Holocaust research

The Darkest Time


Larry Neuburger

College Comp II


Jordan Parks

11/18/2011


 
August 2, 1934; the German President von Hidenburg dies and Hitler becomes the Fuhrer (historyplace.com). Some would say that day was a start of a long run of bad days. Hitler was a leader who encouraged the genocide just one group of people, that group of people where the Jews. In this paper I will discuss why I feel this act of genocide beat the rest. Even though America got in WWII because of the bombing of Pearl Harbor I’m still happy they got in a help put an end to what some might call the darkest moment in all mankind.
Nazis views on Jews – Anti-Semitism
When researching something like the Holocaust there is so much information out that even the slightest thing that has the most meaning just passed over because of the lack of knowledge. Dictionary.reference.com defines Anti-Semitism as, “Prejudice or hatred against Jews, a Semitic race.” Anti- Semitism gain ground in Germany during the 19th century and the economic crisis didn’t help the Jews because that’s who the Germans blamed. A letter from Wagner to King Ludwig II of Bavaria, Das Judentum in der Musik read as followed:
“I view the Jewish race in particular as the born enemy of the racially pure man and of any nobleness in him; I am convinced that they especially will destroy us Germans.”(Anti-Semitism)

Looking for a starting point for why the Germans hated the Jews, let’s just say that it started with the Jewish bankers and the loss of money happening in Germany. If one thing that is same the across the world, is that when money is being spent and not as much is being brought in things are going to get a little ugly. It’s not right but many people really do believe that money makes the world go round and round.
The hatred for the Jews grew so much that germans would vandalize the tombstone of Jewish people who have died. Nuremberg Laws
According to the website www.holocaustreserchproject.org the Nuremberg Laws and the Anti-Semitism of the Germans caught the Jews by surprise. The Jews considered Germany as their home; they were loyal to their country and they thought their country was loyal to them. Man was they wrong.
The first law was, The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. It prohibited the marriage or intercourse between “Jews”/non- Aryans and “Germans”.
The second law was, The Reich Citizenship Law, which striped the Jews of the German citizenship and had a new distinction between “Reich citizens” and “nationals.” (www.holocaustresearchproject.org)
Thinking about that makes me sick to my stomach, to think about how the Germans basically unowned the Jews completely. These are the same people who fought next to the so called Aryans. Actually there were a great number of Jewish soldiers who came home from WWI. The Jews were shocked that they were singled out and treated so poorly. Makes me thinks about the finical crisis that was in effect. Could money really be the problem? We know that a lot of the bankers in Germany were Jewish.
Kristallnacht
On the night of November 9, 1938, the sounds of breaking glass shattered the air in cities throughout Germany while fires across the country devoured synagogues and Jewish institutions. By the end of the rampage, gangs of Nazi storm troopers had destroyed 7,000 Jewish businesses, set fire to more than 900 synagogues, killed 91 Jews and deported some 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps. (pbs)
According to pbs.com the reason for all the synagogue and Jewish businesses being destroyed on that night was because of a Jewish teenager, just two nights before this one. The Jewish teen has shot the Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris. News had spread fast as it reached the top leaders of the Nazi party later that day and let’s not forget say that they were also attending a dinner. The Nazi General couldn’t let an act like this go unpunished. Besides the Jewish teen getting kid, he told his men “we not a tear for them.” As they are burning the synagogue he later shouts out, “ They stood in the way long enough. We can use the space made free more usefully than as Jewish fortresses."
Almost seems as if the Nazi kept taking and taking and taking from the Jews until finally one snaps. Then the Nazi army comes in and cleans shop. Jews never had a chance or an option of what to do at that point. Life as they know it was completely up to the Nazis now.
Rounding up Jews – ghettos
To make the Jews easier to find and occupy the Nazis sent them to the ghettos. They consisted of a small area with a lot of apartment for people to sleep. Let’s not fool ourselves the ghettos were over populated. The biggest ghetto was the Warsaw Ghetto, which got so big in population it came second to New York when compared to American states. According to (Warsaw), “in 1935 the city limits covered an area of 54 square miles with a population of 1.3 million people.”
These ghettos were not pretty at all. It was over populated; there wasn’t enough food to feed everyone there. The Jews couldn’t come and go. All the exits were blocked off. These were the beginning stages to what later lead to concentration camps.
The way the Nazi army would round up the Jews was something of a search and destroys. They already didn’t have any respect for the Jews so when they are out looking for them they trash everything and look everywhere and if the property doesn’t strike and interest to them at the moment they would just torch it. So just in case the Jews had a good enough hiding spot they still would die.
Wannsee Conference – The Final Solution
The Wannsee Conference was held on 20 January 1942, in a villa owned by the SS-Nordhav Foundation in the attractive Berlin lakeside suburb of Wannsee. This was a pretty big conference because of the discussion of the final solution. Those attending were:
• Gauleiter Dr. Alfred Meyer and Reichamtsleiter (Chief Officer) Dr. Georg Leibrandt - Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories
• State Secretary Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart - Reich Ministry of the Interior
• State Secretary Dr. Erich Neumann - Office of the Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan
• State Secretary Dr. Roland Freisler - Reich Justice Ministry
• State Secretary Dr. Josef Bühler - Office of Governor General [Poland] representing Hans Frank
• Under State Secretary Martin Luther - Foreign Office
• SS Senior-Colonel Gerhard Klopfer - Party Chancellery representing Martin Bormann
• Ministerial Director Friedrich Kritzinger - Reich Chancellery
• SS Major-General Otto Hofmann - Race and Resettlement Main Office
• SS Major-General Heinrich Müller - Reich Security Main Office
• SS Lt-Colonel Adolf Eichmann - Reich Security Main Office
• SS Senior-Colonel Dr. Eberhard Schöngarth - Commander of the Security Police and the SD in the General Government [Poland]
• SS Major Dr. Rudolf Lange - Commander of Security Police and Security Service for General Commissariat Latvia, as Deputy of Commanding Officer of Security Police and Security Service for Reich Commissariat Ostland [Baltic States and White Russia] Security Police and Security Service. (Wannsee)

The closer WWII got the phrase, “Final Solution of the Jewish Problem,”grew. Actually it was already in effect, the Germans already stirped them of their pride of being german. The Germans already took the Jews from their homes and forced them into the ghettos so they can keep closer tabs on them. Also these “ghettos” weren’t just picked at random. Al l of the “ghettos” that the Nazi had set up were all by the railroad tracks and we all know how the Nazi transported the Jews to the Concentration Camps…The Train. Now all was left of the Nazis were to transport all the Jews to the Concentration Camps that they had placed all over the contry.
There was were they pretty much carried out the last part of the Final Solution. Once at the camps a Jewish life could almost be compared to a fly. They can kill one and they know there are still many more out there to kill. The final leg of this Final Solution lead to hundreds upon thousands of Jewish deaths per day. Once they were of no value the Nazi had many of ways of killing the Jews. Lets just say that a quick death was a luck death among the Jews.
Selection – selection
When talking about the selection I feel that the only way we can full gain to knowledge of what happened we needed to find a surviover. Thanks to the advanced technology in the world I was able to find audio of a survivor who discusses the selction process once the Jews entered the Concentration Camps. The survivor was Jack Kagan, who was born in 1929 in the Novogrodek ghetto. His life began in darkness unlike the rest of us being born into the light knowing that we will have every opportunity in life. Kagan didn’t this is his story:
"Early morning, lorries arrived, the doors have opened, the Nazi arrived and started a selection. You came out, he asked you, the head of the family, your profession, how many children. To the left, it's to go out to the yard; to the right it's to stand in the corner of the entrance of the building. Came to our turn, my uncle went in front, he said, 'What is your profession?' He said a saddle maker. 'How many children?' Two children. To the left. Came to my father. 'Your profession?' Again, saddle maker, two children. To the right. That means it was no rhyme or reason whom to select to death and whom to life. Because he went in front, two children, saddle maker, the same profession. We were the lucky ones, he left us to remain alive, and them to death. So my uncle Moishke, Soshke, Berol, and Leizer went out to the yard. They sent out four and a half thousand, four thousand people on lorries, took them outside the town into graves, into prepared graves, and massacred them, they shot them. That was Einsatzkommando, which was Einsatzkommando. My mother was standing practically opposite the window, and suddenly out of nowhere police, SS, came, with the back of their rifles hitting everybody, and I knew that this is the end of the people which are standing on the yard. In this execution I lost my mother, I lost my sister Nachama, I lost my auntie, Surcharsky." (Kagan)
How tough it was for him to survive. Jack Kagan was one of thousands of Jews who never saw their families again once they stepped off the train. The selection process was purely based on how useful the Jews were to the Nazi and yes, when their value ran out, their life ran out. What a dark time for mankind.
Extermination methods
The main reason for the selction was to determine who was valuable to the Nazis. One questioned I wondered was, “did they Jews know which were going to live and which were going to die at the time?” Well according to the website (Concentration), the Jews after being selected had no clue which line was which. The Nazi would basically check them out ask them what was there occupation and then say left or right. The Nazis tactic for killing the useless in the beginning was smart. There were already thousands upon thousands of Jews being line up and selected. If the ones going to their death knew they were about to die in a matter of minutes it would have caused a lot of commotion.
With the ones they wanted to die right off the back they told them that they were heading to the showers to wash the dirt and nasty smell of being in a train for multiple days. But, instead of water coming of the faucets came gas and in a matter of minutes everyone is ether dead from poisoning or lack of oxygen. Other methods consisted throwing Zyklon B down the air vents. Nazi army thought of the Jews. The Nazi had death runs which were very long runs to another concentration camp and stopping was prohibited. If a Jew fell he/she would have to get up and keep running before they were either run over, literally from everyone else or shot by a German officer. Some would think that getting shot by a German officer wouldn’t be as bad as running for such a long time, but the Germans believed that the Jews life was worthless. So they only used one bullet per Jew if they were to shot them.
So imagine being on one of these so called death runs and when continuing is no longer an option and a German shots you, a Jewish worker and you don’t die. Lying there in the snowing or in the middle of the road like road kill dying slowly just a group of men thinks their better than the rest.
The death camps
When hearing the words “death camps” together many people think back to the holocaust, because that could be considered the largest act of genocide in the world. During WWII when the Jews heard death camp they were just wishing is wasn’t Auschwitz. Death surrounds Auschwitz and boy did death take its victims. Many people believe that Auschwitz was one of the first death camps probably because it was one of the worst death camps to be at. Auschwitz was 1 of 9 new death camps made after the II World War had broken out. The other camps were (Concentration):
• “Neuengamme,
• Gusen,
• Natzweiler,
• Gross-Rosen,
• Lublin,
• Niederhagen,
• Stutthof,
• Arbeitsdorf."
Now these death camps were a key element in playing its role in the “Final Solution.” The last part of the “Final Solution” was eventually death to all Jews and anybody else of the non-Aryan bloodline. Deaths camps differed from Concentration Camps for the key fact of once you enter a death camp that would be that last stop any Jew will be making. The purpose of those places was to die, nothing can explain better than number. (Concentration) has documents describing how many deaths were in Auschwitz alone:
Gassed on Registered prisoners Total
Nationality Arrival Total Died Survived Deaths
----------- -------- ------- ------- -------- -------
Jews 890,000 205,000 95,000 110,000 985,000
Poles 10,000 137,000 64,000 73,000 74,000
Romany 2,000 21,000 19,000 2,000 21,000
Soviet POWs 3,000 12,000 12,000 — 15,000
Others — 25,000 12,000 13,000 13,000
------- ------- ------ ------ -------
Total 905,000 400,000 202,000 198,000 1,208,000
Liberation
According to, “A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust, in 1945 allies’ forces enters Nazi territory to rescue the Jew and POW’s. When our allies’ found the Jews and other pioneers they were in awe. They were shocked by the mile long trenches full of bodies of murdered victims, shocked by the sight of the prisoners. They knew there was a problem but had no idea that the genocide on the Jews were so great. Being at war and seeing that is an experience in itself, but to walk in a camp to see hundreds of Jews that just barely held on. Thousands of Jews who look like they haven’t ate in weeks. Seeing other humans in that kind state really brings it to perspective of how bad it really was.
The soldiers’ first train of thought was to give these people all the food that they have on them because this was a rescue mission and everyone in the camps needed to be rescued. With the soldiers’ giving their food certain Jews would die after eating because they were so unhealthy that their bodies couldn’t handle the food that was being ingested.
At the end of the day the remaining Jews were very happy to be rescued. Something like this was just bitter-sweet because if a Jew came in with a family member most likely by the time of rescue that family members chances of life was already at a all time low. Being a Holocaust Survivor is something that most Jew should feel good about. Part of the reason why I feel this was the darkest time for all mankind, is because there was so many death brought to innocent civilians. From the bombing Pearl Harbor, to the genocide against the Jew and finally with the atomic bombings in not one, but two Japanese cities. It’s great how America dedicates a month to this horrible time. Not to praise Hitler, but to bring awareness to the people out there, that wants to see the world burn. We as a whole has to make sure that nothing of this magnitude happens again because after death there is nothing left.