THE HOLOCAUST
A NORTH CAROLINA TEACHER’S RESOURCE
BY
LINDA SCHER
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Child survivors of Auschwitz concentration camp, wearing adult-sized prisoner jackets,
stand behind a barbed-wire fence as the camp is liberated in January 1945.
Published in cooperation with the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust
Copyright © 2002 by the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust. Updated 2005.
North Carolina Department of Public Instruction
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/holocaust_council/
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
N
ow as in the past Gizella’s tireless commitment to educating others about the
Holocaust has been an inspiration. Judith Tulchin and the late Dr. Lawrence
Rudner, both of whom contributed greatly to the creation of the first edition of
this guide, continue to deserve thanks for their hard work and dedication to
Holocaust education. Special thanks go to Dr. Gerhard Weinberg. It was a great honor to
have such a distinguished Holocaust scholar provide a careful reading and editing of the
guide for this new edition. Over the years Dr. David Crowe, Dr. Karl Schleunes, and
Professor Joseph Hoffman have given generously of their time and talents to make the
teacher education workshops possible. Designer Sandra Webbere’s professionalism and
artistic expertise made her a joy to work with.
Special thanks go to the members of the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust who
served as reviewers for this revision of the guide. Dr. Michael Bassman, Shelly Weiner,
and Maxine Smith were especially helpful. The revision greatly benefited from teacher
Christine Wigg’s ten years of experience teaching the lessons in this guide to the
students in her eighth-grade Advanced English class at Southern Nash Junior High
School in Spring Hope, North Carolina. Several of her students were also especially
diligent in providing feedback. They include Mary Sipes, Jonathan Smith, Colt Robbins,
Ashley Braswell, and Crystal Taylor. Perceptive advice came from Social Studies
consultants Doug Robertson and Jeanne Weavil-Haney at the North Carolina
Department of Public Instruction. Outstanding educators and administrators Steve
Harvel and Dr. Arnold Sgan have continued to be enthusiastic supporters, offering sound
advice and always constructive criticism. Teacher Lori Lichtenwalner also provided many
practical suggestions for improving the guide. Professor Joe Hoffman, University Fellow
in German and Modern Jewish History at George Washington University, offered a
prompt, careful, and thorough reading for historical accuracy. As always, copyeditor Pat
Silva applied her keen eye to the manuscript.
My parents, Harold and Paula Scher, not only supported and encouraged this project,
but also taught their children pride in their own traditions and respect for the traditions of
others.
The North Carolina Council on the Holocaust wishes to acknowledge the generous gift of
Tobee and Leonard Kaplan to the Toleo Foundation which helped make publication of
this guide possible. We are very grateful for their interest in our work. We are equally
grateful for the support we received from State Superintendent Dr. Michael Ward and the
North Carolina Department of Public Instruction for the reprinting of this guide. 2002
The Council also wishes to express its appreciation to UNC-TV (UNC Center for Public
Broadcasting) for uploading this guide on its website in 2005, making it available to
many more North Carolina teachers. Special thanks go to James McGurk, UNC-TV
Promotions Manager, and Robert Watson, UNC-TV Web Manager.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
HOW TO USE THIS RESOURCE GUIDE
OVERVIEW 1: A SHORT HISTORY OF ANTI-SEMITISM
Teaching Lesson 1
i
iii
1
6
Handout 1A: You Are There
9
Handout 1B: Fact—Not Fantasy: Walter in Germany
10
Handout 1C: Where Does it Come From?
11
OVERVIEW 2:
HITLER’S RISE
Teaching Lesson 2
17
Handout 2: The News from Germany
OVERVIEW 3:
12
PREWAR NAZI GERMANY
Teaching Lesson 3
19
20
25
Handout 3A: The Shame of Nuremberg
29
Handout 3B: A Diary Entry of Anne Frank
30
Handout 3C: Henry Before and After Kristallnacht
31
OVERVIEW 4: THE HOLOCAUST
Teaching Lesson 4
34
39
Handout 4A: Gizella in the Ghetto
41
Handout 4B: Anatoly
42
Teaching Lesson 5
Handout 5A
43
Esther and Elias
45
Handout 5B: Susan
47
Handout 5C: Rena: First Weeks at Auschwitz-Birkenau
50
Handout 5D: Julius
53
Handout 5E: Background Information (Esther, Elias, Susan, Rena, Julius)
58
Teaching Lesson 6
59
Handout 6A: Map—Concentration Camps and Death Camps
61
Handout 6B: Map—Holocaust Casualties
62
OVERVIEW 5:
RESISTERS
Teaching Lesson 7
Handout 7A: Gizella “Joins” the Resistance
63
65
68
Handout 7B: Simone Helps Children
OVERVIEW 6: BYSTANDERS, PERPETRATORS, AND RESCUERS
Teaching Lesson 8
70
74
79
Handout 8A: Portraits of Rescuers
83
Handout 8B: Shelly in Hiding
85
Handout 8C: Choosing a Righteous Among the Nations
87
Teaching Lesson 9
88
Handout 9A: A Nazi Education
90
Handout 9B: A 150-Percent Nazi
91
OVERVIEW 7:
REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING
Teaching Lesson 10
96
99
Handout 10A: German Officers State Their Case, Part 1
102
Handout 10B: Himmler Speaks to the SS Leaders
105
Handout 10C: Julius Remembers Eichmann
106
Handout 10D: German Officers State Their Case, Part II
108
Epilogue
Handout 11: The News from Germany: 1998
THE HANGMAN
HOLOCAUST TIME LINE
GLOSSARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF HOLOCAUST MATERIALS
EXTENDING HOLOCAUST STUDY
110
112
114
116
121
125
130
PREFACE
These lessons have been provided by the North Carolina Council on the
Holocaust. These lessons are from the book The Holocaust: A North Carolina
Teacher’s Resource. For more information, please see the N.C. Council on the
Holocaust webpage at.
I am pleased to provide an introduction for The Holocaust: A North Carolina
Teacher’s Resource, and to be able to offer my personal thoughts on the lessons
we must learn and teach from this most tragic event.
We are living in a time when our children far too often are exposed to news
broadcasts showing incidents of violence stemming from intolerance or hate. We
must not allow such occurrences to become acceptable norms in our society. As
educators, parents, and citizens we must work together to create a climate of
cooperation, to reduce prejudice, and to assure equitable treatment for all. This
guide is an excellent educational tool to help accomplish these goals.
Citizenship and civic participation are cherished traditions in North Carolina. The
teachers of our state work hard to instill in our students an appreciation and
respect for these traditions. Students must learn the importance of strong
character, honest public debate, and listening with respect to the opinions of
others. Civic education for our students also emphasizes the responsibility that
comes with citizenship. We must guard against the denial of legal or civil rights to
any segment of society. I want North Carolina to be a leader in guaranteeing full
and equal rights to all of its citizens. I want our students to speak out when they
believe the civil rights of others have been abused and to recognize fully the
dangers of failing to speak out against prejudice, discrimination, and intolerance.
During the 1930s as Hitler rose to power, Martin Niemoeller, a German
Protestant clergyman, spoke out against the Nazi regime in his homeland. For
this Niemoeller spent seven years in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau
concentration camps, much of it in solitary confinement. Throughout this guide,
students will learn about other acts of courage like Niemoeller’s and about the
importance of heeding Niemoeller’s warning about the dangers of apathy in the
face of prejudice:
First they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because
I was not a socialist. Then they came for the workers and I did
not speak out because I was not a worker. Then they came for
the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then
they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.
The Holocaust: A North Carolina Teacher’s Resource provides teachers and
students with a sound historical framework, tracing the ways in which democratic
traditions were systematically eroded and then destroyed in Germany by the Nazi
regime that valued only a select few. The guide hits home because of its unique
use of North Carolina Holocaust survivors telling their stories in their own words.
On these pages survivors from Raleigh, Greensboro, Charlotte, Asheville and
many other places in our state speak vividly and hauntingly of their own
commitment to insure tolerance and respect for all those who call North Carolina
home.
Dr. Michael E. Ward
State Superintendent of Public Instruction
North Carolina Department of Public Instruction
2002
HOW TO USE THIS RESOURCE GUIDE
T
eaching about the Holocaust is often limited by teacher’s familiarity with
the subject and the amount of time available for this topic. The materials in
this guide were designed with these concerns in mind. The guide is divided
into three main parts: Overviews, Lesson Plans, and student Handouts. The
guide also contains a Holocaust time line, glossary of key terms, and
bibliography.
OVERVIEWS
The seven Overviews in this guide provide short summaries
of topics related to the Holocaust. Teachers can summarize these mini-lectures
for students or share them with more able readers. In the Overviews, unfamiliar
words are printed in bold to indicate that the term is defined in the Glossary.
Each Overview provides an historical context and background information for
teaching the lessons it precedes.
LESSON PLANS Each lesson examines a topic discussed in an Overview.
Depending on the amount of time available for each topic and the course in
which it is taught, a teacher might use all or two or three of these lessons. Each
lesson plan contains a list of handouts needed to teach the lesson, new
vocabulary, and suggestions for teaching. The lessons conclude with ideas for
enrichment activities that connect the study of the Holocaust to other areas of
curriculum.
HANDOUTS
Each lesson contains one or more handouts for students.
Most are primary source documents: interviews with North Carolina survivors,
original newspaper accounts of events in Germany, speeches by Nazi officials,
and testimony from the Nuremberg Trials. At the middle school level, teachers
may want to read some of the handouts aloud or tape record and replay them.
Interviews with North Carolina survivors or Nazi officers work especially well as
oral presentations.
TIME LINE, GLOSSARY, BIBLIOGRAPHY
The back of the book contains
the poem “The Hangman,” suggested for use with Lesson Two and a Holocaust
time line. The Glossary consists of terms introduced in the Overviews or the
lessons. The guide concludes with an annotated Bibliography of books and
audiovisual materials.
1 OVERVIEW
A SHORT HISTORY OF ANTI-SEMITISM
T
he roots of anti-Semitism—prejudice against the Jews—go back to ancient
times. Throughout history, the seeds of misunderstanding can be traced to
the position of the Jews as a minority religious group. Often, in ancient
times, when government officials felt their authority threatened, they found a
convenient scapegoat in the Jews. Belief in one God (monotheism) and refusal to
accept the dominant religion set the Jews apart from others.
CHRISTIAN TARGETS OF PERSECUTION The Romans conquered Jerusalem, center of the Jewish homeland, in 63 B.C. During the early period of Roman
rule, Jews practiced their religion freely. After about 30 A.D., the first targets of
Roman persecution were Christians, considered by the Romans to be heretics,
believers in an unacceptable faith. However, once Christianity took hold and
spread throughout the empire, Judaism became the target of Roman authorities,
particularly after the Great Jewish Revolt against Rome in the first century A.D.
CHRISTIANITY BECOMES STATE RELIGION
Christianity teaches love
and brotherhood, but not all early Christians practiced these teachings. Some
wanted to convert all “nonbelievers.” Jews had their own religion. They did not
want to become Christians. The more the Jews remained true to their faith, the
harder some worked to convert them. When Jews clung to their religion, distrust
and anger grew. The Church demanded the conversion of the Jews because it
insisted that Christianity was the only true religion. The power of the state made
Jews outcasts when they refused to renounce their faith. They were denied
citizenship and its rights.
By the end of the fourth century, Jews had been stamped with one of the most
damaging myths they would face. For many Christians they had become the
“Christ-killers,” blamed for the death of Jesus. While the actual crucifixion of
Jesus was carried out by the Romans, responsibility for the death of Jesus was
then placed on the Jews.
RELIGIOUS MINORITIES HARSHLY TREATED IN MIDDLE AGES In Europe,
during the Middle Ages—from 500 A.D. to about 1450—all religious
nonconformists were harshly treated by ruling authorities. Heresy, holding an
opinion contrary to Church doctrine, was a crime punishable by death. Jews were
seen as a threat to established religion. As the most conspicuous non-conforming group, they were attacked. At times it was easy for ruthless leaders to
convince their largely uneducated followers that all “nonbelievers” must be killed.
Sometimes the leaders of the Church aided the persecutions. At other times, the
Pope and bishops protected Jews.
NEW LAWS SET JEWS APART
The Justinian Code, compiled by scholars
for the Emperor Justinian (A.D. 527-65), excluded Jews from all public places,
prohibited Jews from giving evidence in lawsuits in which Christians took part,
1
and forbade the reading of the Bible in Hebrew. Only Greek or Latin were
allowed. Church Council edicts forbade marriage between Christians and Jews
and outlawed the conversion of Christians to Judaism in 533 A.D. In 1215, the
Fourth Lateran Council stamped the Jews as a people apart with its decree that
Jews were to wear special clothes and markings to distinguish them from
Christians. Although the Church passed four decrees concerning Jews, it was up
to individual states to impose the new decrees. Some rulers willingly accepted
the restrictions while others did not.
The Council of Basel (1431-43) established the concept of physical separation in
cities with ghettos. It decreed that Jews were to live in separate quarters,
isolated from Christians except for reasons of business. Jews were not allowed
to go to universities. They were required to attend Christian church sermons.
CRUSADES
The Crusades, which began in 1096, resulted in increased
persecution of Jews. Religious fervor reached fever pitch as the Crusaders made
their way across Europe toward the Holy Land. Although anger was originally
focused on the Muslims controlling Palestine, some of this intense feeling was
redirected toward the European Jewish communities through which the
Crusaders passed. Massacres of Jews occurred in many cities en route to
Jerusalem. In the seven-month period from January to July 1096, approximately
one fourth to one third of the Jewish population in Germany and France, around
12,000 people, were killed. These persecutions caused many Jews to leave
western Europe for the relative safety of eastern Europe.
MANY OCCUPATIONS CLOSED TO JEWS
In western and southern
Europe, Jews could not become farmers because they were forbidden to own
land. Land ownership required the taking of a Christian oath. Gradually more and
more occupations were closed to them, particularly commerce guilds. There were
only a few ways for Jews to make a living. Since Christians believed lending
money and charging interest on it—usury—was a sin, Jews were able to take on
that profession. It was a job no one else wanted. It also provided Jews with
portable wealth in the event of expulsion.
BLACK DEATH LEADS TO SCAPEGOATING
The Black Death, or bubonic
plague, led to intense religious scapegoating in many communities in western
Europe. Between 1348 and 1350, the epidemic killed one third of Europe’s
population, perhaps as many as 25 million people. Many people believed the
plague to be God’s punishment for their sins. For others the plague could only be
explained as the work of demons. This group chose as their scapegoat people
who were already unpopular in the community. Because Jews generally
practiced better hygiene and rodent control, they tended to suffer less from the
plague than their Christian neighbors. Yet rumors spread that the plague was
caused by the Jews who had poisoned wells and food. The worst massacre of
Jews in Europe before Hitler’s rise to power occurred at this time. For two years,
a violent wave of attacks against Jews swept over Europe. Tens of thousands
were killed by their terrified neighbors despite the fact that may Jews also died of
the plague.
2
Not only were Jews blamed for the Black Death, but they were also believed to
murder Christians, especially children, to use their blood during religious
ceremonies. The “blood libel,” or ritual murder, as it is known, can be traced back
to Norwich, England, where around 1150, a superstitious priest and an insane
monk charged that the murder of a Christian boy was part of a Jewish plot to kill
Christians. Despite the fact that the boy was probably killed by an outlaw, the
myth persisted. Murdering Jews was also justified by other reasons. Jews were
said to desecrate churches and to be disloyal to rulers. Those who tried to
protect Jews were ignored or persecuted themselves.
EXPELLED FROM WESTERN EUROPE
By the end of the Middle Ages, fear
and superstition had created a deep rift between Jews and Christians. As
European peoples began to think of themselves as belonging to a nation, Jews
again became “outsiders,” expelled from England in 1290, from France in 1306
and 1394, and from parts of Germany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
They were not legally allowed in England until the mid-1600s and in France until
the French Revolution.
GOLDEN AGE AND INQUISITION IN SPAIN
Unlike Jews in other parts
of western Europe, the Jews of Spain enjoyed a Golden Age of political influence
and religious tolerance from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries. However, in
the wave of intense national excitement that followed the Spanish conquest of
Granada in 1492, both Jews and Muslims were expelled from Spain after the
unification of Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella. Unification had been aided by
the Catholic Church which, through the Inquisition, had insisted on religious
conformity. Loyalty to country became equated with absolute commitment to
Christianity. From 1478 to 1765, the Church-led Inquisition burned thousands of
Jews at the stake for their religious beliefs.
PROTESTANT REFORMATION The Protestant Reformation, which split Christianity into different branches in the sixteenth century, did little to reduce antiSemitism. Martin Luther, who led the Reformation, was deeply disappointed by
the refusal of the Jews to accept his approach to Christianity. He referred to Jews
as “poisonous, bitter worms” and suggested they be banished from Ger-many or
forcibly converted. In his booklet Of Jews and Their Lies, Luther advised:
First, their synagogues or churches should be set on fire. . .
Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and
destroyed. . . They ought be put under one roof or in a stable,
like gypsies. . . Thirdly, they should be deprived of their
prayerbooks. . . Fourthly, their rabbis must be forbidden under
threat of death to teach anymore.
SEPARATED IN GHETTOS
Religious struggles plagued the Reformation
for over 100 years as terrible wars were waged between Catholic and Protestant
monarchs. Jews played no part in these struggles. They had been separated
completely during the Middle Ages by Church law, which had confined the Jews
to ghettos. Many ghettos were surrounded by high walls with gates guarded by
Christian sentries. Jews were allowed out during the daytime for business
dealings with Christian communities, but had to be back at curfew. At night, and
3
during Christian holidays, the gates were locked. The ghettos froze the way of life
for the Jews because they were segregated and not permitted to mix freely. They
established their own synagogues and schools and developed a life separate
from the rest of the community.
ENLIGHTENMENT AND FRANCE
In the 1700s, the Age of Faith gave way to
the Age of Reason. In the period known as the Enlightenment, philosophers
stressed new ideas about reason, science, progress, and the rights of individuals. Jews were allowed out of the ghetto. The French Revolution helped many
western European Jews get rid of their second-class status. In 1791 an emancipation decree in France gave Jews full citizenship. In the early 1800s, most
German states including Bavaria, Prussia, and many western European countries passed similar orders, but they did not eliminate their restrictions on Jews.
Although this new spirit of equality spread, many Jews in the ghetto were not
able to take their places in the “outside world.” They knew very little about the
world beyond the ghetto walls. They spoke their own language, Yiddish, and not
the language of their countrymen. By 1871, virtually all legal restrictions on Jews
had been removed in Germany.
The outlook of thinkers of this period shifted from a traditional way of looking at
the world, which stressed faith and religion, to a more modern belief in reason
and the scientific laws of nature. A new foundation for prejudice was laid, which
changed the history of anti-Semitism. No pseudo-scientific reasons were used to
show differences between Jews and non-Jews and set them apart again in
Europe.
NATIONALISM IN GERMANY
In the early nineteenth century, strong
nationalistic feelings stirred the peoples of Europe. Much of this feeling was a
reaction against the domination of Europe by France in the Napoleonic Era. In
Germany, many thinkers and politicians looked for ways to increase political
unity. Impressed by the power France had under Napoleon, they began to see
solutions to German problems in a great national Germanic state.
French diplomat Joseph Arthur Gobineau is often referred to as the father of
modern radical thought. An early proponent of Nordic supremacy who wrote
between 1853 and 1855, Gobineau blamed the decline of civilizations on
degeneration resulting from the interbreeding of superior and inferior racial
groups. He cited the white race, or Aryans as he called them, as the superior
race from which all civilizations were formed. The term “Aryan” originally referred
to peoples speaking Indo-European languages. Racist pseudo-scientists
distorted its meaning to support racist ideas that pointed to those of German
background as examples of “racially superior” Aryan stock. Later the Nazis
defined Aryans as tall, blond, and blue-eyed.
RACE REPLACES RELIGION AS BASIS FOR PREJUDICES The word antiSemitism first appeared in 1873 in a book entitled The Victory of Judaism over
Germanism by Wilhelm Marr. Marr’s book marked an important change in the
history of anti-Semitism. In his book Marr stated that the Jews of Germany ought
to be eliminated because they were members of an alien race that could never
fully be a part of German society.
4
RYAN SUPERIORITY
Marr’s ideas were influenced by other German,
French, and British thinkers who stressed differences rather than similarities
among people. Some of these thinkers believed that western European
Caucasian Christians were superior to other races. Although the term Semitic
refers to a group of languages, not to a group of people, these men made up
elaborate theories to prove the superiority of the Nordic or Aryan people of
northern Europe and the inferiority of Semitic people, of Jews. Houston Stewart
Chamberlain, a German of British descent, wrote of the superiority of the
Germanic race and his fears of its dilution through mixture with inferior races. His
work also stressed the incompatibility of the Jewish and Germanic “races.” Other
pseudo-scientists promoted racial theories based on the ideas of Sir Herbert
Spencer and the Social Darwinists. Spencer believed that cultures evolve
through natural selection and the survival of the fittest. He argued that cultural
groups with superior physical and mental traits would eventually dominate inferior
groups. Some thinkers saw the struggle for racial purity as a battle between the
“racially superior” Germanic peoples and the “inferior” races, including Jews.
RUSSIA AND FRANCE IN LATE 1800s
In other parts of Europe, antiSemitism took different forms. In nineteenth-century Russia, pogroms, massacres of Jews by orders of the czars, occurred. In parts of the former Soviet Union,
these savage attacks on Jews continued into the twentieth century. In Ukraine,
from 1919 to 1921, between 100,000 and 200,000 Jews were massacred in an
estimated 1300 pogroms. In France from 1894 to 1906, the Dreyfus Case
revealed the depth of anti-Semitism in that country. Captain Alfred Dreyfus, the
first Jew to be appointed to the French general staff, was falsely accused of
giving secret information to Germany. Although cleared of all charges, his trial
brought strong anti-Jewish feelings to the surface in France.
Until the late 1800s, anti-Semites had considered Jews dangerous because of
their religion. They discriminated against Jews because of their beliefs, not
because of what they were. If they converted, resentment of them decreased.
After Marr’s book appeared in 1873, Jews were thought of as a race for the first
time. Being Jewish was no longer a question of belief, but of birth and blood.
Jews could not change if they were a race. They were basically and deeply different from everyone else. That single idea became the cornerstone of Nazi antiSemitism. Under the Nazis, traditional Christian-based anti-Semitism would
combine with pseudo-scientific racism, economic depression, and political
instability to set the stage for the Holocaust.
I think the Holocaust happened because someone said
“You’re different. You don’t belong.”
High School Student
5
TEACHING LESSON
1
Handout 1A: You are there
Handout 1B: Fact—Not Fantasy
Handout 1C: Where Does It Come From?
Vocabulary: Kristallnacht (Crystal Night), Gestapo
Read Overview 1 and summarize for students. Point out that throughout history
the treatment of Jews has included both demonization and dehumanization.
Have students look for examples of ways Jews were “demonized” by the Nazis in
the prewar years. The experience of both Walter in Lesson One and Henry in
Lesson Three provide many example of deliberate isolation and demonization of
Jews in the prewar period.
Distribute Handout 1A. Have students discuss the reading, using the questions
that follow.
1. Do you think the events described in this story could happen to anyone in the
community where you live? Why or why not?
2. Could this happen anywhere? If so, where?
If students say that such events could not happen in their community, have them
give reasons for their opinions. What would prevent such events from
happening? (public opinion and public protest, laws, police, government leaders)
What rights do private citizens have in the United States that protect them from
being evicted from their homes or arrested? (Bill of Rights, habeas corpus, due
process, and so on)
After a brief discussion of Handout 1A, tell students that the next account they
will read is fact, not fiction. It is part of the testimony of a survivor of the
Holocaust whose name is Walter. Like the other survivors students will read
about in this resource guide, he lives in North Carolina. Tell students that in
1935, when the Nazis took over in Germany, Walter was eleven years old. His
mother was a widow. His father, a veteran who had fought in the German army in
World War I, had died some years earlier. He and his mother lived in an
apartment in the town of Karlsruhe, near Berlin. You may want to review the
events of Kristallnacht discussed in Overview 3.
Distribute Handout 1B. Use the following questions to discuss the reading:
1. What was the first change Walter noticed in his school?
6
2. Why do you think Walter was not permitted to say “Heil Hitler” or to wear a
uniform?
3. How were the other students and teachers told to act towards Walter and
other Jewish students?
4. What was the effect of these restrictions on Walter and other students?
(Students should recognize that such rules were a deliberate attempt to
isolate and humiliate these students, to make them outsiders or different from
their classmates, and to encourage their classmates to think of them as both
different and inferior.)
Encourage students to think about how they might feel if they were not permitted
to dress like others in their school or if they learned that they would be sent to
another school in the middle of the year. What might they or their parents do
about these rules if they were unhappy about them? Why couldn’t Walter’s
mother do anything? Emphasize that these rules were government policy, not
school rules. Then ask:
1. What changes did Walter notice after Kristallnacht?
2. What happened to the teacher and the principal at Walter’s school? Why do
you think they were taken away?
3. How did the “good Nazi” help Walter and his family?
4. Why do you think Walter says the man was a good Nazi, “if there is such a
thing”?
Conclude by discussing the final sentence in the reading. Why do students think
the grandmother’s neighbor wanted to help Walter’s family, even though he
belonged to a political party that actively preached hatred of Jews? (Although the
neighbor was prejudiced against Jews, the grandmother did not fit his negative
stereotype of a Jew. Because he knew and liked her, he saw her as different
from other Jews that he had only heard or read about.)
5. Is a person who helps others whom he knows personally, while carrying out
actions that violate the rights of those he does not know, a “good” person?
The concluding activity gives students a chance to examine the origins of some
of their own stereotypes. Explain to students that everyone has stereotypes
about others and stereotyping can lead to prejudice. Stereotypes are based
largely on generalizations that people make about a person or a group without
taking into account the individual differences among group members. Encourage
students to think of experiences which have made them question stereotypes or
misconceptions that they have had about groups of people. For example, the
belief that all women are poor drivers or all Southerners speak slowly may
change after driving with or listening to people who don’t fit these stereotypes.
Students might think of how their attitudes have changed after meeting and
getting to know people from a different social group within the school, from a
different neighborhood, another part of the state or country, from schools that
have sports rivalries with their school, or who dress or drive a car very different
from their own preferences.
7
Have students cite groups of people that are “demonized” in the media or within
their own peer groups. Immediately after the bombing of the Oklahoma City
federal building in April 1995, many Americans assumed that this terrorist act had
been committed by someone from the Middle East. Ask students how stereotypes of people from this region of the world were formed.
Next list the names of the following groups on the chalkboard:
Politicians
Old People
Teenagers
Harvard University Students
North Carolina State University Students
Professional Basketball Players
Professional Ballet Dancers
Welfare Recipients
Computer Programmers
Germans
New Yorkers
Southerners
Migrant Workers
Democrats
Republicans
Have students number a sheet of paper from one to fifteen. Next to each
number, have them quickly list words or phrases they associate with each group.
Tell students that their papers will not be turned in or shared with other class
members. Encourage them to be as truthful as possible. Then have them put a
plus or minus next to each group on the list, indicating whether the words or
phrases they have listed on their paper about this group are generally positive or
negative.
Distribute Handout 1C. This handout lists the most common sources of our
attitudes and beliefs about other people. Have each student pick four groups
from their list about which they have fairly negative attitudes. Ask students to use
the chart to analyze the role each of these opinion sources has had in the
formation of their negative stereotypes. Have students consider the extent to
which their attitudes and assumptions about a group are based on repeated
direct contact with member of this group and to what extent students have
generalized from a single experience or from the portrayal of this group in the
media. Ask students why they think movies and television often present a onedimensional portrayal of certain groups. Ask students how such a portrayal
contributes to the formation of stereotypes. Conclude by asking students what
consequences viewing these groups in a stereotypical way have for both those
who are stereotyped and those who hold these stereotypes.
8
HANDOUT 1A
YOU ARE THERE
I
t’s late in the afternoon on a weekday. You are home after school watching
television. You hear people making loud noises outside on the street, so you
get up and look out the window. You see people being marched down your
street, at gunpoint by men in uniforms. The people are your neighbors. You also
recognize some of the men in uniform. One of them works at the grocery store
where your family shops. One of the people being marched down the street is the
lady from the corner house with her two kids. “What’s going on?” you call out to
people walking quickly by on the street.
“Never mind,” says one.
“Don’t ask,” says someone else.
“It doesn’t concern you,” says a third person. Then the street is deserted again.
The next day at school you notice several empty seats in your English class. By
the end of the week more kids are missing. None of your friends seem to know
where any of them have gone. Then one of your teachers disappears, replaced
by a substitute. No one knows why. “Never mind,” they say. “A new teacher will
come. Maybe she’ll give less homework.”
Then one Saturday you call a friend to see about going to a movie. The phone
rings and rings. Finally a recorded message comes over the line: “Sorry—this
number is no longer in service.” You hurry over to your friend’s house. The door
is open. Strangers are carrying away furniture that belongs to your friend’s family.
Your friend is nowhere around. You step into the house, but a police officer stops
you. “Sorry,” he says. “This house is off limits. It now belongs to the government.”
“But why?” you say.
“The people who lived here have been taken away,” he says.
“What did they do wrong?” you ask.
“People like them, they didn’t have to do anything wrong to get in trouble. Now if I
were you, I’d move along and not ask any more questions.”
________________________________________________________________
9
HANDOUT 1B
FACT—NOT FANTASY:
WALTER IN GERMANY
A
t first I went to public school like everyone else in my town, but I was not
permitted to say “Heil Hitler” or wear a uniform. This set me apart from the
rest of my classmates. I had to attend school parades and listen to
propaganda speeches.
The attitude towards Jewish people became worse as time went on. The other
students were told not to socialize with Jews. The teachers were not supposed to
speak to our parents. In 1937 we were separated from other German children
and placed in a school with children who were mentally handicapped.
On the day after Kristallnacht began, the first thing I noticed as I went to school
that morning was that the Jewish shoe store downstairs had all the windows
smashed. Glass and shoes were all over the street.
I went off to school and the first thing we were told in school was that the teacher
would be late because the synagogue was burning and he had gone there. The
next hour was uneventful. The teacher returned. Then some plainclothes men, I
guess they were from the Gestapo, came and they took the teacher and the
headmaster [principal] away and I went home.
Getting home, I found my mother in tears because two men had been up to our
apartment and searched it. They had torn the curtains and a few pictures off the
wall. I suppose they were looking for valuables. My mother was very upset.
My mother said, “Let’s go to Grandma’s” and that’s what we did. We went to the
railroad station and took the train. My Grandma lived about an hour and a half
away in a small village. Everything was calm there. There was a Nazi in uniform
standing in front of Grandma’s house. He happened to be the next door
neighbor. This man put on his Nazi uniform and stood in front of the house so
that no one would do anything to Grandma. He looked out for us. So he was a
good Nazi, if there is such a thing.
THEN AND NOW
After Kristallnacht, Walter applied for a visa to leave Germany. In 1939 he was
able to go to England where a family friend lived. His mother also applied for
an exit visa, which she received a few days before the war started. She was
not allowed to use it. Walter never saw his mother or grandmother again. Both
died in concentration camps. Walter emigrated to the United States when the
war ended. He and his wife have lived in Greensboro, North Carolina since
1960.
10
HANDOUT 1C
WHERE DOES IT COME FROM?
MY BELIEFS ABOUT
____________________________
Direct Contacts and
Personal Experiences
Conversations
with Family
Conversations
with Friends
Television
Movies
Books and Magazines
Internet & Video
Games
11
2
OVERVIEW
HITLER’S RISE
I
n the century and a half before 1933, the people of Germany created more
enduring literature and music, more profound theology and philosophy, and
more advanced science and scholarship than did the people of any other
country in the world. Germans were highly
USHMM: courtesy Joanne Schartow
cultured and literate. Their universities were
the most respected in Europe. And yet it was
in this country that Nazism developed.
Many factors played a part in Adolf Hitler’s rise
to power. Hitler’s arresting personality and his
skills as a public speaker and propagandist
contributed to his political success. His ability
to attract followers can also be attributed to the
bitterness many Germans felt following their
country’s defeat in World War I, resentment of
the Versailles Treaty, weaknesses of the
Weimar Republic, the Depression, and the
growth of extreme nationalism in Germany.
WEIMAR
REPUBLIC
BLAMED
FOR
GERMANY’S DEFEAT
In 1919 after defeat
in World War I, Germany set up a republic.
The Weimar Republic was created during the
period of general exhaustion and shock that
followed the war. The Kaiser, Germany’s ruler,
fled to Holland and although the military had
lost the war, the new government was blamed
for the defeat.
Adolf Hitler, Rudolf Hess (left), and
Julius Streicher (right) at the third
Nazi Party Congress, Nuremberg,
Germany, August 1927
Germans were not prepared for a democratic government. The country had
always known authoritarian leaders and had been ruled by an emperor since
1871. Many Germans saw the Weimar Republic as an interim government.
When Germany held elections, it became a “Republic without Republicans.” It did
not have an elected majority and was disliked by many sides.
RESENTMENT OF VERSAILLES TREATY
At the end of World War I,
the Weimar government signed the Treaty of Versailles. The treaty fostered
feelings of injustice and made many Germans want revenge. Article 231, known
to many Germans as the “war guilt” clause, declared that the Central Powers had
begun the war and were, therefore, responsible for the destruction it caused in
the Allied nations. Germany was forced to give up land and pay reparations
which Germans considered excessive and unfair.
12
HIGH INFLATION IN GERMANY
Following Germany’s defeat, the
German mark became almost worthless. In 1914 $1 was equal to 4 marks; in
1921 $1 was equal to 191 marks; by 1923 $1 was equal to 17,792 marks; and by
1923 $1 was worth 4,200,000,000 marks. Hitler benefited from the country’s
economic problems. Economic uncertainty and the fear of communism after the
Bolshevik revolution offered a rich soil for the seeds of fascism.
HITLER’S EARLY YEARS
Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889,
in Austria. He was the fourth of six children. Hitler’s stepfather, a customs official,
died when Adolf was fourteen. Hitler’s first years at school were successful until
he entered a technical school at age eleven. There, his grades became so poor
that he left school at sixteen.
In 1907 Hitler’s mother died. He moved to Vienna, where he lived for seven
years. While there he applied for admission to the Academy of Art, but was
rejected for lack of talent. In 1913 Hitler moved to Munich, Germany. In 1914, he
joined the Bavarian army as a dispatch runner. In World War I, he took part in
heavy fighting. He was wounded in 1916 and gassed in 1918. He was recovering
in a hospital when the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918. Hitler’s
wartime experiences reinforced central ideas he pursued later: his belief in the
heroic virtues of war, his insistence that the German army had never been
defeated, and his belief in the inequality of races and individuals.
NAZI PARTY FORMED In 1919, at age thirty, Hitler returned to Munich, where
former soldiers, embittered by their experiences, had formed associations. Many
groups blamed Germany’s defeat on Jews who had “stabbed the army in the
back.” Hitler joined the German Socialist Workers’ party and within a year, had
transformed it into the National Socialist German Workers’ party, or Nazi party.
By 1922, he was well known in
USHMM: courtesy Bud Tullin
Munich. He rented beer halls and
repeated his basic themes:
hatred of communists and Jews,
the injustice of the Treaty of
Versailles, the betrayal of the
German army by Jews and
pacifists, and the need to acquire
enormous amounts of land for
German settlement.
HITLER WRITES MEIN KAMPF
On November 8, 1923, Hitler and
SA members of the Nazi party march in a long
his followers attempted a takecolumn along a street in Munich, 1922
over of the government in
Munich. The failure of this coup attempt resulted in a five-year jail sentence for
Hitler. He served only nine months due to a sympathetic judge. During this time
he wrote the first of the two volumes of Mein Kampf (My Struggle). This book
became the bible of the Nazi movement. It clearly spelled out Hitler’s program. In
it, Hitler announces his intention to manipulate the masses by means of
propaganda, forecasts a worldwide battle for racial superiority, and promises to
free Germany from the limitations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles.
13
Released from prison in 1924, Hitler realized the Nazis must come to power
legally. “Democracy must be
USHMM: courtesy James Sanders
defeated with the weapons of
democracy,” he said. His task
was to reorganize his outlawed party and work toward
his goals. The popularity of
Hitler’s racist ideas coupled
with his magnificent gift of
oratory united the disillusioned
of every class: the bankrupt
businessman, the army officer
who couldn’t adjust to civilian
life, the unemployed worker or
Hitler leads an SA unit in a Nazi party parade
clerk, and the university
in Weimar, Germany, 1931
student who had failed his
exams.
PROFESSIONALS AND WORKERS ATTRACTED TO NAZI PARTY
Hitler’s
ideas found support among all classes from lawyers, doctors, and scientists to
factory workers. Among his earliest supporters were members of the lower
middle class—small shop-keepers, farmers, clerks, and tradesmen. Generally,
young Protestant men favored the party, while women, older socialists and
democrats, and Catholics opposed it. Hitler offered something for everyone: the
return of the glories of Germany; racial war as a normal state of life; the Jew as
the common enemy of the German people; the German race as the saviors of
the world. Hitler’s racist appeals attracted anti-Semites, but most Germans were
more attracted by other aspects of his program.
DEPRESSION BRINGS NEW SUPPORTERS Hitler’s chance came during the
Depression years. After 1929, many people blamed the Weimar government for
the country’s economic problems. By the early 1930s, Germany was in a
desperate state. Six milUSHMM
lion people, one third of
the workforce, was out of
work. Hitler’s program appealed to a cross-section
of the German public who
perceived the Depression
as a unique German phenomenon rather than as a
worldwide disaster.
HITLER
APPOINTED
CHANCELLOR
The
Nazi party surprised observers with its success in
the parliamentary elections of 1930, winning 107
The automobile in which Hitler is riding moves through a
crowd of supporters as it leaves the Chancellery after
Hitler’s meeting with Pres. von Hindenburg, 19 Nov. 1932
14
seats in the Reichstag, or parliament. By July 1932 the Nazis had gained control
of 230 seats to become the strongest single party. In January 1933, an aging
President Paul von Hindenburg was persuaded to appoint Hitler Chancellor of
the Reich. Hindenburg believed Hitler could lead Germany out of its political and
economic crisis. Hindenburg also believed Hitler could be controlled. Once in
power, Hitler immediately took steps to end democracy and turn the nation into a
dictatorship. He began by calling a new election for March 1933. The Nazicontrolled Reichstag then passed the Emer-gency Decree. All civil rights—free
speech, freedom of the press, the right to assemble, the privacy of the mails—
were suspended.
Until the election, Hitler used the power of emergency decrees to rule. All open
opposition came to an end. Newspaper offices and radio stations were wrecked.
He created special security forces that murdered or arrested leaders of the
communist, socialist, and other opposition political parties.
CIVIL RIGHTS SUSPENDED BY ENABLING ACT
On the first day the new
Reichstag met, the Nazis helped push through the Enabling Act. This act
provided legal backing for the Nazi dictatorship. No charges had to be filed to
lock people up. Warrants did not have to be issued for arrests. “Enemies of the
people and the state” were sent to concentration camps. The first camps
opened soon after Hitler took power. The Reichstag adjourned, never again to
have an effective voice in the affairs of Germany during Hitler’s rule.
THIRD REICH COMES TO POWER
When von Hindenburg died in August
1934, Hitler saw his chance to consolidate his power. He united the offices of
President and Chancellor to become the Supreme Head of State and
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. The democratic state was dead.
Hitler’s Third Reich had come to power.
USHMM
Hitler poses with a group of SS
members soon after his appointment
as chancellor, Berlin, February 1933
15
TEACHING LESSON
Handout 2:
2
The News from Germany
Vocabulary: totalitarian
Read Overview 2 and summarize for students. Then write the following
quotation from the British statesman Edmund Burke on the board:
“All that is necessary for the forces of evil
to win is for good men to do nothing.”
Ask students what they think this quote means. (Bad things happen because
good people do nothing to stop them.) Ask students to suggest reasons why
otherwise “good people” might not act when confronted with behavior that they
know to be wrong. (fear of physical harm, fear of losing status in the community
or of public disapproval, apathy, indifference, ignorance of how the problem can
be solved)
Middle schoolers might be introduced to this lesson through the poem “The
Hangman” by Maurice Ogden, reprinted in the back of the book. This poem is
also used in a powerful film The Hangman listed in the Bibliography.
In this lesson students read about some German men and women who did try to
protest against Nazi policy. This handout can be used to help students contrast
the way dissent or opposition to government policy is treated in a democratic
society like the United States with the way dissenters are treated in a totalitarian
state.
Distribute Handout 2. Make sure students realize that each of these newspaper
reports comes from newspaper articles of the 1930s. As students read each
article, have them note the date and the place where each occurred. Explain that
Martin Niemoeller was a German Protestant minister who served with distinction
in the German navy as a submarine commander in World War I. In the years
after World War I, he was at first a supporter of the Nazi party. However, after
Hitler came to power in 1933, he preached against the Nazis and became the
leader of the Confessing Church. The purpose of this group was to systematically
oppose the Nazi-sponsored German Christian Church. He was imprisoned briefly
in 1937 and then spent nearly eight years in prison from 1938 to 1945 when the
Allies liberated the camps.
When students have completed the reading, make a chart like the one on the
next page on the board. Have students complete the chart and use it to compare
the articles.
16
Crime
Persons Accused
Punishment
Failed to give Nazi salute
German citizen
Two weeks in prison
Marched in a protest against
a ban on public prayer
meetings for imprisoned
ministers; opposed
restrictions on churches
Several hundred Protestant
church leaders
Demonstrators jailed
but later released
Opposed Nazi ideas, told
children not to give Nazi
salute, were pacifists
German citizens
Rev. Niemoeller:
eight years in prison
Children taken away
from parents
Ask students what effect they think the punishments for these acts had on
German citizens who did not agree with Nazi policies. (The increasing severity of
punishments in the decade before the war had a chilling effect on dissent.) Point
out that without the cooperation and support of major institutions of German
society such as the Church or the universities, individual resistance, even if it had
existed on a larger scale, would not have been very effective.
Next ask students whether any of the actions described in these newspaper
articles would be considered a crime in the United States. (No) What rights do
Americans have that protect them from arrest for such activities? (constitutional
rights of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly)
Have students think of periods in American history when opposition to
government policies has been strong. A good example is the Vietnam era. Some
of the ways opponents of the Vietnam War expressed their views were through
marches, protests, refusing to salute the flag, refusing to sing the national
anthem. None of these actions were illegal. What would have been the response
to such actions in Nazi Germany? (Clearly, such actions would have been
considered criminal acts in Nazi Germany. Point out that in the United States
opposition to the war expressed through such activities as refusing to register for
the draft and takeovers of buildings were illegal, and students might consider
reasons for this.)
As a follow-up activity for this lesson, groups of students can write the memo
suggested at the end of Handout 2. (Groups can consider such responses as
diplomatic protests, secret negotiations, the League of Nations, economic
sanctions and boycotts, breaking off relations with Germany.) Students can also
write short newspaper articles indicating how the same information might appear
in a German newspaper of the period. Students should be made aware that
these newspapers were used as propaganda tools of the Nazi government.
17
Connect to Civics: Examine with the class the difficult choices a democracy
faces in determining the limits of dissent. Should a civil rights group be allowed to
hold a protest march or a rally? Should the same rights be given to the Ku Klux
Klan or to neo-Nazis and skinheads? Should members of an American Nazi party
be given a parade permit? Students can research an actual incident that took
place in Skokie, Illinois, in 1977. Skokie is a suburb of Chicago. Twenty years
ago, many of its residents were Jewish and some were concentration camp
survivors. The incident which occurred there began when Nazi party members
requested a permit to hold a rally. Many members of the community objected
strongly to the request. Skokie town leaders responded by obtaining a court
order banning the rally and passing local laws that prohibited the rally.
The Nazi party asked the American Civil Liberties Union to defend its right to hold
the rally. The lawyer for the Nazi party argued that to deny the Nazis the right to
march violated their First Amendment rights. The Supreme Court refused to stop
the planned rally. However, the Skokie rally was not held. After the U.S. District
Court overruled the Chicago Park District’s opposition to their appearance there,
the Nazis decided to rally in Chicago instead.
In general the art of all great popular leaders at all times
consists . . . in not scattering the attention of a people but
rather in concentrating it always on one single opponent.
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
18
HANDOUT 2
THE NEWS FROM GERMANY
The New York Times
New York
January 8, 1935
Jailed for Failing to Salute
STRASLUND, Germany, January 7, 1935. Because he failed to give the Nazi salute
when a band played the Nazi anthem, a German citizen was sentenced today to two
weeks’ imprisonment. A Nazi paper in nearby Stettin asserts that he stood with his
hands in his pockets while the band played the song which is sacred to every good
National Socialist.
The Associated Press
August 8, 1937
115 Seized in Niemoeller Parade
BERLIN, Germany, August 7. The police arrested, but later released, 115 demonstrators who marched through the streets tonight in protest against a ban on public
prayer meetings for imprisoned pastors who had opposed Nazi church restrictions. The
parade was believed to be the first public mass demonstration against any measure
taken by the Government under Nazi rule. Several hundred members of the church of
the Reverend Martin Niemoeller, Protestant leader in the fight against government
control of church affairs, joined in the march. Niemoeller goes on trial Tuesday
charged with having opposed Nazi church restrictions.
New York
The New York Times
November 30, 1937
Reich Court Takes Children from Parents
WALDENBERG, Germany, November 29. A district court in this town today
deprived a father and mother of their children because they opposed the National
Socialist idea, taught their children not to give the Hitler salute, and were pacifists.
Both parents are members of a Christian sect known as International Bible
Researchers. They had adopted a number of pacifist ideas of the Quakers. The father
denied that he had tried to influence the children’s attitude toward the present political
regime. The court ruled that the children could not live in such an atmosphere without
becoming “enemies of the state.”
Imagine you are a policy analyst for the U.S. State Department. Based upon the
newspaper articles you have just read, write a memo to the president describing
the situation, what might happen, and the courses of action the president might
take.
19
3
OVERVIEW
PREWAR NAZI GERMANY
S
eizure of power gave the Nazis enormous control over every aspect of
German life. The Nazis could use the machinery of government—the
police, courts, schools, newspapers and radio—to implement their racist
beliefs. Jews, who made up less than one percent of the total population in 1933,
were the principal target of this attack, but the Roma (Gypsies) and the handicapped were also singled out for persecution because they were seen as a
biological threat to the purity of the Aryan race. The Nazis blamed the Jews for
Germany’s defeat in World War I, its economic problems, and for the spread of
communist parties throughout Europe.
National Archives
GERMANS
ACCEPT
ANTI-JEWISH
PROPAGANDA
As Hitler raged
against the Jews, he accused them of
dominating Germany’s economic and
political life despite strong evidence to the
contrary. In 1925 Jews made up less than
five percent of officials in the German
government, including the judicial system.
Yet Hitler’s propaganda machine inflated
this number to fifty percent and then sixtytwo percent. By 1930, less than eight
percent of the directors of Berman banking
companies were Jewish. In 1932,
Germany’s eighty-five major newspapers
had fewer than ten Jewish editors. Yet
many Germans believed the Nazi claim
that Jews controlled the nation’s financial
system and its press. The Nazis skillfully
used propaganda to create the public
perception that Jews were a devious
political, economic, and social threat to the
nation, justifying Hitler’s violent persecution of them.
Hitler at Nazi party rally, Nuremberg,
ca. 1928, from photo album created
by Heinrich Hoffman to document
early Nazi party activities
In April 1933, Hitler began to make discrimination against Jews government
policy. All non-Aryans were expelled from the civil service. A non-Aryan was
defined as anyone who had Jewish parents or two or more Jewish grandparents.
In this same year the government called for a one-day general boycott of all
Jewish-owned businesses and passed laws excluding Jews from journalism,
radio, farming, teaching, the theater, and films. At the same time government
contracts with Jewish businesses were cancelled.
20
NUREMBERG LAWS
USHMM: courtesy Hans Pauli
In 1934, Jews were
dismissed from the
army. They were excluded from the stock
exchange, law, medicine, and business.
But it was the Nuremberg Laws of 1935
that took away the
citizenship of Jews
born in Germany, labeling them “subhuman.” These laws defined Jews not by their
religion, but by the
religious affiliation of
Poster entitled "The Nuremberg Law for the Protection of Blood
their
grandparents.
and German Honor," ca. 1934, with a chart of the forbidden
These laws became
degrees of marriage between Aryans and non-Aryans
the backbone of the
Nazi attack on Jews
up to 1939. Over time some fourteen supplementary decrees were issued which
served as the basis for excluding Jews from professions, medicine, law, from
serving as patent attorneys or tax advisors, and for limiting their business
activities. With these laws Hitler officially made anti-Semitism a part of
Germany’s basic legal code.
Under these laws, marriage between Jews an Aryans was forbidden. Jews were
not to display the German flag and could not employ servants under forty-five
years of age. These laws created a climate in which Jews were viewed as inferior
people. The systematic removal of Jews from contact with their neighbors made
it easier for Germans to think of Jews as less human or different.
German Jews lost their political rights. Restrictions were reinforced by
identification documents. German passports were stamped with a capital “J” or
the world Jude. All Jewish people had to have a recognizable Jewish name.
Jewish men had to use the middle name “Israel,” Jewish women the middle
name “Sarah.” These names had to be recorded on all birth and marriage
certificates. By 1939 the Nazis had seized Jewish businesses and properties or
forced Jews to sell their businesses at rock bottom prices. Jewish children could
no longer go to public schools, theaters, or movie houses. Hotels were closed to
Jews and in some places Jews were prohibited from living or even walking in
certain sections of German towns.
T-4 PROGRAM
The Nazis also began the persecution of other groups
viewed as racially inferior. Between 1933 and 1935, the Nazis passed laws
creating involuntary sterilization programs aimed at reducing the number of
21
genetically “inferior” Germans.” Targets of these programs included over 300,000
mentally or physically disabled people. A law passed on July 14, 1933 made
sterilization compulsory for people with congenital mental defects, schizophrenia,
manic-depressive illness, hereditary epilepsy and severe alcoholism. This law
also included the blind and the deaf, even those who became deaf or blind from
such illnesses as scarlet fever or from accidents.
When Hitler started the war in 1939, he ordered the elimination of the mentally
handicapped because they were “useless eaters.” The so-called T-4 program
headquartered in Berlin’s Tiergartenstrasse 4 took the handicapped to extermination centers and gassed them with carbon monoxide. In 1941, public outcry
against this program led the Germans to continue it with much greater secrecy.
Before August 1941 about 100,000 people were killed by the Nazis through the
T-4 Program. By the end of the war another 100,000 were murdered in this way.
These men and women along with Jews and Roma (Gypsies) were seen as a
biological threat to the purity of the German Aryan race that had to be exterminated.
THE ROMA
Many of Germany’s 30,000 Roma (Gypsies) were
also sterilized and prohibited from marrying Germans. They were considered by
the Nazis to be racially impure and mentally defective. Later they would be
condemned by the Nazis to the same fate as Jews—total annihilation. Over half
a million Roma were murdered by the Germans in gas chambers, “medical”
experiments, and random killings.
Although treated less severely than Jews or the Roma, homosexuals, mostly
males, were another target of Nazi persecution. They were often given the choice
of sterilization, castration, or imprisonment in a concentration camp where they
were forced to wear a pink triangle. Children of mixed African and German racial
background were also targeted for sterilization. Some of these children were
offspring of German women and African soldiers in the French army stationed by
the French in the Rhineland after World War I. These children were taken from
schools or streets and sterilized, often without anesthesia. Under a 1933 statute,
the “Law for the Prevention of Off-spring with Hereditary Defects,” these
sterilizations were completely legal.
JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES
Jehovah’s Witnesses were singled out for
abuse because they were pacifists. They refused to swear an oath to the state or
serve in the German army and they urged others to act as they did. In addition,
they would not salute the Nazi flag or say “Heil Hitler.” Many Witnesses lost jobs
and some went to prisons and concentration camps in Germany or had their
children taken from them and sent to orphanages.
SS GAIN POWER
Hitler’s position was challenged from within the Nazi
party by the SA, an abbreviation for the German word for storm troopers. Also
called brown shirts, they were Hitler’s private army run by Ernst Roehm. In 1934
Hitler ordered a purge of the SA by the SS, the elite group of soldiers who served
as his personal bodyguard. The Night of Long Knives ended any challenge to
22
Hitler’s position of power. Once the SS State was created, resistance to the Nazi
regime was destroyed. Communists, Catholics, Jews, intellectuals, and others
were the targets of the Gestapo, or secret police.
DACHAU FIRST CONUSHMM: courtesy KZ Gedenkstaette Dachau
CENTRATION CAMP
The SS soon took over
from the SA the responsibility for setting up
concentration
camps
throughout
Germany.
Anyone suspected of
disloyalty or disobedience could be sent
there. The first concentration camp was at
Dachau, close to Munich. It was built to hold
Dachau inmates gathered outside and on the rooftops
political dissenters and
of a camp building to hear a speech by Hitler, 1934
“enemies of the state.”
No charges had to be filed against the detainees, no warrant for their arrest was
necessary, no real evidence was required.
In 1935, Hitler reintroduced the military draft, in violation of the Versailles Treaty.
In 1936 German troops reoccupied the Rhineland. That same year Hitler signed
an agreement with Italian dictator Mussolini to establish the Rome-Berlin Axis.
NIGHT OF BROKEN GLASS
On November
9, 1938, the Nazis carried out what the German
press called a “spontaneous demonstration”
against Jewish property, synagogues, and
people. Dr. Josef Goebbels, the propaganda
minister, claimed the demonstration was in
reaction to the shooting of a lower-level diplomat
at the German embassy in Paris. A young
Jewish boy attempted to assassinate the official
or because his father had been deported to
Poland. Throughout Germany fires and bombs
were used to destroy synagogues and shops.
Store windows were shattered, leaving broken
glass everywhere. By the time it ended, nearly
100 people had been killed. That night became
known as the Night of Broken Glass, or
Kristallnacht. German documents found later
showed that Kristallnacht had been carefully
planned weeks in advance by the Nazis.
USHMM: courtesy Stadtarchiv Pforzheim
Shattered stained glass
windows of a synagogue in
Pforzheim after Kristallnacht,
10 Nov. 1938
23
Even before Kristallnacht, many Jews in Germany and Austria had sought to
escape. Between 1933 and 1939, about half the German-Jewish population
succeeded in finding refuge in other countries. More than two thirds of Austrian
Jews fled the country as well. Some found safety in Palestine. Others went to
China which did not require an entry visa. Latin American nations admitted some
Jews as well. Many believed mistakenly they would be safe in France, Holland,
and other western European nations. Because of the worldwide economic
depression, public opinion in almost all countries was overwhelmingly opposed to
immigration of any kind. The United States, Canada, and Britain maintained
existing numbers of immigrants imposed by the Quota Law of 1924. Many Jews
who remained under Nazi rule in Germany or Austria did so only because they
could not get visas
USHMM: courtesy Norbert Hilsberg
or sponsors in host
countries or lacked
the money needed
to emigrate.
In March 1938,
German
troops
marched into Austria and met no
resistance. Austria
became a part of
greater Germany.
This Anschluss, or
uniting, although a
violation of both
the Treaty of Versailles and the
Austrian election poster, 1936-1938. The German text above reads
Treaty of St. Ger“Hitler our last hope” and below “Therefore come to us!”
main, would be
justified by provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, which stated that all people of
one nationality had the right to live under one government. Hitler next seized the
Sudetenland, an area in western Czechoslovakia where many Germans lived.
For a short time he persuaded the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain,
and the French Premier Edouard Daladier, that he was right in doing so. But
when he invaded and occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia, no justifications could
be found.
WORLD WAR II BEGINS
Poland would be next. On September 1, 1939,
German forces, spearheaded by tanks and bombers, marched into Poland and
crushed all organized resistance. England and France declared war against
Germany on September 3, 1939 and the world was once again at war.
24
T E A C H IN G L E S S O N
3
Handout 3A: The Shame of Nuremberg
Handout 3B: Diary Entry: Anne Frank
Handout 3C: Henry Before and After Kristallnacht
Vocabulary:
Aryan, Nuremburg Laws, Gestapo, Kindertransport, Reichstag
Read Overview 3 and summarize for students. Then write the terms democracy
and dictatorship on the board. Have students identify the major differences
between these two forms of government. Through discussion, students should
recognize that a dictatorship is a government in which power is held by one
person or a small group. A key characteristic of a dictatorship is that it is not
responsible to the people and cannot be limited by them. Those in power have
absolute authority over the people they govern.
Many modern dictatorships are also totalitarian. This mans that those in power
exercise total control over every aspect of their citizens’ lives from school to
workplace, from what people read to how they spend their leisure time. In a
democracy, political authority rests with the people and democratic leaders
govern with the consent of the governed. The rights of citizens are protected by
law. The majority rules, but the minority has rights that are protected by law.
Among these rights are freedom of religion, assembly and petition, speech, and
press.
Review the differences between these forms of government. Then distribute
Handout 3A. Tell the class that this is a copy of an actual newspaper article that
appeared in the New York Herald Tribune in 1935. Use these questions to start
discussion:
1. What lawmaking body passed the Nuremberg Laws?
2. To what political party did most members of the Reichstag belong?
3. The members of the Reichstag were elected by the people of Germany. Does
this mean that it was a democratic legislature? Why or why not?
4. What is meant by the statement in the article that the Reichstag is “now
nothing more than a rubber stamp”?
5. Was there any discussion of these laws before they were passed? Did any
members of the Reichstag oppose them? How do you think opposition to the
laws would have been treated?
25
6. Who was hurt by these laws?
7. What restrictions were put on Jews by these laws? What were the penalties
for breaking these laws?
8. What do you think the Nazi party hoped to achieve with these laws?
Focus discussion on the following question: What is the difference, if any,
between individual acts of prejudice and discrimination and those which are
carried out through government laws? (The passage of the Nuremberg Laws by
the Reichstag encouraged and supported prejudice and made hatred of Jews
acceptable. A society that tolerates or legalizes bigotry through its government is
different from a society where discrimination is unlawful. In a democratic society
like the United States, individual acts of discrimination and prejudice do occur.
However, they are not sanctioned by the government and are often actively
opposed by government laws and regulations. Furthermore, in countries where
discrimination is illegal, people who believe they have been treated unfairly can
seek redress through the courts.)
Next have students suggest ways laws such as these would have been
discussed in a democratic legislature like the Congress. Point out that German
Jews had no way of expressing their opposition to these laws, because they had
no representation in the legislature. Ask students how Americans opposed to the
passage of laws can protest against them before their passage. (by contacting
their legislative representatives, public petitions and protests, use of media) How
would a minority group in a democracy protest such laws once they were
passed? (legal actions, using television and other media as a forum for
discussion, public protests, possibly economic boycotts)
Distribute Handout 3B. Have students read the handout. Then list on the
chalkboard the restrictions Anne describes such as riding on a train or subway,
driving a car, going to the movies. Emphasize that German Jews faced these
restrictions solely because they were born Jewish or had Jewish parents,
grandparents, or great grandparents. Prejudice rather than illegal activities by
Jews made them subject to these laws.
Connect to Language Arts: Ask students to imagine that these laws were
applied to all families with children between the ages of fourteen and eighteen in
your school. The reasons why these laws apply only to this set of students has
not been made clear to students. However, they must follow the rules or face
serious penalties. Have each student write a paragraph or diary entry describing
how his or her life would change if they and their families were faced with such
laws. Have students describe a typical school day and a weekend day. How
would students’ after-school activities change?
their jobs change? their
schooling change?
Connect to American/North Carolina History: Encourage students to think of
periods in American history when citizens have been treated unfairly as a result
26
of government legislation. Compare and contrast the Nuremberg Laws with such
laws as the Indian Removal Act during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, the
black codes and Jim Crow laws during the period following Reconstruction, and
the internment camps for some Japanese Americans on the West Coast during
World War II. Areas for comparison and contrast include purpose or aims of such
laws, groups affected by the laws, responses of citizens to such laws, and
differences in ways citizens in a democracy and an authoritarian society could
respond to such laws. Provide students with a copy of the Bill of Rights. Have
students decide which of the Nuremberg Laws and the laws cited by Anne Frank
in her diary would be illegal under the Bill of Rights.
Distribute Handout 3C. Tell students that this survivor testimony examines the
experiences of a German Jewish boy in prewar Germany. Locate the city of
Dresden on a map. Explain that the Kindertransport, or Children’s Transport,
mentioned by Henry in this selection refers to the transporting of Jewish children
from Germany and other Nazi-occupied countries during the prewar years. The
Kindertransports allowed several thousand children to escape some parts of
Europe under Nazi domination at that time. The children were sent without their
parents to places of temporary or permanent refuge. Great Britain, where Henry
went, provided shelter for some 10,000 Jewish children between the ages of four
months and seventeen years. The first trainload of 100 children left Germany on
Decem-ber 3, 1938. The last train left Germany at the end of August 1939. The
events of Kristallnacht that Henry relates and the round-up of 30,000 Jews by the
Nazis put pressure on the British government to admit the young refugees. The
following questions might be used to discuss the handout.
1. What two events of 1935 made Henry uneasy? How was Henry personally
affected by the passage of the Nuremberg Laws?
2. Review the Nuremberg Laws in Handout 3A. What part of the law forced
Henry’s family to dismiss Kaethe? What penalty did Henry’s family face for
failing to dismiss her?
3. Why was it so difficult for Henry’s father to find a job after he was dismissed
form the bank? How do you think the removal of Jews from their jobs as
doctors, lawyers, and other professional positions might have affected the
way non-Jewish Germans viewed them? How might it have affected how they
felt about themselves?
4. How did Hitler use the shooting of the undersecretary at the German
Embassy in Paris to further his own anti-Semitic program? Why does Henry
call Kristallnacht a “supposedly spontaneous outburst of popular anger”?
5. How was Henry’s family personally affected by Kristallnacht? What does
Henry mean when he refers to his father as a “fatherland-loving” father? Why
did Henry’s father think the Gestapo would not take him away once they knew
of his status as a World War I veteran?
27
6. How did his stay in Buchenwald affect Henry’s father?
7. According to Henry why was it so difficult for people like his family to leave
Germany up to 1941?
8. How did Henry get out of Germany? Why did his mother want him sent to
Britain instead of Holland? Was her belief that Holland would not be a safe
haven correct? Explain.
9. Why weren’t other members of Henry’s family able to protest his father’s
seizure and imprisonment? Why wasn’t the Dresden Jewish community able
to protest the destruction of Kristallnacht or the passage of the Nuremberg
Laws? How might Americans have responded to each of these events if they
had objected to them?
Connect to Language Arts and Literature: Have students read Kindertransport by Olga Drucker (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1992). This
book, especially appropriate for middle schoolers, is a powerful autobiographical
account of a young Jewish girl’s struggles as a refugee in England from 19391945. For a writing activity, have students imagine they are a young Jewish boy
or girl leaving Germany on a Kindertransport. Have students describe their feelings about leaving family, friends, and their German homeland. As an alternative
activity, students might make a timeline of Henry’s life in the prewar years,
adding events in German and world history to the timeline to indicate how the
changes in Henry’s life are related to events taking place in prewar Germany.
The ideal
state is
that in
which an
injury
done to
the least
of its
citizens
is an
injury
done to
all.
Solon,
Athenian
Statesman
28
HANDOUT 3A
THE SHAME OF NUREMBURG
New York
Herald Tribune
September 16, 1935
The Shame of Nuremburg
by Ralph Barnes
NUREMBURG, Germany, September 15, 1935. Strict new laws depriving German Jews
of all the rights of German citizens were decreed by a cheering Reichstag here tonight
after an address by Chancellor Adolf Hitler. Tonight’s decrees are among the most
sweeping measures taken since the Nazis came into power two and half years ago. Under
the new laws, Jews in Germany will be put back abruptly to their position in Europe during
the Middle Ages.
The new laws, which go into effect January 1, help to realize the anti-Jewish part of the
Nazi program. They are described as laws for the protection of German blood and German
honor. As read before the Reichstag by the president of the legislative body, they are:
1. Marriages between Jews and Germans are forbidden.
2. Physical contact between Jews and Germans is forbidden.
3. Jews are not permitted to employ in their household German servants under the age
of 45.
4. Jews are forbidden to raise the swastika emblem (now the national flag).
Violation of any of the first three laws is punishable by imprisonment at hard labor.
Violation of the fourth law is punishable by imprisonment.
Tonight’s session of the Reichstag was called unexpectedly by Hitler. All but two or three
of the 600 members are Nazi party men. The Reichstag, which is now nothing more than a
rubber stamp, was called to order by the president of the Reichstag at 9 P.M. After speaking
of the three laws, the President asked the Reichstag for unanimous approval. Six hundred
men, most of them in brown uniforms, leaped to their feet.
With the anti-Jewish wing of the Nazi party now in power, further anti-Semitic measures
are expected to be enacted soon.
29
HANDOUT 3B
A DIARY ENTRY of ANNE FRANK
S
aturday, June 20, 1942. The arrival of the Germans was when
the sufferings of us Jews really began. Anti-Jewish decrees
followed each other in quick succession. We must wear a yellow
star. We must hand in our bicycles. We are banned from trams
[trains or subways] and forbidden to drive. We are only allowed to
do our shopping between three and five o’clock and then only in
shops which bear the sign
USHMM: courtesy Samuel Schryver
“Jewish shop.” We must be
indoors by eight o’clock and
cannot even sit in our own
gardens after that hour. We are
forbidden
to
visit
theaters,
cinemas, and other places of
entertainment. We may not take
part in public sports. Swimming,
tennis courts, hockey fields and
other sports grounds are all
prohibited to us. We may not
visit Christians. We must go to
Jewish schools, and many more
restriction of a similar kind.
Sisters Jetty and Shelly de Leeuw in the
Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, Holland,
wearing yellow-star badges, 1942 or 1943.
Both were later deported and perished,
the same fate suffered by Anne Frank
and her sister Margot.
30
HANDOUT 3C
HENRY BEFORE AND AFTER KRISTALLNACHT
I
n 1935, two events made me, at age nine, very uneasy. First, the Nuremberg
Laws of 1935 with their sweeping restrictions on Jews and on contacts
between Jews and non-Jews. These laws forced us to discharge Kaethe, our
maid, who was also a sort of nanny to me. She was deeply attached to the family
and we two to each other and we all cried as she moved out. Second, the bank in
which my father held a high position and which was owned by a local Jewish
family, was forcibly taken over by a non-Jewish bank, the Dresdner Bank. The
Dresdner Bank, Germany’s second largest bank, had been founded by Jews in
the middle of the nineteenth century. But by 1935, the founders’ family had been
ousted, and it was now “Aryan” as Nazi terminology had it.
Exclusion Begins
The removal of Jews from professional life continued with the dismissal of my
father from his job at the bank a year later. For a while, my father set himself up
in the real estate business. But by now he was over fifty years old and non-Jews
were unlikely to use a Jewish real estate agent. They knew he might not be able
to hire a secretary or even rent an office. Neither of these events in themselves
were catastrophic, but they show the slow, step-by-step restriction of our life
space in the first five years of the Nazi regime. For some like my fatherlandloving father, this slow progression was never quite enough impetus to get out,
until my mother took charge in 1938 and insisted that we try to do so.
My own life soon changed greatly too. After a year in junior high, in the summer
of 1937, after a soccer game in which I was the goalkeeper, my high school
classmates bunched up to give me a beating. I escaped just in time. I would
never return to school except to retrieve my books. By 1938 exclusion was
formalized by government decree and shared by all Jewish children. The Jewish
community hastily set up its own schools. Although understaffed, the school had
highly motivated and able teachers. At this time in early 1938, the kids in our
apartment complex also excluded me from playing with them and from one day
to the next stopped speaking to me. It was frightening. They were my playmates.
Father Taken Away on Kristallnacht
However, the event which marked the beginning of the end occurred on the night
of November 9, 1938. On November 7, seventeen-year-old Herschel Grynszpan
had gone to the German Embassy in Paris and shot an assistant to the ambassador. The shot did not kill but only gravely wounded him. News of the incident
was broadcast on German radio immediately with hourly updates. We suddenly
realized that, in one way or another, my family and the rest of the Dresden
Jewish community would face some kind of awful, unpredictable punishment if he
died. We all prayed for his survival. But he did die and on the night of the ninth
and again on the tenth, the Kristallnacht occurred, a supposedly spontaneous
outburst of popular anger which was, in fact, ordered by Himmler’s second in
command, Reinhardt Heydrich, with the approval of the top Nazi party and gov31
ernment leaders. Remaining Jewish shops had their windows smashed and the
Dresden synagogue was set afire. That night all over Dresden Jewish men we
knew began to be arrested in their homes, pushed into police vans, and whisked
away. Their families did not know what had happened to them or what to do.
On the morning of the second day, the bell of our apartment rang at 7:30. I
opened it and two men in civilian clothes stormed in, asked where my father was,
and crashed into his bedroom. They found him standing in the middle of the
room. My father asked if they were really going to take a decorated veteran of the
Great War away. To make his point, my father turned from them to go to his desk
to get out his medals. The smaller, meaner one of the two quickly drew his
revolver and pointed it at my father and told him not to move and to raise his
hands. I stood at the door petrified. They grabbed him, rushed him away so
rapidly past where our coats hung that my father snatched the wrong coat, the
lighter one of his two overcoats. They shoved him down the stairs so that he
almost fell and we lost sight of him until we looked out the window and saw him
being pushed into the police wagon.
My father did not return until a month later. During that month, we had only one
official, preprinted postcard
USHMM: courtesy Robert A. Schmuhl
from him in a shaky
handwriting very different
from his usual curved
script. We learned he was
being held in a concentration camp called Buchenwald. Slowly some of my
parents’ friends were released and although they
had to swear not to speak
about their experiences,
they did. We learned that
my father had caught
Prisoners standing during a roll call in Buchenwald
pneumonia, partly because
concentration camp, Germany, ca. 1940.
he had grabbed the wrong
Each man wears a striped hat and a uniform with
colored triangular badges and identification numbers.
coat. We feared he might
die.
In fact, he did survive. On the eighth of December just short of a month after
being arrested, he came back, but he was a wreck. His head had been shaved
and was covered by scabs. He was emaciated; he sank onto a kitchen chair and
sobbed uncontrollably for a long time—something I had never seen him do. It
would take him over a year to recover. By that time my parents and my halfbrother were in Chile, South America. They were able to get a visa to Chile just
before the outbreak of war. Up to 1941, the German policy was to rid the country
of Jews, forcing them to leave everything behind, but not to exterminate them.
The real problem was the refusal of other countries to open their doors to more
than a limited number of those seeking to flee. My family used this visa three
weeks after the war began to emigrate to Chile.
32
Henry Escapes Germany on the Kindertransport
I was not with them, because while my father was in Buchenwald, we received
information that England and Holland had offered to accept Jewish children but
not their parents, provided the Jewish communities of those countries guaranteed their upkeep. My mother decided that I should be sent out but only to
England. She sensed that a war by Germany against its neighbors was possible
and that Holland was not a
USHMM: courtesy Instytut Pamieci Narodowej
safe haven. And so in
early January at age
twelve, a month after my
father had come home
from Buchenwald, I traveled with my mother to
Berlin where I joined
Jewish children from other
parts of Germany for a
railway journey on a
special train that became
known as one of the Kindertransports. My mother
and I loved each other
dearly. We were both sad
Jewish refugee children arrive in England on the first
and anxious, but we also
Kindertransport from Germany, Dec. 1938
felt relief and optimism.
Getting out of Germany was clearly the right thing to do after Kristallnacht.
All the children on that transport ended up briefly in a holiday camp on the coast
of the North Sea. It consisted of a set of light cabins constructed for summer use.
They were very cold in mid-January. English families would come to select
children to give them a home for as long as need be. However, I was not chosen
by any of the families, so I ended up in a hostel for Jewish refugee children in
London. There I could write and receive letters from my parents in Chile. In
November 1940, after two months of being bombed every night, spending the
night in the basement of the hostel, I was invited to live with a widower and his
housekeeper, a family friend from Germany, in the city of Lincoln about 140 miles
north of London. From that time on, life went upwards. During the war, I worked
down in the coal mines. Then I attended and graduated from the London School
of Economics. In 1948, I was able to visit my family for ten months in Chile.
From there, in the summer of 1949, I came to the United States and life really
began.
THEN AND NOW
After leaving Chile in 1949, Henry came to the United States to begin his
graduate studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Henry and his wife
came to North Carolina in 1968 after Henry was offered a position in the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He taught
at the university until his retirement in 1994.
33
4
OVERVIEW
THE HOLOCAUST
T
he term Holocaust comes from a Greek word that means “burnt whole” or
“consumed by fire.” Between 1939 and 1945, nearly six million Jews died
in the Holocaust along with five million non-Jews. Among the non-Jewish
groups the Nazis singled out for murder and persecution were the Roma
(Gypsies), Polish intellectuals, Serbs, resistance fighters of all nations, German
opponents of Nazism, and eventually all people of Slavic ethnicity. These were
not accidental deaths or casualties of war, but planned mass executions. Along
with these eleven million human beings, a way of life, an entire European Jewish
culture rich in traditions, vanished as well.
POLICY OF EMIGRATION ABANDONED
In the prewar years, Hitler tried to
rid Germany of its Jewish population by a series of harsh discriminatory laws
intended to make Jews want to leave Germany. If this failed, he planned forced
expulsion. At the time World War II began, many historians argue that the Nazis
had not yet devised a plan for the murder of the Jews. Although Hitler began
setting up concentration camps in 1933 for the persecution of political and
religious dissidents, the Final Solution may not have been decided upon until
after the invasion of the Soviet Union. The war enabled the Nazis to apply their
racial theories particularly against the “subhuman” Poles, Slavs, Roma, and
Jews. Starting in October 1939, following the invasion of Poland, Heinrich
Himmler created a new department of the SS whose purpose was to deal with
deportations, emigration, or mass shootings by mobile killing units. Once groups
were categorized as “subhuman,” they no longer had to be treated by the normal
rules of civilized behavior. Nazi leaders felt justified in making them victims of
mass brutalization.
WANNSEE CONFERENCE
During 1941 Hitler decided to move from
a policy of forced emigration to one of annihilation. Einsatzgruppen, mobile
killing squads, were already murdering Jews in Poland and parts of the Soviet
Union. At the Wannsee Conference, in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, on
January 20, 1942, SS General Reinhard Heydrich explained to SS and other top
Nazi leaders and heads of German government bureaucracies that Hitler had
“given sanction for the evacuation of Jews to the East.” This statement
announced a policy that had as its aim the destruction of European Jewry.
Instead of forcing Jews to emigrate, Nazi officials would deport them to death
camps. A death camp would have facilities designed specifically for mass
murder. The Nazis’ euphemism for this policy was “evacuation to the East.” At
the conference, Nazi leaders as well as non-Nazi bureaucrats, who would
arrange for the transport of Jews to the death camps in Poland, received
instructions for the implementation of this policy of genocide and the deportation
of Jews from all Nazi-occupied countries. No dissent was heard from those
34
attending the conference. In fact, some participants offered suggestions for
making the process of carrying out the Final Solution more efficient. Nazi leaders
had a two-step plan. Jews were to be gathered at “concentration points” in cities
on or near railroad lines and then taken by train to mass killing centers.
NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR
USHMM: courtesy Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen
KILLING At the beginning
of the war, the SS, directed
by Heinrich Himmler, had
organized mobile killing
squads, the Einsatzgruppen, that followed the
German
armies
into
Poland and, later, into the
Baltic countries. Jews were
rounded up in towns and
villages and driven to the
forest or into the countryside. As soon as they were
stripped of their clothes
Latvian Jewish women huddle together before being
and
any
possessions,
executed by a killing squad composed of Latvian
victims were executed by
police directed by the local SS commander, 1941
gunfire and buried in huge
pits. Fearing this method of execution would be discovered, the Germans
abandoned mass shootings relying, instead, upon specially equipped vans that
were used to gas the passengers within.
DEATH CAMPS IN POLAND
While the killing vans did the job, the
process itself was slow. The Germans felt a faster method had to be found. At
first they experimented with gas chambers at small concentration camps in
Germany. By the fall of 1941, mass murder became official state policy; orders
were given to build death camps in Poland, accessible by direct rail lines from
any point in occupied Europe.
Nazi leaders chose Poland for the killing centers for several reasons. First, the
largest number of Jews lived in eastern Europe. Second, non-Jews in these
areas had age-old traditions of anti-Semitism and were unlikely to oppose the
activities of the Nazis. In fact, many offered assistance. The Holocaust would not
have been possible without the aid of these local populations. Finally, all sites
were located in semi-rural areas. Starting in 1941, death camps were built at
Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno, Belzec, and Maidanek.
JEWS FORCED INTO GHETTOS
Following the invasion of Poland, the
Germans began to round up Polish Jews and put them into ghettos. There they
were segregated from the rest of the population and told that, when labor camps
were built, they would be resettled in special work areas. Jews from cities in
Germany and from other countries were also sent to these staging areas in
Poland and in other parts of Nazi-occupied eastern Europe. In total, the Nazis
35
created some 400 ghettos. They used starvation and deprivation to weaken the
captives. Then, whenever the Nazi officials in charge decided, a certain number
of residents were ordered to report to rail stations for “resettlement to the East.”
Between 1941 and 1945, the Germans built and operated twenty major
concentration camps in Germany and eastern Europe. The concentration
camps, including Dachau, BuchenUSHMM: courtesy Archiv der KZ-Gedenkstaette Mauthausen
wald, Mauthausen, and Ravensbruck were set up as work camps.
Prisoners were worked to death as
slave laborers or used in medical
experiments conducted by German
physicians and university scientists.
Scores of other, smaller concentration camps were built in other
areas. These camps tied up men
and materiel in their operation and
were a drain on German manpower. This policy did not advance
the war effort, but it showed the
strong commitment of the Nazis to
the Final Solution. At first, thinking
that life could only be better away
from the disease-ridden ghettos,
the victims willingly accepted resettlement. In order to avoid panic in
the ghettos, the Germans allowed
families to travel together to the
death camps. Crowded into railroad
Prisoners carry large stones up the "stairs of
cattle cars with little water and no
death" from the quarry at the Mauthausen
food, frightened and confused
concentration camp in Austria, 1942
families made the slow train trip into
Poland.
DEPORTATION “TO THE EAST”
The victims seldom knew what
was about to happen to them. Although the rumors from the killing centers, or
death camps, began to filter back into the ghettos after 1942, few Jews could
believe that mass extermination was the final aim of the Germans—a nation
many had considered to be the most cultured and advanced in Europe. Even
when a number of death camp escapees managed to return to the ghettos and
report what they had seen, their accounts were dismissed as wild stories.
Under the “resettlement plan,” the Nazis first emptied out the major areas of
Jewish settlement in eastern Europe. Poland was first, followed by Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, and the Soviet Union. Nazi
victories in western Europe in 1940 had brought even more Jews under Nazi
control. Victims were transported from France, Holland, Belgium, and Germany
itself. The policy of genocide was in full force in Europe by mid-1942. Almost all
36
the victims at Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka death camps were Jews.
A few were Roma. Few survived these camps.
AUSCHWITZ IS LARGEST CAMP
Auschwitz, also known as
Auschwitz-Birkenau, was the largest death camp. It was built west of Krakow,
Poland,
in
Auschwitz.
USHMM: courtesy National Archives
Beginning in late 1941,
Russian prisoners of war
and
several
thousand
Jewish prisoners worked
nonstop to build the gas
chambers and crematoria, as well as hundreds
of barracks to house slave
laborers. Thus, Auschwitz
served first as a concentration camp and slave labor
camp and then became the
death camp where the
most of the European Jews
and Roma were killed.
German engineers and
Aerial reconnaissance photo of Auschwitz II
architects supervised the
(Birkenau), Poland, May 1944
construction. Scores of
German
doctors
and
medical researchers carried out cruel medical experiments on human beings in
specially equipped laboratories built on the grounds of the camp. The camp
began accepting large numbers of prisoners in 1942, and was soon operating at
full capacity. While the Germans used some prisoners as slave laborers, killing
was the major goal of the camp. By mid-1944, when vast numbers of Hungarian
Jews were arriving at Auschwitz, 10,000 people or more were murdered daily.
Even as the war brought the Soviet armies deep into eastern Europe after 1944,
trains filled with victims continued to arrive in Auschwitz.
Railroad freight cars and passenger trains, packed with terrified prisoners,
arrived in the death camps several times each day. Prisoners were unloaded
from the trains by waiting guards. Once they were separated by sex, victims
waited in long lines to be checked by an SS doctor who decided who would go to
the gas chambers. The young, the healthy, and those with skills needed by camp
officials were sent into the camp itself. In the camp, guards made the prisoners
undress and hand over rings, watches, and all other valuables. Prisoners’ heads
were shaved and they were herded into overcrowded barracks. Most of these
people eventually died of malnutrition, brutality, and diseases. Old people, the
sick, women with children under fourteen, and pregnant women were almost
always sent directly to the gas chambers. Victims were driven naked into the gas
chambers which were disguised as shower rooms and either carbon monoxide or
Zyklon B, a deadly gas, was used to asphyxiate them.
37
NAZIS TRY TO DESTROY EVIDENCE OF CAMPS
In late 1944, the Allied
armies crossed into Germany and the Soviet forces liberated sections of eastern
Poland. Fearful that the secret of the death camps would be discovered, the
Germans began destroying them. Treblinka had already been plowed under after
a Jewish revolt in August, 1943, and Auschwitz was partially taken apart in 1945.
FORCED MARCHES BEGIN
As the Allies approached several
of the remaining camps, the killing continued, with nearly a half-million victims
murdered in 1945 alone. The SS forcibly marched the surviving prisoners from
the Polish death camps to camps inside Germany, where they hoped to prevent
their liberation and hide evidence of the massive genocide which had occurred.
These final death marches killed thousands, and tens of thousands of starving
victims were eventually left to die in abandoned German trains. Those who
survived remained in concentration camps until they were freed by the Allies.
On April 30, 1945, shortly before he took his own life, Hitler wrote his last political
testament. He blamed the war on the Jews. They were, he said, solely
responsible for causing the war and their own eventual destruction, and he urged
the continuation of their extermination.
National Archives
National Archives
Prisoners liberated at Wobbelin camp, May 4
Burial service for executed Jews, April 29
__LIBERATION of the CAMPS, 1945__
USHMM: courtesy Robert Pettit
U.S. flag at half-mast at Buchenwald, 19 April
National Archives
Germans ordered to view victims at Wobbelin, May 6
38
TEACHING LESSON
4
Handout 4A: Gizella in the Ghetto
Handout 4B: Anatoly
Vocabulary:
ghetto
Either the teacher or a student can summarize Overview 4 for students. Tell the
class that in this lesson they will learn from first-hand accounts of survivors about
the mistreatment of Jews during Holocaust. Review the definition of a ghetto with
the class. Emphasize that the ghettos created by the Nazis were not like the
ghettos the Jews had lived in during the Middle Ages. The medieval ghettos
protected Jews and their institutions. Within them, Jews were able to study, pray,
and socialize as they pleased. The ghettos devised by the Nazis were a part of
the Nazi extermination plan. In Polish ghettos like Warsaw and Lodz, residents
were sealed inside. Tens of thousands died of starvation, overcrowding,
exposure to cold, and epidemics of typhoid and other diseases. Ghettos provided
a pool of forced labor for the Germans. Many ghetto residents toiled on road
gangs or building crews or performed other forms of hard labor that supported
the German war effort. Thousands were worked to death in the ghettos.
Give half the class Handout 4A and the other half Handout 4B. Tell the students
with Handout 4A that Gizella lived in Poland in 1939 when the Nazis invaded her
country. She was ten years old. Explain to students with Handout 4B that
Anatoly lived in the Ukraine, which was a part of the Soviet Union at the
beginning of the war. During fighting between Germany and the Soviet Union, the
Germans captured Ukraine. After students have read their handouts, use these
questions to summarize and compare the two readings.
1. How did the person you read about get to the ghetto? Who sent them? Why?
2. What were the most serious problems people in the ghetto faced? Judging by
what you read, what were the worst aspects of ghetto life?
3. How did people in the ghetto obtain food?
The group with Handout 4A can also be asked:
1. Where do you think the trucks that took the people out of the ghettos were
going?
2. Why were the people taken from the ghetto forced to write postcards to those
left behind?
The group with Handout 4B can consider:
39
1. Why didn’t Anatoly’s family try to escape when the Germans took over his
city?
2. What two things helped Anatoly survive in the ghetto?
This group can also contrast the way Ukrainians and Rumanians treated the
people in the ghetto.
To illustrate the crowded conditions in the ghetto, explain that one of the largest
ghettos, the Warsaw Ghetto, was about 1⅓ square miles in area. Identify an area
within your community that is about 1⅓ square miles. A university campus or a
residential neighborhood might be an example. Choose an area students are
familiar with. Estimate the number of people living in this area. Then explain that
in this area where (use the statistics for your community) live, the Nazis put
anywhere from 330,000 to 500,000 people. This is more than the population of
Raleigh, Greensboro, or Winston-Salem. Students can also imagine what it
would be like to have twenty extra people living in their home.
Conclude by looking at the effects of ghetto life on both the people living within
the ghetto and those on the outside. Ghetto life isolated Jews and set them apart
from other citizens. Putting people in the ghettos, forcing them to wear the Yellow
Star, depriving them of food, medicine, and sanitary facilities—all were methods
of dehumanization. The goal of this treatment was to make both Jews and nonJews feel that this group was inferior. Making Jews “less than human” helped
anti-Semites justify their treatment of them.
Students often ask why more prisoners of the ghetto didn’t attempt to escape.
Explore this question with the class. (Ghetto life deprived its victims of their
dignity, their resources, and their health. Many believed this imprisonment was
temporary and would end when Germans came to their senses and rejected Nazi
rule. Many were old and sickly, and most had no other place to go. Even if
residents could have escaped from the ghetto, few countries would accept them.
The United States and Britain had strict quotas limiting the number of immigrants
from Germany and eastern Europe. Even if these nations had been willing to
accept Jews, there was no way to get them out. Almost all shipping was military
with few civilian transports.)
Connect to American History: Examine with the class the ways people with
strong prejudices attempt to make the victims of their bigotry seem less than
human. Techniques range from ethnic and racial jokes and cartoons to
segregation by law and denial of access to economic and educational
opportunities. Parallels may be drawn to the black codes and laws that
dehumanized African Americans during slavery and in the post-Reconstruction
period, to the depiction of Chinese Americans in cartoons and newspapers, and
to the apartheid “pass laws,” which forced black South Africans to carry special
travel permits.
40
HANDOUT 4A
GIZELLA IN THE GHETTO
M
y family was very unusual because they owned land, and not many
Jews owned land. My memories are of the house and of the soil, and
how of the house smelled on Shabbat [the Jewish Sabbath]. It was
scrubbed clean and I remember the smell of the Sabbath dinner. The candles
were on the table. Later when times were bad and I felt lonely, so alone and
hungry, I always thought of the candles and of the family. And I always hoped
that I would be able to experience this feeling once again.
Gizella’s mother feeding the ducks and chickens
in front of their house in Poland in the 1930s
In 1939, war broke out. My family
was forced to leave their farm for
an apartment in a nearby city. We
lived in one room. Soon Jewish
children were separated from
other youngsters and sent to an
all Jewish school. Then little by
little, my schoolmates and their
families began to disappear. One
day, my friends came to school,
the next day they didn’t. I don’t
remember how many friends
disappeared. I kept asking, “What
happened to them?”
I was sent to stay with an aunt and uncle in Lutsk, Poland. Then all of us were
herded into a ghetto. Our property—including jewelry, most clothing and household furniture—were taken. The Nazis created a ghetto at the edge of town and
moved all the Jews into shacks. All of us had to wear yellow patches on our
chests and backs. On public streets we could not walk beside Christians. In the
ghetto there was only one water pump, and it was locked except for one hour a
day. There was no food, no sanitation. There was typhoid and starvation
everywhere.
Sometimes children in the ghetto risked their lives, sneaking beyond the ghetto’s
wall and then trying to sell a piece of clothing or other valuables smuggled in
earlier. Whatever they could sell or trade went for food.
Each day trucks came and took people away, and every day the line at the water
pump was smaller and smaller. You could hear the sound of screaming and
moaning every night. The Germans said they were relocating people to safety
where they could work with honor. A Jewish committee was forced to select who
was to go. They forced the deported people to write postcards back to the ghetto
so the people would not panic.
41
HANDOUT 4B
ANATOLY
T
he war between Germany and Russia started on June 22, 1941. Nobody
expected the war. Most people didn’t have time to leave the city, Zmerinka.
Besides, Jews thought that the German soldiers would be good to them.
The German army had been there in World War I and had treated them decently.
The place where we lived was in the Ukraine, one of the most anti-Semitic
republics in the Soviet Union. So when the German Occupation started, many
Jews did not try to leave because they didn’t believe what they had read about
the Germans in the Russian newspaper. They thought it was the Soviet
propaganda.
The Germans divided Zmerinka into two parts. Under an agreement between
Germany and Romania, which was a satellite of Germany, part of the city
belonged to Romania. All the Jews living in the Rumanian part of the city were
put in a ghetto. In the other part of the city, all were killed. My mother and I and
my two younger sisters and brothers were sent to the ghetto. In the ghetto, adults
were used for labor to work on the roads being built by the Germans or to fix
bridges destroyed during the German invasion or by the Soviet army when they
left.
It was not legal but you would exchange your clothes for a meal, for food. That
was the only way to try and survive. Our house, a three-bedroom house, was
crowded. Six families, including my own, squeezed into the same home,
somehow managing to fit twenty people into a house meant for five.
It was only a place to sleep but our house had a big garden and we had a lot of
vegetables. This gave us the chance to survive. We ate potatoes. That was all
we had to eat. Another thing which helped us was that a lot of the Rumanian
Jews were sent from Romania to our ghetto. The Rumanian government sent
food and other things to the Jews from their nation. The Rumanian Jews shared
with their fellow prisoners.
Anatoly’s family survived this way for three years until their ghetto was
liberated by the Soviet Army in April 1944. By then only 300 of the 3,000
people sent to the ghetto at the beginning of the war were still alive.
42
TEACHING LESSON
5
Handout 5A: Esther and Elias
Handout 5B: Susan
Handout 5C: Rena: First Weeks at Auschwitz-Birkenau
Handout 5D: Julius
Vocabulary: Auschwitz, concentration camp, displaced persons camp,
commando, resistance, SS, selection, transport, underground, crematorium,
death march.
In this lesson students will read about the experiences of four North Carolinians
who survived the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. As they read, encourage
students to think about the ways in which the Nazis attempted to dehumanize
their prisoners. They can also consider what motivated these people to survive,
what strategies they developed to help them survive and what part luck played in
their survival. Have students discuss why these people wanted to tell others
about their experiences even although it is extremely painful for them to do so.
Before handouts are distributed, review the vocabulary for this lesson. Definitions
of all the terms are found in the Glossary or in this lesson plan.
Divide the class into four groups of four students each. Give a member of each
group Handout 5A, 5B, 5C, or 5D. Provide all groups with Handout 5E which
gives additional background information on these four survivors. Students can
also locate the places named in their readings on a map of Europe. If a detailed
map is not available, students might look at the maps in Martin Gilbert’s The
Atlas of the Holocaust.
Within groups, have each student read and answer the questions at the end of
his or her handout and then summarize the handout for the other members of the
group. When all students have shared their findings, have each group use these
questions to compare and contrast the experiences they have read about. Ask
each group to select a spokesperson to report the group’s answers to the class.
1 In what ways were the experiences of these people alike? (All of them lost
their freedom and all control over their time. They all lived in fear and
uncertainty, but tried, in accordance with their abilities, to react in a way that
would help them survive.)
2 What kept most people from trying to escape from the trains going to the
camps? From the camps? How successful do you think the escape attempts
were? (Students should be aware that deportees and camp inmates were
unarmed, malnourished, and shell-shocked from their treatment in the ghettos
or from incarceration in the cattle cars. They had no money or food, no
43
weapons or ways to get weapons, no ration cards or identification papers,
were surrounded by largely hostile local populations who were very unlikely to
help them, and risked endangering those around them by trying to escape or
fight back. For these reasons, escape attempts rarely succeeded.)
3. In her selection, Rena talks about learning to be “camp smart.” In what ways
were these survivors camp smart? What do you think helped them survive
their experiences? (Students might mention personal courage, resourcefulness, the help of others, religious faith, intelligence or cleverness,
determination to survive, luck, the ending of the war. In the case of Rena,
having her sister to look after her might also have helped her survive. Point
out that although the resourcefulness of these survivors under pressure was
an important factor in their survival, they were also just plain lucky.
Emphasize that for every person who survived because of bravery,
resourcefulness, and chance good fortune, many hundreds of thousands
more who were equally brave and resourceful died in labor camps or gas
chambers.)
4. Why do you think the people you have read about wanted to tell others about
their experiences? (When one of the survivors was asked why she was willing
to visit schools and talk to students about her experiences, she replied,
“When you read about something in a book, it’s entirely different from when
you meet a person face to face and you realize that they’ve got two hands,
two arms, and two eyes, and they’re very much like you. It helps you realize
that they have the same right to exist as anybody in this world.”)
5 In her testimony, Susan states that making people eat and drink from the
same bowl and use that bowl for urination and defecation was one of the
ways prisoners were dehumanized. This enabled the guards to justify treating
them like animals or, as Susan says, “like vermin.” In what other ways were
people dehumanized at Auschwitz? What do you think the purpose of this
treatment was? For a concluding activity, have each group prepare a group
statement expressing the members’ feelings about what they have read. The
reaction statement might take the form of a poem, picture, or an audio or
video sound or sight collage using passages from the readings. Encourage
students to be creative in their responses.
Connect to Language arts: Students can compare and contrast the wartime
experiences of the people they have read about with the experiences of Anne
Frank or of Annie and Sini in the book The Upstairs Room by Johanna Reiss.
More advanced high school students might read Primo Levi’s Survival at
Auschwitz. Students can note the dates of the experiences described in these
handouts and interview adults who lived during this period, asking them to
describe what their lives were like and what they knew or did not know about
what was going on in eastern Europe at this time.
44
HANDOUT 5A
E STHER AND E LIAS
E
STHER: On a Saturday morning, 1944, early in the morning around 7
o’clock, somebody knocked on the door very hard. We didn’t know what
was happening. The Germans were outside. They gave us exactly two
hours to get ready. Two of my brothers were begging my mother for permission
to let them go up into the attic and hide. My mother was screaming like anything.
She said she was not going to leave anybody behind. Everybody—the whole
family was going. We were very close. The whole family was going to go
together. So my two brothers didn’t have any choice. We all got ready.
We took a couple of loaves of bread and a quilt or blanket. They took us to a big
place and gathered everybody together. The Germans were organized. They had
a schedule. Everybody’s name was written down. They knew how many people
were there. And that afternoon they sent trucks like they carry horses in.
Everybody got in the trucks. It was March 25 and it was snowing. They called our
names out and checked a list before they put us in the truck. I was completely
lost. I was twenty-two years old. I said, “What are they going to do to us? Where
are they going to take us?”
ELIAS: They put us in a big truck without food or anything and we went to a little
town. There we were put in one big building that used to be a warehouse. Over
2000 people in one building without food, not a thing. After eight days, a train
came. Seventy-five people—children, old people, families—were put in each car
of the train. The train traveled through Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, through Czechoslovakia, and stopped at Auschwitz, Poland. Eight days and nights. A lot of
people died in the train cars by the time the train reached Auschwitz.
ESTHER: When we arrived at Auschwitz, everybody was asking, “What are they
going to do?” Two German men came and took us out of the train. You know if
you sit eight days in a train and you don’t stretch your feet, it’s very hard to walk.
They separated us when we came out of the train. They put the young people on
the right, the old people on the left. Of all my family, only one of my brothers and
I came out of Auschwitz. Everybody else went that same night to the gas chambers. I told the German officer, “I want to go with my mother,” and he said, “You
cannot go with your mother because she cannot walk. You’re going to walk. And
you’re going to meet them tonight.” And we walked. And we never saw them
again.
Both Esther and Elias survived, they said, because of a combination of
determination to live, religious faith, and luck. Esther remembers eating rotten
potato peelings. Elias ate grass when no other food was available. Once Elias
and his brother rubbed their faces with snow and ice to redden them. Their idea
45
was to look healthy enough to be selected for a forced labor program—one way
to delay extermination.
THEN AND NOW
While Esther and Elias survived their stay in the camps, other members of
their families did not. Esther’s sisters and brothers, her first husband, her
mother and many relatives died at Auschwitz. Elias never saw his first wife
and child again after the night the trains unloaded. After the war both returned
to their village hoping to find their families again. It was at this time that Esther
and Elias became friends and eventually married. In 1951 they moved to
Greensboro, North Carolina.
1. How did Esther’s family first earn the Nazis were coming?
2. Why didn’t Esther’s brothers try to escape by hiding in the attic of their
house?
3. What was the first thing that happened to the family after they left their home?
4. How long did the train trip take? Where was the train going? What do you
think would be the worst part of the train trip?
5. What happened to the people on the train after it got to Auschwitz?
6. What were three things that Esther and Elias say helped them to survive?
USHMM: courtesy Instytut Pamieci Narodowej
Interior view of the railcar on display in
the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
in Washington, DC. The railcar is one
of several types of freight cars used to
deport Jews to ghettos and concentration camps.
46
HANDOUT 5B
SUSAN
I
came into the Auschwitz death factory from one of the many collection
camps for Jews in German-occupied countries. Before deportation to the
camp called Theresiendstadt (pronounced Tur-RAYSH-En-Shtaht), my
mother and I had lived in Prague, Czechoslovakia. That had been our home
since we fled Austria in 1938 after Hitler seized power. But Hitler followed us into
Czechoslovakia in 1939, and I found myself on a train to Auschwitz-Birkenau in
January 1943. My transport consisted of 500 men and 500 women. Sixty women
between the ages of fourteen and thirty-four, myself included, were selected for
labor in the women’s camp; the
same number of men went into
the men’s camp. The rest were
gassed at once. Men and women,
separated in camps enclosed
with electrified barbed wire, were
guarded day and night by soldiers
with machine guns.
I was “processed” into the camp
on January 28, 1943. I was
shaved all over, given the
summer uniform of a dead
Russian prisoner, a kerchief to
cover my bald head, and a tin
Susan’s ID photo which she carried as a refugee
bowl for food, drink, and other
in Brussels in late 1945 after the war ended
purposes. I had no spoon, coat,
handkerchief or rag, nothing for
care and maintenance of my appearance. This was a means to dehumanize
prisoners so that guards would feel no pity when they treated us like vermin.
How did I survive such hell? I learned to accept the nightmarish camp as the real
world and coped from one minute to the next. Blind luck also played a part. Twice
a day the SS guards made random selections from the prisoners’ ranks. Those
chosen went to the gas chambers. I have no explanation for why some lived and
others died. Survival depended on getting through selection alive or finding a
commando that worked inside the camp and was not subject to selections.
Commandos were work units that performed tasks inside and outside the camp.
An inside unit might have five prisoners while an outside unit contained 200 to
300 laborers. Outside jobs included road building, demolishing bombed houses,
digging stumps, cultivating fields, carrying ties and rails for railroad construction,
all without the help of machinery. For five months in 1943, between bouts of
typhoid fever, jaundice, and scabies, I served on an outside commando and lived
47
in a barrack built to house 300, but actually crammed with 600 to 800 women.
Each three overcrowded barracks had one toilet and one water faucet.
The one advantage that I had when I came to Auschwitz was that I spoke both
fluent German and fluent Czech. The Jewish women in the prisoner-administration commando, the Jewish office manager, and the block administrators were
either Slovak, Polish, or non-Jewish Polish political prisoners. The languages
they spoke were pretty similar to mine so I could communicate with them, giving
me one leg up.
One of the things that probably saved me was that on the first day in the
commando, not knowing the camp rules and regulations, I just acted on instinct.
We were standing in line waiting to march out, and there was the work
commander leader, an SS man. I just stepped up and said to him, “Reporting
name so and so, number so and so, and I’m a secretary.” The man’s mouth fell
open because nobody had dared to do that. I must have made an impression. He
wrote my number down. Everybody in line said ”My God, he wrote your number
down, you’re going to go to the gas.” But three days later, I was called to work in
the political department, taking transcripts of investigations. Through that job,
after about three weeks, I got a job in the political department, where it was clean
and I was relatively well fed. But about a month later, someone in the secretarial
commando was caught smuggling information out of a file. An example was
made with me and two others on the bottom rung. We were kicked out of
Auschwitz and back to Birkenau to the extermination camp.
A lot of people, when they came into Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was a nightmare
situation, couldn’t accept the fact that they were there. They couldn’t live like that.
They totally refused to adapt or even attempt to cope within the frame of that
nightmare. From the first day on, whether it was walking around in Russian
prisoners’ uniforms with a shaved head or using one bowl for eating and
elimination, I accepted it. That was one of the most important things. I accepted
the frame of the situation and lived from one minute to the next or from one day
to the next, with no other aim but survival.
Then I had the good fortune to obtain an inside job in the administration office. In
1944 I was lucky to be assigned to “Canada,” the clothing commando that
collected and processed all clothing and other property confiscated from Jews for
redistribution to the German civilian population. Many suitcases contained food.
The ability to use the food and clothing that came into the commando increased
our chances of survival.
In January 1945, the Germans evacuated the camp because the Russians were
too close. They did not release us. Instead we endured an infamous death march
in the subfreezing Polish winter. Women who had survived for two or three years
in Birkenau died on that march. Those who could not walk anymore got a bullet
in the head. Survivors were stuffed into the overcrowded concentration camps in
Germany proper. I spent three months after that death march in the Ravensbruck
women’s camp near Berlin.
48
When the Russians entered Berlin, the Germans marched us deeper into
Germany. They hoped to exchange their prisoners for German prisoners held by
the Allies. But when we arrived at the first American checkpoint near a small
German village, German hopes were dashed. The SS guards went straight into
prisoner-of-war camps. The Americans put me in a displaced persons camp.
THEN AND NOW
In 1946 Susan came to the United States, where she settled in the Midwest.
After earning a Ph.D. in Germanic Literature and Language at the University
of Kansas, in 1972 she moved to Charlotte. There she worked at the
University of North Carolina at Charlotte teaching German and French. For
many years she has also lectured and taught a course on the Holocaust both
in Germany and throughout the United States. She has three children and two
grandchildren.
1. Why did Susan and her mother leave Auschwitz?
2. How did Susan get to Auschwitz? What happened to her at the selection site
she describes? What happened to most of the people who came to Auschwitz
on the train with Susan?
3. Why do you think the Nazis made the prisoners wear uniforms and shave
their heads? What were some other ways prisoners were dehumanized?
According to Susan, what was the purpose of this type of treatment?
4. What mental strategies did Susan use to cope with life in the camp?
5. What skills did she have that helped her survive? In what ways was she
lucky?
6. How did having a job in “Canada” help Susan survive?
7. Why does Susan call Auschwitz a “death factory”?
USHMM: courtesy Instytut Pamieci Narodowej
Entrance gate to Auschwitz concentration camp
in Poland. The gate bears the motto "Arbeit
Macht Frei" (“Work makes one free”).
49
HANDOUT 5C
RENA: FIRST WEEKS
IN AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU
W
e have a calendar in Birkenau. It is hunger. The emptiness in our
stomachs never ceases. It is our only clock, our only way to discern
what time of day it is. Morning is hunger. Afternoon is hunger. Evening
is hunger. Slowly we starve until we cannot make out anything beyond the
gnawing of our intestines grinding against each other.
There is only one thing that exists beyond the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau. It lies
in wait for me like a beacon of light shining through the fog. I hold it before me
constantly, every second of every day. It is
the only thing that keeps me going—
Mama and Papa. They beckon to Danka
and me from the fringes of my mind. . . .
We’re here! they cry. We’re waiting for you
to come home. I hear Mama’s voice
comforting my troubled mind, soothing the
worries of our existence. The only thing
she cannot help is the hunger, but even
that dulls in comparison to the knowledge
that Mama and Papa are waiting for
Danka and me to return to Tylicz. I frame
this picture in my mind and hang it on a
mental wall where I can gaze at it
constantly. I know they are there. I work
because they need me. I live because they
are alive. . . . I wonder if I will ever wake
Rena (far right) with her parents, her
up to turn over in a real bed again. Will I
older sister Zosia, and her younger
ever open my eyes without German
sister Danka
commands and decide to sleep in because
it is raining out and I don’t have to get up yet? The days are long and hard. . . .
Falling into unconsciousness, I am woken by barking, by gunshots . . . . by four
A.M.
“Raus! Raus!” [“Out, Out”]
The room elders hit the girls who are still sleeping and those who aren’t quick
enough to scramble off the shelves we lie on. . . . “Come on, Danka.” I shake [my
sister] gently. “We have to get up and find the bathroom.” There is no toilet in the
block, as we had in Auschwitz: there is a bucket. “Where’s the toilet?” I ask,
ducking as the stick strikes my head. This is not a place for questions. We run
outside. The kettle of tea is sitting by the door. We hold out our bowls; the ladle
splashes lukewarm tea across our hands.
Standing in neat rows of five in the dark, we eat our remaining piece of bread and
wait for the SS to arrive. We have noticed that the day goes better if we can eat
50
something before we work, so Danka and I always eat only half our portion [of
bread] at night, saving the rest until morning.
SS men march up and down the rows counting our heads. . . . Roll call takes at
least two hours this first day at Birkenau. We are not used to standing for so long
at attention; fighting the urge to shift our feet, we must not even yawn. Every few
minutes [the SS man] hits someone for not looking attentive enough, for moving
her feet, for no reason at all.
“Dismissed!” The orders crackle through the dawn light. We work all day and
march back to the stables. . . . We should try to sleep in here.” I point to an area
far enough away from the block elder’s room to give us time to get up in the
morning without getting struck by her stick. We crawl onto the shelving cradling
our bread and clutching our blanket between us. Silently we chew our bread,
hiding the remainder in our pockets.
These first few weeks we are barely surviving. The food is less than it was which
means it has gone from a crust to half a crust. The soup is so thin there is no use
to wait at the end of the line for a piece of turnip or meat, and the tea is
practically clear. Every morning that we wake up at least one of the girls has died
on our block. There are no exceptions. We are dropping like flies.
You have to have a brain to figure out all that is going on, the tricks to being
camp smart: where it’s the warmest, who’s the most dangerous, who doles out a
bit more soup. The new arrivals barely have time to figure out how to survive
before they die.
After roll call you don’t know anything else that’s happening. You can’t keep
brooding about what is befalling you . . . because then you won’t have the energy
to go on, and you have to keep going. The work you do may kill you, but if you
don’t do it you will be killed.
As bad as Auschwitz was I miss it. I miss being able to wash my face. I miss the
little blanket Danka and I both had. Now we must fight for just one blanket that
barely covers us. In Auschwitz, the bunk beds we slept on were spacious in
comparison. Now there are six women per shelf. We are crowded so close that
we almost have to touch.
It is Sunday. . . . We get off our shelves. Get our tea. Eat our half piece of bread.
There is a rumor that there is going to be a selection.
“What’s a selection?” we ask among ourselves. We groom all day, pulling lice
from our armpits and clothes. There is no frightening these creatures; they are
everywhere. I spit on my shoes and wet the crease on my pants. It is important to
look good if there is going to be a selection—whatever that means. I want to look
right.
Four A.M. “Raus! Raus!”
We grab our tea as we step outside. The guards do not count us at once. Instead
they stand at one end of the camp, ignoring our neat lines and perfect rows. We
wait and wait. The row at one end begins to move slightly forward slowly. We
strain our eyes to see what is happening. “They are selecting us.” The whisper
51
scurries down the rows, informing those of us who are not yet moving toward the
SS. “They’re deciding who will live and who will die,” the whispers confirm. Our
ranks grow silent. How can they do that? We move forward. I take Danka’s hand,
squeezing it reassuringly. “I will go in front of you,” I whisper.
[The line moves forward as each person steps in front of a table where an SS
officer sits.] An SS points for one to go left and the other right. . . . I squeeze
Danka’s hand one last time before stepping in front of those who will judge me fit
or unfit. Tomorrow may have no meaning for us if we do not pass this selection—
and if we do pass? Tomorrow may have no meaning for us.
I hold my breath. The thumb points for me to live. Stepping forward cautiously, I
wait for my sister. The thumb points for Danka to follow me. I breathe.
Four A.M. “Raus! Raus!”
There is another selection.
THEN AND NOW
Both Rena and her sister Danka survived the war. They were liberated from
the Ravensbruck concentration camp on May 2, 1945. In the months after the
war, both went to work for the Red Cross in Holland. Rena later married a Red
Cross commander and in 1952 they emigrated to the United States. The
couple have four children and three grandchildren and live today near
Hendersonville, North Carolina, where they retired in 1988. One of Rena’s
other sisters, Gertrude, also survived the war, but the fate of their other sister,
Zosia, is unknown. Rena never saw her parents again and believes they
perished in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
1. What does Rena mean by the statement “We have a calendar in Birkenau. It
is hunger.”
2. What mental images does Rena use to survive in Auschwitz-Birkenau? How
does having her sister with her help Rena survive?
3. At what time were inmates at Auschwitz-Birkenau awakened? Describe their
morning routine. What did they have to eat? What were the eating utensils?
4. What were the sleeping arrangements at Birkenau? Why does Rena miss the
sleeping arrangements at Auschwitz?
5. What happens at roll call? What is the punishment for not standing at
attention during roll call? What other examples of random violence does Rena
describe?
6. What strategies does Rena use to maintain her physical strength? What are
the tricks to being “camp smart”?
7. What is a selection? Why do you think the Nazi guards chose people for
execution in this way? How did this process dehumanize prisoners?
52
HANDOUT 5D
JULIUS
I
n March 1944 the German army occupied Hungary. Shortly afterwards, laws
were put in place requiring Jews to wear yellow stars and observe a curfew
after sunset. All other rights Jews had previously had as citizens—owning
their own businesses, attending universities, practicing a profession and even
owning a radio, the only source of news that they had—were taken away from
them. I was 19 years old. I lived with my family in a small town about 100 miles
south of the Polish border. A small group of young friends and I, twenty of us
total, decided never to wear a yellow star. Using false papers identifying us as
non-Jews, we at first avoided capture. At night we secretly listened to the BBC
broadcasts from London. We never learned about what was happening to Jews
in other parts of Europe. Had we known it, we would have organized and fought
behind the lines, gladly giving our lives or perhaps helping to end the war sooner.
Students in the third-year class at the Hebrew high school Julius attended, in 1941 before the
war reached Hungary. Julius’s brother Andrew is in the top row, second from the right.
Not long after the Germans ordered Jews to wear the yellow star, we were forced
to leave our homes and move into the ghetto. My grandmother, grandfather,
aunt, her husband, their two children, and his parents, and my uncle and his
family all shared two small rooms.
Betrayed by a Farmer
Instead of moving into the ghetto, we twenty fellows decided to go into the woods
where we hoped to survive until the war was over. We pretended to be migrant
53
workers accepting odd jobs from the farmers. We worked on one farm taking
care of pigs and carting wheat to the flour mill. Close to the end of April, the
farmer we worked for informed on us to the Germans. We were captured by
German soldiers and taken to the brick factory, which was the transport area for
Jews being deported to Auschwitz. At the brick factory, we were severely beaten
and then interrogated to find out if we knew anyone else hiding in the woods.
Unfortunately, I had a note written in Hebrew in my pocket which a German
officer found. Thinking it was a secret code, he took me to the group leader. I
was questioned and beaten until I passed out. Luckily, I was taken to a first-aid
station and the doctor looking after me happened to be a close family friend. He
made sure I was put in a cattle car with the rest of my friends.
No one in the train knew where we were heading. A day later the train stopped.
The Germans opened the cattle car doors and allowed Hungarian Jews from the
nearby labor camp to bring water into our car. The big bucket that served as a
bathroom for the whole train car was emptied. Immediately they locked the doors
again and the train headed east.
Selection in Auschwitz
About three or four days later, the train stopped, and the doors opened to a
bedlam of noise. Voices in German, Yiddish, French, Polish shouted for us to get
out of the car, leave everything behind. Men and women were told to line up
separately. Immediately they marched us forward and we passed the first
selection in front of Mengele. I shall never forget Mengele. He was dressed
immaculately from his uniform to his very highly polished boots. I could see my
reflection in them. He looked at me. I was still showing bruises on my face, and
despite the fact that I was young and otherwise in excellent condition, he wasn’t
sure if I should go right or left. Finally he asked me, “Can you run?” I loudly
answered “Yes.” Then he pointed to his left and I started running. This was the
difference between life and death.
We were taken to an empty barrack where we sat wondering where we were and
what was going to happen to us. Late that evening a fellow in a prison uniform
came to our barrack, hoping to find somebody he knew. He had heard that a
transport from Hungary had arrived. He told us that we were in a camp called
Birkenau, an adjoining camp to Auschwitz, and that we had been selected to
work, but he doubted that many of us would survive the harsh conditions and the
lack of food. We asked him about the others who were directed to Mengele’s
right, mostly the elderly, frail, or women with children. He told us we would never
see them again. He pointed to the chimneys spewing smoke and sparks, letting
us know that was where they were. We realized the odor we were smelling was
burning flesh. The rest of the night not one of us slept a wink. We just stood by
the windows and looked at the chimneys.
Early in the morning several prisoners took us to the showers, ordering us to strip
naked and leave everything behind except for our shoes. First the barber shaved
our bodies. After the shower, we were disinfected and given a towel, a piece of
54
soap, and a bowl with a rusty spoon. They also gave us a uniform of lightweight
striped fabric and marched us to Auschwitz, about a mile and a half away. There
we were assigned to a place in a barrack and a number was tattooed on our left
arm. Then the guards asked everybody about their profession. Other prisoners
had advised me to claim a profession; I told them I was a plumber.
Moved to a Labor Camp
One day they came and called out certain numbers. The men with these
numbers were assigned to be taken to a labor camp. I was one of the 200 men
taken in a transport to a new camp built to house workers for a nearby factory. I
was assigned to a drill machine used in producing cannons for the German army.
We worked seven days a week, twelve hours a day, on the day shift and another
group worked twelve hours on the night shift. We were considered luckier than
most other people who worked outdoors and in the mines which was much more
difficult.
Our life followed a certain routine. We got up at six o’clock in the morning and
lined up for appel, which was the roll call or counting. We got a dark hot liquid
that they called coffee and marched to work. Seven o’clock at night the night shift
arrived, and the day shift marched back to camp. We were given a soup which
sometimes contained one or two pieces of potatoes or turnips. It was a daily
struggle figuring out where to stand in line to reach the kettle just before it was
empty. People at that point in the line were the lucky ones. They were in the right
place to receive the piece of potato and turnip in the bottom of the soup kettle.
We were also given a slice of bread, one sixth of a loaf.
Little communication took place among prisoners. We were not allowed to talk
while working or marching, or during roll call. The only time we talked to each
other was during mealtime when the subject was invariably food—what our
mothers used to cook and our favorite dishes, and what we were going to do
when we were liberated. I was going to spend all my money eating in a pastry
shop until I was sick to my stomach. My dream was to have enough bread to
satisfy my hunger along with one slice of bread for tomorrow.
A Close Call
Late in the fall I dropped a piece of metal on my foot and my toes got so swollen I
had to take my shoe off. The next morning I was told to report to the infirmary.
The doctor of this infirmary was the brother of an inmate that I had befriended on
a previous occasion. We discovered we had both belonged to the same Zionist
organization. The doctor was very attentive to me especially after I developed a
high fever. My fever started just as the inspector from Auschwitz came to take
away the dead and half-dead. At night he passed through the hospital and if he
saw somebody too weak to return to work, he tagged the bed, assigning the
person to be taken back to Auschwitz. In the morning I woke up and saw the tag
on my bed. My fever had broken and I felt much better. I asked the doctor to help
me since I felt good enough to go back to work. Luckily, for me, the patient
55
underneath had died during the night and the doctor, risking his life, changed the
tag from my bed to the dead man’s bed, and I survived a close call. Two days
later I was back at work.
In December, just before Christmas, we heard heavy machine gun fire and knew
Russian soldiers were coming closer. The Nazis gathered us together, gave each
of us half a loaf of bread, and marched us to the railway station. The factory
where we worked produced one gun a day, the best gun of World War II, but for
the previous few weeks not a single gun was taken to the battlefield because the
Germans lacked the fuel or trains to carry them. Yet they had no problem getting
a train to take us to Austria. We ate the bread on the first day of the trip. For the
rest of the trip, we had no bread or water. We picked up some snow from the top
of the car through a small window. In Munich, Germany, the train was taken
away from us and we waited for a day outdoors for another. We were gathered in
a corner in the railroad station, watching the people walking by with Christmas
packages. We stood there starved and looking miserable, but not one person out
of the hundreds passing by took notice of us or gave us so much as a morsel of
bread.
A day later we arrived at Mauthausen, a concentration camp in Austria. We had
to get off the train and walk about a mile to the station in knee-deep snow.
Weakened by starvation and brutal treatment, many could not make it. Those
who fell in the snow were killed. At least one third of the group died.
A Life-or-Death Stair Climb
Mauthausen was at the foot of the Alps. It was mid-January and extremely cold.
We kept ourselves from freezing by huddling together to get the warmth of our
body temperatures. After three weeks, we were taken to Gusen, a labor camp
working for the military. I was assigned to assemble machine guns. The camp
was in a valley, and the factory was on top of a hill. From the camp to the factory
we had to climb twenty-one rough uneven steps, and these steps became the
test to determine if we were still fit to work. If anyone fell while walking those
steps, his number was reported and the next day he was told to stay in his
barracks. Staying in the barracks usually meant you would be taken to the
crematorium to die.
On the second day of May, as I was going to work, I fell on the steps. My number
was recorded and I was told not to go to work. After everyone left for work, I sat
on the steps waiting for the cart to come for me to take me to the crematorium.
Again I was in luck. My barrack was the very last one on the road before the cart
headed for the crematorium. In mid-afternoon, the cart came, but it was so
overloaded with corpses that the fellows pulling the cart said to me, “We will
come for you tomorrow.” The next day, two of us sat on the steps, waiting for the
cart. Our minds were so numb that it really didn’t matter that this would be our
last day on earth. The same thing happened again. The cart was too full. Again
they told us that they would be back for us tomorrow. I didn’t know whether I was
happy or sad to be given another day to live.
56
Angels from Heaven
That afternoon, at five o’clock, we again lined up for an appel. Always exactly at
five o’clock the gates opened and the German soldiers appeared. But on this day
it was five minutes after five and the gates were closed. Suddenly I saw two
soldiers in green uniforms peeking through the gates. Then the gates opened
and suddenly some prisoners shouted: “We are free.” The German soldiers had
fled as American GIs approached the camp. We started singing our national
anthems. Every European country was represented. Then everyone ran towards
the gates to surround the soldiers. They looked at us as if we were creatures
from outer space, while we looked at them as if they were angels from heaven.
We stared at each other without saying a word. Then I remembered my English
lesson from school and I shouted “God Save the King.” A soldier looked at me
and said, “We are Americans, not British.” The silence was broken and we
started communicating. Thus my captivity ended and my second life began.
THEN AND NOW
Julius came to the United States in 1947 after receiving a scholarship to
attend the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, where he earned a
degree in textile engineering. In 1966 Julius moved to Asheville and opened a
knitting mill which he owned until his retirement in 1988. Julius and his wife
have three sons and three granddaughters. Julius’s mother and father
survived the war and he was reunited with them in the United States. Julius’s
brother and all the rest of his family died in the Holocaust.
1. Why did Julius and his friends go into hiding? How were they captured?
2. How did Julius get to Auschwitz? Describe the trip in the cattle car.
3. What is a selection? Where was the first selection? Why was he at great risk
during this first selection? What was “lucky” about this first selection? What
happened to those sent in the opposite direction?
4. Why do you think the Nazis made the prisoners wear uniforms and put tattoos
on their arms? In what other ways were prisoners dehumanized in the
camps?
5. Why did other prisoners advise Julius to say he had a skilled trade?
6. How did Julius’s first job help him survive?
7. What strategies did Julius devise for surviving at Auschwitz?
8. How was Julius lucky in Auschwitz? in the labor camp?
57
HANDOUT 5E
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Esther & Elias, Rena, Susan, and Julius
Handout 5A: Both Esther and Elias were born in the village of Janina in Greece.
Neither knew the other well until World War II ended. When the Nazis came to
her village, Esther, age 22, had been married less than a year to her first
husband. Elias was in his early thirties. He and his wife had a four-year-old
daughter.
Handout 5B: Rena was born in Tylicz (Till-ITCH], Poland in 1920. Her oldest
sister, Gertrude was sixteen years older than Rena. Her youngest sister, Danka,
was born when Rena was two years old. The two sisters were extremely close,
with Rena looking after her younger sister throughout their childhood. Their
mutual caring and sharing continued throughout their nightmare years in
Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Handout 5C: Susan was born in Vienna, Austria, and moved to Germany when
still a child. One of the jobs Susan held at Auschwitz was in the warehouses
known as “Canada.” These were storehouses where inmates, mostly Jewish
women, sorted the contents of the suitcases and other personal belongings taken
from victims when they arrived at Auschwitz. All money, jewelry, precious stones,
and similar valuables were sent directly to the German Reichsbank. Watches,
clocks, pencils, scissors, flashlights, and wallets were given to front-line German
troops. The clothing went to German civilians. Susan mentions the death
marches that took place in late 1944. As Allied armies approached Germany, the
SS evacuated outlying concentration camps, covering up evidence of genocide
by moving prisoners into camps in Germany. So many inmates died on these
long journeys by foot that they became known as death marches.
Handout 5D: Julius was born in Mukacevo, Czechoslovakia, in 1925, but was
deported to Auschwitz from Hungary. Hungary’s Jews were the last to be
deported to Auschwitz. At Auschwitz, Julius encountered the infamous, brutally
sadistic Josef Mengele, the German doctor who served as chief physician at
Auschwitz from 1943 to 1944. Mengele met the trainloads of deportees arriving
at Auschwitz. With the flick of his hand, he decided who lived and who died,
gesturing one way for life and the other for death in the gas chambers.
Mauthausen, where Julius was sent in the last months of the war, was a forced
labor camp. Prisoners there were treated so brutally that the camp had one of the
highest death rates of any camp. Nazi camp leaders tortured their prisoners by
making them carry heavy loads up the steps of a stone stairway on starvation
rations. Many prisoners lasted only a few days.
58
TEACHING LESSON
6
Transparency of Handout 6A: Concentration Camps and Death Camps
Transparency of Handout 6B: Holocaust Casualties
Vocabulary: concentration camp, death camp, swastika, Final Solution
This activity has two purposes. First, it familiarizes students with the area in
which the Holocaust took place. Second, it illustrates, through map study, the
total commitment of the Nazis to the Final Solution. In the final years of the war,
when the Germans were clearly losing, carrying out the Final Solution continued
without interruption. Hitler ordered trains carrying Jews to Auschwitz to take
priority over trains carrying war materiel to the eastern front where the Germans
were heavily engaged in battle with the Soviets. According to historian David
Wyman, “to kill the Jews, the Nazis were willing to weaken their own capacity to
fight the war.” As the Nazis began losing the war, trains, transports, and
manpower were desperately needed for the German war effort. Despite the
economic and military cost of doing so, the Nazis continued to use these
resources in the effort to murder Jews.
Before displaying these maps, make a transparency of each to be used on an
overhead projector. Then display Transparency 6A on an overhead projector,
covering the key to the map with a notecard. Ask students what area of the world
is shown on the map. Have students guess what the symbols on the map might
represent. With the map key still covered, have students name the countries in
which the swastikas are found (Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Holland,
France) and the country in which the skull-and-crossbones symbols are located
(Poland). Encourage students to again guess what these symbols represent,
based on their locations. Uncover the key. Emphasize that a death camp was
specifically designed for mass murder.
Use this question to think critically about the information on the map:
1. Why do you think Poland was chosen as the site for the death camps? (The
Nazis chose an area that was far from western Europe. They wanted a place
where their activities were less likely to be observed and had many rural and
isolated areas. It also had the largest Jewish community, with over three
million Jews. A long tradition of anti-Semitism existed in eastern Europe,
particularly in Poland. The Germans were assured of the cooperation or at
least indifference of the local people.)
Before the Holocaust, Poland had the largest Jewish community of any European
nation occupied by the Nazis. About 3.3 million Jews lived there before the
German invasion. Jews made up around ten percent of the population. By war’s
end, more than ninety percent of Poland’s Jews had been killed by the Nazis. In
59
prewar Poland, as in much of eastern Europe. Official government policies of
anti-Semitism prevented Jews from raising their standard of living. Only a small
percentage of the Jewish population were professionals or landowners. Most
were small traders, craftspeople, or manual laborers.
Next, overlay Transparency 6B on top of Transparency 6A. Explain that this
map shows the number of Jews killed by the Nazis in each country. Ask:
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
What countries lost the largest number of people? (Poland, Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania, Germany/Austria. In each of these countries ninety percent of the
Jewish population was killed.)
Which countries lost the fewest people? (Denmark, Finland, Italy. Germany’s
partner in the war, Italy, had fewer of its Jewish citizens killed than many
Nazi-occupied countries whose governments had opposed the Nazis.)
Why do you think the railroads were important to the Final Solution? (As the
map indicates, the transport of captives from all parts of Europe to Poland
was a massive undertaking for the Germans. It required transport trains or
trucks, military personnel, and supplies.)
What else were trains, trucks, and manpower needed for at this time? (They
were needed to fight the war against the Allies.)
What do these maps suggest about the importance of the Final Solution to
Hitler? Why were the Germans willing to risk undermining the war effort?
(For the Nazis, the Final Solution was an essential objective of winning the
war.)
Trains moved Jews to the killing centers while troops for the front lines were
shunted onto railroad sidings. In 1944 when the German army was fighting
desperately to hold back the Soviet army on the eastern front, the Nazis were
also engaged in a massive deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. Despite
a deteriorating military situation, carrying out the Final Solution continued without
interruption. Hitler ordered trains carrying Jews to Auschwitz to take priority over
trains carrying was materiel to the front. When trains and other forms of transport
were lacking, victims were forced to march the distance to the death camps. War
plans could be changed but not the plans for the Final Solution.
Connect to World History: Have students report on why such countries as
Denmark and Italy were able to save so many of their citizens. In many countries
people did not have the same hatred of Jews that the Nazis did. When antiSemitism became the official policy of the Italian Fascist party, the party lost
supporter. Although the Italians did, at the urging of the Germans, institute
discriminatory laws against Italian Jews, Mussolini’s government refused to take
part in the effort to exterminate Jews or deport Jewish residents. Jews in
occupied areas of Yugoslavia, France, and Greece were also protected from
deportation by Italian officials. When, however the Germans overthrew the Italian
government in 1943, Italian Jews and Jews under their protection in occupied
areas were sent to the killing centers.
60
HANDOUT 6A
CONCENTRATION CAMPS and DEATH CAMPS
61
HANDOUT 6B
HOLOCAUST CASUALTIES
62
5
OVERVIEW
RESISTERS
W
hen the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed, many people
wondered how it was possible for the Nazis to kill so many people
without meeting overwhelming resistance.
POLICY OF COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY
Jewish resistance to Nazi
persecution was limited by circumstances in occupied Europe. With the carefully
worked out plans for the Final Solution, Jews had few chances for massive
resistance. Under the Nazi policy of collective responsibility, anyone working
against the Germans faced brutal punishment. Entire communities and families
were held responsible for individual acts of resistance or sabotage. Poland, for
example, lived under a virtual state of terror throughout the occupation. Any contact between Poles and Jews was punishable by death. Despite this, resistance
to Nazi persecution took
USHMM: courtesy Museum of the Great Patriotic War
several forms—armed resistance outside the ghettos and camps, resistance
within the ghettos that led
to uprisings, and the spiritual resistance of individuals who showed their
opposition by continuing to
practice their religion.
ARMED RESISTANCE IN
COUNTRYSIDE
Armed
resistance came from those
Jewish partisan brigade in Belarus, Soviet Union, 1943
who managed to escape
capture. Organizing themselves into small resistance groups in the eastern European countryside, these
people—with few arms, inadequate food, and little help from native citizens,
fought against the Nazis on several fronts. Known as partisans, such groups
attacked German supply depots, captured weapons, and served as links
between the ghettos and the outside world. In both eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union, Jewish partisans fought against the Nazis in the forests and
countryside. On April 19, 1943, members of the National Committee for the
Defense of Jews, in cooperation with Christian railroad workers and members of
the Belgium underground, attacked a train going to Auschwitz from the Belgian
transit camp of Malines. Working together, Jewish and Christian partisans helped
several hundred Jewish deportees escape.
63
JEWISH ARMED RESISTANCE
When the ghettos were being
evacuated and destroyed, Jewish resisters led a number of uprisings. There
were few arms available to Jews or to civilians in general. Despite this, armed
resistance took place in many ghettos. One of the most famous uprisings
occurred in the Warsaw Ghetto in April-May, 1943. With few arms and almost no
outside help, a group of young ghetto residents held out for several weeks
against overwhelming German superiority. The Warsaw Ghetto was destroyed
soon after the uprising. Only a handful of the ghetto fighters survived. Yet, this
uprising was not unique. In
September 1942, in the
USHMM: courtesy National Archives
Tulchin
ghetto
in
the
Ukraine, 700 Jewish families
escaped. Almost all were
caught and only fifteen
survived. Similar uprisings
took place at the Bialystok
and Vilna ghettos in Poland.
In
both
cases
most
participants were killed.
The strongest armed resistance took place in the
ghettos, but almost every
concentration camp also had
Jewish resistance fighters captured by SS troops during
a resistance movement. In
the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Poland, spring 1943
Auschwitz, Treblinka, and
Sobibor, Jews formed active
resistance groups that helped prisoners get food from the outside, bribed camp
guards, sabotaged installations, and even led armed uprisings. Jewish workers in
the Auschwitz crematoriums revolted in 1943, destroying one of the crematory
facilities and killing a number of SS soldiers. In Treblinka, prisoners spent a year
organizing a full-scale revolt that took place in the summer of 1943. A number of
prisoners escaped. In Sobibor, nearly 700 Jews rebelled and, although most
were caught and killed, some 300 got away. These uprisings so enraged Hitler
that both camps were destroyed.
OTHER FORMS OF RESISTANCE
In the ghettos and slave labor
camps, concentration camps and death camps, Jews rebelled through daily acts
of spiritual resistance. They participated in worship services at great risk to
themselves and their families and in the ghettos secretly continued the education
of their children by organizing schools and holding classes. Strictly observant
Jews also defied the Nazis by continuing to practice Jewish dietary laws. Others
resisted by creating art or music, keeping diaries, or by stealing out of the ghetto
to obtain food. Many continued to practice their religion. praying silently or aloud
in camp barracks so that others could be comforted. They shared food, helped
the weak stand through roll call, or intentionally produced defective war materials
in slave labor factories. All were extraordinary acts of courage and resistance.
64
TEACHING LESSON
7
Handout 7A: Gizella “Joins” the Resistance
Handout 7B: Simone Helps Children
Vocabulary: ghetto, spiritual resistance, Resistance, Vichy government,
Occupied France, internment camp
Read Overview 5 and summarize for students. One of the questions both
teachers and students ask most frequently about the Holocaust is “Why didn’t the
Jews fight back?” Before beginning this lesson, you may want to point out that
such a question to some extent blames the victims of the Holocaust for the
tragedy that befell them. The question implies that the Jews of Europe could
have stopped the Nazi genocide if only they had acted differently. As Overview 5
indicates, both physical and spiritual resistance did take place. It is important for
teachers to present an accurate picture of the daily acts of resistance by Jews in
ghettos and concentration camps as well as to describe Jewish participation in
resistance groups. Jews resisted by building hiding places in the ghettos and by
jumping from the trains taking them to the death camps. For many Jews, the
ultimate act of resistance was struggling to survive in a death camp or ghetto at a
time when it would have been easier to die than to live under such horrifying
conditions.
Because teenagers, in particular, often argue that they would have acted quite
differently in this situation, you might use these questions to clarify their
understanding of the obstacles which Jews faced in resisting.
1. If you fled to escape capture, where would you go? Who would give you food
and shelter? How would you pay for these necessities? What would be the
penalties for Christians who helped you? (Remind students that violence
against Jews was state-supported. Thus victims could not turn to the police or
other law enforcement officials for protection. To the contrary, police and
military soldiers were perpetrators of state-sanctioned violence. In addition, in
almost all occupied countries, local populations collaborated with the Nazis.
Resisters could not assume that their Christian neighbors or friends would
hide them. Many people informed on their neighbors for personal gain, out of
fear of reprisals if they did not do so, or out of personal anti-Semitism.)
2. Assuming you could get out of your house, how could you escape from the
town or city where you lived? (Point out that in Nazi-occupied countries,
everyone was required to carry identification papers. It was not possible to
travel by train from one place to another without such papers. People caught
without their papers were immediately under suspicion.)
65
3. How would you defend yourself? (Students often say they would get a gun,
but where would they get one? Few farmers owned guns. Only police,
foresters, and soldiers had them. There were no gun stores and obtaining
guns or ammunition was a life-threatening act. Even Christian resistance
groups were very reluctant to give guns or ammunition to Jewish partisans.)
4. Would you be willing to risk the lives of your family, your friends, and possibly
your entire community by an act of resistance? (The Nazis practiced a policy
of collective responsibility. If one member of a family resisted, other family
members were killed. Resistance put everyone in a family and sometimes in a
village in extreme danger. Sometimes a resister was forced to watch as his or
her family was tortured and killed before the resister himself was put to
death.)
5. Once trapped in a ghetto, malnourished and demoralized, would you be
thinking about resistance or survival? What resources would you have to
organize resistance?
6. In a concentration camp, closely watched by guards with guns and vicious
dogs, surrounded by electrified fences, skeleton-like in appearance and
dressed in thin, clearly-marked clothing often in subzero temperatures, how
would you fight back?
After reviewing the difficulties of resistance, tell students they will now examine
the experiences of two Jewish women who did participate actively in resistance
movements. Write the words “member of the underground” and “resistance” on
the chalkboard. Ask students what associations these phrases bring to mind.
Where do students’ ideas about the work and life of such people come from?
(war movies, television dramas, suspense novels) From the media and spy
novels, students often think of such work as exciting, even glamorous.
Divide students into pairs and give each pair Handouts 7A and 7B. In these
handouts students will examine and contrast the experiences of two North
Carolina women who worked in the Resistance, one in Poland and one in
France. Begin by noting the differences between France and Poland under the
Nazis. Make sure students understand that after France surrendered to
Germany, the country was divided into two parts. The northern part, Occupied
France, was ruled directly by the Germans, while in Southern France, the Vichy
Government, composed of pro-Nazi French politicians, governed in the Free
Zone, or unoccupied France.
Initially in the Free Zone, French Jews felt safe, although Jews living in either
part of France who did not have French citizenship and Jewish refugees from
eastern Europe were soon targeted for deportation by the Nazis. However, as the
war progressed, the Nazis exerted greater control over all of France and all Jews
risked deportation and death.
From the earliest days of occupation, the Nazis exerted strong direct control over
Poland. Many Poles actively collaborated with the Nazis. Students may have
read about some of Gizellas’s earlier experiences in Handout 4A. If not, review
this handout with eh class. Explain that although Gizella was forced to live in the
66
ghetto, her uncle, a doctor had more freedom of movement. Despite the fact that
he was Jewish, he was allowed to leave the ghetto to treat his Christian patients.
Gizella was sometimes permitted to go with him to carry his medical bag or
supplies. Outside the ghetto, her blonde hair and gray-green eyes meant she
was often mistaken for a German or a Pole. Her physical resemblance to the
Polish Christians around her helped save her life.
Have students use the following questions to help them analyze and compare
and contrast the experiences of Gizella and Simone:
1. How did each of these young women become a resister?
2. What were the goals for each young woman’s resistance work? Whom did
their work help the most? What risks did each take? What obstacles did each
face? Which resister had more help from the local population?
3. What was each resister’s “cover”? Why were identity papers important to
each of them? How were these papers obtained? How were they used?
4. What skills and personality traits do you think helped make these young
women effective resisters?
5. Simone expresses the opinion that she and her friends in the resistance did
nothing out of the ordinary? Do you agree?
After reading about the experiences of these two resisters, ask students if they
would describe resistance work as “exciting” or “glamorous”. What words best
describe it?
Connect to World History: Students may be assigned to research and report to
the class on the many forms resistance took during World War II in both occupied
and Allied countries. Fighting Back by Harold Werner and Against All Hope:
Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps by Hermann Langbein are useful
resources for more advanced students
The scariest thing is not the evil,
but more the people who sit by and let it happen.
Albert Einstein
67
HANDOUT 7A
GIZELLA “JOINS” THE RESISTANCE
O
ne day my uncle sent for me, asking me to bring a special instrument to the home
of a Czech farmer he was treating. I walked out with my yellow star patches.
Suddenly I heard someone say, “Where are you going, little one?” I was walking
with my head bowed. They were German soldiers calling me. “Now look at her,” they
said, “how pretty. She looks like my ____. Look at the blonde hair. Look at those eyes.
Do you want a piece of chocolate?”
I remember walking on. I didn’t turn around then. I came to the farm and I must have
looked a bit strange. Uncle said to me, “What’s the matter with you? You look positively
yellow. And where are your patches?” He turned to the wife of the farmer he was treating
and said, “Do me a favor, put the patches on her.”
But the farmer’s wife shook her head. She looked at me and said, “No I won’t. She
doesn’t need any patches.”
[Gizella’s looks eventually helped her to escape from the ghetto. Her uncle arranged for
her to hide in the home of one of his patients. She slipped out of the ghetto and went to
meet people who would take her to her new hiding place.]
The meeting was a meadow on the edge of town. I went there. I heard trucks coming
and hid. When they arrived, they were full of people. The Germans yelled at them to get
down and I saw a shower of yellow stars as they got off. I heard shooting and then
screaming. Then it got quiet. Those voices have haunted me every day of my life.
The Germans left and I crept out of my hiding place. Two men came up behind me.
“What do you want?” I said. Then somebody grabbed me and I was placed under straw
in a wagon. They seemed to know quite a lot about me. They said they knew where my
Aunt Lucy and my two cousins were hiding. If this remark was meant to scare me, I don’t
know. But after they said that, I never said another word. I was afraid, and I had a feeling
that I had no choice but to obey their orders. And anyway, where else was I to go? My
life in the Resistance had begun.
I was taken to a hut in the forest. They listened to me speak German, Russian, and
Polish. I spoke these languages without any difficulties. I was given the birth certificate of
a young woman named Veronika. The birth certificate was authentic, but the only
problem was Veronika was much older than I. At that time I was twelve years old. So in
the next picture that was taken of me I had to put my hair up so that I looked a little bit
older.
To make sure I learned my new identity, a member of the Resistance would coach me.
In the middle of the night he would shine a light on my face to wake me up. He would
say,
“What’s your name?”
“Gizella.”
“What’s your name?” Slap.
“Veronika?”
“WHAT’S YOUR NAME?”
“Veronika!” That was how I learned my new name.
68
[After getting her identification papers, she began her work with the Resistance.]
At my first job I was told I would know only one person among the people working for the
Resistance. The person that I knew was called Makar. I doubt that was his real name.
Throughout my stay my only contact was this one man. He was my “chain man.” His was
my only link in this human chain of underground Nazi fighters.
I was supposed to be
the granddaughter of a
couple living in a house
where
the
German
commander of that city
lived. My job was to
polish his boots, bring
his meals, and empty
the wastebasket.
Anything I found in the
wastepaper basket, I
was told to bring to
Makar. My job was to
live in this house. Never
ask any questions. And
tell Makar about the
comings and goings of
Gizella’s ID, now in the collections of the N.C. Museum of
the German officers and
History
the types of insignias they were wearing. Makar told me to pretend I could not
understand German so that I could listen to their conversations.
My next job was my most important one. I had a completely different identity. I was the
cleaning person in the German commandant’s headquarters in a large city in Poland. My
job was to get as many copies of the identification forms issued at this headquarters as I
could. People could survive with those papers. People who had identification papers
could get work papers. They could prove that they were legal residents of the city and
they could obtain ration cards for food. Even non-Jews without such papers might be
sent to forced labor camps. I took the papers, but I never knew whom they gave them to.
That’s what I wonder about today. I would like to know that I saved someone’s life.
Early in 1944, I was captured. I think somebody denounced me. I don’t know for sure. At
that time, I was working with a German supply unit, doing kitchen work. A Gestapo
officer came. He asked many questions. Even though the Germans could not prove my
identity was false, I was arrested and taken to a concentration camp.
THEN AND NOW
Gizella survived the war, but her parents and young brother did not. After the war
ended, she came to the United States to live with an aunt and uncle. Later she met
her husband Paul and in 1970 they moved to Raleigh, North Carolina. They have two
children and three grandchildren.
69
HANDOUT 7B
SIMONE HELPS CHILDREN
S
imone was born in 1920 in a small village in northeast France called Ringendorf.
At age three, she and her family moved to the larger nearby city of Strasbourg.
After graduating from high school in 1938, Simone trained at a school of social
work where she studied early childhood education. Her education ended after the
Germans invaded France in May 1940. One month later France surrendered, and the
country was divided into two parts. Simone’s family was expelled by the Germans from
Strasbourg along with all other Jews. Eventually they found a farmhouse in the
southwest of France in the Free Zone, where her parents and brother, along with several
other relatives lived until late in the war.
A Request for Help
One day late in 1941, I got a letter from someone I had known in Strasbourg. She was a
member of OSE (pronounced O-Zay),* a Jewish child care organization. OSE had set up
children’s homes around Paris in the late 1930s to care for Jewish children from
Germany and Austria whose parents had sent them to safety in France. After the
German invasion of France in 1940, the homes were moved to the south of France. By
1941 OSE was taking care of several hundred Jewish children in 16 homes. OSE
workers were trying to help families detained in French internment camps get their
children out of these camps and into the children’s homes. The letter asked me to come
at once to an internment camp
called Rivesaltes where many
USHMM: courtesy Simone Weil Lipman
foreign-born Jewish families deported from the Rhineland or from
Belgium and Holland were being
held.
Children cared for by the OSE in the Rivesaltes
transit camp, southern France, 1942
So I packed my bags and came. I
was twenty-one years old. I had no
idea what to expect at Rivesaltes. I
hadn’t even known these camps
existed. I was shocked at conditions
there. People were malnourished,
inadequately clothed, and living in
filthy rat-infested quarters. We set
up infirmaries, clinics, and nurseries,
and created programs for children
and teenagers.
At this time OSE workers could take children under the age fifteen out of the camps and
place them in children’s homes. To be released from an internment camp, a child had to
have a residence permit authorized by a local government official. Some local officials
found ways to help us, despite the orders of the Vichy Government. First, however, we
had to persuade the parents in the Rivesaltes camp to let their children go. The
*
OSE: Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, an organization funded by the American Joint Distribution Committee to help
migrant Jewish populations.
70
deportations had not yet started. Understandably, the parents, not realizing the grave
dangers they faced, were reluctant to be separated from their children.
Massive Deportations Begin
By August 1942, buses and trucks unloaded their human cargo daily at the internment
camps. Rivesaltes became a central collection point for deportations. People were told
they would be sent to work camps, but that wasn’t true. The trains went to the death
camps in Poland. At this time, some Jews could still escape deportation, depending on
their nationality, date of arrival in France, service in the French army, and a few other
such factors. For example, Jews with one non-Jewish parent might be allowed to
remain. We scrambled to provide people in the camps with documents that would help
them.
In our work at Rivesaltes we were aided by other relief agencies, the French Resistance,
and the Jewish scouting movement. The Jewish scouting movement became a
laboratory for falsifying documents and escorting people to safe places and across
borders. Taking children out of the camps was now strictly forbidden. The Nazis and
their French collaborators had ordered that Jewish families be kept together for their
“resettlement to the East.” The French police even took children from the children’s
homes after the parents had been tricked by the police into giving them their children’s
addresses.
Conditions Worsen and Danger Increases
By November 1942, all of France was occupied by the Germans. Rivesaltes was
emptied out and I took a job in one of the children’s homes taking care of the children
whom we had gotten out of the camp. We cared for around fifty children. In spite of the
risks, the police alerts, the lack of food, we tried to make life in the home as normal as
possible.
Children’s Homes Closed
By early 1943, the French police were taking children over age sixteen from the
children’s homes. The homes were easy targets for police roundups, because they were
known to house Jewish children. The Germans conducted house searches and made
mass arrests. OSE offices were raided and had to be moved many times. Now French
Jews like myself were as much at risk as foreign-born Jews. How foolish we had been to
think we would escape persecution.
In the summer of 1943 we learned that the children’s homes would soon be closed. We
had to act quickly. OSE formed a secret network to place the Jewish children under
assumed names in non-Jewish surroundings. The homes began to forge false identity
papers and organize secret border crossings into Switzer-land and Spain for the older
teenagers. Everywhere frightened Jewish parents clamored for false papers and
entrusted their children to OSE.
Going Underground
The new OSE operation needed workers, and I was eager to join. What were the
qualifications? None, really. You had to do it and be able to blend in physically with the
non-Jews around you. I began by changing my identity. I took a different name and
obtained a false birth certificate, an identification card, and most importantly, ration cards
for food and clothing. By then a network of people forging false papers existed, so we
had access to blank identification cards. I made my place of birth the town of Toul
71
because I knew that Toul’s city hall had been bombed and all the documents had
disappeared.
Changing my prewar student card and library cards was easy, but to make my new
identity more believable, I needed the help of my former professors at the school of
social work in Strasbourg. I went to see them. Without asking me any questions, they
agreed at once to help me. They got me a diploma under my false name and a
certificate stating that I was their student in 1938. These documents later helped to save
my life when I got into a tight spot. I also needed a cover. The local Department of Public
Health listed me as a member of its staff and gave me the documents to prove it. I went
there only once to see what the place looked like in case I needed to describe it.
Finding New Hiding Places
Simone’s false ID from 1943-44
With my new identity established, I moved to
Chateauroux, a safe city some seventy-five
miles north of Limoges and began my real
job, helping to find safe places and new
identities for children escaping from the
Nazis. One of the first people to assist us was
the Archbishop of Toulouse. The archbishop
had already spoken out from the pulpit
against the discriminatory measures against
Jews. He immediately gave his support to our
project, helping to find homes for twenty-four
children in Catholic convents, orphanages,
and private schools. Soon we were combing
the entire southern zone for Christian
children’s homes and even summer overnight
camps willing to take Jewish children under
false names.
The bewildered children came day and night,
carrying whatever possessions they had. They traveled in small groups supervised by a
social worker. We found temporary shelter for them until permanent housing could be
arranged, and coached them in their new identities before taking them to new families.
When, as sometimes happened, a false identity broke down, the children had to be
moved at once and placed elsewhere for everyone’s safety.
Sometimes children came to us who were being smuggled into neutral countries,
particularly Switzerland. We got them false papers, took the labels out of their clothes
and went through their luggage removing any traces of their true identities. I took them
from Chateauroux to Lyons. Then someone else helped them cross into Switzerland.
More than a thousand children were smuggled from France to Switzerland this way.
Coded lists of the children’s real and false names compiled by OSE workers were kept in
Geneva, ensuring that the children could be traced even if all the OSE workers were
killed.
Nothing Out of the Ordinary
In February 1944, the Gestapo raided OSE headquarters. All the OSE offices and
medical centers were closed. Workers were captured and shot as hostages or died in
battles between the French Resistance and the Gestapo. Despite this, OSE’s work
continued.
72
During those years, I was rarely frightened. I was young and felt sort of invulnerable, not
thinking beyond what I had to do. There was a job to be done and I did it. None of us felt
we were doing anything extraordinary or particularly brave. So many of my peers were
doing the same kind of work. We did it because it was the thing to do.
Around this time I was arrested in Limoges by the French militia, a special police unit
dedicated to finding Jews and members of the French Resistance. Limoges was the
headquarters for OSE work in my area and I had to go there from time to time. I was
walking down the street with a co-worker when a young Frenchman came up to us and
said, “Follow me.” Under his arm, he carried a gun. He belonged to the French militia
which suspected my friend of being in the resistance. He marched us to my friend’s
apartment and began ransacking her rooms. Neither of us knew exactly what he was
looking for, but sewn into the lining of my suit pocket were the seals of town halls used in
making false papers. I also had a coded list of my hidden children.
Fast Thinking in a Dangerous Situation
As I watched the French militia man tear apart my friend’s apartment, I thought about
how to get rid of the incriminating documents. I asked permission to go to the bathroom
and they let me go. That simple little slip on their part saved me. In the bathroom, I
removed everything from the lining of my pocket, and flushed most of it down the toilet.
The rest I threw out the window. When I came back into the room, they went through my
papers but I was okay. I had my diplomas, my university student card, and my library
card with the false names. Luckily no one asked me about the address in Limoges on
my identification card. I didn’t even know where the street was. If they had asked me to
take them there, I couldn’t have done it, but they didn’t and I was saved. The militia let
me go, but not my friend.
In September 1944, the war was over for us in southern France. OSE reopened its doors
and we took the children out of the convents and homes that had hidden them and
brought them to a large chateau in central France. We celebrated as the search for the
children’s surviving relatives began. Months passed before the Allies reached the death
camps in Poland. Only then did we learn that many of the children we had sheltered
were now orphans.
THEN AND NOW
Simone came to the U.S. in 1946. A scholarship enabled her to continue her
education and get a master’s degree in social work. After marrying, she raised a
family of two children and continued her career in psychiatric social work. In 1986
Simone and her husband retired to Chapel Hill.
73
6
OVERVIEW
BYSTANDERS, PERPETRATORS, AND RESCUERS
F
or the most part, the nations of the world offered little assistance to the
victims of the Holocaust. German plans for the annihilation of the Jews
could not have succeeded without the active cooperation of non-Germans
in occupied Europe. A long tradition of anti-Semitism aided the Nazis in their
efforts. Many of the death camps were staffed by eastern Europeans, recruited
and trained by the Nazis.
LEAGUE OF NATIONS OFFERS LITTLE HELP
During the early stages of
Nazi persecution of German Jews, few countries offered refuge to the victims.
This was true even after it became clear that discrimination against Jews was a
deliberate policy of the German government. Although its charter forbade such
actions, the League of Nations remained helpless to stop Hitler’s plans for the
forced expulsion of the Jews. The League did set up a commission to help
German Jewish refugees, but League member nations offered so little assistance
that the head of the commission, James McDonald, resigned in protest. No
nation offered to revise its immigration policy to meet this crisis. None except
England offered to accept Jews in large numbers while they could still get out.
Most refugees accepted by England at that time were Austrian- and GermanJewish children.
UNITED STATES FAILS TO HELP EUROPE’S JEWS
The countries of the
world continued to restrict immigration from Europe. In the 1930s government
officials in the United States and Great Britain as well as others outside Nazi
Europe received numerous press reports about the persecution of Jews. By 1942
Britain and the United States had confirmed reports of Hitler’s intent to annihilate
European Jewry. However, a variety of factors including anti-Semitism and fear
of a massive influx of refugees stopped both countries from changing their
immigration and refugee policies. The American public learned about the death
camps in November 1942 when the State Department made this information
available to the public and gave it to the mass media. It was never treated as a
major news story in American newspapers. The Allies’ stated goal of defeating
Germany’s military took precedence over rescue efforts. Despite U.S. knowledge
of the genocide taking place in the death camps and labor camps, U.S. military
and political leaders did not take any specific steps to stop or slow the murder of
Jews until 1944 when mounting pressure from the public, particularly JewishAmerican groups, forced the United States to undertake limited rescue efforts.
A few church leaders worked with American Jewish organizations to urge the
government to act, but on the whole deafening silence prevailed. The United
States immigration quota remained largely unfilled even for children. There was
74
little leadership from President Roosevelt to put pressure on State Department or
government officials. Despite this, several thousand Jews did manage to get out.
Refugees went anywhere they could get a visa, an official paper attached to a
passport which enabled entrance and travel within a particular country. China,
Brazil, Japan, and India were among the few places offering entry.
By late 1938, the Nazis had recognized that forced emigration of German Jews
was a failure. The German Foreign Office noted that the world had closed its
borders to the Jews. How could the Jews leave Hitler’s Germany if there was
now no place for them to go?
IMMIGRATION QUOTAS NOT FILLED
Through early 1939, the United
States admitted about 100,000 Jews from Germany and other eastern European
nations. Yet nearly 400,000 openings went unfilled. Certain officials within the
State Department resisted attempts to fill the quotas allowed for Jewish
emigration. Reasons for this are complex. Throughout the Depression years,
some Americans feared job competition from incoming refugees. Anti-Semitism
also played a part in American policy. Great Britain, Canada, and a number of
Latin American countries had policies similar to those of the United States. Once
the war began in 1941, U.S. immigration from war-torn Europe basically stopped.
ST. LOUIS REFUSED ENTRY
While the doors to official
emigration were closing to German
Jews, many still tried to leave their
country for a safe haven abroad.
Counting on the good will of the
United States and Canada, several
shiploads of German Jews sailed for
North America in 1938 and 1939. In
May, 1939, 937 German Jews
boarded the S.S. St. Louis bound
from Hamburg, Germany, to the
United States. The passengers on
the St. Louis already had American
quota permits but did not yet have
visas.
The St. Louis reached Cuba. For
over one month, the passengers
waited for their papers to be
processed by American authorities.
When permission was eventually
denied by the United States and a
number of other nations, the St.
Louis returned to Germany where
most of the passengers died in
concentration camps.
USHMM: courtesy Dwight D. Eisenhower Library
Jewish refugees aboard the St. Louis look out
a porthole of the ship while docked in the port
of Havana, Cuba, May 27-June 2, 1939.
75
The world’s religious communities did little to protest the mistreatment of
Germany’s Jews. Before the war, few Catholic and Protestant clergymen officially
condemned the Nazi treatment of Jews. Church leaders in Germany looked
aside when in 1935 the Nazis implemented the Nuremberg Laws.
MONASTERIES AND CONVENTS OFFER REFUGE
After war broke out,
however, a number of Catholic and Protestant leaders did offer some assistance
to Jews, including false baptismal certificates and refuge in monasteries and
convents. In Germany, Pastor Martin Niemoeller, a World War I hero, eventually
spoke out against some Nazi policies, as did a few other high-ranking German
religious leaders. But such protest was limited and came too late to make a
difference. The Vatican, under Pope Pius XII, stood silent throughout the war.
Even when Italian Jews were deported from Italy within view of the Vatican, the
Pope offered no official condemnation.
DENMARK AND KING CHRISTIAN
Many courageous individuals and
nations did attempt to stop the Holocaust. The Danish government refused to
accept German racial policies, even after that nation was occupied in 1940. The
Danish king, Christian X, forcefully told German officials that he would not permit
the resettlement of Denmark’s small Jewish population. In the fall of 1943, when
the Nazis ordered the deportation of the Danish Jews, the Danish Resistance,
with the strong support of the local population, organized a boatlift to neutral
Sweden. Danish fishermen and police risked their lives, ferrying Jews across the
Baltic Sea to Sweden. The rescue that followed saved almost the entire Danish
Jewish community of 7,000..
ITALY AND BULGARIA
Although Italy and Bulgaria were allied with
Germany in the war, both nations resisted German orders to deport Jewish
citizens. The Bulgarian king and government slowed efforts to deport Jews, as
did the Italian government. Despite severe German pressure and local antiSemitic political parties, Bulgaria saved some of its Jewish citizens, while
allowing the Nazis to take Jews from areas that were newly annexed to Bulgaria.
RAOUL WALLENBERG IN HUNGARY
While the Hungarian government
at first resisted efforts to deport Hungarian Jews, it finally agreed to let the
resettlement begin in 1944. Hungary’s 500,000 Jews were the last to be deported
to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat working in
Budapest, gave tens of thousands of Swedish passports to condemned
Hungarian Jews, often handing out these documents to people already loaded on
German trains bound for the death camps.
Wallenberg’s efforts during 1944 saved about 20,000 lives, and provided shelter
for hundreds of others in “safe houses” protected by the Swedish government in
Budapest. Suspected of spying for the Allies, Wallenberg was arrested by the
Soviets after the liberation of Budapest in 1945 and disappeared.
76
A FRENCH VILLAGE TAKES A
STAND
The small French town
of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in southern France saved between 3,000
and 5,000 Jews. Urged to act by the
local pastor of the Reformed Church
André Trocmé, townspeople hid
thousands of Jews in their homes
and farmhouses. From there many
were smuggled across the border
into Switzerland. The Dutch village
of Nieuwlande performed a similar
act of heroism. Beginning in 1942,
each of its residents agreed to hide
one Jewish family or at least one
Jew. Sharing the danger equally, no
one villager risked being denounced
by the others.
USHMM: courtesy Peter Feigl
Journal kept by Klaus Peter Feigl, a Jewish
refugee child hidden in Le Chambon-surLignon, France, for eight months, including
New Year’s Day 1943. (Peter escaped to
Switzerland and came to the U.S. in 1946.
In 1987 he was re-united with his journal,
which had been discovered at a flea
market in France in the late 1940s.)
Several factors determined how
many people became rescuers and
how successful their efforts were. In some occupied countries, Nazi control was
more direct than in others or occurred later in the war. In Poland, for example,
Nazi control began early and was direct, while in Hungary the Nazis did not take
control until 1944. Another factor influencing the extent to which rescue was
possible was the degree of control the Nazis exercised over a country’s
government. In Denmark, non-Jewish citizens were treated leniently by Nazi
authorities during the first year of the war because the Germans viewed the
Danes as racially superior Aryans like themselves. In Poland, the Nazis
exercised almost total control. Nazi officials did whatever was necessary to
annihilate the Jews. In Poland Nazi law made helping Jews an offense
punishable by death. The names of those executed were widely publicized and
punishments often applied to the rescuers’ families as well as the rescuers
themselves.
POLISH UNDERGROUND GROUP ZEGOTA
Despite this, many Polish
citizens aided Jews during the war. A few resistance groups supplied arms to
Jewish fighters in various Polish ghettos. Zegota, a small underground
organization of Polish Catholics, hid Jews from deportation. Older Jews in hiding
were given money and medicine. An estimated four thousand Jewish children
were taken form the ghettos and put into Catholic orphanages, convents, or
cloisters where they assumed new identities and survived the war. There were
many instances of individual Poles hiding Jews in their homes and farms.
However, most Polish resistance groups ignored, or even persecuted, Jews who
escaped from ghettos and camps.
Another key factor was the degree of anti-Semitism within an occupied country.
Historically many eastern European countries had a strong tradition of anti77
Semitism. Denunciations of Jews and those tried to protect them were common.
In such areas, before they could act, prospective rescuers had to overcome
deeply ingrained anti-Jewish attitudes as well as the knowledge that their actions
on behalf of Jews would be condemned by non-Jewish friends and relatives. The
sheer number of Jews within a particular country and the degree to which these
Jews were assimilated also affected their chances of rescue. It was easier to get
Denmark’s 7,000 Jews to safety than Poland’s 3 million.
In addition, it was easier in some places than in others for Jews to physically
blend with the rest of the population. Hiding Jews in countries like Italy was made
somewhat easier by the fact that many Jews looked similar to their Italian
rescuers. Italians saved more than 30,000 Jews following Hitler’s occupation of
northern Italy in 1943. Nuns, priests, and others hid families in convents or forged
new identity papers for those they rescued. In
USHMM
Poland this was not the case. Finally in many
parts of eastern Europe, Jews and Christians
lived in separate social and cultural worlds. This
lack of assimilation made it very difficult for Jews
to blend into the Christian world. In Poland, for
example, over three fourths of all Polish Jews
spoke Yiddish or Hebrew as their first language.
Malvina Csizmadia, a Slovakian
Protestant recognized by Yad
Vashem as one of the
Righteous Among the Nations.
Malvina, with her mother and
sisters, helped twenty-five
Jewish men escape from a
labor camp and found hiding
places for them in their village.
For five weeks they brought the
men food until the Soviet army
liberated their area.
HOLOCAUST MUSEUM HONORS RESCUERS
At Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial
museum in Israel, non-Jews who aided Jews
during the war are honored as Righteous
Among the Nations. Hundreds of trees have
been planted along a pathway on the Avenue of
the Righteous at Yad Vashem. Each tree on this
avenue bears a plaque which gives the name of
the person or group honored and a brief
description of his or her actions. The Avenue of
the Righteous reminds museum visitors of the
courage of non-Jews who, despite risk to their
own lives and families, refused to stand by whole
others were persecuted. To date over 12,000
people and groups have received this honor. The
country with the largest number honored is
Poland. The country with the highest per capita
contribution is Holland.
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TEACHING LESSON
8
Handout 8A: Portraits of Rescuers
Handout 8B: Shelly in Hiding
Handout 8C: Honoring a Rescuer
Optional Video: The Courage to Care or They Risked Their Lives
Vocabulary: Righteous Among the Nations, underground, collective responsibility
Read Overview 6 with students. Then tell the class that although many ignored
the persecution of Jews and other minorities, a small number of brave men and
women did not. These people, most of whom were Christians, have been given a
special title and place of honor in Israel. In 1953 the Israeli Parliament, the
Knesset, passed a law giving the Holocaust Remembrance Authority the power
to recognize and honor those who risked their lives for the rescue of Jews.” A
commission headed by an Israeli Supreme Court Justice was set up to hear
testimony concerning the heroic actions of each nominee. Among the questions
the committee asks about each nominee are the following:
1) How was the original contact made between the rescuer and the
rescued?
2) How did the rescuer help the rescued?
3) Was the rescuer paid and if so, what amount?
4) What were the risks faced by the rescuer?
5) What were the rescuer’s motivations?
6) What is the evidence provided by the rescued person or his or her
representative?
A person accorded this honor is given a specially minted medal bearing his or
her name, a certificate of honor, and the privilege of having his or her name
added to those on the “Righteous Among the Nations Wall of Honor” at Yad
Vashem. Tree plantings have been discontinued due to lack of space.
In this lesson, students will look in Handout 8A at short biographical sketches for
some of the people honored at the Righteous Among the Nations. Handout 8B
describes the experiences of a North Carolina survivor who was hidden by Polish
farmers during the war. Then Handout 8C asks students to view the film The
Courage to Care or They Risked Their Lives or to research one of the well-known
rescuers listed on the handout and write a speech nominating one of them for
official recognition as a Righteous Among the Nations.
79
Before distributing Handout 8A, emphasize the great risks that those who helped
Jews were taking. Quite often people caught aiding Jews were shot or hanged on
the spot by German or their accomplices. Other family members were killed or
severely punished as well. In many places the Gestapo offered a reward to
anyone turning in Jews. A typical reward paid by the Gestapo to an informer was
one quart of brandy, two pounds of sugar, a carton of cigarettes, and a small
amount of money. A Dutch police investigation in 1948 indicated that an
unnamed informant had been paid 7½ gulden or about $1.40 per person for
turning in Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis.
Even without a reward, a neighbor or relative might decide to inform on a family
hiding fugitives to settle a grudge or quarrel. In addition to fearing the Germans,
those who helped had to be careful of local anti-Semites. After the war ended, it
was not unusual in some eastern European countries for those who had helped
to ask their Jewish friends not to tell anyone for fear of reprisals by their
neighbors. In addition, those willing to help had to have a place where fugitives
could be hidden. Annexes, cellars, stoves, garbage bins, and cemeteries served
as hiding places. In rural areas, pigsties, cow barns, stables, and haystacks
harbored those hunted by the Nazis.
Divide the class into groups. Give the members of all groups copies of Handout
8A. Tell the class that each of the people described in A, B, and C have been
awarded the title “Righteous Among the Nations” and have had a tree planted in
their memory on the Avenue of the Righteous. Ask each group to answer the
questions at the bottom of the handout.
Discuss student answers to the questions on Handout 8A. Focus discussion on
the reasons why some people showed a willingness to help others despite the
extreme risk. Social scientists have identified several factors that motivated
rescuers to risk their lives for others.
On pages 150-193 of her book When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian
rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland, sociologist Nechama Tec identifies six
characteristics that the rescuers she studied shared. These characteristics were
1) individuality or separateness. These people did not blend into their social
environment;
2) independence or self-reliance. The rescuers were willing to act in accordance with their personal beliefs, regardless of how these convictions were
viewed by others;
3) a long history of doing good deeds which reflected their enduring
commitment to standing up for the helpless and needy;
4) a tendency to see aid to Jews in a matter-of-fact, unassuming way, as
neither heroic nor extraordinary;
5) an unplanned, unpremeditated beginning of Jewish rescue that happened
gradually or suddenly, even impulsively; and
6) a way of looking at Jews that defined them, not as Jews, but as helpless
people, totally dependent on the protection of others.
80
Psychologists who have studied the traits of rescuers have identified one or more
of these factors as contributing to the willingness of the rescuer to risk his or her
life for another—a strong sense of morality, a personal relationship with the
rescued person, altruism, political or religious beliefs or the belief that he or she
is capable of succeeding with the rescue. Every rescuer who was studied
exhibited one or more of these traits.
After reading the handout, have students focus on Question 3:
Why were people willing to help others despite the risks? (The Ukrainian farmer
described in Part C had known the man whose family he helped as a friend
before the war began. This did not make the risks to him and his family any less
great, but it may explain why he had no prejudices to overcome. Joop
Westerweel, on the other hand, had shown evidence earlier in his life of being
willing to take a stand against injustice while in the East Indies. He exhibits
Nechama Tec’s long history of standing up for the helpless and the needy.
Students might also suggest that all of these people acted out of their political or
religious beliefs, particularly the conviction that Hitler’s persecution of Jews and
other minorities was wrong.)
Conclude this activity by discussing the question of what makes a person a hero.
Today the term is used to describe a wide variety of people in public life from
sports personalities and Olympic gold medal winners to civil rights leaders such
as Martin Luther King, Jr. Ask students: What qualities or characteristics make
the people in these stories “heroic”? (courage, commitment to beliefs or
principles, persistence, compassion or concern for others)
Next distribute Handout 8B. After reading and discussing the questions on the
handout, ask: Do you think Shelly would want to nominate them as ”Righteous
Among the Nations”? What other questions would you want to ask Shelly before
answering this question?
Distribute Handout 8C. Tell the class that each group will be nominating a
person to receive the honor of being called a “Righteous Among the Nations.” If a
copy of the film The Courage to Care or They Risked Their Lives is available,
students might select a candidate from the people profiled in these films.
(Information on both films is found in the Bibliography.) As an alternative, each
group can choose one of the well-known rescuers listed on Handout 8C. After
each group has completed its research, have members choose a representative
to deliver the speech to the class. To make the presentation more interesting,
select three students to act as Israeli Supreme Court Justices asking questions
of the speakers after they have made their speeches. All of the people listed in
the handout have been honored at Yad Vashem as “Righteous Among the
Nations.”
Additional information on Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who helped
save thousands of Hungarian Jews, can be found in With Raoul Wallenberg in
81
Budapest by Per Anger and Wallenberg: Lost Hero by Danny Smith. Both books
are suitable for middle and high school students. Students can also consult the
Internet for recent information on Wallenberg. Rescue by Milton Meltzer gives the
stories of many others who helped save Holocaust victims. (Information on these
books can be found in the Bibliography.)
Most students will be familiar with Oskar Schindler, made famous by the Steven
Spielberg movie Schindler’s List. Schindler was a Czech businessman who
saved thousands of Jews by employing them in his factory. Less well known is
Sempo Sugihara. Sugihara was the Japanese deputy consul general in Lithuania
from the fall of 1939 to August 1940. Disobeying his government’s orders, he
issued transit visas to thousands of Jews who had fled into Lithuania from
German-occupied Poland to escape Nazi death camps. When Sugihara returned
to Japan in 1947, he was asked to resign from the diplomatic corps because of
his refusal to obey orders on 1940.
Connect to Language Arts: As a follow-up activity, have students write a letter
to the person who has received their Righteous Among the Nations award,
informing him or her of the award and explaining how the writer feels about what
the recipient has done.
Connect to American/North Carolina History: Students can compare and
contrast the “rescuers” of slaves during the pre-Civil War period in American
history and the rescuers of the Holocaust victims. What risks did Southerners
who provided waystations on the Underground Railroad take? How might they
have been treated by their neighbors of discovered? What motivated participants
in the Underground Railroad to help the slaves escape to freedom? In North
Carolina, many of the participants in the Underground Railroad were Quakers.
All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win
is for good men
to do
nothing.
Edmund Burke
British Statesman
82
HANDOUT 8A
PORTRAITS OF RESCUERS
A. Wladislaw Misiuna, Foreman, Poland
In the winter of 1944, many girls from the Lodz ghetto in Poland were sent to
work on a rabbit farm. The workers raised rabbits whose skins were used to
make coats, caps, and gloves for German troops on the Russian front. Although
the work was not very hard, working conditions were very poor. Workers faced
the constant threat of death from malnutrition or disease. Nineteen-year-old
Wladislaw Misiuna was one of the three Polish foremen on this farm. He allowed
the girls to take vegetables from the rabbits’ supply. When the girls told him his
actions might mean a firing squad, he replied, “You are hungry human beings
and therefore must eat.”
Almost worse than the starvation was the filth which bred highly contagious
disease. One of the girls developed a skin rash and was covered with sores. The
foreman feared the Germans would kill her and any others who became infected,
yet he knew it was impossible for her to go to the camp doctor. The foreman
infected himself, went to the camp doctor, and got the medicine to cure both
himself and the girl.
One day, the foreman had the girls put all their clothing in a pot of boiling water.
Just then, a group of SS soldiers came to inspect the farm. One of the SS
officers asked what was in the pot. The foreman said it was food for the rabbits.
But the officer uncovered the pot and saw the laundry. He became furious and
ordered the SS men to shoot the girls and the foreman. The foreman reacted
quickly, saving all their lives. “Don’t you believe in cleanliness and hygiene? Do
you want us to fall ill with dreadful infections?” he said.
For a moment there was complete silence. Then the officer said, “Well, then, stay
alive—you and these cursed girls!”
B. Joop Westerweel, Teacher, Holland
Joop Westerweel was a Dutch teacher and the principal of a school in
Lundsrecht, Holland. He was married and the father of four children. As a young
man, Joop had lived in the Dutch West Indies where he spoke out against the
way the Dutch treated their Indonesian subjects. When the Nazis occupied his
country, Joop rented apartments in his own name and allowed Jewish families to
live in them. Then he and his wife quit their jobs and joined a Jewish
underground group pledged to the rescue of Dutch Jewish children. They were
the only Christian members of this group. The group, led by a woman named
Joachim Simon, smuggled Jewish children into Switzerland. From there, the
83
group’s leaders hoped the children could be sent safely to Palestine. The trail to
be taken by the children and their guides cut through the Pyrenees Mountains
from France to the border with Spain.
When Simon, the group’s leader, was captured by the Gestapo, Joop took over
as group leader. He was then forty years old. After a year of this work, Joop’s
wife was arrested, tortured, and sent to a concentration camp. Despite this, Joop
continued his work. Joop and other members of the underground group went
back and forth from Holland and France into Spain. For twenty months Joop
recruited dozens of Dutch families to hide people or help them escape from
Holland.
On March 11, 1944, he was captured by the Nazis while trying to smuggle two
girls out of a concentration camp and into France. He was sent to the Vught
concentration camp in Holland. There he was beaten and tortured, but gave no
information about those who had worked with him. In August 1944, he was shot
by the Nazis. His wife did survive the war. After fifteen months in a concentration
camp, she was freed by the Red Cross.
C. Fiodor Kalenczuk, Farmer, Ukraine
Four people from Ukraine survived the war because of Fiodor Kalenczuk, a
Ukrainian farmer. At peril to himself and his family, Kalenczuk hid these people
on his farm for seventeen months. The survivors were a grain merchant, his wife,
his ten-year-old daughter and the daughter’s friend. In 1942, the Nazis marched
across Poland and Russia. The grain merchant’s family managed to escape from
a ghetto to the Kalenczuks’ farm. Kalenczuk and the grain merchant had known,
respected, and liked each other for five years, never imagining the troubles that
would bring them together.
The farmer hid the fugitives in his home. Then he found a safer place for them in
his stable, bringing them meals three times a day. The farmer himself had to
struggle to support his wife and eight children. In 1943, he had to surrender part
of his harvest to the Germans, yet he continued to feed the four people hiding in
his stable. His wife feared that the Jews were endangering their own lives. But he
refused to turn them out. In January 1944, the Germans were driven out of
Ukraine and the refugees came out of hiding.
1. How did each person help save others?
2. What risks was each person taking in helping others?
3. Why do you think these people were willing to help others despite these
risks?
4. Would you consider any of these people “heroes”? Explain your answers.
84
HANDOUT 8B
SHELLY IN HIDING
T
he Germans invaded Soviet-occupied Poland in June 1941. In August,
they came to Rovno, my city. Rovno was near the border with the Soviet
Union and many of the people who lived there were Ukrainian. Of the
100,000 people who lived in Rovno, about 25,000 were Jews. Members of my
family had lived in Rovno since the early 1700s. After the initial roundup of
Jewish families for the death camps, German soldiers began collecting Jews for
slave labor camps. Then, in the winter of 1940-41, the Nazis herded the city’s
remaining Jews into the ghetto. I was four years old. My mother and I were in the
ghetto for about three months where we were very closely watched. We were not
even allowed to go outside. One time, I did go outside and a soldier pointed a
gun at me, so I never went out again.
We were in the ghetto about three months when we heard rumors that there was
going to be another roundup. My grandfather saw that things were getting very
bad. He went to a Ukrainian farmer he knew in a small village about twelve
kilometers away from Rovno. My grandfather offered to pay the farmer if he
would hide me, my mother, my Aunt Sophie, and my cousin Rachel, age five. At
first the farmer refused. “No, absolutely not,” he said. “It’s much too dangerous.
I’ve got a young child. My daughter is only twelve years old.” But my grandfather
kept coming back and talking to him. Finally when the farmer saw Jews in the
village being killed and his neighbors turning Jews in to the local police, he
agreed to help us.
I think there were several reasons why the farmer took such a risk. His son was a
resistance fighter in the Polish-Ukrainian Underground. The son’s strong
commitment to helping other people may have influenced the father. Also this
son had a special fondness for my Aunt Sophie who had been very kind to him
when he was a young child. The farmer’s wife also liked my aunt because she
used to help the farmer’s wife by milking her cow for her on Sundays so the wife
could go to church. Also, once the farmer was hiding us, morally it was hard for
him to turn us out because we were two young children, me and my cousin, who
faced almost certain death.
Of course, we paid the farmer and his wife for their trouble, but they didn’t do it
for the money. It was too dangerous a thing to do just for money. The farmer was
putting his entire family at risk. The Nazis and their Polish and Ukrainian
collaborators practiced collective responsibility. If we had been found, the farmer
would have been shot on the spot or taken into town and hanged as an example
to other villagers. His wife and daughter would have been killed too. Besides,
there were plenty of other people who took money for hiding Jews and after they
got paid, they turned them in anyway. The farmer had a married son in a nearby
village who was an anti-Semite. He never told his son about us.
85
At first, we hid in a small space in the top of the farmer’s barn. It was large
enough only for us to sit or lie down. The farmer made a tunnel through which we
were brought food. After about eighteen months informers alerted the Nazis to
our hiding place and we decided to make a run for it, taking off into the woods.
We spent a sleepless night in the forest listening to the sounds of the Nazis
searching for us.
The next day, another farmer came to our aid. He had known my mother back in
the days when she ran the small grocery store in Rovno. He was also a friend of
the first farmer who helped us. The second farmer took us into the wheat fields
near his home where we spent three days hiding until the Nazis got tired of
searching. Then we went back to the first farmer. Our next hiding place was
under a trough where horses drank. We lay there for several weeks, but it was
horrible and we couldn’t take it. My mother said she would rather die than
continue living there.
Next we moved to an underground tunnel where the farmer stored his grain. That
was where we lived for three months. It was pretty bad because there was one
hole that the farmer dug for air and in order to get the food we would have to
crawl on our bellies through a tunnel. It was damp, dark, and frightening. Just
candles and lots of rats.
Then and Now
In February 1944, when the Russians took control of Rovno, Shelly and her
family came out of their hiding place. For almost two years they did not know
what had happened to Shelly’s father. Then in late 1945 they discovered that
he was alive. He had survived the war because he was drafted into the
Russian army in 1939. The family was reunited. Together, they sneaked
across the Polish-German border to the section of Germany occupied by the
United States. After three years in a displaced persons camp, they emigrated
to the United States. They have lived in Greensboro, North Carolina since
1972. Shelly’s grandfather, and many of her aunts, uncles, and cousins died in
the Holocaust.
1. Two Ukrainian farmers helped hide Shelly and her mother during the war.
According to Shelly, what reasons did each have for helping them?
2. What risks were the farmers taking in helping Shelly and her mother?
3. Would you consider these farmers heroes? Does the fact that the first farmer
was paid for hiding the two of them make his actions less heroic? Explain
your answer.
86
HANDOUT 8C
CHOOSING A RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS
H
ere is a list of people who have been candidates for being honored as a
“Righteous Among the Nations.” Choose one of them and do research to
find out what actions this person took as a rescuer. Then answer the
questions below to see if the person you have chosen qualifies for this award.
Write a speech explaining why you believe this person should receive this honor.
Varian Fry (United States)
Jan Karski (Poland)
Oskar Schindler (Czechoslovakia)
Raoul Wallenberg (Sweden)
Sempo Sugihara (Japan)
Aristide de Sousa Mendes (Portugal)
1 What were the risks faced by the rescuer?
2 What were the rescuer’s motivations?
3 What is your evidence that this person was a rescuer?
4 Why do you think this person deserves the honor of being considered a
“Righteous Among the Nations”?
87
TEACHING LESSON
9
Handout 9A: A Nazi Education
Handout 9B: A 150-Percent Nazi
Vocabulary: Hitler Youth
All of the people whose lives students have read about so far have been
survivors of the Holocaust. Peter Becker, the man students will read about in
Handout 9B, is different. Like many thousands of non-Jewish Germans of this
period, he was not just a passive bystander, but an active supporter of Hitler and
the Nazi party. In his own words, he was a “150-Percent Nazi.” Handout 9B
offers some insight into how young Germans like Peter were educated or
indoctrinated to develop loyalty to Nazism and Hitler. He tells not only how he
became a Nazi but also explains why he only began to question his intense
admiration for Hitler after the war ended with Germany’s defeat.
Peter’s devotion to Nazism began with his membership in the Hitler Youth, the
youth movement of the Nazi party. Becker started out in the preparatory junior
youth program for children ages six to ten. The Hitler Youth was first organized in
1926. Ten years later Hitler outlawed all other youth groups. By 1938 the Hitler
Youth movement had almost eight million members, boys and girls ages six to
twenty-one. In many respects participation in the Hitler Youth was considered
more important than formal education in Germany.
In any society, individuals learn the normal, or accepted, political beliefs and
behavior of their society from their family, friends, schools, churches, and
synagogues, and other community organizations. Learning the accepted political
beliefs of one’s society is called political socialization. Among the values and
beliefs German youth learned through participation in the Hitler Youth were
loyalty to Hitler and the Reich, the importance of political and military activism in
support of the Reich, extreme hatred of Jews, and total devotion and unquestioning obedience to the will of the Fuehrer.
Begin the lesson by asking students to name some of the political values and
beliefs they have learned as Americans. Write their responses on the board. You
may want to give them a few examples. (Voting is an important right and
responsibility of citizens. All people are created equal. All people should be
treated equally under the law. The United States is a democracy whose leaders
govern with the consent of the people.) When the list is completed, have students
discuss where they have learned these beliefs and behaviors of American
democracy. (school, textbooks, home, church or synagogue, television, the
Internet, and other media) In this lesson, students will read about a young man
who was socialized in the very different political culture of Nazi Germany.
Distribute Handout 9A. Ask each student to list eight political beliefs or values
that a German boy might have learned in the course of his schooling, judging by
the statements of the Nazi Minister of Education and the examples from the
88
arithmetic book and geography lesson. Have students share their lists with the
class. (Germans should be willing to sacrifice or face death for the Nazis and for
Hitler. The purpose of schooling is to teach obedience to authority. The most
important responsibility of a girl is to bear children. Girls do not need to be well
educated to fulfill their responsibilities to the Nazi state. Jews are aliens.
Germany is powerful because of its racial purity. The U.S. is weak because of its
racial impurity. Democracy is an inferior and inefficient form of government.)
Distribute Handout 9B. Have students read the handout and work in groups to
answer these questions:
1. How was Peter socialized or educated to become a Hitler Youth?
2. Name at least three values or political beliefs Peter held as a Hitler
Youth.
3. Whom did Peter blame for Germany’s economic problems? How did he
form this opinion?
4. Why do you think Peter so willingly accepted what he learned in the
special Nazi school and the Hitler Youth?
Focus discussion on Question 4. Emphasize that Peter’s family, his peers, his
teachers, and respected authority figures like the Nazi leaders who visited his
school all shared and reinforced the beliefs and values he was learning in school,
his after-school activities, and his youth group. Moreover, his textbooks taught
and reinforced this distorted view of German history. His access to information,
particularly accurate information, was carefully controlled in the special Nazi
school. Although his life was less structured in his later teen years, access to
accurate information was still carefully controlled by the totalitarian government
under which he lived.
Have students describe events that led Peter to question his understanding of
German history and the Nazis. List responses on the board. (viewing a traveling
exhibit in Bremen, listening to Nuremberg Trials, talking with the American
teacher, studying German history) Ask students how each event affected his
view of the Nazis, the war, and his participation in the Hitler Youth. Conclude by
discussing the final paragraph of Handout 9B entitled “A Warning.” Write the
following on the board: “Eternal Vigilance Is the Price of Liberty.” Briefly review
with the class Overviews 2 and 3. Then have a volunteer paraphrase the statement on the board and explain how it applies to events in Nazi Germany. Ask:
1. What safeguards exist in a democracy to make the rise of a Hitler or a
catastrophe like the Holocaust less likely?
2. Why does Peter consider a free press so important to the defense of liberty?
3. How would Peter’s education have been different if Germany had possessed
a free press at that time? Why didn’t Hitler allow a free press?
4. Why do you think Peter says people need to become “politically active” to
protect their freedoms? What does he mean by “politically active”? (Examples
of politically active citizens include people who are informed about events in
their community, states, and nation; knowledgeable about the candidates who
run for office; vote; are willing to speak out against actions by other citizens or
government leaders that affect or take away the rights of citizens and
minorities.)
89
HANDOUT 9A
A NAZI EDUCATION
T
he following selections from Facing History and Ourselves Holocaust and Human
Behavior by Margot Strom and William Parsons offer insight into the curriculum of
schools in Nazi Germany. The first reading describes the Nazi Prime Minister of
Education’s goals for education. The second looks at a math problem, and the third
describes a discussion in a geography class.
The Nazi Prime Minister of Education’s Plan
“The chief purpose of the school is to train human beings to realize that the State
is more important than the individual, that individuals must be willing and ready to
sacrifice themselves for Nation and Fuehrer. . . . The basic principle to keep in
mind is that we are not striving to inculcate as much knowledge as possible into
the minds of our students. If students have learned to submit to authority, if they
have developed a willingness to fit into that particular [place] chosen for them by
the Party, then their education has been successful.”
“Every girl must learn the duties of a mother before she is sixteen, so that she
can have children. Why should girls bother with higher mathematics or art or
drama or literature? They could have babies without that sort of knowledge.”
An Arithmetic Lesson
The following word problem appeared in Germany’s Rise and Fall—Arithmetic
Instruction in Higher Grades of Elementary School. “The Jews are aliens in
Germany—In 1933 there were 66,060,000 inhabitants of the German Reich, of
whom 499,682 were Jews. What is the percentage of aliens?”
A Geography Lesson
In one geography class, the teacher explained that Germany was powerful now
because of the doctrine of racial purity. He asked his students to name countries
that were declining because of racial sins. They mentioned Russia, England,
France. The teacher was not satisfied. “Well, which country has always called
itself the ‘melting pot’ of all nations?” Then came the chorus: “Amerika.” He
explained how during the centuries there had been many men and women who
could not get along in Europe. Most of them were criminals and crooks . . .
undesirables. Whenever they tangled with the law in Germany, or any other
European country, they got on a boat and went to the United States. There they
married each other. . . . Any German boy with intelligence could see what the
result would be. The citizens of the United States were sinking lower and lower.
“There are many other weaknesses as a result of this lack of racial purity,” he
continued. “Their government is corrupt. They have a low type of government, a
democracy. What is a democracy?”
“A democracy is a form of government in which people waste much time. A
democracy is a form of government that will be defeated by the Fuehrer.”
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HANDOUT 9B
A 150-PERCENT NAZI
I
n the 1930s Peter Becker was growing up in Germany, his native country.
The oldest of four boys, he was born in Munich, Germany, in 1929. When he
was age five, his father died. His widowed mother had no way to support her
young children. She decided to place Peter in one of Hitler’s special schools for
Hitler Youth, the future leaders of the Nazi party.
Enrolled in School by Mother
At the age of six I was not aware of the existence of the Hitler Youth or of Hitler
for that matter. It was a shock to me to be going on a trip with my mother. I was
taken to Potsdam and introduced to various people. All of a sudden my mother
said good-bye and left. I was then in a school, but I was not aware of the purpose
of the school.
The school in which I was enrolled and where my brothers also came later was
set up for the training of the future leaders of the Nazi Party. I was in the National
Political Education Institution at Potsdam. It was the only school in which children
were enrolled as young as age six.
Nazi party membership was not a requirement for my school. To get into this
school, you had to be reasonably intelligent and in good physical condition—
healthy, no blemishes, no impairments. You also had to be Aryan, no “Jewish
blood.” It was a boarding school. We only went home during vacations—Easter,
Christmas, and the six-week summer vacation.
The Curriculum
As Hitler Youth, our activities weren’t much different from other German
schoolchildren. Our curriculum included English, mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, Latin, geography, and music. We were in a boarding school under
constant supervision. We were raised in a military lifestyle. Our lives were
regulated from morning until night. We all got up at a certain time—very early.
We then performed exercises out in the yard regardless of the weather—winter
and summer. We ate breakfast, made our beds, washed, dressed and went to
school. At lunchtime we marched to lunch. After lunch we did our homework.
Then we ate the evening meal and had more activities.
Extracurricular Activities
It was in the after-school activities that my life differed from that of a normal boy
in public school. We were not aware of being indoctrinated. It was a very subtle
process. We had a great number of activities. We played games where we
chased each other, but the objective was to learn how to move in underbrush,
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forests, and fields. Even play was designed to prepare us for a military life. Once
a week we drilled, learning how to march, salute, and make turns.
A Nazi without Knowing It
In the evenings we watched movies. The movies had generally some kind of
patriotic or political message, although we were not aware of that. When we were
older, speakers came to lecture on various topics: What Germany was going to
do. How Germany was successful in doing this or that. We were indoctrinated in
a very subtle fashion, so that by the time the war ended when I was fifteen, I had
become a Nazi without even being aware that I was one.
To me Hitler was the great man in
Germany’s life, the savior of Germany.
I believed all this because our
knowledge of what had gone on in the
past was very limited. We were
carefully kept from having a broad
picture of history. We were not aware
of what Germany had done before. Our
history lessons started with the First
World War and the depressing period
after Germany had been beaten down
as a result of the Treaty of Versailles,
disarmed, and saddled with reparations. We learned that Hitler came
along to bring Germany back to
greatness. We felt that we were part of
that, and we were very proud.
USHMM: courtesy Mira Wallerstein
Cover of Nazi publication Der Stuermer,
depicting a group of Hitler Youth marching
to drive the forces of evil from the land, May
1936. The caption under the illustration
reads "We youth step happily forward facing
the sun . . . With our faith we drive the devil
from the land."
The Jews were not mentioned very
often. Our enemies were the French,
the Russians, or Bolsheviks, and the
English. We were taught that the war
was an attempt by other European
countries to encircle Germany and
keep it down. Hitler had succeeded in exploding this ring of encirclement to make
Germany free again. He had rearmed Germany, making it a great power again.
Learning Anti-Semitism
We were aware that the Jews existed, but here was very little attention paid to
them. We received publications which, however, were very effective. They dealt
with such distortions and lies as, for example, how the Jews were the big
imperialists in England and France. We never saw any Jews. We didn’t know any
Jews, at least not in the school. In the school we saw publications in which Jews
were depicted in an unflattering way. Those pictures stayed with me longer than
any verbal impression that could have been given to me. I didn’t know any Jews
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except the one Jewish family across the street from my grandmother’s house in
Oranienburg. I played with the daughter when I was younger and I was not aware
that they were Jewish.
We did not have access to radio on a regular basis or to newspapers. Our
knowledge of what was going on in the world came totally from what we were
told. Once the war started, we listened to radio broadcasts, but this news was
very controlled. We were winning and that was great, so we all felt very happy.
Hitler’s picture was in every classroom and every dormitory room. Hitler and
other Nazi leaders were our heroes. Because we were a school close to Berlin,
we were used for exhibit purposes whenever the regime had an important visitor.
We were shown off as part of the New Germany. We saw Goebbels, Himmler,
Goering, and Mussolini. All the important people who happened to be in Berlin
and who had dealings with the Third Reich came to our school. We were all very
impressed with that and thought “how great and good we are.”
When I was thirteen, I left the school and came home. I had an illness that kept
me from staying and I was very happy about this. What I hated about the school
was not the indoctrination. It was being away from home. There were fifty other
boys. I did not get as much attention as I wanted.
History Rewritten by the Nazis
I went to a normal public school in Potsdam. It had a normal curriculum except
that biology, history, and geography were clearly affected by Nazi ideology. Jews
were depicted in the biology books as an inferior race. In biology we also learned
about racial purity. In geography we were told how Germany had suffered and
how Germany had lost its colonies while England, for example, was amassing its
empire. Germany was the only pure Aryan country. All the others were contaminated. We were told that we were the top people. The Germans had made all the
important innovations in modern civilization. German order and discipline and
German industry were foremost.
Joins the Regular Hitler Youth
When I left the Nazi school, I joined the regular Hitler Youth. By that time membership was compulsory. I never questioned the fact that we had to join. It was
something that I wanted to do. It was fun. I joined the Hitler Youth Cavalry. We
learned how to ride horses and drive a coach with four horses. It was all very
exciting. These activities were interspersed with indoctrination evenings, when all
Hitler Youth groups came together to listen to speakers praising the Nazi party
and to talk about the victories Germany was winning, even although by that time
we were retreating.
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No Awareness of Germany Losing War
Towards the end of the war, all news in Germany was carefully controlled. We
didn’t see any pictures in the paper about the results of air raids. Potsdam, where
I lived, was not bombed. It was not until 1943, when I took my first trip to Berlin,
that I saw ruins. I was shocked, but I still believed we were going to win the war.
The bombing of Berlin was a temporary setback. The city would be rebuilt in
much greater splendor than before. Until the very last I thought we were winning
because I was a full believer in the propaganda, which said that the Germans
were working on wonder weapons. Until the day the Russians showed up on the
outskirts of Potsdam and began to shell it, I was convinced that Germany would
win the war. It shows how easily people can be misled.
150-Percent Nazi
When the war ended in 1945, I was almost sixteen. The Russians moved in and
occupied Potsdam. The janitor in our building was a member of the Communist
party. He went to the police and denounced me as having been a very strong
Nazi. Indeed I was a Nazi. What kind of Nazi was I? I think I was 150-percent
Nazi. That’s how strongly I believed in the system and what Hitler was doing. I
was picked up by the Russians and interrogated. When they realized I was
harmless, I was released.
Shortly after the Russians occupied Berlin, I remember seeing a headline that
said Germans killed four million Jews. I was outraged. I was convinced that this
headline was just propaganda by the British and Americans. I was convinced that
Germany was being set up as the guilty party to pay reparations again. Then
after a while the figures changed. Ultimately it was six million. I still did not
believe it. I looked in an almanac which said
Germany only had 600,000 Jewish people. I
wondered how could we possibly have killed
six million. Then I looked at the areas which
Germany had occupied from 1939 until 1945
and at the Jewish population in France,
Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Austria, Poland,
and Russia. I realized that the numbers fit.
We Germans could have done this, but I still
did not believe it. To me it was
inconceivable.
Begins to Question
Peter Becker at age 15, in Bremen,
Germany, shortly after the war
My mind changed slowly. It was a painful
process that took place over a period of two
years between 1945 and 1947. The first
thing that made me change my mind or
accept what had happened was a traveling
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exhibit that came to Bremen. It consisted of things from various concentration
camps. The ones that I remember were lampshades made out of human skins.
Reluctantly, I became convinced that what the Germans were accused of was
actually true. By that time I was sixteen or seventeen and the Nuremberg Trials
had begun. I listened to them on the radio and read the reports about them. Then
we saw newsreels of the concentration camps, showing what the Germans had
done not only in Germany but also in the death camps in Poland.
An Unanswered Question
Then I met an American high school teacher working in Germany. We had long
talks about Hitler, politics, and democracy. At first I was a defender of Hitler and
of Germany. I felt that Germany had been unjustly maligned. But through our
discussions I began to see a different picture. It took me two years to fully accept
what the Germans had done. I think I became an historian because I wanted to
understand what had happened to Germany and to me. Had I become a member
of the SS and been assigned as a guard to a concentration camp, what would I
have done? I don’t know. I would hope that I would have realized that what I was
being asked to do was a great crime. But I don’t know whether I would have had
that internal strength or whether I would have been swept up in events to
become a mindless follower, like all the others who did not speak out or even
blink an eye at what was happening.
A Warning
There is a saying in the columns of the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” People like Hitler exist in every age
under different guises. There are always people who follow such leaders without
questioning because whatever convinces them is so strong they don’t see
anything else. What prevents a society from falling into that trap is eternal
vigilance, making sure that everyone knows everything. That there are no
secrets. A strong press is one of the absolute safeguards of a democracy. So are
openness and civic participation. People have to become politically active, not
necessarily by joining a political party but contributing their share to society and
not letting other people do it for them.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
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7
OVERVIEW
REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING
T
he magnitude of the Holocaust did not become evident until April 17, 1945,
when the Allied forces from the west and the Russian forces from the east
linked up at the Elbe River in Germany. As unsuspecting Allied soldiers
entered the concentration camps in Germany, they discovered thousands of
dying people. Despite the efforts of the British and American medical personnel.
these prisoners were rescued too late. In the weeks following liberation, many of
them died of typhus and other diseases or from starvation.
DISPLACED PERSONS
Allied forces faced a serious dilemma. What
was to be done with the freed prisoners of war and displaced persons (DPs).
For most survivors, their homes, family, and friends no longer existed. Those
who did return to their homelands were often met with hostility by their neighbors;
many of whom had profited by their absence. The Allies set up DP camps to
house the vast numbers of
National Archives
Jewish survivors and other
refuges with no place to
return to. The camps were
mostly located in areas of
Germany controlled by the
western Allies, especially
the United States and
Great Britain. By 1946,
250,000 Jews crowded
Portion of letter from President Harry S Truman to General
into DP camps. These
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 31 August 1945, ordering an
camps were considered a
improvement in the condition of refugees in the displaced
persons camps
temporary
arrangement
until the DPs could
immigrate or return to their native lands. When it became clear that other
countries would not significantly raise their immigration quotas, the 200,000 Jews
liberated from the camps were returned to their native countries. Some 65,000
Polish and Lithuanian Jews had nowhere to go.
Both political and humanitarian reasons contributed to the decision to open the
doors of Palestine to the survivors of the Holocaust. In western Europe and the
United States, letters from soldiers in occupied Germany described the horrors of
the death camps. In the United States, the findings from committees and
individuals contributed to public awareness of the Holocaust.
ISRAEL OPENS DOORS TO REFUGEES
In November 1947,
the United Nations General Assembly voted to sanction a partition plan dividing
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Palestine into a binational state. The state of Israel became a haven for the
surviving Jews of Europe. The modern state of Israel did not result from the
Holocaust. Its roots go back to the
National Archives
Zionist political philosophy of the late
nineteenth century, but the holocaust
experience influenced its establishment. After the horrors of the Holocaust, many Jewish leaders felt that
a Jewish state was the only
guarantee of safety.
Resettlement of refugees was just
one of the problems facing the
leaders of the postwar world. Equally
pressing was the need to understand
and bring to justice those who had
carried out the Holocaust. This was
the purpose of the Nuremberg
Trials held in Nuremburg, Germany.
This was the first time that leaders of
a country were tried by an
international tribunal for crimes that
Rudolf Hess points to Franz Trenkle, number
had been in keeping with state
four on the list of forty accused torturers at
policy. There were two sets of trials
Dachau on trial for their actions, 20 Nov. 1945
of Nazi war criminals. The first set
began November 20, 1945, and lasted until October 1, 1946. An International
Military Tribunal was convened, made up of repre-sentatives of the United
States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. These trials were of the political,
military, and economic leaders of the Third Reich captured by the Allies. Among
the defendants were Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, and Albert Speer. Many of
the most prominent Nazi leaders—Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels—committed
suicide and were not brought to trial. At these trials, most of those who had
participated in the Holocaust were charged with committing “crimes against
humanity.” Such crimes were defined as the murder, extermination, enslavement,
deportation, and other inhuman acts committed against civilian groups on
political, racial, or religious grounds.
The second set of trials, the Subsequent Nuremburg Proceedings, was
conducted by the Office of the U.S. Government for Germany. Although these
trials used American judges, the tribunal considered itself international. These
trials tool place from 1946 to 1949. The defendants were high-ranking Nazi
officials including cabinet ministers, SS officers, and doctors who had carried out
medical experiments. The American Nuremburg tribunal sentenced twenty-four
to death, twenty to life imprisonment, ninety-eight to other prison terms while
acquitting thirty-five.
DEFENDANTS SAY THEY OBEYED ORDERS
Defendants did not
deny the charges, but argued that in a war situation, they were following orders
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and could not be held responsible for orders from a superior. The prosecutors
argued that while war is an evil thing, there is the unwritten “custom of war” which
forbids murder as distinguished from killing in legitimate combat. Despite these
high profile trials, the majority of Nazi war criminals were not prosecuted. Most
returned to normal life. Hundreds of thousands of members of the Gestapo, the
SS, the Einsatzgruppen, the police, and the armed forces, as well as business
people and bureaucrats who planned and implemented the Final Solution.
received no penalties for their participation in genocide.
NAZI HUNTERS SEARCH FOR WAR CRIMINALS
Between 15,000
and 20,000 Nazi war criminals were still alive in the early 1990s. Most were
thought to be hiding in Europe, South America, or the United States. The search
for these people continues, led by men and women known as Nazi hunters. One
of the most famous Nazi hunters is Simon Wiesenthal, a Holocaust survivor. He
has successfully tracked down more than 1,000 Nazi criminals. He discovered
the hiding places of Argentina’s Adolf Eichmann, the high-ranking Nazi official
responsible for arranging all transportation of Jews to the camps during the
period of the Final Solution. After the war Eichmann escaped from a POW camp
in Germany and made his way to Argentina. He was captured by agents of the
Israeli government in Argentina in 1960 and taken to Israel, where he stood trial.
Eichmann never denied the accusations against him, but claimed that he was
powerless to resist orders from his military superiors. After a sixteen-week trial,
Eichmann was found guilty of all charges and was hanged in Israel in 1962.
Other well-known Nazi hunters are Beate and Serge Klarsfeld. Through their
efforts, Klaus Barbie, head of the Gestapo in Lyon after the Nazis took over
southern France, was brought to trial in France and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987 for committing “crimes against humanity.” Known as the “Butcher of
Lyon,” Barbie carried out the deportation of more than 800 Jews and members of
the French Resistance. In 1951 Barbie moved to Bolivia and lived there under a
false identity until 1972, when the Klarsfelds found him. The Bolivian government
refused to extradite Barbie until 1983. He died in jail.
The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been
so calculated, so malignant and devastating, that civilization
cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive
their being repeated.
Justice Robert Jackson
Chief American Counsel
Nuremberg War Crimes Trials
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TEACHING LESSON
10
Handout 10A: German Officers State Their Case, Part I
Handout 10B: Himmler Speaks to the SS Leaders
Handout 10C: Julius Remembers Eichmann
Handout 10D: German Officers State Their Case, Part II
Vocabulary:
Nuremberg Trials, Einsatzgruppen, crimes against humanity,
kapo, SS
Either the teacher or a student should summarize Overview 7 for students,
emphasizing the Nuremberg Trials. Point out that although these trials were
unique in having an international panel of judges and prosecutors, they were
conducted like other criminal trials. The defendants were charged in written
indictments, were represented by counsel of their own choosing, had the right to
argue their own cases, and could provide defense witnesses. The accused in the
Nuremberg Trials were charged with three types of crimes. One category was
“crimes against peace” which included planning and waging wars of aggression
and conspiring to commit war crimes. A second category was war crimes. A third
category, “crimes against humanity.” included crimes against civilians and groups
for which the laws of war offered no protection. Guilt or innocence was
determined by a panel of judges from the major Allied powers: the United States,
Britain, the Soviet Union, and France.
Tell students that they are about to read explanations by two German officers
who gave testimony at trials about their reasons for participating in the
Holocaust. Before distributing the handouts, the class can speculate briefly on
what explanations the men will offer for their behavior. Heinrich Himmler, referred
to in Handouts 10A and 10C, was the SS chief with the responsibility for the
Final Solution.
Divide the class into pairs. Give each pair a copy of Handout 10A. Assign
students Part I of the Handout, the testimony of Otto Ohlendorf. Have one
student make a list of the arguments Ohlendorf used to explain his behavior.
Have the other student provide a list of counterarguments for each argument
stated. Repeat this process with Part II of Handout 10A, the writings of Rudolf
Hess. This time, however, have students in each pair switch roles, asking the
student who identified arguments to find counterarguments and the student who
found counterarguments identify Hess’s explanation for his behavior.
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When all pairs have completed the assignment, one member of each pair can
share their list of arguments or explanations with the class. (Among the
explanations suggested by the readings are the argument that the officers were
just following orders, that to disobey would have been unpatriotic, that it was not
the responsibility of subordinates to make decisions but only to carry them out,
that the military training of German soldiers had not prepared them to make
decisions, that the officers did not have enough information to make a decision
about the rightness of their actions or involvement.)
List all arguments on the board. Then have the students supply counterarguments. Conclude by writing the following statements on the board: It is the
duty of soldiers to obey all orders. Soldiers give up their right to judge and
examine when they enter the service.” Have students debate this statement or
write a paper explaining their opinions. Tell students that Otto Ohlendorf was
executed in 1951. Rudolf Hess was executed in March 1947. Ask students
whether they think German soldiers share the blame for the atrocities committed
by the Nazis with the many millions of civilians who stood by neither resisting nor
protesting these activities.
Before reading aloud the speech by Heinrich Himmler in Handout 10B, explain
that the speech was delivered by Himmler, chief of the elite military corps known
as the SS, to top SS leaders at a meeting in Poznan, Poland, in 1943. Himmler
had much of the responsibility for carrying out the Final Solution. Because of this,
he was one of the most important Nazi leaders. Discuss reactions to Himmler’s
speech. Were students surprised by Himmler’s pride in the slaughter? Why or
why not? Distribute Handout 10B before continuing discussion. Give students
time to read the biographical information about Himmler on the handout. Then
ask:
1. What subject does Himmler say he is discussing? (the deportation and
extermination of European Jews)
2. Why does he say that his topic can be talked about openly at that meeting,
but not elsewhere? (The people in this group presumably share his belief in
the Final Solution and his commitment to the extermination of the Jews.)
3. Why does Himmler say that SS leaders should feel proud about their part in
the murder of Jews? (They should feel proud because they have remained
“decent.” It is a “glorious” page in German history.)
Before continuing discussion of Himmler’s speech, write the word “decent” on the
board. Then ask:
4. What do you think Himmler means when he says that the people who did this
have remained “decent”? (true to their convictions, committed to their racist
beliefs, patriotic or loyal to their country)
5. How does Himmler’s definition of “decency” differ from what is usually meant
by this term? (One definition of “decent” is “morally praiseworthy.” Encourage
students to develop their own definitions.)
100
Conclude this lesson by dividing students into groups and distributing Handouts
10C and 10D. In Handout 10C Julius recalls seeing Adolf Eichmann. This
handout offers a view of the Holocaust perpetrators from the perspective of one
of their victims. Julius’s account is chilling in its vivid portrayal of Eichmann’s
obviously sadistic enjoyment as he watches the execution of five prisoners.
Students have read about Julius, a survivor of Auschwitz, in Handout 5D. Before
students read 10C, review the earlier account of Julius’s concentration camp
experiences.
After reading Julius’s account of his encounter with Eichmann, distribute
Handout 10D. Have students answer the questions on the handout and then
compare Julius’s description of Eichmann’s behavior with Eichmann’s own
justification of his actions.
1. How does Julius’s eyewitness account refute Eichmann’s assessment of his
behavior?
2. How does it damage Eichmann’s credibility?
Working in groups, have students prepare a written or an oral response that a
survivor such as Julius might have given to Eichmann’s plea for leniency and to
his statement that he was only obeying orders.
Connect to Civics: As a class, create a Charter of Rights for members of the
armed forces. Identify rights and responsibilities of soldiers. Students can define
what they believe to be the obligations of soldiers to carry out orders with which
they disagree. They can also decide if soldiers will be held responsible for
carrying out orders that are later judged to be criminal acts.
Interested students might research and report to the class on more recent trials
of Nazi war criminals, the explanations given by Serbian soldiers for their
participation in “ethnic cleansing” during the hostilities in the former Yugoslavia,
or the defense of Lieutenant William Cally for his behavior at My Lai during the
Vietnam War. Students can consult the Reader’s Guide and the Internet for
articles on the trial of Adolf Eichmann or Klaus Barbie. Others might find out
about the work of famous Nazi hunters such as Simon Wiesenthal or Beate
Klarsfeld.
Connect to the Internet: In April 1997 PBS aired a two–hour television documentary, The Trial of Adolf Eichmann. In conjunction with the program, PBS and
ABC News created an outstanding website (www.remember.org/eichmann)
which provides excellent materials on the trial proceedings as well as classroom
activities and other resources for learning more about the Eichmann trial.
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HANDOUT 10A
GERMAN OFFICERS STATE THEIR CASE. PART I
A
t the Nuremberg War Trials, Otto Ohlendorf, an officer in the German army, was questioned
about his leadership of the Einsatzgruppen, or mobile killing units. These squads moved
from place to place killing groups of people and piling their bodies into mass graves often dug by
the victims themselves. Under Ohlendorf’s direction, Special Task Unit D murdered about 90,000
Jews. The mobile killing units operated in newly captured Soviet territory in 1941, killing more
than 1.2 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war taken by the
Germans. Ohlendorf was a university-educated officer who held a Ph.D. in law. An academic and
intellectual, he held the position of Director of Research at the Institute for World Economy and
Maritime Transport before becoming commander of Ein-satzgruppen D. Two excerpts from his
testimony at the Nuremberg Trials follow:
USHMM: courtesy National Archives
PROSECUTOR: What were the
instructions with respect to the Jews
and the communists [officials]?
OHLENDORF: The instructions were
that in the Russian operational areas of
the Einsatzgruppen, the Jews as well
as the Soviet political leaders were to
be liquidated.
PROSECUTOR: And when you say
“liquidated” do you mean “killed”?
OHLENDORF: Yes, I mean “Killed.” In
the late summer of 1941 Himmler . . .
assembled the leaders and men of the
Einsatzkommandos, repeated to them
the liquidation order, and pointed out that the leaders and men who were taking
part in the liquidation bore no personal responsibility for the execution of this
order. The responsibility was his alone and [Hitler’s]. . . . To me it is inconceivable that a subordinate [secondary] leader should not carry out orders given
by the leaders of the state.
Otto Ohlendorf testifying on his own behalf
at the Einsatzgruppen Trial, 9 Oct. 1947
PROSECUTOR: Was the legality of the orders explained to these people in a
dishonest way?
OHLENDORF: I do not understand your question. Since the order was issued by
the superior authorities, the question of legality could not arise in the minds of
these individuals for they had sworn obedience to the people who had issued the
orders.
COUNSEL: What were your thoughts when you received the order for the
killings?
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OHLENDORF: The immediate feeling with me and the other men was one of
personal protest, but I was under direct military coercion and carried it out. The
order, as such, even now I consider to have been wrong, but there is no question
for me whether it was moral or immoral, because a leader who has to deal with
such serious questions decides on his own responsibility. This is his responsibility. I cannot examine and I cannot judge. I am not entitled to do so. What I did
there is the same as is done in any other army. As a soldier, I got an order and I
obeyed this order as a soldier.
1. Make a list of the main arguments Ohlendorf uses to explain his actions.
2. Next to each argument you have listed, write three or four sentences
describing how you think the prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trial would
answer each argument the defendant has made.
3. What person or group do you think the defendant would blame for the loss of
life that occurred in the Holocaust?
German Officers State Their Case, Continued
Rudolf Hess became an active member of the SS in 1934. He ran concentration camps at
Dachau and Sachsenhausen before becoming the commander of the Auschwitz death camp in
May 1940. Acting on instructions from Heinrich Himmler, Hess turned Auschwitz from a
concentration camp into the largest center for the mass murder of European Jews. Over four
million people were systematically put to death at Auschwitz. Hess served as head of this camp
from 1940 until the end of 1943. In November 1943, Hess was moved from Auschwitz to Berlin
where he worked for the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office. However, he returned
there in the summer of 1944 to oversee the murder of more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews. Hess
was tried at Nuremberg. A part of his explanation for his actions at the camp follows:
Don’t you see, we SS men were not supposed to think about these things. It
never ever occurred to us—and besides, it was something already taken for
granted that the Jews were to blame for everything. We just never heard
anything else. Even our military training took for granted that we had to protect
Germany from the Jews. It only started to occur to me after the collapse that
maybe it was not quite right, after I had heard what everybody was saying. We
were all trained to obey orders without even thinking. The thought of disobeying
an order would simply never have occurred to anybody and somebody else
would have done just as well if I hadn’t. Himmler had ordered it and had even
explained the necessity and I really never gave much thought to whether it was
right or wrong. It just seemed necessary.
When, in the summer if 1941, Himmler gave me the order to prepare installations
at Auschwitz, where mass exterminations could take place and personally carry
out these exterminations, I did not have the slightest idea of their scale or consequences. It was certainly an extraordinary and monstrous order. Nevertheless,
the reasons behind the extermination program seemed to me, right. I did not
reflect on it at the time. I had been given an order and I had to carry it out.
Whether this mass extermination was necessary or not was something on which
I could not allow myself to form an opinion, for I lacked the necessary breadth of
view.
103
Since my arrest, it has been said to me repeatedly that I could have disobeyed
this order, and that I might have assassinated Himmler. I do not believe that of all
the thousands of SS officers there could have been found a single one capable
of such a thought. It was completely impossible. Certainly many SS officers
grumbled about some of the orders that came from the SS, but they nevertheless
always carried them out.
1. Make a list of the main arguments Hess uses to explain his actions during the
Holocaust.
2. Next to each argument you have listed, write three or four sentences
describing how the prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials might answer each
argument the defendant has made.
3. On what person or group do you think the defendant would place the blame
or responsibility for the persecution and loss of life that occurred in the
Holocaust?
USHMM: courtesy Harry S Truman Library
Rudolf Hess being interrogated by U.S. attorneys for
information pertaining to the Nuremberg Trials, fall 1945
104
HANDOUT 10B
HIMMLER SPEAKS TO THE SS LEADERS
H
einrich Himmler was the head of the SS and the senior SS official in charge of
carrying out the Final Solution. He was one of Hitler’s main advisers and had been
active in the Nazi party since the 1920s. Himmler helped to change the SS from a small
band of Hitler bodyguards into an elite army corps that later ran the concentration and
death camps. In 1939 he helped organize the Kristallnacht pogroms. Strongly committed
to racist Nazi ideology, Himmler believed he was doing a great service for Germany by
killing what he considered to be subhuman or inferior races. When the war ended,
Himmler tried to escape Germany disguised as a soldier, but was arrested by British
troops. In May 1945, he committed suicide. In a 1943 speech he gave to SS leaders in
Poznan, Poland, Himmler made the following statement:_________________________
I want to tell you about a very grave matter in all
frankness. We can talk about it quite openly here, but
we must never talk about it publicly. I mean the
evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish
people. Most of you will know what it means to see one
hundred corpses piled up, or 500 or 1000. To have
gone through this and—except for instance of human
weakness—to have remained decent, that has made
us tough. This is an unwritten, never to be written,
glorious page of our history.
Evidence Presented at the Trial of Major War Criminals at Nuremberg
USHMM: courtesy Instytut Pamieci Narodowej
Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler (center, right)
on an official tour of the Janowska concentration
camp in Poland, ca. August 1942
105
HANDOUT 10C
JULIUS REMEMBERS EICHMANN
I
n this selection Julius, who was imprisoned in the Auschwitz death camp, tells about
his encounter with Adolf Eichmann, the top Nazi official in charge of rounding up and
departing Jews to the death camps.__________________________________________
In September 1944, something was in the air. The soldiers and the kapos were
extremely strict, more strict than usual and everything had to be just so. Naturally
we suspected that something was going to happen. We figured that maybe
some high-ranking visitors were coming, maybe Himmler himself. During the
night, before we left for work, they started building something in the middle of the
square, but we didn’t know what they were building. We thought maybe it was a
podium.
The next morning I happened to be working on the day shift. We went to work as
usual at 6:45 a.m. But at two o’clock in the afternoon the whistle blew and we
had to stop. This happened only one day the whole time I was in this camp. It
was very unusual. Everyone started whispering. Rumors began to fly that high
dignitaries were visiting the camp. We marched back to camp and as we entered
the gate, we saw three inmates standing in line in the tube. This was a space
between two electrically charged wires and was the area where they punished us
for minor infractions like stealing some potato peels from the kitchen.
They marched us to the center of the square and we saw that what they had
been building was a gallows. Near the gallows were some chairs. So we start
adding up. We saw the three guys, three gallows. You didn’t have to be a genius
to figure what was happening. We tried to find out why these guys had been
picked up. Nobody knew. Later on, we found they were from the night shift. They
were supposed to be sleeping, but during the day, you were allowed to go the
bathroom if you had to. They went to the bathroom and were going back to their
barrack, when they were taken. They spent the rest of the day waiting for the
hanging.
After about a half hour of waiting in front of the gallows, a group of officers came
in—the camp commander, all his officers, and a few other high-ranking officers.
Then suddenly, the grapevine started moving. “It’s Eichmann, it’s Eichmann.” We
saw them walk in front of the gallows and sit in the chairs. They sat down and the
three poor souls were brought from the tube. They lined them up in front of the
gallows on stools and a German soldier put a noose around each of their necks.
Then they stood there, waiting. After a while the German solider who had put the
nooses around their necks went by and kicked each stool out of there. I had seen
dead people before, but this was the worse sight I’ve ever seen before or since.
Three men, innocent young fellows from Budapest. I knew them personally. No
speeches. No reasons. Actually, it was in honor of the visitor, who turned out to
106
be Eichmann. It was a hanging party in his honor. Some dignitaries would have
been satisfied with a bouquet of flowers. He had to have a hanging party.
The Nazi officers were carrying on a conversation among themselves and we
were wondering what was going to happen next. After a few minutes the officers
stood up, and actually I could see Eichmann clapping his hands and stomping his
foot in glee like he had seen a beautiful performance of some sort. The officers
were laughing and joking among themselves.
USHMM: courtesy Israel Government Press Office
Adolf Eichmann listens as he is sentenced to death
at his trial in Israel, 15 Dec. 1961
The hanging was gruesome, but
the worst was yet to come. The
guest of honor got up from his
chair. He had decided to have
another hanging party. Eichmann
passed down in front of us. We
were lined up in rows five deep.
He picked his first victim. Then
he walked further down the line
and stopped right in front of me,
reaching as if he would grab my
neck; but instead of grabbing me,
he pulled out the poor fellow
behind me and then he picked a
third one. The three men were
lined up on the gallows and
executed in turn.
The hanging party was over. The guest of honor, whom we were told was
Eichmann, left and the camp went back to its normal routine.
107
HANDOUT 10D
GERMAN OFFICERS STATE THEIR CASE. PART II
A
dolf Eichmann has been described as the main coordinator of the Final Solution. He
was brought to trial in Israel in April 1961. At the trial, the prosecution presented
more than 1400 documents showing Eichmann’s deep involvement in Hitler’s plans to
annihilate the Jews. Eichmann’s defense never challenged the factual account by the
Holocaust survivors of his actions or the authenticity of the prosecution’s documents.
The trial lasted four months. After it ended, the court recessed as the panel of judges
adjourned to consider the evidence. The judges reassembled in December 1961 to hand
down a guilty verdict. After the conviction, the presiding judge gave Eichmann the
chance to address the court before the sentencing phase of the trial began. Here are
excerpts from Eichmann’s statement:_________________________________________
Once again I would stress that I am guilty of having been obedient, having
subordinated myself to the official duties and the obligations of war service and
my oath of allegiance and my oath of office. . . . This obedience was not easy.
And again, anyone who has to give orders and has to obey orders knows what
one can demand of people. I did not persecute Jews with avidity and passion.
That is what the government did. Nor could the persecution be carried out other
than by a government. . . . I accuse the leaders of abusing my obedience. At that
time obedience was demanded, just as in the future it will also be demanded of
the subordinates. Obedience is commended as a virtue. May I therefore ask that
consideration be given to the fact that I obeyed, and not whom I obeyed.
[The] top echelons, to which I did not belong, gave the orders, and they rightly, in
my opinion, deserved the punishment for the atrocities which were perpetrated
on the victims on their
USHMM: courtesy Israel Government Press Office
orders. But the subordinates
are now also victims. I am
one of such victims. It is
said that I could and should
have
refused
to
be
obedient. . . . Under the
circumstances
then
prevailing such an attitude
was not possible. Nor did
anyone behave in this
fashion. From my experience I know that the
possibility, which was alleged only after the war, of
opposing orders is a selfprotective fairy tale. An
individual could secretly slip
Adolf Eichmann, in a bullet-proof glass enclosure, taking
away. But I was not one of
notes during his trial in Jerusalem, 1961
those who thought that was
108
permissible.
109
I was asked by the judges whether I wished to make an admission of guilt, like
the Commandant of Auschwitz, Hess, and the Governor General of Poland,
Frank. These two had every reason to make such an admission of guilt. . . . Hess
was the one who actually carried out the mass killings.
My position is different. I never had the power and the responsibility of a giver of
orders. I never carried out killings, as Hess did.
I am not the monster that I am made out to be. I am the victim of an error of
judgment.
1. On whom does Eichmann place the blame for the war crimes of the Nazis?
2. What does Eichmann say was his role was in these crimes? Why does he
say he is a “victim”?
3 How are Eichmann’s arguments similar to and different from those of
Ohlendorft and Hess?
4. How does Julius’s eyewitness account of Eichmann’s actions at Auschwitz
undermine the credibility of Eichmann’s statements about his actions? How
does Julius’s testimony contradict Eichmann’s statement that he did not
persecute Jews with “avidity and passion”?
5. What other statements by Eichmann does Julius’s testimony contradict?
6. Would Julius have been a good witness for the prosecution at Eichmann’s
trial? Give reasons for your answer.
110
EPILOGUE
Handout 11:
The News from Germany: 1998
Optional Video: Not In Our Town: Heroes
Vocabulary:
neo-Nazis
Draw a continuum like this on the chalkboard:
TOTAL ACCEPTANCE
PREJUDICE
REJECTION/DEATH
Explain that the term Total Acceptance describes a society in which the poorest,
least powerful people and the highest, most powerful people in the society are all
subject to the same laws. In such a society, the civil and human rights of all
individuals are equally respected. At the other end of the continuum, the term
Total Rejection describes a society in which the state is all-powerful and
individuals have no rights. The midpoint on this line is prejudice, where the rights
of minorities begin to suffer. Have volunteers draw X’s at the points on the line
were they would put their own community, North Carolina, or the United States.
Working in groups, have students reach a consensus conclusion and then send a
representative to the chalkboard to show their placements on the continuum and
explain the reasons for their choices.
Then focus on Germany in the late 1930s and the war years. Have volunteers
locate on the continuum where such actions as these fall:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
Nuremburg Laws
Kristallnacht
Yellow star badge introduced
Jewish property given to pro-Nazi non-Jews
ghettoization
death camps built in Poland
Jews collected and deported “to the East.”
Have students use the Time Line in the back of the book to pick other events for
the continuum. Emphasize that Hitler’s treatment of the Jews was not an abrupt
move from protection of human rights by the government to genocide. It was a
steady progression from laws limiting civil rights, to ghettos, to the plan for the
genocide of the Jewish people. Along the way, the Nazis skillfully built popular
support by playing on existing fears or hatred of Jews.
Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal has identified six conditions that he believes
made it possible for the Holocaust to take place. These conditions are:
111
1) The existence of a feeling of overpowering hatred by the people of a
nation
2) A charismatic leader able to identify the feelings of anger and alienation
that existed within the nation and convert these feelings into hatred of a
target group
3) A government bureaucracy that could be taken over and used to organize a policy of repression and extermination
4) A highly developed state of technology that makes possible methods of
mass extermination
5) War or economic hard times
6) A target group against whom this hatred could be directed.
Write six of these conditions on the board. Then distribute Handout 11. Have
students decide whether any of these conditions existed in Germany in 1998
when this article was written. How many, if any, exist in any country today? Have
students locate this event on the continuum. Discuss what students might do or
encourage others to do to make sure that situations such as this do not escalate
further. Ask:
1) What role should the government play in ending outbreaks of violence
such as this?
2) Do religious institutions and private citizens have a responsibility to help
defuse such situations?
Point out that Germany has responded to the growth of neo-Nazi groups in a
variety of ways including the banning of such parties and of neo-Nazi literature
and the organization of anti-hate group rallies. Note also that the two young men
who attacked Thavr were being put on trial.
Connect to Civic Participation: Have students report to the class on how
individual Americans and the U.S. government have responded to the rise of
hate crimes in this country. In 1993, when violence and vandalism by white
supremacists threatened Jews, Native Americans, and African Americans in
Billings, Montana, the city’s residents fought back in a variety of ways, including
the formation of a human rights watch committee and holding anti-hate rallies.
After a rock was thrown through the window of the home of a Jewish family
where a Chanukah menorah was displayed, the local newspaper printed a fullpage menorah for families of all faiths to hang in the windows of their homes to
show community solidarity. Nearly 10,000 residents did so. The video Not In Our
Town: Heroes tells the story of events in Billings. A second video, Not In Our
Town II: Citizens Respond to Hate looks at how communities in the United States
have taken a stand against intolerance. Students can also use the Internet to find
articles on responses to the hate crimes that resulted in the dragging death of
James Byrd in Texas in June 1998 and the murder of Matthew Shepherd in
Wyoming in October 1998.
112
HANDOUT 11
THE NEWS FROM GERMANY: 1998
Chicago Tribune
April 5, 1998
Germany’s New Storm Troopers
Fuerstenwalde, Germany—A kind of ethnic cleansing is taking place in democratic
Germany, spawned by violent right-wing groups against mainly Third World foreigners whom they blame for taking jobs from Germans. In towns and villages all over the
former states of communist-ruled eastern Germany, the rightists threaten and beat up
foreigners, trying to force them to leave the country. About ten of their victims have
been killed in the past two years.
“You don’t find foreigners on the streets in eastern Germany past 6 or 8 p.m.,” said
Bernd Wagner, a former police officer who has made a study of rightist violence. “In
the villages, it’s difficult for the police because often their own sons are involved in the
violence,” he said. “And the rightists have some sympathizers among the police. I’ve
heard police say all foreigners are criminals, and the young people help us keep the
countryside clean.”
Antiforeigner sentiment is a problem in several European countries, but the issue is
particularly sensitive in Germany because of its Nazi past and because its extreme
Right, particularly in eastern Germany, is prone to violence. Foreigners account for
only two percent of the population in eastern Germany, but high unemployment in the
region has made them a focus for smoldering discontent.
The problem is aggravated by the fact that democratic traditions have been slow to take
root in a region that was under communist rule for nearly a half century. The evils of
the Nazi era have been drilled into schoolchildren in western Germany since World
War II, but not in the east. “National Socialism (Nazism) and communism were based
on the same values,” Wagner said. “The motor of dictatorship is the same, if not the car
itself.”
The rightists, whose trademarks are shaved heads and combat fatigues, often are
referred to as neo-Nazis. They prefer to call themselves Nationals. With unemployment
in the east running as high as twenty-three percent, twice the national average, and
many people alienated by a sense of being looked down upon by Germans in the more
prosperous west, the groups tend to be anti-capitalist, anti-Semitic, and anti-foreigner.
The rightists also direct some of their anger at homeless people living on the streets. In
their vernacular, foreigners are “ticks”—that is, bloodsuckers—and the street people
are “cockroaches.”
113
Mohammed Al Thavr, 17, a Yemeni student who has lived in eastern Germany since
age five, is among those who have felt the wrath of rightists. On February 19, en route
to school, he encountered four rightist youths who verbally abused him, fired a blank
pistol at him, and threw sharp-pointed metal objects. Then one of them, wearing boots
with metal caps, kicked him in the face. Thavr suffered a broken nose and cheek bone
and a severe concussion. “I’m afraid to go out now,” Thavr said. “The police have
stopped protecting us foreigners, and protect the Nazis. When something happens to
me, people look away. It’s not that the country is bad. There are a lot of nice people in
Germany. But here the bad ones are stronger.
Thavr lives with a German couple, Berend and Beate Maria Klevenhusen. “The Nazis
are only a very small group, but active,” Beate Klevenhusen said. “At home, they hear
about a foreigner with a job while their father is out of work, and they adopt the
attitude of their parents. They are looking for something to hold onto that is not given
to them by the family or by the country. They have a sense of not getting anywhere.”
Thavr’s two attackers are awaiting trial.
Fuerstenwalde is far from being a major hotbed of rightist violence. A town of 34,000
just thirty-four miles southeast of Berlin, it hosts about 1,500 foreigners. Town
authorities have been more vigorous than most in addressing attacks on foreigners.
They have set up youth and sports clubs to attract young people away from violence,
and hold history workshops to reach the young about the Nazi period.
In the old East German communist state, the lessons of this dark period of German
history were not presented to children in the way they have been in West German
schools. They denied there was anti-Semitism in the East, and there was no discussion
of what National Socialism meant to minorities. The magazine Der Spiegel recently
conducted a survey in eastern Germany which found that sixty-five percent of people
think too many foreigners are living in Germany, forty-eight percent say foreigners
take jobs from Germans, and fourteen percent say a dictatorship could solve the
region’s problems better than the present govern-ment.
Andreas Politz, who heads the Department of Social Affairs at the town hall, said,
“You can’t say right-wing extreme ideas are on the fringe here. They are very
widespread. But young people are not the only ones to blame. “What about the adult
who stands behind a curtain and watches what is going on?” he said.
1. What conditions in eastern Germany made it fertile ground for a right-wing
hate group?
2. Why did this group blame foreigners for their problems? What other groups
are the objects of their anger? How did they express their bigotry?
3. What words did they use to dehumanize foreigners and the homeless?
4. What steps have people in Fuerstenwalde taken to stop the attacks on
foreigners?
5. Could a hate group find supporters in our community? Why or why not?
114
THE HANGMAN
MAURICE OGDEN
1.
2.
Into our town the Hangman came,
The next day’s sun looked mildly down
Smelling of gold and blood and flame—
On roof and street in our quiet town
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air
And, stark and black in the morning air,
And built his frame on the courthouse square.
The gallows-tree on the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
Only as wide as the door was wide;
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
A frame as tall, or little more,
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And his air so knowing and businesslike.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
And we cried: “Hangman, have you not done,
Who the criminal, what the crime,
Yesterday, with the alien one?”
That Hangman judged with the yellow twist
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed:
Of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
“Oh, not for him was the gallows raised.”
And innocent through we were, with dread
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead;
“. . . Did you think I’d gone to all this fuss
Till one cried: “Hangman, who is he
To hang one man? That’s a thing I do
For whom you raise the gallows-tree:
To stretch the rope when the rope is new.”
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
Then one cried, “Murderer!” One, cried, “Shame!”
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
And into our midst the Hangman came
“He who serves me best,” said he,
To that man’s place. “Do you hold,” he said,
“Shall earn the rope on the gallows-tree.”
“With him that was meant for the gallows-tree?”
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
And he laid his hand on that one’s arm,
On a man who came from another land—
And we shrank back in quick alarm,
And we breathed again, for another’s grief
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
At the Hangman’s hand was our relief.
Out of fear of this hangman’s cloak.
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn.
That night we saw with dread surprise
By tomorrow’s sun would be struck and gone.
The Hangman’s scaffold had grown in size.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Fed by the blood beneath the chute
Out of respect for his hangman’s cloak.
The gallows-tree had taken root;
115
Now as wide, or a little more,
For hanging, and so he calls to me
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
To help pull down the gallows-tree.”
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
And I went out with right good hope
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
To the Hangman’s tree and the Hangman’s rope.
3.
He smiled at me as I came down
The third he took—we had all heard tell—
To the courthouse square through the silent town,
Was a usurer and infidel, And:
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
“What,” said the Hangman, “have you to do
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?”
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap
And we cried out: “Is this one he
And it sprang down with a ready snap—
Who has served you well and faithfully?
And then with a smile of awful command
The Hangman smiled: “it’s a clever scheme
He laid his hand upon my hand.
To try the strength of the gallows-beam.”
“You tricked me, Hangman!” I shouted then,
The fourth man’s dark, accusing song
“That your scaffold was built for other men . . .
Had scratched our comfort had and long;
And I no henchman of yours,” I cried,
And “What concern,” he gave us back,
“You lied to me, Hangman, foully lied!”
“Have you for the doomed—the doomed and black?
Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye;
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again:
“Lied to you? Tricked you?” he said, “Not I.
“Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?”
For I answered straight and I told you true:
“It’s a trick,” he said, “that we hangmen know
The scaffold was raised for none but you.”
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow.”
“For who has served me more faithfully
And so we ceased and asked no more,
Than you with your coward’s hope?” said he,
As the Hangman tailed his bloody score;
“And where are the others that might have stood
And sun by sun, and night by night,
Side by your side in the common good?”
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
“Dead,” I whispered; and amiably
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
“Murdered,” the Hangman corrected me;
Till they covered the square from side to side;
“First the alien, then the Jew . . .
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
I did no more than you let me do.”
Cast its shadow across the town.
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky,
4.
None had stood so alone as I—
Then through the town the Hangman came
And the Hangman strapped me, and no voice there
And called in the empty streets my name—
Cried “Stay” for me in the empty square.
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall
And although: “There is no one left at all
——Maurice Ogden
116
HOLOCAUST TIME LINE
1933
Jan. 30
Hitler, leader of the National Socialist Party, is appointed chancellor of Germany.
Feb. 27
The Nazis use the arson-burning of the Reichstag building in Berlin as an excuse to
suspend civil rights in the name of national security.
Mar. 5
The Nazis receive 44% of the popular vote in parliamentary elections, the last
democratic elections in Germany until Hitler’s death. Hitler arrests the Communist
parliamentary leaders in order to achieve a majority in the Reichstag.
Mar. 22
FIRST CONCENTRATION CAMP, Dachau, is opened in Nazi Germany.
Mar. 24
German parliament (Reichstag) gives Hitler power to enact laws on its behalf, in
effect creating a dictatorship (Enabling Act).
April 1
Nazi boycott of all Jewish businesses begins.
April 7
Jews are barred from German civil service.
April 26
May 2
The Gestapo (secret police) is established, taking over all local police.
The Nazis ban German trade unions and arrest their leaders.
May 10
Thousands of books by Jews and political dissidents are burned publicly.
July 14
Nazis declare the Nazi Party the only legal political party in Germany.
Aug. 20
American Jewish Congress calls for a boycott of German products.
Oct. 19
Germany withdraws from the League of Nations.
Sept. 29
Jews are barred from owning land.
1934
May 17
Aug. 2
Aug. 19
Jews are banned from receiving national health insurance.
HITLER DECLARES HIMSELF FUEHRER (leader) after von Hindenberg dies.
By a 90% approval, the German people vote to support Hitler’s dictatorial powers.
1935
Mar. 16
Hitler renews the draft in violation of the Versailles Treaty that ended World War I.
Aug. 18
Jews are banned from marrying non-Jews.
Sept. 15
NUREMBERG RACE LAWS deprive Jews of the rights of citizenship.
1936
Mar. 7
July
Aug. 1
NAZI INVASION OF THE RHINELAND between Germany and France. Nazi military
aggression for territory begins.
Sachsenhausen concentration camp is opened in Germany.
Olympic Games open in Berlin. Signs reading “Jews Not Welcome” are temporarily
removed from most public places by Hitler’s orders.
1937
Jan.
Jews are banned from certain jobs and professions.
July
Buchenwald concentration camp is opened in Germany.
Nov. 16
Jews’ right to obtain passports for travel outside of Germany is restricted.
117
1938
Mar. 13
AprilJune
June/Sept.
July
Sept. 29.
Oct. 5
Nov. 9-10
NAZI OCCUPATION OF AUSTRIA, which is annexed to Germany (the Anschluss).
Nazis order Jews to provide full information about their businesses, personal
property, and financial assets to the government.
Jewish doctors and lawyers are forbidden to practice their professions.
All Jews over age 15 are ordered to get identity cards.
Evian Conference. Delegates from 32 countries meet in France to consider ways to
help European Jews, but no nation agrees to accept any refugees.
NAZIS ACQUIRE SUDETENLAND (western Czechoslovakia). In the Munich
Agreement, Great Britain and France agree to the German takeover of the
Sudetenland in return for Hitler’s promise to demand no more territory.
Nazis require Jewish passports to be stamped with a large red "J."
KRISTALLNACHT: The Night of Broken Glass. Anti-Jewish riots take place in
Germany and Austria. 267 synagogues are destroyed, 7,500 Jewish shops are
looted, 91 Jews are killed, and 30,000 Jewish men are sent to concentration camps.
Nov. 12
German Jews are ordered to pay 1,000,000,000 (one billion) Reichsmarks in
reparations for the damages of Kristallnacht.
Nov. 15
All Jewish children are expelled from German schools.
Dec. 3
Nazis issue the Decree on Eliminating the Jews from German Economic Life.
1939
Jan. 30
In a speech, Hitler threatens to exterminate the Jews if a world war breaks out.
Feb. 21
Nazis order Jews to turn over all of their silver and gold items.
Mar. 4
Nazis begin using German Jews for forced labor.
Mar 15
NAZIS OCCUPY CZECHOSLOVAKIA in violation of the Munich Agreement.
April 30
German landlords are given the right to evict Jewish tenants.
May-June
Aug.
Sept 1
Oct.
Oct-Dec.
Dec. 18
The ship St. Louis, carrying almost 1,000 Jewish refugees, is turned away from
Cuba, the U.S., and other countries before returning to Europe.
Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression pact.
NAZIS INVADE POLAND. WORLD WAR II BEGINS. Britain and France soon
declare war on Germany. The U.S. declares its neutrality.
Nazis begin forced euthanasia of the handicapped in Germany.
GHETTOS ARE CREATED IN POLAND to isolate the Jewish populations into small
enclosed sections of the cities.
Nazis restrict food rations for Jews in Germany.
1940
April-May
April 27
Sept. 27
Aug. 8
Aug. 15
NAZIS INVADE WESTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES. Denmark, Norway.
Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and France are defeated and occupied.
AUSCHWITZ concentration camp is established in Poland.
THE AXIS IS FORMED as Germany, Italy, and Japan sign the Tripartite Pact.
NAZIS BEGIN AIR ATTACKS ON BRITAIN. The Battle of Britain begins. The Nazis
never invade the island of Great Britain.
Nazis announce plan to deport all European Jews to the island of Madagascar off
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southeastern Africa.
Oct. 18
Anti-Jewish laws are passed by the Vichy government in France.
Nov. 15
The Jewish ghetto in Warsaw is sealed, enclosing 450,000 Jews inside its walls.
Other ghettos in Poland are sealed by the Nazis in the following months.
1941
Jan.
About 2000 Jews die of starvation in the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland.
May
Killing of Jews by gas begins at Sobibor death camp in Poland.
June 22
July
GERMANY INVADES THE SOVIET UNION in violation of the non-aggression pact.
EINSATZGRUPPEN (killing squads) begin murdering hundreds of thousands of
Jews in the eastern Soviet Union.
Maidanek concentration camp is opened in Poland.
Sept. 1
German and Austrian Jews are ordered to wear armbands with the Star of David.
Oct. 15
Nazis begin mass deportations of German Jews to ghettos in Poland.
Dec. 7
THE U.S. ENTERS WWII. The U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, is bombed
by the Japanese. The U.S. declares war on Japan the next day.
Dec. 8
Nazis begin using mobile gas vans to kill Jews at the Chelmno death camp.
Dec. 11
Germany declares war on the U.S. The U.S. declares war on Germany.
1942
Jan. 5
German Jews are ordered to turn in their winter clothing to be sent to Nazi troops.
Jan. 20
“THE FINAL SOLUTION” to exterminate European Jews is planned at the
Wannsee Conference. More death camps are opened in the coming months.
January
Mass killing of Jews using Zyklon-B gas begins at Auschwitz.
March
April 20
MayJuly
First Jews from France and Slovakia arrive at Auschwitz death camp in Poland.
Jews in Germany are banned from using public transportation.
The New York Times reports mass killings of Jews by the Nazis in eastern Europe
— Poland, Russia, and the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania).
July 14
First Jews from Holland are sent to Auschwitz.
July 21
American Jews hold a rally in New York City to pressure the U.S. and the United
Nations to rescue the Jews of Europe.
Oct. 4
Oct. 25
All Jews in German camps are sent to the death camp at Auschwitz in Poland.
First Jews from Norway are sent to Auschwitz.
1943
Feb. 2
NAZI RETREAT BEGINS. German army surrenders at Stalingrad, Soviet Union.
Feb. 26
First Gypsies (Roma) arrive at Auschwitz.
19 April
U.S. and British officials meeting in Bermuda fail to devise an effective plan for
rescuing the victims of the Nazis in Europe.
AprilMay
WARSAW UPRISING. Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto resist for 28 days the Nazi attack
to liquidate the ghetto. 50,000 Jews are killed.
May 13
Allies are victorious in north Africa with the surrender of Axis troops.
June 28
Five new crematoria are completed at Auschwitz. Almost 5,000 corpses can be
burned in one day.
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JuneJuly
Nazis order all ghettos in Poland and the Soviet Union to be liquidated. Armed
resistance by Jewish fighters occurs in five ghettos.
July 9
Allies invade Sicily, beginning the military campaign in southern Europe.
July 25
As Allies invade Italy from the south, Italians revolt and depose Mussolini. German
army soon occupies Italy from the north.
Aug. 2
Inmates of the Treblinka death camp in Poland revolt. Only 70 survive.
Aug.-Sept.
The Jewish ghettos in Vilna, Minsk, and Bialystock, Poland, are liquidated.
Oct. 1
Danish underground evacuates over 7,000 Jews by sea to Sweden.
Oct.14
Inmates of Sobibor death camp revolt and many escape. Only 50 survive.
Nov.
U.S. Congress holds hearings on the State Dept.’s inaction in response to the
mounting evidence of the Nazi extermnation of the Jews.
1944
Mar. 19
German army invades Hungary. The deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz
soon begins.
April 7
Two Jews escape from Auschwitz and present a report of the Nazi atrocities in the
camp to representatives of the Pope in Slovakia.
June 6
D-DAY. THE ALLIES INVADE CONTINENTAL EUROPE at Normandy, France.
JulyJan.
Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg saves nearly 33,000 Jews in Hungary by giving
them visas and setting up “safe houses.” In early 1945 he is arrested by the Soviets
and imprisoned in Moscow. He may have lived in Soviet prisons until the late 1980s.
July 20
Attempted assasination of Hitler by a group of German officers fails.
July 24
Maidanek death camp in Poland is liberated by the Soviet army.
Aug. 4
Anne Frank and her family are arrested in their hiding place in Amsterdam, Holland,
and are sent to Auschwitz. Anne and her sister Margot are later sent to BergenBelsen in Germany where Anne dies of typhus on March 15, 1945.
Aug. 6
Last ghetto in Poland is liquidated (Lodz). 60,000 Jews are sent to Auschwitz.
Oct. 7
Inmates revolt at Auschwitz and destroy Crematorium IV.
Aug.-Oct.
EUROPEAN CITIES ARE LIBERATED FROM NAZI CONTROL as the U.S. and
British armies progress from the west and the Soviet army from the east.
1945
Jan. 17
Nazis evacuate Auschwitz as the Soviet army approaches from the east.
Feb.-April
DEATH MARCHES. Prisoners are forced to march to camps in central Germany as
the Nazis retreat from advancing Allied armies. Thousands die on the marches.
Jan.-May
CONCENTRATION CAMPS ARE LIBERATED across Europe by Allied troops.
April 12
U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt dies. Vice President Harry Truman becomes
president.
April 15
Bergen-Belsen, where Anne Frank had died a month earlier, is liberated. Of the
58,000 survivors, nearly 30,000 die in the following weeks from disease and the
effects of chronic malnutrition.
April 25
American and Soviet troops meet on the Elbe River in Germany.
April 30
HITLER COMMITS SUICIDE as Allied armies approach Berlin from east and west.
Other top Nazi officials commit suicide in the following months.
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May 8
Oct.
Aug. 15
WAR IN EUROPE ENDS. Germany surrenders: V-E Day (Victory in Europe)
NUREMBERG WAR CRIMES TRIALS BEGIN (Nuremberg, Germany). Of the 22
major Nazi officials who are tried, 12 are sentenced to death by hanging, seven are
given prison sentences from 10 years to life, and three are acquitted. Many other
Nazi war criminals are tried in later months.
WORLD WAR II IS OVER. Japan surrenders. V-J Day (Victory in Japan).
1960
May
Adolf Eichmann, who directed the implementation of the “Final Solution,” is arrested
in Argentina and brought to Israel for trial. He is executed in May 1962.
Feb.
Legislation is passed in Germany to allow prosecution of Nazi war criminals to be
extended for an additional twenty-year period.
Sept.
The U.S. Office of Special Investigation is created to track down Nazis living in the
U.S. under false identity. From then until 2005, over 100 Nazi persecutors are
stripped of U.S. citizenship and about half of these are deported.
Feb.
Josef Mengele, guilty of sadistic “medical experiments” in Auschwitz, dies in Brazil
without ever having been discovered and brought to trial.
May
Klaus Barbie, the SS officer known as “the Butcher of Lyons,” is tried and convicted
in France. Barbie had been deported from Bolivia in 1983.
Feb.
John Demjanjuk, who had lived in The U.S. since 1951, is convicted of being “Ivan
the Terrible,” a brutal SS guard at the Treblinka death camp. In 1993 the Israel
Supreme Court overturns his conviction due to inconclusive evidence.
April
U.S. Senate hearings begin into the allegations that Swiss banks trafficked in gold
looted by Hitler’s armies from Jews. A year later, Switzerland acknowledges using
money held for European Jews in Swiss banks and promises to make restitution to
survivors.
1965
1979
1987
1988
1996
1998
March
Former SS Captain Erich Priebke is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the
massacre of 335 civilians in caves near Rome, Italy, in 1944. He had escaped to
Argentina after the war and was discovered by an ABC news reporter in 1994.
2000
Feb.
The North Carolina Museum of Art returns the painting Madonna and Child in a
Landscape by Lucas Cranach the Elder to the family of an Austrian Jew from whom
the painting had been stolen during the Nazi era. Later in the year the painting
returns to the museum when the family sells it to the museum for a reduced price.
2005
Jan.
The U.S. Office of Special Investigation expands its search for war criminals to
include those involved in other atrocities and genocides across the world.”For the
first time since Nuremberg,” said the director, “the world is really getting
serious about these kinds of cases.”
121
122
GLOSSARY
Anti-Semitism: Acts or feelings against
Jews; takes the form of prejudice, dislike, fear, discrimination, and persecution.
The first three concentration camps
established were Dachau near Munich,
Buchenwald near Weimar and Sachsenhausen near Berlin, all in Germany.
Aryan: A term used by the Nazis to
mean a superior race of Nordic-type
white people who were the “master
race.” The Nazis applied the term primarily to people of Northern European
racial background. It is not a racial term,
but the name of a family of language,
the Indo-European languages, which
include German, English, and Greek.
Crematorium: A large oven or furnace
where bodies of death camp inmates
were burned after the victims were
gassed or died from other causes in the
camp.
Auschwitz/Auschwitz-Birkenau: Largest and most notorious of all the
concentration camps; was both a slave
labor camp and a death camp.
Established in 1940 as a concentration
camp, it became a death camp in early
1942. Eventually it consisted of three
sections: Auschwitz I, the main camp;
Auschwitz II, also known as Birkenau, a
death camp; and Auschwitz II, the I. G.
Farben labor camp, also known as
Buna.
Collective Responsibility: The act of
holding a group responsible for the
actions of any of its individual members.
Commandos:
Work units that performed tasks inside and outside a concentration camp. An inside unit might
have five prisoners while an outside unit
contained 200 to 300 laborers. Outside
jobs included road building, demolishing
bombarded houses, digging stumps,
cultivating fields, carrying ties and rails
for railroad construction, all without the
help of machinery.
Concentration Camp: Prison camps
established beginning in 1933 soon after
the Nazis assumed power. The Nazis
sent people considered by them to be
“enemies of the state” to these camps.
These groups included communists and
other political opponents, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals.
Death Camp:
A camp whose basic
purpose was to kill Jews and others.
Gas chambers were built especially for
that use. There were six death camps,
all in occupied Poland: Auschwitz,
Belzec, Chelmno, Maidanek, Sobibor,
and Treblinka.
Death Marches: Forced marches under
brutal conditions required of death camp
and concentration camp inmates by the
Nazis to avoid liberation by advancing
Allied forces.
Deportation: Forced removal of Jews
in Nazi-occupied lands from their homes
under pretense of resettlement. Most
were shipped to death camps.
Displaced Persons (DP) Camp:
Camps set up after World War II by the
Allies to house Holocaust survivors and
other refugees who had no place to go
home to. A temporary arrangement until
the DPs could immigrate or return to
their native lands.
Einsatzgruppen:
Specially trained
killing squads who had as their mission
to seek out and kill Jews, Roma, and
communists. These mobile killing units
consisted of Special Action squads of
the SS and Security Police. Their
victims were executed by shooting and
were buried in mass graves. Most were
later dug up and burned.
Final Solution: The Nazi team for their
plan to exterminate all European Jews.
The full name was “The Final Solution of
the Jewish Question.” Beginning in
123
December 1941, Jews were rounded up
and sent to death camps in Poland. The
program was disguised as “resettlement
in the East.”
Fuehrer: Title taken by Hitler; German
word for leader.
Gas Chamber: A room that was sealed
off and airtight so that death could be
induced through the use of poison gas.
Genocide: Term created after World
War II to describe the deliberate and
systematic murder of an entire political,
cultural, or religious group. The Nazis
used the phrases “Final Solution,”
“special treatment,” and “resettlement”
as euphemisms for genocide.
Gestapo:
The secret state police
organization in Nazi Germany; formed in
April 1933 and created to eliminate
political opposition. Terror, arrest, and
torture were the main methods used.
and the Gestapo was not accountable to
any other civil authority.
Ghetto: An area of a city in which all
Jews from surrounding areas were
forced to live until they were transported
to a concentration or death camp.
Surrounded by barbed wire or walls, the
ghettos were often sealed so that
people were prevented from leaving or
entering. They were overcrowded and
disease-ridden, and their occupants
suffered from malnutrition. All the
ghettos were eventually destroyed as
the Jews were deported to death
camps. The first major ghetto was
created in the city of Lodz in western
Poland in April 1940. Other major
ghettos were in eastern Europe in such
cities as Warsaw, Vilna, Riga, and
Minsk.
Holocaust: The systematic, planned
extermination of six million European
Jews by the Nazis during World War II.
Many non-Jews perished in the
Holocaust, but only the Jews were
marked for complete annihilation. The
word is derived from the Greek term
meaning “burnt whole.”
Judenrat:
A council of Jewish
representatives in communities and
ghettos set up by the Nazis to represent
Jewish interests and carry out Nazi
instructions.
Judenrein: A German word meaning
“cleansed of Jews,” denoting areas
where all Jews had been either murdered or deported.
Kapo: Prisoner in charge of a group of
inmates in a Nazi concentration camp.
Kapos were appointed by the SS as
labor foremen over the prisoners. The
word probably is derived from the Italian
capo or boss. The kapo was often
recruited from among known German
criminals. In return for supervising
workers at hard labor, he or she received special privileges.
Kristallnacht: German term for “Night
of Broken Glass,” which took place in
Germany and Austria on November 9
and 10, 1938. Nazi police smashed
Jewish synagogues, houses, and shops.
At the same time, around 35,000 Jewish
men were sent to concentration camps.
The “excuse” for this action was the
assassination of a minor German official
in Paris by a Jewish teenager whose
parents had been rounded up by Nazis.
This event signaled the beginning of the
Nazi effort to exterminate the Jewish
people.
Labor Camp: A prison camp where the
prisoners were used to slave labor for
German industry and the production of
war materiel.
Liberated: Set free.
Liberators: Allied soldiers who freed
the inmates of concentration camps.
Mein Kampf: Hitler’s autobiography
with the English title My Struggle.
Written in 1923 while Hitler was in
prison for his part in the unsuccessful
1923 Beer Hall Putsch, the book,
published in 1925, contains all of Hitler’s
political theories including his plans for
the future of Germany and his intention
to create “living space” in the East for
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the superior Aryan race. Sometimes
referred to as the Bible of the Nazi party.
hatred of other races, religions, or
nationalities.
Mischling: Germans of mixed Jewish
and Christian ancestry who faced antiSemitic discrimination under the Nuremberg Laws if they had one or more
Jewish grandparents.
Reichstag: One of the two houses of
the German legislature or parliament.
Musselmann:
Concentration camp
slang for a prisoner near death from
starvation and privation who had given
up fighting for life.
Nazi: Name used to identify member of
the National Socialist German Workers
Party, a German fascist political movement which ruled Germany from 1933 to
1945 under Adolph Hitler.
Neo-Nazis:
Parties or groups who
accept the racist, anti-Semitic political
ideas of Adolf Hitler. White supremacy
and a hatred of blacks are other key
beliefs. Neo-Nazi skinheads can be
found in Europe and the United States.
Nuremberg Laws: In 1935, Hitler established anti-Semitism as part of Germany’s legal code through these laws.
Laws excluded Jews from German
society, deprived them of their citizenship, removed them from jobs, and
expelled them from schools and universities.
Nuremberg Trials: A military tribunal
set up by the United States, Britain,
France, and the Soviet Union, which
met in Nuremberg, Germany, from November 1945 to October 1946 to try
high-ranking former Nazi leaders.
Partisan: A member of a guerrilla band
operating within enemy territory. During
World War II, this term was applied to
resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied
countries.
Pogrom:
A brief, planned surprise
attack against a Jewish community.
Prejudice: An opinion formed before
the facts are known. In most cases
these opinions are founded on suspicions, ignorance, and the irrational
Reparations: The money and goods
paid by German legislature or parliament.
Resistance:
Acts of rebellion of
sabotage committed by individuals and
groups within the camps and ghettos.
Righteous Among the Nations/
Righteous Gentiles: Non-Jews honored at Yad Vashem in Israel for risking
their lives to save a Jewish person from
Nazi persecution during the Holocaust.
SA: Abbreviation for Sturmabteilung,
the storm troopers of the early Nazi
party, organized in 1921.
SS: Abbreviation for Schutzstaffel, or
protection squads. Members of Hitler’s
elite force of German storm troopers.
Responsible for carrying out Hitler’s
Final Solution. Controlled the concentration and death camps under the
direction of Heinrich Himmler.
St. Louis:
In May 1939 the ship St.
Louis left Hamburg, Germany with 937
Jewish refugees seeking asylum in the
Americas. Most were denied entry, and
907 had to return to Europe. Most were
trapped in Belgium, the Netherlands,
and France and perished during the
Holocaust after these countries were
occupied by the Germans.
Scapegoat: A person or group that
bears the blame for the mistakes or
crimes of others. Hitler blamed Jews for
Germany’s defeat in World War I and its
post-war troubles.
Selection: The sorting of prisoners in a
death camp into two groups, those
judged able to work and those who were
to be killed. At Auschwitz selection often
occurred when a transport arrived.
Those considered unable to work,
especially children, the elderly, and
women with small children were taken
directly to the gas chambers. In the
125
ghettos, selections were also used to
choose Jews for deportation.
Shoah: Originally a Biblical term meaning “widespread disaster.” It is the
modern Hebrew equivalent of the term
Holocaust.
Survivor: Person who survived Nazi
persecution from 1933 to 1945.
Swastika: Symbol of the Nazi party
adopted in 1920. An ancient symbol
dating back about six thousand years, it
is now banned in Germany.
Synagogue: Jewish house of worship.
Third Reich: The German word reich
means empire. The Nazis called their
government the Third Empire. The first
was the Holy Roman Empire and the
second was the German Empire of the
19th century.
Umschlagplatz: A German word meaning “collection point.” It was a square in
the Warsaw Ghetto where Jews were
rounded up for deportation to Treblinka.
Underground: A group organized in
strict secrecy among citizens in an
occupied country for maintaining communications and initiating activity that
will lead to the removal of the occupier.
Yellow Star: The six-pointed Star of
David made of yellow cloth and sewn to
the clothing of European Jews to permit
easy identification.
Zionism: The nationalistic movement
of Jewish people working for the establishment of the Jewish state in what is
now the modern state of Israel.
126
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF HOLOCAUST MATERIALS
KEY: MS: suitable for grades 6-8, HS: suitable for grades 9-12
TR: recommended for teacher reference
BOOKS_________
Altshuler, David A. Hitler’s War Against the Jews: The Holocaust. New York: Behrman House,
1996. Adapted for young readers from The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945 and A Holocaust
Reader by Lucy S. Davidowicz. Includes 100 photographs and original source readings. MS and HS
Anger, Per. With Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest. Washington, DC: United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum, 1996. Biography of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg who saved
thousands of Hungarian Jews. He stopped deportation trains and death marches to hand over
Swedish passes to the deportees. Includes story of his mysterious disappearance in the Soviet
Union. MS and Up
Bachrach, Susan D. Tell Them We Remember: The Story of the Holocaust. Boston: Little,
Brown, 1994. Short, easy-to-read, and engaging, this book, written under the auspices of the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Museum, provides a detailed and comprehensive history of the Holocaust. It
addresses such topics as Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, Hitler’s rise
to power, Jewish partisans, and the fate of the survivors. MS and HS
Berenbaum, Michael. The World Must Know. Boston: Little, Brown, 1993. A thought-provoking,
highly readable and extremely engaging history of the Holocaust by the former director of
research at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The book draws heavily on the
museum’s extensive collection of photographs, documents, and artifacts. HS and TR
Block, Gay and Malk Drucker. Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust. New
York: Holmes and Meier, 1992. First-person accounts by forty-nine rescuers from ten different
countries describing how they hid Jews in cellars and behind false walls, shared their meager
food rations, and raised Jewish children as their own. The rescuers explain why they acted as
they did. MS and HS
Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men: Reserve Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in
Poland. New York: Harperperennial Library, 1993. Analysis of how a typical unit of German
police actually operated during the Holocaust. For fifteen months, Reserve Police Battalion 101, a
unit of just over 450 men from Hamburg, Germany, was responsible in Poland for the mass
murder of tens of thousands of Jews. Browning analyzes the character of the men who
participated, basing his analysis on the judicial interrogation in the 1960s of 210 men from the
battalion. His conclusions are chilling. Advanced HS
Chaikin, Miriam. A Nightmare in History: The Holocaust, 1933-1945. New York: Clarion Books,
1992. History of life in Nazi Germany which also traces the growth of anti-Semitism in Europe
and describes the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1942. Includes excerpts from diaries and
eyewitness accounts. MS
Drucker, Malka and Michael Halperin. Jacob’s Rescue. New York: Bantam, Doubleday, Dell,
1993. The uplifting and true story of how the Rosland family in Warsaw, Poland saved the life of a
young Jewish boy, Jacob Gutgeld. Especially good for sixth grade. MS
127
Friendlander, Saul. When Memory Comes. New York: Noonday Press, 1991. In 1939, when he
was seven years old, the author fled Czechoslovakia with his family. Before they were taken to
the death camps, his parents left him in a Catholic seminary in France where he was trained for
the priesthood. After the war ended, he rediscovered his true identity. HS and TR
Friedman, Ina R. Escape or Die: True Stories of Young People Who Survived the Holocaust.
New York: Yellow Moon Press, 1991. Contains twelve accounts by Holocaust survivors of their
experiences during that era. Although there are moments of compassion in these narratives, they
are, for the most part, stark and unsparing portraits of a world gone mad. MS and Up
__________. Flying Against the Wind. New York: Anchor, 1995. The biography of Cato Bjontes
van Beek, a young girl who was one for the few non-Jewish Germans to oppose the Nazis.
Drawn from diaries, letters, and personal accounts, this book offers an inspiring portrait of
resistance to Nazi rule. MS and Up
Gilbert, Martin. The Atlas of the Holocaust. New York: William Morrow, 1993. An illustrated
reference which contains over 300 maps, 45 photographs, and an excellent narrative, all of which
are used to depict events from 1932 to 1945. TR
Greenfeld, Howard. The Hidden Children. New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1993. An examination
of the lives of twenty-five children hidden by strangers during the Holocaust. Among the stories
are those of children who masked their identities with Christian names or took refuge in convents
and orphanages. MS
Gutman, Israel. Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Shelburne, VT: Chapters Pub,
1998. A richly documented history of the Warsaw Ghetto by an author who is a death-camp
survivor and the director of the research center at Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust
memorial. Gutman uses diaries, underground papers, and other rare documents to describe life
in the Warsaw Ghetto. Advanced HS and TR
Ippisch, Hanneke. Sky: A True Story of Resistance during World War II. New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1996. The author describes her girlhood in the 1930s, the occupation of Holland, and
her participation in the Dutch resistance. MS and HS
Langbein, Hermann. Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps. New
York: Paragon House, 1994. Written by a camp survivor, this well-researched study examines
overt forms of rebellion and sabotage within the camps and attempts by inmates to get proof of
genocide to the outside world. Advanced HS and TR.
Levine, Ellen. Darkness Over Denmark. New York: Holiday House, 2000. Danish resistance and
the rescue of the Jews. MS and HS
Lindwer, Willy. The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank. New York: Anchor Books, 1992. The
last seven months of Anne Frank’s life are described by six teenaged girls who went into the
camps with Anne but survived. MS and HS
Meltzer, Milton. Never to Forget. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Source book of readings on the
Holocaust by a well-known writer of juvenile book. Traces the roots of anti-Semitism, Hitler's rise
to power, and the workings of the Nazi death machine. MS and HS
__________. Rescue. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. The story of how non-Jews saved Jews
during the Holocaust. Recounting of many individual acts of heroism. MS and HS
Nieuwsma, Milton. Kinderlager. New York: Holiday House, 1998. An oral history of three
Holocaust survivors who as young children were kept in a special children’s section of the
Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. MS and HS
128
Orlev, Uri. The Island on Bird Street. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. The riveting action-paced
fictional tale of how a young boy survives in a Polish ghetto after the residents have been
deported. Based on the author’s own experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto. MS
Richter, Hans Peter. Friedrich. New York: Puffin, 1987. This award-winning modern classic of
juvenile fiction tells the story of a young Jewish boy in Germany during the 1930s, detailing the
destruction of his family. MS.
Rudd van der Rol and Rian Verhoeven. Anne Frank: Beyond the Diary. New York: Puffin, 1995.
A photographic biography of Anne Frank compiled by the staff of the Anne Frank House in
Amsterdam, illustrated with photographs from the House archives and from the private collections
of Otto Frank and Miep Gies. More than 105 captioned photographs, documents, and
illustrations. MS and Up
Rossel, Seymour. The Holocaust: The World and the Jews. New York: Behrman House, 1992.
Examines universal human issues raised by the Holocaust such as resistance to evil, justice and
injustice, and the moral responsibility of governments. Discusses the rise of anti-Semitism in
Europe, the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust, and the trials of Nazi war criminals.
References to other human rights violations. HS
Sereny, Gitta. Into That Darkness. New York: Random House, 1983. One of the few books on
perpetrators. Based on interviews with Franz Stangl, commandant of Treblinka, the largest Nazi
death camp. HS and TR
Stadtler, Bea. The Holocaust: A History of Courage and Resistance. New York: Berhman
House, 1994. An easy-to-read history of the period in a simple, straightforward style. The book
traces the rise of the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler. Includes thought-provoking questions for
students at the end of each chapter. MS
Strom, Margot Stern, and William Parsons. Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and
Human Behavior. Boston: Facing History and Ourselves, 1994. Comprehensive anthology and
ideal book for dealing with genocide in the twentieth century. Extensive readings and activities for
raising important issues. Each well-documented section contains teaching rationales and
selected readings and activities. HS
Tec, Nechama. When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in NaziOccupied Poland. New York: Oxford UP, 1987. A well-researched investigation of the Polish
Jews who passed as Christians to evade the Nazis and of the people who helped them by an
author who was herself a survivor helped by the Poles. Advanced HS and TR
Volavkova, Hanna, editor. I Never Saw Another Butterfly. New York: Shocken Books, 1994.
Drawings and poetry by children in the Terezin (Theresiendstadt) concentration camp in Austria.
All ages
Werner, Harold. Fighting Back. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. The author
recounts his experiences as a member of a large Jewish partisan unit conducting military
missions against the German army in occupied Poland. HS
Wyman, David. The Abandonment of the Jews. New York: New Press, 1998. Examines the
response of the United States to the Holocaust during World War II. Covers the role of President
Roosevelt and Congress. Carefully researched and documented. Advanced HS and TR
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VIDEOS_________
America and the Holocaust: Deceit and Indifference. 90 minutes. WGBH Boston. The
disturbing story of how American immigration policies during World War II prevented hundreds of
thousands of Jews from finding refuge in the United States. Uses newsreel footage, interviews,
official documents and statistics to look at the State Department’s policy for “calculated
bureaucratic delay.” HS
Bringing Nazi War Criminals to Justice. 30 minutes. Films for the Humanities. A German by
birth and a Nazi hunter by choice, Beate Flarsfeld has helped track down and punish Nazi war
criminals including Klaus Barbie. MS and HS
Camera of My Family: Four Generations in Germany, 1845-1945. 18 minutes/discussion
guide. Anti-Defamation League. Photographs describe the life of a middle class, German-Jewish
family before and during the war. The photographer, born in Germany in 1938, explores the
tragedy of her family through the use of old family photographs. MS and HS
Choosing One’s Way: Resistance in Auschwitz/Birkenau. 30 minutes. Ergo Media. Interviews
with survivors of Auschwitz/Birkenau who describe the various forms their resistance took. Details
the rebellion of the prisoners who died blowing up Crematorium #4. HS
The Courage to Care. 29 minutes. United Way. Stories of ordinary people who refused to give in
to Nazi tyranny. Shows Christians who risked their lives to save Jews. Examines acts of
exceptional courage. 1986 Academy Award nomination. MS and HS
The Double Crossing: The Voyage of the St. Louis. 29 minutes. Ergo Media. In interviews,
archival footage, and photographs, passengers on the ship St. Louis relive the voyage to
nowhere that raises issues of anti-Semitism, quota systems for refugees, and worldwide
immigration policies. MS and HS
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport. 117 minutes, by Academy Awardwinning documentary filmmaker Mark Jonathan Harris. In interviews with Kindertransport
survivors and with exceptional documentary footage, this film presents the remarkable rescue
operation that brought 10,000 European Jewish children to England and “into the arms of
strangers.” MS and Up
The Longest Hatred. 150 minutes. WGBH Boston. Draws on images from art, vintage film clips,
and a variety of voices to chronicle the history of anti-Semitism . Part 1 looks at the ancient roots
of anti-Jewish prejudice through the Middle Ages and the Reformation and examines the modern
resurgence of anti-Semitism in Austria, Poland, and Russia today. Part 2 looks at anti-Semitism
in the Islamic world. Advanced HS
The Holocaust: A North Carolina Perspective. 32 minutes. North Carolina Council on the
Holocaust. Documentary about Nazi oppression during World War II. The presentation looks at
Hitler’s rise to power in 1993 through the Nuremburg War Trials in 1945. North Carolina survivors
and liberators discuss their experiences. MS and HS. Available through the North Carolina Council on the
Holocaust, Dept. of Public Instruction.
Not in Our Town: Heroes. 20 minutes. The Working Group. In 1993, when white supremacists
threatened Jews, Native Americans, and African Americans with vandalism and violence,
residents of Billings, Montana, refused to stand by idly. A human rights watch committee was
formed and crowds turned out for hate rallies. MS
The Wave. 45 minutes. The Program Source. Dramatizes the effects of mass psychology through
an actual experiment in a California high school. A teacher shows how otherwise decent citizens
can be persuaded to support an authoritarian leader. HS
Zegota: A Time to Remember. 52 minutes. Documentaries International. Examines the Polish
resistance organization Zegota. HS
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WEBSITES_______
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
http://www.ushmm.org
A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust (Univ. of South Florida and Florida Dept. of Education)
http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu//holocaust
Google’s Directory of Holocaust Websites (extensive annotated list)
http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/History/By_Time_Period/Twentieth_Century/
Holocaust?tc=1/
Museum of Tolerance Education Resources, from the Simon Wiesenthal Center
http://teachers.museumoftolerance.com/
A Beginning Teacher’s Guide to Using the World Wide Web to the Teach the Holocaust
http://schulkin.org/beginning.html
Holocaust Teacher Resource Center, from the Holocaust Education Foundation
http://www.holocaust-trc.org
The Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Central Florida
http://www.holocaustedu.org
The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (University of Minnesota)
http://www.chgs.umn.edu/indexNS.html
Yad Vashem (Israel): The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority
http://www.yadvashem.org/
Facing History and Ourselves:Examining History and Ourselves
http://www.facing.org
Literature of the Holocaust (extensive weblist)
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/holhome.html
Holocaust and Resistance Studies: course outline and resources, from the Vermont NEA
http://www.vtnea.org/holo.htm
NORTH CAROLINA WEBSITES______________
North Carolina Council on the Holocaust (with links to other Holocaust councils in the South)
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/holocaust_council/
Center for Diversity Education, Asheville, NC
http://main.nc.us/diversity/homeframe.html
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EXTENDING HOLOCAUST STUDY________________________
Topics for student research and individualized and/or independent study:
Anti-Semitism
Nazi Racism, the Nazi use of racial theory
Victims of Nazi persecution: homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, Roma (Gypsies)
Jews in Prewar Germany
Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust
Nazi Rule
The Third Reich, German state and society
Hitler Youth
Nuremberg Laws
T-4 Program: the murder of the handicapped
German rule in Occupied Europe
Vichy France
Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass)
Pogroms
Voyage of the St. Louis
Evian Conference
The U.S. response to the Holocaust
Ghettoization
Ghettos of Poland/Life in the Ghettos
Forced labor, exploitation of prisoner poor
Killing Phase
Wannsee Conference
Final Solution
Types of camps and their establishment
Mobile killing Units (Einsatzgruppen)
Death Marches
Death Camps, camps designed for mass murder:
Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, Maidanek (Majdanek)
Resistance and Rescue
Resistance and partisans
White Rose
Rescue, acts of courage to save victims
Raoul Wallenberg, Janusz Korzcak
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Postwar
Liberation, Allied forces encounter prisoners of the Nazi Camps
War Crimes Trials, bringing war criminals to justice; Eichmann trial
DP (Displaced Persons) Camps
Perpetrators
Survivors and the Postwar World
Nazi Hunters, Simon Wiesenthal
Neo-Nazis in Europe and the U.S.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FOR QUOTED MATERIAL
For permission to reprint copyrighted material, grateful acknowledgement is made to the following
sources:
Overview 1
Handout 1A
Handouts 1B,
4A, 4B
Handout 2
Handout 3A
Handout 3B
Handout 5B
Handout 5C
Handout 8A
Handout 9A
Handout 11
Statement by Martin Luther in Luther, Of Jews and Their Lies (“Von den
Juden und Ihren Lügen”) 1543, in Luther’s Reformation (22 vols.: St. Louis:
Concordia, 1890). English translation from A History of the Holocaust by
Yehuda Bauer Franklin Watts, New York: 1982.
“You are There” adapted from In Their Words, a compilation of testimony
from survivors of the Holocaust, their liberators, and protectors, produced by
the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center, Inc., Florida
International University, North Miami, Florida. © 1983.
Interviews with North Carolina survivors which appear in these handouts
(edited and adapted for this guide) first appeared in complete form in
Witnesses to the Horror: North Carolinians Remember the Holocaust by
Cecile Holmes White, published in cooperation with the North Carolina
Council on the Holocaust. These excerpts are used by permission of the
author and may be used only for the purposes of classroom instruction.
“Jailed for Failing to Salute,” 8 Jan. 1935, and “Reich Court Takes Children
from Parents,” 30 Nov. 1937. The New York Times: for permission to use all
articles credited to it herein. Copyright © 1935/37 by the New York Times
Company. Reprinted by permission.
“115 Seized in Niemoeller Parade,” 8 August 1937. Associated Press: for
permission to use all articles credited to it herein. Reprinted by permission.
“The Shame of Nuremberg, by Ralph Barnes. I.H.T. Corporation, for
permission to use the article credited to the Herald Tribune. Reprinted by
permission.
Excerpt from Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl, Copyright © 1952 by
Otto H. Frank. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday, a division of Bantam,
Doubleday, Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
Selection from “Inside Auschwitz-Birkenau,” Tar Heel Junior Historian,
Spring 1986, Volume 25, Number 3. Reprinted by permission.
Selection from Rena’s Promise by Rena Kornreich Gelissen with Heather
Dune Macadam © 1955 by Rena Kornreich Gelissen and Heather Dune
Macadam. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston, MA.
Experiences of Wladislaw Misiuna and Fiodor Kalenczuk adapted from Roll
of Honor by Dr. Arieh Bauminger, Jerusalem; Yad Vashem, 1970. Reprinted
by permission.
Material from Facing History and Ourselves. Reprinted by permission of the
Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation, Inc., 16 Hurd Road,
Brook-line, Massachusetts.
“Germany’s New Storm Troopers,” copyright © 1998 by The Chicago
Tribune Company. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
133