The Holocaust:
A Quest for Meaning
Prof. Heidi M. Szpek
Life Before the Holocaust
Kielce's Market: Kielce Museum, Jewish artist P.Schultz
Anti-Semitism before the Holocaust
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Jew as ‘the Other’ under Rome & early Christianity
Persecution during the Crusades
Creation of the ghetto (Venice 1517)
Blood libel charges
Martin Luther
– Emphasis on conversion
– Issue of Usury
• Mass expulsions throughout Europe (1500-1900)
• Prominence of the Other (professional accomplishments)
• Change from Anti-Semitism based on religion to ethnic
discrimination
Pale of Settlement in Russia
• Est. 1791 by Czar
Elizabeth II, under
pressure to rid Moscow
of Jewish
business & ‘evil’
influence
• 90% of Jews lived in
4% of land
Pogroms (E. Europe)
Yiddish/Russian term for ‘devastation’
Jewish Reaction
• Sought complete
assimilation
• Fought to be accepted
at local and national
levels (e.g. WWI service)
• Maintained separate
Jewish lifestyle
Excerpt: Norman Salsitz,
A Jewish Boyhood in Poland:
Remembering Kolbuszowa
Four-tiered Social Structure
Eastern Europe
• Poles (Catholic)
• Ukranian peasant (Russian Orthodox)
• Volksdeutsch/Ethnic German – descendant of
German settlers brought in during 18th century
• Jews (Yiddish)
Select Additional Sources
• Elie Wiesel, “The World of the Shtetl.”
In Wise Men and Their Tales: Portraits of
Biblical, Talmudic, and Hasidic Masters.
Schocken, 2004 (pp. 316-336). [On Reserve]
• http://www.bagnowka.com
• http://www.ushmm.org/
• http://motlc.learningcenter.wiesenthal.org
(hopefully soon back online)
After World War I
• Largest Jewish community was in Poland
• Ukraine: Petlura Gang – 60,000 Jews killed
• Germany: Weimar Constitution = democracy
– Walter Rathenau, Minister of Reconstruction
• Jews blamed for Germany’s humiliation
• National Socialist German Workers’ Party
25 Point Program
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(Munich, 25 February 1920)
Creation of a Greater Germany
Return of Germany’s lost colonies
POINT FOUR:
– None but members of the Nation may be
members of the State. None but those of
German blood, whatever creed, may be
members of the Nation. No Jew therefore may
be members of the Nation.
Adolf Hitler
• 1920 #7 in the Nazi party
• 1925 jailed for treason
• 1925 first installment of Mein Kampf
– Marxism & Judaism greatest threats
– Redefined Aryan and Semitic
– Excerpt: Mein Kampf
• 1933 Chancellor of Germany
1925-1933 Germany
• Military organization within Nazi party
established (SA, SS, Gestapo)
• 1926 Hitler Youth
• Inflation & unemployment began to rise
• 1931 Rosh HaShanah – attack on Jews
returning from synagogue; symbolic
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5 February 1933 Emergency Decree
27 February 1933 Reichstag fire
28 February 1933 Emergency Order
March 1933 Dachau opened
23 March 1933 Enabling Act
Einzeloperationen “individual
operations”
Boycott of Jewish shops
Windows marked with Star of David or
Jude
7 April 1933 Order retirement (all nonAryans)
Sachsenhausen & Esterwegen camps
Jews expelled from Universities (Einstein)
10 May 1933 book burning, Berlin Opera
House
October 1933 Law of Revolution at
Dachau (hanging)
1933
Jewish Reaction
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Despair
Suicide
Some left Germany to W. Europe
5000 emigrated to Palestine
Others waited
1934-1935
• Intensified campaign to
create Judenfrei villages
• May 1934 Der Sturmer
• Attempted legislation to prevent sexual
relations between Jews and non-Jews
• Redefinition of who is Jewish
• New term: Christian non-Aryans
• 15 September 1935 Nuremberg Laws
– 1. Citizenship only belong to a national of German
or kindred blood
– 2. Jews were not of German blood; intermarriages
forbidden
– 3. forbid relations outside marriage between Jew
and German
– 4. Jews forbidden to fly German flag
1936-August 31, 1939
• Assassination of Wilhelm Gustloff, head of Nazi
party in Switzerland, THUS all police power
centralized under Gestapo
– One of events later used to justify Kristallnacht
• March 1936 Przytyk pogrom, s. of Warsaw
– Poles would be accustomed to such actions
• Palestinian Arabs begin General Strike
– Because British allowed Jews to emigrate in Palestine
• Hitler into Rhineland (violating Versailles)
– half of German Jews find refuge
– Polish Jewry (c. 4 million) too extensive
The Eternal Jew
8 November 1937
1938
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March 1938 Austria annexed (Anschluss)
Buchenwald opens
June 1938 burning of synagogues
6 July 1938 International Conference at Evian
– issue of refugees & avoid having a Jewish
problem
• September 1938 Sudetenland to Germany
Kristallnacht
• 9 November 1938
• Impetus: Grynszpan
affair (Paris)
• 191 synagogues
damaged
• Jews fined for damage
done
Berlin, Germany
Dortmund, Germany
• December 1938 first train to Britain with German
Jewish children
• 3 May 1938 second ‘Jewish Law’: Hungary
– Forbid Jews to be judge, lawyer, teacher …
• 17 May 1939 Palestine White Paper
– 75,000 Jews to Palestine in next 5 years
• May 1939 plight of the St. Louis
• 23 August 1939 non-aggression pact between Nazi
Germany & Soviet Union
– If invade Poland, Soviet Union would do nothing
1 September 1939: Germany invades Poland:
World War II begins
Discussion
• Your response/reactions to stories/
photos/details in Gilbert’s Holocaust &
Wiesel’s After the Darkness
• Life and character of Adolf Hitler
• Your response to:
– response/reaction of world
– human nature for action/thoughts to
oppressed at this time