PJ's Chapters 1-4 the Final Solution

8/8/2019 PJ's Chapters 1-4 the Final Solution

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The "Final Solution"

Synopsis

The Nazis, under cover of the war, developed the technology, bureaucracy, and psychology ofhate to

efficiently murder millions of Jews. The details of the "Final Solution" were worked out at the Wannsee

Conference. All Jews in Germany and the occupied cou ntries were deported to sealed ghettos as a holding

area. Many were then shipped in cattle cars to labor camps where they lived under brutally inhumanconditions. Hundreds of thousands were sent directly to the gas chambers in death camps. As the Allies

advanced on the camps, death marches further depleted theranks of potential camp survivors.

INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES

Students will learn that:

1. An entire state bureaucracy was mobilized solely for the purpose of annihilating Jews.

2. German technologicalexpertise was harnessed to make the mass murder as efficient and low-cost as

possible.

3. Special camps were created solely for the purpose ofkilling Jews and other "undesirables."

4. The conditions in these death camps and other concentration camps were brutal, and designed

purposely to make survival only temporary.

CHAPTERCONTENT

On October 23, 1941, S.S. head Heinrich Himmler issued an order down the Nazi chain of command which

heralded a major change in Nazi policy withrespect to the "Jewish pr oblem." Until then, the Nazis worked

vigorously to encourage Jews to emigrate. The Madagascar Plan (see below) was oneexample of strategies

which were formulated to remove Jews from Germany and its occupied lands. As is described in more

detail in Chapter 11, many countries refused to accept Jewishrefugees. This shift in policy resulted in the

deportation of Jews to camps and ghettos in the East. The policy to "resettle" Jews to these ghettos and

camps was a significant step in what was to become the "Final Solution" the systematic murder of millions

of Jews.

Madagascar Plan

Before the "Final Solution" was devised to murder all Jews in Nazi jurisdiction, the scheme the Nazis

planned to rid theirland of the Jews was forced emigration. In 1940, plans were d evised by the Nazis toship all Jews under Nazi control to Madagascar, an island in the Indian Ocean. It was not until 1941 that

Nazi bureaucrats werereferring to the "Final Solution" (Gesamtlosung) in the context of genociderather

than a "Territorial Final Solution" (territoriale Endlosung) in the context of forced emigration. Some

historians believe that the Madagascar Plan was a smokescreen for Hitler's desire to murder European

Jewry (see page 62 of Marrus' The Holocaust in History).


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The Nazis hoped that the wretched ghetto conditions would deplete the Jewish population quickly an d

naturally through starvation, disease and cold. The ghetto also served as theholding area foreventual

transport to the death camps for those who were able to survive.

Ghetto inhabitants in many areas were forced to become slaves for German industry. F actories were built

alongside or within ghetto walls so that industries could take advantage of this freelabor. The

administration of Jewishlife was theresponsibility of the Jewish Councils, the Judenrte (see Chapter 11).

Life in the ghetto was abominable, and thousands died. There was no medicine. The food ration allowedwas a quarter of that available for the Germans, barely enough to allow survival. The water supply was

contaminated in many ghettos. Epidemics of tuberculosis, typhoid, and lice were common. Bodies of new

victims piled up in the streets faster than they could be carted away. In the Warsaw ghetto, more than

70,000 died ofexposure, disease, and starvation during the first two winters. Almost all of those who

survived the Warsaw ghetto wereeitherkilled when the ghetto was razed in 1943 or died in the death

camps.

Theresienstadt Ghetto

TheTheresienstadt ghetto was established by the Nazis in an 18th century fortress in Czechoslovakia on

November 24, 1941. More than 150,000 Jews passed through the ghetto during its four -yearexistence,

which was used as a holding area foreventual murder in Auschwitz. By 1943, rumors began circulating in

the international community that the Nazis wereexterminating Jews in gas chambers, and that the

conditions of the ghettos did not permit survival. The Nazis rebuilt parts of this ghetto to serve as a

"showpiece" for propaganda purposes. Flower gardens were planted in the ghetto. Shops, schools, and a

cafe were built. When an investigating commission of t he International Red Cross came to visit, they did

not see a typical ghetto. In July 1944 the Nazis made a documentary propaganda film about life in this

ghetto. After the movie was completed, most of the Jewish "actors" were shipped to their death at

Auschwitz.

Wannsee Conference

At the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942 in Wannsee, a Berlin suburb, the details of the "Final

Solution" were worked out. The meeting was convened by Reinhard Heydrich, who was thehead of the S.S.

main office and S.S. Chief Heinrich Himmler's top aide. The purpose of the meeting was to coordinate the

Nazi bureaucracy required to carry out the "Final Solution," which provided for:

y Deportation of Jews to killing centers.y Immediate death for those who were unable to work or t he very young, the old, and the weak.y Segregation by gender of theremaining Jews.y Decimation through forced labor with insufficient nourishment.y Eventual death for theremnant.

Concentration Camps

The Nazi concentration camps wereestablished beginning in 1933 for the purpose of imprisoning political

opponents. After the "Night of the Long Knives" (see Chapter 8, page 65), authority and management of

the concentration camps was turned over to the S.S. The S.S. expanded the concentration camp system,

and used these facilities to warehouse other "undesirables," including hundreds of thousands of Jews.


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Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen were among the first concentration camps built by the Nazis near

Munich, Weimar, and Berlin respectively.

Upon arrival at a camp, the inmates were usually stripped of all their valuables and clothes. They were

then shorn of body hair, disinfected, given a shower, and issued a striped prison uniform without regard to

size. Each step of the process was designed to dehumanize the prisoners, both physically and emotionally.

Each prisoner was given a number. At Auschwitz, forexample, the number was tattooed on the arm, but

some camps did not tattoo their inmates.

Life in the camps was a living hell. As described by Judah Pilch i n "Years of the Holocaust:The Factual

Story," which appears in The Jewish Catastrophe in Europe, a typical day in thelife of a concentration camp

inmate began at dawn, when they wereroused from their barracks whichhoused 300 -800 inmates each.

Their "beds" were bunks of slatted wood two and three tiers high. Frequently three to four prisoners

shared each bunk, not permitting spaceenough for them to stretch out for normal sleep. The inmates

were organized into groups to go to the toilets, marched to a di stribution center for a breakfast consisting

of some bread and a liquid substitute for tea or coffee, and then sent out to work for 10 -14 hours in mines,

factories, and road or airfield building, often in sub -zero weather or the severeheat of summer. They were

subjected to constant physical and emotionalharassment and beating. The inmates' food rations did not

permit survival for very long. Those who resisted orders of the guards were shot on the spot. Numerous

roll calls wereheld to assure that no prisoners had escaped. If one did attempt an escape, all of theinmates suffered for it.

Death Camps

The German skill in adapting the 20th century techniques of mass production was applied in engineering

the "Final Solution." In 1941, theengineers of the "Fin al Solution" utilized these same principles to cheaply

and efficiently murder millions of Jews and other "undesirables." The plants established to carry out this

mass murder were the death camps.

Unlike concentration camps, death camps had no barracks to house prisoners, other than those for

workers at the camps. In order to process the murder of thousands of people, great pains were taken todeceive the victims concerning their fate. Jews deported from ghettos and concentration camps to the

death camps were unaware of what they were facing. The Nazi planners of the operation told the victims

that they were being resettled forlabor, issued them work permits, told them to bring along their tools

and to exchange their German marks for foreign currency. Food was also used to coax starving Jews onto

the trains. Once the trains arrived at the death camps, trucks were available to transport those who were

too weak to walk directly to the gas chambers. The others were told that they would have to be deloused

and enter the baths. The victims were separated by sex and told to remove their clothes. The baths were in

reality the gas chambers. The showerheads in the baths were actually the inlets for poison gas. At

Auschwitz, the gas chambers held 2,000 people at a tim e. With the introduction of a cyanide -based gas

called Zyklon B, all 2,000 occupants could bekilled in five minutes. As a result of this technological

"advancement," Auschwitz was able to "process" the death of 12,000 victims daily. Before the bodies were removed by workers with gas masks and burned in crematoria, the teeth of the victims were stripped for

gold, which was melted down and shipped back to Germany. Innocent victims wereexploited and

desecrated to a degree unknown in human history.

Unlike the death camps ofTreblinka, Chelmno, Sobibor, and Belzec, which were built and operated solely

to kill Jews, the two death camps of Maidanek and Auschwitz also had a work camp attached. Upon arrival

at these two camps, a selection was made at the train station concerning which Jews (about 10 percent of


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the arrivals) would be permitted to live and escape immediate gassing in the gas chambers. These "lucky"

survivors were permitted to live only to theextent that they endured the physical and emotion al trauma

inflicted upon them. They were given a food ration that permitted them to survive for only three months.

As they died from exhaustion, beatings, and starvation, they werereplaced with newly arrived victims.

Auschwitz was also used as the site fo r medicalexperimentation. Many of theseexperiments had little

scientific value but were only exercises to discoverhow much torture a victim could endure until death. By

theend of 1944, an estimated two-and-a-half million Jews had died at Auschwitz. Mor e than a quarter of a

million Gypsies also died there.

Einsatzgruppen or "Special Action Squads"

Specially trained units of the S.S. followed the first wave of German army troops in the invasion of the

Soviet Union (June 1941). Their orders were to execut e on the spot all Communists, Jews, and Gypsies.

It is estimated that by theend of 1942, they had killed more than a million Soviet Jews. These victims were

shot orloaded into enclosed trucks modified for the introduction of carbon monoxide to asphyxiate its

victims. An additional 400,000 werekilled by other S.S. units, anti -Semitic native civilians, police units, and

the German army.

Babi Yar

The Jews of Kiev wererounded up by the Einsatzgruppen for "resettlement" in late September 1941.

Thousands of J ews were brought to a ravine on the outskirts of Kiev and mowed down by machine guns.

Many who were not wounded, including thousands of children, were thrown into the pit of bodies and

were buried alive. According to an account in The Holocaust by Martin G ilbert, Ukrainian militia men joined

in the slaughter. Therecords of the Einsatzgruppen unit which participated in theexecutions recorded

33,771 Jews killed at Babi Yar on September 29 -30. In all, more than 100,000 persons, most of them Jews,

wereexecuted at Babi Yar between 1941-1943 by the Nazis. In the summer of 1943, the bodies were dug

out by slavelabor and burned to hide theevidence of the slaughter.

NaziMurder of Non-Jews

While the focus of Nazi genocide was unquestionably targeted toward Jews , theThird Reich's policy of

mass murder was not restricted to Jews but devastated theranks of other non -Aryans.

Michael R. Marrus, in his book, The Holocaust in History, writes about the targets of Nazi murder:

"The Nazis murdered between five million and six million Jews during the Holocaust, two-thirds of

European Jewry and about one -third of theentire Jewish people. But a staggering 55 million may have

perished in all theaters during the Second World War including some 20 million Soviet citizens... five million

Germans, and three million non -Jewish Poles...In all, some 18 million European civilians may have died as aresult of famine, disease, persecution, and more conventional acts of war.

"Awesome as they are, therefore, numbers do not in themselv es prescribe the singularity of the Holocaust.

But they provide a clue. For the proportion of European Jews killed during the Second World War, with

roughly one ofevery three civilian deaths in Europe being that of a Jew, was undoubtedly greater than that

of any other people, because of the Nazis' policy toward them. Unlike the case with any other group, and

unlike the massacres before or since, every single one of the millions of targeted Jews was to be murdered.


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Eradication was to be total. In principle, no Jew was to escape. In this important respect, the Nazis' assault

upon Jewry differed from the campaigns against other peoples and groups; Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses,

homosexuals, Poles, Ukrainians, and so on. Assaults on these people could indeed be murderous; their

victims number in the millions, and their ashes mingle with those of the Jews of Auschwitz and many other

camps across Europe. But Nazi ideology did not require their total disappearance. In this respect, the fate

of the Jews was unique."

Gypsies

Approximately a half million Gypsies (a dark-skinned, Caucasian ethnic group targeted by the Nazis) were

murdered out of approximately 1.6 million who wereliving in Europe. The Gypsies in Germany and the

occupied territories of the German War mac hine were subjected to many of the same persecutions as the

Jews:restrictive, discriminatory laws, isolation and internment, and mass executions at their camp sites, in

labor camps and death camps.

Polish Christians

Of the six million Poles murdered by t he Nazis, half were Polish Christians. The Nazis considered the Poles

and other

Slavic p

eop

les to b

esub-

human d

estin

ed to s

erv

eas s

lav

es to t

heA

ryan "mast

errac

e."

The

Polish intelligentsia and politicalleadership was sought out specifically forexecut ion, and other Polish

civilians were slaughtered indiscriminately. Among the dead were more than 2,600 Catholic priests.

Ukrainians

Almost four million Ukrainians fell victim to Nazi slaughter, through combat, starvation, and terror,

particularly as a result of theefficient Einsatzgruppen. Of these, 900,000 were Jews, according to Bohdan

Wytwychky's TheOther Holocaust: Many Circles of Hell.

Other Victims of Nazi Genocide

The Germans rounded up thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses and homosexuals and sent th em to the death

camps forextermination. Homosexuals were forced to wear pink triangles on their clothing paralleling the

yellow Star of David for Jews.

Death Marches

By the beginning of 1945, the Soviet troops were advancing through Poland. Theretreatin g Germans

forced allremaining Auschwitz prisoners to march toward Germany under indescribably cruel conditions.

Approximately 20,000 of 58,000 prisoners died en route, from exhaustion, starvation, cold, beatings, and

executions by gua

rds.

In his bunker, in the Chancellory building in Berlin, knowing that the war was lost and that the "1,000 Year

Reich" had lasted only a few years, Hitler committed suicidehours after marrying Eva Braun. Germany

formally surrendered to the Allies on May 7, 1945. By theend of the war, more than 55 million had died

and 35 million wounded. Only 17 million of the dead were soldiers.


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Historical Events Listing

April 9, 1940 - Germany invaded and occupied Denmark.

April 27, 1940 - Himmler ordered theestablishment of a concent ration camp at Auschwitz.

April 30, 1940 - The ghetto at Lodz, Poland, was sealed off.

June 4, 1940 - Germany invaded Holland, Belgium, and France.

June 29, 1940 - Marshal Petain surrenders France to the Germans.

September 27, 1940 - The Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis was established.

September 27, 1940 - The Warsaw Ghetto was sealed off, making thousands of Jews inside virtual

prisoners underhouse arrest.

June 22, 1941 - Germany invaded Greece and Yugoslavia.

June 22, 1941 - The Germans attacked and declared war on the Soviet Union.

July 8, 1941 - Wearing of the Jewish Star was decreed in the German-occupied Baltic states.

July 31, 1941 - S.S. Obergruppenfhrer Reinhard Heydrich was appointed by Goering to carry out the "Final

Solution", the murder of all the Jews in Europe.

September 1, 1941 - Wearing of the Jewish "Star of David" was decreed throughout the Greater Reich.

October 1, 1941 - All Jewishemigration was halted.

October 14, 1941 - Mass de

portation to conc

ent

ration camps of J

ews f

rom a

llov

erNazi -cont

ro

lled Eu

rop

e

began.

December 8, 1941 - 27,000 were massacred in Riga.

October 23, 1941 - 34,000 were massacred in Odessa.

October 28, 1941 - 34,000 were massacred in Kiev.

November 6, 1941 - 15,000 were massacred in Rovno.

December 7, 1941 - The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The United States entered the war.

December 8, 1941 - Chelmno death camp on the Ner River in Pol and opened and the first gassing took

place.

December 11, 1941 - Germany declared war on the United States.

October 17, 1942 - The Allied Nations pledged to punish the Germans for their policy of genocide.


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Winter of 1943 - The tattered and frozen German army on the Eastern front surrendered to the Soviets at

Stalingrad.

April 1943 - The Bermuda Conference on Refugees was convened. The agenda was to discuss action by the

Allies to rescuerefugees in Europe under Nazi control. No formal action was agreed to.

October 7, 1943 - Hitler ordered that all Jews of Denmark be deported to the death camps in Poland.

Almost 95% of Danish Jews were whisked to Sweden, escaping the S.S.

March 18, 1944 - The Germans invaded and occupied Hungary. Deportations of Hungari an Jews to

Auschwitz followed under the direction of Adolf Eichmann. Mostly all of thehalf -million Hungarian Jews

were sent to the gas chambers.

June 1, 1944 - D-Day. The Allies invaded France at Normandy.

VOCABULARY

Auschwitz - The most infamous and largest of the Nazi death camps, located near Cracow in Southwestern

Poland.

Babi Yar - An area in the Soviet Union near Kiev, where thousands of civilians, most of whom were Jews,

were murdered by the Nazis.

crematorium - An oven where the bodies of newly murdered prisoners of camps, and those who died from

other causes, were incinerated.

death camps - Centers established in mostly rural areas designed specifically for mass murder. Six death

camps (Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Maidanek, Chelmno and Belzec) wereestablished solely for the

extermination of European Jewry.

death marches - Forced marches under brutal conditions required of death camp and concentration campinmates by the Nazis to avoid liberation by advancing Allied forces.

Einsatzgruppen - "Special Action Squads" of the S.S. whichhad as their mission to seek out and murder

Jews, Communists and Gypsies.

extermination - Mass murder, in the context of thekilling of Jews in a manner which would be no less

heinous than thekilling of insects.

Final Solution - The term used by the Nazis to describe their program of mass murder of the Jewish people.

gas chamber - Rooms constructed to be air-tight so that poison gas introduced into theroom would kill

large numbers of peop le.

Gypsies - A dark-skinned, Caucasian ethnic group with origins in India who had, in many cases in Europe, a

migratory way oflife.

labor camp - A prison camp where the prisoners were used as slavelabor for German industry and war

machine.


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tuberculosis - An infectious disease which can affect any organ, but particularly attacks thelungs.

typhus - Disease transmitted by lice or fleas which was epidemic in concentration camps.

zyklon B - A cyanide gas developed to kill Jews at Auschwitz in a manner which was moreefficient than

using carbon monoxide gas.

ACTIVITIES

y Research the average daily calorie intake of people in the United States and the developing world,and compare this to the average intake of a concentration camp inmate.

y Research why the Nazis kept detailed chronicles of all aspects of their genocide.y Research the story of "The Precious Legacy." What did the Nazis have in mind by creating this

exhibit?

y Define the following words using their dictionary definition, and construct another definiti on, usingthe Nazi context if appropriate:

murder massacre euthanasia mass-murder slaughter liquidation

deportation assassination pogrom decimation execution terrorism

killing extermination persecution genocide holocaust

y What do these words have in common? Which words above are interchangeable?y Which areeuphemisms? Which may be condoned (and under what circumstances) and which may

not? Why is there sensitivity among scholars and survivors of the Holocaust on how these words

are used?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

y Discuss what you would have taken into a ghetto had you been deported to one.y How did the Nazis succeed in carrying out the Final Solution? Why were the orders from the top

obeyed all the way down the chain of command?

EVALUATION

1. Define the following:

1. zyklon B2. crematorium3. "special treatment"4. labor camp5. gas chamber6. Final Solution7. typhus8. Gypsies


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2. Describelife in the Nazi ghettos for the Jews and the major differences between these ghettos and those

of the Middle Ages.

3. What was the mission of the Einsatzgruppen? Who were their targets? What methods did they use to

accomplish their mission?

4. Who was Adolf Eichmann, and what was his job?

5. How was theTheresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia different than any other ghetto?

6. Name three death camps, and briefly describe typical conditions in one.

7. What was the Wannsee Conference? Who convened it? What was its purpose?

8. What prompted the Nazis to order the "death marches" of 1945?

9. Why wereexperiments performed on inmates of the death camps?

TEACHING STRATEGIES

y Show the class the book and filmstrip, I Never Saw Another Butterfly.y Recreate the discussions on human nature and values from previous chapters. Let the students

describe if their views on human naturehave changed as a result oflearning about what occurred

during the "Final Solution."

y Have students view the film, The Wannsee Conference. Study guides on this film are available(contact the Holocaust Resource Center nearest you).

y Read to the class poignant excerpts from Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.

Documents

PJ's Chapters 1-4 the Final Solution