Research Project on The Holocaust
Introduction
The Holocaust is genocide of European Jewish people by Nazi during the WWII. The Holocaust is a significant event in history because modern state had never committed itself to the murder of an entire people before. Overall numbers of approximately 6 million of Jews were killed as victims of the Holocaust. The genocide had been carefully planned before the actual action. Although first deportation concerning Polish Jews in the Reich was ordered as early as October 28, 1938, the largest numbers of Jews have been killed during 1942-1945. The Wannsee Conference is a key event in accelerating the mass killing of Jews in Holocaust. (See starting point below)
The mobile killing squad Massacres have started slaughtering Jews in 1941. Also, the deportations of Jews to killing centres have been done away since 1941 till 1944. As Germany surrendered in 1945, the Holocaust came to an end together with the end of war. I would like to focus on how people allowed this to happen.
Starting Point
On January 20, 1942, fifteen high-ranking Nazi party and German government leaders attended Wannsee conference in Berlin. This took place on order to discuss the final solution to the "Jewish question". Reinhard Heydrich was SS chief; Heinrich Himmiler's head deputy. Heydrich was also a chairman of the conference who was ordered by Hitler to hold the conference. Heydirch postponed the date of the conference from December 8, 1941 to the above date. Heydirch expressed the importance of postponing the event in the letter to Hoffman that "on account of events in which some of the invited gentlemen were concerned". This shows that Heydrich had already built a consensus among the various participating authorities during the weeks prior to the conference.
Despite of the official name of the conference, the actual purpose of the conference was to convince non-Nazi leader to help arranging Jews to be transported from Germany to the camps in Poland. Another purpose was to talk about the destruction, or genocide of all European Jews. Nazi used the word "final solution" and "Jewish question" rather than "extermination" to hide the real purpose from the entire world. During this conference, Heydrich supposed that approximately 11 million Jews will be involved in the final solution of European Jewish question. During the conference the way of treating mixed marriages of Jews was discussed as well.
However, the mass killing had already begun in occupied Soviet Union by the mobile killing squad.
Mernhard Losener; an expert of Jewish matters, was invited to the conference, but he begged to resign his duties thus after all, not even a single man who presented this conference objected to the announced policy because they had been informed the subject of the conference already as I mentioned above. As a result, the number of mass killings has started increasing rapidly from this point with the help of non-Nazi leader.
Policy
Adolf Hitler occupied a key position in the Third Reich and was a fanatical anti-Semite.
Anti-Semitism was a centre of Nazism. After the failure of the Nazi party to win a majority in parliament, Hitler introduces a bill that would give his government legislative authority. The Nazis, the Conservatives, and the Catholic Center Party support this "Enabling Act," which would grant Hitler's government the power to decree laws without a vote in parliament for a four-year period. Thus individuals were subjected to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. Besides, culture, the economy, education, and law came under control of Nazi. Nazi attempted to create "Volk" community. "Volk" community united all social classes and regions of Germany behind Hitler. "Hitler consistently portrayed Jews as the most determined and sinister enemies of the Germans and all other nations as well". Hitler also viewed Jews as disease carriers represent an extreme danger and as the cause of permanent chaos in the economic structure of Germany through continued black market dealings. From his point of view, those who threat the country, Jews should be killed in order to provide pure Aryan blood. As I mentioned above, Hitler was an absolute power therefore everybody must listen otherwise to be punished by not following his idea. Thus Hitler made it possible to carry out the genocide of Jews.
Activities
As it was discussed during the Wannsee Conference, Nazis intention of slow murder of the entire race has been carried out. The targets of the Holocaust wasn't only Jews, but prisoners in German area, some Polish citizens, citizens of Soviet Union and those who had disabilities physically or mentally. Also the Jews were deported from all over Europe to the East, Poland; Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Belgium, Scandinavia nations, Luxembourg, Holland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece and Rumania. Even during the deportations, there had been natural death of Jews. In 1942, the death rate among German Jewry was 8.5per thousand. Nazi has built six main extermination camps; Chelmo, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkerau and Majdarek. They also created ghettos apart from the camps to accommodate Jews. Approximately 6 million Jews were killed during the WWII. In the capital of Poland, Warsaw, there were about 375,000 Jews lived on the eve of WWII. In October-November 1940, Germany established the Warsaw ghetto, into which approximately 500,000 Jews were crowded. The Jews there were given numbers and forced to wear Jewish badge. Of these, an average of 5,000 to 6,000 died each month from starvation, disease, exposure to cold, and shooting. Tens of thousands were deported to Treblinka in 1942. After an uprising organized by resistance fighters ended on may 16, 1943, the surviving Jews were deported to Nazi camps. In the camps, Nazi used many ways of killing Jews such as gassing, shooting, random acts of terror, disease and starvation. In this manner, two-third of European Jewry, one-third of world Jewry, was removed. However, at the end of the Holocaust mainly shooting or gas vans were used due to the inefficiency for the killer's mentality. The numbers of Jews who were killed from different countries are following; Poland, 32,500,000, Soviet Union, 10,500,000, Rumania, 5,500,000, Slovakia, 2,500,000, Hungary, 2,000,000, France 1,500,000, Germany, 2,000,000, Holland, 500,000, and Belgium, 500,000*13.
Bystanders
Despite of the Nazi policy, there were surely some people who did not agree with the Holocaust and tried to support them. However, Nazi power was greater than the voice of those people. Besides, their lack of power wasn't the only reason why the Holocaust couldn't have been avoided. One of the biggest reasons was lack of information. To some, the news of the killing was everywhere; to others, the truth remained hidden until the end of the war. By early 1942, the news such as massacres of the Jews in Poland and the Soviet Union reached England. At this time, Jewish press had also obtained the information. Such information about genocide were told by refugees who escaped to Switzerland; the ones who escaped to Turkey. Also German soldiers who had witnessed mass shooting in Russia returned home, and spread the stories. Nevertheless, most of the people who have heard of this disbelieved the stories, and took them only as rumours. Even though they did believe the stories, they rather preferred to stay away from the issue than to risk their lives for supporting them. Some of them provided place for the Jews. The neutrals also didn't want to be involved with the war, because of Nazi's new order of Europe to refuse refugees and their economic vulnerability. The Vatican quarrelled with both Hitler and Mussolini on race, but hardly out of concerns for the welfare of Jews.
Throughout this period the church seldom opposed anti-Jewish persecutions and rarely denounced governments for discriminatory practices. The most church would do was to encourage humanitarian aid by subordinates within the church. The Jewish communities weren't admitted and also failed to unite therefore they didn't have the way to rescue the other Jews. Yet, there were some countries such as Spain and Portugal which didn't follow this order. They received tens of thousands of refugees; most of them were Jews. In addition, a lieutenant commander of Japanese army allowed the Jewish refugees who escaped though Siberia to enter Manchuria even though Japan was allied with Germany. After all, above supporters took passive actions and they weren't enough to rescue most of the Jews.
End
Proposed made in 1944 that the Allies help the Jews by bombing the death camp of Auschwitz hasn't been executed after all. By the end of the war, the murder of Jews was even increasing due to the possibility of troops of enemies preventing the practice. Finally, ransom negotiation was proposed by Hungarian Jewish leaders. Eichmann took charge of the negotiation and offered to save the lives of a million Jews in exchange for ten thousands trucks and some other material; under one condition that the vehicles should only be used against the Red Army, but not to the Western Allies. This was called "Europa plan". Himmler undertook the negotiation in the last months of the war.
According to Himmler's personal physician, Felix Kersten, the SS chief declared that he wanted "to bury the hatchet between us and the Jews".
As it was declared, Himmler arranged providing for the surrender of some Nazi concentration camps to the Allies before the SS had a chance to murder all of the inmates. After this event, Hitler's lieutenants were ready to abandon the genocidal program in favour of other objectives of a dying regime. According to German historian Martin Broszat, "Himmler isuued a fateful order in January 1945 to evacuate the camps in Eastern Europe about to be engulfed by the Soviets and to force westward all inmates able to move". April 24, 1945, Himmler's Peace offer transmitted through Court Bernadotte thus finally the Holocaust came to an end. Nevertheless, during the evacuation marches 700,000 inmates died. It was because they were exhausted after the months and weeks of the camp. In addition, just after the end of Holocaust, April 30 1945, Hitler killed himself in the Reich Chancellory bunker. Consecutively, Himmler took poison while in British custody on June 14, 1945.
Conclusion
After all, Nazi has succeeded to evacuate two-third of the Jewry of Europe by taking advantage of the war. Overall number of Jews killed during the WW‡U is approximately 6 million. However, the number of Jews involved to the Holocaust was presumably around 11 million, which Heydrich assumed during the Wannsee Conference. The Holocaust has gone that far because of the enthusiasm of Nazi's and Hitler's absolute power which didn't allow anybody to object. Yet, the Holocaust couldn't have been done only by the power of Hitler. Even those Nazi high-ranking leaders who were Jewish joined arranging the Holocaust to show their loyalty to Hitler. This tendency was derived from fear to Hitler. In conclusion, the Holocaust couldn't have been done away if it wasn't in this specific period of time and background. In other words, the combination of national identity (Nazism), bystanders, Hitler, and the WWII made it possible to exercise the murder of an entire ethnic, Jews.
The difficulties in Holocaust was that Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich; the most important characters all died during or soon after the Holocaust. Also, they didn't leave much written evidence therefore the existed evidence were told verbally by their secretaries or surrounding people. Another difficulty was that the actual number of Jews which were killed during the WWII is still not clear. It is said to be between 5 million to 6 million.
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