The Holocaust - SharpSchoolwwphs.sharpschool.com/UserFiles/Servers/Server... · Jews in Christian Europe, reinforced by modern political anti-Semitism developing from a complex mixture

The Holocaust The Holocaust is a period in European history that took place in Nazi Germany during the late 1930s and 1940s, just prior to and during World War II. It is important for all people to have an understanding of this genocide. This packet contains a large amount of primary and secondary source information. You should familiarize yourself with this for our discussion. My expectations for this 45 minute Harkness Table are high. I want to hear evidence of your reading and understanding of what happened in the holocaust. This packet is yours to keep. Feel free to mark it up. You may consider using a highlighter; post it notes, something to organize your research and studying so you may be able to hold an intellectual and informed discussion. Additionally, on the day you are not participating in the circle you will need to be contributing to the Google back channel discussion. Please bring your electronic device, phone, tablet, and laptop, whatever you have, to the class. I will be looking for your active engagement in the virtual discussion outside the circle. To view a timeline of the events that you are studying please visit the following webpage: http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html To view images of the Holocaust and German occupation please visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum at the following link: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_list.php?MediaType=ph Some thoughts and questions to consider when you are preparing:

• Who were the Nazis? • What did they stand for? • When did they take control in Germany? • Who was Adolph Hitler? • Who was responsible for the destruction of millions of Jews, Poles, Gypsies, and

other groups during World War II? • How could this happen? • Why didn’t the allies do anything to stop it?

The Wannsee Protocols On January 20, 1942, an extraordinary 90-minute meeting took place in a lakeside villa in the wealthy Wannsee district of Berlin. Fifteen high-ranking Nazi party and German government leaders gathered to coordinate logistics for carrying out “the final solution of the Jewish question.” Chairing the meeting was SS Lieutenant General Reinhard Heydrich, head of the powerful Reich Security Main Office, a central police agency that included the Secret State Police (the Gestapo), Heydrich convened the meeting on the basis of a memorandum he had received six months earlier from Adolf

Hitler’s deputy, Herman Goring, confirming his authorization to implement the “Final Solution.” The “Final Solution” was the Nazi regime’s code name for the deliberate, planned mass murder of all European Jews. During the Wannsee meeting German government officials discussed “extermination” without hesitation or qualm. Heydrich calculated that 11 million European Jews from more than 20 countries would be killed under this heinous plan. During the months before the Wannsee Conference, special units made up of SS, the elite guard of the Nazi state, and police personnel, known as Einsatzgruppen, slaughtered Jews in mass shootings on the territory of the Soviet Union that the Germans had occupied. Six weeks before the Wannsee meeting, the Nazis began to murder Jews at Chelmno, an agricultural estate located in that part of Poland annexed to Germany. Here SS and police personnel used sealed vans into which they pumped carbon monoxide gas to suffocate their victims. The Wannsee meeting served to sanction, coordinate, and expand the implementation of the “Final Solution. During 1942, trainloads of Jewish men, women, and children were transported from countries all over Europe to Auschwitz, Treblinka, and four other major killing centers in German-occupied Poland. By year’s end, about 4 million Jews were dead. During World War II (1939-1945), the Germans and their collaborators killed or caused the deaths of up to 6 million Jews. Hundreds of Jewish communities in Europe, some centuries old, disappeared forever. To convey the unimaginable, devastating scale of destruction, postwar writers referred to the murder of the European Jews as the “Holocaust.” Centuries of religious prejudice against Jews in Christian Europe, reinforced by modern political anti-Semitism developing from a complex mixture of extreme nationalism, financial insecurity, fear of communism, and so-called race science, provide the backdrop for the Holocaust. Hitler and other Nazi ideologues regarded Jews as a dangerous “race” whose very existence threat ended the biological purity and strength of the “superior Aryan race.” “To secure the assistance of thousands of individuals to implement the “Final Solution,” the Nazi regime could and did not exploit existing prejudice against Jews in Germany and the other countries that were conquered by or allied with Germany during World War II. “While not all victims were Jews, all Jews were victims,” Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel has written. “Jews were destined for annihilation solely because they were born Jewish. They were doomed not because of something they had done or proclaimed or acquired but because of who they were, sons and daughters of Jewish people. As such they were sentenced to death collectively and individually….” SUMMARY OF THE HISTORY OF THE HOLOCAUST IN TWO MAIN SECTIONS: 1933–1939 AND 1939–1945 1933–1939 On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was named chancellor, the most powerful position in the German government, by the aged President Hindenburg, who hoped Hitler could lead the nation out of its grave political and economic crisis. Hitler was the leader of the right-

wing National Socialist German Workers party (called the “Nazi party” for short). It was, by 1933, one of the strongest parties in Germany, even though—reflecting the country’s multiparty system— the Nazis had won only a plurality of 33 percent of the votes in the 1932 elections to the German parliament (Reichstag). Once in power, Hitler moved quickly to end German democracy. He convinced his cabinet to invoke emergency clauses of the constitution that permitted the suspension of individual freedoms of press, speech, and assembly. Special security forces—the Gestapo, the Storm Troopers (SA), and the SS—murdered or arrested leaders of opposition political parties (Communists, socialists, and liberals). The Enabling Act of March 23, 1933 forced through a Reichstag already purged of many political opponents gave dictatorial powers to Hitler. Also in 1933, the Nazis began to put into practice their racial ideology. The Nazis believed that the Germans were “racially superior” and that there was a struggle for survival between them and the “inferior races.” They saw Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and the handicapped as a serious biological threat to the purity of the “German (Aryan’) Race,” what they called the “master race.” Jews, who numbered about 525,000 in Germany (less than one percent of the total population in 1933), were the principal targets of Nazi hatred. The Nazis identified Jews as a race and defined this race as “inferior.” They also spewed hate-mongering propaganda that unfairly blamed Jews for Germany’s economic depression and the country’s defeat in World War I (1914-18). In 1933, new German laws forced Jews out of their civil service jobs, university and law court positions and other areas of public life. In April 1933, a boycott of Jewish businesses was instituted. In 1935, laws proclaimed at Nuremberg, made Jews second-class citizens. These Nuremberg Laws defined Jews, not by their religion or by how they wanted to identify themselves, but by the religious affiliation of their grandparents. Between 1937 and 1939, new anti-Jewish regulations segregated Jews further and made daily life very difficult for them: Jews could not attend public schools; go to theaters, cinemas, or vacation resorts; or reside or even walk in certain sections of German cities. Also between 1937 and 1939, Jews increasingly were forced from Germany’s economic life: The Nazis either seized Jewish businesses and properties outright or forced Jews to sell them at bargain prices. In November 1938, the Nazis organized a riot (pogrom), known as Kristallnacht (the “Night of Broken Glass”). This attack against German and Austrian Jews included the physical destruction of synagogues and Jewish-owned stores, the arrest of Jewish men, the vandalization [sic] of homes, and the murder of individuals. Although Jews were the main targets of Nazi hatred, the Nazis persecuted other groups they viewed as racially or genetically “inferior.” Nazi racial ideology was buttressed by scientists who advocated “selective breeding” (eugenics) to “improve” the human race.

Laws passed between 1933 and 1935 aimed to reduce the future number of genetic “inferiors” through involuntary sterilization programs: 320,000 to 350,000 individuals judged physically or mentally handicapped were subjected to surgical or radiation procedures so they could not have children. Supporters of sterilization also argued that the handicapped burdened the community with the costs of their care. Many of Germany’s 30,000 Roma (Gypsies) were also eventually sterilized and prohibited, along with Blacks, from intermarrying with Germans. About 500 children of mixed African-German backgrounds were also sterilized. New laws combined traditional prejudices with the racism of the Nazis, which defined Roma, by “race,” as “criminal and asocial.” Another consequence of Hitler’s ruthless dictatorship in the 1930s was the arrest of political opponents and trade unionists and other the Nazis labeled “undesirable” and “enemies of the state.” Some 5,000 to 15,000 homosexuals were imprisoned in concentration camps; under the 1935 Nazi-revised criminal code, the mere denunciation of a man as “homosexual” could result in arrest, trial, and conviction. Jehovah’s Witnesses, who numbered at least 25,000 in Germany, were banned as an organization as early as April 1933, because the beliefs of this religious group prohibited them from swearing any oath to the state or serving in the German military. Their literature was confiscated and they lost jobs, unemployment benefits, pensions, and all social welfare benefits. Many Witnesses were sent to prisons and concentration camps in Nazi Germany, and their children were sent to juvenile detention homes and orphanages. Between 1933 and 1936, thousands or people, mostly political prisoners, were imprisoned in concentration camps, while several thousand German Roma (Gypsies) were confined in special municipal camps. The first systematic roundups of German and Austrian Jews occurred after Kristallnacht, when approximately 30,000 Jewish men were deported to Dachau and other concentration camps, and several hundred Jewish women were sent to local jails. The wave of arrests in 1938 also included several thousand German and Austrian Roma (Gypsies). Between 1933 and 1939, about half the German-Jewish population and more than two-thirds of Austrian Jews (1938-39) fled Nazi persecution. They emigrated mainly to the United States, Palestine, elsewhere in Europe (where many would be later trapped by Nazi conquests during the war), Latin America, and Japanese-occupied Shanghai (which required no visas for entry). Jews who remained under Nazi rule were either unwilling to uproot themselves or unable to obtain visas, sponsors in host countries, or funds for emigration. Most foreign countries, including the United States, Canada, Britain, and France, were unwilling to admit very large numbers of refugees. 1939–1945 On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland and World War II began. Within weeks, the Polish army was defeated, and the Nazis began their campaign to destroy Polish culture and enslave the Polish people, whom they viewed as “subhuman.” Killing Polish leaders was the first step: German soldiers carried out massacres of university professors, artists, writers, politicians, and many Catholic priests. To create new living space for the

“superior Germanic race,” large segments of the Polish population were resettled, and German families moved into the emptied lands. Other Poles, including many Jews, were imprisoned in concentration camps. The Nazis also “kidnapped” as many as 50,000 “Aryan looking” Polish children were later rejected as not capable of Germanization[sic] and were sent to special children’s camps where some died of starvation, lethal injection and disease. As the war began in 1939, Hitler initialed an order to kill institutionalized, handicapped patients deemed “incurable.” Special commissions of physicians reviewed questionnaires filled out by all state hospitals and then decided if a patient should be killed. The doomed were then transferred to six institutions in Germany and Austria where specially constructed gas chambers were used to kill them. After public protests in 1941, the Nazi leadership continued this “euthanasia” program in secret. Babies, small children, and other victims were thereafter killed by lethal injection and pills and by forced starvation. The “euthanasia” program contained all the elements later required for mass murder of European Jews and Roma (Gypsies): a decision to kill, specially trained personnel, the apparatus for killing by gas, and the use of euphemistic language like “euthanasia” that psychologically distanced the murderers from their victims and hid the criminal character of the killings from the public. In 1940, German forces continued their conquest of much of Europe, easily defeating Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Yugoslavia, and Greece. On June 22, 1941, the German army invaded the Soviet Union and by late November was approaching Moscow. In the meantime, Italy Romania, and Hungary had joined the Axis powers led by Germany and were opposed by the main Allied powers (British Commonwealth, Free France, the United States, and the Soviet Union). In the months following Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Jews, political leaders, Communists, and many Roma (Gypsies) were killed in mass shootings. Most of those killed were Jews. These murders were carried out at improvised sites throughout the Soviet Union by members of mobile killing squads (Einsatzgruppen) who followed in the wake of the invading German army. The most famous of these sites was Babi Yar, near Kiev, where an estimated 33,000 persons, mostly Jews, were murdered over two days. German terror extended to institutionalized handicapped and psychiatric patients in the Soviet Union; it also resulted in the death of more than 3 million Soviet prisoners of war. World War II brought major changes to the concentration camp system. Large numbers of new prisoners, deported from all German-occupied countries, now flooded the camps. Often entire groups were committed to the camps, such as members of underground resistance organizations who were rounded up in a sweep across Western Europe under the 1941 Night and Fog decree. To accommodate the massive increase in the number of prisoners, hundreds of new camps were established in occupied territories of eastern and western Europe. During the war, ghettos, transit camps, and forced-labor camps, in addition to the

concentration camps, were created by the Germans and their collaborators to imprison Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and other victims of racial and ethnic hatred as well as political opponents and resistance fighters. Following the invasion of Poland, 3 million Polish Jews were forced into approximately 400 newly established ghettos where they were segregated from the rest of the population. Large numbers of Jews also were deported from other cities and countries, including Germany, to ghettos and camps in Poland and German-occupied territories further east. In Polish cities under Nazi occupation, like Warsaw and Lodz, Jews were confined in sealed ghettos where starvation, overcrowding, exposure to cold, and contagious diseases killed tens of thousands of people. In Warsaw and elsewhere, ghettoized Jews made every effort, often at great risk, to maintain their cultural, communal, and religious lives. The ghettos also provided a forced-labor pool for the Germans, and many forced laborers (who worked on road gangs, in construction, or at other hard labor related to the German war effort) died from exhaustion or maltreatment. Between 1942 and 1944, the Germans moved to eliminate the ghettos in occupied Poland and elsewhere, deporting ghetto residents to “extermination camps”—killing centers equipped with gassing facilities located in Poland. After the meeting of senior German government officials in late January 1942 at a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee the decision to implement “the final solution of the Jewish question,” Jews from western Europe also were sent to killing centers in the East. The six killing sites, chosen because of their closeness to rail lines and their location in semi rural areas, were Belzec, Sobibor, Trebinka, Chelmno,Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Chelmno was the first camp in which mass executions were carried out by gas piped into mobile gas vans; at least 152,000 persons were killed there between December 1941 and March 1943, and between June and July 1944. A killing center using gas chambers operated at Belzec, where about 600,000 persons were killed between May 1942 and August 1943. Sobibor opened in May 1942 and closed following a rebellion of the prisoners on October 14, 1943; about 250,000 persons had already been killed by gassing at Sobibor. Treblinka opened in July 1942 and closed November 1943; a revolt by the prisoners in early August 1943 destroyed much of that facility. At least 750,000 persons were killed at Treblinka, physically the largest of the killing centers. Almost all of the victims at Chelmno, Belzec, Sorbibor, and Treblinka were Jews; a few were Roma (Gypsies), Poles, and Soviet POWs. Very few individuals survived these four killing centers where most victims were murdered immediately upon arrival. Auschwitz-Birkenau, which also served as a concentration camp and slave labor camp, became the killing center where the largest numbers of European Jews and Roma (Gypsies) were killed. After an experimental gassing there in September 1941 of 250 malnourished and ill Polish prisoners and 600 Soviet POWs mass murder became a daily routine; more than 1 million people were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 9 out of 10 of them Jews. In addition, Roma, Soviet POWs, and ill prisoners of all nationalities died in the gas chambers there. Between May 15 and July 9, 1944, nearly 440,00 Jews were deported from Hungary in more than 140 trains, overwhelmingly to Auschwitz. This was probably the largest single mass deportation during the Holocaust. A similar system was implemented at Majdanek, which also doubled as a concentration camp, and where between 170,000 and 235,00 persons were killed in the gas chambers or died from

malnutrition, brutality, and disease. The methods of murder were similar in the killing centers, which were operated by the SS. Jewish victims arrived in railroad freight cars and passenger trains, mostly from ghettos and camps in occupied Poland, but also from almost every other eastern and western European country. On arrival, men were separated from women and children. Prisoners were forced to undress and hand over all valuables. They were then forced naked into the gas chambers, which were disguised as shower rooms, and either carbon monoxide or Zyklon B (a form of crystalline prussic acid, also used as an insecticide in some camps) was used to asphyxiate them. The minority selected for forced labor were, after initial quarantine, vulnerable to malnutrition, exposure, epidemics, medical experiments and brutality; many perished as a result. The Germans carried out their systematic murderous activities with the active help of local collaborators in many countries and the acquiescence or indifference of millions of bystanders. However, there were instances of organized resistance. For example, in the fall of 1943, the Danish resistance, with support of the local population, rescued nearly the entire Jewish community in Denmark by smuggling them via a dramatic boatlift to safety in neutral Sweden. Individuals in many other countries also risked their lives to save Jews and other individuals subject to Nazi persecution. One of the most famous was Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who played a significant role in some of the rescue efforts that saved the live of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews in 1944. Resistance existed in almost every concentration camp and ghetto of Europe. In addition to the armed revolts at Sobibor and Treblinka, Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto led to a courageous uprising in April and May 1943, despite a predictable doomed outcome because of superior German force. In general, rescue or aid to Holocaust victims was not a priority of resistance organizations, whose principal goal was to fight the war against the Germans. Nonetheless, such groups and Jewish partisans (resistance fighters) sometimes cooperated with each other to save Jews. On April 19, 1943, for instance, members of the National Committee for the Defense of Jews, in cooperation with Christian railroad workers and the general underground in Belgium attacked a train leaving the Belgian transit camp of Malines headed for Auschwitz and succeeded in assisting Jewish deportees to escape. The U.S. government did not pursue a policy of rescue for victims of Nazism during World War II. Like their British counterparts, U.S. political and military leaders argued that winning was the top priority and would bring an end to Nazi terror. Once the war began, security concerns, reinforced in part by anti-Semitism, influenced the U.S. State Department (led by Secretary of State Cordell Hull) and the U.S. government to do little to ease restrictions on entry visas. In January 1944, President Roosevelt established the War Refugee Board within the U.S. Treasury Department to facilitate the rescue of imperiled refugees. Fort Ontario in Oswego, New York, began to serve as an ostensibly free port for refugees from the territories liberated by the Allies. After the war turned against Germany, and the Allied armies approached German soil in late 1944, the SS decided to evacuate outlying concentration camps. The Germans tried

to cover up the evidence of genocide and deported prisoners to camps inside Germany to prevent their liberation. Many inmates died during the long journeys on foot known as “death marches.” During the final days, in the spring of 1945, conditions in the remaining concentration camps exacted a terrible toll in human lives. Even concentration camps such as Bergen-Belsen, never intended for extermination, became death traps for thousands, including Anne Frank, who died there of typhus in March 1945. In May 1945, Nazi Germany collapsed, the SS guards fled, and the camps ceased to exist. AFTERMATH OF THE HOLOCAUST The Allied victors of World War II (Great Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union) faced two immediate problems following the surrender of Nazi Germany in May of 1945: to bring Nazi war criminals to justice and to provide for displaced persons (DPs) and refugees stranded in Allied-occupied Germany and Austria. Following the war, the best-known war crime was the trial of “major” war criminals, held at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany, between November 1945 and August 1946. Under the auspices of the International Military Tribunal (IMT), which consisted of prosecutors and judges from the four occupying powers (Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States), leading officials of the Nazi regime were prosecuted for war crimes. The IMT sentenced 13 of those convicted to death. Seven more defendants committed suicide before the trial began. Three of the defendants were acquitted. The judges also found three of six Nazi organizations (the SS, the Gestapo SD [part of Nazi Security Service], and the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party) to be criminal organizations. In the three years following the major trial, 12 subsequent trials were conducted under the auspices of the IMT but before U.S. military tribunals. The proceedings were directed at the prosecution of second—and third—ranking officials of the Nazi regime. They included concentration camp administrators; commanders of the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units); physicians and public health officials; the SS leadership; German army field commanders and staff officers; officials in the justice, interior, and foreign ministries; and senior administrators of industrial concerns that used concentration camp laborers, including I.G. Farben and the Flick concern. In addition, each occupying power (Great Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union) conducted trials of Nazi offenders captured in its respective zone of occupation or accused of crimes perpetrated in that zone of occupation. The U.S. military authorities conducted the trials in the American zone at the site of the Nazi concentration camp Dachau. In general, the defendants in these trials were the staff and guard units at concentration camps and other camps located in the zone and people accused of crimes against Allied military and civilian personnel. Those German officials and collaborators who committed crimes within a specific location or country were generally returned to the nation on whose territory the crimes were committed and were tried by national tribunals. Perhaps the most famous of these cases was the trial in 1947, in Cracow, Poland, of Rudolf Hoss, the commandant of Auschwitz. Trials of German war criminals and their collaborators were conducted during the late 1940s and early 1950s in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union. After the establishment

of West Germany in 1949, many former Nazis received relatively lenient treatment by the courts. Courts in West Germany ruled the offenders were not guilty because they were obeying orders from their superior officers. Some Nazi criminals were acquitted and returned to normal lives in German society, a number of them taking jobs in the business world. Many war criminals, however, were never brought to trial or punished. In 1958, the Federal Republic of Germany, established a Central Agency for the investigation of National Socialist Violent Crimes to streamline the investigation of Nazi offenders living in West Germany. These efforts, which continue to this day, led to some significant proceedings such as the Frankfurt Trial of Auschwitz camp personnel in the 1960s. The investigation of Nazi offenders residing in the United States began in earnest during the late 1970s and continues to this day. Even as the Allies moved to bring Nazi offenders to justice, the looming refugee crisis threatened to overwhelm the resources of the Allied powers. During World War II, the Nazis uprooted millions of people. Within months of Germany’s surrender in May 1945, the Allies repatriated more than 6 million (DP) to their home countries. Some 250,000 Jewish DPs, including most of the Jewish survivors of concentration camps, were unable or unwilling to return to Easter Europe because of postwar anti-Semitism and the destruction of the communities during the Holocaust. Many of those who did return feared for their lives. Many Holocaust survivors found themselves in territory liberated by the Anglo-American armies and were housed in DP camps that the Allies established in Germany, Austria, and Italy. They were joined by a flow of refugees, including Holocaust survivors, migrating from points of liberation in Eastern Europe and the Soviet-occupied zones of Germany and Austria, Most Jewish DPs hoped to leave Europe for Palestine or the United States, but the United States was still governed by severely restrictive immigration legislation, and the British, who administered Palestine under a mandate from the defunct League of Nations, severely restricted Jewish immigration for fear of antagonizing the Arab residents of the Mandate. Other countries had closed their borders to immigration during the Depression and during the war. Despite these obstacles, many Jewish DPs were eager to leave Europe as soon as possible. The Jewish Brigade Group, formed as a unit within the British army in late 1944, worked with former partisans to help organize the Beriha (literally, “escape”), the exodus of Jewish refugees across closed borders from inside Europe to the coast in an attempt to sail for Palestine. However, the British intercepted most of the ships. In 1947, for example, the British stopped the Exodus 1947 at the port of Haifa. The ship had 4,500 Holocaust survivors on board, who were forcibly returned on British vessels to Germany. In the following years, the postwar Jewish refugee crises eased. In 1948, the U.S. Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act, which provided up to 400,000 special visas for DPs uprooted by the Nazi or Soviet regimes. Some 63,000 of these visas were issued to Jews under the DP Act. When the DP Act expired in 1952, it was followed by a Refugee Relief Act that remained in force until the end of 1956. Moreover, in May 1948,

the State of Israel became and independent nation after the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Israel quickly moved to legalize the flow of Jewish immigrants into the new state, passing legislation providing for unlimited Jewish immigration to the Jewish homeland. The last DP camp closed in Germany in 1957. Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport Milton Meltzer The Holocaust was one of the innumerable crimes committed by the Nazis. Then why single out the extermination of the Jews? Is it necessary to remember? Is it good? Can it even be understood by those who have come after? No one would claim that the Nazi extermination of the Jews was greater or more tragic than what has been done to other persecuted peoples. Such comparisons are unfeeling and fruitless. What is historically significant is its uniqueness. There is no precedent for it in Jewish history, nor in the history of other people. Civilians in the past have been massacred for what men called “reasonable” goals, utilitarian goals to extend power, to acquire wealth, to increase territory, to stamp out opposition, to force conversion. What some power conceived to be in its self-interest was the reason behind the persecution. But Hitler and the Nazis wanted to murder all Jews because they were Jews. Not because of their faith, not despite their faith. But because of what Hitler called their ‘race.” He did not believe this “inferior” people had any right to share the earth with their “superiors,” the Germans. So Jews, religious and unreligious, were exterminated. They were killed even when their deaths proved harmful, militarily or economically, to the Nazis. It was a crime against all humanity, committed upon the body of the Jewish people. That the Jews were the victims this time derives from the long history of anti-Semitism. How could it have happened? It did not occur in a vacuum. It was the logical outcome of certain conditions of life. Given the antihuman nature of Nazi beliefs, the crime of the Holocaust could be expected. We see that now. That it happened once, unbelievable, as it seems, means it could happen again. Hitler made it a possibility for anyone. Neither the Jews nor any other group on earth can feel safe from that crime in the future. I do not believe that the world of Hitler was totally alien to the world we know. Still, before we can compare Hitler’s Germany to anything else, we need to find out what it was like and how it came to be. And just as important, we need to expand our knowledge of our own human nature to understand why people were infected by Nazism, how the poison spread, and what its effects were. The question has to do with good and evil, with our inner being, with our power to make moral choices. Excerpts from pp XV – XVI, In Never to Forget: The Jews of the Holocaust by Milton Meltzer. Copyright © 1976 by Milton Meltzer. Reprinted by permission of Harper Collins Publishers

A Horror Erased From Memory Roger Simon - Chicago Sun-Times, April 11, 1976 MILWAUKEE—Some months ago, two members of the Milwaukee chapter of the Nazi party (the National Socialist White People’s Party) smashed the windows of an auto while the owner—a Jew —sat inside. They were arrested and a short while ago went on trial. Everyone connected with the trial thought that choosing a jury of 12 men and women who were not disgusted by the term Nazi would be very difficult. Bruce C. O’Neill, the lawyer for the two Nazis, felt that it would be almost impossible to find a jury that wasn’t prejudiced. After all,World War II had ended less than a generation ago. “I thought that people would associate the word Nazi with concentration camps and the killing of Jews,” O’Neill said on the phone. “I was very surprised. No, I was shocked.” O’Neill was shocked because after questioning 23 randomly-selected, average citizens, all middle-aged and alive during World War II, this is what he found: • Virtually none of the prospective jurors knew anything about Nazism. • They did not associate Nazism with WorldWar II. They did not associate Nazism with racial hatred, concentration camps, or the killing of 6 million Jews. David B. Offer, a reporter for the Milwaukee newspaper, quoted the following comments by some of the prospective jurors: One woman said she knew that Nazism was a dictatorship, but that she “really couldn’t say more about it.” “Nazi means communist,” another said. “I have heard of Nazis but I don’t listen to the news that much,” said another. O’Neill and the judge, Patrick J. Madden, were stunned. “It just didn’t mean anything to them,” Judge Madden told me. “The word Nazi and what Nazism stood for was virtually unknown to them.” Oddly enough, a Nazi had just run a primary election for mayor of Milwaukee. The newspapers were full but he got nearly 5,000 votes. The man who brought the charges against the two Nazis, Milton Kleinberg, was not all surprised that the jury knew nothing about Nazis. “A Jewish organization had a booth at the state fair last year,” he said. “They had a questionnaire about Nazism. Among young people, 95 percent had never heard of it. Among older people, many of whom were veterans of World War II, 60 percent did not associate Nazism with concentration camps or the killing of Jews.” Even though O’Neill was defending the two Nazis, he does not defend or support Nazism. “I was so amazed at the answers by the jurors that I finally just asked a woman if she had ever heard of Adolf Hitler,” O’Neill said. “She said that the name sounded familiar, but she couldn’t say for sure who he was.”

The prospective jurors were not lying in order to sneak on the jury and let the two Nazis go. After a two-day trial, the Nazis were found guilty. “I consider the ignorance about Nazism to be very serious,” O’Neill said. “All I can say is God help us all. God help us all.” “It was very frightening to hear those replies,” Judge Madden said. “Very frightening. I don’t know who said it, but if you don’t know history, you are doomed to repeat it.” It was a little more than 30 years ago that World War II ended. In it, 6 million Jews were incinerated by the Nazis. Nearly, 300,000 Americans of all religions, of all races, from all states died in battle

Statements by Leading Nazis on the "Jewish Question " Speech by Adolf Hitler, January 31, 1939. Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals - Washington, U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1949-1953, Vol XIII, p. 131: Today I will once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe! Adolph Hitler speaking to a crowd at the Sports Palace in Berlin, 30 January 1942. Quoted in "The Holocaust," by Martin Gilbert, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, NY, 1985, p. 285. Text as monitored by the Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service, Federal Communications Commission. And we say that the war will not end as the Jews imagine it will, namely with the uprooting of the Aryans, but the result of this war will be the complete annihilation of the Jews. Excerpts from the meeting between Adolf Hitler and the Mufti, Haj Amin Husseini, on 28 November 1941. The notes were taken by Dr. Paul Otto Schmidt and are quoted in Gerald Fleming's "Hitler and the Final Solution", p. 101-104. Also geheime Reichssache 57 a/41, Records Dept. Foreign and Commonwealth Office Pa/2: The Fhrer then made the following declaration, requesting the Mufti to lock it deep in his heart: 1) He (the F�hrer) would carry on the fight until the last traces of the Jewish-Communist European hegemony had been obliterated. 2) In the course of this fight, the German army would - at a time that could not yet be specified, but in any case in the clearly foreseeable future - gain the Southern exit of Caucasus. 3) As soon as this breakthrough was made, the F�hrer would offer the Arab world his personal assurance that the hour of liberation had struck. Thereafter, Germany's only remaining objective in the region would be limited to the annihilation of the Jews living under British protection in Arab lands. Adolf Hitler, quoted in "Hitler," by Joachim Fest, Vintage Books Edition, 1974, p. 679-680: Nature is cruel; therefore we are also entitled to be cruel. When I send the flower of German youth into the steel hail of the next war without feeling the slightest regret over the precious German blood that is being spilled, should I not also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin?

Speeches by Reichsfuehrer-SS Himmler before senior SS officers in Poznan, October 4 and 6, 1943. Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1949-1953, Vol. XIII, p. 323, and Himmler, Reichsfuehrer-SS - P. Padfield, Henry Holt and Co, NY, 1990, p. 469: I mean the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race. It's one of those things it is easy to talk about, "the Jewish race is being exterminated", says one party member, "that's quite clear, it's in our program, elimination of the Jews, and we're doing it, exterminating them". And then they come, 80 million worthy Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. Of course the others are vermin, but this one is an A-1 Jew. Not one of those who talk this way has watched it, not one of them has gone through it. Most of you know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500, or 1,000. To have stuck it out and at the same time - apart from exceptions caused by human weakness - to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be written. 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 the children? I have resolved even here on a completely clear solution. That is to say I do not consider myself justified in eradicating the men - so to speak killing or ordering them killed - and allowing the avengers in the shape of the children to grow up for our sons and grandsons. The difficult decision has to be taken, to cause this Volk [people] to disappear from the earth. [This speech was recorded; the magnetic tapes are in the National Archives in Washington, DC] Speech by Reichsfuehrer-SS Himmler at Kharkow, April 1943. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1946, Vol. IV, p. 572-574: We have - I would say, as very consistent National Socialists, taken the question of blood as our starting point. We were the first really to solve the problem of blood by action, and in this connection, by problem of blood, we of course do not mean antisemitism. Antisemitism is exactly the same as delousing. Getting rid of lice is not a question of ideology. It is a matter of cleanliness. The Goebbels [Reich Propaganda Minister] Diaries, February 14 1942. The Goebbels Diaries 1942-1943 - L.P. Lochner, Doubleday & Co., 1948, p. 86: World Jewry will suffer a great catastrophe at the same time as Bolshevism. The F�hrer once more expressed his determination to clean up the Jews in Europe pitilessly. There must be no squeamish sentimentalism about it. The Jews have deserved the catastrophe that has now overtaken them. Their destruction will now go hand in hand with the destruction of our enemies. We must hasten this process with cold ruthlessness. The Goebbels [Reich Propaganda Minister] diaries, March 27, 1942. The Goebbels Diaries 1942-1943 - L.P. Lochner, Doubleday & Co., 1948, p. 147-148: Beginning with Lublin, the Jews in the General Government [Nazi occupied Poland] are now being evacuated eastward. The procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews. On the whole it can be said that about 60 percent of them will have to be liquidated whereas only 40 percent can be used for forced labor.

Speech by Hans Frank [Governor of occupied Poland], to German soldiers in Poland, urging them to write home. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1946, Vol. II, p. 633-634: In all these weeks, they [i.e., your families] will be thinking of you, saying to themselves: my God, there he sits in Poland where there are so many lice and Jews, perhaps he is hungry and cold, perhaps he is afraid to write. It would not be a bad idea to send our dear ones back home a picture, and tell them: well now, there are not so many lice and Jews any more, and conditions here in the General Government have changed and improved somewhat already. Of course, I could not eliminate all lice and Jews in only one year's time. But in the course of time, and above all, if you help me, this end will be attained. After all, it is not necessary for us to accomplish everything within a year and right away, for what would otherwise be left for those who follow us to do? Speech by Hans Frank [Governor of occupied Poland], December 16 1941. Documents on the Holocaust - Edited by Y. Arad, Y. Gutman, A. Margaliot, NY, Ktav Pub. House in Association with Yad-Vashem, 1981, p. 247, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1946 Vol. II p. 634: One way or another -- I will tell you quite openly -- we must finish off the Jews. The F�hrer put it into words once: should united Jewry again succeed in setting off a world war, then the blood sacrifice shall not be made only by the peoples driven into war, but then the Jew of Europe will have met his end.... But what should be done with the Jews? Can you believe that they will be accommodated in settlements in the Ostland? In Berlin we were told: why are you making all this trouble? We don't want them either, not in Ostland nor in the Reichskommissariat; liquidate them yourselves! Gentlemen, I must ask you to steel yourselves against all considerations of compassion. We must destroy the Jews wherever we find them, and wherever it is at all possible, in order to maintain the whole structure of the Reich... The Jews represent for us also extraordinary malignant gluttons. We have now approximately 2,500,000 of them in the General Government [Nazi occupied Poland], perhaps with the Jewish mixtures and everything that goes with it, 3,500,000 Jews. We cannot shoot or poison those 3,500,000 Jews, but we shall nevertheless be able to take measures which will lead somehow to their annihilation, and this in connection with the gigantic measures to be determined in discussions with the Reich. Letter from Hugo H�ppenerner, higher SS and Police leader in the Warthegau, to SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer Eichmann, July 16 1941: Documents of Destruction - R. Hilberg, Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1971, p. 87. Enclosed is a memorandum on the results of various discussions held locally in the office of the Reich Governor. Subject: Solution of the Jewish question 4) This winter there is a danger that not all of the Jews can be fed anymore. One might weigh honestly, if the most humane solution might not be to finish off those of the Jews who are not employable by means of some quick-working device. At any rate, that would be more pleasant than to let them starve to death. 5) For the rest, the proposal was made that in this camp all the Jewish women, from whom one could still expect children, should be sterilized so that the Jewish problem may actually be solved completely with this generation.

Excerpted from a memorandum dated 27 April, 1942 by Dr. Erhard Wetzel (a lawyer), who was serving as desk officer in the Reich Ministry for the Eastern Territories. "Nazism: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945", Volume II, J.Noakes and G.Pridham, editors. Schocken Books, New York, (c)1988 by the Dept. of History and Archeology, University of Exeter. ISBN 0-8053-0973-5 (vol. 1), 0-8052-0972-7 (vol. 2). Document #690 on p.979: Re: the Solution of the Polish Question ...It should be obvious that one cannot solve the Polish problem by liquidating the Poles in the same way as the Jews. Such a solution to the Polish problem would burden the German people with guilt for years to come and lose us the sympathies of people everywhere, particularly since our neighbors would be bound to reckon that they would be treated in the same way when the time came. A letter to Rosenberg enclosing reports from Generalkommisar for White Russia, Wilhelm Kube, about the extermination of Jews in the east, June 18 1943. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1946, Vol I, p. 1001: ...The fact that Jews receive special treatment requires no further discussion. However, it appears hardly believable that this is done in the way described in the report of the General Commissioner of 1 June 1943. What is Katyn against that? Imagine only that these occurrences would become known to the other side and exploited by them! Most likely such propaganda would have no effect only because people who hear who hear and read about it simply would not be ready to believe it. ["Special treatment" and "resettlement" mean extermination, as is obvious from many such documents; consider, for instance, the following] Memorandum from Gestapo Headquarters, 15 June 1944. Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1949-1953, Vol. IV, p. 1166: In amending my directive of June 20 1944, I request that those people subject to special treatment be sent to a crematorium to be cremated if possible.

Hitler on Propaganda In chapter six of Mein Kampf, Hitler reviewed the use of propaganda during World War I. In the course of his criticism of the German effort, he included comments on the function of propaganda in general. His statements offer insight into the methods used by the Nazi Party. Source: Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, translated by Ralph Manheim. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1943. The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training of the individual, but in calling the masses' attention to certain facts, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus for the first time placed within their field of vision.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be. But if, as in propaganda for sticking out a war, the aim is to influence a whole people, we must avoid excessive intellectual demands on our public, and too much caution cannot be extended in this direction.

The more modest its intellectual ballast, the more exclusively it takes into consideration the emotions of the masses, the more effective it will be. And this is the best proof of the soundness or unsoundness of a propaganda campaign, and not success pleasing a few scholars or young aesthetes. The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses. The fact that our bright boys do not understand this merely shows how mentally lazy and conceited they are. Once understood how necessary it is for propaganda in be adjusted to the broad mass, the following rule results: It is a mistake to make propaganda many-sided, like scientific instruction, for instance. The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out. Thus we see that propaganda must follow a simple line and correspondingly the basic tactics must be psychologically sound.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What, for example, would we say about a poster that was supposed to advertise a new soap and that described other soaps as 'good'? We would only shake our heads. Exactly the same applies to political advertising. The function of propaganda is, for example, not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly.

Discriminatory Decrees Against the Jews

This document was retrieved from the archives of Nizkor. Source: Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression, Volume I, Chapter XII, Office of the United States Chief Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1946, pp. 980-982. 2. DISCRIMINATORY DECREES AGAINST JEWS When the Nazi Party gained control of the German State, the conspirators used the means of official decrees as a weapon against the Jews. In this way the force of the state was applied against them.

• Jewish immigrants were denaturalized (1933 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 480, signed by Frick and Neurath).

• Native Jews were precluded from citizenship (1935 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 1146, signed by Frick). Jews were forbidden to live in marriage or to have extramarital relations with persons of German blood (1935 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part

I, page 1146, signed by Frick and Hess). • Jews were denied the right to vote (1936 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 133,

signed by Frick). • Jews were denied the right to hold public office or civil service

[Page 981] positions (1933 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 277, signed by Frick) . Jews were relegated to an inferior status by the denial of common privileges and freedoms. Thus, they were denied access to certain city areas, sidewalks, transportation, places of amusement, restaurants (1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 1676). Progressively, more and more stringent measures were applied, even to the denial of private pursuits. They were excluded from the practice of dentistry (1939 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 47, signed by Hess). The practice of law was denied to them (1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 1403, signed by Frick and Hess). The practice of medicine was forbidden them (1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 969, signed by Frick and Hess). They were denied employment by press and radio ( 1933 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 661). They were excluded from stock exchanges and stock brokerage 1934 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 661). They were excluded from farming ( 1933 Reichsgesetzblatt, , Part I, page 685). In 1938 they were excluded from business in general and from the economic life of Germany (1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, Page 1580, signed by Goering). The Jews were also forced to pay discriminatory taxes and huge atonement fines. Their homes, bank accounts, real estate, and intangibles were expropriated. A report of a conference under the chairmanship of Goering, and attended by Funk, among others, which was held at 11 clock on 12 November 1918 at the Reich Ministry for Air, quotes Goering as saying: "One more question, gentlemen, what would you think the situation would be if I'd announced today that Jewry shall have to contribute this one billion as a punishment." "I shall choose the wording this way that German Jewry shall, as punishment for their abominable crimes, etc., etc., have to make a contribution of one billion; that'll work. The pigs won't commit another murder. I'd like to say again that I would not like to be a Jew in Germany." (1816-PS) Following these whimsical remarks a decree was issued over the signature of Goering, fining German Jews the sum of one billion Reichsmarks (1938 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 1579 dated 12 November 1938, signed by Goering). [Page 982] Similar decrees are contained in 1939 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 282, signed by Goering; and in 1941 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 722, signed by Frick and Bormann. Finally, in 1943, the Jews were placed beyond the protection of any judicial process by a decree signed by Bormann and Frick, among others; the police were made the sole arbiters of punishment and death (1943 Reichsgesetzblatt, Part I, page 372, signed by Frick and Bormann.)

Kristallnacht Order Message from SS-Grupenf�hrer Heydrich to all State Police Main Offices and Field Offices, November 10 1938 (before Kristallnacht, the "night of broken glass," the first large scale pogrom against the Jews). Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1946, Vol. III, p. 545-547. Regards: Measures against Jews tonight. . . . a) Only such measures may be taken which do not jeopardize German life or property (for instance, burning of synagogues only if there is no danger of fires for the neighbourhoods). b) Business establishments and homes of Jews may be destroyed but not looted. The police have been instructed to supervise the execution of these directives and to arrest looters. c) In Business streets special care is to be taken that non-Jewish establishments will be safeguarded at all cost against damage. . . . As soon as the events of this night permit the use of the designated officers, as many Jews, particularly wealthy ones, as the local jails will hold, are to be arrested in all districts. Initially only healthy male Jews, not too old, are to be arrested. After the arrests have been carried out the appropriate concentration camp is to be contacted immediately with a view to a quick transfer of the Jews to the camps....

Medical Experiments Letter from SS-Standartenf�hrer Sievers to SS-Obersturmbannf�hrer Dr. Brandt, November 2 1942. Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Vol. XX, p. 520: Dear Comarade Brandt, As you know, the Reichsf�hrer-SS has directed that SS-Hauptsturmf�hrer Prof. Dr. Hirt be supplied with everything needed for his research work. For certain anthropological researches - I already reported to the Reichsf�hrer-SS on them - 150 skeletons of prisoners, or rather Jews, are required, which are to be supplied by the KL Auschwitz. Letter from Graum to Reichsf�hrer-SS Himmler, June 1 1943. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1946, Supp. A, p. 1273: Dear Reichsf�hrer, The f�hrer's Commissioner-General, SS Brigadef�hrer Professor Dr. Brandt, called me with the request that I should assist him by placing prisoners at his disposal for research work into the cause of contagious jaundice (Hepatitis epidemica) which he was furthering considerably. The work has been carried out up to now by a medical captain, Dr. Dohmen, within the framework of the research place of the army medical inspectorate, with the participation of the Robert Koch institute. It has up to now led to the result, in agreement with the result of other German research workers, that contagious jaundice is not carried by bacteria but by a virus. In order to increase our knowledge, which is based up to now only on vaccination experiments from men to animals, the reverse way is now necessary, namely the vaccination of the cultivated virus germ into humans. One must reckon on cases of death.

Letter to SS-Obergruppenf�hrer Pohl, 19 May 1944. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1946, Supp. A, p. 1270-1271: Dear Obergruppenf�hrer, Following our application of 30.9.43, you gave me your authorization on the 25.10.43 for the carrying out of experiments with a view to producing a new kind of spotted fever serum and transferred 100 suitable prisoners to Natzweiler for this purpose. It has been possible to carry out the experiments very satisfactorily so far with the help of the chief of Department D III, SS Standartenf�hrer Dr. Dolling commissioned by you. Letter from SS-Sturmbannf�hrer Brandt to SS-Obersturmbannf�hrer Sievers, 21 March 1942.BR> Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1949-1953, Vol. I, p. 144: Reference is made to the subatmospheric pressure experiments which are being carried out on concentration camp inmates in the Dachau camp by the air force. The Reich Leader-SS has approved the experiments under the conditions that SS-Untersturmf�hrer Dr. Rascher who is an Obersturmf�hrer in the air-force, will take part in them. Letter from SS-Untersturmf�hrer Rascher to Reichsf�hrer-SS Himmler, 5 April 1942. Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1949-1953, Vol. I, p. 144-147: Highly esteemed Reich Leader: Enclosed is an interim report on the low-pressure experiments so far conducted in the concentration camp of Dachau... Only continuous experiments at altitudes higher than 10.5 Km resulted in death. These experiments showed that breathing stopped after about 30 minutes, while in two cases the electrocardiographically charted action of the heart continued for another 20 minutes. The third experiment of this type took such an extraordinary course that I called an SS physician of the camp as a witness, since I had worked on these experiments all by myself. It was a continuous experiment without oxygen at a height of 12 Km. conducted on a 37-year old Jew in good general condition. Breathing continued up to 30 minutes. After 4 minutes the experimental subject began to perspire and to wiggle his head, after 5 minutes cramps occurred, between 6 and 10 minutes breathing increased in speed and the experimental subject became unconscious; from 11 to 30 minutes breathing slowed down to three breaths per minute, finally stopping altogether. Severest cyanosis developed in between and foam appeared at the mouth...

Autopsy report ~~~~~~~~~~~~

One hour later after breathing had stopped, the spinal marrow was completely severed and the brain was removed. Thereupon the action of the auricle stopped for 40 seconds. In then renewed its action, coming to a complete standstill 8 minutes later. A heavy subarchnoid oedema was found in the brain. In the veins and arteries of the brain a considerable quantity of air was discovered.

Letter from SS-Untersturmf�hrer Rascher to Reichsf�hrer-SS Himmler, 11 May 1942, Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1949-1953, Vol. I, p. 152-155: Highly esteemed Reich Leader, Enclosed I am forwarding a short summary on the principle experiments conducted up to date.... For the following experiments Jewish professional criminals who had committed race pollution were used. The question of the formation of embolism was investigated in 10 cases. Some of the experimental subjects died during a continued high-altitude experiment; for instance, after one-half hour at the height of 12 Km. After the skull had been opened under water an ample amount of air embolism was found in the brain vessels and, in part, free air in the brain ventricles. To find out whether the severe psychic and physical effects, as mentioned under No. 3, are due to the formation of embolism, the following was done: After relative recuperation from such a parachute descending test had taken place, however, before regaining consciousness, some experimental subjects were kept under water until they died. When the skull and the cavities of the breast and of the abdomen had been opened under water, an enormous amount of air embolism was found in the vessels of the brain, the coronary vessels, and vessels of the liver and the intestines, etc. It was also proved by experiments that air embolism occurs in practically all vessels even while pure oxygen is being inhaled. One experimental subject was made to breathe pure oxygen for 2.5 hours before the experiment started. After 6 minutes at a height of 20 Km, he died and at dissection also showed ample air embolism, as was the case in all other experiments. Report by SS-Untersturmf�hrer Rascher about intense cooling experiments in Dachau concentration camps, 10 September 1942. Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1949-1953, Vol. I, p. 220: The experimental subjects were placed in the water, dressed in complete flying uniform, winter or summer combination, and with an aviator's helmet. A life jacket made out of rubber kapok was to prevent submerging. The experiments were carried out at water temperatures varying from from 2.5 to 12 Centigrade. In one experimental series, the occiput (brain stem) protruded above the water, while in another series of experiments the occiput (brain stem) and back of the head were submerged in water. Electrical measurements gave low temperature readings of 26.4 in the stomach and 26.5 in the rectum. Fatalities occurred only when the brain stem and the back of the head were also chilled. Autopsies of such fatal cases always revealed large amounts of free blood, up to one-half litter, in the cranial cavity. Report by Prof. Dr. Holzloehner, Dr. Rascher, and Dr. Finke, regarding cooling experiments, 10 October 1942 Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1949-1953, Vol. I, p. 226-243: If the experimental subject was placed in the water under narcosis, one observed a certain arousing effect. The subject began to groan and made some defensive movements. In a few cases a state of excitation developed. This was especially severe in the cooling of head and neck. But never was a complete cessation of the narcosis observed. The defensive movements ceased after about 5 minutes. There followed a progressive rigor, which developed especially strongly in the arm musculature; the arms were strongly

flexed and pressed to the body. The rigor increased with the continuation of the cooling, now and then interrupted by tonic-clonic twitchings. With still more marked sinking of the body temperature it suddenly ceased. These cases ended fatally, without any successful results from resuscitation efforts. Letter from SS-Untersturmf�hrer Dr. Rascher to SS-Sturmbannf�hrer Rudolph Brandt, October 3 1942. Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1949-1953, Vol. I, p. 221-222: The Reich leader SS wants to be informed of the state of the experiments. I can announce that the experiments have been concluded, with the exception of those on warming with body heat. The final report will be ready in about 5 days. Prof. Holzloehner, for reasons I cannot fathom, does not himself want to make the report to the Reich Leader Himmler and has asked me to attend to it. This report must be made before 20 October, because the great Luftwaffe [German air-force] conference on freezing takes place on Nuernberg on 25 October. The report on the results of our research must be made there, to assure that they be used in time for the troops. May I ask you to arrange for a decision from the Reich Leader regarding the final report to him, and the submission to him of the relevant material? Today I received your letter of 22 September 1942, in which the Reich Leader orders that the experiments on warming through body heat must absolutely be conducted. Because of incomplete address it was delayed. Today I asked Obersturmbannf�hrer Sievers to send a telegram to the camp commander immediately, to the effect that four Gypsy women be procured at once from another camp. Moreover, I asked SS Obersturmbannf�hrer Sievers to take steps to have the low pressure chamber ready for use.

Testimonies of Auschwitz SS-Men

All of the documents on this Web page were retrieved from the archives of Shamash: The Jewish Internet Consortium. The comments inside the square [ . . . ] brackets were written by Daniel Keren for the Shamash archives. From the statement of Hans Stark, registrar of new arrivals, Auschwitz. Quoted in "'The Good Old Days'" - E. Klee, W. Dressen, V. Riess, The Free Press, NY, 1988, p. 255: At another, later gassing--also in autumn 1941--Grabner* ordered me to pour Zyklon B into the opening because only one medical orderly had shown up. During a gassing Zyklon B had to be poured through both openings of the gas-chamber room at the same time. This gassing was also a transport of 200-250 Jews, once again men, women and children. As the Zyklon B--as already mentioned--was in granular form, it trickled down over the people as it was being poured in. They then started to cry out terribly for they now knew what was happening to them. I did not look through the opening because it had to be closed as soon as the Zyklon B had been poured in. After a few minutes there was silence. After some time had passed, it may have been ten to fifteen minutes, the gas chamber was opened. The dead lay higgledy-piggedly all over the place. It was a dreadful sight. * Maximillian Grabner, Head of Political Department, Auschwitz

Testimony of SS private Hoeblinger. Extracted from "Der Auschwitz Prozess", by Hermann Langbein, Vol. I, quoted in "Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers - J.C Pressac, the Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, NY, 1989, p. 174: I was detailed to the transport service and I drove the Sanka [abbreviation for Sanitatskraftwagon/medical truck] which was to carry the prisoners.... Then we drove to the gas chambers. The medical orderlies climbed a ladder, they had gas masks up there, and emptied the cans. I was able to observe the prisoners while they were undressing. It always proceeded quietly and without them suspecting anything. It happened very quickly. Testimony of SS private Boeck. Extracted from "Der Auschwitz Prozess", by Hermann Langbein, Vol. I, quoted in "Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers - J.C Pressac, the Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, NY, 1989, p. 181: Q: were you present at a gassing operation one day? A: Yes, it was one evening. I accompanied the driver Hoeblinger. A transport had arrived from Holland and the prisoners had to jump from the wagons. They were well-off Jews. There were women with Persian furs. They arrived by express train. The trucks were already there, with wooden steps before them, and the people climbed aboard. Then they all started off. In the place Birkenau once stood, there was only a long farmhouse (Bunker 2) and beside it four or five big huts. Inside, the people were standing on clothes which were building up on the floor. The block leader and the sergeant, carrying a cane, were there. Hoeblinger said to me 'lets go over there now'. There was a sign 'to disinfection'. He said 'you see, they are bringing children now'. They opened the door, threw the children in and closed the door. There was a terrible cry. A member of the SS climbed on the roof. The people went on crying for about ten minutes. Then the prisoners opened the doors. Everything was in disorder and contorted. Heat was given off. The bodies were loaded on a rough wagon and taken to a ditch. The next batch were already undressing in the huts. After that I didn't look at my wife for four weeks. Testimony of SS-Unterscharfuehrer Pery Broad, describing gassing in Krema I in Auschwitz. Quoted in "KL Auschwitz as Seen by the SS", p. 176: ... The "disinfectors" were at work. One of them was SS-Unterscharf�hrer Teuer, decorated with the Cross of War Merit. With a chisel and a hammer they opened a few innocuously looking tins which bore the inscription "Cyclon, to be used against vermin. Attention, poison! to be opened by trained personnel only!". The tins were filled to the brim with blue granules the size of peas. Immediately after opening the tins, their contents was thrown into the holes which were then quickly covered. Meanwhile Grabner gave a sign to the driver of a lorry, which had stopped close to the crematorium. The driver started the motor and its deafening noise was louder than the death cries of the hundreds of people inside, being gassed to death.

Testimonies of Belzec SS-Men Testimony of SS-Unterscharf�hrer Schluch, In the Belzec-Oberhauser trial. Quoted in "BELZEC, SOBIBOR, TREBLINKA - the Operation Reinhard Death Camps", Indiana University Press - Yitzhak Arad, 1987, p. 70-71: After leaving the undressing barracks, I had to show the Jews the way to the gas chambers. I believe that when I showed the Jews the way they were convinced that they were really going to the baths. After the Jews entered the gas chambers, the doors were closed by Hackenholt himself or by the Ukrainians subordinated to him. Then Hackenholt switched on the engine which supplied the gas... I could see that the lips and tips of the noses were a bluish color. Some of them had their closed, other's eyes rolled. The bodies were dragged out of the gas chambers and inspected by a dentist, who removed finger rings and gold teeth... Testimony of SS-Oberscharf�hrer Kurt Bolender, In the Belzec-Oberhauser trial> [Quoted in "BELZEC, SOBIBOR, TREBLINKA - the Operation Reinhard Death Camps", Indiana University Press - Yitzhak Arad, 1987, p. 76: Before the Jews undressed, Oberscharf�hrer Michel made a speech to them. On these occasions, he used to wear a white coat to give the impression that he was a physician. Michel announced to the Jews that they would be sent to work, but before this they would have to take baths and undergo disinfection so as to prevent the spread of diseases... After undressing, the Jews were taken through the so-called Schlauch. They were led to the gas chambers not by the Germans but by the Ukrainians...After the Jews entered the gas chambers, the Ukrainians closed the doors. The motor which supplied the gas was switched on by a Ukrainian named Emil and by a German driver called Erich Bauer from Berlin. After the gassing, the door were opened and the corpses removed.... SS-Untersturmf�hrer Oberhauser on the death camp at Belzec. Quoted in 'The Good Old Days' - E. Klee, W. Dressen, V. Riess, The Free Press, NY, 1988., p. 228-230: The camp of Belzec was situated north-east of the Tomaszo'w to Lemberg [Lvov] road beyond the village of Belzec. As the camp needed a siding for the arriving transports the camp was built about 400 meters from Belzec station. The camp itself was divided into two sections: section 1 and section 2. The siding led directly from Belzec station into section 2 of the camp, in which the undressing barracks as well as the gas installations and the burial field were situated... The gassing of Jews which took place in Belzec camp up till 1 August 1942 can be divided into two phases. During the first series of experiments there were two to three transports consisting of four to six freight cars each holding twenty to forty persons. On the average 150 Jews were delivered and killed per transport. At that stage the gassings were not yet part of a systematic eradication action but were carried out to test and study closely the camp's capacity and the technical problems involved in carrying out a gassing... At the beginning of May 1942 SS-Oberf�hrer Brack from the F�hrer's chancellery suddenly came to Lublin. With Globocnik he discussed resuming the extermination of the Jews. Globocnik said he had too few people to carry out this programme. Brack stated that the euthanasia programme had stopped and that the people from T4 would from now on be detailed to him on a regular basis so that the decisions taken at the Wannsee

conference could be implemented. As it appeared that it would not be possible for the Einsatzgruppen to clear individual areas of Jews and the people in the large ghettos of Warsaw and Lemberg by shooting them, the decision had been taken to set up two further extermination camps which would be ready by 1 August 1942, namely Treblinka and Sobibor. The large-scale extermination programme [Vernichtungsaktion] was due to start on 1 August 1942. About a week after Brack had come to Globocnik, Wirth and his staff returned to Belzec. The second series of experiments went on until 1 August 1942. During this period a total of five to six transports (as far as I am aware) consisting of five to seven freight cars containing thirty to forty people came to Belzec. The Jews from two of these transports were gassed in the small chamber, but then Wirth had the gas huts pulled down and built a massive new building with a much larger capacity. It was here that the Jews from the rest of the transport were gassed. During the first experiments and the first set of transports in the second series of experiments bottled gas was still used for gassing; however, for the last transports of the second series of experiments the Jews were killed with the exhaust gases from a tank or lorry engine which was operated by Hackenholt. Professor Wilhelm Pfannenstiel, Waffen-SS hygienist, on a gassing at Belzec. Quoted in 'The Good Old Days' - E. Klee, W. Dressen, V. Riess, The Free Press, NY, 1988., p. 238-244: When I am asked about executions of Jews I must confirm that on 19 August 1942 I witnessed an execution of Jews at Belzec extermination camp. I would like to describe how I came to be there. During my conversations with SS-Brigadefuehrer Globocnik, he told me about the large spinning-mills that he had set up in Belzec. He also mentioned that work at this camp would considerably outstrip German production. When I asked him where the spinning materials came from, he told me proudly that they had come from the Jews. At this point he also mentioned the extermination actions against the Jews, who for the most part were killed at the the camp at Belzec... During this first visit I was taken around by a certain Polizieihauptmann named Wirth, who also showed and explained to me the extermination installations at the camp. He told me that the following morning a new transport of about 500 Jews would be arriving at the camp who would be channeled through these extermination chambers. He asked me whether I would like to watch one of these extermination actions, to which, after a great deal of reflection, I consented. I planned to submit a report to the Reichsarzt-SS about the extermination actions. In order to write a report I had, however, first to observe an action with my own eyes. I remained in the camp, spent the night there and was witness to the following events the next morning. A goods train traveled directly into the camp of Belzec, the freight cars were opened and Jews whom I believe were from the area of Romania or Hungary were unloaded. The cars were crammed fairly full. There were men, women and children of every age. They were ordered to get into line and then had to proceed to an assembly area and take off their shoes... After the Jews had removed their shoes they were separated by sex. The women went together with the children into a hut. There their hair was shorn and they had to get undressed... The men went into another hut, where they received the same treatment. I saw what happened in the women's hut with my own eyes. After they had undressed, the

whole procedure went fairly quickly. They ran naked from the hut through a hedge into the actual extermination centre. The whole extermination centre looked just like a normal delousing institution. In front of the building there were pots of geraniums and a sign saying "Hackenholt Foundation", above which there was a star of David. The building was brightly and pleasantly painted so as not to suggest people would be killed here... Inside the buildings, the Jews had to enter chambers into which was channeled the exhaust of a [100(?)]-HP engine, located in the same building. In it there were six such extermination chambers. They were windowless, had electric lights and two doors. One door led outside so that the bodies could be removed. People were led from a corridor into the chambers through an ordinary air-tight door with bolts. There was a glass peep-hole, as I recall, next to the door in the wall. Through this window one could watch what was happening inside the room but only when it was not too full of people. After a short time the glass became steamed up. When the people had been locked in the room the motor was switched on and then I suppose the stop-valves or vents to the chambers opened. Whether they were stop-valves or vents I would not like to say. It is possible that the pipe led directly to the chambers. Once the engine was running, the light in the chambers was switched off. This was followed by palpable disquiet in the chamber. In my view it was only then that the people sensed something else was in store for them. It seemed to me that behind the thick walls and door they were praying and shouting for help.

Testimonies of Treblinka SS-Men Testimony of Treblinka's second commandant, Stangl. Quoted in "BELZEC, SOBIBOR, TREBLINKA - the Operation Reinhard Death Camps", Indiana University Press - Yitzhak Arad, 1987, p. 184: Michel [the sergeant-major of the camp] told me later that Wirth suddenly appeared, looked around on the gas chambers on which they were still working, and said: 'right, we'll try it out right now with those twenty-five working Jews. Get them up here'. They marched our twenty-five Jews up there and just pushed them in and gassed them. Michel said Wirth behaved like a lunatic, hitting at his own staff with his whip to drive them on... Willi Mentz testifies about his days in Treblinka. Quoted in 'The Good Old Days' - E. Klee, W. Dressen, V. Riess, The Free Press, NY, 1988., p. 245-247: When I came to Treblinka the camp commandant was a doctor named Dr. Eberl. He was very ambitious. It was said that he ordered more transports than could be "processed" in the camp. That meant that trains had to wait outside the camp because the occupants of the previous transport had not yet all been killed. At the time it was very hot and as a result of the long wait inside the transport trains in the intense heat many people died. At the time whole mountains of bodies lay on the platform. The Hauptsturmfuehrer Christian Wirth came to Treblinka and kicked up a terrific row. And then one day Dr. Eberl was no longer there... For about two months I worked in the upper section of the camp and then after Eberl had gone everything in the camp was reorganized. The two parts of the camp were separated by barbed wire fences. Pine branches were used so that you could not see through the fences. The same thing was done along the route from the "transfer" area to the gas chambers...

Finally, new and larger gas chambers were built. I think that there were now five or six larger gas chambers. I cannot say exactly how many people these large gas chambers held. If the small gas chambers could hold 80-100 people, the large ones could probably hold twice that number... Following the arrival of a transport, six to eight cars would be shunted into the camp, coming to a halt at the platform there. The commandant, his deputy Franz, Kuettner and Stadie or Maetzig would be here waiting as the transport came in. Further SS members were also present to supervise the unloading: for example, Genz and Belitz had to make absolutely sure that there was no one left in the car after the occupants had been ordered to get out. When the Jews had got off, Stadie or Maetzig would have a short word with them. They were told something to the effect that they were a resettlement transport, that they would be given a bath and that they would receive new clothes. They were also instructed to maintain quiet and disciplined. They would continue their journey the following day. Then the transports were taken off to the so-called "transfer" area. The women had to undress in huts and the men out in the open. The women were than led through a passageway, known as the "tube", to the gas chambers. On the way they had to pass a hut where they had to hand in their jewelery and valuables. Kurt Franz testifies on his days in Treblinka. Quoted in 'The Good Old Days' - E. Klee, W. Dressen, V. Riess, The Free Press, NY, 1988., p. 247-249: I cannot say how many Jews in total were gassed in Treblinka. On average each day a large train arrived. Sometimes there were even two. This however was not so common. In Treblinka I was commander of the Ukrainian guard unit as I had been in Belzec. In Treblinka as in Belzec the unit consisted of sixty to eighty men. The Ukrainians' main task was to man the guard posts around the camp perimeter. After the uprising in August 1943 I ran the camp more or less single-handedly for a month; however, during that period no gassings were undertaken. It was during that period that the original camp was demolished. Everything was leveled off off and lupins were planted... Testimony of SS Oberscharfuehrer Heinrich Matthes about Treblinka. Quoted in "BELZEC, SOBIBOR, TREBLINKA - the Operation Reinhard Death Camps", Indiana University Press - Yitzhak Arad, 1987, p. 121: During the entire time I was in Treblinka, I served in the upper camp. The upper camp was that part of Treblinka with the gas chambers, where the Jews were killed and their corpses laid in large pits and later burned. About fourteen Germans carried out services in the upper camp. There were two Ukrainians permanently in the upper camp. One of them was called Nikolai, the other was a short man, I don't remember his name... These two Ukrainians who lived in the upper camp served in the gas chambers. They also took care of the engine room when Fritz Schmidt was absent. Usually this Schmidt was in charge of the engine room. In my opinion, as a civilian he was either a mechanic or a driver... All together, six gas chambers were active. According to my estimate, about 300 people could enter each gas chamber. The people went into the gas chamber without resistance. Those who were at the end, the Ukrainian guards had to push inside. I personally saw how the Ukrainians pushed the people with their rifle butts...

The gas chambers were closed for about thirty minutes. Then Schmidt stopped the gassing, and the two Ukrainians who were in the engine room opened the gas chambers from the other side.

Life in the Warsaw Ghetto

Life in the Warsaw Ghetto, Emanuel Ringelblum quoted in Yad Vashem Documents on the Holocaust, pp 228-229: Smuggling began at the very moment that the Jewish area of residence was established; its inhabitants were forced to live on 180 grams of bread a day, 220 grams of sugar a month, 1 kg. of jam and 1 kg. of honey, etc. It was calculated that the officially supplied rations did not cover even 10 percent of the normal requirements. If one had wanted really to restrict oneself to the official rations then the entire population of the ghetto would have had to die of hunger in a very short time.... The German authorities did everything to seal off the ghetto hermetically and not to allow in a single gram of food. A wall was put up around the ghetto on all sides that did not leave a single millimeter of open space.... They fixed barbed wire and broken glass to the top of the wall. When that failed to help, the Judenrat was ordered to make the wall higher, at the expense of the Jews, of course.... Several kinds of guards were appointed for the walls and the passages through them; the categories of guards were constantly being changed and their numbers increased. The walls were guarded by the gendarmerie together with the Polish police; at the ghetto wall there were gendarmerie post, Polish police and Jewish police...The victims of the smuggling were mainly Jews, but they were not lacking either among the Aryans (Poles). Auerswald, too, employed sharply repressive measures to stop the smuggling. Several times smugglers were shot at the central lock-up on Gesiowka Street. Once there was a veritable slaughter (100 persons were shot near Warsaw). Among the Jewish victims of the smuggling there were tens of Jewish children between 5 and 6 years old, whom the German killers shot in great numbers near the passages and at the walls.... And despite that, without paying attention to the victims, the smuggling never stopped for a moment. When the street was still slippery with the blood that had been spilled, other smugglers already set out, as soon as the "candles" had signaled that the way was clear, to carry on with the work....

Testimony of Crematorium Engineers Testimony of SS-Unterscharf�hrer Herman Lambert about Sobibor. Quoted in "BELZEC, SOBIBOR, TREBLINKA - the Operation Reinhard Death Camps", Indiana University Press - Yitzhak Arad, 1987, p. 123: As I mentioned at the beginning, I was in the extermination camp of the Jews for about two to three weeks. It was sometime in autumn 1942, but I don't remember exactly when. At that time I was assigned by Wirth to enlarge the gassing structure according to the model of Treblinka. I went to Sobibor together with Lorenz Hackenholt, who was at that time in Treblinka... We reported to the camp commander, Reichsleitner. He gave us exact directive for the construction of the gassing installations. The camp was already in operation, and there was a gassing installation. Probably the old installation was not big enough, and

reconstruction was necessary. Kurt Prufer, senior engineer of Topf and Sohne, testifying in Erfurt, Germany, March 5, 1946. Quoted from the interrogation transcripts by Prof. Gerald Fleming from the University of Surrey, in an NYT article, July 18 1993: Q. Who apart from you participated in the construction of the furnaces? A. From 1941-2, I constructed the furnaces. The technical drawings were done by Mr. Keller. The ventilation systems of the "Kremas" [crematoriums] were constructed by senior engineer Karl Schultze. Q. How often and with what aim did you visit Auschwitz? A. Five times. The first time at the beginning of 1943, to receive orders of the SS Command where the Kremas were to be built. The second time in spring 1943 to inspect the building site. The third time was in autumn 1943 to inspect a fault in the construction of a Krema chimney. The forth time at the beginning of 1944, to inspect the repaired chimney. the fifth time in September-October 1944, when I visited Auschwitz with the intended relocation [from Auschwitz] of the crematoriums, since the front was getting nearer. The crematoriums were not relocated, because there were not enough workers. Q. Were you the sole Topf engineer in Auschwitz in spring 1943? A. No, [senior engineer Karl] Schultze was with me in Auschwitz at the time. I saw personally about 60 corpses of women and men of different ages, which were being prepared for incineration. That was at 10 in the morning. I witnessed the incineration of six corpses and came to the conclusion that the furnaces were working well. Q. Did you see a gas chamber next to the crematoriums? A. Yes, I did see one next to the crematorium. Between the gas chamber and the crematorium there was a connecting structure. Q. Did you know that in the gas chamber and in the crematoriums there took place the liquidation of innocent human beings? A. I have known since spring 1943 that innocent human beings were being liquidated in Auschwitz gas chambers and that their corpses were subsequently incinerated in the crematoriums. Q. Who is the designer of the ventilation systems for the gas chambers? A. Schultze was the designer of the ventilation systems in the gas chambers; and he installed them. Q. Why was the brick lining of the muffles so quickly damaged? A. The bricks were damaged after six months because the strain on the furnaces was colossal. Engineer Fritz Sander testifying on March 7 1946. Quoted from the interrogation transcripts by Prof. Gerald Fleming from the University of Surrey, in an NYT article, July 18 1993: I decided to design and build a crematorium with a higher capacity. I completed this project of a new crematorium in November 1942--a crematorium for mass incineration, and I submitted this project to a State Patent Commission in Berlin. This "Krema" was to be built on the conveyor belt principle. That is to say, the corpses must be brought to the incineration furnaces without interruption. When the corpses are pushed into the furnaces, they fall onto a grate, and then slide into the furnace and are incinerated. The corpses serve at the same time as fuel for heating of the furnaces. This

patent could not yet be approved by the Main Patent Office in Berlin, because of its classification (as a state secret). Q. Although you knew about the mass liquidation of innocent human beings in crematoriums, you devoted yourself to designing and creating higher capacity incineration furnaces for crematoriums - and on your own initiative. A. I was a German engineer and key member of the Topf works and I saw it as my duty to apply my specialist knowledge in this way to help Germany win the war, just as an aircraft construction engineer builds airplanes in wartime, which are also connected with the destruction of human beings. Testimony of Engineer Karl Schultze. Quoted from the interrogation transcripts by Prof. Gerald Fleming from the University of Surrey, in an NYT article, July 18 1993: Q. What was your personal part in these "Krema" building operation and what was Prufer's part? A. Prufer was an expert. he designed and constructed these crematoriums and led the building operations in the concentration camps. I was responsible for the ventilation systems and for its air injection into the muffles. In specific instances, I led the installation operations personally. I personally led the installation work in Auschwitz crematoriums and gas chambers. For this purpose, I traveled to Auschwitz three times in 1943. . . . I did not know that in the crematoriums in Auschwitz-Birkenau innocent human beings were being liquidated. I thought criminals were being killed there who had partly been sentenced to death because of the crimes they had committed against the German army in Poland and other occupied territories. I am a German and supported and am supporting the Government in Germany and the laws of our Government. Whoever opposes our laws is an enemy of the State, because our laws establish him a such. I did not act on personal initiative but as directed by Ludwig Topf. I was afraid of losing my position and of possible arrest. Q. Your views do not really differ from the views of a Nazi. A. No, I was not a member of the NSDAP [National Socialist German Workers Party]. I only respected and acted according to the laws of my country.

Heinrich Himmler From the speech of Reichsf�hrer-SS Himmler, speaking to SS Major-Generals, Poznan, October 4 1943. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1946, Vol. IV, p. 559: One basic principal must be the absolute rule for the SS man: we must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and to nobody else. What happens to a Russian, to a Czech, does not interest me in the slightest. What the nations can offer in good blood of our type, we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture; otherwise, it is of no interest to me. Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interest me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished. We shall never be rough and heartless when it is not necessary, that is clear. We Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these human animals. But it is a crime against our own blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and

grandsons to have a more difficult time with them. When someone comes to me and says, "I cannot dig the anti-tank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it will kill them", then I would have to say, "you are a murderer of your own blood because if the anti-tank ditch is not dug, German soldiers will die, and they are the sons of German mothers. They are our own blood". Letter from Reichsf�hrer-SS Himmler to the Higher SS and Police Chief in the Ukraine, Kiev, September 7 1943. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1946, Supp. A, p. 1270: Dear Pruetzmann, Infantry general staff has special orders with regard to the Donetz area. Get in touch with him immediately. I order you to cooperate as much as you can. The aim to be achieved is that when areas in the Ukraine are evacuated, not a human being, not a single head of cattle, not a hundredweight of cereals and not a railway line remain behind; that not a house remain standing, not a mine is available which is not destroyed for years to come, that there is not a well which is not poisoned. The enemy must really find completely burned and destroyed land. Discuss these things with Stampf straight away and do your absolute best. Extract from Himmler's address to party comrades, September 7 1940. Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals - Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., Vol. IV, p. 1140: If any Pole has any sexual dealing with a German woman, and by this I mean sexual intercourse, then the man will be hanged right in front of his camp. Then the others will not do it. Besides, provisions will be made that a sufficient number of Polish women and girls will come along as well so that a necessity of this kind is out of the question. The women will be brought before the courts without mercy, and where the facts are not sufficiently proved--such borderline cases always happen--they will be sent to a concentration camp. This we must do, unless these one million Poles and those hundreds of thousands of workers of alien blood are to inflict untold damage on the German blood. Philosophizing is of no avail in this case. It would be better if we did not have them at all-- we all know that--but we need them.

The Persecution of the Jews (Part 11 of 14) Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression Volume I Chapter XII It appears that a certain amount of discord existed between officials of the German government as to the proper means and methods to be used in connection with the extermination program. A secret report dated 18 June 1943, addressed to Rosenberg, complained that five thousand Jews killed by the police and SS might have been used for forced labor, and chided them for failing to bury the bodies of those liquidated: "The fact that Jews receive special treatment requires no further discussion. However, it appears hardly believable that this is done in the way described in the report of the General Commissioner of 1 June 1943. What is Katyn against that? Imagine only that these occurrences would become known to the other side and exploited by them! Most likely such propaganda would have no effect only because people who hear and read

about it simply would not be ready to believe it." "To lock men, women, and children into barns and to set fire to them does not appear to be a suitable method of combatting bands, even if it is desired to exterminate the population. This method is not worthy of the German cause and hurts our reputation severely." (R-135) Gunther, the prison warden at Minsk, in a letter dated 31 May [Page 1002] 1943, addressed to the General Commissioner for White Ruthenia, was critical by implication. This letter, entitled, "Action Against Jews," reads: "On 13 April 1943 the former German dentist Ernst Israel Tichauer and his wife, Elisa Sara Tichauer, nee Rosenthal, were committed to the court prison by the Security Service. Since that time all German and Russian Jews who were turned over to us had their golden bridgework, crowns, and fillings pulled or broken out. This happens always one to two hours before the respective action. "Since 13 April 1943, 516 German and Russian Jews have been finished off. On the basis of a definite investigation gold was taken only in two actions -- on 14 April 1943 from 172, and on 27 April 1943 from 164 Jews. About fifty percent of the Jews had gold teeth, bridgework, or fillings. Hauptscharfuehrer Rube of the Security Service was always personally present and he took the gold along, too. "Before 13 April 1943 this was not done. (signed) Gunther, Prison Warden." (R-15) The foregoing letter was forwarded to Rosenberg, as Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, on June 1943. The covering letter to Rosenberg reads: "The enclosed official report from the warden of the prison in Minsk is submitted to the Reich Minister and the Reich Commissar for Information. "(signed) The General Commissar in Minsk." (R-15) A further complaint is contained in a secret letter addressed to General of Infantry, Thomas, Chief of the International Armament Department, dated 2 December 1941 (3257-PS). The writer of this letter apprehensively stated his reason for not forwarding the communication through official channels: "For the personal information of the Chief of the Industrial Armament Department I am forwarding a total account of the present situation in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine in which the difficulties and tensions encountered so far and the problems which give rise to serious anxiety are stated with unmistakable clarity. "Intentionally I have desisted from submitting such a report through official channels or to make it known to other departments interested in it because I do not expect any results that way, but to the contrary am apprehensive that the difficulties and tensions and also the divergent opinions might only be increased due to the peculiarity of the situation." ******* [Page 1003] "Jewish problem: "Regulation of the Jewish question in the Ukraine was a difficult problem because the Jews constituted a large part of the urban population. We therefore have to deal -- just as in the General Government -- with a mass problem of policy concerning the population. Many cities had a percentage of Jews exceeding fifty percent. Only the rich Jews had fled from the German troops. The majority of Jews remained under German administration. The latter found the problem more complicated through the fact that these Jews represented almost the entire trade and even a part of the manpower in small and medium industries besides the business which had in part become superfluous as a direct or

indirect result of the war. The elimination therefore necessarily had far-reaching economic consequences and even direct consequences for the armament industry (production for supplying the troops)." "The attitude of the Jewish population was anxious - obliging from the beginning. They tried to avoid everything that might displease the German administration. That they hated the German administration and army inwardly goes without saying and cannot be surprising. However, there is no proof that Jewry as a whole or even to a greater part was implicated in acts of sabotage. Surely there were some terrorists or saboteurs among them just as among the Ukrainians. But it cannot be said that the Jews as such represented a danger to the German armed forces. The output produced by Jews who, of course, were prompted by nothing but the feeling of fear, was satisfactory to the troops and the German administration.

Letter from Hitler to Karl Brandt

1 September 1939

Berlin, 1 September 1939 Reichsleiter Bouhler and Dr. Brandt, M. D., are charged with the responsibility of enlarging the authority of certain physicians to be designated by name in such a manner that persons who, according to human judgment, are incurable can, upon a most careful diagnosis of their condition of sickness, be accorded a mercy death.

[Signed] A. HITLER

[Handwritten note] Given to me by Bouhler on 27 August 1940 [Signed] DR. GUERTNER

Letter from Bishop of Limburg to the Reich Minister of Justice

The Bishop of Limburg

To the Reich Minister of Justice Berlin

Limburg/fiahm, 13August 1941

13 August 1941

Regarding the report submitted on July 16 (sub. ZV,pp.6-7) by the Chairman of the Fulda Bishops' Conference, Cardinal Dr. Bertram, I consider it my duty to present the following as a concrete illustration of destruction of so-called "useless life".

About 8 kilometers from Limburg in the little town of Hadamar, on a hill overlooking the town, there is an institution which had formerly served various purposes and of late had been used as a nursing home. This institution was renovated and furnished as a place in which, by consensus of opinion, the above-mentioned euthanasia has been systematically

practiced for months -- approximately since February 1941. The fact is, of course, known beyond the administrative district of Wiesbaden because death certificates from the Hadamar-Moenchberg Registry are sent to the home communities. (Moenchberg is the name of this institution because it was a *Franciscan monastery prior to its secularization in 1803.)

Several times a week busses arrive in Hadamar with a considerable number of such victims. School children of the vicinity know this vehicle and say: "There comes the murder-box again." After the arrival of the vehicle, the citizens of Hadamar watch the smoke rise out of the chimney and are tortured with the ever-present thought of depending on the direction of the wind.

The effect of the principles at work here are that children call each other names and say, "You're crazy; you'll be sent to the baking oven in Hadamar." Those who do not want to marry, or find no opportunity, say, "Marry, never! Bring children into the world so they can be put into the bottling machine!" You hear old folks say, "Don't send me to a state hospital! When the feeble-minded have been finished off, the next useless eaters whose turn will come are the old people."

All God-fearing men consider this destruction of helpless beings a crass injustice. And if anybody says that Germany cannot win the war, if there is yet a just God, these expressions are not the result of a lack of love for the Fatherland but of a deep concern for our people. The population cannot grasp the fact that systematic actions are carried out which in accordance with paragraph 211 of the German Penal Code are punishable with death. High authority as a moral concept has suffered a severe shock as a result of these happenings. The official notice that N. N. died of a contagious disease and, therefore, his body had to be burned, no longer finds credence, and official notices of this kind which are no longer believed have further undermined the ethical value of the concept of authority.

Officials of the Secret State Police, it is said, are trying to suppress discussion of the Hadamar occurrences by means of severe threats. In the interest of public peace, this may be well intended. But the knowledge, and the conviction, and the indignation of the population, cannot be changed by it; the conviction will be increased with the bitter realization that discussion is prohibited by threats, but that the actions themselves are not prosecuted under penal law.

I beg you most humbly, Herr Reich Minister, in the sense of the report of the Episcopate of 16 July of this year, to prevent further transgressions of the Fifth Commandment of God.

[Signed] DR.HTLFBICH

I am submitting copies of this letter to the Reich Minister of the Interior and to the Reich Minister for Church Affairs. [Initialed by the above]

Survivor Stories – Below are links to some of the survivors telling their oral history stories. I recommend you look into these so you have a first hand account and are able to recount some of this at the Harkness Table. http://www.tellingstories.org/holocaust/ http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/survivor/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeixVrnS7r8 http://archive.adl.org/children_holocaust/children_main1.html