Holocaust Research Terms You Should Know! 1. Background Information.

Holocaust Research TermsYou Should Know!

1. Background Information

Eugenics

• Eugenics is a pseudoscience that deals with the improvement of hereditary qualities of a race (selective breeding for certain characteristics.)

• Eugenics was originated by Sir Francis Galton (British).

• The Nazis totally believed that the Germans were of the Aryan race and that this race was superior to all others.

• Jews could never be Germans because they could never be Aryans.

The Perfect Aryan!

Nazi depiction of a typical Jewish man

• The Nazis saw Jews as a race and not a religion. Therefore, if Jews married Germans they would corrupt the Aryan blood line.

• The Nazis produced a chart which showed that the European racial type is aesthetically superior to the Aborigine, Negro, and Oriental races.

• Nazi chart showing racial aesthetics

Aryans

Aborigines

Negroes

Orientals

• In 1933 the Nazis came up with a formula to define a “non-Aryan” as any person that had one Jewish parent or grandparent. This was later redefined in November 1935 under the Reich* Citizenship Law.

* The Third Reich refers to the advent of the third 1000 year period in Germany and the world's history, during which the Nazis believed their Nordic, Atlantean Master Race would rule the world.

The Reich Citizenship Law

1. This law stated that no Jew could be a citizen of the Reich.

2. No Jew could vote.

3. Jews could not hold public office.

4. Jewish civil servants were required to retire.

5. A person was fully Jewish if he or she had at least three Jewish grandparents.

6. If a person had two Jewish grandparents but did not practice the Jewish religion or have a Jewish spouse, then that person was designated as a “part Jew” or crossbreed (Mischlinge).

7. If a person had only one Jewish grandparent and did practice the Jewish religion he/she was a Mischlinge of the second degree.

• These Nazi racial laws established race as the fundamental legal principle in German life. They were used to identify who the targets for persecution and death would be.

• Aryan veterinarians even refused to treat the pets of their Jewish owners. Germans avoided all contacts with Jews as this could be construed as traitorous association with the enemies of Aryan blood.

The Nazis

• (National Socialist Party) was a German

Fascist movement that placed nation or race above the individual and that stood for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictator, Adolf Hitler.

The Jews have endured centuries of persecution and

prejudice.

• However, worldwide hatred of Jews between WWI and WWII grew because of two factors:– 1. Zionism - the conviction that Jews should have

their own country;– 2. The publication of an anti-Semitic book entitled

the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that “revealed” a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. The book was a hoax, but people like Henry Ford believed it, and it enabled Hitler’s Nazi party to gain popularity.

• The Nazi party began as the German Worker’s Party in 1919 and envisioned a German state ruled by the middle class and purged of Jews and foreigners.

• Hitler became the 55th member of the party.

• In March 1920 they changed their name to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi for short.

• Hitler’s speeches drew thousands and could last two hours. By 1921 he had total control of the Nazi Party.

• From its beginning, the Nazi Party adopted the slogan, “The Jews are our misfortune,” and from its beginning, preached hatred of the Jewish people.

• In 1923 the Nazis had 55,000 members and tried to overthrow the German government but failed. As a result, they were banned from German politics and their membership dropped to 27,000.

• The Great Depression of 1929 was a world-wide depression. Over three million Germans were without jobs. By 1933 over six million were jobless in Germany, and the Nazi membership increased to over 200,000 members.

• In the 1930 elections in Germany the Nazis got 6.4 million votes and won 107 seats in the Reichstag (their congress). They were the second most popular political party in Germany.

• Because the Germans feared the Communists in Russia, and the Nazis were anti-Communist, their membership grew to 1.4 million members by 1932.

• In 1932 Hitler became a German citizen so that he could run for President of Germany.

• In 1932 Hitler ran against Paul von Hindenberg, the incumbent president, with a campaign slogan of “freedom and bread.” Hindenburg won the election by more than 7 million votes.

• The Nazis were a vocal, strong political party, and Hindenberg knew that he had to appease them if he wanted to prevent a civil war, and to be a successful President. That’s when he made the biggest mistake in history: he appointed Hitler as the Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933.

• The Chancellor is like the vice-president in the USA.

• One hundred days after Hitler became Chancellor, more than 20,000 books written by Jewish authors were burned in the Opera House Square in Berlin.

1. Ironically, a hundred years earlier, Heinrich Heine, a German poet and a Jew had written, “Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned.” His words were prophetic.

• Within six months after Hitler had been appointed Chancellor, democracy was dead in Germany, civil rights were gone, and the Nazi Party was the only official political party permitted to exist in Germany.

• By the end of 1933, fifty concentration camps were opened in Germany, and every Nazi political opponent was sent to a camp. The Nazi reign of terror had begun.

Mein Kampf

• In 1923 the Nazi Party tried to take over the German government in an event known as the Beer Hall Putsch.

• November 8, 1923, the Nazis held a rally in a beer hall in Munich and proclaimed that a national revolution had begun.

• The following day they held a demonstration in the center of Munich that turned into a riot. In a shoot-out with the Munich police, sixteen Nazis and four policemen were killed.

• Hitler and the Nazis ran for their lives but were captured and put on trial for treason.

• At his trial for treason Hitler argued that the real criminals were the government officials who signed the Treaty of Versailles ending WWI. The judges agreed with him and were sympathetic toward Hitler. This also brought Hitler into the national spotlight.

• Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison. However, he only served nine months confined to an apartment within a prison complex, with his room-mate, Rudolf Hess.

• While confined, Hitler dictated a book to Hess, which became his political manifesto. Mein Kampf means “My Struggle.”

• The book became one of the most influential of 20th Century and made Hitler a wealthy man. By 1945 it had sold ten million copies and was required reading for every Nazi.

• The book deals with Hitler’s six poverty-stricken years, from 1907-1913 when he lived in Vienna, Austria. In Vienna he learned about social Darwinism, anti-socialism, and anti-Semitism.

The Treaty of Versailles

• This was the peace treaty which officially ended World War I.

• Germany was forced to accept full responsibility for causing the war and make reparations to certain countries.

• Germany was forced to give up some of its territory to a number of surrounding countries, such as France, Denmark, and Poland.

Europe before World War I

Europe after WW I.

• Germany was stripped of all its overseas and African colonies.

• Restrictions were put on the size of the German military of 100,000 soldiers and no tanks.

• Germany agreed to respect the independence of Austria.

• The Allies held Germany solely responsible for all “loss and damage” suffered by them during the war and provided the basis for reparations. The amount was officially put at 269 billion gold marks, a sum that many economists deemed to be excessive and would require Germany to pay through 1987. It was lowered to 132 billion marks, which was still an unrealistic amount of money.

• The amount of money that Germany was forced to pay for war damages put her into an economic depression and ruined the German economy.

The Episode of the St. Louis

• In May 1939, hundreds of Jewish immigrants secured visas to migrate to Cuba (937 people).

• Although all of the passengers had the proper documents, when they arrived in Cuba the Cuban President wouldn’t admit them until they paid a large amount of money.

• Only a few refugees could pay the price to disembark in Cuba.

• The ship left Cuba and sailed along the coast of Florida, hoping that the United States would agree to accept the refugees. The U .S. Coast guard sailed alongside the ship to make sure no one jumped off.

• After sailing along the eastern coast of the US for three weeks, the St. Louis set sail for Europe.

• When the St. Louis returned to Europe, 287 travelers were admitted to Great Britain. The rest of the passengers disembarked in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, which came under Nazi rule. Except for the immigrants that went to Cuba and Great Britain, all were murdered by the Nazis.

• Why is the incident of the St. Louis important?

• It shows that the strict immigration policy enforced by the U.S.A. would not bend because of the environment created by the Great Depression.

End of Part I Notes!

The St. Louis docked in Havana Harbor, Cuba

2. Holocaust Terms and Events

Kristalnacht“The Night of Broken Glass”

• In 1938 many Polish Jews living in Germany were rounded up and sent to a concentration camp, including the family of Herschel Grynszpan, a 17 year old Polish Jew living in Paris.

• Grynszpan went to the German Embassy in Paris and shot a German diplomat.

• In retaliation for this Jewish murder of a German diplomat, Nazi Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels gave the signal for a nationwide pogrom* against the Jews.

*Pogrom

• Pogroms originated in Russia. They were government sanctioned riots and vandalism against Jews and Jewish-owned property.

• On November 9 and 10, 1938, violence raged throughout Germany against Jews. Synagogues were set on fire, Jewish businesses were vandalized, many Jews were killed, and thousands were rounded up and sent to concentration camps.

• Shattered glass littered the streets and created the name “Kristalnacht” or “Night of Broken Glass” to memorialize the event.

• This event marks the beginning of the Holocaust.

• The Jews were forced to pay the Nazis for the damages done to their own property for Kristalnacht!

• Three days after Kristalnacht the Nazis enacted policies that segregated Jews from going to theatres, parks, schools, plus prohibited them from owning and operating businesses. Jewish businesses were taken over by the Nazis.

Selection

• Selection means being chosen to continue living because you are still physically fit for slave labor.

• Selections occurred immediately upon arrival at a camp.

• Those who were too old or too young, or that appeared to be ill were immediately killed.

• Selections were held on a frequent basis within camps to weed out those prisoners that were becoming weak or ill.

The Final Solution

• This was the Nazi code word for their plan to annihilate every Jew living in Europe.

• The Nazis had several other plans to get the Jews out of Germany before arriving at the Final Solution to the Jewish Question:

• 1. Their first idea was to deport every Jew to another country. The incident of the St. Louis shows that this wasn’t a viable option since no country wanted a flood of refugees.

2. After the Nazis conquered France, they wanted to use the French island of Madagascar as a Jewish slave colony. This was a good idea until Germany invaded Poland.

• Poland had the largest Jewish population in all of Europe. Now there would be too many Jews to send to Madagascar.

• After the September 1939 German invasion of Poland, the Nazis developed a comprehensive plan to annihilate the Jews by this process. On January 20, 1942, fifteen high ranking Nazi and German government leaders met near a lake in Berlin known as Wannsee. Reinhard Heydrich called the meeting where the “final solution to the Jewish question” was hatched. Not one person at the meeting objected to killing every Jew in Europe, thus giving government sanction to genocide.

1. Round up all of the Jews and segregate them into ghettos so they would have a large number of them centralized in one location.

2. Create the Einsatzguppen (mobile killing units) to massacre whole Jewish communities.

3. Create death camps where large numbers of people could be killed efficiently and cost-effectively, and their bodies could be disposed of without attracting public attention.

4. Trains would be used to transport victims to the camps

The Einsatzgruppen

• Mobile killing squads made up of special duty units, composed primarily of SS and police personnel, assigned to kill Jews and other undesirables in Poland and the Soviet Union.

• The Nazis’ first attempt at mass executions operated under the command of Heinrich Heydrich.

• They followed the German army into Poland and rounded up “undesirables” in every village, transported the victims to a wooded area, stripped them of their clothing, told them to lie down in a ditch, and shot them.

• The Einsatzgruppen killed more than a million Jews and tens of thousands of Soviet and Polish political and religious officials, as well as gypsies.

• They shot men, women, and children without regard for age or gender.

• One of the worst massacres occurred near the Ukranian city of Kiev where 34,000 people were machine-gunned to death in a two day orgy of executions.

• This first method of mass execution encountered some problems for the Nazis:

1. The killers needed to look at their victims, and as hardened and brain-washed as they were, they turned to alcohol to help them

accomplish their work and also to forget what they did. Many developed psychological problems.

2. Gun fire attracted attention and they wanted to keep their mass executions a secret, not only from their own citizens, but from the world.

3. The Nazis needed to find a more economical and efficient way to kill

a larger number of people, quickly and more cheaply.

a. They experimented with many methods including blowing people up, but their remains flew up into trees, etc. and were difficult to hide.

• The Nazi idea to use gas as a means for mass murder came from their experiments with using gas to kill victims in the T-4 Program.

The T-4 Program

• In the fall of 1939 the German government established the Euthanasie Programme under the direction of Philip Bouhler and Dr. Karl Brandt.

• The headquarters for this program were at Tiergartenstrasse 4, Berlin and the code name for this program was derived from its address: T-4 Program.

• The word “euthanasia” means “mercy killing” and is synonymous with physician-assisted suicide. The Nazis corrupted this word.

• The Nazi regime’s goal was to remove those people unfit to live and produce offspring from their population.

• The first phase of this program came under the Nuremberg Laws and required the sterilization of anyone deemed “unfit.”

• Those “unfit” included Jews, gypsies, and any person with a physical or mental defect. This included all handicapped people or those with incurable diseases or mental conditions in Germany. These victims were referred to as “life unworthy of life.”

• The very first victims were newborn babies that presented defects at birth. They were killed at birth in a discreet manner without their mothers knowing it .

• Euthanasia progressed to handicapped hospitalized patients that were killed by doctors with lethal injections of drugs. Their death certificates would state that they died of complications of pneumonia, etc.

• Before long gas chambers were constructed inside hospitals and handicapped patients were placed inside of them in groups and killed with carbon monoxide gas.

• Next, the Nazis constructed special gassing facilities that were built to look like medical institutions on the outside, but were killing centers for the handicapped.

Bernberg Euthanasia Facility

• Between December 1939 and August 1941, about 50,000 Germans were secretly killed by the Euthanasia Program.

• Under the T-4 Program it is estimated that as many as 400,000 may have been killed. The Nazis destroyed the records so that an accurate accounting can’t be made.

• It is important to note that when people began to suspect that their loved ones were being killed by medical facilities and physicians, they were outraged. The Christian church leaders spoke out against it and wrote to Nazi officials. Hitler capitulated to public pressure and the program was stopped for a year before secretly starting up again.

A. This is important because it shows that the Nazis responded to public pressure.

• At the end of World War II when American troops went into German hospitals, they found that doctors were still gassing civilians in euthanasia centers. Both doctors and nurses that were found to have participated in this program were put on trial in 1965. None were punished, and many saw nothing wrong with what they were doing.

The Gestapo

• Created by Hermann Goring on April 26, 1933.

• Transferred to Heinrich Himmler in April 1934.

• Himmler answered only to Hitler and through the SS was free to define “legality” and was unhindered by moral constraints.

• When Himmler became the head of all of the German police in 1936, the Gestapo was led by Reinhard Heydrich.

• The Gestapo became a tool of terror, often placing people in “protective custody” before sending them to concentration camps.

• Orchestrated pogroms against Jews including what came to be known as Kristallnacht.

• Some of the SS were part of the Einsatzgruppen.

– Most of the SS were professional men – which included lawyers, physicians, – and even clergymen. They were people

» that had “a heightened sense of duty.”

Pogroms

• Government sanctioned riots against a group of people because of religious, racial, or ethnic prejudice.

• Began in Russia in the late 1800’s under the Czar as a way to drive Jews out of Russia

• Adopted by the Nazis as a way to terrorize Jewish communities and kill Jewish citizens.

Ghettos• Segregated, walled-in areas of cities where Jews

were forced to relocate before they were transported to concentration or death camps.

• Jews were made to wear some kind of outward identification sign, such as a yellow star or an armband with a Star of David.

• The first ghetto was created by the Nazis on October 8, 1939, in the Lodz district of Poland. Other large ghettos in Poland were Lublin, Warsaw, and Krakow. Ghettos were formed in many Eastern European cities.

• Warsaw had the largest Jewish population in Europe with Jews comprising 30% of the city’s population.

• About 400,000 Jews were forced to move into the Warsaw ghetto. German authorities forced ghetto residents to live in an area of 1.3 square miles, with an average of 7.2 persons per room.

• Besides being over-crowded, the residents had restricted food rations thus producing hunger and then starvation. Squalid living conditions created an environment for diseases to breed which brought about immense suffering and death.

• During 1942 and 1943 the Nazis “liquidated” the ghettos by deporting the inhabitants to death camps, or by murdering them in the ghettos.

• In the summer of 1942 the Nazis removed 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp. About 60,000 people remained in the ghetto.

1. Of those remaining in the ghetto, 750 young men and women decided to fight to the death rather than be sent like sheep to the slaughter house .

2. They were able to obtain some guns and ammunition and train themselves to fight.

3. With their limited resources, these brave young people were able to defend themselves against the Nazis from April 19 - May 16, 1943. Finally, the Germans began burning the ghetto, building by building until they either killed or burned to death everyone.

• The End of Part II Notes