9. Nuremberg Trials, 1946
On 1st November, 1943, Cordell Hull (USA), Anthony Eden (Britain) and Vyacheslav Molotov (Soviet Union)
signed in Moscow a declaration that warned that the Allies were determined to bring to justice those "German
officers and men and members of the Nazi Party who have been responsible for atrocities, massacres and
executions."
In May 1945, Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman, Joseph Stalin and Charles De Gaulle agreed that an
international military tribunal should try the leaders of Nazi Germany for war crimes. It was decided to charge
the men and women on four counts: crimes against peace (planning and making war); war crimes (responsibility
for crimes during war); crimes against humanity (racial persecution) and conspiracy to commit other crimes.
Gideon Hausner
Six Million Accusers (1961)
When I stand before you here…I am not standing alone. With me are six million
accusers. But they cannot rise to their feet and point an accusing finger towards
him who sits in the dock and cry: “I accuse.” For their ashes are piled up on the
hills of Auschwitz and the fields of Treblinka, and are strewn in the forests of
Poland. Their graves are scattered throughout the length and breadth of Europe.
Their blood cries out, but their voice is not heard. Therefore I will be their
spokesman and in their name I will unfold the awesome indictment.
8. The Final Solution
In January 1942 high Nazi officials met to discuss the "final solution of the Jewish question," in the Berlin
suberb, Wansee. Known as the Wansee Conference, this meeting did not begin the killing of the Jews, but in it
the Nazis articulated their plans clearly and determined on a systematic method to carry them out.
Emanuel Celler, Speech in the House of Representatives (30th June, 1943)
Mr. Speaker, nations have declared war
on Germany, and their high-ranking
officials have issued pious protestations
against the Nazi massacre of Jewish
victims, but not one of those countries
thus far has said they would be willing
to accept these refugees either
permanently or as visitors, or any of the
minority peoples trying to escape the
Hitler prison and slaughterhouse.
Goebbels says: "The United Nations
won't take any Jews. We don't want
them. Let's kill them." And so he and
Hitler are making Europe Judenrein. (without Jews)
Without any change in the immigration statutes we could receive a reasonable
number of those who are fortunate enough to escape the Nazi hellhole, receive them
as visitors, the immigration quotas notwithstanding. They could be placed in camps
or cantonments and held there in such havens until after the war. Private charitable
agencies would be willing to pay the entire cost thereof. They would be no expense
to the government whatsoever.
These agencies would even pay
for transportation by ships to
and from this country.
We house and maintain Nazi
prisoners, many of them
undoubtedly responsible for
Nazi atrocities. We should do
no less for the victims of the
rage of the Huns.
7. Death Camps, 1942-1945
In the next phase of the plan to kill all Jews Nazis separated out the young, the old, and the ill and sent them to
their deaths. The gas chamber was used in the extermination camps such as Auschwitz. Those who could work
obtained only a temporary reprieve as slave labor for the Germans. When the Nazis spoke of these camps at all
they spoke about the need to execute traitors. The public was not allowed to see what was going on and the
newspapers did not report on them.
Jewish prisoners
are loaded onto the
train from
Westerbork, a
transit camp, on
their way to a
concentration camp
Rudolf Hoess
Commandant of Auschwitz (c. 1945)
…I remember, too, a woman who tried
to throw her children out of the gas
chamber, just as the door was closing.
Weeping she called out:
“At least let my precious children
live.”
There were many such shattering
scenes, which affected all who
witnessed them.
During the spring of 1942
hundreds of vigorous men and women
walked all unsuspecting to their death in the gas-chambers, under the blossom-laden
fruit trees of the “Cottage” orchard. This picture of death in the midst of life
remains with me to this day…
6. SS Units, starting in 1939
By 1939, the Nazis had a formal policy in place
to kill the Jews under their power. The Ghettos
were the first staging ground. From there, Jews
were rounded up and sent into lightly populated
areas to be killed without arousing too much
attention.
Hans Frank
“We Must Finish with the Jews”
(December 16, 1941)
…I will therefore, on principle,
approach Jewish affairs in the
expectation that the Jews will
disappear. They must
go…Gentlemen, I must ask you to
steal yourselves against all
considerations of compassion. We
must destroy the Jews wherever we
find them, and wherever the whole
structure of the Reich…The views
that were acceptable up to now
cannot be applied to such gigantic,
unique events. In any case, we must find a way that will lead us to our goal, and I
have my own ideas on this.
A mobile killing force called the Einsatzgrubben conducted many executions, particularly in the Ukraine and
Baltic states.
Jews from Lubny (Ukraine) assembled just prior to execution
5. Ghettos, 1939
Jewish people were herded into ghettos (walled off parts of the city in which the people could be more easily
controlled). Often they were given only hours to gather their belongings. To their neighbors, if seemed as if
they had just left their homes behind and moved away. Few guessed where they had gone. When Germans
inquired, they were told the Jews had a deadly disease and had to be quarantined for public safety.
Life in the Warsaw
Ghetto, Emanuel
Ringelblum
Smuggling began at the
very moment that the
Jewish area of residence
was established; its
inhabitants were forced
to live on 180 grams of
bread a day, 220 grams
of sugar a month, 1 kg.
of jam and 1 kg. of
honey, etc. It was
calculated that the officially supplied rations did not cover even 10 percent of the
normal requirements. If one had wanted really to restrict oneself to the official
rations then the entire population of the ghetto would have had to die of hunger in a
very short time.... The German authorities did everything to seal off the ghetto
hermetically and not to allow in a single gram of food. A wall was put up around
the ghetto on all sides that did not leave a single millimeter of open space.... They
fixed barbed wire and broken glass to the top of the wall.
Children climbing the walls to smuggle food into the
Warsaw Ghetto
Waiting for a drink of water in the Warsaw Ghetto, where
water and food were in short supply.
4. Kristallnacht, November, 1938
During the evening of November 9, 1938, the "night of broken glass," many Jewish businesses, synagogues and
homes were destroyed by mobs of people fired by propaganda and fueled by their own prejudice and ignorance.
Kristallnacht was a massive coordinated attack throughout the German Reich.
The attack came after Herschel Grynszpan, a 17 year old Jew living in Paris, shot and killed
a member of the German Embassy in retaliation for the poor treatment his father and his
family suffered at the hands of the Nazis. His family, along with thousands of other Jews,
had been transported in boxcars and dumped at the Polish border.
The German propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, incited Germans to "rise in bloody
vengeance against the Jews”. Mob violence broke out as the German police stood by and
watched. Storm troopers and members of the SS beat and murdered Jews along with the
mobs. Nearly 1000 synagogues were burned and thousands of Jews rounded up.
Message from SSGrupenführer Heydrich to all
State Police Main Offices
and Field Offices, November
10 1938 (before
Kristallnacht)
Regards: Measures against
Jews tonight.
.a) Only such measures may
be taken which do not
jeopardize German life or
property (for instance,
burning of synagogues only if there is no danger of fires for the neighbourhoods).
b) Business establishments and homes of Jews may be destroyed but not looted.
The police have been instructed to supervise the execution of these directives and to
arrest looters.
c) In Business streets special care is to be taken that non-Jewish establishments will
be safeguarded at all cost against damage.
R.T. Heydrich
Kristallnacht-A Preliminary Secret Report to H.W. Goering (November, 1938)
…In numerous cities the
plundering of Jewish shops and
firms has taken place. In order
to prevent further plundering,
severe measures were taken
everywhere…
The number of pillaged
Jewish shops and apartment
houses cannot yet be confirmed.
The following numbers
appearing in the reports-815
destroyed shops, 29 warehouses
set on fire or otherwise
destroyed, 171 apartment houses
set on fire or otherwise
destroyed-reflect only part of the
actual damage. The urgency
with which the reports had to be
prepared made it necessary to
restrict them to general
statements, such as “numerous”
or “most shops destroyed.” The
numbers, therefore, will greatly
increase.”
Synagogues burned on the night of
Kristallnacht
3. Anti-Jewish, Nuremberg Laws (starting in 1933)
The Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935:
 Deprived Jews of rights of citizenship
 Prohibited marriage or sexual relations with
Aryans
 Forced Jews to wear an identifying Jewish Star
on their clothes.
 Prevented them from going to public places
like parks and theaters, effectively preventing
them from maintaining friendships with non
Jewish Germans.
The Nuremberg Race Laws included:
"The Law for the Protection of German Blood and
German Honor" (prohibiting German- Jewish
intermarriage)
"The Reich Citizenship Law" (designating Jews as
subjects, not citizens).
"The Law for the Protection of the Genetic Health of the German People" (requiring potential marriage partners
to submit to a medical examination). If they were disease free, they would be issued a "Certificate of Fitness to
Marry." The certificate was required in order to get a marriage license.
The Nuremberg Laws
(September 15, 1935)
Law for the Protection of
German Blood and Honor
…Paragraph 1. (1) Marriages
between Jews and state
members of German or
cognate blood are forbidden.
Marriages concluded despite
this law are invalid, even if
they are concluded abroad in
order to circumvent this law.
(2) Only the State Attorney
may initiate the annulment suit…
Paragraph 4 (1) The display of the Reich and national flag and the showing of the
national colors by Jews is prohibited. (2) However, the display of the Jewish colors
is permitted to them…
1. Pogroms, 19th c.-20th c.
Pogrom is Russian for "devastation". During the 19th century Russia there were attacks by mobs against the
Jews. These were often approved or condoned by those in authority.
After the assassination of Alexander II in 1881 there was a wave of pogroms in southern Russia against the
Jewish community. This led to a large increase in Jews leaving Russia. Of these, more than 90 per cent settled
in the United States.
N. Tchaykovsky
The Massacre of the Jews at Kishinev (June 1, 1903)
…And still, when the actual massacres began, the Governor-it is said nowfailed for two days to obtain orders from the Minister and the Tsar at St. Petersburg
to use military force against the housebreakers and murderers. Moreover, he
refused in the course of those two days any communication with the suffering
Jewish population, never left his private quarters, closed all the telephones in the
town to the public, and prohibited any private telegrams from Kishinev to St.
Petersburg.
The police of the town not only refused to render any efficient protection and
assistance to the …attacked and murdered population, but deliberately prevented by
force any assistance being rendered to them by private persons who were willing to
do so. The police actually pointed out Jewish homes to the rioters…
2. The Dreyfus Affair, 1894
French officer Alfred Dreyfus was framed by a fellow officer and convicted of treason by a military courtmartial. He was sentenced to life in prison for his alleged crime of passing military secrets to the Germans. The
Jewish artillery captain was convicted on flimsy evidence in a highly irregular trial. Later, after several years of
public outcry and new evidence against another man, Dreyfus was proved innocent and returned to his position
in the French Army.
The Dreyfus case demonstrated the anti-Semitism permeating France's military and, because many praised the
ruling, in France in general. Out of the scandal a perilous national division was born, in which nationalists and
members of the Catholic Church supported the military, while republicans, socialists, and advocates of religious
freedom lined up to defend Dreyfus.
Emile Zola
J’accuse (January 13, 1898)
…Ah! The emptiness of this indictment
(accusation)!…I defy honest men to read it
without their hearts bursting with indignation
and crying out in revolt…These…are the facts
which explain how a judicial error could be
committed; and the moral proofs, the wealthy
position of Dreyfus, the absence of motives; his
continual cry of innocence, finish in showing
him to have been a victim of the extraordinary
imagination of…clerical surroundings, of the
hunt after “dirty Jews,” which dishonors our era.