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Research Paper Holocaust Overview

Brendon Smith

Mr. Neuburger English Comp. 102-127 1 November 2012

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The Holocaust is a tragedy that undoubtedly crossed a line to become one of the most demoralizing events in human history. Around twelve million Jewish lives were taken throughout this gruesome time by Nazi troops. People around the world ought to be required to know the series of events that took place during the Holocaust. In order to understand the actual events that have taken place, one must simply have accurate information. Providing this information will show people how the Jews were truly treated and hopefully prevent this sadistic event from ever happening again. Nazi Rise to Power The Nazi rise to power begins with the end of World War I. The Allies won this pervasive war with the Central Powers, who are led by Germany. After the Allies forced the Central Powers to their knees, they ordered them to sign the Treaty of Versailles. This document forced Germany to declare responsibility for starting the war. The Treaty of Versailles is a one-sided document that contains 700 directives and Germany was not allowed to change a single one. The German repayment consisted of large amounts of money. According to Think
At this gathering at Buckeberg in 1934, the Fhrer passes risers of flag-bearing members of the SA. Source: http://bit.ly/QBUX7e

Quest, Germans were required to give up fertile land which comprised almost ten percent of its total holdings, and was prohibited from ever again organizing a large

army (The Nazi Rise to Power). After World War I, the people of Germany felt betrayed and powerless. They were crushed by the victors, and their pride was damaged. Most Germans lost money and property in the war, and they were required to pay high taxes to repay the Allies. The Weimar republic was completely in debt and could not manage to keep out of it. The future Nazi

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leader, Adolf Hitler, was born on April 20, 1889 in Braunau am Inn, Austria. His father was a strict and abusive man. Adolf was more emotionally attached to his mother, however both parents died before Hitler reached the age of twenty. Hitler quit high school at the age of fifteen in hopes of becoming an artist. After being turned down by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, Hitler lived off the money he made selling painted postcards at street corners. In Vienna, Hitler established his anti-Semitic personality. He wrote an autobiography, Mein Kampf, which revealed the anti-Semitic ideas and plans. Nazis Views on Jews Years before Hitler became chancellor of Germany, he was preoccupied with ideas about race. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Hitler spread his beliefs in racial purity and in the superiority of the Germanic race, which is what he called an Aryan master race" (Nazi Racism). He stated that his race must remain pure in order to one day take over the world. Adolf Hitler wrote Mein Kampf while in prison for treason, then failed to seize power in 1923. In this autobiography, Hitler views history as the fight between races for living space. He anticipated a war of conquest with the Slavic peoples confined to the German interests. He wanted to remove all Jews from Germany. Adolf smoothly
The Nazis used public displays to spread their ideas of race. Source: http://bit.ly/PBMbVA

entered the National Socialist Party, otherwise known as the Nazi Party, with his naturally gifted and talented public speaking skills. He was easily able to build a sense of German pride and success. The Nazi party created over 3,000 members and Hitler was appointed their leader, which is also known as the Fhrer.

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As Hitler and the Nazis came to power, the beliefs of the government were spread publicly on posters, on the radio, in movies, classrooms, and newspapers. The Nazis began to put their ideology into practice with the support of German scientists who believed that the human race could be improved by limiting the reproduction of people that are considered poorer. Hitler and other Nazi leaders didnt view the Jews as a religious group, but instead as a lethal race, which lived off of the other races and weakened them. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum states, Once Hitler took power, Nazi teachers in school classrooms started applying the principles of racial beliefs. They did everything from measuring skull size and nose length to recording the color of their pupils, hair, and eyes to decide whether students fit in with the true Aryan race. Several Jewish students at this time were consistently humiliated (Nazi Racism) Nuremberg Laws According to The History Place, the Nazis issued a complex instructional chart to help officials distinguish the various degrees of Jewishness (The Nuremberg Laws). Usually, the Jews that are full-blooded carried a greater level of discrimination against them. In addition, much of the confusion still remained. Nearly 50,000 people converted to Christianity from Judaism. Others were either half-Jew or even considered quarter-Jews. Strangely enough,
Instructional chart issued to help bureaucrats distinguish Jews from Mischlinge (mixed race persons) and Aryans. Source: http://bit.ly/Q8yaA1

several German Jews reacted to the Nuremberg Laws with a sense of relief, thinking the worst was now over.

The History Place concludes, At least now they finally understood where they stand and could get on with their lives even if they had diminished rights. And to some degree they were correct (The Nuremberg Laws). The Nazis moved rather slowly in regard to the Jews. This was a quiet

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time for Jews in the Third Reich, as Hitler started to focus his attention entirely on diplomatic affairs and military re-armament. Kristallnacht PBS claims that on the night of November 9, 1938, the sounds of breaking glass shattered the air in cities throughout Germany while fires were started across the country devouring synagogues and Jewish institutions (Kristallnacht). Many gangs of Nazi storm troopers demolished several Jewish businesses, set fire to over 900 synagogues, killed 91 Jews and deported nearly thirty thousand Jewish men to concentration camps. "Kristallnacht" provided the Nazi government with an opportunity at last to totally remove Jews from German public life. It was the concluding event in a sequence of anti-Semitic

policies set in place since Hitler took power in 1933.

Aftermath of Kristallnacht Source: http://bit.ly/SGpbly

The Nazis dispersed a letter stating that Jewish businesses cannot be reopened unless they are managed by non-Jews. On November 15th 1938, Jewish children were banned from attending school. One does not deserve to be banned from school due to their religion. Not long after, the Nazis provided the "Decree on Eliminating the Jews from German Economic Life," which prohibited Jews from selling goods or services anywhere, from engaging in crafts work, from serving as the leaders of any firms, and from being members of cooperatives. Somehow, the Nazis decided that the Jews should be liable for the damages caused during Kristallnacht. According to PBS, "The Decree on the Penalty Payment by Jews Who Are German Subjects also imposed a one-billion mark fine on the Jewish community, supposedly an indemnity for the death of vom Rath (Kristallnacht).

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Even though the outrages carried on throughout the Night of Broken Glass did arouse violence in Western Europe and the United States, little action was taken to help the Jews of Germany. PBS states, At a press conference on November 15th of 1933, President Roosevelt said, the news of the past few days from Germany has deeply shocked public opinion in the United States... I myself could scarcely believe that such things could occur in a 20th century civilization" (Kristallnacht). Also, the president ordered that the 12,000-15,000 refugees already in the U.S. on temporary visitor visas could remain in the country forever. Rounding Up Jews In 1942, Hitler decided to clear up the ghettos and, within 18 months, he deported over two million Jewish survivors to death camps. The Jewish Virtual Library states, Germans ordered the Jewish police in the Warsaw ghetto to round up people for deportation. Approximately 300,000 men, women, and children were packed in cattle cars and transported to the Treblinka death camp where they were murdered. This left a Jewish population of between 55,000 and 60,000 in the ghetto (Warsaw Ghetto Uprising). In January 1943, the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto used a small supply of weapons that had been smuggled into the ghetto and fired their guns at German troops as they tried to round up another group of ghetto residents for deportation. Not long afterwards, the troops retreated. This small victory motivated the ghetto fighters to prepare for future resistance. The Jews in the Warsaw ghetto truly fought for their lives and probably ended up saving thousands of Jews from being deported and murdered. If there were more people that fought for the Jews throughout this time period, the Jews may have avoided losing the lives of their loved ones.

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According to The Jewish Virtual Library, The Jews in the ghetto believed that what had happened in January was proof that by offering resistance it was possible to force the Germans to desist from their plans. Many thought that the Germans would continue in unrestrained mass deportations only so long as the Jews were passive, but that in the face of resistance and armed confrontation they would think twice before boarding upon yet another action. The Germans would also have to take into account the possibility that the outbreak of fighting in the ghetto might lead to the rebellion spreading to the Polish population and might create a state of insecurity in all of occupied Poland. These considerations led the
Heavily armed guards watch housing blocks burn during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising Source: http://bit.ly/PPGTpw

civilian population of the ghetto, in the final phase of its

existence, to approve of resistance and give its support to the preparations for the uprising. The population also used the interval to prepare and equip a network of subterranean refuges and hiding places, where they could hold out for an extended period even if they were cut off from one another. Every Jew in the ghetto had his own spot in one of the shelters set up in the central part of the ghetto. The civilians and the fighters now shared a common interest based on the hope that fighting the Germans might be a way of rescue for them (Warsaw Ghetto Uprising). After the January battle, the Jews spent the following weeks to train, acquire weapons, and make plans to defend the ghetto. Unfortunately, the Germans also prepared for the possibility of a fight by replacing the chief of the SS and police in the Warsaw district with an officer who had experience fighting partisans. The ghetto fighters were warned of the timing of the final deportation and the total Jewish population went into hiding. On April 19, 1943, the Warsaw ghetto uprising began after German troops and police entered the ghetto to deport the

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rest of the Jews that survived. Nearly seven hundred and fifty fighters armed with a handful of pistols, rifles, and Molotov cocktails faced more than two thousand heavily armed and welltrained German troops supported by tanks and flamethrowers. This cannot be referred to a fair fight, but this does show that the Jews literally gave all they had in saving their own people as well as their selves. The Jewish Virtual Library claims, On May 16, Stroop announced the fighting was over. He said his forces had captured 56,065 Jews and announced that he was going to blow up the Great Synagogue as a symbol of victory and of the fact that the Jewish quarter of Warsaw no longer exists (Warsaw Ghetto Uprising). The Wannsee Conference According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Final Solution was the code name for the systematic, deliberate, physical annihilation of the European Jews. Hitler authorized this European-wide scheme for mass murder. Reinhard Heydrich arranged the Wannsee Conference to inform and secure support from government ministries and other interested agencies relevant to the implementation of the Final Solution, and to disclose to the participants that Hitler himself had tasked Heydrich with coordinating the operation. The men at the table did not deliberate whether such a plan should be
Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the SS (Security Service) and Nazi governor of Bohemia and Moravia. Source: http://bit.ly/SHIniw

undertaken, but instead discussed the implementation of a policy

decision that had already been made at the highest level of the Nazi regime (Wannsee Conference and the "Final Solution"). During the Wannsee Conference, most participants already knew that the National Socialist regime had engaged in mass murder of Jews. The police and military units were already slaughtering tens of thousands of Jews in the German-occupied

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Soviet Union. Others were aware that units of the German Army and the SS and police were killing Jews in Serbia. Not even one of the officials present at the meeting objected to the Final Solution policy that Heydrich declared. Heydrich specified that roughly eleven million Jews in Europe would fall under the provisions of the Final Solution. He included not only Jews living in Europe, but also the Jewish populations of the United Kingdom, and the neutral nations such as Switzerland, Ireland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and European Turkey. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum states, Heydrich announced that during the course of the Final Solution, the Jews will be deployed under appropriate supervision at a suitable form of labor deployment in the East. In large labor columns, separated by gender, able-bodied Jews will be brought to those regions to build roads, whereby a large number will doubtlessly be lost through natural reduction. Any final remnant that survives will doubtless consist of the elements most capable of resistance. They must be dealt with appropriately, since, representing the fruit of natural selection, they are to be regarded as the core of a new Jewish revival (Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution). The point of the Wannsee Conference was to advance the organization of a policy aimed at the physical annihilation of the European Jews. Death Camps Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany established around twenty thousand camps to imprison its many millions of victims. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, These camps were used for a range of purposes including forced-labor camps, transit camps which served as temporary way stations, and extermination camps built primarily or exclusively for mass murder (Nazi Camps). From its rise to power in 1933, the Nazi government built a series of confinement facilities to imprison and eliminate so-called "enemies of the state." The prisoners in the early concentration camps were mostly German Communists,

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Socialists, Social Democrats, Roma (Gypsies), Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, and people accused of socially abnormal behavior. These facilities were called concentration camps because those imprisoned there were physically concentrated in one location. After Germany's invasion of Austria in March 1938, the Nazis arrested German and Austrian Jews and imprisoned them in the Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen concentration camps, which are all located in Germany. After the violent Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") in November of 1938, the Nazis directed mass arrests of adult male Jews and incarcerated them in camps for brief periods. Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Nazis established forced-labor camps where thousands of prisoners died
Auschwitz death camp Source: http://bit.ly/TvS7hj

from exhaustion, starvation, and exposure. SS units guarded the

forced-labor camps. The Nazi camp system expanded quickly during World War II. Nazi doctors even performed medical experiments on prisoners in some of the camps. A couple years later, following the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Nazis improved the number of prisoner-of-war (POW) camps. Some new camps, such as Auschwitz, were built at existing concentration camp complexes in Poland. The camp at Lublin, later known as Majdanek, was established in the autumn of 1941 as a POW camp and became a concentration camp in 1943. Unfortunately, thousands of Soviet prisoners of war were either shot or gassed there. Extermination Camps Chelmno was the first extermination camp to be established with the one cruel purpose of killing all Jews in an organized fashion. In Chelmno, roughly one-hundred and fifty-two Jews were gassed to death using exhaust gas from trucks. Not long after Chelmno was established,

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three more extermination camps were created. Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor are the names of these three sadistic camps. The extermination camp Belzec was established in May 1942 and continued to function until August 1943. Six-hundred thousand Jews died due to the cruel efficiency of the gas chambers at Belzec. Similarly, Sobibor activated its terrible business of mass murder in May 1942. The killings continued through October 1943, when an uprising between the prisoners put an end to the activities of the camp. The Jews fought with the low amount of weapons they had to avoid being murdered. Two-hundred and fifty thousand Jews lost their lives in Sobibors gas chambers. Also, the extermination camp Treblinka ran from July 1942 to November 1943. In August 1943, an uprising demolished many of the facilities. 900,000 Jews died in the terribly efficient extermination camp at Treblinka. According to the Danish Center, It is estimated that 1 million Jews and several thousand gypsies were killed during Operation Reinhard (Extermination Camps). Only few survived or escaped the killings, majority were killed upon arrival. Auschwitz-Birkenau, which also ran as a concentration camp and a work camp, became the largest killing center as far as the number of fatalities is concerned. Between 1 and 2 million Jews were killed in the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau during its day. The first gassing experiments began in September 1941. The extermination camp was started up in March 1942 and ended its work in November 1944. Majority of the victims in the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau were Jews. The other victims were mainly Poles, gypsies, and Soviet POWs. Majdanek is another extermination camp that initiated its gassings in October 1942. The camp worked in the same way as Auschwitz-Birkenau, and also included a
Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp Source: http://bit.ly/ZgWAbJ

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concentration and work camp. In 1943, the camp was closed after claiming between 60,000 and 80,000 Jewish losses. Overall, mass extermination was usually performed in the form of shooting and gassing of Jews and Soviet POWs. Survivors Words As for the survivors, they now live the rest of their lives knowing the complete destruction of their Jewish family and the horrific events they had to face due to Nazi troops. Holocaust survivors, such as Herman Cohn and Ursula Levy, revealed their survival story and the devastating events that also took place along the way. Herman Cohn was born in Essen, Germany in 1921. He was raised by his army veteran father and his stepmother. This family owned a business selling furniture and linen. As Anti-Semitism grew, Herman got informed at work that he had better leave because several Jews are being picked up
Herman Cohn; Holocaust Survivor Source: http://bit.ly/TwlMqy

and taken to concentration camps. Herman turned around and

then left immediately. Later that day, he arrives at his fathers home realizing that his father was missing. Herman later finds out that his father was taken that same morning he was informed to leave work. After his father was taken, Herman decides to attempt to get a visa to travel to the U.S. Herman shows up at the social security office to get an item stamped in order to obtain a visa. He notices a classmate of his working at this office and they talk for a while and Herman states, Did they really burn the Synagogue down? Is it true? Hermans classmate confirms that it is true. A few moments later, Herman is asked to be seen by a German boss. The boss and a man with boots worn by S.S. troops are standing in this room and ask, What rumors are you telling your friend that works here and Herman explains that there is no rumor because it did

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happen and every Jew knows it. The man in the boots orders Herman to walk to the Gestapos headquarters and he said he would be following Herman five meters behind. Herman was warned that if he walks even six meters away or runs away from the Gestapo man in boots that he will be shot. Once Herman arrives at the headquarters, he sees a dozen Gestapo men all in uniform. Herman is placed in a corner for around an hour and kicked. Each Gestapo troop kicked me and shouted, Where is your father hiding his money? Herman carefully avoided every situation of being killed and instead just took a beating. On May of 1935, Ursula Levy is born. She comes from Osnabruck, Germany. Levy was three years old when her father and uncle were taken and sent to concentration camps. Levy stated, They were exposed to extremely cool temperatures causing injuries to the legs of both my father and my uncle. They both died in 1939 due to a developed gangrene infection. After her fathers death, her mother decides to write to her sisters husband, which lives in the U.S., asking for any chance of help getting her children out of Germany. Her mothers sisters husband, Uncle Joseph, responds to the letter telling
Ursula Levy, Holocaust Survivor Source: http://bit.ly/T41WV2

Ursulas mother that there is a place in Holland to contact.

Ursulas mother then sends Ursula and her brother to Holland where there are hundreds of Catholic children. Jewish children are sent here to secretly hide from the German army that wants to get rid of all Jews. The Nazis then invaded Holland and sent all of the Jewish children to concentration camps. A man named Mr. Vanmaklenburg spoke with the guards about Ursula and her brother stating that they are not Jewish and they then were sent to another camp called Westerberg. At Westerberg, Orthodox Jewish men ran an orphanage and the children in this

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orphanage went to school every day. They not only got school, but they were well fed and they got to play out in the woods of an evening. Not long after, Ursula and her brother were forced onto a train with several other Jews. The train had frequent stops for the Jews to walk around and move their legs. The Nazis unloaded the deceased from the train on these stops. Ursula mentioned, No bread was ever taken from me, no one ever molested me, and no one ever beat me. Many Jews were starving terribly and didnt take bread from this little girl. After about two weeks, Ursula and her brother are let off the train and sent to a nearby town for food and rest. Ursula is later informed that her mother has passed and it took her a little bit of time and therapy to deal with these devastating events. Ursula and her brother were extremely lucky to have survived this time period being Jewish.

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Works Cited
"The Nazi Rise to Power." ThinkQuest.org. Oracle, Web. 27 Oct. 2012. "Nazi Racism." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Web. 28 Oct. 2012. "The Nuremberg Laws." The History Place - Triumph of Hitler. The History Place, Web. 04 Nov. 2012. "Kristallnacht." The American Experience - America and the Holocaust. PBS, Web. 06 Nov. 2012. Bard, Mitchell. "Warsaw Ghetto Uprising." Jewish Virtual Library. Jewish Virtual Library, Web. 07 Nov. 2012. "Wannsee Conference and the "Final Solution"" United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Web. 07 Nov. 2012. "Nazi Camps." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Web. 10 Nov. 2012. "Auschwitz." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Web. 10 Nov. 2012. "Extermination Camps." The Danish Center - Holocaust Education. The Danish Center, Web. 12 Nov. 2012.