Non-Jewish Victims of the
Holocaust
Master race, social Darwinism,
lebensraum all important characteristics of this persecution
Total overturning of Judeo-Christian
thinking
Gypsies (Roma and
Sinti): originated from northern India,
thought to have come from Egypt (hence the name “Gypsies”)
Language of the Romani was based in
Sanskrit
Aryans had come from India (??)
This point hammered home a point some students had made previously –the
Nazis could be such hypocrites! Their
standards fit when most convenient for them!
German name for gypsies meant
“untouchable”, or pariah
Like the caste system...
Believed to be involved in the occult
What are some things that Gypsies are commonly associated with? -- Fortune-telling. Tarot cards. Circuses, like in the booth with the crystal ball. Magic.
Just traveling around like nomads.
19th Century Denmark: gypsy hunts
Like fox hunts
Which echoes the Browning excerpt we read.
Earned living as performers, craftsmen
Some had become petty bourgeoisie,
lower civil servants by 20th century
Society on a tribal basis
Sinti and Roma two of the largest
Gypsies identified with tribe, not
nation
Think back to what we said about the Jews after their emancipation in the
late-18th century. What did
the French say about the Jew? Didn’t
they say something like “to the Jew as a person anything, but to the Jews as a
people nothing”? -- That’s pretty
close – so the Gypsies were faced with the same dilemma in that they had this
question to answer: Could they ally
with a flag? They, too, were suspected
of disloyalty.
Racial laws in Germany, then Austria
Underwent some steps in Holocaust as
Jews
Less information available before,
during, or after WWII
Not as many written records
Gypsy extermination was not pursued
with total ruthlessness as was the Jewish extermination
Debates about whether some should be
saved
Why would they debate this? --
Maybe some were Aryan-looking enough to pass.
Maybe some could be used as slaves or servants.
¼- ½ million gypsies died (out of
approximately 1 million European gypsies)
Post-war suffering is much less known
In parts of Europe today they are
still discriminated against and persecuted (Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania…)
Gypsies today face immigration quotas in many European nations.
Why would you suppose homosexuals were persecuted? -- Because of what they do – same sex
relations. It probably didn’t fit in
with the Nazis racial ideals. Maybe
they were seen as deviant, like the Gypsies were with the occult. – Then you may be surprised – it is
racial, but maybe not in the way you’d expect.
Homosexuals
Homosexuality was “an error of
degenerate individualism” – Himmler
Homosexuality would not perpetuate the
Aryan race
Aryan homosexuals were the ones
persecuted
Homosexuals
in Slavic lands weren’t bothered specifically because Nazi goal here was racial
depletion
There’s your answer. While the
Nazis might have been opposed to homosexual behavior per se, they were more
concerned that the master race would not be furthered if men were having sex
with other men and not with women.
Please note, however, that this is primarily the concern of the Aryan
homosexual; non-Aryans weren’t a concern for this reason. – Could we say then that homosexuals were
persecuted, but Aryan homosexuals for a different reason than non-Aryans? -- Not
exactly, but when you speak of the SA purge, that Ernst Rohm was gay was
certainly potentially damaging propaganda against the Nazis.
Abortion also attacked among Aryans,
but not in other lands
Paragraph 175 amended in 1935 to
punish homosexual acts
1939:
special office opened to deal with homosexuality and abortion
Lesbianism not dealt with
Why do you suppose this is? --
I would guess that because women can’t impregnate themselves, that the Nazis
didn’t look on this as particularly negative toward the furthering of the
master race. Yet when men were choosing
to find their “fulfillment” elsewhere, they were “wasting” their cells.
Ernst Rohm and many of his followers
were murdered in the SA purge
Rohm
was homosexual
About 100,000 men were arrested as
homosexuals
50,000 were sentenced to regular
prison terms
Made to wear the pink triangle badge
5,000-15,000 were sent to camps
Don’t you just hate the large variances in statistical information? -- I found that when I was researching my
paper that there is often a disagreement between sources as to death tolls,
ghetto populations, how many prisoners might have escaped, etc. – And although the Nazis were generally
meticulous record-keepers, there are times when we just can’t put our fingers
on a definite figure. Many records were
destroyed…
10,000 murdered
Intense physical abuse from guards
Medical experiments to determine cause
of homosexuality
Homosexuals have kept silent about
these years...
At the conclusion of this discussion, we turned our attention back to the
film “Mass Murder” in the Hitler’s Holocaust series, which we’ve been
watching. We saw more footage of the
trains, deportations, and the camps.
Josef Mengele was addressed, as were selections. Again, this series does just a wonderful job
of incorporating testimony from survivors as well as the perpetrators. Students’ interest is generally held by this
series, and from time to time the tape is stopped for a question or comment.
Jehovah’s
Witnesses
Courageous religious opponents of
Nazism
Refused
any allegiance to Hitler
No “Heil Hitler” salute, didn’t vote
in elections
Meetings, publications banned or
disrupted
Imprisoned, sent to camps
Could get out of persecution by
denying their beliefs
Was that an option for Jews? -- Was it? -- No, it wasn’t, because of the Nazi
racial ideology. These Jehovah’s
Witnesses could have been Aryans.
Those in the camps still witnessed
their beliefs
Hoess wrote of them as “transformed
martyrs”
Wouldn’t rebel or try to escape
Officers used them as servants
About 10,000 Witnesses in camps
2500-5000 died in camps or prisons
Again, a wide variance in these statistics…
Poles,
Russian POW’s
There were several Allied POW
massacres
Russian surprise at Operation
Barbarossa
Remember, the Nazis’ point of view concerning this invasion was that they
would be fighting a war of annihilation; the Soviets could not imagine the
ferocity not only of the attack, but of the einsatzgruppen actions that
followed.
Huge numbers of Russian POW’s
Nazis didn’t feel Russians were worthy
of consideration or protection under rules of war
At this point we entered into a discussion of some of the accepted rules
of war, such as the abstention from bombing around schools, hospitals, and
churches, of treating POW’s humanely, etc.
Questions were raised as to the morality of that, when war is about death
in the first place… I responded that
the goal of war is victory, which is usually through land acquisition. Students commented that the land isn’t just
given away… it must be taken.
War of annihilation; racial war
2 ½ - 3 million died (57.5% of total)
Only 3.6% of British and US POW’s died
Why the disparity in the death tolls?
-- It’s the difference between East and West, and the racial
factor. Even if the Germans thought the
Americans were a racially diluted nation, most of our soldiers were white.
Russians were used at Auschwitz for
Zyklon B experiments
Not a single act of resistance among
Russians until 1945
Terrorized,
starved, beaten
So lack of resistance wasn’t just a Jewish phenomenon?
Those who survived were most often
sent by Stalin to Siberia for labor
Stalin feared weakness, cowardice,
Nazi indoctrination
Some White Russians and many
Ukrainians welcomed the Nazis in 1941
Were treated barbarously
Poland was marked out as a colony
Part of it was directly annexed
Poles would become helots
We discussed the Spartans from their ancient world history lessons…
Education stopped after 4th
grade
Abortion encouraged
Some asked what methods were used for abortion. I told them to use their imaginations, and they would be correct
in some cases.
Intelligentsia was to be liquidated
Lost 45% of physicians and dentists
-- 57% of attorneys
-- 15% of teachers
-- 40% of professors
-- 30% of technicians
-- 20% of clergy
-- 50+% of journalists
Why was there a need to strike at the intelligentsia? -- Destroy any leadership elements. To make sure that the Poles would be
disorganized. They wanted to see that
people would have fear that they might be next.
Only in Poland did the Nazis imprison
bishops
2000 priests perished, many churches
and cultural monuments were destroyed
Why didn’t they do this in the West?
-- They would have had a fear that the Germans or French would have
rallied around the church in spite of the fear of Nazi punishment. Their religion would have taken over their
fear of the Nazis. In the East, they
already dominated the land, so they felt like they could do whatever they
wanted. – Plus, they had a pact
with the Vatican.
Attempt to destroy Polish national
memory and culture
Czechs
were also to be enslaved
Some were thought to be Germanized or
“Germanizable”
Slave labor
7-8 million slaves of the Reich
Nazis reintroduced slavery to Europe
RUSHA = Office of Race Research and
Examination
If an eastern slave worker were caught
having sexual relations with an Aryan woman, an officer of RUSHA would examine
him. If he was “Aryan” enough, he might
even be allowed to marry the woman. If
not, he would be hanged for the crime of “race defilement”.
Blond hair or an extra inch in height
could determine a man’s fate
This perhaps is the summary statement for all of Nazi persecution…
Generally only Poles, Czechs, and
Lithuanians had a chance at Germanization
Russians or Serbs had no chance