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The question of how much knowledge German (and other European) civilians had about the Holocaust whilst it was happening has been studied and debated by historians. [2] [3] [4] In Nazi Germany, it was an open secret among the population by 1943, Peter Longerich argues, but some authors place it even earlier. [5] After the war, many Germans claimed that they were ignorant of the crimes perpetrated by the Nazi regime, a claim associated with the stereotypical phrase "Davon haben wir nichts gewusst" ("We knew nothing about that").
In German-occupied Europe, governments were acutely aware of the implications of their complicity, and that the general population, to varying degrees, were usually not aware of the implications of ghettoization and deportation. [6] [7] [8] Governments such as the Vichy government in France have been posited to be acutely aware of their complicity with the Nazis' genocidal policies. [8] With regard to general populations, the overall consensus amongst historians appears to be that many were aware of a hatred towards the Jewry, but not insofar that a significant comprehension of the Nazis' genocidal policies was reached. [6] [7]
Knowledge of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany is a recurrent historical issue. The precise number of people who knew of the Final Solution is unknown. The larger population were at least acutely aware of the Nazi Party's anti-Semitism, if not advocates of the movement themselves. Numerous perspectives emerge when examining the degrees to which the larger population were aware that anti-Semitic practices enabled by the Nazi Party would eventuate to ethnic cleansing of the Jewish population. However, many historians argue that Germans were provided information explicit enough to indicate that the Jewish people were being massacred.
Although the mass murder of Jews took place outside of Germany, the mass killing of Soviet prisoners of war occurred within it and at an early date. By mid 1942 an estimated 227,000 had died after being deported to Germany. Many Germans were aware of these killings. Some Germans tried to help the prisoners, by giving them food or even aiding escapees. According to the Security Service reports, many Germans called for the death of these prisoners out of fear that feeding them would reduce their own rations. [9]
Nazi policies were widely available to the population. [10] Numerous speeches spoken by Hitler in 1942 allude to the destruction of Jews. [11] Notably, on 24 February 1942, Hitler's speech celebrating the Nazi Party's foundation alludes to his prophecy of 30 January 1939 in which he foresaw the destruction of European Jews. [12] This speech was then reported the following day in the Niedersaechsische Tageszeitung. Hitler publicly referenced his original 1939 prophecy at least four times in public in the year 1942. [13] Historians such as Confino and Koonz argue that Hitler's emphasis on this prophecy during the height of the holocaust meant that it became a shared ideal among the society. [14] [15]
From the analysis of primary sources circulating during the Second World War, historian Ian Kershaw deduces that areas of Germany closer to Poland and Russia had more knowledge of the ongoing extermination of Jews, as they were physically closer to the killing areas. [16] The names of extermination camps are rarely mentioned in primary sources originating from the Western side of the Reich. [16] Comparatively, areas near the east of Europe make references to the camps. Particularly, primary sources report the Polish resistance movement comparing the Katyn massacre to Auschwitz concentration camp. [16]
Kershaw argues that there is a strong likelihood that German people understood the implications of deportation for evacuated Jews. [12] There were numerous reports of mass shootings conducted in the Soviet Union, and it was known to the general German Public that this was where German Jews would be deported to. [17] Similarly, Kershaw argues that local SD reports provided enough information such that Germans who wanted to seek the purpose of deportation would likely find the answer. [17] In July 1942, Karl Duerckefaelden, a Celle engineer, noted three instances in his everyday life where rumours of deportation circulated. [18] A conversation with a Dutch lorry driver, news from the BBC, and the wife of a Jew all spoke of the deportation of Jews and the potential implications of death. [19]
A report from Minden in December 1941 outlined how Jews were being deported to Warsaw in cattle cars, and, upon arrival, worked in factories, whilst the old and sick were shot. [12] SD reports in April 1942 also outline how the Sicherheitspolizei were tasked with exterminating the Jews in German-occupied territories, where victims would dig their own graves before being shot. This information reached the Erfurt area of Germany. [20] Kershaw also explores the accessibility of this information by referencing diaries of German people. [20] German people who travelled for work were more likely able to access information on mass shootings. Karl Duerckefaelden's brother-in-law, who travelled to Dnieper, spoke to him of informants who had seen mass shootings first-hand. [21] One informant spoke of the mass shooting of 118 Jews no longer fit for work and two different mass burials of 50,000 and 80,000 Jews on the trip home. [21] Another trip involved interaction with people on the front who stated that all the Jews in Ukraine were dead.[ citation needed ]
According to Gellately, the German public initially understood that Nazi concentration camps were educative institutions for criminals. [22] However, despite censorship, the German public eventually came to understand the likelihood of fatality if sent to a concentration camp. [23] Prisoners began to appear in public spaces such as factories and city streets, and they often wore distinctive clothing with badges that signified their nationality and crime. [24] The nature of concentration camps was made further obvious by the SS's public displays of violence towards inmates. [23] Numerous interviews with German people mention either a cruel or murderous incident between guards and inmates. Usually, the inmate was beaten to death or shot for either disobeying or being unable to work. [25]
Longreich purports that it was not widely known that Jews were exterminated using gas chambers. [26] Bankier purports that by 1943, gas as a killing method was widely discussed, although there were inaccuracies that gave rise to misconceptions of how the gassings were practiced. [26] Reports and interviews only have vague and infrequent references to victims being gassed in cattle trucks of trains in tunnels. This information, if disseminated, was done so via foreign broadcasts and rumours from soldiers. Indictment of German individuals reveal that some of the public knew of the gas chambers, but were censored. [26] In the Munich Special Court in 1943, a woman recalls discussing foreign broadcasts with her neighbour which outlined how Jewish women and children were segregated from the Aryan population and then killed with gas. [27] In 1944, also in the Munich Special Court, an Augsburg furniture removal man was indicted of having declared that the "Führer" was a mass-murderer who had Jews loaded into a wagon and exterminated by gas. [27]
There are competing views amongst historians regarding the Dutch public's knowledge of the Holocaust. Some historians argue that the majority of the Dutch had a complete understanding of the Holocaust. After analyzing Queen Wilhelmina's wartime speeches, social scientist Jord Schaap concluded that the Holocaust was known in the Netherlands between 1940 and 1945. According to Schaap, the key issue was whether or not the Dutch would believe the information. [3] [28] Similarly, Vuijsje in his book Against Better Knowledge: Self-Deception and Denial in Dutch Historiography of the Persecution of the Jews, argues that public knowledge was extensive, but the Dutch public denied the information because of their inability to act against the reality. [3] [29] Other historians contend that many of the Dutch had fragmented knowledge of the Holocaust. Loe de Jong, director of the Dutch State Institute of War Documentation and Dutch historian, argues that while information about the Holocaust was available to the general public, a large proportion of Dutch Jews thought it incomprehensible that their deportation would result in deaths by gassing. De Jong argues that knowledge of mass extermination was only acquired after World War II had ended. [30] [31] Similarly, historian Friedlander argues that even those who were in close proximity to the killing sites had little knowledge of what happened to deported Jews. [32]
Van der Boom's analysis of Dutch diaries reveals that the public knew the Jewish people were deliberately singled out to be sent to concentration camps in Poland. [3] The Jewish people were also aware of the Nazi's wish to practice genocide. Many diarists from Amsterdam particularly, conclude that death would be imminent for Jews. [3] Diaries from Etty Hillesum, an aspiring writer and Joop Voet, a young accountant, both discussed a recognition that Jews were the enemies of Germany and that the Nazis would seek their extermination. [33] [34] Deportation was famously described by Anne Frank as a march of death. [35] However, most diarists were convinced that whilst they would be treated harshly and potentially face death, they did not think they would be killed immediately upon arrival. [3]
Some of the Dutch heard about prisoners' death by Nazis' experimentation, that is, where Jews would be compelled to be subjects of supposed science experiments. [3] This story circulated in the early 1940s in response to the mortality rates in Mauthausen. This story was mentioned by four diarists analysed by van der Boom. [3]
Knowledge of mass shootings first appeared in a BBC report in 1942. Later that year, eyewitness stories of Jews forced to dig their own graves were recorded by two diarists. Ten other diarists also spoke of mass executions by shooting. [36]
Nazis' infliction of death by gassing was spoken of by diarists, and many did believe in the information. Thirty-five out of the 164 diarists wrote of Jews being gassed. This knowledge originated from detailed reports on Auschwitz, the deportation of Hungarian Jews, news reports and eyewitness accounts of the liberation of camps. [37] [38] A number of diarists did not believe it to be a real practice by the Nazis because they deemed that there was either not enough evidence or that the evidence was not reliable. [39] [3]
Van der Boom argues that by examining the obedience of victims, it can be concluded that immediate murder was unknown amongst the Dutch Jewry. It remained unclear to diarists whether going into hiding would be less dangerous than being deported to concentration camps. [3] Half of Jewish diarists and a quarter of Gentile diarists referred to the destination of deportation trains as a great unknown. [36] [3] Out of the 164 diaries examined by Van der Boom, only 24 implied that the deported Jews would be interned in camps. Of the remaining diaries, 61% discuss labour explicitly whilst another 24% imply being interned at camps. [3]
Another diarist, Philip Mechanicus, assumed there to be three types of camps. Firstly, he believed there was a camp for the privileged, such as Theresienstadt or Bergen-Belsen. [40] Secondly, he believed there to be labour camps for the majority of deportees and then thirdly, concentration camps for Jews who had to be punished for whatever reason. [40] Joop Voet, also appears to have misunderstood the nature of concentration camps writing that he would take his children into hiding because he would likely be unable to take care of them properly at the camps and its severity would kill his children. [3] Many Jews appeared to have thought that deportees would still be able to survive at concentration camps. Kruisinga, the notary public who had heard numerous gassing rumours expressed surprise in his diaries when unable to contact a deported Jew to discuss business affairs: "It is easier to arouse the spirit of Julius Caesar than to get a letter from a Jewish client in a labor camp in eastern Germany." [3] Van der boom argues that if the victims knew of their fate upon deportation they would have most definitely acted differently and sought hiding. [3]
Olga Baranova argues that it is undeniable that the people of Belarus had a clear awareness of the Nazi's genocidal intent as they were first-hand witnesses. [41] She argues that by examining the actions of the Belarusians, it can be deduced that the general public understood the imminence of death that came with ghettoisation. [41]
From examining how some Belarusians collaborated with the Nazis, Baranova finds a clear awareness of the Nazi's genocidal policies. [41] People who participated in disclosure would have understood the consequences of their actions as the Nazis' collective responsibility policies would execute entire families. [42] Some Belarusians believed that by cooperating with the Nazis, they would increase their own chance of survival. [43] Complicity from the Belarusian public ranged from: acceptance of Nazi policies, ignoring Jewish neighbours who needed assistance with food and shelter and disclosing to Nazi authorities about Jews in hiding. [44] Some Belarusians participated in rounding up Belarusian Jewry and guarded the ghettos and concentration camps. [44] Local auxiliary policemen also participated in the mass shootings. [44] Such collaboration occurred in the Western part of Belarus, which was under civilian administration (the Generalkommissariat Weißruthenien) and Eastern Belarus, which was overseen by the German Army Group Centre. [45]
Baranova explores also, that by looking to the actions of those who assisted Jews in escaping the ghettos, it can be shown that the Belarusian knew of imminent death upon relocation to ghettos. [46] The memoirs of Holocaust survivor Georgji Elper describe his experiences in the Minsk ghetto, and being saved by a Belarusian woman. [46] [47] His memoirs also recall how he and other deportees heard of Jews exterminated by death squads and being sent to city ghettos. [48] There are also several instances when individuals accepted appointment to positions in local administration, with the intention of protecting the Jews in Belarus. [48] Elper recalls how he heard how a Belarusian policeman told a Jewish girl about an upcoming pogrom. [49] [48] From this forewarning, a secret storeroom was constructed which hid and saved the lives of many Jews. Other means of assistance also included forgery, so that Jews could escape ghettos. [48]
Implementation of German policies did not occur without the knowledge of the Hungarian government. Hungarian national and local officials made key decisions concerning the implementation of anti-Jewish measures and were aware of the Nazis' genocidal intent. [51] [52] Hungarians who worked near the concentration camps were witnesses of deportation and executions. [53]
Historians Vági, Csősz, and Kádár argue that the government had a clear understanding of the Nazi's genocidal policies and actively collaborated with the regime. [54] György Ottlik's 1944 report to the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reflects an awareness of the change in Nazi policy, that is one from discrimination to systemic genocide. [55] His report outlines how the Nazis had begun justifying the genocide so as to convince the Sztójay to cooperate with their policies. [55] Ottlik's report also discusses how France was already cooperating with Nazi policies at the time of the report. [55] [56] Horthy's memorandum to the Sztójay outlines how he was forced in a situation where he was not allowed to intervene with German policies. [57] Horthy describes the Jewish question as cruel and inhumane. [57] The Hungarian elite also had significant knowledge of the Nazi's genocidal policies. [58] The Relief and Rescue Committee in Budapest, run by Zionist activists, bargained for the lives of Jews with Nazi officials. [59] The committee would offer cash, valuables, contacts, promises of alibis in exchange for the lives of over a thousand Jews. [59]
The Hungarian Interior Ministry specifically, issued a confidential ghettoisation order and also defined the parameters. [60] County officials were responsible for deciding which towns would have ghettos. Written in May 1944, a letter from prefect of Vas County to chief administrative officers and mayors revealed that the deputy prefect of Vas county decided that seven ghettos were to be established in the county. [52] Mayors were then responsible for determining ghettos' precise locations. In Kormend, chief administrative officers and deputy prefects met and decided that the boundaries of the ghetto were to be the streets surrounding the synagogue: Széchenyi Street, Gróf Apponyi Street, Dienes Lajos Street, and Rábamellék Street. [52]
Hungarian soldiers and labor servicemen were the first members of the Hungarian public to know of the Nazi's genocidal policies; they saw, first-hand, the execution of Jews on the Eastern Front. [53] The journals of Miksa Fenyő, editor of Nyugat ['West'], a literary journal that catalysed modern movements, demonstrate that Jews had access to information regarding the Holocaust. [61] In one of his entries, he records a visit from one of his sources and discusses witnessing 600,000 Jews being dragged away to be killed. [62] Fenyo's source also mentions that the killings are committed by both the Gestapo and the Hungarian guard. [63] In a testimony, Father John S recounted seeing trainloads of Hungarian Jews upon peering through a fence and seeing one man being struck down by an SS guard. [64] [65] [66] From examining approximately 5000 Hungarian testimonials, the staff of the Hungarian Jewish relief organisation, National Committee for Attending Deportees (DEGOB) were able to conclude that the majority of Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz were unaware that they would be killed upon arrival. [67] Refugees from Poland and Slovakia tried to warn Hungarian Jews of the consequences of deportation. A student from Munkács, T. F. was informed of Auschwitz from disclosure by his Slovakian cousin. [68]
The highest levels of the Slovak government were aware by late 1941 of mass murders of Jews in German-occupied territories. [69] [70] In July 1941, Wisliceny organized a visit by Slovak government officials to several camps run by Organization Schmelt, which imprisoned Jews in East Upper Silesia to employ them in forced labor on the Reichsautobahn. The visitors understood that Jews in the camps lived under conditions which would eventually cause their deaths. [71] [72] Slovak soldiers participated in the invasions of Poland and the Soviet Union; [73] they brought word of the mass shootings of Jews, and participated in at least one of the massacres. [74] Some Slovaks were aware of the 1941 Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre, in which 23,600 Jews, many of them deported from Hungary, were shot in western Ukraine. [75] [76] Defense minister Ferdinand Čatloš and General Jozef Turanec reported massacres in Zhytomyr to President Jozef Tiso by February 1942. [69] [77] Both bishop Karol Kmeťko and papal chargé d'affaires Giuseppe Burzio confronted the president with reliable reports of the mass murder of Jewish civilians in Ukraine. [77] [78] In early 1942, Hanns Ludin, the German ambassador to Slovakia, reported that the Slovaks were enthusiastic about the deportation of their Jewish population. [79] Eventually, the Slovak government agreed to pay 500 Reichsmarks each for the deportation of two-thirds of their Jewish population. [80]
The Final Solution or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to the Jewish question" was the official code name for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not restricted to the European continent. This policy of deliberate and systematic genocide starting across German-occupied Europe was formulated in procedural and geopolitical terms by Nazi leadership in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference held near Berlin, and culminated in the Holocaust, which saw the murder of 90% of Polish Jews, and two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe.
The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior government officials of Nazi Germany and Schutzstaffel (SS) leaders, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. The purpose of the conference, called by the director of the Reich Security Main Office SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, was to ensure the co-operation of administrative leaders of various government departments in the implementation of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, whereby most of the Jews of German-occupied Europe would be deported to occupied Poland and murdered. Conference participants included representatives from several government ministries, including state secretaries from the Foreign Office, the justice, interior, and state ministries, and representatives from the SS. In the course of the meeting, Heydrich outlined how European Jews would be rounded up and sent to extermination camps in the General Government, where they would be killed.
The Romani Holocaust was the planned effort by Nazi Germany and its World War II allies and collaborators to commit ethnic cleansing and eventually genocide against European Roma and Sinti peoples during the Holocaust era.
This is a selected bibliography and other resources for The Holocaust, including prominent primary sources, historical studies, notable survivor accounts and autobiographies, as well as other documentation and further hypotheses.
The functionalism–intentionalism debate is a historiographical debate about the reasons for the Holocaust as well as most aspects of the Third Reich, such as foreign policy. It essentially centres on two questions:
Jewish resistance under Nazi rule took various forms of organized underground activities conducted against German occupation regimes in Europe by Jews during World War II. According to historian Yehuda Bauer, Jewish resistance was defined as actions that were taken against all laws and actions acted by Germans. The term is particularly connected with the Holocaust and includes a multitude of different social responses by those oppressed, as well as both passive and armed resistance conducted by Jews themselves.
The Holocaust in Poland was the ghettoization, robbery, deportation and mass murder of Jews, alongside other groups under similar racial pretexts in occupied Poland by the Nazi Germany. 3,000,000+ Polish Jews were murdered, primarily at the Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Auschwitz extermination camps, who made up half of the Jewish Holocaust victims.
Holocaust victims were people targeted by the government of Nazi Germany based on their ethnicity, religion, political beliefs, disability or sexual orientation. The institutionalized practice by the Nazis of singling out and persecuting people resulted in the Holocaust, which began with legalized social discrimination against specific groups, involuntary hospitalization, euthanasia, and forced sterilization of persons considered physically or mentally unfit for society. The vast majority of the Nazi regime's victims were Jews, Sinti-Roma peoples, and Slavs but victims also encompassed people identified as social outsiders in the Nazi worldview, such as homosexuals, and political enemies. Nazi persecution escalated during World War II and included: non-judicial incarceration, confiscation of property, forced labor, sexual slavery, death through overwork, human experimentation, undernourishment, and execution through a variety of methods. For specified groups like the Jews, genocide was the Nazis' primary goal.
The history of the Jews in Slovakia goes back to the 11th century, when the first Jews settled in the area.
The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Chełmno in occupied Poland. Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and prisoners of war (POWs); the term Holocaust is sometimes used to refer to the persecution of these other groups.
Holocaust trains were railway transports run by the Deutsche Reichsbahn and other European railways under the control of Nazi Germany and its allies, for the purpose of forcible deportation of the Jews, as well as other victims of the Holocaust, to the Nazi concentration, forced labour, and extermination camps.
Responsibility for the Holocaust is the subject of an ongoing historical debate that has spanned several decades. The debate about the origins of the Holocaust is known as functionalism versus intentionalism. Intentionalists such as Lucy Dawidowicz argue that Adolf Hitler planned the extermination of the Jewish people as early as 1918 and personally oversaw its execution. However, functionalists such as Raul Hilberg argue that the extermination plans evolved in stages, as a result of initiatives that were taken by bureaucrats in response to other policy failures. To a large degree, the debate has been settled by acknowledgement of both centralized planning and decentralized attitudes and choices.
Janowska concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp combining elements of labor, transit, and extermination camps. It was established in September 1941 on the outskirts of Lwów in what had become, after the German invasion, the General Government. The camp was named after the nearby street Janowska in Lwów of the interwar Second Polish Republic.
The Holocaust in Hungary was the dispossession, deportation, and systematic murder of more than half of the Hungarian Jews, primarily after the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944.
The Working Group was an underground Jewish organization in the Axis-aligned Slovak State during World War II. Led by Gisi Fleischmann and Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl, the Working Group rescued Jews from the Holocaust by gathering and disseminating information on the Holocaust in Poland, bribing and negotiating with German and Slovak officials, and smuggling valuables to Jews deported to Poland.
The Holocaust in Slovakia was the systematic dispossession, deportation, and murder of Jews in the Slovak Republic, a client state of Nazi Germany, during World War II. Out of 89,000 Jews in the country in 1940, an estimated 69,000 were murdered in the Holocaust.
From 4 to 7 November 1938, thousands of Jews were deported from Slovakia to the no-man's land on the Slovak−Hungarian border. Following Hungarian territorial gains in the First Vienna Award on 2 November, Slovak Jews were accused of favoring Hungary in the dispute. With the help of Adolf Eichmann, Slovak People's Party leaders planned the deportation, which was carried out by local police and the Hlinka Guard. Conflicting orders were issued to target either Jews who were poor or those who lacked Slovak citizenship, resulting in chaos.
During a speech at the Reichstag on 30 January 1939, German Führer Adolf Hitler threatened "the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe" in the event of war:
If international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will be not the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.
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