Research Paper Holocaust Overview

Carol Brown

Mr.Neuburger English Comp. 102-127 15 November 2012

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The Holocaust remains a dark blot on world history. It is one of the most tragic events to have ever transpired. What is worse is that very few people today know what actually happened that led up to such a horrible event. In order to honor those who have fallen, one must inform the youth of today, so the memory of the twelve million who were systematically murdered will go on and history will not be allowed to repeat itself. There was a series of events that allowed the Holocaust to occur and to understand the Holocaust one has to begin with the rise Of the Nazi party. Nazi Rise to Power According to David A. Meiers article Adolf Hitlers Rise to Power, following WWI, Adolf Hitler was recruited to join a military intelligence unit, the Press and Propaganda Department of Group Command IV of the Reichswehr, where he was assigned to keep an eye on The Germans Worker Party. It was disorganized and did not have a leader. The article also states that Hitler built up this party from a de facto discussion group to an actual political party and names himself as their leader. He uses his hatred for the Jews as part of his political platform. On Oct 16, 1919 Hitler gave an impromptu speech that captivated people, mass donations were made and many young men flocked to join the party. By The Party attracted thousands of new members, many of whom were victims of inflation and found comfort in blaming the Jews for their problems, (Meier). http://binged.it/TdcAF3

Brown Nazis views on Jews Hitler established extreme anti-Semitic within the Nazi party. According to Modern History sourcebook; in 1920 the Hitler releases The 25 Points. Hitler lays out 25 points in which he describes who can be a citizen, who cannot be a citizen, who can live in Germany, who can immigrate or not and implementing that the German Way be taught to all students. This is an important document that lays the http://binged.it/YtIIt foundation for further laws and actions to be put into

place. In essences, it is the starting point in making the Jewish people sub humans (The 25 Points 1920: An Early Nazi Program). Hitler states: "If I am ever really in power, the destruction of the Jews will be my first and most important jobI shall have gallows after gallows erected... Then the Jews will be hanged one after another... As soon as they are untied, then the next group will follow and that will continue until the last Jew in Munich is exterminated. Exactly the same procedure will be followed in other cities until Germany is cleansed of the last Jew"(QTD, Statements by Hitler and Senior Nazis Concerning Jews and Judaism)! Nuremberg Laws With the release of the Nuremberg Law in September 1935, the racial definition of Jew was put into place. According to, The History Place, the Nuremberg race laws deprived the German Jews the right as a citizen and demoted them to subjects under the Reich. The laws forbid that they marry or have sexual relationships with anyone who was Aryan, or of pure German

Nuremberg Law Chart http://bit.ly/SZmeyO

Brown Blood (The Nuremberg Race Laws). Furthermore it changed the definition of Jewish from a religious belief to being a genetic trait that is passed in blood. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), under the Nuremberg Law it did not matter if you practiced the Jewish faith or not, you were defined as Full Jew if you had three Jewish grandparents, a First degree Jew if you had two Jewish grandparents and a second degree Jew if

you had a least one Jewish grandparent. Dr. Roland Freisler states, The lawis a regulation that establishes the very foundation of the German people, which we do not seek to narrow but to broaden for the protection of our race (Background, The Supreme Court Decision On The Nuremberg Race Laws). Propaganda In 1926 Hitler publishes his book Mein Kampf in which he states that he advocates the use of propaganda to spread the ideals of National Socialism. According to USHMM, in 1933 Hitler established a Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda headed by Joseph Goebbels. Their aim was to see that the Nazi message be spread through whatever way possible be it books, music, art, radio, educational material, press and even films. Propaganda campaigns helped create an atmosphere in which violence against Jews was tolerated (Nazi Propaganda). The History Learning Site explains that as the Minister of Enlightenment, Goebbels had two main tasks: to ensure nobody in Germany would read or see anything that was damaging to the Nazi Party and also to
Nazi Propaganda Poster http://bit.ly/Sz3EeI

ensure that the views of the Nazis were put across in the most persuasive manner possible. Goebbels states, "The

Brown essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it"(Propaganda in Nazi Germany). Kristallnacht On October 28th 1938, 17,000 Jews who were citizens of Poland but were currently living in Germany were arrested and forced to relocate across Polish border. The Polish government refused to admit them and placed them in relocation camps on the Polish frontier. Among the people being deported were the Grynszpan Family however, their 17 year old son Herschel was living in Paris at the time. When Herschel received word about his family and the fact that they had all their worldly possessions taken from them he became very angry. According to, The History Place Herschel then went and shot a member of the German Embassy in retaliation for the way his family was treated. Because of the shooting that took place Hitler and Goebbels saw this as an opportunity to exact vengeance on the Jewish race

(Kristallnacht). On November 9-10 1938 USHMM, explains that the Nazi troopers and SS staged state sanctioned anti-Jewish riots. The two nights became known as Kristallnacht or The night of the broken glass. They looted plundered and destroyed over 267
Kristallnacht http://bit.ly/Sxma6V

synagogues, 7500 businesses and numerous homes. They also

damaged Jewish cemeteries, hospitals, and schools. There were 91 Jewish people that lost their lives that night. These riots started the state sponsored murders of the Jewish people (Kristallnacht: The November 1938 Pogroms). Rounding up Jews-Ghettos

Brown Following Kristallnacht on November 10th 1938 Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the

Secret Police sent a series of telegrams to the heads of different organizations such as the Hitler Youth and the SS stating that as many Jews should be arrested as much as the jails could hold. According to,( Spartacus Educational), On September 21, 1939 Heydrich told SS commanders in Poland that all the Jews should be confined to designated areas in cities and towns, that these ghettos were to be surrounded by barbed wire, brick walls and armed guards. The first ghetto was set up in Piotrkow on 28th October 1939. The SS began deporting Jews from Austria and Czechoslovakia to ghettos in Poland. They were locked in transporter trains and many died along the journey. The two largest ghettos were established in Warsaw and Lodz. In Warsaw there were 22 entrances to the ghetto and all were ordered sealed. The German authorities allowed the Jewish council to put together a police task force to help maintain order in the ghetto (Warsaw Uprising). USHMM goes on to emphasize that over Four
Warsaw Ghetto http://bit.ly/UbZDvU

hundred thousand people lived in the Warsaw ghetto

confined to a space of only 1.3 square miles. Within two years a quarter of the population died from starvation and disease. Resistance . As the Jews were taken from the lives they had built for themselves and forced to live

in these Ghettos. The Jews started to fight back by resisting the Nazi invasion. There were many ways in which they resisted. To understand resistance we must define direct active resistance and direct passive resistance.

Brown Direct active resistance refers to the taking up of arms, actively fighting against their oppressors. An example of this would be the uprising at The Warsaw Ghetto. According to,

(USHMM) because of the forced deportations several Jewish people banded together and created an armed defense. On January 18 1943, a group of Jewish fighters, armed with pistols, infiltrated a column of Jews who were being forced to the Umschlagplatz transfer point. They fought the German escorts. Most of the Jewish fighters died in the battle, but the attack allowed some of the Jews to be able to disperse and not board the transfer train (Warsaw Ghetto Uprising). Direct Passive resistance refers to things like hiding, or refusal to wear the Jewish star or even concealing ones identity if possible. One famous account of this is depicted in The Diary of Anne Frank, a young girl who kept a diary while she hid in an attic during the holocaust. It tells of the horrors she faced during the Holocaust and the faith she struggled to keep (A. Frank).

Anne Frank http://bit.ly/Unh78H

The Wannsee Conference-The Final Solution On January 20, 1942 fifteen of the highest ranked officials from the Nazi Party and the German government. They gathered in the suburb of Berlin called Wannsee to discuss the Final Solution of the Jewish Question. USHMM reports that The Final Solution was a code name for the systematic annihilation of the Jews. Heydrich convened the
Heydrich at Wannsee http://bit.ly/RmE79n

conference to inform and gain the support from the

Brown government ministries and other agencies that would be willing to help implement the Final Solution, and to also disclose that Hitler himself had assigned Heydrich and the Reich with coordinating and carrying out the operation. The men at the conference did not discuss if this should be allowed or not but rather how to carry out the policy. Furthermore Heydrich announced that during the time the plan be implemented that all able bodied Jewish persons be put to work first building roads and etc., it would not matter if some perished while working

since they were all to be exterminated anyways(Wannsee Conference and The Final Solution).

Extermination Methods One of the most popular methods of extermination used by the Nazis on the Jewish peoples was the notorious gas chambers. The article Gassing Operations, reports that the first gas chambers that were used to euthanize mental and physically disabled people that were seen as unworthy of life, used pure carbon monoxide. Furthermore, in 1941 they started to experiment with mass shootings as a means of extermination, however mass shooting turned out to be mentally taxing on the soldiers and too costly. They then experimented with mobile gas vans which were tightly sealed; they would divert the exhaust into the back and suffocate the victims that way. The vans allowed for them to be able to take their killing machine with them. They decided that gasses victims was less costly and began to build multiple gas chambers at the camps. They tricked their victims into going into these gas chambers under the pretense of needed to be deloused.
Gas Chamber at Auschwitz http://bit.ly/njL6AL

However the Nazi regime continued to

Brown experiment with more effective and less costly means of execution. At the Auschwitz camp in Poland, they experimented with Zyklon B, buy using it on prisoners of war in September 1941. The Zyklon B pellets, converts to lethal gas when exposed to air. It proved as the quickest gassing method and was selected as the means of mass murder at Auschwitz (USHMM). The History Place, notes that each of the death camps, there were special groups of Jewish slaves that were called Sonderkommandos, they were given the grim task of untangling the victims that were killed in the gas chambers and forced to remove the bodies. The Jewish slaves were also forced to extract any gold fillings from teeth of the victims, and had to search body orifices for hidden valuables. They then had to dispose of the corpses by various methods such as; mass burials, cremation, or just pile the bodies in pits (The Nazi Holocaust 1938-1945 6,000,000 Deaths).

Death Camps There we six major extermination camps. The major camps were Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka. In reference to the article, Extermination Camps, Chelmno was the first extermination camp to be set up a small town in Poland. 152,000 people were put to death using exhaust gas from trucks, between the period of December 1941-March 1943 and then again in June and July 1944. Belzec was also established in May 1942 and continued to function until August 1943. 600,000 Jews were murdered in the gas chambers at Belzec. Sobibor was also established in May 1942. It remained functioning through October 1943, when the prisoners staged and up rise and put an end to the murders at the camp. Over 250,000 lost their lives at Sobibors in the gas chambers (The Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies).

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According to (Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team, HEART) Treblinka was located in the north-eastern region of the Generalgouvernement, it was known as Treblinka I. The extermination camp started functioning in July 1942 to November 1943. On August 2, 1943, the prisoners were able to seize weapons from the camps armory, but unfortunately they were discovered before they could take over the camp. Hundreds of prisoners stormed the main gate in order to attempt to escape. Many of them were shot, however more than 300 did escape. However, many of those who
Auschwitz Concentration Camp http://bit.ly/TDoEPS

escaped were eventually tracked down and killed by German SS and police. 900,000 Jews lost their lives in the

terribly efficient extermination camp at Treblinka (Treblinka Death Camp History). USHMM, states that Auschwitz was the largest and most complex concentration camp. It actually consisted of three camps simply referred to as Auschwitz I, II, and III. In May of 1940 Auschwitz began running as a concentration/labor camp. I conducted medical experiments and had a killing center. II had the largest prisoner population, and also a killing facility. They had to build four crematoriums to handle all of the bodies. There was an uprising by the prisoners in On October 7, 1944.Hundreds of prisoners assigned a crematorium rebelled when they learned that they were going to be killed. The prisoners were able to kill three guards and blew up the crematorium and a gas chamber. The Germans were able to terminate the revolt and then killed most of the prisoners who were involved in the rebellion. III was established in October 1942 to house prisoners assigned to work at the Buna synthetic rubber works, it also had a so-called Labor Education Camp. All together over 960,000 Jews were killed in Auschwitz (Auschwitz). According to an article, (Majdanek, Poland) Majdanek was established October 1941 as a

Brown POW camp then converted into a concentration camp on February 16, 1943. Over 360,000 people lost their lives at Majdanek (http://bit.ly/UnbuHz). Liberation As the draw of 1944 came to an end and the Nazi power was coming to an end, it started the beginning of the liberation of the death camps. According to, (The Jewish Virtual

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Library) Majdanek was the first camp to be liberated on July 23, 1944 unfortunately only a few people were found alive. On January 27 1945, they liberated the prisoners of Auschwitz, where they found hundreds of sick and exhausted prisoners. The Allis were able to start help liberating camps starting in April 1945(Liberation). USHMM states that US forces were able to liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp on April 11, 1945. The Nazis had begun evacuating the camp a few days before the liberation; however on the day of liberation, a prisoner resistance organization seized control of Buchenwald which helped to prevent atrocities. US forces
Liberation of Dachau http://binged.it/QWhM5U

were able to liberate more than 20,000 prisoners at

Buchenwald. The US forces were also able to liberate prisoners from Dora-Mittelbau, Flossenbrg, Dachau, and Mauthausen. In mid April 1945, British soldiers were able to liberate prisoners from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. There were over 60,000 prisoners at the concentration camp who were in seriously diminished condition due to a Typhus outbreak at the camp. Over 10,000 of the prisoners who were liberated died from Typhus and malnutrition(Liberation of Nazi Camps).

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Works Cited

"Auschwitz." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. N.p., 11 May 2012. Web. 13 Nov. 2012.

"Background, Supreme Court Decision on The Nuremberg Race Laws." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. N.p., 11 May 2012. Web. 5 Nov. 2012.

Frank, Anne, David Barnouw, Gerrold Van Der. Stroom, Arnold Pomerans, B. M. MooyaartDoubleday, Susan Massotty, Anne Frank, and Anne Frank. The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition. New York: Doubleday, 2003. Print.

"Gassing Operations." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. N.p., 11 May 2012. Web. 13 Nov. 2012.

Halsall, Paul. "Modern History Sourcebook: The 25 Points 1920." Fornham University-The Jesuit University of New York. N.p., Aug. 1997. Web. 30 Oct. 2012.

"Kristallnacht: The November 1938 Progroms." United States Holocaust Memorial Meseum. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Nov. 2012.

"Kristallnaucht." The History Place. N.p., 1997. Web. 6 Nov. 2012.

"Liberation." Jewish Virtual Library. N.p., 2012. Web. 15 Nov. 2012.

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"Liberation of Nazi Camps." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. N.p., 11 May 2012. Web. 15 Nov. 2012.

"Majdanek Extermination Camp (Poland)." Majdanek Extermination Camp (Poland). N.p., 19444. Web. 13 Nov. 2012. <http://www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Camps/MajdanekEng.html>.

Meier, David A. "Hitler's Rise to Power." Hitler's Rise to Power. David A Meier, 2000. Web. 23 Oct. 2012.

"The Nazi Holocaust 1938-1945 6,000,000 Deaths." The History Place. Genocide in the 20th Century, 2000. Web. 13 Nov. 2012.

"Nazi Propaganda." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. N.p., 11 May 2012. Web. 6 Nov. 2012.

"The Nuremberg Race Laws." The History Place. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Nov. 2012.

"The Rise of Adolf Hitler/ Hitler Joins the German Workers Party." The History Place. N.p., 1996. Web. 25 Oct. 2012.

Simkin, John. "Warsaw Uprising." Sparticus Educational. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Nov. 2012.

Stein, S. D., Dr. "Statements by Hitler and Senior Nazis Concerning Jews and Judaism." N.p., 04 Mar. 2000. Web. 1 Nov. 2012.

Tonge, Stephen. "Hitler; The Rise to Power." European History. Stephen Tonge, 5 Jan. 2011. Web. 25 Oct. 2012.

Brown Trueman, Chris, BA. "Propaganda In Nazi Germany." The History Learning Site. N.p., 2012. Web. 6 Nov. 2012.

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Vogelsang, Peter, and Brian B.M. Larsen. "Anit-Semitism." The Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. N.p., 2002. Web. 30 Oct. 2012.

Vogelsang, Peter, and Brian B.M. Larsen. "Extermination Camps." The Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. N.p., 2002. Web. 13 Nov. 2012.

"Wannsee Conference and The Final Solution." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. N.p., 11 May 2012. Web. 8 Nov. 2012.

"Warsaw Ghetto Uprising." United States Holocaust Memorial Meseum. N.p., 11 May 2012. Web. 13 Nov. 2012.

Webb, Chris, and Carmelo Lisciotto. "Triblinka Death Camp History." Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team. N.p., 2007. Web. 13 Nov. 2012.