The Holocaust: A Darkness of History

Comp 102

Professor Neuburger

27 March 2011
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Paul Iannucilli

Professor Neuberger

Comp 102

1 April 2011

The Holocaust: A Darkness of History

The Holocaust was one of the darkest chapters in the history of mankind.. In this paper, I

will provide a brief overview of the particular aspects of the Holocaust, as well as offer

reflections, thoughts and reactions to the facts behind the atrocity.

The Nazis come to power

Post World War I Germany was a country reeling in economic and social upheaval.

Anger and resentment from the reparations they were forced to pay as conditions of The Treaty

of Versailles. As well as a general

feeling of being the recipient of unfair treatment

from the victors created a cauldron waiting to

boil over when the right catalyst was

introduced. That catalyst was the National

Socialist German Workers Party, known

1 Adolph Hitler at a rally

historically http://bit.ly/eMPgcO as the Nazis. (History.com/the

Holocaust/ Before the Holocaust)

Adolf Hitler was the figure who spearheaded the political rise of the Nazi party. He

attempted a coup known as the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. For his role in this attempted coup, he
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received a prison sentence. It was in prison where he wrote Mein Kampf , an autobiographical

narrative and a scathing anti-Semitic diatribe, blaming all of Germany’s postwar problems on the

Jews.

Hitler’s book outlined plans for a second war, and the rise to power of an all-white

‘Aryan’ race, with the dual need of expansion for the Aryans by conquest termed ‘Lebensraum’.

As Germany continued struggling, Hitler’s views and aims reached powerful sympathetic ears

and ultimately created the backing of the Nazi party by the people. This environment of despair

set the stage for a people looking for a scapegoat for their problems, and Hitler’s treatise

provided a convenient one.

Anti-Semitism and Nazis

Anti-Semitism was by no means a new idea in Germany. Hatred toward Jews had roots

as far back as The Middle Ages. This was a brutal manipulation of a nation in crisis: Adolf

Hitler and his supporters to galvanize a country into supporting an unspeakable agenda. After

the people swallowed this agenda, Hitler and the Nazis were then able to seize power of

Germany.

The wave of Anti-Semitism which took root in Germany at

the time largely had economic root causes. Germany was in the

throes of major economic depression, currency was so devalued

that people had to push it around in wheelbarrows to buy groceries.

The Weimar Republic (Germany’s post World War I government)

2Anti-Semitic Cartoon saw a return to people wanting to not only return Germany to its
http://bit.ly/hql3lt
past military and industrial glory, but looking for a scapegoat for
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the abundant problems they faced. This perfect storm of circumstances set the framework for the

devastating wave of Anti-Semitism the Nazis created. (Holocaust Chronicle/1933)

The appointment of Adolf Hitler as the Chancellor of Germany came as the culmination

of the rising tide of Anti-Semitic sentiment within the German people. Making good on what

was his will, and what he manipulated the peoples will to be, Hitler and the Nazi regime then

took action through the government to forward the Aryan agenda. The first manifestation of the

ultimate Aryan agenda was the passing of the Nuremburg Laws. The metaphorical storm clouds

were looming on the horizon, and the new regime was now able to manifest Anti-Semitism into

tangible government policy.

The Nuremburg Laws

On September 15 1935, The Nuremburg Laws were passed. The Nuremburg Laws made

Jews non-citizens. They could no longer fly the German flag, and it also made it illegal for a

Jewish person to marry a German citizen. (JewishFederationofPittsburgh.org)

When looking at these laws, it is important to know what Hitler’s regime defined as a

Jew. According to these laws, a Jew was considered to be anyone with three Jewish

grandparents or two Jewish grandparents and who considered oneself to be a Jew. The

particularly insidious nature of this aspect of the law was that it numerically qualified what being

of a culture or ethnicity meant, and by making it cold it and mathematical the process of

dehumanization truly began. It was around this time that measures were taken among other

segments of the population Hitler deemed undesirable. Jehovah’s Witnesses, gypsies,

communists, and gays were among those that the Nazis laws and government began to

systematically repress.
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There were anti-Semitic riots, protests, and demonstrations all done by the people and the

Nazi party. In 1938, the great Synagogue in Munich was demolished by Nazis. Anti-Semitic

decrees are issued to include the citizens of recently annexed Austria, and the Germans also sent

a large number of Polish Jews to be deported to Poland, although they were turned around at the

border.

The increasing resentment and tension for Jews created by the Nazis began to escalate

even more rapidly, culminating in the first in a long of atrocities the Jews were made to suffer at

the hands of the Nazis: Kristallnacht, or the night of broken glass. Up until this point the

tensions were not overtly hostile, but this was going to quickly and irrevocably change.

Historically, when a government sows the seeds of oppression of a people, atrocity is soon to

follow. Things inevitably had to come to a boiling point which was being orchestrated by the

government, and it finally did with Kristallnacht.

Kristallnacht
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Kristallnacht was launched by the Gestapo of the Nazi party. The Gestapo were secret

police and antagonists for the Nazis who used the assault of a German official by an exiled Jew

in Paris as the pretext to incite riots. These events

occurred on November 9-10 of 1938. Described

officially as spontaneous outbursts, this organized

anti-Semitic fervor resulted in Jewish businesses

being destroyed and synagogues being burned

down. 30,000 Jews were then sent to recently

opened concentration camps at Buchenwald and

3A Synagogue being destroyed in Frankfurt
Dachau. For the slaying of Minister Ernst Vom
http://bit.ly/gdhY0R

Rath, the Nazi government forced Jewish insurance companies to pay the government 1 billion

marks, and for the damages caused on Kristallnacht they were ordered to pay 6 million marks.

(Jewish Virtual Library/Kristallnacht)

It was at this point historians mostly agree the Holocaust began. It was obvious that

Hitler and the Nazis were adopting a policy of overtly and publicly punishing Jews for their

ethnicity and began separating Jews into concentration camps, under the pretext of using Jews

for labor and to separate them from German citizens. The turning away of the Polish Jews by

Poland was also being used as the catalyst to initiate Lebensraum with Poland as the Nazis first

target. The Nazis had also affected a sealing of European borders to Jewish refugees, sealing the

fate of the Jews to die at the hands of the merciless Nazis in the concentration camps. The tide

was truly against the Jews in Nazi Germany at this stage, and only intervention from an outside

government could have improved their condition. Sadly, these hopes were in vain.

(Nizkor.org/Kristallnacht)
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The deportation of Jews by the Nazis was conceived by those in the party as a means to

rid themselves of the Jewish population. At this point the Jewish citizens of Nazi Germany and

Austria were forced to wear armbands with the Star of David to mark them as separate and to

remind them and everyone else of the shame of their ethnicity, according to Nazi party leaders.

This also had the effect of turning a symbol of hope and solidarity into something shameful and

further dividing the Jewish people with something that once unified and inspired. Jews were

being treated legally as lesser and segregated with shame by Aryans and it was from this attitude

that plans for deportation were made than unrealized by other countries ignoring the plight of the

Jews. The Nazis then proceeded to open the ghettoes and separate the Jews into them.

(History.com/the holocaust/Beginning of War)

Ghettos/the Wannsee Conference

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In September of 1939, the German Army invaded and occupied the western half of

Poland. As a result of that military action, war was declared on Germany by France and

England. Using seized property, the Nazis then started to give property of Polish Jews away to

ethnic Germans and Polish gentiles. The ghettoes that were made in Poland functioned like

captive states, and the Nazis quickly erected walls and barbed wire in order to keep by force

control and submission of the Jewish populations residing there. In the fall of 1939, Hitler began

the Euthanizing of 70,000 mentally ill and disabled Germans. The method of execution was gas.

This served as the prototype for the chilling events that were soon to follow in regards to the

Nazi regimes plan for the Jews. Those being murdered with state sanctioning were considered

undesirable to a government, which begs the question, who has the right to define a person’s

worth? Time after time this has created tyranny and barbarism cloaked with righteous rhetoric

and blind fervor.

The conditions of the

concentration camps and the ghettoes

were unimaginably

wretched. There was disease,

overcrowding, people were horribly

malnourished 4Jews being forced into a ghetto

and many families who

were once . http://bit.ly/fyl7UI wealthy were suddenly

found with nothing. Some were

separated and placed in different camps, ultimately never to see one another again. If conditions

were complained about by anyone, they were literally forfeiting their life or the lives of those
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they cared about. The ghettoes were a constant environment of tension, starvation, disease, and

mortal fear.

With the Nazis taking away the rights and property of Jews, they now had no place to put

the Jews that were in Nazi territory. In order to correct this situation, Heinrich Himmler, second

in command of the SS held what is known today as the Wannsee Conference. Named for a lake

on the suburbs of Berlin at was held in a manor house overlooking the lake. It was there that the

most fateful and terrifying decision in all human history would occur. The decision to

implement The Final Solution to what Nazi high command considered to be the Jew problem.

Deportation and confinement were no longer considered to be financially or logistically feasible

for the Nazis. The decision to begin mass extermination of Jews was made. (Jewish Virtual

Library/Wannsee protocol)

One of the first ways The Final Solution was to be carried out was with death squads.

The local populace assisted the Nazis in rounding up and massacring Jews in the early part of the

Final Solution however these methods were eventually abandoned in favor of more methodical

large scale butchery. It was at this point that death camps began to open up on the Eastern front

of the war campaign. Here, in 1942, was when large scale death camps such as Auschwitz were

opened for the specific purpose of mass transport of Jews to their death.

Selection

Among the groups who were selected for departure were Jews, Gypsies, Communists,

Mentally ill, and others. All ages and genders were targeted for those the Nazi had deemed less

than citizens. Among the first to depart for the death camps were the old, sick, very young or

otherwise infirm. The Nazis targeted out those whom they thought were or valueless to be first
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selected to die. They did not differentiate by family. The Nazis sent fathers, sons, mothers to

separate camps. Sometimes newborn babies were taken from their mothers. 6 and one half

million Jews were victims of the Nazis. There were 5 million non-Jews some were Polish

Catholics and Christians. (Holocaust Forgotten)

In regards to the selection of the Nazis and their victims, one of their victims, Pastor

Nielloemer, a victim of the Nazis summarized it most poignantly.

“First they came for the

Jews and I did not speak

out because I was not a

Jew. Then they came for

the communists and I did

not speak out because I

was not a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a

trade unionist. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for

me.”

It is the indifference of good men to evil which truly allows the greatest evils to flourish.

Transportation to these camps occurred by loading Jews into railroad cars originally

intended for cattle. When they arrived at one of the camps, they slept on dirt floors or large

wooden slats. They were starved or given maggot ridden provisions

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Extermination Methods

At the large concentration camps, the main method used for extermination of Jews was

gas chambers. Jewish people were led into what looked like large shower area. Then Zyklon-B

gas was released through the ventilation systems and entire rooms full of Jews suffocated and

stopped breathing. The Nazis did not have enough gas to kill all the Jews, so they used far too

small amounts, which prolonged the agony and pain their victims had to endure as their life

slowly left their bodies. This is

something that should never be

forgotten. Also, they were taken on

forced marches out into isolated areas and

executed by soldiers en masse. This

practice occurred more commonly later

in the war, as the Axis position became

6Crematorium
increasingly untenable and the
http://bit.ly/e2MNnu

Nazis began evacuation of the

camps. Some of the marches literally took Jews to the doorsteps of townspeople who ignored

their plight and let them die on their doorsteps. (Yad Vashem)

The Five Death Camps

The five death camps were located in Poland, on the eastern front of the Nazi war effort

against once allied Russia. The five death camps were Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Sobibor,

Treblinko, and Majdanek. It was at these locations that the majority of Jews and other

‘undesirable elements’ met their deaths at the hands of the Nazis. These locations were chosen
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for their close proximity to the rail lines. Some of the Jews were able to jump the death cars and

escape to safety, although this was rare. Others, who were few and far between, were spared

this awful fate. These were Jews who had skills the Nazis ultimately used as part of the war

effort. Oskar Schindler’s munitions factory is among one of the few places that provided such a

safe haven. (History.com/The Holocaust/Holocaust Death Camps)

Liberation

By mid to late 1944, the tide was clearly turning against the Nazis. Although Hitler

urged the citizens to resist the allied effort and to keep racial purity at all costs. By late spring in

1945, the Allied forces made their way to the concentration camps and were able to liberate the

surviving Jewish victims. Many prisoners died after liberation, being so emaciated that they

could not eat the food given them and starved. By May of 1945, the third Reich collapsed and

Hitler committed suicide in his bunker underneath Berlin. When the Allied forces liberated the

camps, they could have not been prepared for the large scale horror. Thousands of sick,

emaciated barely alive people and the

bodies of hundreds of thousands dead in

open mass graves. They recorded their

findings so that the world would know

and never forget the horror of the

Holocaust, but even today there are those

7What was found that deny or try to revise what truly
http://bit.ly/fE4CCH
happened, which will be discussed later.

The nightmare of Nazi power was over,

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but the horror of the Holocaust still reverberates in our consciousness today. (U-s-

history.com/holocaust)

After Liberation until Israel/1948

After the Holocaust, The Jews were a displaced people without a homeland. This led to

the founding of Israel in 1948. This state, in the British territory of Palestine was set aside to

become the Jewish homeland. Over 700,000 Jews immigrated to Israel. Over 140,000 decided

to make their home in New York. The Nazis who had escaped justice were hunted down and

faced trial for international war crimes and crimes against humanity at Nuremburg. It was there

that it came to light the fact that Nazi doctors had spent the war conducting twisted medical

experiments on Jews and literally burying the evidence in the mass graves of the concentration

camps.

Israel hunted down all of those in the SS high command who escaped justice at

Nuremburg. Some of the trials were not able to occur until the early 1960s due to the scattering

of Nazis all over the world. Many were to find homes in South America, as there were dictators

who only cared about the money these leaders had after enriching themselves with Jewish

fortunes, yet one more indignity the Jews had to suffer.

Today the bravery and

perseverance of the Jews in

one of the darkest chapters of

human history is

memorialized. There are

Holocaust museums, survivor

8Adolph Eichmann on trial

http://bit.ly/fL3aLP
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sites, literature that survived the war such as The Diary of Anne Frank as well as the first-hand

accounts of those who lived through the atrocities such as Night by Elie Wiesel. An unfortunate

part of the Holocaust memory today is the way in which certain Arab nations have tried to deny

the Holocaust and revise the horror because of their blind hatred of Jews. The conditions which

created the Holocaust were a baseless anti-Semitism which scarily still exists today all over the

world. This is why it is now all that much more important to never forget the past lest we

become doomed to repeat it.

Afterword: This is probably the hardest assignment I have ever had. I did not feel I had nearly

enough space to pay the topic its due diligence so I know I have only scratched the surface of a

multifaceted and complex history. This paper was hard to write in that when you see the faces of

the children and their emaciated bodies you know the true meaning of the phrase ‘senseless loss

of life’. I wrote this over the course of several days because I had to keep putting it down and

steeling myself up to continue. It is hard to write about which is why it is all the more important

that it remains written about. I have known people full of hate or with pretensions of racial

superiority and no human being can see the plight of Jews in Nazi Germany and maintain any

illusions about the grandeur of the Third Reich, which is why I guess they deny the Holocaust.

Any master race that could possibly exist would be morally superior to other races, and no

superior race could do what the Nazis have done. Therefore, when confronted with the evidence

of one of man’s ultimate historical inhumanities to man they can’t accept the logical fallacy so

are forced to deny it ever occurred at all. This is yet one final indignity that the Jews have had to

face. In closing, I have educated myself about something that was only; as it is for many I am

sure, an abstract historical event which has been made personally relevant to me through this
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assignment. Just because I was horrified, and enraged doesn’t mean I wasn’t enlightened. As

hard as this assignment was to write, it needed to be written.