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{{Short description|Genocide of European Jews by Nazi Germany}} | |||
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{{about|the state-sponsored genocide of European Jews during World War II|all peoples persecuted during this era|Holocaust victims}} | |||
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] at ], May/June 1944.<ref name = "Auschwitz Album">. ]. Retrieved 24 September 2012.</ref>]] | |||
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'''The Holocaust''' (from the ] {{lang|el|ὁλόκαυστος}} ''{{lang|el-Latn|holókaustos}}'': ''hólos'', "whole" and ''kaustós'', "burnt"),<ref>{{Harvnb|Dawidowicz|1975|p=xxxvii}}.</ref> also known as '''Shoah''' (]: <big>{{lang|he|השואה}}</big>, ''HaShoah'', "the catastrophe"), was a ] in which approximately six million ] were killed by the ] and its collaborators. An additional five million non-Jewish victims of Nazi persecution are included by many historians bringing the total to approximately eleven million, although this is not uncontroversial. Killings took place throughout ] and ].<ref>{{Harvnb|Snyder|2010|p=45}}.<br>Further examples of this usage can be found in: ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ]</ref><ref>Niewyk, Donald L. and Nicosia, Francis R. '''', ], 2000, pp. 45-52.</ref> | |||
{{Infobox civilian attack | |||
| title = The Holocaust | |||
From 1941 to 1945, Jews were targeted and methodically murdered in a ], the largest in modern history, and part of a broader aggregate of acts of oppression and killings of various ethnic and political groups in Europe by the Nazis.<ref>http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/resource_center/the_holocaust.asp</ref> Every arm of Germany's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of the genocide, turning the Third Reich into "a genocidal state".<ref name = "Berenbaum 2005 103">{{Harvnb|Berenbaum|2005|p=103}}.</ref> Non-Jewish victims of broader Nazi crimes include ], ], ], ], ], and the ]. In total, approximately 11 million people were killed, including one million Jewish children alone.<ref>About.com, The Holocaust, http://history1900s.about.com/od/holocaust/a/holocaustfacts.htm</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Fitzgerald|2011|p=4}}; {{Harvnb|Hedgepeth|Saidel|2010|p=16}}.</ref> Of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe before the Holocaust, approximately two-thirds were killed.<ref>{{Harvnb|Dawidowicz|1975|p=403}}.</ref> A network of about 42,500 facilities in Germany and German-occupied territories were used to concentrate, confine, and kill Jews and ].<ref name=NYT030113>{{cite news|title=The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking|url=http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/sunday-review/the-holocaust-just-got-more-shocking.html|accessdate=2 March 2013|newspaper=The New York Times|date=1 March 2013|author=Eric Lichtblau}}</ref> and between 100,000 and 500,000 people were direct participants in the planning and execution of the Holocaust.<ref>Interpreting the 20th Century: The Struggle Over Democracy, The Holocaust, Pamela Radcliff, p. 104-107, http://anon.eastbaymediac.m7z.net/anon.eastbaymediac.m7z.net/teachingco/CourseGuideBooks/DG8090_EFF59C.PDF</ref> | |||
| partof = ] | |||
| image = Selection on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1944 (Auschwitz Album) 1b.jpg | |||
The persecution and genocide were carried out in stages. Initially the German government passed laws to exclude Jews from civil society, most prominently the ]. A network of ] was established starting in 1933 and ] were established following the outbreak of ] in 1939. In 1941, as Germany conquered new territory in eastern Europe, specialized paramilitary units called '']'' were used to murder around two million Jews and "partisans", often in mass shootings. By the end of 1942, victims were being regularly transported by freight train to specially built ]s where, if they survived the journey, most were systematically killed in ]. The campaign of murder continued until the ] in April–May 1945. | |||
| image_size = 240px | |||
| alt = Large number of people standing beside a railway siding with the camp gate in the background | |||
Jewish armed resistance to the Nazis occurred throughout the Holocaust. One notable example was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of January 1943, when thousands of poorly armed Jewish fighters held the SS at bay for four weeks. An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 ] actively fought the Nazis and their collaborators in Eastern Europe.<ref name="Kennedy 2007 780">{{Harvnb|Kennedy|2007|p=780}}.</ref><ref name=USHMM_RES>. ''Holocaust Encyclopedia''. ]. Retrieved 27 September 2012.</ref> ] were also highly active in the ], which conducted a guerilla campaign against the Nazis and Vichy French authorities. In total, there were over a hundred armed Jewish uprisings.<ref name="jewishpartisans1">, Accessed 22 December 2013.</ref> | |||
| type = ], ], ], ], ], ], ] | |||
| caption = Jews arriving at ] in ], May 1944. Most were ] to go to the ]. | |||
{{TOC limit|limit=3}} | |||
| location = Europe, primarily ] and the ] | |||
==Etymology and use of the term== | |||
| coordinates = | |||
{{main|Names of the Holocaust}} | |||
| date = 1941–1945 | |||
The term ''holocaust'' comes from the ] word '']'', referring to an ] offered to a god in which the whole (''olos'') animal is completely burnt (''kaustos'').<ref>. ]. Retrieved 25 September 2012.</ref> | |||
| fatalities = ] | |||
| perps = ] along with ] and ] | |||
Writing in Latin, ], a 12th-century monk, was the first recorded chronicler to use the term "holocaustum" in Britain.<ref>http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/n/e/u/Michael-R-Neuman-Costa-Mesa/WEBSITE-0001/UHP-0707.html Richard 'Lionheart' Plantagenet, King of England (b. September 08, 1157, d. April 06, 1199)</ref> Sir ] employed the word "holocaust" in his philosophical Discourse ] in 1658 <ref>'And if the burden of Isaac were sufficient for a holocaust, a man may carry his own pyre'. (chapter 3).</ref> and for centuries, the word was used generally in English to denote great massacres. Since the 1960s, the term has come to be used by scholars and popular writers to refer specifically to the Nazi genocide of Jews.<ref>{{Harvnb|Niewyk|Nicosia|2000|p=45}}.</ref> The television mini-series ] is credited with introducing the term into common parlance after 1978.<ref name="Steinweis">] provides a survey of this phenomenon.</ref> | |||
The biblical word ''shoah'' (שואה; also transliterated ''sho'ah'' and ''shoa''), meaning "calamity", became the standard ] term for the Holocaust as early as the 1940s, especially in Europe and Israel.<ref name="yad def">, ]. Retrieved 24 September 2012.</ref> ''Shoah'' is preferred by some Jews for several reasons, including the theologically offensive nature of the word "holocaust", which they take to refer to the Greek pagan custom.<ref>For example, Israeli journalist ], the daughter of two Holocaust survivors and translator of the 2009 English edition of her mother's diary of surviving Bergen-Belsen ({{Harvnb|Lévy-Hass|2009}}), has argued that " 'The Holocaust' is an incorrect term … as if something came out from the sky, from heaven, some disaster, a calamity, a nature calamity, and not human-made calamity." Asked for a better way to refer to it, she responded, "The German industry of murder. Or the assembly-line of murder." <p>For an opposing view on the allegedly offensive nature of the meaning of the word ''holocaust'', see ].</ref> | |||
The Nazis used a ] phrase, the "] to the Jewish Question" (German: ''Endlösung der Judenfrage''), and the phrase "Final Solution" has been widely used as a term for the genocide of the Jews. Nazis used the phrase ''lebensunwertes Leben'' (]) in reference to their victims in an attempt to justify the killings. | |||
==Distinctive features== | |||
===Institutional collaboration=== | |||
] were established in Europe in which Jews were confined before being shipped to ]s]] | |||
Every arm of Germany's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics that led to the genocides, turning the Third Reich into what one Holocaust scholar, ], has called "a genocidal state".<ref name="Berenbaum 2005 103"/> | |||
<blockquote>Every arm of the country's sophisticated bureaucracy was involved in the killing process. Parish churches and the Interior Ministry supplied birth records showing who was Jewish; the Post Office delivered the deportation and denaturalization orders; the Finance Ministry confiscated Jewish property; German firms fired Jewish workers and disenfranchised Jewish stockholders.</blockquote>The universities refused to admit Jews, denied degrees to those already studying, and fired Jewish academics; government transport offices arranged the ] for deportation to the camps; German pharmaceutical companies tested drugs on camp prisoners; companies bid for the contracts to build the ]; detailed lists of victims were drawn up using the ] (IBM Germany) company's ] machines, producing meticulous records of the killings. As prisoners entered the death camps, they were made to surrender all personal property, which was catalogued and tagged before being sent to Germany to be reused or recycled. Berenbaum writes that the Final Solution of the Jewish question was "in the eyes of the perpetrators ... Germany's greatest achievement."<ref name = "Berenbaum 2005 104">{{Harvnb|Berenbaum|2005|p=104}}.</ref> ], the German national bank helped ] stolen from the victims. | |||
] writes that: "Not one social group, not one religious community, not one scholarly institution or professional association in Germany and throughout Europe declared its solidarity with the Jews."<ref name = "Friedländer 2007 xxi">{{Harvnb|Friedländer|2007|p=xxi}}.</ref> He writes that some Christian churches declared that ''converted'' Jews should be regarded as part of the flock, but even then only up to a point. Friedländer argues that this makes the Holocaust distinctive because ] policies were able to unfold without the interference of countervailing forces of the kind normally found in advanced societies, such as industry, small businesses, churches, trade unions and other vested interests and ] groups.<ref name = "Friedländer 2007 xxi"/> | |||
===Ideology and scale=== | |||
{{Antisemitism}} | |||
In other genocides, pragmatic considerations such as control of territory and resources were central to the genocide policy. Israeli historian and scholar ] argues that: | |||
{{quote| | |||
The basic motivation was purely ideological, rooted in an illusionary world of Nazi imagination, where an international ] was opposed to a parallel ] quest. No genocide to date had been based so completely on myths, on hallucinations, on abstract, nonpragmatic ideology—which was then executed by very rational, pragmatic means.<ref>{{Harvnb|Bauer|2002|p=48}}.</ref> | |||
}} | }} | ||
'''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. | |||
German historian ] wrote in 1986 that one distinctive feature of the Holocaust was that: | |||
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. | |||
{{quote| | |||
never before had a state with the authority of its responsible leader decided and announced that a specific human group, including its aged, its women and its children and infants, would be killed as quickly as possible, and then carried through this resolution using every possible means of state power.<ref>{{Harvnb|Maier|1988|p=53}}.</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. | |||
The killings were systematically conducted in virtually all areas of ] in what are now 35 separate European countries.<ref>, History1900s, About.com. 16 June 2010. Retrieved 31 July 2010.</ref> It was at its most severe in Central and Eastern Europe, which had more than seven million Jews in 1939. About five million Jews were killed there, including three million in occupied Poland and over one million in the Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands also died in the Netherlands, France, Belgium, ], and Greece. The ] makes it clear that the Nazis intended to carry their "final solution of the Jewish question" to Britain and all neutral states in Europe, such as Ireland, Switzerland, Turkey, Sweden, Portugal, and Spain.<ref>{{Harvnb|Dear|Foot|2001|p={{page needed|date=November 2012}}}}.</ref> | |||
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==Terminology and scope== | |||
Anyone with three or four Jewish grandparents was to be exterminated without exception. In other genocides, people were able to escape death by ] to another religion or in some other way ]. This option was not available to the Jews of occupied Europe,<ref name="Bauer Bstag">For a summary of this point, see: ] (27 January 1998). . ]. Retrieved 21 September 2012.</ref> unless their grandparents had converted before 18 January 1871. All persons of recent Jewish ancestry were to be exterminated in lands controlled by Germany.<ref>{{Harvnb|Bauer|2002|p=49}}.</ref> | |||
{{Main|Names of the Holocaust}} | |||
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 ..."}}; | |||
{{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."}}; | |||
{{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."}}; | |||
{{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.")}}; | |||
{{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== | |||
===Extermination camps=== | |||
] River (c. 1900) with the ], destroyed in 1938 during the ]]] | |||
{{main|Extermination camp}} | |||
] 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}} | |||
The use of camps equipped with gas chambers for the purpose of systematic mass extermination of peoples was a unique feature of the Holocaust and unprecedented in history. Never before had there existed places with the express purpose of killing people en masse. These were established at ], ], ], ], ], ], ], and ]. | |||
] postcard showing a ]]] | |||
===Medical experiments=== | |||
{{further|Nazi human experimentation}} | |||
] children in ], victims of medical experiments]] | |||
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}} | |||
A distinctive feature of Nazi genocide was the extensive use of human subjects in "medical" experiments. According to ], "German physicians were highly Nazified, compared to other professionals, in terms of party membership."<ref>{{Harvnb|Hilberg|1995|p=66}}.</ref> Some carried out experiments at Auschwitz, ], ], ], ], and ] concentration camps.<ref name = "Harran 2000 384">{{Harvnb|Harran|2000|p=}}.</ref> | |||
==Rise of Nazi Germany== | |||
The most notorious of these physicians was Dr. ], who worked in Auschwitz. His experiments included placing subjects in pressure chambers, testing drugs on them, freezing them, attempting to change eye color by injecting chemicals into children's eyes, and various amputations and other surgeries.<ref name = "Harran 2000 384"/> The full extent of his work will never be known because the truckload of records he sent to Dr. ] at the ] was destroyed by von Verschuer.<ref>{{Harvnb|Müller-Hill|1998|p=22}}.</ref> Subjects who survived Mengele's experiments were almost always killed and dissected shortly afterwards. | |||
] 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}} | |||
He worked extensively with Romani children. He would bring them sweets and toys, and personally take them to the gas chamber. They would call him "Onkel (Uncle) Mengele".<ref name = "Berenbaum 2005 194_195">{{Harvnb|Berenbaum|2005|pp=194–195}}.</ref> Vera Alexander was a Jewish inmate at Auschwitz who looked after 50 sets of Romani twins: | |||
===Persecution of Jews=== | |||
{{quote|I remember one set of twins in particular: Guido and Ina, aged about four. One day, Mengele took them away. When they returned, they were in a terrible state: they had been sewn together, back to back, like ]. Their wounds were infected and oozing pus. They screamed day and night. Then their parents—I remember the mother's name was Stella—managed to get some ] and they killed the children in order to end their suffering.<ref name = "Berenbaum 2005 194_195"/>}} | |||
{{main|The Holocaust in Germany}} | |||
{{further|Anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Nazi Germany}} | |||
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}} | |||
] after its destruction during '']'']] | |||
==Development and execution== | |||
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>}} | |||
===Origins=== | |||
{{see also|Antisemitism|Christianity and antisemitism|Martin Luther and antisemitism|Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses}} | |||
{{quote box|align=right|width=25em|quote="The whole problem of the Jews exists only in nation states, for here their energy and higher intelligence, their accumulated capital of spirit and will, gathered from generation to generation through a long schooling in suffering, must become so preponderant as to arouse mass envy and hatred. In almost all contemporary nations, therefore - in direct proportion to the degree to which they act up nationalistially - the literaral obscenity of leading the Jews to slaughter as scapegoats of every conceivable public and internal misfortune is spreading."|source=—], 1886, <ref>''Nietzsche der philosoph un Politiker'', 8, 63, ''et passim''. Ed. Alfred Baeumler, Reclam 1931</ref>}} | |||
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}} | |||
] and ] maintained that from the Middle Ages onward, German society and culture were suffused with antisemitism, and that there was a direct ideological link from medieval ] to the Nazi death camps.<ref>{{Harvnb|Dawidowicz|1975|p=47}}; {{Harvnb|Bauer|1982|p={{page needed|date=November 2012}}}};</ref> | |||
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}} | |||
The second half of the 19th century saw the emergence in ] and ] of the ], developed by such thinkers as ] and ]. The movement presented a pseudoscientific, biologically based racism that viewed Jews as a race locked in mortal combat with the ] for world domination.<ref>{{Harvnb|Fischer|2002|pp=47–49}}.</ref> ''Völkisch'' antisemitism drew upon stereotypes from Christian antisemitism, but differed in that Jews were considered to be a race rather than a religion.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gramel|1992|pp=53–4}}.</ref> | |||
==Start of World War II== | |||
In a speech before the '']'' in 1895, ''völkisch'' leader ] called Jews "predators" and "cholera bacilli" who should be "exterminated" for the good of the German people.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gramel|1992|p=61}}.</ref> In his best-selling 1912 book ''Wenn ich der Kaiser wär'' (''If I were the Kaiser''), ], leader of the ''völkisch'' group '']'', urged that all German Jews be stripped of their German citizenship and be reduced to ''Fremdenrecht'' (alien status).<ref name = "Friedländer 1997 76">{{Harvnb|Friedländer|1997|p=76}}.</ref> Class also urged that Jews should be excluded from all aspects of German life, forbidden to own land, hold public office, or participate in journalism, banking, and the liberal professions.<ref name = "Friedländer 1997 76"/> Class defined a Jew as anyone who was a member of the Jewish religion on the day the ] was proclaimed in 1871, or anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent.<ref name = "Friedländer 1997 76"/> | |||
]'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}} | |||
The first ] on humans and ] by Germans took place in the death camps of ] during the ]. It has been suggested that this was an inspiration for the Holocaust.<ref>{{cite book|title=Identity Politics in the Age of Genocide: The Holocaust and Historical Representation|page=97|author=David B. MacDonald|year=2007|publisher=Routledge|url=http://books.google.de/books?id=X5d8AgAAQBAJ&pg=PT66&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=snippet&q=Herero%20Genocide&f=false|isbn=1134085710}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1314399/Hitlers-Holocaust-blueprint-Africa-concentration-camps-used-advance-racial-theories.html|title=Hitler's Holocaust blueprint: A new book reveals how the Kaiser's Germany used concentration camps in Africa to advance their theories of racial supremacy|date=September 23, 2010}}</ref> | |||
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 German Empire, ''völkisch'' notions and pseudoscientific racism had become common and accepted throughout Germany,<ref name = "Evans 1989 69">{{Harvnb|Evans|1989|p=69}}.</ref> with the educated professional classes of the country, in particular, adopting an ideology of human inequality.<ref>{{Harvnb|Friedlander|1994|pp=495–6}}.</ref> Though the ''völkisch'' parties were defeated in the 1912 ''Reichstag'' elections, being all but wiped out, antisemitism was incorporated into the platforms of the mainstream political parties.<ref name = "Evans 1989 69"/> The ] (Nazi Party; NSDAP) was founded in 1920 as an offshoot of the ''völkisch'' movement, and adopted their antisemitism.<ref>{{Harvnb|Fischer|2002|pp=47–51}}.</ref> In a 1986 essay, German historian ] wrote about the situation in post–World War I Germany that: | |||
===Ghettoization and resettlement=== | |||
{{quote| | |||
{{further|The Holocaust in Poland}} | |||
If one emphasizes the indisputably important connection in isolation, one should not then force a connection with Hitler's ''weltanschauung'' , which was in no ways original itself, in order to derive from it the existence of Auschwitz ... Thoughts about the extermination of the Jews had long been current, and not only for Hitler and his satraps. Many of these found their way to the NSDAP from the ] , which itself had been called into life by the ].<ref>{{Harvnb|Mommsen|1993|p=121}}.</ref> | |||
], ]]] | |||
}} | |||
] 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}} | |||
Tremendous scientific and technological changes in Germany during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, together with the growth of the welfare state, created widespread hopes that ] was at hand and that soon all social problems could be solved.<ref>{{Harvnb|Peukert|1994|pp=280–284}}.</ref> At the same time a racist, social Darwinist, and eugenicist world-view which declared some people to be more biologically valuable than others was common.<ref>{{Harvnb|Peukert|1994|pp=279–280}}.</ref> Historian ] states that the ''Shoah'' did not result solely from antisemitism, but was a product of the "cumulative radicalization" in which "numerous smaller currents" fed into the "broad current" that led to genocide.<ref>{{Harvnb|Peukert|1994|p=280}}.</ref> After the First World War, the pre-war mood of optimism gave way to disillusionment as German bureaucrats found social problems to be more insoluble than previously thought, which in turn led them to place increasing emphasis on saving the biologically "fit" while the biologically "unfit" were to be written off.<ref>{{Harvnb|Peukert|1994|p=288}}.</ref> | |||
]'' stormtroopers urge a national boycott of all Jewish businesses on 1 April 1933. These SA stormtroopers are outside ] in Berlin to deter customers. The signs read: "Germans! Defend yourselves! Don't buy from Jews." ("''Deutsche! Wehrt Euch! Kauft nicht bei Juden!''")<ref name=boycotts>. Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, ]. {{Dead link|date=September 2012}}. Retrieved 24 September 2012.</ref> The store was later ransacked during ] in 1938, then handed over to a non-Jewish family.]] | |||
The economic strains of the ] led many in the German medical establishment to advocate the idea of euthanisation of the "incurable" mentally and physically disabled as a cost-saving measure to free up money to care for the curable.<ref>{{Harvnb|Burleigh|2000|pp=47–48}}.</ref> By the time the Nazis came to power in 1933, a tendency already existed in German social policy to save the racially "valuable" while seeking to rid society of the racially "undesirable".<ref>{{Harvnb|Peukert|1994|p=289}}.</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}} | |||
Hitler was open about his hatred of Jews. In his book '']'', he gave warning of his intention to drive them from Germany's political, intellectual, and cultural life. He did not write that he would attempt to exterminate them, but he is reported to have been more explicit in private. As early as 1922, he allegedly told Major Joseph Hell, at the time a journalist: | |||
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}} | |||
{{quote|Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews. As soon as I have the power to do so, I will have gallows built in rows—at the Marienplatz in Munich, for example—as many as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged indiscriminately, and they will remain hanging until they stink; they will hang there as long as the principles of hygiene permit. As soon as they have been untied, the next batch will be strung up, and so on down the line, until the last Jew in Munich has been exterminated. Other cities will follow suit, precisely in this fashion, until all Germany has been completely cleansed of Jews.<ref>{{Harvnb|Fleming|1987|p=17}}.</ref>}} | |||
Rape and sexual exploitation of Jewish and non-Jewish women in eastern Europe ].{{sfn|Westermann|2020|pp=127–128}} | |||
Mommsen suggested that there were three types of antisemitism in Germany: There was 1) the cultural antisemitism found among German conservatives, especially in the military officer corps as well as in the top members of the civil administration; 2) there was the "volkisch" antisemitism or racism which advocated using violence against the Jews; and 3) the religious anti-Judaism, particularly within the Catholic Church. The cultural antisemitism kept the ruling establishment from distancing itself or opposing the violent, racial antisemitism of the Nazis, and religious antisemitism meant that the religious establishment did not present opposition to racial persecution of the Jews.<ref>] (12 December 1997) . ]. Retrieved 26 September 2012.</ref>{{cn|date=December 2014|reason=this is a primary source}} | |||
==Invasion of the Soviet Union== | |||
===Legal repression and emigration=== | |||
{{further|Anti-Jewish legislation in prewar Nazi Germany|Racial policy of Nazi Germany|Nuremberg Laws|Haavara Agreement}} | |||
Right from the establishment of the Third Reich, Nazi leaders proclaimed the existence of a '']'' ("people's community"). Nazi policies divided the population into two categories, the ''Volksgenossen'' ("national comrades"), who belonged to the ''Volksgemeinschaft'', and the ''Gemeinschaftsfremde'' ("community aliens"), who did not. Nazi policies about repression divided people into three types of enemies, the "racial" enemies such as the Jews and the Gypsies who were viewed as enemies because of their "blood"; political opponents such as Marxists, liberals, Christians and the "reactionaries" who were viewed as wayward "National Comrades"; and moral opponents such as homosexuals, the "work-shy" and habitual criminals, also seen as wayward "National Comrades".<ref name = "No&Pr 1983 499">{{Harvnb|Noakes|Pridham|1983|p=499}}.</ref> The last two groups were to be sent to concentration camps for "re-education", with the aim of eventual absorption into the ''Volksgemeinschaft'', though some of the moral opponents were to be sterilized, as they were regarded as "genetically inferior".<ref name = "No&Pr 1983 499"/> | |||
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}} | |||
"Racial" enemies such as the Jews could, by definition, never belong to the ''Volksgemeinschaft''; they were to be totally removed from society.<ref name = "No&Pr 1983 499"/> German historian ] wrote that the National Socialists' "goal was an utopian ''Volksgemeinschaft'', totally under police surveillance, in which any attempt at nonconformist behaviour, or even any hint or intention of such behaviour, would be visited with terror".<ref>{{Harvnb|Peukert|1987|p=220}}.</ref> Peukert quotes policy documents on the "Treatment of Community Aliens" from 1944, which (though never implemented) showed the full intentions of Nazi social policy: "persons who ... show themselves unable to comply by their own efforts with the minimum requirements of the national community" were to be placed under police supervision, and if this did not reform them, they were to be taken to a concentration camp.<ref>{{Harvnb|Peukert|1987|p=221}}.</ref> | |||
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}} | |||
Leading up to the March 1933 ''Reichstag'' elections, the Nazis intensified their campaign of violence against the opposition. With the co-operation of local authorities, they set up concentration camps for extrajudicial imprisonment of their opponents. One of the first, at ], opened on 9 March 1933.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gilbert|1986|p=32}}.</ref> Initially the camp contained primarily communists and Social Democrats.<ref>{{Harvnb|Longerich|2012|p=155}}.</ref> Other early prisons—for example, in basements and storehouses run by the '']'' (SA) and less commonly by the '']'' (SS)—were consolidated by mid-1934 into purpose-built camps outside the cities, run exclusively by the SS. The initial purpose of the camps was to serve as a deterrent by terrorizing those Germans who did not conform to the ''Volksgemeinschaft''.<ref name="Peukert 1987 214">{{Harvnb|Peukert|1987|p=214}}.</ref> Those sent to the camps included the "educable", whose wills could be broken into becoming "National Comrades", and the "biologically depraved", who were to be sterilized, were to be held permanently, and over time were increasingly subject to ], i.e., being worked to death.<ref name="Peukert 1987 214"/> | |||
], a Belarusian Jew who helped Soviet prisoners escape]] | |||
], the legal, economic, and social rights of Jews were steadily restricted. The Israeli historian ] writes that, for the Nazis, Germany drew its strength "from the purity of its blood and from its rootedness in the sacred German earth."<ref name="Friedländer 1997 33">{{Harvnb|Friedländer|1997|p=33}}.</ref> On 1 April 1933, ], which was the first national antisemitic campaign, initially planned for a week, but called off after one day owing to lack of popular support. In 1933, a series of laws were passed which contained ]s to exclude Jews from key areas: the ], the first antisemitic law passed in the Third Reich; the Physicians' Law; and the Farm Law, forbidding Jews from owning farms or taking part in agriculture. | |||
] 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}}=== | |||
Jewish lawyers were ], and in ], Jewish lawyers and judges were dragged out of their offices and courtrooms and beaten.<ref>{{Harvnb|Friedländer|1997|p=29}}.</ref> At the insistence of then president ], Hitler added an exemption allowing Jewish civil servants who were veterans of the First World War, or whose fathers or sons had served, to remain in office. Hitler revoked this exemption in 1937. Jews were excluded from schools and universities (the Law to Prevent Overcrowding in Schools), from belonging to the Journalists' Association, and from being owners or editors of newspapers.<ref name="Friedländer 1997 33"/> The ''Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung'' of 27 April 1933 wrote: | |||
<!-- internal links target here --> | |||
{{Further|The Holocaust in the Soviet Union|The Holocaust in Romania}} | |||
], mainly by local Ukrainians.{{sfn|Beorn|2020|pp=162–163}}]] | |||
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}} | |||
{{quote|A self-respecting nation cannot, on a scale accepted up to now, leave its higher activities in the hands of people of racially foreign origin . . . Allowing the presence of too high a percentage of people of foreign origin in relation to their percentage in the general population could be interpreted as an acceptance of the superiority of other races, something decidedly to be rejected.<ref>{{Harvnb|Friedländer|1997|pp=30–1}}.</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}} | |||
In July 1933, the ] calling for compulsory sterilization of the "inferior" was passed. This major ] policy led to over 200 ]s ({{lang|de|''Erbgesundheitsgerichte''}}) being set up, under whose rulings over 400,000 people were sterilized against their will during the Nazi period.<ref>{{Harvnb|Proctor|1988|p=108}}.</ref> | |||
], Belarus]] | |||
] based on the Nuremberg Laws of 1935.]] | |||
] | |||
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}} | |||
In 1935, Hitler introduced the ], which: prohibited "Aryans" from having sexual relations or marriages with Jews, although this was later extended to include "Gypsies, Negroes or their bastard offspring" (the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor),<ref>{{Harvnb|Gellately|2001|pp=216, 231}}</ref> stripped German Jews of their citizenship and deprived them of all ]. At the same time the Nazis used propaganda to promulgate the concept of '']'' (race defilement) to justify the need for a restrictive law.<ref>{{Harvnb|Evans|2005|pp=539, 551}}</ref> Hitler described the "Blood Law" in particular "the attempt at a legal regulation of a problem, which in the event of further failure would then have through law to be transferred to the final solution of the National Socialist Party". Hitler said that if the "Jewish problem" cannot be solved by these laws, it "must then be handed over by law to the National-Socialist Party for a final solution".<ref>{{Harvnb|Kershaw|1998|p=570}}.</ref> The "]", or "''Endlösung''", became the standard Nazi euphemism for the extermination of the Jews. In January 1939, he said in a public speech: "If international-finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed once more in plunging the nations into yet another world war, the consequences will not be the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation (''vernichtung'') of the Jewish race in Europe".<ref>{{Harvnb|Berenbaum|2005|p=57}}.</ref> Footage from this speech was used to conclude the 1940 Nazi propaganda movie '']'' (''Der ewige Jude''), whose purpose was to provide a rationale and blueprint for eliminating the Jews from Europe.<ref>{{Harvnb|Michael|Doerr|2002|p=154}}.</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}} | |||
Jewish intellectuals were among the first to leave. The philosopher ] left for Paris on 18 March 1933. Novelist ] went to Switzerland. The conductor ] fled after being told that the hall of the ] would be burned down if he conducted a concert there: the '']'' explained on 6 April that Walter and fellow conductor ] had been forced to flee because the government was unable to protect them against the mood of the German public, which had been provoked by "Jewish artistic liquidators".<ref>{{Harvnb|Friedländer|1997|p=1}}.</ref> ] was visiting the US on 30 January 1933. He returned to Ostende in Belgium, never to set foot in Germany again, and calling events there a "psychic illness of the masses"; he was expelled from the ] and the ], and his citizenship was rescinded.<ref name="Friedländer 1997 12">{{Harvnb|Friedländer|1997|p=12}}.</ref> When Germany annexed ] in 1938, ] and his family fled from Vienna to England. Saul Friedländer writes that when ], honorary president of the ], resigned his position, not one of his colleagues expressed a word of sympathy, and he was still ostracized at his death two years later. When the police arrived in 1943 with a stretcher to deport his 85-year-old bedridden widow, she committed suicide with an ] of ]s rather than be taken.<ref name="Friedländer 1997 12"/> | |||
==Systematic deportations across Europe== | |||
===Kristallnacht (1938)=== | |||
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}} | |||
{{main|Kristallnacht}} | |||
] | |||
On 7 November 1938, Jewish minor ] assassinated Nazi German diplomat ] in Paris.<ref name = "Benz 2007 97">{{Harvnb|Benz|2007|p=97}}.</ref> This incident was used by the ] as a pretext to go beyond legal repression to large-scale physical violence against Jewish Germans. What the Nazis claimed to be spontaneous "public outrage" was in fact a wave of pogroms instigated by the ], and carried out by ] members and affiliates throughout Nazi Germany, at the time consisting of ], Austria and ].<ref name = "Benz 2007 97"/> These pogroms became known as ''Reichskristallnacht'' ("the Night of Broken Glass", literally "''Crystal Night''"), or ''November pogroms''. Jews were attacked and Jewish property was vandalized, over 7,000 Jewish shops and more than 1,200 synagogues (roughly two-thirds of the synagogues in areas under German control) were damaged or destroyed.<ref name = "Diamant RK">{{Harvnb|Diamant|1998}}.</ref> | |||
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}} | |||
The death toll is assumed to be much higher than the official number of 91 dead.<ref name = "Benz 2007 97"/> 30,000 were sent to concentration camps, including ], ], ], and ],<ref>{{Harvnb|Benz|2007|p=97}} (26,000 to Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen); {{Harvnb|Buchholz|1999|p=510}} (Pomeranian Jews to Oranienburg).</ref> where they were kept for several weeks, and released when they could either prove that they were about to emigrate in the near future, or transferred their property to the Nazis.<ref>{{Harvnb|Buchholz|1999|p=510}}.</ref> German Jewry was collectively made responsible for restitution of the material damage of the pogroms, amounting to several hundred thousand ]s, and furthermore had to pay an "atonement tax" of more than a billion ]s.<ref name = "Benz 2007 97"/> After these pogroms, Jewish emigration from Germany accelerated, while public Jewish life in Germany ceased to exist.<ref name = "Benz 2007 97"/> | |||
===Resettlement and deportation=== | |||
] aboard the MS '']'' were refused entry to Cuba, the United States and Canada, and the ship was forced to return to Europe]] | |||
Before the war, the Nazis considered mass deportation of German (and subsequently the European) Jewry from Europe. Hitler's agreement to the 1938–9 Schacht Plan, and the continued flight of thousands of Jews from Hitler's clutches for an extended period when the Schacht Plan came to nothing, indicate that the preference for a concerted genocide of the type that came later did not yet exist.<ref>], p. 7. For details of the original Schacht Plan, see . '']''. 18 December 1938. Retrieved 30 September 2012.</ref> | |||
Plans to reclaim former German colonies such as ] and ] for Jewish resettlement were halted by Hitler, who argued that no place where "so much blood of heroic Germans had been spilled" should be made available as a residence for the "worst enemies of the Germans".<ref>{{Harvnb|Brechtken|1998|pp=200–1}}.</ref> Diplomatic efforts were undertaken to convince the other colonial powers, primarily the United Kingdom and France, to accept expelled Jews in their colonies.<ref>{{Harvnb|Brechtken|1998|p=196ff}}.</ref> Areas considered for possible resettlement included British ],<ref name="Brechtken 1998 205">{{Harvnb|Brechtken|1998|p=205}}.</ref> Italian ],<ref name="Brechtken 1998 205"/> British ],<ref>{{Harvnb|Poprzeczny|2004|p=150}}.</ref> French ],<ref name="Brechtken 1998 205"/> and Australia.<ref>{{Harvnb|Brechtken|1998|p=197}}.</ref> | |||
Of these areas, ] was the most seriously discussed. ] called the ] a "territorial final solution"; it was a remote location, and the island's unfavorable conditions would hasten deaths.<ref>{{Harvnb|Naimark|2001|p=73}}.</ref> Approved by Hitler in 1938, the resettlement planning was carried out by ] office, only being abandoned once the mass killing of Jews had begun in 1941. In retrospect, although futile, this plan did constitute an important psychological step on the path to the Holocaust.<ref>{{Harvnb|Browning|2004|p=81}}.</ref> The end of the Madagascar Plan was announced on 10 February 1942. The German Foreign Office was given the official explanation that, due to the war with the Soviet Union, Jews were to be "sent to the east".<ref>{{Harvnb|Hildebrand|2005|p=70}}.</ref> | |||
Nazi bureaucrats also developed plans to deport Europe's Jews to ].<ref>{{cite web|last=Cesarani|first=David|authorlink=David Cesarani|date=17 February 2011|title=From Persecution to Genocide|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/radicalisation_01.shtml|publisher=BBC History|accessdate=25 September 2012}}</ref> Palestine was the only location to which any Nazi relocation plan succeeded in producing significant results, by means of an agreement begun in 1933 between the Zionist Federation of Germany (''die Zionistische Vereinigung für Deutschland'') and the Nazi government, the ]. This agreement resulted in the transfer of about 60,000 German Jews and $100 million from Germany to Palestine, up until the outbreak of World War II.<ref>{{Harvnb|Black|2001|p={{page needed|date=November 2012}}}}; {{Harvnb|Nicosia|2000|p={{page needed|date=November 2012}}}}.</ref> | |||
===Early measures=== | |||
====In German-occupied Poland==== | |||
{{main|The Holocaust in Poland}} | |||
{{further|Invasion of Poland|Occupation of Poland (1939–45)|History of the Jews in Poland}} | |||
] 1941, including ] and the ] area]] | |||
Germany's ] in September 1939 increased the urgency of the "Jewish Question". Poland, was home to approximately three million Jews (]), in ], two-thirds of whom fell under Nazi control with Poland's capitulation. | |||
], Reichsprotektor of ], recommended concentrating all the Polish Jews in ]s in major cities, where they would be put to work for the German war industry. The ghettos would be in cities located on railway junctions in order to furnish, in Heydrich's words, "a better possibility of control and later deportation."<ref>{{Harvnb|Browning|2004|p=111}}.</ref> During his interrogation in 1961, Adolf Eichmann recalled that this "later deportation" actually meant "physical extermination."<ref>{{Harvnb|Cesarani|2005|p=99}}.</ref> | |||
{{rquote|right| | |||
'''''I ask nothing of the Jews except that they should disappear.|], Nazi governor for occupied Poland.'''''<ref>{{Harvnb|Mann|2005|p=246}}.</ref> | |||
}} | |||
<!-- Deleted image removed: ], Poland]] --> | |||
In September, Himmler appointed Heydrich head of the ] (''Reichssicherheitshauptamt'' or RSHA, not to be confused with the ]). This organization was made up of seven departments, including the ] (SD), and the ].<ref>{{Harvnb|Lumsden|2002|pp=83, 84}}.</ref> They were to oversee the work of the ] in occupied Poland, and carry out the policy towards the Jews described in Heydrich's report. The first organized murders of Jews by German forces occurred during ] and through '']'' units. The Jews were later herded into ghettos, mostly in the ] area of central Poland, where they were put to work under the Reich Labor Office headed by ]. Here many thousands died from maltreatment, disease, starvation, and exhaustion, but there was still no program of systematic killing. There is little doubt, however, that the Nazis saw forced labor as a form of extermination. The expression ''Vernichtung durch Arbeit'' ("destruction through work") was frequently used. | |||
{{further|Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland}} | |||
Although it was clear by late 1941 that the SS hierarchy was determined to embark on a policy of killing all the Jews under German control, there was still opposition to this policy within the Nazi regime, although the motive was economic, not humanitarian. ], who had overall control of the German war industry, and the German army's Economics Department, argued that the enormous Jewish labor force assembled in the General Government area (more than a million able-bodied workers), was an asset too valuable to waste, particularly with Germany failing to secure rapid victory of the Soviet Union. | |||
====In other occupied countries==== | |||
], west Ukraine (Nazi occupied USSR). Photo was found by Soviets at former Gestapo headquarters in Zolochiv.]] | |||
When Germany occupied Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, and France in 1940, and Yugoslavia and Greece in 1941, antisemitic measures were also introduced into these countries, although the pace and severity varied greatly from country to country according to local political circumstances. Jews were removed from economic and cultural life and were subject to various restrictive laws, but physical deportation did not occur in most places before 1942. The ] regime in occupied France actively collaborated in persecuting French Jews. Germany's allies Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Finland were pressured to introduce antisemitic measures, but for the most part they did not comply until compelled to do so. During the course of the war some 900 Jews and 300 Roma passed through the Banjica concentration camp in Belgrade, intended primarily for Serbian communists, royalists and others who resisted occupation. The German puppet regime in Croatia, on the other hand, began actively persecuting Jews on its own initiative, so the ''Legal Decree on the Nationalization of the Property of Jews and Jewish Companies'' was declared on 10 October 1941 in the Independent State of Croatia. | |||
=====In North Africa===== | |||
{{see also|The Holocaust in Italian Libya}} | |||
Though the vast majority of the Jews affected and killed during Holocaust were of ] descent, ] and ] Jews suffered greatly as well. | |||
In the 1930s, the ] regime initiated anti-Semitic laws which barred Jews from government jobs, government schools and required them to stamp "Jewish race" into their passports.<ref name=haaretz>{{cite news|author=Amiram Barkat|title=A new look at Libyan Jewry's Holocaust experience|url=http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/a-new-look-at-libyan-jewry-s-holocaust-experience-1.11501|accessdate=21 September 2013|newspaper=]|date=30 April 2003}}</ref> However, this was not enough to deter Jews from ], as 25% of the population in ] was Jewish with over 44 synagogues in existence.<ref name=geoimages>{{cite web|author=Maurice Roumani|title=Aspects of the Holocaust in Libya|url=http://geoimages.berkeley.edu/libyajew/LibyanJews/RoumaniAspects.html|work=]|accessdate=21 September 2013}}</ref> In 1942, the Jewish Quarter of ] was occupied by the Nazis and more than 2,000 Jews were deported and sent to Nazi labor camps. By the end of WWII, about one-fifth of those who were sent away had perished.<ref name=yad-vashem>{{cite web|author=Sheryl Ochayon|title=The International School for Holocaust Studies - The Jews of Libya|url=http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/education/newsletter/25/jews_libya.asp|work=]|accessdate=21 September 2013}}</ref> Several forced labor camps for Jews were established in Libya, the largest of which, the Giado camp, held almost 2,600 inmates, of whom 562 died of weakness, hunger, and disease. Smaller labor camps were established in ], Jeren, and Tigrinna.<ref name=yad-vashem/><ref>Daniel Greenfield (April 8, 2013). "". FrontPage Magazine. Retrieved 21 September 2013.</ref> | |||
], the only North African country to come under direct Nazi occupation, had 100,000 Jews when the Nazis arrived in November 1942. During their six months of occupation, the Nazis imposed anti-Semitic policies in Tunisia, including forcing Jews to wear the Yellow Star, fines, and confiscation of property. Some 5,000 Tunisian Jews were subjected to forced labor, and some were deported to European death camps.<ref></ref> More than 2,500 Tunisian Jews died in slave labor camps during the German occupation.<ref></ref> | |||
====General Government and Lublin reservation (Nisko plan)==== | |||
{{main|Nisko Plan|General Government}} | |||
On 28 September 1939, Germany gained control over the Lublin area through the ] in exchange for ].<ref>{{Harvnb|Niewyk|Nicosia|2000|p=232}}.</ref> According to the ], they set up the Lublin-Lipowa Reservation in the area. The reservation was designated by Adolf Eichmann, who was assigned the task of removing all Jews from Germany, Austria and the ].<ref>{{Harvnb|Cesarani|2005|pp=9, 77–78}}.</ref> They shipped the first Jews to Lublin less than three weeks later on 18 October 1939. The first train loads consisted of Jews deported from Austria and the ].<ref>{{Harvnb|Niewyk|Nicosia|2000|p=153}}.</ref> By 30 January 1940, a total of 78,000 Jews had been deported to Lublin from Germany, Austria and ].<ref>{{Harvnb|Kats|1970|p=35}}.</ref> On 12 and 13 February 1940, the ] to the Lublin reservation, resulting in ] ] ] to be the first to declare his ] '']'' ("free of Jews").<ref>Yad ṿa-shem, rashut ha-zikaron la-Shoʾah ṿela-gevurah, ''Yad Vashem studies XXXI'', Yad Vashem Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, 2003, p.322</ref> On 24 March 1940 Göring put the Nisko Plan on hold, and abandoned it entirely by the end of April.<ref>{{Harvnb|Niewyk|Nicosia|2000|p=154}}.</ref> By the time the Nisko Plan was stopped, the total number of Jews who had been transported to Nisko had reached 95,000, many of whom had died from starvation.<ref>Dwork and Jan van Pelt, ''Holocaust: A History'', 208.</ref> | |||
In July 1940, due to the difficulties of supporting the increased population in the General Government, Hitler had the deportations temporarily halted.<ref>{{cite book|last=Rubenstein|first=Richard L.|authorlink=Richard L. Rubenstein|author2=Roth, John K. |title=Approaches to Auschwitz|edition=2nd|year=2003|publisher=Westminster John Knox Press|isbn=978-0-664-22353-3|page=164|chapter=War and the Final solution}}</ref> | |||
In October 1940, ''Gauleiters'' ] and ] oversaw Operation ''Bürckel'', the expulsion of the Jews into unoccupied France from their ''Gaues'' and the parts of ] that had been annexed that summer to the ''Reich''.<ref name = "Krausnick 1968 57">{{Harvnb|Krausnick|1968|p=57}}.</ref> Only those Jews in ] were not expelled.<ref name = "Krausnick 1968 57"/> The 6,500 Jews affected by Operation ''Bürckel'' were given at most two hours warning on the night of 22–23 October 1940, before being rounded up. The nine trains carrying the deported Jews crossed over into France "without any warning to the French authorities", who were not happy with receiving them.<ref name = "Krausnick 1968 57"/> The deportees had not been allowed to take any of their possessions with them, these being confiscated by the German authorities.<ref name = "Krausnick 1968 57"/> The German Foreign Minister ] treated the ensuing complaints by the Vichy government over the expulsions in a "most dilatory fashion".<ref name = "Krausnick 1968 57"/> As a result, the Jews expelled in Operation ''Bürckel'' were interned in harsh conditions by the Vichy authorities at the camps in ], ] and ] while awaiting a chance to return them to Germany.<ref name = "Krausnick 1968 57"/> | |||
During 1940 and 1941, the murder of large numbers of Jews in German-occupied Poland continued, and the deportation of Jews to the General Government was undertaken. The deportation of Jews from Germany, particularly Berlin, was not officially completed until 1943. (Many Berlin Jews were able to survive in hiding.) By December 1939, 3.5 million Jews were crowded into the General Government area. | |||
===Concentration and labor camps (1933–1945)=== | |||
{{further|Nazi concentration camps|List of Nazi concentration camps|Extermination through labor}} | |||
], where 20,000 inmates are believed to have died]] | |||
From the beginning of the Third Reich concentration camps were founded, initially as places of incarceration. Although the death rate in the concentration camps was high, with a mortality rate of 50%, they were not designed to be killing centers. (By 1942, six large extermination camps had been established in Nazi-occupied Poland, which were built solely for mass killings.) After 1939, the camps increasingly became places where Jews and ]s were either killed or made to work as slave laborers, undernourished and tortured.<ref>{{Harvnb|Harran|2000|p=}}.</ref> It is estimated that the Germans established 15,000 camps and subcamps in the occupied countries, mostly in eastern Europe.<ref>, Jewish Virtual Library.</ref><ref>.</ref> New camps were founded in areas with large Jewish, Polish intelligentsia, communist, or Roma and Sinti populations, including inside Germany. The transportation of prisoners was often carried out under horrifying conditions using rail freight cars, in which many died before reaching their destination. | |||
] was a policy of systematic extermination – camp inmates would literally be worked to death, or worked to physical exhaustion, when they would be gassed or shot.<ref>{{Harvnb|Bloxham|2000|pp=1–37}}; {{Harvnb|Longerich|2010|pp=314–320}}.</ref> Slave labour was used in war production, for example producing ] rockets at ], and various armaments around the ] complex. | |||
Upon admission, some camps ] with a prisoner ID.<ref>{{Harvnb|Harran|2000|p=}}.</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, with prisoners regularly dying of exposure.<ref name=NormalDay>{{cite web|url=http://www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Camps/DayEng.html|title="Just a Normal Day in the Camps", JewishGen, {{nowrap|6 January 2007}}|publisher=Jewishgen.org|date=30 March 1999|accessdate=31 July 2010}}</ref> | |||
===Ghettos (1940–1945)=== | |||
{{main|Ghettos in occupied Europe 1939-1944|List of Nazi-era ghettos}} | |||
:''Main ghettos: ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ]'' | |||
]]] | |||
After the invasion of Poland, the Nazis established ghettos in the incorporated territories and General Government in which Jews were confined. These were initially seen as temporary, until the Jews were deported out of Europe; as it turned out, such deportation never took place, with the ghettos' inhabitants instead being sent to extermination camps. The Germans ordered that each ghetto be run by a '']'' (Jewish council) consisting of Jewish community leaders, with the first order for the establishment of such councils contained in a letter dated 29 September 1939 from Heydrich to the heads of the ''Einsatzgruppen''.<ref>{{Harvnb|Trunk|1996|pp=1–6}}.</ref> The ghettos were formed and closed off from the outside world at different times and for different reasons.<ref>{{Harvnb|Browning|1986|pp=345–8}}; {{Harvnb|Hilberg|2003|pp=216–7}}.<br>One reads that the Łódź ghetto was closed in April 1940 to force the Jews inside to give up money and valuables they did not actually have; that the Warsaw ghetto was closed for health considerations (of people outside, not inside, the ghetto); but that the Lublin ghetto was not established until April 1941.</ref> The councils were responsible for the day-to-day running of the ghetto, including the distribution of food, water, heat, medical care, and shelter. The Germans also mandated them to undertake confiscations, organize forced labor, and, finally, facilitate deportations to extermination camps.<ref>{{Harvnb|Hilberg|1980|p=104}}; {{Harvnb|Hilberg|1995|p=106}}.</ref> The councils' basic strategy was one of trying to minimise losses, largely by cooperating with Nazi authorities (or their surrogates), accepting the increasingly terrible treatment, bribery, and petitioning for better conditions and clemency.<ref>{{Harvnb|Hilberg|1995|p=170}}.</ref> Overall, to try and mitigate still worse cruelty and death, "the councils offered words, money, labor, and finally lives."<ref>{{Harvnb|Hilberg|1980|p=103}}.</ref> | |||
The ultimate test of each ''Judenrat'' was the demand to compile lists of names of deportees to be murdered. Though the predominant pattern was compliance with even this final task,<ref>{{Harvnb|Hilberg|1980|p=104}}.</ref> some council leaders insisted that not a single individual should be handed over who had not committed a ]. Leaders such as Joseph Parnas in ], who refused to compile a list, were shot. On 14 October 1942, the entire council of Byaroza committed suicide rather than cooperate with the deportations.<ref>{{Harvnb|Berenbaum|2005|pp=81–3}}.</ref> ] in Warsaw killed himself on 23 July 1942 when he could take no more as the final liquidation of the ghetto got under way.<ref>{{Harvnb|Hilberg|1995|p=117}}; {{Harvnb|Lichten|1984|p=71}}.</ref> Others, like ], who became the "dedicated autocrat" of Łódź,<ref>{{Harvnb|Hilberg|1995|p=109}}.</ref> argued that their responsibility was to save the Jews who ''could'' be saved, and that therefore others had to be sacrificed. | |||
The importance of the councils in facilitating the persecution and murder of ghetto inhabitants was not lost on the Germans: one official was emphatic that "the authority of the Jewish council be upheld and strengthened under all circumstances",<ref>{{Harvnb|Hilberg|2003|p=1111}}.</ref> another that "Jews who disobey instructions of the Jewish council are to be treated as saboteurs."<ref name="Hilberg 1995 106">{{Harvnb|Hilberg|1995|p=106}}.</ref> When such cooperation crumbled, as happened in the Warsaw ghetto after the Jewish Combat Organisation displaced the council's authority, the Germans lost control.<ref>{{Harvnb|Snyder|2010|p=285}}.</ref> | |||
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest, with 380,000 people; the Łódź Ghetto was second, holding 160,000. They were, in effect, immensely crowded prisons, described by Michael Berenbaum as instruments of "slow, passive murder."<ref name = "Berenbaum 2005 114">{{Harvnb|Berenbaum|2005|p=114}}.</ref> Though the Warsaw Ghetto contained 30% of the population of the Polish capital, it occupied only 2.4% of the city's area, averaging 9.2 people per room.<ref name=USHMMDeportationsWarsaw>. ''Holocaust Encyclopedia''. ]. Retrieved 27 September 2012.</ref> | |||
Between 1940 and 1942, starvation and disease, especially ], killed hundreds of thousands. Over 43,000 residents of the Warsaw ghetto died there in 1941,<ref name=USHMMDeportationsWarsaw/> more than one in ten; in ], more than half the residents died in 1942.<ref name = "Berenbaum 2005 114"/> | |||
{{quote|The Germans came, the police, and they started banging houses: "Raus, raus, raus, Juden raus." ... ne baby started to cry ... The other baby started crying. So the mother urinated in her hand and gave the baby a drink to keep quiet ... , I told the mothers to come out. And one baby was dead ... from fear, the mother choked her own baby. |Abraham Malik, describing his experience in the ]<ref>{{Harvnb|Berenbaum|2005|pp=115–6}}.</ref>}} | |||
Himmler ordered the start of the deportations on 19 July 1942, and three days later, on 22 July, the deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto began; over the next 52 days, until 12 September 300,000 people from Warsaw alone were ] to the ]. Many other ghettos were completely depopulated. | |||
{{further|Timeline of Treblinka}} | |||
The first ] occurred in September 1942 in the small town of ] in south-east Poland. Although there were armed resistance attempts in the larger ghettos in 1943, such as the ] and the ], in every case they failed against the overwhelming Nazi military force, and the remaining Jews were either killed or deported to the death camps.<ref>{{Harvnb|Berenbaum|2005|p=116}}.</ref> | |||
===Pogroms (1939–1942)=== | |||
{{main|Pogrom|Dorohoi Pogrom|Iaşi pogrom|Jedwabne Massacre|Legionnaires' Rebellion and Bucharest Pogrom|History of Lviv#Lviv pogroms and the Holocaust|Odessa massacre}} | |||
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 30 June 1941, in which as many as 14,000 Jews were killed by Romanian residents and police, and the ] of July 1941, in which 300 Jews were locked in a barn set on fire by the local Poles in the presence of Nazi '']'', which was preceded by the execution of 40 Jewish men at the same location by the Germans. – Such were the final finding of the official investigation conducted in 2000–2003 by the ], confirmed by the number of victims in the two graves examined by the archeological and anthropological team participating in the exhumation. Earlier higher estimates based on hearsay were disproved.<ref name="Buffalo">Public Prosecutor Radosław J. Ignatiew (9 July 2002), ''Polish Academic Information Center'', University of Buffalo.</ref><ref name="ipn.gov.pl4643"> Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, ul. Towarowa 28, 00-839 Warszawa. {{pl icon}}</ref><ref name="gov">IPN Communiqué. Final findings. ], 30 June 2001. PDF file, direct download 25.4 MB. {{pl icon}}</ref><ref name="memorial stone">The inscription on the memorial stone raised in the place of the barn at Jedwabne read: "Place of torture and execution of the Jewish population. The Gestapo and Nazi gendarmerie burned 1,600 people alive on 10 July 1941." ({{lang-pl|Miejsce kaźni ludności żydowskiej. Gestapo i żandarmeria hitlerowska spaliła żywcem 1600 osób 10.VII.1941.}}). In 2001 the stone was removed and deposited in the Polish Army Museum in ] because it did not present the confirmed number of dead.</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=Gross, Jan Tomasz |title=Neighbors: the destruction of the Jewish community in Jedwabne, Poland |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton, N.J |year=2001 |pages= |isbn=0-691-08667-2 |oclc= |doi= |accessdate=}}p.7</ref> | |||
===Death squads (1941–1943)=== | |||
{{main|The Holocaust in Ukraine|The Holocaust in Lithuania|The Holocaust in Latvia|The Holocaust in Estonia|The Holocaust in Belarus|The Holocaust in Russia|Einsatzgruppen|Mass graves in the Soviet Union|War crimes of the Wehrmacht}} | |||
{{See also|Babi Yar|Rumbula massacre|Kamianets-Podilskyi Massacre|Ponary massacre}} | |||
The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 opened a new phase. The Holocaust intensified after the Nazis occupied Lithuania, where close to 80% of the country's 220,000 ] were ] before the end of the year.<ref>{{Harvnb|Kwiet|1998|p=4}}; {{Harvnb|Porat|2002|p=161}}.</ref> The Soviet territories occupied by early 1942, including all of Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and ] and most Russian territory west of the line ]-Moscow-], contained about three million Jews at the start of the war. Hundreds of thousands had fled Poland in 1939. | |||
] in Ukraine. The photo was mailed from the ] to Germany and intercepted by a member of ]]] | |||
Members of the local populations in certain occupied Soviet territories participated actively in the killings of Jews and others.<ref name = "Matthäus 2004 268_276">{{Harvnb|Matthäus|2004|pp=268–276}}.</ref> Ultimately it was the Germans who organized and channelled these local participants in the Holocaust.<ref name = "Matthäus 2004 268_276"/> In Lithuania, Latvia and western Ukraine; locals were deeply involved in the murder of Jews from the very beginning of the German occupation.<ref name = "Matthäus 2004 268_276"/> The Latvian ] was an example of an auxiliary unit involved in these killings.<ref name = "Matthäus 2004 268_276"/> In addition, Latvian and Lithuanian units left their own countries, and committed the murders of Jews in Belarus. To the south, Ukrainians killed approximately 24,000 Jews.<ref name = "Matthäus 2004 268_276"/> Ukrainians went to Poland, where they served as concentration and death camp guards.<ref name = "Matthäus 2004 268_276"/> ] in Croatian areas also carried out acts of persecution and murder. | |||
]'' A; members execute Jews on the outskirts of Kovno, 1941-1942]] | |||
Many of the mass killings were carried out in public, a change from previous practice.<ref name = "Matthäus 2004 268_276"/> German witnesses to these killings emphasized the participation of the locals.<ref name = "Matthäus 2004 268_276"/> | |||
Germany usually justified the massacres committed by the ''Einsatzgruppen'' on the grounds of anti-partisan or anti-bandit operations, but the German historian ] wrote that this was merely an excuse for the German Army's considerable involvement in the Holocaust in Russia. He wrote in 1989 that the terms "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" were indeed correct labels for what happened.<ref>Hillgruber, Andreas "War in the East and the Extermination of the Jews," pp. 85–114 from ''The Nazi Holocaust Part 3, The "Final Solution": The Implementation of Mass Murder Volume 1'' edited by Michael Marrus, Mecler: Westpoint, CT 1989 pp. 102–103.</ref> Hillgruber maintained that the slaughter of about 2.2 million defenseless men, women and children for the reasons of racist ideology cannot possibly be justified for any reason, and that those German generals who claimed that the ''Einsatzgruppen'' were a necessary anti-partisan response were lying.<ref>Hillgruber (1989), "War in the East and Extermination of the Jews," p. 103.</ref> | |||
Army co-operation with the SS in anti-partisan and anti-Jewish operations was close and intensive.<ref name = "Förster 1998 276">{{Harvnb|Förster|1998|p=276}}.</ref> In mid-1941, the ] commanded by ], during the course of "anti-partisan" ] in the ], killed 699 Red Army soldiers, 1,100 partisans and 14,178 Jews.<ref name = "Förster 1998 276"/> Before the operation, Fegelein had been ordered to shoot all adult Jews while driving the women and children into the marshes. After the operation, General Max von Schenckendorff, who commanded the rear areas of ], ordered on 10 August 1941 that all ''Wehrmacht'' ] when on anti-partisan duty should emulate Fegelein's example, and organized between 24–26 September 1941 in ] a joint SS-''Wehrmacht'' seminar on how best to kill Jews.<ref name = "Förster 1998 276"/> The seminar ended with the 7th Company of Police Battalion 322 shooting 32 Jews at a village called Knjashizy before the assembled officers, as an example of how to "screen" the population for partisans.<ref name = "Förster 1998 277">{{Harvnb|Förster|1998|p=277}}.</ref> | |||
As the war diary of the Battalion 322 read: | |||
{{quote|The action, first scheduled as a training exercise, was carried out under real-life conditions (''ernstfallmässig'') in the village itself. Strangers, especially partisans could not be found. The screening of the population, however resulted in 13 Jews, 27 Jewish women and 11 Jewish children, of which 13 Jews and 19 Jewish women were shot in co-operation with the Security Service<ref name = "Förster 1998 277"/>}} | |||
Based on what they had learned during the Mogilev seminar, one ''Wehrmacht'' officer told his men, "Where the partisan is, there is the Jew and where the Jew is, there is the partisan".<ref name = "Förster 1998 277"/> | |||
In Order No. 24 24 November 1941, the commander of the 707th division declared: | |||
{{quote|''Jews and Gypsies'':...As already has been ordered, the Jews have to vanish from the flat country and the Gypsies have to be annihilated too. The carrying out of ''larger'' Jewish actions is not the task of the divisional units. They are carried out by civilian or police authorities, if necessary ordered by the commandant of White Ruthenia, if he has special units at his disposal, or for security reasons and in the case of collective punishments. When smaller or larger groups of Jews are met in the flat country, they can be liquidated by divisional units or be massed in the ghettos near bigger villages designated for that purpose, where they can be handed over to the civilian authority or the SD.<ref>{{Harvnb|Förster|1998|p=278}}.</ref>}} | |||
The German historian Jürgen Förster, a leading expert on the subject of ''Wehrmacht'' war crimes argued that they (the ''Wehrmacht'') played a key role in the Holocaust. He said it is wrong to describe the ''Shoah'' as solely the work of the SS with the ''Wehrmacht'' as a passive and disapproving bystander.<ref>{{Harvnb|Förster|1998|p=280}}.</ref> | |||
], in ], on 15–17 December 1941]] | |||
] writes that the German ''Einsatzgruppen'' commanders were ordinary citizens: the great majority were professionals, most were intellectuals, and they brought to bear all their skills and training in becoming efficient killers.<ref>{{Harvnb|Hilberg|2003|p=291}}.</ref> | |||
The large-scale killings of Jews in the occupied Soviet territories was assigned to SS formations called '']'' ("task groups"), under the overall command of Heydrich. These had been used to a limited extent in Poland in 1939, but were organized in the Soviet territories on a much larger scale. ''Einsatzgruppe'' A was assigned to the Baltic area, ''Einsatzgruppe'' B to Belarus, ''Einsatzgruppe'' C to north and central Ukraine, and ''Einsatzgruppe'' D to Moldova, south Ukraine, ], and, during 1942, the north ].<ref>{{Harvnb|Browning|2004|p=225}}.</ref> | |||
According to ] at ], "the ''Einsatzgruppen'' had the mission to protect the rear of the troops by killing the Jews, Gypsies, Communist functionaries, active Communists, and all persons who would endanger the security." In practice, their victims were nearly all defenseless Jewish civilians (not a single ''Einsatzgruppe'' member was killed in action during these operations). By December 1941, the four ''Einsatzgruppen'' listed above had killed, respectively, 125,000, 45,000, 75,000, and 55,000 people—a total of 300,000 people—mainly by shooting or with hand grenades at mass killing sites outside the major towns. | |||
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum provides the account of one survivor of the ''Einsatzgruppen'' in ], Ukraine, when the Germans killed 1,600 Jews on 6 April 1942, the second day of ]: | |||
{{quote|I saw them do the killing. At 5:00 pm they gave the command, "Fill in the pits." Screams and groans were coming from the pits. Suddenly I saw my neighbor Ruderman rise from under the soil ... His eyes were bloody and he was screaming: "Finish me off!" ... A murdered woman lay at my feet. A boy of five years crawled out from under her body and began to scream desperately. "Mommy!" That was all I saw, since I fell unconscious.<ref>{{Harvnb|Berenbaum|2005|p=93}}.</ref> | |||
}} | |||
], July 1941]] | |||
The most notorious massacre of Jews in the Soviet Union was at a ravine called ] outside ], where 33,771 Jews were killed in a single operation on 29–30 September 1941.<ref>{{Harvnb|Evans|2008|pp=226–7}}.</ref> The decision to kill all the Jews in Kiev was made by the military governor (Major-General ]), the Police Commander for ] (SS-''Obergruppenführer'' ]), and the ''Einsatzgruppe'' C Commander ]. A mixture of SS, SD and Security Police, assisted by Ukrainian police, carried out the killings. Although they did not participate in the killings, men of the ] played a key role in rounding up the Jews of Kiev and transporting them to be shot at Babi Yar.<ref>{{Harvnb|Murray|Millett|2000|p=141}}.</ref> | |||
On Monday, the Jews of Kiev as ordered gathered by the cemetery, expecting to be loaded onto trains. The crowd was large enough that most of the men, women, and children could not have known what was happening until it was too late; by the time they heard the machine gun fire, there was no chance to escape. All were driven down a corridor of soldiers, in groups of ten, and then shot. A truck driver described the scene, as: | |||
{{quote|one after the other, they had to remove their luggage, then their coats, shoes, and outer garments and also underwear ... Once undressed, they were led into the ravine which was about 150 meters long and 30 meters wide and a good 15 meters deep ... When they reached the bottom of the ravine they were seized by members of the ''Schutzpolizei'' and made to lie down on top of Jews who had already been shot ... The corpses were literally in layers. A police marksman came along and shot each Jew in the neck with a ] ... I saw these marksmen stand on layers of corpses and shoot one after the other ... The marksman would walk across the bodies of the executed Jews to the next Jew, who had meanwhile lain down, and shoot him.<ref>{{Harvnb|Berenbaum|2005|pp=97–98}}.</ref>}} | |||
], ], and ] (second from the right) at the ], May 1939. Wolff wrote in his diary that Himmler had vomited after witnessing the mass shooting of 100 Jews.<ref>Isaacs, Jeremy (23 November 2006). . '']''. Retrieved 25 September 2012.</ref>]] | |||
In August 1941 Himmler travelled to ], where he personally witnessed 100 Jews being shot in a ditch outside the town, an event described by ] in his diary: "Himmler's face was green. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his cheek where a piece of brain had squirted up onto it. Then he vomited." After recovering his composure, Himmler lectured the SS men on the need to follow the "highest moral law of the Party" in carrying out their tasks.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gilbert|1986|p=191}}.</ref> | |||
===New methods of mass murder=== | |||
Starting in December 1939, the Nazis introduced new methods of mass murder by using gas.<ref name = "Benz 2007 98">{{Harvnb|Benz|2007|p=98}}.</ref> First, experimental ]s equipped with gas cylinders and a sealed trunk compartment, were used to kill mental care clients of ] in ], ], and ], as part of an operation termed ].<ref name = "Benz 2007 98"/> In the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, larger vans holding up to 100 people were used from November 1941, using the engine's exhaust rather than a cylinder.<ref name = "Benz 2007 98"/> These vans were introduced to the ] in December 1941, and another 15 of them were used by the Einsatzgruppen in the ].<ref name = "Benz 2007 98"/> These gas vans were developed and run under supervision of the SS-''Reichssicherheitshauptamt'' (Reich Main Security Office) and were used to kill about 500,000 people, primarily Jews but also Romani and others.<ref name = "Benz 2007 98"/> The vans were carefully monitored and after a month of observation a report stated that "ninety seven thousand have been processed using three vans, without any defects showing up in the machines".<ref>{{Harvnb|Kogon|Langbein|Rueckerl|1993|p={{page needed|date=November 2012}}}}.</ref> | |||
A need for new mass murder techniques was also expressed by ], governor of the General Government, who noted that this many people could not be simply shot. "We shall have to take steps, however, designed in some way to eliminate them." It was this problem which led the SS to experiment with large-scale killings using poison gas. ] seems to have been the inventor of the gas chamber. | |||
{{clear}} | |||
===Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution (1942–1945)=== | |||
{{further|Operation Reinhard|Wannsee Conference|Final Solution}} | |||
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] took place. The 15 men seated at the table on 20 January 1942 to discuss the "]"<ref name=Heydrichletter>, Foreign Office, February 26, 1942, regarding the minutes of the ].</ref> were considered the best and the brightest in the Reich.<ref>{{Harvnb|Berenbaum|2005|pp=101–2}}.</ref>]] | |||
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]. Holocaust scholar ] comments that more people lost their lives in this room than in any other room on Earth: 500,000 people.<ref name=morris>{{cite web |last= Morris |first= Errol |date= 12 May 1999 |title= Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. |url= http://www.errolmorris.com/film/mrd_transcript.html |publisher= Fourth Floor Productions |accessdate= 25 September 2012}}</ref>]] | |||
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] sent to Adolf Eichmann in January 1943, that reported that 1,274,166 Jews had been killed in the four ] camps during 1942]] | |||
The ] was convened by ] on 20 January 1942 in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee and brought together some 15 Nazi leaders which included a number of state secretaries, senior officials, party leaders, SS officers and other leaders of government departments who were responsible for policies which were linked to Jewish issues. The initial purpose of the meeting was to discuss plans for a comprehensive solution to the "Jewish question in Europe." Heydrich intended to "outline the mass murders in the various occupied territories . . . as part of a solution to the European Jewish question ordered by Hitler . . . to ensure that they, and especially the ministerial bureaucracy, would share both knowledge and responsibility for this policy."<ref>{{Harvnb|Longerich|2010|p=305}}.</ref> | |||
] | |||
A copy of the minutes which were drawn up by Eichmann has survived, but on Heydrich's instructions, they were written up in "euphemistic language." Thus the exact words used at the meeting are not known.<ref>{{Harvnb|Longerich|2010|p=306}}.</ref> However, Heydrich addressed the meeting indicating the policy of emigration was superseded by a policy of evacuating Jews to the east. This was seen to be only a temporary solution leading up to a final solution which would involve some 11 million Jews living not only in territories controlled then by the Germans, but to major countries in the rest of the world including the UK, and the US.<ref>{{Harvnb|Longerich|2010|p=307}}.</ref> There was little doubt what the solution was: "Heydrich also made it clear what was understood by the phrase 'Final Solution': the Jews were to be annihilated by a combination of forced labour and mass murder."<ref>{{Harvnb|Longerich|2010|p=308}}.</ref> | |||
The officials were told there were 2.3 million Jews in the General Government, 850,000 in Hungary, 1.1 million in the other occupied countries, and up to five million in the USSR, although two million of these were in areas still under Soviet control – a total of about 6.5 million. These would all be transported by train to ]s (''Vernichtungslager'') in Poland, where almost all of them would be gassed at once. In some camps, such as Auschwitz, those fit for work would be kept alive for a while, but eventually all would be killed. Göring's representative, Dr. ], gained a limited exemption for some classes of industrial workers.<ref>{{Harvnb|Cesarani|2005|pp=113–114}}.</ref> | |||
===Reaction=== | |||
====German public==== | |||
In his 1983 book, ''Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich'', ] examined the '']'' (history of everyday life) in Bavaria during the Nazi period.<ref>{{Harvnb|Marrus|2000|p=89}}.</ref> Describing the attitudes of most Bavarians, Kershaw argued that the most common viewpoint was indifference towards what was happening to the Jews.<ref name = "Marrus 2000 89_90">{{Harvnb|Marrus|2000|pp=89–90}}.</ref> Kershaw argued that most Bavarians were vaguely aware of the ''Shoah'', but were vastly more concerned about the war than about the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question".<ref name = "Marrus 2000 89_90"/> Kershaw made the analogy that "the road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference".<ref>{{Harvnb|Evans|1989|p=71}}; {{Harvnb|Marrus|2000|p=91}}.</ref> | |||
Kershaw's assessment that most Bavarians, and by implication most Germans, were indifferent to the ''Shoah'' faced criticism from the Israeli historian Otto Dov Kulka, an expert on public opinion in Nazi Germany, and the Canadian historian Michael Kater. Kater maintained that Kershaw downplayed the extent of popular antisemitism, and that though admitting that most of the "spontaneous" antisemitic actions of Nazi Germany were staged, argued that because these actions involved substantial numbers of Germans, it is wrong to see the extreme antisemitism of the Nazis as coming solely from above.<ref name = "Marrus 2000 92">{{Harvnb|Marrus|2000|p=92}}.</ref> Kulka argued that most Germans were more antisemitic than Kershaw portrayed them in ''Popular Opinion and Political Dissent'', and that rather than "indifference", "passive complicity" would be a better term to describe the reaction of the German people.<ref>{{Harvnb|Marrus|2000|p=93}}.</ref> | |||
In a study focusing only on the views about Jews or Germans opposed to the Nazi regime, the German historian Christof Dipper in his 1983 essay "''Der Deutsche Widerstand und die Juden''" (translated into English as "The German Resistance and the Jews" in ''Yad Vashem Studies'', Volume 16, 1984) argued that the majority of the anti-Nazi national-conservatives were antisemitic.<ref name = "Marrus 2000 92"/> Dipper wrote that for the majority of the national-conservatives "the bureaucratic, pseudo-legal deprivation of the Jews practiced until 1938 was still considered acceptable".<ref name = "Marrus 2000 92"/> Though Dipper noted no one in the ] supported the Holocaust, he also commented that the national-conservatives did not intend to restore civil rights to the Jews after the planned overthrow of Hitler.<ref name = "Marrus 2000 92"/> Dipper went on to argue that, based on such views held by opponents of the regime, "a large part of the German people ... believed that a "Jewish Question" existed and had to be solved ...".<ref name = "Marrus 2000 92"/> | |||
A study conducted in 2012 established that in Berlin alone there were 3,000 camps of various functions, another 1,300 were in Hamburg and its co-researcher concluded that it is unlikely that the German population could avoid knowing about the persecution considering such prevalence.<ref name=NYT030113 /> ] has argued that the German civilian population were, by and large, aware of what was happening. According to Gellately, the government openly announced the conspiracy through the media and civilians were aware of its every aspect except for the use of gas chambers.<ref>Ezard, John (17 February 2001). . '']''. Retrieved 23 September 2012.</ref> In contrast, some historical evidence indicates that the vast majority of Holocaust victims, prior to their deportation to concentration camps, were either unaware of the fate that awaited them or were in denial; they honestly believed that they were to be resettled.<ref>{{Harvnb|Lower|2006|p=245}}; {{Harvnb|Niewyk|Nicosia|2000|p=26}}; {{Harvnb|Yahil|1991|p=257}}.</ref> | |||
====International==== | |||
{{Main|International response to the Holocaust}} | |||
===Motivation=== | |||
In his 1965 essay "Command and Compliance", which originated in his work as an expert witness for the prosecution at the ], the German historian Hans Buchheim wrote there was no coercion to murder Jews and others, and all who committed such actions did so out of free will.<ref name = "Buchheim 1968 372_373">{{Harvnb|Buchheim|1968|pp=372–373}}.</ref> Buchheim wrote that chances to avoid executing criminal orders "...were both more numerous and more real than those concerned are generally prepared to admit...",<ref name = "Buchheim 1968 372_373"/> and that he found no evidence that SS men who refused to carry out criminal orders were sent to concentration camps or executed.<ref>{{Harvnb|Buchheim|1968|p=381}}.</ref> Moreover, SS rules prohibited acts of gratuitous sadism, as Himmler wished for his men to remain "decent", and that acts of sadism were taken on the individual initiative of those who were either especially cruel or who wished to prove themselves ardent National Socialists.<ref name = "Buchheim 1968 372_373"/> Finally, he argued that those of a non-criminal bent who committed crimes did so because they wished to conform to the values of the group they had joined and were afraid of being branded "weak" by their colleagues if they refused.<ref>{{Harvnb|Buchheim|1968|pp=386–7}}.</ref> | |||
In his 1992 monograph ''Ordinary Men'', the Holocaust historian ] examined the deeds of German ] of the '']'' (Order Police), used to commit massacres and round-ups of Jews as well as mass deportations to the Nazi death camps. The members of the battalion were middle-aged men of working-class background from ], who were too old for regular military duty. They were given no special training for genocide and at first, the commander gave his men the choice of opting out of direct participation in murder if they found it too unpleasant (even by being part of a passive cordon round the area of the killing). The majority chose not to exercise that option; fewer than 12 men, out of a battalion of 500 did so. Influenced by postwar ] on obedience, Browning argued that the men of the battalion killed out of peer pressure, not blood-lust.<ref>{{Harvnb|Browning|1992|p=57.}}</ref> | |||
The Russian historian Sergei Kudryashov studied the guards trained at the ] ("]"), who provided the bulk of personnel for the ] death camps and performed massacres for Battalion 101. Most of them were former Red Army soldiers who volunteered to join the ''SS'' in order to get out of the POW camps.<ref>{{Harvnb|Kudryashov|2004|pp=232–32}}.</ref> ] wrote that ''Hiwis'' "were screened on the basis of their anti-Communist (and hence almost invariably anti-Semitic) sentiments."<ref name="Browning">{{cite web | url=http://hampshirehigh.com/exchange2012/docs/BROWNING-Ordinary%20Men.%20Reserve%20Police%20Battalion%20101%20and%20the%20Final%20Solution%20in%20Poland%20(1992).pdf | title=Arrival in Poland | publisher=Penguin Books | work=Ordinary Men: ] and the Final Solution in Poland | date=1992; 1998 | accessdate=1 May 2013 | author=] | pages=52, 77, 79, 80 | format=PDF file, direct download 7.91 MB complete | quote=''Also:'' }}</ref> The majority of the "volunteers" were from Ukraine, Latvia and Lithuania (], or Hiwis).<ref name="Browning" /> Kudryashov claimed that he found little sign of antisemitism or any attraction to National Socialism among the Trawniki men (not confirmed by Browning),<ref name="Browning" /> many of whom prior to their capture had been Communists according to Kudryashov.<ref name = "Kudryashov 2004 234">{{Harvnb|Kudryashov|2004|p=234}}.</ref> Despite the generally apathetic views of the Trawniki guards, the vast majority faithfully carried out the SS's expectations of how to mistreat Jews; the mistreatment of Jews by the Trawniki guards was "systematic and without any particular cause".<ref name = "Kudryashov 2004 234"/> Many, though not all of the Trawniki men executed Jews, and almost all of them while working as guards in the Operation Reinhard camps personally killed dozens of Jews.<ref>{{Harvnb|Kudryashov|2004|pp=234–5}}.</ref> Following Christopher Browning, Kudryashov argued that the Trawniki men were examples of ordinary people becoming willing killers.<ref>{{Harvnb|Kudryashov|2004|pp=226–7, 234–5}}.</ref> | |||
The "Trawniki men" (German: ''Trawnikimänner'') were deployed in all major killing sites of the "Final Solution" – it was their primary purpose of training. They took an active role in the executions of Jews at ], ], ], ] (three times), ], ], ], ], ], ] (twice), ] as well as ], not to mention Trawniki itself.<ref name="Browning" /><ref name="Jabłoński">{{cite web | url=http://www.trawniki.hg.pl/traw/obozjab.html | title=Hitlerowski obóz w Trawnikach | publisher=Trawniki official website | work=The camp history | accessdate=2013-04-30 |author=Mgr Stanisław Jabłoński (1927–2002) | language=Polish}}</ref> | |||
===Extermination camps=== | ===Extermination camps=== | ||
{{ |
{{Main|Extermination camp}} | ||
] | |||
{|class="wikitable" style="float:right; margin-left:1em; font-size:80%" | |||
|+Approx. number killed at each extermination camp<ref>Source: . Retrieved 7 May 2007</ref> | |||
|- | |||
!Camp name!!Killed!!]!!Ref. | |||
|- | |||
!align="left"|] | |||
|align="right"|1,000,000 | |||
|{{Coord|50|2|9|N|19|10|42|E|region:PL-25_type:landmark_source:GNIS|display=inline|name=Oświęcim (Auschwitz, Poland)}} | |||
| style="text-align:center;"|<ref name=yvsau/><ref>Per {{dead link|date=January 2011}}, Auschwitz II total numbers are "between 1.3M–1.5M", so we use the middle value 1.4M as estimate here.</ref><ref>Coordinates from: ]</ref> | |||
|- | |||
!align="left"|] | |||
|align="right"|600,000 | |||
|{{Coord|50|22|18|N|23|27|27|E|region:PL-70_type:landmark_source:GNIS|name=Belzec (Poland)}} | |||
| style="text-align:center;"|<ref name=yvsbe/><ref>Coordinates from: ]</ref> | |||
|- | |||
!align="left"|] | |||
|align="right"|320,000 | |||
|{{Coord|52|9|27|N|18|43|43|E|region:PL-51_type:landmark_source:GNIS|name=Chełmno (Poland)}} | |||
| style="text-align:center;"|<ref name=yvsch/><ref>Coordinates from: ]</ref> | |||
|- | |||
!align="left"|] | |||
|align="right"|58–97,000 | |||
|{{Coord|45|16|54|N|16|56|6|E|region:HR-14_type:landmark_source:GNIS|name=Jasenovac (Sisačko-Moslavačka, Croatia)}} | |||
| style="text-align:center;"|<ref name=yvsja>, Yad Vashem.</ref><ref>Coordinates from: ]</ref> | |||
|- | |||
!align="left"|] | |||
|align="right"|360,000 | |||
|{{Coord|51|13|13|N|22|36|0|E|region:PL-45_type:landmark_source:GNIS|name=Majdanek (Poland)}} | |||
| style="text-align:center;"|<ref name=yvsmaj/><ref>Coordinates from: ]</ref> | |||
|- | |||
!align="left"|] | |||
|align="right"|65,000 | |||
|{{Coord|53|51|4|N|27|42|17|E|region:BO-00_type:landmark_source:GNIS|name=Malyy Trostenets (Belarus)}} | |||
| style="text-align:center;"|<ref name=yvsmal>, Yad Vashem.</ref><ref>Coordinates from: ]</ref> | |||
|- | |||
!align="left"|] | |||
|align="right"|250,000 | |||
|{{Coord|51|26|50|N|23|35|37|E|region:PL-29_type:landmark_source:GNIS|name=Sobibór (Poland)}} | |||
| style="text-align:center;"|<ref name=yvsso/><ref>Coordinates from: ]</ref> | |||
|- | |||
!align="left"|] | |||
|align="right"|870,000 | |||
|{{Coord|52|37|35|N|22|2|49|E|region:PL-49_type:landmark_source:GNIS|name=Treblinka (Poland)}} | |||
| style="text-align:center;"|<ref name=yvstr/><ref>Coordinates from: ]</ref> | |||
|} | |||
] 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"/> | |||
During 1942, in addition to Auschwitz, five other camps were designated as extermination camps (''Vernichtungslager'') for the carrying out of the ''Reinhard'' plan.<ref name=aktr>{{cite web|url=http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%205724.pdf|title=Aktion Reinhard|publisher=Yad Vashem|format=PDF}}</ref><ref>Although ] was not technically part of Operation ''Reinhard'', it began functioning as an extermination camp in December 1941.</ref> Two of these, ]<ref>Chełmno, which used gas vans rather than gas chambers to commit mass murder, had its roots in the extension of the Euthanasia Program to the ] and the subsequent liquidation of large numbers of that region's Jews beginning in September 1941. See ], pp. 9–48.</ref> and Majdanek, were already functioning as, respectively, a labor camp and a POW camp: these now had extermination facilities added to them. Three new camps were built for the sole purpose of killing large numbers of Jews as quickly as possible, at ], Sobibór and Treblinka. A seventh camp, at Maly Trostinets in Belarus, was also used for this purpose. Jasenovac was an extermination camp where mostly ethnic ] were killed. | |||
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> | |||
Extermination camps are frequently confused with concentration camps such as Dachau and ], which were mostly located in Germany and intended as places of incarceration and forced labor for a variety of enemies of the Nazi regime (such as Communists and homosexuals). They should also be distinguished from slave labor camps, which were set up in all German-occupied countries to exploit the labor of prisoners of various kinds, including prisoners of war. In all Nazi camps there were very high death rates as a result of starvation, disease and exhaustion, but only the extermination camps were designed specifically for mass killing. | |||
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}} | |||
{{quote|There was a place called the ramp where the trains with the Jews were coming in. They were coming in day and night, and sometimes one per day and sometimes five per day . . . Constantly, people from the heart of Europe were disappearing, and they were arriving to the same place with the same ignorance of the fate of the previous transport. And the people in this mass . . . I knew that within a couple of hours . . . ninety percent would be gassed.|], who worked on the ''Judenrampe'' in ] from August 18, 1942 to June 7, 1943.<ref name = "Berenbaum 2005 114"/> | |||
}} | |||
The extermination camps were run by SS officers, but most of the guards were Ukrainian or Baltic auxiliaries.{{citation needed|date=March 2014}} | |||
====Gas chambers==== | |||
At the extermination camps with gas chambers all the prisoners arrived by train. Sometimes entire trainloads were sent straight to the gas chambers, but usually the camp doctor on duty subjected individuals to selections, where a small percentage were deemed fit to work in the slave labor camps; the majority were taken directly from the platforms to a reception area where all their clothes and other possessions were seized by the Nazis to help fund the war. They were then herded naked into the gas chambers. Usually they were told these were showers or delousing chambers, and there were signs outside saying "baths" and "sauna." They were sometimes given a small piece of soap and a towel so as to avoid panic, and were told to remember where they had put their belongings for the same reason. When they asked for water because they were thirsty after the long journey in the cattle trains, they were told to hurry up, because coffee was waiting for them in the camp, and it was getting cold.<ref>{{Harvnb|Piper|1998|p=173}}.</ref> | |||
] | |||
According to ], commandant of Auschwitz, bunker 1 held 800 people, and bunker 2 held 1,200.<ref>{{Harvnb|Piper|1998|p=162}}.</ref> Once the chamber was full, the doors were screwed shut and solid pellets of ] were dropped into the chambers through vents in the side walls, releasing toxic HCN, or ]. Those inside died within 20 minutes; the speed of death depended on how close the inmate was standing to a gas vent, according to Höß, who estimated that about one-third of the victims died immediately.<ref name = "Piper 1998 170">{{Harvnb|Piper|1998|p=170}}.</ref> Johann Kremer, an SS doctor who oversaw the gassings, testified that: "Shouting and screaming of the victims could be heard through the opening and it was clear that they fought for their lives."<ref name = "Piper 1998 163">{{Harvnb|Piper|1998|p=163}}.</ref> When they were removed, if the chamber had been very congested, as they often were, the victims were found half-squatting, their skin colored pink with red and green spots, some foaming at the mouth or bleeding from the ears.<ref name = "Piper 1998 170"/> | |||
The gas was then pumped out, the bodies were removed (which would take up to four hours), gold fillings in their teeth were extracted with pliers by dentist prisoners, and women's hair was cut.<ref>{{Harvnb|Piper|1998|p=163}}<br>See also {{Harvnb|Goldensohn|2005|p=298}}, quoting ]: "We cut the hair from women after they had been exterminated in the gas chambers. The hair was then sent to factories, where it was woven into special fittings for gaskets." Höß said that only women's hair was cut and only after they were dead. He said he had first received the order to do this in 1943.</ref> The floor of the gas chamber was cleaned, and the walls whitewashed.<ref name = "Piper 1998 163"/> The work was done by the ''],'' which were work units of Jewish prisoners. In crematoria 1 and 2, the ''Sonderkommando'' lived in an attic above the crematoria; in crematoria 3 and 4, they lived inside the gas chambers.<ref>{{Harvnb|Piper|1998|p=172}}.</ref> When the ''Sonderkommando'' had finished with the bodies, the SS conducted spot checks to make sure all the gold had been removed from the victims' mouths. If a check revealed that gold had been missed, the ''Sonderkommando'' prisoner responsible was thrown into the furnace alive as punishment.<ref>{{Harvnb|Piper|1998|p=171}}.</ref> | |||
At first, the bodies were buried in deep pits and covered with lime, but between September and November 1942, on the orders of Himmler, they were dug up and burned. In early 1943, new gas chambers and crematoria were built to accommodate the numbers.<ref>{{Harvnb|Piper|1998|p=164}}.</ref> | |||
{{quotation| | |||
Another improvement we made over Treblinka was that we built our gas chambers to accommodate 2,000 people at one time, whereas at Treblinka their 10 gas chambers only accommodated 200 people each. The way we selected our victims was as follows: we had two SS doctors on duty at Auschwitz to examine the incoming transports of prisoners. The prisoners would be marched by one of the doctors who would make spot decisions as they walked by. Those who were fit for work were sent into the Camp. Others were sent immediately to the extermination plants. Children of tender years were invariably exterminated, since by reason of their youth they were unable to work. Still another improvement we made over Treblinka was that at Treblinka the victims almost always knew that they were to be exterminated and at Auschwitz we endeavored to fool the victims into thinking that they were to go through a delousing process. Of course, frequently they realized our true intentions and we sometimes had riots and difficulties due to that fact. Very frequently women would hide their children under the clothes but of course when we found them we would send the children in to be exterminated. We were required to carry out these exterminations in secrecy but of course the foul and nauseating stench from the continuous burning of bodies permeated the entire area and all of the people living in the surrounding communities knew that exterminations were going on at Auschwitz.|], Auschwitz camp commandant, Nuremberg testimony.<ref>{{Harvnb|Pelt|2002|p=4}}.</ref> | |||
}} | |||
===Jewish resistance=== | |||
]'s ] to Heinrich Himmler]] | |||
] | |||
{{Main|Jewish resistance during the Holocaust}} | |||
In '']'', ] noted: | |||
{{quote|The reaction pattern of the Jews is characterized by almost complete lack of resistance. In marked contrast to German propaganda, the documentary evidence of Jewish resistance, overt or submerged, is very slight. On a European-wide scale the Jews had no resistance organization, no blueprint for armed action, no plan even for psychological warfare. They were completely unprepared.<br> | |||
... Measured in German casualties, Jewish armed opposition shrinks into insignificance.<br> | |||
... A large component of the entire process depended on Jewish participation, from the simple acts of individuals to the organized activity in councils.<br> | |||
... Jewish resistance organizations attempting to reverse the mass inertia spoke the words: "Do not be led like sheep to slaughter."<br> | |||
... Franz Stangl, who had commanded two death camps, was asked in a West German prison about his reaction to the Jewish victims. He said that only recently he had read a book about lemmings. It reminded him of Treblinka.<ref>{{Harvnb|Hilberg|2003|pp=1104–1105, 1111}}.</ref>}} | |||
In his important study, ] observes likewise: "On the Jewish side there was practically no resistance."<ref name = "Longerich 2012 341">{{Harvnb|Longerich|2010|p=341}}.</ref> Hilberg accounts for this compliant attitude by evoking the history of Jewish persecution: as had been the case so many times before down through the centuries, simply appealing to their oppressors, and complying with orders, would hopefully avoid inflaming the situation and so mitigate the damage done to the Jews until the onslaught abated. "There were many casualties in these times of stress, but always the Jewish community emerged once again like a rock from a receding tidal wave. The Jews had never disappeared from the earth." They were "caught in the straitjacket of their history", and the realisation that this time was different came too late.<ref>{{Harvnb|Hilberg|2003|pp=1112–1118}}.<p>Polish Rabbi ], for example, compared the liquidation of the Jews of his country to the situation that faced French and German Jews during the First Crusade, when the Halakha "determined one way of reacting to the distress". The Nazi onslaught "prompts us to react in an entirely different manner. In the past, during religious persecution, we were required by the law 'to give up our lives even for the least essential practice.' In the present, however, when we are faced by an arch-foe, whose unparalleled ruthlessness and program of total annihilation know no bounds," said Ziemba, the Halakha demands "that we fight and resist to the very end with unequaled determination and valor for the sake of Sanctification of the Divine Name." See {{Cite web | last = Green | first = David B. | date = 14 January 2013 | title = This day in Jewish history / The Warsaw Ghetto uprising begins, in the mind | url = http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/this-day-in-jewish-history/this-day-in-jewish-history-the-warsaw-ghetto-uprising-begins-in-the-mind-1.493880 | website = haaretz.com | accessdate = 24 October 2014 }}</ref> | |||
Discussing the case of Warsaw, Timothy Snyder notes in a similar vein that it was only during the three months after the massive deportations of July–September 1942 that general agreement on the need for armed resistance was reached, and lays the passivity emanating from the conservative center of Jewish politics at the door of the overall success the Jewish community had enjoyed by engaging in a ''quid pro quo'' with the pre-war Polish government.<ref>{{Harvnb|Snyder|2010|p=283}}.</ref> By the time of the biggest act of armed resistance, the ] of spring 1943, only a small minority of Polish Jews were still alive.<ref name = "Longerich 2012 341"/> | |||
] and other historians argue that resistance consisted not only of physical opposition, but of any activity that gave the Jews dignity and humanity in humiliating and inhumane conditions.<ref> | |||
* Bauer, Yehuda. ''Forms of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust.'' In ''The Nazi Holocaust: Historical Articles on the Destruction of European Jews.'' Vol. 7: Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust, edited by Michael R. Marrus, 34–48. Westport, Connecticut: Meckler, 1989. | |||
* Bauer, Yehuda, ''They chose life: Jewish resistance in the Holocaust'', New York, The American Jewish Committee, 1973. | |||
* by Israel Gutman. ]. | |||
* U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum | |||
* The Miles Lerman Center for the Study of Jewish Resistance. Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum</ref> | |||
{{Quote|In every ghetto, in every deportation train, in every labor camp, even in the death camps, the will to resist was strong, and took many forms. Fighting with the few weapons that would be found, individual acts of defiance and protest, the courage of obtaining food and water under the threat of death, the superiority of refusing to allow the Germans their final wish to gloat over panic and despair. | |||
Even passivity was a form of resistance. To die with dignity was a form of resistance. To resist the demoralizing, brutalizing force of evil, to refuse to be reduced to the level of animals, to live through the torment, to outlive the tormentors, these too were acts of resistance. Merely to give a witness of these events in testimony was, in the end, a contribution to victory. Simply to survive was a victory of the human spirit.|]. ''The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy''.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gilbert|1986|p=828}}.</ref>}} | |||
] | |||
Hilberg argued against overstating the extent of Jewish resistance, or using all-encompassing definitions of it like that deployed by Gilbert. "When relatively isolated or episodic acts of resistance are represented as typical, a basic characteristic of the German measures is obscured", namely that the merciless slaughter of peaceable innocent people is turned into some kind of battle. "The inflation of resistance has another consequence which has been of concern to those Jews who have regarded themselves as the actual resisters. If heroism is an attribute that should be assigned to every member of the European Jewish community, it will diminish the accomplishment of the few who took action." Finally, the blending of the passive majority with the active few was "not merely a form of dilution, which blurred the multitudinous problems of organizing a defense in a cautious, reluctant Jewish community; it was also a way of shutting off a great many questions about that community, its reasoning and survival strategy." Without posing these questions, Jewish history could not be written.<ref>{{Harvnb|Hilberg|1996|pp=126–137}}.</ref> | |||
The most well known example of Jewish armed resistance was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of January 1943, when thousands of poorly armed Jewish fighters held the SS at bay for four weeks before being crushed by overwhelmingly superior forces. According to Jewish accounts, several hundred Germans were killed, while the Germans claimed to have lost 17 dead and 93 wounded. 13,000 Jews were killed, 57,885 were deported and gassed according to German figures. This uprising was followed by the revolt in the Treblinka extermination camp in May 1943, when about 200 inmates escaped from the camp. They overpowered and killed a number of German guards and set the camp buildings ablaze, but 900 inmates were also killed, and out of the 600 who successfully escaped, only 40 survived the war. Two weeks later, there was ]. | |||
In September, there was a short-lived uprising in the ]. In October, 600 Jewish prisoners, including Jewish Soviet prisoners of war, attempted an escape at the Sobibór death camp. The prisoners killed 11 German ] officers and a number of camp guards. However, the killings were discovered, and the inmates were forced to run for their lives under heavy fire. Three hundred of the prisoners were killed during the escape. Most of the survivors either died in the minefields surrounding the camp or were recaptured and executed. About 60 survived and joined the Soviet partisans. On 7 October 1944, 250 Jewish '']s'' (laborers) at Auschwitz attacked their guards and blew up Crematorium IV with explosives that female prisoners had smuggled-in from a nearby factory. Three German guards were killed during the uprising, one of whom was stuffed into an oven. The Sonderkommandos attempted a mass breakout, but all 250 were killed soon afterwards. | |||
] during World War II.]] | |||
An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 ] (see the list at the top of this section) actively fought the Nazis and their collaborators in Eastern Europe.<ref name="Kennedy 2007 780"/><ref name="USHMM_RES"/> They engaged in ] and ] against the Nazis, instigated Ghetto uprisings, and freed prisoners. In Lithuania alone, they killed approximately 3,000 German soldiers. As many as 1.4 million Jewish soldiers fought in the ] armies.<ref name="75 n.15">{{Harvnb|Lador-Lederer|1980|p=}}.</ref> including 500,000 in the ], 550,000 in the ], 100,000 in the Polish army and 30,000 in the British army.<ref>"". '']''. May 5, 2013.</ref> About 200,000 Jewish soldiers serving in the Red Army died in the war.<ref>{{Harvnb|Pinkus|1990|p=261}}.</ref> The ], a unit of 5,000 Jewish volunteers from the ], fought in the ]. German-speaking Jewish volunteers from the ] performed commando and sabotage operations against the Nazis behind front lines in the ]. | |||
In occupied Poland and Soviet territories, thousands of Jews fled into the swamps or forests and joined the partisans, although the partisan movements did not always welcome them. In Lithuania and Belarus, an area with a heavy concentration of Jews, and also an area which suited partisan operations, Jewish partisan groups saved thousands of Jewish civilians from extermination. No such opportunities existed for the Jewish populations of cities such as ]. However in ], and other parts of the Netherlands, many Jews were active in the ].<ref>{{Harvnb|Klempner|2006|pp=145–146}}.</ref> Timothy Snyder wrote that "Other combatants in the Warsaw Uprising were veterans of the ghetto uprising of 1943. Most of these Jews joined the ]; others found the ], or even the antisemitic ]. Some Jews (or Poles of Jewish origin) were already enlisted in the Home Army and the People's Army. Almost certainly, more Jews fought in the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944 than in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943."<ref>{{Harvnb|Snyder|2010|p=320}}.</ref> Joining the partisans was an option only for the young and the fit who were willing to leave their families. Many Jewish families preferred to die together rather than be separated. | |||
] were also highly active in the ], which conducted a guerilla campaign against the Nazis and Vichy French authorities, assisted the Allies in their sweep across France, and supported Allied including ] forces in the liberation of many occupied French cities. Although Jews made up only one percent of the French population, they made up fifteen to twenty percent of the French Resistance.<ref>{{Harvnb|Suhl|1987|pp=181–3}}.</ref> The Jewish youth movement EEIF, which had originally shown support for the Vichy regime, was banned in 1943, and many of its older members formed armed resistance units. ] Jews also formed the ] (Jewish Army), which participated in armed resistance under a Zionist flag, and smuggled Jews out of the country. Both organizations merged in 1944, and participated in the liberation of Paris, ], ], ], and ].<ref>{{Harvnb|Zuccotti|1999|p=274}}.</ref> | |||
{{Quote|Many people think the Jews went to their deaths like sheep to the slaughter, and that's not true—it's absolutely not true. I worked closely with many Jewish people in the Resistance, and I can tell you, they took much greater risks than I did.|Pieter Meerburg<ref>{{Harvnb|Klempner|2006|p=145}}.</ref>}} | |||
] | |||
For the great majority of Jews, resistance could take only the passive forms of delay, evasion, negotiation, bargaining and where possible, bribery of German officials. The Nazis encouraged this by forcing the Jewish communities to police themselves, through bodies such as the ] (''Reichsvereinigung der Juden'') in Germany and the Jewish Councils ''(]'') in the urban ghettos in occupied Poland. They held out the promise of concessions in exchange for each surrender, enmeshing the Jewish leadership so deeply in well-intentioned compromise that a decision to stand and fight was never possible. Holocaust survivor Alexander Kimel wrote: "The youth in the Ghettos dreamed about fighting. I believe that although there were many factors that inhibited our responses, the most important factors were isolation and historical conditioning to accepting martyrdom."<ref> ''] discussion log'' 2 Dec 1998</ref> | |||
The historical conditioning of the Jewish communities of Europe to accept persecution and avert disaster through compromise and negotiation was the most important factor in the failure to resist until the very end. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising took place only when the Jewish population had been reduced from 500,000 to 100,000, and it was obvious that no further compromise was possible. ] writes: | |||
{{quote|The Jews had been persecuted for a millennium and a half and had learned from long experience that resistance cost lives rather than saved them. Their history, their theology, their folklore, their social structure, even their vocabulary trained them to negotiate, to pay, to plead, to protest, not to fight.<ref>{{Harvnb|Johnson|1988|p=506}}.</ref>}} | |||
The Jewish communities were also systematically deceived about German intentions, and were cut off from most sources of news from the outside world. The Germans told the Jews that they were being deported to work camps{{spaced ndash}}euphemistically calling it "resettlement in the East"{{spaced ndash}}and maintained this illusion through elaborate deceptions all the way to the gas chamber doors (which were marked with labels stating that the chambers were for the removal of lice) to avoid uprisings. As photographs testify, Jews disembarked at the railway stations at Auschwitz and other extermination camps carrying sacks and suitcases, clearly having no idea of the fate that awaited them. Rumours of the reality of the extermination camps filtered back only slowly to the ghettos, and were usually not believed, just as they were not believed when couriers such as ], the Polish resistance fighter, conveyed them to the western Allies.<ref>{{Harvnb|Wood|Jankowski|1994}}.</ref> | |||
===Climax=== | |||
{{refimprove section|date=June 2011}} | |||
Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated in ] in June 1942. He was succeeded as head of the ] by ]. Kaltenbrunner and Eichmann, under Himmler's close supervision, oversaw the climax of the 'Final Solution'. During 1943 and 1944, the extermination camps worked at a furious rate to kill the hundreds of thousands of people shipped to them by rail from almost every country within the German sphere of influence. By the spring of 1944, up to 8,000 people were being gassed every day at Auschwitz.<ref>. ''Holocaust Encyclopedia''. ]. Retrieved 27 September 2012.</ref> | |||
Despite the high productivity of the war industries based in the Jewish ghettos in the General Government, they were liquidated during 1943, and their populations shipped to the camps for extermination. The largest of these operations, the deportation of 100,000 people from the Warsaw Ghetto in early 1943, provoked the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which was suppressed with great brutality. Approximately 42,000 Jews were shot during the ] on 3–4 November 1943.<ref>. ''Holocaust Encyclopedia''. ]. Retrieved 27 September 2012.</ref> At the same time, rail shipments arrived regularly from western and southern Europe. Few Jews were shipped from the occupied Soviet territories to the camps: the killing of Jews in this zone was left in the hands of the SS, aided by locally recruited auxiliaries. In any case, by the end of 1943 the Germans had been driven from most Soviet territory. | |||
] | |||
] | |||
Shipments of Jews to the camps had priority on the German railways, and continued even in the face of the increasingly dire military situation after the ] at the end of 1942 and the escalating Allied air attacks on German industry and transport. Army leaders and economic managers complained at this diversion of resources and at the killing of irreplaceable skilled Jewish workers. By 1944, moreover, it was evident to most Germans not blinded by Nazi fanaticism that Germany was losing the war. Many senior officials began to fear the retribution that might await Germany and them personally for the crimes being committed in their name. But the power of Himmler and the SS within the German Reich was too great to resist, and Himmler could always evoke Hitler's authority for his demands. | |||
In October 1943, Himmler gave a speech to senior Nazi Party officials gathered in Posen (now ] in western Poland). Here he came closer than ever before to stating explicitly that he was intent on exterminating the Jews of Europe: | |||
{{Quote|I may here in this closest of circles allude to a question which you, my party comrades, have all taken for granted, but which has become for me the most difficult question of my life, the Jewish question ... I ask of you that what I say in this circle you really only hear and never speak of ... We come to the question: how is it with the women and children? I have resolved even here on a completely clear solution. I do not consider myself justified in eradicating the men—so to speak killing them or ordering them to be killed—and allowing the avengers in the shape of the children to grow up ... The difficult decision had to be taken, to cause this people to disappear from the earth.}} | |||
] after their arrival at the Auschwitz death camp. May/June 1944]] | |||
The audience for this speech included Admiral ] and Armaments Minister ]. Dönitz successfully claimed at the ] that he had had no knowledge of the Final Solution. Speer, however, declared at the trial and in a subsequent interview that "If I didn't see it, then it was because I didn't want to see it."<ref>{{Harvnb|Fest|1999|p=329}}.</ref> The text of this speech was not known at the time of their trials. | |||
The scale of extermination slackened somewhat at the beginning of 1944 once the ghettos in occupied Poland were emptied, but on 19 March 1944, Hitler ordered the ], and Eichmann was dispatched to Budapest to supervise the deportation of Hungary's 800,000 Jews. Hitler had personally complained to the Hungarian regent Admiral ] on the previous day, 18 March 1944, that: | |||
{{quote|Hungary did nothing in the matter of the Jewish problem, and was not prepared to settle accounts with the large Jewish population in Hungary.<ref>{{Harvnb|Evans|2002|pp=102–3}}.</ref>}} | |||
More than half of them were shipped to Auschwitz after the occupation. The commandant, Rudolf Höss, said at his trial that he killed 400,000 Hungarian Jews in three months. | |||
===="Blood for Goods"==== | |||
The operation to kill Hungarian Jews met strong opposition within the Nazi hierarchy, and there were some suggestions that Hitler should offer the Allies a deal where they would be spared in exchange for a favorable peace settlement. There were unofficial negotiations in ] between Himmler's agents, British agents, and representatives of Jewish organizations; at one point an attempt by Eichmann to exchange one million Jews for 10,000 trucks—the so-called "]" proposal—but there was no real possibility of such a deal being struck on this scale. | |||
===Escapes, publication of existence (April–June 1944)=== | |||
], June–July 1944. ] (right) escaped from Auschwitz on April 7, 1944, bringing the first credible news to the world of the mass murder that was taking place there. Arnost Rosin (left), escaped on 27 May 1944.<ref name=ConwayWiesenthal>]. , Museum of Tolerance, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Annual 1 Chapter 07. Retrieved 11 September 2006.</ref>]] | |||
] addressed to United Nations, 1942]] | |||
Escapes from the camps were few, but not unknown. In 1940, the Auschwitz commandant reported that "the local population is fanatically Polish and ... prepared to take any action against the hated SS camp personnel. Every prisoner who managed to escape can count on help the moment he reaches the wall of a first Polish farmstead."<ref>{{Harvnb|Swiebocki|1998|p=505}}.</ref> According to Ruth Linn, however, escapees, particularly Jewish ones, could ''not'' rely on help from the local population or the Polish underground.<ref>{{Harvnb|Linn|2004|p=20}}.</ref> | |||
In February 1942, an escaped inmate from the Chełmno extermination camp, Jacob Grojanowski, reached the Warsaw Ghetto, where he gave detailed information about the Chełmno camp to the ] group. His report, which became known as the ], was smuggled out of the ghetto through the channels of the Polish underground to the ], and reached London by June 1942. It is unclear what was done with the report at that point.<ref name=yvsch/><ref></ref><ref>{{cite web|title= Grojanowski Report|url=http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%206317.pdf|publisher=]|accessdate=26 September 2012}}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Farbstein|1998}}.</ref> In the meantime, by 1 February, the ] had decided not to release information about the extermination of the Jews because it was felt that it would mislead the public into thinking the war was simply a Jewish problem.<ref>Memorandum, ] to Leo Rosten, 1 February 1942, quoted in Eric Hanin, "War on Our Minds: The American Mass Media in World War II" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Rochester, 1976), ch. 4, n.6. {{OCLC|3640206}}.</ref> | |||
By at least 9 October 1942, British radio had broadcast news of gassing of Jews to the Netherlands.<ref>{{Harvnb|Frank|2007|pp=66–67}}.</ref> In December 1942, the ] released the ], that described how "Hitler's oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe" was being carried out and which declared that they "condemn in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination."<ref>{{Harvnb|Lemkin|2005|p=89 n.45}}.</ref> | |||
In 1942, ] reported to the Polish, British and US governments on the situation in Poland, especially the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Holocaust of the Jews. He met with Polish politicians in exile including the prime minister, as well as members of political parties such as the ], ], ], ], ] and ]. He also spoke to ], the British foreign secretary, and included a detailed statement on what he had seen in Warsaw and Bełżec.<ref>{{Harvnb|Karski|2001|pp=552–564}}.</ref> In 1943 in London he met the then-well-known journalist ]. He then traveled to the United States and reported to president ]. His report was a major factor in informing the West. | |||
In July 1943, Karski again personally reported to Roosevelt, telling him about the situation in Poland and becoming the first eyewitness to tell him about the Jewish Holocaust.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/07/17/the-man-who-told-fdr-about-the-holocaust/ |title=Algemeiner 07/17/2013 |publisher=Algemeiner.com |date=2013-07-17 |accessdate=2014-03-04}}</ref> During their meeting Roosevelt asked about the condition of horses in Poland,<ref name="Karski1"/> but did not ask one question about the Jews.<ref name="KarskiLanzmann"/> He also met with many other government and civic leaders in the United States, including ], ], ], and ]. Karski also presented his report to the media, bishops of various denominations (including Cardinal ]) and members of the Hollywood film industry and artists, but without success. Many of those he spoke to did not believe him, or supposed that his testimony was much exaggerated or was propaganda from the ].<ref>{{Harvnb|Wood|Jankowski|1994|p=316}}.</ref> | |||
News about gassing Jews was also published in illegal newspapers of the ], like in the issue of ] of 27 September 1943. However, the news was so unbelievable that many assumed it was merely war propaganda. The publications were halted because they were counter-productive for the Dutch resistance. Nevertheless, many Jews were warned that they would be murdered, but as escape was impossible for most of them, they preferred to believe that the warnings were false.<ref>Het Parool, 27 September, page 4–5. ''Concentration camps: where the Nazi's bring their ideals in practice'', NIOD (Dutch Institute of War Documentation), Amsterdam</ref><ref> and (Het 'Illegale Parool'-archief 1940–1945, 27 September 1943, p 4–5)</ref> | |||
] | |||
In September 1940, Captain ], a member of the Polish underground and a soldier of the ], worked out a plan to enter Auschwitz and volunteered to be sent there, the only person known to volunteer to be imprisoned at Auschwitz. He organized an underground network ] (''translation: "Union of Military Organizations"'') that was ready to initiate an uprising but it was decided that the probability of success was too low for the uprising to succeed. UMO's numerous and detailed reports became a principal source of intelligence on Auschwitz for the Western Allies. Pilecki escaped from Auschwitz with information that became the basis of a two-part report in August 1943 that was sent to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in London. The report included details about the gas chambers, about "selection", and about the sterilization experiments. It stated that there were three crematoria in Birkenau able to burn 10,000 people daily, and that 30,000 people had been gassed in one day. The author wrote: "History knows no parallel of such destruction of human life."<ref>{{Harvnb|Lewis|2002|pp=31–33}}.</ref> When Pilecki returned to Poland after the war the communist authorities ] for the ]. He was sentenced to death in a show trial and was executed on 25 May 1948. | |||
Before Pilecki escaped from Auschwitz the most spectacular escape took place on 20 June 1942, when Ukrainian ] and three Poles, ], ] and ] made a daring escape.<ref>"Byłem Numerem: swiadectwa Z Auschwitz" by Kazimierz Piechowski, Eugenia Bozena Kodecka-Kaczynska, Michal Ziokowski, Hardcover, Wydawn. Siostr Loretanek, ISBN 83-7257-122-8</ref> The escapees were dressed as members of the ], fully armed and in an SS staff car. They drove out the main gate in a stolen ] 220 automobile with a smuggled first report from Witold Pilecki to the ] about the Holocaust. The Germans failed to recapture any of them.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://en.auschwitz.org.pl/m/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=578&Itemid=8|title=Auschwitz-Birkenau – The Film about the Amazing Escape from Auschwitz—Now Available on DVD|publisher=En.auschwitz.org.pl|date=13 January 2009|accessdate=31 July 2010}}</ref> | |||
] and ], Jewish inmates, escaped from Auschwitz in April 1944, eventually reaching ]. The 32-page document they dictated to Jewish officials about the mass murder at Auschwitz became known as the ]. Vrba had an ] and had worked on the ''Judenrampe'', where Jews disembarked from the trains to be "selected" either for the gas chamber or slave labor. The level of detail with which he described the transports allowed Slovakian officials to compare his account with their own deportation records, and the corroboration convinced the Allies to take the report seriously.<ref>{{Harvnb|Vrba|2006}}.</ref> | |||
Two other Auschwitz inmates, Arnost Rosin and Czesław Mordowicz escaped on 27 May 1944, arriving in Slovakia on 6 June, the day of the ] (]). Hearing about Normandy, they believed the war was over and got drunk to celebrate, using dollars they'd smuggled out of the camp. They were arrested for violating currency laws, and spent eight days in prison, before the '']'' paid their fines. The additional information they offered the Judenrat was added to Vrba and Wetzler's report and became known as the Auschwitz Protocols. They reported that, between 15 and 27 May 1944, 100,000 Hungarian Jews had arrived at Birkenau, and had been killed at an unprecedented rate, with human fat being used to accelerate the burning.<ref name=LinnGuardian>] (13 April 2006). . '']''. Retrieved 25 September 2012.</ref> | |||
The BBC and ''The New York Times'' published material from the Vrba-Wetzler report on 15 June,<ref>According to ], p. 30, the BBC first broadcast information from the report on 18 June, not 15 June.</ref> 20 June 3 July<ref name=INQUIRYCONFIRMSNAZIDEATHCAMPS>Brigham, Daniel T. (3 July 1944). . '']''. Retrieved 2 October 2012.</ref> and 6 July<ref name=TWODEATHCAMPSPLACESOFHORROR>Brigham, Daniel T. (6 July 1944). . '']''. Retrieved 2 October 2012.</ref> 1944. The subsequent pressure from world leaders persuaded ] to bring the mass deportations of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz to a halt on 9 July, saving up to 200,000 Jews from the extermination camps.<ref name=LinnGuardian/> | |||
On 14 November 2001, in the 150th anniversary issue, ''The New York Times'' ran an article by former editor ] reporting that before and during World War II, the ''Times'' had maintained a strict policy in their news reporting and editorials to minimize reports on the Holocaust.<ref>] (14 November 2001). . '']''. Retrieved 28 September 2012.</ref> The ''Times'' accepted the detailed analysis and findings of journalism professor ], who had published an article the year before in the ''Harvard International Journal of the Press and Politics'', that ''The New York Times'' had deliberately suppressed news of the Third Reich's persecution and murder of Jews.<ref>{{Harvnb|Leff|2005}}.</ref> Leff concluded that ''New York Times'' reporting and editorial policies made it virtually impossible for American Jews to impress Congress, church or government leaders with the importance of helping Europe's Jews.<ref>] (4 April 2005). . ], ]. Retrieved 19 October 2012.</ref> | |||
{{further|The New York Times and the Holocaust}} | |||
===Death marches (1944–1945)=== | |||
{{main|Death marches (Holocaust)}} | |||
] of the most famous Death march from ] to ]]] | |||
By mid-1944, the Final Solution had largely run its course. Those Jewish communities within easy reach of the Nazi regime had been largely exterminated, in proportions ranging from about 25 percent in France to more than 90 percent in Poland. On 5 May, Himmler claimed in a speech that "The Jewish question has in general been solved in Germany and in the countries occupied by Germany."<ref>{{Harvnb|Longerich|2012|p=695}}.</ref> During 1944, in any case, the task became steadily more difficult. German armies were evicted from the Soviet Union, the Balkans and Italy, and German forces—as well as forces aligned with them—were either defeated or were switching sides to the Allies. In June, the western Allies landed in France. Allied air attacks and the operations of partisans made rail transport increasingly difficult, and the objections of the military to the diversion of rail transport for carrying Jews to Poland more urgent and harder to ignore. | |||
At this time, as the Soviet armed forces approached, the camps in eastern Poland were closed down, any surviving inmates being shipped west to camps closer to Germany, first to Auschwitz and later to ] in ]. Auschwitz itself was closed as the Soviets advanced through Poland. The last 13 prisoners, all women, were killed in Auschwitz II on 25 November 1944; records show they were "''unmittelbar getötet''" ("killed outright"),<!--see footnote for the full German--> leaving open whether they were gassed or otherwise disposed of.<ref>], p. 920, 933, which uses information from a series called ''Hefte von Auschwitz'', and cited in ], p. 564. The original German is: ''25. November Im KL Auschwitz II kommen 24 weibliche Häftlinge ums Leben, von denen 13 unmittelbar getötet werden.''</ref> | |||
Despite the desperate military situation, great efforts were made to conceal evidence of what had happened in the camps. The gas chambers were dismantled, the crematoria dynamited, mass graves dug up and the corpses cremated, and Polish farmers were induced to plant crops on the sites to give the impression that they had never existed. Local commanders continued to kill Jews, and to shuttle them from camp to camp by forced "death marches" until the last weeks of the war.<ref>. ''Holocaust Encyclopedia''. ]. Retrieved 27 September 2012.<br>According to ], p. 476, death marches were a frequent occurrence throughout the war. The inaugural one commenced on 14 January 1940 in occupied Poland, when the SS escorted 800 Jewish POWs from the Polish army to Biała Podłaska from Lublin—a distance of 100km in a matter of days in the depths of Polish winter. Massacred all along the way, less than 5% of the 800 survived the journey.</ref> | |||
Already sick after months or years of violence and starvation, prisoners were forced to march 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. Those who lagged behind or fell were shot. Around 250,000 Jews died during these marches.<ref>{{Harvnb|Friedländer|2007|p=649}}.</ref> | |||
The largest and best-known of the death marches took place in January 1945, when the Soviet army advanced on Poland. Nine days before the Soviets arrived at Auschwitz, the SS marched 60,000 prisoners out of the camp toward ] (German: Loslau), {{convert|56|km|mi|abbr=on}} away, where they were put on freight trains to other camps. Around 15,000 died on the way. ] and his father, Shlomo, were among the marchers: | |||
{{Quotation| | |||
An icy wind blew in violent gusts. But we marched without faltering. . . . | |||
Pitch darkness. Every now and then, an explosion in the night. They had orders to fire on any who could not keep up. Their fingers on the triggers, they did not deprive themselves of this pleasure. If one of us had stopped for a second, a sharp shot finished off another filthy son of a bitch. ... | |||
Near me, men were collapsing in the dirty snow. Shots.<ref>{{Harvnb|Wiesel|2012|p=122}}.</ref> | |||
}} | |||
===Liberation=== | |||
] | |||
{{main|Battle of Berlin|Death of Adolf Hitler|Prague Offensive|Victory in Europe Day}} | |||
The first major camp, ], was discovered by the advancing Soviets on 23 July 1944. Chełmno was liberated by the Soviets on 20 January 1945. Auschwitz was liberated, also by the Soviets, on 27 January 1945;<ref>{{Harvnb|Hitchcock|2009|p=283}}.</ref> Buchenwald by the Americans on 11 April;<ref>{{Harvnb|Hitchcock|2009|p=297}}.</ref> ] by the British on 15 April;<ref>{{Harvnb|Hitchcock|2009|p=340}}.</ref> Dachau by the Americans on 29 April;<ref>{{Harvnb|Gilbert|1986|p=798}}.</ref> ] by the Soviets on the same day; Mauthausen by the Americans on 5 May;<ref>{{Harvnb|Gilbert|1986|pp=808–9}}.</ref> and ] by the Soviets on 8 May.<ref name=GluckWood144>{{cite book|author=Stone, Dan G.; Wood, Angela|title=Holocaust: The events and their impact on real people, in conjunction with the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education|location=|year=2007|page=144|isbn=0-7566-2535-1}}</ref> Treblinka, Sobibór, and Bełżec were never liberated, but were destroyed by the Nazis in 1943. Colonel ] of the US 7th Army said of Dachau: "There our troops found sights, sounds, and stenches horrible beyond belief, cruelties so enormous as to be incomprehensible to the normal mind."<ref>{{citation|author=] Section, ]|year=1945|title=Dachau|publisher=]|page=|accessdate=27 September 2012}}</ref><ref>A film with scenes from the liberation of Dachau, Buchenwald, Belsen and other Nazi concentration camps, supervised by the British Ministry of Information and the American Office of War Information, was begun but never finished or shown. It lay in archives until first aired on PBS's ''Frontline'' on 7 May 1985. The film, partly edited by ], can be seen online at .</ref> | |||
] | |||
In most of the camps discovered by the Soviets, almost all the prisoners had already been removed, leaving only a few thousand alive—7,600 inmates were found in Auschwitz,<ref>{{Harvnb|Hitchcock|2009|p=289}}.</ref> including 180 children who had been experimented on by doctors. Some 60,000 prisoners were discovered at Bergen-Belsen by the British 11th Armoured Division,<ref name=11th>. ''Holocaust Encyclopedia''. ]. Retrieved 27 September 2012.</ref> 13,000 corpses lay unburied, and another 10,000 died from ] or malnutrition over the following weeks.<ref name=BB>. ''Holocaust Encyclopedia''. ]. Retrieved 27 September 2012.</ref> The British forced the remaining SS guards to gather up the corpses and place them in mass graves.<ref>{{Harvnb|Wiesel|2002|p=41}}.</ref> | |||
The BBC's ] described the scenes that greeted him and the British Army at Belsen: | |||
{{quote|Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which . . . The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them . . . Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live . . . A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms . . . He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days. This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life.<ref>] (15 April 1945). . ]. Retrieved 25 September 2012.</ref>}} | |||
{| class="wikitable" style="float:center; margin-left:1.0em" | |||
==Victims and death toll== | |||
|+Major extermination camps{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=120}} | |||
{{further|The Destruction of the European Jews|The War Against the Jews|Holocaust victims}}<!-- Comment added for future reference Do not remove: ] --> | |||
{| class="wikitable" style="float:right; margin-left:1em; font-size:80%" | |||
|- | |- | ||
!scope="col"| Camp | |||
!Victims!!Killed!!Source | |||
!scope="col"| Location | |||
!scope="col"| Number of Jews killed | |||
!scope="col"| Killing technology | |||
!scope="col"| Planning began | |||
!scope="col"| Mass gassing duration | |||
|- | |- | ||
|scope="row"| ] | |||
|Jews | |||
| ]{{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}} | |||
| align="right" |5.93 million|| style="text-align:center;" |<ref name="autogenerated2">]. ''The War Against the Jews'', Bantam, 1986.p. 403</ref> | |||
|- | |- | ||
|scope="row"| ] | |||
|Soviet POWs | |||
| ]{{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}} | |||
| align="right" |2–3 million|| style="text-align:center;" |<ref name="Berenbaum 2005 125">{{Harvnb|Berenbaum|2005|p=125}}.</ref> | |||
|- | |- | ||
|scope="row"| ] | |||
|Ethnic Poles | |||
| ]{{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}} | |||
| align="right" |1.8–2 million|| style="text-align:center;" |<ref name="autogenerated1">1.8–1.9 million non-Jewish Polish citizens are estimated to have died as a result of the Nazi occupation and the war. Estimates are from Polish scholar, Franciszek Piper, the chief historian at Auschwitz. at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.</ref><ref name="PolandWorldWarIIcasualties" /> | |||
|- | |- | ||
|scope="row"| ] | |||
|Disabled | |||
| ]{{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}} | |||
| align="right" |270,000|| style="text-align:center;" |<ref name="holocaust-education.dk">http://www.holocaust-education.dk/baggrund/eutanasi.asp</ref> | |||
|- | |- | ||
|scope="row"| ] | |||
|Romani | |||
| ]{{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}} | |||
| align="right" |90,000–220,000|| style="text-align:center;" |<ref name="USHMM Roma">. ''Holocaust Encyclopedia''. ]. Retrieved 27 September 2012. The USHMM places the scholarly estimates at 220,000–500,000. According to ], p. 126, "serious scholars estimate that between 90,000 and 220,000 were killed under German rule."</ref><ref name="383–96">{{Harvnb|Hancock|2004|pp=}}.</ref> | |||
|- | |||
|Freemasons | |||
| align="right" |80,000–200,000|| style="text-align:center;" |<ref name="GrandLodgeofScotland">{{cite web|url=http://www.grandlodgescotland.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=91&Itemid=125|title=GrandLodgeScotland.com|publisher=GrandLodgeScotland.com|accessdate=31 July 2010}}</ref><ref name="holocaust">''Freemasons for Dummies'', by , Wiley Publishing Inc., Indianapolis, 2005, page 85, sec. ''Hitler and the Nazis''</ref> | |||
|- | |||
|Slovenes | |||
| align="right" |20,000–25,000|| style="text-align:center;" |<ref>The number of ] estimated to have died as a result of the Nazi occupation (not including those killed by Slovene collaboration forces and other Nazi allies) is estimated between 20,000 and 25,000 people. This number only includes civilians: Slovene partisan POWs who died and resistance fighters killed in action are not included (their number is estimated at 27,000). These numbers however include only Slovenes from present-day ]: it does not include ] victims, nor Slovene victims from areas in present-day Italy and Croatia. These numbers are result of a 10-year long research by the Institute for Contemporary History (''Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino'') from Ljubljana, Slovenia. The partial results of the research have been released in 2008 in the volume ''Žrtve vojne in revolucije v Sloveniji'' (Ljubljana: Institute for Conetmporary History, 2008), and officially presented at the Slovenian National Council (</ref> | |||
|- | |||
|Homosexuals | |||
| align="right" |5,000–15,000|| style="text-align:center;" |<ref name="Chronicle108">''The Holocaust Chronicle'', Publications International Ltd., p. 108.</ref> | |||
|- | |||
|Jehovah's<br>Witnesses | |||
| align="right" |2,500–5,000|| style="text-align:center;" |<ref name="Shulman">Shulman, William L. ''A State of Terror: Germany 1933–1939''. Bayside, New York: Holocaust Resource Center and Archives.</ref> | |||
|- | |||
|Spanish Republicans | |||
| align="right" |7000|| style="text-align:center;" |<ref name="Pike, David Wingeate 2000">Pike, David Wingeate. Spaniards in the Holocaust: Mauthausen, the horror on the Danube; Editorial: Routledge Chapman & Hall ISBN 9780415227803. London, 2000.</ref> | |||
|} | |} | ||
The number of victims depends on which definition of "the Holocaust" is used. Donald Niewyk and Francis Nicosia write in ''The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust'' that the term is commonly defined as the mass murder of more than five million European Jews.<ref name="Niewyk 2000 45–52">{{Harvnb|Niewyk|Nicosia|2000|pp=45–52}}.</ref> They further state that 'Not everyone finds this a fully satisfactory definition.'<ref>{{cite book|authors=Donald L. Niewyk, Francis R. Nicosia|title=The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust|publisher= Columbia University Press|location= |year=2000 |isbn= 0231112009|oclc=|doi=|page=49 |quote=Those who offer explicit or implicit arguments for including them among the victims of the Holocaust, such as Bohdan Wytwycky in ''The Other Holocaust'' and Christian Streit and Jürgen Forster in ''The Policies of Genocide'', point out that the appallingly high losses among Soviet prisoners of war were racially determined. The Germans did not usually mistreat prisoners from other Allied countries, but in the Nazi view Soviet prisoners were Slavic "subhumans" who had no right to live. ... Those who would include Polish and Soviet civilian losses in the Holocaust include Bohdan Wytwycky in ''The Other Holocaust'', ] in ''The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Rule, 1939–1944'', and Ihor Kamenetsky in ''Secret Nazi Plans for Eastern Europe''.}}</ref> According to British historian ], the total number of victims is just under six million—around 78 percent of the 7.3 million Jews in occupied Europe at the time.<ref>{{Harvnb|Gilbert|1988|pp=242–4}}.</ref> Timothy D. Snyder wrote that "The term Holocaust is sometimes used in two other ways: to mean all German killing policies during the war, or to mean all oppression of Jews by the Nazi regime."<ref>{{Harvnb|Snyder|2010|p=412}}.</ref> | |||
===Liquidation of the ghettos in Poland=== | |||
Broader definitions include the two to three million Soviet POWs who died as a result of mistreatment due to Nazi racial policies, two million non-Jewish ethnic Poles who died due to the conditions of Nazi occupation, 90,000-220,000 Romani, 270,000 mentally and physically disabled killed in Germany's eugenics program, 80,000–200,000 Freemasons, 20,000–25,000 Slovenes, 5,000–15,000 homosexuals, 2,500–5,000 Jehovah's Witnesses and 7,000 Spanish Republicans, bringing the death toll to around 11 million. The broadest definition would include six million Soviet civilians who died as a result of war-related famine and disease, raising the death toll to 17 million.<ref name="Niewyk 2000 45–52"/> A research project conducted by the ] estimated that 15 to 20 million people died or were imprisoned.<ref name=NYT030113 /> ] estimates the total ] death toll of Nazi Germany to be 21 million. | |||
{{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}} | |||
===Jewish=== | |||
] became significant as a symbol of ].{{sfn|Bartov|2023b|p=209}}]] | |||
{|class="sortable wikitable" style="float:right; clear:right; text-align:right; margin-left:1em; font-size:90%" | |||
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}} | |||
|+The following figures from ] show the annihilation of the Jewish population of Europe by (pre-war) country:<ref name=autogenerated2/> | |||
!Country | |||
!Estimated<br>Pre-War<br>Jewish<br>population | |||
!Estimated<br>killed | |||
!Percent<br>killed | |||
|- | |||
|Poland | |||
|3,300,000 | |||
|3,000,000 | |||
|90 | |||
|- | |||
|] | |||
|253,000 | |||
|228,000 | |||
|90 | |||
|- | |||
|Germany and Austria | |||
|240,000 | |||
|210,000 | |||
|90 | |||
|- | |||
|] and ] | |||
|90,000 | |||
|80,000 | |||
|89 | |||
|- | |||
|] | |||
|90,000 | |||
|75,000 | |||
|83 | |||
|- | |||
|Greece | |||
|70,000 | |||
|54,000 | |||
|77 | |||
|- | |||
|Netherlands | |||
|140,000 | |||
|105,000 | |||
|75 | |||
|- | |||
|Hungary | |||
|650,000 | |||
|450,000 | |||
|70 | |||
|- | |||
|] | |||
|375,000 | |||
|245,000 | |||
|65 | |||
|- | |||
|] | |||
|1,500,000 | |||
|900,000 | |||
|60 | |||
|- | |||
|Belgium | |||
|65,000 | |||
|40,000 | |||
|60 | |||
|- | |||
|] | |||
|43,000 | |||
|26,000 | |||
|60 | |||
|- | |||
|] | |||
|600,000 | |||
|300,000 | |||
|50 | |||
|- | |||
|Norway | |||
|2,173 | |||
|890 | |||
|41 | |||
|- | |||
|France | |||
|350,000 | |||
|90,000 | |||
|26 | |||
|- | |||
|] | |||
|64,000 | |||
|14,000 | |||
|22 | |||
|- | |||
|Italy | |||
|40,000 | |||
|8,000 | |||
|20 | |||
|- | |||
|] | |||
|5,000 | |||
|1,000 | |||
|20 | |||
|- | |||
|] | |||
|975,000 | |||
|107,000 | |||
|11 | |||
|- | |||
|Denmark | |||
|8,000 | |||
|52 | |||
|<1 | |||
|- class="sortbottom" | |||
|'''Total''' | |||
|'''8,861,800''' | |||
|'''5,933,900''' | |||
|'''67''' | |||
|} | |||
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}} | |||
Since 1945, the most commonly cited figure for the total number of Jews killed has been six million. The ] Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in ], writes that there is no precise figure for the number of Jews killed,<ref>{{cite web|title=The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names|url=http://db.yadvashem.org/names/search.html?language=en|publisher=Yad Vashem|accessdate=8 November 2013}}</ref> but has been able to find documentation of more than three million names of Jewish victims killed,<ref name=names-documentation>{{cite web|title=The Holocaust: Tracing Lost Family Members|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/tracing.html|work=JVL|accessdate=8 November 2013}}</ref> which it displays at its visitors center. The figure most commonly used is the six million attributed to Adolf Eichmann, a senior SS official.<ref>], an SS officer and a Doctor of History, testified at the ] and Eichmann's trial that at a meeting he had with Eichmann in Budapest in late August 1944, "Eichmann ... told me that, according to his information, some 6,000,000 (six million) Jews had perished until then – 4,000,000 (four million) in extermination camps and the remaining 2,000,000 (two million) through shooting by the Operations Units and other causes, such as disease, etc." </ref> | |||
===Deportations from elsewhere=== | |||
Early calculations range from about 4.2 to 4.5 million in ''The Final Solution'' (1953) by ] (arguing against higher Russian estimates),<ref>{{cite book|last=Reitlinger|first=Gerald|title=The Final Solution. The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939–1945|location=New York|publisher=Beechhurst Press}} Review by {{cite journal|first=Philip|last=Friedman|title=Review of ''The Final Solution''|journal=]|volume=16|issue=2|year=1954|pages=186–189 |jstor=4465231 }} See also a review by {{cite journal|first=Albert M.|last=Hyamson|title=Review of ''The Final Solution''|title=]|volume=29|issue=4|year=1953|pages=494–495|jstor=2606046 }}</ref> and 5.1 million from ], to 5.95 million from ]. ] and Robert Rozett in the '']'' estimate 5.59–5.86 million.<ref>Israel Gutman. ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust'', Macmillan Reference Books; Reference edition (1 October 1995).</ref> A study led by ] of the ] suggests 5.29–6.2 million.<ref name=YadVashemnumbers/><ref name=isbn3-423-04690-2>{{cite book|author=Benz, Wolfgang|title=Dimension des Völkermords. Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus.|publisher=Dtv|year=1996|isbn=3-423-04690-2}}</ref> Yad Vashem writes that the main sources for these statistics are comparisons of prewar and postwar censuses and population estimates, and Nazi documentation on deportations and murders.<ref name=YadVashemnumbers>, FAQs about the Holocaust, Yad Vashem.</ref> Its Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names currently holds close to three million names of Holocaust victims, all accessible online. Yad Vashem continues its project of collecting names of Jewish victims from historical documents and individual memories.<ref>, ] web site.</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}} | |||
Hilberg's estimate of 5.1 million, in the third edition of '']'', includes over 800,000 who died from "ghettoization and general privation"; 1,400,000 killed in open-air shootings; and up to 2,900,000 who perished in camps. Hilberg estimates the death toll of Jews in Poland as up to 3,000,000.<ref>{{Harvnb|Hilberg|2003|pp=1320–1321}}.</ref> Hilberg's numbers are generally considered to be a conservative estimate, as they typically include only those deaths for which records are available, avoiding statistical adjustment.<ref>{{Harvnb|Piper|1998|p=71}}.</ref> | |||
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}} | |||
Martin Gilbert arrived at a "minimum estimate" of over 5.75 million Jewish victims.<ref name=isbn0415281458>{{cite book|author=Martin Gilbert|title=The Routledge atlas of the Holocaust, 3rd Ed.|publisher=]|location=London|year=2002|isbn=0-415-28145-8|page=245|quote=By the most exact estimates of recent research, the number of Jews killed in Europe between September 1939 and May 1945 was nearly six million. This estimate is a minimum; the deaths shown opposite total just over 5,750,000, and are based on such country-by-country and region-by-region records as survive.}}</ref> ] used pre-war census figures to estimate that 5.934 million Jews died (see table below).<ref name=isbn0553343025>{{cite book|author=Dawidowicz, Lucy S.|title=The war against the Jews, 1933–1945|publisher=Bantam Books|location=New York|year=1986|isbn=0-553-34302-5}}p. 403</ref> | |||
==Perpetrators and beneficiaries== | |||
]'' burn corpses in the fire pits at Auschwitz II-Birkenau.<ref>.</ref>]] | |||
{{further|Responsibility for the Holocaust}} | |||
] 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}} | |||
There were about eight to ten million Jews in the territories controlled directly or indirectly by Germany (the uncertainty arises from the lack of knowledge about how many Jews there were in the Soviet Union). The six million killed in the Holocaust thus represent 60 to 75 percent of these Jews. Of Poland's 3.3 million Jews, about 90 percent were killed.<ref>{{cite web|title=Responses to common Holocaust-denial claims|url=http://archive.adl.org/holocaust/response.asp|publisher=ADL|accessdate=8 November 2013}}</ref> The same proportion were killed in ] and Lithuania, but most of ]'s Jews were evacuated in time. Of the 750,000 Jews in Germany and Austria in 1933, only about a quarter survived. Although many German Jews emigrated before 1939, the majority of these fled to ], France or the Netherlands, from where they were later deported to their deaths. | |||
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}} | |||
In Czechoslovakia, Greece, the Netherlands, and Yugoslavia, over 70 percent were killed. 50 to 70 percent were killed in ], Belgium and Hungary. It is likely that a similar proportion were killed in ] and Ukraine, but these figures are less certain. Countries with notably lower proportions of deaths include ], Denmark, France, Italy, and ]. ] was the only country occupied by Germany that had a significantly larger Jewish population in 1945 than in 1939. About two hundred native Jews and over a thousand refugees were provided with false documents, hidden when necessary, and generally treated as honored guests in a country whose population was roughly 60% Muslim.<ref>Shoah Research Center;– Albania The Jews of Albania during the Zogist and Second World War Periods and see also Norman H. Gershman's book Besa: Muslims Who Saved Jews in World War II – for reviews etc (all consulted 24 June 2010)</ref> Additionally, Japan, as an Axis member, had its own unique response to German policies regarding Jews; see ]. | |||
{|class="wikitable" style="float:right; margin-left:1em; font-size:80%" | |||
|- | |||
!Year!!Jews killed<ref>{{Harvnb|Hilberg|2003|p=1322}}.</ref> | |||
|- | |||
|1933–1940 | |||
|align="right"|under 100,000 | |||
|- | |||
|1941 | |||
|align="right"|1,100,000 | |||
|- | |||
|1942 | |||
|align="right"|2,700,000 | |||
|- | |||
|1943 | |||
|align="right"|500,000 | |||
|- | |||
|1944 | |||
|align="right"|600,000 | |||
|- | |||
|1945 | |||
|align="right"|100,000 | |||
|} | |||
{|class="wikitable" style="float:left; margin-right:1em; font-size:80%" | |||
|- | |||
!Extermination Camp!!Estimate of<br> number killed!!Ref | |||
|- | |||
|] | |||
|align="right"|1,000,000||<ref name=yvsau></ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Piper|1998|p=62}}.</ref> | |||
|- | |||
|] | |||
|align="right"|870,000||<ref name=yvstr>, Yad Vashem.</ref> | |||
|- | |||
|] | |||
|align="right"|600,000||<ref name=yvsbe>, Yad Vashem.</ref> | |||
|- | |||
|] | |||
|align="right"|79,000–235,000||<ref name=yvsmaj>, Yad Vashem.</ref><ref name='Reszka'>{{cite web|url=http://en.auschwitz.org.pl/m/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=44&Itemid=8|title=Majdanek Victims Enumerated. Changes in the history textbooks?|accessdate=13 April 2010|last=Reszka|first=Paweł|date=23 December 2005|work=]|publisher=Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum}}</ref> | |||
|- | |||
|] | |||
|align="right"|320,000||<ref name=yvsch>, Yad Vashem.</ref> | |||
|- | |||
|] | |||
|align="right"|250,000||<ref name=yvsso>, Yad Vashem.</ref> | |||
|} | |||
This gives a total of over 3.8 million; of these, 80–90% were estimated to be Jews. These seven camps thus accounted for half the total number of Jews killed in the entire Nazi Holocaust. Virtually the entire Jewish population of Poland died in these camps.<ref name=autogenerated2/> | |||
==Forced labor== | |||
In addition to those who died in the above extermination camps, at least half a million Jews died in other camps, including the major concentration camps in Germany. These were not extermination camps, but had large numbers of Jewish prisoners at various times, particularly in the last year of the war as the Nazis withdrew from Poland. About a million people died in these camps, and although the proportion of Jews is not known with certainty, it was estimated to be at least 50 percent.{{Citation needed|date=September 2009|reason=need sourcing for concentration camps and Einsatzgruppen killing estimates}} Another 800,000 to one million Jews were killed by the ''Einsatzgruppen'' in the occupied Soviet territories (an approximate figure, since the ''Einsatzgruppen'' killings were frequently undocumented).<ref name=isbn0-375-40900-9>{{cite book|author=Rhodes, Richard|title=Masters of death: the SS-Einsatzgruppen and the invention of the Holocaust|publisher=Alfred A. Knopf|location=New York|year=2002|isbn=0-375-40900-9}}</ref> Many more died through execution or of disease and malnutrition in the ghettos of Poland before they could be deported. | |||
{{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}} | |||
====By country==== | |||
] | |||
In the 1990s, the opening of government archives in Eastern Europe resulted in the adjustment of the death tolls published in the pioneering work by Hilberg, Dawidowicz and Gilbert (e.g. compare Gilbert's estimation of two million deaths in Auschwitz-Birkenau with the updated figure of one million in the Extermination Camp data box). As pointed out above, Wolfgang Benz has been carrying out work on the more recent data. He concluded in 1999: | |||
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}} | |||
{{quote|The goal of annihilating all of the Jews of Europe, as it was proclaimed at the conference in the villa Am Grossen Wannsee in January 1942, was not reached. Yet the six million murder victims make the holocaust a unique crime in the history of mankind. The number of victims—and with certainty the following represent the minimum number in each case—cannot express that adequately. Numbers are just too abstract. However they must be stated in order to make clear the dimension of the genocide: 165,000 Jews from Germany, 65,000 from Austria, 32,000 from France and Belgium, more than 100,000 from the Netherlands, 60,000 from Greece, the same number from Yugoslavia, more than 140,000 from Czechoslovakia, half a million from Hungary, 2.2 million from the Soviet Union, and 2.7 million from Poland. To these numbers must be added all those killed in the pogroms and massacres in Romania and Transitrien (over 200,000) and the deported and murdered Jews from Albania and Norway, Denmark and Italy, from Luxembourg and Bulgaria.|Benz, Wolfgang ''The Holocaust: A German Historian Examines the Genocide''<ref>{{cite book|author=Benz, Wolfgang|title=The Holocaust: A German Historian Examines the Genocide|publisher=Columbia University Press|location=New York|year=1999|isbn=0-231-11214-9 |pages=152–153}}</ref>}} | |||
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> | |||
====Effect on the Yiddish and Ladino languages==== | |||
] | |||
Because the significant majority of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust were speakers of ], the Holocaust had a profound and permanent effect on the fate of the Yiddish language and culture (see ]). On the eve of ], there were 11 to 13 million Yiddish speakers in the world.<ref>{{Harvnb|Jacobs|2005|p=3}}.</ref> The Holocaust led to a dramatic, sudden decline in the use of Yiddish, because the extensive Jewish communities, both secular and religious, that used it in their day-to-day life were largely destroyed. Around five million (85%) of the victims of the Holocaust were speakers of Yiddish.<ref>], ''Grammatik der jiddischen Sprache'' (4., erg. Aufl., Hamburg: Buske, 1984), p. 3.</ref> | |||
==Escape and hiding== | |||
Of the remaining non-Yiddish speaking population, the ] (Judaeo-Spanish) speaking Jewish communities of ] and the Balkans were also destroyed, which contributed to the near-extinction of this language. | |||
]]] | |||
{{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}} | |||
===Non-Jewish=== | |||
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}} | |||
====Slavs==== | |||
{{main|Generalplan Ost|Hunger Plan}} | |||
] | |||
Himmler's '']'' (General Plan East), which was enthusiastically agreed to by Hitler in the summer of 1942, involved exterminating, expelling, or enslaving most or all ]s from their native lands so as to make ] for German settlers, something that would be carried out over a period of 20–30 years.<ref>{{Harvnb|Mazower|2008|pp=204–211}}; {{Harvnb|Müller|Ueberschär|2002|p=285}}.</ref> | |||
] 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}} | |||
Author and historian Doris L. Bergen has written: "Like so much Nazi writing, General Plan East was full of euphemisms. ... Nevertheless its intentions were obvious. It also made clear that German policies toward different population groups were closely connected. Settlement of Germans and ethnic Germans in the east; expulsion, enslavement, and decimation of Slavs; and murder of Jews were all parts of the same plan."<ref>{{Harvnb|Bergen|2009|p=168}}.</ref> | |||
==International reactions== | |||
Historian ] estimates the number of Slav civilians and POWs murdered by the Nazis at 10,547,000.<ref name="University of Hawaii">{{cite web|last1=Rummel|first1=R.J.|title=DEMOCIDE: NAZI GENOCIDE AND MASS MURDER|url=http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NAZIS.CHAP1.HTM|website=http://www.hawaii.edu/|publisher=University of Hawaii|accessdate=7 June 2014}}</ref> | |||
{{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}} | |||
According to historian ]: | |||
{{quote| | |||
''Generalplan Ost'' . . . forecast the diminution of the targeted east European peoples' populations by the following measures: Poles – 85 percent; ] – 75 percent; ] – 65 percent; ] – 50 percent. These enormous reductions would result from "extermination through labor" or decimation through malnutrition, disease, and controls on reproduction. . . . The ] people, once subjugated in war, would join the four Slavic-speaking nations whose fate ''Generalplan Ost'' foreshadowed.<ref>{{Harvnb|Hagen|2012|p=313}}.</ref> | |||
}} | |||
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> | |||
{{Quotation| | |||
It is a question of existence, thus it will be a racial struggle of pitiless severity, in the course of which 20 to 30 million Slavs and Jews will perish through military actions and crises of food supply.| ] spoke about ], June 1941<ref>{{Harvnb|Cesarani|2004|p=366}}.</ref> | |||
}} | |||
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}} | |||
=====Ethnic Poles===== | |||
{{further|Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles|Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)|Pacification operations in German-occupied Poland|Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen}} | |||
] with the letter "P", required wear for Polish inmates]] | |||
] | |||
] | |||
] | |||
==Second half of the war== | |||
German planners had in November 1939 called for "the complete destruction" of all ].<ref>{{Harvnb|Gellately|2001|p=153}}.</ref> "All Poles", Heinrich Himmler swore, "will disappear from the world".<ref>{{Harvnb|Phayer|2000|p=21}}.</ref> The Polish state under German occupation was to be cleared of ethnic Poles and settled by German colonists.<ref>{{Harvnb|Berghahn|1999|pp=32–3}}.</ref> Of the Poles, by 1952 only about three–four million of them were to be left in the former Poland, and only to serve as slaves for German settlers. They were to be forbidden to marry, the existing ban on any medical help to Poles in Germany would be extended, and eventually Poles would cease to exist. On 22 August 1939, just over a week before the onset of war, Hitler declared that "the object of the war is ... physically to destroy the enemy. That is why I have prepared, for the moment only in the East, my 'Death's Head' formations with orders to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space we need."<ref>{{Harvnb|Piotrowski|1998|p=115}}.</ref> Nazi planners decided against a genocide of ethnic Poles on the same scale as against ethnic Jews; it could not proceed in the short term since "such a solution to the Polish question would represent a burden to the German people into the distant future, and everywhere rob us of all understanding, not least in that neighbouring peoples would have to reckon at some appropriate time, with a similar fate".<ref>{{Harvnb|Gellately|2001|p=154}}.</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}} | |||
The actions taken against ethnic Poles were not on the scale of the genocide of the Jews. Most Polish Jews (perhaps 90% of their pre-war population) perished during the Holocaust, while most Christian Poles survived the brutal German occupation.<ref>], ''Unequal Victims'' Holocaust Library 1985</ref> Between 1.8 and 2.1 million non-Jewish Polish citizens perished in German hands during the course of the war, about four-fifths of whom were ethnic ] with the remaining fifth being ethnic minorities of Ukrainians and Belarusians, the vast majority of them civilians.<ref name=autogenerated1/><ref name=PolandWorldWarIIcasualties>Piotrowski, Tadeusz. . Retrieved 15 March 2007; and ]. "Szanse i trudności bilansu demograficznego Polski w latach 1939–1945", ''Dzieje Najnowsze'', issue 1994/2.</ref> At least 200,000 of these victims died in concentration camps with about 146,000 being killed in Auschwitz. Many others died as a result of general massacres such as in the Warsaw Uprising where between 120,000 and 200,000 civilians were killed.<ref name="Piotrowski 1998 295">{{Harvnb|Piotrowski|1998|p=295}}.</ref><ref></ref> | |||
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}} | |||
The policy of the Germans in Poland included diminishing food rations, conscious lowering of the state of hygiene and depriving the population of medical services. The general mortality rate rose from 13 to 18 per thousand.<ref name=Nurowski>Nurowski, Roman. 1939–1945 War Losses in Poland, Warsaw 1960,</ref> Overall, about 5.6 million of the victims of World War II were Polish citizens,<ref name=PolandWorldWarIIcasualties/> both Jewish and non-Jewish, and over the course of the war Poland lost 16 percent of its pre-war population; approximately 3.1 million of the 3.3 million Polish Jews and approximately two million of the 31.7 million non-Jewish Polish citizens died at German hands during the war.<ref>''Poland-World War II-casualties'', Piotrowski, Tadeusz. </ref> According to recent (2009) estimates by the ], over 2.5 million non-Jewish Polish citizens died as a result of the German occupation.<ref>Polska 1939–1945. Straty osobowe i ofiary represji pod dwiema okupacjami, ed. Tomasz Szarota and Wojciech Materski, Warszawa, IPN 2009, ISBN 978-83-7629-067-6 ()</ref> Over 90 percent of the death toll came through non-military losses, as most of the civilians were targeted by various deliberate actions by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.<ref name="Piotrowski 1998 295"/> | |||
===Death marches and liberation=== | |||
A few days before the invasion of Poland, on 22 August 1939, Adolf Hitler said to his generals: | |||
] 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}} | |||
{{quote|Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter—with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. ... Our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness—for the present only in the East—with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space ('']'') which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians? ... Poland will be depopulated and settled with Germans. ... As for the rest, gentlemen, the fate of Russia will be exactly the same as I am now going through with in the case of Poland.<ref>Gaymon Bennett, Ted Peters, Martinez J. Hewlett, Robert John Russell (2008). "''The evolution of evil''". Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. p.318. ISBN 3-525-56979-3</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Pinkus|2005|p=57}}.</ref>}} | |||
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}} | |||
=====West Slavs===== | |||
West Slavic populations were persecuted to some extent. By one estimate, 345,000 ] citizens were executed or otherwise killed, and hundreds of thousands more of all of these groups were sent to concentration camps and used as forced labor.<ref>Stephen A. Garrett (1996). "''''". Palgrave Macmillan. p.60. ISBN 0-312-15908-0</ref> The villages of ] and ] were completely destroyed by the Nazis; all men over 16 years of age from the village were murdered and the rest of the population was sent to Nazi concentration camps where many women and nearly all of the children were killed. | |||
==Death toll== | |||
The German ethnic ] population was also persecuted. | |||
{{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}} | |||
=====Ethnic Serbs and other South Slavs===== | |||
{{main|World War II persecution of Serbs}} | |||
] from ]]] | |||
In the ], up to 581,000 Yugoslav civilians were killed during ].<ref>]''Yugoslavia manipulations with the number Second World War victims'', Zagreb: Croatian Information center,1993 ISBN 0-919817-32-7 and </ref><ref>]-Žrtve Drugog svetskog rata u Jugoslaviji 1990 ISBN 86-01-01928-5</ref> German forces, under express orders from Hitler, fought with a special vengeance against the Serbs, who were considered '']'' (sub-human).<ref>Tomasevich, Jozo. ''War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration.'' Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8047-3615-4</ref> The ] collaborators conducted a systematic extermination of large numbers of people for political, religious or racial reasons. The most numerous victims were ]. | |||
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> | |||
], ] and others were also victims of the Jasenovac concentration camp. According to the US Holocaust Museum: {{quote|The Ustaša authorities established numerous concentration camps in Croatia between 1941 and 1945. These camps were used to isolate and murder Serbs, Jews, Roma, Muslims , and other non-Catholic minorities, as well as Croatian political and religious opponents of the regime.}} | |||
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}} | |||
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (]) and ] report between 56,000 and 97,000 persons were killed at the Jasenovac concentration camp.<ref>United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – Holocaust Era in Croatia: 1941–1945, Jasenovac (go to section III Concentration Camps) </ref><ref>. ''Holocaust Encyclopedia''. ]. Retrieved 27 September 2012.</ref><ref>, Jasenovac</ref> Yad Vashem reports an overall number of over 500,000 murders of Serbs "in horribly sadistic ways" at the hands of the Ustaše.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205930.pdf|title=Croatia|work=Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies|publisher=Yad Vashem}}</ref> | |||
==Aftermath and legacy== | |||
According to the most recent study, ''Bošnjaci u Jasenovačkom logoru'' ("Bosniaks in the Jasenovac concentration camp") by the author ], at least 103,000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) perished during the Holocaust at the hands of the Nazi regime and the Croatian Ustaše. According to the study, "unknown is the full number of Bosniaks who were murdered under Serb or Croat alias or national name" and "a large numbers of Bosniaks were killed and listed under ] populations", therefore in advance sentenced to death and extermination.<ref>*—Congress of Bosniak Intellectuals, Sarajevo. ISBN 978-9958-47-102-5. October 2006. (Holocaust Studies) | |||
{{Main|Aftermath of the Holocaust}} | |||
</ref><ref>{{dead link|date=January 2011}} {{bs icon}}<!-- {{dead link|date=July 2009}} --> Meliha Pihura, Bosnjaci.net Magazine, 13 April 2007.</ref> Excluding Slovenes under Italian rule, between 20,000 and 25,000 ] were killed by Nazis or fascists (counting only civilian victims).<ref name=ds-rs.si>http://www.ds-rs.si/dokumenti/publikacije/Zbornik_05-1.pdf</ref> | |||
===Return home and emigration=== | |||
] collaborationists cooperated with the Nazis and what followed was an extensive persecution of non-Albanians (mostly Serbs) by Albanian fascists. Most of the war crimes were perpetrated by the Albanian ] and the ]. 3,000 to 10,000 Kosovo Serbs were murdered by the Albanians during the war, and another 30,000 to 100,000 were expelled.<ref>], p. 95.</ref> | |||
<!-- ], 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=== | ||
{{further|Category:Holocaust trials}} | |||
{{main|Occupation of Belarus by Nazi Germany|Reichskommissariat Ukraine}} | |||
], November 1945|alt=Rows of men sitting on benches]] | |||
], Belarus, 1943]] | |||
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}} | |||
Soviet civilian populations in the occupied areas were also heavily persecuted (in addition to the barbarity of the Eastern Front frontline warfare manifesting itself in episodes such as the siege of Leningrad in which more than one million civilians died).<ref>{{Harvnb|Evans|2008|p=406}}.</ref> Thousands of peasant villages across ], ] and ] were annihilated by German troops. Bohdan Wytwycky has estimated that as many as one-quarter of all Soviet civilian deaths at the hands of the Nazis and their allies were racially motivated.<ref name="Niewyk 2000 45–52"/> | |||
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}} | |||
The Russian Academy of Sciences in 1995 reported ] at German hands, including Jews, totaled 13.7 million dead, 20% of the 68 million persons in the occupied USSR. This included 7.4 million victims of Nazi genocide and reprisals.<ref name="ReferenceA">The Russian Academy of Science Rossiiskaia Akademiia nauk. Liudskie poteri SSSR v period vtoroi mirovoi voiny:sbornik statei. Sankt-Peterburg 1995 ISBN 5-86789-023-6</ref> | |||
===Reparations=== | |||
In Belarus, Nazi Germany imposed a regime in the country that was responsible for burning down some 9,000 villages, deporting some 380,000 people for slave labour, and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. More than 600 villages, like ], were burned along with their entire population and at least 5,295 Belarusian settlements were destroyed by the Nazis and some or all of their inhabitants killed. Tim Snyder states: "Of the nine million people who were on the territory of Soviet Belarus in 1941, some 1.6 million were killed by the Germans in actions away from battlefields, including about 700,000 prisoners of war, 500,000 Jews, and 320,000 people counted as partisans (the vast majority of whom were unarmed civilians."<ref>{{Harvnb|Snyder|2010|pp=250–251}}.</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}} | |||
{{Quotation| | |||
The German racists assigned the Slavs to the lowest rank of human life, from which the Jews were altogether excluded. The Germans thus looked upon Slavs as people not fit to be educated, not able to govern themselves, worthy only as slaves whose existence would be justified because they served their German masters. Hitler's racial policy with regard to the Slavs, to the extent that it was formulated, was "depopulation." The Slavs were to be prevented from procreating, except to provide the necessary continuing supply of slave laborers.| ], ''The Holocaust and the historians''<ref>{{Harvnb|Dawidowicz|1981|p=10}}.</ref> | |||
}} | |||
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}} | |||
] | |||
===Remembrance and historiography=== | |||
=====Soviet POWs===== | |||
] in Berlin, 2016|alt=A memorial of many square concrete blocks]] | |||
{{main|Nazi crimes against Soviet POWs}} | |||
According to ], between two and three million Soviet prisoners-of-war—or around 57 percent of all Soviet POWs—died of starvation, mistreatment, or executions between June 1941 and May 1945, and most of those during their first year of captivity. According to other estimates by ], an estimated 2.8 million Soviet POWs died in eight months in 1941–42, with a total of 3.5 million by mid-1944.<ref>{{cite web|title=Soviet Prisoners of war|url=http://www.gendercide.org/case_soviet.html}}</ref> The USHMM has estimated that 3.3 million of the 5.7 million Soviet POWs died in German custody—compared to 8,300 of 231,000 British and American prisoners.<ref>. ''Holocaust Encyclopedia''. ]. Retrieved 27 September 2012.</ref> The death rates decreased as the POWs were needed to work as slaves to help the German war effort; by 1943, half a million of them had been deployed as ].<ref name = "Berenbaum 2005 125"/> | |||
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. | |||
====Romani people==== | |||
{{main|Porajmos}} | |||
{{quote|hey wish to toss into the Ghetto everything that is characteristically dirty, shabby, bizarre, of which one ought to be frightened and which anyway had to be destroyed.|] on the Roma.<ref>{{Harvnb|Kermish|1968|pp=}}.</ref>}} | |||
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}} | |||
Because the ] are traditionally a private people with a culture based on ], less is known about their experience of the genocide than about that of any other group.<ref name="Niewyk 2000 47">{{Harvnb|Niewyk|Nicosia|2000|p=47}}.</ref> ] writes that the lack of information can be attributed to the Romani's distrust and suspicion, and to their humiliation, because some of the basic ]s of Romani culture regarding hygiene and sexual contact were violated at Auschwitz. Bauer writes that "most could not relate their stories involving these ]s; as a result, most kept silent and thus increased the effects of the massive ] they had undergone."<ref>{{Harvnb|Bauer|1998|p=453}}.</ref> | |||
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> | |||
] | |||
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}} | |||
The treatment of the Romani was not consistent in the different areas that Nazi Germany conquered. In some areas (e.g. Luxembourg and the Baltic countries), the Nazis killed virtually the entire Romani population. In other areas (e.g. Denmark, Greece), there is no record of Romanis being subjected to mass killings.<ref>See ''History of the Holocaust: a Handbook and a Dictionary'', Edelheit, Edelheit & Edelheit, p.458, Free Press, 1995</ref> | |||
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> | |||
Donald Niewyk and Frances Nicosia write that the death toll was at least 130,000 of the nearly one million Romani in Nazi-controlled Europe.<ref name="Niewyk 2000 47"/> Michael Berenbaum writes that serious scholarly estimates lie between 90,000 and 220,000.<ref>{{Harvnb|Berenbaum|2005|p=126}}.</ref> A study by Sybil Milton, senior historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, calculated a death toll of at least 220,000 and possibly closer to 500,000, but this study explicitly excluded the ] where the genocide of Romanies was intense.<ref name="USHMM Roma"/><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nyed.uscourts.gov/pub/rulings/cv/1996/685455.pdf|title=Re. Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation (Swiss Banks) Special Master's Proposals|date=11 September 2000|accessdate=29 January 2013|archiveurl=//web.archive.org/web/20120516101356/http://www.nyed.uscourts.gov/pub/rulings/cv/1996/685455.pdf|archivedate=16 May 2012 }}</ref> Martin Gilbert estimates a total of more than 220,000 of the 700,000 Romani in Europe.<ref>{{cite book|last=]|first=Martin|title=The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust|publisher=Routledge, London & New York|year=2002|isbn=0-415-28145-8}} (ref Map 182 p 141 with Romani deaths by country & Map 301 p 232) Note: formerly ''The Dent Atlas of the Holocaust''; 1982, 1993.</ref> ], Director of the Program of Romani Studies and the Romani Archives and Documentation Center at the University of Texas at Austin, has argued in favour of a much higher figure of between 500,000 and 1,500,000, claiming the Romani toll proportionally equaled or exceeded that of Jewish victims.<ref name="383–96"/><ref>Hancock, Ian. , Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota.</ref> | |||
==Notes== | |||
Before being sent to the camps, the victims were herded into ghettos, including several hundred into the ].<ref name=USHMMDeportationsWarsaw/> Further east, teams of ''Einsatzgruppen'' tracked down Romani encampments and murdered the inhabitants on the spot, leaving no records of the victims. They were also targeted by the puppet regimes that cooperated with the Nazis, e.g. the ] regime in ], where a large number of Romani were killed in the Jasenovac concentration camp. The genocide analyst ] has stated that the Ustashe killed virtually every Romani in Croatia.<ref>Helen Fein, ''Accounting for Genocide'', New York, The Free Press, 1979, pp.79, 105</ref> | |||
{{notelist}} | |||
==References== | |||
In May 1942, the Romani were placed under similar labor and social laws to the Jews. On 16 December 1942, Heinrich Himmler, Commander of the ] and regarded as the "architect" of the Nazi genocide,<ref>{{Harvnb|Breitman|1991}}.</ref> issued a decree that "Gypsy '']e'' (mixed breeds), Romani, and members of the clans of ] origins who are not of German blood" should be sent to Auschwitz, unless they had served in the '']''.<ref>{{Harvnb|Bauer|1998|p=444}}.</ref> On 29 January 1943, another decree ordered the deportation of all German Romani to Auschwitz. | |||
{{reflist|20em}} | |||
===Works cited=== | |||
This was adjusted on 15 November 1943, when Himmler ordered that, in the occupied Soviet areas, "sedentary Gypsies and part-Gypsies (''Mischlinge'') are to be treated as citizens of the country. Nomadic Gypsies and part-Gypsies are to be placed on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps."<ref>{{Harvnb|Bauer|1998|p=445}}.</ref> Bauer argues that this adjustment reflected Nazi ideology that the Romani, originally an Aryan population, had been "spoiled" by non-Romani blood.<ref>{{Harvnb|Bauer|1998|p=446}}.</ref> | |||
====Books==== | |||
{{Refbegin|30em|indent=yes}} | |||
* {{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==== | ||
{{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=}} --> | |||
{{main|Black people in Nazi Germany|Rhineland Bastard|Racial policy of Nazi Germany#Other "non-Aryans"}} | |||
* {{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}} | |||
The number of black people in Germany when the Nazis came to power is variously estimated at 5,000–25,000.<ref>{{Harvnb|Lusane|2003|pp=97–98}}.</ref> It is not clear whether these figures included Asians. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., "The fate of black people from 1933 to 1945 in Nazi Germany and in German-occupied territories ranged from isolation to persecution, sterilization, medical experimentation, incarceration, brutality, and murder. However, there was no systematic program for their elimination as there was for Jews and other groups."<ref>. ''Holocaust Encyclopedia''. ]. Retrieved 27 September 2012.</ref> Meanwhile, ], ], ]ians and ]ns were classified as Aryans, so they were not persecuted (see ]). Racial restrictions were relaxed to the extent that ], ] and ] were recruited by the German military due to the shortage of manpower.<ref>Robert L. Canfield, ''Turko–Persia in Historical Perspective'' p. 212 – "As Turkistanis they joined the so-called "]", which were part of the ''Wehrmacht'' and later the ''Waffen-SS'', to fight the Red Army (Hauner 1981:339-57). The estimates of their numbers vary between 250,000 and 400,000, which include the ], the ] and members of the ] ethnic groups (Alexiev 1982:33)"</ref> | |||
* {{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}} | |||
* {{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}} | |||
* {{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}} | |||
* {{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}} | |||
* {{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}} | |||
* {{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}} | |||
* {{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}} | |||
* {{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}} | |||
* {{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}} | |||
* {{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}} | |||
* {{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}} | |||
* {{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}} | |||
==== |
====Journal articles==== | ||
{{refbegin|30em|indent=yes}} | |||
{{main|Nazi eugenics|Action T4|Erbkrank|Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring|Schloss Hartheim}} | |||
* {{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=<!-- --> }} | |||
{{quote|Our starting-point is not the individual, and we do not subscribe to the view that one should feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty or clothe the naked—those are not our objectives. Our objectives are entirely different. They can be put most crisply in the sentence: we must have a healthy people in order to prevail in the world.|], 1938.<ref>{{Harvnb|Burleigh|Wippermann|1991|p=69}}.</ref>}} | |||
* {{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}} | |||
''Action T4'' was a program established in 1939 to maintain the genetic "purity" of the German population by killing or ] citizens who were judged to be ] or suffering from ].<ref>{{Harvnb|Kershaw|2000|pp=252–261}}.</ref> | |||
{{refend}} | |||
{{Holocaust by country|state=collapsed}} | |||
Between 1939 and 1941, 80,000 to 100,000 mentally ill adults in institutions were killed; 5,000 children in institutions; and 1,000 Jews in institutions.<ref name = "Lifton 2000 142">{{Harvnb|Lifton|2000|p=142}}.</ref> Outside the mental health institutions, the figures are estimated as 20,000 (according to Dr. Georg Renno, the deputy director of ], one of the euthanasia centers) or 400,000 (according to Frank Zeireis, the commandant of Mauthausen concentration camp).<ref name = "Lifton 2000 142"/> Another 300,000 were forcibly sterilized.<ref>{{Harvnb|Neugebauer|1998}}.</ref> Overall it has been estimated that over 270,000 individuals<ref name="holocaust-education.dk"/> with mental disorders of all kinds were put to death, although their mass murder has received relatively little historical attention. Along with the physically disabled, people suffering from ] were persecuted as well. Many were put on display in cages and experimented on by the Nazis.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://thehumanmarvels.com/894/the-ovitz-family-nazi-experiments/dwarfism|title=THE OVITZ FAMILY – Nazi Experiments|publisher=Thehumanmarvels.com|accessdate=2013-01-18}}</ref> Despite not being formally ordered to take part, ]s and psychiatric institutions were at the center of justifying, planning and carrying out the atrocities at every stage, and "constituted the connection" to the later annihilation of Jews and other "undesirables" in the Holocaust.<ref>{{Harvnb|Strous|2007}}.</ref> After strong protests by the German Catholic and Protestant churches on 24 August 1941 Hitler ordered the cancellation of the T4 program.<ref>{{Harvnb|Lifton|2000|p=95}}.</ref> | |||
{{Antisemitism topics}} | |||
The program was named after ] 4, the address of a villa in the Berlin borough of ], the headquarters of the General Foundation for Welfare and Institutional Care,<ref>{{Harvnb|Sereny|1995|pp=48–49}}.</ref> led by ], head of Hitler's private chancellery (''Kanzlei des Führer der NSDAP'') and ], Hitler's personal physician. | |||
Brandt was tried in December 1946 at ], along with 22 others, in a case known as ''United States of America vs. Karl Brandt et al.'', also known as the ]. He was ] at ] on 2 June 1948. | |||
====Homosexuals==== | |||
{{main|Institut für Sexualwissenschaft|Pink triangle|Persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust}} | |||
] in Amsterdam, a memorial to the homosexual victims of Nazi Germany]] | |||
Between 5,000 and 15,000 homosexuals of German nationality are estimated to have been sent to concentration camps.<ref name=Chronicle108/> James D. Steakley writes that what mattered in Germany was criminal intent or character, rather than criminal acts, and the ''"gesundes Volksempfinden"'' ("healthy sensibility of the people") became the leading normative legal principle.<ref name=Steakley>Steakley, James. , ''The Body Politic'', Issue 11, January/February 1974.</ref> In 1936, Himmler created the ].<ref>{{Harvnb|Longerich|2012|p=237}}.</ref> Homosexuality was declared contrary to "wholesome popular sentiment,"<ref name=Chronicle108/> and homosexuals were consequently regarded as "defilers of German blood." The Gestapo raided ]s, tracked individuals using the address books of those they arrested, used the subscription lists of gay magazines to find others, and encouraged people to report suspected homosexual behavior and to scrutinize the behavior of their neighbors.<ref name=Chronicle108/><ref name=Steakley/> | |||
Tens of thousands were convicted between 1933 and 1944 and sent to camps for "rehabilitation", where they were identified by yellow armbands<ref name=EBnon-Jews>"Non-Jewish victims of Nazism", ''Encyclopædia Britannica''.</ref> and later pink triangles worn on the left side of the jacket and the right trouser leg, which singled them out for ].<ref name=Steakley/> Hundreds were ] by ].<ref>{{Harvnb|Giles|1992|p=46}}: " large proportion of those formally convicted of homosexuality by nazi courts were not actual homosexuals. Many of the younger plaintiffs were prosecuted for harmless adolescent horseplay, and some of the older ones by political rivals for entirely fictitious offences".</ref> They were humiliated, tortured, used in ] experiments conducted by SS doctors, and killed.<ref name=Chronicle108/> Steakley writes that the full extent of gay suffering was slow to emerge after the war. Many victims kept their stories to themselves because homosexuality remained criminalized in postwar Germany. Around two percent of German homosexuals were persecuted by Nazis.<ref name=Steakley/> | |||
====The political left==== | |||
] | |||
German communists, socialists and trade unionists were among the earliest domestic opponents of Nazism<ref>. ''Holocaust Encyclopedia''. ]. Retrieved 27 September 2012.</ref> and were also among the first to be sent to concentration camps. Hitler claimed that communism was a Jewish ideology which the Nazis termed "]". Fear of communist agitation was used as justification for the ], the law which gave Hitler his original dictatorial powers. Hermann Göring later testified at the ] that the Nazis' willingness to repress German communists prompted president ] and the German elite to cooperate with the Nazis.{{Citation needed|date=October 2012}} ] assisted the Gestapo via "the exchange of information about Communism", and as late as October 1937, the head of the British agency's Berlin station, ], described his relationship with ]'s so-called communism expert as "cordial".<ref>{{Harvnb|Jeffery|2010|p=302}}.</ref> | |||
Hitler and the Nazis also hated German ] because of their resistance to the party's racism. Many leaders of German leftist groups were Jews, and Jews were especially prominent among the leaders of the ] in 1919. Hitler already referred to ] and "]" as a means of "the international Jew" to undermine "racial purity" and survival of the ] or Aryans, as well as to stir up ] class tension and labor unions against the government or state-owned businesses. Within concentration camps such as ], German communists were privileged in comparison to Jews because of their "racial purity".<ref>Augustine, Dolores, of Niven, Bill, ''The Buchenwald Child: Truth, Fiction, and Propaganda'' in ''Central European History'' 41:01, Cambridge University Press</ref> | |||
Whenever the Nazis occupied a new territory, members of communist, socialist, or ] groups were normally to be the first persons detained or executed. Evidence of this is found in Hitler's infamous ], in which he ordered the summary execution of all political ]s captured among Soviet soldiers, as well as the execution of all Communist Party members in German-held territory.<ref>Brown, Maggie (5 October 1999). . '']''. Retrieved 5 September 2012.</ref><ref>. ''Holocaust Encyclopedia''. ]. Retrieved 27 September 2012.</ref> ''Einsatzgruppen'' carried out these executions in the east. ] ("Night and Fog") was a directive ({{lang-de|link=no|Erlass}}) of Hitler on 7 December 1941 signed and implemented by Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces ], resulting in ] and the ] of many political activists throughout Nazi Germany's occupied territories. | |||
Among the well-known leftist prisoners of the concentration camps were German socialists ], ], Heinrich Bußmann, ], Heinrich Fulda, ], and Alfred Schmieder; German communists ], Ernst Grube, Walter Krämer, ], ], ], ], and ]; Jewish socialist and former ] ]; Slovenian socialist activist ]; Jewish Austrian socialist ]; and Austrian socialist (and later Interior Minister) ]. ], a leading German socialist politician, was imprisoned in various concentration camps for ten years, and left the camps severely ill, leading to the amputation of his leg in 1948 and ultimately his death in 1952; however, during that time he played an instrumental role in re-establishing the ]. | |||
====Freemasons==== | |||
{{Main|Suppression of Freemasonry#Nazi Germany and Occupied Europe|Nacht und Nebel}} | |||
]'', founded in November 1943 in Hut 6 of Emslandlager VII (KZ Esterwegen), one of two Masonic Lodges founded in a Nazi concentration camp]] | |||
In '']'', Hitler wrote that ] had "succumbed" to the Jews: "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>''Mein Kampf'', p. .</ref> Within the Reich, however, the "threat" posed by Freemasons was not considered serious from the mid-1930s onwards.<ref name = "Longerich 2012 213_214">{{Harvnb|Longerich|2012|pp=213–214}}.</ref> Heydrich even established a Freemasonry museum—at which Eichmann spent some time early in his SD career<ref>{{Harvnb|Cesarani|2005|pp=42–33}}.</ref>—for what he regarded as a "disappeared cult".<ref>{{Harvnb|Gerwarth|2011|pp=106–107}}.</ref> Similarly, Hitler was happy to issue a proclamation on 27 April 1938 whose third point lifted restrictions on Party membership for former Freemasons, "provided the applicants had not served with the Lodge as high degree members."<ref>{{Harvnb|Domarus|2004|p=1095}}.</ref> The ''Führer'' still maintained Freemasonry within his conspiratorial outlook,<ref>Hitler signed a decree on 1 March 1942 that spoke of the "systematic spiritual struggle against Jews, Freemasons, and their allies" (], p. 2592); he believed Italian Masons were behind the deposition of Mussolini on 24 July 1943 (], p. 595); and he claimed a previously undetected lodge was involved in ] of July 1944 (], p. 688).</ref> but its adherents were not persecuted in a systematic fashion like groups such as the Jews.<ref name = "Longerich 2012 213_214"/> Those Freemasons who were sent to concentration camps as political prisoners were forced to wear an inverted ].<ref>{{Harvnb|Cooper|2010|p={{page needed|date=November 2012}}}}.</ref> | |||
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum believes that, "because many of the Freemasons who were arrested were also Jews and/or members of the political opposition, it is not known how many individuals were placed in Nazi concentration camps and/or were targeted only because they were Freemasons."<ref>. ''Holocaust Encyclopedia''. ]. Retrieved 27 September 2012.</ref> However, the Grand Lodge of Scotland estimates the number of Freemasons executed between 80,000 and 200,000.<ref name=GrandLodgeofScotland/> | |||
====Jehovah's Witnesses==== | |||
{{main|Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany}} | |||
Refusing to pledge allegiance to the Nazi party or to serve in the military, roughly 12,000 ] were forced to wear a purple triangle and were placed in camps where they were given the option of renouncing their faith and submitting to the state's authority. Between 2,500 and 5,000 were killed.<ref name=Shulman/> Historian Detlef Garbe, director at the Neuengamme (Hamburg) Memorial, writes that "no other religious movement resisted the pressure to conform to National Socialism with comparable unanimity and steadfastness."<ref>{{Harvnb|Garbe|2001|p=251}}.</ref> | |||
====Spanish Republicans==== | |||
After losing the ] many republicans fled to France. With the subsequent fall of France, many were sent to concentration camps, particularly the ], where about 7000 died.<ref name="Pike, David Wingeate 2000"/><ref></ref> | |||
==Uniqueness== | |||
Dr. Shimon Samuels, director for International Liaison of the ], describes the acrimonious debate that exists between "specifists" and "universalists". The former fear debasement of the ''Holocaust'' by invidious comparisons, while the latter places the ''Holocaust'' alongside non-Jewish experiences of mass extermination as part and parcel of the global context of ]. Dr. Samuels considers the debate, '']'', to dishonour the memory of the respective victims of ''each'' genocide. In his words, "Each case is specific as a threshold phenomenon, while each also adds its unique memory as signposts along an incremental continuum of horror."<ref>{{Harvnb|Samuels|2001|p=209}}.</ref> ] argued: "A moment's reflection makes clear that the notion of uniqueness is quite vacuous . . . , in practice, deeply offensive. What else can all of this possibly mean except 'your catastrophe, unlike ours, is ordinary'."<ref>{{Harvnb|Novick|1999|p=9}}.</ref> | |||
], professor at the University of British Columbia Okanagan (Canada), believes that claims of uniqueness for the Holocaust have become less common since the 1994 ].<ref>{{Harvnb|Jones|2010|p=254}}.</ref> In 1997, the publication of '']'' led to further debate on the comparison between Soviet and Nazi crimes; the book argued that Nazi crimes were not very different from the Soviet ones, and that Nazi methods were to a significant extent adopted from Soviet methods;<ref>{{Harvnb|Courtois|1999|p=9}}.</ref> in the course of the debate, the term "]" appeared in discourse.<ref>{{Harvnb|Möller|1999}}; {{Harvnb|Rosefielde|2009}}.</ref> Some scholars strongly dissent from this view.<ref>]. . ''Europe-Asia Studies'' Vol. 48, No. 8 (Dec., 1996), pp. 1319-1353.</ref> ] of ] has argued that the Holocaust is the only genocide that has occurred in history, and he defines "Holocaust" to include only "the travail of European Jewry" and not other victims of the Nazis.<ref name="novick">{{Harvnb|Novick|1999|pp=196–197}}.</ref> In a speech commemorating the 70th anniversary of the ], French President ] maintained the uniqueness of the Holocaust and criticized comparisons as trivialization. {{Quotation|The challenge is to fight tirelessly against all forms of falsification of history: not only the insult of Holocaust denial, but also the temptation of relativism. Indeed, to pass on the history of the Shoah is to teach how uniquely appalling it was. By its nature, its scale, its methods, and the terrifying precision of its execution, that crime remains an abyss unique in human history. We must constantly remind ourselves of that singularity.<ref>http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/aug/18/france-hollande-crime-vel-d-hiv/</ref> | |||
}} | |||
==Reparations== | |||
{{main|Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany}} | |||
In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the ] led by ] submitted to the Allies a memorandum demanding reparations to Jews by Germany but it received no answer. In March 1951, a new request was made by Israel's foreign minister ] which claimed global recompense to ] of $1.5 billion based on the financial cost absorbed by Israel for the rehabilitation of 500,000 Jewish survivors. ] Chancellor ] accepted these terms and declared he was ready to negociate other reparations. A ] was opened in ] by ] in order to help with individual claims. After negociations, the claim was reduced to a sum of $845 millions direct and indirect compensations to be installed in a period of 14 years. In 1988, West Germany allocated another $125 million for reparations.<ref>], Holocaust Restitution: German Reparations </ref> | |||
In 1999, many German industries such as ], ] or ] faced lawsuits for their role in the ]. In order to dismiss these lawsuits, Germany agreed to raise $5 billions of which Jewish forced laborers still alive could apply to receive a lump sum payment of between $2,500 and $7,500.<ref>], Holocaust Restitution: German Reparations </ref> In 2012, Germany agreed to pay a new reparation of €772 millions as a result of negociations with Israel.<ref>], ''Holocaust Reparations: Germany to Pay 772 Million Euros to Survivors'' </ref> | |||
In 2014, the ], the French state-owned railway company, was compelled to allocate $60 millions to American Jewish Holocaust survivors for its role in the transport of deportees to Germany. It corresponds to approximately $100,000 per survivor.<ref>], ''Pour le rôle de la SNCF dans la Shoah, Paris va verser 100 000 euros à chaque déporté américain'' </ref> | |||
These reparations were sometime criticized in Israel where they were seen as "blood money".<ref>], Holocaust Restitution: German Reparations </ref> The American professor ] wrote '']'' to denounce how the ]ish establishment exploits the memory of the ] Holocaust for political and financial gain, as well as to further the interests of ].<ref>Norman Finkelstein, ''The Holocaust Industry'' .</ref> It also led to massive scam where $40 millions were fraudulently given to thousands of people who were not eligible for the funds.<ref>], </ref> | |||
==See also== | |||
{{div col ||20em}} | |||
*] | |||
===By country=== | |||
{{see also|Category:The Holocaust by country}} | |||
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===Perpetrators and collaborators=== | |||
{{main|List of major perpetrators of the Holocaust}} | |||
* ] | |||
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===Victims and survivors=== | |||
* ] | |||
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===Involvement of other countries and nationals=== | |||
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===Rescuers=== | |||
* ] | |||
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====Individual rescuers==== | |||
* ] | |||
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===Aftermath=== | |||
* ] | |||
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====Legal response==== | |||
* ] | |||
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====Memorials==== | |||
* ] | |||
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====Cultural, political, and scholarly responses==== | |||
* ] | |||
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* ] | |||
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** ] | |||
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===Miscellaneous=== | |||
* ] | |||
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===Other genocides and mass killings=== | |||
* ] | |||
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* '']'' or African Holocaust | |||
* ] | |||
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{{div col end}} | |||
==Footnotes== | |||
{{reflist|colwidth=30em|refs= | |||
<ref name="Karski1">{{cite web |url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/8460682/Story-of-a-Secret-State-by-Jan-Karski-review.html |title=tory of a Secret State by Jan Karski: review |author=Nigel Jones |publisher=The daily telegraph |date=4 May 2011 |quote=''Karski reached London where he had an interview with the foreign secretary Anthony Eden, the first of many top officials to effectively ignore his account of the Nazis’ systematic effort to exterminate European Jewry. The very enormity of Karski’s report paradoxically worked against him being believed, and paralysed any action against the killings. Logistically unable to reach Poland, preoccupied with fighting the war on many fronts, and unwilling to believe even the Nazis capable of such bestiality, the Allies put the Holocaust on the back burner. When Karski took his tale across the Atlantic, the story was the same. President Roosevelt heard him out, then asked about the condition of horses in Poland."}}</ref> | |||
<ref name="KarskiLanzmann">{{cite web|url=http://www.ushmm.org/online/film/display/detail.php?file_num=4739 |title=U.S Holocaust memorial Museum, Claude Lanzmann Interview with Jan Karski |author= Claude Lanzmann |publisher= Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive |date=4 May 2011 |quote= Karski first told Roosevelt that the Polish nation was depending on him to deliver them from the Germans. Karski said to Roosevelt, "All hope, Mr. President, has been placed by the Polish nation in the hands of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Karski says that he told President Roosevelt about Belzec and the desperate situation of the Jews. Roosevelt concentrated his questions and remarks entirely on Poland and did not ask one question about the Jews ". Watch the video, or see the full transcript}}</ref> | |||
}} | |||
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: {{Cite book|last1=Wood|first1=Thomas E. |authorformat=scap|last2=Jankowski|first2=Stanisław M.|year=1994|title=Karski: How One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust|location=|publisher=|ref=harv}} | |||
: {{Cite book|last=Yahil|first=Leni |authorformat=scap|year=1991|title=The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932–1945|location=Oxford|publisher=]|ref=harv}} | |||
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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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{{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.
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- 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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