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Ehrhart

Research Paper The Nazi Genocide: Holocaust

Ian J Ehrhart

ENG-102-104 Professor Neuburger 18 November 2011

Ian J Ehrhart Professor Neuburger ENG-102-104

Ehrhart 2 In 1933, shortly after the Nazi party gained power, the Holocaust began. Over the next 12 years the death count rose until it reached numbers beyond speculation and with the surrender of Germany in 1945, the war ended. In some circles, the number is said to be as high as 17 million, while in other circles it is said to sit roundly on 10 million and although since 6 million Jews died, 6 million is a highly unlikely total death count if the other persecuted groups are taken into account. The Nazis also targeted Poles, blacks, Jehovahs Witnesses, Gypsies, disabled people, homosexualsThe list goes on). At the dawn of the Nazi movement, anti-Semitism and propaganda reigned supreme, slowly pulling people into Hitlers mindset. As his power and taskforce grew, so did the destruction and dehumanization. Beginning with the Nuremburg laws, continuing with Kristallnacht, moving to the Wannsee Conference and finally reaching the death camps, this age in modern history became the epitome of Hell. In an attempt to expand ones knowledge of these horrific years, we will investigate the aforementioned moments as well as a few other topics that were essential to the Nazi war. For the purpose of reverence for the Jewish people, the Holocaust will often be referred to as the Nazi genocide in this paper since Holocaust is the Greek word for sacrifice by fire. That having been said, most of the Jews killed in the Nazi genocide were killed and cremated. Nazi Views on Jews Anti-Semitism In an interview with Professor Yehuda Bauer, the question was posed, Can you point to a reason, or reasons, as to why the Holocaust took place between the Germans and the Jews? (Bauer). To this, Professor Yehuda replies, first off, that the Holocaust was not a German disaster. The Nazi genocide could have occurred anywhere, led by any race. Perhaps the true reason, Yehuda points out, that the genocide occurred against the Jews was not because Germans are anti-Semitic, but instead because most of Europe and the Christian/Moslem culture had been taught anti-Semitism for years. With people believing Jews had been responsible for the

Ehrhart 3 crucifixion, this led to people believing that Satan was inborn in the Jews since only Satan could want the death of God or his son, and in this belief people gratified anti-Semitism in a sense that allowed them to ignore it to a certain degree (Bauer). According to The History Place, on September 15, 1935 a conference was held, and on January 1, 1936 the fruit of that labor was enacted. Two laws, often called The Nuremberg Laws, were put in place under the names of the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. The Reich Citizenship Law stated that a citizen was only to be one of German blood who was willing to faithfully serve the Reich and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor made marriage between Germans and Jews illegal and any already in place must be annulled. It made sex between Germans and Jews illegal, and Jews werent allowed to hired German women under the age of 45. This law also made it illegal for Jews to display the Reich flag and colors however they were still allowed to display Jewish colors. So in essence, these laws were made to isolate the Jewish community thereby beginning the real exclusionary and discriminatory movement against the Jewish people. (The History Place) The Nuremberg Laws As reported from The History Place, in a meeting on September 15, 1935 a meeting was held to decide what exactly was to be done about the Jewish people in Germany. Despite the fact that Jews made up less that 1% of the 55 million, Hitler felt that the Jews were the real source of German problems. As was aforementioned, the Nuremberg laws were put in place to begin a period of discrimination and isolation against Jews. The Nuremberg laws even made up a list of Jews and sub-Jews to show just how pure someone was. You could be a half-Jew, a Mischlinge, a quarter Jew or a full-blood but regardless of what you could be, either way you were considered Jewish if you had Jewish descendants up to and including your grandparents. This often meant

Ehrhart 4 that people went without jobs because no one wanted to hire the Jews and this made their lives even worse despite the ghettos and anti-Semitism they had already endured. (The History Place) Kristallnacht According to Aish, on November 9, 1938, over 1300 synagogues were burnt down or destroyed, 91 Jews were killed, 30,000 Jews were put into camps, 7,000 Jewish businesses were destroyed while several thousand Jewish homes were pillaged and afterwards, the Jewish people were given a bill of 1 billion Deutsch marks to pay for the damage. Not only was Kristallnacht meant to gather people against the Jews since after all Ernst Von Rath was shot down by a Jew by the name of Hershel Grynszpan, but it was also meant to make the Jews feel fear. It was a tactic to make them cower or leave. This was just another step toward the ultimate attack against the Jews when they would all be sent to camps to burn, starve, and choke on Zyklon-B. (Aish) Kristallnacht was just one of many pogroms against the Jewish people and according to PBS, upon his arrest Grynszpan said, Being a Jew is not a crime. I am not a dog. I have a right to live and the Jewish people have a right to exist on Earth. Wherever I have been I have been chased like an animal. (PBS) Ghettos December 10, 1939 was the day that Friedrich belhr wrote a memorandum to turn part of the city of Lodz into a ghetto. At this point there were already ghettos scattered around the country, but this is merely one of them. The idea was that the Jews could be put here in a small area to be watched over and held until the final solution was discovered. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, 230,000 Jews lived in Lodz before it became a ghetto, and so in order to separate the Jews from the rest of the population people were warned that the area to be turned into a ghetto was infected with a contagious disease. On February 8, 1940 the order was given to begin setting up the ghetto and despite the fact that it was supposed to be done in a single day, it

Ehrhart 5 took weeks to reach completion. However, after it was complete, Jews from all over the city were forced to move in bringing only what they could quickly gather. The living was tight (roughly 3.5 people per room), and in April a fence went up surrounding the area, and on May 1, 1940 the ghetto was officially sealed. A Jew by the name of Mordekchai Chaim Rumkowski was given the head position of the ghetto (assigned by the Nazis, not his fellow Jews) and though it is unknown who he was truly aligned with, he believed that the Jews were given independence through the ghetto. Since the Jews were expected to pay for their own food, housing, and sewage clean-up Rumkowski came up with a way to supply them with food and money. The Jewish Library further explains that he proposed that the Nazis bring in raw material so the Jews could create the products and be paid in food and money. Unfortunately, the proposal was changed by the Nazis so food was the only payment. This food came in bulk at the beginning of the month, often in poor condition and since it was immediately seized by Rumkowski and his officials and rationed, it was in very short supply. Dysentery, tuberculosis, and typhus infected much of the community, and with the giant population being pressed into the tiny ghetto, it came as a shock to hear that 20,000 new Jews were to be moved into the ghetto along with 5,000 gypsies. In the winter of 1941, conditions became so terrible that people dismantled buildings and houses just for firewood to cook the little food they had. Beginning on January 6, 1942 and continuing to (and beyond) January 19, there had been 10,003 people deported from the ghetto to the Chelmno death camp where they were gassed. By 1944, Himmler had the ghetto liquidated and in 1945, when the Russians liberated what was left, there were only 877 people remaining within the walls of the ghetto... The others had all been deported to camps, including Chelmno and Auschwitz. (The Jewish Library) The Wannsee Conference

Ehrhart 6 As noted from the House of The Wannsee Conference, on January 20, 1942 there was a meeting held with 15 high level members of the SS, the NSDAP and a few other parties to discuss what was to happen with the Jews. Here it was decided that the Jews were to be exterminated from Europe and so began the true Nazi genocide (House of The Wannsee Conference). Selektion In his biography, Jack Kagan recalls the selection process. He says the only questions asked were profession and number of children. His uncle answered, Saddle-maker; Two children, and then was sent to the left, to die. His father answered the exact same way (since it was the truth) and was sent to the right, to survival. In this moment Kagan learned that selektion was random and at the whim of the Nazi asking the questions. It was mere luck of the draw that Kagan survived (Kagan). Though this was not the norm in most camps, it did occur at times and it is an example of the Nazi corruption. Extermination Methods According to Peter Vogelsang and Brian B.M. Larsen in their article Methods of Mass Murder, after the final solution was beginning to be implemented, the extermination methods came under speculation and as a result, they had to be tested to find the most efficient method. It began with mass shootings. Often people were made to dig their own graves or mass graves were dug and people were shot so they would merely fall into the depths to their deaths. This however led to a loss of massive amounts of munitions and something better had to be done. So came the hermetically sealed gassing trucks. People were packed into the trucks and killed with the exhaust, being forced to suffocate. The real idea behind this wasn't even to save ammunition but instead to keep the people performing the murders emotionally detached from their grisly jobs. The final, greatest blow came in the form of Zyklon-B. This potent gas was used to kill

Ehrhart 7 undesirable people en masse and it was pumped into chambers specially built for the purpose of extermination. Other extermination methods existed including experimental medical operations and lethal injection (Vogelsang). The Death Camps According to isurvived.org, in the world of Auschwitz, death was the only salvation. With gas chambers raining down Zyklon-B, electrified fences marked with machine-gun wielding guards. Auschwitz was the largest of the camps, but more than just a death camp, it was a torture zone. While Auschwitz was only one of the five main death camps, it was the epitome of the Nazi movement. The very air was filled with the moans of the decaying people within the walls. In Auschwitz alone roughly 1.5 million people met their deaths. Let us remember that it was not only Jews who died there but human beings of all kinds: Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, etc. The majority of the people in the camp didn't even have the luck of survival as they went straight from the trains to the gas chambers. People were brought in on trains and dehumanized, being treated like animals to take away their very humanity (since to the Nazi's they were not human). Death marches were held and many people had to grow close to one another for emotional support throughout the Hell in which they resided. People were crawling with lice and infection. Hygiene was a thing unheard of since you either ended up without shoes or covered in lice again. To keep from needless repetition, the dehumanization was so terrible that a single symbol can be used to sum it all up. Above the door to one of the gas chambers there was a Star of David and below it, a sign which read, This is the Gateway to God. Righteous men will pass through. (isurvived.org) Liberation According to ushmm.org, as the Allied forces began a series of offensive strikes against the Nazi's, the Nazi's forced people in camps to march from Poland to Germany. They did all

Ehrhart 8 they could to hide what they had done, burning down the crematoriums, but in their haste, the Nazi's couldn't destroy the gas chambers. As the camps were uncovered by Soviet and Allied troops, the true horror was revealed. Burnt mass graves sat in the camps, thousands of confiscated outfits, and even thousands of pounds of hair. Troops found survivors badly stricken with typhus and dysentery. Emaciated human beings, who could barely stand (let alone eat), were to be removed. Over 10,000 emancipated people died within the first few weeks after liberation just from malnutrition. Many accounts retell memories of piles of unburied corpses and people so weak you thought they were dead but the movement of their eyes told you they were alive. Liberation from the camps was only a small step. Liberation of the minds of the prisoners was the real unspoken issue. Many people had seen such horror that accounts say they died merely because their bodies couldn't process the fear. Some people just couldn't get rid of the memories and there are even accounts of people committing suicide because they could not move past their agonizing memories (ushmm.org) Post-Liberation In summary of The Aftermath of the Holocaust, an article on ushmm.org, fearing antiSemitism in their homes, liberated Jews couldn't return. Many moved to Australia after a time but for those who stayed, life was hard. Many had to be moved into DP (displaced persons) camps like Bergen-Belsen and in late 1944 the Jewish Brigade Group formed in order to assure the movement of Jews from Europe to Palestine with another group called the Brihah (the Hebrew word for escape). Over the next few years there were many illegal attempts to move Jews into Palestine via ships but most of these were caught and forced to turn around. In fact, in 1947 a ship carrying roughly 4,500 survivors was forced to return to Germany. In 1948, the state of Israel was formed and in just five years, an estimated 170,000 Jews moved in. Though Israel had been formed and though Jews moved all over (including Australia, Canada, New Zealand,

Ehrhart 9 Mexico, etc.) there was still a great tension and that tension still resides in Israel today (ushmm.org)

The Nazi genocide was one of the worst seen by the eyes of humanity. The number of dead could be as high as 17 million but what is in the past is done. As a human race, not the whites, or blacks, or Germans, or any other ethnicity, but as fellow human beings we must learn to survive with one another and hold onto each other. The world is a cold place and humans are capable of truly horrific things. We must learn from these horrors so that we may better combat them in times to come.

Ehrhart 10 Works Cited Bauer, Yehuda. "The Background to Nazi Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust." Interview by Amos Goldberg. Yad Vashem. Shoah Resource Center, 2000. Web.

"The Triumph of Hitler." The History Place. The History Place, 2001. Web. 14 Nov. 2011.

Ellis, Eliyahu, and Shmuel Silinsky. "Kristallnacht." The Jewish Website - Aish.com. http://www.aish.com/, 31 Dec. 1969. Web. 16 Nov. 2011.

"Kristallnacht." PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. PBS. Web. 18 Nov. 2011.

"The Lodz Ghetto." Jewish Virtual Library - Homepage. Jennifer Rosenberg, 1998. Web. 20 Nov. 2011.

"The Wannsee Conference." Haus Der Wannsee-Konferenz . 3 Mar. 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2011.

Kagan, Jack. "The Selection Process." THE BRITISH LIBRARY - The World's Knowledge. The British Library. Web. 20 Nov. 2011.

Vogelsang, Peter, and Brian B.M. Larsen. "Methods of Mass Murder." The Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 2002. Web. 20 Nov. 2011.

"Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp Complex." Holocaust Remembrance, Sanctuary, and Tribute to Survivors. Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Poland. Web. 20 Nov. 2011.

"Liberation of Nazi Camps." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 6 Jan. 2011. Web. 20 Nov. 2011.

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"The Aftermath of the Holocaust." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 6 Jan. 2011. Web. 20 Nov. 2011.

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