The Twisted Road To
Auschwitz, Littered With Obstacles
Internal
public opinion: most Germans weren’t
ready or willing to kill Jews
Solution:
intense propaganda
Teachers began racial purity instruction to children
aged 6
Jews portrayed as poisonous mushrooms, etc.
Threat of terror
Gestapo needed informers and others willing to
support their activities
Passivity/apathy of the common
man cannot be overlooked
We mentioned the nature of bystander mentality earlier,
when we spoke of the person peering out the window at a deportation, yet
finding comfort in the fact that when they turned from the view, their life was
still the same.
We viewed part two of the History Channel’s Holocaust
series, titled “Decision”. Details were
given throughout of efforts to alienate, persecute, move, and annihilate the
Jews of Europe. The film discussed the
euthanasia program as a training ground for mass killings. Gas vans were shown, as were rooms fitted
with openings through which carbon monoxide could be pumped from an
engine. They detailed some of the
rationale for the killing, primarily through first-person testimony. One
veteran said it was common knowledge that once einsatzgruppen activities began,
soldier absenteeism rose as did the suicide rate and the number of incidents of
mental problems. After reading the
excerpt from Browning, the students were very interested in this aspect of the
film.
We were also able to view archival footage of Churchill
and Roosevelt at their meeting at sea that would become the Atlantic Charter,
as well as film shot at the Evian Conference.
Numerous examples of Hitler speaking to the Reichstag as well as to the
masses were used, and the students saw Joseph Goebbels speak for the first
time. That was particularly important
since we’d looked at propaganda yesterday.
We will discuss the film on Monday.
To further our discussion of propaganda, I passed out
laminated copies of a brochure I had picked up at the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum on the art of Arthur Szyk.
The piece is entitled “Satan Leads the Ball”. It can be viewed at:
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/szyk/intro/93833.htm
Students were given the opportunity to try to figure out
who all of the figures were, and then I read them a handout that came with the
brochure. It’s a great example of
propaganda, and tied in well with what we’d looked at a few days ago. Students were very responsive not only to
the symbolism, but to Szyk’s art as well.
We then came back to the notes, tying in material from the
video along the way.
External
public opinion: in the 1930’s, Hitler
was allowed to move from triumph to triumph
Hitler’s self-confidence continued to rise
1938: only
150,000 of 500,000 German Jews had left
The film gave us images of Jewish businesses marked with
Stars of David, and the word “Jude”.
Kristallnacht was covered in some detail, including the assassination by
Herschl Grynzspan that touched off the pogrom on November 9-10, 1938.
Evian Conference (July 1938): called by FDR after Nazi occupation of
Austria
200,000 Jews in Austria
Refugee question
Delegates from 32 nations
“Australia does not currently have a racial problem,
and does not wish to import one.”
The only nation willing to accept Jews was the
Dominican Republic
They’d offered to take up to
100,000 Jews (5000 actually went)
Students were cognizant of the resort atmosphere of Evian,
while those whose conditions they debated were feeling the increased oppression
of the Nazis. It was a good contrast to
elicit anger at the both the lack of comprehension on the part of the world as
well as the lack of intent toward action.
At this point we stopped to look at a resource I’d
received from Warren Marcus at a Museum workshop I attended in Chicago in
2000. It can be viewed on the Museum’s
website at
http://www.ushmm.org/education/foreducators/guidelines/pdf/immigrationvisas.pdf
It shows what the United States required of immigrants in
the late 1930’s-early 1940’s. Students
saw the desperate situation in which Jews would have found themselves. Prior to this discussion, I think they felt
that the Jews were foolish for not leaving.
I pressed them on the issue and asked how many had ever been to a
foreign country outside of North America or the Caribbean. Only a handful between the two classes
had. Then I asked them how easy it
would be financially or socially to move to that country. How many actually knew someone living in
that country? How many could afford not
only to transport themselves at a moment’s notice, but their belongings as
well? There was a great deal of
affirmation on their faces toward the difficulties in flight when it was posed
that way. More than one student pointed
out that the US seemed fixated on the assets of the “receiving” Jewish
relative(s) here in the States. Others
responded with a reminder that the Great Depression was still an issue, and
that solvency was important so as not to create more “welfare cases” in this
nation.
External
successes fueled internal opinion rises
Propaganda rallies
Physical/moral
barrier
What does this mean?
-- It means that people would have to get out of their comfort zones
and do things they normally wouldn’t do.
People usually see physical violence from one person to another as
bad. Not like boxing or football, but
like mob action, or when police have to keep people in line with their billy
clubs. Those kinds of things are hard
to watch, especially when it’s on the news and you know it’s real. Movies you know are fake. But not the movies that we watch in class –
that stuff is hard to watch, too, even though it’s old and in black and
white. The moral barrier can refer to
those who looked the other way; kind of like today when people say, “I don’t
want to get involved”.
Nov. 9-10, 1938:
Kristallnacht
First major, organized physical assault on Jews
In response to assassination
of German diplomat by a Jewish boy (occurred in Paris)
Boy’s family had been expelled by Germany because
they were Polish Jews
Germany wanted to make a nation for Germans, not
foreigners, and especially not Jewish foreigners…
Goebbels planned it with Hitler’s approval
SA & SS carried out the violence
200 synagogues burned in Germany, Austria, and the
Sudetenland
100 murdered
30,000 Jewish males deported
7500 Jewish shops burned and looted
Expropriation of German Jewry
$1 billion mark fine against Jews for “instigating”
Kristallnacht
Here is your physical/moral barrier… -- Right – it would take more than just
the Nazi elite to carry out this kind of destruction, particularly since it was
all over Germany and its lands.
After Kristallnacht, direction of Jewish question was
given to SS
Rational, bureaucratic, cold-blooded efficiency
After discussing these ideas, we looked at an exercise
that assigns responsibility to 30 different people who would have found
themselves in Germany during the Holocaust, from Goering to a worker at a
Zyklon B factory, from a judge who assigned the mentally handicapped to sterilization
to someone who volunteered for the SS.
This was also obtained at the workshop in Chicago, and can also be found
on the Museum’s website at
http://www.ushmm.org/education/foreducators/guidelines/pdf/assessing.pdf
We discussed the ratings students gave various
individuals. The most important part of
the lesson was “why”. Students did a
very good job of debating their stances on the various case studies. Some seemed to have a trouble understanding
the adage “if you’re not a part of the solution, you’re a part of the
problem”. This was especially true in
the example of the Aryan couple that took over a vacated Jewish business, or
apartment. Many did not see that as a
form of support of the Nazi mission.
One student offered the position that a person in our times who moved
into a home that had been repossessed by a bank was not necessarily against the
impoverished or financially disorganized…
Also, the role of the Vatican was debated. Students were able to see the pope as a moral agent in the world,
despite whether one is Catholic or not.
Most, though, stopped at insisting that he should have made a statement
denouncing Hitler. Likewise, some were observant in pointing out that the
United States did not have strictly Jewish quotas in the 1930’s, but quotas
against the admission of all immigrants. We’ll cover the material about Pius
XII in a later discussion, and perhaps it will become clearer as to why many
indict the pope for his refusal to take a stand against Hitler. We’ll also look at the Roosevelt
administration as a major bystander.
Human
means to carry out the Final Solution
SS: the
guardians of the Aryan race
1939: est. of
RHSA (Reich Security Main Office)
Headed by Reinhard Heydrich
Gestapo, headed by Heinrich Mueller (has never been
found since the war)
Office #IV
Office B-4 was Jewish office, headed by Adolf
Eichmann
Think about Eichmann’s “title” as the “ultimate desk
murderer”. What do you think that
means? -- It means that he didn’t
actually kill any Jews. – Right –
actually, he killed one: a boy who
picked fruit from a tree in front of his home (in Budapest, Hungary). Yet he is responsible for the deaths of
millions. What do you think his job
entailed? -- Well, he ran the trains
all around Europe to take Jews and other victims to the camps. I suppose he had to be very organized… -- More than you can imagine. How about this – they knew what the
capacities were for the gas chambers, elevators, and crematoria in the six
killing centers. Eichmann’s job was to
ensure that those facilities were always in use. Sure, at times “production” (sounds obscene, but that was the
output of these “factories” – death) slowed, but generally Eichmann made sure
that trains kept a constant influx of victims.
Finding a technical means to commit
mass murder
Complaints from einsatzgruppen that killing
(shooting) was hard on the nerves
Messy, too
We reflected on the Browning reading…
T-4 program (the euthanasia program)
Began in the autumn of 1939
Exterminate the physically and
mentally “damaged”
By 1945, 400,000 Germans had been forcibly sterilized
Nazis would eliminate “life
unworthy of life”
Gas chambers came to be used
Required doctors and nurses, hospital staff to
cooperate
Euthanasia program lasted Oct. 1939-Aug. 1941
As a result of protests led by Catholic bishop, Nazis
terminated program
70,000-100,000 Germans were executed by poison gas
during the program
Fall, 1941:
Odilo Globocnik was ordered by Himmler to murder the Jews of Poland (the
Generalgouvernment)
Euthanasia program continued in hospitals, orphanages
through lethal injections (mostly using phenol), starvation
Total of ¼ million may have died in the program
The
army had sworn an oath of allegiance not to Germany, but to Hitler
We’ve seen this in a couple of videos…
Saw USSR as an enemy
Question: what
would the soldiers do when the einsatzgruppen came and machine-gunned old men,
children?
In many cases, the Wehrmacht assisted
In most cases, they
were apathetic
German High Command was intensely antisemitic
NOW, the July 31, 1941* order to annihilate the Jews could
be given
The arrogance of Hitler and his drunkenness with
power allowed him to do this
After concluding these notes, I passed out a copy of a
portion of the appendices from Landau’s book, The Nazi Holocaust. We read a short article about euphemisms for
death; students were distressed at the detachment with which a minor bureaucrat
wrote of the need to alter the load space in a van used for gassing patients in
the T-4 program. We talked about how
the Nazis used several such covers to hide what they were doing – talk about
things as naturally and “unkilling” as possible and they just might get away
with it…
Summary:
Internal War
Key motive force:
racial war
Racial nationalism
Spread Aryan rule and control around the world
Wars of conquest had to be fought
1934-39:
350,000-400,000 Germans declared “unfit” and were sterilized
Efforts were made to encourage
those of pure Aryan stock to breed
Euthanasia program began with children and spread to
adults
Many who had been sterilized were later killed
Program spread to the camps
Spring, 1941:
14f13 program
Euthanasia personnel were sent into camps to weed out
the sick and those deemed politically dangerous (some Jews, too)
Internal program against the Jews and German gypsies
External War
War against nearby Slavic enemies
Poland
War against Great Britain
Because Germany had been internally “purified”, there
would be no “stab in the back” again
War against USSR communists
War against USA
Nazis viewed the US as a racially-diluted, weak, and
divided land
Hitler laid plans to build a huge navy with which to
attack the US
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor caused Hitler to rush
to declare war on the US on Dec. 11, 1941
We discussed that Hitler had planned to invade the United
States, and was somewhat dismayed at the timing of the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor. Also, we noted Hitler’s
commitment to winning both wars: the war against the world and the war against
the Jews. Students remarked on more
than one occasion that Hitler expended a tremendous amount of resources toward
the extinction of the Jews; had he leveled all that manpower, etc. against the
Allies, he surely could have increased his chances of defeating the powerful
American/British/Soviet alliance.
Hitler viewed the French as an inferior Alpine race,
but the British of superior Aryan stock
Jews were the anti-race
Personnel who had fought the internal war could now
fight the external war (against the Jews of Europe)
War provided the Nazis with a cover for what they
were doing
Why a cover?
Not all Aryans had been “educated” on racial ideals
Do it away from the prying eyes of civilians
As it went on, more and more Germans got involved,
and more and more knew something was happening to the Jews but were perhaps in
denial, looking the other way…
Einsatzgruppen used shooting to kill
Cover of war made it easier to deceive the victims
Opinions of neutral nations had to be considered
Nazis didn’t want genocide to be used against them as
propaganda
Nazis were aware of opinions in Great Britain and the
United States
* This is one proposed date; some
historians will argue that an exact date will never be known.