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service) and was eventually made head of the section for technical affairs of the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (RSHA; Reichssicherheitshauptamt). It was in this capacity that he supervised, in late 1941 and early 1942, the outfitting and dispatch of some twenty gas vans (see G A S C H A M B E R S / V A N S ) in which at least 200,000 people were murdered. Rauff left B E R L I N to lead an SD Einsatzkommando in Tunis in late 1942, and he became the district SS and Police Leader for northern I TA LY when the Germans occupied that part of the country in September 1943. After the war Rauff was held in a prisoner-of-war camp, from which he escaped in December 1946; he remained hidden in a monastery in Rome for eighteen months. He then made his way abroad, eventually settling in Chile. In 1963, an extradition request made by the Federal Republic of G E R M A N Y was rejected in the Chilean Supreme Court on the ground that the crimes with which Rauff was charged were beyond the Chilean statute of limitations. He died in Santiago, Chile, in 1984.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES “Gas Vans.” Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance Online. [Online] http://motlc. wiesenthal.org/pages/t024/t02455.html (accessed on September 11, 2000).

The SS. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1989. Williamson, Gordon. The SS: Hitler’s Instrument of Terror. Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International, 1994.

Ravensbrück The Ravensbrück C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P was located near a village of that name on the Havel River. The site was two-thirds of a mile (1 kilometer) from the

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Fürstenberg railway station and 56 miles (90 kilometers) north of B E R L I N . On May 15, 1939, a concentration camp for women was opened there. Three days later, 867 female prisoners were transferred to the camp from the Nazi concentration camp at Lichtenburg (present-day Prettin, in eastern Germany).

Two women, their prisoner numbers on their left sleeves, work in the spinning workshop, in Ravensbrück, Germany.

The camp structure was similar to that of other Nazi concentration camps, with 150 female supervisors (SS-Aufseherinnen) added to the men who served as guards and held administrative posts. The female supervisors were SS volunteers, or women who had accepted the post for the sake of the better pay and work conditions it offered, as compared to work in factories. In 1942 and 1943, Ravensbrück also had a training base for female SS supervisors. The 3,500 women who underwent training there worked at Ravensbrück and other concentration camps. In late 1939, Ravensbrück had 2,000 prisoners. By the end of 1942, the number had grown to 10,800. In 1944, another 70,000 prisoners were brought to Ravensbrück. Most of them were transferred to one of Ravensbrück’s thirty-four satellite camps. Some of these satellite camps were far away from Ravensbrück, in Mecklenburg, Bavaria, and the Protectorate of B O H E M I A A N D M O R AV I A . Most of the satellite camps were attached to military industrial plants; one such plant was put up near Ravensbrück itself. In 1944, the main Ravensbrück camp had 26,700 female inmates, as well as several thousand girls in a detention camp for minors (Jugendschutzlager).

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A

ndrei Vlasov was a Soviet army officer and Nazi prisoner of

war who agreed to collaborate with the Germans against the Soviet regime between 1942 and 1945. The Nazis turned Vlasov over to the Soviet Union on May 15, 1945; he was executed by hanging for his treasonous actions.

In April 1941, a concentration camp for men was established near the Ravensbrück camp. Officially, however, it was a satellite of the S A C H S E N H AU S E N camp. Approximately 20,000 male prisoners passed through this camp during the years of its existence, 16 percent of them Jews. In early 1945, Soviet prisoners in the men’s camp were recruited for Andrei Vlasov’s propaganda army, while German prisoners were drafted into Oskar D I R L E WA N G E R ’ S SS brigade. By early February 1945, some 106,000 women had passed through the Ravensbrück camp. Twenty-five percent of them were Polish, 20 percent German, 19 percent Russian and Ukrainian, 15 percent Jewish, 7 percent French, 5.5 percent Romani (Gypsy), and 8.5 percent others. From the summer of 1942, M E D I CA L E X P E R I M E N T S were carried out at Ravensbrück. One such project, directed by Professor Karl Gebhardt, made use of sulfonamide to treat festering wounds and bone transplants. Seventy-four inmates underwent these painful experiments; most of the victims were young Polish women suspected of belonging to the underground. Another experiment, conducted by Professor Carl C L AU B E R G , involved sterilization; thirty-five women were the victims of the experiment, most of them G Y P S I E S (Romani). In the early stage of the camp’s existence, the method used for killing prisoners was to shoot them in the back of the neck. In 1942, the inmates who were condemned to death were sent to institutions (such as Bernburg) that were involved in the E U T H A N A S I A P R O G R A M , or to A U S C H W I T Z ; or they were later murdered in Ravensbrück with phenol injections. Their bodies were burned at the nearby Fürstenberg crematorium. But the number of victims grew even further, so a crematorium was installed at Ravensbrück in April 1943, near the camp for minors. In late January or early February of 1945, gas chambers were constructed next to the crematorium. By the end of April, 2,200 to 2,300 people had been put to death in them. In late March 1945, the order was given for Ravensbrück to be evacuated, and 24,500 prisoners, both men and women, were put on the road to Mecklenburg. Early in April, 500 women inmates were handed over to the Swedish and Danish Red Cross, and 2,500 German women were set free. On the night of April 29–30, Soviet forces liberated Ravensbrück, where they found 3,500 sick female prisoners being cared for by other inmates.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Gaulle-Anthonioz, Genevieve de. The Dawn of Hope: A Memoir of Ravensbruck. New York: Arcade, 1999. Morrison, Jack G. Ravensbruck: Everyday Life in a Woman’s Concentration Camp, 1939–45. Princeton: Wiener, 2000. Ten Boom, Corrie. The Hiding Place. Tappan, NJ: Revell, 1971; Grand Rapids, MI: Chosen Books, 1996.

Rayman, Marcel (1923–1944)

Marcel Rayman was a French Jewish underground fighter during the German occupation of F R A N C E . Born in W A R S A W , Rayman emigrated with his parents to France, where he became active in the Communist Jewish Workers’ Sports Club.

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In June 1940, when P A R I S was occupied by the Germans, Rayman joined the Deuxième Détachement (Second Company), a Yiddish-speaking unit that was under the command of the Communist partisan organization, the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (Fighters and Partisans; FTP). He participated in numerous attacks on German soldiers and army installations in Paris. When the French secret service discovered and liquidated his company, Rayman was put into the “Manouchian Company,” a Communist partisan unit led by the Armenian poet Missak Manouchian. On September 28, 1943, Rayman took part in a daring operation that resulted in the death of Dr. Julius von Ritter, the German official in charge of enlisting French laborers for work in G E R M A N Y . Rayman fell into G E S TA P O hands a few days later and was one of the accused in a show trial, along with Manouchian and 21 other fighters, most of whom were Jewish. All of the accused, including Rayman, were executed.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Jewish Partisans of World War II [videorecording]. Aleph Productions, 1985. Weisberg, Richard H. Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

Refugees, 1933–1945 Since the mid-nineteenth century, the number of political refugees—individuals fleeing the land of their birth as a result of political, social, or economic persecution—has increased greatly. Large numbers of Jews left eastern Europe following the Russian pogroms of 1881, 1882, and thereafter. Then, World War I (19141918) and the subsequent social and the economic upheavals associated with the rise of totalitarian regimes in eastern Europe led to a refugee problem.

The First Wave, 1933–1938 Jews figured prominently in the first wave of refugees who fled G ERMANY immediately after Hitler took power in January 1933. Different estimates, based on many sources, indicate that between 52,000 and 63,000 Jews left Germany in 1933; some 37,000 remained abroad. At first the German government did not prevent them from leaving; in fact, they encouraged them to do so. The pace of emigration slowed somewhat in 1934 and most of 1935, but accelerated notably after the N U R E M B E R G L AW S of September 1935 deprived Jews of German citizenship and civil rights. Most of the emigrés went to neighboring countries, including F R A N C E , the N E T H E R L A N D S , Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, and A U S T R I A . Many thought that the Nazis would not remain long in power and they could then return home. Often only individual family members left, while some remained in Germany to protect the family’s interests. Some Jews remained in Germany to avoid the increasingly heavy emigration tax and because the laws strictly limited how much money they could take out of Germany. Up to 1938, the exodus remained limited to just over one-fourth of the 525,000 German Jews.

The Second Wave, 1938–1941 In 1938, thousands of frightened, impoverished German Jews, including entire families, flooded neighboring countries. During 1938, the Nazi policy clearly aimed

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M

ore Jews would have emigrated from Germany and its expand-

ed territories had there been places for them to resettle. The outbreak of war in September 1939 created new obstacles for those who wanted to leave. By then, few could find space on a ship or secure the rare entry visas and other documents necessary to travel abroad.

to rid Germany of its Jews, in part because 200,000 additional Austrian Jews had become part of the Reich after Germany annexed Austria. To speed up the process, Nazi officials sent SS-Untersturmführer Adolf E I C H M A N N to V I E N N A to organize forced expulsion. Between April and November of 1938, 50,000 Austrian Jews left the newly incorporated territory, over 30,000 more than left Germany in the same period. With the recovery of the German economy and the end of unemployment, A R YA N I Z AT I O N —the confiscation of Jewish property—intensified. A new wave of violence throughout Germany and Austria convinced many Jews that they had no future in Germany. In October, B E R L I N expelled masses of Jews and dumped thousands of them in the Polish border town of Zba˛ szyn´ . The Polish government blocked their entry to P O L A N D . After K R I S TA L L N AC H T , on November 9–10, 1938, many more Jews left. These refugees were joined by others from Czechoslovakia, part of which was absorbed into the Reich early in 1939. In all, an estimated 150,000 additional Jews fled Germany after Kristallnacht. Some 71,500 Jews left the Greater German Reich between September 1939 and the end of 1941, when all exits were finally sealed. These represented about a fifth of the Jews remaining in the Reich. Most of them went to Britain, to the Western Hemisphere, to Shanghai, or to Palestine. The least fortunate remained in western Europe, where Nazism again engulfed them in 1940.

Closing the Doors Throughout Europe and America, severe economic depression shaped immigration policies of the period. Hard times practically everywhere brought currents of A N T I S E M I T I S M to the surface. Nations everywhere erected barriers against immigration. Western European countries did so in the early 1930s. The S OV I E T U N I O N , under Josef Stalin, did not receive Hitler’s victims, even those who were Communists. The British, faced with the Arab revolt in Palestine (1936–1939), began to limit entry just at the time when large numbers of Jewish refugees sought to go there. Restrictive policies governed Jewish immigration in Canada and the U N I T E D S TAT E S , with only a few thousand permitted to immigrate each year. Before 1938, however, temporary havens did exist in Europe, and refugees managed to leave. They had to pledge that they would not work in their host country and would eventually move on. But the international climate was cold and forbidding. The League of Nations, whose High Commission for Refugees had done important work during the 1920s, offered little help. Jewish agencies bore all the work and expense required to facilitate the passage of the increasing flow of refugees. The American Jewish J O I N T D I S T R I B U T I O N C O M M I T T E E (JDC) was the largest of these. It worked closely with the Jewish Colonization Association, Hicem (an amalgam, established in 1927, of several Jewish emigration and immigration organizations), the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and other groups. After the Anschluss (annexation of Austria) in 1938, immigration officials around the world feared an unmanageable flood of unwanted refugees. Many of the fugitives from the Reich became stateless, having either lost their German nationality or been stripped of their Czech or Austrian citizenship. An international conference at Evian in July 1938 (see E V I A N C O N F E R E N C E ) widely publicized the plight of the refugees, but failed to achieve any loosening of restrictions. Jewish observers left the meeting feeling bitter and alone. At the end of the 1930s, policymakers in the countries enacted further immigration restrictions. They realized that, because an equally great danger existed for the Jews in Eastern Europe, the tens of thousands of Jews from the Reich might

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soon be joined by millions from Poland, H U N G A RY , and Romania. Deepening antisemitism in those countries, along with the severe impoverishment accompanying the Depression, exacerbated their fears. In 1939 one traditional country of immigration after another shut its doors. After the Munich Conference, governments in the West grimly prepared for the war they had so long hoped to avoid. In 1939, the British placed severe limitations on Jewish access to Palestine. Panic-stricken Jews now sought any possible haven. Corrupt consular authorities sometimes sold entry permits to Latin American countries. About 17,000 German and Austrian Jews managed to reach the international port of Shanghai, practically the only place on the globe that required no visas or other documentation for entry, and later a haven for many Polish Jews as well. Other Jews, without legal means of staying in one country, continued moving from place to place.

A group of Polish Jewish refugees on board the Japanese ship Hikawa Maru approximately six months prior to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in the United States. The ship set sail from Yokohama, Japan, on June 5, 1941, and arrived at Vancouver, Canada, on June 17.

Wartime Refugees About 110,000 Jewish refugees were spread across Europe in 1939. When the war broke out, about 300,000 Jews, almost 10 percent of the entire Polish Jewish population, fled German-held territory in western Poland and crossed into parts occupied by the Soviets. During the following months, close to two million Jews came under Soviet rule for the first time, in parts of Poland and Romania as well as

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I mmigration limits everywhere hardened into firm barriers in the late 1930s, particularly after Germany annexed Austria.

in the Baltic states. Substantial numbers of them, deemed suspect and threatening to the new process of Sovietization, were uprooted and sent to the eastern regions of the USSR, along with many of their non-Jewish neighbors. Meanwhile, in Poland, hundreds of thousands of Jews were also on the move. The Nazis planned to move vast numbers of Jews from the German-incorporated parts of Poland to the rest of the country under their control, called the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T —a kind of reservation they envisioned as a vast dumping ground for the people they had conquered in the east. Although these plans were halted after early D E P O R TAT I O N S of Jews, the refugees continued to flow to towns and cities, where the Nazis set up ghettos. At least a million of Poland’s three million Jews were torn loose from their homes by the effects of war and persecution during this period. Between 500,000 and 600,000 Jews—about one-fifth of Polish Jewry— died in ghettos and labor camps as a result of these Nazi policies. In 1939 and 1940, Nazi strategists briefly planned to concentrate Jewish refugees in the L U B L I N area, part of the Generalgouvernement. This effort, known as the Lublin Plan (see N I S KO A N D L U B L I N P L A N ), was seen as a temporary measure, after which its survivors would be dispatched even farther to the east, across Soviet territory. Tens of thousands of refugees were dumped into the Lublin region before the Nazis shelved this plan. In 1941 the Nazis, who were still searching for an answer to “the Jewish question,” considered the M A DAG A S C A R P L A N as a way of ridding Europe of Jews, but no Jews were actually sent to that island in the Indian Ocean. In the summer of 1941, following the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union, many communities of Polish and Soviet Jews were overrun too quickly for their inhabitants to become refugees. Eventually, O P E R AT I O NA L S QUA D S (Einsatzgruppen) and other Nazi forces massacred hundreds of thousands of them. On the Nazi side of the former border, about 10,000 refugees hid in so-called family camps in the often inhospitable countryside. About one and a half million Jews did manage to flee the German advance, ending up behind Soviet lines. Several hundred thousand were scattered throughout the Soviet Union, where they suffered greatly during the war. Other Jews fled elsewhere in Europe. Oddly, two Axis countries protected significant numbers of Jewish refugees. Italian forces protected Jews in the parts of France, Greece, and C R OAT I A that they occupied. Hungary, although tied to Nazi Germany and committed to its own anti-Jewish program, nevertheless received Jewish refugees unofficially from neighboring Poland and S L OVA K I A . Occasionally, Jews managed to leave Bulgaria or Romania via the Black Sea. They hoped to reach Palestine, but refugee ships with this destination had to stop at Turkey to refuel and take on supplies. Turkish policy sought to avoid the use of a Turkish port for stopovers and very few Jews managed to land there. About 21,600 Jews managed to enter Switzerland, but thousands more were turned back or deterred from attempting entry because of that country’s harshly restrictive policy, tinged with antisemitism. The Spanish frontier was not officially open but Spain generally did not turn back those who managed to cross the Pyrenees. They did try to speed refugees out of the country, sending them on to the Portuguese port of Lisbon, from which thousands managed to leave for America. A substantial number of the 100,000 refugees who passed through Spain and Portugal during the war were Jews. Sweden received Jews from other Scandinavian countries, notably about 6,000 refugees from D E N M A R K who fled quickly in October 1943. Outside Europe, Jewish refugees faced many obstacles, even though many foreign governments knew they were in grave danger. The gates to Palestine remained shut, and only 58,000 Jews managed to enter, whether legally or illegally (smuggled into the country by A L I YA B E T ). U.S. policy remained restrictive. (See U N I T E D

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S TAT E S D E PA R T M E N T O F S TAT E ). In April 1943, as public pressure mounted in G R E AT B R I TA I N and the United States, the Allies held the Bermuda Conference to discuss the refugee problem. Neither government wanted to alter its policies, so the results were meager. More Americans protested against inaction, and finally, on January 17, 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed to establish an agency (the W A R R E F U G E E B OA R D ) to address the refugee problem and rescue Jews. Despite the late response, representatives of the War Refugee Board managed to save many thousands of lives. Elsewhere too, as the war neared its end, restrictions were eased and refugees could move about more freely. More Jews were now able to enter Switzerland and Sweden. Unfortunately, by this time few Jews were in a position to flee, and, for millions, it was too late.

SEE ALSO RESCUE OF CHILDREN. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Feingold, H. The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust, 1938–1945. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1970. Gruber, Ruth. Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 World War II Refugees and How They Came to America. New York: Times Books/Random House, 2000. Kaplan, William. One More Border: The True Story of One Family’s Escape from War-torn Europe. Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre, 1998. Marrus, M. R. The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Pomerantz, Jack. Run East: Flight from the Holocaust. Bloomington: University of Illinois Press, 1997. Wolman, Ruth, ed. Crossing Over: An Oral History of Refugees from Hitler’s Reich. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996.

Reichenau, Walter von (1884–1942)

A German field marshal, Walter von Reichenau fought in World War I and later served in the 100,000-man army of the Weimar Republic (and early Nazi years) known as the Reichswehr. He was the most ardent supporter of the N A Z I PA RT Y among the high-ranking officers of the German army. In his capacity as chief of a department in the Reichswehr Ministry, he was instrumental in the subordination of the armed forces under the Nazi leadership. He commanded an army in the attacks on P O L A N D , F R A N C E , and the S OV I E T U N I O N . After the fall of France (June 1940), he was promoted to the rank of General Field Marshal. “Image

not available for copyright reasons”

In December 1941, Reichenau rose to the command of Army Group South in Russia. He issued a directive ordering and sanctioning the extermination of Soviet P R I S O N E R S O F WA R and Soviet citizens, especially Jews. The directive opened with the following sentences: There are frequent vague conceptions prevailing with regard to the behavior of the troops toward the Bolshevist system. The main object of the campaign against the Jewish Bolshevist system is the total destruction of their instruments of power and the elimination of the Asiatic influence from the cultural life of Europe. For this reason the troops are faced with

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“Only thus can we fulfill our historic task to free the German people once and for all from the AsiaticJewish danger.” —Walter von Reichenau, in a 1941 directive to troops under his command.

tasks which far exceed mere soldierly routine. In the eastern sector the soldier is not only one who fights according to the rules of warfare, he is at the same time the exponent of an uncompromising ideology and the avenger of all the bestialities that have been inflicted upon German and racially related people. Therefore the soldier must fully understand the necessity of meting out severe yet fair retribution to the Jewish subhumans [Untermenschen]. This retribution will also result in nipping in the bud any uprisings in the rear of the army, which, as experience has shown, have always been instigated by Jews.… Only thus can we fulfill our historic task to free the German people once and for all from the Asiatic-Jewish danger. Hitler was greatly pleased with this order and directed that it be sent to all army commanders with a recommendation to issue similar orders. Reichenau died in Poltava on January 17, 1942, from a heart attack.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bartov, Omar. Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. “A German Field Marshal Instructs the Wehrmacht on Its Role in the Soviet Union,” in The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes (Vol. 10: The Einsatzgruppen or Murder Commandos). New York: Garland, 1982. [Online] http://www.assumption.edu/ HTML/Academic/history/HI14Net/reichenau-english.html (accessed on September 11, 2000).

Reich Security Main Office The Reich Security Main Office (RSHA; Reichssicherheitshauptamt) was the combined headquarters of the Nazi Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police; Sipo) and SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service). The RSHA was the central office through which the Nazis’ fight against the “enemies of the regime” was organized and coordinated with the police and state bureaucracy. Embodying the SS ideology, the RSHA was the principal tool in the regime’s ideological, political, and racial warfare against its enemies.

Police Agencies, 1931–1939 Several SS institutions functioning during the period before the establishment of the RSHA may be considered its precursors. Chief among these was the SD and SS surveillance and intelligence apparatus, which was set up in 1931 by Heinrich H I M M L E R and for which Reinhard H E Y D R I C H was responsible. Its primary tasks were to protect the Nazi leadership from the Weimar Republic’s political police and to establish a secret espionage network to be used against party enemies, government agencies, and the party itself. Weimar Republic

German republic from 1918 to 1933.

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The second precursor of the RSHA was the G E S TA P O , which was originally the political police of Prussia during the period of the Weimar Republic . In 1933 and 1934, Himmler used the SD as an instrument in his successful takeover of the political police of all the German states. These were formally unified with the Gestapo in 1936. Characteristically, Himmler kept the SD itself outside this new state bureaucracy. Moreover, he encouraged competition between the Gestapo and the SD.

REICH SECURITY MAIN OFFICE

A third precursor to the RSHA was the Criminal Police, or Kriminalpolizei (also referred to as Kripo), under Arthur N E B E . Nebe served first in the Gestapo. Then, eager to centralize and to use methods forbidden in a state observing the law, he took over the modern criminal police agencies of the German states and unified them to serve under the new regime. In 1936, the Gestapo and Kripo were reorganized as the Sipo. As state agencies, they came under Heydrich’s control. Until 1939, the SD remained under his command as a separate SS main office.

T

he Gestapo was the formidable backbone of the RSHA,

combining surveillance, denunciation, and torture with its power to imprison people in concentration camps and

The RSHA from 1939 to 1945

execute them there.

On September 22, 1939, the SD and Sipo were merged to become the RSHA. Once the personnel were all selected, the RSHA was ready to function as an instrument that would carry out future atrocities. Between 1939 and 1941 the RSHA developed into an enormous organization under Heydrich, who maintained his title as chief of the Sipo and SD. It came to comprise the following seven departments: Dept. I, under Bruno Streckenbach (who would become acting RSHA chief for eight months following Heydrich’s assassination in June 1942), was in charge of personnel. Dept. II, originally under Dr. Werner B E S T and later under Dr. Neckmann, was in charge of organizations and law, including legislation, passports, and budget. Dept. III, under Otto O H L E N D O R F , was essentially the former SD internal affairs department, and retained the same functions. Its main divisions dealt with economic matters, culture, and ethnic Germans. Dept. IV, under Heinrich M Ü L L E R , was the Gestapo, which was divided into fourteen divisions, plus the border police. The divisions dealt separately with political “enemies” (including Communists, Liberals, Catholics, and Protestants), and functionally with sabotage, counterintelligence, treason, and the like. Section IV B 4, under Adolf E I C H M A N N , combined two areas of responsibility: evacuations and Jews. Dept. V, under Nebe, was the Kriminalpolizei, which had four main divisions. Dept. VI, officially under Heinz Jost and later under Walter Schellenberg , was called SD-Foreign, and was the foreign intelligence of the SS. Its six divisions dealt with German spheres of interest in the West. In reality, it was under the direct control of the chief of the RSHA. Dept. VII, under Professor Franz Six, was the “ideological” branch of the RSHA, in charge of collecting, evaluating, and disseminating ideological material, mainly concerning Jews. The basic structure of the RSHA remained the same following the assassination of Heydrich, his temporary replacement by Streckenbach, and his subsequent permanent replacement by Ernst K A LT E N B R U N N E R in early 1943. During Kaltenbrunner’s era, the Gestapo department grew even larger. In the wake of the attempts on Hitler’s life in 1944 and the subsequent breakup of the Abwehr (the Wehrmacht’s intelligence service) because of its alleged involvement in the attempts, the SD’s foreign department also became significantly larger. The regional structure of the RSHA in the Reich itself was, by official design, under the control of the Sipo and SD inspectors in each military district. State police district offices in the larger cities and Gestapo branches and SD main and sectional offices were also theoretically subordinated to these inspectors. In reality, however, the Gestapo issued orders directly to its own branches. From 1941 on, the Gestapo often acted on its own against “enemies of the Reich,” denounced and

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arrested citizens, and supervised foreign workers who had been brought forcibly to G E R M A N Y to fill the manpower gap. In the occupied territories, a similar control from B E R L I N was generally maintained. Here, the Gestapo, Kripo, and SD branches were under the control of the commanders of the Sipo and SD, although in the field the Gestapo, SD, and mobile killing units known as O P E R AT I O N A L S Q UA D S (Einsatzgruppen) were largely autonomous. Himmler established an alternate line of command on May 21, 1941. The Higher SS and Police Leaders, whom Himmler had designated as his personal representatives on November 13, 1937, were allowed to bypass the regular chain of command and issue orders in Himmler’s name directly to the Sipo and SD commanders, cutting out the RSHA. Regardless of their professional training, the RSHA’s served in a wide range of functions, both in the occupied territories and the Reich itself. Thus, Dr. Otto Ohlendorf, an economist, commanded Operational Squad (Einsatzgruppe) D; and the former SD man who became dean of the Faculty for Foreign Countries at Berlin University, Professor Franz Six, commanded Vorkommando Moskau of Operational Squad (Einsatzgruppe) B. The primary victims of the Nazis, the Jews, became the special focus of RSHA activity under Eichmann’s section, IV B 4. From late 1941 on, it directed the deportation of most of European Jewry to ghettos, slave labor, and E X T E R M I NAT I O N CA M P S . The RSHA continued Hitler’s extermination policies to the very end of the war.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Calic, Edouard. Reinhard Heydrich: The Chilling Story of the Man Who Masterminded the Nazi Death Camps. New York: Morrow, 1985. Rurup, Reinhard, ed. Topography of Terror, Gestapo, SS and Reichssicherheitshauptamt on the “Prinz-Albrecht-Terrain.” Berlin: Verlag Willmuth Arenhovel, 1989.

Rescue Committee of United States Orthodox Rabbis The Rescue Committee of United States Orthodox Rabbis (Va’ad Ha-Hatsala) was a relief and rescue agency established in November 1939 by the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada (the leading association of rabbis in the Orthodox community; otherwise known as the Agudat ha-Rabbanim). Its express purpose was to save the rabbis and rabbinical students who had escaped from P O L A N D to L I T H UA N I A following the outbreak of World War II.

yeshivas

Rabbinical academies.

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During the initial two years of its existence, the Va’ad, led by its founder, Rabbi Eliezer Silver of Cincinnati, sent relief to the approximately 2,500 rabbis and students who had fled to Lithuania, among them practically the entire faculty and student body of such well-known yeshivas as those of Mir, Kletsk, Radin, Kamenets, and Baranovichi. The Va’ad assisted in the emigration of about 650 of these rabbis and yeshiva students during the period from October 1940 to June 1941. Several of the scholars emigrated to the United States (among them rabbis Aron Kotler, Avraham Yaphin, Reuven Grazowsky, and Moshe Shatzkes) and to Palestine (Eliezer Yehuda Finkel, Eliezer Shach and others), but the majority, approximately 500, ended up in Shanghai, where almost all remained for the duration of the war. In the

RESCUE COMMITTEE OF UNITED STATES ORTHODOX RABBIS

fall of 1941 the Va’ad obtained Canadian visas for 80 scholars, but only 29 succeeded in reaching Canada. Several of the rabbis who arrived in the United States after the outbreak of the war, such as Abraham Kalmanowitz and Aron Kotler, played an active role in the Va’ad’s activities. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the American entrance into the war on December 7, 1941, the Va’ad initially concentrated on assisting the refugee scholars in Shanghai, as well as several hundred rabbis and yeshiva students in Soviet Central Asia. The latter were among the thousands of Polish citizens, deported by the Soviets to Siberia prior to the Nazi invasion, who were released in the wake of the Polish-Soviet agreement (the so-called SikorskiStalin Pact) of August 1941. The Va’ad sent these groups funds as well as parcels of food and clothing, and thereby enabled the scholars to maintain their unique lifestyle and continue their Talmudic studies despite the difficult conditions in Shanghai and Central Asia.

T

he Va’ad helped to rescue several thousand Jews during

the war and assisted thousands during the postwar period.

Following the revelation throughout 1942 of the mass annihilation of European Jewry, the Va’ad engaged in political activity designed to rescue Jews under Nazi occupation. The highlight was of these activities were a protest march of four hundred Orthodox rabbis to the White House on October 6, 1943, the only public demonstration by Jewish leaders in Washington during the war. The Va’ad also helped establish the W A R R E F U G E E B OA R D in the United States. In early January 1944, as the rabbis realized the scope of the disaster that had befallen European Jewry, the Va’ad officially decided to devote its subsequent efforts to rescuing all Jews, regardless of their religiosity or organizational affiliation. During 1944 and 1945 the Va’ad, through its branches in Switzerland, Sweden, Turkey, and Tangier, launched relief and rescue activities to assist the Jews under Nazi rule, and maintained contact with Orthodox leaders in S L OVA K I A and H U N G A R Y . The culmination of these efforts was the rescue of 1,200 inmates of the T H E R E S I E N S TA D T concentration camp, who were sent to Switzerland in February 1945. During the course of the war, the Va’ad’s activities aroused considerable controversy within the American Jewish community, in large part due to the priority the Va’ad accorded to rabbis and yeshiva students. Most of the other A M E R I CA N J E W I S H O R G A N I Z AT I O N S preferred to allocate equal resources to all Jews in distress. Moreover, the aid that the Va’ad provided for the refugee scholars in Shanghai, and to a lesser extent in Central Asia, was in addition to the regular assistance received by the refugees. This enabled the rabbis and yeshiva students to study on a full-time basis, while the other refugees had to work. Another issue that caused considerable controversy was that of rescue tactics. On various occasions the Va’ad used methods of transferring funds that violated the spirit, if not the letter, of American wartime restrictions. This policy was adamantly opposed by other Jewish organizations, primarily the J O I N T D I S T R I B U T I O N C O M M I T T E E , which throughout the war maintained a policy of strict adherence to United States governmental directives. The Va’ad’s willingness during the final stages of World War II to transfer funds into Nazi hands in return for the release of Jews also aroused controversy. The final issue of debate within the community concerned the Va’ad’s fund-raising activities. Shortly before the Va’ad was established, fund raising in the American Jewish community for domestic and overseas needs had been unified under the United Jewish Appeal. The Va’ad’s decision to launch a separate fund-raising effort broke community unity. After World War II, the Va’ad played an active role in rehabilitating survivors, aiding Jewish children, and providing for religious needs. During the period from its establishment in late 1939 until the end of 1945, the Va’ad spent more than $3 million on relief and rescue work.

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SUGGESTED RESOURCES Kranzler, David. Thy Brothers’ Blood: The Orthodox Jewish Response During the Holocaust. Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah Publications, 1987.

H

olocaust survivor Klemak Nowicki recalls a close

call with the Gestapo while he was a

Zuroff, Efraim. The Response of Orthodox Jewry in the United States to the Holocaust: The Activities of the Va’ad ha-Hatzala Rescue Committee, 1939–1945. Hoboken, NJ: KTAV, 2000.

child hidden at a convent: “About three men were taking me out, and I remember that the bishop . . . said, If

Rescue of Children

you take him, you’ll have to take me. I don’t know why, but they let me go. They usually didn’t give a damn, they’d take everybody. But they left me alone. If it wasn’t for the bishop’s intervention, I would have been dead.” Howard Greenfeld, The Hidden Children (New York: Tucknor & Fields), 1993, p. 89.

The N A Z I

PA R T Y ,

led by Adolf H I T L E R , took power in G E R M A N Y in 1933. A N T I S E M I T I S M —hatred of Jews—was a fundamental part of the Nazis’ beliefs, and they quickly started making laws that discriminated harshly against Jews. Some Jews realized that very dark times lay ahead for them in Germany and tried to emigrate to other countries. While some families left Germany together, others sent just their children to safer countries in Europe and overseas. In the period from 1934 to 1945, about 1,000 unaccompanied safer countries by Jewish refugees ages sixteen and below reached the U N I T E D S TAT E S . Most of them were from Germany. They traveled to the United States either directly from Germany or after spending some time in a third country.

United States Efforts The first organization to deal with the project of bringing the children to the United States and settling them there was the German Jewish Children’s Aid (GJCA), established in New York in 1934. Another twelve or so organizations eventually came to play a role in the effort. Some of the groups, like the GJCA, were set up for this purpose. Others were existing organizations such as the American Jewish J OINT D ISTRIB UTION C OMMITTEE , the American Jewish Committee, and the United Hias Service.

immigration quota

The limited number of citizens allowed to enter the United States as immigrants from any particular country.

Until 1941, the GJCA was able to bring 590 refugee children to the United States directly from Germany with the help of the children’s emigration section of the German Jewish representative body, the Reich Representation of Jews in Germany ( Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland), and local American relief organizations. The United States immigration authorities accepted the GJCA’s willingness to be responsible for the children, which relieved it of the need to find an individual sponsor for each child. But in all other respects, the children had to go through exactly the same procedure as adults who wanted to immigrate to the United States. They had to submit an immigration application, enclose medical certificates and security clearances, and wait for their turn in their country’s immigration quota . Attempts were also made to have special laws passed to allow for the immigration of refugee children. In 1939, after the K R I S TA L L NAC H T violence against Jews in Germany and A U S T R I A , a bill was introduced into Congress to allow 20,000 children—not necessarily Jewish—to enter the United States, over and above the immigration quota allowed for Germany. After a long struggle, however, the bill was taken off the congressional agenda.

British Child Refugees In the summer of 1940, when the Battle of Britain was at its height, the idea of allowing British children to be brought to the United States on a temporary basis

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was suggested. Within a few weeks, the U N I T E D S TAT E S D E PA R T M E N T O F S TAT E made it possible for the children to enter the country as visitors, and thus to avoid the immigration regulations. Congress even passed a law permitting the children to be brought to the United States on American ships. This welcoming attitude of the government toward the transfer of British children to the United States contrasted sharply with its reluctance to admit refugee children from Germany. A special organization, the United States Committee for the Care of European Children (USCOM), was formed to deal with transporting the children from Britain and settling them in the United States. By the fall of 1940, when the “evacuation project” was called off, USCOM had brought in between 835 and 840 British children. The precise number of Jewish children among them is not known, but it is believed to have been no more than thirty or forty.

Four young members of the largest group of German-Jewish refugees arrive at Southampton (England) on the United States liner Manhattan. The refugees number nearly 250, including 88 children. March 24, 1939.

Jewish refugee children also went to the United States after a stay in B E L G I U M , the N E T H E R L A N D S , or F R A N C E . Following the cancellation of the “evacuation project” from Britain, USCOM accepted the task of bringing these children to the United States. Between 1940 and 1942, volunteers from the Quakers (see the A M E R I C A N F R I E N D S S E R V I C E C O M M I T T E E ) helped to bring children from Jewish orphanages and from internment camps for foreign nationals in southern France, and to bring them to the United States. When they reached the United States, these children were placed under the care of the GJCA. From the summer of 1941

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HIDDEN CHILDREN IN EUROPE Jewish children rescued by non-Jews in Europe had very different experiences than those who were sent to the United States. Many of them spent their war years hiding from the Nazis. Since her diary was first published in 1947, Anne Frank has been the human face of the Holocaust for millions of people. The Secret Annex, and later editions of Anne’s Diary of a Young Girl, are among the most widely read books in the world. Many people do not know that there were thousands of hidden children during that period in history. Like Anne, not all survived. However, of the tens of thousands of Jewish children who were hidden, many did. The First International Gathering of Children Hidden During World War II took place in New York City in 1991. Sixteen hundred people from around the world met to discuss their experiences as hidden children. For many, it was the first time they had spoken about that time in their lives. Many had been physically hidden in attics, like Anne Frank, or in closets, basements, or underground tunnels. Children were hidden in forests and caves and even sewers. Others were given false identities and placed in convents and orphanages. Some children lived with non-Jewish families. Though not physically hidden away from the world, they adopted new names, observed different religions, lived apart from their real families, and otherwise hid their true identities. Despite the diversity of their Holocaust experiences, the conferees discovered striking similarities among themselves. Perhaps most notable was the lasting impact of the desperate need to keep silent while in hiding. Whether they had to remain quiet in order not to be overheard, or they had to be careful not to reveal their Jewish roots, the hidden children practiced silence. Their lives—and those of their rescuers—depend-

to the end of the war in 1945, some 350 Jewish refugee children arrived in the United States after transit through France and Spain. Upon arriving in the United States, most of the children were given physical and psychological examinations, and were then handed over to foster parents. The guidelines laid down by the American Children’s Bureau for choosing the foster parents took into account their economic situation, their temperament and personality, and the reasons that had led them to apply to care for a refugee child. There also had to be religious compatibility between the child and the foster parents; United States law required that a child must not be placed in the care of foster parents belonging to a different religion. This meant that Jewish children were handed

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ed on it. That wariness has stayed with many of the hidden children, often affecting their ability to form strong, trusting relationships. Guilt was another shared characteristic of the now-grown hidden children. Some were told that they had no right to complain about their wartime experiences. For hadn’t they lived? Hadn’t they escaped the camps? Many who were forced to hide their Jewish origins suffered terrible guilt about denying the heritage for which their loved ones suffered and died. Survivor guilt was especially common—“Why did I survive when so many others died?” Another common theme was enduring grief. Many families could not be reunited after the war; parents had been murdered, or their whereabouts could not be traced, or a child’s real identity had been forgotten. Reunited families found, to their dismay that loved ones had been profoundly changed by the war, physically and psychologically. Some children were so young when they were hidden, they remembered their real families only vaguely, if at all. Hidden children had to mature quickly beyond their actual ages. Many survivors grieved the loss of childhood. Some felt abandoned by their parents, even while knowing they had been given up out of love and a desperate hope for a chance at survival. The legacy of the hidden-child experience endures. Perhaps as a way to compensate for the deficiencies of their childhoods, many of the hidden children have become over-achievers. Some still fear persecution. Some don’t know their real names or birthdays. Some are only now learning of their Jewish heritage. Since the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, previously unavailable documents are still revealing new details. Many who have always known had never before discussed their past with their own children. Why did they come forth after decades of silence? To satisfy their families’ curiosity. To heal. Perhaps most of all, to bear witness to the Holocaust.

over only to Jewish foster parents, unlike the situation in other countries, where Jewish refugee children were put into the hands of any family that was prepared to care for them. According to research conducted during the war and afterward, most of these Jewish refugee children integrated rapidly and well into American life.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Fox, Anne L. Ten Thousand Children: True Stories Told by Children Who Escaped the Holocaust on the Kindertransport. West Orange: NJ: Behrman House, 1998. Giddens, Sandra. Escape: Teens Who Escaped from the Holocaust to Freedom. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 1999.

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Group of Jewish parachutists, resistance fighters from Palestine, sitting behind enemy lines.

Greenfeld, Howard. The Hidden Children. New York: Tucknor & Fields, 1993. Kustanowitz, Esther. The Hidden Children of the Holocaust: Teens Who Hid from the Nazis. New York: Rosen Pub. Group,1999. Matas, Carol. Greater Than Angels. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1999.

Resistance, Jewish Overview In the Nazi system, Jews were faced with a process of dehumanization that ended in death. Any act that opposed that process can be regarded as resistance. Before and during the H O L O C AU S T , there were many cases of planned or spontaneous opposition to the Nazis and their collaborators by individual Jews or groups of Jews. Jewish resistance took many forms and worked on many different levels. Organized armed resistance is regarded as the height of opposition to the Nazis. Many instances of Jewish armed struggle throughout Europe have been documented; the most famous is the W A R S A W G H E T T O U P R I S I N G of the spring of

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1943. Virtually every attempt by armed Jewish fighters to confront Nazi forces ended in the defeat of the Jews. Most of the fighters themselves generally did not expect to be victorious; they fought for other reasons, such as to avenge the murder of other Jews, or to let future generations know that Jews had resisted the Nazis with arms to defend Jewish honor. Among the Jewish PA R T I S A N S , who did try to save lives through their efforts, fighting and survival went hand in hand. In addition to the partisan fighting units that committed acts of sabotage against the Nazi war effort, family camps were often created in forests for Jews who had escaped from ghettos or camps but were unable to engage in combat fighting. These camps were protected by the partisan fighters.

T

he foundation of Jewish resistance, especially in the

ghettos and the Nazi camps, was the struggle to stay alive. The smuggling of food, clothing, medicine, and other necessities kept many Jews alive, at least for a while. Jews also traded with non-

Resistance through Rescue In most of the countries of Europe, the focal point of Jewish resistance was rescue, rather than armed confrontation. This was especially true in B E L G I U M , the N E T H E R L A N D S , H U N G A RY , and G E R M A N Y . In F R A N C E , however, there was significant Jewish participation in organized armed resistance, along with rescue activities. In 1942, the Jewish underground in France crystallized, and the united Jewish forces established the Jewish Army (Armée Juive). The Jewish Army took part in many operations. It took revenge on traitors; attacked German airplanes, transport vehicles, and trains; and sabotaged factories producing materials for the Axis war effort.

Jews whenever possible. In this way, an active underground counter-economy was maintained, which often meant the difference between life and death.

Rescue was an important factor in the Slovakian national uprising (see S L OVA The Jewish fighters taking part in it hoped that the remaining Slovakian Jews would be saved by the toppling of the Nazi-oriented government from power. In Algeria, a defense group was organized by young Jews, under the guise of a sports club. The group played a key role in easing the entry of Allied forces into Algeria in 1942, by helping to seize and hold strategic positions in the cities.

KIA.

Other forms of resistance may also come under the heading of rescue. Many Jews tried to escape from the Nazis by crossing borders to safer lands with the use of false identity papers, or by hiding (with non-Jews, or in any place where conditions permitted). For instance, some 350,000 Jews fled to Soviet territory from P O L A N D in the wake of the advancing German forces. Tens of thousands escaped from the W A R S AW ghetto to the “Aryan” side of the city and were among the tens of thousands more who hid throughout Poland. Similarly, the rescue of Jewish children in France and Belgium, and the smuggling of Jews from France to Spain and from I TA LY to Switzerland—all operations in which the Jewish YO U T H M OV E M E N T S took part—come under the heading of resistance as well as rescue.

Spiritual Resistance Also of great importance was spiritual resistance, called by the Jews “sanctification of life” (Kiddush Ha-Hayyim). Jews responded to their deteriorating circumstances and dehumanization with spiritual resistance. The creation of schools, theaters, and orchestras helped Jews retain their dignity despite Nazi oppression in the ghettos. Similarly, Jewish religious observance in the face of laws or rules that forbade it was an important aspect of the sanctification of life in ghettos and camps. Underground meetings of Zionist youth groups served this purpose as well. In many of the ghettos, notably those of Warsaw and K R A K Ó W , underground Jewish newspapers and pamphlets were printed and distributed. This Jewish press gave information about events and analyzed them. It also strengthened morale by publicizing poems, fiction, and jokes. Finally, it also called for acts of armed resistance.

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U

nderground groups faced severe obstacles. They somehow had

to smuggle arms into the ghetto, train

Individual noncompliance with specific Nazi demands was another form of resistance. Many Jewish leaders who refused to follow Nazi directives were killed for their defiance. The first chairman of the J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council) of L VOV , Dr. Joseph Parnes, was arrested and killed by the Nazis for refusing to hand Jews over to them for F O R C E D L A B O R . Moshe Jaffe, the last leader of the M I N S K Judenrat, defied the Nazis and told the Jews to flee for their lives. He was killed soon afterward.

fighters under ghetto conditions, and find a way to put fighters on battle alert in case of a surprise action by the Germans. The insurgents did not have the slightest chance of forcing the Germans to put a stop to the extermination. Their primary purpose was to offer resistance for its own sake.

Armed Resistance Armed resistance by Jews in the Holocaust years differed from the resistance offered by the general populations of occupied Europe in World War II. Armed struggle by Jews was carried on under conditions in which the Jews were the object of general, absolute extermination. It was carried out by people spread out over hundreds of ghettos and hundreds of camps—none of which had any contact with the other. Its underground groups had very few possibilities open to them to prepare for an armed uprising. The Jews had to enter into armed confrontation with the Germans without having had a chance to train for it. They had to do this at a time when German military might was at its height, and to do so without any outside support. The timing of these armed resistance actions was dictated by the dates fixed by the Nazis for the transports of Jews to E X T E R M I NAT I O N CA M P S . A R M E D R E S I S TA N C E I N T H E G H E T TO S In approximately 100 ghettos in Poland, L I T H UA N I A , B E L O R U S S I A (present-day Belarus), and U K R A I N E , armed Jewish underground organizations came into being. Their purpose was to stage uprisings, or to break out of the walled-in ghetto by the use of armed force. After escaping, they wished to engage in partisan operations on the outside. The two forms often combined, with the uprising being followed by an escape from the ghetto. There were also cases in which uprisings were spontaneous or improvised.

The largest single revolt by Jews was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of the spring of 1943. By then, 300,000 Warsaw Jews had either been murdered on the spot or deported to T R E B L I N K A ; no more than 60,000 Jews were left in the ghetto. Dozens of survivors managed to escape from the ghetto through the city sewers. They reached the Wyszków Forest, where they tried to link up with partisans in order to keep up their fight against the Germans. Inside the ghetto, which by then was destroyed, several small groups maintained resistance throughout the month of June 1943. This struggle is commemorated worldwide on Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom ha-Sho’ah) in late April or early May each year. Several other ghettos in Poland formed Jewish Fighting Organizations. Some were inspired by the J E W I S H F I G H T I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N (Z˙ ydowska Organizacja Bojowa; Z˙OB) in Warsaw. The U N I T E D P A RT I S A N O R G A N I Z AT I O N (Fareynegte Partizaner Organizatsye; FPO), in V I L N A , became active as early as January 1942. Not content with local operations, the FPO made great efforts to stir up resistance across Eastern Europe. It was from Vilna that Abba Kovner made his famous appeal for armed struggle against the Nazis (“Not to Go like Sheep to the Slaughter”). The FPO did not succeed in staging a revolt inside the Vilna ghetto, but it did manage to get several hundred fighters out to join the partisans’ struggle in the Rudninkai and Naroch forests. Similar to the FPO in style and action was the Antifascist Organization, which came into being in the K OV N O ghetto in January 1942. It operated until the liquidation of the ghetto in the summer of 1944. There, too, no open revolt took place inside the ghetto. However, many fighters were able to join the partisans in the area.

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In Kraków, the Jewish fighting organization gave up the idea of staging a revolt inside the ghetto, maintaining that under the circumstances it did not stand a chance. Instead, the organization decided to move the fight against the Germans to the “Aryan” side of the city, and it launched several attacks against the Germans in the streets. Of these, the most famous was a raid on the German officers’ club in the city, on December 22, 1942. On October 25, 1941, when the Germans were about to put up ghettos in Starodubsk and Tatarsk, they were met with armed resistance by the local Jews. There were no survivors in this fight, and the events that took place came to be known from Nazi records only. On July 21, 1942, the Jews of Kletsk rose up in revolt, setting their houses on fire and breaking out of the ghetto by force. On the same day, the Jews of Nesvizh rose up; on August 9, 1942, the Jews of Mir; on September 3, 1942, the Jews in the Lachva ghetto; on September 9, 1942, the Jews in the Kremenets ghetto; and on September 24, 1942, the Jews in the Tuchin ghetto.

I

n the smaller ghettos, preparing a force for a revolt was much more difficult

than in a large place like Warsaw. It was harder to keep the preparations secret, undetected by the watchful eyes of the Germans who surrounded the ghetto. Still, notable instances of armed resistance occurred in smaller ghettos including Bial⁄ystok, Cze˛stochowa, Be˛dzin, Sosnowiec, and Tarnów.

UPRISINGS IN THE CAMPS For the Jewish resistance movement, the Nazi camps

were an extraordinary place in which to fight. Conditions there posed far greater problems for organizing resistance and for actual fighting than in the ghettos. The ghetto population, in relative terms, enjoyed freedom of movement within the confines of the Jewish quarter. The concentration camp inmates had only their barracks or place of work in which to move and keep in touch with one another—and even there, they were almost constantly under the supervision of the camp administration. Conditions for resistance varied greatly throughout the system of camps that the Germans had created—E X T E R M I NAT I O N CA M P S , C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S , forcedlabor camps, and prisoner-of-war camps. But they also had certain features in common. One enormous difficulty faced by the resistance movement was the incredible terror to which camp inmates were exposed. They had no means of defending themselves. They were completely at the mercy of the camp administration, guards, and officials. Any prisoner could be subjected to the most brutal torture and murder for even the slightest offense, or without having committed any offense at all. The possibility of offering resistance was severely limited, far more than in the ghettos, by chronic starvation and harsh living conditions. Another factor that stood in the way of resistance initiatives was the principle of “collective responsibility.” This meant that when prisoners committed some “wrong,” not only those who had taken part were punished, often with their lives, but also other prisoners, who had not been involved. The success of one group of prisoners—for instance, in breaking out of the camp—in most cases led to the punishment of other prisoners. Civilians outside the camps were subject to the death penalty, more often than not without trial, for helping a prisoner to escape or offer resistance. This made it very hard to establish contact with civilians living in the vicinity of the camps and receive any help from them. Despite all these difficulties, the prisoners succeeded in organizing uprisings in a number of camps. In several dozen camps, they organized escapes to join partisan operations in the area. In several camps, notably S O B I B Ó R , T R E B L I N K A , and Birkenau (see A U S C H W I T Z ), Jewish members of the S P E C I A L C O M M A N D O (Sonderkommando) units started uprisings. All were brutally put down. In Birkenau, all the rebels were killed. However, in Sobibór and Treblinka, a small number of Jews managed to escape. These were the only organized acts of Jewish armed resistance carried out against the Nazis in the concentration and extermination camp network. Other uprisings took place in Kruszyna, Min´ sk Mazowiecki, Krychów, and J A N Ó W S K A . There was an exceptionally successful escape from the prisoner-of-war

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camp in L U B L I N , in the wake of which partisan operations were organized. Other successful escapes that were followed by partisan operations took place in Kras´nik, M A J DA N E K , and Ostrowiec-S´wie˛tokrzyski.

SEE ALSO ANIELEWICZ, MORDECAI; RINGELBLUM, EMANUEL; ROBOTA, ROZA; SZENES, HANNAH. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Flames in the Ashes [videorecording]. Ergo Media, 1987. Gurewitsch, Brana, ed. Mothers, Sisters, Resisters: Oral Histories of Women Who Survived the Holocaust. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998.

Rescue and Resistance: Portraits of the Holocaust. New York: Macmillan Library Reference USA, 1999. Resistance During the Holocaust. Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1998. Reproduced in part at http://www.igc.org/iearn/hgp/aeti/aeti-1998no-frames/resistance.htm (accessed on September 11, 2000). Warsaw Ghetto Uprising [videorecording]. Ergo Media, 1993.

REVISIONISM. SEE HOLOCAUST, DENIAL OF. Riegner Cable An urgent telegram message, or cable, was sent on August 8, 1942, by Dr. Gerhart Riegner, the representative of the W O R L D J E W I S H C O N G R E S S (WJC) in Geneva. The intended recipients were Stephen S. W I S E in the U N I T E D S TAT E S and Sidney Silverman, member of Parliament, in Britain. The cable read as follows: Received alarming report that in Führer’s headquarters plan discussed and under consideration according to which all Jews in countries occupied or controlled Germany numbering 3 1/2–4 million should after deportation and concentration in east be exterminated at one blow to resolve once and for all the Jewish question in Europe. Action reported planned for autumn; methods under discussion including prussic acid. We transmit information with all necessary reservation as exactitude cannot be confirmed. Informant stated to have close connections with highest German authorities and his reports generally speaking reliable. The cable was transmitted through British diplomatic personnel to Silverman, and Howard Elting attempted to transmit the message through the American viceconsul in Geneva to the U N I T E D S TAT E S D E PA R T M E N T O F S TAT E . In view of the apparently unsubstantiated nature of the information, the State Department refused to inform Wise. However, Silverman sent the cable to Wise from London, and it reached him on August 28. On September 2, Wise sent the cable to Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, who invited Wise to meet with him, asking that he not publish the cable until it had been confirmed. Wise agreed, but he informed highranking officials in the United States including a number of Cabinet members and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He also contacted Christian clergymen. On September 3, Jacob Rosenheim, president of Agudat Israel (the ultra-Orthodox Jewish movement) in New York, received a similar cable from Isaac Sternbuch of the R E S C U E C O M M I T T E E O F U N I T E D S TAT E S O R T H O D O X R A B B I S in Switzerland. As a result, Wise approached Rosenheim and formed a temporary emergency committee

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of Jewish leaders to decide what to do with the information and how to address the situation. On November 24, when the American government finally became convinced that Jews were being mass murdered in Europe, Wise broke the news of the cable, together with much supporting information, to the press. After many years of investigation, historians discovered that the anonymous information on which Riegner’s cable was based had been provided by Eduard Scholte, 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. The sources on which Scholte based his information are not known. The information itself was inaccurate: mass murder of Jews had been going on since June 1941, and gassings, first in vans, with carbon monoxide, and later in gas chambers (see G A S C H A M B E R S / V A N S ) had been taking place since September 1941. While the cable spoke of a future “blow” under “consideration,” the ongoing extermination process had already begun. Moreover, the cable itself indicated that the information may not have been true. The last sentence had been introduced into the cable at the insistence of Dr. Paul Guggenheim, a senior member of the WJC living in Geneva. Nevertheless, the cable was a breakthrough, because it confirmed previously inconclusive information about the mass murder of Jews that had previously reached the West.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Laqueur, W., and R. Breitman. Breaking the Silence. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986. Peck, Abraham J., ed. The Papers of the World Jewish Congress 1939–1945. New York: Garland, 1991. Wyman, D. S. The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.

Riga Riga is the capital of L AT V I A . It was founded in the thirteenth century, and at various times it was under German, Polish, Swedish, and Russian rule. From 1918 to 1940 Riga was the capital of independent Latvia. In June 1940 Latvia became part of the S OV I E T U N I O N , and Riga became the capital of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic. Jews first settled in Riga in the seventeenth century. They were expelled from the city in 1742, but a few decades later Jews were living there again. In 1935 the Jewish population of Riga was 43,000, about half the total number of Jews in Latvia, and 11 percent of the city’s total population. With Jewish schools, a rabbinical academy, a theater, and three Yiddish daily newspapers, Riga was the political and cultural center of Latvian Jewry. On July 1, 1941, nine days after their invasion of the Soviet Union, the Germans occupied Riga. Several thousand Jews managed to get out of the city when it was being evacuated, but most were caught there. On the first day of the occupation, Latvian volunteer military units began arresting and killing Jewish males by the thousands. On July 4 the Latvian volunteers set fire to the city’s central syna-

A young Jewish girl from Munich who was deported to Riga.

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I

n a pogrom launched shortly after the German occupation of Riga, Jews were raped, chased away from food distribution lines, denied treatment in

the hospitals, and rounded up for forced labor. Many were driven out of their homes to make room for Germans, and their money, furnishings, and valuables were confiscated.

gogue, the Chor synagogue, and later burnt down all the other synagogues in the city except for one. During the rest of July, several thousand more Jewish males were shot to death in the Bikernieki Forest and at other locations. Jewish doctors and a few skilled craftspeople, however, were spared and released. Between July and October 1941 the Germans issued a series of anti-Jewish decrees. Jews had to wear a Star of David. They were not allowed to walk on the sidewalk, frequent public places, attend any educational institution, or practice a profession—except for doctors, who were permitted to have Jewish patients only. In mid-August all Jews were ordered to enter the ghetto, which had been set up in a suburb north of Riga. By the time the ghetto was sealed off, 29,602 Jews were concentrated there. A high fence was erected around it, and Latvian guards were posted at its gates to supervise the residents’ exit and entry. The ghetto was extremely crowded, most of the houses were dilapidated, and sanitary conditions and water supplies were totally inadequate. A Council of Elders was appointed, and a J E W I S H G H E T T O P O L I C E was formed. The Council of Elders tried to improve living conditions in the ghetto, establishing a hospital, a home for the aged, and a variety of other services. The ghetto supplied the Germans with Jewish forced labor: the unskilled were employed in backbreaking work, and the skilled artisans, in their regular occupations. Occasionally groups of Jews were sent to work outside the ghetto, in peat bogs, on farms, or on the nearby construction of the Salaspils concentration camp. On November 19, 1941, the Germans separated the 5,000 Jews who were employed from the remaining ghetto inhabitants. The working Jews were moved to a fenced-in area in the northeast corner of the ghetto, which became known as the “small ghetto.” On the night of November 30 the “large ghetto” was surrounded by German and Latvian guards. The next morning the inhabitants were taken to the R U M B U L A Forest, 5 miles (8 kilometers) from Riga, where they were shot to death next to large pits that had been prepared beforehand. By early December, the entire population of the large ghetto, about 25,000 people, had been killed, including most of the members of the Council of Elders and Rabbi Menahem Mendel Zak, the Chief Rabbi of Riga.

Reich

Germany, Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

After emptying the large ghetto of its inhabitants, the Germans filled it with Jews whom they had deported from G E R M A N Y , A U S T R I A , and the Protectorate of B O H E M I A A N D M O R AV I A . This came to be known as the “German ghetto.” Between December 1941 and the spring of 1942, 16,000 Jews from the Reich were brought to the German ghetto. Most of the people who lived in the small ghetto worked outside, and some began living where they worked. The official food rations were too meager to live on. When almost 700 Jews arrived from K OVNO , in L ITHUANIA , they set up a secret grocery and bakery. They also helped organize classes for the few children left in the ghetto. In early January 1942 the first steps were taken to organize an underground—a secret military operation. Eventually there were between two and three hundred members, including 28 of the ghetto’s 40 policemen. The ghetto underground organization contacted groups on the outside in the hope of joining the partisan (guerrilla) fighters. The members’ main goal was to acquire weapons, which would be smuggled in by Jews working in the German storehouses, where captured weapons were kept. Near the end of October, 1942 the Riga underground made an effort to join a group of partisans outside the ghetto in Belorussia. When this plan failed and Jewish fighters were killed outside the ghetto, there were swift repercussions for those

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left inside. Jews, many of whom had taken no part in either the escape or the underground movement itself, were arrested immediately and 108 uninvolved Jews were killed on October 31 in an act of reprisal against the underground movement. On November 1, the small ghetto was incorporated into the larger German ghetto. Once the Nazi authorities discovered the underground, more and more Jews began living at their places of work, and the ghetto was gradually emptied of its inhabitants. In the summer of 1943 the Germans transferred some ghetto residents to the K A I S E RWA L D camp and others to their places of work or to labor camps. That November the Germans carried out large-scale violence against Jews in the Riga ghetto. By December the process of clearing the ghetto of its inhabitants had been completed, and the Germans returned the area to the government of Riga.

O

In 1944, while the Soviet army was advancing toward the Latvian border, the Germans tried to erase evidence of the crimes they had committed. Groups of Jewish men were ordered to reopen the pits containing the mass graves of Riga’s Jews and burn the corpses; then they, too, were killed. By June the Soviet army had reached the Latvian border. The Germans decided to slaughter many of the Jewish prisoners in Kaiserwald and other Latvian camps. The remaining Jews were sent to C O N C E N T R A T I O N CA M P S outside the country, chiefly to the S T U T T H O F camp, near Danzig. On October 13, the Soviet army liberated Riga. The remaining Jews in the city, about one hundred and fifty, including a few children, came out of their hiding places.

authorities lost no time in taking further

n October 28, 1942, ten underground members left the

ghetto in a truck driven by a Latvian, who was headed for the Belorussian border in order to join the partisans there. In a German ambush, most of the Jews were killed. The German security punitive action. Later that day large numbers of suspects were arrested, and on October 31, 108 Jews who had nothing to do with the underground were executed.

After the war the Soviet authorities encouraged citizens from the Soviet interior, including a large number of Jews, to settle in Riga. In 1947 Riga had a Jewish population of 10,000; by 1959 it had grown to 30,267. Some were remnants of Latvian Jewry who had taken refuge in the Soviet Union, or had survived concentration camps. Most were from the Soviet interior. In 1962 a group of Riga Jews worked to establish a special memorial for the Jewish victims of the H O L O CAU S T on the field of slaughter in the Rumbula Forest. The site became a garden with a memorial to the murdered Jews. In the late 1960s and the early 1970s Riga was one of the centers of the Jewish national reawakening in the Soviet Union. Many Jews emigrated to Israel, which sharply reduced the Jewish population of Riga.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Ezergailis, Andrew. The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941–1944. Washington, DC: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1996. Reproduced in part online at http://vip.latnet.lv/LPRA/ Ezergailis_preface.html (accessed on September 11, 2000). Press, Bernhard. The Murder of the Jews in Latvia, 1941–1945. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999. Schneider, Gertrude. Journey into Terror: Story of the Riga Ghetto. New York: Ark House, 1979.

“Righteous among the Nations” The record of the events and uprisings of the H O L O CAU S T would be incomplete without the inspiring chapters—unique points of light—recorded by individuals within the nations under Nazi rule who did not stand aside and accept the fate of the Jews with indifference. In comparison with the needs of the masses of Jews requiring aid and rescue in occupied Europe, the “Righteous among the Nations”—those who

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The Certificate of Honor awarded to “Righteous among the Nations.”

risked life, freedom, and safety to rescue one or more Jews without the expectation of financial or other compensation—were few. Yet their acts show that aid and rescue were possible, and that more could have been done had there been more individuals who saw assistance to fellow beings in danger as a human obligation. The title, “Righteous among the Nations,” has come to describe the non-Jews who extended aid and comfort to Jews during the Holocaust. The name comes from a Hebrew phrase, hasidei ummot haolam, that means: “The righteous among the nations of the world have a place in the world to come.” In general, the term “Righteous among the Nations” can apply to any moral person who extends sympathy, kindness, and assistance to Jews in times of trouble and trial. However, in the context of the Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Law, the designation “Righteous among the Nations” is applied to specific individuals who risked their own lives for the life a Jew. The Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance (Yad Vashem) Law, passed by Israel’s

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Knesset in 1953, charged the Yad Vashem Remembrance Authority with establish-

Israel’s Parliament.

ing and perpetuating a memorial to “the Righteous among the Nations who risked their lives to save Jews.” Since 1963, the Yad Vashem Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem has sponsored a commission to identify and name the “Righteous among the Nations.” For decades, many of the commission members have themselves been Holocaust survivors. The commission is headed by an Israeli Supreme Court judge. Every instance of a rescuer being submitted for recognition as a “Righteous among the Nations” is carefully examined by the committee. Nomination materials include personal testimony or other evidence from the rescued person or persons that indicates what action the nominee took on behalf of the rescued, under what circumstances and threats, and for what (if any) compensation or benefit to the rescuer.

“RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS”

There are three main criteria for recognition of a rescuer as a “Righteous among the Nations”: (1) a concrete rescue action or aid in rescue, (2) rescue carried out at personal risk, and (3) remuneration neither requested nor received by the rescuer for the action or aid. More than 16,000 individuals have been recognized as “Righteous among the Nations.” Designees identified during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were each entitled to plant a tree along the avenue on Har ha-Zikkaron (the Yad Vashem Memorial Hill). Now, due to space considerations, designees are recognized with their names inscribed on the Wall of Honor in the Garden of the Righteous at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Each is also awarded a certificate of honor and a medal engraved with his or her name and the Talmudic maxim “He who saves one life is considered as having saved the whole universe.” As one of its commemoration activities, Yad Vashem decided to issue a lexicon of “Righteous among the Nations,” giving a brief description of the rescue act of each of them. The importance of this project transcends the aim of commemoration: no less important is the public dissemination of the stories of rescue and self-sacrifice so that future generations will be educated to understand the significance of the term “humanity.”

T

he greatest collective rescue activity was in Denmark. More

than 7,000 of the nearly 8,000 Jewish inhabitants of the country were smuggled in small boats to Sweden while, at the same time, ships were waiting at Copenhagen to transport them to the extermination camps. The rescue was made possible by the universal willingness of the Danish population to take part in the operation.

Rescues and Rescuers The majority of the rescues involved concealment in the home or yard of the rescuer, most often by building a bunker within the house or a warehouse; those in hiding had to remain there for weeks, months, and even years, usually without seeing the light of day. The food supply was a special problem in the wartime conditions of scarcity, and at times the needy rescuer shared a scant slice of bread with the people that he or she was concealing. This kind of rescue was perhaps the most dangerous because of the long period of concealment, the frequent searches for people in hiding, and, at times, denunciation by collaborators with the Germans. Others found a way to rescue by providing forged papers that allowed a Jew to live as a non-Jew outside the ghetto or camp, or by helping to smuggle Jews over the border to another area or country, such as unoccupied F R A N C E , Spain, Portugal, and Switzerland. One teenage girl working in a munitions factory deprived herself of a slice of bread every day, month after month, giving it to the Jewish prisoner working next to her. For the most part, the “Righteous among the Nations” worked as individuals, each one guided by the dictates of his or her conscience, out of purely humane motives, and at times from profound religious convictions. In several cases, as in Norway and the N E T H E R L A N D S , and to a certain extent in France and in B E L G I U M , the anti-Nazi underground also helped persecuted Jews in different ways, mainly by finding hiding places. Some individuals also developed broad rescue networks, saving many endangered Jews. The bold enterprise of Raoul W A L L E N B E R G in H U N G A R Y is one of the most famous; his passion to rescue was boundless. His initiatives were designed to prevent continuation of the D E P O RTAT I O N S of B U DA P E S T Jews to A U S C H W I T Z , and they were largely successful. Wallenberg was always present where assistance was required and spared no activity to reduce the suffering, he also encouraged others with his initiative. Oskar S C H I N D L E R took approximately 1,200 Jews working in his factory under his protection, made their living conditions easier, and looked after them until the liberation by the Red Army. In the Nazi nerve center of B E R L I N , Elisabeth Abegg courageously extended aid to persecuted Jews, concealing them in her apartment close to the Nazi command headquarters. Irena Adamowicz, a member of the Catholic scout movement in W A R S AW , worked for the pioneering youth

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movement underground, traveling to many ghettos on dangerous missions. In 1942, she even reached the distant ghettos of L I T H UA N I A , where she reported on events in the Jewish communities throughout the occupied countries in eastern Europe. She won the trust of the Jews through her devotion and deep identification with their fate, and she prompted some of the members of her movement to work for the Jewish underground. Rescue efforts even occurred in the extermination camps themselves. Herman Langbein and Ludwig Worl, who were interned at Auschwitz, came to the aid of Jewish prisoners there and worked to ease their wretched conditions. Julius Madritsch and Raimund Titsch manifested concern for the Jewish internees employed in the factories at the P L⁄ A S Z Ó W camp, obtaining food supplements for them and defending them from the ill treatment of the commandant, Amon Goeth, and his murderous helpers. The French doctor Adelaide Hautval was sent to Auschwitz as punishment for protecting Jews who were to be deported. When she arrived at the block where experiments were carried out on Jewish girls, she refused to participate in murder and cared for the Jewish prisoners with great devotion. By their acts, the “Righteous among the Nations” saved not only Jewish lives but the honor of humanity in the terrible period of the Holocaust.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bauminger, Arieh L. The Righteous Among the Nations. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1990. “Righteous Among the Nations.” Yad Vashem Online. [Online] http://www.yadvashem.org.il/righteous/index.html (accessed on September 11, 2000).

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Rescuers. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/rescuer.htm (accessed on September 11, 2000).

Ringelblum, Emanuel (1900–1944)

Emanuel Ringelblum was an historian and Jewish public figure, and the founder and director of the clandestine archive Oneg Shabbat. Ringelblum was born in Buczacz, Eastern Galicia, into a middle-class merchant family. In World War I the family suffered economic setbacks and moved to Nowy Sa˛cz. In 1927 Ringelblum earned a doctorate from the University of Warsaw for his thesis on the history of the Jews of W A R S AW in the Middle Ages. From an early age, Ringelblum was a member of Po’alei Zion Left and was active in public affairs. For several years he taught history in Jewish high schools. In 1930 he took on part-time employment with the J O I N T D I S T R I B U T I O N C O M M I T T E E . He established close working relations and personal ties with Yitzhak Gitterman, one of its leaders in P O L A N D , which he maintained during the war years as well. In November 1938 the Joint sent Ringelblum to the Zba˛szyn´ camp, where 6,000 Jews were gathered—Polish citizens who had been expelled from G E R M A N Y at the end of October. The five weeks that Ringelblum spent there, as the person responsible for the fortunes of the refugees, left an indelible impression on him.

Emanuel Ringelblum.

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In his professional capacity Ringelblum belonged to the third generation of historians of the Jews of Poland, a generation educated and trained in independent Poland. In 1923 a number of these historians formed a group, with Ringelblum as

RINGELBLUM, EMANUEL

one of its outstanding scholars and organizers, which eventually was associated with Yivo (Yidisher Visenshaftlikher Institut; Institute for Jewish Research). Ringelblum was one of the editors of the publications issued by the group—Yunger Historiker (1926–1929) and Bleter far Geschichte (1934, 1938). In his research work Ringelblum concentrated on the history of the Jews of Warsaw, which he planned to bring upto-date. Most of his writings are based on original archival material and cover a wide range of subjects. By 1939 he had published 126 scholarly articles. During the war, Ringelblum was engaged in four spheres of activity in the Warsaw ghetto: (1) working in an institute for social self-aid among Warsaw Jews; (2) working in the political underground, with emphasis on its cultural affairs sector; (3) establishing and administering the clandestine Oneg Shabbat Archive; and (4) keeping an up-to-date chronicle of events. He also wrote articles on specific subjects, concerning the life of the Jews during the German occupation of Poland, especially Warsaw, covering the period from the beginning of the war up to his own arrest on March 7, 1944. Ringelblum was in charge of the “public sector” in the self-aid organization. He ran a network of soup kitchens for the desperately impoverished Jewish population and organized and promoted the growth of “House Committees” (Komitety Domowe), made up of volunteers with no previous experience of public activity.

E

manuel Ringelblum was aware that there was no precedent for

what was happening to the Jews under the occupation; he believed “it was important that future historians have available to them accurate records of the events that were taking place.” The ghetto archive Oneg Shabbat—also known as the Ringelblum Archive—is the most extensive documentary source about Jews under the Nazi regime.

Ringelblum and his associates made the soup kitchens—in which tens of thousands of soup portions were dispensed every day—into clubs, under the patronage of the political underground. With his friend Menahem Linder, Ringelblum founded in the Warsaw ghetto a society for the promotion of Yiddish culture (Yidishe Kultur Organizatsye). They arranged lectures, observances of anniversaries of Jewish writers, and meetings with writers and scholars in the ghetto. Ringelblum’s most outstanding achievement was the secret Oneg Shabbat Archive, which he launched in the first few months of the war. In the initial stage, Ringelblum and a small group of friends concentrated on collecting testimonies and reports on events by Jews who came to Warsaw from the provinces to solicit assistance from the self-aid organization. He attracted a large circle of friends and activists to the archive, and succeeded in gaining the support of writers and underground activists representing the various political groups. As reported by Hirsch Wasser, the secretary of the underground archive (and the only surviving member of the team): “Every item, every article, be it long or short, had to pass through Dr. Ringelblum’s hands.… For weeks and months he spent the nights poring over the manuscripts, adding his comments and instructions.” During the last stages of the ghetto’s existence, Ringelblum and his associates collected every document and piece of evidence relating to the D E P O RTAT I O N S and the murders and passed them on to the Polish underground, which in turn transmitted the information to London. This was how the Polish underground and London learned for the first time about the C H E L⁄ M N O extermination camp and came in possession of a detailed report on the deportation of 300,000 Jews from Warsaw. The archive also circulated in the ghetto a bulletin, Yediot (News), which enabled the underground to keep current with events. Ringelblum himself kept a running record of events and important items of information, at first on a daily basis, and then, after July 1942, on a weekly and monthly basis. It was not a diary but rather a chronicle of events, enhanced by the author’s own appraisals and the historical associations that the events brought to his mind. Ringelblum’s notes are full of abbreviations and allusions. He obviously regarded them as the raw material for a comprehensive work that he would write after the war. After the mass deportation, Ringelblum’s method of writing under-

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went a change. He no longer put down information in the form of a digest, but instead dealt with the broad and pressing issues of the time, in an attempt to evaluate the events he was witnessing and to comprehend their meaning. His writings also convey his bitter resentment and fear. In addition he composed biographical notes on many of the outstanding Jewish personalities who had gone to their death in the deportations and the struggle, with details of their accomplishments and of their fate under the occupation and in the ghetto. He dealt extensively with the lives of Yitzhak Gitterman, Mordecai A N I E L E W I C Z , Ignacy (Yitzhak) Schiper, Meir Balaban, and Janusz K O R C Z A K . Ringelblum continued writing up to the last months of his life, which he spent in hiding with Poles. It was in that period that he wrote his work on Jewish-Polish relations, an attempt to cover a multifaceted subject without the help of written sources or reference materials. Ringelblum’s works have been translated and published, in full or in part, in Yiddish, Polish, English (Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto; 1958), Italian, French, German, and Japanese. He was the model for the hero of John Hersey’s The Wall. After the great deportation from the Warsaw ghetto, Ringelblum became an advocate of armed resistance, and the archive was put under the protection of the civilian arm of the J E W I S H F I G H T I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N (Z˙ ydowska Organizacja Bojowa; Z˙ OB). In March 1943 Ringelblum accepted an invitation that he had repeatedly received from the Polish side, and with his wife and 13-year-old son left the ghetto and went into hiding among the Poles. On the eve of Passover 1943 he entered the ghetto on his own and walked straight into the uprising. What happened to him during the deportation and the fighting is not known, but in July 1943 he was found in the T R A W N I K I labor camp. Two members of the Warsaw underground—a Polish man and a Jewish woman-smuggled him out of Trawniki and took him to Warsaw, in the guise of a railway worker. With his family and another 30 Jews, he hid in an underground refuge—and continued writing. A group of Jews trying to rescue others Jews in hiding among the Poles sought to enlist Ringelblum for their operation and to utilize his non-Jewish appearance. On March 7, 1944, however, before Ringelblum had decided whether to leave the hideaway, the place was discovered and all the Jews and Polish-protected persons there were taken to Warsaw’s Pawiak Prison. According to one report, Jewish prisoners who were working in the prison as skilled craftsmen proposed that Ringelblum join their group, but when he realized that there was no chance for his family to be saved, he rejected the offer. A few days later Ringelblum, his family, and the other Jews who had been with him in the hideout were shot to death in the ruins of the ghetto.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Ringelblum, Emanuel. Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto; the Journal of Emmanuel Ringelblum. New York: Schocken Books, 1974. Ringelblum, Emmanuel. Polish-Jewish Relations During the Second World War. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1992.

Robota, Roza (1921–1944)

Roza Robota was an activist in the Jewish underground in the A U S C H W I T Z Birkenau camp. Born in Ciechanów, P O L A N D , Robota was a member of the HaShomer ha-Tsa’ir Zionist underground in her town. In 1942 she was taken to

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Auschwitz, as part of a transport from Ciechanów, and was among the first prisoners to be put into the women’s camp in Birkenau. A Jewish underground group set up in Auschwitz in 1943 contacted Robota, and she became the channel through which the group was able to develop support in the Birkenau women’s camp. In 1944, with Robota’s help, minute quantities of explosives were smuggled out of the Union ammunition factory in the camp. They were handed over to the underground in Auschwitz I and to the S P E C I A L C O M M A N D O men employed in the Birkenau crematoria. In the wake of the investigation held after the Special Commando mutiny of October 1944, Robota and three other young female prisoners working in the Union factory were arrested. Robota was the only one who knew the names of the core group that ran the operations of the underground and its channels of communication, but despite the torture that she underwent, she did not reveal a single name. On January, 6, 1945, just a few weeks before the camp was evacuated, Roza Robota and three comrades—Ella Gartner, Tusia, and Regina—were hanged.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Langbein, Hermann. Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps, 1938–1945. New York: Paragon House, 1994.

Roza Robota.

Resistance During the Holocaust. Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1998. Reproduced in part at http://www.igc.org/iearn/hgp/aeti/aeti-1998no-frames/resistance.htm (accessed on September 11, 2000). “Rosa Robota: Heroine of Auschwitz.” [Online] http://www.datasync.com/~davidg59/rosa.html (accessed on September 11, 2000).

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Resisters. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/resister.htm (accessed on September 11, 2000).

Rosenberg, Alfred (1893–1946)

Alfred Rosenberg was a Nazi ideologist and the head of the N A Z I PA R T Y ’s foreign-policy department. Born in Revel (now Tallinn) in Estonia, Rosenberg came from a family of Baltic Germans. He studied architecture at the universities of R I G A and Moscow. Fleeing to G E R M A N Y in 1918, he settled in Munich, where he associated with White Russian reactionary expatriate circles and joined the ultranationalist and semi-occult Thule Society. He was already becoming known for his antisemitic and anti-Bolshevik views through such works as Die Spur der Juden im Wandel der Zeiten (The Track of the Jews through the Ages) and Unmoral im Talmud (Immorality in the Talmud), both published in 1919. Rosenberg joined the German Workers’ party following Adolf H I T L E R , whom he impressed with his theories of a Judeo-Bolshevik-Masonic conspiracy constantly engaged in “undermining the foundations of our existence.” Rosenberg was one of the principal distributors of the P R OTO C O L S O F T H E E L D E R S O F Z I O N , a forgery of the tsarist police that appealed to his belief in the active working of occult powers to subvert civilization. In 1921 he became chief editor of the party newspaper. He participated in the abortive Munich Beer-Hall Putsch of November 1923 and was protected by Hitler from the attacks of other leading Nazis, who were offended by Rosenberg’s Baltic origins and his intellectual arrogance.

Alfred Rosenberg.

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Rosenberg’s role as chief Nazi ideologist was enhanced by his founding, in 1929, of the Kampfbund für Deutsche Kultur (Fighting League for German Culture) and, above all, by his major work, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (The Myth of the Twentieth Century; 1930). As an expression of Nazi philosophy this book had an influence comparable to that of Hitler’s M E I N K A M P F . Rosenberg’s book was enormously popular, and by 1942 had sold over a million copies. The book incorporated the racial theories of Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau and proclaimed that race was the decisive factor determining art, science, culture, and the course of world history (see R AC I S M ). Mythus outlined several doctrines. The Teutons represented the “master race” of “Aryans,” whose task was to subdue Europe. This belief was combined with denunciation of Judaism and Christianity, whose ideals of compassion and charity must yield to the neo-pagan Teutonic sense of honor. The swastika was the symbol of blood and soil, and denoted the worship of Wotan and the ancient Norse gods. The Jews had threatened the ideal of race with their internationalism and a religion of humanity destructive of the Teutonic spirit. With doctrines such as these, Rosenberg’s Mythus sought to systematize Nazi ideology. Reichstag

The German Parliament.

In 1930 Rosenberg was elected to the Reichstag as Nazi deputy for HesseDarmstadt, and he made a rapid ascent to positions of influence after 1933. In 1934 Hitler appointed him the “Führer’s delegate for the supervision of the whole intellectual and philosophical education and training of the National Socialist party.” From 1933 to 1945 he also headed the party’s foreign-affairs department, which gave him access especially to fascist parties in eastern Europe and the Balkans. In 1939 he established in Frankfurt the Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage (Institute for the Investigation of the Jewish Question). Rosenberg declared in his inaugural address there that the “Jewish question” would be considered solved “only after the last Jew has left the Greater German living space.” The institute’s principal task was to ransack the libraries, archives, and art galleries of European Jewry to promote its “research.” After the fall of F R A N C E , Rosenberg and his staff spearheaded the seizure of French art treasures and sent them to Germany. In November 1941 Rosenberg was appointed Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, where his policy differed in detail but not in principle from the extermination policy achieved by Heinrich H I M M L E R , Reinhard H E Y D R I C H , and the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA). Condemned to death at Nuremberg as a major war criminal, he was hanged in 1946.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Cecil, Robert. The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972. Dutch, Oswald. Hitler’s 12 Apostles. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1969. Whisker, James B. The Philosophy of Alfred Rosenberg. Newport Beach, CA: Noontide Press, 1990.

Rovno Interwar period

The years between the end of World War I and the beginning of World War II.

184

Rovno (in Polish Równe) is a city in the northwestern U K R A I N E , capital of the oblast (district) of the same name. In the interwar period , Rovno belonged to the Volhynia (in Polish, Wol⁄ yn´ ) district of P O L A N D . Jews had been living in the town since the sixteenth century.

ROVNO

A German police officer shoots Jewish women still alive after a mass execution of Jews from the village of Mizocz, southwest of Rovno.

On the eve of World War II, it had a population of nearly 57,000; about 25,000 were Jews. In September 1939 Rovno was occupied by the S OV I E T U N I O N , and thousands of Jews from German-occupied Poland found refuge there. By June 1941, the Jewish population had grown to over 30,000. In the battle for the city following the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the city center and the railway station were bombed and shelled and were heavily damaged or destroyed. Three thousand to four thousand people were killed, many of them Jews. Several thousand Jews fled the city to the east, either during the mobilization and general flight or in the evacuation organized by the local Communist party secretary. On June 28, six days after the invasion, Rovno was occupied by the Germans. In the course of July and August, some 3,000 Jews were murdered under various pretexts. By order of the military government, a J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council) was set up whose members included men active in community affairs during the prewar period. Two of the appointees to the Judenrat—the chairman, Dr. Moshe Bergmann, and a lawyer, Leon Sukharchuk—committed suicide rather than become the Nazis’ helpers. The Jews were ordered to wear an armband with a blue Star of David on a white background (later replaced by a yellow badge; see B A D G E , J E W I S H ). They were sent on F O R C E D L A B O R and had to hand over their valuables and pay a ransom, in large sums of money and in gold. On September 1, 1941, the Ukraine was put under the control of the civil administration known as the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. The Reichskommissar, Erich Koch, established his headquarters at Rovno, and apparently for this reason he sought to speed up the purge of its Jews. The planning of the Aktion was in the hands of Higher S S and Police Leader Friedrich J E C K E L N of Army Group South. Its implementation was entrusted to the S D (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service) forces in Rovno as well as to Ukrainian auxiliary police (see U K R A I N I A N M I L I TA R Y P O L I C E ). The German military administration also took part. On November 5, the Rovno district Kommissar informed the Judenrat that Jews who had no work permits would be moved to other locations for work. Notices to this effect were posted in the streets, ordering the Jews to report on November 7 with a minimum of luggage. On that day and the next, 21,000 Jews were rounded

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up and taken to a pine grove at Sosenki, 4 miles (6 kilometers) away, where they were all shot standing next to trenches that had been dug in advance for their burial. About 80 percent of Rovno’s Jews were murdered in this operation. In postwar reports, members of the Soviet underground claimed that they had learned from Soviet P R I S O N E R S O F WA R about the trenches that were being dug and tried to warn the Jews of their fate, but the Jews would not believe what they were told. There has been no confirmation of this report by any Jewish source. The 5,000 surviving Jews were moved into a ghetto set up in the Wola quarter of Rovno, with seven families to an apartment. Though the ghetto was not sealed off from the outside, the inhabitants were severely restricted in their movement and in effect were confined to the ghetto area. They were assigned to forced labor, with several hundred working for the Jung construction firm. The murder of Jews, singly or in small groups, went on without interruption until the final destruction of the ghetto. Occasionally, individual Jews offered resistance, sometimes even using firearms. In one case four Jews—Syma Gimberg, Isaac Schneider, Nyonya Kopilnik, and a woman by the name of Dvoricz—fought a group of Germans and Ukrainians face to face, killing some and themselves falling in the battle. On July 13, 1942, the ghetto was surrounded by German and Ukrainian police. Force was used to round up the Jews, who were taken to the railway station. All of them—some 5,000 people—were packed into freight cars and sent northeast, toward Kostopol. When the train reached its destination, a wood northwest of the town, the Jews were taken out, lined up along prepared trenches, and shot. While the ghetto was under siege, dozens of its inhabitants tried to flee; there were also some who jumped off the train while it was in motion. Most of the escapees were young people, who formed into groups or roamed the woods on their own. Before long they joined up with Soviet partisan units. On February 5, 1944, Rovno was liberated in a combined operation of the Soviet army (Thirteenth Army and Eighteenth Cavalry Corps) and the partisan forces, who made their assault on the city from the west. The number of Jewish survivors in the city did not exceed a few dozen. They were joined by survivors and returnees from small towns in the district, where their lives had been endangered by Ukrainian nationalist PA RT I S A N S of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The Jewish partisans obtained permission to establish a religious community and were given a building for a synagogue. They made this into a center where all new Jewish arrivals in the city reported and were given food and clothing. In the summer of 1944, on the initiative of Zionist activists Abraham and Eliezer Lidowski, a clandestine organization was set up to establish escape routes to Palestine. The organization contacted a similar group in V I L NA and devised a joint plan to move the Jews in the direction of Bucharest, where the pro-German regime had fallen in August 1944. When this plan failed, the Rovno and Vilna groups concentrated their efforts on central Poland, encouraged by the fact that an official repatriation program of Polish nationals—among them many Jews—had just been launched. By the fall of 1944, as many as 1,200 Jews had gathered in Rovno. Most of them left the city, moving toward destinations in the west.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Huneke, Douglas K. The Moses of Rovno. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1985.

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RÓWNE. SEE ROVNO. RUDNINKAI FOREST. SEE PARTISANS. Rumbula Rumbula (also Rumbuli) was the site of a massacre in a wooded area near the railway station of the same name, 5 miles (8 kilometers) from R I G A , the capital of L AT V I A . From November 29 to December 9, 1941, 38,000 Jews were murdered at Rumbula: 28,000 from the Riga ghetto and 10,000 who had been transported by train from G E R M A N Y , A U S T R I A , and the Protectorate of B O H E M I A A N D M O R AV I A . After World War II the site was neglected, and there was no sign to commemorate the massacre that had taken place. In 1962 a group of Jewish activists placed a wooden sign there that read: “On this site the voice of thirty-eight thousand Jews of Riga was stilled, November 29–30, 1941 to December 8–9, 1941.” The Soviet authorities, disapproving of any memorial sign that specifically mentioned Jews, removed it from the site. After persistent public pressure, a memorial stone was erected with inscriptions in Russian, Latvian, and Yiddish: “To the memory of the victims of the Nazis, 1941–1944.” The site has since become a place of Jewish assembly, particularly on the anniversaries of the Rumbula massacre and the W A R S AW G H E T TO U P R I S I N G , and on the Jewish high holidays. These gatherings have also become, to some extent, an expression of the national rebirth of the remnants of the Jewish population in Soviet Latvia.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Mikhelson, Frida. I Survived Rumbula. Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1982. Press, Bernhard. The Murder of the Jews in Latvia, 1941–1945. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999.

RUSSIA. SEE SOVIET UNION.

187

Sachsenhausen Sachsenhausen was a concentration camp near B E R L I N located on the outskirts of Oranienburg. It was built by teams of prisoners transferred to the site from small camps in the Ems area and elsewhere, beginning in July 1936. As indicated in a letter written by Heinrich H I M M L E R to the minister of justice, Sachsenhausen, like B U C H E N WA L D , was built in anticipation of the coming war. The camp was prepared for an expected intake of large numbers of prisoners. In November 1938, following the K R I S TA L L NAC H T pogrom, 1,800 Jews were sent to Sachsenhausen. About 450 of them were murdered shortly after their arrival in the camp. The total number of persons imprisoned in Sachsenhausen was approximately 200,000. When World War II began, conditions in the camp deteriorated sharply: in 1939, more than 800 prisoners died there, and in 1940 this number increased to nearly 4,000. In 1940, 26,000 prisoners, mainly from P O L A N D , were delivered to the camp. Most of them stayed only a short while and were then transferred to other camps in the Reich. At some point, probably in August 1941, the SS set up an installation for mass executions by shooting, disguising it as a prisoners’ examination room. In the following months, 13,000 to 18,000 Soviet P R I S O N E R S O F WA R , who were not even registered in the camp’s lists, were murdered there. The camp also had a gas chamber, probably installed in 1943, that was added to an existing crematorium compound (see G A S C H A M B E R S / V A N S ). The gas chamber was used on special orders only. One such occasion, presumably, was in February 1945, when the SS had several thousand physically debilitated prisoners killed on the eve of the camp’s evacuation. In addition to the Soviet prisoners of war executed on arrival and those prisoners who died en route to and from the camp and during its evacuation, some 30,000 persons perished in Sachsenhausen. In the first few years, the most important work project was a brickyard that prisoners built in the spring of 1938, on the Oder-Havel canal. Some 2,000 prisoners worked daily on the project. In April 1941 a satellite camp was established for the brickyard work team. Conditions in it were exceptionally harsh, and prisoners whose assignment to it was lengthy had little chance of surviving. From 1943 on, the prisoners were employed primarily in various branches of the armaments industry, especially in the production of engines for aircraft, tanks, and vehicles. In 1944, 7,000 prisoners were assigned to the Heinkel Works in Oranienburg. Another large group was employed at the DEMAG tank plant in Falkensee, near Berlin. Special satellite camps were put up for both these plants. The brickyard was eventually converted to the manufacture of grenades.

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SCHINDLER, OSKAR

Prisoners of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp stand in columns under the supervision of a camp guard, 1938.

Sachsenhausen was liberated on April 27, 1945, by advance troops of the Soviet army. At that point the camp contained only 3,000 prisoners, most of whom were not fit for marching. All the other prisoners had been evacuated by the SS.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Preissinger, Adrian. Death Camps of the Soviets, 1945–1950: From Sachsenhausen to Buchenwald. Ocean City, MD: Landpost Press, 1994. “Prisoners of War (POWs).” Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance Online. [Online] http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/pages/t062/t06234.html (accessed on September 11, 2000).

Schindler, Oskar (1908–1974)

Oskar Schindler was a businessman who is remembered as a protector of Jews during the H OLOCAUST . Schindler was born a Catholic in Svitavy in the Sudetenland (a region of Czechoslovakia prior to 1938, when it became part of Germany’s territory). He came to K RAKÓW in late 1939 in the wake of the German invasion of P OLAND . There he took over two previously Jewish-owned firms that dealt with the manufacture and wholesale distribution of enamel kitchenware products, one of which he operated as a trustee (Treuhänder) for the German occupation administration. Schindler then established his own enamel works in Zablocie, outside Kraków, in which he employed mainly Jewish workers, thereby protecting them from deportation. When the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto began in early 1943, many Jews were sent to the P L⁄ A S Z Ó W labor camp, which was noted for the brutality of its commandant, Amon Goeth. Schindler used his good connections with high German officials in the Armaments Administration to set up a branch of the Pl⁄ aszów camp in his factory compound for approximately 900 Jewish workers, including persons unfit and unqualified for labor production needs. In this way, he spared them from the horrors of the Pl⁄aszów camp.

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SCHINDLER, OSKAR

Oskar Schindler (standing 2nd from right), and a group of Jews he rescued, in Munich, Germany.

In October 1944, with the approach of the Russian army, Schindler was granted permission to reestablish his now-defunct firm as an armaments production company in Brünnlitz (Brnenc, Sudetenland) and to take the Jewish workers from Zablocie with him. In an operation unique in the history of Nazi-occupied Europe, he succeeded in transferring 700 to 800 Jewish men from the G ROSS -R OSEN camp and approximately 300 Jewish women from A U S C H W I T Z to Brünnlitz. In Brünnlitz, the 1,100 Jews were given the most humane treatment possible under the circumstances: food, medical care, and religious needs. Informed that a train with evacuated Jewish detainees from the Goleszow camp was stranded at nearby Svitavy, Schindler received permission to take workers to the Svitavy railway station. There they forced the ice-sealed train doors open and removed approximately 100 Jewish men and women. Nearly frozen and resembling corpses, the Jews were then swiftly taken to the Brünnlitz factory and nourished back to life, an undertaking to which Schindler’s wife, Emilie, particularly devoted herself. Those whom it was too late to save were buried with proper Jewish rites. Schindler was devoted to the humane treatment of his Jewish workers and to their physical and psychological needs. He used his good connections with friends in high government positions, as well as his jovial and good-humored disposition, to befriend and ingratiate himself with high-ranking SS commanders in Poland. This stood him in good stead when he needed their assistance in extracting valuable and crucial favors from them, such as making conditions better and reducing the punishments of Jews under his care. Schindler was imprisoned on several occasions when the G E S TA P O accused him of corruption, only to be released due to the intervention of his connections in B E R L I N ministries. In 1949, Oskar and Emilie Schindler emigrated to Argentina. Eight years later, Schindler left his wife and returned to Germany. He began to visit his friends in Israel in 1961. In 1962, Oskar Schindler planted a tree bearing his name in the Garden of the Righteous at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Wanting to be buried in Jerusalem because his “children,” as he called them, were there, Schindler died in 1974 and was buried in the Catholic churchyard on Mount Zion in Jerusalem.

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SUGGESTED READING Brecher, Elinor J. Schindler’s Legacy: True Stories of the List Survivors. New York: Dutton, 1994.

I

n 1993, director Steven Spielberg released the film Schindler’s List,

a motion picture biography of Oskar Schindler that concentrated on his

Keneally, Thomas. Schindler’s List. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982. Roberts, Jack L. Oskar Schindler. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1996. Schindler, Emilie. Where Light and Shadow Meet: A Memoir. New York: Norton, 1997.

Schindler’s List [videorecording]. MCA Universal Home Video, 1993.

rescue work. The film won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. It has also won

SCHUTZSTAFFEL. SEE SS.

awards from several other international organizations.

SD The SD (Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS; Security Service of the SS) was the N AZI PARTY ’s intelligence service and a major instrument for the implementation of the “F INAL S OLUTION ”. In 1931 Heinrich H IMMLER established the nucleus of an intelligence service in the SS headquarters and appointed Reinhard H E Y D R I C H as its chief. The new section operated out of Munich, at first on a modest scale; a year later it became the Security Service of the SS. Its function was to uncover the party’s enemies and keep them under surveillance; however, the relationship of the SD with similar services maintained by party organizations was not clearly defined. In April 1934 Himmler took over the Prussian G E S TA P O , the final link that he needed to complete his takeover of the entire political police apparatus in G E R M A N Y ; he appointed Heydrich as its director. Himmler and Heydrich moved to B E R L I N and the SD headquarters moved with them. On June 9 of that year, Rudolf Hess designated the SD as the sole party intelligence service. Whereas most of the senior Gestapo men were recruited from among the professional police officers, the SD attracted an elite of ambitious intellectuals and devoted much effort to studying and formulating the political and ideological goals of the SS. The Gestapo had the status of a national political police, but the division of labor between the two intelligence branches, the SD and the Gestapo, was not clear-cut. Even though both organizations were headed by the same people, there was still rivalry between them. The first attempt to define the respective responsibilities of each branch was made in mid-1937. Himmler announced that the SD was an intelligence and counterintelligence service whose task it was to assist the Gestapo by identifying the enemies of the state; the Gestapo’s task was to deal with these enemies once they were uncovered. Further guidelines were issued on July 1, 1937, allocating areas of responsibility to either the Gestapo or the SD. Some areas, such as the “Jewish issue,” remained the joint responsibility of both organizations.

Abwehr

The intelligence service of the Wermacht—the regular German armed forces.

4

These guidelines, however, failed to resolve all the existing differences regarding the coordination of work between the Gestapo and the SD. The SD chiefs also tried their hand in espionage abroad by seeking to gain control over military intelligence. This goal was achieved in July 1944, after the attempt on Hitler’s life, in which the Abwehr chiefs were found to have been involved. Because it was a large organization with a network of informers who submitted regular reports, the SD was able to keep track of the changing mood of the public. In this field the SD considered itself the central branch of the intelligence service, its task being to provide the political leaders with the basic data they required for the decision-making process.

SD

On September 27, 1939, Heydrich unified his command over the Gestapo and the SD by creating the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (RSHA; Reichssicherheitshauptamt). It was only after the outbreak of the war that the SD was assigned operational tasks, when it joined the O P E R AT I O N A L S Q UA D S (Einsatzgruppen) that followed the invading German army into P O L A N D . Its personnel served in command positions or in the rank and file of the Operational Squads, which in the summer of 1941 launched a systematic murder campaign against Jews and other groups in the German-occupied areas of the S OV I E T U N I O N . The staff organization of the civil administration centers in the German-occupied areas included officers or inspectors from the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei) and the SD. The officer, a Higher SS and Police Leader, was the commander of all the SS and police units in his area. The Security Service personnel engaged in intelligence activities and in punishing and murdering the local population, chiefly the Jews.

Jews captured by SS and SD troops during the suppression of the Warsaw ghetto uprising are forced to leave their shelter and march to the Umschlagplatz (Transfer Point) for deportation.

In 1935 the Jewish Section of the SD (Section II 112) adopted a basic policy and its own independent ways of operating. The concept that the Jews, by their very nature, were enemies of the state and of the Nazi regime determined the SD’s goal and methods. The “provisional goal” it set in December 1936 was “to rid Germany of the Jews.” From then on the SD kept Jewish organizations and institutions under its surveillance in order to harass the Jews and exert pressure on them to leave Germany. In 1937 the section outlined the practical steps that had to be taken to achieve its goal: economic dispossession, public pressure, and terrorization.

5

SECRET STATE POLICE

The first director of the Jewish Section of the SD was Leopold von Mildenstein, followed in 1936 by Herbert Hagen. Adolf E I C H M A N N joined the section in early 1935 and was put in charge of subsection 112/3, which dealt with “Zionists.” He entered upon his major role in the murder of the Jews when he was dispatched from the section to head the C E N T R A L O F F I C E F O R J E W I S H E M I G R AT I O N (Zentralstelle Für Jüdische Auswanderung) in V I E N NA . The Jewish Section of the SD had a central role in organizing and implementing the “Final Solution.” On October 1, 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg declared the SD (as well as the SS and the Gestapo) a criminal organization.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Breitman, Richard. The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution. New York: Knopf, 1991.

The SS. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1989. Williamson, Gordon. The SS: Hitler’s Instrument of Terror. Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International, 1994.

SECRET STATE POLICE. SEE GESTAPO. SECURITY SERVICE OF THE SS. SEE SD. Sendler, Irena (b. 1916)

Irena (“Jolanta”) Sendler became one of the most active members in the Polish Council for Aid to Jews known as “Zegota.” This was an active underground organization in the W A R S AW area. Sendler, a Catholic, tried to ease the suffering of her Jewish friends and acquaintances during the early days of the German occupation of P O L A N D . Her job at the Social Welfare Department of Warsaw gave her access to visit the ghetto area at all times; her official purpose was to help fight contagious diseases. She took advantage of the opportunity to provide many Jews with clothing, medicine, and money. When walking through the ghetto streets, Sendler wore an armband with the Star of David, both as a sign of solidarity with the Jewish people and so as not to call attention to herself.

Irena Sendler.

At the end of the summer of 1942, Sendler was asked to join the newly founded Zegota, or Council for Aid to Jews. She was very valuable to Zegota, for she had already enlisted a large group of people in her charitable work. This group included a wide network of contacts both inside the ghetto and out. While working with Zegota, Sendler specialized in smuggling Jewish children out of the ghetto and finding safe places for them with non-Jewish families in the Warsaw region. Each of her co-workers was made responsible for several blocks of apartments where Jewish children were sheltered. She herself oversaw eight or ten apartments where Jews were hiding under her care. Zegota provided financial support to the families who helped care for the children. In October 1943, Sendler was arrested by the G E S TA P O , and taken to the infamous Pawiak Prison. There she was brutally tortured to make her reveal information. The efforts to “break” her were unsuccessful, and the interrogators told her

6

S E Y S S - I N Q UA R T, A R T H U R

that she was doomed. However, on the day set for her execution, she was freed, after her companions from the underground bribed one of the Gestapo agents. Officially, however, Sendler was listed on public bulletin boards as among those executed. Forced to stay out of sight for the remainder of the German occupation, Sendler continued to work undercover for Zegota. In 1965 she was recognized by Yad Vashem as “R I G H T E O U S A M O N G T H E N AT I O N S ”.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Tec, Nechama. When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

I

rena Sendler’s rescue work was done at great risk to herself and her co-

workers. Concealing Jews was a crime punishable by death in Nazi-occupied Poland. In Warsaw, Zegota sheltered at least 2500 registered Jewish children.

Seyss-Inquart, Arthur (1892–1946)

A V I E N N A lawyer who walked with a limp after being wounded in World War I, Seyss-Inquart became recognized as an Austrian Nazi statesman. He was active in nationalist circles and, while initially not antisemitic, he became increasingly attracted to National Socialism. Seyss-Inquart was held in high esteem by the Austrian chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, who appointed him to the Council of State. Seyss-Inquart was not considered a reliable member of the N A Z I PA R T Y in Austria. However, he was highly regarded by Adolf H I T L E R , who pressured Schuschnigg into appointing Seyss-Inquart as the Austrian minister of both the interior and public security on February 16, 1938. On Hitler’s ultimatum, Seyss-Inquart was appointed chancellor after Schuschnigg’s resignation in March of 1938. Seyss-Inquart immediately invited the German armed forces to invade Austria. In return, Hitler appointed him the Reich commissioner of Ostmark, as Austria was now called; however, Seyss-Inquart’s influence on the Austrian Anschluss was slight. On May 1, 1939, Seyss-Inquart was appointed to a government post in the central German government. In October, 1939, he was appointed deputy governor-general in P O L A N D . There, he was responsible for examining the territory to be used for the L U B L I N Reservation, where the Jews from the Reich were to be deported (see N I S KO A N D L U B L I N P L A N ). On May 19, 1940, Hitler appointed Seyss-Inquart as the Reich Commissioner of the Occupied N E T H E R L A N D S and also instructed him to try to create a friendship between the Dutch and the Germans. Hitler hoped that the man who had helped in the annexation of Austria would succeed in the same way in the Netherlands. In his first months as commissioner, Seyss-Inquart acted with restraint, creating the impression that the Germans would not make life difficult for the Dutch. However, it quickly became clear to him that, apart from the small organized minority in the Dutch Nationalist Socialist movement, the Dutch would reject the efforts of the Germans to win them over. In time, the Germans began to take steps against the Dutch. Acts against the Jews, which began in late 1940 and reached a peak in February, 1941, contributed in particular to the anti-German climate. For example, Amsterdam dockworkers went on strike in reaction to what the Germans did to the Jews. Seyss-Inquart reacted sharply to these incidents, rightly seeing in them the failure of his policy. He took an active role in the anti-Jewish legislation, in the pillage of Jewish property, and in the dispatch of Jews to the E X T E R M I N A T I O N C A M P S . Seyss-Inquart knew that the removal of the Jews from Europe was Hitler’s supreme mission, and he wanted to be among the initiators of the cam-

7

SHE’ERIT HA-PELETAH

Arthur Seyss-Inquart (2nd from left) and Konrad Henlein (3rd from left), leader of the Nazi Sudeten party, January 30, 1939.

paign rather than to allow the local S S to claim exclusive credit for initiating the “ F I N A L S O L U T I O N ” . In fact, Seyss-Inquart was aware of Hitler’s intentions at a very early stage. At a well-attended meeting held on May 15, 1941, Nazi officials deliberated on the confiscation of Jewish property. At this meeting, Hitler indicated that the proceeds from such confiscations should expected to provide financial resources for a “Final Solution.” In an attempt to become the one entrusted with responsibility for dealing with the Jews, Seyss-Inquart initiated several of the harshest measures that were taken against them. During the last months of the war, Seyss-Inquart began negotiations with the Allied armies in an attempt to ease the suffering of the Dutch population. After the cease-fire, he became one of the war criminals indicted for C R I M E S AG A I N S T H U M A N I T Y . Seyss-Inquart was sentenced to death at the Nuremberg Trial. Throughout all of his activities, Seyss-Inquart remained loyal to Hitler, and Hitler praised him highly on a number of occasions. A collection of speeches by Seyss-Inquart, Vier Jahre in den Niederlanden: Gesammelte Reden, was published in Amsterdam in 1944.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Conot, Robert E. Justice at Nuremberg. New York: Harper and Row, 1983. Harris, Whitney R. Tyranny on Trial: The Evidence at Nuremberg. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1995. Sprecher, Drexel A., Inside the Nuremberg Trial: A Prosecutor’s Comprehensive Account. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1999.

SHE’ERIT HA-PELETAH. SEE DISPLACED PERSONS, JEWISH; REFUGEES, 1933–1945.

SHIPS. SEE ALIYA BET; ST. LOUIS. 8

SKARZYSKO-KAMIENNA

SHO’AH. SEE HOLOCAUST. SICHERHEITSDIENST. SEE SD. Simferopol Simferopol is a city in the Crimean peninsula; capital of the Crimean Oblast (district), in the U K R A I N E (once part of the S OV I E T U N I O N ). Simferopol was founded in the eighteenth century, and Jews lived there from its inception. On the eve of World War II the city’s Jewish population was more than 20,000, out of a total population of 142,678. Simferopol was occupied by the Germans on November 1, 1941. By then most of the Jews had left on their own accord or had been evacuated, but their place had been taken by Jewish refugees from K H E R S O N , Dnepropetrovsk, and the Jewish kolkhozy in the Larindorf and Freidorf subdistricts. Approximately 13,000 Jews were in Simferopol when the Germans arrived, as well as 1,500 Krimchaks, the largest community of these Jews to be found anywhere. On the day after the occupation, announcements were posted ordering the Jews to form a J UDENRAT (Jewish Council) and to report for FORCED LABOR . In the following days they were ordered to register and wear a yellow badge (see B ADGE , J EWISH ) in the form of a Star of David. On December 9, the Krimchak Jews were rounded up and killed. From December 11 to 13 the remaining 12,500 Jews were rounded up, put on trucks, and taken out of town to be shot to death. The murder was perpetrated by the men of S P E C I A L C OMMANDO (Sonderkommando) 11b, belonging to Operational Squad (Einsatzgruppe) D, and by German police of Reserve Ordnungspolizei Battalion No. 3. Jews who had gone into hiding and were caught were put into the local jail, and by the middle of February 1942, 300 of them were gassed to death (see G AS C HAMBERS /V ANS ). Simferopol was liberated by the Soviets on April 13, 1944.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Gitelman, Zvi, ed. Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER. SEE MUSEUMS AND MEMORIAL INSTITUTES.

Skarz˙ysko-Kamienna Skarz˙ysko-Kamienna was a forced-labor camp for Jews in the town of that name in the K I E L C E district of P O L A N D . Located next to an ammunition factory, the camp belonged to HASAG, a German corporation. S S officer Egon Dalski, the general manager of the HASAG factory in Skarz˙ysko-Kamienna from 1939 to 1943, was in charge of the camp.

9

SKARZYSKO-KAMIENNA

T

he harshest conditions were found at Camp C where prisoners did

the deadly work of producing underwater mines and filling them with picric acid. The acid caused the skin to turn yellow, and within three months the prisoners doing this work died of poisoning.

The Skarz˙ysko-Kamienna camp was established in August 1942, in three separate sites, identified as Factory Camps (Werke) A, B, and C. It existed until August 1, 1944. Most of the prisoners were from Poland. The rest were brought there from A U S T R I A , Czechoslovakia, G E R M A N Y , the N E T H E R L A N D S , and F R A N C E . The average number of prisoners in the camp was 6,000. According to German sources, 3,241 Jews perished at Skarz˙ysko-Kamienna between October 1, 1942, and January 31, 1943—an average of 26 deaths a day. The total number of Jews who were brought there is estimated at 25,000 to 30,000. Of those, it is believed that between 18,000 and 23,000 died. The three camps were situated close to the factories in which the prisoners worked. The inmates worked side-by-side with free Polish laborers. Each department had a German manager, with Poles acting as his deputies and as supervisors. The camp security was in the hands of the Ukrainian factory police (Werkschutz), but headed by Germans notorious for the acts of robbery, murder, and rape that occurred under their watch. They reported to the factory manager. The factories operated on two twelve-hour shifts; the prisoners were given impossible work loads. Sanitary conditions in the camp were intolerable. The food rations consisted of 7 ounces (200 grams) of bread a day and about a pint (.5 liters) of watery soup twice a day, and, occasionally, a spoonful of jam or a small portion of margarine. The prisoners had to work in the same clothes week after week. When these disintegrated—as they inevitably did, the inmates wrapped themselves in paper bags. In all three camps, there were epidemics of dysentery, typhus, and a disease caused by weakness, which the prisoners called hasagowka, after the HASAG company. Medical assistance was not available in the camps until early 1944. During the spring of 1944, when the authorities faced a critical shortage of labor, living conditions in the camp improved slightly, in order to keep up the prisoners’ strength. There were more food rations, medical supplies, and clothing. Some of the inmates had connections with the Jewish or Polish underground and received aid from these sources. Prisoners who tried to escape were usually killed. In Camps A and C, any Jews caught stealing materials in the factory were hanged. In late 1943 and early 1944, mass executions took place in Camp C. The victims were prisoners of different nationalities who had been brought in from the G E S TA P O jails in the Radom district. Shortly before the liquidation of the camp in the summer of 1944, a special unit of Jewish prisoners, under SS supervision, took the bodies of these victims out of the mass grave in which they had been buried in the Camp C area, in order to cremate them. Several underground resistance groups were active in the camp, among them a cell of the J E W I S H F I G H T I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N (Z˙OB). Members of the Bund, a Jewish “nationalist” group, established links with the Bund leadership in W A R S AW . Jewish prisoners smuggled arms out of the factory and gave them to Polish PA R T I S A N S belonging to the Home Army (Armia Krajowa). Links also existed with the Polish Communist underground, the Polish Workers’ Party (Polska Partia Robotnicza). Two days before the liquidation of Camp C, several hundred prisoners escaped. Most of them were killed during the attempt or in the surrounding forests. In late July 1944, some 600 people were murdered on the spot. The remaining prisoners, numbering more than 6,000, were transferred to the B U C H E N WA L D camp, to camps at Cze˛stochowa and Leipzig, and to other camps in Germany. In 1948, twenty-five German foremen from the Skarz˙ysko-Kamienna camp were brought to trial in Leipzig. Four were sentenced to death, two to life impris-

10

SLOVAKIA

onment, and others to prison terms of varying lengths. The most brutal camp enforcers were never found.

Slovakia, October 1938.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Karay, Felicja. Death Comes in Yellow: Skarz˙ysko-Kamienna Slave Labor Camp. Amsterdam: Harwood, 1995.

SLAVE LABOR. SEE FORCED LABOR. Slovakia Slovakia is a region in east central Europe. Until 1918 Slovakia was part of H U N G A R Y ; between the two world wars, it was part of the Czechoslovak republic. Between March 14, 1939, and April 29, 1945, it was a satellite of Nazi G E R M A N Y , and after World War II it became part of Czechoslovakia. Jews had lived in Slovakia since the Roman period. During the nineteenth century, the community began to grow significantly. In 1930, 135,918 Jews (4.5 percent of the population) lived in Slovakia. More than 10,000 young Jews belonged to Zionist YO U T H M OV E M E N T S .

11

SLOVAKIA

A

t the Wannsee Conference held in January 1942, Nazi leaders noted that the Slovaks seemed sure to cooperate in facilitating the “Final

Solution.” In mid-February the Germans asked the Slovaks for 20,000 young Jews to “build new Jewish settlements.” The

In September 1938, a part of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland, became part of Germany; the second Czechoslovak republic was established with Slovakia as an autonomous region. Germany allowed Hungary, its ally, to annex parts of Slovakia and Ruthenia. With this loss of territory, the December 1938 census showed a Jewish population of 88,951 in Slovakia. In March 1939, the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia and made areas of B O H E M I A A N D M O R AV I A a protectorate of the Reich. Slovakia became a separate state on March 14, 1939. A one-party totalitarian regime (the Slovak People’s Party of Hlinka, known as the Ludaks) took control of Slovakia. The government aligned itself with Nazi Germany and signed a treaty that allowed Germany to interfere in Slovak internal affairs and to dictate its foreign policy.

Slovaks agreed, but, fearing that the Germans might leave only unproductive Jews in Slovakia, they demanded that they deport the entire community.

Anti-Jewish Sentiment and Policy A N T I S E M I T I S M was present in Slovakia during the war years. Storm troops of the Hlinka Guard and paramilitary squads of ethnic Germans attacked Jews on the streets, looted their property, and forcibly removed Jews to the no-man’s-land between Slovakia and Hungary. In July 1940, a National Socialist regime was set up in Slovakia, bringing more systematic anti-Jewish legislation. That August, the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (RSHA; Reichssicherheitshauptamt) sent Dieter W I S L I C E N Y to Slovakia to serve as an adviser on Jewish affairs. The Slovaks set up the Central Economic Office to remove Jews from the economy and oversee the A R YA N I Z AT I O N (Arisierung) of Jewish property. Jewish assets were estimated to be worth more than 3 billion Slovak crowns (approximately 120 million dollars), including real estate, business enterprises, and capital. This forced conversion of Jewish assets to non-Jewish ownership was completed in one year. In the summer of 1941, anti-Jewish legislation escalated. Jews were now banned from certain public places and had to wear a yellow armband with a Star of David (see B A D G E , J E W I S H ). Jewish apartments, as well as mail and other documents, also had to display a Star of David. The “Jewish Code,” issued on September 9, 1941, classified Jews along the same lines as the N U R E M B E R G L AW S . By December 1941 Jews were forbidden to congregate and were subject to a curfew. Fifteen thousand Jews were removed from Bratislava. By March 1942, 6,700 had been resettled in Trnava, Nitra, and eastern Slovakia, or sent to labor camps.

Deportations On March 27, the first trainload of Slovak Jews was sent to the east. By October 1942, about 58,000 Slovak Jews had been deported, most of them to A U S C H W I T Z , M A J DA N E K , and the L U B L I N area. On May 23, 1942, the Slovak parliament passed a law that permitted the expulsion of Jews from Slovakia. As early as the autumn of 1942, rumors about the fate of Jewish deportees led some Slovak politicians to demand an end to the deportations. The Germans denied the rumors, but refused when some politicians demanded that a Slovak delegation be allowed to visit the deportees in Auschwitz. This pressure contributed to the ending of the transports in October 1942.

Jewish Response to Deportations When Jewish leaders learned about the impending deportations several weeks before they began, an activist core group formed a committee known as the “Working Group” in an attempt to forestall them. The group’s activities did not prevent

12

SLOVAKIA

The deportation of the Jews of Stropkov, near the Czechoslovak-Polish border, took place on May 21, 1942. A Jew is subjected to a humiliating beard trimming while waiting at the railway station to be deported.

the transports, but their combined use of intervention with government and Catholic church officials, bribery, and negotiations with the Nazis contributed to ending the deportations in October 1942. Later, the Auschwitz Protocols came into the hands of the Working Group. Its leaders sent the reports to the West, with a plea to bomb the railway lines leading to Auschwitz and the camp itself. The Allies failed to bomb the camp, but the information contained in the protocols sparked increased internationally backed rescue activities in Hungary.

Auschwitz Protocols

Detailed reports by four Jewish escapees from Auschwitz who reached Slovakia in the spring of 1944.

Prior to March 1944, more than 10,000 Jews escaped into Hungary. Others sought protection by converting to Christianity or by obtaining false “Aryan” papers. Some Jews who were deemed “vital” to the Slovak economy were granted “certificates of exemption” from the deportations. The five companies of Jews in the Sixth Slovak Brigade (armed forces) and most of the Jews in Slovak labor camps were usually safeguarded from deportation. During the relatively quiet period in Slovakia between October 1942 and August 1944, the Working Group negotiated with the Nazis to save the remaining Slovak Jews, as well as other Jews slated for extermination. This bargaining (known as the Europa Plan), did not save the rest of European Jewry, but some historians believe that the contact with the Germans may have helped protect the remaining Slovak Jews until the Slovak National Uprising broke out in late August 1944.

Slovak National Uprising Efforts to oust the pro-Nazi regime and free Slovakia from its dependence on Germany led to the Slovak National Uprising (August 28 to October 27, 1944). A minority of Slovaks had never supported the regime, and partisan units sprang up as early as 1942. In the three labor camps, armed cells began to form during the deportations of 1942. The uprising was planned by the Czechoslovak Agrarian party, the right wing of the Social Democratic party, the Communist party, estranged Slovak nationalists, and a group of army officers. In late December 1943 the Slovak National Council (SNR) was established to coordinate the uprising. The rebels hoped their efforts would coincide with an advance by the Soviet army. If German troops attacked Slovakia, they expected their forces could hold out in central Slovakia until Soviet troops arrived.

partisan units

Organized groups of paramilitary guerrilla fighters targeting the occupying Nazi forces.

13

SLOVAKIA

T

he Jews hoped that a successful uprising in Slovakia would lead

to the rescue of the remaining 20,000 Slovakian Jews.

Early in 1944, contact was established between the Jewish fighting groups in the labor camps and the SNR; the Jewish groups remained part of the planning and execution of the uprising from that point on. In the spring of 1944, partisan units, most of them under Soviet command, were active in the mountains. Moscow sent guerrilla soldiers to Slovakia to engage in partisan activities, but they made little effort to coordinate with the SNR. As the Germans suffered increasing military losses, more and more Slovaks joined their own rebel forces. By the summer, the rebels controlled significant areas of eastern and central Slovakia. The government did little to stop the PA R T I S A N S , who were operating in an area of about 5,366 square miles with a population, at the most, of 800,000. Most of the terrain consisted of mountains and valleys. The resistance forces declared a Czechoslovak republic and set up a government in the liberated area. On August 28 and 29, to forestall further partisan gains, the Germans invaded Slovakia. The Germans had superior manpower and firepower, while the 60,000 rebels, of which 16,000 were partisans, were armed mostly with light weapons. Their heavy arsenal included only 120 cannon, 15 tanks, and 21 airplanes, which the Soviets had provided. Moreover, the rebel troops and partisans were not as experienced as the Germans. However, the Germans could not quell the uprising within a few days, as they had expected. Late in September, they brought in more SS units and within weeks, the Germans crushed the rebels. The organized military struggle ended on October 27. More than 2,000 Jews took part in the rebellion and about 500 died in battle. During the uprising, four Jewish parachutists from Palestine reached Slovakia. Their arrival boosted Jewish morale. They worked for Jewish welfare in the “liberated” rebel territory, where most of the surviving Jews had gathered and tried to combat antisemitism in the rebel-held areas. Only one, Chaim Hermesh, survived the uprising and continued fighting with Slovak partisans until the war ended. The uprising failed in part because of internal political differences and because of Allied reluctance to fully support it. The Western powers regarded Slovakia as part of the Soviet sphere; the Soviets gave only meager support. After the uprising collapsed, the Germans captured 5,000 Jews, mostly civilians, and about 19,000 partisans. They killed more than 1,500 of these Jews. By March 1945, the Germans had deported 13,500 Jews to Auschwitz, S AC H S E N H AU S E N , and T H E R E S I E N S TA D T . About 10,000 Slovak Jews survived in the camps until liberation; 4,000 to 5,000 remained in hiding in Slovakian cities and towns, or with partisans in the mountains. Including those Jews who lived in the territories that Hungary had annexed, about 100,000 Slovak Jews were lost. Between 25,000 and 30,000 Slovak Jews survived the war, but those who returned home felt unwelcome. Anti-Jewish demonstrations and violence were common, and Jews were blocked from reclaiming their own homes and other property. After the Soviet-backed regime was established in 1948, most of the remaining Jews left Slovakia; the majority immigrated to Israel in 1949.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES “55th Anniversary of Slovak National Uprising.” Krajsk £rad Bansk Bystrica. [Online] http://www.55snp.sk/en/ (accessed on September 11, 2000). “Jewish Parachutists.” Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance Online. [Online] http:// motlc.wiesenthal.com/pages/t059/t05903.html (accessed on September 11, 2000). “Slovak National Uprising.” Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance Online. [Online] http://motlc.wiesenthal.org/pages/t071/t07147.html (accessed on September 11, 2000).

14

SOBIBÓR

Sobibór Sobibór was an E X T E R M I N AT I O N CA M P near the village and railway station of Sobibór in the L U B L I N district of P O L A N D . Established as part of A K T I O N (O P E R A TION ) R EINHARD , the camp was built in a sparsely populated, woody, and swampy area beginning in March 1942. Local inhabitants and a group of 80 Jews from nearby ghettos built it. In April 1942, SS officer Franz S TANGL was appointed camp commandant. The camp staff included 20 to 30 German SS men, most of whom, like Stangl, had taken part in the E U T H A N A S I A P R O G R A M . In addition, 90 to 120 Ukrainians served in the camp. Most were Soviet P R I S O N E R S O F WA R who had been trained for the job at T R A W N I K I ; some were V O L K S D E U T S C H E —Soviet nationals of German origin. The German staff filled most of the command and administrative positions, while the Ukrainian unit acted as guards and security personnel. Among other things, it was their job to quash any resistance offered by the Jews who were brought to the camp and to prevent escapes. Jewish prisoners also worked in the camp, performing various physical tasks.

W

hen the camp was almost finished, a test was made to

verify that the gas chambers were working properly. Two hundred and fifty Jews, most of them women, were brought in from the nearby labor camp at Krychów and put to death in the chambers. All the SS men of the camp were present at this experiment.

Physical Characteristics of the Camp The camp formed a rectangle 1,312 by 1,969 feet (400 by 600 meters) in area. It was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence 9.8 feet (3 meters) high, with tree branches intertwined in it to conceal the camp. There were three camp areas, each individually fenced in: the administration area, the reception area, and the extermination area. The administration area consisted of the Vorlager (“forward camp,” the part of the camp closest to the railway station) and Camp I. The Vorlager included the railway platform, with space for 20 railway cars, and the living quarters for the German and Ukrainian staff. Camp I was fenced off from the rest. It contained housing for the Jewish prisoners and their workshops. The reception area, also known as Camp II, was the place where Jews from the incoming transports were brought. There they went through various procedures before being killed in the gas chambers—removal of clothes, cutting of women’s hair, and confiscation of possessions and valuables. The extermination area, or Camp III, was located in the northwestern part of the camp. It was the most isolated part. It contained the gas chambers (see G A S C H A M B E R S / V A N S ), burial trenches, and housing for the Jewish prisoners who worked there. A path 9.8 to 13 feet (3 to 4 meters) wide and 492 feet (150 meters) long, and lined on both sides with a barbed-wire fence, led from the reception area to the extermination area. The fencing here was also intertwined with branches to conceal from view this path along which the victims were herded, naked, toward the gas chambers from the shed where they had undressed. The gas chambers were inside a brick building. Each chamber was square, measuring 172 square feet (16 square meters), with a capacity of 160 to 180 people. The chambers were entered from a platform at the front of the brick building. Each gas chamber also had another opening, through which the bodies were removed. The carbon monoxide gas was produced by a 200-horsepower engine in a nearby shed, from which it was piped into the gas chambers. The burial trenches were nearby, each 164 to 197 feet (50 to 60 meters) long, 33 to 49 feet (10 to 15 meters) wide, and 16.4 to 23 feet (5 to 7 meters) deep. From the railway platform to the burial trenches ran a narrow-gauge railway that was used to transport persons too weak to make their way to the gas chambers on their own, as well as the bodies of those who had died en route to Sobibór.

15

SOBIBÓR

Plan of the Sobibór extermination camp.

Camp Procedures Several hundred able-bodied Jews were chosen from among the first few transports of prisoners to form work teams. Some worked as tailors, cobblers, carpenters, and so on, to serve the needs of the German and Ukrainian camp staff. All the other work assignments had to do with “processing” the victims along the route that led from the railway platform to the burial trenches. A total of about 1,000 prisoners, 150

16

SOBIBÓR

of them women, were eventually put into these teams. One group of several dozen prisoners worked on the railway platform. Their job was to remove from the cars those who could not get off on their own and to remove the bodies of those who had died en route. They also had to clean out the cars. The purpose was to make sure that when the train left the camp, it would contain no trace of the human cargo it had transported. Other work teams were assigned to the reception area, to handle the clothing and luggage left there by the victims on their way to the gas chambers. These groups had to sort out the clothing and prepare it to be sent out of the camp, to search for money and other valuables that might have been left behind, and to remove the yellow patches from the clothing and any other signs that could have identified the clothes as having been worn by Jews. Yet another group in this area, the barbers, had to cut off the women’s hair and package it to be sent out of the camp.

E

verything was done on the run, accompanied by shouts, beatings,

and warning shots. The victims were in a state of shock and did not grasp what was happening to them.

In the extermination area, 200 to 300 Jewish prisoners were held. It was their task was to remove the bodies of the murdered victims from the gas chambers, take them to the burial ground, and then clean up the chambers. A special team of prisoners, nicknamed “the dentists,” was charged with extracting gold teeth from the mouths of the victims before their bodies were put into the trenches. Toward the end of 1942, in an effort to erase the traces of the mass killings, the bodies were dug up and cremated; this task too was carried out by a special team of prisoners. Nearly every day there were Selektionen—“selections”—among the Jewish prisoners. In these selections, the weak and the sick were sent to the gas chambers. Their place was taken by new arrivals. Any misbehavior by a prisoner—such as the theft of food, money, or valuables found in the luggage left behind by the victims— was punished by death. Only a few prisoners survived for more than a few months.

Transports: First Stage The process of killing trainloads of Jews was based entirely on misleading the victims and hiding the fate that was in store for them. When a train arrived, the people on board were ordered to get off. They were told that they had arrived at a “transit camp” from which they would be sent to labor camps. Before leaving for the labor camps, they were to take showers, and at the same time their clothes would be disinfected. Following this announcement, the men and women were separated (children went with the women); they were told that the sexes had to be separated for their showers. The victims were ordered to take off their clothes and hand over any money or valuables in their possession; anyone who was caught trying to conceal any item was shot. Then followed the march to the gas chambers, which had been made to look like shower rooms. Some 450 to 550 persons entered the chambers at a time. When the gas chambers were jammed full of people, they were closed and sealed and the gas was piped in. Within twenty to thirty minutes, everyone inside was dead. The bodies were then removed from the gas chambers and buried, after the gold teeth had been taken from their mouths. The whole procedure, from the arrival of the train to the burial of the victims, took two to three hours. In the meantime, the railway cars were cleaned up and the train departed—and another 20 cars, with their human load destined for extermination, entered the camp. The first stage of the extermination operation went on for three months, from May to July 1942. The Jews who were brought to Sobibór during this period came from the Lublin district in Poland, and from Czechoslovakia, G E R M A N Y , and A U S T R I A . Those from countries outside Poland had first been taken to ghettos in the Lublin district, and from there were deported to Sobibór. Some 10,000 Jews were

17

SOBIBÓR

T r

he Dutch Jews came to Sobibór in p8

8

egular passenger trains. They were given a polite welcome and were asked to send letters to their relatives in the

Netherlands to let them know they had arrived at a labor camp. After they had

brought from Germany and Austria, 6,000 from T H E R E S I E N S TA D T , and many thousands from S L OVA K I A . In all, between 90,000 and 100,000 Jews were murdered at Sobibór in this first stage. The transports came to a temporary halt at the end of July, to enable the railway line to undergo repairs. In Sobibór’s first three months of operation, the Germans found that the gas chambers created a bottleneck in the murder program. They had a total capacity of fewer than 600 people. The halt in camp operations during August and September 1942 was therefore used to construct three more gas chambers. These were put up next to the existing chambers under the same roof, with a hallway separating the old chambers from the new. With a new capacity of 1,200 people, the rate of extermination could be doubled.

written these letters, they were given the same treatment as all the other transports. Within a few hours they were all dead.

Second Stage By the beginning of October 1942, work on the railway line was completed and the transports to Sobibór could begin again. Until early November, the arriving transports brought more Jews from towns in the Lublin district. In the winter, following the closing of the B E L⁄ Z˙ E C camp, and in the spring and summer of 1943, Sobibór also received transports from the region known as Eastern Galicia. The winter transports arrived bearing people who had frozen to death on the way. Some of the transports consisted of people who had been stripped naked in order to make it harder for them to escape from the train. One train carried 5,000 Jewish prisoners from the M A J DA N E K camp. From October 1942 to June 1943, a total of 70,000 to 80,000 Jews from Lublin and the Eastern Galicia districts were brought to Sobibór. The number of victims from the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T was between 145,000 and 155,000. By the end of October 1942, some 25,000 Jews from Slovakia had been killed at Sobibór. In February 1943, Heinrich H I M M L E R paid a visit to the camp. While he was there, a special transport arrived with several hundred Jewish girls from a labor camp in the Lublin district. Himmler watched the entire extermination procedure. In March 1943, four transports from F R A N C E brought 4,000 people, all of whom were killed. Nineteen transports arrived from the Netherlands between March and July 1943, carrying 35,000 Jews. The last transports to arrive at Sobibór came from the V I L N A , M I N S K , and Lida ghettos. Approximately 14,000 Jews came on these transports in the second half of September 1943, following the liquidation of the ghettos in these cities. This brought the total number of Jews killed at Sobibór throughout the period of the camp’s operation to approximately 250,000. At the end of the summer of 1942, the burial trenches were opened and the process of burning the victims’ bodies was begun. The corpses were put into huge piles and set on fire. The bodies of victims who arrived in the camp after that time were cremated immediately after gassing and were not buried.

Resistance and Escape On July 5, 1943, Himmler ordered the closing of Sobibór as an extermination camp. It was to be transformed into a concentration camp. Throughout the camp’s existence, attempts had been made to escape from it. Some of them were successful. In retaliation for these attempts, the Germans executed many dozens of prisoners. During the summer of 1943, in order to prevent escapes, and also as a safety measure against attacks by PA RT I S A N S , the Germans planted land mines along the entire

18

SOUSA MENDES, ARISTIDES DE

circumference of the camp. In July and August of that year, an underground group was organized among the Jewish prisoners in Sobibór under the leadership of Leon Feldhendler, who had been chairman of the J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council) in Zól⁄kiew, a town in Eastern Galicia. The group’s aim was to organize an uprising and a mass escape from the camp. In September, Soviet Jewish P R I S O N E R S O F WA R were brought to the camp from Minsk; one of them was Lieutenant Aleksandr P E C H E R S K Y . The underground recruited him into its ranks and put him in command, with Feldhendler as his deputy. The plan was for the prisoners to kill the SS men, acquire weapons, and fight their way out of the camp. The uprising broke out on October 14, 1943. During the course of fighing, 11 SS men and several Ukrainians were killed. Some 300 prisoners managed to escape, but most of them were killed by their pursuers. Those who had not joined the escape for various reasons and had remained in the camp were all killed as well. At the end of the war, about 50 Jews survived of those who had escaped during the uprising. After the uprising, the Germans liquidated Sobibór, abandoning the idea of turning it into a concentration camp. By the end of 1943, no trace of it was left. The camp area was plowed under, and crops were planted in its soil. A farm was put up in its place, and one of the Ukrainian camp guards settled there. In the summer of 1944, the area was liberated by the Soviet army and troops of the Polish People’s Army (Gwardia Ludowa). Eleven of the SS men who had served at Sobibór were brought to trial. The trials took place in Hagen, West Germany, from September 6, 1965, to December 20, 1966. One of the accused committed suicide; one was sentenced to life imprisonment. Five were given sentences ranging from three to eight years, and four were acquitted. The camp area was designated by the Polish government as a national shrine and a memorial was erected on the site.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Arad, Yitzhak. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. Blatt, Thomas Toivi. From the Ashes of Sobibor: A Story of Survival. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1997.

Escape from Sobibor [videorecording]. Live Home Video, 1991. Rashke, Richard L. Escape from Sobibor. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1982.

SONDERKOMMANDO. SEE SPECIAL COMMANDO. SONDERKOMMANDO 1005. SEE AKTION (OPERATION) 1005. Sousa Mendes, Aristides de (1885–1954)

A Portuguese career diplomat, Aristides de Sousa Mendes was consul general in Bordeaux, F R A N C E , when the Anglo-French front collapsed in the north in May, 1940. A wave of refugees, among them thousands of Jews, rushed to the south of France hoping to cross into Spain and proceed to Portugal. From Portugal, they hoped to escape from Europe by ship. In order to cross the Spanish frontier, the

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SOVIET UNION

refugees needed a Portuguese entry or transit visa. However, on May 10, 1940, the Portuguese government banned the further passage of refugees through its territory. The government also instructed its consular representatives in France, including Sousa Mendes, not to issue visas to those seeking temporary shelter in Portugal; no visas at all were to be issued to Jews. The sudden halt of entry into Portugal via Spain created a congestion of refugees in Bordeaux, the last major French city close to the Spanish frontier. Some 10,000 Jews were left stranded. Rabbi Haim Kruger, a refugee from B E L G I U M , met with the Portuguese diplomat. He pleaded with, and convinced, Sousa Mendes to grant transit visas for all refugees in spite of the instructions of the Portuguese government to the contrary. Sousa Mendes then devoted all of his time to issuing transit visas—close to 10,000, according to some reports—before the arrival of the Germans.

Aristides de Sousa Mendes.

S

ousa Mendes explained his choice by saying, “If thousands of Jews

can suffer because of one Catholic [i.e., Hitler], then surely it is permitted for one Catholic to suffer for so many Jews.” On another occasion, he had stated: “My desire is to be with God against man, rather than with man against God.”

Upon learning of Sousa Mendes’s insubordination, the Portuguese government ordered his immediate recall and dispatched two emissaries from Lisbon to accompany him home. On their way to the Spanish border, Sousa Mendes and the emissaries stopped in Bayonne, a city that came under the jurisdiction of the Bordeaux consulate, and visited with the local Portuguese legislator. Sousa Mendes, who was still the formal superior of the Bayonne consul, ordered the legislator to issue special visas to the Jewish refugees waiting outside. These visas were unique documents, slips of paper that bore the consulate seal and the following inscription: “The Portuguese government requests of the Spanish government the courtesy of allowing the bearer to pass freely through Spain. He is a refugee from the European conflict en route to Portugal.“ After Sousa Mendes was returned to Lisbon, the government, fuming at his disobedience, had him dismissed from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with all of his retirement and severance pay suspended. Sousa Mendes unsuccessfully appealed directly to the government and the National Assembly to be reinstated. Burdened with the task of feeding a family that included 13 children and, with no other income opportunities available, Sousa Mendes sank into poverty. His wife died in 1948; he died in 1954, forgotten, heartbroken, and impoverished. In 1966, through the efforts of his daughter Joana in the U N I T E D S TAT E S , he was posthumously honored by Yad Vashem as “R I G H T E O U S A M O N G T H E N AT I O N S ”. In 1985, an international committee was created for the perpetuation of Sousa Mendes’s memory. Bending to foreign pressure, the Portuguese National Assembly agreed to award him a full rehabilitation in 1988.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Lyman, Darryl. Holocaust Rescuers: Ten Stories of Courage. Springfield, NJ: Enslow, 1999.

A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Rescuers. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/people/rescuer.htm (accessed on September 11, 2000).

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991) was commonly referred to as the Soviet Union, or USSR. The geographic size and composition of the country’s member republics shifted throughout the history of the Soviet Union. In 1991, the union disintegrated into 15 independent states; among them are Russia, U K R A I N E , Belarus (see B E L O R U S S I A ), L AT V I A , L I T H UA N I A , and Estonia.

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SOVIET UNION

Before World War II, there were more than 3 million Jews in the Soviet Union. Many had lived there for generations, often in villages that were exclusively Jewish, and in Jewish areas of larger cities. In 1939 and 1940, the Jewish population expanded by nearly 2 million when the Soviet Union annexed territory including eastern P O L A N D , the Baltic states, Bessarabia, and Bukovina. In addition, Soviet Jewry during World War II included 250,000 to 300,000 Jewish refugees who had fled from Poland when it was occupied by G E R M A N Y at the start of the war. In June 1941, when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, as many as 5,250,000 Jews were under its rule, more than half the total number of Jews in Europe.

I

n the annexed territories, Jews were affected by a policy of forced

“Sovietization” between 1939 and 1941. Jewish organizations were disbanded, Hebrew schools closed,

The three categories of Jews—those who had been living in the Soviet Union before 1939, those living in the territories annexed by the Soviet Union, and the refugees—differed from one another in their social makeup, their way of life, and their Jewish consciousness and identification.

independent Jewish newspapers were

In addition, the original Soviet Jewish population itself could be divided into three groups. There were Jews—between 1.25 million and 1.5 million—who were well assimilated into Soviet society, working in technical fields such as engineering and science. They lived in fairly industrialized areas, were younger than the average Soviet Jew, and had left behind the life of their parents and grandparents in small Jewish villages. Their attitude toward the Yiddish language and culture and toward religion was marked by disrespect and scorn. Many were in mixed marriages and the percentage of Communist party membership was high.

Soviet authorities classified them as

no longer published, and political parties were outlawed. Masses of Jews were arrested and exiled, because the politically hostile elements.

A second group, numbering between 750,000 and 1 million Jews, lived in the large cities where historically there had been centers of Jewish population. In average age and education they were not very different from the first group. The areas they inhabited, however, were less industrialized, and the population was heterogeneous (consisting of Ukrainians, Belorussians, Russians, and Poles). To some degree that factor had slowed their rate of acculturation to the Russian way of life. Many of these Jews still spoke Yiddish and spent much of their leisure time with other Jews. A third group, numbering somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million still lived in the Jewish towns—shtetl—and in the Jewish agricultural areas established and encouraged by the Soviet regime in the 1920s and 1930s. This meant that at the outset of World War II, dozens of villages in the southern Ukraine and the Crimea were either exclusively Jewish or had a Jewish majority. Most of the Jews in this group were older, and their formal education was far below the average among Soviet Jews. They spent their life among other Jews, both at work and in their leisure time. The Yiddish language, Jewish jokes, and the use of Jewish metaphors were prevalent among this group, more than among any other sector of Soviet Jewry. Refugee Jews in the Soviet Union posed a particularly difficult problem. They generally had no place to live and no employment, and had left their relatives behind in German-occupied Poland. They had no Jewish cultural network, and there was no place for them in the social structure of the territories where they lived. The Soviet authorities tried to deal with the problem by recruiting them for work in the interior of the USSR on a voluntary basis, but this attempt failed. The refugees, numbering hundreds of thousands, were given the option of accepting Soviet citizenship or returning to their homes in German-occupied Poland. If they became Soviet citizens they would be under certain restrictions, such as not being allowed to live within 62 miles (100 kilometers) of the border or in the large cities. Most of the refugees opted for returning to Poland. The Soviets took this as a mark of disloyalty to their regime, and in June and July of 1940 the refugees were exiled to the Soviet interior. On June 22, 1941, the Germans launched Operation “Barbarossa,” the invasion of the Soviet Union on a huge military scale, with the objective of ending the war

21

SOVIET UNION

German-occupied Soviet territory.

by that winter. Initially, the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) made rapid progress. The Red Army’s lack of preparedness, the breakdown of communications, and the reluctance of the Soviet command to act without approval at the political level, brought the Soviet military position to the brink of disaster. The civilian administration was in complete disarray, as well.

Evacuation A few days after the German invasion, the Supreme Evacuation Council was set up to organize the move of factories, employees and their families, and administrative institutions to safer territory. There was no evacuation plan, however, and the result was haphazard and chaotic. Many who escaped were highly mobile young people who held privileged positions in government offices or factories. Proximity to railway stations or other means of transportation affected one’s ability to flee quickly. Generally speaking, more such opportunities were available in the large cities than in the towns.

For Jews, escaping to the interior of the USSR meant a chance of avoiding extermination. 22

As time went on and the pace of the German advance slackened, a proper procedure was established for moving civilians more effectively. As a result, the evacuation gradually became a planned operation. By late July 1941 the authorities began approving requests for evacuation of the general population and no longer confined themselves to the personnel of war-essential industrial plants. Those who still remained in the areas occupied by Germany early in the campaign were less likely to have opportunities to leave. The chances of getting away from larger population

SOVIET UNION

centers, and from places occupied at a later date—whether on one’s own or as part of an organized evacuation effort—were better. When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, the Soviet government initiated a military draft that was organized by age groups and geographic location. During the early months of the fighting, especially in the areas close to the front, the draft was carried out under chaotic conditions. In the annexed territories hardly any draft took place at all, because of the rapidity of the German occupation there, and in the areas west of the 1939 Soviet border, the draft was only partial, at best. The chances for a Jew to survive and fight in the Red Army depended, in large measure, on his place of residence and the timing of the Nazi occupation of that place. Since the Soviet Union was only partially occupied by the Germans throughout the war, its Jews, at least up to early 1943, were split into two groups—one group lived under Nazi occupation rule and the other under the Soviet regime.

V

ery few non-Jews risked their lives to hide Jews, and only a small

number of Jews were saved in this way. The majority of the population who saw the Jews being killed before their very eyes looked away; some showed outward indifference but in fact sympathized with the Jews, while others gloated over what was happening to them.

Occupation and Extermination The Germans divided the occupied Soviet territories into four administrative units, whose borders underwent changes resulting from developments at the front. Two of these units were under civilian administration: (1) Reichskommissariat Ostland, consisting of the Baltic states and western B E L O R U S S I A , including the M I N S K district; and (2) Reichskommissariat Ukraine including the regions of Volhynia, Zhitomir, Kiev, Nikolayev, Tauria, and Dnepropetrovsk. Most of the occupied part of the Russian republic and part of the occupied U K R A I N E were under a military administration. The area lying between the Dniester and Bug rivers, in which Odessa was located, was renamed Transnistria and handed over to Romanian rule. To the Jewish population, this administrative division of the German-occupied area made little difference, since it was mainly the SS and the O P E R AT I O N A L S Q UA D S (Einsatzgruppen) that dealt with the Jews, regardless of where they lived. During preparations for Operation “Barbarossa,” German orders were issued to exterminate all the Jews. Two patterns for doing this emerged. In the areas that had been annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939 and 1940, the pattern included harassment, establishment of ghettos, starvation, and, finally, deportation to the E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S . In these areas, the total extermination of the Jews was completed within 12 to 18 months after the occupation. The other pattern was applied in Nazi-occupied areas within the Soviet Union’s pre-1939 borders. Here, the extermination of the Jews was seen as an integral element in military operations. The total annihilation of the Jews in these areas took only weeks—two to three months, at most—from the day they were occupied. To exterminate the Jews in the occupied localities in the Soviet Union, the Germans generally used one of four methods and, in some cases, a combination of these methods: 1. The German occupation authorities appointed a three- or four-member J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council) of prominent figures of the Jewish community; these included highly respected persons, such as doctors and engineers. A few days later an announcement was made ordering the Jews to register with the Judenrat, on pain of death. A short time later, the Jews were ordered to report at a certain spot in the town, from which they were going to be sent to a labor camp or “moved to Palestine.” The Jews were told to take along only a few items, and no food at all, since it would be provided for them by the authorities. The assembled Jews were escorted by Germans and locally recruited police forces who beat and harassed the Jews and shot anyone who lagged behind or voiced any protest. The Jews then proceeded—

23

SOVIET UNION

usually on foot but sometimes by truck—to nearby antitank ditches, quarries, or ravines, where they were to be killed. Just before reaching the spot, they were split up into groups of between 10 and 100 and ordered to undress. The slaughter site was surrounded by Germans armed with machine guns; the Jews were forced into the ditch, ravine, or quarry and fired at, from all directions. When one group was finished off, the next was brought in and killed in the same way. 2. In some places, especially in villages and towns with a small number of Jews who were known to all the inhabitants, the Germans did not appoint a Judenrat or register the Jews but proceeded immediately to round up and kill them. 3. In still other places, Jews were concentrated in a certain city quarter. They were ordered to move into the designated area and the non-Jewish residents were ordered to leave and move into apartments that had become available in other quarters. The result was a ghetto of sorts, into which nearly all the Jewish population was packed, under terrible conditions. The ghetto was rarely fenced in and was only loosely guarded. Its inhabitants were ordered to wear a distinctive sign, either a white armband or a badge (see B ADGE , J EWISH ) with a Star of David on it. Some Jews—usually the young and the skilled workers—were put to work outside the ghetto, where they also suffered from brutal mistreatment. Ghettos of this kind in the old Soviet borders lasted no longer than a few weeks or months (except for the ghetto at M I N S K ). The Jews were taken from the ghetto and shot to death at a nearby site, as described above. 4. The fourth method was to crowd the Jews into a makeshift concentration camp, in the buildings of an old factory or in an open field. The area was fenced in and put under guard. Here too, the Jews had to wear a distinctive sign. From time to time they were removed from the camp, by the thousands, and taken to slaughter sites nearby to be killed.

Resistance There was no organized physical resistance by the Jews in the Soviet Union, during or after the extermination campaign. However, in many instances individual Jews resisted spontaneously, with acts ranging from spitting in a German’s face to snatching his gun away and killing him. The only effective resistance option available to Jews was to join the forest-based partisan units (see PARTISANS ). The forests and other remote areas became rallying points for Soviet army officers and political commissars whose units had disintegrated, for a few Communist officials who had not managed to escape, and for Jews who had fled from German harassment and murder in their villages. The forests also became places of refuge for entire Jewish refugee families. The emergence of partisan groups was a spontaneous phenomenon and it was natural for some of the units to be made up largely of Jewish fighters. As these Jewish partisan groups made contact with the Soviet partisan organization, many of the units lost their distinctly Jewish character, and the Jewish officers were replaced by non-Jews.

Jews in the Soviet Army The Jews who lived under the Soviets during the H O L O CAU S T included roughly 2 million civilians and hundreds of thousands, mostly men, who served in the Red Army. Most men, Jew and non-Jew alike, were drafted into the Soviet army. Thousands more Jews volunteered for military service, and the percentage of Jews in the army was higher than their percentage in the overall population. Jews served in every branch of the service. Since they were, on the average, more educated, relatively more served in the specialized branches, such as the air force, the armored

24

SPECIAL COMMANDO

corps, the engineering corps, the artillery, and the medical corps. Many Jews served as generals in senior command positions of the Soviet army. Jewish soldiers fought willingly in the Soviet army, inspired by devotion to the country and a desire to avenge, as best they could, the murder of their families and their people.

After the War Beginning in 1944, and even earlier, when most of the occupied areas of the Soviet Union were liberated, the Jews began to return to villages and cities. Their Jewish communities had been destroyed and the territories that had been under German control had become huge burial grounds for Jews. Every city and town had its mass graves. From non-Jews and the few Jewish survivors, the returning Jews learned that many of their neighbors had helped the Germans, either directly, or by seizing Jewish property. Many who had collaborated with the Germans were now reinstated in the Soviet administration. Jewish appeals to the authorities to take action against the collaborators were unsuccessful. The apartments in which Jews had lived—those that the war had spared—were occupied, and many Jews had to resort to long and exhausting litigation to get them back. Despite the general shortage of experienced manpower, the authorities preferred not to reinstate Jews in some of the positions and posts they had held before the war. The many Jews who had fought and suffered on behalf of the Soviet Union, and who had endured severe persecution by the Germans, were now faced with renewed A N T I S E M I T I S M in the villages and cities they had once called home. In a single decade, from 1939 to 1948, the Jews of the Soviet Union underwent far-reaching change and upheaval. The Jewish population was diminished by half; the Jewish villages ceased to exist; the greater part of the Yiddish-speaking population was annihilated; the belief in the brotherhood of the Soviet peoples was shaken to the core; the possibility of assimilation with the general population was put in doubt; and popular antisemitism was again revived. The Holocaust has been a major factor in the reorientation of Soviet Jewry since 1948. The Holocaust and the rise of the state of Israel have played a crucial role in the awakening of Jewish religious and national consciousness among Soviet Jewry. Despite efforts by the government to disguise the Jewishness of the victims of the Nazis and their helpers, memory of those terrible years has not been erased.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Gitelman, Zvi, ed. Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. Pomerantz, Jack. Run East: Flight from the Holocaust. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997. Porter, Jack Nusan, ed. Jewish Partisans: A Documentary of Jewish Resistance in the Soviet Union During World War II. Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982. Zipperstein, Steven J. Imagining Russian Jewry: Memory, History, Identity. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999.

Special Commando Special Commando, or Sonderkommando, is a term that could refer to one of three groups of people:

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SPORRENBERG, JACOB

1. A German unit, mainly of the SS, gathered for special duties or assignments. The Special Commandos took part in the “F I NA L S O L U T I O N ” of the “Jewish question” in Europe. Along with the O P E R AT I O NA L S QUA D S (Einsatzgruppen) that operated in the occupied Soviet territories, there were about ten Special Commandos. One of them, first known as the Lange Kommando and later as Special Commando Bothmann, carried out the extermination operation at the C H E L⁄ M N O camp. The designation “Sonderkommando 1005” was given to the units whose task it was to obliterate the traces of mass slaughter by opening the burial pits and burning the corpses they contained (see A K T I O N (O P E R AT I O N ) 1005). 2. The designation of Special Commando was also given to units made up of Jewish prisoners, mainly those assigned to the death installations—the gas chambers and crematoria. Such Special Commandos worked at A U S C H W I T Z -Birkenau; they were themselves put to death and replaced every few months with new prisioners. One of these Special Commandos staged an uprising in the Birkenau camp in 1944. 3. There was also a Jewish Special Commando in the L⁄ Ó D Z´ ghetto. It dealt with criminal offenses and functioned as part of the J E W I S H G H E T T O P O L I C E (Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst).

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Fromer, Rebecca. The Holocaust Odyssey of Daniel Bennahmias, Sonderkommando. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993.

Good Evening Mr. Wallenberg [videorecording]. Orion Home Video, 1994. MacLean, French. The Cruel Hunters: SS-Sonderkommando Dirlewanger, Hitler’s Most Notorious Anti-partisan Unit. Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 1998.

Sporrenberg, Jacob (1902–1952)

Jacob Sporrenberg was an SS officer. He was born in Düsseldorf, G E R M A N Y , was raised Catholic, and studied at a vocational school. Sporrenberg volunteered for the border guard and for the army (the Reichswehr). In 1923 the French occupation authorities sentenced him to two years’ imprisonment on a charge of underground activity for the N A Z I PA RT Y in the Ruhr region, but he was released on bail. In 1925 Sporrenberg joined the Nazi party, in 1929 he joined the Sturmabteilung (Storm Troopers), and in 1930 the S S . He was a delegate to the Reichstag (parliament) in 1933. From 1933 to 1936 Sporrenberg was SS commander in the Schleswig-Holstein sector, and from 1936 to 1939, regional commander in East Prussia. Subsequently he occupied various posts in Wiesbaden and Königsberg. In 1940 he served in the SS Germany Brigade on the western front, where he was appointed Gruppenführer (lieutenant general). In August, 1941 he was sent to lead the struggle against the PA RT I S A N S in the east and was appointed SS and Police Leader in M I N S K , B E L O R U S S I A . Later he served in the Second Police Regiment in the fight against the partisans. In August 1943 Sporrenberg became SS and Police Leader in the L U B L I N district. That November he organized Aktion E R N T E F E S T (“Harvest Festival”), which resulted in the slaughter of 42,000 to 43,000 Jews interned in the camps of M A J DA N E K , T R AW N I K I , and Poniatowa.

26

SPRACHREGELUNG

After the German retreat from the Lublin area in July 1943, Sporrenberg was sent to organize the defense fortifications on the Vistula-Nida line in the Radom district. In November he was sent to Norway. On May 11, 1945, several days after the German surrender, Sporrenberg was arrested by the Allies. The British extradited him to P O L A N D , where he stood trial on a charge of collective punishment, imposition of a rule of terror by mass murders, and organization of Aktion “Erntefest.” Sporrenberg was sentenced to death and hanged.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bronowski, Alexander. They Were Few. New York: Peter Lang, 1992. Goldstein, Arthur. The Shoes of Majdanek. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1992.

Sprachregelung During the Nazi years, language was manipulated to serve the purposes of the regime. Idioms coined by the Nazis served as an official language and as a language of propaganda and camouflage. The term Sprachregelung ( “language regulation”) refers to this specific application of language. It was in this language that Joseph G O E B B E L S , the propaganda minister, communicated through the Nazi-controlled press. An example is the use of the word Gleichschaltung (coordination), which in actuality meant the elimination of political opponents and Nazi control of the German state agencies and public organizations. Sprachregelung was employed particularly in the implementation of anti-Jewish policy, and here it was designed to fill a variety of roles. Words and expressions with generally neutral or positive meanings were used to camouflage acts of terror and destruction. The intention was to hide the nature of those acts from the world and even from the German public, and also to mislead the Jews, who, failing to understand what awaited them, would take no preventive actions. Thus an apparently normal situation was created in which those who issued an order had an exact knowledge of its true content but were not obliged to call it by name. As acts of murder became routine and were explained and discussed in written reports, the use of Sprachregelung gradually decreased for a time. Hitler saw the need to issue a special order on July 11, 1943 instructing that official S S reports use only the term “F I NA L S O L U T I O N ” when discussing the resolution of the Jewish problem, and not the straightforward term “destruction.” The expression “Final Solution,” which was accepted as a term by all those dealing in the H O L O C AU S T , is one of the outstanding and typical examples of Sprachregelung. In many contexts the Nazis used the term “solution” or even “final solution” to note a way or means to overcome a difficulty. This was also true of the prefix “special” (sonder-), which designated exceptional cases or actions. The first to use the term “special treatment” (Sonderbehandlung) with regard to the Jews was apparently, and most ironically, the German president, Paul von Hindenburg. He asked Hitler not to apply the discriminatory laws of April 1933 to Jewish civil servants (and other civil servants considered undesirable by the Nazis) who had been wounded as soldiers in World War I or who had a family member wounded in that war—essentially requesting exemptions in cases where there was a “reason for special treatment.” However, in the language of the Nazis, “special treatment” meant execution. On more than one occasion, with overt cynicism, Nazi policies and practices

27

SS

were nominally based on (and presented as) acts undertaken for the common good. For instance, they justified shutting Jews in ghettos by explaining that this would prevent the spread of typhus; and they claimed that Jews were sent to forced-labor camps for “work education.” In fact, when they first rose to power in G E R M A N Y , the Nazis had declared that the C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S were set up for “reeducation.” D E P O RTAT I O N S and transfers were camouflaged by a number of special expressions. The word Abwanderung (“leaving [a place]”) originally indicated internal migration, as in a move of villagers to the town; in other words, it expressed free population movement. The Nazis used this word to indicate emigration of Jews and forced migration. The deportations of the Jews and Poles from the Warthegau to the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T were called Umsiedlung (“change of residence”). To indicate deportation, two expressions were used. Aussiedlung (“evacuation”) was supposed to arouse the delusion that the Jews deported to the EXTERMINATION CAMPS were being sent to a place of resettlement. In contrast, the term Abschiebung (“removal”) denoted that they were being removed from the place of their abode, without indicating the destination to which they were being sent. This term was for internal use only. The expression Verjudung (“Judaization”) was in common usage among many antisemites, for whom it indicated the destructive influence, as it were, of the Jews on the people among whom they lived. The counteraction was called “removal of the Jews” or “purification from Jews” (Entjudung). This term was used by the Nazis to indicate the removal of Jews from the German economy, and it appears in different combinations in the relevant legislation. In euphemistic language the ghetto was called the “Jewish residential area” (jüdischer Wohnbezirk), and deportation to the T H E R E S I E N S TA D T ghetto was described as “transfer of residence.” One of the most widely used words, and one also used by the Jews in the ghetto, was Aktion (“action”), meaning organized hostile action against the Jewish populace such as disturbances, arrests, property confiscations, deportations, and concentration in the ghetto, or for sending to extermination camps. In the use of such seemingly benign terms, Nazi acts of oppression and the annihilation of the Jews could be masked and hidden from immediate view of the world outside, as well as from the oppressed themselves.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Reuth, Ralf Georg. Goebbels. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993.

SS The SS (Schutzstaffel; Protection Squad) were Hitler’s bodyguard, N A Z I PA RT Y police, and, later, the most “racially pure” elite guard of the Third Reich as well as the main tool of Nazi terror and destruction.

Early History As Adolf H I T L E R ’ S personal bodyguard, recruited from the SA (Sturmabteilung; Storm Troopers) in March 1923, the SS was distinguished by a black cap with a death’s-head emblem, and later by their entirely black uniforms. The two dozen bodyguards participated in Hitler’s unsuccessful Beer-Hall Putsch of November 1923 in Munich, when he tried to overthrow the government. They were outlawed, as was the rest of the Nazi party, following the failed coup. When the party was legalized again at the end of 1924, Hitler reestablished the unit and created several

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SS

more such “commandos.” In contrast to the SA, which tended to consider itself a semi-independent, paramilitary mass organization, the SS and its new commandos were an exclusive elite, subject directly to Hitler’s authority.

Group of SS leaders at the headquarters of the Nazi Party in 1932.

In November 1926, the SA High Command was created, and in spite of numerous protests, it took over the SS headquarters. This move threatened the special status of the fledgling SS. On January 6, 1929, Heinrich H I M M L E R assumed control of the SS as the Reichsführer-SS (Reich Leader of the SS). Between 1929 and 1933, the SS grew and was entrusted with the security of party headquarters and the personal security of most of the party leaders, especially at Hitler’s public appearances. An embryonic secret intelligence, the S D (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service), was founded under the command of Reinhard H E Y D R I C H , as was the SS Race and Resettlement Main Office (RuSHA; Rasseund Siedlungs-Hauptamt), the bureau responsible for the racial purity of the SS and the eventual settlement of inhabitants of conquered eastern territories. SS officers had to prove their own and their wives’ “racial purity” back to the year 1700, and membership was conditional on “Aryan” appearance. Traditional symbols and pre-Christian myths were combined with an aura of fearlessness to create an SS mystique. This mystique was reflected in the wearing of the black uni-

Racial ideology and mythology was institutionalized in the SS. 29

SS

T

he state’s political police were unified as the Gestapo and

fully amalgamated with the SS in 1936. The Security Police (Sipo) was divided into the Gestapo, under Reinhard Heydrich, and the Criminal Police (Kripo) under Arthur Nebe. The Order Police (Orpo) was encompassed within the SS as a separate SS outfit. Heydrich encouraged bureaucratic competition between the Gestapo and SD, which led to everharsher police tactics and methods.

form, black cap, death’s-head emblem, death’s head “ring of honor,” and officer’s dagger bearing the SS motto, “Meine Ehre heisst Treue” (“Loyalty Is My Honor”). Later, pagan ceremonies were practiced and pilgrimages were made to ancient Teutonic “sacred sites.” The regional organization also bore traditional titles and was first divided into squads (Schar, Trupp), platoons (Sturm), companies (Sturmbann), and battalions (Standarte), which in late 1932 were put together into county SS sections under regional command. The regional commanders were directly responsible to Himmler and were often rotated to avoid grass-roots power-base building. In contrast to the vague and yet far-reaching goals of the SA, Himmler aimed after Hitler’s rise to power to gain control over the political police (G E S TA P O ) while establishing the C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S of the SS. The first model of that kind was D AC H AU , built early in March 1933. Himmler managed to maintain exclusive control over Dachau. By mid-1934 the SS took over all the political police and concentration camps. The Dachau commandant, Theodor E I C K E , was made inspector of the concentration camps and SS guard formations on July 4, 1934. Himmler maintained the concentration camp system separately as a totally SS branch under Eicke, in which guards were trained in a savage killer outfit called the SS D E AT H ’ S -H E A D U N I T S (Totenkopfverbände). This was the source of the militarized SS units later known as the Waffen-SS, who were trained for civil war duties, and later were transferred as SS frontline units fighting under the army’s operational control. Young officers schools were established to train and indoctrinate young cadets, some already the products of the Nazi youth movement, the H I T L E R Y O U T H (Hitlerjugend), as the new fighting and pitiless racial elite. Special SS police units, the O P E R AT I O NA L S QUA D S (Einsatzgruppen), were established to enter invaded territories. The regional SS was reorganized under Higher SS and Police Leaders, who acted as Himmler’s personal representatives in each military district from the outset of World War II. The plan was expanded to enforce the “Germanization” of the occupied territories. Special institutions were created in cooperation between Himmler’s personal office and the RuSHA. These included Lebensborn (Fountain of Life)—a system of SS stud farms that were the brainchild of Himmler’s program for the development of a pure Aryan race—and Ancestral Heritage (Ahnenerbe). The official functions of the latter were to adopt “suitable” children for childless SS families, to nurture “racially sound” pregnant women and their offspring, and to conduct “racial research” that eventually culminated in M E D I C A L E X P E R I M E N T S with the “racially inferior,” mainly Jews, in concentration camps. This was done in cooperation with the chief SS physician and his own bureaucracy, which also played a major role in the E U T H A NA S I A P R O G R A M .

The SS in World War II The war led to enormous growth in the SS as a whole and increased the murderous level of its activities. The cruel, inhuman regime of the SS was encouraged from the top down. Sipo commanders in the occupied territories competed with SS head offices to implement increasingly harsh official policies. The SS headquarters itself was reorganized in 1939, with the establishment of the R EICH S ECURITY M AIN O FFICE (RSHA; Reichssicherheitshauptamt), and again in 1942, when eleven main offices emerged. During the war, the Waffen-SS grew into Hitler’s personal multinational brigade. Himmler saw them as an assurance of SS domination in the Nazi postwar order. In 1941 the first implementation of the “Final Solution,” during the invasion of the S OVIET U NION , was carried out primarily by the Einsatzgruppen, which conducted

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SS DEATH’S-HEAD UNITS

mass killings by firing squads and, later, mobile gas vans (see G AS C HAMBERS /VANS ) as well. The men of the Einsatzgruppen had been recruited from the Gestapo and the SS and had undergone special training. Their operations were made possible by a formal agreement between the SS, represented by Heydrich, and the Wehrmacht High Command that was concluded in the spring of 1941, together with the final preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union. The SS was aided in the killings by various police units, Wehrmacht forces, and numerous local collaborators. In the occupied countries of western and southeastern Europe, the SS, in cooperation with the SD, Gestapo, local police, and local officials, organized the mass extermination of the Jews in camps in the east from 1942 to 1944. A special terminology (see S P R AC H R E G E L U N G ) was perfected to mislead the victims. The process of killing by gas in the E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S , as well as the camps’ structure and management, were organized and overseen by SS officers, most of whom had been trained by Eicke in Dachau. The SS E C O N O M I C -A D M I N I S T R AT I V E M A I N O F F I C E (Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt), later known as the WVHA, planned to use the concentration camps as sources of slave labor that would also serve the enterprises of the SS under Oswald P O H L . Since Pohl was entrusted at the same time with the factory-like destruction of the Jews in the extermination camps, his role, like this phase of SS policy, was inherently contradictory. Nonetheless, special procedures were invoked in the camps to select Jews for immediate mass killings or for slave labor (which usually resulted in death anyway). When Nazi Germany’s final collapse became inevitable, Himmler ordered the termination of the “Final Solution,” apparently hoping to use the remnants of European Jewry as trump cards in negotiations with the West against the Soviets. The SS in pointless marches drove the survivors of the now-evacuated camps outside the Reich to Germany. Many perished on these D E AT H M A R C H E S or died at the hands of the SS guards, until the latter fled from the approaching armies of the Allies.

Wehrmacht

Regular German armed forces.

T

o the very end, the SS remained the backbone of the Nazi regime.

It involved hundreds of thousands of Germans in its crimes: Gestapo policemen, uniformed police, who were used as firing-squad killers or helped carry out deportations, private firms, which supplied equipment to extermination camps and used SS forced labor, and Wehrmacht units, which provided the military framework of occupation and control necessary for the SS massacres.

In the charter of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, the SS was designated a criminal organization. Thus, everyone who participated in the SS was to be considered a war criminal subject to court action at Nuremberg and in other proceedings.

SEE ALSO NAZI PARTY; TRIALS OF THE WAR CRIMINALS. SUGGESTED RESOURCES MacDonald, C. A. The Killing of Reinhard Heydrich: The SS “Butcher of Prague.” New York: Da Capo Press, 1998. Rempel, Gerhard. Hitler’s Children: The Hitler Youth and the SS. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

The SS. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1989. Williamson, Gordon. The SS: Hitler’s Instrument of Terror. Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International, 1994.

SS Death’s-Head Units The SS Death’s-Head Units (SS-Totenkopfverbände) were units of the S S (Schutzstaffel) originally formed to guard C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S . The SS

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Death’s-Head Units developed from the Upper Bavarian Guard Troop of the General SS, the D A C H A U guard unit. They were developed starting in 1934 by Theodor E I C K E , the Inspector of Concentration Camps and Commander of SS Guard Formations. Eicke wanted the Death’s-Head Units to be an elite unit within the elite SS. In March 1935 the Dachau unit and the guard units of the concentration camps were reorganized into six units under Eicke: 1. Oberbayern (Upper Bavaria), at Dachau 2. Ostfriesland (East Friesland), at Esterwegen 3. Sturmbann Elbe (Elbe Company), at Lichtenburg 4. Sachsen (Saxony), at Sachsenburg 5. Brandenburg, at Oranienburg and Columbia Haus 6. Hansa, at Fehlsbüttel In September, 1935, Adolf H I T L E R publicly recognized the Death’s-Head Units, making the Reich assume the cost of their operation, and thereby allowing for their expansion. In March 1936, Heinrich H I M M L E R authorized an expansion from 1,800 to 3,500 men, and on March 29 the formations were officially designated as a separate SS unit named Totenkopfverbände, removed from the authority of the General SS, and given distinctive dark brown uniforms. Three SS-Totenkopfstandarten (SS Death’s-Head Regiments) were established: 1. Oberbayern (Upper Bavaria), at Dachau 2. Brandenburg, at S AC H S E N H AU S E N 3. Thüringen, at B U C H E N WA L D Following the Anschluss (annexation) of A U S T R I A in March 1938, a fourth regiment, Ostmark (Austria), was set up for the M AU T H AU S E N camp. On August 17, 1938, Hitler declared that in order to fulfill special domestic tasks of a political nature, the Death’s-Head Units, the SS Special Service Troops (reserve troops), and the SS Cadet Schools were to be armed, trained, and organized as military units, outside the structure of both the army and the police. In the event of mobilization, the Death’s-Head Units would be transferred to the Special Service Troops. By the outbreak of World War II the Death’s-Head Units and their reserves numbered some 24,000 men. Nine days after German forces invaded P O L A N D , the three original Death’s-Head Regiments, followed by some of the newer regiments, were sent. Acting with the cruelty they had been trained to use, they perpetrated acts of terror that would be repeated again and again throughout Nazi-controlled Europe. On August 15, 1940, Himmler transferred the Death’s-Head Units that had been designated as reserves for the Totenkopfdivision to the Command Office of the Waffen-SS. In April 1941, in the course of preparing for the campaign against the S O V I E T U N I O N , the remaining Totenkopfverbände officially became part of the Waffen-SS, completing their transition into the German army and closing the chapter of the autonomous Totenkopfverbände, or Death’sHead Units. In this new context the Death’s-Head Units and their reputation for brutality continued to expand. The number of men in the Death’s-Head Units grew constantly; according to official SS figures, there were 40,000 men and women in its units on January 15, 1945, guarding 714,211 camp inmates.

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“This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions”

Concise History of the Death’s-Head Units The following summary outlines the development of the Totenkopfverbände from 1934 to 1941: July 1934. Theodor E I C K E institutes the Death’s Head (Totenkopf) insignia for the Upper Bavarian Guard Troop of the General SS in Dachau. March 1935. Under Eicke the Guard Troop is reorganized into six units, all remaining under the General SS. The units are posted as guards at concentration camps. March 1936. The six units under Eicke are officially designated as SSTotenkopfverbände, and they are independent of the General SS. September 1937. Still under Eicke, the Totenkopfverbände are reorganized into three Standarten (regiments). August 1938. The Totenkopfverbände begin their expansion. By September 1939, eight new regiments are established and the number of men, including reserves, reaches 24,000. October 1939. (1) Eicke establishes and commands the Totenkopfdivision, a part of the new Waffen-SS. The division includes the original three Totenkopf Standarten. (2) SS-Oberführer Alfred Schweden takes command of the remaining Totenkopfverbände. There is a flow of men between the Totenkopfverbände and the Totenkopfdivision. April 1941. The Totenkopfverbände are completely incorporated into the Waffen-SS and lose their autonomy. Near the end of the war, they number about 40,000.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Hohne, Heinz. The Order of the Death’s Head; the Story of Hitler’s S.S. New York: CowardMcCann, 1970.

The SS. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1989. Sydnor, Charles W. Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death’s Head Division, 1933-1945. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.

33

STAHLECKER, FRANZ WALTER

Williamson, Gordon. The SS: Hitler’s Instrument of Terror. Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International, 1994.

Stahlecker, Franz Walter (1900–1942)

Reichskommissariat Ostland

The civil (non-military) administration of occupied Soviet territories of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Belorussia which were among the easternmost areas held under Nazi control.

Franz Walter Stahlecker was an S S officer who served as commander of an Operational Squad (see O P E R AT I O N A L S Q UA D S ). Born in Sternenfels, Stahlecker joined the N A Z I PA R T Y in 1932, served in the police, and in 1934 was appointed police chief of the Württemberg region. He was then assigned to the S D (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service) main office, and in 1938 became the SD chief of the Danube district (V I E N NA ), retaining this post even when he became the Higher SS and Police Leader of the Protectorate of B O H E M I A A N D M O R AV I A . In 1940 Stahlecker was sent to Norway, where he held the same position, and was promoted to SS-Oberführer (brigadier general). In June 1941 he became a Brigadeführer (major general) in the SS and the police force, and was appointed the commanding officer of Einsatzgruppe (Operational Squad) A, which operated in the Northern Command, including the Baltic states and the area west of Leningrad, killing Jews and other Soviet nationals. At the end of November 1941, Stahlecker was also made Higher SS and Police Leader of Reichskommissariat Ostland . He was killed on March 23, 1942, in a clash with Soviet PA RT I S A N S .

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Gitelman, Zvi, ed. Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

Stangl, Franz (1908–1971)

Franz Stangl was a Nazi police officer. He was born in Altmünster, A U S T R I A , the son of a former soldier who brutalized him throughout his childhood. Initially a master weaver, Stangl joined the Austrian police in 1931. His talent for organization soon became evident, and he was shortly appointed criminal investigation officer in the political division, which at that time was charged with investigating antigovernment activities. In November 1940, Stangl became police superintendent of the Euthanasia Institute at the Hartheim castle, near Linz. In March 1942 he became commandant of the S O B I B Ó R extermination camp in P O L A N D , and from early September 1942 to August 1943 he was the commandant of T R E B L I N K A . In less than a year there, he supervised the mass killing of at least 900,000 Jews. In September 1943, after the inmates’ revolt in Treblinka, Stangl and most of his staff were transferred to Trieste. There, aside from a brief stint at the San Sabba concentration camp, he was largely employed in organizing antipartisan measures for Odilo G L O B O C N I K , the Higher SS and Police Leader of the Adriatic seaboard area. Franz Stangl, sitting in court at witness stand.

34

At the end of the war Stangl made his way back to Austria, where he was eventually interned by the Americans for belonging to the SS, although they knew noth-

STARACHOWICE

ing of his association with the extermination program. In the late summer of 1947 the Austrians, while investigating the E U T H A NA S I A P R O G R A M at the Hartheim castle, learned of Stangl’s presence in an American prisoner-of-war camp, and he was transferred to an open civilian prison in Linz. In May 1948, about to be charged, he escaped and made his way to Rome. With assistance from Bishop Alois Hudal, rector of Santa Maria del Anima, Stangl obtained a Red Cross pass, money, and a job as an engineer in Damascus, Syria, where his family soon joined him. In 1951 the family moved on to Brazil, where, registering under their own names at the Austrian consulate, they were soon established in the city of São Bernardo do Campo, near São Paulo. There, Stangl worked at the Volkswagen factory. Sixteen years later, Stangl’s presence in Brazil became known. He was arrested on February 28, 1967, and extradited to G E R M A N Y that June. His trial in Düsseldorf lasted one year; in December 1970 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for joint responsibility in the murder of 900,000 people during his tenure as commandant of Treblinka. He died in prison on June 28, 1971.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Arad, Yitzhak. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. Sereny, Gitta. Into That Darkness. New York: Vintage Books, 1983.

Starachowice Starachowice was a labor camp in P O L A N D . Before World War II, Starachowice, a town in the K I E L C E subdistrict of Poland, was the site of armament factories and an iron-ore mine. Under the German occupation of Poland, these enterprises were renamed the Hermann Göring Works (Hermann Göring Werke). Jews were sent there for F O R C E D L A B O R . Starachowice was occupied on September 9, 1939, soon after G E R M A N Y ’s invasion of Poland. Jewish males between ages 17 and 60 were put to work in the town’s factories for very little pay, plus a bowl of soup during working hours. In February 1941 an “open” ghetto was established in Starachowice. Jews living in the area were sent there, as well as Jews from Pl⁄ock and L⁄ Ó D Z´ . On October 27, 1941, the Starachowice ghetto was liquidated. Some 200 Jews were shot to death on the spot. The physically fit were moved to a nearby camp that had been prepared in advance (Julag I—the name came from the German word Judenlager, meaning “Jewish camp”). The rest were deported to T R E B L I N K A , an E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P . The Jews working in the armament factories were also moved to Julag I. Some 8,000 Jews passed through Starachowice camp. Records show that 9 percent of them died in typhus epidemics or were shot to death following a selection. The camp population averaged 5,000; from time to time the camp was replenished with prisoners from M A J DA N E K , P L⁄ A S Z Ó W , and other places. In the summer of 1943, the prisoners employed in the factories were moved to another camp, Julag II. Five thousand prisoners passed through Julag II, and 7 percent of them died of typhus or were murdered outright. The average number of prisoners in Julag II was 3,000.

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STATE DEPARTMENT

In July 1944, steps were taken to liquidate Starachowice camp. When the prisoners became aware of what was happening, they began destroying the camp’s installations and fence and tried to escape. The Ukrainians guarding the camp opened fire and threw hand grenades at the desperate inmates, killing 300 of them on the spot. Those who escaped were captured and murdered. The rest of the camp’s prisoners—1,500 of them—were deported to A U S C H W I T Z -Birkenau.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Browning, Christopher R. Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

STATE DEPARTMENT. SEE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE. STERILIZATION. SEE EUTHANASIA PROGRAM; MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS. St. Louis The St. Louis was a German ship carrying Jewish refugees whose entry into Cuba was denied because their landing permits to Havana were invalidated by the Cuban government. Owned by the Hamburg-America Line, the St. Louis departed from Hamburg for Cuba on May 13, 1939. It carried 936 passengers, of whom 930 were Jews carrying landing certificates for Havana. Arranged by the Cuban director general of immigration, Manuel Benitez González, these certificates were to replace the usual immigration visas. According to Cuban law, such certificates required no fee. However, González sold them for personal gain, for as much as $160.00. Cuban government officials became jealous of González’s illicit wealth. This jealousy, combined with local sentiment against the influx of additional Jewish refugees and the government’s profascist leanings, led the Cuban government to invalidate the landing certificates and to curtail the authority of the director general (May 5, 1939). The government decreed that the certificates would be honored only until May 6. Apparently, both the Hamburg-America Line and its passengers were aware of the decree, but they believed that the certificates, which were bought well before the decree, would be honored. Only 22 of the Jewish refugee passengers actually met Cuba’s new visa requirements. When the St. Louis reached Havana on May 27, its passengers were denied entry. The American Jewish J O I N T D I S T R I B U T I O N C O M M I T T E E (JDC) dispatched Lawrence Berenson to Havana to negotiate the disembarkation of the refugees. Berenson arrived in Havana on May 30. Cuban president Federico Laredo Bru insisted that the ship leave the Havana harbor: he claimed that because the shipping line and the JDC had both known in advance that the certificates were invalid, they should be taught a lesson about respect for Cuban law. The St. Louis left Havana on June 2. The ship’s captain, Gustav Schroeder, steered the St. Louis in circles in the areas off Florida and Cuba while the negotiations continued. American immigration officials announced that the refugees would not be allowed to enter the U N I T E D S TAT E S . However, an agreement was reached on June 5 that allowed them to land in Cuba for a $453,000 bond ($500.00 per refugee), to be deposited by the following day. The JDC could not meet the deadline, and the

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ship sailed for Europe on June 6. Twenty-nine passengers had been permitted to land, of whom twenty-two were Jews with valid Cuban visas. Max Loewe, a Jew without a valid visa, was hospitalized after a suicide attempt. Six of those permitted to land were not Jewish.

Jewish refugees, aboard the SS St. Louis, off the shore of Havana, Cuba, June 3, 1939.

While the St. Louis was en route to Europe, four countries—G R E AT B R I TA I N , B E L G I U M , F R A N C E , and the N E T H E R L A N D S —agreed to take in the refugees. After the ship reached Antwerp on June 17, 287 of the refugees entered Britain, 214 entered Belgium, 224 entered France, and 181 entered the Netherlands. Most of the passengers who received temporary refuge in European countries were later victims of the “F I NA L S O L U T I O N ”.

SEE ALSO ALIYA BET; REFUGEES, 1933–1945. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bachrach, Susan D. Tell Them We Remember: The Story of the Holocaust. Boston: Little, Brown, 1994. Thomas, Gordon. Voyage of the Damned. New York: Stein and Day, 1974.

Streicher, Julius (1885–1946)

Julius Streicher was a Nazi politician whose specialty was inciting antisemitic sentiment. Born in Augsburg, Bavaria, Streicher taught elementary school and fought in World War I. He helped to found the German Socialist Party in 1919;

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S T R O O P, J Ü R G E N

Reichstag

German Parliament.

shortly thereafter he merged it with the N A Z I PA R T Y . He held several political posts, including Gauleiter (district leader) of Franconia (1928–1940); member of the Bavarian provincial legislature (1924–1932); and member of the Reichstag , beginning in 1932. He was also a general in the SA (Sturmabteilung; Storm Troopers). One of the most rabid anti-semites in the Nazi party, Streicher founded Der Stürmer (The Attacker) in Nuremberg in 1923, becoming its editor and, as of 1935, its owner as well. He gave the newspaper its special antisemitic-pornographic character. It was crude and aggressive, with simple language that made it easy to comprehend. Antisemitic cartoons by Philipp Rupprecht (“Fips”) featured caricatures of Jews, designed to make them look ugly and revolting. Articles accused Jews of terrible crimes and claimed there was an international “Jewish conspiracy.” At times, the paper was so extreme that even the Nazi authorities disassociated themselves from it and closed it down. The papers were heavily advertised in public places, such as bus stops, busy streets, parks, and factory canteens. After 1933, nine special editions were published, often timed to appear at the annual Nuremberg rally. During the early 1930s, Streicher urged municipalities in Franconia to ban Jews from restaurants and cafes and even to establish Jewish ghettos. After he was appointed to the Central Defense Committee against Jewish Atrocity and Boycott Propaganda in 1933, he helped to organize the April 1 economic boycott of Jewish businesses (see B OY C OT T, A N T I -J E W I S H ). He helped initiate and write the N U R E M B E R G L A W S . As early as 1938, in an article entitled “War against the World Enemy,” he called for the total destruction of the Jewish people. In March 1940 Streicher was suspended from his post as Gauleiter of Franconia, after the supreme court of the Nazi party investigated him for bribery. Even so, Streicher remained one of the leading proponents of militant A N T I S E M I T I S M . Circulation of Der Stürmer dropped sharply after 1940, owing partly to wartime paper shortages but mainly because Jews had disappeared from everyday life in Germany. The final issue appeared on February 1, 1945, denouncing the invading Allies as tools of the international Jewish conspiracy.

Julius Streicher.

When the war ended, Streicher tried to hide out, disguised as a housepainter, but he was recognized and American soldiers arrested him on May 23, 1945. He was among the major Nazi criminals tried by an International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. The court said, “For twenty-five years [Streicher] incited to hatred of the Jews, in speeches and in writing, and became widely known as the ‘Number 1 enemy of the Jews.’” The tribunal sentenced Streicher to death; he was executed by hanging, on October 16, 1946.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bytwerk, Randall L. Julius Streicher. New York: Stein and Day, 1983. Dutch, Oswald. Hitler’s 12 Apostles. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1969. Showalter, Dennis E. Little Man, What Now? Der Stürmer in the Weimar Republic. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1982.

Stroop, Jürgen (1895–1951)

Jürgen Stroop was the SS and police chief who crushed the W A R S AW G H E T TO U P R I S I N G and destroyed the W A R S A W ghetto. Josef Stroop (he changed his first name to the more “Aryan”-sounding Jürgen in 1941) was born in Detmold, in cen-

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S T R O O P, J Ü R G E N

The front page of an issue of Julius Streicher’s infamous Der Stürmer shows the blood of innocent Germany pouring into the platters of the Jews.

tral G E R M A N Y , into the family of a Catholic policeman from the lower middle class. Educated in a nationalist and militarist spirit, he volunteered for the army in World War I, was wounded three times, and in 1918 was promoted to the rank of captain. After the war, Stroop was employed in the Detmold municipal administration. In 1932 he joined the N A Z I PA R T Y and the SS, attracted by both the nationalist views and the uniforms. He quickly rose in the ranks of the SS and by 1939 was an SSOberführer (brigadier general) and commander of a police unit. Upon the outbreak of war between Germany and the S OV I E T U N I O N in June 1941, Stroop was sent to the front at his own request. After being wounded, he was transferred to police functions in the occupied Soviet territories, where he specialized in persecuting the population and harassing local PA R T I S A N S . On April 17, 1943, on the eve of the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, he was summoned by the Higher SS and Police leader of the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T , Friedrich Wilhelm K R Ü G E R . The SS and police chiefs apparently rushed Stroop to Warsaw, doubting the ability of the local police commander, Ferdinand Sammern-Frankenegg, to

39

S T R O O P, J Ü R G E N

“Image not available for copyright reasons”

carry out the liquidation of the ghetto. Sammern-Frankenegg’s helplessness became apparent shortly after the liquidation began; during the outbreak of the ghetto uprising on April 19, 1943. Stroop assumed command. Stroop conducted the action against the insurgent ghetto as a military campaign; his methods consisted of unrestrained and indiscriminate killing and destruction. He had under his command about 2,000 men from different units, equipped like frontline troops. Stroop sent daily reports on the campaign in the ghetto to K R A K Ó W , the capital of the Generalgouvernement. In his concluding report at the end of the campaign, which he called the “Great Operation”(Grossaktion), he wrote: After the first days it was clear that the Jews would not think of being deported of their own free will, but had definitely decided to defend themselves in all possible ways and with the arms in their possession.… The number of Jews taken from their homes in the first days and captured was relatively small. The Jews were apparently hiding in the sewers and in specially prepared bunkers.… Twenty- to thirty-member combat units made up of Jewish youths eighteen to twenty-five years old, with a certain number of women, spread the revolt and renewed it periodically. These combat units had been ordered to defend themselves with arms to the end, and when necessary to commit suicide rather than be taken alive.… In this armed revolt there were women in the combat units, armed like men, some of them members of the He-Haluts movement. The women often fired from guns in both hands.… The Jewish opposition and rebels could be broken only by the energetic and constant use of strike forces day and night. On April 23, 1943, the order was given by the SS-Reichsführer [Heinrich

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S T U C K A R T, W I L H E L M

H I M M L E R ], through Wilhelm Krüger, to effect the evacuation of the Warsaw ghetto with the greatest rigor and unrelenting diligence.… The Great Operation terminated on May 16, 1943, at 8:15 p.m., with the blowing up of the Warsaw synagogue. There is no longer any activity in the former Jewish residential quarter … all the buildings and everything else have been destroyed; only the Dzielna [Pawiak] security prison was spared. In his last daily report, dated April 16, Stroop reported that out of 56,065 Jews caught, 13,929 were exterminated and about 5,000 to 6,000 were killed in the shelling and burning. After putting down the uprising, Stroop continued to serve as SS and Police Leader in the Warsaw district. In September 1943, he was appointed Higher SS and Police Leader in Greece, with promotion to the rank of SS-Gruppenführer. That November, Stroop was transferred to serve in the same capacity in the Twelfth Army District in the Reich, which included the areas of Wiesbaden, Darmstadt, and Luxembourg. He remained in this post until the end of the war.

S

troop was held in prison in Warsaw with Kazimierz Moczarski, a

member of the Polish underground Home Army (Armia Krajowa). Their lengthy conversations were later the subject of Moczarski’s book Gespräche

mit dem Henker (Conversations with an Executioner).

Soon after the war’s end, Stroop was discovered attempting to change his identity, in the Wiesbaden area, which was in the hands of the United States army. When military officials searched his home, they found a meticulously organized album, containing his reports from the Warsaw ghetto campaign and a series of photographs taken by the Germans during the uprising. In January 1947 Stroop was tried by the American military court in D AC H AU (Trial No. 12-3188, United States v. Stroop) and charged with responsibility for war crimes perpetrated in the Twelfth Army District. Of the 22 people accused in this trial, which concluded in March, 13 were sentenced to death, including Stroop. The verdict was not carried out, and Stroop was extradited to Poland as a war criminal wanted in the Polish People’s Republic. The prosecution presented the photographs, together with parts of Stroop’s reports, at the N U R E M B E R G T R I A L of the principal Nazi criminals. This constituted one of the most shocking and condemning documents in the entire trial. During his interrogation in a Polish prison, Stroop provided clarifications and supplementary information to the reports he had written during the Warsaw ghetto uprising in April and May 1943. In July 1951 Stroop was tried at the Warsaw district court. He was executed by hanging that September in Warsaw.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Landau, Elaine. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. New York: Macmillan, 1992. Moczarski, Kazimierz. Conversations with an Executioner. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall, 1981. Stroop, Jurgen. The Stroop Report: The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw Is No More! New York: Pantheon Books, 1979.

STRUTHOF. SEE NATZWEILER-STRUTHOF. Stuckart, Wilhelm (1902–1953)

A Nazi politician and jurist, Wilhelm S T U C K A R T was responsible for the drafting of the N U R E M B E R G L A W S and their subsequent implementation orders.

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STUTTHOF

Freikorps

Paramilitary group formed after Germany’s defeat in World War I.

Stuckart was born in Wiesbaden and studied law in Frankfurt am Main and Munich. He joined a Freikorps group in the aftermath of World War I and was twice imprisoned by the French for his oppositionist activities. Already a rightwing extremist, Stuckart joined the N A Z I PA R T Y in 1922, became its legal adviser in 1926, and a judge in 1930. He had to resign in 1932 because of his political affiliations, but his career revived when the Nazis seized power in January 1933. He became, successively, state secretary in the Prussian Ministry of Culture, Education, and Church Affairs (June 1933), a member of the Prussian State Council (September 1933), and secretary of state in the Reich Ministry of the Interior (March 1935). Stuckart headed the department for constitutional and legislative matters, and in this capacity was instrumental in helping to draft the Nuremberg Laws (1935). He joined the SS in 1936. Together with Hans Globke, he edited a commentary on German racial legislation in 1936; he also published a number of works on Nazi legal theory. In 1942 he participated in the W A N N S E E C O N F E R E N C E , at which he warmly endorsed plans for the “F I NA L S O L U T I O N ”, the compulsory sterilization of all “non-Aryans,” and the dissolution of mixed marriages. In racial matters Stuckart was even more extreme than Reinhard H E Y D R I C H . Arrested in 1945, Stuckart was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. He claimed to be ignorant of the E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S . He was released in 1949 and died near Hannover in an automobile accident that was rumored to have been the work of a group taking revenge on Nazi war criminals.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Newman, Amy. The Nuremberg Laws: Institutionalized Anti-semitism. San Diego, CA: Lucent Books, 1999. Noakes, Jeremy, and Geoffrey Pridham. Documents on Nazism 1919–1945. New York: Viking Press, 1974. “The Nuremberg Laws.” American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. [Online] http://www. us-israel.org/jsource/Holocaust/nurlaws.html (accessed on September 11, 2000).

Stutthof Stutthof was a concentration camp 22 miles (36 kilometers) east of Danzig (Gdan´sk), at the mouth of the Vistula River. It was first designated as a “camp for civilian war prisoners” and officially became a concentration camp on January 8, 1942. The camp remained in existence from September 2, 1939, to May 9, 1945. About 115,000 prisoners passed through Stutthof; of these, 65,000 perished and 22,000 were moved to other C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S . In the early period of its existence, several thousand prisoners were released from Stutthof. At the end of the war a few hundred survivors were set free when Stutthof and its satellite camps were liberated by Soviet and Polish forces. Stutthof had several dozen satellite camps, spread over what is now northern P O L A N D and the Kaliningrad district of Russia. The largest of the satellite camps were at Thorn and Elbing; each had 5,000 Jewish women prisoners. The camp staff consisted of S S men and a group of Ukrainian auxiliary police (see U K R A I N I A N M I L I TA R Y P O L I C E ). The total number of SS men stationed at Stutthof during the

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STUTTHOF

“This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions”

years of its existence was 3,000. Initially, the prison population was made up of Poles from Danzig and Pomerania; later, Poles from all parts of northern Poland and from W A R S AW joined them. The camp also contained a considerable number of Soviet prisoners, as well as large groups of Norwegians, Danes, and others. In the early stage the number of Jewish prisoners was quite small. At first, Stutthof was in effect an “extermination” camp because the hard labor and harsh conditions caused the death of many prisoners. In 1943 conditions improved slightly, as far as the non-Jewish prisoners were concerned. The prisoners were put to work in various plants and arms factories. They were accommodated, at the beginning, in the camp’s old wooden barracks. In 1943 concrete barracks were put up in the new camp. Relatively few prisoners attempted to escape from Stutthof. Executions took place quite frequently; the victims were mostly activists in the resistance movement. In 1944 large transports of Jews, mostly women, were brought to the camp from the Baltic countries and A U S C H W I T Z . They were put through a Selektion and some were sent to the camp’s gas chambers (see G A S C H A M B E R S /V A N S ). In January 1945 the prisoners in most of the satellite camps and the main camp itself were evacuated westward toward the vicinity of Le˛ bork, in dreadful winter conditions. Tens of thousands perished in these D E AT H M A R C H E S . Some groups of prisoners were evacuated by sea in small boats; many of these prisoners drowned. Stutthof was liberated on May 9, 1945.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Birger, Trudi. A Daughter’s Gift of Love: A Holocaust Memoir. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1992. Rabinovici, Schoschana. Thanks to My Mother. New York: Puffin Books, 2000. Yla, Stasys. A Priest in Stutthof; Human Experiences in the World of the Subhuman. New York: Manyland Books, 1971.

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TWELVE-YEAR-OLD AT STUTTHOF These thoughts and memories were recorded soon after the liberation of Stutthof by Werner Galnik, a young boy who survived the H O L O CAU S T , but lost most of his family. On September 25, 1944, when the Red Army was not far from Riga, the Germans sent us Jews to the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig.… Everything was taken away from us at Stutthof. We were allowed only the prison clothes we had on our backs. We had to come to assembly and be counted. Then we were shown our sleeping quarters. Four people had to sleep on a cot six feet long and 20 inches wide. I was here only with my brother. My mother was in the women’s camp, and I was in the men’s camp. I could see my mother only through a fence. When I got a piece of bread for a present because I was small, I would carefully throw a piece of bread to my mother over the barbed wire. When a woman guard saw it, my mother would be hit with a belt. Once, a woman guard saw that I gave my mother a little piece of bread. My mother was terribly punished. I begged them not to hit my mother, but they hit her even more.… [When the Russians came].…I was very happy. I became a free person. I ran back and cried to the Jews, “Come, come, the Russians are here, we are free people.” .…Now I would like to have my parents, and I would like to live again like we lived before with my parents. —WERNER GALNIK, RECORDED AT RIGA, AUGUST 26, 1945

Children in the Holocaust and World War II: Their Secret Diaries, Laurel Holliday, editor (New York: Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster) 1995, pp. 61–65.

SUBSEQUENT NUREMBERG PROCEEDINGS. THE

SEE TRIALS OF

WAR CRIMINALS.

Sugihara, Sempo (1900–1986)

Sugihara was a Japanese consul general in K OV N O , Lithuania, who actively assisted Jewish refugees in 1940. In early August of that year, three weeks before the Soviet authorities intended to remove all foreign consular representatives from

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Kovno, Sugihara was approached by Dr. Zorah Warhaftig, a representative of the Jewish Agency Palestine Office in Lithuania. Warhaftig asked Sugihara to grant Japanese transit visas to Polish Jewish refugees stranded in Kovno as a means for them to obtain Soviet visas. Warhaftig outlined a plan to Sugihara: the refugees would travel to the Dutch-controlled island of Curaçao in the Caribbean, which did not require an entry permit; the refugees would get to the island by way of the USSR and Japan. The Soviets made their approval of this plan contingent on whether the refugees obtained transit visas from Japan. Though his government rejected the proposal, Sugihara decided to grant visas to any Jewish refugees who requested them. Scheduled to leave Kovno on August 31, Sugihara devoted most of his time in the weeks before his departure to granting visas. Many rabbinical students, such as those of the famed Mir academy, took this opportunity to leave Lithuania. After spending time in China and other countries, they eventually reached the United States and Israel. It appears that at least 1,600 visas were issued (Sugihara estimated the figure at some 3,500). At the end of the year, Sugihara was reassigned to other Japanese diplomatic posts in Europe. Upon his return to Tokyo in 1947, he was asked to submit his resignation for his insubordination seven years earlier. In 1984, Yad Vashem awarded him the title of “R I G H T E O U S A M O N G T H E N AT I O N S ”.

Sempo Sugihara.

Years later, while recalling the dramatic and tense days of August, 1940, Sugihara explained his predicament: “I really had a hard time, and was unable to sleep for two nights. I thought as follows: ‘I can issue transit visas … by virtue of my authority as consul. I cannot allow these people to die, people who had come to me for help with death staring them in the eyes. Whatever punishment may be imposed upon me, I know I should follow my conscience’” (Ryusuke Kajiyama, in Sankei Shinbun Yukan Tokuho, January 24, 1985).

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Gold, Alison Leslie. A Special Fate: Chiune Sugihara, Hero of the Holocaust. New York: Scholastic Press, 2000. Lyman, Darryl. Holocaust Rescuers: Ten Stories of Courage. Springfield, NJ: Enslow, 1999.

Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story [sound recording]. Live Oak Media, 2000. Sakamoto, Pamela Rotner. Japanese Diplomats and Jewish Refugees: A World War II Dilemma. New York: Praeger, 1998.

Survivors, Psychology of The H O L O C AU S T remains a trauma for all mankind and a monstrous enigma which severely challenges optimistic views of mankind. Research in psychology, sociology, and psychiatry has not been able to fully explain how or why the idea of systematically exterminating human beings made its appearance in the twentieth century. Nonetheless, scientists who have studied the psychology of survivors of the Holocaust, with all its trauma, note that this appalling episode in human history also illustrates the victory of life over death and destruction, as shown by research on later effects among survivors and their families in Europe, Israel, and the U N I T E D S TAT E S . Early ideas about the psychology of survivors were based on early observations of injured survivors. But in order to comprehend the full impact of the Holocaust,

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“This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions”

one must observe survivors in relation to their families, not just as individuals. In addition, one must consider the diverse experiences of survivors both during and after the Holocaust. Nazi R AC I S M and persecution affected both individuals and the Jewish community, but also the specific culture that was a part of each individual. Because the traumatization was both individual and collective, most individuals made great efforts to create a “new family” to replace the nuclear family they had lost. Small groups of friends gathered during the years of the Holocaust, sharing all basic necessities. Through their common experiences—shared stories about the past, fervent hopes for the future, and joint prayers—as well as through creative expression

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in poetry, art, and diary records that reveal continued aspirations of hope and love, victims sought to resist dehumanization and find support. Some of the defenses were traditional, including black humor or sharp irony directed at the victims themselves and at the aggressor; identification with martyrs of the past; identification with religious or political ideologies; the formation of mutually supportive systems with a special character; and the creation of fantasy. Imagination was an important way to escape from the frustrations of reality, and fantasies also allowed the self-image to transform itself from victim to hero. Examining these elements helps one to understand the survivors. Studies of Jewish survivors reveal some common features and similar psychophysiological patterns in their responses to the Holocaust. They often experienced several phases of psychosocial response, including attempts to actively master the traumatic situation, then, finally, passive compliance with the persecutors. These phases may be understood as trial periods, in which victims tried to adapt and cope with the tensions and dangers they faced.

C

learly, a uniform picture that depicts Holocaust survivors as

having suffered from a static concentration camp syndrome (as it was described from 1945–1955), is not valid. The descriptions of the survivors’ syndrome in the late 1950s and 1960s created a new means of diagnosis in psychology and the behavioral sciences and served as a model in examining the results of catastrophic stress situations.

Later research showed that the adaptation and coping mechanisms of survivors were influenced by their childhood experiences, developmental histories, family structures, and emotional family bonds. Behavioral scientists have asked specific questions in their studies: What was the duration of the trauma? During the Holocaust was the victim alone or with family and friends? Was he in a camp or in hiding? Did he use false “Aryan” papers? Was he a witness to mass murder in the ghetto or the camp? What were his support systems—family and friends—and what social bonds did he have? Studies show that those who were able to actively resist the oppressor, whether in the underground or among the PA R T I S A N S , had vastly different experiences than the survivors of E X T E R M I N A TION CAMPS. Survivors faced many difficulties in re-entering society after the war. Often, they aroused ambivalent feelings of fear, avoidance, guilt, pity, and anxiety in others. However, it seems that most survivors managed to rejoin the paths their lives might have taken prior to the Holocaust. This is especially true for those who were adolescents or young adults during the Holocaust.

Survivors of Ghettos and Camps The Jews arrested and brought to C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S during World War II were under sentence of death, whether they were murdered immediately after their arrival or were kept alive to work. Their chances of surviving the war were minimal. Personal qualities, qualifications, and attitudes meant nothing. Jewish prisoners could hardly avoid feeling constantly threatened by the brutal treatment that was their fate. After spending months or years in ghettos, with continuous persecution and arbitrary selections, many Jews developed chronic insecurity and anxiety; others felt apathy and hopelessness. This mental state was complicated by overcrowding, infectious diseases, lack of facilities for basic hygiene, and continuous starvation. The extreme brutality used to transport Jews to camps augmented the helplessness and confusion felt by prisoners. The fear of death was very real. People could see that the camp was the last stop in the prisoner’s life; the farewells that took place on the train ramps were forever. The sentence of death by labor might take longer than the gas chamber, but it was equally ominous.

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Many survivors described themselves as incapable of living life fully, often barely able to perform basic tasks.

Indescribable living conditions, filth and lack of hygiene, diseases and extreme nutritional insufficiency, continuous harassment and physical abuse, perpetual psychic stress caused by the recurrent macabre deaths—all combined to deeply influence the attitudes and mental health of inmates. Yet some former prisoners describe mainly resignation, curtailment of emotional and normal feelings, weakening of social standards, regression to primitive reactions, and, finally, “relapse to the animal state.” Others observed comradeship, community spirit, humanity, and extreme altruism—even moral development and religious revelation. Such differences are inevitable considering the vast numbers of prisoners—about a million at any one time—and various nationalities and religions.

Liberation and After When liberation came, most of the Jewish inmates were too weak to move or understand what was happening. People died by the hundreds in the first weeks after liberation. After the first physical improvement, the ability to feel and think returned and many felt completely isolated, no longer about to repress what had actually happened. Studies of survivors living in Israel show that 80 percent to 90 percent had lost most of their closest relatives, and three out of four had lost their entire family. Survivors clung to the hope of finding some family member still alive in the new D I S P L AC E D P E R S O N S ’ camps. The massive scale of the effort to assist displaced persons contributed, inadvertently, to the sense of disorientation among survivors. International organizations cared for them and tried to put new meaning into their lives, but within the mechanics of these organizations the individual was of very little consequence. Most of the survivors wanted to be independent and to leave the countries that symbolized persecution and destruction. Most hoped to reach Palestine, seeing immigration there as the solution to their problems. After the state of Israel was founded, those who were among the new settlers integrated quickly into the new society. The struggle for the young country, and the tasks of building it up, required survivors to suppress their own problems. The majority adapted to newly founded families, jobs, and kibbutz life. Many, however, still endured chronic anxiety, sleep disturbances, nightmares, emotional instability, and depression. The survivors who went to the United States, Canada, and Australia, some of them extremely traumatized, faced more problems. They had to face strange new surroundings, a new language, and new laws, in addition to building new lives without the cultural and religious camaraderie shared by those building new lives in Israel. When the West German government decided to compensate victims for physical damage suffered during Hitler’s regime, many were examined intensively by medical specialists. In most cases no ill effects directly attributable to detainment in the camps were found. This was not surprising because anyone who showed signs of physical disease had already been eliminated and killed in the ghettos and camps and during the infamous D E AT H M A R C H E S . The Jews who survived both the camps and the marches were an extremely select group. Their main problems were emotional, which the Germans did not deem worthy of restitution. Many survivors described themselves as barely able to perform basic tasks in daily lives lacking a sense of joy or hope. It often took many years, following such

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extreme trauma, before self-confidence and a sense of personal value returned and before they fully adjusted to the life of their communities. Despite their ability to adjust to life’s challenges after their Holocaust experiences, rigorous investigation shows that these survivors suffered deep wounds that have healed very slowly; a half century later the scars are present. Holocaust survivors show long-term consequences in the form of psychological stress, associated with heightened sensitivity to A N T I S E M I T I S M and persecution. Normal people before the Holocaust, these survivors endured extreme stress and psychic trauma. Their reactions were “normal”—because not to react to this previously unheard-of kind of treatment would be abnormal.

D

espite the many difficulties faced by Holocaust survivors in Israel,

their overall adjustment, both vocationally and socially was generally more successful than that of Holocaust survivors in other countries.

Survivors in Israel In 1964 researchers compared Jewish Holocaust survivors then living in Israel and non-Jewish Norwegians who returned to Norway after being deported and imprisoned during the war. The results showed that Jewish survivors suffered more from the total isolation in the camps, from the danger of death, which was greater for the Jews, and from “survivor guilt,” than did the Norwegians. A study of Israeli Holocaust survivors in kibbutzim revealed that survivors who could not mourn their losses immediately after the war began mourning and working through their grief as they adjusted to life in the kibbutz. This study showed that many survivors had a low threshold for emotional stress that surfaced as depression and tension in stressful situations.

kibbutzim

Collective settlements or communities in Israel.

Surveys made in Israel more than 30 years after World War II did not show significant differences in the extent of psychological damage between people who survived by hiding during Nazi occupation and those who were former concentration camp inmates. However, the latter experienced more pronounced emotional distress than those who survived the occupation outside the camps. Research on elderly Holocaust survivors in Israel showed that they encountered particular difficulties adjusting after the war because of the serious problems they had to overcome (loss of family and of the social and cultural background they had known before the Holocaust). A controlled study carried out in a university psychiatric hospital in Jerusalem 40 years after the end of the war revealed a difference between hospitalized depressive patients who had been inmates of Nazi concentration camps and a matched group of patients who had not been persecuted. Concentration camp survivors were more belligerent, demanding, and regressive than the control group—traits that may, in fact, have helped them to survive.

Children of Survivors Research and experience reveal that survivors’ children born after the Holocaust bear its legacy. Much of the published research on these psychological problems consists of in-depth studies of individual cases. Some of the literature, however, focuses on the whole family. Researchers in Canada, the United States, Israel, the N E T H E R L A N D S , F R A N C E , and Eastern Europe have shown a growing interest in the psychosocial problems of the second generation, as documented in a survey of research done worldwide on the subject, conducted by Tikva Nathan in 1981. This study shows that children of survivors may develop psychological problems, which are rooted in the atmosphere of anxiety, bereavement, and loss prevailing in their homes. They show family dynamics characterized by fear of separation, overprotec-

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tiveness, ongoing bereavement reactions, and mutual guilt feelings in both parents and children.

A

variety of psychological phenomena are shared

among members of the second generation, including problems of communication with their parents and problems of adaptation to the social environment, as expressed in loneliness or strong dependency needs, a search for affection, and outbursts of aggression.

Not all of these investigations have been controlled, but the validity of the clinical findings is supported by the fact that most were conducted independently, in places far removed from one another, and with no contact between the researchers. The findings also conform with the descriptions that members of the second generation give of themselves, especially when they have themselves become professionals in the field. However, since these findings are based on research conducted in clinical settings, they are thus not applicable to the general population of survivors’ children. Only a few studies have been carried out on the psychological and social adjustment of the latter group. For instance, surveys on attitudes conducted outside of Israel report that second generation children have feelings of shame and embarrassment with regard to their survivor parents, whereas the children of Holocaust survivors growing up in Israel demonstrate empathy and identification with their parents. Research results also demonstrate that the relationships between survivor parents and their children bear distinctive characteristics stemming from the Holocaust experience and contain unique psychodynamic phenomena. But there is no evidence of the existence of a psychopathological syndrome, or of pathological patterns of adjustment. On the contrary, a study conducted by Tikva Nathan in 1988 among secondary school students in Israel showed that the offspring of Holocaust survivors were just as healthy mentally as their peers in school, and that they coped successfully both in school and socially. Such children even manifested a certain resilience to stressful life events. Investigators throughout the world agree that certain patterns of parent-child relations are typical in survivor families, including overprotection and separation difficulties. The parents often expect levels of achievement and of solace that their children find difficult to fulfill. Their sense of obligation, along with feelings of guilt at not being able to oblige at all times, may alternate with outbursts of aggression and sorrow. These children of survivors sometimes have to fulfill the difficult role of compensating their parents for all the losses and suffering sustained by the latter. This special position of a child in survivor families has been noted by Tikva Nathan, who uses the term “the precious child.” In the words of Judith S. Kestenberg, the birth of a child to a survivor constituted “the undoing of G E N O C I D E .”

SEE ALSO DISPLACED PERSONS; RESCUE OF CHILDREN; UNITED STATES ARMY AND SURVIVORS IN GERMANY.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Facing Hate with Elie Wiesel and Bill Moyers [videorecording]. Mystic Fire Video, 1991. Fremont, Helen. After Long Silence: A Memoir. New York: Delacorte Press, 1999. Landau, Elaine, ed. We Survived the Holocaust. New York: Franklin Watts, 1991. Langer, Lawrence L. Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory. Neew Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991. Whiteman, Dorit Bader. The Uprooted: A Hitler Legacy; Voices of Those Who Escaped Before the “Final Solution”. New York: Insight Books, 1993.

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SZENES, HANNAH

ONE-TWO-THREE This is the last poem of Hannah Szenes, written in 1944 while she was in prison in Budapest. It was translated from the Hungarian by Peter Hay. One-two-three … eight feet long, Two strides across, the rest is dark … Life hangs over me like a question mark. One-two-three … maybe another week, Or next month may still find me here, But death, I feel, is very near. I could have been twenty-three next July; I gambled on what mattered most, The dice were cast. I lost. —HANNAH SZENES

Hannah Senesh: Her Life and Diary, translated by Marta Cohn (London: Vallentine, Mitchell and Co. Ltd.), 1971.

Szenes, Hannah (1921–1944)

One of a group of Palestinian Jews who parachuted into German-occupied Europe, Hannah Szenes (Senesh) was a poet. Born into a Jewish family from Budapest that produced a number of poets, writers, and musicians, Szenes displayed creative talent at an early age. She kept a diary and composed poems—first in Hungarian, and later, when she became an ardent Zionist, also in Hebrew. In 1939, Szenes emigrated to Palestine (present-day Israel). Two years later, she joined a kibbutz. There she wrote some of her most moving poems, including “To Caesarea” (see Y O U T H M OV E M E N T S ). In Palestine, Szenes joined the British Army and volunteered in 1943 to parachute into occupied Europe in order to aid Jews under Nazi oppression. She underwent training for the mission in Egypt. In March 1944, about a week before the German occupation of Hungary, Szenes was dropped into Yugoslavia. Together with fellow parachutists from Palestine, she spent three months there with antiNazi partisans under the leadership of Josef Broz Tito (later the president of Yugoslavia). Szenes hoped that with the partisans’ help she would be able to get into Hungary. She was convinced that even if she and her associates did not succeed in rescuing Jews, their personal sacrifice would be a symbol and inspiration to the Jews of Europe. A chance meeting with a Jewish woman partisan inspired her to compose a poem, “Ashrei ha-Gafrur” (in English, “Blessed Is the Match”). She left the text with Reuven Dafni, a fellow parachutist.

partisan

A paramilitary guerrilla fighter.

In early June 1944, Szenes crossed the border into Hungary. She was immediately captured by the Nazis, and found to have a radio transmitter in her possession.

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TARNOPOL

She was then taken to Szombathely, put into prison, and tortured. But no physical torture, and not even the threat that her mother’s life was at stake, could extract the code for the forbidden transmitter from her. After five months in jail, Szenes was brought to trial, at which she forcefully and proudly defended herself. She was convicted of treason against Hungary and shot to death by a firing squad. She refused to wear a blindfold, choosing to look her executors in the face. Hannah Szenes has been the subject of novels, plays, and a movie; she has become a symbol of courage, steadfastness, and moral strength. Her writings have been published in many editions. In 1950, Szenes’s remains were brought to Israel and buried on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. A village, Yad Hannah, commemorates her name.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Hay, Peter. Ordinary Heroes: Chana Szenes and the Dream of Zion. New York: Putnam, 1986. Schur, Maxine. Hannah Szenes: A Song of Light. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1986. Senesh, Hannah. Hannah Senesh: Her Life and Diary. London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1971. “Women of Valor: Partisans and Resistance Fighters” [Online] http://www.interlog.com/%7 Emighty/valor/bios.htm (accessed on September 11, 2000).

TARNOPOL. SEE TERNOPOL. Hannah Szenes, sitting in a field at the Kibbutz Sdot Yam, Israel.

Tarnów

interwar period

The years between the end of World War I and the beginning of World War II.

Tarnów is located in southern P O L A N D , east of K R A K Ó W , and it is one of the oldest cities in the country. The presence of Jews in Tarnów was first recorded in the mid-fifteenth century. Under Austrian rule (1772–1918), Tarnów became an important trade center, in which the Jews played the leading role. In independent Poland during the interwar period , Tarnów Jewry was impoverished as a result of the government’s discriminatory policy, but there was much educational and cultural activity in the community. On the eve of World War II, 25,000 Jews were living in Tarnów, representing 55 percent of the city’s total population. After World War II broke out in September 1939, thousands of Jewish refugees from western Poland converged on Tarnów, but as the Germans advanced eastward, the Jews of Tarnów itself fled to the east. The Germans occupied the city on September 8. From the first day of the occupation, Wehrmacht troops harassed the Jews, seizing them for F O R C E D L A B O R and robbing them of their belongings. On September 9, most of the city’s synagogues were set on fire. In early November a J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council) was established. At first its members, while carrying out the German orders, sought also to provide relief to the community, by organizing economic support for the needy, attempting to have hostages set free, and offering medical aid. The Judenrat also helped the Jewish refugees in the city find places to stay. On Passover of 1940, several Judenrat members were arrested for their devoted services to the community. They were replaced by persons of lesser standing, whose behavior came to be sharply criticized by members of the community. In the spring of 1940 the Germans subjected the Jews of Tarnów to increasingly harsher decrees: a collective fine was imposed; Jews were apprehended on the

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TENENBAUM, MORDECHAI

street for forced labor; they had to hand over valuables in their possession; and they had to evacuate apartments in designated streets. During the first half of 1941, the G E S TA P O seized Jewish refugees whose presence in the city was “illegal” and killed them. That December, following the outbreak of war between G E R M A N Y and the U N I T E D S TAT E S , more than one hundred Jews were arrested and many of them were put to death. On June 11, 1942, 3,500 Jews were deported to B E L⁄ Z˙ E C , and several hundred others were murdered in the streets of the city or in the Jewish cemetery. On June 15 the Germans resumed this operation and within three days another 10,000 persons were deported to Bel⁄ z˙ec. Many others were murdered in the cemetery or in huge pits that had been prepared near the city. On June 19 a ghetto was established, and sporadic killings took place within its walls. On September 10 all the ghetto inhabitants had to assemble in a city square and were subjected to a Selektion. Persons possessing a document that showed them to be working at jobs of importance to the German economy were separated out, while the rest, some 8,000 in all, were taken to Bel⁄z˙ec to be killed. In October, Jews from nearby areas were imprisoned in the Tarnów ghetto, whose population increased to 15,000. The wave of D E P O R TAT I O N S to the E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S continued, and in mid-November another train left for Bel⁄z˙ec, carrying 2,500 Jews. Against the background of this liquidation process, a Jewish underground group was organized in Tarnów in the fall of 1942. Members of the Zionist youth movement Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir were among those who took the lead. Later, the members of other political movements joined them. Some members of the J E W I S H G H E T TO P O L I C E also took part, and helped the underground acquire weapons. One group of underground members left the ghetto for the forests in order to take part in armed struggle against the Germans, but most of them fell in battle against S S units. Others remained active in the ghetto and concentrated on trying to arrange border crossings into H U N G A RY , where they hoped they would find refuge. Only a few, however, managed to escape in that way. During the course of 1943 more killings took place in the ghetto, and the final liquidation was launched on September 2. Approximately 7,000 Jews were deported to A U S C H W I T Z , and 3,000 to P L⁄ A S Z Ó W . Three hundred were left behind in Tarnów to sort out the belongings of the deported Jews. They too were deported to Pl⁄aszów in late 1943, when Tarnów was declared judenrein (“cleansed of Jews”).

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Kornbluth, William. Sentenced to Remember: My Legacy of Life in Pre-1939 Poland and Sixty-Eight Months of Nazi Occupation. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1994.

Tenenbaum, Mordechai (1916–1943)

Mordechai Tenenbaum was a key leader of the Jewish underground movements in V I L N A , W A R S AW , and B I A L⁄ Y S TO K . In Bial⁄ystok he was also in command of the uprising. Born in Warsaw, Mordechai Tenenbaum (Tamaroff) was the seventh child in a family of moderate means. He attended a secular school in which Hebrew was the language of instruction. In 1936, he was accepted as a student in the Warsaw Oriental

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Institute; the Semitic languages he learned there later gave him the ability to work in the Jewish underground movement throughout P OLAND by posing as a Tatar. kibbutz

A Jewish communal farm or settlement.

Tenenbaum was active in Jewish youth organizations. He trained for kibbutz life and attended a course for Hebrew tutors in Vilna. Late in 1938, Tenenbaum was called to Warsaw to join the staff of the He-Haluts-Pioneer Jewish Youth head office. He was a regular contributor to the movement’s periodicals. In September 1939, before the fall of Warsaw, Tenenbaum and his co-workers left the city and made their way to Kovel and Vilna, hoping to reach Palestine. The number of immigration “certificates” for Palestine was severely limited, and Tenenbaum provided his comrades with forged documents. Instead of going with them to Palestine, however, he chose to stay behind in Vilna and continue his work. In June 1941, Vilna was taken by the Germans. Attacks against Jews began immediately. Tenenbaum tried to help his fellow members by providing them with forged work permits, but many were caught. In an effort to save his peers, Tenenbaum moved the survivors of the He-Haluts kibbutz from Vilna to the B I A L⁄ Y S TO K ghetto, which was still relatively quiet, with the help of Anton Schmid, an anti-Nazi Austrian sergeant in the German army. On January 1, 1942, the youth of the Vilna ghetto issued a call to the Jews not to permit themselves “to be led like sheep to the slaughter,” to refuse to cooperate, and to resist deportation by all available means. Tenenbaum added a comment of his own to a copy of this appeal and hid it safely inside the ghetto; the document was recovered years later, when the city was liberated. To continue the work of the underground movement, Tenenbaum left Vilna with forged documents identifying him as a Tatar by the name of Yussuf Tamaroff. He went by train to the G RODNO and Bial⁄ystok ghettos. In March of 1942, Tenenbaum returned to Warsaw and reported on the situation in Vilna and the other ghettos he had visited, trying in vain to convince the HeHaluts leadership that the Germans intended to exterminate all the Jews under their control. Shortly thereafter, reports came in of the mass murder of Jews in L U B L I N and its vicinity and of the gassing of Jews in the C H E L⁄ M N O extermination camp, which the Germans had put into operation in December 1941. One of the founders of the J E W I S H F I G H T I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N (Z˙ OB; Z˙ ydowska Organizacja Bojowa) in July 1942, Tenenbaum was active in acquiring arms from outside the ghetto and teaching others how to use the weapons. In November 1942, Tenenbaum went to Bial⁄ ystok to organize and led a resistance movement there. When he arrived, he found the ghetto sealed and surrounded by Germans. Tenenbaum tried to reach Grodno, but he was stopped by Germans, who discovered that his papers were false. Though shot in the leg, he escaped, and eventually he reached the one Grodno ghetto that was still in existence.

Mordechai Tenenbaum.

54

After recovering from his wounds, Tenenbaum traveled to Bial⁄ystok, where he worked to unify all the underground movements in the ghetto and help them gather weapons. Tenenbaum then assumed yet another task: the establishment of an underground archive. He collected German documents; evidence concerning Bial⁄ystok, Grodno, and other towns in the area; the minutes of J UDENRAT meetings and copies of the announcements it had made; and folklore items and songs composed in the ghetto. He also kept a diary and urged others to do so, and wrote articles, letters, and manifestos. He preserved this archive as a memorial to the Jews, their sufferings, and their struggle against the Nazis, and as a means to indict the Germans in the course of history for their unspeakable crimes against the Jews. His writings represent an extraordinary testimony of the era, unparalleled among underground leaders. Only Emanuel R INGELBLUM ’s archive can be compared with the record that Tenenbaum assembled.

TERNOPOL

Early in 1943, the Germans began deporting Jews from Bial⁄ ystok. Because weapons were scarce, Tenenbaum decided to keep his forces intact and hold back, but to intensify efforts to obtain more arms and train his men. He sent emissaries into the forests to make contact with the PA R T I S A N S and to search for arms. Jews employed in German factories were instructed to sabotage the products on which they were working. Weapons were stolen from the Germans; food was stockpiled. Tenenbaum issued a call for resistance: “Let us fall as heroes, and though we die, yet we shall live.” In July 1943, Tenenbaum managed to unify all the underground movements in the ghetto—only a few weeks before the ghetto’s liquidation.

I

n a meeting of the Dror underground group at Bial⁄ystok on February 27,

1943, Tenenbaum proclaimed, “We are the last. It is not … particularly pleasant …: it involves a special responsibility.

On August 16, 1943, anticipating action by the Germans, Tenenbaum gave the signal for the uprising. He had hoped to break the German blockade of the ghetto, thereby enabling Jews to escape to the forests and continue the fighting from there. But the German forces surrounding the ghetto were too strong; masses of Jews were seized with panic and despair and did not join the fight. Nevertheless, groups of fighters held out for a month and even harassed the German forces at night; some small groups that had been caught jumped from moving trains or fought their way through the German lines and joined the partisans.

We must decide today what to do

All trace of Tenenbaum was lost during the uprising and it is not known when or where he died, although there were rumors that he and a deputy committed suicide. After the liberation, the Polish government posthumously gave Tenenbaum the award of Virtuti Militari. Most of Tenenbaum’s archive is kept by Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem; a small part is preserved by the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, and another portion is held in a museum near Naharia, in Israel.

factory remains whole … we will fight to

tomorrow. There is no sense in sitting together in a warm atmosphere of memories! Nor in waiting together, collectively, for death. Then what shall we do…? We can see to it that not one German leaves the ghetto, that not one the last, till we fall.”

SUGGESTED RESOURCES The Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum of the Holocaust and Resistance. [Online] http://www. amfriendsgfh.org/Docs/gfh.html (accessed on August 30, 2000). Rescue and Resistance: Portraits of the Holocaust. New York: Macmillan Library Reference USA, 1999. A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Resisters. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/ people/resister.htm (accessed on August 30, 2000).

TEREZÍN. SEE THERESIENSTADT. Ternopol Ternopol (in Polish, Tarnopol) is a city in the Ukrainian SSR, which was founded by Poles in 1540. During the period from 1772 to 1918 the city was in the province of Galicia, then under Austrian rule. Between the two world wars it was part of P O L A N D . In 1939 it was annexed by the S OV I E T U N I O N . Jews lived there from the time of its foundation and for a long period constituted a majority. In 1939 there were 18,000 Jews living in Ternopol. On July 2, 1941, Germans conquered the city. Two days later a pogrom was begun that lasted more than a week (July 4–11). Both Germans and Ukrainians participated and some 5,000 Jews were murdered. In July and August of that year, the Germans issued decrees against the Jews: their movement inside and outside the city was restricted; they were forbidden to change their places of residence; many of

55

T4 OPERATION

ghetto

A restricted part of a city where Jews were required to live under Nazi supervision.

their homes and valuables were confiscated; and hundreds were taken out daily for F O R C E D L A B O R . In September, the Germans issued an order to set up a ghetto . The concentration of the Jews in the ghetto and the fencing of its area continued until the beginning of December. The J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council) allocated the houses in the ghetto, conducted a census, and supplied forced laborers. In the fall and winter of 1941–42, the Judenrat was compelled to send groups of young people to the labor camps set up in the area. On March 23, 1942, the Germans carried out an operation (Aktion) that ended with the killing of 700 Jews in the Yanovka Forest. That spring the Judenrat opened several workshops in the ghetto to perform work vital to the German economy, hoping they would gain a certain immunity in the event of further operations (Aktionen.). In July the sporadic killings increased, and from August 27 to 30, the Germans carried out another Aktion. In a Selektion, more than 3,000 persons, most of them aged and sick, were deported to the B E L⁄ Z˙ E C extermination camp. A few hundred men were sent to the labor camp in the area. At the beginning of September, the Germans reduced the area of the ghetto and living conditions deteriorated. Another Aktion came on September 30, 1942. The Germans ordered the Judenrat to gather 1,000 Jews, but when the Jewish leaders did not provide that number, the Germans conducted their own manhunt. They put 800 Jews onto a train destined for Bel⁄z˙ec. During the first half of November there were two further Aktionen in Ternopol, and an additional 2,500 Jews were sent to Bel⁄z˙ec. At the beginning of 1943, the Germans established a labor camp in the area of the ghetto. They assembled Jews classified as “useful” and employed them in factories vital to the German economy. Jews from other parts of the ghetto attempted to infiltrate the camp in the belief that its inmates would remain unharmed. In the operation of April 8 and 9, 1943, a total of 1,000 persons were removed from the ghetto and killed in pits adjacent to the city. In April and May 1943, the murders in the ghetto continued, culminating in the final operation on June 20. The Germans killed the sick and the aged on the spot, while the others were murdered in fields in the vicinity of the city. The labor camp was closed on July 22, when all its inmates were put to death, except for a group of workers who were kept alive for another two weeks to sort out the belongings of the victims. At the beginning of August, they too were killed. The Germans and the Ukrainians continued to hunt Jews hiding in the city and the neighboring forests. Many fell into their hands up to the last days of the German occupation.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Kahana, David. Lvov Ghetto Diary. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990. Marshall, Robert. In the Sewers of Lvov: A Heroic Story of Survival from the Holocaust. New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1991.

T4 OPERATION. SEE EUTHANASIA PROGRAM. Theresienstadt Theresienstadt (in Czech, Terezín) was a ghetto established in northwestern Czechoslovakia. Theresienstadt was founded as a garrison town in the late eigh-

56

THERESIENSTADT

teenth century during the reign of Emperor Joseph II and named after his mother, Empress Maria Theresa. In World War II, the town served as a ghetto to which the Nazis expelled 140,000 Jews from the protectorate of B O H E M I A A N D M O R AV I A and from central and western Europe. Control of the ghetto was in the hands of the Central Office for the Solution of the Jewish Question in Bohemia and Moravia, which came under the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (RSHA; Reichssicherheitshauptamt). It was run by the S S . Czech police served as the ghetto guards, and with their help the Jews in the ghetto were able to maintain contact with the outside world. The “small fortress,” which was near the ghetto, was used as an internment camp for political prisoners, non-Jews and Jews, mainly from the protectorate.

Examples of currency produced by the Nazis as part of their effort to deceive the world into believing that Theresienstadt was an autonomous Jewish city. In reality, it was a ghetto and a transit station for Auschwitz and other places.

The Nazi plan to establish a ghetto in Theresienstadt is first mentioned in a document dated October 10, 1941. The plan was (1) to concentrate in Theresienstadt most of the Jews of the protectorate as well as certain categories of Jews from G E R M A N Y and western European countries: prominent persons, persons of special merit, and old people; (2) to transfer the Jews gradually from Theresienstadt to E X T E R M I NAT I O N CA M P S ; and (3) to camouflage the extermination of European Jews from world opinion by presenting Theresienstadt as a “model Jewish settlement.”

57

THERESIENSTADT

Barracks in the women’s camp at Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia.

The leaders of Czechoslovak Jewry supported the plan hoping it would mean that the Jews would not be deported to the east and would stay in their country throughout the war. The first group of Jews, from Prague, came to Theresienstadt at the end of November 1941, and by the end of May 1942, 28,887 Jews had been deported to the ghetto, one-third of the Jewish population of the protectorate. In the first few months, conditions in Theresienstadt were similar to other Nazi C O N C E N T R A T I O N C A M P S . However, it did not take long to dispel the hope that Theresienstadt would save Jews from deportation to the east; the first deportation, of 2,000 Jews to R I G A , took place in January 1942. From then on, for as long as the ghetto existed, deportation and the threat of deportation cast a pall of fear over the ghetto population. In September 1942 the ghetto population reached its peak, 53,004 people, living in an area of 125,770 square yards (115,004 sq m). In that month, 18,639 persons arrived in Theresienstadt, and 13,004 were deported to the extermination camps; 3,941 died in the ghetto. D E P O R TAT I O N S to Theresienstadt came to an end in the first half of 1943. By then approximately 90 percent of the Jews of the protectorate and nearly all the Jews left in Germany and A U S T R I A had been brought into the ghetto. In 1943 and 1944 the remaining Jews of T H E N E T H E R L A N D S and D E N M A R K were also taken to Theresienstadt. Deportations to the east—to ghettos in P O L A N D and the Baltic states and, as of October 1942, to the T R E B L I N K A and A U S C H W I T Z extermination camps—were continued. The final phase began in the fall of 1944 and continued for as long as the gas chambers in the east were still in operation. By then, only 11,068 people remained in the ghetto. The majority of the Theresienstadt ghetto population were assimilated Jews, reflecting the religious practices of central and western European Jewry. There were also smaller groups of Orthodox Jews and ardent Zionists. There were a few groups of Protestants and Catholics who under the Nazi racial laws were classified as Jews. The Zionists, especially the members of the Zionist YO U T H M OV E M E N T S , made efforts to carry on educational and cultural activities, and represented the most active, enterprising, and influential element in the ghetto population.

58

THERESIENSTADT

“This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions”

The internal affairs of the ghetto were run by a Council of Elders, to which Jewish leaders from among the prisoners were appointed. As in other ghettos, the Jewish leadership had the terrible task of making up the lists of those to be deported. It was also responsible for assigning the work to be done in the ghetto, distributing the food, providing housing for new arrivals, and overseeing sanitation and health services, the care of the old and the young, cultural activities, and the maintenance of public order. In all the areas of which it was in charge, the council also exercised judicial authority. Education, which was the Jewish leadership’s chief concern, was primarily in the hands of youth counselors who had been members of youth movements. The atmosphere in the youth hostels (Jugendheime), which housed a substantial part of the children of school age (up to the age of sixteen), was almost totally divorced from the harsh reality of the ghetto. Although schooling was prohibited, regular classes were held, clandestinely. The educational effort made in Theresienstadt was an outstanding example of moral resistance to the Nazi regime. Thanks to the large number of artists, writers, and scholars in the ghetto, there was an intensive program of cultural activities, with several orchestras, an opera, a theater troupe, and both light and satiric cabarets. Lectures and seminars were held, and a 60,000-volume library was established, with special emphasis on Jewish subjects. For many, this library provided their first opportunity to gain an understanding of their Jewish identity. Every week there were dozens of performances and lectures. Religious observance had to contend with difficult conditions, but it was not officially banned. The Nazis used the multifaceted activities in the Theresienstadt ghetto for their own purposes. They even printed special currency for use within the ghetto. At the end of 1943, when word spread in the outside world of what was happening in the extermination camps, the Nazis decided to allow an International Red Cross investigation committee to visit Theresienstadt. In preparation for the visit, more prisoners were deported to Auschwitz, to reduce the ghetto population of its congestion. Dummy stores were put up, as well as a café, a bank, kindergartens, a

59

THERESIENSTADT

Children in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, the Nazis “model camp.”

school, and flower gardens—all the trappings of a place in which human beings lead normal lives. The Red Cross committee’s visit took place on July 23, 1944; the meetings of the committee members with the prisoners had all been prepared in advance, down to the last detail. In the wake of the “inspection” the Nazis made a propaganda film showing how the Jews were leading a new life under the benevolent protection of the Third Reich. When the filming was completed, most of its “cast,” including all the members of the internal leadership group and nearly all the children, were deported to the gas chambers in Auschwitz. As a result of the intolerable conditions in the ghetto—overcrowding, a total lack of sanitation facilities, and appalling nutritional shortages—diseases of epidemic proportions broke out and took a fearful toll. In 1942, 15,891 persons died in Theresienstadt, equal to 50.4 percent of the average total population. By the end of 1943 the ghetto health department had managed to set up a network of hospitals, with 2,163 beds, and a beginning was made in regular medical checkups and inoculations against contagious diseases. That year the mortality rate dropped to 29.4 percent, and the following year, 1944, to 17.2 percent. In the last six months of the ghetto’s existence, the Jewish population was increased; 1,447 from S L OVA K I A , 1,150 from H U N G A R Y , and 5,932 (persons of “mixed blood”) from the protectorate, Germany, and Austria. Before the war came to an end, the International Red Cross succeeded in transferring some of the survivors to neutral countries: 1,200 Jews to Switzerland on February, 5, 1945, and 413 Danish Jews to Sweden on April 15 of that year. At the end of April the ghetto experienced its final shock, when the Germans brought in thousands of prisoners who had been evacuated from concentration camps. As a result there was a new outbreak of epidemics in Theresienstadt; many died, both new arrivals and veterans of

60

TRANSFER POINT (UMSCHLAGPLATZ)

Theresienstadt. On May 3, five days before the Red Army liberated the ghetto, the Nazis handed Theresienstadt over to a Red Cross representative, putting him in charge of the ghetto and its prisoner population. The last Jew left Theresienstadt on August 17, 1945. According to a number of statistical sources (which differ slightly), between November 24, 1941, and April 20, 1945, 140,000 Jews had been expelled from their homes and taken to Theresienstadt. Of these, 33,000 died there, 88,000 were deported to extermination camps, and 19,000 were alive (either in Theresienstadt or among the two groups that had been transferred to Switzerland and Sweden) when the ghetto was liberated; 3,000 of those deported survived the extermination camps. By national origin, the people who had been taken to Theresienstadt came from Czechoslovakia (75,500), Germany (42,000), Austria (15,000), the Netherlands (5,000), Poland (1,000), Hungary (1,150), and Denmark (500).

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bondy, Ruth. “Elder of the Jews”: Jakob Edelstein of Theresienstadt. New York: Grove Press, 1989.

I Never Saw Another Butterfly; Children’s Drawings and Poems from Theresienstadt Concentration Camp, 1942–1944. McGraw-Hill, 1964. Reprint, New York: Schocken Books, 1993. Roubickova, Eva Mandlova. We’re Alive and Life Goes On: Theresienstadt Diary. New York: Henry Holt, 1998. Rubin, Susan Goldman. Fireflies in the Dark: The Story of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and the Children of Terezin. New York: Holiday House, 2000.

Theresienstadt, Gateway to Auschwitz [videorecording]. Ergo Media, 1993.

Transfer Point (Umschlagplatz) The umschlagplatz, or “transfer point,” was the area separating the W A R S A W ghetto from the Polish part of the city, on the corner of Zamenhof and Niska streets. From this location, hundreds of thousands of Jews were deported to E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S and C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S , mostly to T R E B L I N K A , between July and September of 1942 and January and May of 1943. The Warsaw Umschlagplatz (or Umschlag, as many referred to it) was, until the mass deportation in the summer of 1942, the only official transit point for the transfer of manufactured goods and commodities to and from the ghetto. It had a railway siding and a special 120-man Transferstelle (transfer office), run by the Germans, who supervised the movement of individuals and goods through the junction. When the D E P O R TAT I O N S were launched on July 22, 1942, the place ceased to function as a link between the ghetto and the outside world and became the Umschlag, the spot where the deportees from the ghetto were assembled for deportation. Karl W O L F F , an S S general on Heinrich H I M M L E R ’s staff, was responsible for providing a daily train for the deportations from Warsaw. In a letter dated July 28, 1942, Theodor Ganzenmüller, the director general of the Reich Ministry of Transportation, stated: “Since July 22, a freight train with five thousand Jews has been making its way daily from Warsaw to Treblinka via Malkinia.” Next to the Umschlag was a courtyard surrounded by a high fence, and in its center was a vacant building that had once served as a hospital. The Jews designated for deportation

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TRAWNIKI

were rounded up in the streets of the ghetto and marched, under guard, to the Umschlag, where they were kept sitting on the ground in the courtyard or on the floor inside the building, pending the arrival of the daily train. When the train arrived, they were packed in, 100 to 120 in each freight car. SS men, Ukrainian and Baltic forces, the Polish auxiliary police, and the J E W I S H G H E T TO P O L I C E (Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst) were on guard during the process. In the spring of 1988 a monument was unveiled at the Umschlagplatz to mark the place where some 300,000 Warsaw Jews were sent to their death.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Roland, Charles G. Courage Under Siege: Starvation, Disease, and Death in the Warsaw Ghetto. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. “The Umschlagplatz” [photographs]. A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust. [Online] http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/gallery/umschlag.htm (accessed on August 31, 2000).

T

wo members of the Warsaw underground smuggled Z˙OB

activist Emanuel Ringelblum out of Trawniki in 1943 and took him to Warsaw, disguised as a railway worker. With his family and other Jews, he went into hiding and continued writing the archives known as Oneg Shabbat until he and his family were killed in 1944.

Trawniki Trawniki was a labor camp established in a town of that name, southeast of L U B L I N , P O L A N D , in the fall of 1941. Located in what had once been a sugar factory, the camp was used to house Soviet P R I S O N E R S O F WA R and Polish Jews. It was also a training site for Ukrainian camp guards. Trawniki belonged to the network of camps under the control of Odilo G L O B O C N I K , the Higher SS and Police Leader in the Lublin district. In the spring of 1942, Jews from G E R M A N Y , A U S T R I A , and Czechoslovakia were brought to Trawniki. Many of them died as a result of starvation and disease. Others were deported to B E L⁄ Z˙ E C , an E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P , or were shot to death in the nearby forest. Late in 1942, a brush factory that had been in operation in the Mie˛ dzyrzec Podlaski ghetto was moved, together with its crew, to Trawniki. After the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto in the wake of the W A R S A W G H E T T O U P R I S I N G in 1943, the Fritz Schulz Works in Warsaw was moved to Trawniki. It had 10,000 workers, with workshops for tailors, furriers, and broom makers. Among the arrivals from Warsaw were Dr. Emanuel R I N G E L B L U M and 33 members of the J E W ˙ ydowska Organizacja Bojowa; Z˙OB). The Z˙OB I S H F I G H T I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N (Z members set up an underground organization in the camp. They were able to acquire a few arms, and made plans for an uprising. Important factories supplying goods for Germany’s war effort, such as army uniforms, were moved to Trawniki in 1943. In May of that year, Jews from T H E N E T H E R L A N D S and from B I A L⁄ Y S TO K , M I N S K , and Smolensk were taken to Trawniki. The Jewish prisoners in the camp worked in the war-supplies factories as well as in peat mining and in earth-moving operations outside the camp. After the uprising that took place in the S O B I B Ó R camp on October 14, 1943, the Nazis became alarmed about the possibility of more such rebellions breaking out. Heinrich H I M M L E R soon ordered the liquidation of all the Jewish camps. This order led to the E R N T E F E S T (“H A R V E S T F E S T I VA L”) Aktion, an SS “operation,” of early November 1943, in which 43,000 thousand Jews were killed. Trawniki’s population was liquidated on November 5. On that day, 10,000 Jews were taken out of the camp, brought to pits that had been prepared in advance, and murdered. The

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Jewish underground members were taken by surprise, but they resisted, and all fell in battle. In the spring of 1944, the remaining prisoners in the camp were transferred to the S TA R A C H O W I C E camp, in the Radom district. Some 20,000 Jewish prisoners passed through Trawniki during its existence.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES “Soviet Prisoners of War.” Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance Online. [Online] http://motlc.wiesenthal.org/pages/t062/t06261.html (accessed on August 31, 2000).

Treblinka Treblinka was an E X T E R M I NAT I O N CA M P in the northeastern part of the G E N E R a region of P O L A N D under German occupation. The camp was located in a sparsely populated area, 2.5 miles (4 km) northwest of the village and railway stop of Treblinka. The site was heavily wooded and well hidden from view. ALGOUVERNEMENT,

A penal camp, known as Treblinka I, had been set up nearby in 1941. Poles and Jews were imprisoned there, working in quarries to extract materials for the German war effort. The extermination camp was established as part of A K T I O N (O P E R AT I O N ) R E I N H A R D . Work began in May 1942 and was completed on July 22 of that year. The project was carried out by German firms. For labor, they used prisoners from Treblinka I as well as Jews brought in from neighboring towns. In addition to the camp structures and gas chambers, a branch railway track was built. It led from the camp to the nearby railway station. Huge pits were dug within the camp grounds to be used as mass graves.

Physical Layout of the Camp The camp was laid out in a rectangle, 1,312 feet wide by 1,968 feet long (400 x 600 m). It resembled the S O B I B Ó R camp, which had already been built. Two barbed-wire fences surrounded the camp; the inner one had tree branches entwined in the wire to block any view of the camp and its activities. Watchtowers, each 26 feet (8 m) high, were placed along the fence and at each of the four corners. The camp was divided into three parts: the living area, the reception area, and the extermination area. The living area contained housing for the German and Ukrainian staff. The camp offices, clinic, and storerooms were also located there. One section, set off by its own fence, held the barracks that housed the Jewish prisoners who worked in the camp. The workshops where they labored as tailors, shoemakers, and carpenters were also there. In the reception area, the prisoners were taken off the incoming transport trains. They then had to go through a variety of procedures before being forced into the gas chambers (see G A S C H A M B E R S / VA N S ). In addition to the railway siding and platform, this area contained the “deportation square,” a fenced-in section with two barracks in which the new arrivals had to undress. Near the railway platform were two large storerooms where the clothes and other possessions taken from the victims were sorted and stored. The extermination area, called the “upper camp” by the Germans, was in the southeastern part. Covering an area of 656 by 820 feet (200 x 250 m), it was com-

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TREBLINKA

Plan of the Treblinka extermination camp, spring 1943.

pletely fenced in and separated from the rest of the camp. In this area was a brick building containing three gas chambers, each measuring 13 by 13 feet (4 x 4 m). An adjoining shed housed a diesel engine, which produced the carbon monoxide gas for the chambers. The gas was fed into the gas chambers by way of pipes that ended in what looked like shower heads, to create the impression that the chambers were merely shower rooms. A hallway led to each of the three gas chambers. Inside each, facing the entrance, was a second door through which the dead bodies were removed. The huge trenches in which the bodies were buried lay 492 to 656 feet (150–200 m) from the gas chambers, to the east of the building. A narrow path, fenced in on each side and camouflaged with tree branches, led from the reception area to the extermination area. It was along this path, nicknamed the “pipe,” or “tube” (Schlauch), that the Jews, now naked, were driven to the gas chambers.

Camp Staff and Administration In August 1942, Franz S TA N G L , the former commander of Sobibór, became the commander at Treblinka. The German staff numbered between twenty and thirty SS men, all of whom had taken part in the E U T H A N A S I A P R O G R A M . They held the command and administrative positions in the camp—the most powerful jobs. A

64

TREBLINKA

SURVIVING TREBLINKA Very few prisoners lived to tell of their experiences in the four death camps: Bel⁄ z˙ec, Chelmo, Treblinka and Sorbibór. Some who did were participants in the Treblinka rebellion of August 2, 1943. In Leni Yahil’s Holocaust, Stanislaw Kon recalls the events that began with a pistol shot “exactly at four in the afternoon” on that day: “. . .hands are stretched out to grasp the longed-for rifles, pistols, and hand grenades. . . . the chief murderers in the camp are being attacked. Telephone contact is immediately cut off. The guard towers are set alight with petrol.” He goes on to describe the prisoners’ state of readiness: “The weapons are divided up among the comrades. We have two hundred armed men. The remainder attack the Germans with axes, spades, and pickaxes.” Kon remembers that the burning of the camp and the sound of gunfire brought to the site “Germans from all around. SS men and gendarmes from Kosov, soldiers from the nearby airfield, and even a special SS unit from Warsaw. . . . Most of our warriers fall, but Germans fall as well. Few of us are left.“ Sixteen camp guards were killed in the effort. Although 150 of 700 prisoners managed to escape, most were caught and killed outside the camp by Nazis who hunted them down. The camp was closed down by the end of September.

Ukrainian company consisting of between 90 and 120 men served as camp guards and security personnel. They had the tasks of making sure that no Jews escaped and putting down any attempt at resistance. Some of the Ukrainians were given other duties, including the operation of the gas chambers. Most were Soviet P R I S O N E R S O F WA R who had volunteered to serve the Germans, and had been trained for their duties at the T R A W N I K I camp. Some of them were of ethnic German extraction (V O L K S D E U T S C H E ), and the majority of these were appointed platoon or squad commanders. There were also between 700 and 1,000 Jewish prisoners in the camp. They did all the manual labor, including work that was part of the extermination process. In addition, they had to take care of the personal needs of the German and Ukrainian staff. Groups of Jewish prisoners did construction work as well, which went on even while the extermination process was in operation. They were also kept busy with such jobs as cutting tree branches in the nearby woods and using them for camouflage. These prisoners were taken from the incoming transports, put to work for a few days or weeks at the most, and then “selected” out and killed. Their places were taken by new arrivals. In September 1942, the camp commanders decided to introduce more efficient methods, to reduce the time required to kill the people in each transport. The plan was to establish a permanent staff of Jewish prisoners (rather than one that was constantly replaced). These inmates would each specialize in one particular phase of the process. Such a permanent staff did come into being, but the prisoners did not last long under the harsh conditions of the camp—the frequent

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TREBLINKA

A

group of 200 to 300 prisoners, kept

selections (Selektionen) for death, execution for the slightest offense, illness, epidemics, and suicides all took their toll. Among the Jewish prisoners, fifty women were used for help in the laundry and the kitchen. Some were also put to work in the extermination area.

apart from the other Jewish in-

mates, worked in the extermination area, removing the corpses from the gas chambers, cleaning the chambers, extracting the victims’ gold teeth, and burying their bodies. After the practice of cremating the bodies began in the spring of 1943, these prisoners also performed that task.

Railway Transports The Treblinka extermination process was based on experience the Germans had gained in the B E L⁄ Z˙ E C and Sobibór camps. An incoming train, usually with 50 to 60 cars (containing a total of 6,000 to 7,000 people), first came to a stop in the Treblinka village railway station. Twenty of the cars were brought into the camp; the rest waited behind in the station. As each part of a transport was due to enter the camp, Ukrainian guards took their posts on the camp railway platform and in the reception area. When the cars came to a stop, the doors were opened and SS men ordered the Jews to get out. A camp officer then announced to the arrivals that they had come to a “transit camp,” and from there they would be sent to various labor camps. For hygienic reasons, they would now take showers and have their clothes disinfected. Any money and valuables in their possession were to be handed over for safekeeping and would be returned to them after they had been to the showers. Following this announcement, the Jews were ordered into the deportation square. At the entrance to the square, the men were ordered into a barrack on the right, and the women and children to the left. This was done with the prisoners on the run—the guards shouted at them, drove them on, and beat them. In the barracks, they had to undress. Beginning in the fall of 1942, the women’s hair was cut off at this point. Naked, they then entered the “pipe” that led to the gas chambers. Women and children were gassed first, while the men were kept in the deportation square, standing naked and waiting until their turn came. Once the victims were locked inside the gas chambers, the diesel engine was started and the carbon monoxide poured in. In less than thirty minutes, all had suffocated. Their bodies were removed and taken to the trenches for burial. In the initial stage of the camp, it took three to four hours for all the people in the twenty railway cars to be liquidated. But with time, the Germans gained expertise and reduced the length of the killing process to an hour or two. While the killing was going on, the railway cars were cleaned. The corpses of people who had died en route and articles that had been left behind were taken off the cars. This work was done by a team of some fifty male prisoners. The empty twenty-car segment of the train then pulled out to make room for another twenty cars, with their human load, to enter the camp from the station. At this time, another team of prisoners of fifty men collected the clothes and other articles that had been left in the deportation square barracks and transferred them to the sorting area. There, a team of 100 prisoners searched the clothing and articles for any money or valuables. They also removed the yellow badges (which Jews were forced to wear) from the clothing and any other identifying signs, destroyed all passports and identity cards, and prepared the items to be sent out of the camp. The Germans soon realized—as they had at Bel⁄z˙ec and Sobibór—that the bottleneck in the speed of the extermination process at Treblinka was the limited capacity of the gas chambers, which covered an area of no more than 57 square yards (48 sq m). Ten more gas chambers were built between the end of August and the beginning of October 1942, with a total area of 383 square yards (320 sq m).

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A page from deputy camp commander Kurt Franz’s photo album about life in Treblinka.

They were inside a brick building that had a hallway down the center and five doors on each side, each leading to a gas chamber. A second door in each chamber could be opened only from the outside and was used to remove the corpses. The capacity of the new gas chambers was more than sufficient for the entire human load of twenty railway cars at one time. Another efficiency measure in the extermination process was the introduction of what was called the “infirmary.” When a transport arrived, those too weak to reach the gas chambers on their own were told that they would be put into the sick bay. They were taken to a closed-in, camouflaged area with a Red Cross flag flying over it. Inside was a large ditch where SS men and Ukrainians were waiting for the sick Jews. They murdered them on the spot.

Extermination Program The mass extermination program at Treblinka went into effect on July 23, 1942. The first transports to reach the camp were made up of Jews from the W A R S A W ghetto. By September 21, some 254,000 Jews from Warsaw and 112,000 from other places in the Warsaw district had been murdered at Treblinka, making a total of 366,000 from the area. From the Radom district, 337,000 Jews were murdered, and 35,000 from L U B L I N , most of them before the winter of 1942–43. The total number of victims who had been residents of the Generalgouvernement was 738,000. More than 107,000 Jews from the B I A L⁄ Y S T O K district were taken to Treblinka to be killed, most of them between November 1942 and January 1943. A total of 29,000 Jews from outside Poland were also killed at Treblinka. Seven thousand Jews from S L OVA K I A were murdered in the summer and fall of 1942. Five transports brought 8,000 Jews from T H E R E S I E N S TA D T in Czechoslovakia in October 1942. From Greece, more than 4,000 Jews who had first been deported from their homes came in March 1943. From Macedonia, a part of Yugoslavia that Bulgaria had annexed, 7,000 Jews were murdered in Treblinka in March and April 1943. And at least one transport of 2,800 Jews came from Salonika in March 1943.

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Two thousand G Y P S I E S (Romani) were also among the victims of Treblinka. The mass extermination program continued until April 1943, after which only a few isolated transports arrived; the camp had fulfilled its function. In late February and early March of 1943, SS head Heinrich H I M M L E R visited Treblinka. He ordered an operation to burn the bodies of the victims, in an effort to erase traces of the murders. The mass graves were opened and the corpses were taken out, to be consumed by the flames of huge pyres (the “roasts”). The bones were crushed and, together with the ashes, were reburied in the same graves. This burning of corpses continued until the end of July. Upon its completion, the camp was shut down, in the fall of 1943. A total of 870,000 people had been murdered there.

Escape and Resistance

F

or every prisoner who escaped, ten of those left behind were executed. Measures of this kind discouraged escape attempts.

Hundreds of attempts to escape were made as the trains were on their way to the camp. Some of those who tried to escape died from the jump from the train, or were shot to death by the transport escorts. Others were caught by railway guards or were handed over to the police by local inhabitants. Some of the escapees managed to reach ghettos, only to be sent to their death when it was the turn of the Jews in those ghettos to be deported to the camps. There were also many attempts to escape from the camp itself, especially in the first few months of its existence, when order and security had not been fully established. Most attempts were made at night. Prisoners tried to get through fences or hide in the railway cars that had been loaded with the victims’ clothing and valuables and were about to leave the camp. Another method was to dig an underground passage leading to a point beyond the camp perimeter, but all those who tried this means of escape were caught. Not many survived of those who were able to escape from trains to or from the camp. Anyone who was caught in an escape attempt was hanged. As time went by, more stringent security measures were taken in the camp. Several efforts at resistance were made in Treblinka, both by individuals and by entire transports, in which SS men and Ukrainians were killed or wounded. At the beginning of 1943, a resistance group was formed among the inmates, led by people who held the top posts entrusted to prisoners; one of them was Dr. Julian Chorazycki, who was the SS men’s physician. At a later stage, the chief K A P O , Marceli Galewski, and other Kapos and work-team leaders also joined. Attempts were made to obtain weapons with the help of the Ukrainians, but these efforts failed and led to Chorazycki’s death. Prisoners from both the main camp and the extermination area belonged to the underground resistance group. In the extermination area, the resistance was led by a Jewish officer from the Czech army, Zelo Bloch. The group’s plan, which took form in April 1943, was based on taking weapons from the SS armory and then seizing control of the camp, destroying it, and fleeing to the forests to join the PA R T I S A N S . Fifty to seventy men were members of the resistance, but it was expected that all the prisoners would join in an uprising if it were to break out. When the burning of the bodies was nearing completion and it was clear that the camp was about to be closed and the remaining prisoners murdered, the leaders of the underground resolved that the rebellion must take place in the afternoon of August 2, 1943. Initially the uprising went according to plan. With the help of a copied key, the armory was opened. Weapons were taken out and handed to the resistance members. At this point, the resistance men began to suspect that one of the SS officers, Kurt Küttner, had noticed unusual activities and was about to alarm

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the camp guard; the SS man was shot at once. The gunshot alerted the guards and put an end to the removal and distribution of weapons from the armory, and the plan to seize control of the camp was abandoned. Instead, resistance members who had weapons opened fire at the SS men and set some of the camp buildings on fire. Masses of prisoners now tried to storm the fence and escape from the camp. They were fired at from all the watchtowers, and most of them were hit, falling in or near the fence area. Those who managed to get out of the camp were caught and shot by German security forces called to the scene. Of the approximately 750 prisoners who had tried to make their escape, seventy survived to see liberation. Most of the camp structures, except for the gas chambers, were made of wood and were burned. Of the prisoners who were left, some were killed on the spot. The rest were made to demolish the remaining structures and erase all traces of the activities that had taken place at the camp. When this work was done, these prisoners were shot. The grounds were plowed under and trees were planted. The land was turned into a farm, and a Ukrainian peasant family was settled there.

After the War Two trials were held of SS men who had served in Treblinka. In the first trial, which lasted from October 1964 to August 1965, there were ten defendants, including the deputy camp commandant, Kurt Franz. Of the ten, one was acquitted. Five were sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to twelve years, and four were given life sentences. The second trial was that of Franz S TA N G L , the camp commandant, who had escaped to Brazil but was extradited to G E R M A N Y . His trial, conducted from May to December 1970, resulted in a sentence of life imprisonment. The area of the Treblinka camp was made into a Polish national monument, in the form of a cemetery. Hundreds of stones were set in the ground, inscribed with the names of the countries and places from which the victims had originated.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Arad, Yitzhak. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. Donat, Alexander, ed. The Death Camp Treblinka: A Documentary. New York: Holocaust Library, 1979. Steiner, Jean-François. Treblinka. London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967. Reprint, New York: MJF Books, 1996. Willenberg, Samuel. Surviving Treblinka. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1989.

Trials of the War Criminals General Survey At the end of World War II, men and women accused of war crimes against Allied citizens stood trial in a variety of courts. Military or political leaders whose crimes had no particular geographical location were classified as “major” war criminals. They were brought to Nuremberg or Tokyo, where they were tried before courts established by Allied international agreement. Numerically these trials were a small part of a very large picture. The overwhelming majority of post-1945 war crimes trials were those of “minor” war criminals. They were civilians or former

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John Demjanjuk, surrounded by guards in courtroom, 1988.

members of enemy armed forces whose crimes were committed in specific locales, as in C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S . Minor war crimes trials were conducted by military courts in the British, American, French, and Soviet zones of occupied G E R M A N Y ; in I TA LY and A U S T R I A ; and by courts established for that purpose in Allied countries. The new governments installed in the former occupied and satellite countries also tried war criminals, and after the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany, German courts began prosecuting war criminals on their own. Two war criminals, Adolf E I C H M A N N and John (Iwan) Demjanjuk, were brought to Israel, where they were tried for their crimes in 1961–62 and 1988–89, respectively. The term “Nuremberg trials” is often used to describe four different criminal proceedings. The first, which focused on 24 indicted “major” German and Austrian war criminals, was conducted by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) between October 18, 1945, and October 1, 1946. Only 22 suspects were actually tried: Robert Ley committed suicide, and Gustav Krupp von Bohlen was too ill to

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stand trial. Judges from G R E AT B R I TA I N , F R A N C E , the S OV I E T U N I O N , and the U N I T E D S TAT E S presided over the IMT, which tried defendants on charges of conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and C R I M E S AG A I N S T H U M A N I T Y . Nuremberg was also the site of 12 later trials of 177 members of organizations and groups alleged to have been of a criminal character. Former members of the G E S TA P O and the SS, as well as civil servants and industrialists, were among those tried. American lawyers served as judges in these proceedings. The third type of “Nuremberg trial” was held in Tokyo. A multinational panel of 11 judges, who comprised the IMT in East Asia, presided over the trials of Japanese military and political leaders. The trials of “minor” war criminals conducted by military and national courts were the fourth type of Nuremberg proceeding. These trials were held variously in the zones of former Axis territory occupied by the victorious powers, in the liberated territories, and at or near the scenes of the crimes.

The first trial of Nazi war criminals took place in July 1943, nearly two years before the war ended.

Krasnodar Trial The first trial of Nazi criminals was held in the Soviet city of Krasnodar from July 14 to 17, 1943, before the Soviet military tribunal of the North Caucasian Front. The trial dealt with the crimes committed by the Nazis in the city, involving 7,000 acts of murder. Thirteen Soviet citizens were brought to trial; all had served in the auxiliary unit of Sonderkommando 10a (from Einsatzgruppe D), under the command of Dr. Kurt Christmann. They were charged with annihilating all the patients in the Krasnodar municipal hospital, in the Berezhanka convalescent home, and in the regional children’s hospital by means of lethal gas. In their testimony, the accused described the set-up and methods used for these murders (see G A S C H A M B E R S / VA N S ). Twenty-two local witnesses testified, including Ivan Kotov, who survived the gas van by breathing through a piece of material soaked in urine. On July 17, 1943, eight of the accused were sentenced to death by hanging, and three others to twenty years’ imprisonment with F O R C E D L A B O R . This was the first trial in which the mass murders of the O P E R AT I O N A L S Q UA D S (Einsatzgruppen) and the use of gas vans were made known to the world.

Nuremberg Trial The Nuremberg Trial—designed to punish the leaders of a regime, a government, and an army for crimes committed in the framework of their policy and its implementation by means of an independent court of law of an international character—was the first of its kind in history. This court would try the accused in accordance with the principles of justice and the rules of law, with the accused having every opportunity to defend themselves. The judges appointed to the tribunal were urged to follow the law and their conscience, notwithstanding the fact that they were nationals of the countries that had won the war—the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France— and that it was the governments of these countries that had appointed them. The Nuremberg court’s purpose was to sit in judgment on the men and women who were guilty of crimes against humanity and peace (by planning, executing, and organizing such crimes, or by ordering others to do so) during World War II. The term “international” was included in the IMT’s official designation to underline the universal validity of its judgment and its importance for the entire world.

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October 18, 1945, did indeed take

The IMT tried 22 of Nazi Germany’s political, military, and economic leaders: Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Ernst K A LT E N B R U N N E R , Alfred R O S E N B E R G , Hans F R A N K , Wilhelm Frick, Julius S T R E I C H E R , Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Martin B O R M A N N , Franz von Papen, Arthur S E Y S S -I N QUA RT , Albert Speer, Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath, Hjalmar Schacht, Walther Funk, Karl Dönitz (the commander of the navy, whom Adolf H I T L E R , on the eve of his suicide, appointed as his successor); Erich Raeder (the commander of the navy prior to 1943); Baldur von Schirach (leader of the H I T L E R Y O U T H and district leader of V I E N NA ); and Hans Fritzsche (in charge of radio propaganda).

place there. The ruins of the German

The individual defendants were indicted under Article 6 of the charter, as follows:

T

he International Military Tribunal (IMT) intended to hold the trial

of the major Nazi war criminals in Berlin, and the opening session, on

capital could not accommodate such a large-scale event, however, so the trial was moved to Nuremberg—a location selected, among other reasons, because of what it symbolized as a Nazi stronghold that had gained infamy for the racist laws named after it (see Nuremberg Laws).

Article 6. The Tribunal established by the Agreement referred to in Article 1 hereof for the trial and punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis countries shall have the power to try and punish persons who, acting in the interests of the European Axis countries, whether as individuals or as members of organizations, committed any of the following crimes: The following acts, or any of them, are crimes coming within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal for which there shall be individual responsibility: (a) Crimes against peace: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression. (b) War crimes: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. (c) Crimes against humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts. Leaders, organizers, instigators, and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any person in execution of such plan. The judgment, which was delivered on September 30 and October 1, 1946, sentenced 12 of the defendants to death: Bormann, Göring, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Streicher, Sauckel, Jodl, Bormann, and SeyssInquart. Bormann, who was not captured, was sentenced in absentia, and Göring committed suicide; the other ten were hanged, on October 16, 1946. Hess, Funk, and Raeder were sentenced to life imprisonment; Speer, Neurath, Dönitz, and Schirach were given sentences ranging from ten to twenty years; and von Papen, Schacht, and Fritzsche were acquitted. Both the indictments and the judgments of the IMT stressed the legal definition of a “war of aggression.” A formal state of war exists as soon as such a state is declared, but this is not always accompanied by an act of aggression. On the other hand, aggression, in the form of an armed attack, can be carried out without being preceded by a declaration or announcement, and without the victim putting up any resistance or being able to defend himself. This was the case in Austria and Czechoslovakia, which the IMT cited as examples of states victimized by Nazi planning and preparing for wars of aggression. The tribunal determined that the N A Z I P A RT Y leadership, the SS, the Gestapo, and the SA could all be charged with criminal activity, but they excluded the Reich government, the German General Staff, and the high command of the German armed forces among the organizations declared as criminal. The prosecuting team excluded certain categories from the charge of criminal participation in criminal organizations, including persons holding strictly administrative posts in the police

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and members of certain party or official bodies, so as to remove the slightest suspicion of trying anyone under the principle of collective responsibility.

Military officers and judges inside the Nuremberg Trial courtroom.

The IMT determined that wars of aggression, in any form, are prohibited under a great number of international treaties. The tribunal, however, disregarded the charges in the indictment of conspiracies to commit war crimes, and dealt only with the defendants’ common plan to prepare and conduct a war of aggression. The tribunal considered that all the other crimes were derived from the crimes against peace. The crime of participation in a criminal organization was included in the IMT charter so that none of those who participated in planning or carrying out Nazi atrocities could escape justice, even if their responsibility for any specific criminal act could not be proved. In adopting the rule that participation in a criminal organization was a crime, the IMT had in mind the members of several Nazi frameworks classified by its charter as criminal organizations, and it planned to indict them, unless they could prove that despite their membership in such criminal organization or conspiracy they bore no personal responsibility for the criminal acts. The basis of this decision was the fact that these were voluntary organizations whose members had joined them in full knowledge of their criminal aims and methods. The IMT, like the courts of many countries, also held to the principle that persons committing a criminal violation of international law are individually responsible for violations and that the official position of such criminals does not absolve

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them from punishment. In addition, the tribunal took a clear stand on the issue of responsibility for crimes carried out on orders from above; the following of superior orders was not an excuse for the perpetration of a crime. The testimony given at the Nuremberg Trial, the documents presented by the prosecution, and the entire record of its proceedings constitute an incomparable source for the study of the H O L O CAU S T , and for understanding how to prevent its recurrence in any form, and especially to prevent the resurgence of A N T I S E M I T I S M and of discrimination against foreigners. The conclusions arrived at by the IMT were also applied to the drafting of (1) the international convention for the prevention of the crimes of G E N O C I D E (the Genocide Convention), adopted by the United Nations on December 9, 1948; (2) the Human Rights Declaration of December 10, 1948; (3) the Convention on the Abolition of the Statute of Limitations on War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity of November 26, 1968; and (4) the Geneva Convention on the Laws and Customs of War of 1949, and its supplementary protocols of 1977.

W

hen the British liberated

The principle that the only legal wars are wars in self-defense or against aggression—a fundamental rule of present-day international law—also derives from the United Nations Charter, the IMT charter, and the IMT judgment.

Bergen-Belsen in April

1945, they found hundreds of rotting corpses on the ground and in the barracks. Among the survivors, many were too weak to move unassisted. Prisoners had been beaten, tortured, or starved to death, or had died of diseases such as typhus. The barracks for the prisoners were deplorable, each crammed beyond a tolerable limit; many prisoners became ill or died due to dreadful sanitary conditions.

Bergen-Belsen Trial The trial of the B E R G E N - B E L S E N camp staff was held from September 17 to November 17, 1945, before a British military tribunal at Lüneburg, Germany. The accused were on trial for crimes committed in the A U S C H W I T Z and Bergen-Belsen camps. They were charged with planning and conspiring to torture and murder prisoners, committing acts of murder, and meting out inhuman treatment and punishment with their own hands. Among the accused in this trial were Josef K R A M E R , who had been a commandant of concentration camps from 1943 on; Dr. Fritz Klein, who took an active part in making Selektionen and sending people to their death; and prisoners who collaborated with the Nazis and were given the status of agents of the camp administration, such as Stanisl⁄awa Staroska, a Polish woman known as “Stana the Flogger.” Fortyfive persons stood trial, twenty-one of them women. Kramer, Klein, and nine others—among them two women, Irma Grese and Elisabeth Volkenrath, who were charged with torturing and assaulting prisoners— were sentenced to death by hanging. Erich Zoddel, the camp’s chief K A P O , was sentenced to life imprisonment, Staroska to ten years, and others to periods of one to three years. Fourteen of the accused were acquitted.

Zyklon B Trial In March 1946 the trial of Bruno Tesch, Joachim Drösihn, and Karl Weinbacher was held before a British military tribunal in Hamburg. The accused were owners and executives of a Hamburg factory that from January 1, 1941, to March 31, 1945, manufactured poison gas used to kill concentration camp prisoners. The gas, called Z Y K L O N B, was manufactured by the Tesch and Stabenow Company. It was used by the SS, S S D E AT H ’ S - H E A D U N I T S (Totenkopfverbände) stationed in Auschwitz, and the other E X T E R M I NAT I O N CA M P S . The defendants in the trial claimed that they did not know what their product had been used for, a claim that was rebutted by Tesch’s official company reports of his trips to Auschwitz. Tesch and Weinbacher (the executive manager of the “facto-

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ry for means of death”) were sentenced to death and executed; Drösihn, an employee of the factory, was acquitted. The Zyklon B Trial established for the first time that the manufacture of gas for killing prisoners was a war crime.

Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings On December 20, 1945, four weeks after the opening of the trial of the major war criminals by the International Military Tribunal, the Allied Control Council announced its Law No. 10. This law empowered the commanding officers of the four zones of occupation to conduct criminal trials on charges of aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and membership in an organization aiming at such crimes. Under the charge of crimes against humanity, persecution of the citizens of any country on political, religious, and racial grounds was declared punishable under the principles of international law. To carry out Law No. 10, the Office of the United States Government for Germany (OMGUS) established six military tribunals, composed of civilian judges recruited from among state supreme court judges in the United States. In 1,200 sessions of 12 trials known as the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings, which were held between December 1946 and April 1949, 177 persons were tried, including representatives of the leadership of the Reich ministries, the Wehrmacht, industrial concerns, the German legal and medical establishment, and the SS.

T

he International Military Tribunal (IMT) declared that all the leaders,

organizers, inciters, and accessories to a criminal act who participated in the decision or implementation of a common plan, or a conspiracy to commit crimes, were guilty not only of their own acts but also of the crimes carried out by any other person in the execution of the common plan or conspiracy.

All the judgments rendered at Nuremberg claimed to enforce statutory law or international common law, and widespread petitions to administer retroactive or ad hoc special law were rejected by the courts. As a result, the “F I NA L S O L U T I O N ” was classified among the conventional crimes—murder, maltreatment, abduction, enslavement, and robbery—committed on racial grounds. Since it was the tribunals’ task to prove the criminal nature of many of the activities carried out by the pillars of the German state, each of the twelve cases dealt with a specific sphere. The destruction of the Jews as a crime therefore appears in the Nuremberg Proceedings not as a single entity but split up into detailed component parts, next to and in conjunction with other criminal pursuits. Chronologically, the stages of the persecution of the Jews are distributed among the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings in the following pattern: 1. Preparation of the Nuremberg Laws and their decrees of implementation. 2. Application of the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor by Rassenschande (race defilement) tribunals. 3. Forced “A RYA N I Z AT I O N ” of Jewish-owned capital. 4. Forced “Aryanization” of agricultural property. 5. Abduction and mass shooting of Jews in concentration camps maintained by the Wehrmacht in Serbia, in retaliation for partisan attacks. 6. The extermination campaign by the Einsatzgruppen in the war against the Soviet Union. 7. Logistic support for the Einsatzgruppen, direct orders to them, and responsibility for their actions under the law of war. 8. The deportation of Jews from western Europe. 9. Events relating to the deportations from Denmark, Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, France, Italy, and Hungary. 10. Deportations from Greece. 11. Antisemitic indoctrination of the population and dulling of their conscience during the extermination process.

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12. Pillage of the property left behind by the Jews who were abducted from Germany.

T

he destruction of Jews was not classified as a separate criminal

offense at Nuremberg, a fact that has since often been deplored. In legal terms, this offense was one of the several atrocities summarized as “crimes against humanity.”

13. Administration of concentration camps and the Vernichtung durch Arbeit (annihilation through work) system in the SS-run companies Ostindustrie Gbmh (Osti) and Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke (German Earth and Stone Works; DEST). 14. The enslavement of Jews by private industry, through forcing them to work under conditions like those in concentration 15. The government-sponsored slave economy. 16. Sale of Zyklon B (prussic acid) to the SS and construction of industrial plants in Auschwitz. 17. Medical experiments on human beings in concentration camps, including sterilization experiments for future application to Mischlinge. 18. Hoarding of dental gold from Auschwitz. With the exception of the Reichsbahn (the national railway system) and the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (RSHA; Reichssicherheitshauptamt), the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings exposed the principal agencies involved in the extermination of the Jews, determined the culpability of their personnel, and passed sentences on a few of their leading figures. The courts next turned their attention to the personnel who had been directly engaged in carrying out the liquidation process in the extermination camps and the killing squads. Contrary to the expectations of those who initiated them, the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings had no influence on the way the German people viewed their recent history. The Germans exerted constant organized pressure on United States High Commissioner John J. McCloy to suspend the sentences. By 1951, primarily at the urging of the German churches and political parties, a hurried pardoning policy was introduced. Many ex-convicts resumed their interrupted careers or retired, usually keeping entitlements to pensions for their official services.

Germany As early as 1943, the Allies in the war against Germany agreed that they would punish officials of the Nazi regime who were responsible for its crimes. On the basis of that agreement, Allied military tribunals convicted and sentenced an estimated 60,000 Germans and Austrians of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Until late 1950, the crimes related to the Nazi regime that were tried by German courts in the Federal Republic of Germany dealt mainly with relatively minor transgressions. Some grave crimes, however, were also within the jurisdiction of German courts in that period, such as crimes committed in the concentration camps, murders during the course of the E U T H A N A S I A P R O G R A M , and the socalled final-phase crimes. Almost all these criminal trials resulted from charges brought by the victims or their heirs against participants in the crimes who were known or who had been discovered by chance, rather than through any deliberate investigative process. In 1950, shortly after the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany in the three Western zones of occupation, prosecutors were free to embark upon a systematic investigation of all Nazi crimes and to prosecute the criminals involved in them. Due to a lack of personnel and adequate material resources, however, investigations were difficult to organize. German attention and resources were, not surprisingly, focused on post-war rehabilitation and the restoration of the country’s economic strength.

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According to the statute of limitations of May 8, 1950, the operative date for Nazi crimes, as distinguished from other crimes, was the day the war ended, rather than the date on which the crime was committed, since prosecution of these crimes had not been possible during the Nazi regime. The statute thus made it possible to inaugurate a series of trials for crimes committed in the Auschwitz and T R E B L I N K A extermination camps, in the B U C H E N WA L D , N E U E N G A M M E , G R O S S - R O S E N , Flossenbürg, and S AC H S E N H AU S E N concentration camps, in the T H E R E S I E N S TA D T camp, and in the Sajmisˇte (Semlin) detention camp. However, from 1951 to 1955 the number of proceedings conducted in the courts of the Federal Republic was sharply reduced, because by the time the statute was issued, five years after the end of the war, offenses that bore a maximum sentence of five years could no longer be prosecuted. Most of the investigations of these offenses had originated with complaints filed by victims of the crimes or their heirs, and, sometimes, against suspects who had been discovered by chance.

The Germans, for the most part, felt that the Nuremberg sentences were arbitrary and unfair decisions made by the victorious powers.

On May 8, 1955, the statute of limitations was to go into effect for Nazi-related crimes with a maximum sentence of ten years. As far as the prosecution of Nazi crimes was concerned, this meant, for all practical purposes, that henceforth only acts of premeditated murder could be prosecuted. At about the same time, on May 3, 1955, the “transition agreement” between Germany and the United States, Britain, and France went into effect, containing the following provision: Persons who have been tried for a crime by the American, British, or French authorities in their respective zones of occupation and the proceedings against them [having] terminated, will not be tried again for the same crime by the German public prosecution, regardless of the outcome of the trial under the Allied occupation authorities—conviction, acquittal, or dismissal of the case because of lack of evidence; this provision also applies to cases in which new evidence has come to light against persons who have been either acquitted or have had their case dismissed. Nevertheless, 1955 marked the beginning of a change in the prosecution of Nazi crimes. It began with an investigation into the murder of Jews in the German-Lithuanian border region by members of an Einsatzkommando (mobile killing sub-unit). In this case, the prosecution pursued all leads that came to light during the investigation of other crimes committed by Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos, and added these criminal charges to the initial complaint. The mass of information gathered by this process made it clear that some of the worst crimes committed by the Nazi regime had yet to be prosecuted. In the fall of 1958 the ministers of justice of all the states (Länder) of the Federal Republic established the Central Office of the Judicial Administrations of the Länder for Investigation of Nazi Crimes (Ludwigsburger Zentralstelle), in Ludwigsburg. The new office was assigned the task of finding all available sources of information on Nazi crimes and instituting criminal proceedings against the responsible persons. In the first year, the Ludwigsburger Zentralstelle initiated 400 extensive investigations. The most significant had to do with the crimes committed by Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos in the Soviet Union and P O L A N D ; by the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police), Ordnungspolizei (“order” police), and the so-called Ethnic Germans’ Self-Defense Force in the occupied territories; and in the Auschwitz, B E L⁄ Z˙ E C , S O B I B Ó R , Treblinka, and C H E L⁄ M N O extermination camps.

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F

or political reasons, the government of the

German Federal Republic would not establish contact with the Eastern European countries—most of which were still without diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic—even though many documents necessary for the investigation and prosecution of Nazi criminals were available only through these countries.

On May 8, 1960, fifteen years after the war had ended, the statute of limitations on the Nazi-influenced crimes of manslaughter, deliberate physical injury leading to death, and deprivation of liberty with lethal results went into effect. Political figures active in the Social Democratic party of the Federal Republic of Germany had attempted to introduce a law that would block the statute of limitations from going into effect, but the majority of the Bundestag (the German parliament) were in favor of the statute being applied. Henceforth, only murder could still be prosecuted by the courts. Even the charge of murder, according to the law existing at the time, would be subject to a statute of limitations on May 8, 1965, unless criminal proceedings were instituted against suspects before that date. Accordingly, the Ludwigsburger Zentralstelle and the prosecuting attorneys in the various German states made efforts to collect all available evidence as quickly as possible and use it in time to institute criminal proceedings against persons known to be, or suspected of being, participants in a crime of murder under the Nazi regime. Since most of the available documentary evidence at that time was kept in archives of countries outside Germany, the Ludwigsburger Zentralstelle appealed to the Western countries for their assistance. The authorities, especially in the United States, gave the Zentralstelle broad access to the material held in their archives. Most of the relevant documents, however, were held by the Communist countries of Eastern Europe, and were therefore not accessible to German investigators.

protocols

Written records, for example, interview transcripts or minutes of meetings.

In late 1964, it became clear that despite all the efforts being made, the perpetrators of the majority of Nazi acts of murder would benefit from the statute of limitations when it went into effect the following May 8. At this point, the Federal Republic of Germany requested that all foreign governments make available all evidence in their possession on Nazi war crimes. As a result, German prosecuting attorneys and Zentralestelle officials were able to examine the contents of additional archives containing hundreds of thousands of documents and protocols of interrogations and investigations. In March 1965, the Bundestag legislated a postponement of the date for the statute of limitations on Nazi acts of murder to December 31, 1969. It was hoped that by then, with additional staff on the job, it would be possible to have investigated the Nazi murder charges. The Zentralstelle staff was subsequently increased. German consular officials and local authorities in many countries gathered evidence from witnesses and victims. Despite the greatly increased efforts, it was soon obvious that it would not be possible to investigate all Nazi crimes, and initiate criminal proceedings against the suspects, by the end of 1969. The statute of limitations was then extended another ten years, to December 31, 1979. Documentary evidence continued to accumulate in the 1970s, especially from Poland, albeit on a reduced scale. In 1978, concern about the statute of limitations was revived all over the world. Foreign countries and multinational organizations and institutions, including the European Parliament in Strasbourg, pressed for the total abolition of the statute of limitations as far as war crimes and crimes against humanity were concerned. In early 1979, the American television series Holocaust was broadcast in the Federal Republic, reviving German interest, especially among young people, in the relentless prosecution of Nazi crimes. In July 1979, due to the impact of these developments, the Bundestag decided to abolish the statute of limitations for the

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crime of murder in general, thus enabling Nazi killers to be brought to trial regardless of date. From its inception in December 1958 until the summer of 1986, the Ludwigsburger Zentralstelle launched investigation of more than 5,000 cases, involving thousands of suspects. This led to a total of 4,853 official criminal trials covering the entire spectrum of Nazi violence.

D

ue to contradictory testimonies given by different witnesses, and

the diminished ability to remember

Most proceedings ended without convictions, however. In many instances the participants in the crime could not be found or the evidence in hand was not enough to prove the guilt of the surviving suspects. Also of benefit to many suspects were legal principles developed by the German courts that protect individuals from being convicted of a crime on the basis of membership in a unit or organization that took part in a crime. For an individual to be convicted under those circumstances, his actual participation in the organization’s criminal act had to be proven. This often proved to be an impossible task so many years after the crimes had been committed.

events that had taken place so long

When it was determined that a party was guilty, but that the criminal act had occurred as a consequence of following the orders of one’s superiors, the courts generally considered the accused to be an accessory to the crime and not the actual perpetrator. This finding allowed the convicted criminal to receive a prison term of limited duration rather than imposing the sentence of life imprisonment that was mandatory for murder. Considering the immense number of victims and the enormous cruelty of the murderous deeds, many—even the most unbiased of observers—believed that such leniency was uncalled for.

the lesser charge of accessory to the

before, it was often impossible to determine individual guilt, even when the crime itself was revealed down to the last detail. Furthermore, suspects whose crimes were committed in the course of following orders were often convicted of crime, thus receiving lighter punishments than they would have received as the perpetrators of the acts.

In the four decades following World War II, German courts in the Federal Republic tried 90,921 persons indicted for taking part in Nazi crimes; 6,479 persons were given substantial sentences, 12 being sentenced to death (as long as the death penalty was still in force) and 160 to life imprisonment. At least 1,500 additional suspects have been investigated since 1986. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union early in the 1990s, many more archives have become available to investigators in Germany and around the world, adding both to the workload and the conviction rate of those committed to establishing accountability. Prior to the reunification of Germany, officials of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) acknowledged that while no systematic attempt was made to prosecute Nazi crimes, stiff sentences were imposed on those whose Nazi criminal actions came to public attention through other means. As of the end of 1976, roughly three decades after prosecutions began worldwide, a total of 12,861 convictions had been made in that country for “fascist war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Postwar Dispensation of Justice in Germany In 1949, there was concern that Heinrich H I M M L E R ’s police and Nazi judges would be reinstated in the civil service. This in fact did take place. On the basis of the constitutional entitlement of former government officials to be maintained by the state (article 131 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany), nearly all the police, judges, and public prosecutors who had served under the Nazis were returned to their posts. Consequently, all attempts to convict Nazi judges of judicial murder failed. During the Hitler period, judges had obeyed Nazi laws and had been blind to the illegality of their actions; this blindness carried over into the new postwar period, and these judges were regularly acquitted of charges against them. In 1955 the Federal Republic of Germany added to its criminal code a paragraph (220a) making a life sentence mandatory for anyone convicted of murder with the intention of destroying a national group. However, because genocide was

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FINANCIAL REPERCUSSIONS A HALF-CENTURY LATER In reunified Germany since the early 1990s, attention has focused on the economic crimes of the Nazis, as well as those related to mass murder. In particular, new evidence has been analyzed concerning the status of reparations to Holocaust victims for work done under slave labor conditions as well as the status of property and money confiscated by the Nazi regime. International investigators have examined the tangled trail of deposits, transfers, and outright confiscation created by the Nazis to channel the assets of European Jewry—including gold, artwork, religious artifacts, and whole libraries—into the Nazi treasury by way of Switzerland through diplomatic and banking avenues. A report released in June 1998 also traced the wartime and postwar conduct of Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, and Argentina, as well as allegations that gold of the wartime Axis government of Croatia had been transferred to the Vatican. Reparation plans have been established, but in general terms, it has been difficult for victims to file claims and receive settlements. The U.S. Office of Special Investigations continues to work to locate, declassify, and disclose to the public classified documents pertaining to Nazi criminals and to transactions in plundered assets of Holocaust victims. In 1997, the German Parliament voted to discontinue making disability payments to anyone linked to war crimes. At the time the legislation was enacted, there were at least 20 known criminals whose benefits were to stop immediately, and as many as 50,000 whose service records would be carefully examined for any evidence of participation in activities covered by war crimes statutes. No conviction would be required for benefits to be rescinded.

not identified specifically as a crime while the Nazis were in power, the Federal Republic did not apply this standard against Nazis found guilty of that crime. Murder, physical injury, and deprivation of liberty were illegal in the Third Reich. However, such criminal acts were not subject to prosecution in Nazi Germany when they were committed on official orders. After the war the courts claimed that at the time the criminal acts were committed, they had been under duress and unable to try the offenders. Doubt also remained as to whether the legal officers who had served under the Nazi regime were capable of dispensing justice. This atmosphere of leniency did not change until the late 1950s, when a generation which had not witnessed or supported Nazi crimes, or taken part in them, began reaching adulthood and assuming positions of authority. Although most Germans still called for an end to the prosecution of Nazi crimes, a minority vehemently insisted that the crimes involving mass extermination be prosecuted. In West German courts, the chain of command leading to the “Final Solution” was considered to have two main “links”: There were the originators—Adolf Hitler,

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Hermann Göring, and Reinhard H E Y D R I C H —at the top level and then there were the actual murder personnel—camp guards, camp commandants, Operational Squad members—at the lowest level. The responsibility of the intermediate level— the bureaucratic-military-industrial elites, which the Nuremberg Military Tribunals had exposed—was not recognized by the West German courts. The renewed interest in accountability during the late 1950s led to investigation of members of the lowest ranks in the chain of command, the subordinate echelons of the police and the SS who were charged with the physical destruction of the masses of victims delivered into their hands.

T

he conviction of Nazi criminals in West German courts in the

1950s was hindered by the time that had elapsed between the crimes and the trials. Facts were difficult to ascertain. As

In general, the German courts decided that the crimes they were asked to judge did not meet the criteria of murder as required by law. If the defendants were shown to have killed, they were also generally shown to have acted as tools of the Nazi machine. At most, they were guilty of being accessories to murder, an offense punishable by terms in prison ranging from three years to life (or, as of 1975, from three to fifteen years). The accused also benefited from the fact that they were no longer considered to represent a threat to the community.

a rule, the courts accepted the

The full force of the law was applied only in the rather rare cases of excessively cruel and sadistic criminals. Inflicting more pain and physical or mental torture “than was necessary” was shown to be in violation of orders the defendants had received. Federal German criminal courts regarded such behavior as indication of murderous intent, and in these cases they could therefore pass sentences of life imprisonment.

day, places, faces, and ranks. It was

perpetrators’ own testimony of having acted in obedience to orders. Few witnesses had survived, and those who had survived often did not accurately remember particulars as dates, times of therefore rarely possible to achieve a finding of guilt.

In contrast to the Nuremberg judgments, the German population was more accepting of the German courts’ dispensation of justice to Nazi criminals. The guilt of the concentration camp killers and SS firing squads was not in doubt. Yet they were given every consideration by the courts, which felt that although the accused had engaged in a mass murder operation, they were not “murderous types.” In the view of the judges, the extermination personnel became the “murderous type” only if they exhibited and promoted Hitlerian racist hatred, or if they performed the killing in an excessively cruel manner.

Poland In view of the enormous crimes committed by the Nazis in Poland, the capture and punishment of war criminals was considered an urgent priority by Polish authorities in the liberated territories. The Polish Committee of National Liberation, established in liberated L U B L I N on July 21, 1944, issued an order on August 31 of that year concerning the punishment of Nazi criminals and Polish traitors. This order established strict criminal responsibility for all kinds of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Special courts were established on September 12, 1944, for the trial of Nazi criminals. The proceedings were of a summary nature and there was no appeal. On January 22, 1946, the Supreme National Court was created to deal with trials of special significance. In 1949 the special courts were abolished and subsequent trials of war crimes came before regular courts, with selected judges conducting the trials according to the general rules of procedure. A mass of documentation accumulated in the trials of Nazi war criminals by Polish courts covered a variety of subjects, including: the almost total extermination of the Jewish population; the selective killing of other parts of the Polish population; terror actions and persecution on grounds of ethnic origin, religion, and race; the network of extermination camps, concentration camps, and labor camps; the

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A VICTIM, A DEFENDANT Many survivors of Nazi atrocities were called to testify at the various international trials. One such witness was a Dutch Jew by the name of Max Nabig, who fell victim to the experiments of Dr. Hans Eysele at Buchenwald. Nabig miraculously survived a stomach resection performed by Eysele without anesthesia. Although most who endured Eysele’s experimentation were killed by lethal injection shortly after the procedures were complete, Nabig was protected by other prisoners and nurtured back to health. Nabig’s testimony helped convict Eysele in his postwar trial. And what happened to Dr. Hans Eysele after his conviction? Given the death penalty, Eysele served just five years of what had been commuted to an eight-year prison sentence. In 1952, he was released, and when he returned to his home province of Bavaria, he began practicing medicine again in Munich and was loaned the sum of 10,000 marks in “compensation” for losses incurred as a result of the war. In 1955, further evidence of his inhumane treatment of prisoners surfaced. To avoid being arrested once again, Eysele sought asylum in Egypt, where he was able to establish a comfortable medical practice.

actions designed to restrict the natural growth of the native populations of the occupied countries; the forced-labor organization that involved moving people, by force, out of the borders of their own country; the destruction and theft of art works and antiquities; the forced assimilation into the German nation of select groups of children and youngsters; the ruin of the economy of the occupied countries; the destruction and theft of private property; the destruction of W A R S AW in 1944; and other war crimes and crimes against humanity. SPECIAL COURTS The special courts established in September 1944 lost no time

in tackling their task. The first trial of war criminals in Poland was held from November 27 to December 2, 1944, while fighting was still in full swing. The accused were staff members of the M A J DA N E K camp who had fallen into Polish hands. The total number of Nazi war criminals tried after the war was 5,450—a tiny fraction of the total, since most of the criminals had fled with the retreating German forces. The attempts made after the war to extradite war criminals to Poland were only partially successful; the total number extradited was 1,803. In 1947 and 1948 difficulties were encountered in extraditing Nazi war criminals to Poland from the western zones of occupation in Germany, and from 1950 on, no more extraditions were granted. This meant that at least 5,600 Nazis listed as war criminals by the United Nations War Crimes Commission could not be prosecuted. The trials before the Supreme National Court were of special importance. The first such trial (June 7 to 21, 1946) was that of Arthur Greiser, the Gauleiter (district leader) of the Warthegau. Next to be tried (August 27 to September 5, 1946) was Amon Goeth, who had been the commandant of the P L⁄ A S Z Ó W camp.

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In the trial of Ludwig Fischer, who had been governor of the Warsaw district, and in that of Ludwig Leist, the former governor of Warsaw, and of two Higher SS and Police Leaders, Josef Meisinger and Max Daum (December 17, 1946, to late February 1947), all the accused were found guilty of crimes against the population of Warsaw and its vicinity, including the abominable treatment of the population after the suppression of the 1944 W ARSAW P OLISH U PRISING . Fischer was also convicted on the charge of setting up the Warsaw ghetto and the Treblinka extermination camp. The trial of Rudolf H Ö S S , the man who set up the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp and was its commandant until October 1943, was held March 11 to 29, 1947. This trial reconstructed, with great precision, the teams that had established and operated Auschwitz. These were the men who were responsible for the fate of the 300,000 prisoners whose names were listed in the camp rolls and of more than one million other prisoners who were not even registered in the camp and, on their arrival in Auschwitz, were taken straight to the gas chambers.

T

he trials of Nazi criminals in Poland were conducted in

accordance with established legal procedure, with the accused having the rights of defense. The accused were tried for acts and crimes in violation not only of state law, but also of international law, mainly the Fourth Hague Convention.

The first Auschwitz trial was followed by the trial of Arthur L I E B E H E N S C H E L (November 24 to December 16, 1947), who succeeded Höss as the commandant of Auschwitz, and 39 other defendants, many of whom had held responsible posts in the camp. In the trial held from April 5 to 27, 1948, the accused was Albert Forster, who had been district leader of Danzig and then of Danzig-East Prussia. The last trial before the Supreme National Court (April 17 to June 5, 1948), was Josef Bühler, who had been deputy governor of the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T (that is, the deputy of Hans Frank, who was tried at the Nuremberg Trial). The Nazi criminals who were tried by the Supreme National Court were all sentenced to death and executed, with the exception of Leist and some of the Auschwitz camp staff. The Polish courts regarded the administrative institutions of the concentration camps—the camp command, administrative officers, and personnel—as criminal organizations, under the definition of that term by the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal. S E V E N S I G N I F I CA N T T R I A L S I N P O L A N D Of the thousands of trials held before the special courts and, later, the regular courts in Poland, the most important were those of the following persons:

1. Erich Koch (1959), who had been governor of East Prussia, which had parts of northern Poland annexed to it. S AW

2. Jürgen S T R O O P (1951), who in 1943 was in charge of suppressing the W A R G H E T TO U P R I S I N G .

3. Franz Konrad (1951), an SS officer charged with committing multiple murders in the Warsaw ghetto and assisting in the suppression of the ghetto uprising. 4. Herbert Buttcher (1949), SS and Police Leader in the Radom district, who was charged, in part, with the extermination of the Jews of Ostrowiec, Cze˛ stochowa, and Piotrków Trybunalski. 5. Hans B I E B OW (1947), chief of the L⁄ Ó D Z´ ghetto administration. 6. Jacob S P O R R E N B E R G (1950), SS and Police Leader in the Lublin district, charged with, among other crimes, the mass murder of Jews, mainly in Aktion E R N T E F E S T (“H A RV E S T F E S T I VA L”). 7. Paul Otto Geibel (1954), SS and Police Leader in Warsaw, charged with the role he played in the destruction of the Polish capital in 1944, among other crimes. Also brought to trial were several dozen persons who had served on the staffs of the Auschwitz, Majdanek, and S T U T T H O F camps.

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SEE ALSO BARBIE TRIAL; CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY; OFFICE OF SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Conot, Robert E. Justice at Nuremberg. New York: Harper & Row, 1983. Garscha, Winfried R., and Claudia Kuretsidis-Haider. “War Crime Trials in Austria,” in Proceedings of the Conference of the German Studies Association (1997). Reproduced at http://www.doew.at/warcrime.html#trials (accessed on September 1, 2000). Harris, Whitney R. Tyranny on Trial: The Evidence at Nuremberg. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1995. Sprecher, Drexel A. Inside the Nuremberg Trial: A Prosecutor’s Comprehensive Account. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1999. Taylor, Telford. The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir. New York: Knopf, 1992. Teicholz, Tom. The Trial of Ivan the Terrible: State of Israel vs. John Demjanjuk. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988.

Trial of Adolf Eichmann and Hitler and the Nuremberg Trials [videorecording]. Columbia Tristar, 1996.

Ukraine

pogroms

Organized attacks against Jews and their property.

Jews have lived in Ukraine for a thousand years. Their population grew steadily over the centuries, despite the existence of A N T I S E M I T I S M and occasional periods of violent persecution. Terrible massacres of Jews took place in the 1600s and 1700s, when tens of thousands of Jews were murdered and entire communities destroyed. During the civil war of 1918, some 100,000 Ukrainian Jews were murdered in pogroms . Jews were disabled for life, their property was pillaged and destroyed, and many of the towns and villages where they had lived were totally abandoned. Still, the Ukrainian Jews developed diverse and vibrant communities. In September 1939, the western part of Ukraine was incorporated into the S OV I E T U N I O N . Before long, its Jewish institutions and organizations were abolished. Thousands of Jewish leaders and activists were exiled, and the Jewish economy was completely “Sovietized.” With its new borders, the Ukraine had a Jewish population of 2.4 million in early 1941. On June 22, 1941, G E R M A N Y attacked the Soviet Union. German forces advanced rapidly, and by that October Germany had conquered the entire Ukrainian republic, except for the Lugansk district. The German army was accompanied by Ukrainian nationalist military units. Important public figures in western Ukraine—including major religious leaders—welcomed the Germans as liberators, in the hope of being granted independence from the Soviet Union. The Germans were also received warmly in eastern Ukraine. Some of the Soviet P R I S O N E R S O F WA R who were Ukrainians, as well as young Ukrainian civilians, volunteered for service in auxiliary units of the German army, police, and the S S . In late 1943, a Ukrainian SS division was formed, made up of volunteers. O P E R AT I O N A L S Q UA D S (Einsatzgruppen) C and D, marching in with the German army, quickly installed a regime of terror and mass murder in Ukraine. They killed hundreds of thousands of Jews, as well as tens of thousands of other citizens whom they suspected of being Communists or Soviet officials.

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The Ukrainian nationalists soon realized that Germany would not grant independence to Ukraine. The Germans turned the larger part of the region over to a civil administration (the Reichskommissariat Ukraine), and put the rest of eastern Ukraine under a military administration. The region known as Eastern Galicia was annexed as a district to the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T . Despite their earlier promises, the Germans did not abolish the collective farms established by the Soviets. Instead, they took huge quantities of grain, other foodstuffs, and raw materials from Ukraine. The local population was left to starve, especially in the cities. Millions of people were sent as F O R C E D L A B O R to Nazi German territory.

Ukraine.

In response, a large partisan resistance movement was formed under Communist leadership. These paramilitary PA R T I S A N S operated mostly in the northern, heavily wooded part of Ukraine, where they took guerrilla action against German occupying forces. In western Ukraine and in Bukovina, with the help of the U K R A I N I A N A U X I L P O L I C E (Ukrainische Hilfspolizei), the local population staged violent pogroms in which thousands of Jews were murdered and their property pillaged and destroyed. In LVOV , 5,000 Jews were murdered in two of these pogroms. The operational squads also carried out mass violent “actions” (Aktionen), which were organized killing sprees, in such places as L U T S K (where they murdered 2,000 Jews), Ostrog (3,000), and T E R N O P O L (5,000). IARY

In much of the eastern side of the old Polish-Soviet border, the operational squads sought total liquidation of the Jews. (The exception was in K A M E N E T S P O D O L S K I .) The extermination proceeded at a rapid pace, following a regular pattern. Immediately after occupation, the German military administration issued a

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series of decrees, ordering the Jews to wear distinctive badges (see B A D G E , J E W I S H ) and to register with the authorities. The Jews were ordered to set up committees (a form of J U D E N R AT ), confined to specific streets, and put on forced labor. After a few months, the Jews were rounded up and taken to ravines, abandoned quarries, or anti-tank ditches, where they were killed. The job of rounding up, guarding, and transporting the Jews was in the hands of German and Ukrainian police and, at times, also of rear-echelon German army units. The killing itself was carried out by the operational squads or the SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service). Jews who tried to escape or who could not keep up with the rest were killed on the spot. Eight gas vans (see G A S C H A M B E R S / VA N S ) were also used for the murders.

T

he Jews were crowded into gas vans, which were hermetically

sealed. Exhaust fumes were then piped into the vans, and the victims choked to death while the vans were on the road to the burial pits.

The Jews of Zhitomir were the first victims of the systematic murder process. By September 19, 1941, the entire Jewish population of the city, numbering 10,000, had been killed. On September 29 and 30, the Jews of Kiev were brought to the ravine of B A B I Y A R and murdered there. On October 13, some 15,000 Jews from Dnepropetrovsk were murdered. The Jews of K H A R K OV were rounded up in December, held in the sheds of a tractor plant, and from there taken to the Drobitski Yar ravine in January 1942, where they were murdered there. In Transnistria, then under Romanian rule, some Jews escaped Operational Squad D and were able to survive, as were some of the Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina. But the Jews of Odessa—80,000 of them—were all killed. Most of the Jews of Volhynia, KamenetsPodolski, and Eastern Galicia were murdered during 1942 and 1943. There were many instances of resistance (see R E S I S TA N C E , J E W I S H ) during this liquidation process. Tens of thousands of Jews tried to escape. There were uprisings in ghettos and armed resistance based in fortified bunkers. Many of the young people who managed to escape established Jewish fighting units. Others joined the Soviet partisan movement and fought in the catacombs of Odessa, in the Dnepropetrovsk and Kiev areas, and in various partisan groups. During the government-organized evacuation of Ukraine on the eve of the German occupation, 800,000 of eastern Ukraine’s 1.5 million Jews (within the 1939 borders) were evacuated or escaped. In comparison, no more than 50,000 Jews from among the 900,000 living in western Ukraine and Bukovina survived. The Jews of Transcarpathian Ukraine, which during the war was under Hungarian rule, were deported to A U S C H W I T Z in the summer of 1944. Most of them perished there. The German defeat at Stalingrad in early 1943 marked the start of Ukraine’s liberation, which was completed in late August 1944. Following the liberation, many Jews wanted to return to their homes in Ukraine, but they encountered fierce antisemitism. In Kiev, this assumed the dimensions of a pogrom. Many of the survivors therefore decided to settle elsewhere. The surviving remnants of the Jews of western Ukraine and Bukovina took advantage of their right to repatriate to P O L A N D or Romania, and soon joined the Beriha—the organized exodus to those countries. Many made their way to Israel between 1945 and 1948.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Fishman, Lala. Lala’s Story: A Memoir of the Holocaust. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1997. Gitelman, Zvi, ed. Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. Kahana, David. Lvov Ghetto Diary. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990. Sobel, Nathan, ed. Luboml: The Memorial Book of a Vanished Shtetl. Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1997.

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UKRAINIAN MILITARY POLICE

Weiner, M. Jewish Roots in Ukraine and Moldova: Pages from the Past and Archival Inventories. Secaucus, NJ: Miriam Weiner Routes to Roots Foundation, 1999. Zipperstein, Steven J. Imagining Russian Jewry: Memory, History, Identity. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999.

Ukrainian Military Police Ukrainian Military Police units (Ukrainische Hilfspolizei) were established in the earliest days of the German invasion of the S OV I E T U N I O N and the occupation of Ukrainian-inhabited areas. These units were organized, with the encouragement of the local military governors, by the Ukrainian nationalists who accompanied the German forces on their entry into U K R A I N E . As soon as the SD (Sicherheitsdienst, or Security Service) established its offices in an occupied area, it instituted a check on the political reliability of the Ukrainian militia personnel, especially the officers. On July 27, 1941, on Heinrich H I M M L E R ’s orders, the mobile Ukrainian Military Police was created, under the jurisdiction of the SS and German police commanders in the various subdivisions of the German civil administration. The battalions were housed in police barracks in key places, and were deployed in major police operations such as the drive against the PA R T I S A N S . After the civil administration had been installed in August, 1941 in the Galicia district and, throughout September, in the other parts of the German-occupied Ukraine, the militia units were renamed the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police Constabulary (Ukrainische Hilfspolizei Schutzmannschaft), and an individual policeman was generally referred to as a Schutzmann (constable). The units were subordinate to the German police and gendarmerie. The Ukrainian Military Police wore black uniforms and were equipped with captured Soviet light weapons. Collective fines were imposed upon the Jews to defray the costs of providing the police with uniforms and boots. The senior commanders of these units were Germans. In the first few days of the occupation, Ukrainian police, as an organized group and individually, participated in pogroms against the Jews, in L V OV , in the cities of Eastern Galicia, and in Volhynia. Later, when Ukrainian police escorted groups of Jews to places of work or were on guard duty in the ghettos, they extorted money from the Jews, harassed them, and frequently shot Jews merely for the sake of killing. When the ghettos were being liquidated, units of the Ukrainian Military Police took part in operations such as blockading the ghettos, searching for Jews who had gone into hiding, and hunting those who had escaped. They led Jews to their execution, which generally took place in a large pit, and served as the guards surrounding the murder sites, barring access to them. Known for their brutality, they killed many thousands of Jews who tried to escape or could not keep up on the way to the execution sites or. In the spring of 1943, large numbers of Ukrainian police deserted with their weapons and joined the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrainska Povstanska Armiya). Others, especially those who served in the mobile battalions, retreated westward with the German forces, and in the final stage of the war were incorporated into the Eastbattalion or into divisions of the Ukrainian National Army.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Gitelman, Zvi, ed. Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

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Partisans of Vilna [sound recording]. Flying Fish, 1989. Porter, Jack Nusan, ed. Jewish Partisans: A Documentary of Jewish Resistance in the Soviet Union During World War II. Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982.

UNDERGROUND, JEWISH. SEE RESISTANCE, JEWISH. UNITED KINGDOM. SEE GREAT BRITAIN. United Partisan Organization The United Partisan Organization (FPO; Fareynegte Partizaner Organizatsye) was a Jewish, anti-German underground organization in the V I L N A ghetto. In July 1940, L I T H UA N I A —including Vilna—was occupied by the S OV I E T U N I O N . At that time, the existing Zionist youth organizations had to go underground, continuing their activities in secret and in defiance of the Soviet forces. When the city was captured by the Germans on June 24, 1941, these organizations continued to exist. In the first few months of the German occupation, their efforts concentrated mainly on saving their members from the killing sprees that were being conducted in Vilna by Nazi O P E R AT I O N A L S Q UA D S (Einsatzgruppen). The underground groups discussed where they should focus their efforts. Should they continue their underground activity in the Vilna ghetto, where most of the Jews had been murdered? Or should they move to ghettos in B E L O R U S S I A or the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T , where the Jews were still living in relative quiet? All the movements, except for He-Haluts ha-Tsa’irDror, which was headed by Mordechai T E N E N BAU M , wanted to stay in Vilna.

Birth of a United Resistance Movement

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here were five people to a cell, based on their places of

residence in the ghetto. Three cells made up a platoon, and six to eight platoons formed a battalion. The United Partisan Organization (FPO) had two battalions, each composed of 100 to 120 fighters.

On New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1941, 150 members of the Pioneer (Haluts) Youth Movements in the ghetto attended a meeting. There, Abba Kovner’s appeal “not to go like sheep to the slaughter” was read. Kovner announced that all the Jews who had been taken taken from Vilna were murdered at P O N A R Y . He called upon the Jewish youth to organize for armed struggle against the Germans. On January 21, 1942, representatives of the Zionist YO U T H M OV E M E N T S —among them Kovner of Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir, Nissan Reznik of Ha-No’ar ha-Tsiyyoni, Josef G L A Z M A N of Betar, and Yitzhak Wittenberg of the Communists—decided to establish a united resistance movement: the United Partisan Organization (FPO). Wittenberg was elected commander of the FPO. Kovner, Glazman, and Reznik served on his staff. The organization’s aim was to prepare for armed resistance in the face of and Nazi violence toward Jews. Another goal was to spread the idea of resistance to other ghettos.

D E P O RTAT I O N S

To accomplish its goals, the FPO divided itself into underground “cells,” or small groups. The FPO headquarters included representatives of all the parties and youth movements that had united to join in underground activities. Representatives were sent to the G R O D N O , B I A L⁄ Y S TO K , and W A R S AW ghettos in order to establish contact with them. They were to spread the idea of resistance and rebellion, and tell of the mass extermination of the Jews in Vilna and the rest of Lithuania. Attempts were also made to establish ties with the Polish underground

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Jewish partisans who left the Vilna ghetto and escaped to the Rudninkai Forest return to Vilna after the liberation in July 1944.

Home Army (Armia Krajowa) in Vilna, but these efforts failed. There was contact with a small, non-Jewish Communist group that was active in Vilna; the ghetto underground lent its support to this group. An attempt was also made to send women representatives through the front lines to the Soviet Union, to tell the world of the mass extermination of the Jews and to appeal for help. These emissaries were stopped by Germans near the front lines. They managed to escape, though, and made their way back to Vilna. The FPO’s most pressing problem was acquiring weapons. Few sources existed for the underground, although some guns could be purchased from the local population. Members of the underground working in a German captured-weapons depot were able to smuggle out some weapons and give them to the FPO. Primitive hand grenades and Molotov cocktails were made in the ghetto itself. The underground managed to acquire mostly pistols, plus a small number of rifles, hand grenades, and submachine guns. The weapons were kept in a cache in the ghetto. At its height, the FPO had some 300 organized members, and a weapon of some sort was available for each.

Molotov cocktails

A type of hand-made bomb.

The FPO carried out acts of sabotage outside the ghetto. For example, FPO members mined the railway used by trains heading for the front lines, and they sabotaged equipment and arms in German factories where underground members were employed. The chairman of the Vilna J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council), Jacob G E N S , knew of the underground’s existence and maintained contact with its leaders. In the spring of 1943, the FPO smuggled more arms into the ghetto. It also contacted the PA RT I S A N S who were active in the forests of western Belorussia. Several groups of young people who were not FPO members headed for the forests, and representatives of the partisans came to the ghetto. The Judenrat, warned of these activities by the German authorities, considered them dangerous to the continued existence of the ghetto. This led to friction between the Jewish Council and the FPO. Acting on a tip, the Germans arrested the members of the Vilna Communist underground committee. They ordered Gens to hand Wittenberg over to them. Otherwise, the Vilna ghetto and its entire population would be liquidated. On July 15, 1943, Gens invited the FPO command to his house and arrested Wittenberg on the spot. As German security police were leading Wittenberg to the ghetto gate,

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O

n September 1, 1943, the FPO issued a call for revolt in the

Vilna ghetto: “Jews, prepare for armed resistance …! Out into the streets …! Strike the murderers! In every street, in every yard, in every room, within the ghetto and outside the ghetto.… Jews, we have nothing to lose. We can save our lives only if we kill the murderers.… Long live armed resistance!”

they were attacked by FPO members, and Wittenberg was set free. The FPO then took up positions in several of the ghetto houses. On the following day, there was a confrontation between the FPO and the ghetto police. Many of the ghetto inhabitants sided with the police and demanded that Wittenberg be handed over, in order to save the ghetto from the Germans. To avoid a bloody battle among the Jews, Wittenberg gave himself up to the Germans. That same night, he committed suicide. Abba Kovner was elected to take his place as the FPO commander. For the FPO, these events served as a warning. A partisan base was subsequently established in the forest as a place of refuge for FPO members, should the need arise. On July 24, 1943, a group of FPO men, headed by Josef G L A Z M A N , left the ghetto for the Naroch Forest. On September 1, the Germans launched a deportation of Jews from Vilna to Estonia. This was an early step in the ghetto’s total liquidation, so the FPO mobilized its members. They took up positions in one section of the ghetto and called for the Jews to rebel against deportation orders. The ghetto inhabitants did not respond to the call. They believed they really were being sent away for work elsewhere and were not destined for extermination. That evening, there was an armed clash between underground members and the German forces combing the ghetto. When darkness fell, the Germans left the ghetto and did not return to it for the duration of their operation, which lasted until September 4. Gens, the Judenrat chairman, had promised to provide the Germans with the required quota (number of Jews) to be sent to Estonia. The FPO gave up the idea of an uprising, since the ghetto inhabitants were not interested in participating. It began moving its members out, to the Naroch and Rudninkai Forests. The Vilna ghetto was liquidated on September 23, 1943. Most of the inhabitants were sent to C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S and E X T E R M I N AT I O N CA M P S . The last group of FPO members left the ghetto that day. Most of the 500 to 700 FPO members escaped to the forests and formed themselves into Jewish battalions as part of the Soviet partisan movement. Partisans from the Vilna ghetto fought in the forests until the Soviet army reached them. Then they took part in the liberation of Vilna, on July 13, 1944.

SEE ALSO RESISTANCE, JEWISH. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Partisans of Vilna [sound recording]. Flying Fish, 1989. Porter, Jack Nusan, ed. Jewish Partisans: A Documentary of Jewish Resistance in the Soviet Union During World War II. Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982.

United States Army and Survivors in Germany and Austria At the end of World War II, the Allied powers were faced with seven million DIS (DPs) in G E R M A N Y and A U S T R I A . In an extensive operation, the Allies succeeded in repatriating more than six million—that is, returned to the places where they had lived prior to Nazi aggression—but a million refused or were unable to return to their countries of origin. Included in this group were former citizens of the Baltic countries (L AT V I A , L I T H UA N I A , and Estonia) that had been annexed by the S OV I E T U N I O N in 1940, and Poles, Ukrainians, and Yugoslavs who resisted repatriaP L AC E D P E R S O N S

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tion either because of their opposition to the Communist regime or because they were afraid of being put on trial for collaborating with the Nazis. When old hostilities with the Soviet Union resurfaced and intensified, the U NITED S TATES no longer tried to pressure the nationals of Communist countries to return to their former homes. This situation compelled the Allied forces to take care of masses of people representing 52 different nationalities who were housed in 900 DP assembly centers. The administration of these camps was to have been the responsibility of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), but for a variety of reasons—lack of trained personnel, absence of a clear policy, poor planning and management—the international agency was unable to fulfill its role properly. The private relief organizations that were gradually permitted to operate in the camps could provide only partial aid at best. Consequently, the U.S. Army, despite a shrinking budget and inexperienced personnel, assumed the major responsibility for the DPs. The Jewish population in the American zone in Germany and Austria grew from 30,000 in 1945 to 250,000 in the summer of 1947, as Jews from eastern Europe moved in. Most of these Jews had no homes and no families to return to. The only solution for them was emigration, but the gates of all the countries in the world, including the United States and Palestine, were closed to them. As time went on, the number of Jewish DPs increased just as the military budget was being reduced. Opposition to the Jews became stronger, even among the senior American officers. Compounding the frustration for all concerned, the American policy of transferring authority over DPs to the Germans, both on a local and on a national level, conflicted with the DPs’ refusal to accept and submit to German authority.

A

ddressing the diverse needs of the DPs was difficult. The American

army’s policy of evenhandedness toward all the DPs, instituted to avoid charges of discrimination, had an adverse effect on the Jewish DPs, who were housed in the same camps with DPs from Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltic countries who continued to display antisemitic behavior and attitudes toward the Jews.

In June 1945, President Harry S. Truman sent Earl G. Harrison, dean of the law faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, on a mission to Europe to investigate the DPs’ situation. Harrison recommended establishing separate camps for Jews and improving their treatment in terms of food, housing, and clothing. The sympathetic attitude of the American people toward survivors of C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S , together with Harrison’s report, led to a decisive change for the better in the conditions of the H O L O C AU S T survivors. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the commander in chief of the American forces in Europe, appointed to his staff an adviser on Jewish affairs, who made sure that problems affecting the Jews were dealt with speedily and efficiently at the highest level. On two occasions in 1946 the administration in Washington decided to close the borders between the American zones and the east, but after Jewish lobbying in Washington they were soon reopened. In the final analysis, the infiltration of great numbers of Jews into the American zones in Germany and Austria would not have been possible without the humanitarian approach of American army personnel, who more often than not closed their eyes to the immigration. With the establishment of the state of Israel in May 1948 and the passage of a DP bill by Congress in June of that year (the Wiley-Revercomb Displaced Persons’ bill, which provided for the admission of 100,000 DPs to the United States in 1949 and 1950), the DP problem underwent a drastic transformation. Large-scale emigration to Israel and the United States now emptied the camps, diminished the blackmarket operations, and improved the army’s attitude toward the remaining DPs. Views differ concerning the overall relations between the American army and the Jewish DPs. All in all, despite occasional friction, especially between the DPs and American soldiers of lower echelons, the American army deserves credit for its massive help to the Jewish DPs.

SEE ALSO DISPLACED PERSONS; RESCUE OF CHILDREN; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

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SUGGESTED RESOURCES Abzug, Robert H. Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Hyett, Barbara Helfgott. In Evidence: Poems of the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986. Parshall, Gerald. “Freeing the Survivors.” U.S. News and World Report, April 3, 1995.

Survivors of the Holocaust [videorecording]. Turner Home Entertainment, 1996. Tito, E. Tina. Liberation: Teens in the Concentration Camps and the Teen Soldiers Who Liberated Them. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 1999.

United States Department of State The U N I T E D S TAT E S Department of State was the North American governmental body most directly responsible for dealing with the fate of European Jewry during the years preceding World War II and, to a certain extent, during the H O L O C AU S T years, through its powers to grant visas, formulate refugee policy, and deal with foreign governments and international agencies. It has come under criticism for its lack of response to the widespread massacre of Jews throughout Europe. The State Department’s career officers were traditionally part of an upper-class elite and were insensitive, and often antagonistic, to non–“Anglo-Saxon” immigrants. This helped shape their response to the events of the Holocaust, at a time when much of the department’s policy formulation was in their hands. After Adolf H I T L E R came to power in 1933 and the plight of Jews in G E R M A N Y grew increasingly difficult, the already stringent United States visa regulations were often amended by American consuls, which decreased the likelihood that German Jews would obtain United States entry visas. In this, and in its opposition to increasing the number of refugees permitted to enter the United States, the State Department reflected the prevailing public view on immigration. The State Department’s attitude toward the plight of the refugees hardened when, in January 1940, Breckinridge Long, a political associate of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was appointed assistant secretary of state. His power included authority over the Visa Division and responsibility for formulating U.S. refugee policy. Fearful of spies and saboteurs infiltrating the refugees, and hoping to keep the United States from being inundated by ethnic and political elements then perceived as undesirable, Long instituted policies that created even more obstacles for potential refugees from Europe. In the summer of 1942, the State Department attempted to prevent news of the Holocaust, transmitted through its channels, from reaching American Jewish leadership (see R I E G N E R C A B L E ). In February 1943, the State Department gave specific instructions to its representative in Switzerland not to transmit such information. When President Roosevelt agreed to the Jewish leadership’s request to allow the transfer of funds to the Jews of Romania, the State Department delayed the transaction. Throughout the war it opposed any serious rescue or relief efforts for the Jews of Europe. The apparent apathy of State Department officers toward the fate of the European Jews led top officials of the Treasury Department to accuse them, in a report to the president, of deliberate acquiescence in the murder of the Jews of Europe.

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This report was the major factor in Roosevelt’s action, in January 1944, to create the W A R R E F U G E E B OA R D , which subsequently made the main decisions regarding United States–initiated relief and rescue attempts.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES America and the Holocaust: Deceit and Indifference [videorecording]. PBS Video, 1994. Newton, Verne W., ed. FDR and the Holocaust. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. Wyman, David S. The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. Wyman, David S., ed. Showdown in Washington: State, Treasury, and Congress. New York: Garland, 1990.

UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM. SEE MUSEUMS AND MEMORIAL INSTITUTES.

United States of America The U.S. government’s response to the anti-Jewish National Socialist regime in G E R M A N Y is best viewed within the context of three factors that include (1) America’s foreign policy of isolationism during the 1920s and 1930s; (2) the domestic impact of the Great Depression on the economy of the United States; and (3) deep-seated attitudes of R AC I S M and A N T I S E M I T I S M at all levels of American society.

The Roots of U.S. Response to Nazism in Europe Initially, the relationship of the United States to Germany reflected the U.S. policy of isolationism . In practice, this meant refusing to become involved in international conflicts where U.S. interests were not directly threatened, and protecting economic relationships that were beneficial to the United States. Public disillusionment with America’s entry into World War I was a major reason for this policy. The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration’s ability to intervene as the National Socialists (Nazis) rose to power was limited by strong isolationist sentiment among the American people. Isolationist legislation, such as the Hoover-Stimson Doctrine (1931), the Ludlow Amendment (1934–36), and the Neutrality Laws of 1936, 1937, and 1939, undoubtedly signaled to the aggressors in B E R L I N and Tokyo that, despite being a major world power, the United States would not likely intervene in their plans to expand their empires through invasion and brute force.

isolationism

A policy of national isolation reflected in a country’s choice not to enter into political and economic alliances with other countries.

On the economic front, Americans were focused on their own needs during the years immediately following World War I, and were generally uninterested in assuming a role in the rebuilding of Europe after the war. When spending and financial speculation spiraled out of control by the end of the 1920s, the United States—and indeed all of its trading partners—were plunged into the economic crisis known as the Great Depression. During the next decade, as the refugee phase of the crisis in Europe began to reach its peak (1933–41), there was great reluctance to increase immigration to the United States, where joblessness was rampant and communities were already having difficulty providing for those most severely affected by the Depression.

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hose who opposed a rescue policy for European Jews

argued that the stream of refugees in the United States would increase unemployment.

More difficult to appraise is the role of antisemitism in the response of the United States to the crisis of European Jews. Whereas in Berlin the “Jewish question” was ideologically tied to all public policy, antisemitism was not officially part of public policy or government action in the United States. Overt antisemitic behavior in the United States was not sanctioned by the government, even if there were also no laws against it. Jews were leaders in business and government, particularly in the major northeastern population centers, and the Jewish community was considered to have close ties to the Roosevelt administration. This, in fact, led to some of the conflict for President Roosevelt, especially in the foreign-policy area, where Jewish leaders had taken a strong interventionist position regarding world affairs and the responsibility of the United States to intervene on behalf of European Jews. As a result, they earned the staunch opposition of isolationist spokesmen like Charles Lindbergh, who, in a speech in Des Moines in September 1941, warned the nation that Anglophiles and Jews were trying to bring the United States into the war. More outspoken antisemites, such as National socialist Fritz Kuhn and American clergymen Charles E. Coughlin and Gerald L. K. Smith, and had long before forged a negative link between the movement to “stop Hitler” and the Jews, who were accused of placing Jewish interests before those of the United States as a whole. During the 1930s, antisemitic sentiment stemmed primarily from the conservative right wing of the political spectrum. The political culture of American Jewry placed it at the opposite end of that spectrum, on the liberal left. Jews supported the resurgence of organized labor and the organization of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Jews were the nation’s staunchest supporters of the welfare-state program, which dovetailed with their own social democratic priorities. Consequently, some of the conservative critics of Roosevelt’s “New Deal” programs complained about the increasing number of Jews in high positions in the administration, and began calling the New Deal the “Jew Deal.” Roosevelt’s administration was reluctant to fuel that sentiment. There was also a need to work productively across the political spectrum to solve America’s social and economic problems; further alienating conservative congressmen by embracing “the Jewish agenda” would have been counterproductive.

Early Response As the crisis in Europe unfolded, there was some response from the United States. In 1937 a “special care” instruction was issued to American consulates, alerting them to the need for special attention to this issue. Hugh R. Wilson, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, was “recalled for consultation” after the K R I S TA L L N AC H T violence in November 1938. After the Anschluss (annexation of A U S T R I A ) in March of that year, the German and Austrian U.S. immigration quotas were unified in order not to lose the opportunity to accept refugees from Austria. And in 1939, after the international E V I A N C O N F E R E N C E , the United States agreed to fully utilize existing immigrant quotas for the first time. But a bill in Congress to admit 10,000 Jewish refugee children outside the quota (the Wagner-Rogers Bill), introduced in 1939 and again in 1940, did not emerge from committee. Throughout World War II, the “Jewish question” maintained the low priority it had had before the war. The “great debate” over isolationism in American foreign policy was resolved by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but that hardly stilled the strident antisemitism that persisted in sectors of the American populace. Anti-refugee and anti-rescue sentiment was now reinforced by fears that Germany would infiltrate spies into the refugee stream. Roosevelt’s awareness of these popular passions convinced him that the war must never be allowed to be depicted in terms of a war to save the Jews.

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Indifference to the refugees extended to the question of rescuing those in camps. Even when it became clear that the Germans had actually embarked on the “F I N A L S O L U T I O N ,” the State Department tried for a time to suppress confirmation of the news, which had been transmitted from Leland Harrison, its own consul in Bern, Switzerland. Instead, a fruitless search was undertaken for areas where masses of Jews might be resettled. Jews were not willing to pioneer outside Palestine, and the administration had “frozen” the Palestine problem, which was considered a British affair, until after the war. Efforts to rescue Jews by means of refugee ships failed; in one example, the S T. L O U I S , destined in 1939 for Cuba with a cargo of hapless refugees, was rejected by Cuba and compelled to return to Europe, where death awaited many of the passengers. Only the Dominican Republic Settlement Association, a small-scale venture whose genesis can be traced to the Evian Conference, succeeded in providing a safe haven for Jewish refugees.

“A

lone they faced mighty legions, the mightiest in Europe then.

Alone. That is the key word, the haunting theme.” Elie Wiesel, on the situation of European Jews when it became clear that virtually no country in the world would open its doors to Jewish refugees.

Most of the steps taken by the Roosevelt administration were intended more as gestures than as a consistent policy to ameliorate the plight of the victims. The Evian Conference, called at Roosevelt’s behest in mid-1938 to bring order into the chaotic refugee situation, was doomed to fail. The American delegation was instructed beforehand that U.S. immigration laws could not be changed. With the United States unable to contribute any genuine solutions for the problem, nations such as Britain and F R A N C E could hardly be expected to take the lead. Similarly, the concept of resettling Jews, on which so much was staked, turned into an appalling failure. Receiving nations wanted to rid themselves of Jews rather than offer haven to them.

Allied Responses, 1942–45 Between 1942 and the end of the war in Europe in 1945, the Allies gave no priority in their war aims to the rescue of Jews. They rejected repeated suggestions for retribution, negotiations, or ameliorating the situation, such as sending food packages to camps or changing the designation of their inmates to that of P R I S O N E R S O F WA R , contending that such steps would interfere with the prosecution of the war. The systematic murder of the Jews was not mentioned at any of the Allied war conferences held at Tehran, Casablanca, and Yalta. As news continued to reach the West and the public at large between May and December 1942, the British government was under great pressure to do something to help the Jews. When told of the British desire to make some sort of gesture, the U.S. State Department opted to issue a declaration rather than take concrete action. A statement drafted by the British Foreign Office and edited by the U.S. State Department was issued on December 17, 1942, in the names of B E L G I U M , Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, T H E N E T H E R L A N D S , Norway, P O L A N D , the S OV I E T U N I O N , G R E AT B R I TA I N , the United States, and the French National Committee. Clearly condemning the “bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination,” the declaration noted that hundreds of thousands had been killed. In the British Parliament, Anthony Eden prefaced his reading of the declaration by saying that it was about the sad fate of the Jews. The declaration, however, did not appease all those who clamored for aid to the Jews. Details of the fate of the Jews filtered out of Nazi-occupied Europe after October 1942. In London and Washington, government officials responded by convening a second refugee conference, in Bermuda, in April 1943. It soon became apparent that the purpose of this conference was to assuage public opinion without taking concrete rescue steps. Most recommendations for rescue were rejected. Negotiating with Berlin for the release of the Jews and a halt to the slaughter was also rejected. The delegates did make some tentative plans to establish a refugee camp in North Africa. However, so little was accomplished at the conference, it was decided not to

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ost of the steps taken by the Allies concerning the rescue of Euro-

pean Jews were gestures rather than meaningful action on behalf of the victims. Not until hundreds of thousands of Jews had been murdered by the Nazis did the governments of the United States and Great Britain begin to pursue significant rescue policies.

publicize the results. Rescue advocates dubbed the conference a “cruel mockery.” It was held at the same historical moment as the W A R S A W G H E T T O U P R I S I N G , so that the connection between the martyrdom of the Jews and the indifference of the Allies was startlingly apparent. By the fall of 1943, rescue advocates were pushing hard for the creation of a government agency specifically focused on the rescue of European Jewry. Congressional hearings were held in November 1943; it looked as if a rescue resolution would be formulated and announced sometime early in 1944. Firm action on the rescue question finally came from the Treasury Department, however, which was headed by Henry M O R G E N T H AU , Jr., a Jewish American who had direct access to Roosevelt. An official in the Treasury Department had conclusive evidence that the State Department had tried to suppress news of the implementation of the “Final Solution” and had otherwise sought to undermine all rescue efforts. A secret report containing this information was delivered by Morgenthau to the president on January 16, 1944, along with a plan to create an interdepartmental rescue agency. Whether out of a desire to claim credit for taking action before Congress could act, or to avoid the embarrassment of letting it be known that the United States had deliberately suppressed news about the killing of European Jews—or both—Roosevelt created the W A R R E F U G E E B OA R D (WRB). Headed by Treasury official John Pehle, the WRB was to be staffed with personnel from Jewish agencies knowledgeable on rescue matters. Financing was to be provided by the American Jewish J O I N T D I S T R I B U T I O N C O M M I T T E E .

The War Refugee Board Almost immediately, the WRB had to deal with a crisis in H U N G A R Y . Berlin was anxious to get rid of the Jews of Hungary before the demise of Germany itself. The WRB made a broadcast to the Hungarian people, urging them not to cooperate with the scheduled D E P O R TAT I O N S . Appeals were sent to all nations that still had diplomatic contact with Hungary to increase the size of their diplomatic staff in Hungary so that the deportations could be monitored. Money was provided to underground Zionist youth groups to enable them to open up escape routes through Yugoslavia, S L OVA K I A , and Romania. A special executive order issued by Roosevelt in April 1944 ordered that a temporary haven for rescue be established by the Army Relocation Authority in Fort Ontario, near Oswego, New York. This effectively, though temporarily, circumvented immigration laws, which had been a major rescue roadblock. Various neutral countries, especially in Latin America, were pressured to accept refugees. Switzerland was also asked to help Hungarian Jews, as was the International Red Cross. Yet despite the increase in activity by the Roosevelt administration, the rescue of the surviving Jews proved to be very difficult. The Allies still lacked control of the physical scene of the deportations. Bombing the camps and the railways leading to them, which had been suggested by rescue advocates as early as the spring of 1943, might have served as a substitute for such on-the-ground control. But in both Britain and the United States the military high command rejected the bombing idea as needlessly interfering with the major “win-the-war” priority, and it was viewed as being of “doubtful efficacy.” The creation of the WRB came too late and was too weakly implemented to save the surviving Jews of Europe.

SEE ALSO AMERICAN JEWRY AND THE HOLOCAUST; AMERICAN PRESS AND THE HOLOCAUST; RESCUE OF CHILDREN.

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SUGGESTED RESOURCES Abzug, Robert H. Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

America and the Holocaust: Deceit and Indifference [videorecording]. PBS Video, 1994. Newton, Verne W., ed. FDR and the Holocaust. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. Novick, Peter. The Holocaust in American Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Wyman, David S. The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.

USSR. SEE SOVIET UNION.

Vallat, Xavier (1891–1972)

Xavier Vallat was the French coordinator of the Vichy government’s anti-Jewish program in 1941 and 1942 (see F R A N C E ). Vallat’s political career and perspective on society was militantly nationalist, Catholic, and authoritarian. Vallat fought and was badly wounded in 1918, during World War I. By 1940 he was a member of the parliament. In March 1941, Marshal Philippe Pétain appointed Vallat head of the Office for Jewish Affairs, which was charged with administering anti-Jewish policy and legislation in France. Committed to the elimination of Jews from French public life and to reducing their role in French society, Vallat stood for what he called antisémitisme d’état. This meant that French antisemitic policy was to serve the interests of the state, and not to follow the dictates of the Nazis. Vallat operated in a highly legalistic manner, although in rare instances he made exceptions, permitting distinguished French-born Jews to remain in French public life. Anti-German as well as anti-Jewish, he resisted following an antisemitic policy that would materially aid the Reich. The Germans forced him out of office in May 1942, when their plans called for the D E P O R TAT I O N and killing of the Jews. In 1947 Vallat was sentenced to ten years in prison but was released two years later.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Josephs, Jeremy. Swastika Over Paris. New York: Arcade, 1989. Weisberg, Richard H. Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

VATICAN. SEE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. VERNICHTUNGSLAGER. SEE EXTERMINATION CAMPS. VICTIMS, NON-JEWISH.

SEE GYPSIES; HOMOSEXUALITY

IN THE

THIRD REICH.

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Vienna

T

he Jews of Vienna tried desperately to escape

from the nonstop regime of terror that prevailed in their city. At the end of May 1938, 2,000 Jews belonging to the intelligentsia were arrested and sent to the Dachau camp in four transports. The dark streets of a blackout exercise in September 1938 were used for concerted attacks on Jews; so many were injured that the Jewish hospital courtyards could not hold them all.

Until 1918, Vienna was the capital of the Habsburg Empire. A Jewish community was first established there in the twelfth century. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Vienna was a center of Jewish learning and Hebrew literature. A variety of Jewish welfare institutions and sports organizations were founded there, and Jewish newspapers, including a daily, were published. Vienna was also the center of the Zionist movement at its inception and the seat of the Zionist Executive. A significant number of Austrian Jews were leaders of the Social Democratic party. In 1923, Vienna’s Jewish population reached 201,513, the third largest in European cities. By 1936 it had decreased to 176,034, 9.4 percent of the population, likely in response to increasing anti-Jewish activity in A U S T R I A . G E R M A N Y ’s annexation of Austria in March 1938 was enthusiastically welcomed by most of the Viennese, and the ensuing persecution of the Jews, in which a substantial part of the population participated, was even more brutal than in Germany. Right after the German takeover, Jewish community and Zionist organization offices were closed and their board members were arrested and sent to the D AC H AU concentration camp. Jewish public life, however, did not come to a complete standstill. Financial assistance to the needy continued on the basis of an improvised list of the needy. The list of financial contributors, however, was found, and in retribution the Nazis imposed a fine of 500,000 reichsmarks on the Jewish community of Austria. This was the first such fine imposed on a Jewish community by the Nazis. On May 2, 1938, the community offices were reopened; emigration and social welfare were now their major concerns. Adolf E I C H M A N N had been sent to Vienna to enforce the emigration of Austria’s Jews by threats of arrest, through the C E N T R A L O F F I C E F O R J E W I S H E M I G R AT I O N (Zentralstelle für Jüdische Auswanderung). Many Jews who wanted to emigrate, however, had neither a destination available nor the funds needed to leave. A special tax was levied on prospective emigrants by the Nazis; the Jewish community depended on donations from the American Jewish J O I N T D I S T R I B U T I O N C O M M I T T E E to cover all the costs associated with emigration. In June 1938 the Jewish community leaders inaugurated vocational training and retraining courses to equip the Jews with professional skills pending their emigration. In the course of a single year, 24,025 men and women attended 1,601 courses. As late as May 1940, 1,151 courses were still in operation. These also played an important social role, by giving people something to do. Job skills training helped people learn to repair and renew clothing, shoes, furniture, and even medical instruments. Some courses trained nurses and social workers. By the time the courses were suspended, on February 3, 1941, 45,336 students had participated in the program. Language courses were kept up until July 1941. Under pressure of international public opinion to find a solution to the refugee problem and to aid in the emigration of Jews from Germany and Austria, a conference on refugee problems was convened at Evian-les-Bains (see E V I A N C O N F E R E N C E ) on July 6, 1938, at which 31 nations were represented. The aim of the meetings was to secure aid for persecuted Jews and identify opportunities for emigration. While the conference did not secure even a fraction of the emigration options needed, the Jews of Austria were in line to receive a goodly share of the meager number of emigration slots open for 1938. There were internal conflicts within the Jewish community about who should receive certificates to emigrate to Palestine; this was caused primarily by the pitifully small number of immigration certificates made available by the British.

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Jewish citizens of Vienna were forced to scrub away election slogans from the streets of Vienna following the Anschluss in 1938.

Increasing Persecution The practice of attacking Jews on Jewish holidays was introduced in Vienna. On October 4, 1938, the eve of the Day of Atonement, the N A Z I P A R T Y in Vienna decided to drive the Jews out of the city, with excited mobs demonstrating in the streets to express their support—a kind of grand rehearsal for the November 1938 pogrom. That evening, Nazi party members wearing plain clothes began taking Jews out of their apartments in well-to-do parts of the city, sealing the apartments, and leaving the Jews homeless, taunting them with the hope that boats would take them to Palestine. On October 6 the operation was extended to include the outskirts of Vienna. It became routine practice to close off streets in Jewish neighborhoods in the middle of the day and arrest the Jews. On Kristallnacht, 49 synagogues, as well as prayer houses and private sanctuaries, were destroyed in Vienna, and 3,600 Jews were deported to Dachau and B U C H E N WA L D , to be released only when their relatives were able to produce documentary proof that they were going to emigrate. The Nazi party membership in Vienna, led by Odilo G L O B O C N I K , played a significant part in the pogrom. In 1939 the expulsion of Jews from their apartments was accelerated, a result of a Nazi policy aimed at concentrating the Jews in “Jewish” quarters. In the period from March to September 1939, 13,600 Jewish families were forced to vacate their apartments, and in the first half of that year, 9,500 formerly Jewish-owned apartments were turned over to “Aryan” owners.

A

primary advocate for Jewish young people was himself a

young man. Aron Menczer had refused to join his parents and five brothers, all active Zionists, on their way to Palestine, choosing to stay behind and serve the children of Vienna as a surrogate parent and an educator. On Jewish holidays Menczer arranged for youth services to be held, and on Passover he organized the children’s own Seder service.

After the occupation of P O L A N D , the emphasis in the policy on Jews switched from emigration to deportation. Even young people with emigration papers in their possession were not released. In September 1939 the Jewish community was ordered to draw up an alphabetical list of all the Jews in the city. Two transports with a total of 1,584 Jewish professionals left Vienna for Nisko, on the San River, on October 20 and 26, 1939 (see N I S K O A N D L U B L I N P L A N ). Of them, no more than 198 persons were assigned to the job of setting up a barracks camp, while the rest were forced across the river into Soviet territory, with gunfire at their backs. These activities suggest that Nazi anti-Jewish policy was in transition.

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Life Goes On

T

he Nazis were disappointed to discover that only 976 Jewish

apartments were vacated in 1942, despite the large number of Jews who had been deported (32,721) or moved from their apartments to the “Jewish” quarters of the city. This ratio illustrates what cramped conditions the Jews must have been living in—up to six families in a small three-room apartment—and how destitute they had become by that time.

The deportation program was halted while the Germans prepared for the offensive in western Europe. It was reinstated in February 1941, and within three weeks more than 5,000 Viennese Jews, in five transports, left for the K I E L C E region of Poland. Once again the program came to a halt, this time because of the preparations for the invasion of the S OV I E T U N I O N . The interludes between pogroms and D E P O RTAT I O N S and between one wave of deportations and the next were used by the Jews of Vienna to try and find ways of emigrating from the country and, as best they could, to bring some order into their lives. Zionist youth operations were at their height in July 1939, when 779 Zionist pioneers and teenagers were undergoing training in sixteen agricultural training camps and workshops and in three tree nurseries (see YO U T H M OV E M E N T S ). Of the 2,340 abandoned children left in Vienna in early 1940, only 338 were in the care of community institutions; 1,839 children, ranging in age from ten to eighteen, were being cared for by families and other young people. Religious life, which had been conducted as usual—albeit on a more modest scale—up to the November 1938 pogrom, was subsequently continued in secret, with people gathering in small groups for services in private apartments. Requests by the community to permit services to be held in parts of the synagogues that had been left standing were turned down. In January 1939, visits by clergy to Jewish prisoners was no longer permitted. On February 5, 1941, the Zionist youth organizations were ordered closed. The two major agricultural training camps were turned into labor camps, in which all the youth instructors were concentrated. As of May 12, 1941, Jewish education programs were officially terminated and it was announced that young people interned in Dachau and Buchenwald would no longer be released for emigration, even with proof of emigration certificates.

Last Stage of Deportations On July 31, 1941, Vienna still had 43,811 Jews “by religion” living in the city, as well as 8,728 persons defined as Jews by race under the N U R E M B E R G L AW S (twothirds of the latter figure were converts from Judaism). Further emigration of Jews between the ages of 18 and 45 was prohibited on August 5, 1941, and the final, systematic deportation of the Jews of Vienna was launched on October 15 of that year. By October 5, 1942, 5,000 Jews had been deported to L⁄ Ó D Z´ , 5,200 to R I G A , 6,000 to Izbica, and 10,476 to M I N S K . In the period from June 20 to October 9, 1942, 13,776 Viennese Jews were deported to T H E R E S I E N S TA D T . One of the transports, which left Vienna on September 23, was made up of prominent, so-called “privileged” Jews, including Jewish community leaders and Zionist youth instructors, headed by Aron Menczer. On November 1, 1942, the Jewish community organization was disbanded and changed to the Council of Elders of the Jews of Vienna (Ältestenrat der Juden in Wien). The remaining assets of the community, amounting to 6.5 million reichsmarks, were transferred to Prague, ostensibly to be used for the financing of the Theresienstadt ghetto. The Central Office for Jewish Emigration was closed on March 31, 1943, and the responsibility for the deportations was transferred from one branch of the SS to another. As of December 31, 1944, 5,799 Austrian Jews still lived in Vienna. Of this number 3,388 were partners in so-called privileged mixed marriages (privilegierte

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Mischlingen), and 1,358, in regular mixed marriages. At the time of the liberation of Vienna, some 150 Jews remained in hiding, and a similar number survived who worked in the warehouses where confiscated Jewish possessions were stored, or as laborers in SS households. Also among the survivors were 35 Jewish community employees and 84 disabled war veterans, some of whom owed their lives to their Christian wives. A day before the liberation of Vienna by the Soviet army, on April 12, 1945, nine Jews who had been in hiding were shot to death by SS men about to make their escape from the city.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bukey, Evan Burr. Hitler’s Austria: Popular Sentiment in the Nazi Era, 1938–1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Clare, George. Last Waltz in Vienna: The Rise and Destruction of a Family, 1842–1942. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1982.

Kristallnacht: The Journey from 1938 to 1988 [videorecording]. PBS Video, 1988. Newman, Richard. Alma Rosé: Vienna to Auschwitz. Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 2000.

Vilna Vilna, known in Lithuanian as Vilnius and in Polish as Wilno, was the capital of the Lithuanian SSR. From 1920 to 1939 Vilna was under Polish rule, and on the eve of World War II its population was about 200,000. Jews lived in Vilna from the first half of the sixteenth century, and it became a center of Torah learning. In the nineteenth century Vilna was a hub of Jewish culture. With flourishing Jewish newspapers, publishing firms, and printing presses, Vilna was known as “the Jerusalem of L I T H UA N I A .” By the end of that century the city was also a focus of Jewish political life. In the interwar period, under Polish rule, the economic situation of the Jews deteriorated and they also suffered from A N T I S E M I T I S M . At the outbreak of World War II, Vilna’s Jewish population was more than 55,000. On September 19, 1939, the Red Army entered Vilna, but a few weeks later the city was handed over to the Lithuanians. Vilna’s Jews welcomed both the Soviet rule and the subsequent Lithuanian regime, since this meant the city would not come under German occupation. Some 12,000 to 15,000 Jewish refugees from German-occupied P O L A N D made their way there. In July 1940, Lithuania (and with it Vilna) was incorporated into the S OV I E T U N I O N and became a Soviet republic. The Soviet regime outlawed the activities of Jewish organizations and political parties, and took over the Jewish schools and cultural institutions. Jewish studies— the Hebrew language as well as Jewish religion and history—were prohibited. Nationalization measures by the Soviets were a severe blow to the livelihood of the Jews; the refugees, in particular, made efforts to emigrate to the West. In the period from September 1939 to the German invasion of the Soviet Union, 6,500 Jewish refugees left Vilna for Palestine, the U N I T E D S TAT E S , China, Japan, and other places. Some of them were granted Soviet transit visas. On June 24, 1941, two days after invading the Soviet Union, the Germans occupied Vilna. Three thousand Jews were able to flee into the Soviet interior before the Germans took the city, at which time the Jewish population stood at 57,000.

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VILNA GHETTO DIARY This is from a diary kept between June 1941 and April 1943 in the Vilna Ghetto. The writer went into hiding with his family early in April 1943; they were found nearly six months later and most family members, including Yitskhok, were killed. The diary was later found by a cousin, covered with dirt and mud, in the hiding place they had shared. Wednesday the 10th of December [1941]. It dawned on me that today is my birthday. Today I became 15 years old. You hardly realize how time flies. It, the time, runs ahead unnoticed and presently we realize, as I did today, for example, and discover that days and months go by, that the ghetto is not a painful squirming moment of a dream which constantly disappears, but is a large swamp in which we lose our days and weeks. Today I became deeply absorbed in the thought. I decided not to trifle my time away in the ghetto on nothing and I feel somehow happy that I can study, read, develop myself, and see that time does not stand still as long as I progress normally with it. In my daily ghetto life it seems to me that I live normally but often I have deep qualms. Surely I could have lived better. Must I day in day out see the walled-up ghetto gate, must I in my best years see only the one little street, the few stuffy courtyards? Still other thoughts buzzed around in my head but I felt two things most strongly: a regret, a sort of gnawing. I wish to shout to time to linger, not to run. I wish to recapture my past year and keep it for later, for the new life. My second feeling today is that of strength and hope. I do not feel the slightest despair. Today I became 15 years of age and I live confident in the future. I am not conflicted about it, and see before me sun and sun and sun.… —YITSKHOK RUDASHEVSKI

Children in the Holocaust and World War II: Their Secret Diaries, Laurel Holliday, ed. (New York: Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster) 1995, pp. 172–73.

German Occupation A few days later, the German military authorities and the Lithuanian administration issued a series of anti-Jewish decrees. Jews were ordered to wear the yellow badge (see B A D G E , J E W I S H ); they were not allowed to use the sidewalks or walk on certain streets. A night curfew was imposed. They could make their purchases only at certain times and in certain stores. On July 4 the Germans ordered the establishment of a J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council). In July, Einsatzkommando 9, assisted by ypatingi buriai (“the special ones”; Lithuanian volunteers who collaborated with the Germans), rounded up 5,000 Jewish men from the streets and houses and took them to P O NA RY , 7.5 miles (12 km) from Vilna, to murder them. The Jews in Vilna knew nothing of the fate of these men; there were only rumors that they were working somewhere in the east. Between the end of July and early August, Lithuania was transferred from German military rule to German civil administration. District commissioner Hans Christian Hingst was appointed governor of Vilna. On August

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A scene from David Pinski’s “The Eternal Jew,” produced in the Vilna ghetto, June 1943.

6, as its first step, the new administration imposed a levy of 5 million rubles (500,000 Reichsmarks) on the Jews. Between August 31 and September 3, 1941, 8,000 more Jews were taken to Ponary and murdered, among them most of the members of the Judenrat. This episode became known among the Jews as “the great provocation,” since it was preceded by the Germans’ staging an attack on German soldiers, blaming the violence on the Jews, and presenting the killing spree that followed as a retaliatory move. In the following days, from September 3 to 5, the area from which the Jews had been evacuated was fenced in and two ghettos were established, Ghetto No. 1 and Ghetto No. 2, separated from each other by German (Deutsche) Street. On September 6 all the remaining Jews of Vilna were forced to move into the ghettos—approximately 30,000 into Ghetto No. 1, and between 9,000 and 11,000 into Ghetto No. 2. Another 6,000 were taken to Ponary and murdered. On the following day the Germans established two Jewish Councils (Judenräte), one for each of the ghettos. As the ghetto administration organizations, the Judenräte had departments for food, health, lodging, education, and employment, and a general department for organizational and other affairs. A Jewish police force was also established, with Jacob G E N S as its commander.

The Yellow Schein Aktionen In the period from September 15 to October 21, families in which neither parent was employed in a place that issued Scheine (work permits), were transferred into Ghetto No. 2. The other families—those in which at least one parent was in possession of a Schein—were put into Ghetto No. 1. It was during this period that the “Yom Kippur” Aktion (October 1, 1941) took place. In three more Aktionen, on October 3–4, 15–16, and 21, Ghetto No. 2 was liquidated and its inhabitants taken to Ponary and murdered. The Germans distributed 3,000 “yellow Scheine” (so called by the Jews because of the color of the paper on which they were printed) among the Jews in Ghetto No. 1; distribution depended on the place where they worked and the priority each place had with the authorities. A “yellow Schein” enabled its bearer to register on it the other parent

Aktion

A planned “operation” of violence against the Jews which generally involved beatings, deportations, and murders.

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and no more than two children. The Germans planned to permit a maximum of 12,000 Jews to remain in the Vilna ghetto, out of the total of 27,000 to 28,000 surviving in Ghetto No. 1 at the time. On October 24 and November 3–5 the “yellow Schein Aktionen” took place, followed in December by further Aktionen on a smaller scale, the last on December 22. By the end of 1941, the Germans had killed 33,500 of the 57,000 Jews who had been in Vilna when the occupation began. A total of 12,000 “legal” Jews (those in possession of Scheine) were left in the ghetto, plus nearly 8,000 “illegals” that had gone into hiding. Another 3,500 had either fled to cities and towns in B E L O R U S S I A , where the Jews were still living in relative safety, or had found a place to hide outside the ghetto.

Ghetto Life For about a year, between the spring of 1942 and the spring of 1943, there were no mass Aktionen. This was referred to as “the period of relative quiet.” The ghetto, under Judenrat direction, became productive, with most of its inhabitants employed in jobs outside the ghetto or in workshops established inside. The Judenrat’s strategy was based on the assumption that if the ghetto were productive and served German interests, the Germans would keep Jews alive and in the ghetto. Toward the end of its existence, in the summer of 1943, the ghetto had 14,000 persons—over two-thirds of its population—employed in various jobs. The dominant figure in the ghetto leadership was the Jewish police commander, Jacob Gens, who in July 1942 became Judenrat chairman. The ghetto had schools, a rich cultural life, including a theater, social-welfare institutions, soup kitchens, and a medical care system that sought to combat starvation and disease. The mortality rate was low, compared to other large ghettos. The police kept order, and there was a law court. In the spring of 1943, the situation of the Jews in the Vilna area began to deteriorate. Four small ghettos—in Sˇvencˇionys, Mikalisˇkes, Oshmiany, and Salos, with a total of 5,000 Jews—were liquidated. About a quarter of them reached Vilna; the rest were taken to Ponary and murdered. In June and July, labor camps in the Vilna area with Jews from the Vilna ghetto were liquidated. The liquidation of the small ghettos and the labor camps, and the murder of most of their inmates, caused great fear in the Vilna ghetto and undermined whatever faith the Jews still had in the ghetto’s future. At the beginning of 1942, the underground U NITED PARTISAN O RGANIZATION (Fareynegte Partizaner Organizatsye; FPO) was established in the ghetto. During “the period of relative quiet” there existed a somewhat peaceful coexistence between the Judenrat and the underground. This was broken in the spring of 1943, when the situation in the ghetto deteriorated amid increasing indications that the end was approaching. Gens’s attitude toward the underground changed; in his eyes, smuggling weapons into the ghetto and maintaining contact with the PARTISANS in the forests were a threat to the ghetto’s continued existence. The first open clash occurred when Gens tried to remove the leaders of the underground—particularly Josef G L A Z M A N , his former deputy and now vice commander of the FPO—from the ghetto and send them to labor camps outside. Another serious confrontation took place in mid-July 1943, when FPO members while under arrest freed Yitzhak Wittenberg, the commander of the FPO. The Nazis demanded his return, threatening the ghetto population. After further threats by Gens, the FPO command agreed to surrender Wittenberg. On June 21, 1943, Heinrich H I M M L E R ordered the ghettos in the Reichskommissariat Ostland to be liquidated. Inmates who were fit for work were to be sent to C O N C E N T R AT I O N CA M P S , and the rest killed. In two stages, between August 4 and

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24 and between September 1 and 4, over 7,000 men and women capable of working were rounded up and sent to concentration camps in Estonia. During the September Aktionen the FPO called on the ghetto population to disregard the order to report for deportation and to rise up in rebellion. In the late afternoon of September 1, a clash broke out between the underground and the German forces that were combing the ghetto. In the ensuing exchange of fire, the commander of a major FPO combat group” was killed. In order to forestall more violence between the underground and the German forces, Gens, who believed that this would lead to the total liquidation of the ghetto, offered to provide the German authorities with the required quota for deportation to Estonia, on the condition that they pull their forces out of the ghetto. The Germans agreed, and the ghetto fighting came to an end. Following the expulsions to Estonia, 12,000 people were left. On September 14, Gens was summoned by the G E S TA P O and killed on the spot. The final liquidation of the Vilna ghetto took place on September 23 and 24, 1943. Thirty-seven hundred men and women were sent to concentration camps in Estonia and L AT V I A ; over 4,000 children, women, and old men were sent to the S O B I B Ó R extermination camp, where they were murdered. Several hundred old people and children were taken to Ponary to be killed. About 2,500 Jews were left in Vilna, in the Army Motor Vehicle Depot labor camps and in two other smaller camps that provided labor for the German military. Over 1,000 people had gone into hiding inside the ghetto, which was otherwise empty; in the ensuing months, most of them were caught. A few hundred members of the FPO succeeded in escaping from the ghetto during the September Aktionen, establishing themselves in two partisan groups in the Rudninkai and Naroch forests. Eighty Jewish prisoners were kept in Ponary to open up the mass graves and burn the bodies of the victims who had been buried there. On July 2 and 3, 1944, ten days before Vilna was liberated, the Jews in the local labor camps were taken to Ponary to be killed. Approximately 150 to 200 were able to flee before the final liquidation and save themselves.

I

n his diary, Yitskhok Rudashevski, who did survive this episode, described the

terror of hiding from the ghetto fighting in September 1943: “We are like animals surrounded by the hunter. The hunter [is] on all sides: beneath us, above us, from the sides. Broken locks snap, doors creak.… They pound, tear, break. Soon the attack is heard from another side.… We are lost.…”

On July 13, 1944, Vilna was liberated; afterward, several hundred survivors gathered in the city. Of the 57,000 Jews who had been in Vilna when the Nazis occupied it, less than 3,000 were left. About a third of them had taken refuge in the forests. The rest survived in concentration camps in Estonia and G E R M A N Y , in hiding places, or by having had “Aryan” documents in their possession.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Dawidowicz, Lucy S. From That Place and Time: A Memoir, 1938–1947. New York: W. W. Norton, 1989. Gitelman, Zvi, ed. Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

Partisans of Vilna [sound recording]. Flying Fish, 1989. Rabinovici, Schoschana. Thanks to My Mother. New York: Dial Books, 1998.

VILNIUS. SEE VILNA. Vitebsk Vitebsk is a city in the northeastern region of Belarus that dates from the eleventh century. Jews lived in Vitebsk from the late sixteenth century, and the city was a center of Hasidism. Before World War II there were about 50,000 Jews there.

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On July 11, 1941, Vitebsk was occupied by the Germans and was partially destroyed and burned down in the battle. On July 24 many refugees, mostly Jews, were arrested and killed outside the city. Every day Jews were seized for F O R C E D L A B O R . On one of those days 300 young Jews were singled out, accused of arson, and put to death. Later, 27 Jews were caught, accused of not presenting themselves for work, and shot to death in the center of the city. In the early days of the occupation a governing body was appointed in Vitebsk, and a J U D E N R AT (Jewish Council) was responsible for supplying Jews for forced labor. It had to organize the work gangs and equip them with work tools and food. The Judenrat was ordered to draw up a list of the Jewish population, including the children of mixed marriages (see M I S C H L I N G E ). It was also responsible for concentrating the Jews in the ghetto, which was established in the area of the railway station, a locale where most of the houses had been destroyed and burned. The ghetto was surrounded by wire fences and about 16,000 people were crowded into it. The slaughter of Jews and of other groups continued. Early in August 1941, 332 Jewish intellectuals were assembled and murdered. On September 4, 397 Jews imprisoned in the civilian prisoner camp were taken out, accused of organizing a revolt, and put to death. On October 1, 52 Jewish refugees from the town of Gorodok who were living in Vitebsk were killed. Jewish youngsters fled to the surrounding forests and joined units of the Soviet partisan movement. The liquidation of the Vitebsk ghetto began on October 8, on the pretext that it was a source of epidemics. The slaughter lasted three days. Jews were taken to the Vitba River and shot; their bodies were thrown into the river. When Vitebsk was liberated by the Soviet army on June 26, 1944, there were no Jews in the city. About two years later, in 1946, some 500 Jews had returned to live there.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Chagall, Bella. Burning Lights: Thirty-six Drawings by Marc Chagall. New York: Schocken Books, 1946. Reprint, New York: Biblio Press, 1996. Gitelman, Zvi, ed. Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

Volksdeutsche Volksdeutsche was the Nazi term for ethnic Germans living outside of G E R M A N Y in countries of which they were nationals. They were not citizens of the Third Reich—Germany under N A Z I P A R T Y leader Adolf H I T L E R . That is, they did not hold German or Austrian citizenship as defined by the Nazi term Reichsdeutsche (Reich Germans). Nazi Germany made every effort to win the support of the Volksdeutsche. A few years before its rise to power in 1933, the Nazi Party established the Foreign Organization of the Nazi Party (Auslandsorganisation Der NSDAP). This organization’s task was to spread Nazi propaganda among the ethnic German minorities living outside the borders of Germany. In 1936, the Ethnic Germans’ Welfare Office (Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle; commonly known as VoMi), was set up under the jurisdiction of the SS. VoMi cooperated with Nazi-type organizations active in a number of places, including S L OVA K I A , Luxembourg, and F R A N C E .

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Nazi Germany tried to increase the number of Volksdeutsche in the territories it conquered through a policy of “Germanizing” certain classes of the conquered peoples, mainly among the Czechs, Poles, and Slovenes. The Nazis encouraged the children of Germans, or people who had family connections with Germans, to join the Volksdeutsche. However, they were allowed to do so only if they were not descended from Jews or G Y P S I E S . Those who did join the Volksdeutsche received a privileged status and special benefits. In B O H E M I A A N D M O R AV I A , in addition to those who had considered themselves as belonging to the German people during the period of the Czechoslovak republic, three other groups were recognized as Volksdeutsche: people of German origin, returning ethnic Germans, and those affiliated with the German people.

T

hese words from a speech Heinrich Himmler made in 1943

reveal the racism of the Volksdeutsche policy and indeed of all Nazi policy toward non-Aryans: “What happens to the Russians, what happens to the Czechs, is a matter of utter indifference

In October 1939, after Germany’s occupation of P O L A N D , a central bureau was established in that country for the registration of Volksdeutsche. A new Nazi term was created to designate the registry of those belonging to the Volksdeutsche—the German Folk List (Deutsche Volksliste; also known as the Volksliste or DVL).

to me. Such good blood of our own kind

At the beginning of 1940, people registered in the Volksliste were divided into four categories. The first group consisted of ethnic Germans active on behalf of the Third Reich; the second group included all other ethnic Germans. The third group was made up of Poles of German extraction (that is, direct descendants of Germans); the fourth consisted of Poles who were related to Germans.

bringing them up among us. Whether

The German occupying authorities encouraged Poles to register with the Volksliste. In many cases, Poles were even forced to do so, especially in the territories annexed to the Reich. Within these areas, a total of 959,000 people in the first and second categories, who had considered themselves as belonging to the German minority living in independent Poland, were registered with the Volksliste. In the third and fourth categories, 1,861,000 Poles were recognized as having joined the ethnic Germans and were new Volksdeutsche. The number of Volksdeutsche living in the G E N ERALGOUVERNEMENT was estimated at 100,000. In addition, 350,000 ethnic Germans had settled in the western territories of occupied Poland between the beginning of the war in 1939 and the spring of 1941. These Volksdeutsche had migrated from the Baltic countries and the Volhynia region, which had come under Russian rule.

as there may be among the nations we shall acquire for ourselves, if necessary by taking away the children and the other peoples live in comfort or perish of hunger interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our Kultur.”

The Volksliste was also introduced into Yugoslavia following the German occupation of that country. In the Soviet territories (especially U K R A I N E ), conquered after the German invasion of the S OV I E T U N I O N in the summer of 1941, the Volksliste was introduced in the same format as in Poland. In those countries, decrees were issued granting the Volksdeutsche privileged status and material benefits. Among its activities, VoMi organized large-scale looting of property. The Volksdeutsche were given apartments, workshops, and farms that had belonged to Jews and Poles who had been deported from the Polish territory annexed to the Reich, with all their furniture and contents. They were also given hundreds of thousands of items of clothing taken from Jews who had been put to death in the E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S . The Volksdeutsche of Romania were given the apartments of Jews who had lived in the Transnistria region, complete with all their furniture and contents. Nazi Germany received far-reaching support from the Volksdeutsche. Hundreds of thousands of them joined the German forces. With the conquest of Poland in September 1939, armed units were organized from among the Volksdeutsche. Called Self-Defense (Selbstschutz), these units helped the O P E R AT I O NA L S QUA D S (Einsatzgruppen) to carry out terrorist activities against Polish intellectuals and Jews. At the beginning of 1940, Self-Defense was disbanded, and its members were transferred to various units of the S S and German police. In Yugoslavia, the “Prinz Eugen”

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Division of the Waffen-SS (the German armed forces) was formed from Volksdeutsche members. This division was prominent in operations against PA R T I S A N S and in Aktionen (violent “operations”) among the population. About 300,000 Volksdeutsche from the conquered lands and the satellite countries volunteered for or were recruited to the Waffen-SS. From H U N G A R Y alone, some 100,000 ethnic Germans volunteered for service in the Waffen-SS, which released them from serving in the Hungarian army. Among the populations in the German-occupied lands, Volksdeutsche became a term of dishonor and shame.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES The SS. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1989. Williamson, Gordon. The SS: Hitler’s Instrument of Terror. Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International, 1994.

VOLKSDEUTSCHE MITTELSTELLE. SEE VOLKSDEUTSCHE. VOMI. SEE VOLKSDEUTSCHE. Wallenberg, Raoul (1912–?)

Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat who saved the lives of tens of thousands of Jews in B U DA P E S T , H U N G A R Y . Wallenberg was born into a distinguished family of bankers, diplomats, and officers. His father, who died before he was born, had been an officer in the Swedish navy. Wallenberg grew up in the house of his stepfather, Frederik von Dardell. He studied architecture in the U N I T E D S TAT E S , but then took up banking and international trade, which brought him to Haifa in 1936 for six months. In July of 1944 the Swedish Foreign Ministry, on the recommendation of the Swedish branch of the W O R L D J E W I S H C O N G R E S S and with the support of the American W A R R E F U G E E B OA R D , sent Wallenberg to Budapest to help protect the remaining Jews (over 200,000) in the Hungarian capital after 437,000 Hungarian Jews had been deported to A U S C H W I T Z . The Swedish diplomatic personnel in Budapest initiated its operation on behalf of the persecuted Jews a short while after the German occupation of Hungary, on March 19, 1944. At that time, Adolf E I C H M A N N and the Hungarian authorities began organizing the deportation of the Jews to their death. The Swedish foreign minister, Ivar Danielsson, had proposed giving provisional Swedish passports to Hungarian Jews who had family ties or commercial connections with Swedish citizens. By the time Wallenberg arrived in Budapest, several hundred such “protective passports” had been issued. His arrival, on July 9, 1944, coincided with the stoppage of the D E P O RTAT I O N S , a decision taken by the Hungarian government as a result of international pressure, including intervention by King Gustav V of Sweden. The protective operation carried out by the Swedish diplomats, in conjunction with other missions, was nevertheless maintained, and Wallenberg was put in charge of part of the operation. He had special authority to handle the transmission of funds by means of the War Refugee Board (which in turn received the money from Jewish organizations in the United States).

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A Swedish Schutz-Pass, a protective passport issued by Swedish diplomats to protect Jews in Hungary. As a diplomat in Hungary, Raoul Wallenberg issued such passes that saved tens of thousands of Jewish lives.

The summer of 1944 was relatively quiet, but this quiet came to an end on October 15 when the antisemitic fascist A R R O W C R O S S P A R T Y , headed by Ferenc Szálasi, seized power in the country. The Jews of Budapest now faced mortal danger, both from the murderous actions of the Arrow Cross and from Eichmann’s deportations. From that moment on, Wallenberg displayed his courage and heroism in the rescue actions he undertook. Over the course of three months he issued thousands of “protective passports.” Most of the time, both the Hungarian authorities and the Germans honored the signature of the Swedish legation, and the protective documents afforded protection for many Jews.

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When Eichmann organized the D E AT H M A R C H E S of thousands of Jews to the Austrian border, Wallenberg pursued the convoy in his car and managed to secure the release of hundreds of bearers of such passports and take them back to Budapest. His impressive and self-assured manner enabled him even to remove persons from the trains in which they were about to be sent to Auschwitz, or to release them from the H U N G A R I A N L A B O R S E RV I C E S Y S T E M (Munkaszolgálat) into which they had been drafted. The Jews were also in danger of being killed by Arrow Cross men, and to prevent this, Wallenberg set up special hostels accommodating 15,000 persons. Other diplomatic missions were also involved in this and in issuing protective documents of their own. There were 31 protected houses, which together formed the “international ghetto,” a separate entity, quite apart from Budapest’s main ghetto. The management of these houses posed many complicated problems, since it involved the provision of food as well as sanitation and health services, all requiring large sums of money. As many as 600 Jewish employees were engaged in the administration and maintenance of the houses.

“Image not available for copyright reasons”

Both the “international ghetto” and the main ghetto were situated in Pest, which was the first part of Budapest to be occupied by the Soviets. Wallenberg made efforts to negotiate with the Soviets and to ensure proper care for the liberated Jews. The Soviets were highly suspicious of the Swedish mission and charged its staff with spying for the Germans. The large number of Swedish documents in circulation also raised doubt in their minds. When the Soviets requested him to report to their army headquarters in Debrecen, Wallenberg must have believed that he would be protected by his diplomatic immunity, especially since the Swedish legation had represented Soviet interests vis-à-vis the Germans, and he made his way to the Soviet headquarters. He returned to Budapest on January 17, 1945, escorted by two Soviet soldiers, and was overheard saying that he did not know whether he was a guest of the Soviets or their prisoner. Thereafter, all trace of him, and of his driver, Vilmos Langfelder, was lost. The other staff members of the Swedish diplomatic team were also held by the Soviets, but within a few months they all returned to Stockholm, via Bucharest and Moscow.

In the first few years following Wallenberg’s disappearance, the Soviets claimed that they had no knowledge of a person named Wallenberg and were not aware that a person of that name was being held in any of their prisons. German P R I S O N E R S O F WA R , however, coming back from Soviet imprisonment, testified that they had met Wallenberg in prisons and camps in various parts of the S OV I E T U N I O N . In the mid-1950s, on the basis of these accounts, Sweden submitted a strong demand to the Soviets for information on Wallenberg, to which the Soviets replied, in 1956, that they had discovered a report of Wallenberg’s death in 1947 in a Soviet prison. Wallenberg’s family, and especially his mother, did not accept this claim, which conflicted with testimonies from other sources. As the years went by, public opinion, in Sweden and all over the world, became increasingly critical of the manner in which the Swedish government had handled the issue. The subject of Wallenberg came up time and again, and with even greater force after the death of his mother in 1979. Books were published about Wallenberg and public committees were set up to deal with the case, especially in Britain, the United States, and Israel. Reports revealed that in the final days preceding Budapest’s liberation, Wallenberg, with the help of Hungarians and the Zsidó Tanács (Jewish Council), was able to foil a joint SS and Arrow Cross plan to blow up the ghettos before the city’s impending liberation. Through this act—the only one of its kind in the H O L O CAU S T —some 100,000 Jews were saved in the two ghet-

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tos. In recognition of this rescue action on Wallenberg’s part, the U.S. Congress awarded Wallenberg honorary American citizenship. Memorial institutions were created in his honor, streets were named after him, and films were produced about his work in Budapest. Wallenberg’s name and reputation as a “R I G H T E O U S A M O N G T H E N AT I O N S ” have become legendary.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Anger, Per. With Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest: Memories of the War Years in Hungary. New York: Holocaust Library, 1981. Reprint, 1995.

Good Evening Mr. Wallenberg [videorecording]. Orion Home Video, 1994. Lyman, Darryl. Holocaust Rescuers: Ten Stories of Courage. Springfield, NJ: Enslow, 1999. Wallenberg, Raoul. Letters and Dispatches, 1924–1944. New York: Arcade, 1995. Werbell, Frederick E., and Thurston Clarke. Lost Hero: The Mystery of Raoul Wallenberg. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982.

Wannsee Conference The Wannsee Conference was a meeting held at a villa in Wannsee, B E R L I N , on January 20, 1942, to discuss and coordinate the implementation of the “F I N A L S O L U T I O N ”. Reinhard H E Y D R I C H , who was Heinrich H I M M L E R ’s deputy and head of the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA), invited the state secretaries of the most important German government ministries to attend the meeting. Heydrich was assisted by his Jewish expert, Adolf E I C H M A N N . The Wannsee Conference was noteworthy for two reasons. First, it was the only one to involve the broad participation of such prominent members of the ministerial bureaucracy. Second, it was the point at which Adolf H I T L E R ’s decision to solve the so-called Jewish question through systematic mass murder was officially transmitted to this bureaucracy, whose participation was considered necessary. On July 31, 1941, Heydrich met with Hermann Göring, who was still responsible for the coordination of Nazi Jewish policy. Heydrich was directed to submit the “overall plan” for the “final solution to the Jewish question.” By the time of the meeting in January 1942, most of the invitees were clearly aware that the Nazi regime was engaged in the mass murder of Jews. Those in attendance included state secretary Dr. Wilhelm S T U C K A R T of the Interior Ministry, Dr. Josef Bühler, state secretary of the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T , and under secretary Martin Luther of the German Foreign Office. Other participants were Alfred Meyer and Dr. Georg Leibbrandt, who were state secretary and chief of the political division, respectively, of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. Representing the Justice Ministry was state secretary Dr. Roland Freisler, the subsequent “hanging judge” of the notorious People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof). Assistant Secretary Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger, reputedly one of the best-informed people in Nazi G E R M A N Y , represented the Reich Chancellery. Dr. Erich Neumann was present as state secretary of Göring’s Four-year Plan office. Various SS leaders were also in attendance: Heinrich M Ü L L E R of the G E S TA P O ; Otto Hofmann of the S S Race and Resettlement Main Office (RuSHA); Dr. Karl Eberhard Schöongarth of the SS und Polizei (SS and Police) in P O L A N D ; Dr. Rudolf Lange of Operational Squad A in the Baltic; and Gerhard Klopfer, state secretary of Martin B O R M A N N ’s Party Chancellery. No fewer than eight of the fifteen partici-

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EXCERPTS FROM THE WANNSEE PROTOCOL The following excerpts are from the recorded minutes of the Wannsee Conference, January 20, 1942. The English text is based on the official U.S. government translation which was prepared as evidence in the trials at Nuremberg. “…in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes. “The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as the seed of a new Jewish revival. “In the course of the practical execution of the final solution, Europe will be combed through from west to east.… “The evacuated Jews will first be sent, group by group, to so-called transit ghettos, from which they will be transported to the East.” John Mendelsohn, ed. The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes. Vol. 11: The Wannsee Protocol and a 1944 Report on Auschwitz by the Office of Strategic Services (New York: Garland), 1982, pp. 18–32.

pants held Ph.D. degrees. Most participants were well aware of or had participated in the extensive massacres of Jews that had already taken place. The January 20 meeting was held at the villa Am Grossen Wannsee 56–58, a former Interpol property. Heydrich opened the conference with a long speech, in the first part of which he discussed the “Final Solution” to the Jewish question. He also reviewed the emigration policy that had led to 537,000 Jews leaving Germancontrolled lands. In the second section of his speech, Heydrich announced that a total of 11 million European Jews, including even those from Ireland and England, would be evacuated. The evacuations, however, were to be regarded “solely as temporary measures.” The Jews would be utilized for labor. Ultimately, though, the genocidal implications were totally and unmistakably clear. The “Final Solution” was meant to kill every last Jew in Europe, from Ireland to the Urals and from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. In the third section of his speech, Heydrich discussed some of the specific problems that would have to be dealt with. He proposed an old people’s ghetto to ward off anticipated interventions over individual cases, and the sending of Jewish advisers to certain satellite countries to make preparations. However, for Heydrich the most complex problem involved the fate of Jews in mixed marriages and their

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part-Jewish offspring (see M I S C H L I N G E ). A major portion of the conference was spent exploring this problem. The issues were not resolved, and were the subject of two further conferences in March and October 1942. Thereafter, the discussion became quite freewheeling and unstructured. Neumann asked that Jews important to the war economy not be deported until they could be replaced, and Heydrich concurred. Bühler, on the other hand, urged that the “Final Solution” begin in the Generalgouvernement, because there was no transportation problem there and most of the Jews there were already incapable of work. At this point the protocol notes cryptically: “Finally there was a discussion of the various types of possible solutions.” On Heydrich’s instructions, Eichmann did not include the details of this portion of the meeting in the protocol. At that time, the Germans were still unsure about methods. The gas vans at the camp at C H E L⁄ M N O had only been in operation for six weeks (see G A S C H A M B E R S / VA N S ). The camp at B E L⁄ Z˙ E C was still under construction. In the main camp at A U S C H W I T Z , experiments with Z Y K L O N B pellets in Bunker 11 and in the crematorium had been undertaken in the fall of 1941. But the first farmhouse converted into a gas chamber at Birkenau was just being prepared for use. Beyond the E U T H A N A S I A P R O G R A M in Germany and the gas vans at Chel⁄ mno, therefore, the Nazis as yet had little experience in mass murder through gassing on the scale that would be required for the “Final Solution.” Heydrich closed the conference with a plea for the cooperation of all the participants. He was satisfied to find the state secretaries of the ministerial bureaucracy committed and enthusiastic about doing their part. Following the conference, Eichmann prepared the protocol. Thirty copies were made, but only one, the sixteenth, was found after the war. It is presently kept in the archives of the German Foreign Office in Bonn.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Bachrach, Susan D. Tell Them We Remember: The Story of the Holocaust. Boston: Little, Brown, 1994. Locke, Hubert G., and Marcia Sachs Littell, eds. Remembrance and Recollection: Essays on the Centennial Year of Martin Niemöller and Reinhold Niebuhr, and the Fiftieth Year of the Wannsee Conference. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1996.

Protocol of the Wannsee Conference. [Online] http://www.yadvashem.org.il/holocaust/documents/117.html (accessed on September 5, 2000). Wannsee Conference: 11 Million Sentenced to Death [videorecording]. Ergo Media, 1995.

War Refugee Board The War Refugee Board (WRB) was the sole U N I T E D S TAT E S government agency for rescuing and assisting World War II victims. In January 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order to establish the War Refugee Board. This agency was to carry out the U.S. government’s new policy of taking “all measures within its power to rescue the victims of enemy oppression who are in imminent danger of death.” Unfortunately, Roosevelt did not take this action until 14 months after the U N I T E D S TAT E S D E PA R T M E N T O F S TAT E confirmed the news of the systematic extermination of European Jews. Even then there was little support throughout the U.S. government to carry out the rescue of Jews.

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O

n paper, the War Refugee Board had impressive powers.

According to the executive order, all government agencies were to assist it, with special responsibility assigned to the State, Treasury, and War departments. In fact, only the Treasury Department, led by Morgenthau, fulfilled its mandate. The War Department was uncooperative, the State Department was frequently obstructive, and the other government agencies did almost nothing.

In November 1943, Congress began to debate the passage of a rescue resolution. At the same time, Henry M O R G E N T H AU , Jr., secretary of the Treasury, had received a report about the State Department’s attempt to prevent rescue, entitled, “Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews.” Roosevelt quickly created the WRB to avoid the scandal that would result if Morgenthau’s information became public, and to keep Congress from getting the credit for passing rescue resolutions. The WRB was hurt by the president’s lack of interest and support, as well as by a general disinterest on the part of the rest of the government. A major government commitment to rescue European Jews was never obtained. Most important, the board was handicapped from the start by inadequate funding. Roosevelt allotted $1 million to be used for administering the WRB. For the actual rescue programs, which were far more expensive, the board had to turn to private Jewish organizations, especially the American Jewish J O I N T D I S T R I B U T I O N C O M M I T T E E . American Jews, through voluntary contributions to their organizations, provided close to $17 million for the government program. Instead of becoming an effective advocate for the rescue of the remaining Jews of Europe, backed by the full force of the U.S. government, the WRB became a limited, albeit valuable, institution whose work was carried out through cooperation of the government and private Jewish agencies, with the latter carrying most of the load. Despite the difficulties they faced, the WRB’s executive director, John Pehle, and his staff of 30 forged a wide-ranging rescue program. Its main tasks included (1) evacuating Jews and other endangered people from occupied territory; (2) finding places to which they could be sent; (3) using psychological measures (especially threats of war crimes trials) to prevent further D E P O R TAT I O N S and atrocities; and (4) sending relief supplies into C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S . Much of this work was made possible by a handful of WRB representatives stationed overseas. During 1944, the WRB was deeply involved in efforts to save the Hungarian Jews. By focusing international attention on the Hungarian government the WRB helped stop deportations before they encompassed the 230,000 Jews of B U DA P E S T . Ultimately, somewhat more than half of these Jews survived the reign of terror inflicted by a later government under the fascist A R R O W C R O S S P A R T Y . The toll would have been much higher had it not been for the action of Raoul W A L L E N B E R G in protecting the Budapest Jews. The young Swedish diplomat had been sent to Budapest by the WRB; while there he managed to rescue Hungarian Jews who were already in the midst of forced DEATH MARCHES or on board trains on their way to A USCHWITZ . One of the most publicized WRB projects was the evacuation of 982 Jewish refugees from I TA LY to a safe haven in an unused army camp at Oswego, New York (Fort Ontario), in August 1944. The WRB had hoped to set up many such safe havens in the United States and to use these actions as a lever to pressure other countries to open their doors as well. Roosevelt, however, agreed only to the Oswego project. This only reinforced other countries to maintain their closed-door policies, and one of the WRB’s main rescue strategies was thus crushed. By the end of the war, the WRB had played a crucial role in saving approximately 200,000 Jews. About 15,000 were evacuated from Nazi-controlled territory (as were more than 20,000 non-Jews). At least 10,000, and probably thousands more, were protected within those areas by WRB-financed underground activities. The WRB’s diplomatic pressures, backed by its program of psychological warfare, were instrumental in having the 48,000 Jews in Transnistria moved to safe areas of Romania. Similar pressures helped end the Hungarian deportations; ultimately, 120,000 Jews survived in Budapest.

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The results of other WRB programs, though they unquestionably contributed to the survival of thousands more, can never be quantified. On the other hand, numerous WRB plans that might have succeeded collapsed because the rest of the U.S. government would not cooperate.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Newton, Verne W., ed. FDR and the Holocaust. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. Wyman, David S. The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. Wyman, David S., ed. America and the Holocaust. New York: Garland, 1989.

Warsaw General Survey Warsaw was established as a city in the thirteenth century; it became the capital of P O L A N D in 1596. It flanks both banks of the Vistula River: two-thirds of the city’s area is on the west bank and one-third is on the east bank. In 1935 the city limits covered an area of 54 square miles (140 sq km), with a population of 1,300,000. In early September 1939, a few days after the German attack on Poland and the outbreak of World War II, German forces had reached the southern and western parts of Warsaw. Soon they surrounded the city. Air attacks and artillery shelling caused heavy damage to residential houses and ancient buildings and resulted in thousands of deaths and injuries. Warsaw became the seat of the Wehrmacht headquarters and an SS and police headquarters. The number of military and police personnel varied from time to time, and generally was not more than 20,000, and the size of the city’s German population, most of whom arrived after the war broke out, did not exceed 30,000.

A

total of 685,000 residents of Warsaw lost their lives during the

Nazi occupation. The losses in life included 20,000 in September 1939, and 32,000 by executions and other methods. The murdered Jews numbered 370,000; 166,000 persons were killed in the 1944 uprising, and 97,000 perished in the concentration and forced-labor camps.

The German authorities terrorized the population in various ways—by arrests, murder in the streets, public and secret executions, D E P O RTAT I O N S to C O N C E N T R A T I O N C A M P S , and random seizures of persons for deportation to F O R C E D L A B O R . The headquarters of the terror operations was in the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei) office, where persons were detained for questioning. The main terror center was the Pawiak Prison. There were several sites for public and secret executions in and around Warsaw, and they were put into use as early as the autumn of 1939. In the first stage the killings were carried out in areas near Warsaw, which were dubbed “Warsaw’s circle of death”; one was the Palmiry Forest, where executions took place in the spring of 1940. These killings continued throughout the occupation of the city, reaching a climax in 1943. As of August 1, 1944, about 23,000 ethnic Poles had been deported to concentration camps and 86,000 deported for forced labor in the Reich. Apart from the direct terror operations, the Nazi authorities also imposed severe economic repression on the population. Ration cards became compulsory, although the food they provided did not meet minimal needs. The inhabitants sought to combat hunger by taking on extra jobs, stealing from the German occupiers, engaging in black-market dealings, and, primarily, by smuggling in illegal food supplies. A large part of the population was employed in armaments factories and other German-controlled enterprises.

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Resistance to German Oppression The Warsaw inhabitants countered the German regime of terror with a broad resistance movement, consisting of a number of political and military organizations and a wide-ranging program of activities. Warsaw was the headquarters of the major Polish resistance organizations and an important scene for their undertakings. The resistance movement was launched as early as September 1939. On September 26, Service for Polish Victory was formed, which was later renamed the Union for Armed Struggle; in February 1942 it became the Polish Home Army. propaganda

Ideas, information or allegations designed to gain support for a particular cause.

In the initial stage, the resistance movement spread propaganda , by means of some 1,000 underground newspapers, and acquired weapons through various means, including purchase from German soldiers. Later, the resistance manufactured its own arms and ammunition. In a few instances, arms were parachuted by Allied aircraft or stolen from Germans. Early on there was little armed action; what armed struggle there was consisted mostly of executing spies and traitors. In 1943 some military-like actions were launched. Several particularly dangerous German officials were assassinated. The Polish resistance movement also assisted in hiding Jews. The resistance movement continued to expand, despite a heavy loss of life and property owing to Nazi acts of reprisal, and it began preparations for a large-scale armed uprising. When the W A R S AW P O L I S H U P R I S I N G erupted in August 1944, Hitler wanted to bomb from the air the part of the city that was in the rebels’ hands, but he gave up the idea. A few days later, after consultations with Heinrich H I M M L E R , he ordered the total destruction of Warsaw, with a fortress to be constructed on the site. Once the uprising was suppressed, the Germans ordered the civilian population to evacuate the city, sending them to the Pruszków, Ursus, and Piastów transit camps. Some 550,000 Warsaw inhabitants passed through these camps. More than 60,000 were sent on to concentration camps, and over 100,000 to labor camps in the Reich. Special squads of Germans blew up the buildings and systematically destroyed the abandoned city. In January 1945, Soviet and Polish forces attacked the city from the south and north, crossing the Vistula and liberating Warsaw on January 17. It is estimated that 80 percent of Warsaw’s buildings were destroyed.

Jews in Warsaw

T

he cultural drive emanating from Warsaw, with its literary and

artistic creativity, its publishing houses, theaters, and societies, stood in stark contrast to the depressed status and abject poverty that constituted the fate of the masses of Warsaw’s Jewish population.

Jews have lived in Warsaw date from the fifteenth century. In the 1792 census, 6,750 Jews were found to be living there, about one-tenth of the city’s total population. In the nineteenth century Warsaw’s Jewish population grew rapidly; it became the largest Jewish community in Europe and, in the twentieth century, the second largest in the world, after New York City. On the eve of World War I, the Jews in Warsaw numbered 337,000. Just before World War II broke out, Warsaw’s Jewish population was 375,000 (29.1 percent of the total). Jews were to be found in every part of the city, but its northern part contained a section that was predominantly Jewish, with many apartment houses and certain blocks inhabited exclusively by Jews. The antisemitic policies pursued by the Polish government led to widespread poverty among the Jewish population and contributed to the generally poor state of the Polish economy at this time. In the prewar years Warsaw was the capital of Polish Jewry and an important world Jewish center. The head offices of the political parties, of a great many welfare, educational, and religious institutions, and of the trade unions were located

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there. Warsaw was where most of the Jewish newspapers and periodicals were published in different languages. It was also the central point of leadership for education. Jewish sports organizations and YO U T H M OV E M E N T S also located their headquarters in Warsaw.

Warsaw under Siege Although it had been expected, G E R M A N Y ’s aggression on September 1, 1939, found both Poles and Jews unprepared and helpless in the face of the Nazi war machine that was about to engulf them. By the end of the first week of war, the German forces had managed to destroy Poland’s military power, and the German army stood at the gates of Warsaw. At first the Polish high command resolved to make Warsaw an armed fighting fortress, but it later abandoned the plan. The civilian population, including many Jews, had been digging anti-tank ditches at the approaches to Warsaw in the early days of the war, and roadblocks had been put up inside the city. The approach of the German forces prompted an exodus from the city that included government employees and top officials, as well as the leaders of the political and public organizations. Also swept along were Jewish public figures, leaders, and activists of the different political movements, among them the appointed head of the Jewish Community Council. No meaningful preparations had been made for an evacuation, and no individuals or organizations were assigned to take the place of the persons who were abandoning the city in the emergency.

C

haim Aaron Kaplan was a Jewish teacher in Warsaw. On September

14, 1939, he made the following diary entry: “Yesterday, between five and seven in the afternoon, as the Jewish New Year, 5700, was being ushered in, the northern section, populated mostly by Jews, suffered an air raid.” Adam Czerniaków, chairman of the Judenrat in Warsaw, wrote on September 22: “Today is the Day of Atonement, truly the day of judgment. All night long the guns were shelling the city.”

From the very first days of the war, Warsaw was subjected to air raids. By the end of the first week the antiaircraft defense had been put out of action, and the aircraft were able to drop bombs at will. On September 24, Jewish leader Adam C Z E R N I A K Ó W confided in his diary: “All night long the guns keep on firing. There is no gas, no water, no electricity, and no bread; what a terrible day!” In the last week of September the city lay in ruins, a scene of chaos and death. On September 28, Warsaw surrendered; the next day German forces made their entry into the city. There is no evidence that the Germans deliberately aimed their fire at the Jewish streets and the sections that were densely populated with Jews. However, the Jews felt that they had been targeted. The hail of shells that landed on the High Holy Days (the New Year and the Day of Atonement) reinforced that impression.

Warsaw’s Jews under Occupation Many recalled the World War I German occupation, which was orderly and tolerant toward the Jews. From the very first days of this occupation, however, the Jews discovered that the German army that entered the city in 1939 was nothing like the troops that had been stationed there in World War I. The Jews were immediately subjected to attacks and discrimination. Jews were driven away from food lines and seized for forced labor; religious Jews who were wearing their traditional garb were assaulted; Jewish shops and personal property were plundered. In November the first anti-Jewish decrees were issued, such as the introduction of a white armband with a blue Star of David (Mogen David) on it to be worn by all Jews, the requirement of signs identifying Jewish shops and enterprises, the order to hand in radios, and a ban on train travel. Severe economic sanctions were placed on the Jews: in addition to blocking Jewish accounts and putting a stop to economic activity by Jews, the Germans also embarked upon the confiscation of Jewish enterprises. This led to the wholesale

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T

he indiscriminate seizure of Jews for forced labor, regardless of

age or state of health, paralyzed Jewish life in Warsaw as Jews stayed indoors to avoid seizure.

confiscation of Jewish enterprises and personal and commercial property. From the early stage of the occupation, the assets they had accumulated in the past served the Jews as their main source of subsistence. Jews who had managed to conceal savings or goods began trading them for food—a practice that was to continue throughout the war. It may be assumed that tens of thousands of Jews left Warsaw in the exodus that took place in the first few days of the war; on the other hand, an estimated 90,000 Jews were added to the population until the establishment of the ghetto in November 1940—either as refugees or through deportation to Warsaw by the Germans.

Judenrat Activities In place of the many Jewish service institutions that had existed in pre-war Warsaw, only those allowed by the Germans continued to function. The creation of a J U D E N R AT , which took the place of the traditional Jewish Community Council, was mandated by the Nazis to manage the day-to-day needs of the Jews in Warsaw. Later, when the ghetto came into being, the Judenrat would be burdened with increased responsibilities and its authority would be extended to all aspects of Jewish life. But even the first welfare challenges demonstrated the Jews’ helplessness in face of the tragic dilemmas that confronted them, on issues such as forced labor, the collection of large “contributions,” confiscations, and the indiscriminate arrests and executions of groups of Jews as retaliatory measures. One of the first problems to be addressed was that of random seizures of Jews for forced labor. The Judenrat proposed to the Germans that it would provide a fixed quota of men for work, in place of the haphazard kidnappings that had brought Jewish life to a total standstill. According to this arrangement, every Jew was assigned a fixed number of days per month for forced labor. The pay, such as it was, had to be covered by the Judenrat. As a result, the Judenrat, which did not have the financial resources to cover the wages of the forced laborers, was in financial straits at all times.

Mutual Aid Throughout the occupation and the existence of the ghetto, Jews were allowed to continue to maintain welfare and mutual help activities within the community. The financial base for such operations consisted of funds that had been accumulated by the American Jewish J O I N T D I S T R I B U T I O N C O M M I T T E E (known as the Joint); these amounted to substantial sums and were available for welfare purposes under the new conditions. The Joint associated itself with welfare operations in a number of ways, including the care of refugees and the wounded during the fighting. Before long it became evident that the number of needy cases was growing and that an organization had to be created, and properly equipped, that would be able to meet the requirements of the entire Jewish population. The Joint-sponsored Jewish Mutual Aid Society lent assistance to 250,000 Jews during Passover of 1940. Its most important means of aiding masses of people were its soup kitchens, which doled out a bowl of soup and a piece of bread to all in need. When this operation was at its height, more than 100 soup kitchens were in existence in Jewish Warsaw. Important instruments created by Jewish self-help, under the direction of Emanuel R I N G E L B L U M , were the House Committees (Komitety Domowe). Ringelblum and his colleagues sought to make the House Committees into a network based on social principles. The committees’ first task was to take care of the penni-

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less tenants in their buildings, but they also set up kindergartens and youth clubs and arranged cultural activities. When the situation did grow worse, however, and more and more people were in need, the activities of the House Committees went into a decline, and the Mutual Aid Society gained prominence. From its inception, the work of the Mutual Aid Society (Z˙TOS) was guided by social and political principles. Its public council was composed of representatives of the underground political bodies, and that council determined the aid policy and its goals. In this manner, the Z˙TOS assumed a dual role: on the one hand it operated legally, with the knowledge and approval of the authorities, and on the other hand it maintained ties with the clandestine political organizations and lent its assistance to underground activities. Many people regarded the Z˙TOS as an alternative to the Judenrat. The Jewish and Polish populations of Warsaw had few contacts with each other on a public level. While it was not the capital of the G E N E R A L G O U V E R N E M E N T , Warsaw was the capital of underground Poland. The Polish underground military organizations were formed there, the political parties were clandestinely active in the city, and the Delegatura, representing the Polish government-in-exile, had its main office in Warsaw. Warsaw Jews had ties with Poles on an individual basis and certain Jewish political groups were in contact with their Polish counterparts, but no links of any sort were created between the Polish underground forces, or the military and political branches of the Polish government-in-exile, and Jewish public bodies. No Jewish element became a recognized part of a Polish-sponsored underground framework, and no Jewish representative was ever invited to join a body established by official Polish underground organizations.

Ghetto Established In mid-November 1940, the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, surrounded by a high wall, was sealed off. It was situated in the heart of the Jewish quarter, in the northern section of the city, and encompassed the Jewish-inhabited streets. The first attempt to set up a ghetto had been made by the SS in November 1939, but at the time the military governor put a stop to the plan. In February 1940, however, Waldemar Schön, the official in charge of evacuation and relocation in the German district administration, was ordered to draw up plans for the establishment of a ghetto. On October 12, 1940, the Day of Atonement, the Jews were informed of the decree establishing a ghetto. A few days later a map was published indicating the streets assigned to the ghetto area. Up to the very last day, the Jews did not know whether the ghetto would be open or sealed off from its surroundings. On November 16 the ghetto was in fact sealed off, and thousands of Jews who had left their remaining belongings on the other side of the wall no longer had access to them.

“H

astily they tried other streets, avenues, alleys, only to find

in every case barbed wire or a solid brick wall well guarded. There was no way out any more.” —Tosha Bialer, Holocaust survivor and Warsaw Ghetto prisoner.

Nora Levin, The Holocaust Years: The Destruction of European Jewry, 1933–1945 (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell), 1968, p. 208.

The Germans had planned for 113,000 Poles to be evacuated from their homes and resettled elsewhere, and for 138,000 Jews to take their place. As soon as the ghetto was set up, a flow of refugees converged upon it. Some 30 percent of the population of Warsaw was being packed into 2.4 percent of the city’s area. According to German statistics, the density of population in the ghetto consisted of at least six to seven people to a room. Of Warsaw’s 1,800 streets, no more than 73 were assigned to the ghetto. The ghetto wall was 11.5 feet (3.5 m) high and topped by barbed wire. The ghetto cut the Jews off from the rest of the world and put an end to any remaining business ties with Poles. The number of persons employed by the Judenrat increased rapidly and a 1,000-man Jewish police force J E W I S H G H E T T O P O L I C E (Jüdischer Ordnungsdi-

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“Image not available for copyright reasons”

enst) was formed, which eventually was increased to 2,000. At its maximum size, the Judenrat staff consisted of 6,000 persons, compared to the 530 employed by the Jewish Community Council before the war. Food supplies were inadequate, as were sanitary conditions and basic services of all kinds. In November 1940, the month the ghetto was sealed off, there were 445 deaths in the ghetto. The number of deaths thereafter rose rapidly: in January 1941, to 898; in April, to 2,061; in June, to 4,290; and in August, to 5,560. The monthly figure thereafter generally fluctuated between 4,000 and 5,000 for as long as the ghetto existed. An economic structure was gradually created in the ghetto, sustaining a thin upper stratum made up of people who smuggled food into the ghetto and smuggled valuables out to the “Aryan” side, and of skilled craftsmen who made deals (legal or not legal) with German enterprises. Stefan Ernst, one of the diarists who recorded events in the Warsaw ghetto, made the following entry, shortly before the liquidation of the ghetto: “The ghetto contains 20,000, maybe 30,000, persons who have enough to eat, and these are the social elite; at the other end of the ladder are about a quarter of

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a million people who are all beggars, completely bereft of everything, and who wage a daily struggle to postpone their death by starvation. In between these two extremes are about 200,000 people, the ‘average,’ who somehow manage, are still able to take care of themselves, look clean and dressed, and their bellies are not swollen from hunger.” The ghetto’s ties with the outside world were handled by the Transfer Office (Transferstelle), a German authority that was in charge of the traffic of goods into and out of the ghetto. In practice, only some goods—the food shipments into the ghetto and the products manufactured by the ghetto for clients on the outside— passed through the Transferstelle. Most of the economic activities in the ghetto were illegal, and the ghetto economy was essentially an illegal operation, made up of two basic elements: the smuggling of food into the ghetto and the illegal export of products fabricated inside it.

T

he daily food ration allocated to the Warsaw Jews consisted of 181

calories—about 25 percent of the Polish ration, and 8 percent of the nutritional value of the food that the Germans received for their official ration coupons.

German involvement in the ghetto took a number of forms. The German authorities’ main interest was to plunder Jewish property and to make use of Jewish expertise in certain fields. From the earliest stage of the occupation, some Jews were employed in collecting scrap metal, feathers, and textiles. Later, growing numbers of Jews were sent to labor camps, where they were made to do backbreaking jobs and suffered from hunger, poor sanitary conditions, and wearisome and grueling discipline. German entrepreneurs and factory owners soon became interested in the ghetto and the availability of cheap Jewish manpower, and they quickly found ways to exploit the ghetto as a source of forced labor.

Jewish Labor, Legal and Illegal German manufacturers appeared in the ghetto in the summer of 1941, having organized and obtained authorization to operate in the Warsaw area. At first the German companies placed orders with existing Jewish workshops, but before long they put up their own workshops in the ghetto. The Judenrat, seeking to play a role in these operations, encouraged the Jews to accept employment in the German manufacturing establishments, and formed a special department for this purpose. Its efforts were to no avail, however, and it was only the specter of possible deportations from the ghetto that eventually persuaded a growing number of Jews to accept such work. As a rule, the Jews preferred to work in places that manufactured goods for “illegal export,” where they were treated better and where the pay was much higher than in the German-owned factories. Smuggling on a large scale also went on through the ghetto gates, with the various policemen and guards—Germans, Poles, and Jews—involved in the conspiracy and receiving monetary bribes for letting the smuggled goods pass. Children and women who, risking their lives, crossed over to the Polish side in order to bring back some food for their families also engaged in smuggling on a small scale. The overall smuggling operation was a complex organization, maintaining ties with partners and accomplices on the Polish side. The records and diaries kept in the ghetto all show that the smugglers’ operations played a vital role—the smuggling allowed the ghetto to hold out and survive even in the face of the cruel steps taken by the Germans against the population. The smuggling done by children and women was of a different type; they operated on an individual basis, responding to the misery around them and seeking to save themselves and their relatives. Children aged seven or eight frequently gathered in the vicinity of the ghetto gates in order to look for a smuggling opportunity. Attempts by the Germans to bring the smuggling to a complete stop met with the desperate resistance of human beings fighting for their lives. The Germans,

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The pay received for a day’s work in the German

who had no compunctions about the methods they were using, and for whom torture and murder were the accepted means of breaking resistance, could have stopped the smuggling by mass killings. The local administrative officials apparently decided that there was no point in trying to stamp out the smuggling entirely, and that sporadic raids, confiscations, and executions would keep it within acceptable bounds and under reasonable control.

workshops was not enough to buy half a loaf of bread.

Religion, Education, and Culture in the Ghetto While regular schools were banned in the ghetto, the Judenrat was permitted to maintain the vocational training schools. Cultural life in the ghetto consisted of activities conducted by the underground organizations. The ghetto had clandestine libraries that circulated officially banned books. An 80-member symphony orchestra had a repertoire that included the works of the great German composers; at one point it was warned to restrict itself to Jewish composers. Well-known writers and poets continued to create in the ghetto. The audiences appreciated the entertainment that would help them forget the surrounding reality.

Underground Political Parties and Youth Movements Underground activities by political circles and organizations had already begun around the time that the Germans entered Warsaw. Missing were the veteran and experienced Jewish leaders, who had left the city (and the country). Nevertheless, after Warsaw was occupied, members of youth movements and political parties joined together and began to prepare plans of action. At an early stage, the question arose as to whether political organizations could confine themselves to material aid and abandon political activity. The next step was to establish an underground press and to persist in efforts to communicate with political elements outside the country. The Germans’ lack of interest in the ghetto’s underground activities and their silence on the subject enabled the underground, prior to the spring of 1942, to engage in a broad range of activities without the Germans taking drastic steps to suppress them or to punish the participants. The underground press led to two results: It provided the news-hungry ghetto population with reliable information on international political developments and on the war fronts; and it raised political and ideological issues that encouraged discussion. Although this would not be the case in all Jewish ghettos, the Judenrat agreed to cooperate with the underground in Warsaw. The Jewish youth movements and their leaders played an important role in the underground, especially in the later stages: following the great deportation, during the months of preparation for the uprising, and during the W A R S A W G H E T T O U P R I S I N G itself. During the war and in the ghetto, the activities of the youth movements underwent a gradual change, as did their relative importance. They manifested a greater aptitude than did other movements for adapting to the changing circumstances and for taking dynamic action when necessary. The youth leaders assembled in Warsaw because of their keen instincts and leadership qualities and became the acknowledged leaders of the underground. Prior to the onset of the mass killings of Jews, no basic differences existed among the political parties and the youth movements in the underground. The youth movements were more active and more daring, and engaged in a wider variety of operations, but they did not offer themselves as an alternative to the underground’s political leadership or even to the Judenrat. They accepted the authority of the political parties, acknowledging them as the senior element in the underground. There was a con-

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sensus that agreed that every effort had to be made to ensure physical survival, and although the youth movements occasionally voiced some objections, they were part of this consensus. In addition to the struggle for survival, however, they made the moral and spiritual condition of the ghetto youth their special concern. A drastic change in the relationship between the component parts of the underground and the general power structure in the ghetto took place, however, when the mass murders were launched and the first reports came in of the massacres at P O N A R Y and elsewhere. At this point a new concept arose—that the Germans had embarked upon the total destruction of the Jews and that the Jews therefore had no choice but to stand up and fight, even if there was no prospect of survival.

L

eon Berensohn, a prominent Jewish lawyer who died in the

Warsaw ghetto, said that after the war the liberated survivors would have to put up a monument in memory of the Unknown Child—the smuggler in the Warsaw ghetto.

Deportations In the months preceding the mass deportation from the Warsaw ghetto, increasing nervousness was felt, as rumors spread of deportations from other ghettos and cities in occupied Poland. Unrest and panic were created and grave doubts were raised among the ghetto population by the night raids undertaken by the German police. These raids were carried out according to prepared lists; the persons on the list were seized in their homes, taken out, and shot at a nearby location. The first, and worst, such murderous raid took place on April 18, 1942. Fifty-two persons were killed that night, “the bloody night,” as it came to be known in the ghetto. Adam Czerniaków met with underground activists and tried to persuade them to stop publishing the underground newspapers, since the Germans had claimed that the existence of the underground press was the reason for the executions. The underground leaders, consulting on the subject, came to the conclusion that the Germans were lying, and decided that rather than stop publishing the underground press; they would intensify their efforts. Reports on the deportations were found in the underground press and in diaries. Czerniaków repeatedly recorded such rumors and fears in his diary. Several days prior to the beginning of the planned Aktion, an SS officer, Hans Höfle, commander of the A K T I O N R E I N H A R D unit, arrived in Warsaw. With the G E S TA P O section for Jewish affairs, Höfle drew up the plan for the deportation from the Warsaw ghetto. Several members of the Judenrat were arrested and held as hostages, and on the eve of the deportation, notices were posted listing the categories of Jews who were to be “evacuated.” The Aktion began on July 22, 1942, and continued until September 12. On July 23, Adam Czerniaków, the Judenrat chairman who tried to protect his people, committed suicide. He had been ordered to provide a daily quota of 7,000 Jews for deportation, and to include children in this number. Czerniaków was not prepared to have anything to do with turning over Jews, and preferred to put an end to his life. In the first few days of the deportation, the ghetto inhabitants streamed into the German factories (“shops”) or into workshops that were under German protection; there, they thought, they would be safe from deportation. The Jews used whatever savings they had left to buy their way into employment in a “shop.” In the first few days the permits exempting Jews from deportation were honored, and the Germans indiscriminately stamped the large number of work permits that were submitted to them. In the first ten days of the deportation Aktion, 65,000 Jews were taken from the ghetto. This meant that the Germans had filled the quota they had announced. Even in this first phase, which lasted to the end of July, people were sometimes rounded up at random in the streets, or dragged out of their homes, by the SS, the

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German police, and their Ukrainian and Latvian helpers, because daily quotas had not been met. No permits or paperwork provided protection from these seizures.

“This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions”

In the second phase, from July 31 to August 14, the German forces and their helpers took direct charge of the roundups and deportation, with the Jewish police in a secondary role. The German police and the auxiliary police, made up of Ukrainians, Latvians, and Lithuanians—a force of some 200 armed men—saw the Aktion through, day after day. Rumors, of unknown origin, were rife in the ghetto that the Aktion would be over in a day or two, but they were false. In the first week of August, 200 children were taken out of Janusz K O R C Z A K ’s orphanage. Dr. Korczak and his team of assistants went to the railway cars with the children, the elderly educator refusing offers to help him save himself. Ringelblum recorded in his diary: “Korczak set the tone: everybody [all the instructors at the orphanage] was to go to the Umschlag together. Some of the boarding-school principals knew what was in store for them there, but they felt that they could not abandon the children in this dark hour and had to accompany them to their death.” The third phase of the deportation began on August 15 and ended on September 6. At this point the deportation took on the character of a total evacuation. The Germans and their helpers conducted a manhunt, combing the streets and the apartment houses, seizing every person they found at home. Jews who were employed in the “shops” sought refuge there with their families, but the Germans showed no mercy. It became increasingly difficult to round up people, and the Germans compelled every Jewish policeman to bring in a quota of five Jews per day; a policeman who failed to fill the quota had his mother, wife, and children taken away. From mid-August, individuals who had managed to escape from the T R E B L I N K A extermination camp succeeded in infiltrating back into the ghetto, and reported on the fate in store for the deportees when they reached their destination. The final phase began on September 6. The “shops” and the Judenrat were allotted a number of permits; 35,000 such permits were issued, meaning that the Germans intended to leave in the ghetto 10 percent of its pre-deportation population. The bearers of the permits were assembled in a street bottleneck in the David Quarter, where they had to pass through a final inspection and selection. Their bundles too were inspected. In their memoirs, some of the victims recorded that from time to time, when the guards stuck their bayonets into bundles carried on the back of some of the people in the line, the sound of a baby’s cry would ring out from the bundle. In addition to the 35,000 who had permits, another 25,000—and perhaps more—managed to remain in the ghetto. The Jews who were left, mostly women and young men, the last remnants of their families, went through a great psychological change. As long as the deportations were going on, the Jews had been in a constant state of tension, concentrating all their strength on one goal: to survive where they were. When the deportations came to a halt, they had time to take stock of their situation. It was clear to all that their lives were in as much danger as before, and that they had only a short period of grace before another deportation would take place—the final one. An increasing number of them said that they would not surrender to the Germans without a fight.

The Underground and the Ghetto On July 23, the day after the deportation was launched, a meeting was called of underground leaders and public figures who were close to the underground. The representatives of the youth movements and of some of the political factions

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favored forming a defense organization that would resist the deportation by force. The leading public figures participating were reluctant to take such a step or opposed it outright. One representative argued that armed resistance would put the whole ghetto in jeopardy; this was not the first time in history that the Jewish people had been asked to sacrifice some of its sons in order to assure its continued existence as a people, and such a sacrifice would have to be made this time. On the seventh day of the deportation, July 28, representatives of the groups Ha-Shomer haTsa’ir, Dror, and Akiva held a meeting at which they decided to form the J E W I S H F I G H T I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N (Z˙ydowska Organizacja Bojowa; Z˙OB). Although the organization was founded, it had no resources, financial or otherwise, and had as yet to adopt a clear policy on the way it would conduct its struggle. One of the Z˙ OB’s first steps was to publish and distribute leaflets informing the public of the fate of the deportees and what Treblinka stood for. The ghetto population objected, fearing that the leaflets would be seen as a provocative act that would give the Germans a pretext for the total liquidation of the ghetto. The Z˙OB began its effort to acquire weapons and to draw up a plan of action. An attempt to establish ties with the H O M E A R M Y (Armia Krajowa)—the Polish military underground organization—did not succeed. The Communists were more willing to help, so with their assistance the Z˙OB obtained its first arms shipment— five pistols and eight hand grenades. On September 3, 1942, the Z˙OB faced its first crisis. In a surprise raid by the Gestapo on a “shop” where the Z˙OB had its principal base, Josef K A P L A N , one of the organization’s leaders, was arrested. Another prominent member, Samuel Breslaw, who tried to set Kaplan free, was shot in the street. In another incident, a young woman member of the Z˙OB, who was transferring the organization’s weapons from Mila Street to another location, was caught by the Germans with the entire collection of the Z˙OB’s arms. A deep sense of frustration set in among the Z˙OB members, and youngsters among them demanded that they all take to the streets, seize anything they could use as a weapon, and put an end to the ghetto’s placid acceptance of the situation. This was opposed by several of the Z˙ OB leaders, who persuaded the younger members to drop the idea and utilize the expected lull for thorough preparations for the final struggle. A profound change in public opinion had taken place in the ghetto, and as a result, underground groups of different political orientations were now willing to join the Jewish Fighting Organization. By October the Z˙OB had been consolidated and enlarged, with the addition of youth movements and splinter groups of underground political parties from Zionists to Communists. A Z˙OB command was formed, made up of representatives of the founding organizations and the fighting groups.

Deportation and Resistance in January 1943 The second wave of deportations was launched on January 18, 1943. This time, however, the Jews who were ordered to assemble in the courtyards of their apartment houses to have their papers examined refused to comply and went into hiding. The first column that the Germans managed to round up, in the first few hours, consisting of some 1,000 persons, offered a different kind of resistance. A group of fighters led by Mordecai A N I E L E W I C Z and armed with pistols deliberately infiltrated the column that was on its way to the T R A N S F E R P O I N T (Umschlagplatz). When the agreed-upon signal was given, the fighters stepped out of the column and engaged the German escorts in hand-to-hand fighting. The column dispersed, and news of the fight quickly spread.

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O

n Saturday, August 1, 1942, Warsaw diarist Abraham

Lewin wrote: “‘Outside, the sword deals death, and inside, terror’ (Lamentations 1:20). This is the eleventh day of the

Aktion, which becomes more terrible and more cruel from one day to the next. The Germans are clearing whole buildings and entire sections of streets of their inhabitants … today’s sufferings are worse than any that preceded them.”

The resistance, especially the fight that had taken place in the street, left its imprint on the January deportations. These continued until January 22, by which time the Germans had rounded up 5,000 to 6,000 Jews from all parts of the ghetto; after the events of the first day, hardly any Jews responded to the German order to report. The fact that the Aktion was halted after only a few days, and that the Germans had managed to seize no more than 10 percent of the ghetto population, was regarded, by Jews and Poles alike, as a German defeat. The Warsaw Jews who had lived through the first great wave of deportations had believed that the next deportation would be the last, and that the ghetto would be liquidated. The actual outcome was regarded as a German retreat, caused by the resistance they encountered from the fighters and from the general population of the ghetto. It is now known that the Germans had not intended to liquidate the entire ghetto during the January deportations. In fact, they were carrying out an order given by Heinrich Himmler, after a visit he made to Warsaw on January 9, to remove 8,000 Jews from the ghetto and reduce its population to the level the Germans had decided on after the great deportation in the summer and fall of 1942. The deportations and other events that took place in January were to have a decisive influence on the last months of the ghetto’s existence, up to April and May of 1943. The Judenrat and the Jewish police lost whatever control they still had over the ghetto. In the central part of the ghetto, the population obeyed directives from the fighting organizations. A new ghetto commissar was appointed by the Germans. His assignment was to transfer the machinery and workers of the major “shops” in the Warsaw ghetto to labor camps in the L U B L I N area. This transfer however, ran into opposition from the workers, who were taking their instructions from the Z˙OB. The Jewish resistance also impressed the Poles, and they now provided more aid to the Jewish fighters than in the past. The fighting organizations used the few months they had left before the final liquidation to consolidate, equip themselves, and prepare a plan for the defense of the ghetto. The Z˙ OB now had 22 fighting squads, of 15 fighters each; the Military Union had about half the number of fighters, but it operated in a similar manner. The ghetto as a whole was engaged in feverish preparations for the expected deportation, which all believed would be the final one. The general population concentrated on preparing bunkers. Groups of Jews, made up mostly of tenants of the same building, went to work on the construction of subterranean bunkers; such shelters, below ground level or in the cellars, had proved very useful during the January deportation. The January experience gave new hope to the ghetto population, who felt that the Germans might perhaps want to hold back and avoid a military clash with the Jews of the ghetto in a large city that was the capital of Poland and contained the hard core of the Polish resistance movement. Many Jews were now ready to entertain the hope that the combination of resistance and hiding out might provide the route to rescue. The fighters and the general population now had a common interest, with each having its allotted task. The Z˙OB was to be the armed force that would battle in the open, and the masses of the people were to hide out in the bunkers, in what would be another form of joint resistance. The network of bunkers in the ghetto was being expanded, and a substantial part of the ghetto population was kept busy at night digging the hideouts and communication trenches under the ground. The preparation of bunkers became a mass movement in the central ghetto area, and as the final deportation drew near, every inhabitant of the ghetto had two addresses—one on the ghetto surface and a subterranean one in a bunker.

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Backyards of the Warsaw ghetto in Poland.

Final Liquidation and Revolt The final liquidation of the ghetto began on Monday, April 19, 1943, the eve of Passover. The Jews had been warned of what lay ahead and they were prepared. Although the Germans had a substantial military force on the alert for the deportation, they do not seem to have expected the direct confrontation of street battles. SS and Police General Jürgen S T R O O P , who had had experience in fighting the PA RT I S A N S , was assigned to supervise the deportation and liquidation of the ghetto. Stroop’s daily reports on the battle against the ghetto and his final summing-up when the revolt had come to an end constitute the basic historical documentation of the resistance offered by the Jews and the methods used by the Nazis to overcome it.

T

he ghetto fighters were preparing for a final act of protest, a last

sign of life that they would send to the Jews and all of humanity in the free world. For this reason they made no attempt to prepare retreat or escape routes that would be available when the fighting was over. Their choice was to fight until the last breath in their bodies.

In his final report on the military campaign that he led against the ghetto revolt, Stroop provided the following data: “Of the total of 56,065 Jews who were seized, 7,000 were destroyed during the course of the Grossaktion inside the former Jewish quarter; in the deportation to T2 [the Treblinka extermination camp] 6,929 were exterminated,

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DETERMINATION TO SURVIVE Common to the Jews of Poland, no matter what their attitudes and political views, was the stubborn determination to survive (iberlebn), to see the war through. The term that has been handed down to describe this determination to survive physically is Kiddush Ha-Hayyim (“sanctifying life”). Few Jews thought that the Germans might win the war and that it was necessary to prepare for a situation in which the Nazis would dominate worldwide. Such a possibility did not enter most minds, since the Jews would not believe that extreme evil in its Nazi incarnation could last for long. Perhaps they also realized that they had no chance of surviving under a prolonged Nazi regime, and therefore tried to ignore it or repress the very thought.

which adds up to 13,929 Jews destroyed. In addition to the 56,065, another 5,000 to 6,000 lost their lives in explosions and fires.” Stroop’s figures are exaggerated. His report also mentions that the German losses were 16 killed and 85 wounded; these figures do not tally with the daily casualty reports that Stroop submitted during the fighting. Some sources believe that the German losses were much higher. In the last few months of its existence, some 20,000 Jews left the ghetto to seek refuge on the Polish side. The underground Polish political parties, created a special organization, Zegota, to extend aid to Jews. Approximately 4,000 Jews benefited from Zegota’s assistance at various times. In Poland it was more difficult to help Jews than in other occupied countries; offering shelter to a Jew was punishable by death. In addition to the “ R I G H T E O U S A M O N G T H E N AT I O N S ” who helped Jews out of humanitarian motives, quite a few Poles sheltered Jews for money. No data are available on the number of Jews who were saved by hiding or by posing as Poles. Many of these Jews fell in battle or were killed during the Warsaw Polish uprising. Warsaw Jews who were forced out of the bunkers or otherwise fell into German hands during the uprising were not all murdered on the spot; neither were all the people transported from the Umschlagplatz in April and May 1943 taken straight to their death. Transports made up of Jews from the “shops area,” where resistance had not been so fierce, were sent to P O N I ATO WA and T R AW N I K I . From the central ghetto, many transports had M A J DA N E K and B U D Z Y N´ as their destination. Most of these Jews were killed in early November 1943, in the E R N T E F E S T (“H A RV E S T F E S T I VA L”) murder operation. Several thousand Jews who were taken to the Majdanek concentration camp were deported, after a short stay, to A U S C H W I T Z and to labor camps in the western parts of occupied Poland. When all the transfers and evacuations were over, no more than 1,000 to 2,000 of these Jews had survived. After the end of the war, some of the surviving Jews made their way back to the cities where they had lived before the war. Some 2,000 survivors gathered in Warsaw within a few months, and were given first aid by the Jewish Committee that began functioning in the city. Warsaw did not attract a large concentration of Jews; Lublin was preferred as the place where the Polish administration and a new life were gaining hold. It was only when the reconstruction of Warsaw had progressed and the Polish institutions were reestablished there that the central Jewish organizations followed suit and moved to Warsaw.

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The Jewish Historical Institute (Z˙ydowski Instytut Historyczny), which was set up in a wing of the building that housed the Institute of Jewish Studies, embarked upon what became a highly important effort of collecting documents and mementos of the Jews of Poland and the H O L O C AU S T period. Warsaw became the seat of the Central Committee of the Jews of Poland, followed, in 1950, by the Cultural and Social Union of the Jews of Poland. Eventually, 20,000 to 30,000 Jews settled in Warsaw, most of whom had not lived there before the war. The great majority of these Jews left in the waves of Jewish emigration from Poland in the postwar period.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Roland, Charles G. Courage Under Siege: Starvation, Disease, and Death in the Warsaw Ghetto. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Shoah [videorecording]. New Yorker Video, 1999. Stewart, Gail. Life in the Warsaw Ghetto. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1995. Szpilman, Wladyslaw. The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man’s Survival in Warsaw, 1939–45. New York: Picador USA, 1999.

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising The W A R S AW ghetto uprising was the first instance of a rebellion by an urban population in German-occupied Europe. Among the Jewish uprisings, it was also the one that lasted the longest, from April 19 to May 16, 1943. It was unique as a general, ghetto-wide rebellion, in which armed fighters took the offensive while masses of Jews rebelled by hiding out in bunkers and other secret places. Their utter determination made the Warsaw ghetto a bastion of resistance and fighting.

T

he revolt in the ghetto had reverberated among the

remaining Jews of Poland, among the non-Jews in the country, and in all of Europe. Even while the war was still in progress, the story of the Warsaw ghetto uprising became a legend that was

First Steps to Resistance

passed on, with awe and emotion, as an

In the spring of 1942, some members of the Jewish underground of the Warsaw ghetto decided that they must form a defense force. They had heard reports of a mass-murder campaign in the East, and they believed that a defense force must be prepared if the Nazis tried to deport the Jews from Warsaw. They were unable to convince others of the need, however. So, by the time the Nazis launched the mass D E P O RTAT I O N S of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto on July 22, 1942, no unified Jewish and lasting resistance force had come into being.

event of rare historical significance.

When the deportations began, the underground tried again to establish a fighting organization. The ghetto leadership did not support the plan out of fear of Nazi reprisals that would result in the deaths of all Jews of the ghetto, even those who might yet be saved. Still, the J E W I S H F I G H T I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N (Z˙ydowska Organizacja Bojowa; Z˙ OB) was founded on July 28. A small group, its membership included only the three Zionist pioneering movements, Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir, Dror, and Akiva. The new organization had little effect in the summer of 1942, and initial attempts to establish contact with the Polish military underground Home Army (Armia Krajowa) were also unsuccessful. The first wave of deportations ended in mid-September. Some 300,000 Jews had been removed from the ghetto. Of those, 265,000 were deported to the T R E B L I N K A extermination camp. This left 55,000 to 60,000 Jews in the ghetto. The survivors felt isolated and bitter; most were young people who now blamed themselves

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“Image not available for copyright reasons”

for not having offered armed resistance against the deportation of their families. They also knew that deportations would likely recur at any time. This mood rejuvenated the ghetto underground. In October, more factions joined the Z˙OB, which now represented all the active forces in the underground. The Jewish Military Union (Z˙ ydowski Zwia˛zek Wojskowy; Z˙ ZW) was also established, and the Z˙ OB finally made contact with the Home Army, which gave the Z˙OB a few arms—ten pistols and some explosive charges. This was a far cry from what the Z˙OB needed, but it was an important boost to morale. A headquarters was established for the Z˙OB, under the command of Mordecai A N I E L E W I C Z . The organization now began training the fighters and making plans for resistance.

The deportations from the Warsaw ghetto came as a surprise, and the Z˙OB leadership did not have time to plan a coordinated reaction. 130

On Monday, January 18, 1943, before the Z˙OB had completed its preparations, the Germans launched the second wave of deportations, the “January Aktion” (“operation”). This would be the Z˙OB’s first military test. Even though the Z˙ OB had not had time to prepare a full-scale rebellion, the operation did not proceed as the Germans had expected. Resistance fighters armed with pistols deliberately broke into a long column of Jews who were being marched to the assembly point for the deportation. When the agreed-upon signal was given, they confronted the German escorts in a face-to-face battle—this was the first time Germans were attacked inside the ghetto. Most of the Jewish fighters died or were injured in the battle, though Anielewicz was able to overcome a German soldier and was saved. The column of Jews scattered in all directions. News of the battle soon

WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING

reached the rest of the ghetto inmates. In one place—a building on Zamenhof Street—a squad of Dror men, commanded by Yitzhak Z U C K E R M A N , lay in waiting; when the Germans appeared on the scene, they were met by a hail of gunfire. This German offensive lasted four days, during which there was a decisive change in the ghetto population’s pattern of behavior. The Jews refused to respond to the shouts ordering them to get out of their houses and report to the assembly points. Most of the Jews found improvised hiding places. The Germans also acted in a different manner—moving quietly, and keeping away from places where Jews might be hiding, not making their usual ear-splitting cries. The operation ended on the fourth day, by which time 5,000 to 6,000 Jews had been caught. The Germans had planned to take 8,000 (the Jews, however, feared that all in the ghetto would be taken). Both the Jews and the Polish underground interpreted the early discontinuation of the operation as a sign of German weakness and a retreat from the resistance.

The events of four days in January 1943 had a decisive impact on preparations for the next Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Waiting, Watching, Preparing In the next three months, the Z˙OB prepared feverishly for the next episode of rebellion. The Z˙OB had learned from the January events that the ghetto might once again be taken by surprise with a Nazi operation; therefore, the fighters had to be on a permanent alert. A total of 22 fighting units were formed. Another “January lesson” was that the enemy had to be taken unaware by the attacks, and these had to be launched from positions in the maze of the ghetto buildings and roof attics. So, the ghetto was divided into fighting sectors with designated positions, with a fighting unit attached to each. Anielewicz was in overall command of the Z˙OB and the ghetto. Most of the fighters’ weapons were pistols. Some of them had been obtained from Polish organizations, but for the most part they had had to be purchased. The Z˙OB also had automatic weapons and rifles that its men had seized from the Germans, and the Z˙ZW had obtained weapons from Polish sources. In addition, hand grenades were manufactured in the ghetto; these were to play an important role during the uprising. In this waiting period between January and April, expansion of the Z˙OB was limited only by the lack of weapons; the population was now interested in resisting. Shortly before the uprising was launched, the Z˙ OB’s armed and organized force consisted of 22 fighting platoons, with a total of 500 fighters. The Z˙ ZW had 200 to 250 fighters, and the total Jewish fighting forces in the ghetto numbered 700 to 750. The civilian population of the ghetto now believed that resistance would force the Germans to stop the deportations. They thought that the Germans would also have to consider the possibility that the rebellion in the ghetto might spread to the Polish population and even affect all of occupied P O L A N D . The civilians equipped a network of underground refuges and hiding places, where they could hold out for a long period even if they were cut off from one another. Eventually every Jew in the ghetto had a spot in one of the shelters set up in the central part of the ghetto. Many of these civilian shelters also had defensive weapons. The Z˙OB command did not share the hope that armed resistance would keep the Germans from carrying out their plans, but it encouraged the preparation of bunkers.

The Uprising Begins

Passover

The last Aktion and the resistance campaign that came to be known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began on April 19, 1943, which was the eve of Passover . The ghetto fighters had been warned of the timing of what was to be the final deporta-

The eight day commemmoration of the exodus of the ancient Jews from Egypt during the reign of the Pharaoh Ramses II.

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T

he Jews of the Warsaw ghetto fiercely battled the forces of

Nazi Germany and stood up against them longer than some independent countries in Europe had held out against German aggression.

tion. There is no doubt that the chief of the SS and police in the Warsaw district, Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg, was aware of the existence of a Jewish defense formation. However, he apparently did not dare admit to his superiors that a significant Jewish fighting force had been established in the ghetto. On the eve of the final deportation, Heinrich H I M M L E R replaced Sammern-Frankenegg with a man who had had experience in fighting PA R T I S A N S , SS and police leader Jürgen STROOP. In the 27 days that the uprising lasted, the Nazis deployed a considerable military force, including tanks. In the first days of the fighting, they used, on the average, 2,054 soldiers and policemen and 36 officers. Facing them were 700 to 750 young Jewish fighters who had had no military training or battle experience and who for all practical purposes were armed with no more than pistols. On the morning of April 19, when the German forces entered the ghetto they did not find a living soul in the central part, except for a group of policemen. The entire Jewish population had taken to the hiding places and bunkers, and by refusing to follow the Germans’ orders, they became part of the uprising. That day, following the first clash, the Germans were forced to withdraw from the ghetto. They lost a tank and an armored vehicle that had been hit by Molotov cocktails (bombs), and they were unable to capture the Z˙ OB and Z˙ ZW position on Muranowska Square. Two flags were raised on top of a building there—the flag of Poland and a blue and white Jewish national flag. The face-to-face fighting lasted for several days. The Germans were not able to capture or hit the Jewish fighters, who after every clash managed to get away and retreat by way of the roofs; nor could the Germans lay hands on the Jews hiding in the bunkers. The Germans therefore decided to burn the ghetto systematically, building by building; this forced the fighters to take to the bunkers themselves and to resort to partisan tactics by staging sporadic raids. The flames and the heat turned life in the bunkers into hell; the very air was afire. The food that had been stored up spoiled, and the water was no longer fit to drink. Despite all this, the bunker dwellers refused to leave their hideouts. The bunker war turned out to be the Germans’ most difficult and troublesome task. Time and again Stroop claimed in his detailed daily reports that he had overcome resistance and that the uprising was dying out—only to report the next day that there was no end to the attacks and the losses suffered by his troops. Gradually, however, the Jews’ power of resistance declined. On May 8, the headquarters bunker of the Z˙OB fell, and with it also Mordecai Anielewicz and a large group of fighters and commanders. The Z˙OB fighters had not made any plans for a retreat from the ghetto, as they had thought that the battle would go on inside the ghetto until the last fighter had fallen. Thanks to a rescue mission arranged by the Z˙OB men on the Polish side, who made their way through the sewers of the city, several dozen fighters were saved. The fighting in the ghetto lasted nearly a month. The Jews in the bunkers who were not discovered by the Germans’ dogs and special search instruments kept up their resistance as long as they were alive. The Nazis also threw gas grenades into the bunkers, when the Jews inside refused to leave even after they had been forced open. On May 16, Stroop announced that the fighting was over and that “we succeeded in capturing altogether 56,065 Jews, that is, definitely destroying them.” He stated that he was going to blow up the Great Synagogue on Tl⁄ omacka Street (which was outside the ghetto and the scene of the fighting) as a symbol of victory and of the fact that “the Jewish quarter of Warsaw no longer exists.”

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WARSAW POLISH UPRISING

Even after May 16 there were still hundreds of Jews in the subterranean bunkers of the ghetto, which was now a heap of ruins. They sneaked out of the bunkers during the night in search of food and water and kept in touch with one another. The last survivors among these fighters succeeded in establishing contact with the Poles and escaping to the “Aryan” side. Only a handful held out in the bunkers until the W A R S AW P O L I S H U P R I S I N G took place in August 1944.

Waffen-SS troops leading Jews from the burning ghetto during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

SEE ALSO RESISTANCE, JEWISH. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Gutman, Israel. Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. Landau, Elaine. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. New York: Macmillan, 1992.

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: An Audio-visual Program from the Exhibition at Ghetto Fighter’s House [videorecording]. Ergo Media, 1993. Zuckerman, Yitzhak. A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Warsaw Polish Uprising In the summer of 1944, a major uprising took place in W A R S A W , P O L A N D , against the Germans who had occupied the country for five years. This revolt was

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WARSAW POLISH UPRISING

started by the largest Polish resistance organization, the Armia Krajowa, which took its orders from the Polish government-in-exile in London. The aim of the uprising was to take control of Warsaw before the S OV I E T U N I O N ’s Red Army entered the city—a development that was expected to take place soon. The Polish rebel forces amounted to some 23,000 poorly equipped troops. They were facing tens of thousands of German troops and police, who were plentifully supplied with weapons and other equipment. The uprising did not come as a surprise to the Germans. The rebellion broke out on August 1, 1944. In the first few days, it spread over large parts of central Warsaw, extending to the more distant parts of several suburbs and to a number of points on the right bank of the Vistula River. However, not a single bridge or enemy stronghold was captured by the attacking Polish forces. The Germans launched a harsh counterattack. Under the command of Erich von dem B AC H -Z E L E W S K I , their attack was accompanied by mass terror and inhumane methods of fighting. The aid that came to the Poles from the Allies did not amount to more than a few arms drops. In the early stages of the revolt, the Soviets hindered the Allied aid. Only in the later stages, in mid-September, did the Soviets themselves drop some supplies for the Poles. Most of the Polish fighters were young people. Several smaller resistance organizations, led by the Armia Ludowa, joined the uprising. The Armia Ludowa included a group of Jews, members of the J E W I S H F I G H T I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N (Z˙ydowska Organizacja Bojowa; Z˙OB), who had succeeded in leaving the ghetto after a major Jewish revolt there had been quashed the previous year (see W A R S A W G H E T T O U P R I S I N G ). Other Jews also took part in the uprising. On August 4, the rebels liberated several hundred Jewish prisoners (from Greece and H U N G A R Y ) from the concentration camp on Gesia Street. These freed prisoners joined in the revolt. Warsaw’s civilian population also gave strong support to the uprising, by publishing newspapers, providing first aid, organizing supplies and postal services, and performing other such services. On September 14, Polish army units that had parachuted into Warsaw early seized control of the right bank of the Vistula River. They managed to transfer several battalions to the left bank. The Poles suffered heavy losses in the process. They could not, however, bring relief to the rebels. The besieged city center fell to the German forces on October 2, and this marked the end of the uprising. Polish losses came to between 16,000 and 20,000 fighters killed and missing, 7,000 wounded, and 150,000 civilians killed. That last figure included several thousand Jews who had been in hiding with the Polish population after the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto. German losses were much lighter—6,000 dead or missing, and 9,000 wounded. The Germans sent most of the surviving civilians to nearby camps; 65,000 of them were subsequently transferred to C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S . About 100,000 people were held for F O R C E D L A B O R in G E R M A N Y . Following the insurgents’ surrender, the Germans burned and razed those parts of the city that were still intact, causing great losses to Poland’s cultural and spiritual treasures.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES “Armia Krakowa.” Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance Online. [Online] http://motlc.wiesenthal.org/pages/t002/t00215.html (accessed on September 7, 2000).

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WESTERBORK

Westerbork Westerbork was a camp situated near the town of that name in the northeastern N E T H E R L A N D S . From 1942 to 1944, Westerbork was a transit camp for Jews who were being deported from the Netherlands to eastern Europe. The camp had been established in October 1939 by the Dutch government to house Jewish refugees who had entered the country illegally. A Dutch official from the Ministry of Justice was put in charge of it. The costs of putting up the camp and maintaining it were charged to the Jewish Refugee Committee in the Netherlands (established in 1933). When G E R M A N Y invaded the Netherlands on May 10, 1940, there were 750 refugees in the Westerbork camp. The refugees were moved to Leeuwarden, only to be taken back to Westerbork following the Dutch surrender. After the surrender, refugees from other camps were moved to Westerbork. In 1941, the camp had a population of 1,100, accommodated in 200 small wooden houses.

T

he Westerbork camp led a double life. There were the “permanent”

prisoners, who remained in place for a considerable length of time, ran their own affairs, and, in a strange way, led a near-normal life. And there were the masses who were brought into the camp from time to time, stayed there for a week or two, and were then sent to the camps in the East.

At the end of 1941, the German administration decided to use Westerbork as a transit camp for Jews who were being deported to the east. A barbed-wire fence was put up around the camp, and 24 large wooden barracks were built. In the first half of 1942, some 400 German Jews were transferred to Westerbork from various cities in the Netherlands. On July 1, 1942, the German Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei) took control of the Westerbork camp. An SS company was sent in to reinforce the Dutch military police who were responsible for guarding the camp. Erich Deppner was appointed camp commandant. He handled the first transport from Westerbork to A U S C H W I T Z . He caused a riot when, to fill the required quota of 1,000 deportees, he included children without their parents, as well as women who happened to be standing in line for admittance into the camp (their husbands had already been registered for the camp and were not included in the transport). On September 1, 1942, Deppner was replaced by an SS officer, Josef Hugo Dischner. Dischner was unable to deal with the sudden influx of 13,000 prisoners— Jews who had been seized in a raid. On October 12, Albert Konrad Gemmeker took over Dischner’s job. Gemmeker generally left the day-to-day operation of the camp in the hands of the German Jews, who had been in charge of it from the beginning. This did not change even when most of the camp inmates were Jews of Dutch nationality; German Jews kept all the responsible posts. The systematic transfer to Westerbork of Jews from all parts of the Netherlands was launched on July 14, 1942. On the following day, their deportation to Auschwitz and other camps was set in motion. Almost 100,000 Jews were deported from Westerbork. Gemmeker had the Jewish camp leadership prepare the lists of those prisoners to be deported. The leadership, however, was not allowed to include certain camp residents who were exempted from being moved; these included Jews of foreign nationality and about 2,000 inmates who had been given special status in the two weeks before the D E P O R TAT I O N S were launched. Beginning February 2, 1943, the deportation trains left Westerbork every Tuesday, turning the night before into a time of horror and panic in the camp. The camp administration consisted of ten subdivisions. Outstanding among the subdivision heads was Kurt Schlesinger, a businessman in his earlier life, who became Gemmeker’s right-hand man. On August 12, 1943, Schlesinger was appointed head of the principal subdivision, which was also in charge of the main card index—the key instrument for the preparation of the lists of persons to be deported. Another subdivision was the J E W I S H G H E T T O P O L I C E (Jüdischer Ord-

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WESTERBORK

Jews being deported from the Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands, 1943.

nungsdienst). At its full strength, this police force consisted of 200 young men, divided evenly between Dutch and German Jews. They helped arrange transports, in addition to maintaining order inside the camp. The camp inmates were supposed to work for the war effort, but the will to work was very low. In 1943, when the permanent population was at its peak, the camp inmates, both Jews and non-Jews, had jobs in metalworking, health services, and education, as well as in camp administration, kitchen work, camp maintenance and security, and other internal departments. Some worked outside the camp, as well. The number of people working in health services was exceptionally large. Westerbork had a hospital with 1,800 beds, 120 doctors and another 1,000 workers, and laboratories, pharmacies, and other departments needing workers. The camp commandant also encouraged entertainment activities—concerts, operas, and cabaret performances—in which outstanding artists among the camp population took part. There were no shortages in the camp, since the Dutch administration provided it with a regular supply of food and other goods. The camp commandant also had at his disposal a fund for additional purchases. This fund had its source in Jewish property that had been confiscated. On April 12, 1945, when Allied forces were approaching Westerbork, Gemmeker officially handed the camp over to Kurt Schlesinger. On that day, the camp had 876 inmates. Of them, 569 were Dutch nationals. The rest belonged to various other nationalities or were stateless (they did not hold citizenship from any country). After the war, a Dutch court sentenced Gemmeker to ten years in prison. A memorial and a permanent exhibition have been set up on the site of the Westerbork camp.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Boas, Jacob. Boulevard des Misères: The Story of Transit Camp Westerbork. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1985.

Camp of Hope and Despair: Witnesses of Westerbork, 1939–1945 [videorecording]. Ergo Media, 1994.

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WIESEL, ELIE

Hillesum, Etty. Letters from Westerbork. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986. Verdoner-Sluizer, Hilde. Signs of Life: The Letters of Hilde Verdoner-Sluizer from Nazi Transit Camp Westerbork, 1942–1944. Washington, DC: Acropolis Books, 1990.

Wiesel, Elie (b. 1928)

Elie (Eliezer) Wiesel is a H O L O C AU S T survivor, prolific writer, and winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize. Raised in a devout Jewish home in Sighet Marmat¸iei, Transylvania (present-day Romania), Wiesel tenuously held on to his faith in God after being deported to A U S C H W I T Z with his family in 1944. Liberated from B U C H E N WA L D , he later studied at the Sorbonne in P A R I S and became a foreign correspondent for the Israeli daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot. Wiesel has written more than 40 fiction and nonfiction books, including novels that bring to life pictures drawn from traditional Jewish writings, transforming them into vibrant human experiences. In his extraordinary memoir Un di Velt Hot Geshvigen (1956), written in Yiddish and adapted and translated into many languages (the English title is Night), Wiesel personifies the experience of a concentration camp inmate. His unique writing style has provided a powerful means of discussing the Holocaust. Wiesel’s works often deal with oppression and the fragility of the human condition. The anguished memories of his ordeals in the C O N C E N T R AT I O N C A M P S , woven into the text of his stories, express the collective loss of a seared generation. Always mindful of the suffering of the other victims of the Holocaust, Wiesel signifies the uniqueness of the Jewish experience in the statement: “While not all victims [of the Nazis] were Jews, all Jews were victims.”

Elie Wiesel.

On accepting the Congressional Gold Medal of Achievement from President Ronald Reagan in 1985, Wiesel appealed to the president not to visit the cemetery in Bitburg, G E R M A N Y , in which 47 SS men are buried. “Your place, Mr. President, is with the victims,” he declared. This impulse to jolt the conscience of society earned Wiesel the Nobel Peace Prize (though it did not keep Reagan from going to the Bitburg cemetery). In his presentation address at the Nobel Prize ceremonies, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Egil Aarvik, summed up Wiesel’s message to humanity: “Do not forget, do not sink into a new blind indifference, but involve yourselves in truth and justice, in human dignity, freedom, and atonement.” As chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council from 1980 to 1986, Wiesel instituted national “Days of Remembrance” in the U N I T E D S TAT E S . His leadership inspired the introduction of Holocaust curricula in numerous states, cities, and counties. In his words and deeds, Wiesel has helped to bring the Holocaust to the consciousness of the world. He has received dozens of honorary degrees and many awards, and with his wife, Marion, established The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. Today he lectures widely and is a professor in the humanities at Boston University.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. [Online] http://www.eliewieselfoundation.org/default.htm (accessed on September 7, 2000). Facing Hate with Elie Wiesel and Bill Moyers [videorecording]. Mystic Fire Video, 1991.

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“This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions”

A Portrait of Elie Wiesel [videorecording]. PBS Video, 1988. Rosenfeld, A. H., and I. Greenberg, eds.Confronting the Holocaust: The Impact of Elie Wiesel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978. Wiesel, Elie. All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs. Knopf, 1995. Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Hill and Wang, 1960.

Wiesenthal, Simon (b. 1908)

H O L O CAU S T survivor, writer, and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal was born in Buchach, Galicia (present-day U KRAINE ). He studied architecture at the Prague Technical University and was living in LVOV , P OLAND , when World War II began in 1939. He was arrested by Ukrainian police and spent most of the war in concentration and forced-labor camps, among them J ANÓWSKA (Lvov), P L⁄ ASZÓW , G ROSS -R OSEN , and B U C H E N WA L D . Barely alive and weighing less than one hundred pounds, Wiesenthal was liberated in M AUTHAUSEN on May 5, 1945, by the U.S. Army. Wiesenthal and his wife, Cyla Mueller, lost dozens of family members in the Holocaust. After the war, Wiesenthal devoted himself to the investigation of Nazi war criminals. He worked first for the War Crimes section of the U.S. Army in A U S T R I A . In 1947, he established the Jewish Historical Documentation Center in Linz. Public interest in Nazi war criminals decreased, and Wiesenthal closed the Linz center in 1954. He resumed his work in V IENNA in 1961 in the wake of the trial of Adolf E ICH MANN , which created renewed interest in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. Among the most prominent Nazis whom Wiesenthal helped find or bring to justice were Franz S TA N G L , commandant of the T R E B L I N K A and S O B I B Ó R E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S ; Gustav Wagner, deputy commandant of Sobibór; Franz Mürer, commandant of the V I L NA ghetto; and Karl Silberbauer, the policeman who arrest-

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ed Anne F R A N K . Not everyone has appreciated Wiesenthal’s activities: In 1982, a bomb exploded at the front door of his home in Vienna. Several neo-Nazis were arrested for the crime; one was sentenced to prison. In 1977, the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies was established at the Yeshiva University of Los Angeles in honor of Wiesenthal’s life’s work (see M U S E U M S A N D M E M O R I A L I N S T I T U T E S .) Besides his efforts to prosecute Nazi war criminals, Wiesenthal has played an important role in commemorating the victims of the Holocaust. His works include The Murderers among Us; The Sunflower; Max and Helen; and Every Day Remembrance Day: A Chronicle of Jewish Martyrdom.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES

“Image not available for copyright reasons”

Levy, Alan. The Wiesenthal File. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994. Pick, Hella. Simon Wiesenthal: A Life in Search of Justice. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1996. Wiesenthal, Simon. Justice Not Vengeance. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989. Wiesenthal, Simon. The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness. Revised and expanded edition. Edited by Harry James Cargas and Bonnie V. Fetterman. New York: Schocken Books, 1997.

Wirth, Christian (1885–1944)

An S S major and head of the concentration camp organization in P O L A N D , Christian Wirth was born in Württemberg, G E R M A N Y . He trained as a carpenter and later served in World War I, receiving high decorations. After the war, Wirth entered the police force and became notorious for his interrogation methods. He became a member of the N A Z I P A RT Y in 1931. By 1939, Wirth had become a Kriminalkommissar in the Stuttgart criminal police, a department of the G E S TA P O . At the end of 1939, Wirth began to specialize in the “treatment” of the insane by means of euthanasia (see E U T H A NA S I A P R O G R A M ). At this time, he performed the first known gassing experiments on Germans who were certified as incurably insane. Wirth became an inspector of euthanasia establishments in Greater Germany in 1940. His success led to an assignment in the Polish city of L U B L I N in 1941. Here, he set up a new euthanasia center, the first outside the Reich. He followed this with the establishment of five E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S in Poland; the first of these to become operational was at C H E L⁄ M N O . During the next year and a half, Wirth supervised the killing of more than 1.5 million Jews in the camps of B E L⁄ Z˙ E C , S O B I B Ó R , and T R E B L I N K A . He received the cooperation of Odilo G L O B O C N I K and the SS police headquarters in Lublin. Wirth’s assignment involved the introduction of new gassing techniques. When the camp at Bel⁄z˙ec was closed in the fall of 1943, Wirth was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer (major) and sent to Trieste, where his task was to hasten the deportation of the Jews. He was killed by PA RT I S A N S (resistance fighters) while on a journey to Fiume.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Arad, Yitzhak. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.

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Burleigh, Michael. Death and Deliverance: “Euthanasia” in Germany c. 1900–1945. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Friedlander, Henry. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Wise, Stephen Samuel

Rabbi Stephen Wise played a key role in establishing the American Zionist movement.

(1874–1949)

An American Jew, Stephen Wise was a religious leader, a founder of and activist in the Zionist movement in the U N I T E D S TAT E S , and a spokesperson for the cause of civic betterment. Much of the criticism of the role of the American Jewish community during the H O L O CAU S T focuses on his leadership. After serving as a Reform rabbi in Portland, Oregon, Wise moved to the east. In 1907, he founded the Free Synagogue in New York, remaining its spiritual leader until his death. In 1922, Wise established the Jewish Institute of Religion (JIR), an academy for training Reform rabbis. He served as president of the JIR until it merged with the Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1948. Wise was a crusader for social causes. His sermons and speeches focused on every civic cause of the 1920s and 1930s, including municipal corruption and the right of labor to organize. His campaign to force the resignation of the corrupt mayor of New York City, James Walker, brought Wise into conflict with Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was governor of New York from 1928 to 1932. This rupture lasted until the presidential election of 1936, when Wise became a staunch supporter of the administration. In 1897, Wise helped to found the New York Federation of Zionists, which became the Federation of American Zionists a year later. In 1919, Wise was a spokesman for the Zionist cause at the P A R I S Peace Conference (1919–20) and he assumed the presidency of the Zionist Organization of America that same year. He headed the Zionist Organization of America from 1918 to 1920 and again from 1936 to 1938. Wise was among the organizers of the American Jewish Congress, which was founded in 1920. In 1936, he established the W O R L D J E W I S H C O N G R E S S , of which he was president until his death. After 1933, when the Nazis came to power in G E R M A N Y , the leadership role that Wise sought to fill proved increasingly difficult. American Jewry of the time was weak and divided. In 1933, Wise enlisted the support of the American Jewish Congress in a boycott of German products, seeing this as the morally correct thing to do. At the same time, he wavered in his support for the Haavara Agreement between Germany and the Yishuv (the organized Jewish community in Palestine). The Haavara Agreement (1933) was a pact between Nazis and Zionists that approved the emigration of Jews to Palestine; it was the only contract that existed between the Zionists and the Third Reich. Abba Hillel Silver, a fellow Reform rabbi and Zionist, was a Republican supporter who had been radicalized by the events in Europe. He had made an agreement with the more moderate Wise to avoid confronting the administration publicly. In 1943, Silver broke the agreement by arousing American public opinion on behalf of Zionism. At the same time, the aging Wise came into conflict with the Revisionist Zionists, whose cause had been considerably strengthened by a group of Palestinian Jews headed by Peter Bergson; Wise was convinced that Bergson was intending to take over the American Zionist movement. At the same time, Wise faced opposition from the newly organized anti-Zionist constituency within the Jewish community. Clearly, the American Jewish community had become more fragmented than ever in

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Bishop William T. Manning (seated left), Rabbi Stephen Wise (seated right), and two unidentified men (standing), attend a rally to protest the anti-Jewish laws and terrorism promoted by the new Nazi regime in Germany; March 27, 1933, Madison Square Garden, New York.

the crucial year of 1943. Wise’s attempt to play the role of peacemaker was unsuccessful: the divisions within the community were too great, as was the gap between what the Jewish rescue advocates sought and what the Roosevelt administration was willing to give during wartime. Because of his leadership position, Wise was ultimately compelled to bear much of the responsibility for this failure. By 1943, some felt that Wise’s leadership had become weak and inconsistent. Under pressure by U.S. government officials, and in order to avoid accusations that Jews were atrocity-mongers, Wise agreed to delay public release of the news of the “ F I N A L S O L U T I O N ” (as contained in the R I E G N E R C A B L E ) until the information could be independently verified. This delayed any U.S. government action by more than a year, during which hundreds of thousands more European Jews perished. By 1944, Wise had become deeply disillusioned. The establishment of the Jewish state a year before his death gave him considerable gratification, but as the radical losses suffered by European Jewry became known, his despair intensified. His autobiography, The Challenging Years: The Autobiography of Stephen Wise, was published in 1949.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. “Stephen S. Wise.” The Jewish Student Online Resource Center (JSOURCE). [Online] http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/biography/ wise.html (accessed on September 7, 2000). Peck, Abraham J., ed. The Papers of the World Jewish Congress 1939–1945. New York: Garland, 1991. Peck, Abraham J., ed. The Papers of the World Jewish Congress 1945–1950: Liberation and the Saving Remnant. New York: Garland, 1991. Urofsky, Melvin I. A Voice That Spoke for Justice: The Life and Times of Stephen S. Wise. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982.

Wisliceny, Dieter (1911–1948)

Dieter Wisliceny served as Adolf E I C H M A N N ’s deputy in the Jewish Section (Section IV B 4) of the R E I C H S E C U R I T Y M A I N O F F I C E (RSHA; Reichssicherheit-

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shauptamt) in S L OVA K I A , Greece, and H U N G A RY and was the organizer of the mass deportation of Jews from these countries between 1942 and 1944. Wisliceny joined the SS in 1934 and entered the SD (Security Service) the same year. Beginning in September 1940 he acted as “adviser on Jewish affairs” to the Slovak government and soon became known for his intelligence and opportunism. During the D E P O R TAT I O N S from Slovakia in the summer of 1942, Wisliceny was bribed by the Bratislava-based underground Pracovná Skupina (Working Group) to delay the deportation of Slovak Jews. He entered into negotiations on the so-called Europa Plan, initiated by Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandel, to save the remaining Jews in Europe in return for a ransom of $2 million to $3 million, to be made available by Jewish organizations abroad. Wisliceny accepted a sum between $40,000 and $50,000 (the exact amount is not known) as a first installment and transmitted it to higher SS authorities. In 1943 and 1944, Wisliceny headed the S P E C I A L C O M M A N D O for Jewish Affairs in Salonika and was instrumental in the liquidation of Greek Jewry. In March 1944 he joined Eichmann’s Special Commando in B U DA P E S T to organize the deportations of Hungarian Jews and became involved as liaison in the “Blood for Goods” negotiations with the Relief and Rescue Committee of Budapest. After the war, Wisliceny served as a witness for the prosecution at the Nuremberg Trial and was extradited to Czechoslovakia. While awaiting his trial in the Bratislava prison, he wrote several important affidavits on the “F I NA L S O L U T I O N ”; on Eichmann’s role; on the mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini; and on the negotiations over the Europa Plan and the “Blood for Goods” proposal. Wisliceny’s testimony was used by the prosecution at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961. Condemned to death, he was hanged in Bratislava in February 1948.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES “Affidavit of Dieter Wisliceny,” in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Vol. VIII. USGPO, 1946. Reproduced at http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/Wisliceny.htm (accessed on September 7, 2000).

Wolff, Karl (1900–1984)

A senior SS and police officer, Karl Wolff was born in Darmstadt, G ERMANY , the son of a district court judge. In World War I, Wolff served as a lieutenant and earned an Iron Cross, First Class. After the war, he fought in the ranks of the paramilitary fighting units known as Freikorps in the state of Hesse. He held various business posts from 1920 to 1933 and then set up his own public relations firm in Munich. In 1931, Wolff joined the N A Z I P A R T Y and the SS, and in July, 1933, he was appointed Heinrich H I M M L E R ’s assistant to the commanding officer. In 1936, he was elected as a Parliamentary member of the Reichstag from Hesse. Wolff advanced rapidly up the SS ladder, being appointed Standartenführer (colonel) in January 1934, Gruppenführer (lieutenant general) in the Waffen-SS in May 1940, and SS-Obergruppenführer (general) and General-oberst (senior general) in 1942. He was awarded the Nazi party’s gold medal on January 30, 1939. Wolff was responsible for obtaining the necessary deportation trains from the German Railways administration for transporting thousands of Jews to the T R E -

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extermination camp. In September 1943, Wolff became military governor of northern I TA LY and plenipotentiary of the Reich to Benito Mussolini’s Fascist government. In February 1945, Wolff contacted U N I T E D S TAT E S intelligence agent Allen Dulles in Zurich and arranged for the surrender of the German forces in northern Italy. BLINKA

plenipotentiary

A diplomatic agent who has the power to conduct business.

After the war, Wolff appeared as a witness for the prosecution in trials of Nazi criminals. He was tried by a German court and sentenced to four years of imprisonment with hard labor in 1946, but was released a week later. Wolff then became a highly successful public relations agent. At the time of the Adolf E I C H M A N N trial in 1961, he drew attention to himself with an interview that he gave to a German magazine in May. No longer anonymous, Wolff was put under arrest in January 1962, charged with the murder of Jews and with direct responsibility for the deportation of 300,000 Jews to Treblinka. On September 30, 1964, Wolff was sentenced to fifteen years in prison and loss of civil rights for ten years; he was released in 1972 for good behavior.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES The SS. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1989. Williamson, Gordon. The SS: Hitler’s Instrument of Terror. Osceolo, WI: Motorbooks International, 1994. Zuccotti, Susan. The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue, and Survival. New York: Basic Books, 1987. Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.

World Jewish Congress The World Jewish Congress (WJC), international Jewish organization, was founded in 1932 but it was in actual existence only from 1936. The WJC was a successor to the Comité des Délégations Juives (Committee of Jewish Delegations), an organization that had been established to represent Jewish claims at the P A R I S Peace Conference after World War I. Among the affiliates of the WJC was the American Jewish Congress (AJC), which had been formed on a temporary basis during World War I and reorganized on a permanent basis in 1922. The AJC opposed what it saw as a German Jewish leadership in the U N I T E D S TAT E S in which the wealthy had become the controlling class; the AJC attempted to replace this leadership with a mass following of American Jewry that was organized on a democratic basis. Based on the concept of the Jews as a nation, the WJC was organized as an attempt to create a worldwide defense of Jewry against Nazism and A N T I S E M I T I S M . Under the leadership of American rabbi Stephen S. W I S E , the AJC and the WJC were among the first and most active groups to fight Nazism. As early as March 1933, the AJC organized a mass rally in Madison Square Garden in New York against Nazi terrorization of Jews; in May of that year, it sponsored a parade protesting the burning of books in G E R M A N Y . The AJC joined the boycott of German goods and became the mainstay of the boycott movement. It attempted to influence the government administration to relax immigration restrictions in order to allow in a greater number of Jewish refugees. However, along with other Jewish organizations, it hesitated to press for legislation that would permit larger quotas for fear that such an act would lead only to further restrictions.

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After the outbreak of World War II in Europe, the executive of the WJC was relocated from Europe to the United States. The WJC carried on its work from there, using the officers of the AJC to gain access to government officials. Relief efforts of the WJC were hampered not only by the refusal of the U.S. government to allow food to be sent through the blockade of Europe and to permit money to be transferred to occupied countries, but also by the limited funds available to the WJC. Nevertheless, both the WJC and the AJC maintained constant pressure on the U.S. government and the embassies of the Allies, through lobbying efforts and mass demonstrations, to take action on behalf of European Jewry. In July 1942 and March 1943, the AJC organized mass rallies in Madison Square Garden in New York and in other cities around the United States to publicize the plight of European Jews. In August 1942, a cable was sent by Dr. Gerhart Riegner, the WJC representative in Geneva, that outlined the German plans for the “F I N A L S O L U T I O N .” Before this, Americans were not truly aware of what was happening to the Jews of Europe (see R I E G N E R C A B L E ). As in this case, the representatives of the WJC in Europe were the main source of information regarding the fate of European Jewry throughout the war. Rabbi Wise, who was president of both the WJC and the AJC, was the leading Jewish activist with connections in U.S. government circles, though his access to and influence upon President Franklin D. Roosevelt was very limited. However, he and Dr. Goldmann did obtain Roosevelt’s consent, in July 1943, to send funds to Romania for the relief and rescue of Jews. Wise was also largely responsible for informing the secretary of the Treasury, Henry M O R G E N T H AU , Jr., of the tragedy overwhelming European Jewry and for gaining his sympathy for rescue attempts. These two factors were influential in leading to the creation of the W A R R E F U G E E B OA R D . The Board was established in 1944 to expedite the transfer of rescue funds.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Peck, Abraham J., ed. The Papers of the World Jewish Congress 1939–1945. New York: Garland, 1991. Peck, Abraham J., ed. The Papers of the World Jewish Congress 1945–1950: Liberation and the Saving Remnant. New York: Garland, 1991. Urofsky, Melvin I. A Voice That Spoke for Justice: The Life and Times of Stephen S. Wise. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982.

Yelin, Haim (1913–1944)

A writer and anti-Nazi fighter, Haim Yelin was born in the town of Vilkija, L I T H UA N I A . At the end of World War I, his family settled in K OV N O and earned its livelihood by importing Yiddish books and managing the Libhober fun Vissen (Pursuers of Wisdom) library. In 1932, Yelin graduated from the Hebrew Realgymnasium in Kovno. He was found physically unfit for military service. For a short while he was active in the Zionist Pioneering Youth, but he left the organization when he became attracted to the Communist party, which was illegal, during his studies in economics at Kovno University (1934–38). He was a regular contributor to Communist daily and monthly newspapers. After the incorporation of Lithuania into the S OV I E T U N I O N in July 1940, Yelin was appointed to a senior post in the government printing office. During the first few days of the German invasion, in June of 1941, he and his family tried to

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escape into the Soviet interior, but they failed. Upon their return they were put into the Kovno ghetto. For a time Yelin lived under an assumed name in the ghetto, and he also changed his appearance, out of fear that if recognized he would be charged with the Communist activities he had engaged in under the Soviet regime. At the end of 1941, along with some of his friends who were also veteran Communist sympathizers, Yelin established a group that called itself the Antifascist Struggle Organization; he was elected its commander. His duties included managing the group’s internal affairs, and staying in touch with elements outside the ghetto. Disguised as a peasant or a railway worker, he would leave the ghetto, seeking to establish contact with remnants of the Communist party, as well as with the Soviet PA RT I S A N S who were becoming active in the area. It was not until the summer of 1943 that Yelin succeeded in establishing permanent contact with the partisans. He became a member of the Communist party and was permitted to enter the partisans’ base in the Rudninkai Forest, 90 miles (145 km) east of Kovno. As a result of his efforts, all the underground groups in the ghetto, including the Zionists, were united in the effort to help Jewish youths join the partisan units in the forests. Yelin himself accompanied the first few groups who left the ghetto for this purpose. The operation, which enabled 350 young Jews to join the partisans, made Yelin a leading figure in the Kovno underground. On April 6, 1944, while on a mission outside the ghetto, he was ambushed by G ESTAPO agents, and later executed.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Klein, Dennis B., ed. Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto. Boston: Little, Brown, 1997.

Kovno Ghetto: A Buried History [videorecording]. History Channel, 1997.

YELLOW BADGE. SEE BADGE, JEWISH. Youth Movements The first Jewish youth movements came into being in G E R M A N Y and in P O L A N D . Shaped by political developments, particularly the rise in A N T I S E M I T I S M in their countries, the groups fostered their own cultural and ideological patterns of activities, based on Jewish motifs and traditions, as well as hopes for the future.

Germany and Austria In 1931 and 1932 the Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir and Betar Zionist movements were established in Germany. By the time the Nazis came to power, at the end of January 1933, the Jewish youth movements in Germany had crystallized their respective ideologies and organizational patterns and institutions. Ideologically, the Jewish youth movements consisted of two branches: the Zionist pioneering movements and the non-Zionist movements. All the Jewish youth movements were compelled by the authorities to belong to the Reich Committee of Jewish Youth Organizations, which was a loose and voluntary umbrella organization of Jewish youth movements and youth organizations in Germany. It became the sole representative of all Jewish youth organizations, the channel

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Group portrait of Zionist pioneering youth members of the Kibbutz Buchenwald.

of communication for all orders from the government, and the body responsible for the implementation of orders designed to carry out Nazi policy on Jewish youth affairs. The development of Jewish youth movements in Germany and their activities in the Nazi period stemmed from their ideological attitude toward the traumatic changes that had taken place in the situation of German Jewry. The non-Zionist movements broke up or were disbanded by the authorities. The Zionist youth movements, on the other hand, experienced a tremendous growth in their membership after 1933. They showed the Jews a way out of their predicament through a solution based on national pride: emigration to the Jewish homeland. The Zionist pioneering youth movements in Germany maintained their way of life and their social, ideological, and cultural activities as best they could, despite deteriorating conditions and the restrictions imposed on the Jews. The Jewish youth movements in A U S T R I A went through a social, ideological, and educational development very similar to that of their German counterparts. After 1938, only the Zionist He-Haluts youth movements continued to exist in V I E N NA , fulfilling the same role as their German counterparts.

Eastern Europe Jewish youth movements played a particularly important role in eastern Europe as Jews sought to cope with the challenges and trials of the early Nazi and World War II years. The groups influenced the attitudes and behavior of their own members, but they also had an impact on the Jewish public as a whole. The Zionist youth movements in Poland rejected the existing state of affairs and refused to accept, as their own way of life, the passivity of the adult Jewish society. They longed for change, for new energy in Jewish life, for both practical and cultural expressions of their Jewishness. In the Zionist youth movements, this longing took the form of working toward the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine through education in Hebrew and the establishment of agricultural training centers. Generally speaking, the youth movements did not follow any established political program and they should not be seen as political bodies.

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Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir was the first Jewish youth movement to develop in Poland. Dror was a movement whose outlook was similar to that of the Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir. Gordonia adopted a moderate Zionist Socialist program, whereas the Ha-No’ar haTsiyyoni and Akiva movements focused on Zionism and Hebrew culture. Betar, which became a mass youth movement, identified with and was loyal to a political movement called Zionist Revisionism. In the period between the two world wars a very large number of young people joined the Jewish youth movements in Poland. While they never included the majority of Jewish youth there, they numbered about 60,000. On the eve of World War II, when the youth movements were at their numerical height, they are estimated to have had a combined membership of 100,000.

I

n the face of an atmosphere of helplessness and disintegration, the

Jewish youth organizations insisted on retaining their traditional principles and moral strength.

Under the Nazi occupation regime, the Jewish youth movements played a significant role in Jewish community life, eventually becoming major players in the Jewish resistance movement. In the first few months after the war broke out and the German occupation regime was installed, the youth movements in Poland were in disarray. The leaders of the youth movements left W A R S AW and other large cities in central and western Poland and made their way to the eastern provinces. However, the youth movement leadership decided to send some of their senior members back to the German-occupied areas, to revive the movements there and reorganize them to exist as secret, underground organizations, since they were illegal under the Nazi regime. YOUTH MOVEMENTS UNDERGROUND Because they were originally based on

small and intimate “cells,” the youth movements were able to preserve their distinctive character under the political circumstances. When they began operating clandestinely, they embarked on a remarkably intensive range of activities. They were responsible for most of the underground press published in Warsaw, both before and after the ghetto was set up, they conducted courses of study as a substitute for the regular schools, and they organized seminars, ideological symposiums, and other activities. The youth movements operated a network of couriers, most of them girls, who made illegal trips to the closed-off and isolated ghettos. These attempts at communication gave their branches, spread all over the occupied country, the sense that they were part of a centralized movement. Many of the youth movements participated in the activities of the ghetto underground. This does not mean, however, that their leaders aspired to leadership of the community. The youth movements had no intention of taking the place of the Judenräte (Jewish councils; see J U D E N R AT ). In fact, they were opposed to the methods of the Judenräte, which tended to victimize the poorest sectors of the population and submit blindly to the Germans. Apart from the general goal of survival, the youth movements strove to prepare Jewish youth for the challenges in store for them once the war, the humiliation, and the persecution came to an end. Up to the time that the “ F I N A L S O L U T I O N ” was launched by the Nazis, the youth movements had no intention of trying to take the place of the existing organizational pattern in the ghettos, either overtly or covertly. Until the Germans invaded the S OV I E T U N I O N on June 22, 1941, and embarked upon a mass murder campaign that spread to the occupied Polish areas, the youth movements did not focus on fighting back as a primary objective. This changed soon thereafter. FIGHTING ORGANIZATIONS OF JEWISH YOUTH The Jews of V I L N A suffered

heavy losses at the very beginning of the murder campaign. The youth movement leaders of Vilna were the first to recognize that a new goal of the youth movements

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U

nder the Nazi occupation regime, the Jewish youth movements played a significant role in Jewish

community life, eventually becoming major players in the Jewish resistance movement.

should be to fight back. As a result, the first J E W I S H F I G H T I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N , made up of members of various youth movements, came into being. At a meeting of Zionist pioneering youth movements held on the night of December 31, 1941, this proclamation was presented: “All those who have been removed from the ghetto were taken to their death.… Hitler plans to annihilate all the Jews of Europe.… The Jews of Vilna have been selected to be the first in line.… The only way to respond to the enemy is to resist … we must resist up to our dying breath.” These bold and farreaching assertions were not based on proven information but on intuition and a penetrating insight into the course of events. The call for armed resistance was presented as an action that had to be taken. It was clear that there was no chance of survival and that resistance, by a national Jewish fighting unit that had faith in freedom and in the future of the Jewish people, was the only plausible response. Most youth movement leaders were convinced that the Germans’ murder campaign was ideologically motivated and based on a clear-cut, central, and high-level decision. They were resolved to prepare for resistance to the D E P O RTAT I O N S , which they correctly believed would inevitably affect every ghetto. In the early phases of the implementation of the “Final Solution,” the leadership of the underground political parties opposed the youth movements’ positions. This forced the youth group leaders to operate on their own to gain support for their course of action. In the final phase this turned the youth movements into a kind of alternative ghetto leadership; in the Warsaw ghetto, the youth fighting organization replaced the existing leadership, guiding and directing the course of activities in the ghetto’s last days. The youth movements spread the idea of resistance to the different ghettos, sending emissaries from Warsaw to B I A L⁄ Y S TO K , K R A K Ó W , Cze˛stochowa, and Zagl⁄e˛bie to help organize resistance and take part in the struggle. The “pioneering” Zionist youth movements Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir, Dror, and Akiva were very active in the fighting organizations. They helped initiate and plan resistance in all the ghettos that had a fighting body. Members of these movements headed the fighting organizations in the main ghettos. Betar participated in the U N I T E D P A RT I S A N O R G A N I Z AT I O N (Fareynegte Partizaner Organizatsye) in Vilna. A group of its members also took part in the resistance in Bial⁄ystok, and in Warsaw, Betar had its own fighting body. Akiva joined the Z˙ OB in Warsaw, and was the major element of the F I G H T I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N O F P I O N E E R J E W I S H Y O U T H (He-Haluts Ha-Lohem)in Kraków. Ha-Noar ha-Tsiyyoni and Gordonia also took part in the fighting organizations in most of the ghettos. The goal of the Jewish youth fighting organizations in Poland was to offer armed resistance or to rise in revolt in the ghettos, in face of the impending final deportation of the Jews to the E X T E R M I NAT I O N CA M P S . Armed resistance and uprising were both fully put into effect in the W A R S A W G H E T T O U P R I S I N G of April 1943. In other ghettos, the plan was that when the ghetto was confronted with the final deportation, an armed struggle would be launched. It was also agreed that some of the fighters would try to make their way to the forests to join the PA R T I S A N S —also underground resistance fighters—to continue the struggle even after the ghettos had been liquidated. In areas outside Poland, as in K OV N O , L I T H UA N I A , the youth movements prepared for escaping into the forests and joining the partisan movement. They did not have a consistent policy of staging a revolt in the ghetto. However, youth movement members and former members played a significant role among the activists behind the spontaneous uprisings in and escapes from the small towns of B E L O R U S S I A and U K R A I N E .

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Retrospectively, it is evident that neither the Judenräte nor the youth fighting organizations could have saved masses of Jews. The eastern European youth movements had no illusions of paving the way for mass rescue. They regarded their struggle as one last, brave, defiant act by a community that had been condemned to total extermination. Throughout the H O L O C AU S T years, the youth movements maintained an organized and disciplined structure, and their actions were guided by criteria based on social and national Jewish considerations.

Bohemia-Moravia The German occupation of Czechoslovakia and its subsequent division into the Protectorate of B O H E M I A A N D M O R AV I A and the independent Slovak state caused a radical change among the Jews of the Protectorate. Torn from their sources of livelihood and their familiar social structures, the Jewish community found itself defined more by shared experiences more than by differences among themselves.

A bout 2,000 members of the Jewish youth movements were active in the fighting organizations of the main ghettos in occupied Poland.

The youth movements, which showed greater enterprise than other groups in coping with the new challenges, played a leading role in the reorganization of Protectorate Jewry. The reorganization was not confined to the youth and came to affect the entire Jewish population. The youth movements that were active in Bohemia-Moravia varied in character and in the pattern of their programs, but to a great extent all the youth movements cooperated with one another. Their ways parted only shortly before the first groups were about to be taken to T H E R E S I E N S TA D T . The Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir (The Young Pioneers) council advised its members to go underground or escape to S L O VA K I A or H U N G A R Y , while the other youth movements decided not to abandon their junior members, their families, and the community as a whole. Retrospectively, it would appear that the activist line adopted by Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir, despite the painful separation from loved ones that it called for, was based on a more realistic analysis of the future. In the fall of 1941 the Germans decided to move all of the Protectorate’s Jews to Theresienstadt. They also continued sending frequent transports of Jews from Theresienstadt to camps in the east. Jews living in terrible conditions and the constant dread of being included in one of the transports had difficulty focusing on educational work. The youth movements nevertheless did all they could to focus on learning for the future in a valiant attempt to counter the fear and suffering that prevailed in Theresienstadt. On November 10, 1942, a conference of He-Haluts leaders was held in Theresienstadt. The groups decided to join together as He-Haluts he-Ahid (Unified HeHaluts). In August, 1944, another He-Haluts conference was held. This conference confirmed the Zionist pioneering movement’s aim in the ghetto, which was to train the children and young people for cooperative living, universal and national Jewish values, and socialist Zionism. In September the Germans launched the evacuation of the Theresienstadt ghetto. Hardly any of the young pioneers remained or survived.

France On the eve of World War II the Haluts (Pioneer) Youth movements and the Federation of Religious Youth had small branches active in F R A N C E . The oldest Jewish youth movement was the Eclaireurs Israélites de France (French Jewish Scouts), founded in 1923, which introduced a pluralistic admissions policy and

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TO CAESAREA A poem written by a young Hungarian Zionist expressing her joy at finally being in Palestine, where the Zionists hoped to establish a Jewish homeland. Hush, cease all sound. Across the sea is the sand, The shore known and near, The shore golden, dear, Home, the Homeland. With step twisting and light Among strangers we move, Word and song hushed, Towards the future-past Caesarea … But reaching the city of ruins Soft a few words we intone. We return. We are here. Soft answers the silence of stone, We awaited you two thousands years. —HANNAH SZENES, SDOT-YAM, CAESAREA 1941

Hannah Senesh: Her Life and Diary, translated by Marta Cohn (London: Vallentine, Mitchell and Co. Ltd), 1971.

accepted both religious and secular youth, Zionists and anti-Zionists. The Orthodox Jewish community had a small youth organization of its own, named Yeshurun. After the fall of France in June 1940, all youth movements in the Germanoccupied northern part of the country were abolished by German decree. The scouts and the Zionist movement Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir, however, resumed their activities under the guise of community clubs. In the Vichy-controlled south, the youth movements continued to operate openly for another two years. During the summer of 1942, with the mass arrests and deportations of the Jews of France, the Jewish youth movements went underground. In May 1942, the leaders of the various Zionist youth movements agreed to give up their separate political identities to establish a unified Zionist youth movement. This organization became an active element in the community. Immediately after the war, however, the unified movement disbanded and each of its component parts reverted to its original identity. Three out of four Jews who were in France in the summer of 1940 were saved. Tens of thousands of them were rescued because of the Jewish youth movements. Among the recorded significant achievements was the care taken of over 7,000 children whose parents had been deported. Every child had an underground member assigned to him or her, and this person made regular visits, was responsible for the child’s physical and moral welfare, and made sure that the child remained aware of his or her Jewish heritage. Dozens of the young men and women who made up the Jewish underground teams were caught and murdered, but not a single child for whom they were responsible came to harm.

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The events of September 1943 in Nice were a severe test for the Jewish youth movements. While the Italians were in occupation of the zone, they protected the Jews from the French officials. When the Italians signed a cease-fire agreement with the Allied forces on September 8, 1943, however, they abandoned the military positions they had held in France. These were taken over by German military forces and police. Consequently, the Jews in Nice and its surrounding areas were caught in a trap. The Armée Juive (the Jewish resistance movement) was organized by Zionist activists. They recruited fighters among the members of the youth movements and trained them in the use of arms and in guerrilla warfare. The organization of partisan units sponsored by the Armée Juive began in the winter of 1943–44. Armée Juive units took part in the liberation of P A R I S and other major French cities.

Three out of four Jews who were in France in the summer of 1940 were saved, many of them through the efforts of the Jewish youth movements.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Berson, Robin Kadison, ed. “Helmuth Hubener,” in Young Heroes in World History. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. Dvorson, Alexa. The Hitler Youth: Marching Toward Madness. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 1999.

Heil Hitler! Confessions of a Hitler Youth [videorecording]. Ambrose Video Publishing, 1991. Keeley, Jennifer. Life in the Hitler Youth. San Diego: Lucent Books, 2000. Schnibbe, Karl-Heinz. When Truth Was Treason; German Youth Against Hitler. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.

Zamos´ c´ A province in eastern P O L A N D , situated between the Bug and Vistula rivers, Zamos´c´ (in Russian, Zamoste) formed the southern part of the L U B L I N district prior to World War II. Its major city, also called Zamos´c´, was founded at the end of the sixteenth century. The 2,317 square mile (6,000 sq km) area was predominantly agricultural, with a large part of the land belonging to feudal landlords; a considerable portion was forest land (such as Puscza Solska and Lasy Roztecza). Before World War II, the area was divided among four districts—Zamos´ c´ , Tomaszów Lubelski, Hrubieszów, and Bil⁄ goraj—that contained more than 1,660 population centers and about 510,000 inhabitants: 340,000 Poles, 110,000 Ukrainians, and 60,000 Jews. For the most part, the Ukrainians lived in the rural areas of Tomaszów Lubelski and Hrubieszów while the Jews were concentrated in the towns. Jews formed 51 percent of the urban population; in some towns, they accounted for over two-thirds of the population. Jews constituted the majority in a number of the cities, including Zamos´c´, Tomaszów Lubelski, Tarnogród, Tyszowce, Krasnobród, Józefów, and Uchanie. Under the German occupation, the Zamos´c´ population underwent exceptionally harsh treatment. More than 2,000 Poles were murdered upon the German invasion in 1939. Jews were forced into ghettos where many died and from which many others were deported to the B E L⁄ Z˙ E C extermination camp (by order of Odilo G L O B O C N I K ). Periodic massacres occurred throughout the district. On November 12, 1942, the Zamos´ c´ area was declared the G E N E R A L G O U “First Resettlement Area” (Erster Siedlungsbereich,), which resulted in the evacuation of 110,000 Polish peasant families from some 300 villages. Ten thousand people perished in the course of the evacuation. The survivors were taken to

V E R N E M E N T ’s

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transit camps in Zamos´ c´ and Zwierzyniec, to the A U S C H W I T Z and M A J DA N E K to the Reich for F O R C E D L A B O R , or to villages in the Lublin and W A R S AW districts. More than 30,000 Polish children were taken away from their parents and handed over to strangers. Some of them died in Auschwitz or in the course of the deportation, and some were designated for “Germanization” in the Reich.

E X T E R M I N AT I O N C A M P S ,

“Germanization”

The Nazis’ plan to eradicate all aspects of foreign cultures and force certain populations to accept German culture.

These operations led to the strengthening of the resistance and partisan movement (PA R T I S A N S were underground guerrilla fighters who harassed the enemy in the Zamos´ c´ area). Partisan units engaged the Germans in battles in Wojda, Zaboreczno, and Osuchy. The Germans wanted to suppress resistance and continue the expulsion of the Polish population, who were to be replaced with German settlers. In order to do these things, the Nazis resorted to collective punishment. They made an example of selected areas, in which numerous villages were completely wiped out, including Sochy, Szarajowka, and Kitow. Large police and military forces took part in these operations. The Nazis also hunted down people who had gone into hiding in the forests, some of whom were Jews. In the spring of 1944, the southeastern part of the Zamos´c´ area was the scene of heavy fighting between the Ukrainska Povstanska Armyia (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) and units of the Polish resistance. Both sides incurred heavy losses in the fighting, and the districts of Hrubieszów and Tomaszów Lubelski were emptied of their inhabitants. The Zamos´c´ area was liberated by the S OV I E T U N I O N ’s Red Army in July 1944.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Klukowski, Zygmunt. Diary from the Years of Occupation, 1939–44. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

ZENTRALSTELLE FÜR JÜDISCHE AUSWANDERUNG. SEE CENTRAL OFFICE FOR JEWISH EMIGRATION.

Ziman, Henrik (1910–1987)

A Lithuanian Jewish scientist, journalist, Communist leader, and commander of anti-Nazi PA R T I S A N S , Henrik Ziman (Genrikas Zimanas, known as “Hanak”) came from a family of Jewish landowners in southern L I T H UA N I A . He taught Lithuanian at Jewish secondary schools in Ukmerge˙ and, at the same time, majored in biology at the University of K OV N O . Ziman became a Communist activist in 1932 and was put in charge of the party’s secret publications, which were written in several languages, in 1934. Following the annexation of Lithuania by the S OV I E T U N I O N in the summer of 1940, Ziman directed the transformation of the country’s culture from a Lithuanian to a Soviet orientation. He also played an important role in eradicating Zionist and Hebrew-language institutions. When the Nazis invaded Lithuania in June, 1941, Ziman fled to the Soviet interior. In Moscow, he conducted anti-Nazi propaganda on behalf of the Soviet Lithuanian government. Ziman was appointed deputy chief of staff of the Lithuan-

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ian partisan movement in November 1942. Six months later, by which time he had been given the pseudonym “Jurgis” for war purposes, he parachuted into an area of B E L O R U S S I A controlled by the partisans that was close to the Lithuanian border. In October 1943, Ziman arrived at the Rudninkai Forest in southern Lithuania, where he assumed command of a partisan brigade that also included units made up of fighters from the V I L N A and K OV N O ghettos. As a rule, Ziman did not favor the existence of separate Jewish partisan units, which was in line with the policy of the Soviet partisan movement. After the war, Ziman resumed his activities in the Communist party and in the government institutions of Soviet Lithuania. He held a number of senior posts in the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist party and in the Supreme Soviet. From 1945 to 1970, Ziman was editor-in-chief of Tiesa, a daily newspaper published by the party; later he also edited the party’s ideological organ, Komunistas. Ziman published hundreds of articles on cultural and political subjects. In some of them, he harshly criticized the Zionist movement and its policy during and after the H O L O CAU S T period.

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Porter, Jack Nusan, ed. Jewish Partisans: A Documentary of Jewish Resistance in the Soviet Union During World War II. Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982.

ZIONISM. SEE ALIYA BET; WISE, STEPHEN SAMUEL; YOUTH MOVEMENTS.

Zuckerman, Yitzhak (1915–1981)

A founder and leader of the J E W I S H F I G H T I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N (Z˙ ydowska Organizacja Bojowa; Z˙OB) in W A R S AW , Yitzhak (Antek) Zuckerman was born in V I L NA . He came from a family that practiced Jewish culture and law. After graduating from the Hebrew high school in Vilna, he joined the Zionist Y O U T H M OV E M E N T S He-Haluts and He-Haluts ha-Tsa’ir. Zuckerman was invited to join the HeHaluts head office in Warsaw in 1936. When the united youth movement DrorHe-Haluts was formed in 1938, Zuckerman became one of its two secretaries-general. In the spirit of pioneering Zionism and socialism, he took an interest in education and in Yiddish and Hebrew literature. Zuckerman toured Jewish communities in towns and cities, especially in eastern P O L A N D , organizing branches of the movement and youth groups and offering them guidance in their activities. World War II broke out in September 1939. With other activists in He-Haluts and the youth movements, Zuckerman left Warsaw for the east, the parts of Poland that had been occupied by the S OV I E T U N I O N . There, he organized underground branches of the movement. He crossed back into German-occupied territory in April 1940, in order to promote underground activities there. Zuckerman became one of the outstanding underground leaders in Warsaw and, indeed, in all of Poland. He helped to found and edit the underground press, organized secret seminars and conferences, and set up the Dror high school. In addition, Zuckerman established the pattern of his movement’s activities in underground conditions and

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ghettos

Parts of cities where Jews were required to live.

made secret visits to ghettos in German-occupied territory. He took part in organizing and guiding the branches and cells of the movement in the provincial towns and in setting up hidden hakhsharot—the agricultural training farms that were part of the Zionist preparation for relocating to a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In addition, Zuckerman helped to coordinate activities with other youth movements that were operating illegally, especially the Zionist-Marxist Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir. During this period, Zuckerman became close to Zivia Lubetkin, another underground leader; the two eventually married and became partners in various undertakings. In 1941, mass murders were being carried out by the O P E R AT I O N A L S Q UA D S (Einsatzgruppen) in the areas that the Germans had taken from the Soviets. Reports of the murders reached Warsaw in the fall of that year. In his memoirs, Chapters from the Legacy, Zuckerman records that when these reports were received, the reaction was that underground educational activities no longer seemed to be worthwhile or important. He wrote, “There was no point to them … unless such activities went hand in hand with an armed Jewish resistance force.” Zuckerman helped arrange a meeting of the leaders of various Jewish underground factions in Warsaw in early 1942. Discussions about the creation of a unified military resistance movement failed at this time. Instead, desiring some unified effort at resistance, Zuckerman joined the Antifascist Bloc, which was established in the spring of 1942. The organization did not last long and had no achievements to record. When the mass deportation of Jews from Warsaw was launched on July 22, 1942, a group of public figures in the ghetto held an emergency meeting. On behalf of He-Haluts, Zuckerman demanded that the seizure of the Jews be resisted by force. His proposal was turned down and no agreement was reached on any other issue. On July 28, Zuckerman took part in a meeting attended exclusively by the leaders of the three pioneering movements, Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir, Dror, and Akiva. At this meeting, the decision was made to set up the Jewish Fighting Organization (Z˙ OB) and Zuckerman became a member of its staff headquarters. Although the new organization was not able to carry out large-scale resistance operations in the ghetto while the D E P O R TAT I O N S were taking place, it kept together a nucleus of determined activists and spread the ideas of armed resistance to other ghettos besides Warsaw. In December, 1942, the Z˙ OB sent Zuckerman on a mission to K R A K Ó W to discuss possible avenues for its operations with the resistance movement there. Zuckerman was wounded in the leg on the night of December 22, following a military action by the Kraków organization. With great difficulty, he managed to make his way back to Warsaw. The second phase of deportations from the ghetto was launched on January 18, 1943. With Zuckerman in the lead, a group of resistance fighters barricaded themselves in a building in the ghetto and opened fire on the Germans. Zuckerman participated in the intensive preparations for a revolt that continued from the end of January to April 1943. He was appointed commanding officer of one of the three main fighting sectors into which the ghetto was divided. As the time for the revolt drew near, Zuckerman was ordered to cross over to the Polish side of Warsaw as the authorized representative of the Z˙ OB. At the time that the W A R S A W G H E T T O U P R I S I N G was in full swing, Zuckerman made efforts to supply arms to the fighters. In the final days of the revolt, he and other members of the organization formed a rescue team that made its way through the sewers into the ghetto, which was now going up in flames. After the revolt, Zuckerman, with some other survivors, was active in the Z˙ydowski Komitet Narodowy (Jewish National Committee). This group gave aid to Jews in hiding and maintained contact with Jews in some of the forced-labor

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camps and with Jewish underground partisan fighting units that were based in the forests in central Poland. In March 1944, Zuckerman drew up a report on the establishment of the Z˙OB and its record of activity; that May, the report was transmitted to London through the channels of the Polish underground. Zuckerman and other Jewish leaders who were in hiding with the Poles signed appeals for help. In the last two years of the war, these documents were forwarded to London and to authoritative Jewish organizations by way of the Polish underground. During the W A R S A W P O L I S H U P R I S I N G in August 1944, Zuckerman was in command of a group of Jewish fighters, remnants of the underground and the Z˙OB.

F

rom Mordecai Anielewicz’s last letter, read by Zuckerman at the

Adolf Eichmann trial: “One thing is clear, what happened exceeded our boldest dreams. The Germans ran twice

In January 1945, Zuckerman and his wife Zivia were liberated by the Soviet forces. At once, he began to do relief work among the surviving remnants of Polish Jewry. Zuckerman took part in the restoration of the He-Haluts movement and in the mass exodus of Jews from Poland in 1946 and 1947.

from the ghetto. One of our companies

Zuckerman left for Palestine in early 1947. He was one of the founders of Kibbutz Lohamei ha-Getta’ot (the Ghetto Fighters’ Kibbutz) in western Galilee and one of the sponsors of the Ghetto Fighters’ Museum that was established to perpetuate the memory of the fighters and the study of the H O L O C AU S T . For the rest of his life, Zuckerman kept a loving eye on the development of the latter project. Appearing as a witness in the Adolf E I C H M A N N trial in 1961, Zuckerman read to the court the last letter that he had received from Mordecai A N I E L E W I C Z , the commander of the Warsaw ghetto revolt. The letter was dated April 23, 1943, when the fighting was at its height.

Jews of the ghetto are now living. Only a

held out for 40 minutes and another for more than 6 hours.… It is impossible to describe the conditions under which the few will be able to hold out. The remainder will die sooner or later. Their fate is decided.”

SUGGESTED RESOURCES Gutman, Israel. Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. Landau, Elaine. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. New York: Macmillan, 1992. Zuckerman, Yitzhak. A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Z˙ YDOWSKA ORGANIZACJA BOJOWA; Z˙ OB. SEE JEWISH FIGHTING ORGANIZATION.

Zyklon B Zyklon B is the commercial name of hydrogen cyanide (HCN), a highly poisonous cyanic gas. It was used in the E U T H A NA S I A P R O G R A M in which the Nazis killed people they considered “unfit to live,” often because they had physical or mental disabilities. It was also used later in the Nazi E X T E R M I N AT I O N CA M P S , especially at A U S C H W I T Z . The gas was delivered to the camps in crystalline, pellet form, hermetically sealed in tin canisters. As soon as the crystals were exposed to air, they turned into lethal gas. An SS man wearing a gas mask emptied the crystals through a small opening (provided with a cover) into the hermetically sealed gas chamber in which the victims had been packed (see G A S C H A M B E R S / VA N S ). Those inside the chamber were asphyxiated within minutes. Ordinarily, Zyklon B was used as an insecticide. In the report he wrote in prison after the war, Rudolf H Ö S S , the Auschwitz camp commandant, relates how

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Cylindrical containers of Zyklon B gas and a gas mask were found on a wooden shelf at the Majdanek camp after liberation, 1944.

in the summer of 1941 he was ordered to prepare for the mass killing of Jews in the camp within the framework of the “F I N A L S O L U T I O N ”. He and Adolf E I C H M A N N looked for a lethal gas that would be suitable for this purpose. The method of gassing victims with carbon monoxide fumes funneled through an exhaust pipe into a hermetically sealed trailer truck, which was already in use at C H E L⁄ M N O and the three camps serving A K T I O N (O P E R AT I O N ) R E I N H A R D —B E L⁄ Z˙ E C , S O B I B Ó R , and T R E B L I N K A )—was not suitable for killing on the scale that was planned for Auschwitz. On September 3, 1941, an experiment was carried out at the Birkenau site in Auschwitz on a group of Russian P R I S O N E R S O F WA R to determine whether Zyklon B, which the camp storehouses used for fumigation, could be an effective tool for mass killing of humans. The experiment proved this to be so. From then on Zyklon B was used in Birkenau (Auschwitz II) for the gassing of the Jews who were brought there from all over occupied Europe. Zyklon B was manufactured and supplied to the camps by DEGESCH (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung mbH, or German Vermin-Com-

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bating Corporation) in Frankfurt. This firm was controlled by I. G. F A R B E N , and by the Tesch and Stabenow Company in Hamburg. Because of the large demand for Zyklon B, I. G. Farben’s dividends on the DEGESCH investment for the years from 1942 to 1944 were double those of 1940 and 1941. The management of DEGESCH must have been aware that Zyklon B was being used for something other than its intended purpose. German law required that an odor be added to Zyklon B as a warning to alert humans to the lethal presence of the gas. The SS ordered that the odor be removed from its massive orders of the chemical. This unusual request would seem to have offered a clear indication of the purpose it was to serve.

SEE ALSO TRIALS OF THE WAR CRIMINALS. SUGGESTED RESOURCES Müller, Filip. Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers. New York: Stein and Day, 1979. Reprint, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999. United Nations War Crimes Commission. “The Zyklon B Case; Trial of Bruno Tesch and Two Others,” in Law-Reports of Trials of War Criminals. HMSO, 1947. Reproduced at http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/WCC/zyklonb.htm (accessed on September 5, 2000). “Zyklon Introduction Columns.” Holocaust History Project. [Online] http://www.holocausthistory.org/auschwitz/intro-columns/ (accessed on September 5, 2000).

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Glossary Abwehr the intelligence service of the German armed forces

aktion (plural, aktionen) see “operation” Aktion (Operation) 1005 the code name for the Nazi plan to erase evidence of the murder of 125million human beings in occupied Europe Aktion (Operation) Reinhard the code name for the plan to murder the millions of Jews in the General Government (Generalgouvernement), within the framework of the “Final Solution.” It began in October 1941, with the deportation of Jews from ghettos to extermination camps. The three extermination camps established under Operation Reinhard were Bel⁄z˙ec, Sobibór, and Treblinka Aliya Bet organized but “illegal” immigration to Palestine Allied powers, or Allies during World War II, the group of nations including the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the Free French, who fought together against Germany and the other Axis countries Anschluss the invasion and annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany on March 12–13, 1938 antisemites people who hate or discriminate against Jews or Jewish culture antisemitism hatred of or discrimination against Jews appeasement a policy of making certain concessions to an enemy or aggressor in the hope of conciliation and peace

Arisierung see “Aryanization” Armée Juive the Jewish Army in France; unified fighting forces Arrow Cross Party a Fascist political party in Hungary Aryans according to Nazi doctrine, people of pure German “blood,” members of what they called the “master race” Aryanization in German, Arisierung; the forced transfer of Jewish-owned businesses and property to non-Jewish owners by the Nazi German authorities assembly camp or center a place where people were gathered to be sent on to Nazi camps

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assimilation the process of becoming incorporated into a country’s mainstream society and culture Auschwitz a huge complex consisting of Nazi concentration, extermination, and labor camps in Poland. Also called Auschwitz-Birkenau. Auschwitz Protocols detailed reports by four Jewish escapees from Auschwitz who reached Slovakia in the spring of 1944 Axis powers Germany, Italy, and Japan, the countries that signed a pact on September 27, 1940, to divide the world into their spheres of political interest; they were later joined by Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia Axis criminals those who were associated with the Axis powers in World War II, including Germany, Italy, and Japan and their satellite nations Babi Yar a ravine near Kiev where tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews were systematically massacred badge, Jewish an emblem—usually a Star of David—that the Nazis ordered Jews to wear, to identify them as Jews and distinguish them from the rest of the population Barbarossa see “Operation Barbarossa” Barbie, Klaus the head of the SS and SD in France Baum Gruppe (Group) an anti-Nazi organization in Berlin, Germany Beer Hall Putsch the term for Adolf Hitler’s failed attempt, on November 8, 1923, to take over the German government in Munich, at a meeting of Bavarian officials in a beer hall Bel⁄z˙ec a Nazi extermination camp in eastern Poland Bergen-Belsen a Nazi concentration camp in northwestern Germany blitzkrieg meaning “lightning war,” Hitler’s offensive war tactic of using a combination of armored attacks and air assaults blood libels false allegations that Jews were killing Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals Bolsheviks Soviet communists Bormann, Martin a Nazi Party official and deputy to Hitler who was active in such activities such as the Euthanasia Program, the pillage of art objects in occupied countries, and the expansion of forced-labor programs throughout Europe Boycott, Anti-Jewish the boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933—the first national action against the German Jews after the Nazi seizure of power earlier that year British White Paper of 1939 in Great Britain, a policy document that severely restricted immigration of Jews to Palestine Buchenwald a concentration camp in north-central Germany Bund the Jewish Socialist Party, founded in 1897, dedicated to gaining equal rights for Jews; Bundists joined in underground resistance against the Nazis bystanders people who witness but do not participate in an event, either to stop it or to further it

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chancellor the prime minister of Germany Chel⁄ mno a Nazi extermination camp in western Poland; it was the first of the death camps Churchill, Winston the British prime minister from 1940 to 1945, and again from 1951 to 1955 collaboration the cooperation of citizens of a country to further the aims of its occupiers, such as the Nazis collaborators people who help enemy authorities, such as the Nazis, to achieve their aims commissars Soviet Communist officials assigned to military units; their function was to reinforce Communist Party principles and ensure loyalty among members of the Soviet army who fell into German hands collectivization the transformation of an agricultural system (or other economic enterprise) from privately owned farms to a government-supervised enterprise of production and distribution, generally in a communist system columns rows of prisoners of the Nazis sent on forced marches communism a political, social, and economic system that aims for a society free of division by class, in which resources and the means of production are controlled by the government, rather than by private enterprise Communists people who work toward the goals of communism; Communists were the first opponents of the Nazis concentration camps work camps—essentially prisons—set up by the Nazis to house and exploit the labor of people whom they considered to be “undesirable”; living conditions varied from camp to camp, but death, disease, starvation, crowded and unsanitary conditions, and torture were common conceptual Jew a Jewish “type” or stereotype; a set of characteristics that, lumped together, was called “Jewishness” coup d’état a takeover of a government crematorium (plural, crematoria) a huge oven in a Nazi camp where the bodies of murdered prisoners were burned Dachau a Nazi concentration camp in southern Germany; it was the first Nazi concentration camp, established in 1933 death camps see “extermination camps.” death marches forced marches of the prisoners of the Nazis, over long distances and under intolerable conditions, while being transferred between ghettos and/or camps de Gaulle, Charles a general who was interim president of France from 1945 to 1946, and president from 1959 to 1969 dehumanization the Nazi policy of denying Jews and other groups basic civil rights denazification the procedure used by the victorious Allied powers to rid Germany of nazism and to punish Nazi war criminals

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GLOSSARY

deportation the evacuation of large numbers of victims to Nazi camps, usually by train in cattle cars diaspora the “dispersal” of a people from a land or country, such as the ancient Jews from Egypt; also used in reference to Jews worldwide who live outside the homeland of Israel Displaced Persons (DPs) people who were displaced—involuntarily driven out of their homes or countries—during World War II Displaced Persons camps camps where millions of Displaced Persons were temporarily housed in Europe after World War II ended, while they awaited opportunities to emigrate or return to their homelands displacement the process of people being involuntarily ousted from their homes because of war, government policies, or other societal actions, requiring them to find new places and ways to live Eichmann, Adolf an SS lieutenant colonel who headed the Department of Jewish Affairs; he played a key role in the murder of European Jews, especially those in the camps

Einsatzgruppe (plural, Einsatzgruppen) see “operational squads” emancipation the granting of full civil rights to a people Enlightenment a period during the 1700s when philosophers, writers, and other intellectuals questioned all aspects of knowledge and social discourse, seeking to understand the world through reason and scientific observation Erntefest (“Harvest Festival”) the code name for an SS operation to exterminate the last surviving Jews of the Trawniki, Poniatowa, and Majdanek camps, which occurred in November 1943 Euthanasia Program the Nazis’ deliberate killings of institutionalized people with physical, mental, or emotional handicaps; the Nazi euthanasia program began in 1939, with German non-Jews as the first victims; the program was later extended to Jews Evian Conference an international gathering that was convened to address the problem of Jewish refugees; it was held in Evian, France, in July 1938 extermination camps camps built by the Nazis for the sole purpose of killing “enemies” of the Third Reich, especially Jews; the six extermination camps were Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bel⁄z˙ec, Chel⁄mno, Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka—all in occupied Poland; also called death camps or killing centers fascism a social and political ideology with the primary guiding principle that the state or nation is the highest priority, rather than personal or individual freedoms “Final Solution” “the final solution to the Jewish question in Europe”: a Nazi euphemism for the plan to exterminate all the Jews of Europe forced labor groups of people who were forced to build and operate the Nazi camps, usually with little or no pay, and to maintain a steady flow of workers for factories and other industries that supported the German war effort Frank, Hans a Nazi official who was named the governor-general of Poland and was responsible for the extermination of Polish Jewry

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GLOSSARY

French Resistance a well-organized network of people in occupied and Vichy France who worked secretly against the German occupation forces Free French the non-Vichy French government headed by General Charles de Gaulle Freemasons members of a fraternal order dating back to the 1700s that was committed to the ideas of religious tolerance and the equality of all people; Hitler banned this group in Germany Freikorps a paramilitary group formed after Germany’s defeat in World War I führer a German word meaning “leader”; this became Hitler’s title in Nazi Germany gas chambers large, sealed rooms in Nazi camps in which groups of people were murdered by poison gas gas vans vehicles that the Nazis equipped with poison gas, for use as mobile killing units gendarmerie regional or rural police Generalgouvernement (General Government) an administrative unit established by the Germans in October 1939, comprised of those parts of occupied Poland that had not been incorporated into the Third Reich Generalplan Ost (General Plan East) the Nazis’ long-range plan for expelling millions of people—Jews and non-Jews alike—from the central area of eastern Europe and settling it with Germans genocide the deliberate and systematic murder of a religious, racial, political, or cultural group Germanization the Nazi plan to “convert” some populations to German culture by erasing all aspects of the original culture and placing them under German rule German Workers’ Party the precursor to the Nazi Party; the party espoused nationalism, militarism, and a racially “pure” Germany Gentiles non-Jewish people Gestapo the German Secret State Police, which used brutal methods to investigate and suppress resistance to Nazi rule within Germany and in German-occupied Europe ghettos in areas under German occupation, restricted and sometimes sealed sections of cities where Jews were forced to live, usually in extreme overcrowding and deprivation; ghettos were established mostly in eastern Europe ghettoize a term meaning to isolate and disenfranchise a people from mainstream society as the Nazis did to the Jews Goebbels, Josef the Nazi minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, and the organizer of the Kristallnacht pogrom Göring, Hermann a top Nazi official who was responsible for the Aryanization Program and the implementation of the “Final Solution” Great Depression a deep, worldwide, economic downturn that began in 1929

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GLOSSARY

guerrilla warfare fighting in which small independent bands of soldiers harass an enemy through surprise raids, attacks on communications sytems, targeted assassinations, and other tactics Gypsies a collective term for Romani and Sinti, a people who were considered enemies of the state by the Nazis and persecuted relentlessly Haganah an underground organization from Palestine that worked to aid and rescue Jews in occupied Europe Hess, Rudolf Hitler’s deputy in the Nazi Party Heydrich, Reinhard the Nazi official who was responsible for implementing the “Final Solution” Himmler, Heinrich as head of the SS and the Gestapo, Himmler controlled the vast network of Nazi camps and the operational squads Hitler, Adolf the Nazi Party leader, and the German chancellor from 1933 to 1945; he was called Führer, or “Leader,” by the Nazis Hitler Youth in German Hitlerjugend, a Nazi youth group established in 1926; it expanded during the Third Reich, and membership was required after 1939 Holocaust a term used to refer to the systematic, state-sponsored extermination of about six million European Jews and millions of others by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945 Holocaust Denial efforts to deny or misrepresent the events that came to be known as the Holocaust homophobia fear of and prejudice against homosexuals homosexuals one of the groups of people targeted for persecution by the Nazis; they were identified in the Nazi camps by wearing a pink triangle sewn on their uniforms “Horst Wessel” a Nazi song whose lyrics glorified the killing of Jews Höss, Rudolf a high Nazi official who was the commandant of the AuschwitzBirkenau complex Hungarian Labor Service System an organization in which Hungarian Jews of military age were drafted into forced labor to support the Axis war effort immigration quota the limit on the number of people allowed to enter a country as immigrants from any other country International Military Tribunal court chartered by the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union to prosecute Nazi war criminals interwar period the years between the end of World War I (1918) and the beginning of World War II (1939) Iron Guard the Romanian Fascist movement isolationism a policy of national isolation, reflected in a country’s choice not to enter into political and economic alliances with other countries Israel the Jewish state that came into being in 1948 in the geographic region known as Palestine, previously under British control Jehovah’s Witnesses members of a religious group whose pacifist religious beliefs did not allow them to swear allegiance to any worldly power, making them

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GLOSSARY

“enemies” of the Nazi state; the Nazis required Jehovah’s Witnesses to identify themselves by wearing brown triangles sewn on their clothing Jewish Brigade Group a group of the British army made up of Jewish volunteers from Palestine; formed in September 1944, the Jewish Brigade Group fought on behalf of the Allied forces in Italy from March to May 1945 Jewish Council see “Judenrat” Jewish Fighting Organization (Z˙ ydowska Organizacja Bojowa; Z˙ OB) a Jewish group, established in Warsaw in July 1942, that allowed some Jews to offer armed resistance to the Nazis Jewish Ghetto Police police units organized in Jewish communities, by order of the Nazi occupying forces throughout eastern Europe Jewish Law (Statut des Juifs) anti-Jewish legislation passed by the Vichy government of France in 1940 and 1941 Jews people who belong to the religion of Judaism; Jews were defined in racial, rather than religious or cultural, terms by Nazi policies Judaism the monotheistic religion of the Jews, based on the writings and teachings of the Old Testament

Judenfrei a Nazi term meaning “free of Jews,” a reference to the absence of Jews in a given area, as a result of deportation and extermination operations Judenrat (plural, Judenräte) a “Jewish Council,” an administrative committee set up in a Jewish ghetto or other community under German occupation; the Judenräte were established on Nazi orders

Judenrein a Nazi term meaning “cleansed of Jews,” a reference to the absence of Jews in a given area, as a result of deportation and extermination operations. Kapo a concentration camp inmate appointed by the SS to be in charge of a work gang killing centers see “extermination camps”

Kriminalpolizei German criminal police, also referred to as Kripo, which had four main divisions Knesset Israel’s Parliament Kristallnacht “Night of the Broken Glass” or “Crystal Night;” a massive, organized pogrom against Jews throughout Germany and Austria in November 1938 League of German Girls the counterpart, for girls, of the Hitler Youth

Lebensraum a term meaning “living space,” indicating the Nazis’ desire for more land and access to resources for Germans; this basic principle of Nazi ideology and foreign policy was expressed in the drive for the conquest of territories, mainly in the East Lend-Lease an American program to supply military goods to the Allies during World War II liquidation the emptying of a Jewish ghetto through deportations and violence Luftwaffe the German air force

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Madagascar Plan a Nazi plan to expel European Jews to the island of Madagascar, off the coast of Africa; it was eventually abandoned as being impractical Majdanek a Nazi extermination camp in eastern Poland Marranos Jews who professed to accept Christianity in order to escape persecution during the Spanish Inquisition

Mein Kampf meaning “My Struggle,” Hitler’s book relating his radical political and social ideology; it formed the basis for the Nazi Party’s racist beliefs and murderous practices Mengele, Joseph the senior SS physician at Auschwitz-Birkenau from 1943 to 1944; known as the “Angel of Death”

Mischlinge meaning “mongrels,” a Nazi term for people who had one or two Jewish grandparents; may also be translated as “part-jews” Molotov cocktail a type of hand-made bomb Munich Agreement a pact of appeasement that Great Britain and France signed with Germany and Italy in September 1938, allowing Germany to occupy and annex Sudetenland (a part of Czechoslovakia); also called the Munich Pact Muselmann a term widely used by concentration camp prisoners to refer to inmates who were on the verge of death from starvation, exhaustion, and despair Nazi Party the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or NSDAP, founded in Germany in 1919; led by Hitler, the Nazi Party was characterized by a centralist and authoritarian structure, and its platform was based on militaristic, racist, antisemitic, and nationalistic policies Night of the Long Knives the name for the night on June 30–July 1, 1934, when Hitler murderously purged the ranks of the SA, eliminating officers who posed a challenge to any part of his plan for Nazi domination of Europe non-Aryans a Nazi term used to designate Jews, part-Jews, and others the Nazis considered “inferior” racial stock Nuremberg Laws laws announced by Hitler at the annual Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg on September 15, 1935, instituting official, systematic discrimination against the Jews, which led to the exclusion of Jews from German life and citizenship and made the persecution of Jews an official policy of the state Nuremberg Trial the trial of twenty-two major Nazi figures in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1945 and 1946 before the International Military Tribunal Operation a planned Nazi raid or attack (aktion) against Jews, usually to gather victims for extermination Operation Barbarossa the code name for the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which began on June 22, 1941 operational squads (Einsatzgruppen; singular Einsatzgruppe) mobile units of the SS or local auxiliary police groups that followed the German armies to Poland in 1939 and to the Soviet Union in 1941; their charge was to kill all Jews as well as other groups considered “undesirable” by the Nazis Organization Schmelt a system of forced labor for the Jewish population of Eastern Upper Silesia, a region of Poland under German occupation

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GLOSSARY

Ostland the eastern European territories occupied by the Germans, consisting of the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) and the western half of Belorussia Pale of Settlement an area in the western part of the Russian Empire where Russian Jews were required to live from 1835 to 1917 Palestine ancient, Biblical land and former country in the Middle East (controlled by Great Britain from 1923–1948) which is now divided between Israel and Jordan partisan company a group of resistance fighters who used guerrilla tactics against the Nazis and operated in enemy-occupied territory partisans resistance groups that operated secretly, using guerrilla tactics to help Jews and others persecuted by the Nazis perpetrators those who do something that is morally wrong or criminal pogrom an organized and often officially encouraged attack on or massacre of a group of people, especially Jews Potsdam Conference a meeting held by Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and Harry Truman in the summer of 1945 to discuss the political and economic problems that arose after Germany’s surrender prejudice a preconceived judgment or opinion, often founded on suspicion, intolerance, and the irrational hatred of people of other races, religions, creeds, or nationalities prisoners of war soldiers captured in war and held by the enemy propaganda ideas, rumors, images or information—often false or misleading—that are spread to help or hurt a cause, a person or group, or an organization protocols written records, such as interview transcripts or minutes of meetings of interrogations and investigations rabbi the leader of a Jewish congregation, similar to the role of a priest or minister Ravensbrück a concentration camp for women, north of Berlin, Germany Red Army the name often applied to the Soviet army until June 1945 regent the head of state of Hungary Reich the German word for “empire;” see also “Third Reich” Reichstag the German Parliament repatriate to return or be sent back to one’s country of origin or citizenship resettlement a Nazi euphemism for the deportation of prisoners to extermination camps in Poland Revisionists people who deny that the Holocaust ever happened or who misrepresent portions of historical records about and from the Holocaust Rhineland a demilitarized region between Germany and France; Hitler broke the Treaty of Versailles when he ordered German troops to invade this area in March 1936 Ribbentrop, Joachim von Nazi Germany’s foreign minister

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GLOSSARY

Righteous Among the Nations a title given by Yad Vashem, Israel’s official institution of Holocaust remembrance, to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews in areas under Nazi German occupation in Europe righteous gentiles non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from Nazi persecution Roosevelt, Franklin D. the U.S. president from 1933 to 1945 SA (Sturmabteilung, or Storm Troopers) also known as Brown Shirts, they were the Nazi Party’s main instrument for undermining democracy and facilitating Hitler’s rise to power; they were of less political significance after 1934 scapegoat a person or group of people unfairly blamed for something that goes wrong; Jews were often made the scapegoats during times of economic hardship in Europe, unfairly blamed for high unemployment rates and other negative economic indicators SD (Sicherheitsdienst, or Security Service) the SS security and intelligence service

selektion; plural, selektionen the recurring selection of prisoners, from among those arriving at a Nazi camp, to be used for forced labor, or to be killed immediately; also, the choosing of Jews in ghettos to be deported to the camps Shoa or Shoah the Hebrew term for the Holocaust

shtetl general term for a small Jewish town or village in eastern Europe Sobibór a Nazi extermination camp located in eastern Poland Social Darwinism a sociological concept based on Darwin’s concept of physical evolution—the “survival of the fittest”; based on Social Darwinism, Nazis created a pseudo-scientific brand of racism that was most rabid when directed against the Jews, although other cultural and/or ethnic groups were not exempt socialism a theory or system of social organization that advocates the ownership and control of land, capital, industry, and so on, by the community as a whole; in Marxist theory, it represents the stage following capitalism in a state transforming to communism special commando (Sonderkommando) a special unit of the SS; also the name of the slave labor units in extermination camps that removed the bodies of those gassed for cremation or burial SS (Schutzstaffel, or Protection Squad) armed troops, originally organized in 1925 as Hitler’s personal guard, that developed into the most powerful affiliated organization of the Nazi Party; the SS established control of the police and security systems, forming the basis of the Nazi police state and the major instrument of racial terror in occupied Europe Star of David a six-pointed star that is a symbol of Judaism stereotype a biased generalization about a group of people, based on hearsay and distorted, preconceived ideas Stalin, Joseph the Soviet Communist leader from 1927 to 1953 swastika an ancient symbol that gained notoriety as the unmistakable emblem of Nazism and the Nazi Party synagogue in Judaism, the house of worship, as well as a center of community life

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thanatology the science of producing death, invented by the Nazis Third Reich meaning “third regime or empire,” the Nazi designation of Germany and its regime from 1933 to 1945 Treaty of Versailles a peace treaty signed by Germany and the Allies in 1919, after the end of World War I Treblinka a Nazi extermination camp in the General Government (Generalgouvernement) Truman, Harry S the U.S. president from 1945 to 1953, after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt

Umschlagplatz “Transfer point”; the place in Warsaw, Poland, where freight trains were loaded and unloaded; it was used as an assembly point where Jews were loaded onto cattle cars to be taken to Treblinka underground organized groups and individuals acting in secrecy to oppose a government, or, during war, to resist occupying enemy forces Vichy France the region of France not immediately occupied by Nazi Germany, which was governed from the spa town of Vichy; the Vichy government collaborated with the Nazis

Volk the concept of the German “people” as a nation or race, which was an underlying idea in German history from the early 1800s; inherent in the name was a feeling of superiority of German culture and the idea of a universal mission for the German people Volksliste a “racial list” of groups of people who were to be accepted into the Third Reich as Germans and accepted as “ethnic Germans,” or Volksdeutsche Waffen-SS militarized units of the SS Wannsee Conference a Nazi conference held on January 20, 1942, at which SS official Reinhard Heydrich helped present and coordinate the “Final Solution” Wehrmacht the collective name for all three branches of the German armed forces from 1935 to 1945 Weimar Republic the German republic, an experiment in democracy, from 1919 to 1933 Werwolf bands paramilitary guerrilla forces made up of uniformed Germans who operated as resistance fighters in Allied-controlled territories as Germany neared defeat in World War II Yiddish a language that combines elements of German and Hebrew Zionism a political and cultural movement calling for the return of the Jewish people to their biblical home in the region known as Palestine prior to 1948 and the establishment of the State of Israel Zionists members of a social and political movement promoting the creation of a homeland for Jews in Palestine Zyklon B hydrogen cyanide, a pesticide used by the Nazis in their Euthanasia Program and later in some of the gas chambers at the extermination camps

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■ DECLARATION OF THE BOYCOTT BY THE NAZI PARTY LEADERSHIP

March 28, 1933 National Socialists! Party Comrades! After fourteen years of inner conflict, the German Volk—politically overcoming its ranks, classes, professions, and confessional divisions—has elected an Erhebung which put a lightning end to the Marxist-Jewish nightmare. In the weeks following January 30, a unique military revolution took place in Germany. In spite of long years of exceedingly severe suppression and persecution, the masses of millions that support the Government of the National Revolution have, in a very calm and disciplined manner, given the new Reich leadership legal cover for the implementation of its reform of the German nation from top to bottom. On March 5 the overwhelming majority of Germans eligible to vote declared its confidence in the new regime. The completion of the national revolution, has thus become the demand of the Volk. The Jewish-Marxist Bonzen (bigwigs) deserted their position of power with deplorable cowardice. Despite all the fuss, not a single one dared to raise any serious resistance. For the most part, they have left the masses they had seduced in the lurch and fled abroad, taking with them their stuffed strongboxes. The authors and beneficiaries of our misfortune owe the fact that they were spared—almost without exception—solely to the incomparable discipline and order with which this act of overthrowing was conducted.

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Hardly a hair on their heads was harmed. Compare this act of self-discipline on the part of the national uprising in Germany with, for instance, the Bolshevist Revolution in Russia, which claimed the lives of over three million people, and you will begin to appreciate what a debt of gratitude the criminals guilty of the disintegration in Germany owe the powers of the national uprising. Compare the terrible battles and destruction of the Revolution of these very November Men themselves— their shooting of hostages in the years 1918 and ‘19, the slaughtering of defenseless opponents—and you will once again perceive how enormous the difference is between them and the national uprising. The men presently in power solemnly proclaimed to the world that they wanted to live in international peace. In this, the German Volk constitutes a loyal Gefolgschaft [following]. Germany wants neither worldwide confusion nor international intrigues. National revolutionary Germany is firmly resolved to put an end to internal mismanagement! Now that the domestic enemies of the nation have been eliminated by the Volk itself, what we have long been waiting for will now come to pass. The Communist and Marxist criminals and their Jewish intellectual instigators, who, having made off with their capital stocks across the border in the nick of time, are now unfolding an unscrupulous, treasonous campaign of agitation against the German Volk as a whole from abroad. Because it became impossible for them to continue lying in Germany, they have begun, in the capitals of the former Entente, to continue the same agitation against the young national uprising that they had already pursued at the outbreak of the War against the Germany of that time. Lies and slander of positively hair-raising perversity are being launched about Germany. Horror stories of dismembered Jewish corpses, gouged-out eyes, and hacked-off hands are circulated for the purpose of defaming the German Volk in the world for a second time, just as they had succeeded in doing once before in 1914. The animosity of millions of innocent human beings, i.e., peoples with whom the German Volk wishes only to live in peace, is being stirred up by these unscrupulous criminals. They want German goods and German labor to fall victim to the international boycott. It seems they think the misery in Germany is not bad enough as it is; they have to make it worse! They lie about Jewish females who have supposedly been killed, about Jewish girls allegedly being raped before the eyes of their parents, about cemeteries being ravaged! The whole thing is one big lie invented for the sole purpose of provoking a new world-war agitation! Standing by and watching this lunatic crime any longer would mean being implicated. The National Socialist Party will therefore now take defensive action against this universal crime with means that are capable of striking a blow to the guilty parties. For the guilty ones are among us, they live in our midst and day after day misuse the right to hospitality which the German Volk has granted them. At a time when millions of our people have nothing to live on and nothing to eat, while hundreds of thousands of German brain-workers degenerate on the streets, these intellectual Jewish men of letters are sitting in our midst and have no qualms about claiming the right to our hospitality. What would America do were the Germans in America to commit a sin against America like the one these Jews have committed against Germany? The National Revolution did not harm a hair of their heads. They were allowed to go about their business as before; but, mind you, corruption will be exterminated, regardless of

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who commits it. Just as belonging to a Christian confession or our own Volk does not constitute a license for criminals, neither does belonging to the Jewish race or the Mosaic religion. For decades, Germany indiscriminately allowed all aliens to enter the country. There are 135 people to one square kilometer of land in this country. In America there are less than 15. In spite of this fact, America saw it fit to set quotas for immigration and even exclude certain peoples from immigrating. Without any regard to its own distress, Germany refrained for decades from instituting these measures. As our reward, we now have a clique of Jewish men of letters, professors, and profiteers inciting the world against us while millions of our own Volksgenossen are unemployed and degenerating. This will be put to a stop now! The Germany of the National Revolution is not the Germany of a cowardly bourgeois mentality. We see the misery and wretchedness of our own Volksgenossen and feel obliged to leave nothing undone which could prevent further damage to this, our Volk. For the parties responsible for these lies and slander are the Jews in our midst. It is they who are the source of this campaign of hate and lies against Germany. It would be in their power to call the liars in the rest of the world into line. Because they choose not to do so, we will make sure that this crusade of hatred and lies against Germany is no longer directed against the innocent German Volk, but against the responsible agitators themselves. This smear campaign of boycotting and atrocities must not and shall not injure the German Volk, but rather the Jews themselves—a thousand times more severely. Thus the following order is issued to all party sections and party organizations: ITEM 1: ACTION COMMITTEES FOR A BOYCOTT AGAINST THE JEWS Action Committees are to be formed in each Ortsgruppe [local chapter] and organizational body of the NSDAP for conducting a practical, organized boycott of Jewish businesses, Jewish goods, Jewish doctors, and Jewish lawyers. The Action Committees shall be responsible for ensuring that the boycott does not do any harm to innocent parties but instead does all the more harm to the guilty parties. ITEM 2: UTMOST PROTECTION FOR ALL FOREIGNERS The Action Committees shall be responsible for providing the utmost protection for all foreigners, without regard to their religion and origins or race. The boycott is a purely defensive action that is aimed exclusively at the Judentum in Germany. ITEM 3: BOYCOTT PROPAGANDA The Action Committees shall immediately popularize the boycott by means of propaganda and enlightenment. Basic principle: no good German is still buying from a Jew or allowing the Jew or his henchmen to offer him goods. The boycott must be a universal one. It will be borne by the entire Volk and must hit Jewry where it is most vulnerable. ITEM 4: THE CENTRAL MANAGEMENT: PG. STREICHER In cases of doubt, one is to refrain from boycotting businesses until informed otherwise by the Central Committee in Munich. The Chairman of the Central Committee is Pg. Streicher.

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ITEM 5: SURVEILLANCE OF NEWSPAPERS The Action Committees shall keep the newspapers under sharp surveillance in order to ascertain the extent to which they are participating in the enlightenment crusade of the German Volk against the Jewish smear campaign of atrocities (Greuelhetze) abroad. If newspapers are not doing so or doing so only within a limited scope, it is to be seen to that they are instantly removed from every building inhabited by Germans. No German man and no German business is to continue advertising in such newspapers. These papers must become victims of public contempt, written for fellow members of the Jewish race, but not for the German Volk. ITEM 6: BOYCOTT AS A MEANS OF PROTECTING GERMAN LABOR In conjunction with the factory cell organizations of the party, the Action Committees must carry the propaganda of the enlightenment concerning the effects of the Jewish smear campaign of atrocities on German labor and thus the German worker into the factories, enlightening the workers in particular as to the necessity of a national boycott as a defensive measure for the protection of German labor. ITEM 7: ACTION COMMITTEES DOWN TO THE LAST VILLAGE! The Action Committees must be driven into the smallest villages in order to hit especially the Jewish traders on the flatlands. As a basic principle, it should be stressed that the boycott is a defensive measure which was forced upon us. ITEM 8: THE BOYCOTT IS TO COMMENCE ON APRIL 1! The boycott shall not begin in a dissipated fashion but abruptly. For this reason all preparations are to be made instantly. The SA and SS will be given orders to set up guards to warn the population not to set foot in Jewish shops from the moment the boycott begins. The beginning of the boycott is to be publicized on posters and in the press, in handbills, etc. The boycott shall commence abruptly at 10:00 in the morning on Saturday, April 1. It will be maintained until an order from the party leadership commands that it be discontinued. ITEM 9: DEMAND OF THE MASSES FOR RESTRICTED ADMISSION In tens of thousands of mass assemblies that are to reach as far as the smallest village, the Action Committees shall organize the demand for the introduction of a restriction of the number of Jews employed in all professions which should be relative to their proportion in the German population. In order to increase the impact of the action, this demand is initially to be confined to three areas: A. admission to the German secondary school and universities; B. the medical profession; C. the legal profession. ITEM 10: ENLIGHTENMENT ABROAD Another further task of the Action Committees is to ensure that every German who upholds any connection whatsoever abroad shall make use of this to circulate in letters, telegrams, and telephone calls in an enlightening manner the truth that law and order reigns in Germany; that it is the single most ardent wish of the German Volk to be able to pursue its work in peace and live in peace with the rest of the world; and that it is fighting the battle against the Jewish smear campaign of atrocities purely as a defensive battle. ITEM 11: CALM, DISCIPLINE, AND NO ACTS OF VIOLENCE!

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The Action Committees are responsible for ensuring that this entire battle is conducted with the utmost calm and the greatest discipline. Refrain from harming a single hair of a Jew’s head in the future as well! We will come to terms with this smear campaign simply by the drastic force of these measures cited. More than ever before it is necessary that the entire party stand behind the leadership in blind obedience as one man. National Socialists, you have wrought the miracle of sending the November State cartwheeling in a single offensive; you will accomplish this second task the same way. International Weltjudentum should know one thing: The government of the National Revolution does not exist in a vacuum. It is the representation of the working German Volk. Whoever attacks it, is attacking Germany! Whoever slanders it, is slandering the nation! Whoever fights it, has declared war on 65 million people! We were able to come to terms with the Marxist agitators in Germany; they will not force us to our knees, even if they are now proceeding with their renegade crimes against the people from abroad. National Socialists! Saturday, at the stroke of ten, Judentum will know upon whom it has declared war. National Socialist German Workers’ Party/Party Leadership ■ HITLER’S POLITICAL TESTAMENT, APRIL 29, 1945

More than thirty years have passed since 1914 when I made my modest contribution as a volunteer in the First World War, which was forced upon the Reich. In these three decades love and loyalty to my people have guided all my thoughts, actions and my life. They gave me the strength to make the most difficult decisions ever to confront mortal man. In these three decades I have spent my strength and my health. It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war in 1939. It was wanted and provoked solely by international statesmen either of Jewish origin or working for Jewish interests. I have made too many offers for the limitation and control of armaments, which posterity will not be cowardly enough always to disregard, for responsibility for the outbreak of this war to be placed on me. Nor have I ever wished that, after the appalling First World War, there would be a second against either England or America. Centuries will go by, but from the ruins of our towns and monuments the hatred of those ultimately responsible will always grow anew against the people whom we have to thank for all this: international Jewry and its henchmen. Only three days before the outbreak of the German-Polish war I proposed a solution of the German-Polish problem to the British ambassador in Berlin—international control as in the case of the Saar. This offer, too, cannot be lied away. It was only rejected because the ruling clique in England wanted war, partly for commercial reasons and partly because it was influenced by the propaganda put out by international Jewry. I have left no one in doubt that if the people of Europe are once more treated as mere blocks of shares in the hands of these international money and finance conspirators, then the sole responsibility for the massacre must be borne by the true culprits: the Jews. Nor have I left anyone in doubt that this time millions of European children of Aryan descent will starve to death, millions of men will die in battle, and hundreds of thousands of women and children will be burned or bombed to death in our cities without the true culprits being held to account, albeit more humanely.

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After six years of war which, despite all setbacks, will one day go down in history as the most glorious and heroic manifestation of the struggle for existence of a nation, I cannot abandon the city which is the capital of this Reich. Since our forces are too meager to withstand the enemy’s attack and since our resistance is being debased by creatures who are as blind as they are lacking in character, I wish to share my fate with that which millions of others have also taken upon themselves by remaining in this city. Further, I shall not fall into the hands of the enemy who requires a new spectacle, presented by the Jews, for the diversion of the hysterical masses. I have therefore decided to stay in Berlin and there to choose death voluntarily when I determine that the position of the Führer and the Chancellery itself can no longer be maintained. I die with a joyful heart in the knowledge of the immeasurable deeds and achievements of our peasants and workers and of a contribution unique in the history of our youth which bears my name. That I am deeply grateful to them all is as self-evident as is my wish that they do not abandon the struggle but that, no matter where, they continue to fight the enemies of the Fatherland, faithful to the ideals of the great Clausewitz. Through the sacrifices of our soldiers and my own fellowship with them unto death, a seed has been sown in German history that will one day grow to usher in the glorious rebirth of the National Socialist movement in a truly united nation. Many of our bravest men and women have sworn to bind their lives to mine to the end. I have begged, and finally ordered, them not do so but to play their part in the further struggle of the nation. I ask the leaders of the army, the navy and the air force to strengthen the National Socialist spirit of resistance of our soldiers by all possible means, with special emphasis on the fact that I myself, as the founder and creator of this movement, prefer death to cowardly resignation or even to capitulation. May it become a point of honor of future German army officers, as it is already in our navy, that the surrender of a district or town is out of the question and that, above everything else, the commanders must set a shining example of faithful devotion to duty unto death. .... Before my death, I expel former Reichs Marshal Hermann Goering from the party and withdraw from him all the rights that were conferred upon him by the decree of 29 June, 1941 and by my Reichstag statement of September 1939. In his place I appoint Admiral Donitz as president of the Reich and supreme commander of the armed forces. Before my death, I expel the former Reichsführer of the SS and the Minister of the Interior Heinrich Himmler from the party and from all his state offices. In his place I appoint Gauleiter Karl Hanke as Reichsführer of the SS and head of the German Police, and Gauleiter Paul Giesler as minister of the interior. Apart altogether from their disloyalty to me, Goering and Himmler have brought irreparable shame on the whole nation by secretly negotiating with the enemy without my knowledge and against my will, and also by attempting illegally to seize control of the state. In order to provide the German people with a government of honorable men who will fulfill the task of continuing the war with all the means at their disposal, I, as Führer of the nation, appoint the following members of the new cabinet: President of the Reich: Donitz Chancellor of the Reich: Dr. Goebbels Party Minister: Bormann

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Foreign Minister: Seyss-Inquart Minister of the Interior: Gauleiter Giesler Minister of War: Donitz Supreme Commander of the Army: Schorner Supreme Commander of the Navy: Donitz Supreme Commander of the Air Force: Greim Reichsführer of the SS and Head of the German Police: Gauleiter Hanke Trade: Funk Agriculture: Backe Justice: Thierack Culture: Dr. Scheel Propaganda: Dr. Naumann Finance: Schwerin-Crossigk Labor: Dr. Hupfauer Munitions: Saur Leader of the German Labor Front and Minister Without Portfolio: Dr. Ley. Although a number of these men, including Martin Bormann, Dr. Goebbels and others together with their wives have joined me of their own free will, not wishing to leave the capital under any circumstances and prepared to die with me, I implore them to grant my request that they place the welfare of the nation above their own feelings. By their work and loyal companionship they will remain as close to me after my death as I hope my spirit will continue to dwell among them and accompany them always. Let them be severe but never unjust and let them never, above all, allow fear to preside over their actions, placing the honor of the nation above everything that exists on earth. May they, finally, always remember that our task, the consolidation of a National Socialist state, represents the work of centuries to come, so that every individual must subordinate his own interest to the common good. I ask of all Germans, of all National Socialists, men and women and all soldiers of the Wehrmacht, that they remain faithful and obedient unto death to the new government and its president. Above all, I enjoin the government and the people to uphold the race laws to the limit and to resist mercilessly the poisoner of all nations, international Jewry. Berlin, 29 April, 1945, 4 a.m. ADOLF HITLER Witnesses: DR. JOSEPH GOEBBELS MARTIN BORMANN WILHELM BURGDORF HANS KREBS

OFFICIAL LAWS, ORDERS, AND REGULATIONS OF THE THIRD REICH ■ LAW AGAINST THE OVERCROWDING OF GERMAN SCHOOLS AND INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING, APRIL 25, 1933

The Reich government has enacted the following law, which is promulgated herewith: 1 In all schools except schools providing compulsory education, and in institutions of higher learning, the number of pupils and students is to be limited so as to ensure thorough training and to meet professional needs.

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2 State governments will determine at the beginning of each school year how many pupils each school may accept and how many new students each university faculty may accept. 3 In those kinds of schools and faculties whose attendance figures are particularly out of proportion to professional needs, the number of pupils and students already admitted is to be reduced during the 1933 school year as far as this can be done without excessive rigor, in order to establish a more acceptable proportion. 4 In new admissions, care is to be taken that the number of Reich Germans who, according to the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service of April 7, 1933 (RGBI. I, p. 175), are of non-Aryan descent, out of the total attending each school and each faculty, does not exceed the proportion of non-Aryans within the Reich German population. The ratio will be determined uniformly for the entire Reich territory. Likewise, in lowering the number of pupils and students according to section 3, a suitable proportion is to be established between the total number of persons attending and the number of non-Aryans. In doing so, a quota higher than the population ratio may be used as a base. Paragraphs 1 and 2 do not apply to Reich Germans of non-Aryan descent whose fathers fought at the front during the World War for the German Reich or its allies, or to the offspring of marriages concluded before this law took effect, if one parent or two grandparents are of Aryan origin. These also are not to be included in calculating the population ratio and the quota. 5 Obligations incumbent upon Germany as a result of international treaties are not affected by the provisions of this law. 6 Decrees for implementation will be issued by the Reich minister of the interior. 7 The law takes effect on the date of promulgation. ■ LAW FOR THE PROTECTION OF GERMAN BLOOD AND GERMAN HONOR, SEPTEMBER 15, 1935

Imbued with the insight that the purity of German blood is prerequisite for the continued existence of the German people and inspired by the inflexible will to ensure the existence of the German nation for all times, the Reichstag has unanimously adopted the following law, which is hereby promulgated: 1 1. Marriages between Jews and subjects of German or kindred blood are forbidden. Marriages nevertheless concluded are invalid, even if concluded abroad to circumvent this law. 2. Only the state attorney may initiate the annulment suit.

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2 Extramarital intercourse between Jews and subjects of German or kindred blood is forbidden. 3 Jews must not employ in their households female subjects of German or kindred blood who are under forty-five years old. 4 1. Jews are forbidden to fly the Reich national flag and to display the Reich colors. 2. They are, on the other hand, allowed to play the Jewish colors. The exercise of this right enjoys the protection of state. 5 1. Whoever violates the prohibition in paragraph 1 will be punished by penal servitude. 2. A male who violates the prohibition in paragraph 2 will be punished either by imprisonment or penal servitude. 3. Whoever violates the provisions of paragraphs 3 or 4 will be punished by imprisonment up to one year and by a fine, or by either of these penalties. 6 The Reich minister of the interior, in agreement with the deputy of the Führer and the Reich minister of justice, will issue the legal and administrative orders required to implement and supplement this law. 7 The law takes effect on the day following promulgation, except for paragraph 3, which goes into force January 1, 1936. Nuremberg, September 15, 1935 at the Reich Party Congress of Freedom The Führer and Reich Chancellor ADOLF HITLER The Reich Minister of the Interior FRICK The Reich Minister of Justice The Deputy of the Führer and Reich Minister Without Portfolio ■ FIRST ORDINANCE TO THE REICH CITIZENSHIP LAW NOVEMBER 14, 1935)

On the basis of article 3 of the Reich Citizenship Law of September 15, 1935 (Reich Legal Gazette 1, 1146) the following is ordered: Article I 1. Until the issuance of further regulations for the award of citizenship, nationals of German or related blood who possessed the right to vote in Reichstag elections at the time when the Reich Citizenship Law entered into force or who were granted provisional citizenship by the Reich Minister of Interior acting in agreement with the Deputy of the Führer, are provisionally considered Reich citizens.

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2. The Reich Minister of Interior acting in agreement with the Deputy of the Führer may revoke provisional citizenship. Article 2 1. The regulations of Article I apply also to nationals who were part Jews ( jüdische Mischlinge). 2. Partly Jewish is anyone who is descended from one or two grandparents who are fully Jewish (volljüdisch) by race, in so far as he is not to be considered as Jewish under article 5, section 2. A grandparent is to be considered as fully Jewish if he belonged to the Jewish religious community. Article 3 Only a Reich citizen as bearer of complete political rights may exercise the right to vote in political affairs or hold public office. The Reich Minister of Interior or an agency empowered by him may make exceptions with regard to an admission to public office during the transition. The affairs of religious communities will not be affected. Article 4 1. A Jew cannot be a Reich citizen. He is not allowed the right to vote in political affairs; he cannot hold public office. 2. Jewish civil servants will retire as of December 31, 1935. If these civil servants fought for Germany or her allies in the World War, they will receive the full pension to which they are entitled by their last position in the pay scale, until they reach retirement age; they will not, however, advance in seniority. Upon reaching retirement age their pension is to be based on pay scales which will prevail at that time. 3. The affairs of religious communities will not be affected. 4. The provisions of service for teachers in Jewish public schools will remain unaltered until new regulations are issued for the Jewish school system. Article 5 1. Jew is he who is descended from at least three grandparents who are fully Jewish by race. Article 2, paragraph 2, sentence 2 applies. 2. Also to be considered a Jew is a partly Jewish national who is descended from two fully Jewish grandparents and a) who belonged to the Jewish religious community, upon adoption of the Law, or is received into the community thereafter, or b) who was married to a Jewish person upon adoption of the law, or marries one thereafter, or c) who is the offspring of a marriage concluded by a Jew (as defined in paragraph 1) after the entry into force of the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor of September 15, 1935 (Reich Legal Gazette 1, 1146), or d) who is the offspring of an extramarital relationship involving a Jew (as defined in paragraph 1) and who is born out of wedlock after July 31, 1936. Article 6 1. Requirements for purity of blood exceeding those of article 5, which are made in Reich laws or regulations of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and its organizations, remain unaffected.

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2. Any other requirements for purity of blood, exceeding those of article 4, may be made only with the consent of the Reich Minister of the Interior and the Deputy of the Führer. Insofar as requirements of this type exist already, they become void on January 1, 1936 unless they are accepted by the Reich Minister of the Interior acting with the agreement of the Deputy of the Führer. Acceptance is to be requested from the Reich Minister of the Interior. Article 7 The Führer and Reich Chancellor may grant exemptions from the stipulations of implementory ordinances. Berlin, November 14, 1935 The Führer and Reich Chancellor ADOLF HITLER The Reich Minister of the Interior FRICK The Deputy of the Führer R. HESS (Reich Minister without Portfolio) ■ REGULATION FOR THE ELIMINATION OF THE JEWS FROM THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF GERMANY, NOVEMBER 12, 1938

On the basis of the regulation for the implementation of the Four Year Plan of October 18, 1936 (Reichsgesetzblatt, I, p. 887), the following is decreed: §1 1) From January 1, 1939, Jews (§ 5 of the First Regulation to the Reich Citizenship Law of November 14, 1935, Reichsgesetzblatt, I, p. 1333) are forbidden to operate retail stores, mail-order houses, or sales agencies, or to carry on a trade [craft] independently. 2) They are further forbidden, from the same day on, to offer for sale goods or services, to advertise these, or to accept orders at markets of all sorts, fairs or exhibitions. 3) Jewish trade enterprises (Third Regulation to the Reich Citizenship Law of June 14, 1938—Reichsgesetzblatt, I, p. 627) which violate this decree will be closed by police. §2 1) From January 1, 1939, a Jew can no longer be the head of an enterprise within the meaning of the Law of January 20, 1934, for the Regulation of National Work (Reichsgesetzblatt, I, p. 45). 2) Where a Jew is employed in an executive position in a commercial enterprise he may be given notice to leave in six weeks. At the expiration of the term of the notice all claims of the employee based on his contract, especially those concerning pension and compensation rights, become invalid. §3 1) A Jew cannot be a member of a cooperative. 2) The membership of Jews in cooperatives expires on December 31, 1938. No special notice is required.

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§4 The Reich Minister of Economy, in coordination with the ministers concerned, is empowered to publish regulations for the implementation of this decree. He may permit exceptions under the Law if these are required as the result of the transfer of a Jewish enterprise to non-Jewish ownership, for the liquidation of a Jewish enterprise or, in special cases, to ensure essential supplies. Berlin, November 12, 1938 Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan GÖRING Field Marshal General ■ ESTABLISHMENT OF JUDENRÄTE (JEWISH COUNCILS) IN THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES, NOVEMBER 28, 1939 Regulation for the Establishment of the Judenräte, November 28, 1939

1. In each community a body representing the Jews will be formed. 2. This representation of the Jews, known as the Judenrat, will consist of 12 Jews in communities with up to 10,000 inhabitants, and in communities with more than 10,000 inhabitants, of 24 Jews, drawn from the locally resident population. The Judenrat will be elected by the Jews of the community. If a member of the Judenrat leaves, a new member is to be elected immediately. 3. The Judenrat will elect a chairman and a deputy from among its members. 4. 1) After these elections, which must he completed not later than December 31, 1939, the membership of the Judenrat is to be reported to the responsible sub-district Commander (Kreishauptmann), in urban districts to the City Commander (Stadthauptmann). 2) The sub-district Commander (City Commander) will decide whether the Judenrat membership submitted to him should be approved. He may order changes in the membership. 5. It is the duty of the Judenrat through its chairman or his deputy to receive the orders of the German Administration. It is responsible for the conscientious carrying out of orders to their full extent. The directives it issues to carry out these German decrees must be obeyed by all Jews and Jewesses. Cracow, November 28, 1939 The Governor General for the Occupied Polish Territories FRANK

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SECRET NAZI DOCUMENTS ■ REINHARD HEYDRICH’S INSTRUCTIONS FOR MEASURES AGAINST JEWS, NOVEMBER 10, 1938

Secret Copy of most urgent telegram from Munich of November 10, 1938, 1:20 A.M. To: All headquarters and stations of the State Police All districts and sub districts of the SD Urgent! For immediate attention of the chief or his deputy! RE: MEASURES AGAINST JEWS TONIGHT Following the attempt on the life of Secretary of the Legation vom Rath in Paris, demonstrations against the Jews are to be expected in all parts of the Reich in the course of the coming night, November 9/10, 1938. The instructions below are to be applied in dealing with these events: I. The chiefs of the State Police, or their deputies, must immediately upon receipt of this telegram contact, by telephone, the political leaders in their areas—Gauleiter or Kreisleiter—who have jurisdiction in their districts and arrange a joint meeting with the inspector or commander of the Order Police to discuss the arrangements for the demonstrations. At these discussions the political leaders will be informed that the German Police has received instructions, detailed below, from the Reichsführer SS and the chief of the German Police, with which the political leadership is requested to coordinate its own measures: A. Only such measures are to be taken as do not endanger German lives or property (i.e., synagogues are to be burnt down only where there is no danger of fire in neighboring buildings). B. Places of business and apartments belonging to Jews may be destroyed but not looted. The police are instructed to supervise the observance of this order and to arrest looters. C. In commercial streets particular care is to be taken that non-Jewish businesses are completely protected against damage. D. Foreign citizens—even if they are Jews—are not to be molested. II .On the assumption that the guidelines detailed under paragraph I are observed, the demonstrations are not to be prevented by the police, who are only to supervise the observance of the guidelines. III. On receipt of this telegram, police will seize all archives to be found in all synagogues and offices of the Jewish communities so as to prevent their destruction during the demonstrations. This refers only to material of historical value, not to contemporary tax records, etc. The archives are to be handed over to the locally responsible officers of the SD.

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IV. The control of the measures of the Security Police concerning the demonstrations against the Jews is vested in the organs of the State Police, unless inspectors of the Security Police have given their own instructions. Officials of the Criminal Police, members of the SD, of the Reserves and the SS in general may be used to carry out the measures taken by the Security Police. V. As soon as the course of events during the night permits the release of the officials required, as many Jews in all districts, especially the rich, as can be accommodated in existing prisons are to be arrested. For the time being only healthy male Jews, who are not too old are to be detained. After the detentions have been carried out the appropriate concentration camps are to be contacted immediately for the prompt accommodation of the Jews in the camps. Special care is to be taken that the Jews arrested in accordance with these instructions are not ill-treated. HEYDRICH, SS Gruppenfürer

SIGNED

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■ DANNECKER LETTER REQUESTING PERMISSION TO DEPORT CHILDREN FROM PARIS, JULY 10, 1942

[Commanding Officer, Security Police and Security Service in France] IV J, Paris to Reich Security Main Officer IV B 4, Berlin July 10, 1942 Urgent, to be submitted immediately! Subject: Removing Jews from France Previous: Discussion between SS-Lieutenant Colonel Eichmann and SS-Captain Dannecker on July 1, 1942 in Paris, my dispatch of July 6, 1942, IV J SA 225a. French police will carry out the arrest of stateless Jews in Paris during July 16–18, 1942. It is to be expected that after the arrests about 4000 Jew-children will remain behind. For the moment French public welfare will care for these children. Inasmuch, however, as any lengthy togetherness of these Jew-children and nonJewish children is undesirable, and since the “Union of the Jews in France” is not capable of accommodating in its own children’s homes more than 400 children, I request an urgent decision by letter as to whether the children of the stateless Jews about to be deported may be removed also, starting with the 10th transport or so. At the same time I request once more an urgent decision in the matter I raised in my dispatch of July 6, 1942. By instruction DANNECKER

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■ LETTER FROM ARTHUR SEYSS-INQUART TO MARTIN BORMANN REGARDING THE “JEWISH QUESTION” IN THE NETHERLANDS

Reich Commissar for the Occupied Netherlands Territories The Hague to Party Chancellery Chief Bormann

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copies to General Commissars in Netherlands and Plenipotentiary Dr. Schröder February 28, 1944 Dear Party Comrade Bormann: We have cleaned up the Jewish question in the Netherlands insofar as now we only have to carry out decisions that have already been formulated. The Jews have been eliminated from the body of the Dutch people and, insofar as they have not been transported to the East for labor, they are enclosed in a camp. We are dealing here first of all with some 1500 persons who have not been transported to the East for special reasons such as interventions by churches or by personalities who are close to us. In the main I have warded off the interference of the churches in the whole Jewish question in that I held back the Christian Jews in a closed camp where they can be visited weekly by clergy. About 8–9000 Jews have avoided transport by submerging [going into hiding]. By and by they are being seized and sent to the East; at the moment, the rate of seizures is 5–600 a week. The Jewish property has been confiscated and is undergoing liquidation. With the exception of a few enterprises which have not yet been Aryanized, but which have been placed under trusteeship, the liquidation is finished and the property converted into financial papers of the Reich. I count on a yield of ca. 500 million Guilders [more than $250,000,000]. At some appropriate time the future utilization of this money is to be decided on in concert with the Reich Finance Minister; however, the Reich Finance Minister agrees in principle to the use of these funds for purposes in the Netherlands. The question of Jews in mixed marriages is still open. Here we went further than the Reich and obliged also these Jews to wear the star. I had also ordered that the Jewish partner in a childless mixed marriage should likewise be brought to the East for labor. Our Security Police processed a few hundred such cases, but then received instructions from Berlin not to go on, so that a few thousand of these Jews have remained in the country. Finally, Berlin expressed the wish that the Jews in mixed marriages be concentrated in the Jewish camp Westerbork, to be employed here in labor for the moment. Herewith we raise the problem of mixed marriages. Since this matter is basic I turn to you. The following is to be considered with respect to marriages in which there are children: if one parent is brought to a concentration camp and then probably to labor in the East, the children will always be under the impression that we took the parent away from them. As a matter of fact, the offspring of mixed marriages are more troublesome than full Jews. In political trials, for example, we can determine that it is precisely these offspring who start or carry out most of the assassination attempts or sabotage. If we now introduced a measure that is sure to release the hatred of these people, then we will have a group in our midst with which we will hardly be able to deal in any way save reparation. If, in short, there is a plan which is aimed at the removal of Jewish partners from mixed marriages with children, then the children of these marriages will sooner or later have to travel the same road. Hence I believe that it may be more appropriate not to start on this course, but to decide in each instance whether to remove the whole family or—with due regard to security police precautions—to permit the Jewish member to remain in the family. In the first case, the couple, complete with children, will have to be segregated, possibly like the Jews in Theresienstadt. But in that case one must remember that the offspring will get together to have more children, so that practically the Jewish problem will not be solved lest we take some opportunity to remove this whole society from the Reich’s sphere of interest. We are trying the other way in that we free the Jewish partner who is no longer able to have children, or who allows himself to be sterilized, from wearing the star and permit him

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to stay with his family. These Jews—at the moment there must be 4–5000 in the Netherlands—remain under a certain amount of security police control with respect to residence and employability. For example, they are not permitted to direct an enterprise which has employees or occupy a leading position in such an enterprise. There are quite a few volunteers for sterilization. I believe also that we have nothing to fear any more from these people, since their decision indicates a willingness to accept conditions as they are. The situation with the Jewish women is not so simple, since the surgical procedure is known to be difficult. All the same I believe in time this way will yield results, provided one does not decide on the radical method of removing the whole family. For the Netherlands then, I would consider the following for a conclusion of the Jewish problem: 1. The male Jewish partner in a mixed marriage—so far as he has not been freed from the star for reasons mentioned above—is taken for enclosed labor to Westerbork. This measure would signify no permanent separation, but action of a security police nature for the duration of exceptional conditions. These Jews will be employed accordingly and will also receive appropriate wages with which they can support their families who will remain behind. They will also receive a few days’ leave about once in three months. One can proceed with childless female partners in mixed marriages in the same way. We have here in the Netherlands 834 male Jews in childless mixed marriages, 2775 Jews in mixed marriages with children, and 574 Jewesses in childless mixed marriages. Under certain circumstances these Jews can return to their families, for example, if they submit to sterilization, or if the reasons for separation become less weighty in some other way, or if other precautions are taken or conditions develop which make separation no longer seem necessary. The Jewish women in mixed marriages with children— the number involved is 1448—should be freed from the star. The following considerations apply here: it is impossible to take these Jewish women from their families—the Reich Security Main Office agrees—if there are children under 14. On the other hand the women with children over 14 would in most cases have reached an age which would entitle them to request freedom from the star because it is hardly likely that they will have more children. 3. I am now going to carry out the Law for the Protection of Blood in the Netherlands, and 4. make possible divorce in mixed marriages by reason of race difference. These four measures together will constitute a final cleanup of the Jewish question in the Netherlands. Since this regulation could in a certain sense produce a precedent for the Reich, even while in the long run the regulation of mixed marriages in the Reich will also apply in the Netherlands, I am informing you, Mr. Party Director, of my intentions in the hope that I may have your reactions. I wrote in the same vein to the Reichsführer-SS. With best regards Heil Hitler! Your SEYSS-INQUART

JEWISH RESISTANCE ■ A SUMMONS TO RESISTANCE IN THE VILNA GHETTO, JANUARY 1942

Let us not be led like sheep to the slaughter!

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Jewish youth! In a time of unparalleled national misfortune we appeal to you! We do not yet have the words to express the whole tragic struggle which transpires before our eyes. Our language has no words to probe the depths to which our life has fallen nor to vociferate the anguish which strangles us. It is still too hard to find the proper definition for the state in which we find ourselves, for the extraordinary cruelty with which the annihilation of the local Jewish population has been carried out. The community of Jerusalem of Lithuania [Vilna was called “the Jerusalem of Lithuania”] numbered 75,000. On entering the ghetto, 25,000 were already missing, and today only 12,000 remain. All the others have been killed! Death strolls in our streets; in our tents—powerlessness. But the anguish at this huge misfortune is much greater in the light of the ignoble conduct of the Jews at the present time. Never in its long history of martyrdom has the Jewish people shown such abjectness, such a lack of human dignity, national pride, and unity, such communal inertia and submissiveness to the murderers. The heart aches even more at the conduct of Jewish youth, reared for twenty years in the ideals of upbuilding and halutz defense, which now is apathetic, lost, and does not respond to the tragic struggle. There are, however, occasions in the life of a people, of a collective, as in the life of an individual, which seize you by the hair of your head, shake you up, and force you to gird up all your strength to keep alive. We are now experiencing such an occasion. With what can we defend ourselves? We are helpless, we have no possibilities of organizing any defense of our existence. Even if we are deprived of the possibility of an armed defense in this unequal contest of strength, we nevertheless can still defend ourselves. Defend ourselves with all means—and moral defense above all— is the command of the hour. Jewish youth! On none but you rests the national duty to be the pillar of the communal defense of the Jewish collective which stands on the brink of annihilation! I Let us defend ourselves during a deportation! For several months now, day and night, thousands and tens of thousands have been torn away from our midst, men, the aged, women, and children, led away like cattle—and we, the remainder, are numbed. The illusion still lives within us that they are still alive somewhere, in an undisclosed concentration camp, in a ghetto. You believe and hope to see your mother, your father, your brother who was seized and has disappeared. In the face of the next day which arrives with the horror of deportation and murder, the hour has struck to dispel the illusion: There is no way out of the ghetto, except the way to death! No illusion greater than that our dear ones are alive. No illusion more harmful than that. It deadens our feelings, shatters our national unity in the moments before death. Before our eyes they led away our mother, our father, our sisters—enough! We will not go!

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Comrades! Uphold this awareness and impart to your families, to the remnants of the Jerusalem of Lithuania. —Do not surrender into the hands of the kidnappers! —Do not hand over any other Jews! —If you are caught, you have nothing to lose! —Let us defend ourselves, and not go! Better to fall with honor in the ghetto than to be led like sheep to Ponary! II On guard over national honor and dignity We work for Germans and Lithuanians. Everyday we come face to face with our employers, the murderers of our brothers. Great the shame and pain, observing the conduct of Jews, stripped of the awareness of human dignity. Comrades! —Don’t give the foe the chance to ridicule you! —When a German ridicules a Jew—don’t help him laugh! —Don’t play up to your murderers! —Denounce the bootlickers at work! —Denounce the girls who flirt with Gestapo men! —Work slowly, don’t speed! —Show solidarity! If misfortune befalls one of you—don’t be vile egotists—all of ou help him. Be united in work and misfortunes! —Jewish agents of the Gestapo and informers of all sorts walk the streets. If you get hold of one such, sentence him—to be beaten until death! III In the presence of the German soldier Instead of submissiveness and repulsive bootlicking, you are given the possibility in daily encounters with German soldiers to perform an important national deed. Not every German soldier is a sworn enemy of the Jews, not every German soldier is a sworn Hitlerite. But many have false ideas about Jews. We, the youth, by our conduct, in word and deed, can create in the mind of the German soldier another image of a Jew, a productive one, a Jew who has national and human dignity. Comrades, show the Jews with whom you work and live together that this is the approach to the German soldier. IV To the Jewish police Most tragic is the role of the Jewish police—to be a blind tool in the hands of our murderers. But you, Jewish policemen, have at least a chance to demonstrate your personal integrity and national responsibility! —Any act which threatens Jewish life should not be performed! —No actions of mass deportation should be carried out! —Refuse to carry out the orders which bring death to Jews and their families!. . . —Do not let service in the police be turned into national disgrace for you! —Jewish policeman, sooner risk your own life than dozens of Jewish lives! Comrades!

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Convey your hatred of the foe in every place and at every moment! Never lose the awareness that you are working for your murderers! Better to fall in the fight for human dignity that to live at the mercy of the murderer! Let us defend ourselves! Defend ourselves until the last minute!

“This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions”

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“This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions”

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“This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions”

■ FROM THE DIARY OF ADAM CZERNIAKOW ON THE EVE OF THE DEPORTATION FROM THE WARSAW GHETTO, 1942

July 20, 1942 At the Gestapo at 7:30 in the morning. I asked Mende how much truth there was in the rumors. He answered that he had heard nothing about it. After this I asked Brandt; he answered that he knew of nothing of the kind. . . . I went to his superior officer, Commissar Böhm. He said that it was not his department. . . . I observed that according to the rumors the deportation was due to start at 19:30 today. He answered that he would certainly know something if it were so. . . .

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Finally I asked [Scherer] whether I could inform the population that there was no reason for fear. He said I could, that all the reports were nonsense and rubbish. . . . July 22, 1940 [1942] At the Community at 7:30 in the morning. The borders of the small ghetto are guarded by a special unit in addition to the usual one. . . . At 10 o’clock Sturmbannführer Höfle appeared with his people. . . . It was announced to us that the Jews, without regard to sex or age, apart from certain exceptions, would be deported to the East. Six thousand souls had to be supplied by 4 o’clock today. And this (at least) is how it will be every day. . . . Sturmbannführer Höfle . . . called me into the office and informed me that my wife was free at the moment, but if the deportation failed she would be the first to be shot as a hostage. ■ FROM THE DIARY OF A JEWISH YOUTH ON EDUCATION AND CULTURE IN THE VILNA GHETTO, 1942

Sunday the 13th [December 1942]. . . Today the ghetto celebrated the circulation of the 100,000th book in the ghetto library. The festival was held in the auditorium of the theater. We came from our lessons. Various speeches were made and there was also an artistic program. The speakers analyzed the ghetto reader. Hundreds of people read in the ghetto. The reading of books in the ghetto is the greatest pleasure for me. The book unites us with the future, the book unites us with the world. The circulation of the 100,000th book is a great achievement for the ghetto, and the ghetto has the right to be proud of it.

TESTIMONY ■ TESTIMONY OF VICTOR BRACK REGARDING TERMINATION OF THE MENTALLY DISABLED IN GERMANY

Q: Witness, when adult persons were selected for euthanasia and sent by transport to euthanasia stations for that purpose, by what methods were the mercy deaths given? A: The patients went to a euthanasia institution after the written formalities were concluded—I need not repeat these formalities here, they were physical examinations, comparison of the files, etc. The patients were led to a gas chamber and were there killed by the doctors with carbon monoxide gas (CO). Q: Where was that carbon monoxide obtained, by what process? A: It was in a compressed gas container, like a steel oxygen container, such as is used for welding—a hollow steel container. Q: And these people were placed in this chamber in groups, I suppose, and then the carbon monoxide was turned into the chambers? A: Perhaps I had better explain this in some detail. Bouhler’s basic requirement was that the killing should not only be painless, but also imperceptible. For this reason, the photographing of the patients, which was only done for scientific reasons, took place before they entered the chambers, and the patients were completely diverted thereby. Then they were led into the gas chamber which they were told was a shower room. They were in groups of perhaps 20 or 30. They were gassed by the doctor in charge.

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.... Q: What was done with the bodies of these people after mercy deaths were given? A: When the room had been cleared of gas again, stretchers were brought in and the bodies were carried into an adjoining room. There the doctor examined them to determine whether they were dead. Q: Then what happened to the bodies? A: After the doctor had determined death, he freed the bodies for cremation and they were cremated. Q: After he had freed the bodies, had determined that they were dead, they were then cremated? Is that correct? A: Yes. Q: There was a crematory built for every one of these institutions? A: Yes. Crematoriums were built in the institutions. .... Q: And these people thought that they were going in to take a shower bath? A: If any of them had any power of reasoning, they had no doubt thought that. Q: Well now, were they taken into the shower rooms with their clothes on or were they nude? A: No. They were nude. Q: In every case? A: Whenever I saw them, yes.

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Resources for Further Study OVERVIEW OF THE HOLOCAUST Aly, Gotz. “Final Solution”: Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European Jews. London: Arnold, 1999. Bachrach, Susan D. Tell Them We Remember: The Story of the Holocaust. New York: Little, Brown, 1994. Bauer, Yehuda, and Nili Keren. A History of the Holocaust. New York: Franklin Watts, 1982. Berenbaum, Michael. The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. New York: Little, Brown, 1993. Broszat, Martin. The Hitler State: The Foundation and Development of the Third Reich. New York: Longman, 1981. Dawidowicz, Lucy S. The War Against the Jews 1933–1945. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985. Dippel, John V. H. Bound Upon a Wheel of Fire. New York: Basic Books, 1996. Edelheit, Abraham J., and Hershel Edelheit. History of the Holocaust: A Handbook and Dictionary. Boulder: Westview Press, 1994. Edelheit, Abraham J., and Hershel Edelheit. A World in Turmoil: An Integrated Chronology of the Holocaust and World War II. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1991. Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust: A History of the Jews in Europe during the Second World War. New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1986. Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961. Reprint, revised and definitive edition, New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985. Holocaust. Eight-volume library series. Woodbridge, CT: Blackbirch Press, 1998. Kershaw, Ian. Hitler: 1889–1936. New York: Norton, 1998. Kershaw, Ian. Hitler: 1937–1945. New York: Norton, 2000. Roth, John. The Holocaust Chronicles: A History in Words and Pictures. New York: Publications International, 2000. Yahil, Leni. The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jews. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

MULTIMEDIA Historical Atlas of the Holocaust [CD-ROM]. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, 1996.

201

RESOURCES FOR FURTHER STUDY

Kitty: Return to Auschwitz [Videorecording]. Home Vision Cinema, 1986. Majdanek 1944 [Videorecording]. National Center for Jewish Film, 1986. Shoah [Videorecording]. New Yorker Video, 1985.

LIFE UNDER THE NAZIS Auerbacher, Inge. I Am a Star: Child of the Holocaust. New York: Puffin Books, 1993. Bankier, David. The Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion under Nazism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Barnett, Victoria J. Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity During the Holocaust. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1999. Beck, Gad, et al., eds. An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin (Living Out). New York: Henry Holt, 1999. Berenbaum, Michael. A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis. New York: New York University Press, 1990. Bitton-Jackson, Livia. I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing Up in the Holocaust. New York: Scholastic, 1997. Boehm, E. H. We Survived: Fourteen Histories of the Hidden and Hunted of Nazi Germany. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 1985. Browder, George. Hitler’s Enforcers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. Browning, Christopher. The Path to Genocide: Essays on the Launching of the Final Solution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Czerniakow, Adam. The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to Doom, and the Reexamined. Edited by Raul Hilberg. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999. Dippel, John V. H. Bound Upon a Wheel of Fire: Why So Many German Jews Made the Tragic Decision to Remain in Nazi Germany. New York: Basic Books, 1996. Dobroszycki, Lucjan, ed. The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. Drucker, Olga. Kindertransport. New York: Henry Holt, 1995. Dwork, Deborah. Children with a Star: Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. Feig, Konnilyn. Hitler’s Death Camps. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1981. Fogelman, Eva. Conscience and Courage: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1994. Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl. Definitive edition. New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1996. Friedlander, Henry. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press, 1995. Friedlander, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. Gallagher, Hugh Gregory. By Trust Betrayed: Patients, Physicians, and the License to Kill in the Third Reich. New York: Henry Holt, 1990. Hilberg, Raul. Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945. New York: Aaron Asher Books, 1992. Greenfeld, Howard. The Hidden Children. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1993. Horwitz, Gordon. In the Shadow of Death: Living Outside the Gates of Mauthausen. New York: Free Press, 1990.

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RESOURCES FOR FURTHER STUDY

Kaplan, Marion. Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Klein, Gerda Weissmann. All But My Life. Revised edition. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995. Klemperer, Victor. I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, Vol. I, 1933–1941. New York: Random House, 1998. Klemperer, Victor. I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, Vol. II, 1941–1945. New York: Random House, 2000. Lacqueur, Walter. The Terrible Secret: Suppression of the Truth about Hitler’s Final Solution. Boston: Little, Brown, 1980. Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity. New York: Collier Books, 1986. Massaquoi, Hans J. Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany. New York: William Morrow, 1999. Plant, Richard. The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals. New York: Henry Holt, 1986. Smelser, Ronald, and Rainier Zitelmann, eds. The Nazi Elite. London: Macmillan, 1993. Tec, Nechama. Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. Tec, Nechama. When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in NaziOccupied Poland. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Wiesel, Elie. All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs. New York: Knopf, 1995. Wiesel, Elie. And the Sea Is Never Full: Memoirs 1969. New York: Knopf, 1999. Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Bantam Books, 1982. Zar, Rose. In the Mouth of the Wolf. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1983. Ziemian, Joseph. The Cigarette Sellers of Three Crosses Square. Minneapolis: Lerner, 1975.

MULTIMEDIA Children in the Holocaust [Videorecording]. Phoenix/Coronet/BFA Films and Video, 1983. A Day in the Warsaw Ghetto—A Birthday Trip in Hell [Videorecording]. Filmakers Library, 1993. Genocide [Videorecording]. Simon Wiesenthal Center, 1981. Genocide [Videorecording]. World at War series. HBO Home Video, 1975. Kovno Ghetto: A Buried History [Videorecording]. The History Channel, 1997. The Nazis—Witness to Genocide [Videorecording]. MPI Home Video, 1990. Survivors: Testimonies of the Holocaust [CD-ROM]. Simon & Schuster Interactive, 1999. Theresienstadt: Gateway to Auschwitz [Videorecording]. Ergo Media, 1987. Weapons of the Spirit [Videorecording]. First Run/Icarus Films, 1988. Witness to the Holocaust [Videorecording.] National Jewish Resource Center.

PERSPECTIVES ON THE HOLOCAUST Ayer, Eleanor, with Helen Waterford and Alfons Heck. Parallel Journeys. New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 1995.

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RESOURCES FOR FURTHER STUDY

Berenbaum, Michael, and Abraham J. Peck, eds. The Holocaust and History: The Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. Breitman, Richard. Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew. New York: Hill and Wang, 1998. Bridgman, Jon. The End of the Holocaust: The Liberation of the Camps. Portland: Areopagitica Press, 1990. Bukey, Evan Burr. Hitler’s Austria: Popular Sentiment in the Nazi Era, 1938–1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Eliach, Yaffa. There Once Was a World. New York: Little, Brown, 1998. Fein, Helen. Accounting for Genocide. New Brunswick: Free Press, 1979 Feingold, Henry L. The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust, 1938–1944. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1970. Feliciano, Hector. The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World’s Greatest Works of Art. New York: Basic Books, 1997. Gilbert, Martin. The Boys: The Story of 732 Young Concentration Camp Survivors. New York: Henry Holt, 1997. Gutman, Israel, Michael Berenbaum, and Raul Hilberg, eds. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998. Hassler, Alfred A. The Lifeboat Is Full: Switzerland and the Refugees, 1933–1945. New York: Funk & Wagnells, 1969. Herbert, Ulrich. Hitler’s Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany Under the Third Reich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Klee, Ernst, Willi Dreesen, and Volker Riess, eds. “The Good Old Days”: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders. New York: Free Press, 1991. Lipstadt, Deborah E. Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933–1945. New York: Free Press, 1988. Marks, Jane. The Hidden Children: The Secret Survivors of the Holocaust. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1993. Meredith, James H. Understanding the Literature of World War II: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. Rittner, Carol, and Sondra Myers, eds. The Courage to Care: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. New York: New York University Press, 1986. Rochman, Hazel, and Darlene Z. McCampbell. Bearing Witness. New York: Orchard Books, 1995. Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. Volumes I and II. New York: Pantheon, 1986, 1991. Volovkova, Hana, ed. I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children’s Drawings and Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp, 1942–1944. New York: Schocken, 1994. Weiner, Miriam. Jewish Roots in Poland. Secaucus/New York: Routes to Routes Foundation/YIVO, 1997. Weiner, Miriam. Jewish Roots in Ukraine and Moldova. Secaucus/New York: Routes to Routes Foundation/YIVO, 1999. Young, James E. The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meanings. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. Ziegler, Jean. The Swiss, the Gold and the Dead: How Swiss Bankers Helped Finance the Nazi War Machine. New York: Penguin, 1998.

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RESOURCES FOR FURTHER STUDY

Zuckerman, Abraham. A Voice in the Chorus: Life as a Teenager in the Holocaust. Hoboken: Ktav, 1991. Zuroff, Efraim. Occupation: Nazi Hunter; The Continuing Search for Perpetrators of the Holocaust. Los Angeles: Simon Wiesenthal Center, 1994.

MULTIMEDIA America and the Holocaust [Videorecording]. Shanachie Entertainment, 1994. Breaking the Silence [Videorecording]. National Center for Jewish Film, 1984. Kristallnacht: The Journey from 1938 to 1988 [Videorecording]. PBS Video, 1988. Lessons the Holocaust Can Teach Us Today[Videorecording]. Snell Media Video. The Long Way Home [Videorecording]. BWE Video, 1997. The Quarrel [Videorecording]. BMG, 1993. Return to Life: The Story of Holocaust Survivors [CD-ROM]. Sponsored by Yad Vashem.

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Photo Credits Photographs appearing in Learning About the Holocaust were reproduced with permission from the following sources:

VOLUME 1 p. 12, USHMM Photo Archives; p. 22, Leah Hammerstein Silverstein/ USHMM Photo Archives; p. 32, Gift of Sol Scharfstein, Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York; p. 36, USHMM Photo Archives; p. 38, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 42, USHMM Photo Archives; p. 45, USHMM Photo Archives; p. 49, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 50, © Martin Gilbert; p. 53, National Archives/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 59, Gift of Claire Glazer, Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York; p. 60, Gift of Rosette Bakish, Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York; p. 61, Hulton-Getty/The Gamma Liaison Network; p. 62, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 64, © Martin Gilbert; p.78, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 80, USHMM Photo Archives; p. 83, Hadassah Rosenaft Collection/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 85, National Archives/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 90, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 92, Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research; p. 93, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 94, USHMM Photo Archives; p. 98, © Martin Gilbert; p. 100, Archive Photos, Inc.; p. 102, USHMM Photo Archives; p. 105, USHMM Photo Archives; p. 106, USHMM Photo Archives; p. 108, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 113, Private Collection, courtesy of Hélène Potter; p. 115, Sidney Harcsztark Collection/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 120, Eve Nisencwajg Bergstein/USHMM Photos Archives; p. 124, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 127, Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 133, Central State Archive of Film, Photo and Phonographic Documents/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 135, USHMM Photos Archives; p. 138, © Martin Gilbert; p. 141, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 145, USHMM Photos Archives; p. 146, USHMM Photos Archives; p. 150, USHMM Photos Archives; p. 152, USHMM Photos Archives; p. 159, Frihedsmuseet/ USHMM Photo Archives; p. 164, National Museum of American Jewish History/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 169, Collection of Ben Kaplan. Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York; p. 171, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 173, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 177, Archives of the YIVO Institute of Jewish Research; p. 178, Library of Congress; p. 180, Hulton-Getty/Tony Stone Images; p. 182, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 184, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 187, Stadtarchiv Nuerenberg/USHMM Photo

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Archives; p. 191, National Archives/USHMM Photos Archives; p. 193, © Polish Scientific Publishers PWN.

VOLUME 2 p. 3, Archive Photos, Inc.; p. 5, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 14, National Archives/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 16, USHMM Photo Archives; p. 20, Snark/Art Resource; p. 21, Archive Photos, Inc.; p. 27, AP/Wide World Photos; p. 29, UPI/Bettmann Archive. Corbis Corporation; p. 32, Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturdesitz; p. 33, Lena Fagen/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 34, Rijksinstituut Voor Oorlogsdocumentatie/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 38, National Museum in Majdanek/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 40, © Martin Gilbert; p. 46, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 48, © Martin Gilbert; p. 53, Landesbildstelle Baden/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 55, National Archives/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 56, © Martin Gilbert; p. 57, © Martin Gilbert; p. 60, Popperfoto/Archive Photos, Inc.; p. 64, Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research; p. 65, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 66, AP/Wide World Photos; p. 72, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 75, Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research; p. 79, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 80, USHMM Photo Archives; p. 82, Jerzy Ficowski/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 85, USHMM Photo Archives; p. 88, AP/Wide World Photos; p. 89, Archive Photos, Inc.; p. 93, © Corbis Corporation; p. 98, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation. Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York; p. 106, Library of Congress; p. 107, Archive Photos, Inc.; p. 109, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 112, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 117, National Archives/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 118, © Bettmann Archives/Corbis Corporation; p. 122, USHMM Photo Archives; p. 119, © Martin Gilbert; p. 125, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 126, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 133, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 139, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 141, National Museum of American Jewish History/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 145, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 146, Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research; p. 147, Jewish Community Center of New Orleans; p. 152, Pafal Imbro Collection/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 154, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 156, © Corbis Corporation; p. 157, AP/Wide World Photos; p. 160, Ghetto Fighters House/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 168, Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 169, National Archives in Krakow/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 171, Imperial War Museum/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 172, Anthony Potter Collection/Archive Photos, Inc.; p. 174, Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

VOLUME 3 p. 2, © Martin Gilbert; p. 5, Archive Photos, Inc./Popperfoto; p. 6, Library of Congress; p. 8, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 9, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 18, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 20, USHMM Photo Archives; p. 25, Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research; p. 31, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 35, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 38, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 45, USHMM Photo Archives; p. 49, Mauthausen Museum Archives/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 50, USHMM Photo Archives; p. 55, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 61, Hulton Getty Collection/Archive Photos, Inc.; p. 63, Archive Photos, Inc.; p. 65, Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research; p. 71, USHMM Photo Archives; p. 75, Max Reed/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 77, Susan D. Rock; p. 81, © Corbis Corporation; p. 85, © Martin Gilbert; p. 87, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 89, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 93, © Martin Gilbert; p. 95, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 101,

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AP/Wide World Photos; p.105, USHMM Photo Archives; p. 109, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 116, USHMM Photo Archives; p. 113, Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research; p. 121, USHMM Photo Archives; p. 125, © Polish National Publishing House; p. 129, Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research; p. 132, © Martin Gilbert; p. 142, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 143, John Menszer/Shep Zitler; p. 147, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 150, Library of Congress; 155, USHMM Photo Archives; p. 159, Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research; p. 161, Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbursitz; p. 167, Hulton Getty Collection/Archive Photos, Inc.; p. 170, Government Press Office, Jerusalem/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 175, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 178, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 180, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 183, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 183, Gallagher Collection/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 185, Instytut Pamieci Narodowej/Institute of National Memory/USHMM Photo Archives.

Volume 4 p. 2, USHMM Photos Archives; p.3, USHMM Photos Archives; p. 5, Instytut Pamieci Narodowej/Institute of National Memory/USHMM Photo Archives; p. 6 Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 8, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 11, © Martin Gilbert; p. 13, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 16, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 20, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 29, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 34, AP/Wide World Photos; p. 38, © Corbis; p. 39, © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/ Corbis; p. 40, Snark/Art Resource; p. 45, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 52, Beit Hannah Senesh/USHMM Photos Archives; p. 54, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 57, Gift of Erna Levi, Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York; p. 58, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research; p. 67, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 70, AP/Wide World Photos; p. 73, AP/Wide World Photos; p. 89, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 99, National Archives/USHMM Photos Archives; p. 103, Yad Vashem Photo Archives; p. 109, Gift of Katalin Szeekely, Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York; p. 110, UPI/Corbis-Bettmann; p. 120, Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz; p. 127, USHMM Photos Archives; p. 130, Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz; p. 133, National Archives/USHMM Photos Archives; p. 136 USHMM Photos Archives; p. 137, AP/Wide World Photos; p. 139, Corbis Corporation; p. 141, National Archives/USHMM Photos Archives; p. 146, USHMM Photos Archives; p. 156, USHMM Photos Archives.

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Text Credits The editors wish to thank the copyright holders of the excerpted criticism included in this volume and the permissions managers of many book and magazine publishing companies for assisting us in securing reproduction rights. We are also grateful to the staffs of the Detroit Public Library, the Library of Congress, the University of Detroit Mercy Library, Wayne State University Purdy/Kresge Library Complex, and the University of Michigan Libraries for making their resources available to us. Following is a list of the copyright holders who have granted us permission to reproduce material in Learning About the Holocaust. Every effort has been made to trace copyright, but if omissions have been made, please let us know. COPYRIGHTED EXCERPTS IN Learning About the Holocaust WERE REPRODUCED FROM THE FOLLOWING PERIODICALS: Congressional Record, v. 14, October, 1968. COPYRIGHTED EXCERPTS IN Learning About the Holocaust WERE REPRODUCED FROM THE FOLLOWING BOOKS: Anielewicz, Mordecai. From a letter in Documents on the Holocaust. Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds. Ktav Publishers House, 1982, in association with Yad Vashem. Reproduced by permission of Yad Vashem.—Becker, Dr. From a letter in Documents on the Holocaust. Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds. Ktav Publishers House, 1982, in association with Yad Vashem. Reproduced by permission of Yad Vashem.—Bormann, M. From “Hitler Bans Public Reference to the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question,’ July 11, 1943,” in Documents on the Holocaust. Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds. Ktav Publishers House, 1982, in association with Yad Vashem. Reproduced by permission of Yad Vashem.—Brack, Viktor. From “Proposal for the Sterilization of 2-3 Million Jewish Workers, June 23, 1942,” in Documents on the Holocaust. Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds. Ktav Publishers House, 1982, in association with Yad Vashem. Reproduced by permission of Yad Vashem.—Central Construction Office. From a letter in Documents of Destruction: Germany and Jewry, 1933-1945. Edited by Raul Hilberg. Quadrangle Books, 1971. Copyright © 1971 by Raul Hilberg. All rights reserved.—Cohen, Judy (Weissennberg). From Auschwitz-Birkenau. May 4, 1997. Women and Holocaust, http://interlog. com/~mighty/poetry/poetry5.html. Reproduced by permission. (May 24, 2000). Reproduced by permission from the author.—Czerniakow, Adam. From a diary entry in Documents on the Holocaust. Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman,

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and Abraham Margaliot, eds. Ktav Publishers House, 1982, in association with Yad Vashem. Reproduced by permission of Yad Vashem.—Dannecker. From a letter in Documents of Destruction: Germany and Jewry, 1933-1945. Edited by Raul Hilberg. Quadrangle Books, 1971. Copyright © 1971 by Raul Hilberg. All rights reserved.—Donat, Alexander. From The Holocaust Kingdom: A Memoir. Holocaust Library, 1978. Reproduced by permission.—Eberl, Dr. From a letter in Documents of Destruction: Germany and Jewry, 1933-1945. Edited by Raul Hilberg. Quadrangle Books, 1971. Copyright © 1971 by Raul Hilberg. All rights reserved.— Fonseca, Isabel. From Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey. Vintage Books, 1996. Copyright © 1995 by Isabel Fonseca. Reproduced by permission of Alfred A Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. In the UK by Wylie Agency.—From a diary entry in Documents on the Holocaust. Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds. Ktav Publishers House, 1982, in association with Yad Vashem. Reproduced by permission of Yad Vashem.—From “A Summons to Resistance in the Vilna Ghetto, January, 1942,” in A Holocaust Reader. Edited by Lucy S. Dawidowicz. Behrman House, Inc., 1976. © copyright 1976, by Lucy S. Dawidowicz. Reproduced by permission.—From “Declaration of the Boycott by the Nazi Party Leadership, March 28, 1933,” in Witness to the Holocaust. Edited by Michael Berenbaum. HarperCollins, 1997. Copyright © 1997 by Michael Berenbaum. All rights reserved.—From “Establishment of Judenrate (Jewish Councils) in the Occupied Territories, November 28, 1939,” in Documents on the Holocaust. Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds. Ktav Publishers House, 1982, in association with Yad Vashem. Reproduced by permission of Yad Vashem.—From “First Ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Law, November 15, 1935,” in Documents of Destruction: Germany and Jewry, 1933-1945. Edited by Raul Hilberg. Quadrangle Books, 1971. Copyright © 1971 by Raul Hilberg. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of Random House, Inc.—From “Instructions for the Deportation of the Jews from the Palantinate (Pfalz), October, 1940,” in Documents on the Holocaust. Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds. Ktav Publishers House, 1982, in association with Yad Vashem. Reproduced by permission of Yad Vashem.—From “Law Against the Overcrowding of German Schools and Institutions of Higher Learning, April 25, 1933,” in Witness to the Holocaust. Edited by Michael Berenbaum. HarperCollins, 1997. Copyright © 1997 by Michael Berenbaum. All rights reserved.—From “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, September 15, 1935,” in Witness to the Holocaust. Edited by Michael Berenbaum. HarperCollins, 1997. Copyright © 1997 by Michael Berenbaum. All rights reserved.—From “Observations about the ‘Resettlement of Jews in the General Government’,” in Documents of Destruction: Germany and Jewry, 19331945. Edited by Raul Hilberg. Quadrangle Books, 1971. Copyright © 1971 by Raul Hilberg. All rights reserved.—From “Order Banning the Emigration of Jews from the Reich, October, 1941,” in Documents on the Holocaust. Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds. Ktav Publishers House, 1982, in association with Yad Vashem. Reproduced by permission of Yad Vashem.—From “Order by Fischer on the Establishment of a Ghetto in Warsaw, October 2, 1940,” in Documents on the Holocaust. Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds. Ktav Publishers House, 1982, in association with Yad Vashem. Reproduced by permission of Yad Vashem.—From “The Madagascar Plan, July, 1940,” in Documents on the Holocaust. Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds. Ktav Publishers House, 1982, in association with Yad Vashem. Reproduced by permission of Yad Vashem.—From “The Program of the National-Socialist (Nazi) German Worker’s Party,” in Documents on

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the Holocaust. Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds. Ktav Publishers House, 1982, in association with Yad Vashem. Reproduced by permission of Yad Vashem.—Galnick, Werner. From “Werner Galnick,” in Children of the Holocaust and World War II: Their Secret Diaries. Edited by Laurel Holliday. Washington Square Press, 1996. Copyright © 1995 by Laurel Holliday. Reproduced by permission of Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.—Gilbert, Martin. From The Holocaust: A History of the Jews in Europe during the Second World War. Henry Holt and Company, 1986. Copyright © 1985 by Martin Gilbert. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. In the U.K. by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.—Goring, Hermann. From a letter in Documents on the Holocaust. Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds. Ktav Publishers House, 1982, in association with Yad Vashem. Reproduced by permission of Yad Vashem.—Goring, Hermann. From “Regulation for the Elimination of the Jews from the Economic Life of Germany, November 12, 1938,” in Documents on the Holocaust. Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds. Ktav Publishers House, 1982, in association with Yad Vashem. Reproduced by permission of Yad Vashem.—Greenfeld, Howard. From The Hidden Children. Ticknor & Fields, 1993. Copyright © 1993 by Howard Greenfeld. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.—Gutman, Yisrael, and Shmuel Krakowski. From Unequal Victims: Poles and Jews during World War Two. Translated by Ted Gorelick and Witold Jedlicki. Holocaust Library, 1986. Reproduced by permission.—Hachenburg, Hanus. From “Terezin,” in I Never Saw another Butterfly . . .: Children’s Drawings and Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp, 1942-1944. Edited by Hana Volavkova, translated by Jeanne Nemlova. Copyright © 1978, 1993 by Artia, Prague. Compilation © 1993 by Schocken Books. Reproduced by permission of Schocken Books, a division of Random House, Inc.—Hallie, Philip. From Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There. HarperPerennial, 1994. Copyright © 1979, 1994 by Philip Hallie. Reproduced by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.—Heydrich, Reinhard. From “Instructions for Measures Against Jews,” in Witness to the Holocaust. Edited by Michael Berenbaum. HarperCollins, 1997. Copyright © 1997 by Michael Berenbaum. All rights reserved.—Heyen, William. From “Riddle,” in Holocaust Poetry. Edited by Hilda Schiff. Copyright © 1995 Hilda Schiff. Reproduced by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.—Hitler, Adolf. From “Political Testament,” in Witness to the Holocaust. Edited by Michael Berenbaum. HarperCollins, 1997. Copyright © 1997 by Michael Berenbaum. All rights reserved.—Jackson, Livia E. Bitton. From Elli: Coming of Age in the Holocaust. Times Books, 1980. Copyright © 1980 by Livia E. Bitton Jackson. All rights reserved.—Kaplan, Chaim A. From a diary entry in Documents on the Holocaust. Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds. Ktav Publishers House, 1982, in association with Yad Vashem. Reproduced by permission of Yad Vashem.—Klein, Gerda Weissmann. From All But My Life: A Memoir. Revised Edition. Hill and Wang, 1995. Copyright © 1957, renewed 1995 by Gerda Weissmann Klein. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. In the U.K. by Victor Gollancz Ltd.—Klein, Gerda Weissmann. From All But My Life: A Memoir. Revised Edition. Hill and Wang, 1995. Copyright © 1957, renewed 1995 by Gerda Weissmann Klein. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. In the U.K. by Victor Gollancz Ltd.—Langer, Lawrence L. From Admitting the Holocaust: Collected Essays. Oxford University Press, 1995. Copyright © 1996 by Lawrence L.

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Langer. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.—Levi, Primo. From Primo Levi: Collected Poems. Translated by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann. Faber and Faber Limited, 1988. English translation © 1988 by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann. Reproduced by permission of Faber & Faber, Inc., an affiliate of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.—Levin, Nora. From The Holocaust Years: The Destruction of European Jewry, 1933-1945. Thomas Y. Crowell, 1968. Copyright © 1968 by Nora Levin. All rights reserved.—Levin, Nora. From The Holocaust Years: The Destruction of European Jewry, 1933-1945. Thomas Y. Crowell, 1968. Copyright © 1968 by Nora Levin. All rights reserved.—Lukas, Richard. From The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939-1944. University Press of Kentucky, 1986. © 1986 by the University Press of Kentucky. Reproduced by permission.—Nowicki, Klemak. From an excerpt in The Hidden Children. By Howard Greenfeld. Ticknor & Fields, 1993. Copyright © 1993 by Howard Greenfeld. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.—Rabinovici, Schoschana. From Thanks to My Mother. Translated by James Skofield. Dial Books, 1998. English translation copyright © Dial Books, 1998.—Ranasinghe, Anne. From “Holocaust 1944,” in Holocaust Poetry. Edited by Hilda Schiff. Fount Paperbacks, 1995. Copyright © 1995 Hilda Schiff. Reproduced by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.—Rudashevski, Yitskhok. From a diary entry in Children of the Holocaust and World War II: Their Secret Diaries. Edited by Laurel Holliday. Washington Square Press, 1996. Copyright © 1995 by Laurel Holliday. Reproduced by permission of Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.—Senesh, Hannah. From Hannah Senesh: Her Life and Diary. Translated by Marta Cohen. Vallentine, Mitchell and Co. Ltd., 1971. Reproduced by permission of Schocken Books, a division of Random House, Inc.— Seyss-Inquart. From a letter in Documents of Destruction: Germany and Jewry, 1933-1945. Edited by Raul Hilberg. Quadrangle Books, 1971. Copyright © 1971 by Raul Hilberg. All rights reserved.—Sutzkever, Abraham. From “A Cartload of Shoes,” translated by David G. Roskies, in Holocaust Poetry. Edited by Hilda Schiff. Fount Paperbacks, 1995. Copyright © 1995 Hilda Schiff. Reproduced by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.—Westerweel, Joop. From a letter in Martyrs and Fighters: Epic of the Warsaw Ghetto. Edited by Philip Friedman. Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1954. Copyright 1954 by Club of Polish Jews, Inc.—Wiesel, Elie. From Dimensions of the Holocaust: Lectures at Northwestern University. By Elie Wiesel and others. Northwestern University Press, 1977. © 1977 by Northwestern University. All rights reserved.— Wiesel, Elie. From Night. Translated by Stella Rodway. Hill and Wang, 1960. Copyright © 1960 by MacGibbon & Kee. Copyright renewed © 1988 by The Collins Publishing Group. Reproduced by permission of Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. In the U.K. by Georges Borchardt, Inc.—Yevtushenko, Yevgeny. From “Babii Yar,” in Early Poems. Selected, edited and translated by George Reavey. Marion Boyars, 1989. © Marion Boyars Publishers 1966, 1989. This translation © George Reavey 1969, 1989. Reproduced by permission of Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd.—Zelkowicz, Josef. From a journal entry in A Holocaust Reader. Edited by Lucy S. Dawidowicz. Behrman House, Inc., 1976. Reproduced by permission.—Zuckerman, Isaac. From a letter in The Fighting Ghettoes. By Meyer Barkai. J. B. Lippincott, 1962. Copyright © 1962 by Meyer Barkai.

214

Index A Abegg, Elisabeth, 3: 179 Adamowicz, Irena, 2: 165, 3: 179-180 AFSC. See American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) AGFA Camera Company, 2: 14 Aid to Jews by Allies after the War, 1: 167 by Belorussians, 1: 91 by Catholic church in Belgium, 1: 66 donations of foreign currency for travel, 1: 51 by Poles, 1: 1-3, 914: 128 by Ukrainians, 1: 55 See also Non-Jews who aided Jews See also Rescue of European Jews Akiva, 4: 148 in Kraków, 2: 170 Aktion, 4: 28 Aktion, Itelligenz, 2: 169 Aktion “Erntefest.” See Erntefest (“Harvest Festival”) Aktion 1005, 1: 4-6 at Babi Yar, 1: 55 map of, 1: 5 Aktion M (“Operation Furniture”), 3: 88 Aktion Reinhard, 1: 6-9 See also Erntefest (“Harvest Festival”) Aktion T4. See Euthanasia Program Algeria, 3: 171 Aliya Bet, 1: 9-13 Allied Control Council Law No. 10, 4: 75 Allies definition of, 1: 64 effect on Jews of Allies’ German policy, 2: 69 efforts to aid displaced persons, 1: 167, 4: 90 liberation of Jews in southern Italy, 2: 120 postwar disunity among, 1: 155-156 refusal to bomb Auschwitz, 1: 47 responses to Jewish refugees, 19421945, 4: 95

American Friends Service Committee (Quakers), 1: 13-14, 3: 167 American Jewish Committee, 1: 15, 17 American Jewish Conference, 1: 16 American Jewish Congress, 1: 14, 17, 4: 143 American Jewish Distribution Committee. See Joint Distribution Committee American Jewish literature about the Holocaust, 3: 11-12 American Jewish organizations, 1: 14-16, 17 founded by Stephen Samuel Wise, 4: 140-141 Rescue Committee of United States Orthodox Rabbis, 3: 164-166 for rescue of Jewish children, 3: 166 See also Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) American Jews advisors to Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1: 17-18, 3: 69-71 and the Holocaust, 1: 16-19 and the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), 2: 138-139 Orthodox Rabbis, 3: 165 and the Rescue Committee of the United States American press and the Holocaust, 1: 20-21 American Quakers’ reaction to Nazism, 1: 13 American zone denazification, 1: 154 displaced persons’ camps, 1: 168 United States Army role, 4: 90-92 Amsterdam, 3: 85, 86-87 deportations from, 3: 89 Anne Frank’s life in, 2: 26-33 Anielewicz, Mordecai, 1: 21-24, 22, 4: 155, 196 Anne Frank Foundation, 2: 32 Anne Frank house, 2: 31-32 Annex, The (Anne Frank), 2: 30 Anschluss, 1: 50-51 historical context of, 2: 54 Anti-Defamation League (ADL), 1: 15 Antifascist Bloc, 2: 130

Antifascist Struggle Organization, 2: 165 Anti-Gypsy legislation, 2: 81, 82-84 Anti-Jewish boycotts, 1: 102-104 Anti-Jewish legislation Croatia, 1: 139 France, 2: 135-136 Germany, 1: 24-27, 2: 51, 52, 54 Hungary, 2: 108 Italy, 2: 120 “Jewish Code” in Slovakia, 4: 12 Lösener, Bernard, 3: 28 Nazi marriage laws, 1: 25, 2: 90, 3: 66, 96, 4: 180-181 by Ustasˇa in Croatia, 1: 139 See also Nuremberg Laws Anti-Jewish measures Austria, 1: 50, 52-53, 2: 171-174 Belgium, 1: 64-65 Berlin, 1: 84-86 Bohemia and Moravia, 1: 97-98 Budapest, 1: 109 Croatia, 1: 139 Dvinsk, 1: 174 France, 2: 22-23 by French police, 2: 35-36 Generalgouvernement, 2: 40 German-occupied countries, 2: 56 Germany, 2: 50-55, 56-57, 171-174 Hungary, 2: 109-110, 113, 114 Kovno, 2: 164 L ⁄ ódz´, 3: 20 Lublin, 3: 30 Lvov, 3: 37 Netherlands, 3: 87-88 Order Banning the Emigration of Jews from the Reich 4: 188-189 Paris, 3: 111-112 Poland, 3: 131-132 Prague, 1: 99 Riga, 3: 176 Slovakia, 4: 12 by Soviets, 1: 72, 4: 22 Tarnów, 4: 52-53 Ternopol, 4: 55-56 Ukraine, 2: 109-110

215

INDEX

Anti-Jewish measures (continued) Vienna, 4: 99 Vilna, 4: 102-103 Warsaw, 4: 115, 117-118 See also Curfews and restrictions on Jews in public See also Economic measures against Jews See also Mass murders by Nazis See also Public humiliation of Jews See also Seizures of Jewish possessions See also Synagogues, destruction of Anti-Judaism, Christian-inspired, 1: 119 Anti-Nazi coalition, Baum Gruppe, 1: 6263 Anti-Polish measures, 2: 40, 3: 127 Antisemite and Jew (Sartre), 1: 29 Antisemitism, 1: 27-34 of the Catholic saint who rescued Jews, 2: 157 definition of, 1: 27 effect on Jews in America, 1: 18 and fascism, 2: 4 in France, 2: 18-19, 20 in Germany, 2: 48-49 of Goebbels, 2: 67 of Hitler, 2: 93-94, 95 impact on Jewish partisans, 3: 114-115, 117 importance for the Nazi Party, 3: 80 in Italy, 2: 119-120 in Lithuania, 3: 16 in Lvov, 3: 36 postwar, 1: 167, 2: 171 postwar Poland, 2: 153 postwar Soviet Union, 4: 25 postwar Ukraine, 4: 86 relationship to racism, 3: 151 in Slovakia, 4: 12 of Stricher, Julius, 4: 37-38 in the United States, 4: 94 See also Holocaust: denial of See also Pogroms See also Protocols of the Elders of Zion “Antisemitism of reason,” 2: 8 Antwerp, Zionist youth movements in, 1: 67 Antwerp pogrom, 1: 66 Apartments Budapest refuges for Jews, 1: 110, 3: 35, 4: 110 designated by Nazis for Jews, 1: 108, 2: 57, 4: 12, 114 Nazi seizures of Jews’, 1: 36-37, 38, 4: 99, 100, 109 Appeasement of Nazi Germany, 2: 69-70 Arajs Commando, 3: 3 Archives. See Books; Documents of the Holocaust; Museums Arendt, Hannah, 3: 13 Arisierung. See Aryanization Armbands of Jewish ghetto police, 2: 133 swastika, 2: 93 white, with blue Star of David, 4: 117

216

Armed resistance by Jews, 3: 170-171, 172174 assassination attempts on Nazis, 2: 74, 170 in Belgium, 1: 68 decisions about, 2: 170 Liebeskind’s famous quote about, 3: 9 origins of, 3: 140 in Poland, 2: 6-7 in Warsaw, 4: 125, 130-131 by youth movements, 4: 148-149 Zuckerman, Yitzhak, views about, 4: 154 See also Jewish Fighting Organization (Z˙OB) See also Uprisings Armia Krajowa. See Home Army (Armia Krajowa) Arrow Cross Party, 1: 34-35, 2: 112-113 activity in Budapest, 1: 109 Art works belonging to Jews, 1: 50, 65, 3: 184 Aryanization, 1: 35-38 Austria, 1: 50-51 Belgium, 1: 65 Berlin, 1: 84 Bohemia and Moravia, 1: 98 definition of, 1: 35 following Kristallnacht, 2: 174 Netherlands, 3: 86 Paris, 3: 111-112 Poland, 3: 131 Slovakia, 4: 12 by Vichy government, 2: 22 Aryans Alfred Rosenberg’s writings about, 3: 184 Aryan clause in bylaws of German organizations, 1: 25 history of, 3: 149 Nazi classification of Mischlinge as, 3: 67-68 Nazi definition of, 3: 152 Nazi notion of Aryan beauty, 3: 150 Nazi research to identify, 3: 53 See also Non-Jews See also Pregnancy experiments by Nazis Asiatic-Jewish-Bolshevik threat, 3: 164 Asocials Nazi classification of groups of people as, 1: 126 Nazi view of Gypsies as, 2: 82 Assassinations and attempted assassinations of German officers in Kraków, 2: 170 of Grodno ghetto commanders, 2: 74 of Hitler, 3: 29, 67, 73, 85 Association for Jews in Germany, 2: 58 Association of Jews in Belgium (AJB), 1: 64 Atlas, Yeheskel, 1: 38 “Atonement payment,” 1: 37 Attacks on Jews. See Anti-Jewish measures Auerswald, Heinz, 1: 39 Auschwitz, 1: 40-49 entrance to, 1: 127 gas chambers at, 2: 39, 43, 45 I. G. Farben relationship with, 2: 116 survivor accounts of, 1: 129, 3: 6-7

See also Zyklon B Auschwitz Protocols, 4: 14 Australia’s position at Evian Conference, 1: 190 Austria, 1: 49-54 antisemitism in, 1: 31 Central Office for Jewish Emigration, 1: 51, 112 Jewish youth movement, 4: 145-146 map of annexed, 1: 50 Mauthausen, 3: 45-51 See also Vienna Austrian Nazis, 1: 50 Autobiographies Holocaust survivors, 3: 14 Hoss, Rudolf, 2: 108 Wise, Stephen Samuel, 4: 141 Zuckerman, Yitzhak, 4: 154 Axis criminals, definition of, 3: 98 Axis powers, 2: 110 anti-Jewish legislation in, 1: 27 Hungary’s entry into, 2: 111

B Babi Yar, 1: 54-56 account of an eyewitness, 3: 106 escape of prisoners from, 1: 5 “Babii Yar” (Yevtuskenko), 1: 56 Bach-Zelewski, Erich von dem, 1: 56-57 Badges for categories of Jews in ghettos, 1: 58 pink triangle, 2: 105, 4: 2 for Polish and Russian laborers, 2: 15 for prisoners, 1: 61, 131 swastika, 2: 93 See also Armbands See also ID cards See also Jewish badge, 1: 57-61 Balkan states deportations of Jews from, 1: 165 partisan activity by Jews, 3: 115 See also Bulgaria See also Greece See also Yugoslavia Ballad of Mauthausen (Theodorakis and Kambanelis), 3: 51 Baltic states Gypsies, 2: 86 Lohse, Hinrich, 3: 28 partisan activity by Jews, 3: 115 Bank accounts, Nazi seizure of Jews’, 1: 37 Banks, Nazi seizures of Jews’, 1: 35 Barbie, Klaus, 1: 61-62 Barth, Karl, 1: 119 BASF (German company), 2: 115, 117 Battle of Britain, 2: 68 Baum Gruppe (Anti-Nazi organization), 1: 62-63 Bayer (German company), 2: 115, 117 Beer-Hall Putsch, 2: 33, 3: 81 Belarus. See Belorussia Belgium, 1: 63-69 Catholics, 1: 121 deportation of Jews from, 1: 164 Jewish Brigade Group activities, 2: 128

INDEX

position at Evian Conference, 1: 190 protest of Jewish badge, 1: 66 Belorussia, 1: 69-73 Grodno, 2: 73-75 Hitler’s plan to resettle, 2: 42 Lohse, Hinrich, 3: 28 map of, 1: 70 Minsk, 1: 72-73, 3: 63-66, 4: 21 partisans, 3: 115-116 Vitebsk, 4: 105-106 Bel⁄z˙ec, 1: 7, 73-77 Benoît, Marie, 1: 78-79 Bereza-Kartuska, 2: 5 Bergen-Belsen, 1: 79-83 postwar displaced persons’ camps, 1: 82, 168 Bergen-Belsen Trial, 4: 74 Bergson Group, 1: 19 Berlin, 1: 83-87 anti-Nazi coalition, 1: 62-63 Bermuda Conference, 1: 191-192, 3: 161 Best, Werner, 1: 87-88 Betar, 4: 147, 148 Bial⁄ystok, 1: 71, 88-92 underground groups in, 2: 74, 75-76 Biarritz (Goedsche), 1: 30 Biebow, Hans, 1: 92-93 Bielski, Tuvia, 1: 93-94 Birkenau, 1: 41-42, 194 Black people forced sterilization of, by Nazis, 1: 186-187 Jesse Owens in Germany, 3: 150 medical experiments on/about, by Nazis, 3: 59 parallels between American racism and Nazi antisemitism, 3: 151 Blechhammer camp death marches, 1: 151 Blobel, Paul, 1: 94-95 Blood, Nazi experiments about, 3: 59 “Blood for Goods,” 1: 181, 2: 148, 4: 142 Blum, Abraham, 1: 95-96 ´ nai B ´ rith, 1: 14-15 B Bodies. See Corpses Bogaard, Johannes, 1: 96-97 Bohemia and Moravia, Protectorate of 1: 97-99 Gypsies, 2: 85 Jewish badge, 1: 58 Jews deported to Minsk, 3: 65 map of annexed, 1: 98 mass murder of Jews from, 1: 72 Nazi expulsions of Jews from, 4: 57 Nazi plan to deport Jews to Poland, 3: 92-93 Nazi treatment of intellectuals, 3: 47 Volksdeutsche, 4: 107 youth movements, 4: 149-150 Bolshevik Revolution, 1: 30 Bolzano camp, 2: 121 Books antisemitic, 3: 146-148 antisemtic children’s, 1: 32 book-burning, Goebbels’ role, 2: 66 book-burning, in Berlin, 1: 85 clandestine libraries, 4: 122

hidden from Nazis by Jews, 3: 87 Nazi ban on Jews’ ownership of, 2: 164 Nazi seizure of Jews’ libraries, 3: 88 See also Literature of the Holocaust Bormann, Martin, 1: 100-101 Bosnia, Jews in, 1: 139 Bothmann, Hans, 1: 101, 114 Boycott against Nazi Germany, 1: 102, 103, 4: 140, 143 Boycotts of Jewish businesses, 1: 35, 36, 102-104 Nazi discussions about, 3: 96-97 Brandt, Karl, 1: 188, 3: 53 Britain. See Great Britain British military enlistment of Jews in, 2: 73 Jewish Brigade Group, 2: 125-127 lack of preparedness, 2: 67-68 British zone denazification, 1: 154 displaced persons’ camp, 1: 168 Brussels, Zionist youth movements in, 1: 67 Buber, Martin, 2: 91 Buchenwald, 1: 105-107 death marches from, 1: 151-152 Budapest, 1: 107-110 death march, 1: 151 ghetto, 2: 114 Jewish resistance groups, 2: 170 mass murder of Jews by Nazis, 1: 34 Relief and Rescue Committee, 2: 148149 Budzyn´, 1: 110-111 Bulgaria deportation of Jews from, 1: 165 Jewish badge, 1: 60 partisans, 3: 119 Buna-Monowitz (Auschwitz III), 1: 41 Bund, 1: 63 Bund leaders Blum, Abraham, 1: 95-96 Feiner, Leon, 2: 4-5 in Warsaw ghetto, 2: 129-130

C Camp conditions, 1: 129, 130 Bergen-Belsen in April 1945, 4: 75 Budzyn´, 1: 111 Dachau in its last days, 1: 147 Gross-Rosen, 2: 77 Gurs (detention camp), 2: 80 Majdanek, 3: 44, 47 Mauthausen, 3: 47-48 for prisoners who worked, 2: 77 Camp layout and facilities Auschwitz, 1: 40-41 barracks at Dachau, 1: 146 barracks at Theresienstadt, 4: 58 barracks in Majdanek, 3: 45 Bel⁄z˙ec, 1: 75 Bergen-Belsen, 1: 79-80, 81 Buchenwald, 1: 104, 106 Chel⁄mno, 1: 114 Drancy (transit camp), 1: 172 Majdanek, 3: 43

maps of, 1: 74, 4: 16, 64 Mauthausen, 3: 47 Pl⁄asów, 3: 121 Skarz˙ysko-Kamienna, 4: 10 Sobibór, 4: 15 Treblinka, 4: 63-64 See also Crematoriums See also Gas chambers Camp procedures for prisoners Auschwitz, 1: 42-44 Bel⁄z˙ec, 1: 75-76 Chel⁄mno, 1: 115-116 in concentration camps, 1: 130-131 Dachau, 1: 145-153 Drancy (transit camp), 1: 173-174 at extermination camps, 2: 38-39 Sobibór, 4: 16-17 Treblinka, 4: 65-67 Camps for displaced persons after the war, 1: 82, 166-170 survivors’ reactions to, 4: 47-48, 138 tent camps, 3: 47, 50 types of Nazi, 1: 124, 127 See also Concentration camps See also Detention camps See also Extermination camps See also Labor camps See also Liquidation of camps See also Prisoners See also Transit camps Camp staff Auschwitz, 1: 45-45, 3: 146 Bel⁄z˙ec, 1: 73 Bergen-Belsen, 1: 79, 81-82 Chel⁄mno, 1: 114-115 Dachau, 1: 143-144 Death’s-Head Units, 4: 31-32 Drancy (transit camp), 1: 172 of extermination camps, 1: 194 Mauthausen, 3: 48 Pl⁄asów, 3: 122 Ravensbrück, 3: 155 Skarz˙ysko-Kamienna, 4: 10 Sobibór, 4: 15 Stutthof, 4: 42-43 Treblinka, 4: 64-65, 66 Westerbork, 4: 135 See also Trials of war criminals Canada’s position at Evian Conference, 1: 190 Carbon monoxide gas, 2: 37, 39, 4: 156 “Cartload of Shoes, A” (Sutzkever), 3: 10 Carus, Carl Gustav, 3: 150 Catholic church aid to Jews in Belgium, 1: 66 in Amsterdam, 3: 89 attitudes towards Nazi persecution of Jews, 1: 119-121 in Croatia, 1: 140-141 denunciation of the Nazis, 2: 54 in France, 2: 18, 23 Holocaust saint, 2: 156 in Italy, 2: 120 Nazi medical experiments on priests, 3: 57 Nazi persecution of, 1: 121

217

INDEX

Catholic church (continued) in Poland, 3: 127 CDJ (Jewish Defense Committee), 1: 68 Central Europe, antisemitism in, 1: 28-29 Central Office for Jewish Emigration, 1: 51, 3: 89, 95, 98, 111-112 Central Union of German Citizens of Jewish Faith, 1: 112-114 Hirsch, Otto, and, 2: 91-92 Central Union of Jews in Germany, 1: 114 Certificate of Honor to Righteous Among the Nations, 3: 178 Certificates of employment for Jews, 3: 38, 39, 4: 103-104, 112, 123, 185 Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, 1: 33 Chamberlain, Neville, 2: 67, 70 Chambon-sur-Lignon. See Le Chambonsur-Lignon Chapters from the Legacy (Zuckerman), 4: 154 Chel⁄mno, 1: 114-118 Chemical-warfare experiments by Nazis, 3: 57 Children abandoned in Austria, 1: 51 antisemitic books for, 1: 32 deported from Bial⁄ystok, 1: 71, 91 deported from Izieu, France, 1: 62 deported from Paris as Allies landed, 3: 112, 113 deported from Warsaw, 4: 124 detention camp for, 3: 155 exterminated at Chel⁄mno, 1: 116 feelings of one deported from L ⁄ ódz´, 3: 22-23 hidden among Catholics, 1: 120 hidden by the Dutch, 3: 90 Janusz Korczak’s work with, 2: 159162 number who perished in the Holocaust, 3: 76 orphaned, 1: 175, 2: 25, 3: 64, 90, 4: 100, 153 parents forced to choose among, 4: 103-104 Polish, 4: 152 prisoners who became partisans, 1: 111 refugees, German Jewish, 3: 167 refugees, in Great Britain, 2: 72, 73 role in the resistance, 3: 65 saved in Budapest, 1: 110 smugglers in the ghetto, 4: 121-122, 123 soup kitchens for, 3: 135 of survivors, 4: 49-50 working, 2: 16 See also Frank, Anne See also Rescue of Jewish children Children’s Block 66 (Buchenwald), 1: 106 Choms, Wl⁄adysl⁄awa, 1: 118-119 Christian churches, 1: 119-123 contribution to antisemitism, 1: 28 protests against antisemitism, 1: 119 See also Catholic church Christian X (King of Denmark), 1: 160 Chronicles of the L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto, 3: 25-27

218

Churchill, Winston as Great Britain’s war leader, 2: 68, 69, 70 and the Jewish Brigade Group, 2: 127, 128 postwar denazification efforts by, 1: 154 Citizenship Law, Reich, 1: 25, 26 Class and racism in Germany, 3: 152 Clauberg, Carl, 1: 123-124, 3: 59-60 Cohen, Alfred, 1: 15 Cohen, Judy, 1: 40-41 Cohn, Marianne, 1: 124 Collaborators French, 3: 4-5 investigations of, 3: 75, 98 Italian, 2: 122-123 Judenräte, 2: 142 Kapo, 2: 147-148 Lithuanian, 3: 19, 4: 102, 141, 142 resistance actions against, 2: 132 Soviet, 3: 156, 4: 25 Ukrainian, 4: 84 Volksdeutsche, 4: 107-108 Collective farms See Kibbutzim Colleges, Nazi laws prohibiting Jews from, 1: 25 Commissars Nazi experiments on the bodies of, 3: 59 Nazi orders to kill, 2: 158-159, 3: 104 Committee for Special Jewish Affairs, 3: 8586 Communism definition of, 3: 127 Nazi views about, 3: 103, 163-164 Communists alliances with Jews in Poland, 3: 117 Amsterdam strike by, 3: 87 in Baum Gruppe (anti-Nazi organization), 1: 62-63 in Belgian resistance movement, 1: 66 in concentration camps, 1: 106, 126 in France, 2: 80 in the French Resistance, 3: 157 in Latvia, 3: 3 Operational Squad searches for, 3: 102 relationships with Zionist groups, 2: 74, 165 in the Warsaw ghetto, 2: 130 Wittenberg, Yitzhak, 4: 88, 89-90 Yelin, Haim, 4: 144 See also Commissars See also Soviet partisans See also Soviet prisoners of war Compulsory Aryanization, 1: 36-38 Concentration camps, 1: 124-134 Bereza-Kartuska, 2: 5 Bergen-Belsen, 1: 79-83 Bolzano, 2: 121 Buchenwald, 1: 105-107 Budzyn´, 1: 110-111 Croatia, 1: 139-140 Dachau, 1: 143-145 death marches from, 1: 149-153

definition of, 1: 124 Dora-Mittelbau, 1: 170-172 Fossoli, 2: 121 Gestapo relations with, 2: 61 Gross-Rosen, 2: 76-79 Gypsies in, 2: 82, 84 Himmler’s role in, 2: 90 in Italy, 2: 119, 120-122 La Risiera di San Sabba camp, 2: 121122 Majdanek, 1: 86, 2: 39, 3: 42-45 map of, 1: 125 Mauthausen, 3: 45-51 Natzweiler-Struthof, 3: 79-80 Neuengamme, 3: 91-92 Pl⁄asów, 3: 120-122 Ravensbrück, 3: 154-156 Sachsenhausen, 4: 1-2 Stutthof, 4: 42-44 See also Auschwitz See also Camp conditions See also Camp layout and facilities See also Camp staff See also Death marches See also Economic-Administrative Main Office Concentration camp syndrome, 1: 133 Conferences. See Evian Conference; Wannsee Conference Confessing Church, 1: 121 Contacts abroad. See Reports to the outside world Corporations. See German companies; SS companies Corporatism, 2: 2 Corpses Jews massacred at Kamenets-Podolski, 2: 145 Nazi efforts to conceal, 1: 4-6, 3: 50, 4: 68, 77, 122, 177 Nazi medical experiments on, 3: 58-59 Council of Elders of the Kovno Jewish Ghetto Community, 2: 164 Cracow. See Kraków Crematoriums Bel⁄z˙ec, 1: 77 Bergen-Belsen, 1: 83 Natzweiler-Struthof, 3: 80 Crimes against humanity, 1: 134-137, 4: 72, 76 definition of, 2: 45 medical experiments as, 3: 60 relationship to genocide, 2: 44 U.S. Office of Special Investigations, 3: 98 Crimes against peace, 1: 134-135, 4: 72, 73, 136-137 Crimes against the Jewish people, 2: 45 Criminal organizations, 4: 73 Criminal Police, 3: 162 Croatia, 1: 137-141 deportation of Jews from, 1: 164 Gypsies, 2: 86 map of, 1: 138 racist political movements in, 3: 152 Crystal Night. See Kristallnacht

INDEX

Cultural Society of German Jews, 2: 53 Curfews and restrictions on Jews in public, 1: 26, 3: 87-88, 4: 102, 112, 117 See also Ghettos See also Jewish badge CV. See Central Union of German Citizens of Jewish Faith Czechoslovakia. See Bohemia and Moravia; Slovakia Czech police, 4: 57 Czech underground, 1: 6, 3: 48 Czerniaków, Adam, 1: 39, 141-143 diary entries, 1: 143, 4: 117, 123, 125, 198-199

D Dachau, 1: 143-147 Daimler-Benz Aircraft, 3: 79 Dannecker, Theodor, 1: 147-148 role in Paris, 3: 111 Darquier de Pellepoix, Louis, 1: 148 Darwin, Charles, 3: 151 Darwin’s theory of natural selection, 1: 22 Daugavpils. See Dvinsk Death camps. See Extermination camps Death marches, 1: 149-153 columns, 3: 68 photographs of prisoners on, 1: 150, 152 rescue of Jews on, 3: 35-36, 4: 110 from Stutthof, 4: 43 survivor account of, 2: 83 Declaration of the Boycott by the Nazi Party Leadership, 4: 173-77 Deffaugt, Jean, 1: 153-154 DEGESCH (German Vermin-Combating Corporation), 4: 157 De Gobineau, Joseph-Arthur, 3: 149, 150, 184 DEMAG (German company), 4: 1 Demjanjuk, John (Iwan), 4: 70 Denazification, 1: 154-157 Denial of the Holocaust by Jews deported to Poland, 3: 140 postwar, 2: 100-104 Denmark, 1: 157-161 Best, Warner, 1: 87-88 deportation of Jews from, 1: 165 Jewish badge, 1: 60 Jewish refugees from, 3: 160 Protestants, 1: 122 rescue of Jews in, 1: 27, 3: 179 Department of State. See United States Department of State Deportations, 1: 161-165 after emigration of Jews stopped, 1: 161, 180 Aktion Reinhard, 1: 7, 8 from Austria, 1: 51-52 from Belgium, 1: 65, 66-67 from Berlin, 1: 86 from Bial⁄ystok, 1: 91 from Bohemia and Moravia, 1: 99 from Budapest, 1: 109, 3: 52 of Croatian Jews, 1: 140

Dannecker letter requesting permission to deport children from Paris, 4: 191 from Denmark, 1: 159-160 from Dvinsk, 1: 175 effect on Jewish resistance groups, 2: 130-131 “The Foot March,” 1: 109 from France, 2: 22-23 of Germans in mixed marriages, 3: 29 from Germany, 2: 57-58 from Great Britain, 2: 73 from Grodno, 2: 74 of Gypsies, 2: 83, 84-86 from Hungary, 2: 114, 115, 146 Instructions for the Deportation of Jews from the Palatinate (Pfalz) 4: 187-188 Jews chosen first for, 3: 26 of Jews in Italy, 2: 121 of Kraków Jews, 2: 168-171 during Kristallnacht, 2: 173 of Lithuanian Jews by Soviets, 3: 17 from L ⁄ ódz´, 1: 116, 3: 20-21, 22-23 from Lublin, 3: 31-32 from Lvov, 3: 39 from Minsk, 3: 64 Nazi euphemisms for, 4: 28 from Netherlands, 3: 88-90 from Paris, 3: 112 from Poland, 3: 137-139 of Poles, 1: 162, 2: 10, 3: 126, 4: 152 of refugees from Austria, 1: 52 role of Central Office for Jewish Emigration, 1: 112 role of Jewish ghetto police, 2: 134 from Slovakia, 4: 12 to Sobibór, 4: 17-18 SS officer responsible for, 1: 147-148 from Starachowice, 4: 35 from Tarnów, 4: 53 from Ternopol, 4: 56, 57 to and from Theresienstadt, 4: 58 from Vienna, 4: 99, 100-101 from Warsaw, 4: 123-124, 125-126 from Warsaw Transfer Point (Umschlagplatz), 4: 61-62 from Westerbork, 4: 135-137 See also Drancy Deportation ships Arandora Star, 2: 73 Exodus 1947, 1: 12 See also Refugee ships Deportation trains Aktion Reinhard, 1: 7 armed attack by Jews against, 1: 68 to Auschwitz, 1: 42 at Chel⁄mno, 1: 115 cleaning, 4: 66 conditions on, 4: 18 Jews being loaded onto, 1: 115, 164 logistic support for, 1: 163, 180 Novak, Franz, 3: 95 Warsaw Transfer Point (Umschlagplatz), 4: 62 Deportees

in Amsterdam, 3: 89 being loaded on trains, 1: 115, 164 from Budapest, 1: 110 escape attempt by, 2: 74 finding destinations for, 1: 162-163 from Hungary, 1: 34 killed in Latvia, 3: 4 loss of possessions by, 1: 37-38, 51 in Lublin, 3: 30 in Minsk, 3: 65 in Mogilev-Podolski, 3: 68, 69 photographs of, 1: 173, 2: 154, 3: 175, 4: 136 from Warsaw ghetto, 4: 5 Destruction of Jewish property. See AntiJewish measures; Synagogues, destruction of Detention camps Bergen-Belsen, 1: 79-80 in France, 3: 111, 112 in Great Britain, 2: 73 Gurs, 2: 79-81 Kistarcsa, 2: 154-155 Lublin, 3: 31 Mauthausen, 3: 46 Theresienstadt, 4: 57 Westerbork (Netherlands), 3: 88, 89, 90 Diaries Czerniaków, Adam, 1: 143, 4: 117, 123, 125, 198-199 Frank, Anne, 2: 28-31, 3: 12-13 Frank, Hans, 2: 35 Franz, Kurt, 4: 67 ghetto, 3: 134 Goebbels, Joseph, 2: 102 Kaplan, Chaim A., 2: 142, 4: 117, 198 Korczak, Janusz, 2: 161 prisoners at Auschwitz, 1: 47 Rudashevski, Yitskhok, 4: 102, 105 Tenenbaum, Mordechai, 4: 54 Warsaw ghetto, 4: 120, 126 Zelkowicz, Josef, 3: 22-23 See also Autobiographies See also Literature of the Holocaust Dictatorship, appeal of, 2: 3 Diels, Rudolf, 2: 60, 61 Dirlewanger, Oskar, 1: 166 Diseases in ghettos, 4: 60 Nazi experiments about, 3: 56, 57-58, 59 at Skarz˙ysko-Kamienna, 4: 10 Warsaw ghetto, 4: 120 Displaced persons, 1: 166-170 support by Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), 2: 138-139 United States Army and, 4: 90-92 Documents for Jews forgeries by underground groups, 2: 74, 3: 35 smuggling into Poland of forged, 3: 140 Vatican assistance in providing, 1: 120 See also ID cards See also Protective documents for Jews

219

INDEX

Documents of the Holocaust accumulated by Polish courts, 4: 81-82 Anne Frank house archives, 2: 32 from the Bial⁄ystok and Warsaw ghettos, 1: 90 chronicles of the L ⁄ ódz´ Ghetto, 3: 25 collected for postwar trials in Germany, 4: 78 Conversations with an Executioner (Moczarski), 4: 41 efforts to declassify and publicize, 3: 99, 100 Getto Walczy (The Ghetto Fighters) (Edelman), 1: 96 hidden in Oneg Shabbat archive, 3: 180 Himmler’s “Some Thoughts on the Treatment of Alien Populations in the East,” 3: 40 Hitler memo, 1: 187 Jewish Historical Institute, 4: 129 Kaltenbrunner reports, 2: 144 the most revealing, 2: 102 Nazi Party platform objectives, 3: 83 Nuremberg Trial, 4: 73-74 from Operational Squads, 3: 107 Polish-Soviet Nazi Crimes Investigation Commission, 3: 44 proving construction of gas chamber, 3: 80 questions about reliability of, 2: 101, 102 speeches by Arthur Seyss-Inquart, 4: 8 Tenenbaum collection, 4: 54, 55 Wannsee Protocol (Eichmann), 4: 113 Wisliceny, Dieter, affidavits, 4: 142 See also Diaries See also Museums Dominican Republican Settlement Association, 4: 95 Domincan Republic’s position at Evian Conference, 1: 190 Donat, Alexander, 3: 44 Don’t Trust a Fox in the Chicken Coop or a Jew at His Word (Bauer), 1: 32 Dora-Mittelbau, 1: 170-172 death marches from, 1: 153 Dora-Nordhausen. See Dora-Mittelbau Drancy, 1: 172-174 Dreyfus, Alfred, 3: 147 Dror (Deror), 4: 147 Drumont, Eduard, 1: 30-31 Dünaburg. See Dvinsk Dutch Nazis, 3: 86 Dvinsk, 1: 174-176

E Eastern Belorussia, 1: 71-73 Eastern Europe Nazi anti-Jewish legislation for, 1: 27 Nazi treatment of laborers from, 2: 15 youth movements in, 4: 146-149 Eastern Galicia. See Lvov East Germany trials of war criminals, 4: 79

220

Economic-Administrative Main Office, 1: 176-177 administration of Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1: 194 administration of Bergen-Belsen, 1: 70 contradictory goals, 4: 31 Economic boycott against Nazi Germany, 1: 102, 103, 4: 140, 143 Economic measures against Jews ban against possessing cash, 2: 164 Nazi boycott of businesses, 1: 102, 103 as precursor to “Final Solution,” 2: 9 seizures of Jew’s apartments, 1: 36-37, 38, 4: 99, 100, 109 See also Aryanization See also Fines on Jewish communities See also Forced labor Economic structure in Warsaw ghetto, 4: 121-122 Edelman, Marak, 1: 96 Edelstein, Jacob, 1: 177-178 Education, Jewish. See Schools Eichmann, Adolf, 1: 178-181 conflict over deportations to Kistarcsa, 2: 155 duties in SD, 4: 6 impact of his trial, 3: 13 and Madagascar Plan, 3: 41 photographs of, 1: 178, 180 plan to deport Third Reich Jews to Poland, 3: 92-93 in Prague, 1: 98 role in emigration of Jews from Austria, 1: 51-52 search for way to exterminate Jews, 4: 156 strategy for deportations, 1: 163-164 Eicke, Theodor, 1: 181-182 role in SS-Death’s-Head Units, 4: 32, 33 Einstein, Albert, 1: 30 Elizabeth (Queen of England), 1: 66-67 Elkes, Elchanan, 1: 182-183 El Salvadoran protection of Hungarian Jews, 3: 35 Emigration of Jews after the war ended, 1: 168-170 from Austria, 1: 51-52 barriers to, 3: 158, 4: 98 from Bohemia and Moravia, 1: 98 expulsion of Polish Jews from Germany, 2: 54 financial assistance for, 1: 51 Generalplan Ost, 2: 41-43 from Germany, 1: 86, 2: 51, 55-56, 106 loss of property during, 1: 37, 51 Nazi euphemisms for, 4: 28 Nazi prohibition of, 1: 26 Nazi promotion of, 2: 8-9 Nazi resettlement plans, 3: 40-41 from Poland, 3: 129 as precursor to deportations, 1: 161, 180 to Siberia, 2: 42 through Mogilev-Podolski, 3: 68

See also Aliya Bet See also Madagascar Plan See also Nisko and Lublin Plan Employment. See Jobs Endlösung. See “Final Solution” Endre, László, 1: 183-184 England. See Great Britain Enterdungsaktion. See Aktion 1005 Erdöl Raffinerie (German company), 1: 42 Erntefest (“Harvest Festival”), 1: 184-186 as end of Aktion (Operation) Reinhard, 1: 8 Escapes and escape attempts Aktion 1005 prisoners, 1: 95 Auschwitz, 1: 46-47, 48 to Belorussian forests, 1: 73 Bel⁄z˙ec, 1: 77 Chel⁄mno, 1: 116 by children at Budzyn´, 1: 111 by Danish Jews, 1: 159 from deportation trains, 1: 68 Drancy (French transit camp), 1: 173 Dvinsk, 1: 175 France, 2: 23, 24 Gesia Street concentration camp, 4: 134 Grodno ghetto, 2: 74 Jakuba Street camp in L ⁄ ódz´, 3: 24 by Jews who built Hitler’s staff quarters, 3: 34 Kielce ghetto, 2: 153 Kraków ghetto, 2: 170 by Lithuanian Jews, 3: 17, 18 Lvov ghetto, 3: 39 Majdanek, 3: 43 Minsk, 3: 65 Netherlands, 3: 90 Ponary, 3: 141 from prison, 2: 7 by prisoners, 3: 173-174, 4: 65 by prisoners at Babi Yar, 1: 55 by prisoners of the Sonderkommando 1004, 1: 4-5 by protectors of Frank, Anne 2: 28 Riga, 3: 176-177 Rovno, 3: 186 Skarz˙ysko-Kamienna, 4: 10 Slovakia, 4: 13 Sobibór, 4: 18 to the Soviet interior, 1: 72 by Soviet prisoners of war, 3: 48 Starachowice, 4: 36 Treblinka, 4: 65, 68-69 in Ukraine, 4: 86 “Essay on the Inequality of Human Races” (Gobineau), 3: 149, 150 Estonia camps, 3: 17-18, 4: 105 Ethics, universal code of medical, 3: 53 Ethnic Germans. See Volksdeutsche Ethnic Germans’ Welfare Office (VoMi), 4: 106 Eugenics, 3: 151 Europa Plan, 3: 52, 4: 13, 142 Europe antisemitism in, 1: 28-29, 30-32

INDEX

Nazi dilemma of what to do with Jews in, 2: 10 roots of fascism in, 2: 1-2 treatment of Gypsies in, 2: 84-87 Euthanasia Program, 1: 186-189 legal rationale for, 3: 53 testimony of Victor Brack regarding termination of mentally disabled in Germany, 4: 199-200 See also Zyklon B Evacuation of the Soviet Union, 4: 22-23 Evian Conference, 1: 189-192 Evil, American fascination with Nazis’, 3: 13 Executions by Nazis Aryans who aided Jews, 1: 2 partisans, 3: 65 prisoners at Auschwitz, 1: 40 Exodus 1947 (ship), 1: 12 Experiments, Nazi, 3: 52-61 See also Nazi doctors Expulsion of Jews. See Emigration of Jews Extermination camps, 1: 192-194 Aktion Reinhard, 1: 6-7 Bel⁄z˙ec, 1: 7, 73-77 Birkenau, 1: 41-42, 194 Chel⁄mno, 1: 114-118 Globocnik, Odilo, 2: 65-66 Janówska, 2: 124-126 Majdanek, 1: 184-186, 2: 30, 3: 42-45 map of, 1: 193 in Poland, 3: 136-137 processing of prisoners at, 2: 38-39 rescue efforts for prisoners in, 3: 180 Sobibór, 1: 7, 3: 119-120, 4: 15 Treblinka, 1: 7, 4: 63-69 See also Auschwitz See also Concentration camps See also Gas chambers Extermination plan for Jews. See “Final Solution” Extermination vans. See Gas vans

F Fascism, 2: 1-4 definition of, 1: 34 fascist partisans in Poland, 3: 117 fascists’ rise to power in Italy, 2: 118120 in Great Britain, 2: 71 Fascist Doctrine, The (Mussolini), 2: 2 Federal Republic of Germany, trials of war criminals by, 4: 76-81 Feiner, Leon, 2: 4-5 Fiction. See Literature of the Holocaust Fighting Ghetto, The, 3: 120 Fighting Organization of Pioneer Jewish Youth, 2: 5-7, 3: 9 Aharon Liebeskind’s role, 3: 9 Frumka Plotnicka’s role, 3: 122-123 Films about Nazis, 3: 13, 76 “Final Solution,” 2: 7-13 applied to Italy, 2: 120 in Baltic and Belorussian areas, 3: 28 effect on American Jews, 1: 19

Eichmann’s role, 1: 180 Erntefest (“Harvest Festival”), 1: 184186 exclusion of Scandinavian countries from, 1: 158 financing for, 1: 38, 4: 8 in France, 2: 23 in the Generalgouvernement, 1: 6 Germans’ attitudes about, 2: 58-59 Göring orders Heydrich to prepare a plan for the “Final Solution,” 4: 190 Heydrich’s role, 2: 89 Himmler’s role, 2: 90-91 Hitler bans public reference to, 4: 191 Hitler’s role, 2: 95-97 Hitler Youth’s role, 2: 99 Hoss’ recollections about, 2: 107 Hungarian Labor Service System and, 2: 110 in Hungary, 2: 114 impact of Madagascar Plan on, 3: 40 Jewish badge and, 1: 59 Korherr Report, 2: 162 legally defined stages of, 4: 75-76 Nazi acceptance of, 2: 11 Nazi regulations that permitted, 1: 27 Nazis’ reasons for using Poland for, 3: 139 origins in antisemitism, 1: 33 outside world’s knowledge of, 1: 20 in Poland, 3: 136-139 role of deportations, 1: 164-165 SS role, 4: 30-31 use of Auschwitz and Majdanek for, 1: 129 Wannsee Conference, 4: 113-114 West German courts’ view of, 4: 80-81 See also Anti-Jewish legislation See also Anti-Jewish measures See also Concentration camps See also Deportations See also Extermination camps See also Ghettos See also Liquidation of camps See also Liquidation of ghettos See also Mass murders by Nazis See also Nazi deceptions See also SD See also Victims and survivors Financial reparations current status of, 4: 80 excuses for not paying, 4: 48-49 from Germany, 2: 139 paid by I. G. Farben, 2: 117 Simon Wiesenthal Center role, 3: 75 U.S. Office of Special Investigations role, 3: 99-100 Fines on Jewish communities in Austria, 4: 98 kinds of payments accepted Nazis, 3: 34 for murder of German diplomat, 1: 26, 37 Nazi uses of the payments, 4: 87 Paris, 3: 37

Vienna, 4: 100 Vilna, 4: 103 See also Ransom payments to Nazis Flick (German company), 2: 115, 117 Food deprivation by Nazis among German troops, 1: 187 among Poles, 2: 40 cannibalism as result of, 3: 50 at Drancy (French transit camp), 1: 173 in Dvinsk ghetto, 1: 175 Frank, Hans, statement about, 3: 133 Jew’s response to, 3: 176, 4: 115 in Kharkov, 2: 150 in Kovno, 2: 164 in L ⁄ ódz´, 3: 21 by Lohse, Hinrich, 3: 28 Warsaw ghetto, 4: 121 Forced labor, 2: 13-18 Auschwitz, 1: 42-43 Belgium, 1: 65 Dachau, 1: 145 defined as a crime, 4: 76 and forced sterilization, 3: 59 of French workers, 2: 19 Gross-Rosen, 2: 77 Himmler’s role, 2: 90 of Hungarian Jews, 2: 108-110 Italy, 2: 121 of Jewish conscripts in Hungary, 2: 109 Jews in Warsaw ghetto, 4: 121 Judenräte role, 2: 141-142 Kovno, 2: 163-164 Organisation Schmelt, 3: 108-110 Poland, 3: 131-133, 137-139 postwar reparations to laborers, 2: 117 reliance of German army on Jews, 1: 8 See also Jewish prisoners’ tasks See also Labor camps Forced marches. See Death marches Forced sterilization by Nazis of Germans with black fathers, 1: 186187 of Gypsies, 2: 82, 84 of Jewish women, 1: 123-124 medical experiments with, 3: 59-60 and Nazi concept of Mischlinge, 3: 66, 67 Nazi rationales for, 3: 53, 59 numbers of persons subjected to, 1: 188 Proposal for the Sterilization of 2-3 Million Jewish Workers, 4: 189-190 Foreign workers in Germany, 2: 13, 14-15 Fossoli camp, 2: 121 Fountain of Life, 3: 151, 4: 30 France, 2: 18-26 antisemitism in, 1: 28, 30-31 Benoît, Marie, 1: 78-79 Catholics, 1: 120 concentration camps in, 3: 79-80 deportation of Jews from, 1: 164 Drancy (transit camp), 1: 172-174 fascist groups in, 2: 4 Gurs (detention camp), 2: 79-81

221

INDEX

France (continued) French police, role of, 2: 35-36 Great Britain, relationship with, 2: 68 Gypsies, 2: 85 Jewish badge, 1: 59, 61 Jewish underground groups, 3: 171 Jewish youth movements, 4: 150-151 Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, 3: 5-6 map of Vichy and occupied, 2: 19 Oberg, Carl Albrecht, 3: 98 policy about deportations, 3: 152 Protestants, 1: 122 racism in, 3: 151 SS destruction of entire village, 3: 108, 109 See also Paris See also Vichy government Frank, Anne, 2: 26-33, 27 at Bergen-Belsen, 1: 82 Frank, Hans, 2: 33-35 initiation of “Final Solution” in Generalgouvernement, 3: 138-139 policies in the Generalgouvernement, 3: 131-133 role in Nisko and Lublin Plan, 3: 94 statement about disposing of Jews, 3: 136 Frank, Margot, 1: 82, 2: 2627 Frank, Otto, 2: 26-27, 28, 30, 32 Freemasons, 3: 146, 183 Freezing, Nazi experiments on, 3: 54, 56 Freight cars. See Deportation trains French communists, 2: 80 French Jews, deportations of, 2: 23 French police, 2: 35-36 French Resistance, 1: 62, 2: 19 French police and, 2: 36 prisoners taken by Germans, 3: 79-80 French Resistance leaders Cohn, Marianne, 1: 124 Deffaught, Jean, 1: 153-154 Rayman, Marcel, 3: 156-157 French zone denazification, 1: 154 Freudiger, Fülöp, 2: 36-37 Fritsch, Werner Freiherr von, 2: 105 Fritz Schulz Works, 4: 62

G Gas chambers, 2: 37-3 Auschwitz, 1: 41-42 Bel⁄z˙ec, 1: 74-75, 76-77 construction at Auschwitz, 1: 45 Dachau, 1: 147 dismantling of, 1: 48 documented construction of, 3: 80 extermination of Jews at Auschwitz, 1: 46 extermination of Jews at Bel⁄z˙ec, 1: 7576 Himmler’s decision to use, 2: 80 Majdanek, 2: 38, 3: 43 Natzweiler-Struthof, 3: 89 Sobibór, 4: 15 Treblinka, 4: 64, 66-67 See also Zyklon B

222

Gassing experiments on Germans, 4: 139 Gas vans, 2: 37 at Chel⁄mno, 1: 115-116 Nazi account of 4: 189 survivor account of, 4: 71 use in Belorussian ghettos, 1: 72 use in Kharkov, 2: 150 use in Ukraine, 4: 86 See also Zyklon B Gas-warfare experiments by Nazis, 3: 57 Geburtenrückgang (Decline in the Birthrate) (Korherr), 2: 162 Geheime Staatspolizei. See Gestapo Generalgouvernement, 2: 39-41 capital of, 2: 167 compulsory labor laws, 2: 16 Erntefest (“Harvest Festival”), 1: 184186 Hitler’s plan for, 2: 95 Krüger, Friedrich Wilhelm, 2: 174 map of, 2: 40 partisans, 3: 117-118 refugees from, 3: 160 Ukrainian part, 4: 85 See also Kraków See also Lublin See also Lvov See also Radom See also Warsaw General Jewish Fighting Organization, 2: 165 Generalplan Ost, 2: 41-43 Genetic research by Nazis, 3: 53, 58 Genocide, 2: 43-46 legal standards applying to, 4: 79 Nazi process of, 3: 152 Genocide (Wiesenthal Center film), 3: 76 Gens, Jacob, 2: 46-47 leadership in Vilna, 4: 104, 105 relation with Josef Glazman, 2: 64-65 and Vilna Communists, 4: 89 German Armament Works, 2: 124 German Christians movement, 1: 121 German companies factories inside ghettos, 2: 170, 3: 21, 4: 121, 123 protests of loss of Jews’ labor, 3: 139 that built gas chambers, 1: 45 that employed Jews from the ghetto, 2: 17 use of forced labor, 1: 42, 2: 14 use of Jewish prisoners, 1: 176, 2: 77, 116 use of prisoners, 3: 79, 4: 9, 91-92 See also I. G. Farben See also SS companies German Democratic Republic trials of war criminals, 4: 79 German Earth and Stone Works, Ltd., 2: 76, 3: 79, 91 German girls’ organization, 2: 99 German invasion of the Soviet Union, 3: 103 British reaction to, 2: 68 and the “Final Solution,” 2: 11 Hungarians’ role in, 2: 111

Germanization, definition of, 3: 93 German Jewish Children’s Aid (GJCA), 3: 166 German Jews Central Union of German Citizens of Jewish Faith, 1: 112-114 “equalization” with Germans, 3: 67 Hirsh, Otto, leadership of, 2: 91-92 Hitler’s plans for resettlement of, 2: 9 in Minsk, 3: 65 murder of, by Nazis, 1: 72, 3: 64 privileges afforded by Nazis to, 1: 51 German laws against Jews. See anti-Jewish legislation German military initial opposition to Nazis, 2: 54 Luftwaffe, 2: 68, 3: 54 Mischlinge in, 3: 67-68 Nazi medical experiments on behalf of, 3: 54-58 recruitment tactics, 2: 99 Reichenau, Walter von, 3: 163-164 role in “Final Solution,” 4: 31 temporary halt of murders of Jews by, 3: 139 See also German weapons factories See also Operational Squads See also Ukrainian Military Police German occupation Belgium, 1: 63-65 Bial⁄ystok, 1: 88-89 Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, 1: 97 Croatia, 1: 139 Denmark, 1: 158 Dvinsk, 1: 174 France, 2: 19, 21, 23 Grodno, 2: 73 Hungary, 1: 107, 109, 2: 112 Kovno, 2: 163 Kraków, 2: 167-168 Latvia, 3: 2-3 Lithuania, 3: 15-16, 17-18 L ⁄ ódz´, 3: 19-21 Lublin, 3: 30 Lutsk, 3: 33-34 Lvov, 3: 37 Netherlands, 3: 86-87 northern Italy, 2: 120-121 Paris, 3: 111 Poland, 3: 124-125, 130 Riga, 3: 175 Rovno, 3: 185 Soviet territories, 4: 22, 23 Tarnów, 4: 52-53 Ternopol, 4: 55 Vilna, 4: 103 Vitebsk, 4: 106 Warsaw, 4: 117 Western Belorussia, 1: 70 Zamos´c´, 4: 152 German-occupied territories anti-Jewish legislation in, 1: 27 anti-Jewish measures in, 2: 56 centers of Aktion 1005 activity in, 1: 56

INDEX

concentration camp prisoners from, 1: 128 cooperation with and resistance to Nazis in, 3: 114 Gypsies, 2: 85 map of Operational Squads in, 3: 101 Mischlinge policy in, 3: 66-67 Nazi tolerance of homosexuality in, 2: 105 Volksdeutsche, 4: 107 See also Generalgouvernement German organizations classified as criminal by the IMT, 4: 72 German police. See Gestapo German prisoners criminals, 3: 121-122 Jewish, 1: 132-133 at Mauthausen, 3: 46 Nazi medical experiments on, 3: 57 NN (Nacht Und Nebel) prisoners, 3: 80 political prisoners, 1: 104 status of, 1: 131 German prisoners of war, Jews classified as, 2: 110 Germans attitudes towards Nazi treatment of Jews, 2: 58 Hitler’s plan to resettle in the east, 2: 41-43 married to Jews. See Mixed marriages See also Mischlinge See also Volksdeutsche German Vermin-Combating Corporation (DEGESCH), 4: 157 German war effort Aktion Reinhard impact on, 1: 7-8 forced-labor and, 2: 13-18 German weapons factories at Dachau, 1: 145 at Dora-Mittelbau, 1: 170, 171 at Gross-Rosen, 2: 78 at Lublin, 3: 31 at Lvov, 2: 124 at Sauchsenhausen, 4: 1 in Silesia and Sudetenland, 3: 109 German women, Nazi ideal of, 2: 99 Germany, 2: 47-59 antisemitism in, 1: 28-30, 32-33 British appeasement of, 2: 69-70 Catholics, 1: 119-120 concentration camps in, 1: 133 imported laborers, 2: 13 Jewish badge, 1: 60-61 Jewish refugees from, 3: 157-158 Jewish youth movements, 4: 145-146 map of, 1938, 2: 48 map of, 1942, 2: 57 Protestants, 1: 122 reaction to trials of war criminals, 4: 76 Weimar Republic, 1: 84, 2: 49-50 See also East Germany See also West Germany Germany Is Our Problem (Morgenthau), 3: 71

German youth, ideological training of, 2: 99 Gestapo, 2: 59-62 murder of Jewish women, 3: 185 photograph of, 2: 60 “preventative” arrests by, 2: 82 relationship to French police, 2: 36 relationship to SD, 4: 4 relationship with Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), 3: 161-163 Getter, Matylda, 2: 63 Ghetto Fighters’ Museum, 4: 155 Ghettos, 3: 26-27 “A” and “B” in Grodno, 2: 73 alternatives used in Germany, 2: 57 armed resistance in, 3: 172-173 badges for categories of Jews, 1: 58 Belorussia, 1: 71, 72 Bial⁄ystok, 1: 71, 89-91 Budapest, 1: 109, 2: 114 Budapest international, 1: 110, 3: 36 Derechin, 1: 38 Dvinsk, 1: 174-175 for German Jews in Minsk, 3: 64, 65 Jewish cultural activities, 3: 134-135, 4: 103, 122, 171 Jewish youth movements in, 4: 147148 Kharkov, 2: 150 Kherson, 2: 150-152 Kielce, 2: 152 Kovno, 2: 163-164, 4: 145 Kraków, 2: 5-7, 167-169 in Lithuania, 3: 17 L ⁄ ódz´, 3: 21, 25-27 Lublin, 3: 31-32 Lublin “small ghetto,” 3: 32 Lutsk, 3: 34 Lvov, 3: 37-38 Minsk, 1: 72-73, 3: 64 Mogilev-Podolski, 3: 69 Nazi burning of, 4: 130, 132 Nazi euphemism for, 4: 28 Nazi managers of, 1: 39 Operational Squad role, 3: 103 Order by Ludwig Fischer on the Establishment of a Ghetto in Warsaw, 4: 197-198 photographer of, 1: 182 photographs of, 3: 20, 4: 120, 127, 130 in Poland, 3: 133-135 psychology of survivors from, 4: 47-48 Riga, 3: 176 Riga “German,” 3: 176 Riga “small,” 3: 176, 177 Rovno, 3: 186 sale of possessions by Jews in, 2: 169 Tarnów, 4: 53 Ternopol, 4: 56 Theresienstadt, 4: 56, 57-61 turned into concentration camps, 2: 164-165 turned into labor camps, 3: 23, 38 Vilna, 4: 102, 104-105 Vilna No. 1 and No. 2, 4: 103 Vitebsk, 4: 106 Warsaw, 4: 119-121

See also Apartments See also Certificates of employment for Jews See also Forced labor See also Jewish ghetto police GJCA (German Jewish Children’s Aid), 3: 166 Glazer, Gesja (“Albina”), 2: 165 Glazman, Josef, 2: 63-65, 64 Globocnik, Odilo, 2: 65-66 Goebbels, Joseph, 2: 66-67 activities in Berlin, 1: 84 use of Nazi euphemisms, 4: 27 Goedsche, Hermann, 1: 30 Goldszmit, Henryk. See Korczak, Janusz Gordonia, 4: 147 Government control of the individual, 2: 12 Graz, 1: 52 Great Britain, 2: 67-73 declaration of war on Hungary, 2: 111 effect of World War II on its Empire, 2: 69 evacuation of children to the U.S., 3: 166-167 immigration policy, 2: 71-72 impact of Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 3: 147 policy towards Jewish refugees, 3: 160161 position at Evian Conference, 1: 190 Protestants, 1: 122 racism in, 3: 152 reaction to Madagascar Plan, 3: 42 restrictions on immigration to Palestine, 1: 10-11, 17 See also British military See also British zone Great Depression and U.S. response to Holocaust, 1: 18, 4: 93 Greece, deportations of Jews from, 4: 142 Greek Jews deportation from Bulgaria, 1: 165 medical experiments on, 1: 44 Greek partisans, 3: 119 Greiser, Arthur, 2: 44-45 Grodno, 2: 73-75 Grojanowski, Jacob, 1: 116 Grosman, Haika, 2: 75-76 Gross-Rosen, 2: 76-79 death marches, 1: 151-152 Grüninger, Paul, 2: 79 Guards in camps. See Camp staff Guards in Polish ghettos, 3: 133 Gurs, 2: 79-81 Gusen, 3: 46 Gustav V (King of Sweden), 4: 108 Gypsies, 2: 81-87 at Chel⁄mno, 1: 116, 117 deportation from Austria, 1: 53 extermination at Auscahwitz, 1: 46 family camp at Auschwitz, 1: 41, 2: 84 in Latvia, 3: 3 medical experiments on, 3: 156 murdered at Bel⁄z˙ec, 1: 77 Nazi classification of, 1: 144, 2: 84

223

INDEX

Gypsies (continued) Nazi medical experiments on, 3: 56, 59, 60 Nazi murders of at Babi Yar, 1: 55 photographs of, 2: 82, 85 at Pl⁄asów, 3: 121 Ustasˇa extermination of, 1: 140

H Haavara Agreement, 4: 140 Hachenburg, Hanus, 4: 59 Haluts youth movements. See Youth movements Harrison, Earl G., 4: 91 “Harvest Festival.” See Erntefest (“Harvest Festival”) HASAG (German company), 4: 9 Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir, 1: 21,22, 23, 4: 145, 149 in Kraków, 2: 170 He-Haluts Ha-Lohem. See Fighting Organization of Pioneer Jewish Youth Heinkel Works (German company), 4: 1 Hepatitis experiments by Nazis, 3: 57 Hermann Göring Works, 3: 92, 4: 35 Herzegovinan, 1: 139 Herzl, Theodore, 1: 10 Heydrich, Reinhard, 2: 87-89 Aktion named for, 1: 6 decision to murder Soviet prisoners of war, 3: 145 deportation order for Gypsies, 2: 83 effect on the Gestapo, 2: 61 guidelines for Judenräte, 2: 139-140 instigation of the Jewish badge, 1: 58 instructions for measures against Jews 4: 186-187 Jewish policy for Poland, 3: 130-131 photograph, 2: 88 powers over Jews, 1: 26, 37 role in establishing ghettos, 3: 103 role in Generalplan Ost, 2: 41 role in Nazi medical experiments, 3: 56 High-altitude experiments by Nazis, 3: 54, 55 Himmler, Heinrich, 2: 89-91 cancellation of Nisko and Lublin Plan, 3: 94 effect on the Gestapo, 2: 61 negotiations with Allies over Jews, 3: 139 plan for expelling Jews and Poles, 3: 40 policy on Gypsies, 2: 83, 86 powers in Austria, 1: 50 release of Jewish prisoners in 1944, 2: 149 role in construction of Auschwitz, 1: 40 role in “Final Solution,” 2: 10 role in Generalplan Ost, 2: 42 role in Nazi medical experiments, 3: 54 and the SS, 4: 30 visit to Sobibór, 4: 18

224

visit to Treblinka, 4: 68 Hindenberg, Paul von, 2: 50 Hirsch, Otto, 2: 91-92 Hitler, Adolf, 2: 92-97 assassination attempt on, 3: 29, 67, 73, 85 bodyguards, 4: 28 construction of staff quarters, 3: 34 construction of underground home for, 2: 77 document from, 1: 187 interest in Mischlinge, 3: 67-68 and the Madagascar Plan, 3: 41 Mein Kampf, 3: 61-62 opinion about Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 3: 147-148 photographs of, 2: 3, 93 Political Testament, 4: 177-179 practice of “institutional Darwinism,” 2: 33 promotion of emigration of Jews, 2: 910 relationship with I. G. Farben, 2: 115116 relationship with the Nazi Party, 3: 81 rise to power, 2: 50-55, 69, 94 statements about the “Jewish question,” 2: 8, 3: 61, 94 views about Communism, 3: 103 Hitlerjugend. See Hitler Youth Hitler’s Political Testament, 4: 177-179 Hitler Youth, 2: 97-99 Hoescht (German company), 2: 115, 117 Holland. See Netherlands Holocaust denial of, 2: 100-104 the enigma of, 4: 45-46 legally defined stages of, 4: 75-76 origin of the word, 2: 100 Holocaust literature. See Literature of the Holocaust Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority. See Yad Vashem “Holocaust 1944” (Ranasinghe), 4: 46 Holocaust Remembrance Day in the United States, 4: 137 Holocaust survivor accounts about Auschwitz, 1: 40-41 about children in hiding, 3: 166 by a Gypsy, 2: 83 Majdanek, 3: 44 a mass murder by Nazis, 1: 185 stories, 3: 13-14 Stutthof 4: 43, 44-45 See also Autobiographies See also Diaries See also Poems of the Holocaust Holocaust survivors in Austria, 1: 54 in Budapest, 1: 110 documentary (The Long Way Home), 3: 76 photographs of, 1: 42, 80, 3: 50 psychology of, 4: 45-50 viewed as heroes/heroines, 3: 14

who emigrated to Palestine, 1: 12-13 See also Displaced persons See also Victims and Survivors Holocaust (TV series), 4: 78 Home Army (Armia Krajowa), 1: 1, 2, 2: 170, 3: 114, 4: 88-89, 117 aid to Jews, 4: 130 Warsaw Polish uprising by, 4: 134 Home purchase agreement, Nazi, 1: 37 Homosexuality in the Third Reich, 2: 104105 Homosexuals, badges for suspected, 1: 61, 4: 2 “Horror propaganda,” 1: 102 Horthy, Miklós, 2: 105-106 intervention at Kistarcsa, 2: 155 ouster by Arrow Cross Party, 2: 112 role in invasion of Yugoslavia, 2: 111 Höss, Rudolf, 2: 107-108 fictional account of, 3: 13 quoted about Auschwitz, 1: 44-45 quoted about extermination procedures, 1: 43 search for way to exterminate Jews, 4: 156 Hotel Royale, 1: 191 Hull, Cordell, 3: 70 Human rights principle, 1: 136, 3: 100, 137 Hungarian army, 2: 1-8-110, 113 Hungarian Jews attitude towards resistance, 2: 148 mass murder of at Kamenets-Podolski, 2: 145-146 at Mauthausen, 3: 49-50 Hungarian Labor Service System, 2: 108110 Hungarian police, 2: 83, 112 Hungary, 2: 110-115 antisemitism in, 1: 31 assistance to Jewish refugees, 3: 160 Catholics, 1: 121 companies that used forced labor, 2: 108 deportations of Jews from, 1: 165, 4: 142 Eichmann’s extermination of Jews in, 1: 182-183 Gypsies, 2: 86 Jewish badge, 1: 60 Jewish leader Fülöp Freudiger, 2: 3637 Lutz, Carl, rescue of Jews in, 3: 34-36 Nazi leader, László Endre, 1: 183-184 Protestants, 1: 122 racist political movements in, 3: 152 Volksdeutsche, 4: 108 War Refugee Board and, 4: 96, 114 See also Arrow Cross Party See also Budapest See also Horthy, Miklós, 2: 105-106

I ID cards ghetto soup kitchen, 2: 152 Hitler Youth, 2: 98

INDEX

for Jews, 2: 53 Jews’ use of fake Aryan papers, 4: 13 See also Certificates of employment for Jews See also Documents for Jews I. G. Farben, 2: 115-118 investment in Zyklon B gas, 4: 157 use of Jewish prisoners, 2: 77 Immigration to Palestine. See Israel; Palestine Immunization experiments by Nazis, 3: 58 IMT. See International Military Tribunal (IMT) “In Auschwitz-Birkenau” (Cohen), 1: 40-41 Institute for the Investigation of the Jewish Question, 3: 184 Intellectuals, Nazi persecution of, 2: 10, 3: 40, 47 Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (ICR), 1: 190-191 International crimes, 1: 136 “International” ghetto, 1: 110, 3: 36, 4: 110 International law principles of, 1: 136 regarding legal wars, 4: 74 regarding prisoners of war, 2: 13 International Military Tribunal (IMT), 1: 134 See also Nuremberg Trial International Red Cross operations, 1: 160, 3: 50, 4: 60-61, 174 Internet and the Holocaust, 3: 76, 83 Internment camps. See Detention camps Isolationist policy of the U.S., 4: 93 Isolation of Jews. See Anti-Jewish measures; Ghettos Israel founding of, 1: 10-11 immigration of displaced Jews to, 1: 169, 4: 91 laws concerning genocide, 2: 45 survivors in, 4: 49 Yad Vashem memorials and museum, 3: 76-77 Israeli attitudes towards the Holocaust, 3: 14 Italians, rescue of Jews by, 1: 140 Italy, 2: 118-124 assistance to Jewish refugees, 3: 160 deportation of Jews from, 1: 165 fascism, 2: 1-4 Gypsies, 2: 85-86 Jewish Brigade Group activities, 2: 128 map of concentration camps, 2: 119 Itelligenz Aktion, 2: 169

J Jäger, Karl, 2: 124 Jakuba Street camp, 3: 24 Janówska, 2: 124-126 Japan, antisemitism in, 1: 33 Japanese assistance to Jewish refugees, 3: 159 Sempo Sugihara’s role, 4: 44-45 Jasenovac, 1: 139

JDC. See Joint Distribution Committee Jeckeln, Friedrich, 2: 126-127 Jeckeln Aktion, 3: 3 Jehovah’s Witnesses, 1: 144, 2: 108 Jewish Army, 3: 171 Jewish badge, 1: 57-61 French responses to, 3: 112 with Jews’ house numbers, 3: 64 photographs of, 1: 59, 60 protests in Belgium, 1: 66 protests in the Netherlands, 3: 88 See also Anti-Jewish measures Jewish Brigade Group, 2: 127-129 in postwar Belgium, 1: 68 Jewish buildings. See Apartments; Aryanization Jewish businesses. See Economic measures against Jews Jewish Christians, 1: 58, 61 Jewish collective farms. See Kibbutzim Jewish conspiracy. See Protocols of the Elders of Zion Jewish Coordinating Committee (Netherlands), 3: 86 Jewish Councils. See Judenräte Jewish cultural activities as spiritual resistance to Nazis, 3: 171 Jewish Defense Committee (CDJ), 1: 68 Jewish Diaspora, 1: 10 Jewish emigrants. See Emigration of Jews Jewish Fighting Organization (Z˙OB), 2: 129-132 Anielewicz, Mordecai, his influence on, 1: 23 origins, 4: 148 support from Home Army (Armia Krajowa), 1: 2 at Trawniki, 4: 62-63 at Warsaw, 4: 125, 126 Zuckerman, Yitzhak, 4: 153-155 Jewish ghetto police, 2: 132-136 Bial⁄ystok, 1: 89 Lublin, 2: 133 photographs of, 3: 20 relationships with Jewish resistance groups, 2: 134, 135, 165 role in Nazi Aktionen in Vilna, 2: 46 roles in Lvov, 3: 37, 38, 39 Warsaw, 2: 130, 4: 119-120, 124, 132 Westerbork (transit camp), 4: 135-136 Jewish Law (Statut des Juifs), 2: 135-136 Jewish Military Union (ZZW), 1: 2, 2: 131 Jewish National Committee, 2: 131, 4: 155 Jewish newspapers, 2: 55, 3: 171, 181 in the United States, 1: 21 Jewish organizations Association for Jews in Germany, 2: 58 Association of Jews in Belgium (AJB), 1: 64 Bergson Group, 1: 19 in Berlin, 1: 62-63, 84 Central Union of German Citizens of Jewish Faith, 1: 112-114, 2: 91-92 Committee for Special Jewish Affairs, 3: 85-86

Cultural Society of German Jews, 2: 53 General Jewish Fighting Organization, 2: 165 German Jewish Children’s Aid (GJCA), 3: 166 in Germany, 2: 55 in Great Britain, 2: 72-73 Jewish Coordinating Committee (Netherlands), 3: 86 Jewish Military Union (ZZW), 1: 2, 2: 131 Jewish National Committee, 2: 131, 4: 155 in Kraków ghetto, 2: 168 Nazi consolidation of in Paris, 3: 111 in Polish ghettos, 3: 134-135 in postwar Poland, 2: 171 in postwar Warsaw, 4: 128-129 refugees’ reliance on, 3: 158 Reich Representation of German Jews, 1: 84, 2: 51-52, 55, 56 in the Warsaw ghetto, 4: 118-119 in Weimar Republic Germany, 2: 4950 “Working Group” in Slovakia, 4: 12-13 World Jewish Congress, 3: 51, 4: 143144 See also American Jewish organizations See also Jewish Fighting Organization (Z˙OB) See also Joint Distribution Committee See also Judenräte See also Youth movements See also Zionist Groups Jewish partisan leaders Bielski, Tuvia, 1: 93-94 Grosman, Haika, 2: 75-76 Szenes, Hannah, 4: 51-52, 150 Yelin,Haim, 4: 144-145 Jewish partisans, 3: 116, 118 in Soviet territories, 4: 24, 86 from Vilna, 4: 89 Jewish policy under Hitler, 2: 95-97 in Poland, 3: 130 Jewish possessions. See Seizures of Jewish possessions Jewish prisoners acts of kindness to, 3: 179 at Buchenwald, 1: 104-106 at Dachau, 1: 144-145 employed in Organisation Schmelt, 3: 110 at Mauthausen, 3: 49 Nazi medical experiments on, 3: 5758, 60 psychology of survivors, 4: 48 relative disadvantage of, 1: 132-133 role in Aktion Reinhard, 1: 7 Special Commando units with, 4: 26 usefulness for German war effort, 1: 178 who were nationals of neutral countries, 1: 79-80 See also Prisoners Jewish prisoners of war, 3: 143-155

225

INDEX

Jewish prisoners’ tasks at Bel⁄z˙ec extermination camp, 1: 7576, 77 with no practical purpose, 2: 125 sorting possessions of victims, 1: 8 See also Forced labor Jewish professionals Nazi boycott, 1: 103 Nazi laws forbidding, 1: 24-25, 26, 35 Jewish Protestants, 1: 121 Jewish Religious Congregation (JRC) of Prague, 1: 99 Jewish religious practices at Budzyn´ (labor camp), 1: 111 at Drancy (French transit camp), 1: 173-174 Nazi restrictions on, 1: 25 in Polish ghettos, 3: 134-135 as spiritual resistance to Nazis, 3: 171 at Theresienstadt, 4: 59 in Vienna, 4: 100 Jewish resistance group leaders Anielewicz, Mordecai, 1: 21-24, 22, 4: 155 Kaplan, Joseph, 2: 146-147 Liebeskind, Aharon, 3: 9-11 Plotnicka, Frumka, 3: 122-123 Zuckerman, Yitzhak, 4: 153-155 See also Tenenbaum, Mordechai Jewish resistance groups Auschwitz-Birkenau, 3: 182-183 Belgium, 1: 67-68 Belorussia, 1: 71 Berlin, 1: 86 Budapest, 2: 115 France, 2: 24, 4: 151 Grodno, 2: 74 Hungary, 3: 35 Jewish Military Union (ZZW), 1: 2, 2: 131 Kovno, 2: 165 Kraków, 2: 170-171, 3: 9 L ⁄ ódz´, 3: 23-24 Lublin, 3: 30 Minsk, 1: 72, 3: 64-65 Netherlands, 3: 86 parachutists from Palestine, 3: 170, 4: 14, 51-52 and the Polish underground, 3: 135 relationships with Jewish ghetto police, 2: 134-135 relationships with Judenräte, 2: 142143, 4: 89, 104, 164-165 relationships with partisans, 2: 170 relationship with Jewish youth movements, 4: 147-148 Riga, 3: 176-177 Ringelblum, Emanuel, 3: 180-182 Slovakia, 4: 14 Soviet Union, 4: 24 Tarnów, 4: 53 Ukraine, 4: 86 United Partisan Organization (FPO), 4: 88-90 Warsaw ghetto, 4: 122-126, 129-131 weapons used by, 4: 89, 131

226

See also Armed resistance by Jews See also Jewish Fighting Organization (Z˙OB) See also Resistance by prisoners See also Underground groups See also Youth movements Jewish women forced labor by, 1: 8, 2: 114, 3: 121 forced sterilization of, 1: 123-124 Gross-Rosen camps for, 2: 78 Nazi medical experiments on, 3: 60 photographs of, 3: 18, 121, 185 prisoners’ work in the camps, 2: 78 See also Women Jewish youth movements. See Youth movements Jews among partisans, 3: 114-115 betrayal by neighbors, 3: 130, 135 conscription in France, 2: 21 determination to survive, 4: 128 fascist policy towards, 2: 119 in France, 2: 20-21, 23-24 German reasons for fearing, 1: 29-30 in Germany, 2: 47-48 at Gross-Rosen, 2: 76-78 in Hungary, 2: 113-115 idea of homeland, 1: 10 in Lithuania, 3: 16 married to Germans. See Mixed marriages Nazi classification system for, 1: 25, 3: 95-97 Nazi racial experiments on/about, 3: 58-59 Nazi resettlement plans for, 3: 40-41, 94 in Poland, 3: 128-129 postwar identity of, 3: 11-12, 14 registration of, 2: 16, 3: 22, 46, 53, 86 stages in Nazi persecution of, 4: 75-76 stereotypes, 1: 28, 2: 52, 153 Vichy government definition of, 2: 136 See also Mischlinge Jews in hiding accounts by survivors, 3: 166 blackmailers of, 1: 2 children, 3: 168-169 Frank, Anne, and family, 2: 26-33 non-Jews who aided, 3: 179 postwar stress experienced by, 4: 49 Warsaw ghetto bunkers, 4: 126, 131, 132, 133 Jobs Austrian dismissal of Jews and spouses from, 1: 50 certificates of employment, 3: 38, 39, 4: 103-104, 112, 185 Jewish retraining courses for emigrants, 4: 98, 100 Nazi laws prohibiting Jews from working, 1: 35, 4: 36 pay rate for forced labor, 2: 17 See also Economic measures against Jews

Joint. See Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) aid to Belgian Jews, 1: 67 aid to refugees in Budapest, 1: 108 conflict with Rescue Committee of the United States Orthodox Rabbis, 3: 165 donations to emigrants, 4: 98 efforts in Polish ghettos, 3: 134 Federation of Swiss Jewish Communities (SIG) and, 3: 51-52 support by American Jews, 1: 18 Joint Rescue Committee, 2: 137 Journalists who reported the Holocaust, 1: 21 Judenräte, 2: 139-143 Bial⁄ystok, 1: 89 Council of Elders of the Kovno Jewish Ghetto Community, 2: 164 duties in the Generalgouvernement, 2: 16 Jewish Religious Congregation (JRC) of Prague, 1: 99 Kielce, 2: 152 L ⁄ ódz´, 3: 20, 23, 25 Lublin, 3: 30-31, 32 Lvov, 2: 125, 3: 37, 38, 39 Minsk, 3: 64 Nazi replacements for, 2: 170, 3: 39 opposition of Jewish youth movements to, 4: 147 Poland, 3: 131 Regulation for the Establishment of the Judenräte, 4: 184 Rovno, 3: 185 Silesia, 3: 109 Tarnów, 4: 52 Ternopol, 4: 56, 57 Theresienstadt Council of Elders, 4: 59 Union Générale Des Israélites De France (UGIF), 3: 112, 113 Vilna, 4: 103, 104 Vitebsk, 4: 106 Warsaw, 4: 118, 121 Judenrat “gardens,” 1: 89 Judenrat leaders duties the Nazis gave them, 2: 140, 141-142 Edelstein, Jacob, 1: 177-178 Elkes, Elchanan, 1184-185 Freudiger, Fülöp, 2: 36-37 Glazman, Josef, 2: 63-65, 64 Mushkin, Eliyahu, 3: 78-79 killed for defiance of Nazi orders, 2: 169-170, 3: 37, 4: 105, 38, 172 photographs of, 1: 182, 2: 141 relationships with Jewish ghetto police, 2: 132, 135 relationships with Jewish resistance groups, 2: 164-165, 3: 64, 4: 89, 104 suicide by, 3: 185, 4: 123 See also Czerniaków, Adam See also Gens, Jacob

INDEX

Judges at Nuremberg, 4: 73 Judgment at Nuremberg, 4: 72 Jüischer Centralverein. See Central Union of German Citizens of Jewish Faith

K

Kadushin, Zvi, 1: 182 Kaltenbrunner, Ernst, 2: 144-145 Kamenets-Podolski, 2: 145 Kaplan, Chaim Aaron, 4: 117 Kaplan, Josef, 2: 146-147 Kapos, 2: 147-148, 3: 48, 4: 68 Kasztner, Rezso˝, 2: 148-149 Kaunas. See Kovnof Kharkov, 2: 149-150 Kherson, 2: 150-152 Kibbutzim Ghetto Fighters’ Kibbutz, 4: 155 in pre-war Kherson (Ukraine), 2: 151 Zionist, 1: 10, 2: 153, 4: 154 Kielce, 2: 151-152 Kiev. See Babi Yar Kings Christian X (Denmark), 1: 160 Gustav V (Sweden), 4: 108 Leopold III (Belgium), 1: 63-64 Kistarcsa, 2: 154-155 Klein, Gerda Weissmann, 3: 130, 135 Koch, Ilse, 2: 155-156 Koch, Karl Otto, 2: 155-156 Kolbe, Maximilian, 2: 156-158, 157 Kommissarbefehl (Commissar Order), 2: 158-159 Kommissariat, 2: 170 Kook, Hillel, 1: 19 Koppe, Wilhelm, 2: 159 Korczak, Janusz, 2: 159-162, 160 Korherr, Richard, 2: 162 Kovno, 2: 163-166, 4: 145 Kowalski, Wladyslaw, 2: 166-167 Kraków, 2: 167-171 deportations of Jews from, 3: 137 ghetto entrance, 2: 168 Jewish Fighting Organization (Z˙OB), 2: 170 Pl⁄asów (camp), 3: 120-122 synagogues, destruction of, 2: 168 Kramer, Josef, 1: 82, 2: 171 Krasnodor Trial, 4: 71 Kristallnacht, 2: 54-55, 171-174 in Berlin, 1: 85 effect of Nurenberg Laws on, 3: 97 map of, 2: 56 response by the Quakers, 1: 13-14 Krüger, Friedrich Wilhelm, 2: 174-175 Krumey, Hermann, 2: 175 Krupp (German company), 2: 77, 3: 109, 115, 117 Kulmhof. See Chel⁄mno

L

Labor camps, 2: 16-17 Auschwitz III, 1: 41-42 Bel⁄z˙ec, 1: 73 Budzyn´, 1: 110-111

coercion of Jews into, 3: 109 at Gross-Rosen, 2: 77-78 Janówska, 2: 124-126 for Jewish farmers from Kherson, 2: 150-152 Kielce, 2: 153 in Latvia and Estonia, 3: 17-18 in Lithuania, 3: 17-18 L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto, 3: 23 Lutsk, 3: 34 Lvov ghetto, 3: 38-39 for Lvov Jews, 3: 37 Pl⁄asów, 3: 120-122 Poland, 3: 139 in Silesia and Sudetenland, 3: 109-110 Skarz˙ysko-Kamienna, 4: 9-11 Starachowice, 4: 35-36 Ternopol ghetto, 4: 56 Trawniki, 4: 62-63 Vienna, 1: 53-54 Vilna, 4: 105 See also Kapo Labour Party of Great Britain, 2: 69 Lampshades from Jews’ skins, 2: 156 Language and antisemitism, 3: 149 of the Nazis. See Sprachregelung La Risiera di San Sabba camp, 2: 121-122 Latin American countries’ positions at Evian Conference, 1: 190 Latvia, 3: 1-4 Dvinsk, 1: 174-176 Gypsies, 2: 86 map of, 3: 2 Riga, 3: 175-177 Latvian military, 3: 175-176 Latvian police, 3: 3 Latvian resistance groups, 3: 3 Laval, Pierre, 3: 4-5 Laws. See International law; Laws, Nazi; Legal principles Laws, Nazi banning economic activity by Jews, 1: 36 empowering the Gestapo, 2: 60-61 The Enabling Law, 2: 50 First Ordinance to the Riech Citizenship Law, 4: 181-183 Law against the Overcrowding of German Schools and Institutions of Higher Learning, 1: 25, 4: 179-180 Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Home, 1: 25, 3: 53 Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor, 3: 96, 4: 180181 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, 1: 24-25 Measure for the Elimination of Jews from the German Economy, 1: 26 See also Anti-Jewish legislation See also Marriage laws, Nazi Leadership Principle, Nazi, 2: 95, 3: 81 Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, 3: 5-6 Legal principles

Allied Control Council, 4: 75-76 International Military Tribunal (IMT), 4: 72-75 Polish courts, 4: 83 West German courts, 4: 79 Lemberg. See Lvov Lenard, Philipp, 1: 30 Leopold III (King of Belgium), 1: 63-64 Levi, Primo, 3: 6-8, 4: 33 Libraries. See Books; Documents of the Holocaust; Museums Liebehenschel, Arthur, 3: 8 Liebeskind, Aharon, 3: 9-11 Liquidation of camps, 3: 44, 50 Auschwitz, 1: 47 Bel⁄z˙ec, 1: 77 Buchenwald, 1: 107 Budzyn´, 1: 111 death marches from the camps, 1: 149153 Dora-Mittelbau, 1: 171 in the Generalgouvernement, 1: 184186 Gross-Rosen, 2: 78-79 Janówska, 2: 126 Majdanek, 1: 184-186 Mauthausen, 3: 50 Natzweiler-Struthof, 3: 80 Organisation Schmelt labor camps, 3: 110 Pl⁄asów, 3: 122 Poland, 3: 139 Ravensbrück, 3: 156 Sobibór, 4: 19 Starachowice, 4: 36 Stutthof, 4: 43 Ternopol, 4: 56 Trawniki, 4: 62-63 Treblinka, 4: 68, 69 Vilna area, 4: 104 See also Erntefest (“Harvest Festival”) Liquidation of ghettos Belorussia, 1: 71 Bial⁄ystok, 1: 90-91 Budapest, 4: 110 in Croatia, 1: 141 Derechin, 1: 38 in the Generalgouvernement, 2: 40, 3: 138-139 Gestapo role in, 2: 62 Kharkov, 2: 150 Kielce, 2: 152-153 Kovno, 2: 165-166 Kraków, 3: 121 L ⁄ ódz´, 1: 117, 3: 23, 24 Lublin, 3: 33 Lvov, 3: 39 Reichskommissariat Ostland, 4: 104105 Riga, 3: 3, 177 Riga “large,” 3: 176 Starachowice, 4: 35 Vilna, 2: 47, 4: 90, 105 Vilna area, 4: 103 Vitebsk, 4: 106 Warsaw, 4: 40-41, 127

227

INDEX

Literature, antisemitic, 1: 30, 32 Literature of the Holocaust, 3: 11-15 Levi, Primo, 3: 6-8 Ringelblum, Emanuel, 3: 181-182 Szenes, Hannah,4: 51-52, 150 Yelin, Haim, 4: 144 Wiesel, Elie, 4: 137-138 Wiesenthal, Simon, 4: 139 See also Diaries See also Holocaust survivor accounts See also Poems of the Holocaust Lithuania, 3: 15-19 annexation of Polish areas, 3: 127-128 Gypsies, 2: 86 Jewish communities, 1: 69 Kovno, 2: 163-166, 4: 145 United Partisan Organization, 4: 8890 Vilna, 3: 16, 4: 88-90, 101-105 Lithuanian Jews, 2: 73 extermination by Karl Jager, 2: 124 Lithuanian partisans, 2: 165, 3: 116-117 Lithuanian soldiers and police, 3: 17 L ⁄ ódz´, 3: 19-24 deportations from, 3: 137-138 deportees, 1: 115, 116, 117 Jewish Special Commando, 4: 26 See also Biebow, Hans, 1: 92 L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto, chronicles of the, 3: 25 Lohse, Hinrich, 3: 28 Lösener, Bernard, 3: 28-29 Lublin, 3: 29-33 Budzyn´, 1: 110-111 failure to solve “Jewish question” with, 2: 10, 3: 94 plans for deportations of Jews to, 1: 161-162, 3: 92-95 See also Majdanek See also Nisko and Lublin Plan L ⁄ uck. See Lutsk Luftwaffe, 2: 68 Lutheran Church and antisemitism, 1: 119, 121 Lutsk, 3: 33-34 Lutz, Carl, 3: 34-36, 35 Lvov, 3: 36-40 labor camp, 2: 124-126 Lyons, Butcher of, 1: 61-62

M Madagascar Plan, 3: 40-42, 4: 184-186 relation to “Final Solution,” 2: 10 See also Nisko and Lublin Plan Majdanek, 3: 42-45 gas chambers, 2: 39 liquidation of, 1: 184-186 Malaria experiments by Nazis, 3: 57 Marches. See Death marches Marriage laws, Nazi, 1: 25, 2: 90, 3: 66, 96 Marshall Plan, alternatives to the, 3: 71 Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Law, 3: 178 Masons (organization), 3: 146, 183 Mass graves. See Corpses, Nazi efforts to conceal

228

Mass murders by Nazis, 2: 145 Babi Yar, 1: 54-56, 3: 106 the beginning of, 1: 192 Belorussia, 1: 70-71, 72 Bial⁄ystok, 1: 88 of British prisoners of war in France, 1: 182 Budapest, 1: 34, 109 by burning victims alive, 1: 171, 3: 108, 176 by carbon monoxide gas, 2: 37 Croatia, 1: 140 by electrocution, 2: 39 with the Euthanasia Program, 1: 186189 Gypsies, 2: 86-87 Kharkov, 2: 150 Kovno, 2: 163-164 Kraków ghetto, 2: 169 Latvia, 3: 3-4 Lithuania, 3: 17 L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto, 3: 22-23 Lublin, 3: 32, 43 Lutsk, 3: 33, 34 Lvov, 1: 8, 3: 38, 39 Mauthausen, 3: 46 methods used for, 2: 12, 4: 23-24, 113 Minsk, 3: 64 by Operational Squads, 3: 104-105 by phenol injection, 1: 82 photographs of, 1: 135, 3: 105, 142 Pl⁄asów, 3: 122 of Poles, 4: 152 Ponary, 3: 141-142 prisoners at Dachau, 1: 146-147 Riegner cable message about, 3: 174175 Riga “large” ghetto, 3: 176 Rovno, 3: 185-186 Rumbula, 3: 187 Simferopol, 4: 9 Skarz˙ysko-Kamienna, 4: 10 Starachowice, 4: 35 Tarnów, 4: 53 Ternopol, 4: 55, 56 timing of, 3: 136, 4: 99 Ukraine, 4: 85-86 using Zyklon B, 2: 39 Vilna, 4: 102, 103 Vitebsk, 4: 106 See also Camp procedures for prisoners See also Corpses, Nazi efforts to conceal See also Death marches See also Gas chambers See also Gas vans Master Plan, 2: 42, 43 Master race Himmler’s concept of, 2: 90 Nazi concept of, 1: 186 Rosenberg’s concept of, 3: 184 Mauthausen, 3: 45-51 Mayer, Saly, 3: 51-52 Measure for the Elimination of Jews from the German Economy, 1: 26 Medical experiments, 3: 52-61

at Dachau, 1: 146 at Ravensbrück, 3: 156 using Natzweiler gas chamber, 3: 80 victim testimony of, 4: 82 See also Nazi doctors Mein Kampf (Hitler), 2: 94, 3: 61-62 Memorials for Anielewicz, Mordecai, 1: 24 Babi Yar, 1: 55-56 ceremonies of remembrance at, 3: 74, 187 created by Yad Vashem, 3: 76, 77 Dvinsk, 1: 175 for Hirsch, Otto, 2: 92 Natzweiler-Struthof crematorium, 3: 80 Prague, 1: 99 Riga garden, 3: 177 Soviet, at Rumbula, 3: 187 Tower of Faces, 3: 75 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, 4: 137 Westerbork camp, 4: 136 See also Monuments See also Museums Mengele, Josef, 3: 62-63 death of, 3: 99 racial experiments by, 3: 58-59 survivor’s memory of, 1: 40 Messerschmitt Aircraft Company, 3: 79 Meyer-Hetling, Konrad, 2: 41, 42 Minsk, 1: 72-73, 3: 63-66, 4: 22 Mischlinge, 3: 66-68 with black fathers, 2: 188-189 gypsies considered to be, 2: 82, 84 legal definition of, 3: 28 Nazi discussions about, 4: 112-113 survivors in Germany, 2: 59 Mixed blood, persons of. See Mischlinge Mixed marriages Berlin survivors in, 1: 87 categories of Mischlinge in, 3: 66 Catholic support for, 1: 120 German laws against, 2: 52 Germans in, 3: 67 Hitler’s intervention on behalf of Jews in, 3: 67 Jewish survivors in occupied Austria, 1: 53-54 job dismissal of both partners in Austria, 1: 50 Lösener, Bernard, rescuing Jews in, 3: 29 Minsk ghetto incarceration of Aryans in, 3: 64 Nazi conferences about, 4: 112-113 Nazi denial of matrimony loans to those in, 1: 25 See also Mischlinge Moeser, Hans Karl, 1: 171 Mogilev-Podolski, 3: 68-69 Monowitz. See Auschwitz Monsky, Henry, 1: 15 Monuments Baum Gruppe, 1: 62 Bel⁄z˙ec, 1: 77

INDEX

Drancy (French transit camp), 1: 174 Kielce, 2: 153 mass-murder sites in Lithuania, 3: 18 Treblinka cemetery, 4: 69 Warsaw Transfer Point (Umschlagplatz), 4: 61-62 See also Memorials See also Museums Moravia. See Bohemia and Moravia, Protectorate of Moreshet, 3: 69 Morgenthau, Henry, Jr., 1: 18, 3: 69-71 Motives American beliefs about Nazis’ motives, 1: 20 Nazi doctors, 3: 58 Poles who aided Jews, 1: 1, 3 those who deny the Holocaust, 2: 102104 Movies about Nazis, 3: 13, 76 Müller, Heinrich, 3: 71-73 Munich, 2: 135 Munich Agreement, 2: 70, 110 Murders by Nazis. See Executions by Nazis; Extermination camps; Mass murders by Nazis; Medical experiments Muselmann, 3: 73 Museums, 3: 74 Anne Frank house, 2: 31-32 Ghetto Fighters’, 4: 155 Jewish Museum of Prague, 1: 99 Majdanek, 3: 45 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 3: 74-75 Yad Vashem Historical Museum, 3: 76, 77 Mushkin, Eliyahu, 3: 78-79 Muslims, influence on Nazis, 1: 57 Mussolini, Benito, 2: 1, 3 photographs of, 2: 118 reactions to antisemitism, 2: 119-120 relationship with Hitler, 2: 123

N Nathan, Tikva, 4: 50 National Socialism and antisemitism, 1: 33 National Socialist Party. See Nazi Party Natzweiler-Struthof, 3: 79-80 Nazi actions on holidays Christmas Eve, 4: 43 Day of Atonement, pogroms, 4: 99 Passover, arrests of Judenrat officials, 4: 52 Passover, liquidation of Warsaw ghetto, 4: 127, 131 Rosh Hashanah and Day of Atonement aktions, 4: 117 Yom Kippur, Aktion, 4: 103 Nazi deceptions about deportations, 4: 125 about existence of extermination camps, 1: 193-194 about purpose of concentration camps, 4: 28 camp “showers.” See Gas chambers

cover-ups about war crimes, 1: 4-6, 2: 158-159 decorations around camp “showers,” 2: 38 of deportees, 4: 17 disguised gas vans, 2: 37 of émigrés, 2: 148 “examination room” for prisoners, 4: 1 fabricated causes of death for prisoners, 2: 61 ghetto currency, 4: 57 “infirmary” for the sick, 4: 67 letters to relatives of dead Jews, 4: 18 “model ghetto” at Thereseinstadt, 1: 181, 4: 57-58, 59-60 murder of crematorium laborers, 50 murder of Jews who volunteered to be sterilized, 3: 67 not adding odor to Zyklon B, 4: 157 promise of jobs for unemployed Jews, 3: 88, 89 propaganda films about Jews in Third Reich, 4: 60 receiving ransom and killing hostages, 3: 37 rumors about Jews being murderers, 3: 37 staged attack on German soldiers, 4: 103 use of special language. See Sprachregelung See also Camp procedures See also Liquidation of camps Nazi-Deutsch. See Sprachregelung Nazi doctors at Bergen-Belsen, 1: 82 Clauberg, Carl, 1: 123-124, 3: 59-60 at Dachau, 1: 146 in the Euthanasia Program, 1: 186-189 Eysele, Hans, 4: 82 Mengele, Josef, 1: 40, 3: 58-59, 62-63, 99 Ritter, Robert2: 82 See also Medical experiments Nazi euphemisms “asocial elements,” 1: 126 “disinfected” persons, 1: 189 “Final Solution,” 4: 27 “Harvest Festival” (Erntefest), 1: 8, 184-186 “quarantine,” 1: 42 “sauna,” 1: 42 “total removal,” 2: 43 See also Nazi deceptions Nazification, 2: 50-51 Nazi foreign policy, 3: 61 Nazi Four-Year Plan Hitler’s memo on, 2: 53 and I. G. Farben, 2: 116 Nazi ideology about the “Jewish question,” 2: 8, 3: 94, 49, 61, 184 difference from fascism, 2: 4 Rosenberg’s writings about, 3: 184 Nazi newspapers, 4: 38, 39 Nazi nurses, 1: 186-189

Nazi officials Auerswald, Heinz, 1: 39 Biebow, Hans, 1: 92-93 Bormann, Martin, 1: 100-101 in charge of German police departments, 3: 162 Endre, László, 1: 183-184 Goebbels, Joseph, 1: 84, 2: 66-67, 4: 27 Kaltenbrunner, Ernest, 2: 144-145 Korherr, Richard, 2: 162 Lohse, Hinrich, 3: 28 Lösener, Bernard, 3: 28-29 Müller, Heinrich, 3: 71-73 Novak, Franz, 3: 95 Rauff, Walther, 3: 154 Rohm, Ernest, 2: 105 Rosenberg, Alfred, 2: 86, 3: 148, 3: 182-184 Seyss-Inquart, Arthur, 4: 7-8 Stangl, Franz, 4: 34-35 Stricher, Julius, 4: 37-38 Stuckart, Wilhelm, 4: 41-42 See also Frank, Hans See also War criminals Nazi Party, 3: 80-83 anti-Jewish objectives, 1: 24 Foreign Organization, 4: 106 importance of Dachau to, 1: 144 and the “Jewish Question,” 2: 49, 3: 184 Mischlinge belonging to, 3: 67-68 Program of the National-Socialist (Nazi) German Worker’s Party, 4: 171-173 rise to power, 2: 50-55, 94 similar groups in other countries, 3: 152 Nazi rationales attacks on Berlin Jews, 1: 84 conducting medical experiments about wounds, 3: 56 deporting Czech Jews to Poland, 1: 99 detentions of political prisoners, 1: 126 “Final Solution,” 3: 147-148 Kristallnacht, 1: 26, 2: 171-172 massacre at Babi Yar, 1: 54 mass murder of Belorussian Jews, 1: 72 murder of Berlin Jews, 1: 63 murder of Czech prisoners, 3: 48 murder of 300 Lutsk Jews, 3: 33 murder of Vilna Jews, 4: 103 removing Hitler’s opponents, 2: 105 See also “Final Solution” Nazi resistance fighters in Allied territories, 3: 148 Nazis attitudes toward Zionism, 2: 52, 4: 140 categories of, 1: 156 decision-making under Hitler, 2: 33, 95-97 Declaration of the Boycott by the Nazi Party Leadership 4: 173-177 image in film and fiction, 3: 13 pagan roots, 4: 30 postwar arrests of, 1: 155 power gained from antisemitism, 1: 33

229

INDEX

return to public office after the war, 4: 70 stages in persecution of Jews, 4: 75-76 their ideal woman, 2: 99 who followed orders, 4: 73, 81 Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, 2: 135 Nazi symbols, 4: 29-30 black shirts, 2: 122 German flag, 3: 96 swastikas, 2: 93, 3: 184 uniforms, 4: 30, 32, 87 Nazi terminology “collective responsibility” of prisoners, 3: 173 Sprachregelung, 4: 27-28 See also Nazi euphemisms Nazi war criminals. See War criminals Nazi youth, photograph of Hitler with, 2: 93 Nebe, Arthur, 3: 84 Neo-Fascist groups, 2: 103 Neo-Nazi groups, 2: 103, 3: 82-83 See also Denial of the Holocaust Netherlands, 3: 85-91 Bogaard, Johannes, 1: 96-97 Catholics, 1: 121 deportation of Jews from, 1: 164 Jewish badge, 1: 59, 61 Jewish Brigade Group activities, 2: 128 position at Evian Conference, 1: 190 Protestants, 1: 122 Seyss-Inquart, Arthur, 4: 7-8 treatment of Mischlinge in, 3: 66-67 underground groups, 1: 96-97 Westerbork, 3: 88, 4: 135-137, 89, 90 Neuengamme, 3: 91-92 Newspapers Lithuanian Communist, 4: 153 reports on the Holocaust, 1: 20-21 underground Jewish, 2: 170, 4: 122, 123 See also Reports to the outside world New Zealand’s position at Evian Conference, 1: 190 Nice (France), 4: 151 “Night of the Broken Glass.” See Kristallnacht Night (Wiesel), 3: 14, 4: 138 Nisko and Lublin Plan, 3: 92-95 See also Madagascar Plan Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, 4: 137-138 Non-Aryans, definition of, 1: 24-25 Non-Jews who aided Jews execution by Nazis, 1: 2 in Italy, 2: 122 in the Netherlands, 3: 90 in Poland, 1: 1-2, 4: 7, 128 See also Righteous Among the Nations Nordhausen, death march from, 1: 152 Norway, deportation of Jews from, 1: 164 Novak, Franz, 3: 95 Nowak, Franz. See Novak, Franz Nowicki, Klemak, 3: 166 NSDAP. See Nazi Party

230

Nuremberg Nazi Party meeting at, 3: 81 reason for holding trials at, 4: 72 Nuremberg Laws, 1: 25, 3: 96-97 application to Gypsies, 2: 82 Nuremberg Military Tribunals. See Trials of war criminals Nuremberg Trial, 4: 71-74 different types of, 4: 70-71 judges, 2: 117 Otto Ohlendorf’s testimony, 3: 101 questions about legitimacy of, 1: 136137, 2: 102, 3: 184 See also International Military Tribunal (IMT)

O

Oberg, Carl Albrecht, 3: 97-98 Oberschlesische Hydriewerke (German company), 1: 42 Occupied territories. See German-occupied territories Office of Special Investigations, 3: 98-100 Ohlendorf, Otto, 3: 100-101 Olympic games in Berlin, 2: 53 Oneg Shabbat, 3: 180 “One-Two-Three” (Szenes), 4: 51 Open ghettos, 3: 26 Operational Squads, 3: 101-108 difficulties in carrying out mass murders, 2: 12 in Poland, 3: 129, 130-131 relationship to Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), 3: 163 relationship to SD, 4: 5 in the Ukraine, 4: 84 Volksdeutsche units, 4: 107-108 See also Special Commando Operation “Barbarossa,” 3: 103, 4: 21-22 Operation “Erntefest.” See Erntefest (“Harvest Festival”) Operation 1005. See Aktion 1005 Operation Reinhard. See Aktion Reinhard Oradour-sur-Glane, 3: 108 Orchestras prisoners, 1: 45, 2: 125 Warsaw ghetto, 4: 122 Order Banning the Emigration of Jews from the Reich 4: 188-189 Organisation Schmelt, 3: 108-110 Orthodox youth organization, 4: 150 OSI. See Office of Special Investigations Osijek, Jews in, 1: 141 Óswie¸cim See Auschwitz Owens, Jesse, 3: 150 See also Black people

P

Palestine American Jewish Conference and, 1: 16 British army regiment from, 2: 127129 British limits on immigration to, 1: 17 creation of Jewish state in, 1: 10-11

Eichmann’s views about, 1: 179 illegal immigration to (Aliya Bet), 1: 913 Jewish parachutists from, 3: 170, 4: 14, 51-52 policy towards Jewish refugees, 3: 160 postwar emigration by Jews to, 1: 168, 169 prisoners of war from, 3: 144 Paris, 3: 111-113 deportations from, 2: 22 Jews in, 2: 24-25 police, 2: 35-36 Parnes, Joseph, 2: 125, 3: 37 Partisan leaders Atlas, Yeheskel, 1: 38 Glazman, Josef, 2: 63-65, 64 Partisans, 3: 113-119 Belorussian, 2: 74 French, 3: 157 in Lithuania, 2: 165 in Poland, 4: 152 relationships with Jewish resistance groups, 3: 64-65 in the Soviet Union, 4: 24 in the Ukraine, 3: 186, 4: 85 See also Jewish partisans See also Soviet partisans Part Jews. See Mischlinge Patches. See Badges Pechersky, Aleksandr, 3: 119-120 Periodic Table, The (Il Sistema Periodico) (Levi), 3: 8 Phenol injections, Nazi use of, 1: 82, 2: 157, 3: 156 Pl⁄asów, 3: 120-122 Plotnicka, Frumka, 122-123 Poems of the Holocaust “A Cartload of Shoes,” 3: 10 “Babii Yar,” 1: 56 Ballad of Mauthausen, 3: 51 “Holocaust 1944,” 4: 46 “In Auschwitz-Birkenau,” 1: 40-41 “Night,” 4: 138 “One-Two-Three,” 4: 51 “Shema,” 3: 7 “Terezín,” 4: 59 “To Caesarea,” 4: 150 “Waiting,” 4: 33 Pogroms Antwerp, 1: 66 Austria, 1: 52 Belorussian, 1: 69 Berlin, 1: 84 definition of, 1: 31 Lithuania, 3: 16, 17 postwar Kielce, 2: 153, 3: 141 Ukraine, 3: 33, 4: 84, 85 by Ukrainians in Lvov, 3: 37 See also Kristallnacht Pohl, Oswald, 3: 123 Poland, 3: 121-141 aid to Jews in, 1: 1-3 antisemitism in, 1: 31 Bial⁄ystok, 1: 71, 2: 74, 75-76, 88-92 Catholics, 1: 121

INDEX

death marches, 1: 149 deportations of Jews from Germany to, 1: 161 effect of German occupation, 2: 9-10 extermination camps, 1: 192-194, 2: 65-66 Generalplan Ost for, 2: 41-43 German subdivisions of, 3: 125 Gypsies, 2: 86 Jewish badge, 1: 58 Jewish resistance groups, 2: 131-132, 3: 122-123 Jewish youth movements, 4: 147 Kielce, 2: 151-152 Kolbe, Maximilian, 2: 156-158 Lvov, 2: 124-126, 3: 36-40 Nazi destruction of Polish culture, 2: 40-41 Nazi plan for elimination of Jews in, 1: 6-9 rescue of Jews in, 2: 166-167 role of Wilhelm Koppe, 2: 159 Tarnów, 4: 52-53 trials of war criminals by, 4: 81-83 underground groups, 3: 114 Volksdeutsche, 4: 107 Zamos´c´, 4: 151-152 See also Generalgouvernement See also Kraków See also Lublin See also Warsaw Poles attitudes towards Jews, 3: 135 Nazi deportations of, 1: 162 Nazi treatment of, 2: 15, 3: 47, 43 response to the “Final Solution,” 3: 138 Police auxiliary, 1: 149, 4: 84, 85, 87-88, 124 French, 2: 35-36 German, 3: 161-163 Hungarian, 2: 83, 112 Latvian, 3: 3 Lithuanian, 3: 17 Swiss, 2: 79 Vienna, 3: 50 See also Gestapo See also Jewish ghetto police Polish government anti-Jewish policies, 3: 128 anti-Jewish policies in Belorussia, 1: 69 in-exile, 3: 125-126, 128 Polish Jewish refugees, 3: 159-160 Polish prisoners intellectuals, 3: 47 Jewish, 1: 132 at Mauthausen, 3: 48 at Pl⁄asów, 3: 121 status of, 1: 131 Polish prisoners of war, 3: 143-144 Polish underground groups, 3: 128, 4: 119 See also Zegota (the Polish Council for Aid to Jews) Polish women, Nazi medical experiments on, 3: 56-57 Political antisemitism, 1: 32-33

Political organizations. See Jewish organizations; Underground groups; Youth movements Political prisoners Bereza-Kartuska, 2: 5 Buchenwald, 1: 104, 106 Communists, 1: 126 Dachau, 1: 144 detention of, 1: 125-126 extermination at Auschwitz, 1: 46 French communists, 2: 80 in Italy, 2: 120, 121 Kistarcsa, 2: 154-155 Leon Feiner, 2: 4-5 mass murders of, 1: 147 Mauthausen, 3: 46 medical experiments on, 3: 56 murdered by Soviets in Lvov, 3: 37 relative proportion in camps, 1: 126 Spanish Civil War, 1: 130, 2: 80, 3: 47, 48 See also Kommissarbefehl (Commissar Order) Politics and racism, 3: 151-153 Ponary, 3: 141-142 See also Vilna, 4: 105 Poniatowa, liquidation of, 1: 184-186 Pope Pius XI, 1: 119 Pope Pius XII, 1: 78, 120 Portugal, Aristides de Sousa Mendes’ role, 4: 19-20 Portugal’s policy towards Jewish refugees, 3: 160 Postal services in ghettos, 3: 135 Postwar aid to survivors, 3: 165 antisemitism, 1: 33-34 Belgium, 1: 68 Christian churches, 1: 122 controversy over role of the Judenrat, 2: 143 denazification efforts, 1: 154-157 France, 2: 25 I. G. Farben, 2: 117 literary responses to the Holocaust, 3: 12-13 Lublin, 3: 33 Netherlands, 3: 90-91 Prague, 1: 99 prisoners’ adjustment to freedom, 1: 133-134 racism, 3: 153 Soviet Union, 4: 25 See also Displaced persons See also Trials of war criminals, 2: 135 Potsdam Agreement, 1: 154-155 Prague, 1: 98-99, 112 Pregnancy experiments by Nazis, 3: 58, 4: 30, 60, 151 Prejudice against Gypsies, 2: 81 Prejudice against Jews. See Antisemitism; Racism Preventative arrests, 2: 82 Prisoners about to be executed, 1: 133 after liberation, 1: 133, 4: 48-49

badges worn by, 1: 61 barracks at Dachau, 1: 146 barracks at Theresienstadt, 4: 58 barracks in Majdanek, 3: 45 at Buchenwald, 1: 105, 106 categorization by SS, 1: 131 “collective responsibility” of, 3: 173 convicts, 1: 81-82, 2: 77 daily life, 1: 43-44, 130-131 “the dentists,” 4: 17 disabled, 2: 77 diseases and epidemics among, 1: 147 drafted for the German army, 3: 156 Gypsies, 2: 82, 85 in Italian concentration camps, 2: 120 Latvian, 3: 3 medical experiments on, 1: 44, 3: 5261 in the Muselmann stage, 3: 73 orchestras, 1: 45, 2: 125 photographs of, 1: 145, 4: 2 psychological effects of the camps on, 1: 134, 4: 47-48 registration of, 3: 46 role of criminals, 3: 45, 48, 121 roll call, 1: 43 Selektion, 2: 38 sick, 1: 81, 146-147 striped jacket, 2: 147 types of, 1: 126, 128, 131-132, 144 unregistered, 1: 43 See also Camp conditions See also Camp procedures See also Death marches See also Escapes and escape attempts See also Forced labor See also Jewish prisoners See also Kapos See also Political prisoners See also Prisoners of war See also Prisoners’ tasks See also Resistance by prisoners Prisoners of war, 3: 142-146 definition of, 3: 142 forced labor, 2: 13 Jews classified as German POWs, 2: 110 Nazi medical experiments on, 3: 59 Nazi violation of rights of, 2: 158 at Pl⁄asów, 3: 121 See also Soviet prisoners of war Prisoners’ tasks, 1: 130-131 in the armaments industry, 1: 128-129, 3: 48 construction, 2: 76, 77 at Dachau, 1: 145-146 digging canals, 3: 91 disposing of corpses, 1: 4 picking up belongings of victims, 1: 42 quarrying granite, 3: 79 Sachsenhausen brickyard, 4: 1 serving camp guards, 4: 16 skilled and professional labor, 4: 63, 65-66, 68 at Westerbork (transit camp), 4: 136 working in the crematoria, 1: 43

231

INDEX

Prisons L ⁄ ódz´ ghetto, 3: 21 Pawiak (Warsaw), 4: 115 Professions, Nazi laws banning Jews from, 1: 24-25, 26, 35 Program of the National-Socialist (Nazi) German Workers’ Party, 4: 171-73 Propaganda antisemitic poster, 2: 20 effect on news reporting, 1: 20 film by Nazis about Jews, 4: 60 Goebbels’ role, 2: 66-67 Nazis felt was unfair, 1: 102 torching of Nazi anti-Communist exhibit, 1: 63 transmitted by Hitler Youth, 2: 99 See also Sprachregelung “Protective custody” of enemies of the Reich, 2: 62 used as category for prisoners, 3: 46 Protective documents for Jews, 1: 110, 3: 35, 4: 108 Schutz-Pass, 4: 109 Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. See Bohemia and Moravia Protestant churches and Nazism, 1: 119, 121-122 Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, 3: 5-6 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 1: 30, 3: 146 Prussian Gestapo, 2: 60-61 Psychology of survivors. See Holocaust survivors: psychology of Public employment, Nazi ban of Jews from, 1: 35 Public humiliation of Jews hair and beard cutting by Nazis, 3: 31, 4: 13, 129 by Lithuanians, 3: 17 in Lublin, 3: 30 Purtzmann, Hans-Adolf, 3: 148

Q

Quakers, 1: 13-14, 3: 167 Queen Elizabeth, 1: 66-67

R

Rabbis, rescue of, 3: 164 Racial experiments by Nazis, 3: 58-59 Racial ideas about Gypsies, 2: 82 Racial ideas about Jews, 1: 32 Racial laws in Italy, 2: 120 Racial purity standards of Nazis and homosexuality, 2: 104 and medical experiments, 3: 53-54 penalty for violating, 2: 15 pregnancy experiments and euthanasia, 3: 151 requirement for SS officers, 4: 29 See also Mischlinge Racism, 3: 149-153 German perception of, 3: 164 See also Black people Rademacher, Franz, 3: 41 Radom District, 2: 77 camps in, 3: 43, 4: 10

232

Ranasinghe, Anne, 4: 46 Ransom payments to Nazis “Blood for Goods,” 1: 181, 2: 148, 4: 142 Europa Plan, 3: 52 for hostages in Lvov, 3: 37 See also Fines on Jewish communities Rasch, Emil Otto, 3: 153-154 Ration cards, 4: 115 Rauff, Walther, 3: 154 Ravensbrück, 3: 154-156 Rayman, Marcel, 3: 156-157 Reagan, Ronald, 4: 137 Reawakening, The (La Tregna) (Levi), 3: 7 Redcliffe, Sir John (pseudonym), 1: 30 “Red Friday,” 1: 88 Refugees, 3: 157-161 from Austria, 1: 52 in Budapest, 1: 108 children in Great Britain, 2: 72 from Croatia, 1: 140 in Denmark, 1: 157-158 Dutch assistance to, 3: 85-86 Evian Conference, 1: 189-192 German Jewish children, 3: 167 from Germany, 2: 9 in Great Britain, 2: 71-73 helped by the Quakers, 1: 13-14 in Hungary, 2: 36 Hungary’s acceptance of Polish, 2: 111 Judenrat aid to, 2: 140 in Lithuania, 1: 184 in Lvov, 3: 37 in the Netherlands, 3: 88 in occupied France, 2: 21 in Poland, 2: 157 from Poland to Soviet Union, 3: 129130 rabbis, 3: 164 in Rome, 1: 78 in the Soviet Union, 4: 21 United States’ responses, 4: 92, 96 See also Rescue of European Jews See also Rescue of Jewish children Refugee ships, 3: 160 Hikawa Maru, 3: 159 Manhattan, 3: 167 St. Louis, 4: 36-37 Regulation for the Elimination of the Jews from the Economic Life of Germany, 4: 183-184 Regulation for the Establishment of the Jundenräte, 4:184 Reich Association of Jews in Germany, 1: 26, 37-38, 114 Reich Citizenship Law, 1: 25, 26, 3: 96 Reich Committee of Jewish Youth Organizations, 4: 146 Reich Concordat, 1: 119 Reichenau, death marches from, 1: 153 Reichenau, Walter von, 3: 163-164 Reich ghetto in Minsk, 3: 65 Reich Representation of German Jews, 2: 51-52, 55, 56 in Berlin, 1: 84

Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), 3: 161-163 effect on Gestapo, 2: 62 role in Generalplan Ost, 2: 41, 42-43 Wisliceny, Dieter, 4: 141-142 Reichstag, 3: 82 Relief and Rescue Committee of Budapest, 2: 148-149 Religious antisemitism, 1: 28 Reparations. See Financial reparations Reports about the Holocaust in American newspapers, 1: 20-21 Reports to the outside world Auschwitz Protocols, 4: 14 from the Bund, 2: 5 from Central Union of German Citizens of Jewish Faith, 1: 113 about Kristallnacht, 2: 174 from occupied Poland, 1: 2-3, 3: 123 from United Partisan Organization (FPO), 4: 89 U.S. State Department suppression of, 4: 92 via World Jewish Congress, 4: 144 from Warsaw, 3: 181 words used to describe Holocaust, 2: 100 See also Riegner cable Rescue, Nazi experiments on, 3: 54-56 Rescue Committee of United States Orthodox Rabbis, 3: 164-166 Rescue of European Jews American Jewish Conference and, 1: 16 in Belgium, 1: 67-68 by Benoît, Father Marie, 1: 78-79 Bergson Group plan for, 1: 19 by Bogaard , Johannes, in Netherlands, 1: 96-97 in Budapest, 4: 108-111 by Choms, Wl⁄adysl⁄awa, 1: 118-119 by Deffaught, Jean, 1: 153-154 in Denmark, 1: 157-161 as a form of resistance to Nazis, 3: 171 in France, 2: 23 by Grüninger, Paul, 2: 79 Horthy, Miklós, and his role in, 2: 106 from Hungary, 4: 114 in Hungary, 1: 181, 2: 36 by Italians and the Italian government, 2: 122, 123 by Italians in Yugoslavia, 1: 140 from Italy, 4: 114 by Jewish Brigade Group, 2: 128 Judenräte efforts to, “rescue by labor,” 2: 142 by Kasztner, Rezso˝, 2: 148-149 by Kolbe, Maxmilian, 2: 156-158 by Kowalski, Wladyslaw, 2: 166-167 Morgenthau, Henry, Jr., and his impact on, 3: 69-71 by Palestine Jews, 2: 137 by partisans, 1: 38 in Poland, 2: 5 by Ringelblum, Emanuel, 3: 182 by the Romanian government, 1: 77

INDEX

Slovakia, 1: 181 by SS official, 1: 87 by Sugihara, Sempo, 4: 44-45 by Swiss diplomat in Hungary, 3: 3436 Switzerland, 3: 51-52 by a town in southern France, 3: 5-6 United States’ role, 4: 94 U.S. State Department role, 4: 92 See also Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) See also Righteous Among the Nations, 3: 177-180 See also War Refugee Board, 4: 96 Rescue of Jewish children, 3: 166-170 Choms, Wl⁄adysl⁄awa , 1: 118-119 Cohn, Marianne and, 1: 124 Deffaught, Jean and, 1: 153-154 Getter, Matylda and, 2: 63 by Jewish youth movements, 4: 151 Sendler, Irena and, 4: 6-7 Research about survivors of the Holocaust, 4: 46-47, 49-50 Research by Nazis, 3: 52-61 See also Nazi doctors Resistance by prisoners, 1: 131, 133 Auschwitz Fighting Group, 1: 47 Buchenwald, 1: 106-107 Chel⁄mno, 1: 117 Dora-Mittelbau, 1: 171 Robota, Roza, 3: 182-183 Skarz˙ysko-Kamienna, 4: 10 Sobibór, 4: 19 theft of weapons by forced-laborers, 1: 111 Treblinka, 4: 68-69 See also Escapes and escape attempts See also Uprisings Resistance to Nazis by Jews, 3: 170-174, 4: 59 Summons to resistance in the Vilna Ghetto, 4: 193-195 See also Jewish resistance groups See also Partisans See also Underground groups Revisionists, 2: 101-104 Riegner cable, 3: 174-175 Riga, 3: 2-3, 175-177 Righteous Among the Nations, 3: 177-180 Adamowicz, Irena, 2: 165, 3: 179-180 Bogaard, Johannes, 1: 96-97 Choms, Wl⁄adysl⁄awa, 1: 118-119 Deffaught, Jean, 1: 153-154 Grüninger, Paul, 2: 79 from Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, 3: 6 Lutz, Carl, 3: 34-36, 35 Matylda, Getter, 2: 63 Schindler, Oskar, 4: 2-4, 3 Sendler, Irena, 4: 6-7 Sousa Mendes, Aristides de, 4: 19-20 Sugihara, Sempo, 4: 44-45 Wallenberg, Raoul, 4: 108-111, 110 Righteous Among the Nations Avenue, 3: 77 Ringelblum, Emanuel, 3: 180-182 Riots. See Uprisings

Ritter, Robert, 2: 82 Robota, Roza, 3: 182-183 Rohm, Ernst, 2: 105 Roman Catholicism. See Catholic Church Romani. See Gypsies Romania antisemitism in, 1: 31 deportation of Jews from, 1: 165 Gypsies, 2: 86 Jewish badge, 1: 60 racist political movements in, 3: 152 refusal to surrender Jews to Nazis, 1: 77 Volksdeutsche, 4: 107 Romanians at Mogilev-Podolski, 3: 68, 69 Rome deportation of Jews from, 1: 165 rescue of Jews in, 1: 78 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 2: 30-31 Roosevelt, Franklin D. ´ nai B ´ rith, 1: 15 and B denazification efforts by, 1: 154 effect of American antisemitism on, 4: 94 founding of the War Refugee Board, 4: 114 Jewish advisors, 1: 17-18, 3: 69-71 reaction to Kristallnacht, 2: 174 role in Evian Conference, 1: 189-190 Rosenberg, Alfred, 3: 182-184 influence of Protocols of the Elders of Zion on, 3: 148 policy on Gypsies, 2: 86 Rovno, 3: 184-186 Równe. See Rovno RSHA. See Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) Rudashevski, Yitskhok, 4: 102, 105 Rudninkai Forest, 3: 187 Rumbula, 3: 187 Rumkowski, Mordechai Chaim and the chronicles of the L ⁄ ódz´ Ghetto, 3: 25 role in L ⁄ ódz´ Judenrat, 3: 20, 22 Russia. See Soviet Union

S SA photographs of, 1: 102 relationship with SS, 4: 29 Sabotage of German installations, 2: 7-13, 4: 89 Nazi anti-Communist exhibit in Berlin, 1: 63 Sachsenhausen, 4: 1-2 See also Gross-Rosen Samosc, 4: 151-152 Sarajevo, 1: 139, 141 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1: 29-30 Schmelt, Albrecht, 3: 108-110 Schools in the ghettos, 3: 134, 4: 59, 122 Jewish retraining courses for emigrants, 4: 98, 100 Nazi laws prohibiting Jews from, 1: 25

Netherlands, exclusion of Jews from, 3: 88 Schutz-Pass, 4: 109 Schutzstaffel. See SS SD, 4: 4-6 Latvians in, 3: 3 relationship to Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), 3: 161, 162, 163 role in deportations, 1: 161 See also Operational Squads Secret State police. See Gestapo Security Police (Sipo) relationship to Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), 3: 161, 162 relationship with SS, 4: 30 in Warsaw, 4: 115 See also Central Office for Jewish Emigration See also Operational Squads Security Service of the SS. See SD Seizures of Jewish possessions “A Cartload of Shoes” (Sutzkever), 3: 10 Aktion M (“Operation Furniture”), 3: 88 during Aktion Reinhard, 1: 8 at Auschwitz, 1: 48, 49 in Belgium, 1: 65 to benefit the Volksdeutsche, 4: 107 at Chel⁄mno, 1: 116 by Croatians, 1: 139 of dead prisoners, 4: 66 effect on classification of Mischlinge, 3: 67 for funding camp entertainment, 4: 136 German disputes over disposal, 3: 139 by Institute for the Investigation of the Jewish Question, 3: 184 Jewish “tidying-up detachment” at L ⁄ ódz´, 3: 24 kibbutzim in Kherson, 2: 151 in Kovno, 2: 164 Nazi laws permitting, 1: 26 Pohl, Oswald, and his role in, 3: 123 in Poland, 3: 132 storage camps, 1: 172 from wealthy Austrian families, 1: 50 where the gold and jewelry went, 3: 99-100 See also Aryanization Seizures of Jews by Nazis. See Anti-Jewish measures; Deportations; Emigration of Jews; Forced labor Selektion at the camps, 1: 42 Sendler, Irena, 4: 6-7 Serbian minority in Croatia, 1: 138 Seventh-Day Adventists, 2: 108 Sexual relations homosexuality in the Third Reich, 2: 104-105 Nazi laws restricting, 3: 96 Nazi views about, 2: 90, 104 Seyss-Inquart, Arthur, 4: 7-8 letter to Martin Bormann regarding the “Jewish question,” 4: 191-193

233

INDEX

Shanghai, Jewish refugees in, 3: 159, 164 She’erit ha-Peletah. See Displaced persons; Refugees Shelters for Jews Confessing Church, 1: 121 in convents and with families, 1: 118 “International” ghetto, 1: 110, 3: 36, 4: 110 “Shema” (Primo Levi), 3: 7 Ships. See Deportation ships; Refugee ships Sho’ah. See Holocaust Shostakovich, Dmitri, 1: 56 Sicherheitsdienst. See SD Silesia, 1: 97 Organisation Schmelt, 3: 108-110 Simferopol, 4: 9 Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, 3: 75-76, 4: 139 Skarzyski-Kamienna, 4: 9-11 Slave labor. See Forced labor Slovakia, 4: 11-14 annexation of Polish areas, 3: 127-128 Catholics, 1: 121 deportations of Jews from, 1: 164, 4: 142 Gypsies, 2: 86 map of, 4: 11 national uprising, 3: 171, 4: 13-14 partisans, 3: 119 Slovakian military, Jews in, 4: 13 Slovenia, 1: 59 Smuggling in Warsaw ghetto, 4: 121-122, 123 Sobibór, 1: 7, 4: 15 uprising led by Aleksandr Pechersky, 3: 119-120 Social class and racism in Germany, 3: 152 Social Democratic Party prisoners, 1: 126 Social welfare in Polish ghettos, 3: 134 Society of Friends, 1: 13-14, 3: 167 Soldier-literature, 3: 12 “Some Thoughts on the Treatment of Alien Populations in the East” (Himmler), 3: 40 Sonderkommando. See Special Commando Sonderkommando 1005. See Aktion 1005 Songs about the Holocaust, 3: 51 Soup kitchens for children, 3: 135 Warsaw ghetto, 4: 118 Sousa Mendes, Aristides de, 4: 19-20 Sovietization, 4: 21 Soviet military, 4: 23 Jews in, 4: 24-25 Soviet occupation Bial⁄ystok, 1: 88 eastern Poland, 3: 125-125 Hungary, 2: 113 Latvia, 3: 1-2 Lithuania, 3: 15-17 Lutsk, 3: 33 Lvov, 3: 37 Vilna, 4: 101 Western Belorussia, 1: 69-70 Soviet partisans, 4: 86 acceptance of Jews as members, 3: 115

234

Ziman, Henrik, 4: 152-153 Soviet prisoners of war, 3: 145-146 at Auschwitz, 1: 45, 48 in concentration camps, 1: 128 death marches for, 1: 149 Jewish, 3: 144 mass shootings of, 1: 147 at Mauthausen, 3: 48 murder of, at Babi Yar, 1: 55 murder of, at Sachsenhausen, 4: 1 murder of, by German army, 3: 163164 at Neuengamme, 3: 91 Waffen-SS camp for, 3: 43 who served the Nazis, 1: 73 Soviet Union, 4: 20-25 annexation of Polish areas, 3: 127-128 antisemitism in, 1: 30, 31-32, 33 commissars, 2: 158-159, 3: 59, 104 danger perceived by Nazis from, 3: 164 documents of the Holocaust in, 3: 99 Gypsies, 2: 86 Hitler’s plan to resettle parts of, 2: 42 impact of Babi Yar massacre, 1: 56 impact of Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 3: 147 Jewish badge, 1: 58 map of, 4: 22 Nazi murder of Jews and Soviet officials in, 2: 89 Nazi treatment of Russians, 2: 15 policy about antisemitism, 3: 152 Polish Jewish refugees in, 3: 160 postwar Jewish settlement of Riga, 3: 177 treatment of Hungarian Jews, 2: 110 treatment of Jews in Eastern Belorussia, 1: 72 Volksdeutsche, 4: 107 See also Belorussia See also Estonia See also German invasion of the Soviet Union See also Latvia See also Lithuania See also Ukraine Soviet zone denazification efforts, 1: 154 Spain’s policy towards Jewish refugees, 3: 160 Spanish Civil War, effect on Axis powers, 2: 119 Special Commando, 4: 25-26 Special Commando 4a, 1: 54 Special Commando Bothmann, 1: 101, 114 Special Commando Kulmhof, 1: 114-115, 117 Special Commando Lange, 1: 114 Special Commando prisoners, 1: 133 Special courts of Poland, 4: 82-83 Speer, Albert concerns about SS EconomicAdministrative Main Office, 1: 176-177 role at Natzweiler-Struthof, 3: 79 Spiritual resistance to Nazis, 3: 171-172

Sporrenberg, Jacob, 4: 26-27 Sprachregelung, 4: 27-28 Gestapo use of, 2: 62 See also Nazi deception See also Nazi euphemisms SS, 4: 28-31 Central Office for Jewish Emigration control of political prisoners, 1: 126 Death’s-Head Units dog battalion, 1: 45 Ethnic Germans’ Welfare Office (VoMi), 4: 106 Fountain of Life experiment, 3: 151, 4: 30 Latvian Legion, 3: 3 objectives for concentration camps, 1: 127-128 powers relating to “Jewish question,” 1: 26 structure from 1942 to 1944-1945, 1: 128 Ukrainian division, 4: 84, 87 See also Economic-Administrative Main Office See also SD See also Special Commando SS companies German Armament Works, 2: 124 German Earth and Stone Works, Ltd., 2: 76, 3: 79, 91 See also German weapons factories, 3: 103 SS men at Bel⁄z˙ec, 1: 73 Italian unit, 2: 122 massacre of French village, 3: 108 numbers of, in camps and on death marches, 1: 152 reactions to killing people, 1: 45, 2: 37, 3: 107, 4: 90, 173 SS officers, 4: 29 Bach-Zelewski, Erich von dem, 1: 5657 Barbie, Klaus, 1: 61-62 Bothmann, Hans, 1: 101, 114 Best, Werner, 1: 87-88 Blobel, Paul, 1: 94-95 in charge of Operational Squads, 3: 104 Clauberg, Carl, 1: 123-124, 3: 59-60 Dannecker, Theodor, 1: 147-148, 3: 111 Dirlewanger, Oskar, 1: 166 Eicke, Theodor, 1: 181-183 Globocnik, Odilo, 2: 65-66 Höss, Rudolf, 1: 45-46, 2: 107-108, 3: 13, 4: 156 Jager, Karl, 2: 124 Jeckeln, Friedrich, 2: 126-127, 3: 3 Koch, Karl Otto, 2: 155-156 Kramer, Josef, 1: 82, 2: 171 Krüger, Friedrich Wilhelm, 2: 174175 Krumey, Hermann, 2: 175 Liebehenschel, Arthur, 3: 8

INDEX

Mengele, Josef, 1: 40, 3: 58-59, 62-63, 99 Nebe, Arthur, 3: 84 Oberg, Carl Albrecht, 3: 97-98 Ohlendorf, Otto, 3: 100-101 Pohl, Oswald, 3: 123 Purtzmann, Hans-Adolf, 3: 148 Rasch, Emil Otto, 3: 153-154 Sporrenberg, Jacob,4: 26-27 Stahlecker, Franz Walter, 4: 34 Stroop, Jürgen, 4: 38-42, 40 at the Wannsee Conference, 4: 111 Wirth, Christian, 4: 139-140 Wisliceny, Dieter, 4: 141-142 Wolff, Karl, 4: 142-143 See also Camp staff See also Eichmann, Adolf See also Heydrich, Reinhard See also Himmler, Heinrich See also Nazi officials See also War criminals St. Louis (ship), 4: 36-37 Stahlecker, Franz Walter, 4: 34 Stalin, Joseph denazification efforts by, 1: 154 purge of Red Army, 2: 88 Stangl, Franz, 4: 34-35 Starachowice, 4: 35-36 State Department. See United States Department of State Statute of limitations in Germany, 4: 76-78 Sterilization. See Forced sterilization by Nazis Stockman, Noah, 1: 111 Stores, Nazi seizures of Jews’. See Aryanization Stricher, Julius, 4: 37-38 Stroop, Jürgen, 4: 38-42, 40 Stuckart, Wilhelm, 4: 41-42 Stutthof, 4: 42-44 death marches from, 1: 151-153 Styria, 1: 52 Subsequent Nurenberg Proceedings, 4: 7576 Sudetenland labor camps, 3: 109, 110 Sugihara, Sempo, 4: 44-45 Suicides after introduction of Jewish badges, 1: 60-61 in the face of deportations from Berlin, 1: 86-87 by Judenrat leaders, 3: 185, 4: 123 at Mogilev-Podolski, 3: 68 rates in Austria, 1: 50 Survival, Nazi experiments on, 3: 54-56 Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity (Levi), 3: 7 Survivors. See Holocaust survivors; Victims and survivors Survivors’ syndrome, 4: 47 Sutzkever, Abraham, 3: 10 Swastika, 2: 93, 3: 184 Sweden’s policy towards Jewish refugees, 3: 160, 4: 108-111, 161 Switzerland

Federation of Swiss Jewish Communities (SIG), 3: 51 and funds for refugees, 2: 138 Jewish refugees to, 2: 79 policy towards Jewish refugees, 3: 160, 161 Protestants, 1: 122 Saly Mayer’s role, 3: 51-52 Synagogues, destruction of Bohemia and Moravia, 1: 97 Dvinsk, 1: 174 Graz, 1: 50, 52 Klagenfurt, 1: 52 during Kristallnacht, 2: 172, 173 L ⁄ ódz´, 3: 20 Paris, 3: 111 Riga, 3: 175-176 Tarnów, 4: 52 Warsaw, 4: 132 Systematic extermination of Jews. See “Final Solution” Szenes, Hannah, 4: 51-52, 150

T T4 institutions, 1: 188-189 T4 Operation. See Euthanasia Program Tarnopol. See Ternopol Tarnów, 4: 52-53 Tarviso, 2: 128 Tatooing of prisoners, 1: 42 Tenenbaum, Mordechai, 4: 53-55 in Bial⁄ystok, 1: 90 opinion of Adam Czerniaków, 1: 143 photograph of, 4: 54 role in Grodno, 2: 74 Terezín. See Theresienstadt “Terezín” (Hachenburg), 4: 59 Terminology, Nazi. See Sprachregelung Ternopol, 4: 55-56 Terror. See Violence as a Nazi tool Tesch and Stabenow Company, 4: 74 development of Zyklon B gas, 4: 157 Theresienstadt, 4: 56 children in, 60 Denmark’s efforts on behalf of prisoners at, 1: 160 family camp at Birkenau, 1: 46 Nazi use as model ghetto, 1: 181, 4: 57-58, 59-60 youth movements, 4: 149-150 They Fought Back (Suhl), 3: 120 “To Caesarea” (Szenes), 4: 150 Totalitarianism roots in war, 2: 1-2 Trade unions, Nazis and, 1: 126 Trains. See Deportation trains Transfer Office, Warsaw ghetto, 4: 121 Transfer Point (Umschlagplatz), 4: 61-62 Transit camps Drancy, 1: 172-174 Kistarcsa, 2: 154-155 Mogilev-Podolski, 3: 68 Nisko, 3: 94 for Poles from Warsaw, 4: 116 Theresienstadt, 1: 181 Westerbork, 4: 135-137

Transports. See Deportations; Deportation ships; Deportation trains Transylvania, 2: 111 Trawniki, 4: 62-63 liquidation of, 1: 184-186 Treaty of Versailles, effect on World War II, 2: 70 Treblinka, 1: 7, 4: 63-69 Trials of war criminals, 4: 69-84 Auschwitz staff, 1: 48 Barbie, Klaus, 1: 61-62 Bel⁄z˙ec staff, 1: 77 Bergen-Belsen staff, 1: 82 Buchenwald staff, 1: 107 Chel⁄mno staff, 1: 117-118 Dachau staff, 1: 147 disparities among sentences, 1: 156 Dora-Mittelbau staff, 1: 171 Eichmann, Adolf, 1: 181, 3: 13 for genocide, 2: 44-45 by Hungarian courts, 1: 34 Jewish ghetto police, 2: 135 Koppe, Wilhelm, 2: 159 Lithuanian collaborators, 3: 19 Majdanek staff, 3: 44 medical experimenters, 3: 60 in the Netherlands, 3: 90-91 officers of German companies, 2: 116 Operational Squad leaders, 3: 107 Simon Wiesenthal Center role in, 3: 75 Skarz˙ysko-Kamienna staff, 4: 10-11 Sobibór staff, 4: 19 SS members, 4: 31 Treblinka staff, 4: 69 Ukrainian guards, 3: 120 U.S. Office of Special Investigations role, 3: 98 Vichy officials, 2: 19 Truman, Harry S. and Displaced Persons’ Act of 1948, 1: 168 opinion about rebuilding Germany, 3: 71 Tuberculosis experiments by Nazis, 3: 58 Turkey’s policy about Jewish refugees, 3: 160 Typhus experiments by Nazis, 3: 58

U Ukraine, 4: 84-87 forced labor, 2: 124 Gypsies, 2: 86 Hitler’s plan to resettle, 2: 42 Kamenets-Podolski, 2: 145-146 Kharkov, 2: 149-150 Kherson, 2: 150-152 Lutsk, 3: 33-34 Lvov, 2: 124-126, 3: 36-40 map of, 4: 85 Mogilev-Podolski, 3: 68-69 partisans, 3: 117 Rovno, 3: 184-186 Simferopol, 4: 9 Ternopol, 4: 55-56

235

INDEX

Volksdeutsche, 4: 107 Ukrainian Military Police, 4: 87-88 camp guards, 1: 73, 3: 122, 4: 62 role in liquidating Lvov ghetto, 3: 39 Ukrainians, treatment by Nazis, 2: 40 Underground Army, the (Grosman), 2: 76 Underground groups Belgium, 1: 66 Bial⁄ystok, 1: 89-91 Denmark, 1: 159-160 effect of forced labor on, 2: 14 Germany, 1: 122, 155 Lithuania, 2: 63-65, 3: 15-16 Paris, 3: 111, 112 Poland, 1: 2, 3: 126, 128, 135 Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa), 1: 1, 2, 3: 114, 4: 88-89, 117 types of resistance by, 3: 114 Warsaw, 4: 116 See also French Resistance See also Jewish resistance groups See also Partisans See also Resistance by prisoners Uniforms, Nazi, 4: 30, 32, 87 United Kingdom. See Great Britain United Nations, 1: 167 United Nations Genocide Convention, 2: 44 United Partisan Organization (FPO), 4: 8890, 104, 105 United States, 4: 93-97 antisemitism in, 1: 28 attitudes of Americans towards the Holocaust, 3: 14 efforts to rescue Jewish children, 3: 166, 167 Harrison Commission on displaced persons, 1: 168 Hungary’s declaration of war on, 2: 111 immigration laws, 1: 18, 4: 92, 170 immigration laws concerning Nazis, 3: 98-99 immigration of children, 3: 166-169 immigration of displaced persons, 1: 169-170 impact of Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 3: 147 Jewish American literature, 3: 11-12 military tribunals, 4: 75 Neo-Nazi groups, 3: 82 policy towards Jewish refugees, 3: 160161 position at Evian Conference, 1: 192 protests against Nazi Germany by Jews, 3: 165, 4: 141, 143 racism in, 3: 151, 152 reaction to Kristallnacht, 2: 174 support of British war effort, 2: 68 Wise, Stephen Samuel, 4: 140-141 United States Army aid to Holocaust survivors, 4: 90-92 United States Committee for the Care of European Children (USCOM), 3: 167 United States Department of Justice Office of Special Investigations, 3: 98-100

236

United States Department of State, 3: 70, 4: 92-93 United States Department of the Treasury, 3: 70 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 3: 74-75 United States War Department, 4: 114 Uprisings Bial⁄ystok ghetto, 1: 71, 91 Jewish youth movements, 4: 149 Kielce, 2: 153 Lutsk labor camp, 3: 34 Lvov ghetto, 3: 39 Paris, 3: 112-113 by prisoners, 1: 194, 3: 173-174 by prisoners, at Janówska, 2: 126 by prisoners, Auschwitz Special Commando, 1: 47 by prisoners, Himmler’s fear of, 1: 185 Sobibór, 3: 119-120, 4: 19 Treblinka, 4: 68-69 Vilna, 4: 90, 105 Warsaw ghetto, 4: 129-133, 154 Warsaw Polish, 4: 116, 133-134 Westerbork, 4: 135 See also Escapes and escape attempts U.S. State Department. See United States Department of State USSR. See Soviet Union Ustasˇa movement in Croatia, 1: 138, 139

V Vallat, Xavier, 4: 97 Vatican Hitler’s plan to occupy, 2: 120 policy on Nazi Germany, 1: 119, 120 See also Catholic church Vernichtungslager. See Extermination camps Vichy France Jewish badge, 1: 59 Nazi deportations of Jews into, 1: 162 Vichy government, 2: 18-19 Darquier, Louis, 1: 148 Jewish Law (Statut des Juifs), 2: 135136 Jewish policy, 2: 22 Laval, Pierre, 3: 4-5 Vallat, Xavier, 4: 97 Victims and survivors of all concentration camps, 1: 130 of all extermination camps, 1: 194 Auschwitz, 1: 44, 48 Belgian Jews, 1: 64 Bel⁄z˙ec, 1: 76, 77 Bergen-Belsen, 1: 82 Berlin, 1: 87 Bial⁄ystok, 1: 71, 91 Bohemia and Moravia, 1: 99 Buchenwald, 1: 107 Dachau, 1: 147 determining the facts about, 1: 6 Dvinsk, 1: 175 of euthanasia, 1: 188-189 France, 2: 25

Gross-Rosen, 2: 78-79 Hungary, 2: 113 Italy, 2: 123 Jews in Croatia, 1: 141 Jews in Germany, 2: 59 Kharkov, 2: 150 Kovno, 2: 166 Kraków, 2: 170-171 in Latvia, 3: 2, 4 Lithuanian Jews, 3: 18 L ⁄ ódz´, 3: 24 Lublin, 3: 32 Lutsk, 3: 34 Lvov, 3: 39 Mauthausen, 3: 50-51 Minsk, 3: 65 Mogilev-Podolski, 3: 69 of Nazi medical experiments, 3: 53 Paris, 3: 112 Pl⁄asów, 3: 121-122 Poland, 3: 140 Ravensbrück, 3: 156 Riga, 3: 177 Rovno, 3: 186 Slovakia, 4: 14 Starachowice, 4: 35-36 Stutthof, 4: 42 Tarnów, 4: 53 Thereseinstadt, 4: 61 Ukraine, 4: 86 Vienna, 4: 100-101 Vilna, 4: 104, 105 Vitebsk, 4: 106 Warsaw, 4: 115, 127-128 Warsaw Polish uprising, 4: 134 See also Deportations See also Mass murders by Nazis Victim testimony, effect of, 3: 12-13 Vienna, 4: 98-101 anti-Jewish measures, 1: 50, 53-54 antisemitism in, 1: 31 Central Office for Jewish Emigration, 1: 112 deportations of Jews from, 1: 162 influence on Hitler, 2: 93 Vilna, 3: 16, 4: 101-105 Diary entry of Jewish youth in, 4: 199 See also United Partisan Organization (FPO) Violence as a Nazi tool, 3: 127 See also Anti-Jewish measures See also Anti-Polish measures See also Mass murders by Nazis See also Pogroms Vitebsk, 4: 105-106 Volksdeutsche, 4: 106-108 and Nazi deportations of Jews, 1: 162 Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle. See Volksdeutsche Volksliste, 3: 126, 4: 107 Volkswagen Company, 3: 92 VoMi (Ethnic Germans’ Welfare Office), 4: 106 Voting rights, Nazi laws against Jews’, 1: 25

INDEX

W Waffen-SS, 4: 30, 32, 133 Wagner, Richard, 1: 30 “Waiting” (Levi), 4: 33 Waldheim, Kurt, 3: 99 Wallenberg, Raoul, 4: 108-111, 110 Walther weapons factory, 3: 91 Wannsee Conference, 2: 12, 3: 137, 4: 113115 War and government control of individuals, 2: 1-2 See also World War I See also World War II War crimes, offenses defined as, 1: 134-135, 2: 45, 4: 72, 74 War criminals bringing them to trial, 3: 75 difficulties of extraditing, 4: 82 in Germany, disability payments to, 4: 80 “major” and “minor,” 4: 69-70 numbers sentenced by Allies, 4: 76 responsibility for actions, 4: 73, 81 tried at Nuremberg, 4: 71-72 tried in Poland, 4: 83 wanted poster for Josef Mengele, 3: 63 Wiesenthal, Simon and his hunt for, 4: 138-139 See also Crimes against humanity See also Trials of war criminals War Refugee Board, 4: 96, 113-115 Bergson Group influence, 1: 19 and Wallenberg, Raoul, 4: 108 Warsaw, 4: 115-129 death march from, 1: 149-150 Jewish badge, 1: 58 Jewish resistance groups, 2: 129-130 Transfer Point (Umschlagplatz), 4: 6162 Warsaw ghetto uprising, 4: 129-133 Anielewicz, Mordecai, 1: 23-24 Blum, Abraham, 1: 95-96 Zuckerman, Yitzhak, 4: 154 Warsaw Polish uprising, 4: 116, 133-134 Warthegau region, 1: 116-117, 164 See also L ⁄ ódz´ War wounds, Nazi experiments on, 3: 5657 Wehrmacht. See German military Weimar Republic, 1: 84, 2: 49-50 Welfare efforts in Polish ghettos, 3: 134 See also Judenräte Werwolf bands, 3: 148 Westerbork, 3: 88, 4: 135-137, 89, 90 Western Belorussia, 1: 69-71 Western Europe antisemitism in, 1: 28-29 partisan activity by Jews, 3: 115 resistance to Jewish badge, 1: 59, 61 resistance to racism, 3: 152 West German trials of war criminals, 4: 7981 West Germany, denazification by, 1: 156157

Wetzel, Erhard, 2: 41 White Paper of 1939, 1: 17 Wiesel, Elie, 4: 137-138 survivor stories, 3: 14 Wiesenthal, Simon, 4: 138-139 See also Simon Wiesenthal Center Wilczyn´ska, Stefania, 2: 160, 161 Wirth, Christian, 4: 139-140 Wise, Stephen S., 4: 140-141 and the Riegner cable, 3: 174 Wisliceny, Dieter, 4: 141-142 Wittenberg, Yitzhak, 4: 88, 89-90 Wolff, Karl, 4: 142-143 Women medical experiments on, 3: 56-57, 60 Nazi ideal of, 2: 99 partisans, 3: 118 pregnancy experiments by Nazis on, 3: 58, 4: 30, 60, 151 war criminals, 4: 74 See also Jewish women Women camp guards Bergen-Belsen, 1: 82 Ravensbrück, 3: 153 Women prisoners, 1: 49 at Auschwitz, 1: 41 barracks at Theresienstadt, 4: 58 death marches, 1: 151-153 forced labor, 2: 14, 3: 155, 4: 16-17, 78 in France, 2: 80 Women’s camps, 1: 131-132 Bergen-Belsen, 1: 82 Birkenau, 1: 41, 3: 183 Majdanek, 3: 43, 44 Ravensbrück, 3: 155, 156 Silesia and Sudetenland labor camps, 3: 110 Work. See Jobs Workers. See Forced labor; Labor camps “Working Group” in Slovakia, 4: 12-13, 142 Work permits. See Certificates of employment for Jews World Jewish Congress, 4: 143-144 Federation of Swiss Jewish Communities (SIG) and, 3: 51 World War I effect on fascism, 2: 1 effect on Germany, 2: 49 effect on Nazi Party, 3: 82 effect on U.S. policy, 4: 93 Hitler’s views about, 3: 61 impact on World War II, 2: 70 World War II British role in, 2: 67-69 effect on Nazis’ anti-Jewish measures, 2: 56-57 effect on Poland, 3: 129-133 effect on the British Empire, 2: 69 Gestapo during, 2: 62 impetus for finishing “Final Solution” during, 2: 12 Jewish refugees, 3: 159-161 SS activities, 4: 30-31 as a “war of aggression,” 4: 72 See also Allies

See also Axis Powers WVHA. See Economic-Administrative Main Office

Y

Yad Vashem, 3: 76-77 See also Righteous Among the Nations Yalta Statement, 1: 154 Yelin, Haim, 4: 144-145 Yellow badge. See Jewish badge Yellow fever experiments by Nazis, 3: 58 Yellow Schein, 4: 103 Yevtushenko, Yevgeni, 1: 56 Yiddish literature of the Holocaust. See Literature of the Holocaust Youth groups in Germany (Hitler Youth), 2: 97-99 Youth movements, 4: 145-151 conferences of He-Haluts groups, 4: 149 in Denmark, 1: 159 See also Fighting Organization of Pioneer Jewish Youth See also Zionist youth movements Yugoslavia, 1: 95 death march in, 1: 150 Gypsies, 2: 85 invasion of, 2: 111 partisans, 3: 119 rescue of Croatian Jews by Italians in, 1: 140 Volksdeutsche, 4: 107-108 See also Croatia

Z

Zagl⁄e¸bie, 3: 137 Zagreb, 1: 139, 141 Zegota (the Polish Council for Aid to Jews), 1: 118, 3: 138 creation of, 4: 128 Irena Sendler’s role, 4: 6-7 in Kraków, 2: 170 Zentralstelle für Jüdische Auswanderung. See Central Office for Jewish Emigration Ziman, Henrik, 4: 152-153 Zionism and antisemitism, 1: 33 Central Union of German Citizens of Jewish Faith and, 1: 113 Communist attitudes toward, 4: 152153 definition of, 1: 10 Nazi attitudes toward, 2: 52, 4: 140 poem for, 4: 150 Zionist groups, 1: 9-11 Bergson Group, 1: 19 in Germany, 2: 49 in Italy, 2: 118, 120 Jewish Brigade Group, 2: 125-127 Joint Rescue Committee, 2: 137 in Kovno and Vilna, 3: 186 relationships with Communist underground groups, 2: 74, 165 youth movements, 4: 146, 148

237

INDEX

Zionists ´ nai B ´ rith, 1: 15 and B friction with Jewish communities, 1: 159 and Jewish Fighting Organization (Z˙OB), 2: 131 Kasztner, Rezso˝, 2: 148-149 Wise, Stephen Samuel, 4: 140-141

238

in the Warsaw ghetto, 2: 130 Zionist youth movements arrests of members in Croatia, 1: 139 in Brussels and Antwerp, 1: 67-68 first ones, 4: 148 See also Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir Z˙OB. See Jewish Fighting Organization (Z˙OB)

Zuckerman, Yitzhak, 4: 153-155 Z˙ydowska Organizacja Bojowa. See Jewish Military Union (ZZW) Zyklon B, 2: 39, 4: 155-157 Zyklon B Trial, 4: 74 ZZW (Jewish Military Union), 1: 2, 2: 131