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{{Short description|Genocide of European Jews by Nazi Germany}} | |||
{{sprotected2}} | |||
{{about|the state-sponsored genocide of European Jews during World War II|all peoples persecuted during this era|Holocaust victims}} | |||
{{redirect|Holocaust}} | |||
{{Redirect-multi|2|Holocaust|Shoah}} | |||
]s at the ] camp in May/June 1944. To be sent to the right meant slave labor; to the left, the ]s. ]] | |||
{{good article}} | |||
{{Pp|small=yes}} | |||
{{Pp-move}} | |||
{{Use American English|date=August 2020}} | |||
{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2023}} | |||
{{Infobox civilian attack | |||
| title = The Holocaust | |||
| partof = ] | |||
| image = Selection on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1944 (Auschwitz Album) 1b.jpg | |||
| image_size = 240px | |||
| alt = Large number of people standing beside a railway siding with the camp gate in the background | |||
| type = ], ], ], ], ], ], ] | |||
| caption = Jews arriving at ] in ], May 1944. Most were ] to go to the ]. | |||
| location = Europe, primarily ] and the ] | |||
| coordinates = | |||
| date = 1941–1945 | |||
| fatalities = ] | |||
| perps = ] along with ] and ] | |||
}} | |||
'''The Holocaust''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|h|ɒ|l|ə|k|ɔː|s|t|audio=LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-Holocaust.wav}}, {{IPAc-en|usalso|ˈ|h|oʊ|l|ə|-}})<ref>{{cite LPD|3}}</ref> was the ] of ] during ]. Between 1941 and 1945, ] and ] systematically murdered ] across ], around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily through ] and poison gas in ]s, chiefly ], ], ], ], and ] in ]. Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and prisoners of war (POWs); the term ''Holocaust'' is sometimes used to refer to the persecution of these ]. | |||
The Nazis developed ] based on ] and ], and ] in early 1933. Meant to ], regardless of means, the regime passed anti-Jewish laws, encouraged harassment, and orchestrated a nationwide ] in November 1938. After Germany ] in September 1939, occupation authorities began to establish ] to segregate Jews. Following the June 1941 ], 1.5 to 2 million Jews ] by German forces and local collaborators. | |||
'''The Holocaust''' is the term generally used to describe the killing of approximately six million European ]s during ], as part of a program of deliberate extermination planned and executed by the ] regime in Germany led by ]. <ref>Niewyk, Donald L. ''The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust,'' ], 2000, p.45: "The Holocaust is commonly defined as the murder of more than 5,000,000 Jews by the Germans in World War II." Also see "The Holocaust," ''Encyclopaedia Britannica'', 2007: "the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The Germans called this "the final solution to the Jewish question."</ref> After legislation to remove the victims from ], the machinery of the state was used to kill them in ]s. Where the ] conquered new territory in eastern Europe and Russia, specialised units, the ], murdered Jews and political opponents by shooting. ]s were established to concentrate and contain the victims before their destruction. In western European countries occupied by the Nazis, Jews were interned before being deported to the death camps. | |||
Later in 1941 or early 1942, the highest levels of the German government decided to ]. Victims were deported by rail to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, most were killed with poison gas. Other Jews continued to be employed in ] where many died from starvation, abuse, exhaustion, or being used as test subjects in deadly ]. Although many Jews tried to escape, surviving in hiding was difficult due to factors such as the lack of money to pay helpers and the risk of denunciation. The property, homes, and jobs belonging to murdered Jews were redistributed to the German occupiers and other non-Jews. Although the majority of Holocaust victims died in 1942, the killing continued at a lower rate until the ] in May 1945. | |||
Other groups were also persecuted and killed by the regime, including 220,000 ] and ] in the ''Great Devouring'', the ]. Earlier, disabled people were killed for ] reasons in ]. Other victims were homosexuals, ]es, Soviet POWs, Polish citizens, and political prisoners. <ref name=Berenbaum>]. ''The World Must Know'', The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. </ref><ref name=EB>"Holcoaust:Non-Jewish victims of Nazism"], ''Encyclopaedia Britannica''.</ref> | |||
Many ] emigrated outside of Europe after the war. A few ] faced criminal trials. Billions of dollars in ] have been paid, although falling short of the Jews' losses. The Holocaust has also been commemorated in ], and ]. It has become central to Western historical consciousness as a symbol of the ultimate human evil. | |||
Many scholars do not include these groups in the definition of the Holocaust, defining it as the genocide of the Jews, or what the Nazis called the "]" ("''Die Endlösung der Judenfrage''"). Taking into account all the victims of Nazi persecution, the death toll rises considerably; estimates generally place the total number of victims at nine to 11 million.<ref> lists five million non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Donald Niewyk suggests that the broadest definition would produce a death toll of 17 million. A figure of 26 million is given in ''Service d'Information des Crimes de Guerre: Crimes contre la Personne Humain, Camps de Concentration'' (Paris, 1946), 197.</ref> | |||
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== |
==Terminology and scope== | ||
{{Main|Names of the Holocaust}} | |||
{{antisemitism}} | |||
The term ''Holocaust'', derived from a Greek word meaning ']',{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=14}} has become the most common word used to describe the Nazi extermination of Jews in English and many other languages.{{efn|{{harvnb |Bartov |2023a |pp=18–19 |ps=, "Much of this debate curiously boils down to a very specific historical question, namely, did the Nazis target the Jews for genocide in a manner that was essentially different from their treatment of any other group under their rule? There can be little doubt that the Jews played a singular role in the Nazi ''imaginaire'' and that German Jewish policies distinguished them within the Nazi universe of murder and fantasy; but other groups clearly have been similarly targeted in other genocides 'the extent of the 'final solution' was ... shaped by an antisemitism that was colored by a different element over and above the racism and ethno-nationalism that explains the murder of other groups by Nazi Germany—that element being the view of 'the Jews' as an implacable, collective world enemy.' To be sure, this makes the Holocaust unique only within the context of the Nazi empire ..."}}; | |||
{{main|Names of the Holocaust}} | |||
{{harvnb |Smith |2023 |p=36 |ps=, "The Holocaust is particular to Jews and yet has had increasing relevance for those who do not identify as Jewish. ... All Jews everywhere were to be murdered because of their racial heritage was 'put into state policy' on January 20, 1942 at the Wannsee conference (Bazyler 2017, 29). Witness to the genocide of the Jews is a uniquely Jewish experience, because only Jews were targeted by that policy, even if other groups were targeted for genocide under other policies. The Nazi regime committed genocide against the Roma and Sinti, governed by separate policies. They also committed war crimes against Soviet Prisoners of War under other policies. So too the mass murder of disabled and the mentally ill had their own policies. The Nazis committed multiple genocides and crimes against humanity, at the same time, sometimes in the same place, governed by different laws, policies, and practices. It is not correct to say that there were many victim types during 'the Holocaust,' if by 'the Holocaust' we mean the genocide of the Jews."}}; | |||
<!-- ] by the ]. January, 1945]] --> | |||
{{harvnb |Stone |2023 |loc=Introduction: What is the Holocaust?<!-- search "homosexuals" --> |ps=, "This is why the focus here is on the Jews. Roma, the disabled, Soviet POWs, homosexuals and other groups were victims of the Nazis, and it is entirely legitimate to study their fate alongside one another. But using the term 'Holocaust' to encompass all of these groups with the aim of being inclusive and not prioritizing one group's suffering, actually does a disservice to groups other than Jews. For the Nazis persecuted these groups for different reasons, reasons we fail to appreciate if we collapse them all together."}}; | |||
The term ''holocaust'' originally derived from the ] word '']'', meaning a "completely (''holos'') burnt (''kaustos'')" sacrificial offering to a god. It is also known as '''''Ha-Shoah''''' (]: '''השואה'''), '''''Khurbn''''' (]: '''חורבן''' or '''''Halokaust''''', '''האלאקאוסט'''). Since the late 19th century, "holocaust" has primarily been used to refer to disasters or catastrophes. According to the ], the word was first used to describe Hitler's treatment of the Jews from as early as 1942, though it did not become a standard reference until the 1950s. By the late 1970s, however, the conventional meaning of the word became the Nazi genocide. The term is also used by many in a narrower sense, to refer specifically to the unprecedented destruction of European Jews in particular. Some historians credited ] with giving the term 'Holocaust' its present meaning.''' | |||
{{harvnb |Engel |2021 |ps=, pp. 3 ("This book is about an encounter between two sets of human beings: on one hand, the people who acted on behalf of the German state, its agencies, or its almost 66 million citizens between 30 January 1933 and 8 May 1945; on the other, the more than 9 million Jews ...") and 5 ("Those discoveries about the encounter between the Third Reich and the Jews made that encounter stand out in the minds of many from other instances of Nazi persecution and encouraged observers to assign it its own special name.")}}; | |||
The biblical word '''''Shoa''''' (שואה) (also spelled '''''Shoah''''' and '''''Sho'ah'''''} meaning "calamity" in ], became the standard Hebrew term for the Holocaust as early as the early 1940s.<ref>"," Yad Vashem (accessed June 8, 2005) And www.berkeleyinternet.com/holocaust/</ref> ''Shoa'' is preferred by many ]s and a growing number of others for a number of reasons, including the potentially ] offensive nature of the original meaning of the word ''holocaust''. | |||
{{harvnb |Jackson |2021 |pp=199–200 |ps=, "The Nazis killed some people almost exclusively due to their supposed genetic inferiority (the mentally and physically handicapped, Slavs, Roma); they killed others almost exclusively due to their perceived cultural decadence (communists, democrats, modernist authors and artists); but only the Jews were indicted on both grounds simultaneously and with equal vigor. ... This is not to say that Roma, communists, and others were not hated and murdered by the Nazis, but it is to note that the Jews were unique in being despised and assaulted in every dimension of their identity, corporeal and psychic."}}; | |||
{{harvnb |Sahlstrom |2021 |p=291 |ps=, "the established understanding of the Holocaust today as the genocide of six million Jews"}}; | |||
{{harvnb |Bartrop |2019 |p=50 |ps=, "Given this, it must always be remembered that the Holocaust was a premeditated action by the Nazis to permanently eradicate a Jewish presence in Europe. Others—the disabled, Roma, Poles and other Slavs, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, dissenting clergy, communists, socialists, "asocials," and political opponents of all sorts—were also persecuted and in many cases murdered in huge numbers; however, it was the campaign against the Jews that was the ideological "ground zero" for Nazi racial ideology. Others besides Jews were murdered, often on a genocidal scale, and should be remembered and acknowledged: but it was only the Jews who were all to be killed as part of a calculated policy of genocide."}}; | |||
{{harvnb |Beorn |2018 |p=4 |ps=, "I will use the term 'Holocaust' to refer mainly to the Nazi attempt to murder the Jews of Europe; however, I will also use the more inclusive term 'Nazi genocidal project' to capture the larger murderous vision of which the Jews were such a large part. This includes Sinti/Roma (gypsies), the handicapped, political 'enemies,' Soviet prisoners of war, and—particularly in the East—entire ethnic groups such as the Slavs. One cannot understand the Holocaust in Eastern Europe without placing it in the context of this larger Nazi genocidal project that foresaw murder and demographic engineering on a colossal scale."}}; | |||
{{harvnb |Cesarani |2016 |p=xxxix |ps=, "This book deals with the fate of the Jews, not of 'other victims' of Nazi political repression and racial-biological policies. Several other groups endured social exclusion, incarceration in concentration camps, and mass murder. However, the rationale for the persecution of these groups differed radically from the intentions that underlay anti-Jewish policy. Even though homosexual men and women, Germans of African descent, and the severely mentally and physically disabled were all disparaged in Nazi racial thinking, and depicted as a threat to the strength and purity of the Volk, only the Jews were characterized as an implacable, powerful, global enemy that had to be fought at every turn and finally eliminated."}}; | |||
{{harvnb |Hayes |2015 |p=xiii |ps=, "This book also reflects another of its editor's convictions: the Holocaust was National Socialist Germany's assault on the Jews of Europe. Nazism attacked many groups, but none for the same reason that it attacked the Jews, none with the same urgency, and none to the same extent."}}; | |||
{{harvnb |Hayes |Roth |2010 |p=2 |ps=, "Other groups—for example, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, and Slavs—were swept up in the maelstrom of the Holocaust, but not for the same reasons as Jews and not with the same consequences ... In none of these cases, however, was the target group considered dangerous or coherent enough to warrant complete or immediate extirpation. This circumstance constitutes a significant difference from policies pursued toward the Jews, a difference that helps to clarify and define the Holocaust itself."}}; | |||
{{harvnb |Stone |2010 |pp=1–2 |ps=, "For the purpose of this book, the Holocaust is understood as the genocide of the Jews ... 'Holocaust', then, refers to the genocide of the Jews, which by no means excludes an understanding that other groups—notably Romanies and Slavs—were victims of genocide."}}; | |||
{{harvnb |Bloxham |2009 |p=1 |ps=, "Between 5,100,000 and 6,200,000 Jews were murdered during the Second World War, an episode the Nazis called the 'final solution of the Jewish question'. The world today knows it as the Holocaust."}}; | |||
{{harvnb |Niewyk |Nicosia |2000 |ps=, pp. 45 ("The Holocaust is commonly defined as the mass murder of more than 5,000,000 Jews by the Germans during World War II. Not everyone finds this a fully satisfactory definition.") and 51 ("the traditional view that it was the genocide of the Jews alone")}}}} | |||
The term ''Holocaust'' is sometimes used to refer to the persecution of other groups that the Nazis targeted,{{efn|{{harvnb |King |2023 |pp=26–27 |ps=, "Rather than one big thing, the Holocaust might now be described as an array of event categories. In ]'s terms, the Holocaust involved three separate "clusters of genocidal projects": euthanasia and "racial purification" directed against the disabled and Sinti and Roma (at the time referred to collectively as "Gypsies") within the Third Reich; the eradication of Slavic populations living in countries east of Germany; and the Final Solution proper—that is, the attempted mass murder of every Jew residing anywhere within Germany's sphere of influence (Browning 2010, 407). (The list of persecuted categories—people targeted by the Nazis in ways short of genocide—would of course be longer.)"}}; | |||
{{harvnb |Engel |2021 |p=6 |ps=, "Echoing this view, some have contended that the expression 'the Holocaust' ought to refer not only to the encounter between the Third Reich and the Jews but also to 'the horrors that Poles, other Slavs, and Gypsies endured at the hands of the Nazis' (Lukas, 1986: 220). Others have extended the term to encompass the Third Reich's treatment of homosexuals, the mentally ill or infrm, and Jehovah's Witnesses, speaking of 11 or 12 million victims of the Holocaust, half of whom were Jews. Still others have employed the word 'holocaust' also when referring to cases of mass murder not perpetrated by the Third Reich."}}; | |||
{{harvnb |Kay |2021 |pp=1–2 |ps=, "For perhaps the first time, all major victim groups where the death tolls reached at least into the tens of thousands will be considered together: Jewish and non-Jewish ... it makes a great deal of sense to consider the different strands of Nazi mass killing together rather than in isolation from one another. This of course means going against the grain of most scholarship on the subject by examining the genocide of the European Jews alongside other Nazi mass-murder campaigns."}}; | |||
{{harvnb |Gerlach |2016 |pp=14–15 |ps=, "There are a number of words I will try to avoid because of the serious misconceptions they might lead to. The terms 'Holocaust' and 'Shoah' are not useful since neither has any analytical value. 'Holocaust' (derived from the Greek holókauton, or burned sacrifice) has a religious connotation unbefitting of the event it is supposed to refer to, and users of this term may mean by it either the persecution and murder of Jews alone, or Nazi German violence against any group more generally ... Importantly, 'Holocaust' and 'Shoah' have also been criticized as 'teleological and anachronistic' terms that convey a retrospective view that makes complex processes appear 'as a single event.'"}}; | |||
{{harvnb |Niewyk |Nicosia |2000 |p=51 |ps=, "The authors of this volume have adopted the third approach to a working definition: The Holocaust—that is, Nazi genocide—was the systematic, state-sponsored murder of entire groups determined by heredity. This applied to Jews, Gypsies, and the handicapped. This section also makes it clear that other definitions are defended by scholars who deserve a respectful hearing."}}}} especially those targeted on a biological basis, in particular the ], as well as ] and ] and ].{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=xxix}}{{sfn|Niewyk|Nicosia|2000|pp=45–52}}{{sfn|Peck|Berenbaum|2002|p=311}} All of these groups, however, were targeted for different reasons.{{sfn|Stone|2023|loc=Introduction: What is the Holocaust?<!-- search "homosexuals" -->}} By the 1970s, the adjective ''Jewish'' was dropped as redundant and Holocaust, now capitalized, became the default term for the destruction of European Jews.{{sfn|Calimani|2018|pp=70–100, 78–79, 86–87, 94–95, xxix}} The Hebrew word {{translit|he|Shoah}} ('catastrophic destruction') exclusively refers to Jewish victims.{{sfn|Hayes|Roth|2010|p=2}}{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=4}}{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=xxix}} The perpetrators used the phrase "]" as a euphemism for their genocide of Jews.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=15}} | |||
==Background== | |||
The word "]" was coined during the Holocaust. In ], the ] published ] most important work, entitled ''Axis Rule in Occupied Europe'', in the United States. This book included an extensive legal analysis of German rule in countries occupied by ] during the course of ], along with the definition of the term ''genocide''.<ref>Raphael Lemkin '', (Washington, D.C.: ], 1944), pages 79 - 95</ref> | |||
] River (c. 1900) with the ], destroyed in 1938 during the ]]] | |||
] for more than two thousand years.{{sfn | Gilbert | 2015 | p=22}} Throughout the ] in Europe, Jews were subjected to ], which ].{{sfn|Bergen|2016|pp=14–17}}{{sfn|Weitz|2010|p=58}} In the nineteenth century many European countries ] in hopes that they would ].{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=20–21}} By the early twentieth century, most Jews in central and western Europe were well integrated into society, while in eastern Europe, where emancipation had arrived later, many Jews continued to live in ], spoke ], and practiced ].{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=21–22}} ] positing the existence of a ] and usually an ] emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth century due to the ] and ] that increased economic conflicts between Jews and non-Jews.{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=195}}{{sfn|Beorn|2018|pp=21–23}} Some scientists began to ] and argued that there was a ].{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=25}} Many racists argued that ].{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=146}}{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=196}} | |||
The turn of the twentieth century saw a major effort to establish a ] overseas, leading to the ] and subsequent racial apartheid regime in ].{{sfn|Weitz|2010|p=62}}{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=37}} ] (1914–1918) intensified nationalist and racist sentiments in Germany and other European countries.{{sfn|Weitz|2010|pp=64–65}} Jews in eastern Europe were targeted by ].{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=24}} Germany had ] and lost a ];{{sfn|Weitz|2010|pp=64–65}} opposition to the ] united Germans across the political spectrum.{{sfn|Weitz|2010|p=65}}{{sfn|Bloxham|2009|p=133}} The military promoted the untrue but compelling idea that, rather than being defeated on the battlefield, ] by socialists and Jews.{{sfn|Weitz|2010|p=65}}{{sfn|Bloxham|2009|p=135}} | |||
==Features of the Nazi Holocaust== | |||
The Nazi Holocaust had several characteristics that, taken together, distinguish it from other ]. | |||
] postcard showing a ]]] | |||
===Efficiency=== | |||
] established in Europe in which Jews were confined, in ghettos and later in temporary concentration locations and later shipped to extermination camps.]] | |||
The Holocaust was characterized by the efficient and systematic attempt on an industrial scale to assemble and kill as many people as possible, using all of the resources and technology available to the Nazi state.<ref name="cfp-IBM">{{cite web|url=http://hometown.aol.com/merryeee/ibmstory.htm|title=Counted for Persecution; IBM's Role in the Holocaust}}</ref> Germany was, at the time, one of the world's leading nations in terms of technology, industry, infrastructure, research, education, bureaucratic efficiency, and many other fields.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/holocaust/infotech.html|title=Information and Technology in the Holocaust}}</ref> | |||
The ] was founded in the wake of the war,{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=197}} and ] is often cited as the main factor explaining the Holocaust.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=143}} From the beginning, the Nazis—not unlike other nation-states in Europe—dreamed of ], whom they identified as "the embodiment of everything that was wrong with ]".{{sfn|Stone|2023|loc=Introduction: What is the Holocaust?}} The Nazis defined the German nation as a ] unbounded by ]{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=57}} and sought to purge it of racially foreign and socially deficient elements.{{sfn|Weitz|2010|p=65}}{{sfn|Stone|2020|pp=61, 65}} The Nazi Party and its leader, ], were also obsessed with reversing Germany's territorial losses and acquiring additional '']'' (living space) in Eastern Europe for colonization.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=42}}{{sfn|Bergen|2016|pp=52–54}} These ideas appealed to many Germans.{{sfn|Stone|2020|pp=62–63, 65}} The Nazis promised to protect European civilization from the ] threat.{{sfn|Stone|2010|p=17}} Hitler believed that Jews ], as well as the Western powers, and ].{{sfn|Evans|2019|pp=120–121, 123}}{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=59}}{{sfn|Stone|2010|p=18}} | |||
For example, detailed lists of potential victims were made and maintained using ] statistical machinery, and meticulous records of the killings were produced. As prisoners entered the death camps, they were made to surrender all personal property to the Nazis, which was then precisely catalogued and tagged, and for which receipts were issued. | |||
==Rise of Nazi Germany== | |||
In his book, ''Russia's War'', British historian ] describes how the Nazis sought more efficient ways to kill people. In 1941, after occupying ], they used mental patients from ] ]s as guinea pigs. Initially, they tried shooting them by having them stand one behind the other, so that several people could be killed with one bullet, but it was too slow. Then they tried ], but few were killed and many were left wounded with hands and legs missing, so that the Germans had to finish them off with machine guns. In October 1941, in ] the Germans incorporated gassing as a technique for mass murder for the first time. Gas was poured into a ''Gaswagen'' or "gas car". It took more than 30 minutes for people inside the Gaswagen to die. Later, the Germans used a larger truck exhaust, which only took only eight minutes to kill all the people inside.<ref>Richard Overy, ''Russia's War.'' Penguin Books; 1998.</ref> | |||
] from 1933 to 1941]] | |||
Amidst a ] and ], the Nazi Party rapidly increased its support, reaching a high of 37 percent ],{{sfn|Bloxham|2009|pp=138–139}}{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=33}} by campaigning on issues such as ] and economic recovery.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=151}}{{sfn|Beorn|2018|pp=33–34}} Hitler ] in January 1933 in a backroom deal supported by right-wing politicians.{{sfn|Bloxham|2009|pp=138–139}} Within months, all other political parties were banned, the regime seized control of the media,{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=39}} tens of thousands of political opponents—especially communists—were arrested, and ] for ] was set up.{{sfn|Wachsmann|2015|pp=32–38}} The Nazi regime cracked down on crime and social outsiders—such as ], ], and those perceived as workshy—through a variety of measures, including imprisonment in ].{{sfn|Stone|2020|p=66}} The Nazis ] 400,000 people and subjected others to ]s for real or supposed hereditary illnesses.{{sfn|Stone|2020|p=67}}{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=55}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=47–48}} | |||
Although the Nazis sought to control every aspect of public and private life,{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=35}} Nazi repression was directed almost entirely against groups perceived as outside the national community. Most Germans had little to fear provided they did not oppose the new regime.{{sfn|Bloxham|2009|p=148}}{{sfn|Stone|2020|p=65}} The new regime built popular support through economic growth, which partly occurred through ] such as ].{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=39}} The annexations of ] (1938), ] (1938), and ] (1939) also increased the Nazis' popular support.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=40}} Germans were inundated with ] both against Jews{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=39}} and other groups targeted by the Nazis.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=55}} | |||
] sent to ] in January, 1943, that reported that 1,274,166 Jews had been killed in the four ] camps during 1942.]] In the spring of 1942, the ] camps began operating. ] was used in the gas chambers at ], ], and ], whereas ],a cyanide-based insecticide, was employed at ] and ].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-215490/Holocaust|title=The extermination camps|work=Encyclop&ae;dia Britannica Online}}</ref> | |||
The disposal of large numbers of bodies presented a logistical problem as well. The Nazis were constantly studying ways to improve fuel efficiency, using a combination of different fuels, such as coke, wood and body fat. According to surviving ], multiple bodies were added to the ] to obtain optimal fuel efficiency and speed, particularly when the demand was higher. | |||
===Persecution of Jews=== | |||
Corporate involvement in the Holocaust has created significant controversy in recent years. ], Auschwitz camp commandant, said that far from having to advertise their slave labour services, the concentration camps were actually approached by various large German businesses, some of which are still in existence. Technology developed by ] also played a role in the categorization of prisoners, through the use of punched card machines.<ref name="cfp-IBM" /><ref name=IBM>{{cite book | |||
{{main|The Holocaust in Germany}} | |||
| last = Black | |||
{{further|Anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Nazi Germany}} | |||
| first = Edwin | |||
The roughly 500,000 ] made up less than 1 percent of the country's population in 1933. They were wealthier on average than other Germans and largely assimilated, although a minority were recent immigrants from eastern Europe.{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=7}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=43}}{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=96}} Various German government agencies, Nazi Party organizations, and local authorities instituted ].{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=39, 41}} In 1933, Jews were banned or restricted from several professions and the ].{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=40}} After hounding the German Jews out of public life by the end of 1934, the regime passed the ] in 1935.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=52}} The laws reserved full citizenship rights for those of "German or related blood", restricted Jews' economic activity, and criminalized new marriages and ].{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=52, 60}}{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=41}} Jews were defined as those with three or four Jewish grandparents; many of those with partial Jewish descent were classified as '']'', with varying rights.{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=106}} The regime also sought to segregate Jews with a view to their ultimate disappearance from the country.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=52}} Jewish students were gradually forced out of the school system. Some municipalities enacted restrictions governing where Jews were allowed to live or conduct business.{{Sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=42}} In 1938 and 1939, Jews were barred from additional occupations, and their businesses were expropriated to force them out of the economy.{{Sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=41}} | |||
| authorlink = Edwin Black | |||
| title = IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation | |||
| publisher = Three Rivers Press | |||
|date= 2001 | |||
| pages = 560 | |||
| url = http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/ | |||
| id = ISBN 0-609-80899-0 }}</ref> | |||
] after its destruction during '']'']] | |||
===Scale=== | |||
Anti-Jewish violence, largely locally organized by members of Nazi Party institutions, took primarily non-lethal forms from 1933 to 1939.{{Sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=43–44}} Jewish stores, especially in rural areas, were often boycotted or vandalized.{{Sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=44–45}} As a result of local and popular pressure, many small towns became entirely ] and as many as a third of Jewish businesses may have been forced to close.{{Sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=45}} Anti-Jewish violence was even worse in ].{{Sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=46}} On 9–10 November 1938, the Nazis organized '']'' (Night of Broken Glass), a nationwide ]. Over 7,500 Jewish shops (out of 9,000) were looted, more than 1,000 ]s were damaged or destroyed,{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|pp=184–185}} at least 90 Jews were murdered,{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|pp=184, 187}} and as many as ],{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=44}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=112}} although many were released within weeks.{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=200}} German Jews were ] that raised more than 1 billion ] (RM).{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=117, 119}}{{efn|name=1billion|Equivalent to $400 million at the time,{{sfn|Foreign Claims Settlement Commission|1968|p=655}} or ${{formatnum:{{Inflation|US|0.4|1942|r=0}}}} billion in {{Inflation/year|US}}.<ref name=inflation>{{cite web |title=Consumer Price Index, 1800– |url=https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator/consumer-price-index-1800- |publisher=Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis |access-date=29 November 2019 |ref={{sfnref|Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis|2019}}}}</ref>}} | |||
The Holocaust was geographically widespread and systematically conducted in virtually all areas of Nazi-occupied territory, where victims were targeted in what are now 35 separate European countries, and sent to labor camps in some countries or ] in others.<ref>{{cite web|title=Holocaust Map of Concentration and Death Camps|url=http://history1900s.about.com/library/holocaust/blmap.htm}}</ref> The mass killing was at its worst in Central and Eastern Europe, which had more than 7 million Jews in 1939; about 5 million Jews were killed there, including 3 million in occupied Poland and over 1 million in the Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands also died in the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Yugoslavia, and Greece. | |||
The Nazi government wanted to ].{{Sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=48}} By the end of 1939, most Jews who could emigrate had already done so; those who remained behind were disproportionately elderly, poor, or female and could not obtain a visa.{{Sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=49, 53}} The plurality, around 110,000, left for the United States, while smaller numbers emigrated to South America, ], ], and South Africa.{{Sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=52}} Germany collected ] of nearly 1 billion RM,{{efn|name=1billion}} mostly from Jews.{{Sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=50}} The policy of forced emigration continued into 1940.{{Sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=51}} | |||
Documented evidence suggests that the Nazis planned to carry out their "final solution" in other regions if they were conquered, such as the ] and the ].<ref>Martin Gilbert, ''The Oxford Companion to World War II'' Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995</ref> The extermination continued in different parts of Nazi-controlled territory until the end of ], only completely ending when the Allies entered Germany itself and forced the Nazis to surrender in May 1945. | |||
{{-}} | |||
Besides Germany, a significant number of other European countries abandoned democracy for some kind of authoritarian or fascist rule.{{sfn|Stone|2010|p=17}} Many countries, including Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia, passed antisemitic legislation in the 1930s and 1940s.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=332–334}} In October 1938, ] in response to a Polish law that enabled the ] for Polish Jews living abroad.{{Sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=49}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=109–110}} | |||
===Cruelty=== | |||
The Holocaust was carried out without any reprieve even for children or babies, and victims were often tortured before being killed. Nazis carried out ] on prisoners, including children. Dr. ], medical officer at Auschwitz and chief medical officer at ], was known as the "Angel of Death" for his medical and ] experiments, e.g., trying to change people's eye color by injecting ] into their eyes.<ref>{{cite book |last= Harran|first=Marilyn |title=The Holocaust Chronicles, A History in Words and Pictures |year=2000 |publisher=Louis Weber |pages=Pg.384|isbn=0-7853-2963-3}}</ref> ], another doctor who worked at Mauthausen, was known as "Doctor Death". | |||
] ] in ].]] | |||
The guards in the concentration camps carried out beatings and acts of torture on a daily basis. Some women (usually convicted prostitutes) worked in brothels for the guards and privileged prisoners. It has been argued that some were forced to do so.<ref></ref>. Russian prisoners of war were used for experiments, such as being immersed in ice water or being put into pressure chambers in which air was evacuated to see how long they would survive as a means to better protect German airmen. | |||
==Start of World War II== | |||
] in the concentration camps.<ref>{{cite book |last= Harran|first=Marilyn |title=The Holocaust Chronicles, A History in Words and Pictures |year=2000 |publisher=Louis Weber |pages=Pg.108|isbn=0-7853-2963-3}}</ref> They faced persecution not only from German soldiers but also from other prisoners, and many homosexual men were beaten to death.<ref>{{cite book |last= Harran|first=Marilyn |title=The Holocaust Chronicles, A History in Words and Pictures |year=2000 |publisher=Louis Weber |pages=Pg.108|isbn=0-7853-2963-3}}</ref> Additionally, homosexuals in forced labor camps routinely received more grueling and dangerous work assignments than other non-Jewish inmates, under the policy of "Extermination Through Work".<ref>{{cite book |last= Harran|first=Marilyn |title=The Holocaust Chronicles, A History in Words and Pictures |year=2000 |publisher=Louis Weber |pages=Pg.108|isbn=0-7853-2963-3}}</ref> German soldiers also were known to use homosexuals for target practice, aiming their weapons at the pink triangles their human targets were forced to wear.<ref>{{cite book |last= Harran|first=Marilyn |title=The Holocaust Chronicles, A History in Words and Pictures |year=2000 |publisher=Louis Weber |pages=Pg.108|isbn=0-7853-2963-3}}</ref> | |||
]'s ]]] | |||
The German '']'' (armed forces) ] on 1 September 1939, triggering declarations of war ] and ].{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=56}} During the five weeks of fighting, as many as 16,000 civilians, hostages, and ] may have been shot by the German invaders;{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=57}} there was also a great deal of looting.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=98}} Special units known as '']'' followed the army to eliminate any possible resistance.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|pp=99, 101}} Around 50,000 Polish and Polish Jewish leaders and intellectuals ].{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=57–58}}{{sfn|Beorn|2018|pp=102–103}} The ] was established to hold those members of the Polish intelligentsia not killed in the purges.{{sfn|Hayes|2017|p=241}} Around 400,000 Poles were expelled from the ] in western Poland to the ] occupation zone from 1939 to 1941, and the area was ] by ].{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=58}} | |||
The rest of Poland was ], which ] on 17 September pursuant to the ].{{sfn|Beorn|2018|pp=46, 73}} The Soviet Union ] to the Soviet interior, including as many as 260,000 Jews who largely survived the war.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=86}}{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=362}} Although most Jews were not communists, some accepted positions in the Soviet administration, contributing to a pre-existing perception among many non-Jews that Soviet rule was a Jewish conspiracy.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|pp=89–90}} In 1940, Germany invaded much of western Europe including ], ], ], ], and ].{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=56}} In 1941, Germany ] and ].{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=56}} Some of these new holdings were ] while others were placed under ] or ].{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=57}} | |||
===Children=== | |||
The war provided cover for "]", the murder of around 70,000 institutionalized Germans with mental or physical disabilities at specialized killing centers using poison gas.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=58}}{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=38}}{{sfn|Bergen|2016|p=162}} The victims included all 4,000 to 5,000 institutionalized Jews.{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=37}} Despite efforts to maintain secrecy, knowledge of the killings leaked out and Hitler ordered a halt to the centralized killing program in August 1941.{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=284}}{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=59}}{{sfn|Kay|2021|pp=37–38}} Decentralized killings via denial of medical care, starvation, and poisoning caused an additional 120,000 deaths by the end of the war.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=59}}{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=254}} Many of the same personnel and technologies were later used for the mass murder of Jews.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=207}}{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=40}} | |||
During the selection process, children were divided into two groups: those who were fit for work, and those who were not. Those who were deemed healthy enough to work had their prisoner ID tattooed on them, and were given a uniform. The children who were sent to work, most often in munitions factories,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005475|title=CONCENTRATION CAMPS, 1942-1945|work=Holocaust Encyclopedia}}</ref> were not anticipated to survive for much longer than a few weeks. This was due to the workload placed on them by the ] and due to the lack of food and unhygienic conditions within the camp. | |||
===Ghettoization and resettlement=== | |||
Those children deemed unfit for work were immediately taken to the gas chambers.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/index.php?ModuleId=10005142|title=Children|work=Holocaust Encyclopedia|publisher=]|accessdate=2007-01-06}}</ref> These children were often very dependent on their mothers. However, some children, particularly twins, were kept by the camp "doctor" for medical experimentation.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.deathcamps.info/Experiments/jpg_exp5.htm|title=Holocaust - Medical Experiments}}</ref> | |||
{{further|The Holocaust in Poland}} | |||
], ]]] | |||
] in the ]]] | |||
Germany gained control of 1.7 million Jews in Poland.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=96}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=148}} The Nazis ] in the ] of the General Governorate. 45,000 Jews were deported by November and left to fend for themselves, causing many deaths.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=108}} Deportations stopped in early 1940 due to the opposition of ], the leader of the General Governorate, who did not want his fiefdom to become a dumping ground for unwanted Jews.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|pp=107–109}}{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=201}} After the conquest of France, the Nazis considered ] to ], but this proved impossible.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=164}}{{sfn|Beorn|2018|pp=109, 117}} The Nazis planned that harsh conditions in these areas would kill many Jews.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=164}}{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=201}} In September 1939, around 7,000 Jews were killed, alongside thousands of Poles, however, they were not systematically targeted as they would be later, and open mass killings would subside until June of 1941.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=63, 437}} | |||
===Experiments=== | |||
{{main|Nazi human experimentation}} | |||
At the Auschwitz concentration camp, Dr. ] was infamous for carrying out medical experiments on human subjects. These included placing subjects in pressure chambers, testing various drugs on them, freezing them to death, and various other usually fatal traumas. Of particular interest to Mengele were twins, Gypsies, dwarves and infants.<ref>{{cite book |last= Harran|first=Marilyn |title=The Holocaust Chronicles, A History in Words and Pictures |year=2000 |publisher=Louis Weber |pages=Pg.384|isbn=0-7853-2963-3}}</ref> Beginning in 1943, twins were selected and placed in special barracks.<ref>{{cite book |last= Harran|first=Marilyn |title=The Holocaust Chronicles, A History in Words and Pictures |year=2000 |publisher=Louis Weber |pages=Pg.384|isbn=0-7853-2963-3}}</ref> | |||
During the invasion, synagogues were burned and thousands of Jews fled or were expelled into the Soviet occupation zone.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|pp=87, 103}} Various anti-Jewish regulations were soon issued. In October 1939, adult Jews in the General Governorate were required to perform forced labor.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=116}} In November 1939 they were ordered to wear white armbands.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=115}} Laws decreed the seizure of most Jewish property and the takeover of Jewish-owned businesses. When Jews were forced into ghettos, they lost their homes and belongings.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=116}} | |||
Almost all of Mengele's experiments were of little scientific value, including attempts to change eye color by injecting chemicals into children's eyes, various amputations and other brutal surgeries, and in at least one case attempting to surgically transform normal twins into Siamese twins.<ref>{{cite book |last= Harran|first=Marilyn |title=The Holocaust Chronicles, A History in Words and Pictures |year=2000 |publisher=Louis Weber |pages=Pg.384|isbn=0-7853-2963-3}}</ref> | |||
The first ] were established in the Wartheland and General Governorate in 1939 and 1940 on the initiative of local German administrators.{{sfn|Miron|2020|pp=247, 251, 254}}{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=117}} The largest ghettos, such as ] and ], were established in existing residential neighborhoods and closed by fences or walls. In many smaller ghettos, Jews were forced into poor neighborhoods but with no fence.{{sfn|Miron|2020|p=252}} Forced labor programs provided subsistence to many ghetto inhabitants, and in some cases protected them from deportation. Workshops and factories were operated inside some ghettos, while in other cases Jews left the ghetto to work outside it.{{sfn|Miron|2020|p=253}} Because the ghettos were not segregated by sex some family life continued.{{sfn|Miron|2020|pp=253–254}} A Jewish community leadership ({{lang|de|]}}) exercised some authority and tried to sustain the Jewish community while following German demands. As a survival strategy, many tried to make the ghettos useful to the occupiers as a labor reserve.{{sfn|Miron|2020|p=254}}{{sfn|Engel|2020|p=240}} Jews in western Europe were not forced into ghettos but faced discriminatory laws and confiscation of property.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=272}}{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|pp=314–315}}{{sfn|Miron|2020|pp=247–248}} | |||
The full extent of Mengele's work will never be known because the two truckloads of records he sent to Dr. ] at the ] were destroyed by the latter. Subjects who survived Mengele's experiments were almost always killed after the experiments for dissection. | |||
Rape and sexual exploitation of Jewish and non-Jewish women in eastern Europe ].{{sfn|Westermann|2020|pp=127–128}} | |||
While Mengele's experiments were the most notorious, his behavior was not an isolated aberration. Other Nazi physicians also engaged in human experimentation at several concentration camps, including Dachau,<ref>{{cite book |last= Harran|first=Marilyn |title=The Holocaust Chronicles, A History in Words and Pictures |year=2000 |publisher=Louis Weber |pages=Pg.728|isbn=0-7853-2963-3}}</ref> Buchenwald,<ref>{{cite book |last= Harran|first=Marilyn |title=The Holocaust Chronicles, A History in Words and Pictures |year=2000 |publisher=Louis Weber |pages=Pg.726|isbn=0-7853-2963-3}}</ref> Ravensbrück,<ref>{{cite book |last= Harran|first=Marilyn |title=The Holocaust Chronicles, A History in Words and Pictures |year=2000 |publisher=Louis Weber |pages=Pg.752|isbn=0-7853-2963-3}}</ref> Sachsenhausen,<ref>{{cite book |last= Harran|first=Marilyn |title=The Holocaust Chronicles, A History in Words and Pictures |year=2000 |publisher=Louis Weber |pages=Pg.755|isbn=0-7853-2963-3}}</ref> and Natzweiler concentration camps.<ref>{{cite book |last= Harran|first=Marilyn |title=The Holocaust Chronicles, A History in Words and Pictures |year=2000 |publisher=Louis Weber |pages=Pg.747|isbn=0-7853-2963-3}}</ref> | |||
==Invasion of the Soviet Union== | |||
==Victims== | |||
] concentration camp]] | |||
{{main|Holocaust victims}} | |||
While the victims of the Holocaust were ] ]s, the Nazis also persecuted and slaughtered the members of other groups they considered inferior, undesirable or dangerous, including ] and other Slavic peoples such as ], ] and ], ],<ref>*—Congress of Bosniak Intellectuals, Sarajevo. ]. October 2006. (Holocaust Studies) | |||
</ref> ] & ] (also known as Gypsies), and some ]s, ]s and others who did not belong to the "]"; the ] and the physically ]; ]; and political opponents and religious dissidents such as ]s, ]ists, Freemasons and ].<ref>{{cite book |last= Gilbert|first=Martin |title=The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy |year=1990 |publisher=Fontana |pages=Pp 30, 239, 250, 797, 807. |isbn=0-00-637194-9}}</ref> | |||
Germany and its allies Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Italy ] on 22 June 1941.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=67}}{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=201}} Although the war was launched more for strategic than ideological reasons,{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=351}} what Hitler saw as an apocalyptic battle against the forces of ]{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=172}} was to be carried out as a ] with ] for the ].{{sfn|Beorn|2018|pp=121–122}}{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|pp=201–202}} A quick victory was expected{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=179}} and was planned to be followed by a massive ] project to ].{{sfn|Beorn|2018|pp=63–64}} To increase the speed of conquest the Germans planned to feed their army by looting, exporting additional food to Germany, and to terrorize the local inhabitants with preventative killings.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=68}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=180}} The Germans foresaw that the invasion would cause a food shortfall and ] of Soviet cities and some rural areas.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=67–68}}{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=67}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=181–182}} Although the starvation policy was less successful than planners hoped,{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=221–222}} the residents of some cities, particularly in Ukraine, and ], as well as the Jewish ghettos, endured human-made famine, during which millions of people died of starvation.{{sfn|Bloxham|2009|pp=182–183}}{{sfn|Kay|2021|pp=142, 294}} | |||
The victims of the Holocaust were generally described by the ] as "undesirables," "enemies of the state", "asocial elements," and "moral degenerates," labels that went hand-in-hand with their term '']'' ("sub-human"). | |||
By mid-June 1941, about 30,000 Jews had died, 20,000 of whom had starved to death in the ].{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=65}} | |||
==Death toll== | |||
] inspecting prisoners' corpses at a liberated concentration camp, 1945]] | |||
], a Belarusian Jew who helped Soviet prisoners escape]] | |||
The exact number of people killed by the Nazi regime may never be known, but scholars, using a variety of methods, including documentation from the Nazis of determining the death toll, have generally agreed upon common range of the number of victims. Recently declassified ] and ] documents have indicated the total may be somewhat higher than previously believed.<ref>Douglas Davis, "," ''Jerusalem Post'', May 20, 1997 (accessed June 8, 2005).</ref> The following estimates provide a range of the number of victims: | |||
] were intended to die in large numbers. Sixty percent—3.3 million people—died, primarily of starvation,{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=125}}{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=72}} making them the second largest group of victims of Nazi mass killing after European Jews.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=5}}{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=294}} Jewish prisoners of war and ] were systematically executed.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=231–232}}{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=161}} About a million civilians were killed by the Nazis during ], including more than 300,000 in Belarus.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=288}}{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=190}} From 1942 onwards, the Germans and their allies targeted villages suspected of supporting the partisans, burning them and killing or expelling their inhabitants.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=297–298}} During these operations, nearby small ghettos were liquidated and their inhabitants shot.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=298–299}} By 1943, anti-partisan operations aimed for the depopulation of large areas of Belarus.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=298}}{{sfn|Kay|2021|pp=182–183}} Jews and those unfit for work were typically shot on the spot with others deported.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=298–299}}{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=182}} Although most of those killed were not Jews,{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=190}}{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=298}} anti-partisan warfare often led to the deaths of Jews.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=300, 310}} | |||
===Mass shootings of Jews{{anchor|Mass shootings|Einsatzgruppen|Mass shootings}}=== | |||
* An estimated 5 to 6 million Jews,<ref>"," Yad Vashem (accessed June 8, 2005). A detailed breakdown of various estimates of the victims is available from the (accessed August 10, 2005)</ref> including 3 million Polish Jews | |||
<!-- internal links target here --> | |||
* 1.8 – 1.9 million Christian Poles and other (non-Jewish) Poles (estimate includes civilians killed as a result of Nazi aggression and occupation but does not include the military casualties of Nazi aggression or the victims of the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland and of deportations to Central Asia and Siberia)<ref> at the US Holocaust Museum</ref> | |||
{{Further|The Holocaust in the Soviet Union|The Holocaust in Romania}} | |||
* 200,000–800,000 ] & ] (Gypsies) | |||
], mainly by local Ukrainians.{{sfn|Beorn|2020|pp=162–163}}]] | |||
* 200,000–300,000 people with disabilities | |||
* 80,000-200,000 ] ]<ref name="Dummies">''Freemasons for Dummies'', , ISBN 0-7645-9796-5, Hungry Minds Inc, U.S., 2005.</ref> | |||
* 100,000 ] | |||
* 10,000–25,000 ] men | |||
* 2,500–5,000 ]<ref>According to the United States Holocaust Museum .</ref> | |||
The systematic murder of Jews began in the Soviet Union in 1941.{{sfnm|Kay|2021|1pp=13–14|Beorn|2018|2p=128}} During the invasion, many Jews were conscripted into the ]. Out of 10 or 15 million Soviet civilians who ], 1.6 million were Jews.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=72–73}}{{sfn|Miron|2020|p=254}} Local inhabitants killed as many as 50,000 Jews in pogroms in Latvia, ], ], Ukraine, and the Romanian borderlands.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=69, 440}}{{sfn|Kopstein|2023|pp=105, 107–108}} Although German forces tried to incite pogroms, their role in causing violence is controversial.{{sfn|Kopstein|2023|p=107}}{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=202}} ] ] by April 1942.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=69}}{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=185}} | |||
], in the third edition of his ground-breaking three-volume work, '']'', estimates that 5.1 million Jews died during the Holocaust. This figure includes "over 800,000" who died from "Ghettoization and general privation"; 1,400,000 who were killed in "Open-air shootings"; and "up to 2,900,000" who perished in camps. Hilberg estimates the death toll in Poland at "up to 3,000,000".<ref>Hilberg, Raul. The destruction of the European Jews (Yale Univ. Press, 2003, c1961).</ref> Hilberg's numbers are generally considered to be a conservative estimate, as they generally include only those deaths for which some records are available, avoiding statistical adjustment.<ref>Yisrael Gutman, Michael Berenbaum, Raul Hilberg, Franciszek Piper, Yehuda Bauer, ''Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp'', Indiana University Press, 1998, p.71.</ref> British historian ] used a similar approach in his ''Atlas of the Holocaust,'' but arrived at a number of 5.75 million Jewish victims, since he estimated higher numbers of Jews killed in Russia and other locations.<ref>Gilbert, Martin, Atlas of the Holocaust, New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc, 1993.</ref> | |||
Prior to the invasion, the ''Einsatzgruppen'' were reorganized in preparation for mass killings and instructed to shoot Soviet officials and Jewish state and party employees.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=129}} The shootings were justified on the basis of Jews' supposed central role in supporting the communist system, but it was not initially envisioned to kill all Soviet Jews.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=190}}{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=66}} The occupiers relied on locals to identify Jews to be targeted.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|pp=259–260}} The first German mass killings targeted adult male Jews who had worked as civil servants or in jobs requiring education. Tens of thousands were shot by the end of July. The vast majority of civilian victims were Jews.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=69}} In July and August ], the leader of the ] (''Schutzstaffel''), made several visits to the ]' zones of operation, relaying orders to kill more Jews.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=132}} At this time, the killers began to murder Jewish women and children too.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=132}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=207}} Executions peaked at 40,000 a month ] in August and September and in October and November reached their height ].{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=69–70}} | |||
] A" from the December 1941 ] by the commander of a ]. Marked "Secret Reich Matter," the map shows the number of Jews shot in the ], and reads at the bottom: ''"the estimated number of Jews still on hand is 128,000"''. ] is marked as '']'' ("free of Jews").]] | |||
], Belarus]] | |||
] used pre-war census figures to estimate that 5.934 million Jews died. Using official census counts may cause an underestimate since many births and deaths were not recorded in small towns and villages. Another reason some consider her estimate too low is that many records were destroyed during the war. Her listing of deaths by country of origin is available in the article about her book, '']''.<ref>Lucy Dawidowicz, ''The War Against The Jews, 1933–1945'', New York : Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975 ISBN 0-03-013661-X</ref> | |||
] | |||
The executions often took place a few kilometers from a town. Victims were rounded up and marched to the execution site, forced to undress, and shot into previously dug pits.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=70}} The favored technique was a shot in the back of the neck with a single bullet.{{sfn|Bloxham|2009|p=203}} In the chaos, many victims were not killed by the gunfire but instead ]. Typically, the pits would be guarded after the execution but sometimes a few victims managed to escape afterwards.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=70}} Executions were public spectacles and the victims' property was looted both by the occupiers and local inhabitants.{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=203}} Around 200 ghettos were established in the occupied Soviet Union, with many existing only briefly before their inhabitants were executed. A few large ghettos such as Vilna, ], ], ], and ] lasted into 1943 because they became centers of production.{{sfn|Miron|2020|p=254}} | |||
Victims of mass shootings included Jews deported from elsewhere.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=79}} Besides Germany, Romania ].{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=372}}{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=207}} Romania deported about 154,000–170,000 Jews from ] to ghettos in ] from 1941 to 1943.{{sfn|Stone|2010|p=36}} Jews from Transnistria were also imprisoned in these ghettos, where the total death toll may have reached 160,000.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=371}} Hungary expelled thousands of ] and foreign Jews in 1941, who were shortly thereafter ].{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=380}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=224}} At the beginning of September, all German Jews were required to wear a yellow star, and in October, Hitler decided to ] and ban emigration.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=75–77}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=284–285}} Between mid-October and the end of 1941, 42,000 Jews from Germany and its annexed territories and 5,000 ] were deported to Łódź, Kovno, Riga, and ].{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=76}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=286}} In late November, ] outside of Kovno and ] near Riga, but Himmler ordered an end to such massacres and some in the senior Nazi leadership voiced doubts about killing German Jews.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=79}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=298–299}} Executions of German Jews in the Baltics resumed in early 1942.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=300}} | |||
One of the most authoritative German scholars of the Holocaust, Prof. Wolfgang Benz of the Technical University of Berlin, cites between 5.3 and 6.2 million Jews killed in ''Dimension des Volksmords'' (1991), while Yisrael Gutman and Robert Rozett estimate between 5.59 and 5.86 million Jewish victims in the '']'' (1990).<ref>Wolfgang Benz in Dimension des Volksmords: Die Zahl der Jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Munich: Deutscher Taschebuch Verlag, 1991). Israel Gutman, ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust,'' Macmillan Reference Books; Reference edition (October 1, 1995)</ref> | |||
After the expansion of killings to target the entire Soviet Jewish population, the 3,000 men of the ''Einsatzgruppen'' proved insufficient and Himmler mobilized 21 battalions of ] to assist them.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=132}} In addition, Wehrmacht soldiers, ] brigades, and local auxiliaries shot many Jews.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=70}}{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=142}}{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|pp=205–206}} By the end of 1941, more than 80 percent of the Jews in central Ukraine, eastern Belarus, Russia, Latvia, and Lithuania had been shot, but less than 25 percent of those living farther west where 900,000 remained alive.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=71}} By the end of the war, around 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=128}} and as many as 225,000 Roma.{{sfn|Bergen|2016|p=200}} The murderers found the executions distressing and logistically inconvenient, which influenced the decision to switch to other methods of killing.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|pp=146–147}} | |||
The following groups of people were also killed by the Nazi regime, but there is little evidence{{Fact|date=March 2007}} that the Nazis planned to systematically target them for genocide as was the case for the groups above. | |||
==Systematic deportations across Europe== | |||
* 3.5–6 million other Slavic civilians | |||
Most historians agree that Hitler issued an ] to kill all Jews across Europe,{{sfn|Evans|2019|p=120}} but there is disagreement as to when.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=78}}{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=204}} Some historians cite inflammatory statements by Hitler and other Nazi leaders as well as the concurrent ], plans for ] in Poland, and the beginning of the deportation of German Jews as indicative of the final decision having been made before December 1941.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=78}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=303}} Others argue that these policies were initiatives by local leaders and that the final decision was made later.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=78}} On 5 December 1941, the Soviet Union ]. On 11 December, ] after Japan ].{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=79–80}}{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=199}} The next day, he ], referring to his ], "The world war is here; the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence."{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=199}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=306}} | |||
* 2.5–4 million Soviet ] | |||
* 1–1.5 million political dissidents | |||
It took the Nazis several months after this to organize a continent-wide genocide.{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=199}} ], head of the ] (RSHA), convened the ] on 20 January 1942. This high-level meeting was intended to coordinate anti-Jewish policy.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=84–85}} The majority of Holocaust killings were carried out in 1942, with it being the peak of the genocide, as over 3 million Jews were murdered, with 20 or 25 percent of Holocaust victims dying before early 1942 and the same number surviving by the end of the year.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=202}}{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=99}} | |||
Additionally, the ] regime, the Nazis' allies in Croatia, conducted its own campaign of mass extermination against the Serbs in the areas which it controlled, resulting in the deaths of 500,000–1.2 million Serbs. | |||
===Extermination camps=== | |||
The summary of various sources' estimates on the number of Nazi regime victims is given in Matthew White's online . | |||
{{Main|Extermination camp}} | |||
] | |||
] developed from those used to kill mental patients since 1939 were assigned to the ''Einsatzgruppen'' and first used in November 1941; victims were forced into the van and killed with engine exhaust.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=279}} The first extermination camp was ] in the Wartheland, established on the initiative of the local civil administrator ] with Himmler's approval; it began operations in December 1941 using gas vans.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=74}}{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=209}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=290–291}} In October 1941, ] of Lublin ]{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=210}} began work planning ]—the first purpose-built extermination camp to feature stationary ]s using carbon monoxide based on the previous ] programme<ref>], ''Holocaust, the Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews'', p. 280</ref><ref name="Nazi Genocide pp. 96, 99">] ''The Origins of Nazi Genocide, From Euthanasia to the Final Solution'', pp. 96, 99</ref>—amid increasing talk among German administrators in Poland of large-scale murder of Jews in the General Governorate.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=280, 293–294, 302}}{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=74}} In late 1941 in ], Jews in forced-labor camps operated by the ] deemed "unfit for work" began to be sent in groups to Auschwitz where they were murdered.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=280–281, 292}}{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=208–209}} In early 1942, ] became the preferred killing method in extermination camps{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=281–282}} after gassing experiments were conducted on Russian POWs in late August 1941.{{sfn|Browning|2004|pp=526–527}}<ref name="Nazi Genocide pp. 96, 99"/> | |||
===Searching for records of victims=== | |||
Initially after ], there were millions of members of families broken up by the war or the Holocaust searching for some record of the fate and/or whereabouts of their missing friends and relatives. These efforts became much less intense as the years went by. More recently, however, there has a been a resurgence of interest by descendants of Holocaust survivors in researching the fates of their lost relatives. ] provides a searchable database of three million names, about half of the known direct Jewish victims. Yad Vashem's ''Central Database of Shoah Victims Names'' is searchable over the Internet at or in person at the Yad Vashem complex in ]. | |||
The camps were located on rail lines to make it easier to transport Jews to their deaths, but in remote places to avoid notice.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=210}} The stench caused by mass killing operations was noticeable to anyone nearby.{{sfn|Bergen|2016|pp=247, 251}} Except in the deportations from western and central Europe, people were typically deported to the camps in ]. As many as 150 people were forced into a single ]. Many died ''en route'', partly because of the low priority accorded to these transports.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=286–287}}{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=204}} Shortage of rail transport sometimes led to postponement or cancellation of deportations.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=283}} Upon arrival, the victims were robbed of their remaining possessions, forced to undress, had their hair cut, and were chased into the gas chamber.{{sfn|Kay|2021|pp=204–205}} Death from the gas was agonizing and could take as long as 30 minutes.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=330}}{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=199}} The gas chambers were primitive and sometimes malfunctioned. Some prisoners were shot because the gas chambers were not functioning.{{sfn|Stone|2010|pp=153–154}} At other extermination camps, nearly everyone on a transport was killed on arrival, but at Auschwitz around 20–25 percent were separated out for labor,{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=199}} although many of these prisoners died later on{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=211}} through starvation, mass shooting, torture,<ref>{{cite book |last=Borkin |first=Joseph |url=https://archive.org/details/crimepunishmento0000bork |title=The Crime and Punishment of IG Farben |publisher=Free Press |year=1978 |isbn=978-0-02-904630-2 |location=New York City |url-access=registration}}</ref> and medical experiments.<ref name="Weindling von Villiez Loewenau Farron 2016 pp. 1–6">{{cite journal |last1=Weindling |first1=Paul |last2=von Villiez |first2=Anna |last3=Loewenau |first3=Aleksandra |last4=Farron |first4=Nichola |year=2016 |title=The victims of unethical human experiments and coerced research under National Socialism |journal=Endeavour |publisher=Elsevier BV |volume=40 |issue=1 |pages=1–6 |doi=10.1016/j.endeavour.2015.10.005 |issn=0160-9327 |pmc=4822534 |pmid=26749461}}</ref> | |||
Other databases and lists of victims' names, some searchable over the Web, are listed in ]. | |||
Belzec, ], and ] reported a combined revenue of RM 178.7 million from belongings stolen from their victims, far exceeding costs.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=273}}{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=209}} Combined, the camps required the labor of less than 3,000 Jewish prisoners, 1,000 ] (largely Ukrainian auxiliaries), and very few German guards.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=274}}{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=204}} About half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust died by poison gas.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=121}} Thousands of Romani people were also murdered in the extermination camps.{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=247}} Prisoner uprisings at ] and ] meant that these camps were shut down earlier than envisioned.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=111}}{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=208}} | |||
==Execution of the Holocaust== | |||
{{jew}} | |||
===Concentration and labor camps (1933–1945)=== | |||
{{main|Nazi concentration camps|Nazi concentration camp badges}} | |||
{| class="wikitable" style="float:center; margin-left:1.0em" | |||
After the 1932 elections it became clear to the Nazi leaders that they would never be able to secure a majority of the votes and that they would have to rely on other means to gain power. Leading up to the 1933 elections, the Nazis began intensifying acts of violence to wreak havoc among the opposition. At the same time, with cooperation from local authorities, they set up camps as concentration centers within Germany. One of the first was ], which opened in March 1933. These early camps were meant to hold, torture, or kill only political prisoners, such as Communists and Social Democrats. Eventually, the Nazis imprisoned Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, critical journalists, and other undesirables.<ref name="CampTimeline">{{cite web|url=http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/timeline/camps.htm|title=Holocaust Timeline: The Camps|work=A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust|publisher=University of South Florida|accessdate=2007-01-06}}</ref> | |||
|+Major extermination camps{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=120}} | |||
|- | |||
!scope="col"| Camp | |||
!scope="col"| Location | |||
!scope="col"| Number of Jews killed | |||
!scope="col"| Killing technology | |||
!scope="col"| Planning began | |||
!scope="col"| Mass gassing duration | |||
|- | |||
|scope="row"| ] | |||
| ]{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=120}} || 150,000{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=120}} || ]{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=120}} || July 1941{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=120}} <!-- construction in November 1941{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=209}} --> || 8 December 1941 – April 1943 and April–July 1944{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=74, 120}} | |||
|- | |||
|scope="row"| ] | |||
| ]{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=120}} || 440,823–596,200{{sfn|Lehnstaedt|2021|p=63}} || Stationary ], engine exhaust{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=120}} ||October 1941{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=74, 120}} || 17 March 1942 – December 1942{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=74, 120}} | |||
|- | |||
|scope="row"| ] | |||
| ]{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=120}} || 170,618–238,900{{sfn|Lehnstaedt|2021|p=63}} || Stationary ], engine exhaust{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=120}} || Late 1941 or March 1942{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=93–94, 120}} || May 1942 – October 1942{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=93–94, 120}} | |||
|- | |||
|scope="row"| ] | |||
| ]{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=120}} || 780,863–951,800{{sfn|Lehnstaedt|2021|p=63}} || Stationary ], engine exhaust{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=120}} || April 1942{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=120}} <!-- construction in May<ref name=Treblinkadates>{{harvnb|Gerlach|2016|p=94}}; also see {{harvnb|Cesarani|2016|p=504}}.</ref> --> || 23 July 1942 – October 1943{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=120}} | |||
|- | |||
|scope="row"| ] | |||
| ]{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=120}} || 900,000–1,000,000{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=120}} || Stationary ], ]{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=120}} || September 1941<br /><small>(built as POW camp)</small>{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=281–282}}{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=120}} || February 1942 – October 1944{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=120}} | |||
|} | |||
===Liquidation of the ghettos in Poland=== | |||
These early prisons—usually basements and storehouses—were eventually consolidated into full-blown, centrally run camps outside of the cities and somewhat removed from the public eye. By 1942, six large extermination camps, located in Nazi-occupied Poland, had been established.<ref name="CampTimeline" />After 1939, with the beginning of the Second World War, the concentration camps increasingly became places where the non-political enemies of the Nazis, including Jews and POWs, were either killed or forced to act as slave laborers, and kept undernourished and tortured.<ref>{{cite book |last= Harran|first=Marilyn |title=The Holocaust Chronicles, A History in Words and Pictures |year=2000 |publisher=Louis Weber |pages=Pg.321|isbn=0-7853-2963-3}}</ref> | |||
{{further|Operation Reinhard}} | |||
] at ], ], and ] from January 1942 to February 1943]] | |||
<!-- ] to ], 1943]] --> | |||
Plans to kill most of the Jews in the General Governorate were affected by various goals of the SS, military, and civil administration to reduce the amount of food consumed by Jews, enable a slight increase in rations to non-Jewish Poles, and combat the ].{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=91}} In March 1942, killings began in Belzec, targeting Jews from Lublin who were not capable of work. This action reportedly reduced the black market and was deemed a success to be replicated elsewhere.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=243}}{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=200}} By mid-1942, Nazi leaders decided to allow only 300,000 Jews to survive in the General Governorate by the end of the year for forced labor;{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=91}} for the most part, only those working in ] were spared.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=342}} The majority of ghettos were liquidated in mass executions nearby, especially if they were not near a train station. Larger ghettos were more commonly liquidated during multiple deportations to extermination camps.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=220}}{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=200}} During this campaign, 1.5 million ] were murdered in the largest killing operation of the Holocaust.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=340}} | |||
In order to reduce resistance, the ghetto would be raided without warning, usually in the early morning, and the extent of the operation would be concealed as long as possible.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=339}} ] would cordon off the ghetto while the ] and ] carried out the action.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=338}} In addition to local non-Jewish collaborators, the Jewish councils and ] were often ordered to assist with liquidation actions, although these Jews were in most cases murdered later.{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=209}} Chaotic, capriciously executed selections determined who would be loaded onto the trains. Many Jews were shot during the action, often leaving ghettos strewn with corpses. Jewish forced laborers had to clean it up and collect any valuables from the victims.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=339}} | |||
During the War, concentration camps for Jews and other "undesirables" were spread throughout Europe, with new camps being created near centers of dense "undesirable" populations, often focusing on areas with large Jewish, Polish intelligentsia, communist, or Roma and Sinti (Gypsy) populations. Concentration camps also existed in Germany itself. Most of the camps were located in the area of ] in occupied Poland, but there were camps in every country occupied by the Nazis. The transportation of prisoners was often carried out under horrifying conditions using rail freight cars, in which many died before they reached their destination. | |||
] became significant as a symbol of ].{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=209}}]] | |||
The Warsaw Ghetto ] between 22 July and 12 September. Of the original population of 350,000 Jews, 250,000 were killed at Treblinka, 11,000 were deported to labor camps, 10,000 were shot in the ghetto, 35,000 were allowed to remain in the ghetto after a final selection, and around 20,000 or 25,000 managed to hide in the ghetto. Misdirection efforts convinced many Jews that they could avoid deportation until it was too late.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=335–336}} During a six-week period beginning in August, 300,000 Jews from the ] were sent to Treblinka.{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=203}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=337}} | |||
At the same time as the mass killing of Jews in the General Governorate, Jews who were in ghettos to the west and east were targeted. Tens of thousands of Jews were deported from ghettos in the Warthegau and East Upper Silesia to Chełmno and Auschwitz.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=343}} 300,000 Jews—largely skilled laborers—were shot in ], ], and southwestern Belarus.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=93, 249}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=352}} Deportations and mass executions in the ] and Galicia killed many Jews.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=338, 352–353}} Although there was practically no resistance in the General Governorate in 1942, some Soviet Jews improvised weapons, attacked those attempting to liquidate the ghetto, and set it on fire.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=341, 353–354}} These ] were only undertaken when the inhabitants began to believe that their death was certain.{{sfn|Engel|2020|pp=241–242}} In 1943, larger uprisings in ], ], and ] necessitated the use of heavy weapons.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=110}} The uprising in Warsaw prompted the Nazi leadership to liquidate additional ghettos and labor camps in German-occupied Poland with their inhabitants massacred, such as the ], or deported to extermination camps for fear of additional Jewish resistance developing.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=378–380}} Nevertheless, in early 1944, more than 70,000 Jews were performing forced labor in the General Governorate.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=214}} | |||
While not specifically designed as a method for systematic extermination, many concentration camp prisoners died because of harsh conditions or were eventually executed. | |||
===Deportations from elsewhere=== | |||
Upon admission, some camps tattooed prisoners with a prisoner ID.<ref>{{cite book |last= Harran|first=Marilyn |title=The Holocaust Chronicles, A History in Words and Pictures |year=2000 |publisher=Louis Weber |pages=Pg.461|isbn=0-7853-2963-3}}</ref> Those fit for work were dispatched for 12 to 14 hour shifts. Before and after, there were roll calls that could sometimes last for hours; sometimes, prisoners would die of exposure.<ref name="NormalDay">{{cite web|url=http://www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Camps/DayEng.html|title=Just a Normal Day in the Camps|publisher=JewishGen|accessdate=2007-01-06}}</ref> | |||
], ] to the ] of the ], 25 April 1942.]] | |||
Unlike the killing areas in the east, the deportation from elsewhere in Europe was centrally organized from Berlin, although it depended on the outcome of negotiations with allied governments and popular responses to deportation.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=99}} Beginning in late 1941, local administrators responded to the deportation of Jews to their area by massacring local Jews in order to free up space in ghettos for the deportees.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=299–300, 331}} If the deported Jews did not die of harsh conditions, they were killed later in extermination camps.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=321}} Jews deported to Auschwitz were initially entered into the camp; the practice of conducting selections and murdering many prisoners upon arrival began in July 1942.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=97}} In May and June, German and Slovak Jews deported to Lublin began to be sent directly to extermination camps.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=97}} | |||
In Western Europe, almost all Jewish deaths occurred after deportation.{{sfn|Welch|2020|p=460}} The occupiers often relied on local policemen to arrest Jews, limiting the number who were deported.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=375–376}} In 1942, nearly 100,000 Jews were deported ], ], and ].{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=96–97}} Only 25 percent of the Jews in France were killed;{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=366}} most of them were either non-citizens or recent immigrants. ] and ] saved hundreds of Jews by hiding them in the basements of the ] and other resistance efforts in France.<ref name="lep1">{{cite news |last1=De Bengy |first1=Raphael |title=Mohamed Mesli : « Mon père, l'imam sauveur de juifs » |trans-title=Mohamed Mesli: "My father, the imam who saved the Jews" |url=https://www.leparisien.fr/week-end/mohamed-mesli-mon-pere-l-imam-sauveur-de-juifs-18-02-2015-4543709.php |work=] |access-date=26 May 2024 |language=fr-FR |date=18 February 2015}}</ref>{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=95–96, 387}} The death rate in the Netherlands was higher than neighboring countries, which scholars have attributed to difficulty in hiding or increased collaboration of the Dutch police.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=257}} | |||
Between the time of registration into the camp and death, prisoners were subjected to a number of demeaning and torturous ordeals. Prisoners were often beaten, whipped, or hung from beams with their hands behind them. This ordeal was done with their feet just inches from the ground. Prisoners were also shot arbitrarily. | |||
The German government sought the deportation of Jews from allied countries.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=97}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=324, 360}} The first to ], which ] to Poland ] to October 1942.{{sfn|Stone|2010|pp=33–34}}{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=373, 379}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=325–326}} The ] had already ] the majority of its Jewish population (along with a ]),{{sfn|Stone|2010|p=35}}{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=306, 368, 372}} and later deported several thousand Jews in 1942 and 1943.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=366, 389}} Bulgaria deported 11,000 Jews from ] and ], who were murdered at Treblinka, but ].{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=392}} Romania and Hungary did not send any Jews, which were the largest surviving populations after 1942.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=97, 102, 371–372}} Prior to the ] in September 1943, there were no serious attempt to deport Italian Jews, and Italy refused to allow the deportation of Jews in many ].{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=396}}{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=387}} Nazi Germany did not attempt the destruction of the ]{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=105}} and the ].{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=115–116, 382}} | |||
These dreadful ordeals combined to create a miserable experience within the camps. As a result, many inmates embraced or welcomed death.<ref>{{cite book |last= Harran|first=Marilyn |title=The Holocaust Chronicles, A History in Words and Pictures |year=2000 |publisher=Louis Weber |pages=Pg.321|isbn=0-7853-2963-3}}</ref> | |||
==Perpetrators and beneficiaries== | |||
===Persecution (1938–1941)=== | |||
{{further|Responsibility for the Holocaust}} | |||
In '']'', Hitler wrote that Freemasonry had "succumbed" to the Jews and has become an "excellent instrument" to fight for their aims and to use their "strings" to pull the upper strata of society into their alleged designs. He continues, “The general pacifistic paralysis of the national instinct of self-preservation begun by Freemasonry is then transmitted to the masses of society by the Jewish press”.<ref>A. Hitler, ''Mein Kampf'', pages 315 and 320.</ref> | |||
] guards and female staff auxiliaries enjoying themselves on vacation in ]]] | |||
An estimated 200,000 to 250,000 Germans were directly involved in killing Jews, and if one includes all those involved in the organization of extermination, the number rises to 500,000.{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=2}} Genocide required the active and tacit consent of millions of Germans and non-Germans.{{sfn|Westermann|2020|p=117}}{{sfn|Burzlaff|2020|p=1055}} The motivation of ] varied and has led to historiographical debate.{{sfn|Westermann|2020|p=117}}{{sfn|Bloxham|2009|p=264}} Studies of the SS officials who organized the Holocaust have found that most had strong ideological commitment to Nazism.{{sfn|Westermann|2020|pp=124–125}}{{sfn|Bloxham|2009|p=265}} In addition to ideological factors, many perpetrators were motivated by the prospect of material gain and social advancement.{{sfn|Westermann|2020|p=121}}{{sfn|Bloxham|2009|p=269}}{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=213}} German SS, police, and regular army units rarely had trouble finding enough men to shoot Jewish civilians, even though punishment for refusal was absent or light.{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=211}}{{sfn|Bloxham|2009|p=280}} | |||
Non-German perpetrators and collaborators included Dutch, French, and ], Romanian soldiers, ], ] partisans, and some civilians.{{sfn|Westermann|2020|p=117}}{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=260}}{{sfn|Burzlaff|2020|pp=1064, 1066}} Some were coerced into committing violence against Jews, but others killed for entertainment, material rewards, the possibility of better treatment from the occupiers, or ideological motivations such as nationalism and anti-communism.{{sfn|Bloxham|2009|p=281}}{{sfn|Beorn|2018|pp=259, 264}}{{sfn|Burzlaff|2020|p=1067}} According to historian ], non-Germans "not under German command" caused 5 to 6 percent of the Jewish deaths, and their involvement was crucial in other ways.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=13}} | |||
Many scholars date the beginning of the Holocaust itself to the anti-Jewish riots of the Night of Broken Glass ("]") of ], ], in which Jews were attacked and Jewish property was vandalized across Germany. Approximately 100 Jews were killed, and another 30,000 sent to concentration camps, while over 7,000 Jewish shops and 1,574 ] (almost every synagogue in Germany) were damaged or destroyed. Similar events took place in Vienna at the same time. | |||
Millions of Germans and others benefited from the genocide.{{sfn|Westermann|2020|p=117}} Corruption was rampant in the SS despite the proceeds of the Holocaust being designated as state property.{{sfn|Wachsmann|2015|pp=340, 376–377}} Different German state agencies vied to receive property stolen from Jews murdered at the death camps.{{sfn|Wachsmann|2015|p=379}} Many workers were able to obtain better jobs vacated by murdered Jews.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=340}} Businessmen benefitted from eliminating their Jewish competitors or taking over Jewish-owned businesses.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=450}} Others took over housing and possessions that had belonged to Jews.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=349}} Some Poles living near the extermination camps later dug up human remains in search of valuables.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=349}}{{sfn|Beorn|2020|p=166}} The property of deported Jews was also appropriated by Germany's allies and collaborating governments. Even ]s such as ] and ] were able to successfully lay claim to Jewish property.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=334–335}} In the decades after the war, Swiss banks ] for harboring gold deposited by Nazis who had stolen it during the Holocaust, as well as profiting from unclaimed deposits made by Holocaust victims.{{sfn|Messenger|2020|p=383}} | |||
A number of deadly ]s by local populations occurred during the Second World War, some with Nazi encouragement, and some spontaneously. This included the ] in Romania on ], ], in which as many 14,000 Jews were allegedly killed by Romanian residents and police, and the ] in which between 380 and 1,600 Jews were allegedly killed by local Poles. | |||
==Forced labor== | |||
The preserved records of the '']'' (Reich Security Main Office) show the persecution of the ].<ref> accessed ], ]</ref> RSHA Amt VII, ''Written Records''—overseen by Professor ]—was responsible for "ideological" tasks, by which was meant the creation of anti-semitic and anti-masonic propaganda. While the number is not accurately known, it is estimated that between 80,000 and 200,000 Freemasons were ] under the ].<ref name="Dummies">''Freemasons for Dummies'', , ISBN 0-7645-9796-5, Hungry Minds Inc, U.S., 2005.</ref> Freemasonic Concentration Camp inmates were graded as “political” prisoners, and wore an inverted (point down) '']''.<ref>''The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust'', volume 2, page 531, citing Katz, ''Jews and Freemasons in Europe''.</ref> | |||
{{further|Forced labor in Nazi Germany}} | |||
], Belarus, forced to clean a street, July 1941]] | |||
]}} badge at work at ]werke in Auschwitz]] | |||
Beginning in 1938—especially in Germany and its annexed territories—many Jews were drafted into ] and segregated work details. These camps were often of a temporary nature and typically overseen by civilian authorities. Initially, mortality did not increase dramatically.{{sfn|Dean|2020|pp=265, 267}}{{sfn|Spoerer|2020|pp=141–143}} After mid-1941, conditions for Jewish forced laborers drastically worsened and death rates increased; even ] deliberately subjected workers to murderous conditions.{{sfn|Spoerer|2020|pp=142–143}} Beginning in 1941 and increasingly as time went on, Jews capable of employment were separated from others—who were usually killed.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=196–197}}{{sfn|Spoerer|2020|p=142}} They were typically employed in non-skilled jobs and could be replaced easily if non-Jewish workers were available, but those in skilled positions had a higher chance of survival.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=207}}{{sfn|Spoerer|2020|p=143}} Although conditions varied widely between camps, Jewish forced laborers were typically treated worse than non-Jewish prisoners and suffered much higher mortality rates.{{sfn|Dean|2020|p=270}} | |||
In 1938, a ] badge—made by the same factory as the Masonic badge, and first used by the Grand Lodge ''Zur Sonne'', in 1926—was chosen for the annual Nazi Party ''Winterhilfswerk''. Winterhilfswerk was a supposed charitable organization, which actually collected money used for rearmament. This coincidence enabled ] to wear forget-me-not badge as a secret sign of membership.<ref>{{De icon}} Accessed ] ].</ref><ref> Accessed ] ].</ref><ref>Die Freimaurer-Logen Deutschlands und deren Grosslogen 1737-1972 (Quatuor Coronati Bayreuth, Hamburg 1974). Second revised edition, Karl Heinz Francke and Dr. Ernst-Günther Geppert, Die Freimaurer-Logen Deutschlands und deren Grosslogen 1737-1985 (Hamburg 1988).</ref> | |||
In mid-1943, Himmler sought to bring surviving Jewish forced laborers under the control of the SS in the concentration camp system.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=379, 383}}{{sfn|Dean|2020|pp=271–272}}{{efn|The ] system administered by the ] (SS-WVHA){{sfn|Wachsmann|2015|p=290}} was ] from other forced-labor camps{{sfn|Wachsmann|2015|p=456}}{{sfn|Dean|2020|p=274}} and from the single-purpose extermination camps.{{sfn|Wachsmann|2015|p=293}}}} Some of the forced-labor camps for Jews and some ghettos, such as Kovno, were designated concentration camps, while others were dissolved and surviving prisoners sent to a concentration camp.{{sfn|Dean|2020|pp=265, 272}} Despite many deaths, as many as 200,000 Jews survived the war inside the concentration camps.{{sfn|Dean|2020|p=265}} Although most Holocaust victims were never imprisoned in a concentration camp, the image of these camps is a popular symbol of the Holocaust.{{sfn|Dean|2020|pp=264–265}} | |||
===Euthanasia (1939–1941)=== | |||
{{main|T-4 Euthanasia Program}} | |||
Including the Soviet prisoners of war, 13 million people were brought to Germany for forced labor.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=194}} The largest nationalities were Soviet and Polish{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=187}} and they were the worst-treated groups except for Roma and Jews.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=189}} Soviet and Polish forced laborers endured inadequate food and medical treatment, long hours, and abuse by employers. Hundreds of thousands died.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=189–190}} Many others were forced to work for the occupiers without leaving their country of residence.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=195}} Some of Germany's allies, including Slovakia and Hungary, agreed to deport Jews to protect non-Jews from German demands for forced labor.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=392–393}} East European women were also kidnapped, via '']'', to serve as sex slaves of German soldiers in ] and ]<ref name="Herbermann">{{cite book |author1=Nanda Herbermann |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3JM3AdnmE18C&q=%22it+is+impossible+to+speak+of+free+will+when+considering+the+circumstances%22&pg=PA34 |title=The Blessed Abyss |author2=Hester Baer |author3=Elizabeth Roberts Baer |publisher=] Press |year=2000 |isbn=0-8143-2920-9 |location=Detroit |pages=33–34 |format=] |access-date=January 12, 2011}} </ref><ref name="Lenten">{{cite book |last=Lenten |first=Ronit |title=Israel and the Daughters of the Shoah: Reoccupying the Territories of Silence |publisher=Berghahn Books |year=2000 |isbn=1-57181-775-1 |pages=33–34}}.</ref><ref name="polityka">{{cite news |last1=Ostrowska |first1=Joanna |last2=Zaremba |first2=Marcin |date=May 30, 2009 |title=Do burdelu, marsz! |language=pl |trans-title=To the brothel, march! |volume=22 |page= |pages=70–72 |work=] |number=2707 |url=https://www.polityka.pl/archiwumpolityki/1912104,1,do-burdelu-marsz.read |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101205003034/http://archiwum.polityka.pl/art/do-burdelu-marsz,424445.html |archive-date=2010-12-05}}</ref> despite the prohibition of relationships, including fraternization, between German and foreign workers,<ref>{{cite web |title='Sonderbehandlung erfolgt durch Strang' |trans-title=Special treatment is done by train |language=de |url=https://www.ns-archiv.de/imt/ps3001-ps3200/3040-ps.php |work=ns-archiv.de}}</ref><ref name="hertzstein2">{{cite book |last=Hertzstein |first=Robert Edwin |title=The War That Hitler Won: The Most Infamous Propaganda Campaign in History |year=1978 |publisher=] |isbn=9780399118456}}</ref> which imposed the penalty of imprisonment<ref name="hertzstein2"/> and death.<ref>{{cite book |first=Robert |last=Gellately |author-link=Robert Gellately |date=2001 |title=Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany |publisher=] |page=155 |isbn=9780191676697 |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198205609.001.0001}}</ref><ref name="Majer2">{{cite book |last=Majer |first=Diemut |date=2014 |title="Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich |publisher=] |isbn=978-0896728370 |page=369}}</ref> | |||
The ] was established to "maintain the ]" of the German population by systematically killing ] ]s who were physically ], ], handicapped, or suffering from ]. Between 1939 and 1941, over 200,000 people were killed. | |||
==Escape and hiding== | |||
===Ghettos (1940–1945)=== | |||
]]] | |||
{{main|Ghetto|Warsaw Ghetto|Wilna Ghetto}} | |||
{{further|Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust}} | |||
Gerlach estimates that 200,000 Jews survived in hiding across Europe.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=117}} ] was essential to take action, but many struggled to believe the news.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=424–425}} Many attempted to jump from trains or flee ghettos and camps, but successfully escaping and living in hiding was extremely difficult and often unsuccessful.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=236}}{{sfn|Burzlaff|2020|p=1064}}{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=413}} | |||
], where hunger and disease were extremely prevalent.]] | |||
After the invasion of Poland, the Nazis created ]s to which Jews (and some Roma and Sinti) were confined, until they were eventually shipped to death camps and killed. The ] was the largest, with 380,000 people and the ], the second largest, holding about 160,000, but ghettos were instituted in many cities (). The ghettos were established throughout 1940 and 1941, and were immediately turned into immensely crowded prisons; though the Warsaw Ghetto contained 30% of the population of ], it occupied only about 2.4% of city's area, averaging 9.2 people per room. From 1940 through 1942, disease (especially ]) and starvation killed hundreds of thousands of Jews confined in the ghettos. | |||
The support, or at least absence of active opposition, of the local population was essential but often lacking in Eastern Europe.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|pp=236–237}} Those in hiding depended on the assistance of non-Jews.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=419}} Having money,{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=420}} social connections with non-Jews, a non-Jewish appearance, perfect command of the local language, determination, and luck played a major role in determining survival.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=423}} Jews in hiding were hunted down with the assistance of local collaborators and rewards offered for their denunciation.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=382}}{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=260}}{{sfn|Burzlaff|2020|p=1066}} The death penalty was sometimes enforced on people hiding them, especially in eastern Europe.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=360}}{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=206}}{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=269}} Rescuers' motivations varied on a spectrum from altruism to expecting sex or material gain; it was not uncommon for helpers to betray or murder Jews if their money ran out.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|pp=269–270}}{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=206}}{{sfn|Burzlaff|2020|pp=1065, 1075}} Gerlach argues that hundreds of thousands of Jews may have died because of rumors or denunciations, and many others never attempted to escape because of a belief it was hopeless.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=417}} | |||
On ], ], ] ordered the start of the deportations of Jews from the ghettos to the death camps. On ], ], the deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto inhabitants began; in the next 52 days (until ], ]) about 300,000 people were transported by train to the ] from Warsaw alone. Many other ghettos were completely depopulated. The first ] occurred in September 1942 in the small town of ] in southeast Poland. Though there were armed resistance attempts in the larger ghettos in 1943, such as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the ], in every case they failed against the Nazi military, and the remaining Jews were either slaughtered or sent to the extermination camps. | |||
] in ] in most European countries, and often were overrepresented.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=290}} Jews were not always welcome, particularly in nationalist resistance groups—some of which killed Jews.{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=648}}{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=242}} Particularly in Belarus, with its favorable geography of dense forests, many Jews joined the ]—an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 across the Soviet Union.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|pp=237, 242–243}} An additional 10,000 to 13,000 Jewish non-combatants lived in ] in Eastern European forests, of which the most well known was the ].{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=243}}{{sfn|Burzlaff|2020|p=1074}} | |||
===Death squads (1941-1943)=== | |||
{{main|Einsatzgruppen}} | |||
==International reactions== | |||
] was similar to many other mass murders of Jews. Over 33,000 Jews were shot in the course of two days by Nazi ] and Ukrainian collaborationists.]] | |||
{{main|International response to the Holocaust}} | |||
The Nazi leaders knew that their actions would bring international condemnation.{{sfn|Evans|2019|p=140}} On 26 June 1942, ] in all languages publicized ] by the ] and other resistance groups and transmitted by the ], documenting the killing of 700,000 Jews in Poland. In December 1942, ], then known as the United Nations, adopted a ] condemning the systematic murder of Jews.{{sfn|Láníček|2012|pp=74–75, 81}} Most neutral countries in Europe maintained a pro-German foreign policy during the war. Nevertheless, some Jews were able to escape to neutral countries, whose policies ranged from rescue to non-action.{{sfn|Messenger|2020|p=393}} | |||
As many as 1.6 million Jews were murdered in open-air shootings by Nazis and their collaborators, especially in 1941 before the establishment of the concentration camps. During the invasion of the ], over 3,000 special killing units (organized into the four '']'') followed the ], conducting mass murders of Poles, Communist officials, and the Jewish population that lived in Soviet territory. | |||
During the war the ] (JDC) raised $70 million and in the years after the war it raised $300 million. This money was spent aiding emigrants and providing direct relief in the form of parcels and other assistance to Jews living under German occupation, and after the war to ]. The United States banned sending relief into German-occupied Europe after entering the war, but the JDC continued to do so. From 1939 to 1944, 81,000 European Jews emigrated with the JDC's assistance.<ref>{{cite web |title=American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and Refugee Aid |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/american-jewish-joint-distribution-committee-and-refugee-aid |website=] |access-date=28 April 2023 |language=en |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230929065825/https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/american-jewish-joint-distribution-committee-and-refugee-aid |archive-date=29 September 2023}}</ref> | |||
Poles were an early target in the ], in which 30,000 Polish intellectual and political figures were rounded up, and 7,000 eventually murdered. By the summer of 1941, the Einsatzgruppen turned to targeting Jews, starting with the extermination of 2,200 Jews in ] on ], ], and quickly increased in scale. 1,500 Jews were murdered in ] on ] by the German SS forces. 4,000 Jews murdered in ] on ]–], ] by Ukrainian collaborators. From September to the end of 1941, a series of mass murders took place throughout Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Latvia: over 33,000 Jews were killed at ], 25,000 at ] by Latvian Nazis (Arajs Commando), over 36,000 at ] by Romanian forces, 19,000 at the ] of Kaunas, and 40,000 (up to 100,000 by 1944) at ] by the German SS forces.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.holocaustrevealed.org/_domain/holocaustrevealed.org/lithuania/lithuanian_history.htm | title=LITHUANIA|work=The Holocaust Revealed}}</ref> These, and similar slaughters throughout Europe, murdered around 100,000 Jews per month for five months.{{Fact|date=January 2007}} By the end of 1943, another 900,000 Jews would be murdered in this manner, but the pace was not fast enough for the Nazi leadership, who, at the end of 1941 and the beginning of 1942, began the implementation of the ], the complete extermination of the Jews of Europe. | |||
Throughout the war, no detailed photo intelligence study was carried out on any of the major concentration or extermination camps.{{sfn|Neufeld|Berenbaum|2000|p=55}} Appeals from Jewish representatives to the American and British governments to bomb rail lines leading to the camps or crematoriums was rejected, with little to no input from the War Departments of the United States or United Kingdom.{{sfn|Neufeld|Berenbaum|2000|p=61}} However, ] on whether a military response would have impacted on the Holocaust.{{sfn|Neufeld|Berenbaum|2000|p=2}} | |||
Serbs were victims of an extermination policy of Croat ] since this Nazi puppet state was formed in 1941. The murders took many forms: burning of live Serbs forced into churches; slaughter of Serbs by small death squads, often numbering only three, called "black threes", who rampaged by night through villages in which dogs were first poisoned. The squads filled ] pits with still-living Serbs, often connected by barbed wire, and practiced extremely cruel methods of torture and execution such as gouging eyes and cutting salted necks. They also nailed guts of slaughtered victims to the roofs. Extermination in ] camp existed since its onset in 1941, at the time when Germans had not yet started their systematic genocide, and it has appalled even the SS, though soon enough they were organizing systematic extermination in their camps too.{{Fact|date=January 2007}} | |||
==Second half of the war== | |||
Since 2004, the Ukraine Project led by ] has uncovered over 500 mass graves in the Ukrainian countryside with the remains of Jews shot by the Einsatzgruppen. More 1,700 mass graves are believed to existe only in Ukraine.<ref>{{cite web | title=Backstory: A priest's crusade on Holocaust | url=http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1109/p20s01-lire.html | work=Christian Science Monitor}}</ref> | |||
===Continuing killings=== | |||
], annexed by Hungary in 1938,{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=408}} on the selection ramp at ] in May or June 1944. Men are lined up to the right, women and children to the left. About 25 percent were selected for work and the rest gassed.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=199}}]] | |||
After German military defeats in 1943, it became increasingly evident that Germany would lose the war.{{sfn|Bergen|2016|p=266}}{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=196}} In early 1943, 45,000 Jews ] from ], primarily ], to Auschwitz, where nearly all were killed.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=391}} After ] in late 1943, Germany deported several thousand Jews from Italy and the former Italian occupation zones of France, Yugoslavia, Albania, and ], with limited success.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=402–403}}{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=113}} Attempts to continue deportations in Western Europe after 1942 often failed because of Jews going into hiding and the increasing recalcitrance of local authorities.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=102}} ] with the help of the ] in the face of a half-hearted German deportation effort in late 1943.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=302}} Additional killings in 1943 and 1944 eliminated all remaining ghettos and most surviving Jews in Eastern Europe.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=128}} Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka were shut down and ].{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=410–412}}{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=221}} | |||
===Extermination camps (1942–1945)=== | |||
{{main|Nazi extermination camp}} | |||
] | |||
The largest murder action after 1942 was that against the Hungarian Jews.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=103}} After the ] in 1944, the Hungarian government cooperated closely in the ], mostly to Auschwitz.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=114, 368}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=408}}{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=193}} The expropriation of Jewish property was useful to achieve Hungarian economic goals and sending the Jews as forced laborers avoided the need to send non-Jewish Hungarians.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=114}} Those who survived the selection were forced to provide construction and manufacturing labor as part of ] to increase the production of ].{{sfn|Spoerer|2020|p=142}}{{sfn|Wachsmann|2015|p=457}} Although the Nazis' goal of eliminating any Jewish population from Germany had largely been achieved in 1943, it was reversed in 1944 as a result of the importation of these Jews for labor.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=188}} | |||
In December 1941, the Nazis opened ], the first of what would soon be seven ], dedicated entirely to mass extermination on an industrial scale, as opposed to the labor or concentration camps. Over three million Jews would die in these extermination camps. The method of killing at these camps was by poison gas (] or ]), usually in "]s", although many prisoners were killed in mass shootings and by other means. The bodies of those killed were destroyed in ] (except at ] where they were cremated on outdoor pyres), and the ashes buried or scattered. | |||
===Death marches and liberation=== | |||
In 1942, the Nazis began this most destructive phase of the Holocaust, with ], opening the extermination camps of ], ], and ]. More than 1.7 million Jews were killed at the three Aktion Reinhard camps by October 1943. The largest death camp built was ], which had both a labor camp (Auschwitz) and an extermination camp (Birkenau); the latter possessing four gas chambers and crematoria. This camp was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.6 million Jews (including about 438,000 Jews from Hungary in the course of a few months), 75,000 Poles and gay men, and some 19,000 Roma. At the peak of operations, Birkenau's gas chambers killed approximately 8,000 a day. | |||
] after the camp's liberation, April 1945]] | |||
Following Allied advances, the SS deported concentration camp prisoners to camps in Germany and Austria, starting in mid-1944 from the Baltics.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=414–418}} Weak and sick prisoners were often killed in the camp and others were forced to travel by rail or on foot, usually with no or inadequate food.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=414}}{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=234}} Those who could not keep up were shot.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=415}} The evacuations were ordered partly to retain the prisoners as forced labor and partly to avoid allowing any prisoners to fall into enemy hands.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=116}}{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=234}} In October and November 1944, 90,000 Jews were deported from Budapest to the Austrian border.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=409–410}}{{sfn|Dean|2020|p=272}} The transfer of prisoners from Auschwitz began in mid-1944, the gas chambers were shut down and destroyed after October, and in January most of the remaining 67,000 Auschwitz prisoners were sent on a death march westwards.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=415}}{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=233}} | |||
Upon arrival in these camps, all valuables were taken from the prisoners, and the women had to have their hair cut off.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.kimel.net/belzec.html|title=THE BELZEC DEATH CAMP|last=Kimel|first=Alexander|accessdate=2007-01-23}}</ref> According to a Nazi document, the hair was to be used for the manufacture of stockings.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-20/tgmwc-20-195-08.shtml|title=Trials of German Major War Criminals: Volume 20|work=The Nizkor Project|accessdate=2007-01-23}}</ref> Prisoners were divided into two groups: those too weak for work were immediately executed in gas chambers (which were sometimes disguised as showers) and their bodies burned, while others were first used for slave labor in factories or industrial enterprises located in the camp or nearby. Shoes, stockings, and anything else of value was recycled for use in products to support the war effort, regardless of whether or not a prisoner was sent to death. Some prisoners were forced to work in the collection and disposal of corpses, and to extract gold teeth from the dead. | |||
In January 1945, more than 700,000 people were imprisoned in the concentration camp system, of whom as many as a third died before the end of the war.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=117}} At this time, most concentration camp prisoners were Soviet and Polish civilians, either arrested for real or supposed resistance or for attempting to escape forced labor.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=117}} The death marches led to the breakdown of supplies for the camps that continued to exist, causing additional deaths.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=414}} Although there was no systematic killing of Jews during the death marches,{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=235}} around 70,000 to 100,000 Jews died in the last months of the war.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=418}} Many of the death march survivors ended up in other concentration camps that were liberated in 1945 during the ]. The liberators found piles of corpses that they had to bulldoze into mass graves.{{sfn|Stone|2020|p=69}}{{sfn|Priemel|2020|p=178}}{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=215}} Some survivors were freed there{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=215}} and others had been liberated by the Red Army during its march westwards.{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=214}} | |||
===Death marches and liberation (1944–1945)=== | |||
{{main|Death marches (Holocaust)}} | |||
==Death toll== | |||
] concentration-camp inmates on a death march through a ] village in April 1945. Courtesy of the United States ].]] | |||
{{main|Holocaust victims}} | |||
[[File:Holocaust death rate.svg|thumb|Holocaust deaths as an approximate percentage of the 1939 Jewish population: | |||
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Around six million Jews were killed.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Landau |first=Ronnie S. |url=https://archive.org/details/the-nazi-holocaust-its-history-and-meaning-9780755624225-9780857728432_compress |title=The Nazi Holocaust: Its History and Meaning |publisher=I.B. Tauris |year=2016 |isbn=978-0-85772-843-2 |edition=3rd |pages=3, 124, 126, 265–266 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Benz |first=Wolfgang |author-link=Wolfgang Benz |url=https://archive.org/details/9783406811081 |title=Der Holocaust |publisher=] |year=2023 |isbn=978-3-406-80881-4 |edition=10th |location=Munich, Germany |pages=14, 111–112 |language=de}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Herf |first=Jeffrey C. |author-link=Jeffrey Herf |url=https://archive.org/details/the-routledge-history-of-antisemitism-1138369446-9781138369443_compress |title=The Routledge History of Antisemitism |publisher=] |year=2024 |isbn=978-1-138-36944-3 |editor-last=Weitzman |editor-first=Mark |edition=1st |location=Abingdon and New York |pages=278 |language=en |chapter=The Long Term and the Short Term: Antisemitism and the Holocaust |doi=10.4324/9780429428616 |editor-last2=Williams |editor-first2=Robert J. |editor-last3=Wald |editor-first3=James}}</ref> Of the six million victims, most of those killed were from Eastern Europe, and with half from Poland alone.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|p=1}}{{sfn|Bergen|2016|p=155}} Around 1.3 million Jews who had once lived under Nazi rule or in one of Germany's allies survived the war.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=404}} One-third of the Jewish population worldwide, and two-thirds of European Jews, had been wiped out.<ref>{{cite web |title=Jewish Population of Europe in 1945 |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/remaining-jewish-population-of-europe-in-1945 |website=] |access-date=10 May 2023 |language=en}}</ref> Death rates varied widely due to a variety of factors and approached 100 percent in some areas.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=407}} Some reasons why survival chances varied was the availability of emigration{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=407–408}} and protection from Germany's allies—which saved around 600,000 Jews.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=118, 409–410}} ] and the elderly faced even lower survival rates than adults.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=428–429}} It is considered to be the single largest genocide in human history.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Rosenberg |first=Alan |date=1979 |title=The Genocidal Universe: A Framework for Understanding the Holocaust |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41442658 |journal=European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe |volume=13 |issue=1 |pages=29–34 |jstor=41442658 |issn=0014-3006}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Richie |first=Alexandra |date=2024-01-27 |title=The Origins of International Holocaust Remembrance Day |url=https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/origins-international-holocaust-remembrance-day |access-date=2024-04-11 |website=The National WWII Museum {{!}} New Orleans |language=en}}</ref> | |||
The deadliest phase of the Holocaust was ], which was marked by the introduction of extermination camps. Roughly two million Jews were killed from March 1942 to November 1943. Around 1.47 million Jews were murdered in just 100 days from late July to early November 1942, a rate approximately 83% higher than the commonly suggested figure for the ].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Stone |first=Lewi |date=2019 |title=Quantifying the Holocaust: Hyperintense kill rates during the Nazi genocide |journal=] |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=eaau7292 |doi=10.1126/sciadv.aau7292 |pmid=30613773 |pmc=6314819 |bibcode=2019SciA....5.7292S |issn=2375-2548}}</ref> Between July to October 1942, two million Jews were murdered, including Operation Reinhard and other killings, with over three million Jews killed in 1942 alone, as stated by historian ].{{Sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=100}} On the other hand, historian ] states that over two million Jews were murdered from late July to mid-November, stating that "these three-and-a-half months were the most intense, the deadliest of the entire Holocaust".{{sfn|Kay|2021|p=207}} It was the fastest rate of genocidal killing in history.{{sfn|Stone|2023|p=191}} | |||
As the armies of the ] closed in on the Reich at the end of 1944, the Nazis decided to abandon the extermination camps, moving or destroying evidence of the atrocities they had committed there. The Nazis marched prisoners, already sick after months or years of violence and starvation, for tens of miles in the snow to train stations; then transported for days at a time without food or shelter in freight trains with open carriages; and forced to march again at the other end to the new camp. Prisoners who lagged behind or fell were shot. The largest and most well known of the death marches took place in January 1945, when the Soviet army advanced on Poland. Nine days before the Soviets arrived at the death camp at Auschwitz, the SS guards marched 60,000 prisoners out of the camp toward Wodzislaw, 56 km (35 mi) away, where they were put on freight trains to other camps. Around 15,000 died on the way. In total, around 100,000 Jews died during these death marches.<ref>Gilbert, ''The Oxford Companion to World War II''.</ref> | |||
On 3 November 1943, around 18,400 Jews were murdered at ] over the course of nine hours, in what was the largest number ever killed in a death camp on a single day.{{sfn|Stone|2023|p=210}} It was part of ], the murder of some 43,000 Jews, the single largest massacre of Jews by German forces, occurring from 3 to 4 November 1943.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Aktion "Erntefest" (Operation "Harvest Festival") |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/aktion-erntefest-operation-harvest-festival |access-date=12 April 2024 |website=] |language=en |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240604185359/https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/aktion-erntefest-operation-harvest-festival |archive-date=4 June 2024}}</ref> | |||
In July 1944, the first major Nazi camp, Majdanek, was discovered by the advancing Soviets, who eventually liberated Auschwitz in January 1945. In most of the camps discovered by the Soviets, the prisoners had already been transported away by death marches, leaving only a few thousand prisoners alive. Concentration camps were also liberated by American and British forces, including ] on ], ]. Some 60,000 prisoners were discovered at the camp, but 10,000 died from disease or malnutrition within a few weeks of liberation. | |||
Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and POWs; estimated by Gerlach at 6 to 8 million, at more than 10 million by ]<ref>{{cite book |author1=Martin Gilbert |author1-link=Martin Gilbert |title=The Holocaust: The Human Tragedy |date=2014 |publisher=Rosetta Books |isbn=978-0-7953-3719-2 |chapter=Epilogue - "I will tell the world" |quote=As well as the six million Jews who were murdered, more than ten million other non-combatants were killed by the Nazis.}}</ref> and at over 11 million by the ].<ref>{{cite web |website=] |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-and-nazi-persecution |title=Documenting numbers of victims of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution}}; give a total of 17 million (including more than 5 million Jews).</ref> In some countries, such as Hungary, Jews were a majority of civilian deaths; in Poland, they were either a majority{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=3}} or about half.{{sfn|Bergen|2016|p=155}} In other countries such as the Soviet Union, France, Greece, and Yugoslavia, non-Jewish civilian losses outnumbered Jewish deaths.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=3}} | |||
==Resistance and rescuers== | |||
===Jewish Resistance=== | |||
{{Main|Jewish resistance movement}} | |||
==Aftermath and legacy== | |||
Due to the organization and overwhelming military might of the Nazi German state and its supporters, few Jews and other Holocaust victims were able to resist the killings. There are, however, many cases of attempts at resistance in one form or another, and over a hundred armed Jewish uprisings. | |||
{{Main|Aftermath of the Holocaust}} | |||
===Return home and emigration=== | |||
The largest instance of organized Jewish resistance was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, from April to May of 1943, as the final deportation from the Ghetto to the death camps was about to commence, the ] and ] fighters rose up against the Nazis. Most of the resistors were killed, but the few who did survive the war are currently residing in Israel. There were also other ]s, though none were successful against the German military. | |||
<!-- ], late 1940s|alt=People collecting bread in a cafeteria]] --> | |||
After liberation, many Jews attempted to return home. Limited success in finding relatives, the refusal of many non-Jews to return property,{{sfn|Beorn|2018|pp=273–274}} and violent attacks such as the ] convinced many survivors to leave eastern Europe.{{sfn|Beorn|2018|pp=275–276}}{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=215}} Antisemitism was reported to increase in several countries after the war, in part due to conflicts over property restitution.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=353–355}} When the war ended, there were less than 28,000 German Jews and 60,000 non-German Jews in Germany. By 1947, the number of Jews in Germany had increased to 250,000 owing to emigration from eastern Europe allowed by the communist authorities; Jews made up around 25 percent of the population of ].{{sfn|Kochavi|2010|p=509}} Although many survivors were in poor health, they attempted to organize self-government in these camps, including education and rehabilitation efforts.{{sfn|Kochavi|2010|pp=512–513}} Due to the reluctance of other countries to allow their immigration, many survivors remained in Germany until the establishment of Israel in 1948.{{sfn|Kochavi|2010|p=509}} Others moved to the United States around 1950 due to loosened immigration restrictions.{{sfn|Kochavi|2010|p=521}} | |||
===Criminal trials=== | |||
There were also major resistance efforts in three of the extermination camps. In August 1943, an uprising also took place at the ]. Many buildings were burnt to the ground, and seventy inmates escaped to freedom, but 1,500 were killed. Gassing operations were interrupted for a month. In October 1943, another uprising took place at ]. This uprising was more successful; 11 SS men and a number of Ukrainian guards were killed, and roughly 300 of the 600 inmates in the camp escaped, with about 50 surviving the war. The escape forced the Nazis to close the camp. On ], ], the Jewish ]s (those prisoners kept separate from the main camp and involved in the operation of the gas chambers and crematoria) at Auschwitz staged an uprising. Female prisoners had smuggled in explosives from a weapons factory, and Crematorium IV was partly destroyed by an explosion. The prisoners then attempted a mass escape, but all 250 were killed soon after. | |||
{{further|Category:Holocaust trials}} | |||
], November 1945|alt=Rows of men sitting on benches]] | |||
Most Holocaust perpetrators were never put on trial for their crimes.{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=214}} During and after World War II, many European countries launched ] that affected possibly as much as 2–3 percent of the population of Europe, although most of the resulting trials did not emphasize crimes against Jews.{{sfn|Priemel|2020|p=174}} Nazi atrocities led to the United Nations' ] in 1948, but it was not used in Holocaust trials due to the ] of criminal laws.{{sfn|Wittmann|2010|p=524}} | |||
In 1945 and 1946, the ] tried ] primarily for ], which the prosecution argued was the root of Nazi criminality;{{sfn|Priemel|2020|p=176}} nevertheless, the systematic murder of Jews came to take center stage.{{sfn|Priemel|2020|p=177}} This trial and others held by the Allies in occupied Germany—the United States Army alone charged 1,676 defendants in 462 war crimes trials{{sfn|Wittmann|2010|p=525}}—were widely perceived as an unjust form of political revenge by the German public.{{sfn|Wittmann|2010|p=534}} ] later investigated 100,000 people and tried more than 6,000 defendants, mainly low-level perpetrators.{{sfn|Priemel|2020|p=184}}{{sfn|Wittmann|2010|pp=534–535}} The high-level organizer ] was kidnapped and ] in 1961. Instead of convicting Eichmann on the basis of documentary evidence, Israeli prosecutors asked many Holocaust survivors to testify, a strategy that increased publicity but has proven controversial.{{sfn|Priemel|2020|pp=182–183}}{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|pp=215–216}} | |||
There were a number of Jewish partisan groups operating in many countries (see ] for the story of a Jewish Italian partisan). Also, Jewish volunteers from the ], most famously ], parachuted into Europe in a failed attempt to organize resistance. | |||
===Reparations=== | |||
===Resistance of Jehovah's Witnesses=== | |||
{{Main| Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses}} | |||
Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany were persecuted between 1933 and 1945. They were scorned by the name Ernste Bibelforscher (Earnest Bible Students) at that time, because Jehovah's Witnesses would not give allegiance to the ] party, and refused to serve in the military, they were detained, put in concentration camps, or imprisoned during the Holocaust. Unlike Jews, homosexuals and Gypsies, who were persecuted for racial, political and social reasons, Jehovah's Witnesses were persecuted on religious ideological grounds. The Nazi government gave detained Jehovah's Witnesses the option: if they were to renounce their faith, submit to the state authority, and support the German military, they would be free to leave prison or the camps. Approximately 12,000 Jehovah's Witnesses were sent to concentration camps where they were forced to wear a ] that specifically identified them as Jehovah's Witnesses. In the end, about 2,000 of their members who were incarcerated perished under the Nazi system. All lost their employment. Dr. Detlef Garbe Historian and director at the Neuengamme (Hamburg) Memorial stated: “Taking everything into consideration, it has been established that no other religious movement resisted the pressure to conform to National Socialism with comparable unanimity and steadfastness.”<ref>''Persecution and Resistance of Jehovah's Witnesses During the Nazi-Regime 1933-1945'' ''Social Disinterest, Governmental Disinformation, Renewed Persecution, and Now Manipulation of History?'' p.251 </ref> | |||
Historians estimate that property losses to Jews of Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Poland, and Hungary amounted to around 10 billion in 1944 dollars,{{sfn|Goschler|Ther|2007|p=7}} or ${{Inflation|US|start_year=1944|value=10|r=-1}} billion in {{Inflation/year|US}}.<ref name=inflation/> This estimate does not include the value of labor extracted.{{sfn|Hayes|2010|p=548}} Overall, the amount of Jewish property looted by the Nazis was about 10 percent of the total stolen from occupied countries.{{sfn|Hayes|2010|p=548}} Efforts by survivors to receive reparations for their losses began immediately after World War II. There was an additional wave of restitution efforts in the 1990s connected to the ] in eastern Europe.{{sfn|Goschler|Ther|2007|pp=13–14}} | |||
===Rescuers=== | |||
:''See also: ] and ] | |||
] and his colleagues saved as many as 100,000 Hungarian Jews by providing them with diplomatic passes.]] | |||
Between 1945 and 2018, ] in restitution and compensation to Holocaust survivors and heirs. In 1952, West Germany negotiated ] to pay ] 3 billion (around $714 million) to Israel and DM 450 million (around $107 million) to the ].<ref>{{cite web |title=The JUST Act Report: Germany |url=https://www.state.gov/reports/just-act-report-to-congress/germany/ |website=] |access-date=2 May 2023}}</ref> Germany paid pensions and other reparations for harm done to some Holocaust survivors.{{sfn|Hayes|2010|pp=549–550}} Other countries have paid restitution for assets stolen from Jews from these countries. Most Western European countries restored some property to Jews after the war, while communist countries ] many formerly Jewish assets, meaning that the overall amount restored to Jews has been lower in those countries.{{sfn|Bazyler ''et al.''|2019|pp=482–483}}{{sfn|Hayes|2010|p=552}} Poland is the only member of the ] that never passed any restitution legislation.{{sfn|Bazyler ''et al.''|2019|p=487}} Many restitution programs fell short of restoration of prewar assets, and in particular, large amounts of immovable property was never returned to survivors or their heirs.{{sfn|Bazyler ''et al.''|2019|p=485}}{{sfn|Hayes|2010|p=556}} | |||
In three cases, entire countries resisted the deportation of their Jewish population. | |||
===Remembrance and historiography=== | |||
King ] of ] and his subjects saved the lives of most of the ] by spiriting them to safety in Sweden via fishing boats in October 1943. See ]. Moreover, the Danish government continued to work to protect the few Danish Jews captured by the Nazis. When the Jews returned home at war's end, they found their houses and possessions waiting for them, exactly as they left them. | |||
] in Berlin, 2016|alt=A memorial of many square concrete blocks]] | |||
In the decades after the war, Holocaust memory was largely confined to the survivors and their communities.{{sfn|Assmann|2010|p=97}} The popularity of Holocaust memory peaked in the 1990s after the fall of Communism, and became central to Western historical consciousness{{sfn|Assmann|2010|pp=98, 107}}{{sfn|Rosenfeld|2015|pp=15, 346}} as a symbol of the ultimate human evil.{{sfn|Assmann|2010|p=110}} Genocide scholar ] asserted that "the Holocaust has gradually supplanted genocide as modernity's icon of evil",<ref>{{Cite book |last=Moses |first=A. Dirk |author-link=A. Dirk Moses |title=The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2021 |isbn=978-1-107-10358-0 |edition=1st |pages=481–482 |language=en}}</ref> while political scientist ] declared that "the Holocaust, perhaps more than any other event in the past century, represents the pinnacle of evil".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Straus |first=Scott |author-link=Scott Straus |url=https://archive.org/details/genocide-the-power-and-problems-of-a-concept-9780228009511_compress_202404 |title=Genocide: The Power and Problems of a Concept |publisher=McGill-Queen's University Press |year=2022 |isbn=978-0-2280-0951-1 |editor-last=Graziosi |editor-first=Andrea |pages=240 |language=en |editor-last2=Sysyn |editor-first2=Frank E.}}</ref> The Holocaust has been described as "perhaps the most savage and significant single crime in recorded history" and that of the most barbaric events in the twentieth century "the Holocaust probably ranks as the very worst".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Landau |first=Ronnie S. |url=https://archive.org/details/the-nazi-holocaust-its-history-and-meaning-9780755624225-9780857728432_compress |title=The Nazi Holocaust: Its History and Meaning |publisher=I.B. Tauris |year=2016 |isbn=978-0-85772-843-2 |edition=3rd |pages=3, 287 |language=en}}</ref> Renowned German historian ] described it as the "singularly most monstrous crime committed in the history of mankind".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Benz |first=Wolfgang |author-link=Wolfgang Benz |url=https://archive.org/details/holocaustgermanh0000benz |title=The Holocaust: A German Historian Examines the Genocide |publisher=Columbia University Press |year=1999 |isbn=0-231-11215-7 |edition=1st |location=New York |pages=2 |language=en}}</ref> ], in which its advocates argue promotes citizenship while reducing prejudice generally, became widespread at the same time.{{sfn|Stone|2010|p=288}}{{sfn|Sutcliffe|2022|p=8}} ] is commemorated each year on 27 January, while some other countries have set a ].{{sfn|Assmann|2010|p=104}} It has been commemorated in ], ], and speeches, as well as ].{{sfn|Rosenfeld|2015|p=14}} ] is a ] in some countries;{{sfn|Priemel|2020|p=185}} while denials of the Holocaust have been promoted by various Middle Eastern governments, figures and media. | |||
In the second case, the Nazi-allied government of ], led by ], did not deport its 50,000 Jewish citizens, after yielding to pressure from the parliament deputy speaker ] and the ], saving them as well, though Bulgaria did not prevent Germany from deporting Jews to concentration camps from areas in occupied ] and ]. | |||
Although many are convinced that ] to be drawn from the Holocaust, whether this is the case and what these lessons are is disputed.{{sfn|Rosenfeld|2015|p=93}}{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|pp=190–191}}{{sfn|Stone|2010|p=288}} Communist states marginalized the topic of antisemitic persecution while eliding their nationals' collaboration with Nazism, a tendency that continued into the post-communist era.{{sfn|Rosenfeld|2015|p=22}}{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=191}} In West Germany, a self-critical memory of the Holocaust developed in the 1970s and 1980s, and spread to some other western European countries.{{sfn|Kansteiner|2017|pp=306–307}} The national memories of the Holocaust were extended to the European Union as a whole, in which Holocaust memory has provided both shared history and an emotional rationale for committing to ]. Participation in this memory is required of countries ].{{sfn|Kansteiner|2017|p=308}}{{sfn|Assmann|2010|pp=100, 102–103}} In contrast to Europe, in the United States the memory of the Holocaust tends to be more abstract and universalized.{{sfn|Assmann|2010|p=103}} During South African ], the Holocaust was evoked widely and divergently, by ] and non-Jews alike.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gilbert |first=Shirli |date=2010 |title=Jews and the Racial State: Legacies of the Holocaust in Apartheid South Africa, 1945–60 |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/423230 |journal=Jewish Social Studies |volume=16 |issue=3 |pages=32 |doi=10.2979/jewisocistud.16.3.32}}</ref> Whether Holocaust memory actually promotes human rights is disputed.{{sfn|Stone|2010|p=288}}{{sfn|Kansteiner|2017|p=305}} In Israel, the memory of the Holocaust has been used at times to justify the use of force and violation of international human rights norms, in particular as part of the ].{{sfn|Kansteiner|2017|p=308}} | |||
The government of ] refused repeated requests from Germany to deport its Finnish Jews to Germany. German requirements for the deportation of Jewish refugees from ] was largely refused. In Rome, some 4,000 Italian Jews and prisoners of war avoided deportation. Many of these were hidden in safe houses and evacuated from Italy by a resistance group that was organised by an Irish priest, Monsignor ] of the Holy Office. Once a Vatican ambassador to Egypt, O' Flaherty used his political connections to great effect in helping to secure sanctuary for dispossessed Jews. | |||
The Holocaust is the most well-known genocide in history, and is considered to be the single most infamous case of genocide in ] as well.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lieberman |first=Benjamin |title=The Holocaust and Genocides in Europe |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |year=2013 |isbn=978-1-4411-4655-7 |edition=1st |pages=9, 138, 161, 230 |language=en}}</ref> It is the single most documented and studied genocide in history.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Rummel |first=R.J. |author-link=R. J. Rummel |date=1998 |title=The Holocaust in Comparative and Historical Perspective |url=https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/HOLO.PAPER.HTM |journal=The Journal of Social Issues |volume=3 |issue=2}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Aharon |first=Eldad Ben |url=https://www.prif.org/fileadmin/HSFK/hsfk_publikationen/PRIF0620.pdf |title=How Do We Remember the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust? A Global View of an Integrated Memory of Perpetrators, Victims and Third-party Countries |year=2020 |isbn=978-3-946459-59-0 |location=Frankfurt am Main |pages=3 |language=en}}</ref> It is also seen as the archetype of genocide and the benchmark in ].<ref>{{Cite book |title=The Holocaust and Other Genocides: An Introduction |publisher=Amsterdam University Press |year=2012 |isbn=978-90-8964-381-0 |editor-last=Boender |editor-first=Barbara |edition=1st |location=Amsterdam |pages=7–10 |language=en |editor-last2=ten Have |editor-first2=Wichert}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Moses |first=A. Dirk |author-link=A. Dirk Moses |title=The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2021 |isbn=978-1-107-10358-0 |edition=1st |pages=18–19, 34, 204, 396, 452, 480 |language=en}}</ref> | |||
Another example of someone who assisted Jews during the Holocaust is ] diplomat ]. It was in clear disrespect of the Portuguese state hierarchy that Sousa Mendes issued about 30,000 visas to Jews and other persecuted minorities from ]. He saved an enormous number of lives, but risked his career for it. In 1941, Portuguese dictator Salazar lost political trust in Sousa Mendes and forced the diplomat to quit his career. He died in poverty in 1954. | |||
The ] is massive, encompassing thousands of books.{{sfn|Stone|2010|p=6}} The tendency to see the ] continues to be popular among the broader public after being largely rejected by historians.{{sfn|Stone|2010|pp=206–207}}{{sfn|Rosenfeld|2015|p=119}}{{sfn|Sutcliffe|2022|p=2}} Scholar ] points out how the Holocaust was unique in that it was "the industrial killing of millions of human beings in factories of death, ordered by a modern state, organized by a conscientious bureaucracy, and supported by a law-abiding, patriotic "civilized" society."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bartov |first=Omer |author-link=Omer Bartov |title=Germany's War and the Holocaust |publisher=Cornell University Press |year=2003 |isbn=978-0801486814 |pages=135 |language=en}}</ref> Another debate concerns whether the Holocaust emerged from ] or was an aberration of it.{{sfn|Stone|2010|pp=163, 219, 239}} | |||
In April, 1943, a few members of the Belgian resistance stopped the ] train to ], and freed 231 people (115 of whom escaped the Holocaust). | |||
The Jewish population still remains below pre-Holocaust levels. According to the ], the world Jewish population reached 15.2 million by the end of 2020 – approximately 1.4 million less than on the eve of the Holocaust in 1939, when the number was 16.6 million.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2022-04-25 |title=World Jewish population nears pre-Holocaust numbers at 15.2 million |url=https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-705065 |access-date=2024-06-30 |website=The Jerusalem Post {{!}} JPost.com |language=en}}</ref> | |||
] in ], ] during ]. Shanghai provided asylum for tens of thousands of Jewish refugees escaping Europe. Shanghai was the only port in the world that allowed entry for Jews with neither an entry visa nor a passport.]]Some towns and churches also helped hide Jews and protect others from the Holocaust, such as the French town of ] which sheltered several thousand Jews. Similar individual and family acts of rescue were repeated throughout Europe, as illustrated in the famous cases of ], often at great risk to the rescuers. In a few cases, individual diplomats and people of influence, such as ] or ], protected large numbers of Jews. Swedish diplomat ], the Italian ], Chinese consul-general to Austria ], and others saved tens of thousands of Jews with fake diplomatic passes. Between 1933 and 1941, the Chinese city of ] accepted unconditionally over 30,000 Jewish refugees escaping the Holocaust in Europe, a number greater than those taken in by Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India combined during World War II. After 1941, the occupying Nazi-aligned Japanese ghettoised the Jewish refugees in Shanghai into an area known as the ]. Some of the Jewish refugees there aided the Chinese resistance against the Japanese. Many of the Jewish refugees in Shanghai migrated to the United States and ] after 1948 due to the ]. | |||
==Notes== | |||
There were also groups, like members of the Polish ] organization, that took drastic and dangerous steps to rescue Jews and other potential victims from the Nazis. ], member of ] (the Polish Home Army), organized a resistance movement in the ] from 1940, and ] tried to spread word of the Holocaust. | |||
{{notelist}} | |||
==References== | |||
Since 1963, a commission headed by an Israeli Supreme Court justice has been charged with the duty of awarding such people the honorary title ]. | |||
{{reflist|20em}} | |||
===Works cited=== | |||
==Perpetrators and collaborators== | |||
====Books==== | |||
===Who was directly involved in the mass murder?=== | |||
{{Refbegin|30em|indent=yes}} | |||
A wide range of German soldiers, officials, and civilians were in some way involved in the Holocaust, from clerks and officials in the government to units of the army, the police, and the SS. Many ministries, including those of armaments, interior, justice, railroads, and foreign affairs, had substantial roles in orchestrating the Holocaust; similarly, German physicians participated in medical experiments and the T-4 euthanasia program. And, though there was no single military unit in charge of the Holocaust, the ] under Himmler was the closest. From the SS came the ] concentration camp guards, the ] killing squads, and many of the administrative offices behind the Holocaust. The ], or regular German army, participated directly far less than the SS in the Holocaust (though it did directly take part in the massacre of some Jews in Russia, Serbia, Poland, and Greece), but it supported the Einsatzgruppen, helped form the ghettos, ran prison camps, occasionally provided concentration camp guards, transported prisoners to camps, had experiments performed on prisoners, and substantially used slave labor. | |||
* {{Cite book |last=Bartrop |first=Paul R. |authorlink=Paul R. Bartrop |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kU6fDwAAQBAJ |title=The Holocaust: The Basics |date=2019 |publisher=] |isbn=978-1-351-32989-7 |language=en}} | |||
* {{Cite book |last=Bartov |first=Omer |authorlink=Omer Bartov |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ci3WEAAAQBAJ |title=Genocide, the Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis |date=2023a |publisher=] |isbn=978-1-350-33234-8 |language=en}} | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Bazyler |first1=Michael J. |last2=Boyd |first2=Kathryn Lee |last3=Nelson |first3=Kristen L. |author1-link=Michael Bazyler |title=Searching for Justice After the Holocaust: Fulfilling the Terezin Declaration and Immovable Property Restitution |date=2019 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-19-092306-8 |language=en |ref={{sfnref|Bazyler et al.|2019}}}} | |||
*{{cite book |last1=Beorn |first1=Waitman Wade |author1-link=Waitman Wade Beorn |title=The Holocaust in Eastern Europe: At the Epicenter of the Final Solution |date=2018 |publisher=] |isbn=978-1-4742-3219-7 |language=en}} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Bergen |first=Doris |author-link=Doris Bergen |year=2016 |title=War & Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust |publisher=] |isbn=978-1-4422-4228-9}} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Bloxham |first=Donald |author-link=Donald Bloxham |year=2009 |title=The Final Solution: A Genocide |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-19-955034-0}} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Calimani |first=Anna Vera Sullam |title=I Nomi dello sterminio: Definizioni di una tragedia |language=it |trans-title=The Names of Extermination: Definitions of a Tragedy |publisher=Marietti 1820 |year=2018 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QegCEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT6 |isbn=978-8-821-19615-7}} | |||
* {{Cite book |last=Browning |first=Christopher R. |author-link=Christopher Browning |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d9Wg4gjtP3cC |title=The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942 |date=2004 |publisher=] and ] |isbn=978-0-8032-0392-1 |language=en}} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Cesarani |first=David |author-link=David Cesarani |year=2016 |title=] |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-230-76891-8}} | |||
* {{Cite book |last=Engel |first=David |authorlink=David Engel (historian) |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aI8kEAAAQBAJ |title=The Holocaust: The Third Reich and the Jews |date=2021 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-429-77837-7 |language=en}} | |||
* {{cite book |author1=Foreign Claims Settlement Commission |title=Foreign Claims Settlement Commission of the United States: Decisions and Annotations |date=1968 |publisher=] |location=Washington, D.C. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cX5AAAAAIAAJ |oclc=1041397012 |author1-link=Foreign Claims Settlement Commission}} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Gilbert |first=Martin |title=Never Again: A History of the Holocaust |publisher=RosettaBooks |year=2015 |orig-year=2000 |isbn=978-0-7953-4674-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wWhsDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT22}} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Gerlach |first=Christian|author-link=Christian Gerlach |year=2016 |title=The Extermination of the European Jews |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-521-70689-6}} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Hayes |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Hayes (historian) |title=Why? Explaining the Holocaust |date=2017 |publisher=] |location=New York}} | |||
* {{Cite book |last=Hayes |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Hayes (historian) |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6synBgAAQBAJ |title=How Was It Possible?: A Holocaust Reader |date=2015 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-8032-7491-4 |language=en}} | |||
* {{Cite book |last=Jackson |first=Timothy P. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NF8tEAAAQBAJ |title=Mordecai Would Not Bow Down: Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and Christian Supersessionism |date=2021 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-19-753807-4 |language=en}} | |||
*{{cite book |last1=Kay |first1=Alex J.|author-link=Alex J. Kay |title=Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing |date=2021 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-300-26253-7 |language=en |title-link=Empire of Destruction}} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Longerich |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Longerich |year=2010 |title=Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-19-280436-5}} | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Neufeld |first1=Michael |last2=Berenbaum |first2=Michael |author2-link=Michael Berenbaum |title=The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies have attempted it? |date=2000 |publisher=] |location=New York |isbn=0-7006-1280-7}} | |||
*{{cite book |last1=Niewyk |first1=Donald L. |title=The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust |last2=Nicosia |first2=Francis R. |author2-link=Francis R. Nicosia| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nzJAXkfozW8C |publisher=Columbia University Press |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-231-52878-8 |language=en}} | |||
* {{cite book |editor1-last=Peck |editor1-first=Abraham J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zkZC6bp3upsC&pg=PA311 |title=The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined |editor2-last=Berenbaum |editor2-first=Michael |publisher=] |year=2002 |isbn=978-0-253-21529-1 |language=en |editor2-link=Michael Berenbaum}} | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Rosenfeld |first1=Gavriel D. |author1-link=Gavriel D. Rosenfeld |title=Hi Hitler! How the Nazi Past is Being Normalized in Contemporary Culture |date=2015 |publisher=] |isbn=978-1-107-07399-9 |language=en}} | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Russell |first1=Nestar |title=Understanding Willing Participants |volume=2: Milgram's Obedience Experiments and the Holocaust |date=2018 |publisher=Springer |doi=10.1007/978-3-319-97999-1 |isbn=978-3-319-97999-1 |s2cid=151138604 |url=https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-97999-1 |language=en}} | |||
* {{Cite book |last=Smith |first=Stephen D. |authorlink=Stephen D. Smith |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yPqhEAAAQBAJ |title=The Trajectory of Holocaust Memory: The Crisis of Testimony in Theory and Practice |date=2023 |publisher=] |isbn=978-1-000-83062-0 |language=en}} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Stone |first=Dan |author-link=Dan Stone (historian) |title=Histories of the Holocaust |publisher=] |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-19-956679-2}} | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Stone |first1=Dan |title=The Holocaust: An Unfinished History |date=2023 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-241-38870-9 |language=en}} | |||
* {{cite book |last=Wachsmann |first=Nikolaus |author-link=Nikolaus Wachsmann |year=2015 |title=KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-374-11825-9}} | |||
{{refend}} | |||
====Book chapters==== | |||
German police units, all under the control of the Nazis during the war, also directly participated in the Holocaust; for example, Reserve Police Battalion 101, in just over a year, shot 38,000 Jews and deported 45,000 more to the extermination camps.<ref>Donald L Niewyk, ''The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust,'' Columbia University Press, 200, p 83-87. For Reserve Police 101 see Browning, Christopher R., Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York, Harper Collins, 1992</ref> Even private firms helped in the machinery of the Holocaust. Nazi bankers at the Paris branch of ] volunteered the names of their Jewish employees to Nazi authorities, and many of them ended up in the death camps.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.jewishaz.com/jewishnews/990402/bank.shtml | title=British bank implicated in Nazi dealings | first=Douglas | last = Davis | work=Jewish News of Greater Phoenix | date=1999-04-02| accessdate=2007-01-23}}</ref> | |||
{{refbegin|30em|indent=yes}} <!-- {{cite book |last1= |first1= |author-link= |title=The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies |date=2010 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-19-921186-9 |pages= |chapter=}} --> | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Assmann |first1=Aleida |author1-link=Aleida Assmann |title=Memory in a Global Age: Discourses, Practices and Trajectories |date=2010 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-230-28336-7 |pages=97–117 |language=en |chapter=The Holocaust – a Global Memory? Extensions and Limits of a New Memory Community}} | |||
====Axis members==== | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Bartov |first1=Omer |author1-link=Omer Bartov |title=The Oxford History of the Third Reich |date=2023b |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-288683-5 |pages=190–216 |language=en |chapter=The Holocaust}} | |||
=====Bulgaria===== | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Beorn |first1=Waitman Wade |author1-link=Waitman Wade Beorn |title=A Companion to the Holocaust |date=2020 |publisher=] |isbn=978-1-118-97052-2 |pages=153–172 |language=en |chapter=All the Other Neighbors: Communal Genocide in Eastern Europe}} | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Dean |first1=Martin C.|author-link=Martin C. Dean |title=A Companion to the Holocaust |date=2020 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-1-118-97049-2 |pages=263–277 |language=en |chapter=Survivors of the Holocaust within the Nazi Universe of Camps}} | |||
], mainly through the influence of the Bulgarian East Orthodox Church, saved all of its own Jewish population from deportation and certain death. However, although civil and military administration for parts of Northern Greece and Macedonia had been turned over to Bulgaria by Germany, Bulgaria did not prevent the deportation by German authorities of the Jews from those territories to the concentration camps, after the personal intervention of Haj Iman Al-Husseni Mufti of Jerusalem.<ref>Boyadjieff, Christo. ''Saving the Bulgarian Jews in World War II''. excerpted at - URL retrieved ], ].</ref> | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Engel |first1=David |author1-link=David Engel (historian) |title=A Companion to the Holocaust |date=2020 |publisher=Wiley |isbn=978-1-118-97052-2 |pages=233–245 |language=en |chapter=A Sustained Civilian Struggle: Rethinking Jewish Responses to the Nazi Regime}} | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Evans |first1=Richard J. |author1-link=Richard J. Evans |title=The Jews, the Holocaust, and the Public: The Legacies of David Cesarani |date=2019 |publisher=] |isbn=978-3-030-28675-0 |pages=117–143 |language=en |chapter=The Decision to Exterminate the Jews of Europe}} | |||
=====Fascist Italy===== | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Goschler |first1=Constantin |last2=Ther |first2=Philipp |author2-link=Philipp Ther |title=Robbery and Restitution: The Conflict over Jewish Property in Europe |date=2007 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-85745-564-2 |pages=1–18 |language=en |chapter=Introduction: A History Without Boundaries: the Robbery and Restitution of Jewish Property in Europe}} | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Hayes |first1=Peter |author1-link=Peter Hayes (historian) |last2=Roth |first2=John K. |title=The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies |date=2010 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-19-921186-9 |pages=1–20 |chapter=Introduction}} | |||
In ], a law from 1938 restricted civil liberties of Jews. This effectively reduced the country's Jews to second-class status, though Mussolini never made it official policy to deport Jews to concentration camps. After the fall of ] and his creation, the ], Jews started being deported to German camps. The deported numbered about 8,369, and only about a thousand survived. Several small camps were built in Italy and the so-called ] hosted a crematorium; from 2,000 to 5,000 people were killed in San Sabba, only a few of whom were Jews. | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Hayes |first1=Peter |title=The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies |date=2010 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-19-921186-9|pages=540–559 |chapter=Plunder and Restitution}} | |||
*{{cite book |last1=Kansteiner |first1=Wulf |title=The Twentieth Century in European Memory: Transcultural Mediation and Reception |date=2017 |publisher=Brill |isbn=978-90-04-35235-3 |pages=305–343 |language=en |chapter=Transnational Holocaust Memory, Digital Culture and the End of Reception Studies}} | |||
=====Antonescu's Romania===== | |||
* {{cite book |first=Charles |last=King |authorlink=Charles King (professor of international affairs) |chapter=Can – or Should – There Be a Political Science of the Holocaust? |editor-last1=Kopstein |editor-first1=Jeffrey S. |editor-link=Jeffrey Kopstein |title=Politics, Violence, Memory: The New Social Science of the Holocaust |date=2023 |publisher=] |isbn=978-1-5017-6676-3 |language=en}} | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Kochavi |first1=Arieh J. |title=The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies |date=2010 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-19-921186-9 |pages=509–523 |chapter=Liberation and Dispersal}} | |||
The ]n ] regime was responsible for the deaths of between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews. An official report released by the Romanian government concluded: {{quotation|Of all the allies of Nazi Germany, Romania bears responsibility for the deaths of more Jews than any country other than Germany itself. The exterminations committed in ], ], ], ], and ], for example, were among the most hideous acts committed against Jews anywhere during the Holocaust.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://yad-vashem.org.il/about_yad/what_new/data_whats_new/pdf/english/EXECUTIVE_SUMMARY.pdf | title=Executive Summary: Historical Findings | work=Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania | publisher=Yad Vashem (The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority) | format=PDF | accessdate=2007-01-23}}</ref>}} | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Kopstein |first1=Jeffrey S. |author-link=Jeffrey Kopstein |title=Politics, Violence, Memory: The New Social Science of the Holocaust |date=2023 |publisher=] |isbn=978-1-5017-6676-3 |pages=104–123 |language=en |chapter=A Common History of Violence?: The Pogroms of Summer 1941 in Comparative Perspective}} | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Messenger |first1=David A. |title=A Companion to the Holocaust |date=2020 |publisher=Wiley |isbn=978-1-118-97052-2 |pages=381–396 |language=en |chapter=The Geopolitics of Neutrality: Diplomacy, Refuge, and Rescue during the Holocaust}} | |||
In cooperation with German ] and Ukrainian auxiliaries, Romanians killed hundreds of thousands of Jews in ], northern ], and ]. Some of the larger massacres included 54,000 Jews killed in ], a Romanian concentration camp along the ] in Transnistria, between 21 and 31 December 1941. Nearly 100,000 Jews were killed in occupied ] and over 10,000 were killed in the ]. The Romanians also massacred ]s in the Domanevka and Akhmetchetka concentration camps. | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Miron |first1=Guy |title=A Companion to the Holocaust |date=2020 |publisher=Wiley |isbn=978-1-118-97052-2 |pages=247–261 |language=en |chapter=Ghettos and Ghettoization – History and Historiography}} | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Priemel |first1=Kim Christian |author1-link=Kim Christian Priemel |title=A Companion to the Holocaust |date=2020 |publisher=Wiley |isbn=978-1-118-97052-2 |pages=173–189 |language=en |chapter=War Crimes Trials, the Holocaust, and Historiography, 1943–2011}} | |||
=====Hungary===== | |||
* {{cite book |last=Sahlstrom |first=Julia |chapter=Recognition, Justice, and Memory: Swedish-Jewish Reactions to the Holocaust and the Major Trials |date=2021 |title=Early Holocaust Memory in Sweden: Archives, Testimonies and Reflections |pages=287–313 |editor-last=Heuman |editor-first=Johannes |chapter-url=https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55532-0_11 |access-date=28 January 2024 |series=The Holocaust and its Contexts |publisher=] |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-3-030-55532-0_11 |isbn=978-3-030-55532-0 |s2cid=229432191 |editor2-last=Rudberg |editor2-first=Pontus}} | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Spoerer |first1=Mark |title=A Companion to the Holocaust |date=2020 |publisher=Wiley |isbn=978-1-118-97052-2 |pages=135–151 |language=en |chapter=The Nazi War Economy, the Forced Labor System, and the Murder of Jewish and Non-Jewish Workers}} | |||
The ] ] regime deported 20,000 Jews from annexed ] in 1941 to ] in the German-occupied ], where they were shot by the German ] detachments. Hungarian army and police units killed several thousand ]s and ]s in ] in January 1942. However Horthy resisted German demands for mass deportation of Hungarian Jews (pop. 725,000{{Fact|date=February 2007}}}}), and most survived until March 1944 when Nazis occupied Hungary. By the end of June 1944, half of the Jews in Hungary (381,661{{Fact|date=February 2007}}) arrived at Auschwitz. In October 1944, Nazis seized control of the Hungarian puppet government, then resumed deporting Jews, which had temporarily ceased due to international political pressure to stop Jewish persecutions. The Horthy regime was replaced by the ] led by ]. At this late date in the war, with German defeat appearing very likely, Hungarian police nevertheless participated fully with ] in the roundup of 437,000 Jews for deportation to the ]. Moreover, 20,000 ] Jews were shot by the banks of the ] by Hungarian forces under the direct orders of The Arrow Cross, the Hungarian version of the German Nazi Party. 70,000 Jews were forced on a death march to ]—thousands were shot and thousands more died of starvation and exposure.<ref>"" Prof. Jonathan Petropoulos, Claremont McKenna College. See also the , also </ref> | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Stone |first1=Dan |chapter=Ideologies of Race |title=A Companion to the Holocaust |date=2020 |pages=59–74 |doi=10.1002/9781118970492.ch3 |publisher=Wiley |isbn=978-1-118-97052-2 |language=en}} | |||
] by Lithuanian nationalists in June 1941. The SS urged anti-communist partisan leader ] to attack the Jews to show that "the liberated population had resorted to the most severe measures against the ... Jewish enemy."]] | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Weitz |first1=Eric D. |author-link=Eric D. Weitz |title=The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies |date=2010 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-19-921186-9|pages=54–67 |chapter=Nationalism}} | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Westermann |first1=Edward B. |author-link=Edward B. Westermann |title=A Companion to the Holocaust |date=2020 |publisher=Wiley |isbn=978-1-118-97052-2 |pages=117–133 |chapter=Old Nazis, Ordinary Men, and New Killers: Synthetic and Divergent Histories of Perpetrators}} | |||
=====Slovakia===== | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Wittmann |first1=Rebecca |author-link=Rebecca Wittmann |title=The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies |date=2010 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-19-921186-9|pages=524–539 |chapter=Punishment}} | |||
{{refend}} | |||
The ] ] regime deported approximately 70,000 Jews, of whom 65,000 were killed.<ref>"," PBS (accessed June 8, 2005).</ref> | |||
====European occupied countries==== | |||
In addition to the direct involvement of Nazi forces, the ] governments of occupied European countries helped the ] in the Holocaust. Collaboration took the form of either rounding up of the local ]s for deportation to the German ] or a direct participation in the killings. | |||
=====Vichy France===== | |||
In France, ], who became premier after ] had fallen to the German Army, arranged the surrender to Germany. He then became the head of the ] government, which collaborated with Nazism, claiming that it would soften the hardships of occupation. Opposition to the German occupation of northern France and the collaborationist Vichy government was left to the ] within France and the ] led by ] outside of France. The police, the ] ("militia", which worked as the Gestapo's aid), as well as members of ]'s ] (PPF) rounded up 75,000 Jews for deportation to concentration camps. The Vichy regime attracted all of the far-right ] sectors of French society, ]s and other pseudo-fascist movements.<ref name="Remond"> See ]'s classic study on "The Right in France" (''Les Droites en France''), and also ]'s arguments according to which fascism was invented in France at the early 20th century, before being adopted and transformed into a popular movement in Italy. French historians, such as ] and ], have argued that there was no "French fascism", because although some groups, such as the PPF and others, adopted fascist and even Nazi postures, fascism never became really popular. Against Sternhell, they argue that fascism cannot be reduced to an intellectual movement, and must necessarily be considered in its mass dimension. </ref> '']'', a terrorist group and ], the founder of ], are examples of such groups. Antisemitism, as the ] had shown at the end of the 19th century, was widespread in France, especially among ] sympathizers. The Vichy government eagerly participated in the Holocaust, for example with the ], ] '']'', in which 12,884 Jews were arrested, including 4,051 children which the German authorities had not asked for. They were all sent to ] transit camp anyway.<ref name="Remond"/> | |||
], "the Butcher of ]", captured and deported 44 Jewish children hidden in the village of ], killed ] leader ], and was in total responsible for the deportation of 7,500 people, 4,342 murders, and the arrest and torture of 14,311 resistance fighters were in some way attributed to his actions or commands. | |||
] was the number two official in the ] region and supervisor of its "Service for Jewish Questions". In 1997, following revelations from '']'' newspaper, he was finally charged with complicity of crimes against humanity. Papon was accused of ordering the arrest and deportation of 1,560 Jews, including children and the elderly, between 1942 and 1944; most of his victims were sent to Auschwitz. As during ]'s trial, one of the main issue was to determine to what extent an individual should be held ] in a chain of responsibility. In 1998, he was given a ten-year prison term. However, he was released on grounds of poor health in 2002. Many people thought both the relatively light sentence and his release were scandalous, especially when it was known to all that following the war, Papon went on to enjoy a civil service career, which led him to be the chief of the Paris police, held by historian Luc Einaudi as being directly responsible for the ] during the ] (1954–62); Papon even became budget minister of president ] in the 1970s. He was finally arrested because of the ''Canard Enchaîné'' 's revelations, which themselves followed a fiscal control ordered by Papon with the aim of intimidating the satirical newspaper. | |||
=====Belgium===== | |||
The ] state actively collaborated with Nazi Germany in persecuting Jews. 16,000 Jews were arrested in Belgium and sent to camps, mainly in France. Almost all of the 6,000 who were deported to Auschwitz were killed. An official report commissioned by the country's senate concluded that: | |||
{{quotation|The Belgian authorities “anticipated and went beyond” the demands of occupying German forces in segregating, rounding up and dispossessing Jews. Belgium “adopted a docile attitude providing collaboration unworthy of a democracy in its treatment of Jews”.<ref>{{Citation | |||
| last = Van Doorslaer | |||
| first = Rudi | |||
| title = Docile Belgium | |||
| journal = Center for Historical Research and Documentation on War and Contemporary Society, Brussels | |||
| date = February 2007 | |||
| year = 2007}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | |||
| last = | |||
| first = | |||
| title =Extent of Belgian collaboration with Nazis revealed | |||
| publisher ='']'' | |||
| date =February 14 2007 | |||
| url =http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=436136&in_page_id=1811&ct=5}}</ref>}} | |||
=====Ustaše's Croatia===== | |||
The ]n ] regime killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs (estimates vary widely, but by all sources more than 330,000–390,000, and possibly well over a million), over 20,000 Jews and 26,000 Roma, primarily in the Ustase's ] near ]. The Ustase also deported 7,000 more Jews to Nazi ].<ref>"" at the Jewish Virtual Library </ref> | |||
Croats were also victims of the Nazi regime and those who opposed it ended in concentration camps. Many Croats risked their lives during the Holocaust in order to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis (]). | |||
=====Serbia===== | |||
Serbia was set up as a Nazi puppet state under Serbian army general ], which was known as ]. The internal affairs of the Serbian puppet state were moderated by German racial laws, that were introduced in all occupied territories with immediate effects on ], Roma people, as well as imprisonment of left oriented persons. The two major concentration camps in Serbia were: ] and ]. Of 40,000 Serbian Jews around one half lost their lives in Nazi concentration camps both in Serbia and German Reich, where most of the captured Serbian Jews were transferred. Under Nedić, Belgrade was declared to be ] in 1942. Serbs were also victims of the Nazi regime, and most of the victims in Banjica were Serbian. Nazis had a policy of killing 100 Serbs for each killed German soldier and 50 killed Serbs for each wounded, resulting in widespread taking of hostages and executions such as ]. Despite these represive measures, Serbs rebelled, and most Serbs saw Jews as their fellow victims in World War II, dying together in Nazi represion and genocide in ], ] and ]. Legends about Serbs saving the Jews in WWII are widespread in Serbia, and 152 Serbs have been honored as ]. | |||
=====Greece===== | |||
The Jews of ] mainly lived in the area around ], where there had been occasional conflicts between Jews and Greeks. In Thessaloniki, from 1927 until 1935, there was a minor ] ] party called ] (Ethniki Enosis Ellados, EEE), which was revived by Nazi authorities in the city. Members of the EEE assisted occupying forces to identify Jews and collaborated on the deportation of local Jews with remarkable efficiency, either for ] or for more prosaic reasons such as obtaining profits. By the time of the German withdrawal from Greece in 1944, nearly 90% of the Jewish community in Thessaloniki had been annihilated. | |||
] Jews, on the other hand, went through a different experience. They were a minor part of the city's population and in the city there had not been an anti-Semitic atmosphere, and most Jews eluded deportation by either being helped by Greeks into hiding or joining the ] in the mountains. This, however, did not exempt Athenian Jews from organized crime against them. Just like the Nazi authorities had restored the EEE in Thessaloniki, in Athens the German occupation authorities created the ] (Ethniko-Socialistike Patriotike Organosis), whose members attacked or assisted Germans to locate local Jews. The ESPO's most notorious action was the ransacking the synagogue on Melidoni Street, Athens. Other ESPO members were recruited as guards in the ] internment camp, just outside Athens. | |||
In any case, the three ] governments headed by ], ] and ] to different extents were unable to stop (or participated) in the deportation or prosecution of Greek Jews. Rallis, for instance, was known to hold the point of view that the houses left by deported Jews in Thessaloniki would be very welcome for the Greek ] refugees who came to Greece after the 1922 ] catastrophe. | |||
=====German-occupied Soviet territories===== | |||
In the German-occupied Soviet territories, local Nazi collaborationist units represented over 80% of the available German forces providing a total of nearly 450,000 personnel organised in so-called "Schutzmannschaften" formations. Practically all of these units participated in the round-ups and mass-shootings. The overwhelming majority were recruited in the western Ukraine and the Baltic region, areas recently occupied by the Soviets for which the Jews were typically scapegoated, which exacerbated pre-Nazi anti-Semitic attitudes. Thus, for instance, ] nationalists killed 4,000 ] Jews in July 1941, and an additional 2,000 in late July 1941 during the so-called ] Days ]. Nazi Einsatzgruppen, together with Ukrainian auxiliary units, killed 33,000 ]an Jews in Babi Yar in September 1941. Ukrainian auxiliaries participated in a number of killings of Jews, among them in Romanian concentration camps in ] and in ]. | |||
=====Norway===== | |||
After Norway was invaded, the Nazis took control of the government and the true government went into exile. Power was given to the German ] ] and the ] leader ]. Quisling had attempted to establish himself as the leader of occupied Norway, but the Nazis only used him as leader of a ]. The Nazis, as well as some Norwegian police units, managed to round up over 750 Jews, of a total of about 1,800. However, the Nazis and their collaborators were very unpopular in Norway, causing a ], so the German government's aims for Norway were never fulfilled. Many Jews and other people were saved by the actions of Norwegians, including Norwegian police. Still, detailed lists of Jews (and assumingly most other persons as well) existed at the time of ]. This caused the rounding-up of Jews in Norway to be much more efficient than in ]. Quisling and other Norwegians, who collaborated with the Nazis, were ], at least partly due to their involvement in the Holocaust.{{Fact|date=January 2007}} | |||
Also, 245 Sinti and Roma were deported to the Nazi extermination camps, of whom 190 were murdered. <br> See also: ] | |||
=====Baltic collaborators===== | |||
Some ] (''Schutzmannschaft'') with Nazi Einsatzgruppen detachments participated in the extermination of the Jewish population in their countries, as well as assisting the Nazis elsewhere, such as deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto. The ], a Latvian volunteer police unit, for example, shot 26,000 Latvian Jews, at various locations after they had been brutally rounded-up for this purpose by the regular police and auxiliaries, and was responsible for assisting in the killing of 60,000 more Jews.<ref>": An introduction" by Andrew Ezergailis, book excerpt, The Historical Institute of Latvia, 1996.</ref> | |||
About 75% of ] Jewish community, aware of the fate that otherwise awaited them, managed to escape to the Soviet Union; virtually all the remainder (between 950 and 1,000 people) were killed by Einsatzgruppe A and local collaborators before the end of 1941.<ref>Max Jakobson Commission Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, " Report"</ref> | |||
=====The Netherlands===== | |||
Of the 140,000 ] Jews, the German occupiers deported about 107,000 of which 101,800 were murdered. This death toll of 73% is the highest in Western Europe. Reasons that have been suggested to explain this phenomenon are: the occupation regime in the Netherlands was formed by fanatic Austrian Nazis; {{Fact|date=January 2007}} the degree of efficiency and the high level of administrative organization of the pre-war Dutch civilian administration; the typical Dutch landscape without mountains or woods made it practically impossible to find shelter; the majority of the Dutch Jews lived in the larger cities and thus they formed relatively easy targets for persecution and segregation; the Jewish leaders chose, "in order to prevent worse", a policy of collaboration with the Nazis; the Dutch pre-war society can be characterized as a conglomerate of different groups, which lived separately from another and this fact made it easy for the Germans to segregate and persecute the Jewish section of society; because the Jews were cut off from public life, they lost almost all of the support that could have been provided by other groups in society; active assistance by Dutch collaborators, such as the ] group that hunted and "delivered" 8,000 to 9,000 Jews for deportation.<ref>Ad van Liempt, '''', NLPVF (accessed June 8, 2005).</ref> All of these circumstances made it relatively easy for the SS, regularly aided by Dutch police officers, to round up the Jewish population. | |||
===Who authorized the killings?=== | |||
Hitler authorized the mass killing of those labelled by the Nazis as "undesirables" in the T-4 Euthanasia Program. Hitler encouraged the killings of the Jews of Eastern Europe by the '']'' death squads in a speech in July, 1941, though he almost certainly approved the mass shootings earlier. A mass of evidence suggests that sometime in the fall of 1941, Himmler and Hitler agreed in principle on the complete mass extermination of the Jews of Europe by gassing, with Hitler explicitly ordering the "annihilation of the Jews" in a speech on December 12, 1941 (see ]). To make for smoother intra-governmental cooperation in the implementation of this "Final Solution" to the "Jewish Question", the ] was held near Berlin on ] ], with the participation of fifteen senior officials, led by ] and ], the records of which provide the best evidence of the central planning of the Holocaust. Just five weeks later on ], Hitler was recorded saying "We shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jew" to his closest associates. | |||
However despite many years of investigating the documentation the third reich were so thorough in producing, there has never been any written proof that any order was given by Hitler at this or any other meeting or conference. | |||
Arguments that no documentation links Hitler to "the Holocaust" ignore the records of his speeches kept by Nazi leaders such as ] and rely on artificially limiting the Holocaust to exclude what we do have documentation on, such as the T-4 Euthanasia Program and the Kristallnacht pogrom. | |||
===Who knew about the killings?=== | |||
Some claim that the full extent of what was happening in German-controlled areas was not known until after the war. However, even though Hitler did not talk about the camps in public, numerous rumors and eyewitness accounts from escapees and others gave some indication that Jews were being killed in large numbers. Since the early years of the war, the ] published documents and organised meetings to spread word of the fate of the Jews. By early 1941, the British had received information via an intercepted Chilean memo that Jews were being targeted, and by late 1941 they had intercepted information about a number of large massacres of Jews conducted by German police.{{Fact|date=January 2007}} In an entry in the ] dated ], ], the German justice inspector ] recorded a conversation he had in ] with a German soldier who had witnessed a massacre in Poland. Churchill, who was privy to intelligence reports derived from decoded German transmissions, first began mentioning "mass killings" in public at the same time. In the summer of 1942, a Jewish labor organization (the ]) got word to London that 700,000 Polish Jews had already died, and the BBC took the story seriously, though the United States State Department did not.<ref>Richard Breitman, "," US National Archives (accessed August 30, 2005).</ref> In the United States, in November of 1942, a telegram from Europe which contained word about Hitler's plans was released by ] of the ], after a long wait for permission from the government.<ref>Robert S. Wistrich: Hitler and the Holocaust. Chapter 7. London 2001.</ref> This led to attempts by Jewish organizations to put ] under pressure to act on behalf of the European Jews, many of whom had tried in vain to enter either Britain or the U.S. | |||
On ], ], however, after receiving a detailed eyewitness account from ], the Allies issued a formal declaration confirming and condemning Nazi extermination policy toward the Jews.<ref> (USHMM Research Library). Accessed 2006-08-17</ref><ref>"11 Allies Condemn Nazi War on Jews: United Nations Issue Joint Declaration of Protest on 'Cold-Blooded Extermination'". New York Times, 18 December 1942, pp.1, 10.</ref> The US State Department was aware of the use and the location of the gas chambers of extermination camps, but refused pleas to bomb them out of operation. On ], ], Polish government-in-exile and Bund leader ] committed ] in London to protest the inaction of the world with regard to the Holocaust, stating in part in his suicide letter: | |||
:''I cannot continue to live and to be silent while the remnants of Polish Jewry, whose representative I am, are being killed. My comrades in the ] fell with arms in their hands in the last heroic battle. I was not permitted to fall like them, together with them, but I belong with them, to their mass grave. | |||
:''By my death, I wish to give expression to my most profound protest against the inaction in which the world watches and permits the destruction of the Jewish people. | |||
The death camps were discussed between American and British leaders at the ] in April of 1943. The large camps near ] were finally surveyed by plane in April of 1944, many months after the ] ceased to be a serious danger. While all important German cities and production centers were ] by Allied forces until the end of the war, no attempt was made to collapse the system of mass annihilation by destroying pertinent structures or train tracks, even though Churchill was a proponent of bombing parts of the Auschwitz complex. Throughout the war, Britain also pressed European leaders to prevent "illegal" Jewish immigration and sent ships to block the sea-route to ] (from which Britain withdrew in 1948), turning back many refugees.<ref>Robert S. Wistrich: Hitler and the Holocaust. Chapter 7. London 2001.</ref> | |||
Debate also continues on how much average Germans knew about the Holocaust. Recent historical work suggests that the majority of Germans knew that Jews were being indiscriminately killed and persecuted, even if they did not know of the specifics of the death camps. ], a historian at ], conducted a widely-respected survey of the German media before and during the war, concluding that there was "substantial consent and active participation of large numbers of ordinary Germans" in aspects of the Holocaust, and documenting that the sight of columns of slave laborers were common, and that the basics of the concentration camps, if not the extermination camps, were widely known.<ref>Robert Gellately: Backing Hitler. Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, Oxford University Press, 2001 ISBN 0192802917 - </ref> | |||
Other scholars, like ], have argued that most Germans did not know about the mass-murders as they were occurring. <ref>Longerich, Peter: Davon haben wir nichts gewusst! Die Deutschen und die Judenverfolgung 1933-1945. Siedler Verlag, München 2006. ISBN 3886808432 </ref> | |||
==Historical and philosophical interpretations== | |||
The Holocaust and the historical phenomenon of Nazism, which has since become the dark symbol of the 20th century's crimes, is the subject of numerous historical, psychological, sociological, literary, and philosophical studies. All types of scholars have tried to explain what appears as the most irrational act of the ]ern World, which, until at least ], had been so sure of its eminent superiority to other ]. ] philosopher ] and ] thus began the '']'': | |||
<blockquote> "], understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth is radiant with triumphant calamity.<ref> Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, ''Dialectic of Enlightenment'', 2002 translation) </ref> </blockquote> | |||
Theodor Adorno went as far as ceasing to work as a composer, declaring: "writing any more poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric". Thus, Auschwitz became the ] name for the Holocaust and the Nazi barbarity. Although Adorno later retracted this statement, declaring that "Perennial suffering has as much right to expression as the tortured have to scream...", the concepts of civilization and of ] themselves were called into question more profoundly than had happened after the slaughter of World War I. Germany, considered to be one of the most enlightened European countries, radiant with ], ] and ], had made itself guilty of one of the most enormous ] ever committed. It was left to literature, such as ]'s '']'' (1947) or ]'s ''The Human Race'' (1947) to describe what poetry, according to Adorno, could not describe. | |||
The enormity of the Holocaust has prompted much analysis. ], in her 1963 report on ], presented him as a symbol of dull obedience to ] in what was at first seen as a scandalous book, '']: A Report on the Banality of Evil'' (1963), which has since become a classic of ]. Thus, Arendt opposed herself to the first, immediate, explanation, which accused the Nazis of "]" and of "]". Many people who participated in the Holocaust were normal people, according to Arendt, and that is the real scandal. This led ]'s to conduct ] experiences on obedience, opening up the way to understanding the psychological experiences of "]" and ]. The question of charisma was renewed by ]'s 19th century studies about ]. Thus, his work acquired new force, although Hitler himself had been inspired by Le Bon's description of propaganda techniques to write ''Mein Kampf''. Furthermore, Hannah Arendt and some authors such as ] and ] tried to point toward a relative continuity between the crimes committed against "]" people during ] and the Holocaust. They most notably argued that many techniques that the Nazis industrialized had been experimented on in other continents, starting with the ] invented during the ] if not before. This thesis was met with fierce opposition by some groups who argued that nothing could be compared to the Holocaust, not even other ]: although the ] (1904-07) and the ] (1915-17) are commonly considered as the first genocides in history, many argued that the Holocaust had taken proportions that even these crimes against humanity had not achieved. | |||
The Holocaust was indeed characterized by an industrial project of extermination; compared to it, other genocides seemed to lack "professionalism". This led authors such as ] to argue in ''The Origins of Nazi Violence'' that Auschwitz was "an authentic product of Western civilization".<ref> See also ], in '']'', February 2005 </ref> Beginning his book with a description of the ], which according to him marks the entry of the ] into ], and writes: "Through an irony of history, the theories of ]" (]) were applied by a ] to serve "not production, but extermination." (see also ]'s comments). In the wake of Hannah Arendt, Traverso describes the colonial domination during the New Imperialism period through "rational organization", which lead in a number of cases to extermination. However, this argument, which insists on the industrialization and technical rationality through which the Holocaust itself was carried out (the organization of trains, technical details, etc. — see ]'s bureaucratic work), was in turn opposed by other people. These point out that the 1994 ] only used ]s. | |||
Others have presented the Holocaust as a product of German history, analyzing its deep roots in German society: "German ], feeble ], brash nationalism or virulent anti-Semitism. From ]'s ''The Course of German History'' fifty-five years ago to ]'s recent ''Hitler's Willing Executioners'', Nazism is understood as the outcome of a long history of uniquely German traits", writes Russell Jacoby.<ref> , Russell Jacoby, '']'', ], ] issue </ref> Furthermore, while many pointed out that the specificity of the Holocaust was also rooted in the constant ] from which Jews had been the target since the foundation of ] (and the myth of the "] people"), others underlined that in the 19th century, ] had been elaborated in order to justify, in a general way, ]. In his works on "]", philosopher ] also traced the origins of "]" to the ] policies invented during the 19th century. (One of the few compliments that Foucault accorded to ]'s ] was that Freud adamantly opposed such a project of "racial hygiene".) | |||
===Why did people participate in, authorize, or tacitly accept the killing?=== | |||
====Obedience==== | |||
] was one of a number of post-war psychologists and sociologists who tried to address why people obeyed immoral orders in the Holocaust. ] demonstrated that ], when instructed by a person in a position of authority, ] commands entailing what they believed to be the death or suffering of others. These results were confirmed in other experiments as well, such as the ]. In his book ''Mass Psychology of Fascism'' (1933), ] also tried to explain this obedience. The work became known as the foundation of ]. ] winner ] also addressed the problem of ] obedience in ''Masse und Macht'' (1960 - "Crowds and Power"), developing an original theory of the consequences of commands both in the obedient person and in the commander, who may well become a "] ]". Two recent "experiments", one called ] and one conducted by ], tried answer the question of: "How can a people be a part of something terrible and then claim at the demise that they were not really involved?" | |||
====Psychological mechanisms==== | |||
The Holocaust is a clear example of two factors at work. One is described by the "]" theory, which says that an enormous change will not be noticed if it occurs in gradual steps. The other factor is the primal and powerful mechanism of ], which has its home in the ] and ensures that individuals conform to the group. This mechanism has evolved through ] to ensure that human groups survive. Together, these factors make conforming to the group a stronger impulse than breaking out, even if the individual does not agree with what the group is doing. So long as the gradual changes in group behaviour are small, herding can eventually take the group towards a state that is far removed from past behavior and is more and more extreme. Thus, participants in the Holocaust may have privately felt horror or disgust at what they were ordered to do but stayed in line with the group. These effects have been exploited many times in history by ]s and ]aries; they are also seen in ].<ref> - URL retrieved ], ]</ref> | |||
Studies of mass psychology, kick-started by ] but currently being developed under various labels, suggest that the causal mechanism for crowd behaviour is the reverse of what is commonly believed. The socionomic perspective says that, rather than persecution making people fearful and downtrodden, fearful and downtrodden people look for someone to persecute.<ref name=Prechter>] 2000. ''The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior and the New Science of Socionomics''. New Classics Library. ISBN 0-932750-49-4.</ref> | |||
The Jungian-socionomic analysis says that after the humiliation of World War I, the economic ruin of the ], being forced to pay ] and the ], it was natural for the German people to become angry and look for someone on whom to vent their anger; ] behaviour amplifed this anger and the Holocaust was the result.<ref Name=Prechter/> | |||
====Functionalism versus intentionalism==== | |||
{{main|Functionalism versus intentionalism}} | |||
{{Unreferenced|date=January 2007}} | |||
A major issue in contemporary Holocaust studies is the question of ''functionalism'' versus ''intentionalism''. The terms were coined in a 1981 article by the British ] historian ] to describe two schools of thought about the origins of the Holocaust. Intentionalists hold that the Holocaust was the result of a long-term masterplan on the part of Hitler's and that Hitler was the driving force behind the Holocaust. Functionalists hold that Hitler was anti-Semitic, but that he did not have a masterplan for genocide. Functionalists see the Holocaust as coming from below in the ranks of the German bureaucracy with little or no involvement on the part of Hitler. Functionalists stress that the Nazi anti-Semitic policy was constantly evolving in ever more radical directions and the end product was the Holocaust. | |||
Intentionalists like ] argue that the Holocaust was planned by Hitler from the very beginning of his political career, at very least from 1919 on, if not earlier. Later, Dawidowicz was to date the decision for genocide back to ], ]. Other Intentionalists like ], ], ] and ] suggested that Hitler had decided upon the Holocaust sometime in the early 1920s. More recent intentionalist historians like ] continue to emphasize the relative earliness of the decision to kill the Jews, although they are not willing to claim that Hitler planned the Holocaust from the beginning. ] has argued that Hitler was an extreme anti-Semite from 1919 on, but he did not decide upon genocide until the middle of 1941. Yet another group of intentionalist historians such as the American ] claimed Hitler only ordered the Holocaust in December 1941. | |||
Functionalists like ], ], ], ] and ] hold that the Holocaust was started in 1941-1942 as a result of the failure of the Nazi deportation policy and the impending military losses in ]. They claim that what some see as extermination fantasies outlined in Hitler's '']'' and other Nazi literature were mere ] and did not constitute concrete plans. In ''Mein Kampf'' Hitler repeatedly states his inexorable hatred of the Jewish people, but nowhere does he proclaim his intention to exterminate the Jewish people. | |||
Furthermore, Functionalists point to the fact that in the 1930s, Nazi policy aimed at trying to make life so unpleasant for German Jews that they would leave Germany. ] was in charge of facilitating Jewish emigration by whatever means possible from 1937 until ], ], when German Jews were forbidden to leave, ] issuing an order to that effect. Functionalists point to the SS's support for a time in the late 1930s for ] groups as the preferred solution to the "Jewish Question" as another sign that there was no masterplan for genocide. The SS only ceased their support for German Zionist groups in May 1939 when ] informed Hitler of this, and Hitler ordered Himmler to cease and desist as the creation of Israel was not a goal Hitler thought worthy of German foreign policy. | |||
In particular, Functionalists have noted that in German documents from 1939 to 1941, the term "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" was clearly meant to be a "territorial solution", that is the entire Jewish population was to be expelled somewhere far from Germany and not allowed to come back. At first, the SS planned to create a gigantic "Jewish Reservation" in the ], ] area, but the so-called "Lublin Plan" was vetoed by ], the Governor-General of occupied Poland who refused to allow the SS to ship any more Jews to the Lublin area after November, 1939. The reason why Frank vetoed the "Lublin Plan" was not due to any humane motives, but rather because he was opposed to the SS "dumping" Jews into the Government-General. In 1940, the SS and the German Foreign Office had the so-called "]" to deport the entire Jewish population of Europe to a "reservation" on ]. The "Madagascar Plan" was cancelled because Germany could not defeat the United Kingdom and until the British ] was broken, the "Madagascar Plan" could not be put into effect. Finally, Functionalist historians have made much of a memorandum written by Himmler in May, 1940 explicitly rejecting extermination of the entire Jewish people as "un-German" and going on to recommend to Hitler the "Madagascar Plan" as the preferred "territorial solution" to the "Jewish Question". Not until July 1941 did the term "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" come to mean extermination. | |||
Recently, a synthesis of the two schools has emerged that has been championed by diverse historians such as the Canadian historian ], the Israeli historian ] and the British historian ] that contends that Hitler was the driving force behind the Holocaust, but that he did not have a long-term plan and that much of the initiative for the Holocaust came from below in an effort to meet Hitler's perceived wishes. | |||
Another controversy was started by the historian ], who argues that ordinary Germans were knowing and willing participants in the Holocaust, which he claims had its roots in a deep eliminationist German ]. Most historians have disagreed with Goldhagen's thesis, arguing that while anti-Semitism undeniably existed in Germany, Goldhagen's idea of a uniquely German "eliminationist" anti-Semitism is untenable, and that the extermination was unknown to many and had to be enforced by the dictatorial Nazi apparatus. | |||
====Religious hatred and racism==== | |||
The German Nazis considered it their duty to overcome natural ] and execute orders for what they believed to be higher ideals. Much research has been done to explain how ordinary people could have participated in such heinous crimes, notably ] ]'s famous ] of ] to authority. But there is no doubt that, like in some ]s in the past, some people poisoned with racial and religious ] of hatred committed the crimes with ] pleasure. ] has attempted to explain such heinous acts, although ]'s ''The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind'' (1895) was also a major influence of ''Mein Kampf'', in particular relating to the propaganda techniques described in it. Sadistic acts were perhaps most notable in the case of the genocide committed by members of the ], whose enthusiasm and sadism in their killings of Serbs appalled Germans, Italians, and even German SS officers, who even acted to restrain the Ustashe. However, concentration camp literature, such as the writings of ] and ], describe numerous individual sadistic acts, including some committed by ]. | |||
] (a German leader of the Protestant Reformation) made a specific written call for harsh persecution of the Jewish people, including that their synagogues and schools be set on fire, prayerbooks destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes razed, and property and money confiscated. Luther argued that Jews should be shown no mercy or kindness, should have no legal protection, and that these "poisonous envenomed worms" should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time. ] American historian Lucy Dawidowicz, concluded that the line of "anti-Semitic descent" from Luther to Hitler is "easy to draw," in her book "The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945". Adolf Hitler wrote of his admiration of Martin Luther in ''Mein Kampf'' . | |||
Some authors, such as liberal philosopher ] in '']'' (1951), Swedish writer ] or French historian ] have also linked the Holocaust to ]. They argue that techniques put in place during the ] period (first of all, ] during the ]), as well as the ] elaborated during this period (e.g. ]'s 1853 '']'') had been fundamental in preparing the conditions of possibility of the Holocaust. Others authors have adamantly opposed these views, on behalf of the "unicity" of the Holocaust, compared to any other ].{{Fact|date=January 2007}} Philosopher ] also traced the origins of the Holocaust and of "racial policies" to what he called "]", which is a part of "]". | |||
Finally, many have pointed the ancient roots of ], which has been present in the Western world since the foundation of ]. These sentiments were not different in pre-war Germany than elsewhere, but the Nazis were the first political party to organize, promote, and officialize antisemitism, while withdrawing legal protection from Jews. Modern efforts at ], in particular by the ] which has asked the Jews for a pardon, are being made in order to avoid a repetition of such acts. | |||
==Aftermath== | |||
Until recently, Germany refused to allow access to massive Holocaust-related archives located in ] due to, among other factors, privacy concerns. However, in May 2006, a 20-year effort by the ] led to the announcement that 30-50 million pages would be made accessible to historians and survivors.<ref> ] 19 April, 2006</ref> | |||
===Displaced Persons and the State of Israel=== | |||
{{main|Sh'erit ha-Pletah}} | |||
{{unreferencedsect|date=July 2006}} | |||
The Holocaust and its aftermath left millions of refugees, including many Jews who had lost most or all of their family members and possessions, and often faced persistent anti-Semitism in their home countries. The original plan of the Allies was to repatriate these "Displaced Persons" to their country of origin, but many refused to return, or were unable to as their homes or communities had been destroyed. As a result, more than 250,000 languished in ] for years after the war ended. | |||
While ] had been prominent before the Holocaust, afterwards it became almost universally accepted among Jews. Many Zionists, pointing to the fact that Jewish refugees from Germany and Nazi-occupied lands had been turned away by other countries, argued that if a Jewish state had existed at the time, the Holocaust could not have occurred on the scale it did. With the rise of Zionism, ] became the destination of choice for Jewish refugees, but local Arabs opposed the immigration, the United Kingdom refused to allow Jewish refugees into the Mandate, and many countries in the Soviet Bloc made any emigration illegal. Former Jewish partisans in Europe, along with the ] in Palestine, organized a massive effort to smuggle Jews into Palestine, called ], which eventually transported 250,000 Jews (both DPs and those who hid during the war) to the Mandate. By 1952, the Displaced Persons camps were closed, with over 80,000 Jewish DPs in the United States, about 136,000 in Israel, and another 20,000 in other nations, including Canada and South Africa. | |||
===Legal proceedings against Nazis=== | |||
] - Front row: Göring, Heß, Ribbentrop, and Keitel. Second row: Dönitz, Raeder, Schirach, Sauckel.]] | |||
The juridical notion of ] was developed following the Holocaust. The sheer number of people murdered and the transnational nature of the slaughter shattered any notion of national sovereignty taking precedence over international law when prosecuting these crimes. There were a number of legal efforts established to bring Nazis and their collaborators to justice. Some of the higher ranking Nazi officials were tried as part of the ], presided over by an Allied court; the first international tribunal of its kind. In total, 5,025 Nazi criminals were convicted between 1945-1949 in the American, British and French zones of Germany {{Fact|date=February 2007}}. Other trials were conducted in the countries in which the defendants were citizens — in West Germany and Austria, many Nazis were let off with light sentences, with the claim of "]" ruled a mitigating circumstance, and many returned to society soon afterwards. | |||
An ongoing effort to ] resulted, famously, in the capture of Holocaust organizer ] in ] (an operation led by ]) and to his subsequent trial in Israel in 1961.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/eichcap.html|title=The capture of Adolf Eichmann|publisher=]|accessdate=2007-01-21}}</ref>. ] became one of the most famous Nazi hunters. Some ], however, escaped any charges. Thus, ] a former intelligence officer of the Wehrmacht, managed to turn around and work for the ], and created in 1956 the '']'' (BND), the German intelligence agency, which he directed until 1968. | |||
], known as "the Butcher of ]" for his role at the head of the Gestapo, was protected from 1945 to 1955 by the ] and the CIA, before fleeing to South America where he had a hand in ]'s 1980 '']'' in Bolivia.{{Fact|date=February 2007}} Barbie was finally arrested in 1983 and sentenced to life imprisonment for ] in 1987. | |||
In October 2005, ] (aka "Doctor Death") was found to be living for twenty years in Spain, protected by ODESSA.{{Fact|date=February 2007}} | |||
===Legal action against genocide=== | |||
{{Unreferencedsect|date=January 2007}} | |||
The Holocaust also galvanized the international community to take action against future genocide, including the ] in 1948. While international human rights law moved forward quickly in the wake of the Holocaust, international criminal law has been slower to advance; after the Nuremberg trials and the Japanese war crime trials it was over forty years until the next such international criminal procedures, in ]. In 2002, the ] was set up. | |||
Although the Holocaust is often cited as the canonical example of genocide, none of its perpetrators were tried for that crime, as the crime of genocide had not been established at that stage. The first-ever convictions for genocide under the 1948 Convention were handed down on ], ], when the ] found ], the former mayor of a small town in ], guilty of nine counts of genocide committed during the ] in 1994. No state has as yet been convicted of genocide. Only one inter-state case has so far been brought before the ], that of '']'', which has yet to be resolved. | |||
==Survivors' welfare== | |||
], of the nearly 400,000 Holocaust survivors residing in Israel, 40% live below the ], increasing significantly since 1999 and resulting in heated and dramatic protests on the part of survivors against the ] and related agencies. The average rate of ] among survivors is nearly two and a half times that of the national average. The average cases of ] among survivors are nine times higher than the national average, which is attributed to the conditions of starvation experienced by survivors as well as extreme stress.<ref>, '']'', December 29, 2005. </ref><ref>, In ''Re Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation (Swiss Banks)'', September 11, 2000.</ref> | |||
==Impact on culture== | |||
===Holocaust theology=== | |||
{{main|Holocaust theology}} | |||
On account of the magnitude of the Holocaust, many theologians have re-examined the classical theological views on God's goodness and actions in the world.<ref>{{cite book|editor=Cohn-Sherbok, Dan|isbn=0-8147-1619-9|title=Holocaust Theology: A Reader|publisher=New York University Press}}</ref> Some believers and ] question whether people can still have any faith in God after the Holocaust, and some of the theological responses to these questions are explored in Holocaust theology. In it orthodox Jews state their reasons for why they believe the Holocaust happened and, to a more extreme degree, why they felt the Jews of Europe deserved to die.<ref>An example of such can be found in {{cite web|url=http://groups.msn.com/JudaismFAQs/isgodamassmurdered.msnw|title=Is God a mass murderer? Rejecting the Haredi theodicy|last=Lamm|first=Rabbi Dr. Norman|accessdate=2007-01-23}}</ref> | |||
===Art and literature=== | |||
{{main|The Holocaust in art and literature}} | |||
German philosopher ] famously commented that "writing poetry after ] is barbaric,"<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=18521|title=Poetry After Auschwitz: Is John Barth Relevant Anymore?}}</ref> and the Holocaust has indeed had a profound impact on art and literature, for both Jews and non-Jews. Some of the more famous works are by Holocaust survivors or victims, such as ], ], ] and ], but there is a substantial body of literature and art in many languages. Indeed, ] wrote his poem ''Todesfuge''<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.artofeurope.com/celan/cel8.htm|title=Fugue of Death|first=Paul|last=Celan|accessdate=2007-01-23}}</ref> as a direct response to Adorno's dictum. | |||
The Holocaust has also been the subject of many films, including Oscar winners '']'' and '']''. With the aging population of Holocaust survivors, there has been increasing attention in recent years to preserving the memory of the Holocaust. The result has included extensive efforts to document their stories, including the Survivors of the Shoah project and Four Seasons Documentary,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.fourseasonsdocumentary.com|title=Four Seasons}}</ref> as well as ], including ] in Israel and the ]. The historic tale of the Danish Jews fleeing to Sweden by fishing boat is recounted in an award-winning American children's novel.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.amazon.com/Number-Stars-Laurel-Leaf-Books/dp/0440227534|title=Number the Stars}}</ref> | |||
===Freemasonry=== | |||
After World War II, the blue forget-me-not<ref> Accessed February 6, 2006.</ref> flower was used again as a masonic emblem at the 1948, first Annual Convention of the United Grand Lodges of Germany, Ancient Free & Accepted Masons. The badge is now worn in the coat lapel by freemasons around the world to remember all those that have suffered in the name of Freemasonry, and specifically those during the ].<ref> Accessed ] ].</ref><ref> Accessed ] ].</ref> | |||
===Holocaust Memorial Days=== | |||
{{main|Yom HaShoah}} | |||
In a unanimous vote, the ] General Assembly voted on ], ], to designate ] as the "International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust." January 27, 1945 is the day that the former Nazi concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated. Even before the UN vote, January 27 was already observed as ] since 2001, as well as other countries, including Sweden, Italy, Germany, Finland, Denmark and Estonia.<ref>{{cite book |last= Harran|first=Marilyn |title=The Holocaust Chronicles, A History in Words and Pictures |year=2000 |publisher=Louis Weber |pages=Pg.697|isbn=0-7853-2963-3}}</ref> Israel observes ], the "Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust and the courage of the Jewish people ," on the 27th day of the Hebrew month of ], which generally falls in April.<ref>{{cite book |last= Harran|first=Marilyn |title=The Holocaust Chronicles, A History in Words and Pictures |year=2000 |publisher=Louis Weber |pages=Pg.697|isbn=0-7853-2963-3}}</ref> This memorial day is also commonly observed by ].<ref>{{cite book |last= Harran|first=Marilyn |title=The Holocaust Chronicles, A History in Words and Pictures |year=2000 |publisher=Louis Weber |pages=Pg.697|isbn=0-7853-2963-3}}</ref> | |||
==Holocaust denial== | |||
{{main|Holocaust denial}} | |||
Holocaust denial is the assertion that the Holocaust did not occur, or that far fewer than six million Jews were killed by the Nazis; that there never was a centrally planned attempt to exterminate the Jews; or that there were no mass killings at the extermination camps. Those who hold this position often claim that Jews or ]s know that the Holocaust did not occur and are engaged in a conspiracy to further their political agenda. As the Holocaust is considered by historians to be one of the most documented events in recent history, these views are not accepted as credible, with organizations such as the ] stating that Holocaust denial is "at best, a form of academic fraud."<ref>Donald L. Niewyk, ed. ''The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation'', D.C. Heath and Company, 1992.</ref> Public espousal of Holocaust denial is a crime in ten European countries, including France, Poland, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Romania, and Germany. <!--and what are the other four?--> | |||
Holocaust deniers often prefer to be called Holocaust "revisionists." Most scholars contend that the term is misleading. ] is a mainstream part of the study of ]; it is the reexamination of accepted history, with an eye towards updating it. In contrast, ] may willfully misuse historical records; as ] writes: "Revisionists depart from the conclusion that the Holocaust did not occur and work backwards through the facts to adapt them to that preordained conclusion. Put another way, they reverse the proper methodology ... thus turning the proper historical method of investigation and analysis on its head."<ref>Gord McFee, "," The Holocaust History Project (accessed June 8, 2005).</ref> ] summarized that: "No reputable historian questions the reality of the Holocaust, and those promoting Holocaust denial are overwhelmingly anti-Semites and/or neo-Nazis." | |||
Holocaust denial has become popular among ] opponents of ]. The doctoral dissertation of ], President of the ] since 2005, raised doubts that gas chambers were used for the extermination of Jews and suggested that the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust was less than a million.<ref> By Brynn Malone (History News Network)</ref><ref> by Yael Yehoshua (]) April 29, 2003</ref> Abbas has not espoused this position since his appointment as Palestinian Prime Minister in 2003, and has denied being a Holocaust denier. In late 2005 ]ian president ] described the Holocaust as "the myth of the Jews' massacre."<ref> ] 14 December, 2005 </ref><ref>Tom Smith, "The Polls--A Review: The Holocaust Denial Controversy." Public Opinion Quarterly 59 (Summer 1995): 269-295.</ref> An underlying reason for the increase of this view among ] critics is that the legitimacy of Israel as a state is seen as associated to the persecution of Jews over the centuries, and more particularly, to the Nazi Holocaust. Therefore, challenging the very existence of the Holocaust would also question the legitimacy of the creation of the State of Israel. | |||
==See also== | |||
{{sisterlinks|The Holocaust}} | |||
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* {{cite journal |last1=Burzlaff |first1=Jan |title=Confronting the Communal Grave: a Reassessment of Social Relations During the Holocaust in Eastern Europe |journal=The Historical Journal |date=2020 |volume=63 |issue=4 |pages=1054–1077 |doi=10.1017/S0018246X19000566 |s2cid=<!-- --> }} | |||
* {{cite journal |last1=Láníček |first1=Jan |author-link=Jan Láníček|title=Governments-in-exile and the Jews during and after the Second World War |journal=] |date=2012 |volume=18 |issue=2–3 |pages=73–94 |doi=10.1080/17504902.2012.11087307 |s2cid=<!-- --> }} | |||
* {{cite journal |last1=Lehnstaedt |first1=Stephan |author1-link=Stephan Lehnstaedt |title=Aktion Reinhardt – Sources, Research and Commemoration in the last 30 years |journal=Témoigner. Entre histoire et mémoire. Revue pluridisciplinaire de la Fondation Auschwitz |date=2021 |issue=132 |pages=62–70 |doi=10.4000/temoigner.9886 |s2cid=256347577 |url=https://journals.openedition.org/temoigner/9886 |language=en |issn=2031-4183 |doi-access=free}} | |||
* {{cite journal |last1=Sutcliffe |first1=Adam |title=Whose Feelings Matter? Holocaust Memory, Empathy, and Redemptive Anti-Antisemitism |journal=] |date=2022 |volume=26 |issue=2 |pages=222–242 |doi=10.1080/14623528.2022.2160533 |s2cid=<!-- --> |doi-access=free}} | |||
* {{cite journal |last1=Welch |first1=Susan |title=Gender and Selection During the Holocaust: Transports of Western European Jews to the East |journal=] |date=2020 |volume=22 |issue=4 |pages=459–478 |doi=10.1080/14623528.2020.1764743 |s2cid=<!-- --> |url=https://scholarsphere.psu.edu/resources/68efc96d-e75e-48d2-a5c2-1aba2e1cb28e}} | |||
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Revision as of 16:06, 20 December 2024
Genocide of European Jews by Nazi Germany This article is about the state-sponsored genocide of European Jews during World War II. For all peoples persecuted during this era, see Holocaust victims. "Holocaust" and "Shoah" redirect here. For other uses, see Holocaust (disambiguation) and Shoah (disambiguation).
The Holocaust | |
---|---|
Part of World War II | |
Jews arriving at Auschwitz II in German-occupied Poland, May 1944. Most were selected to go to the gas chambers. | |
Location | Europe, primarily German-occupied Poland and the Soviet Union |
Date | 1941–1945 |
Attack type | Genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass murder, mass shooting, death marches, poison gas, hate crime |
Deaths | Around 6 million Jews |
Perpetrators | Nazi Germany along with its collaborators and allies |
The Holocaust (/ˈhɒləkɔːst/ , US also /ˈhoʊlə-/) was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Chełmno in occupied Poland. Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and prisoners of war (POWs); the term Holocaust is sometimes used to refer to the persecution of these other groups.
The Nazis developed their ideology based on racism and pursuit of "living space", and seized power in early 1933. Meant to force all German Jews to emigrate, regardless of means, the regime passed anti-Jewish laws, encouraged harassment, and orchestrated a nationwide pogrom in November 1938. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, occupation authorities began to establish ghettos to segregate Jews. Following the June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot by German forces and local collaborators.
Later in 1941 or early 1942, the highest levels of the German government decided to murder all Jews in Europe. Victims were deported by rail to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, most were killed with poison gas. Other Jews continued to be employed in forced labor camps where many died from starvation, abuse, exhaustion, or being used as test subjects in deadly medical experiments. Although many Jews tried to escape, surviving in hiding was difficult due to factors such as the lack of money to pay helpers and the risk of denunciation. The property, homes, and jobs belonging to murdered Jews were redistributed to the German occupiers and other non-Jews. Although the majority of Holocaust victims died in 1942, the killing continued at a lower rate until the end of the war in May 1945.
Many Jewish survivors emigrated outside of Europe after the war. A few Holocaust perpetrators faced criminal trials. Billions of dollars in reparations have been paid, although falling short of the Jews' losses. The Holocaust has also been commemorated in museums, memorials, and culture. It has become central to Western historical consciousness as a symbol of the ultimate human evil.
Terminology and scope
Main article: Names of the HolocaustThe term Holocaust, derived from a Greek word meaning 'burnt offering', has become the most common word used to describe the Nazi extermination of Jews in English and many other languages. The term Holocaust is sometimes used to refer to the persecution of other groups that the Nazis targeted, especially those targeted on a biological basis, in particular the Roma and Sinti, as well as Soviet prisoners of war and Polish and Soviet civilians. All of these groups, however, were targeted for different reasons. By the 1970s, the adjective Jewish was dropped as redundant and Holocaust, now capitalized, became the default term for the destruction of European Jews. The Hebrew word Shoah ('catastrophic destruction') exclusively refers to Jewish victims. The perpetrators used the phrase "Final Solution" as a euphemism for their genocide of Jews.
Background
Jews have lived in Europe for more than two thousand years. Throughout the Middle Ages in Europe, Jews were subjected to antisemitism based on Christian theology, which blamed them for killing Jesus. In the nineteenth century many European countries granted full citizenship rights to Jews in hopes that they would assimilate. By the early twentieth century, most Jews in central and western Europe were well integrated into society, while in eastern Europe, where emancipation had arrived later, many Jews continued to live in small towns, spoke Yiddish, and practiced Orthodox Judaism. Political antisemitism positing the existence of a Jewish question and usually an international Jewish conspiracy emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth century due to the rise of nationalism in Europe and industrialization that increased economic conflicts between Jews and non-Jews. Some scientists began to categorize humans into different races and argued that there was a life or death struggle between them. Many racists argued that Jews were a separate racial group alien to Europe.
The turn of the twentieth century saw a major effort to establish a German colonial empire overseas, leading to the Herero and Nama genocide and subsequent racial apartheid regime in South West Africa. World War I (1914–1918) intensified nationalist and racist sentiments in Germany and other European countries. Jews in eastern Europe were targeted by widespread pogroms. Germany had two million war dead and lost a substantial territory; opposition to the postwar settlement united Germans across the political spectrum. The military promoted the untrue but compelling idea that, rather than being defeated on the battlefield, Germany had been stabbed in the back by socialists and Jews.
The Nazi Party was founded in the wake of the war, and its ideology is often cited as the main factor explaining the Holocaust. From the beginning, the Nazis—not unlike other nation-states in Europe—dreamed of a world without Jews, whom they identified as "the embodiment of everything that was wrong with modernity". The Nazis defined the German nation as a racial community unbounded by Germany's physical borders and sought to purge it of racially foreign and socially deficient elements. The Nazi Party and its leader, Adolf Hitler, were also obsessed with reversing Germany's territorial losses and acquiring additional Lebensraum (living space) in Eastern Europe for colonization. These ideas appealed to many Germans. The Nazis promised to protect European civilization from the Soviet threat. Hitler believed that Jews controlled the Soviet Union, as well as the Western powers, and were plotting to destroy Germany.
Rise of Nazi Germany
Amidst a worldwide economic depression and political fragmentation, the Nazi Party rapidly increased its support, reaching a high of 37 percent in mid-1932 elections, by campaigning on issues such as anticommunism and economic recovery. Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933 in a backroom deal supported by right-wing politicians. Within months, all other political parties were banned, the regime seized control of the media, tens of thousands of political opponents—especially communists—were arrested, and a system of camps for extrajudicial imprisonment was set up. The Nazi regime cracked down on crime and social outsiders—such as Roma and Sinti, homosexual men, and those perceived as workshy—through a variety of measures, including imprisonment in concentration camps. The Nazis forcibly sterilized 400,000 people and subjected others to forced abortions for real or supposed hereditary illnesses.
Although the Nazis sought to control every aspect of public and private life, Nazi repression was directed almost entirely against groups perceived as outside the national community. Most Germans had little to fear provided they did not oppose the new regime. The new regime built popular support through economic growth, which partly occurred through state-led measures such as rearmament. The annexations of Austria (1938), Sudetenland (1938), and Bohemia and Moravia (1939) also increased the Nazis' popular support. Germans were inundated with propaganda both against Jews and other groups targeted by the Nazis.
Persecution of Jews
Main article: The Holocaust in Germany Further information: Anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Nazi GermanyThe roughly 500,000 German Jews made up less than 1 percent of the country's population in 1933. They were wealthier on average than other Germans and largely assimilated, although a minority were recent immigrants from eastern Europe. Various German government agencies, Nazi Party organizations, and local authorities instituted about 1,500 anti-Jewish laws. In 1933, Jews were banned or restricted from several professions and the civil service. After hounding the German Jews out of public life by the end of 1934, the regime passed the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. The laws reserved full citizenship rights for those of "German or related blood", restricted Jews' economic activity, and criminalized new marriages and sexual relationships between Jews and non-Jewish Germans. Jews were defined as those with three or four Jewish grandparents; many of those with partial Jewish descent were classified as Mischlinge, with varying rights. The regime also sought to segregate Jews with a view to their ultimate disappearance from the country. Jewish students were gradually forced out of the school system. Some municipalities enacted restrictions governing where Jews were allowed to live or conduct business. In 1938 and 1939, Jews were barred from additional occupations, and their businesses were expropriated to force them out of the economy.
Anti-Jewish violence, largely locally organized by members of Nazi Party institutions, took primarily non-lethal forms from 1933 to 1939. Jewish stores, especially in rural areas, were often boycotted or vandalized. As a result of local and popular pressure, many small towns became entirely free of Jews and as many as a third of Jewish businesses may have been forced to close. Anti-Jewish violence was even worse in areas annexed by Nazi Germany. On 9–10 November 1938, the Nazis organized Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), a nationwide pogrom. Over 7,500 Jewish shops (out of 9,000) were looted, more than 1,000 synagogues were damaged or destroyed, at least 90 Jews were murdered, and as many as 30,000 Jewish men were arrested, although many were released within weeks. German Jews were levied a special tax that raised more than 1 billion Reichsmarks (RM).
The Nazi government wanted to force all Jews to leave Germany. By the end of 1939, most Jews who could emigrate had already done so; those who remained behind were disproportionately elderly, poor, or female and could not obtain a visa. The plurality, around 110,000, left for the United States, while smaller numbers emigrated to South America, Shanghai, Mandatory Palestine, and South Africa. Germany collected emigration taxes of nearly 1 billion RM, mostly from Jews. The policy of forced emigration continued into 1940.
Besides Germany, a significant number of other European countries abandoned democracy for some kind of authoritarian or fascist rule. Many countries, including Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia, passed antisemitic legislation in the 1930s and 1940s. In October 1938, Germany deported many Polish Jews in response to a Polish law that enabled the revocation of citizenship for Polish Jews living abroad.
Start of World War II
The German Wehrmacht (armed forces) invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, triggering declarations of war from the United Kingdom and France. During the five weeks of fighting, as many as 16,000 civilians, hostages, and prisoners of war may have been shot by the German invaders; there was also a great deal of looting. Special units known as Einsatzgruppen followed the army to eliminate any possible resistance. Around 50,000 Polish and Polish Jewish leaders and intellectuals were arrested or executed. The Auschwitz concentration camp was established to hold those members of the Polish intelligentsia not killed in the purges. Around 400,000 Poles were expelled from the Wartheland in western Poland to the General Governorate occupation zone from 1939 to 1941, and the area was resettled by ethnic Germans from eastern Europe.
The rest of Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union, which invaded Poland from the east on 17 September pursuant to the German–Soviet pact. The Soviet Union deported hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens to the Soviet interior, including as many as 260,000 Jews who largely survived the war. Although most Jews were not communists, some accepted positions in the Soviet administration, contributing to a pre-existing perception among many non-Jews that Soviet rule was a Jewish conspiracy. In 1940, Germany invaded much of western Europe including the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Denmark and Norway. In 1941, Germany invaded Yugoslavia and Greece. Some of these new holdings were fully or partially annexed into Germany while others were placed under civilian or military rule.
The war provided cover for "Aktion T4", the murder of around 70,000 institutionalized Germans with mental or physical disabilities at specialized killing centers using poison gas. The victims included all 4,000 to 5,000 institutionalized Jews. Despite efforts to maintain secrecy, knowledge of the killings leaked out and Hitler ordered a halt to the centralized killing program in August 1941. Decentralized killings via denial of medical care, starvation, and poisoning caused an additional 120,000 deaths by the end of the war. Many of the same personnel and technologies were later used for the mass murder of Jews.
Ghettoization and resettlement
Further information: The Holocaust in PolandGermany gained control of 1.7 million Jews in Poland. The Nazis tried to concentrate Jews in the Lublin District of the General Governorate. 45,000 Jews were deported by November and left to fend for themselves, causing many deaths. Deportations stopped in early 1940 due to the opposition of Hans Frank, the leader of the General Governorate, who did not want his fiefdom to become a dumping ground for unwanted Jews. After the conquest of France, the Nazis considered deporting Jews to French Madagascar, but this proved impossible. The Nazis planned that harsh conditions in these areas would kill many Jews. In September 1939, around 7,000 Jews were killed, alongside thousands of Poles, however, they were not systematically targeted as they would be later, and open mass killings would subside until June of 1941.
During the invasion, synagogues were burned and thousands of Jews fled or were expelled into the Soviet occupation zone. Various anti-Jewish regulations were soon issued. In October 1939, adult Jews in the General Governorate were required to perform forced labor. In November 1939 they were ordered to wear white armbands. Laws decreed the seizure of most Jewish property and the takeover of Jewish-owned businesses. When Jews were forced into ghettos, they lost their homes and belongings.
The first Nazi ghettos were established in the Wartheland and General Governorate in 1939 and 1940 on the initiative of local German administrators. The largest ghettos, such as Warsaw and Łódź, were established in existing residential neighborhoods and closed by fences or walls. In many smaller ghettos, Jews were forced into poor neighborhoods but with no fence. Forced labor programs provided subsistence to many ghetto inhabitants, and in some cases protected them from deportation. Workshops and factories were operated inside some ghettos, while in other cases Jews left the ghetto to work outside it. Because the ghettos were not segregated by sex some family life continued. A Jewish community leadership (Judenrat) exercised some authority and tried to sustain the Jewish community while following German demands. As a survival strategy, many tried to make the ghettos useful to the occupiers as a labor reserve. Jews in western Europe were not forced into ghettos but faced discriminatory laws and confiscation of property.
Rape and sexual exploitation of Jewish and non-Jewish women in eastern Europe was common.
Invasion of the Soviet Union
Germany and its allies Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Italy invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. Although the war was launched more for strategic than ideological reasons, what Hitler saw as an apocalyptic battle against the forces of Jewish Bolshevism was to be carried out as a war of extermination with complete disregard for the laws and customs of war. A quick victory was expected and was planned to be followed by a massive demographic engineering project to remove 31 million people and replace them with German settlers. To increase the speed of conquest the Germans planned to feed their army by looting, exporting additional food to Germany, and to terrorize the local inhabitants with preventative killings. The Germans foresaw that the invasion would cause a food shortfall and planned the mass starvation of Soviet cities and some rural areas. Although the starvation policy was less successful than planners hoped, the residents of some cities, particularly in Ukraine, and besieged Leningrad, as well as the Jewish ghettos, endured human-made famine, during which millions of people died of starvation.
By mid-June 1941, about 30,000 Jews had died, 20,000 of whom had starved to death in the ghettos.
Soviet prisoners of war in the custody of the German Army were intended to die in large numbers. Sixty percent—3.3 million people—died, primarily of starvation, making them the second largest group of victims of Nazi mass killing after European Jews. Jewish prisoners of war and commissars were systematically executed. About a million civilians were killed by the Nazis during anti-partisan warfare, including more than 300,000 in Belarus. From 1942 onwards, the Germans and their allies targeted villages suspected of supporting the partisans, burning them and killing or expelling their inhabitants. During these operations, nearby small ghettos were liquidated and their inhabitants shot. By 1943, anti-partisan operations aimed for the depopulation of large areas of Belarus. Jews and those unfit for work were typically shot on the spot with others deported. Although most of those killed were not Jews, anti-partisan warfare often led to the deaths of Jews.
Mass shootings of Jews
Further information: The Holocaust in the Soviet Union and The Holocaust in RomaniaThe systematic murder of Jews began in the Soviet Union in 1941. During the invasion, many Jews were conscripted into the Red Army. Out of 10 or 15 million Soviet civilians who fled eastwards to the Soviet interior, 1.6 million were Jews. Local inhabitants killed as many as 50,000 Jews in pogroms in Latvia, Lithuania, eastern Poland, Ukraine, and the Romanian borderlands. Although German forces tried to incite pogroms, their role in causing violence is controversial. Romanian soldiers killed tens of thousands of Jews from Odessa by April 1942.
Prior to the invasion, the Einsatzgruppen were reorganized in preparation for mass killings and instructed to shoot Soviet officials and Jewish state and party employees. The shootings were justified on the basis of Jews' supposed central role in supporting the communist system, but it was not initially envisioned to kill all Soviet Jews. The occupiers relied on locals to identify Jews to be targeted. The first German mass killings targeted adult male Jews who had worked as civil servants or in jobs requiring education. Tens of thousands were shot by the end of July. The vast majority of civilian victims were Jews. In July and August Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS (Schutzstaffel), made several visits to the death squads' zones of operation, relaying orders to kill more Jews. At this time, the killers began to murder Jewish women and children too. Executions peaked at 40,000 a month in Lithuania in August and September and in October and November reached their height in Belarus.
The executions often took place a few kilometers from a town. Victims were rounded up and marched to the execution site, forced to undress, and shot into previously dug pits. The favored technique was a shot in the back of the neck with a single bullet. In the chaos, many victims were not killed by the gunfire but instead buried alive. Typically, the pits would be guarded after the execution but sometimes a few victims managed to escape afterwards. Executions were public spectacles and the victims' property was looted both by the occupiers and local inhabitants. Around 200 ghettos were established in the occupied Soviet Union, with many existing only briefly before their inhabitants were executed. A few large ghettos such as Vilna, Kovno, Riga, Białystok, and Lwów lasted into 1943 because they became centers of production.
Victims of mass shootings included Jews deported from elsewhere. Besides Germany, Romania killed the largest number of Jews. Romania deported about 154,000–170,000 Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina to ghettos in Transnistria from 1941 to 1943. Jews from Transnistria were also imprisoned in these ghettos, where the total death toll may have reached 160,000. Hungary expelled thousands of Carpathian Ruthenian and foreign Jews in 1941, who were shortly thereafter shot in Ukraine. At the beginning of September, all German Jews were required to wear a yellow star, and in October, Hitler decided to deport them to the east and ban emigration. Between mid-October and the end of 1941, 42,000 Jews from Germany and its annexed territories and 5,000 Romani people from Austria were deported to Łódź, Kovno, Riga, and Minsk. In late November, 5,000 German Jews were shot outside of Kovno and another 1,000 near Riga, but Himmler ordered an end to such massacres and some in the senior Nazi leadership voiced doubts about killing German Jews. Executions of German Jews in the Baltics resumed in early 1942.
After the expansion of killings to target the entire Soviet Jewish population, the 3,000 men of the Einsatzgruppen proved insufficient and Himmler mobilized 21 battalions of Order Police to assist them. In addition, Wehrmacht soldiers, Waffen-SS brigades, and local auxiliaries shot many Jews. By the end of 1941, more than 80 percent of the Jews in central Ukraine, eastern Belarus, Russia, Latvia, and Lithuania had been shot, but less than 25 percent of those living farther west where 900,000 remained alive. By the end of the war, around 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot and as many as 225,000 Roma. The murderers found the executions distressing and logistically inconvenient, which influenced the decision to switch to other methods of killing.
Systematic deportations across Europe
Most historians agree that Hitler issued an explicit order to kill all Jews across Europe, but there is disagreement as to when. Some historians cite inflammatory statements by Hitler and other Nazi leaders as well as the concurrent mass shootings of Serbian Jews, plans for extermination camps in Poland, and the beginning of the deportation of German Jews as indicative of the final decision having been made before December 1941. Others argue that these policies were initiatives by local leaders and that the final decision was made later. On 5 December 1941, the Soviet Union launched its first major counteroffensive. On 11 December, Hitler declared war on the United States after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The next day, he told leading Nazi party officials, referring to his 1939 prophecy, "The world war is here; the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence."
It took the Nazis several months after this to organize a continent-wide genocide. Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), convened the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942. This high-level meeting was intended to coordinate anti-Jewish policy. The majority of Holocaust killings were carried out in 1942, with it being the peak of the genocide, as over 3 million Jews were murdered, with 20 or 25 percent of Holocaust victims dying before early 1942 and the same number surviving by the end of the year.
Extermination camps
Main article: Extermination campGas vans developed from those used to kill mental patients since 1939 were assigned to the Einsatzgruppen and first used in November 1941; victims were forced into the van and killed with engine exhaust. The first extermination camp was Chełmno in the Wartheland, established on the initiative of the local civil administrator Arthur Greiser with Himmler's approval; it began operations in December 1941 using gas vans. In October 1941, Higher SS and Police Leader of Lublin Odilo Globocnik began work planning Belzec—the first purpose-built extermination camp to feature stationary gas chambers using carbon monoxide based on the previous Aktion T4 programme—amid increasing talk among German administrators in Poland of large-scale murder of Jews in the General Governorate. In late 1941 in East Upper Silesia, Jews in forced-labor camps operated by the Schmelt Organization deemed "unfit for work" began to be sent in groups to Auschwitz where they were murdered. In early 1942, Zyklon B became the preferred killing method in extermination camps after gassing experiments were conducted on Russian POWs in late August 1941.
The camps were located on rail lines to make it easier to transport Jews to their deaths, but in remote places to avoid notice. The stench caused by mass killing operations was noticeable to anyone nearby. Except in the deportations from western and central Europe, people were typically deported to the camps in overcrowded cattle cars. As many as 150 people were forced into a single boxcar. Many died en route, partly because of the low priority accorded to these transports. Shortage of rail transport sometimes led to postponement or cancellation of deportations. Upon arrival, the victims were robbed of their remaining possessions, forced to undress, had their hair cut, and were chased into the gas chamber. Death from the gas was agonizing and could take as long as 30 minutes. The gas chambers were primitive and sometimes malfunctioned. Some prisoners were shot because the gas chambers were not functioning. At other extermination camps, nearly everyone on a transport was killed on arrival, but at Auschwitz around 20–25 percent were separated out for labor, although many of these prisoners died later on through starvation, mass shooting, torture, and medical experiments.
Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka reported a combined revenue of RM 178.7 million from belongings stolen from their victims, far exceeding costs. Combined, the camps required the labor of less than 3,000 Jewish prisoners, 1,000 Trawniki men (largely Ukrainian auxiliaries), and very few German guards. About half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust died by poison gas. Thousands of Romani people were also murdered in the extermination camps. Prisoner uprisings at Treblinka and Sobibor meant that these camps were shut down earlier than envisioned.
Camp | Location | Number of Jews killed | Killing technology | Planning began | Mass gassing duration |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Chełmno | Wartheland | 150,000 | Gas vans | July 1941 | 8 December 1941 – April 1943 and April–July 1944 |
Belzec | Lublin District | 440,823–596,200 | Stationary gas chamber, engine exhaust | October 1941 | 17 March 1942 – December 1942 |
Sobibor | Lublin District | 170,618–238,900 | Stationary gas chamber, engine exhaust | Late 1941 or March 1942 | May 1942 – October 1942 |
Treblinka | Warsaw District | 780,863–951,800 | Stationary gas chamber, engine exhaust | April 1942 | 23 July 1942 – October 1943 |
Auschwitz II–Birkenau | East Upper Silesia | 900,000–1,000,000 | Stationary gas chamber, hydrogen cyanide | September 1941 (built as POW camp) |
February 1942 – October 1944 |
Liquidation of the ghettos in Poland
Further information: Operation ReinhardPlans to kill most of the Jews in the General Governorate were affected by various goals of the SS, military, and civil administration to reduce the amount of food consumed by Jews, enable a slight increase in rations to non-Jewish Poles, and combat the black market. In March 1942, killings began in Belzec, targeting Jews from Lublin who were not capable of work. This action reportedly reduced the black market and was deemed a success to be replicated elsewhere. By mid-1942, Nazi leaders decided to allow only 300,000 Jews to survive in the General Governorate by the end of the year for forced labor; for the most part, only those working in armaments production were spared. The majority of ghettos were liquidated in mass executions nearby, especially if they were not near a train station. Larger ghettos were more commonly liquidated during multiple deportations to extermination camps. During this campaign, 1.5 million Polish Jews were murdered in the largest killing operation of the Holocaust.
In order to reduce resistance, the ghetto would be raided without warning, usually in the early morning, and the extent of the operation would be concealed as long as possible. Trawniki men would cordon off the ghetto while the Order Police and Security Police carried out the action. In addition to local non-Jewish collaborators, the Jewish councils and Jewish ghetto police were often ordered to assist with liquidation actions, although these Jews were in most cases murdered later. Chaotic, capriciously executed selections determined who would be loaded onto the trains. Many Jews were shot during the action, often leaving ghettos strewn with corpses. Jewish forced laborers had to clean it up and collect any valuables from the victims.
The Warsaw Ghetto was cleared between 22 July and 12 September. Of the original population of 350,000 Jews, 250,000 were killed at Treblinka, 11,000 were deported to labor camps, 10,000 were shot in the ghetto, 35,000 were allowed to remain in the ghetto after a final selection, and around 20,000 or 25,000 managed to hide in the ghetto. Misdirection efforts convinced many Jews that they could avoid deportation until it was too late. During a six-week period beginning in August, 300,000 Jews from the Radom District were sent to Treblinka.
At the same time as the mass killing of Jews in the General Governorate, Jews who were in ghettos to the west and east were targeted. Tens of thousands of Jews were deported from ghettos in the Warthegau and East Upper Silesia to Chełmno and Auschwitz. 300,000 Jews—largely skilled laborers—were shot in Volhynia, Podolia, and southwestern Belarus. Deportations and mass executions in the Bialystok District and Galicia killed many Jews. Although there was practically no resistance in the General Governorate in 1942, some Soviet Jews improvised weapons, attacked those attempting to liquidate the ghetto, and set it on fire. These ghetto uprisings were only undertaken when the inhabitants began to believe that their death was certain. In 1943, larger uprisings in Warsaw, Białystok, and Glubokoje necessitated the use of heavy weapons. The uprising in Warsaw prompted the Nazi leadership to liquidate additional ghettos and labor camps in German-occupied Poland with their inhabitants massacred, such as the Wola Massacre, or deported to extermination camps for fear of additional Jewish resistance developing. Nevertheless, in early 1944, more than 70,000 Jews were performing forced labor in the General Governorate.
Deportations from elsewhere
Unlike the killing areas in the east, the deportation from elsewhere in Europe was centrally organized from Berlin, although it depended on the outcome of negotiations with allied governments and popular responses to deportation. Beginning in late 1941, local administrators responded to the deportation of Jews to their area by massacring local Jews in order to free up space in ghettos for the deportees. If the deported Jews did not die of harsh conditions, they were killed later in extermination camps. Jews deported to Auschwitz were initially entered into the camp; the practice of conducting selections and murdering many prisoners upon arrival began in July 1942. In May and June, German and Slovak Jews deported to Lublin began to be sent directly to extermination camps.
In Western Europe, almost all Jewish deaths occurred after deportation. The occupiers often relied on local policemen to arrest Jews, limiting the number who were deported. In 1942, nearly 100,000 Jews were deported from Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. Only 25 percent of the Jews in France were killed; most of them were either non-citizens or recent immigrants. Si Kaddour Benghabrit and Abdelkader Mesli saved hundreds of Jews by hiding them in the basements of the Grand Mosque of Paris and other resistance efforts in France. The death rate in the Netherlands was higher than neighboring countries, which scholars have attributed to difficulty in hiding or increased collaboration of the Dutch police.
The German government sought the deportation of Jews from allied countries. The first to hand over its Jewish population was Slovakia, which arrested and deported about 58,000 Jews to Poland from March to October 1942. The Independent State of Croatia had already shot or killed in concentration camps the majority of its Jewish population (along with a larger number of Serbs), and later deported several thousand Jews in 1942 and 1943. Bulgaria deported 11,000 Jews from Bulgarian-occupied Greece and Yugoslavia, who were murdered at Treblinka, but declined to allow the deportation of Jews from its prewar territory. Romania and Hungary did not send any Jews, which were the largest surviving populations after 1942. Prior to the German occupation of Italy in September 1943, there were no serious attempt to deport Italian Jews, and Italy refused to allow the deportation of Jews in many Italian-occupied areas. Nazi Germany did not attempt the destruction of the Finnish Jews and the North African Jews living under French or Italian rule.
Perpetrators and beneficiaries
Further information: Responsibility for the HolocaustAn estimated 200,000 to 250,000 Germans were directly involved in killing Jews, and if one includes all those involved in the organization of extermination, the number rises to 500,000. Genocide required the active and tacit consent of millions of Germans and non-Germans. The motivation of Holocaust perpetrators varied and has led to historiographical debate. Studies of the SS officials who organized the Holocaust have found that most had strong ideological commitment to Nazism. In addition to ideological factors, many perpetrators were motivated by the prospect of material gain and social advancement. German SS, police, and regular army units rarely had trouble finding enough men to shoot Jewish civilians, even though punishment for refusal was absent or light.
Non-German perpetrators and collaborators included Dutch, French, and Polish policemen, Romanian soldiers, foreign SS and police auxiliaries, Ukrainian Insurgent Army partisans, and some civilians. Some were coerced into committing violence against Jews, but others killed for entertainment, material rewards, the possibility of better treatment from the occupiers, or ideological motivations such as nationalism and anti-communism. According to historian Christian Gerlach, non-Germans "not under German command" caused 5 to 6 percent of the Jewish deaths, and their involvement was crucial in other ways.
Millions of Germans and others benefited from the genocide. Corruption was rampant in the SS despite the proceeds of the Holocaust being designated as state property. Different German state agencies vied to receive property stolen from Jews murdered at the death camps. Many workers were able to obtain better jobs vacated by murdered Jews. Businessmen benefitted from eliminating their Jewish competitors or taking over Jewish-owned businesses. Others took over housing and possessions that had belonged to Jews. Some Poles living near the extermination camps later dug up human remains in search of valuables. The property of deported Jews was also appropriated by Germany's allies and collaborating governments. Even puppet states such as Vichy France and Norway were able to successfully lay claim to Jewish property. In the decades after the war, Swiss banks became notorious for harboring gold deposited by Nazis who had stolen it during the Holocaust, as well as profiting from unclaimed deposits made by Holocaust victims.
Forced labor
Further information: Forced labor in Nazi GermanyBeginning in 1938—especially in Germany and its annexed territories—many Jews were drafted into forced-labor camps and segregated work details. These camps were often of a temporary nature and typically overseen by civilian authorities. Initially, mortality did not increase dramatically. After mid-1941, conditions for Jewish forced laborers drastically worsened and death rates increased; even private companies deliberately subjected workers to murderous conditions. Beginning in 1941 and increasingly as time went on, Jews capable of employment were separated from others—who were usually killed. They were typically employed in non-skilled jobs and could be replaced easily if non-Jewish workers were available, but those in skilled positions had a higher chance of survival. Although conditions varied widely between camps, Jewish forced laborers were typically treated worse than non-Jewish prisoners and suffered much higher mortality rates.
In mid-1943, Himmler sought to bring surviving Jewish forced laborers under the control of the SS in the concentration camp system. Some of the forced-labor camps for Jews and some ghettos, such as Kovno, were designated concentration camps, while others were dissolved and surviving prisoners sent to a concentration camp. Despite many deaths, as many as 200,000 Jews survived the war inside the concentration camps. Although most Holocaust victims were never imprisoned in a concentration camp, the image of these camps is a popular symbol of the Holocaust.
Including the Soviet prisoners of war, 13 million people were brought to Germany for forced labor. The largest nationalities were Soviet and Polish and they were the worst-treated groups except for Roma and Jews. Soviet and Polish forced laborers endured inadequate food and medical treatment, long hours, and abuse by employers. Hundreds of thousands died. Many others were forced to work for the occupiers without leaving their country of residence. Some of Germany's allies, including Slovakia and Hungary, agreed to deport Jews to protect non-Jews from German demands for forced labor. East European women were also kidnapped, via lapanka, to serve as sex slaves of German soldiers in military and camp brothels despite the prohibition of relationships, including fraternization, between German and foreign workers, which imposed the penalty of imprisonment and death.
Escape and hiding
Further information: Rescue of Jews during the HolocaustGerlach estimates that 200,000 Jews survived in hiding across Europe. Knowledge of German intentions was essential to take action, but many struggled to believe the news. Many attempted to jump from trains or flee ghettos and camps, but successfully escaping and living in hiding was extremely difficult and often unsuccessful.
The support, or at least absence of active opposition, of the local population was essential but often lacking in Eastern Europe. Those in hiding depended on the assistance of non-Jews. Having money, social connections with non-Jews, a non-Jewish appearance, perfect command of the local language, determination, and luck played a major role in determining survival. Jews in hiding were hunted down with the assistance of local collaborators and rewards offered for their denunciation. The death penalty was sometimes enforced on people hiding them, especially in eastern Europe. Rescuers' motivations varied on a spectrum from altruism to expecting sex or material gain; it was not uncommon for helpers to betray or murder Jews if their money ran out. Gerlach argues that hundreds of thousands of Jews may have died because of rumors or denunciations, and many others never attempted to escape because of a belief it was hopeless.
Jews participated in resistance movements in most European countries, and often were overrepresented. Jews were not always welcome, particularly in nationalist resistance groups—some of which killed Jews. Particularly in Belarus, with its favorable geography of dense forests, many Jews joined the Soviet partisans—an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 across the Soviet Union. An additional 10,000 to 13,000 Jewish non-combatants lived in family camps in Eastern European forests, of which the most well known was the Bielski partisans.
International reactions
Main article: International response to the HolocaustThe Nazi leaders knew that their actions would bring international condemnation. On 26 June 1942, BBC services in all languages publicized a report by the Jewish Social-Democratic Bund and other resistance groups and transmitted by the Polish government-in-exile, documenting the killing of 700,000 Jews in Poland. In December 1942, the Allies, then known as the United Nations, adopted a joint declaration condemning the systematic murder of Jews. Most neutral countries in Europe maintained a pro-German foreign policy during the war. Nevertheless, some Jews were able to escape to neutral countries, whose policies ranged from rescue to non-action.
During the war the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) raised $70 million and in the years after the war it raised $300 million. This money was spent aiding emigrants and providing direct relief in the form of parcels and other assistance to Jews living under German occupation, and after the war to Holocaust survivors. The United States banned sending relief into German-occupied Europe after entering the war, but the JDC continued to do so. From 1939 to 1944, 81,000 European Jews emigrated with the JDC's assistance.
Throughout the war, no detailed photo intelligence study was carried out on any of the major concentration or extermination camps. Appeals from Jewish representatives to the American and British governments to bomb rail lines leading to the camps or crematoriums was rejected, with little to no input from the War Departments of the United States or United Kingdom. However, debate exists on whether a military response would have impacted on the Holocaust.
Second half of the war
Continuing killings
After German military defeats in 1943, it became increasingly evident that Germany would lose the war. In early 1943, 45,000 Jews were deported from German-occupied northern Greece, primarily Salonica, to Auschwitz, where nearly all were killed. After Italy switched sides in late 1943, Germany deported several thousand Jews from Italy and the former Italian occupation zones of France, Yugoslavia, Albania, and Greece, with limited success. Attempts to continue deportations in Western Europe after 1942 often failed because of Jews going into hiding and the increasing recalcitrance of local authorities. Most Danish Jews escaped to Sweden with the help of the Danish resistance in the face of a half-hearted German deportation effort in late 1943. Additional killings in 1943 and 1944 eliminated all remaining ghettos and most surviving Jews in Eastern Europe. Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka were shut down and destroyed.
The largest murder action after 1942 was that against the Hungarian Jews. After the German invasion of Hungary in 1944, the Hungarian government cooperated closely in the deportation of 437,000 Jews in eight weeks, mostly to Auschwitz. The expropriation of Jewish property was useful to achieve Hungarian economic goals and sending the Jews as forced laborers avoided the need to send non-Jewish Hungarians. Those who survived the selection were forced to provide construction and manufacturing labor as part of a last-ditch effort to increase the production of fighter aircraft. Although the Nazis' goal of eliminating any Jewish population from Germany had largely been achieved in 1943, it was reversed in 1944 as a result of the importation of these Jews for labor.
Death marches and liberation
Following Allied advances, the SS deported concentration camp prisoners to camps in Germany and Austria, starting in mid-1944 from the Baltics. Weak and sick prisoners were often killed in the camp and others were forced to travel by rail or on foot, usually with no or inadequate food. Those who could not keep up were shot. The evacuations were ordered partly to retain the prisoners as forced labor and partly to avoid allowing any prisoners to fall into enemy hands. In October and November 1944, 90,000 Jews were deported from Budapest to the Austrian border. The transfer of prisoners from Auschwitz began in mid-1944, the gas chambers were shut down and destroyed after October, and in January most of the remaining 67,000 Auschwitz prisoners were sent on a death march westwards.
In January 1945, more than 700,000 people were imprisoned in the concentration camp system, of whom as many as a third died before the end of the war. At this time, most concentration camp prisoners were Soviet and Polish civilians, either arrested for real or supposed resistance or for attempting to escape forced labor. The death marches led to the breakdown of supplies for the camps that continued to exist, causing additional deaths. Although there was no systematic killing of Jews during the death marches, around 70,000 to 100,000 Jews died in the last months of the war. Many of the death march survivors ended up in other concentration camps that were liberated in 1945 during the Western Allied invasion of Germany. The liberators found piles of corpses that they had to bulldoze into mass graves. Some survivors were freed there and others had been liberated by the Red Army during its march westwards.
Death toll
Main article: Holocaust victimsAround six million Jews were killed. Of the six million victims, most of those killed were from Eastern Europe, and with half from Poland alone. Around 1.3 million Jews who had once lived under Nazi rule or in one of Germany's allies survived the war. One-third of the Jewish population worldwide, and two-thirds of European Jews, had been wiped out. Death rates varied widely due to a variety of factors and approached 100 percent in some areas. Some reasons why survival chances varied was the availability of emigration and protection from Germany's allies—which saved around 600,000 Jews. Jewish children and the elderly faced even lower survival rates than adults. It is considered to be the single largest genocide in human history.
The deadliest phase of the Holocaust was Operation Reinhard, which was marked by the introduction of extermination camps. Roughly two million Jews were killed from March 1942 to November 1943. Around 1.47 million Jews were murdered in just 100 days from late July to early November 1942, a rate approximately 83% higher than the commonly suggested figure for the Rwandan genocide. Between July to October 1942, two million Jews were murdered, including Operation Reinhard and other killings, with over three million Jews killed in 1942 alone, as stated by historian Christian Gerlach. On the other hand, historian Alex J. Kay states that over two million Jews were murdered from late July to mid-November, stating that "these three-and-a-half months were the most intense, the deadliest of the entire Holocaust". It was the fastest rate of genocidal killing in history.
On 3 November 1943, around 18,400 Jews were murdered at Majdanek over the course of nine hours, in what was the largest number ever killed in a death camp on a single day. It was part of Operation Harvest Festival, the murder of some 43,000 Jews, the single largest massacre of Jews by German forces, occurring from 3 to 4 November 1943.
Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and POWs; estimated by Gerlach at 6 to 8 million, at more than 10 million by Gilbert and at over 11 million by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In some countries, such as Hungary, Jews were a majority of civilian deaths; in Poland, they were either a majority or about half. In other countries such as the Soviet Union, France, Greece, and Yugoslavia, non-Jewish civilian losses outnumbered Jewish deaths.
Aftermath and legacy
Main article: Aftermath of the HolocaustReturn home and emigration
After liberation, many Jews attempted to return home. Limited success in finding relatives, the refusal of many non-Jews to return property, and violent attacks such as the Kielce pogrom convinced many survivors to leave eastern Europe. Antisemitism was reported to increase in several countries after the war, in part due to conflicts over property restitution. When the war ended, there were less than 28,000 German Jews and 60,000 non-German Jews in Germany. By 1947, the number of Jews in Germany had increased to 250,000 owing to emigration from eastern Europe allowed by the communist authorities; Jews made up around 25 percent of the population of displaced persons camps. Although many survivors were in poor health, they attempted to organize self-government in these camps, including education and rehabilitation efforts. Due to the reluctance of other countries to allow their immigration, many survivors remained in Germany until the establishment of Israel in 1948. Others moved to the United States around 1950 due to loosened immigration restrictions.
Criminal trials
Further information: Category:Holocaust trialsMost Holocaust perpetrators were never put on trial for their crimes. During and after World War II, many European countries launched widespread purges of real and perceived collaborators that affected possibly as much as 2–3 percent of the population of Europe, although most of the resulting trials did not emphasize crimes against Jews. Nazi atrocities led to the United Nations' Genocide Convention in 1948, but it was not used in Holocaust trials due to the non-retroactivity of criminal laws.
In 1945 and 1946, the International Military Tribunal tried 23 Nazi leaders primarily for waging wars of aggression, which the prosecution argued was the root of Nazi criminality; nevertheless, the systematic murder of Jews came to take center stage. This trial and others held by the Allies in occupied Germany—the United States Army alone charged 1,676 defendants in 462 war crimes trials—were widely perceived as an unjust form of political revenge by the German public. West Germany later investigated 100,000 people and tried more than 6,000 defendants, mainly low-level perpetrators. The high-level organizer Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped and tried in Israel in 1961. Instead of convicting Eichmann on the basis of documentary evidence, Israeli prosecutors asked many Holocaust survivors to testify, a strategy that increased publicity but has proven controversial.
Reparations
Historians estimate that property losses to Jews of Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Poland, and Hungary amounted to around 10 billion in 1944 dollars, or $170 billion in 2023. This estimate does not include the value of labor extracted. Overall, the amount of Jewish property looted by the Nazis was about 10 percent of the total stolen from occupied countries. Efforts by survivors to receive reparations for their losses began immediately after World War II. There was an additional wave of restitution efforts in the 1990s connected to the fall of Communism in eastern Europe.
Between 1945 and 2018, Germany paid $86.8 billion in restitution and compensation to Holocaust survivors and heirs. In 1952, West Germany negotiated an agreement to pay DM 3 billion (around $714 million) to Israel and DM 450 million (around $107 million) to the Claims Conference. Germany paid pensions and other reparations for harm done to some Holocaust survivors. Other countries have paid restitution for assets stolen from Jews from these countries. Most Western European countries restored some property to Jews after the war, while communist countries nationalized many formerly Jewish assets, meaning that the overall amount restored to Jews has been lower in those countries. Poland is the only member of the European Union that never passed any restitution legislation. Many restitution programs fell short of restoration of prewar assets, and in particular, large amounts of immovable property was never returned to survivors or their heirs.
Remembrance and historiography
In the decades after the war, Holocaust memory was largely confined to the survivors and their communities. The popularity of Holocaust memory peaked in the 1990s after the fall of Communism, and became central to Western historical consciousness as a symbol of the ultimate human evil. Genocide scholar A. Dirk Moses asserted that "the Holocaust has gradually supplanted genocide as modernity's icon of evil", while political scientist Scott Straus declared that "the Holocaust, perhaps more than any other event in the past century, represents the pinnacle of evil". The Holocaust has been described as "perhaps the most savage and significant single crime in recorded history" and that of the most barbaric events in the twentieth century "the Holocaust probably ranks as the very worst". Renowned German historian Wolfgang Benz described it as the "singularly most monstrous crime committed in the history of mankind". Holocaust education, in which its advocates argue promotes citizenship while reducing prejudice generally, became widespread at the same time. International Holocaust Remembrance Day is commemorated each year on 27 January, while some other countries have set a different memorial day. It has been commemorated in memorials, museums, and speeches, as well as works of culture such as novels, poems, films, and plays. Denial of the Holocaust is a criminal offense in some countries; while denials of the Holocaust have been promoted by various Middle Eastern governments, figures and media.
Although many are convinced that there are lessons or some kind of redemptive meaning to be drawn from the Holocaust, whether this is the case and what these lessons are is disputed. Communist states marginalized the topic of antisemitic persecution while eliding their nationals' collaboration with Nazism, a tendency that continued into the post-communist era. In West Germany, a self-critical memory of the Holocaust developed in the 1970s and 1980s, and spread to some other western European countries. The national memories of the Holocaust were extended to the European Union as a whole, in which Holocaust memory has provided both shared history and an emotional rationale for committing to human rights. Participation in this memory is required of countries seeking entry. In contrast to Europe, in the United States the memory of the Holocaust tends to be more abstract and universalized. During South African apartheid, the Holocaust was evoked widely and divergently, by Jews and non-Jews alike. Whether Holocaust memory actually promotes human rights is disputed. In Israel, the memory of the Holocaust has been used at times to justify the use of force and violation of international human rights norms, in particular as part of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
The Holocaust is the most well-known genocide in history, and is considered to be the single most infamous case of genocide in European history as well. It is the single most documented and studied genocide in history. It is also seen as the archetype of genocide and the benchmark in genocide studies.
The scholarly literature on the Holocaust is massive, encompassing thousands of books. The tendency to see the Holocaust as a unique or incomprehensible event continues to be popular among the broader public after being largely rejected by historians. Scholar Omer Bartov points out how the Holocaust was unique in that it was "the industrial killing of millions of human beings in factories of death, ordered by a modern state, organized by a conscientious bureaucracy, and supported by a law-abiding, patriotic "civilized" society." Another debate concerns whether the Holocaust emerged from Western civilization or was an aberration of it.
The Jewish population still remains below pre-Holocaust levels. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics of Israel, the world Jewish population reached 15.2 million by the end of 2020 – approximately 1.4 million less than on the eve of the Holocaust in 1939, when the number was 16.6 million.
Notes
- Bartov 2023a, pp. 18–19, "Much of this debate curiously boils down to a very specific historical question, namely, did the Nazis target the Jews for genocide in a manner that was essentially different from their treatment of any other group under their rule? There can be little doubt that the Jews played a singular role in the Nazi imaginaire and that German Jewish policies distinguished them within the Nazi universe of murder and fantasy; but other groups clearly have been similarly targeted in other genocides 'the extent of the 'final solution' was ... shaped by an antisemitism that was colored by a different element over and above the racism and ethno-nationalism that explains the murder of other groups by Nazi Germany—that element being the view of 'the Jews' as an implacable, collective world enemy.' To be sure, this makes the Holocaust unique only within the context of the Nazi empire ..."; Smith 2023, p. 36, "The Holocaust is particular to Jews and yet has had increasing relevance for those who do not identify as Jewish. ... All Jews everywhere were to be murdered because of their racial heritage was 'put into state policy' on January 20, 1942 at the Wannsee conference (Bazyler 2017, 29). Witness to the genocide of the Jews is a uniquely Jewish experience, because only Jews were targeted by that policy, even if other groups were targeted for genocide under other policies. The Nazi regime committed genocide against the Roma and Sinti, governed by separate policies. They also committed war crimes against Soviet Prisoners of War under other policies. So too the mass murder of disabled and the mentally ill had their own policies. The Nazis committed multiple genocides and crimes against humanity, at the same time, sometimes in the same place, governed by different laws, policies, and practices. It is not correct to say that there were many victim types during 'the Holocaust,' if by 'the Holocaust' we mean the genocide of the Jews."; Stone 2023, Introduction: What is the Holocaust?, "This is why the focus here is on the Jews. Roma, the disabled, Soviet POWs, homosexuals and other groups were victims of the Nazis, and it is entirely legitimate to study their fate alongside one another. But using the term 'Holocaust' to encompass all of these groups with the aim of being inclusive and not prioritizing one group's suffering, actually does a disservice to groups other than Jews. For the Nazis persecuted these groups for different reasons, reasons we fail to appreciate if we collapse them all together."; Engel 2021, pp. 3 ("This book is about an encounter between two sets of human beings: on one hand, the people who acted on behalf of the German state, its agencies, or its almost 66 million citizens between 30 January 1933 and 8 May 1945; on the other, the more than 9 million Jews ...") and 5 ("Those discoveries about the encounter between the Third Reich and the Jews made that encounter stand out in the minds of many from other instances of Nazi persecution and encouraged observers to assign it its own special name."); Jackson 2021, pp. 199–200, "The Nazis killed some people almost exclusively due to their supposed genetic inferiority (the mentally and physically handicapped, Slavs, Roma); they killed others almost exclusively due to their perceived cultural decadence (communists, democrats, modernist authors and artists); but only the Jews were indicted on both grounds simultaneously and with equal vigor. ... This is not to say that Roma, communists, and others were not hated and murdered by the Nazis, but it is to note that the Jews were unique in being despised and assaulted in every dimension of their identity, corporeal and psychic."; Sahlstrom 2021, p. 291, "the established understanding of the Holocaust today as the genocide of six million Jews"; Bartrop 2019, p. 50, "Given this, it must always be remembered that the Holocaust was a premeditated action by the Nazis to permanently eradicate a Jewish presence in Europe. Others—the disabled, Roma, Poles and other Slavs, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, dissenting clergy, communists, socialists, "asocials," and political opponents of all sorts—were also persecuted and in many cases murdered in huge numbers; however, it was the campaign against the Jews that was the ideological "ground zero" for Nazi racial ideology. Others besides Jews were murdered, often on a genocidal scale, and should be remembered and acknowledged: but it was only the Jews who were all to be killed as part of a calculated policy of genocide."; Beorn 2018, p. 4, "I will use the term 'Holocaust' to refer mainly to the Nazi attempt to murder the Jews of Europe; however, I will also use the more inclusive term 'Nazi genocidal project' to capture the larger murderous vision of which the Jews were such a large part. This includes Sinti/Roma (gypsies), the handicapped, political 'enemies,' Soviet prisoners of war, and—particularly in the East—entire ethnic groups such as the Slavs. One cannot understand the Holocaust in Eastern Europe without placing it in the context of this larger Nazi genocidal project that foresaw murder and demographic engineering on a colossal scale."; Cesarani 2016, p. xxxix, "This book deals with the fate of the Jews, not of 'other victims' of Nazi political repression and racial-biological policies. Several other groups endured social exclusion, incarceration in concentration camps, and mass murder. However, the rationale for the persecution of these groups differed radically from the intentions that underlay anti-Jewish policy. Even though homosexual men and women, Germans of African descent, and the severely mentally and physically disabled were all disparaged in Nazi racial thinking, and depicted as a threat to the strength and purity of the Volk, only the Jews were characterized as an implacable, powerful, global enemy that had to be fought at every turn and finally eliminated."; Hayes 2015, p. xiii, "This book also reflects another of its editor's convictions: the Holocaust was National Socialist Germany's assault on the Jews of Europe. Nazism attacked many groups, but none for the same reason that it attacked the Jews, none with the same urgency, and none to the same extent."; Hayes & Roth 2010, p. 2, "Other groups—for example, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, and Slavs—were swept up in the maelstrom of the Holocaust, but not for the same reasons as Jews and not with the same consequences ... In none of these cases, however, was the target group considered dangerous or coherent enough to warrant complete or immediate extirpation. This circumstance constitutes a significant difference from policies pursued toward the Jews, a difference that helps to clarify and define the Holocaust itself."; Stone 2010, pp. 1–2, "For the purpose of this book, the Holocaust is understood as the genocide of the Jews ... 'Holocaust', then, refers to the genocide of the Jews, which by no means excludes an understanding that other groups—notably Romanies and Slavs—were victims of genocide."; Bloxham 2009, p. 1, "Between 5,100,000 and 6,200,000 Jews were murdered during the Second World War, an episode the Nazis called the 'final solution of the Jewish question'. The world today knows it as the Holocaust."; Niewyk & Nicosia 2000, pp. 45 ("The Holocaust is commonly defined as the mass murder of more than 5,000,000 Jews by the Germans during World War II. Not everyone finds this a fully satisfactory definition.") and 51 ("the traditional view that it was the genocide of the Jews alone")
- King 2023, pp. 26–27, "Rather than one big thing, the Holocaust might now be described as an array of event categories. In Christopher Browning's terms, the Holocaust involved three separate "clusters of genocidal projects": euthanasia and "racial purification" directed against the disabled and Sinti and Roma (at the time referred to collectively as "Gypsies") within the Third Reich; the eradication of Slavic populations living in countries east of Germany; and the Final Solution proper—that is, the attempted mass murder of every Jew residing anywhere within Germany's sphere of influence (Browning 2010, 407). (The list of persecuted categories—people targeted by the Nazis in ways short of genocide—would of course be longer.)"; Engel 2021, p. 6, "Echoing this view, some have contended that the expression 'the Holocaust' ought to refer not only to the encounter between the Third Reich and the Jews but also to 'the horrors that Poles, other Slavs, and Gypsies endured at the hands of the Nazis' (Lukas, 1986: 220). Others have extended the term to encompass the Third Reich's treatment of homosexuals, the mentally ill or infrm, and Jehovah's Witnesses, speaking of 11 or 12 million victims of the Holocaust, half of whom were Jews. Still others have employed the word 'holocaust' also when referring to cases of mass murder not perpetrated by the Third Reich."; Kay 2021, pp. 1–2, "For perhaps the first time, all major victim groups where the death tolls reached at least into the tens of thousands will be considered together: Jewish and non-Jewish ... it makes a great deal of sense to consider the different strands of Nazi mass killing together rather than in isolation from one another. This of course means going against the grain of most scholarship on the subject by examining the genocide of the European Jews alongside other Nazi mass-murder campaigns."; Gerlach 2016, pp. 14–15, "There are a number of words I will try to avoid because of the serious misconceptions they might lead to. The terms 'Holocaust' and 'Shoah' are not useful since neither has any analytical value. 'Holocaust' (derived from the Greek holókauton, or burned sacrifice) has a religious connotation unbefitting of the event it is supposed to refer to, and users of this term may mean by it either the persecution and murder of Jews alone, or Nazi German violence against any group more generally ... Importantly, 'Holocaust' and 'Shoah' have also been criticized as 'teleological and anachronistic' terms that convey a retrospective view that makes complex processes appear 'as a single event.'"; Niewyk & Nicosia 2000, p. 51, "The authors of this volume have adopted the third approach to a working definition: The Holocaust—that is, Nazi genocide—was the systematic, state-sponsored murder of entire groups determined by heredity. This applied to Jews, Gypsies, and the handicapped. This section also makes it clear that other definitions are defended by scholars who deserve a respectful hearing."
- ^ Equivalent to $400 million at the time, or $7 billion in 2023.
- The Nazi concentration camp system administered by the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (SS-WVHA) was administratively separate from other forced-labor camps and from the single-purpose extermination camps.
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- Gerlach 2016, pp. 407–408.
- Gerlach 2016, pp. 118, 409–410.
- Gerlach 2016, pp. 428–429.
- Rosenberg, Alan (1979). "The Genocidal Universe: A Framework for Understanding the Holocaust". European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe. 13 (1): 29–34. ISSN 0014-3006. JSTOR 41442658.
- Richie, Alexandra (27 January 2024). "The Origins of International Holocaust Remembrance Day". The National WWII Museum | New Orleans. Retrieved 11 April 2024.
- Stone, Lewi (2019). "Quantifying the Holocaust: Hyperintense kill rates during the Nazi genocide". Science Advances. 5 (1): eaau7292. Bibcode:2019SciA....5.7292S. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aau7292. ISSN 2375-2548. PMC 6314819. PMID 30613773.
- Gerlach 2016, p. 100.
- Kay 2021, p. 207.
- Stone 2023, p. 191.
- Stone 2023, p. 210.
- "Aktion "Erntefest" (Operation "Harvest Festival")". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on 4 June 2024. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
- Martin Gilbert (2014). "Epilogue - "I will tell the world"". The Holocaust: The Human Tragedy. Rosetta Books. ISBN 978-0-7953-3719-2.
As well as the six million Jews who were murdered, more than ten million other non-combatants were killed by the Nazis.
- "Documenting numbers of victims of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.; Niewyk & Nicosia 2000 give a total of 17 million (including more than 5 million Jews).
- ^ Gerlach 2016, p. 3.
- Beorn 2018, pp. 273–274.
- Beorn 2018, pp. 275–276.
- Gerlach 2016, pp. 353–355.
- ^ Kochavi 2010, p. 509.
- Kochavi 2010, pp. 512–513.
- Kochavi 2010, p. 521.
- Priemel 2020, p. 174.
- Wittmann 2010, p. 524.
- Priemel 2020, p. 176.
- Priemel 2020, p. 177.
- Wittmann 2010, p. 525.
- Wittmann 2010, p. 534.
- Priemel 2020, p. 184.
- Wittmann 2010, pp. 534–535.
- Priemel 2020, pp. 182–183.
- Bartov 2023b, pp. 215–216.
- Goschler & Ther 2007, p. 7.
- ^ Hayes 2010, p. 548.
- Goschler & Ther 2007, pp. 13–14.
- "The JUST Act Report: Germany". United States Department of State. Retrieved 2 May 2023.
- Hayes 2010, pp. 549–550.
- Bazyler et al. 2019, pp. 482–483.
- Hayes 2010, p. 552.
- Bazyler et al. 2019, p. 487.
- Bazyler et al. 2019, p. 485.
- Hayes 2010, p. 556.
- Assmann 2010, p. 97.
- Assmann 2010, pp. 98, 107.
- Rosenfeld 2015, pp. 15, 346.
- Assmann 2010, p. 110.
- Moses, A. Dirk (2021). The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 481–482. ISBN 978-1-107-10358-0.
- Straus, Scott (2022). Graziosi, Andrea; Sysyn, Frank E. (eds.). Genocide: The Power and Problems of a Concept. McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 240. ISBN 978-0-2280-0951-1.
- Landau, Ronnie S. (2016). The Nazi Holocaust: Its History and Meaning (3rd ed.). I.B. Tauris. pp. 3, 287. ISBN 978-0-85772-843-2.
- Benz, Wolfgang (1999). The Holocaust: A German Historian Examines the Genocide (1st ed.). New York: Columbia University Press. p. 2. ISBN 0-231-11215-7.
- ^ Stone 2010, p. 288.
- Sutcliffe 2022, p. 8.
- Assmann 2010, p. 104.
- Rosenfeld 2015, p. 14.
- Priemel 2020, p. 185.
- Rosenfeld 2015, p. 93.
- Bartov 2023b, pp. 190–191.
- Rosenfeld 2015, p. 22.
- Bartov 2023b, p. 191.
- Kansteiner 2017, pp. 306–307.
- ^ Kansteiner 2017, p. 308.
- Assmann 2010, pp. 100, 102–103.
- Assmann 2010, p. 103.
- Gilbert, Shirli (2010). "Jews and the Racial State: Legacies of the Holocaust in Apartheid South Africa, 1945–60". Jewish Social Studies. 16 (3): 32. doi:10.2979/jewisocistud.16.3.32.
- Kansteiner 2017, p. 305.
- Lieberman, Benjamin (2013). The Holocaust and Genocides in Europe (1st ed.). Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 9, 138, 161, 230. ISBN 978-1-4411-4655-7.
- Rummel, R.J. (1998). "The Holocaust in Comparative and Historical Perspective". The Journal of Social Issues. 3 (2).
- Aharon, Eldad Ben (2020). How Do We Remember the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust? A Global View of an Integrated Memory of Perpetrators, Victims and Third-party Countries (PDF). Frankfurt am Main. p. 3. ISBN 978-3-946459-59-0.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Boender, Barbara; ten Have, Wichert, eds. (2012). The Holocaust and Other Genocides: An Introduction (1st ed.). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. pp. 7–10. ISBN 978-90-8964-381-0.
- Moses, A. Dirk (2021). The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 18–19, 34, 204, 396, 452, 480. ISBN 978-1-107-10358-0.
- Stone 2010, p. 6.
- Stone 2010, pp. 206–207.
- Rosenfeld 2015, p. 119.
- Sutcliffe 2022, p. 2.
- Bartov, Omer (2003). Germany's War and the Holocaust. Cornell University Press. p. 135. ISBN 978-0801486814.
- Stone 2010, pp. 163, 219, 239.
- "World Jewish population nears pre-Holocaust numbers at 15.2 million". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. 25 April 2022. Retrieved 30 June 2024.
Works cited
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- Bazyler, Michael J.; Boyd, Kathryn Lee; Nelson, Kristen L. (2019). Searching for Justice After the Holocaust: Fulfilling the Terezin Declaration and Immovable Property Restitution. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-092306-8.
- Beorn, Waitman Wade (2018). The Holocaust in Eastern Europe: At the Epicenter of the Final Solution. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-1-4742-3219-7.
- Bergen, Doris (2016). War & Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4422-4228-9.
- Bloxham, Donald (2009). The Final Solution: A Genocide. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-955034-0.
- Calimani, Anna Vera Sullam (2018). I Nomi dello sterminio: Definizioni di una tragedia [The Names of Extermination: Definitions of a Tragedy] (in Italian). Marietti 1820. ISBN 978-8-821-19615-7.
- Browning, Christopher R. (2004). The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942. University of Nebraska Press and Yad Vashem. ISBN 978-0-8032-0392-1.
- Cesarani, David (2016). Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 1933–1949. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-230-76891-8.
- Engel, David (2021). The Holocaust: The Third Reich and the Jews. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-429-77837-7.
- Foreign Claims Settlement Commission (1968). Foreign Claims Settlement Commission of the United States: Decisions and Annotations. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. OCLC 1041397012.
- Gilbert, Martin (2015) . Never Again: A History of the Holocaust. RosettaBooks. ISBN 978-0-7953-4674-3.
- Gerlach, Christian (2016). The Extermination of the European Jews. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-70689-6.
- Hayes, Peter (2017). Why? Explaining the Holocaust. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
- Hayes, Peter (2015). How Was It Possible?: A Holocaust Reader. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-7491-4.
- Jackson, Timothy P. (2021). Mordecai Would Not Bow Down: Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and Christian Supersessionism. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-753807-4.
- Kay, Alex J. (2021). Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-26253-7.
- Longerich, Peter (2010). Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280436-5.
- Neufeld, Michael; Berenbaum, Michael (2000). The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies have attempted it?. New York: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0-7006-1280-7.
- Niewyk, Donald L.; Nicosia, Francis R. (2000). The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-52878-8.
- Peck, Abraham J.; Berenbaum, Michael, eds. (2002). The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-21529-1.
- Rosenfeld, Gavriel D. (2015). Hi Hitler! How the Nazi Past is Being Normalized in Contemporary Culture. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-07399-9.
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Book chapters
- Assmann, Aleida (2010). "The Holocaust – a Global Memory? Extensions and Limits of a New Memory Community". Memory in a Global Age: Discourses, Practices and Trajectories. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 97–117. ISBN 978-0-230-28336-7.
- Bartov, Omer (2023b). "The Holocaust". The Oxford History of the Third Reich. Oxford University Press. pp. 190–216. ISBN 978-0-19-288683-5.
- Beorn, Waitman Wade (2020). "All the Other Neighbors: Communal Genocide in Eastern Europe". A Companion to the Holocaust. Wiley. pp. 153–172. ISBN 978-1-118-97052-2.
- Dean, Martin C. (2020). "Survivors of the Holocaust within the Nazi Universe of Camps". A Companion to the Holocaust. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 263–277. ISBN 978-1-118-97049-2.
- Engel, David (2020). "A Sustained Civilian Struggle: Rethinking Jewish Responses to the Nazi Regime". A Companion to the Holocaust. Wiley. pp. 233–245. ISBN 978-1-118-97052-2.
- Evans, Richard J. (2019). "The Decision to Exterminate the Jews of Europe". The Jews, the Holocaust, and the Public: The Legacies of David Cesarani. Springer International Publishing. pp. 117–143. ISBN 978-3-030-28675-0.
- Goschler, Constantin; Ther, Philipp (2007). "Introduction: A History Without Boundaries: the Robbery and Restitution of Jewish Property in Europe". Robbery and Restitution: The Conflict over Jewish Property in Europe. Berghahn Books. pp. 1–18. ISBN 978-0-85745-564-2.
- Hayes, Peter; Roth, John K. (2010). "Introduction". The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies. Oxford University Press. pp. 1–20. ISBN 978-0-19-921186-9.
- Hayes, Peter (2010). "Plunder and Restitution". The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies. Oxford University Press. pp. 540–559. ISBN 978-0-19-921186-9.
- Kansteiner, Wulf (2017). "Transnational Holocaust Memory, Digital Culture and the End of Reception Studies". The Twentieth Century in European Memory: Transcultural Mediation and Reception. Brill. pp. 305–343. ISBN 978-90-04-35235-3.
- King, Charles (2023). "Can – or Should – There Be a Political Science of the Holocaust?". In Kopstein, Jeffrey S. (ed.). Politics, Violence, Memory: The New Social Science of the Holocaust. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-1-5017-6676-3.
- Kochavi, Arieh J. (2010). "Liberation and Dispersal". The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies. Oxford University Press. pp. 509–523. ISBN 978-0-19-921186-9.
- Kopstein, Jeffrey S. (2023). "A Common History of Violence?: The Pogroms of Summer 1941 in Comparative Perspective". Politics, Violence, Memory: The New Social Science of the Holocaust. Cornell University Press. pp. 104–123. ISBN 978-1-5017-6676-3.
- Messenger, David A. (2020). "The Geopolitics of Neutrality: Diplomacy, Refuge, and Rescue during the Holocaust". A Companion to the Holocaust. Wiley. pp. 381–396. ISBN 978-1-118-97052-2.
- Miron, Guy (2020). "Ghettos and Ghettoization – History and Historiography". A Companion to the Holocaust. Wiley. pp. 247–261. ISBN 978-1-118-97052-2.
- Priemel, Kim Christian (2020). "War Crimes Trials, the Holocaust, and Historiography, 1943–2011". A Companion to the Holocaust. Wiley. pp. 173–189. ISBN 978-1-118-97052-2.
- Sahlstrom, Julia (2021). "Recognition, Justice, and Memory: Swedish-Jewish Reactions to the Holocaust and the Major Trials". In Heuman, Johannes; Rudberg, Pontus (eds.). Early Holocaust Memory in Sweden: Archives, Testimonies and Reflections. The Holocaust and its Contexts. Springer International Publishing. pp. 287–313. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-55532-0_11. ISBN 978-3-030-55532-0. S2CID 229432191. Retrieved 28 January 2024.
- Spoerer, Mark (2020). "The Nazi War Economy, the Forced Labor System, and the Murder of Jewish and Non-Jewish Workers". A Companion to the Holocaust. Wiley. pp. 135–151. ISBN 978-1-118-97052-2.
- Stone, Dan (2020). "Ideologies of Race". A Companion to the Holocaust. Wiley. pp. 59–74. doi:10.1002/9781118970492.ch3. ISBN 978-1-118-97052-2.
- Weitz, Eric D. (2010). "Nationalism". The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies. Oxford University Press. pp. 54–67. ISBN 978-0-19-921186-9.
- Westermann, Edward B. (2020). "Old Nazis, Ordinary Men, and New Killers: Synthetic and Divergent Histories of Perpetrators". A Companion to the Holocaust. Wiley. pp. 117–133. ISBN 978-1-118-97052-2.
- Wittmann, Rebecca (2010). "Punishment". The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies. Oxford University Press. pp. 524–539. ISBN 978-0-19-921186-9.
Journal articles
- Burzlaff, Jan (2020). "Confronting the Communal Grave: a Reassessment of Social Relations During the Holocaust in Eastern Europe". The Historical Journal. 63 (4): 1054–1077. doi:10.1017/S0018246X19000566.
- Láníček, Jan (2012). "Governments-in-exile and the Jews during and after the Second World War". Holocaust Studies. 18 (2–3): 73–94. doi:10.1080/17504902.2012.11087307.
- Lehnstaedt, Stephan (2021). "Aktion Reinhardt – Sources, Research and Commemoration in the last 30 years". Témoigner. Entre histoire et mémoire. Revue pluridisciplinaire de la Fondation Auschwitz (132): 62–70. doi:10.4000/temoigner.9886. ISSN 2031-4183. S2CID 256347577.
- Sutcliffe, Adam (2022). "Whose Feelings Matter? Holocaust Memory, Empathy, and Redemptive Anti-Antisemitism". Journal of Genocide Research. 26 (2): 222–242. doi:10.1080/14623528.2022.2160533.
- Welch, Susan (2020). "Gender and Selection During the Holocaust: Transports of Western European Jews to the East". Journal of Genocide Research. 22 (4): 459–478. doi:10.1080/14623528.2020.1764743.
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