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Final Solution
Wannsee Conference
• January 20, 1942 • 15 high ranking Nazi officials meet in Berlin to
coordinate the implementation of the “Final Solution” to the Jewish Question
• Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann were present
Wannsee Conference
• The Final Solution was the code name for the systematic, deliberate, and physical annihilation of European Jews
• The conference was held to:1. Inform and secure support from agencies relevant for
the implementation2. Inform participants that Hitler had appointed Heydrich
to coordinate the operation• The decision had already been made to annihilate
the Jews, the purpose was only to discuss implementation
Leaders at Wannsee Conference
Heydrich Eichmann
Wannsee Conference
• Heydrich indicated 11 million Jews would fall under the Final Solution– Including Jews in United Kingdom and neutral ares
(Switzerland, Ireland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and European Turkey)
– They were to be separated by gender, then the able bodied Jews were to be used to build roads• A large number of those would be lost through “natural
reduction”
Chelmno Gassing Vans
• Lodz ghetto experiment (December 1941)
• People were told they had to shower before moving to the next camp and forced to take their clothes off and get into a van
• The exhaust of the van was re-routed to go inside the van
Chelmno Gassing Vans
• Once the driver started the engine, the people inside were suffocated immediately
• The van would bring the bodies to a camp in the woods and unload the bodies– They would be unloaded and burned in mass
graves
• The driver would go back to the castle, clean the van, and reload with more victims
Operation Reinhard• Plan to murder all Jews in
Generalgouvernement (German occupied Poland that wasn’t directly annexed)
• The (RSHA) Reich Security Main Office was responsible for coordinated the deportation to killing centers
Operation Reinhard
• Odilo Globocnik directed operations between 1941 and 1943
• His assistant was Christian Wirth
• Three killing centers were operational as a part of Operation Reinhard– Belzec, Sobibor, and
Treblinka
Operation Reinhard
• There were four main aims of the operation1. Resettle (i.e. kill) Polish Jews2. Exploit skilled labor before killing them3. Secure the personal property of Jews4. Identify and secure alleged hidden and
immovable assets such as factories, apartments, and land
Operation Reinhard
• They tested the gasses on Soviet and Polish POWs
• They were said to have threatened their own men with gassing to keep them ‘in line’
• The majority of the victims of Operation Reinhard were from Polish ghettos
• Several forced labor camps were also a part of Operation Reinhard
Operation Harvest
• Operation Harvest was to get rid of all the Jews left in Lublin District of the Generalgouvernement
• It was in response to resistance against Nazis in Treblinka and Sobibor as well as uprisings in Warsaw and others
• Gas chambers don’t work at Majdanek, so they shoot them; music was played through the loudspeakers to cover the sound of the killings
Josef Mengele
• SS physician• Assistant to Dr. Otmar
von Verhuer-a leading researcher in twins studies
• 1937 joined the Nazi party
• 1943 transferred to be a physician at Auschwitz
Josef Mengele
• The medical staff performed selections at the camps
• Mengele is most known as “the angel of death” or sometimes the “white angel” for his cruel demeanor– Would appear many times when he was off duty to
ensure that potential subjects would not be missed– He would appear sober at the ramp, which was
unusual for those in charge of selection
Josef Mengele
• Previously performed legitimate experiments with twins, now with the opportunity to maim or kill subjects, he performed a broad range of agonizing and often lethal experiments with twins-mostly children
• Had a fascination with heterochromia: a condition in which the irises of an individual were two different colors– He collected the eyes of his victims for research
materials
Josef Mengele
• Many of his test subjects died as a result of his experimentation or were murdered to facilitate post-mortem exams
CONCENTRATION
• 100 of these in Nazi-occupied Europe• prisoners used for forced labor• prisoners usually lasted less than 1/2 year• communists, homosexuals, criminals, social-
democrats, artists.• First camp was opened in 1933, right after
Nazis came to power
RAVENSBRUCK• Camp for women only• run by German women
who were criminals• prisoners worked on
remodeling furs• 50,000 killed• 14,000 rescued by
Swedish diplomatCount Folke Bernadette negotiating for prisoners
EXTERMINATION• Started out as ordinary concentration camps• later modified with gassing installations for
use on humans, now “DEATH CAMPS”• two sub-groups:• 1) Majdanek and Auschwitz, Birkenau• 2) Operation Reinhard camps and Chelmno• “NAZIS GET CLOSE TO CREATING HELL ON
EARTH!!!”
MAJDANEK• Established in 1941 as a
POW camp• started its part in the
Final Solution in 1942• Jews, Poles and Soviet
POW’s sent here• had two gas chambers
to exterminate
AUSCHWITZ• Started operations in January 1940 (Poland)• Himmler chose Auschwitz as the place for the
Final Solution• had 4 gas chambers/crematories by 1943 • mass killings with Zyklon B gas• commanded by Rudolph Hoess• recorded 12,000 kills in one day
THE SS AT AUSCHWITZ
ORDERED TO TAKE ALL POSSESSIONS FROM JEWS
TEETH WITH GOLD
PILES OF GLASSES
ZYKLON-BGAS USED TO KILL VERMIN. IT WAS INEXPENSIVE
COMPARED TO GAS. DROPPED FROM CEILINGS
MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS
• Sterilization of men and women• endurance of pain to high and low
temperatures and pressure• experiments on twins to increase number of
multiple births to Aryan women• injections of phenol to kill patients• Dr. Mengele attempted to sew children
together to make Siamese twins
OPERATION REINHARD
• Largest single massacre of Holocaust• March 1942-November 1943• named after Reinhard Heydrich• carried out at three camps, run by the SS• every Jew that arrived at one of the camps
would be dead in 2 hours.• Total of 1,700,000 Jews killed
BELZEC• MARCH 1942• JEWS FROM LUBIN
GHETTO- POLAND• OPERATIONS STOP
DECEMBER 1942• CAMP WAS
DISMANTLED AND PLOWED OVER AND PLANTED ON
SOBIBOR• MAY 1942• 3 GAS CHAMBERS• ESCAPE OF 300 JEWS
AND SOVIET POW’S• ONLY 50 LIVE• GAS CHAMBERS SHUT
DOWN AFTER ESCAPE
TREBLINKA• JEWS FROM WARSAW
GHETTO• 10 GAS CHAMBERS• LOCATED EAST OF
WARSAW• BODIES WERE BURNED
IN OPEN PITS• AUGUST 1943
Camp Totals
0
200,000
400,000
600,000
800,000
1,000,000
1,200,000
1,400,000
1,600,000
Auschwitz Belzec Chelmo
killed in camp
STATISTICS BY COUNTRY
0
500,000
1,000,000
1,500,000
2,000,000
2,500,000
3,000,000
3,500,000
POLAND USSR HUNGARY GERMANY
BEFOREAFTER
Jewish population before, Jewish population after Holocaust
