Final Solution.docx

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Final Solution

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This article is about Nazi Germany's policy to annihilate the Jewish people. For other uses, seeFinal Solution (disambiguation).

In a February 26, 1942, letter to German diplomatMartin Luther,Reinhard Heydrichfollows up

on theWannsee Conferenceby asking Luther for administrative assistance in the implementation

of the "Endlsung der Judenfrage" (Final Solution to the Jewish Question).English translation

The Final Solution(German:Die Endlsung) wasNazi Germany's plan duringWorld War IIto annihilate theJewish peoplein Nazi occupied Europe which resulted in the most deadly phase

ofthe Holocaust, the destruction of Jewish communities in continental Europe. According to

historians at theUnited States Holocaust Memorial Museum, The Nazis frequently usedeuphemistic language to disguise the true nature of their crimes. They used the term 'Final

Solution' to refer to their plan to annihilate the Jewish people.

Heinrich Himmlerwas the chief architect of the plan, and the German Nazi leaderAdolf Hitler

termed it "the final solution of the Jewish question" (German:die Endlsung der

Judenfrage).[1]

Massacres of about one million Jews occurred before the plans of the Final Solution were fully

implemented in 1942, but it was only with the decision to eradicate the entire Jewish populationthat theextermination campswere built and industrialized mass slaughter of Jews began in

earnest. This decision to systematically kill the Jews of political Europe (inclusive of the Jews in

Vichy North Africa) was made either by the time of or at theWannsee Conference, which tookplace inBerlin, in the Wannsee Villa on January 20, 1942. It occurred very shortly after theBabi
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Yarmassacre was carried out and the conference was chaired byReinhard Heydrich. He was

acting under the authority given to him byReichsmarschallGringin a letter dated July 31,

1941. Gring instructed Heydrich to devise "...the solution of the Jewish problem..." During theconference, there was a discussion by the group of Nazi officials as how best to handle the "Final

Solution of theJewish Question". A surviving copy of the minutes of this meeting[2]

was found

by theAlliesin 1947, too late to serve as evidence during the firstNuremberg Trials.

By the summer of 1942,OperationReinhardbegan the systematic extermination of the Jews,

although hundreds of thousands had already been killed by death squads and in masspogroms.Heinrich Himmler'sspeechat thePosen Conferenceof October 6, 1943, for the first time, clearly

elucidated to all assembled leaders of the Reich that the "Final Solution" meant that "all Jews

would be killed".[3]

Contents

[show]

Historiographic debate about the decision[edit]

Part ofa serieson

The Holocaust

Responsibility[show]

Nazi Germany

People

Major perpetrators Adolf Hitler

Heinrich Himmler Reinhard Heydrich Adolf Eichmann
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Odilo Globocnik Theodor Eicke Richard Glcks

Ernst Kaltenbrunner Rudolf Hss

Christian Wirth Joseph Goebbels

Organizations

Nazi Party Gestapo

Schutzstaffel(SS) Sturmabteilung(SA)

Verfgungstruppe (VT) Wehrmacht

Collaborators during World War II

Nazi ideologues

Early policies[show]

Victims[show]

Ghettos[show]

Atrocities[show]

Pogroms

Kristallnacht Bucharest Dorohoi

Iai
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Jedwabne Kaunas

Lviv (Lvov) Tykocin Vel' d'Hiv Wsosz

Einsatzgruppen

Babi Yar Bydgoszcz

Czstochowa Kamianets-Podilskyi

Ninth Fort Odessa Pianica Ponary

Rumbula Erntefest

" F inal Solution"

Wannsee Conference Operation "Reinhard"

Holocaust trains Extermination camps

End of World War I I

Wola massacre Death marches

Camps[show]

Nazi extermination camps Auschwitz-Birkenau

Beec Chemno Jasenovac Majdanek
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Maly Trostenets Sobibor Treblinka

Nazi concentr ation camps

Bergen-Belsen Bogdanovka Buchenwald

Dachau Gonars (Italy) Gross-Rosen

Herzogenbusch Janowska Kaiserwald

Mauthausen-Gusen Neuengamme

Rab Ravensbrck

Sachsenhausen Sajmite Salaspils Stutthof

Theresienstadt Uckermark Warsaw

Transit and coll ection camps

Belgium

Breendonk Mechelen

France

Gurs Drancy

Italy
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BolzanoNetherlands

Amersfoort Westerbork

Divisions

SS-Totenkopfverbnde Concentration Camps Inspectorate

Politische Abteilung Sanittswesen

Extermination methods

Inmate identification Gas van

Gas chamber Extermination through labor

Human medical experimentationInmate disposal of victims

(Sonderkommando)

Resistance[show]

Jewish partisans Bricha

Ghetto upr isings

Warsaw Biaystok achwa

Czstochowa

Alliedresponse[show]
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Aftermath[show]

Lists[show]

Resources[show]

Remembrance[show]

v t e

Historians disagree as to exactly when Hitler personally (1) decided that the European Jewsshould be killed and (2) gave orders to that effect. The issue is commonly described as

functionalism versus intentionalism: was the Holocaust gradually improvised, or was it the

execution of a plan laid in advance?

Prior to the beginning of World War II, during a speech given on January 30, 1939 (the sixth

anniversary of his accession to power), Hitler foretold the coming Holocaust of the Jews ofEurope when he said:

Today I will once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europeshould succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the

Bolshevizationof the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race

in Europe![4][5][6]

Christian Gerlachhas argued for a different timeframe, suggesting the decision was made by

Hitler on December 12, 1941, when he addressed a meeting of theNazi Party(the Reichsleiter)and of regional party leaders (the Gauleiter). In his diary entry of December 13, 1941, the day

after Hitlers private speech,Joseph Goebbelswrote:

Regarding the Jewish Question, theFhreris determined to clear the table. He warned the Jews

that if they were to cause another world war, it would lead to their own destruction. Those were

not empty words. Now the world war has come. The destruction of the Jews must be its

necessary consequence. We cannot be sentimental about it. It is not for us to feel sympathy for
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the Jews. We should have sympathy rather with our own German people. If the German people

have to sacrifice 160,000 victims in yet another campaign in the east, then those responsible for

this bloody conflict will have to pay for it with their lives.[7]

Echoing his above statements along with the January 30, 1939 speech by Hitler, in an article

written in 1943 entitled "The War and the Jews," Goebbels said:

None of theFhrer's prophetic words has come so inevitably true as his prediction that if Jewry

succeeded in provoking a second world war, the result would be not the destruction of the Aryanrace, but rather the wiping out of the Jewish race. This process is of vast importance, and will

have unforeseeable consequences that will require time. But it can no longer be halted. It must

only be guided in the right direction.[8]

After this decision, plans were made to put the Final Solution into effect. For example, on

December 16, 1941, at a meeting of the officials of theGeneral Government,Hans Frankreferred to Hitler's speech as he described the coming annihilation of the Jews:

As for the Jews, well, I can tell you quite frankly that one way or another we have to put an endto them. TheFhreronce put it this way: if the combined forces of Judaism should again

succeed in unleashing a world war, that would mean the end of the Jews in Europe. ...I urge you:

Stand together with me ... on this idea at least: Save your sympathy for the German people alone.Don't waste it on anyone else in the world, ... I would therefore be guided by the basicexpectation that they are going to disappear. They have to be gotten rid of. At present I am

involved in discussions aimed at having them moved away to the east. In January there is going

to be an important meeting in Berlin to discuss this question. I am going to send State SecretaryDr. Buhler to this meeting. It is scheduled to take place in the offices of the RSHA in the

presence ofObergruppenfhrerHeydrich. Whatever its outcome, a great Jewish emigration will

commence. But what is going to happen to these Jews? Do you imagine there will be settlementvillages for them in the Ostland? In Berlin we were told: Why are you making all this trouble forus? There is nothing we can do with them here in the Ostland or in the Reich Commissariat.

Liquidate them yourselves! ... Here are 3.5 million Jews that we can't shoot, we can't poison. But

there are some things we can do, and one way or another these measures will successfully lead toa liquidation. They are related to the measures under discussion with the Reich.... Where and

how this will all take place will be a matter for offices that we will have to establish and operate

here. I will report to you on their operation at the appropriate time.[9]

JournalistRon Rosenbaum, in his bookExplaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His

Evil, found that the phrase "final solution" had been used much earlier. An investigative reportby theMnchener Post, asocialistnewspaper that was an early opponent of Hitler, found as

early as 1931Nazi PartyandSAdocuments using the phrase as part of a description of plans for

what became theNuremberg Lawsand a suggestion that "for the final solution of the Jewish

question it is proposed to use the Jews in Germany for slave labor or for cultivation of theGerman swamps administered by a special SS division."

[10]

By 1943 the wholesale extermination of European Jewry had begun as clearly outlined in two of

Himmler's speeches made to the NSDAP leadership at Posen on October 4, 1943:
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I am now referring to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. It's one

of those things that is easily said: 'The Jewish people are being exterminated', says every party

member, 'this is very obvious, it's in our program, elimination of the Jews, extermination, we're

doing it, hah, a small matter.' [...] But of all those who talk this way, none had observed it, nonehad endured it. Most of you here know what it means when 100 corpses lie next to each other,

when 500 lie there or when 1,000 are lined up. To have endured this and at the same time tohave remained a decent person - with exceptions due to human weaknesses - had made us tough.This is a page of glory never mentioned and never to be mentioned. [...] We have the moral right,

we had the duty to our people to do it, to kill this people who wanted to kill us.

[11]

And on October 6 1943:

I ask of you that that which I say to you in this circle be really only heard and not ever discussed.

We were faced with the question: what about the women and children? I decided to find a clear

solution to this problem too. I did not consider myself justified to exterminate the men - in otherwords, to kill them or have them killed and allow the avengers of our sons and grandsons in the

form of their children to grow up. The difficult decision had to be made to have this peopledisappear from the earth. For the organisation which had to execute this task, it was the most

difficult which we had ever had. [...] I felt obliged to you, as the most superior dignitary, as the

most superior dignitary of the party, this political order, this political instrument of the Fhrer,to also speak about this question quite openly and to say how it has been. The Jewish question in

the countries that we occupy will be solved by the end of this year. Only remainders of odd Jews

that managed to find hiding places will be left over.

[12]

Prelude: Holocaust in Lithuania and GG Galicia[edit]

Main article:The Holocaust in Lithuania

Several scholars have noted that the Final Solution andthe Holocaustbegan in Lithuania after

the German invasion.Dina Poratwrote: "The Final Solution - the systematic overall physicalextermination of Jewish communities one after the other - began in Lithuania."

[13]Konrad Kweit

wrote: "Lithuanian Jews were among the first victims of the Holocaust [...] The Germans carried

out the mass executions [...] signaling the beginning of the "Final Solution."[14]

Holocaust in General Government (GG) Galicia[edit]

Dr. Samuel Drix (Witness to Annihilation), Jochaim Schoenfeld (Holocaust Memoirs), andseveral survivors of theJanowska Camp, who were interviewed in the film,Janovska: The

Janovska Camp at Lvov, among other witnesses, have argued equally as convincingly that the

Final Solution began inLww(Lemberg) during that same week. Statements and memoirs of

these survivors emphasize that, whenUkrainiancivilians andad hocor auxiliary militias beganto murder women and children rather than only male Jews, the "Final Solution" was begun.
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Witnesses have said that such murders happened both prior to and during thepogromsassociated

with the "Prison Massacre." The question of whether there was some coordination between the

Lithuanianand Ukrainian militias remains (i.e. collaborating for a joint assault inKovno,Wilno,and Lww). Historians still find it difficult to determine precisely when the first concerted effort

at annihilation of all Jews began in the last weeks of June 1941 duringOperationBarbarossa,

despite the assertion ofDina Poratthat the Lithuanian Jews, rather than theGalicianJews, hadthe dubious distinction of being the first victims of the Final Solution. See generally JakobWeiss,The Lemberg Mosaic, (New York: Alderbrook Press, 2011)

Heydrich's letter[edit]

The relevant text is a handwritten cover letter, byReinhard HeydrichtoMartin Lutherof the

Foreign Office, dated February 26, 1942, forwarding theminutesof theWannsee Conference. In

the opening sentence Heydrich explicitly uses the expression, "the final solution to the Jewishquestion".

[15]The following is a translation of the letter from German to English:

Dear Fellow Party Member [Parteigenosse] Luther!

Enclosed I am sending you the minutes of the proceedings that took place on January 20, 1942.

Since the basic position regarding the practical execution of the final solution of the Jewish

question has fortunately been established by now, and since there is a full agreement on the partof all agencies involved. I would like to ask you at the request of the Reich Marshal to make one

of your specialist officials available for the necessary discussion of details in connection with the

completion of the draft that shows the organizational, technical and material prerequisites

bearing on the actual starting point of the projected solutions.

I want to schedule the first discussion along these lines for 10:30 a.m. on March 6, 1942 at 116Kurfrstenstrasse, Berlin. I therefore ask you that for this purpose your specialist official contact

my functionary in charge there, SS-ObersturmbannfhrerEichmann.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogromshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogromshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogromshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuaniahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuaniahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaunashttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaunashttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaunashttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilniushttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilniushttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilniushttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dina_Porathttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dina_Porathttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dina_Porathttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galicia_(Central_Europe)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galicia_(Central_Europe)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galicia_(Central_Europe)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lemberg_Mosaichttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lemberg_Mosaichttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lemberg_Mosaichttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Final_Solution&action=edit&section=4http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Heydrichhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Heydrichhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Heydrichhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_(diplomat)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_(diplomat)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_(diplomat)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minuteshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minuteshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minuteshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannsee_Conferencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannsee_Conferencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannsee_Conferencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution#cite_note-15http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution#cite_note-15http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution#cite_note-15http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution#cite_note-15http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannsee_Conferencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minuteshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_(diplomat)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Heydrichhttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Final_Solution&action=edit&section=4http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lemberg_Mosaichttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galicia_(Central_Europe)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dina_Porathttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilniushttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaunashttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuaniahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogroms

Documents

Final Solution.docx