Holocaust
The Holocaust is a word based on the Yiddish and Hebrew word hurban (destruction), and the Greek word holokaustos (holos: complete, and kaustos: a sacrificial or burnt offering to a god), and has been used specifically to describe the period of 1933-1945 in Nazi Germany when Jews were barred from social life and work, imprisoned en masse, and ultimately targeted for extermination under the policy of die Endlosung (the Final Solution). The word holocaust was chosen in reference to the large number of bodies fed to the crematoria of extermination camps built for that purpose.
Origins
After years of struggling to push their ideology into the masses through browbeatings and violence, the Nazi Party in Germany came to power in 1933, with Adolf Hitler as Chancellor, his ideology firmly entrenched within the party, and in the pages of his Mein Kampf, a semi-biographical work containing his rambling political philosophy. In its pages Hitler expounded on the idea that the Aryan race, of which he was a part, was the so-called “master race”, and had a moral right and duty to subjugate the world; in the way stood the untermenschen (“sub-humans”), which, according to the Nazis, were meant to serve the master race as slaves. At the very bottom were the Jews, who were depicted as an evil race bent on world domination.
Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933 to lead a coalition government at the request of President Paul von Hindenburg, and almost immediately he made moves to consolidate power to himself and the Nazi Party, as well as restrict or eliminate political opposition. Jewish businesses began feeling the effects of a boycott as soon as it began on April 1, followed by the dismissal of Jewish civil service workers, judges, and university professors a week later. On May 10, some ten days after laws were enacted which prevented Jewish children from attending public schools except by quota, thousands of university students and professors stormed bookstores and libraries to remove books they deemed “un-Germanic” and opposed to Nazi teachings, throwing them into public bonfires. The Nurnburg Laws were enacted in 1935, which revoked German citizenship from Jews as well as declaring the marriage between a Jew and a German illegal. By 1938, the political and economic foundations of German Jewry were completely decimated.
Crystal Night
On November 7, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a German Jew living in Paris and upset over his family’s forced deportation to Poland, shot the third secretary (Ernst vom Rath) to the German ambassador in France, who died two days later. His assassination touched off a wave of riots on November 9, seemingly at the behest of the Nazi minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, but this was expanded and organized better with the issuing of orders by the head of the S.S., Reinhard Heydrich, later that evening, who specified that S.S. and S.A. units in various cities would march out with sledgehammers against Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues - but in civilian clothes only (to symbolize the “righteous” anger of the German people). Business could not be looted, as the property inside was deemed property of the state; Jewish property near German shops and homes could not be burned, but smashed; and many Jewish males, particularly the wealthy, were subject to arrest. Over 35,000 men were arrested that night, and according to figures released by Heydrich the total number of arrests exceeded 100,000; 815 Jewish businesses were destroyed, 191 Synagogues were destroyed or demolished, and over 2,000 were dead. By the end of the week local jails as well as the new Buchenwald and Dacau concentration camps were quickly filled. To further add insult to injury, the Jews were declared responsible for the damages done to their property and ordered to pay the staggering sum of one billion Reichmarks.
The sidewalks were littered with shards of the expensive storefront glass that was preferred for shops in Germany, which was called Kristallglas for its high-quality. The amount of glass left behind gave the incident its name: Kristallnacht (“Crystal Night”), or the Night of Broken Glass.
Non-Jewish victims
Jews were not the only victims of Nazi persecution. Members of unions, members of the Social Democratic Party, and political dissidents were also sent to the camps; indeed they were among the first ones incarcerated immediately following Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. Some 20,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses also were rounded up and sent to the camps, primarily because of refusal to register for the draft, swear allegiance to the state, or give the “Heil Hitler” greeting. Homosexuals were arrested as well, where they were forced to wear a pink triangle on their prison garments. Gypsies as well were rounded up and imprisoned, and like the Jews, were deliberately marked for killing.
The mentally retarded, the disabled, and the insane were selected for the T-4 Program, which was created in 1939. Dubbed “useless eaters” by S.S. general Ernst Kaltenbrunner, these people were murdered as part of a “euthanasia” campaign, usually by placing them in a special room where a vehicle’s engine provided the carbon monoxide gas that flowed in through a hose in a wall.
Following the outbreak of World War II in Poland, the Nazis killed Polish intellegensia, politicians, priests, and anyone else deemed part of a Polish leadership; the remainder were deemed slaves to serve their new masters; many were forced to perform hard labor, while many of the children who happened to look Aryan were kidnapped and raised as Germans in German households.
World War II
When World War II began in the fall of 1939, Jews in Germany were completely marginalized. They could not own property, go to a park, associate with Germans, enter a library or museum, work in any professional field or engage in business, nor could their children attend public schools. Public transportation would be forbidden by 1941, and the wearing of the yellow Star of David badge on their clothing was mandatory. They were also, prior to September 1, forced to migrate from countries and territories which had come under Hitler’s wing (the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland), with many being deported to Poland. By September 21, Poland was now the “General Government” protectorate under former lawyer Hans Frank, and on that day Heydrich ordered the establishment of Judenrates (Jewish councils) which comprised 24 men - political leaders and rabbis – and whose personal responsibility was to carry out, to the letter, all German orders. This would include supplying people for work details, usually mundane things like digging ditches to amuse their Nazi overlords. Later, they were made to be responsible for supplying thousands of people a day for the “work” camps of Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, and new one under construction near the town of Oswiecim, which the Germans called Auschwitz.
References
- Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Simon and Schuster, New York (1960).
- Yahil, Leni. The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, Schocken Publishing House, Ltd, Tel Aviv, Israel (1987). English edition by Oxford University Press, New York (1990).
External Links
- Holocaust Encyclopedia
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Houston Holocaust Museum
- Florida Holocaust Museum
- Virginia Holocaust Museum
- Holocaust Awareness Museum & Educational Center of Philadelphia; America's First Holocaust Museum
- Searchable list of 2300 victims from Nuremberg
- Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre in Newark, England
- Montreal Holocaust Memorial Center Museum
- German Government's Memorial To Jews Murdered During Holocaust
- AMCHA: Israeli Association of Holocaust Survivors