As early as 1925, Hitler, in his book "My Struggle", had clearly exposed his ideology and racist politics. Among his racist references to various peoples, Hitler expressed particular polemic about the Jews, who he considered racially inferior to the supremacy of the "Aryan" German race, "subhumans" (Untermenschen), responsible for the crisis not only of Germany but also for the calamities of the whole world.
The Beginning of the Persecution of the Jews – The Road to the Holocaust
With Hitler's appointment as Chancellor on January 30, 1933, racism and especially anti-Semitism were established as doctrines of the German State. From April 1933, an escalating series of anti-Jewish measures of social exclusion, deprivation of basic human and democratic rights, confiscation of property, persecution and brutal violence began. The fascist spirit of the regime also led to the public burning of books (scientific, literary) with the aim, as the Nazis claimed, of "cleansing German culture of dangerous ideas". On the night of May 10, 1933, tens of thousands of books were burned in 30 German cities. From September 1935, with the enactment of the "Nuremberg Laws", which aimed to preserve the "purity" of the Aryan race, the anti-Jewish measures intensified even more and the Jews lost all political and social rights. In 1938 the continued anti-Jewish propaganda - brilliantly orchestrated by the responsible Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels - led to the "Night of Crystals" (Kristallnacht). In the evening of 9th by November 10, 1938, attacks on Jewish neighborhoods, families, businesses, synagogues by members of the Nazi Youth and the SS broke out throughout the Reich, with the toleration of the police. The tragic toll (91 Jews dead, 267 synagogues destroyed, 7.500 businesses looted), was characterized by the Nazi regime as "bloody revenge of the Germans against the Jews".
At the same time, it should be noted that in application of the doctrine of the "purity" of the Aryan race, special euthanasia programs (called T-1939) were started in 4, even in Germany, where mentally retarded people were killed by Nazi doctors. , disabled and other categories of people with special needs. Groups of people such as Roma and homosexuals were also persecuted and sent to concentration camps.
Holocaust: the plan to exterminate the Jews
The "solution of the Jewish question" was evolved, during World War II by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis (the National Socialist Workers' Party), into the brilliantly orchestrated program of the "Final Solution", which amounted to the physical extermination of all Jews, as and all the evidence (archives, synagogues, buildings, etc.), which marked their presence in the various European countries.
By the term "Holocaust", a Greek word established internationally through the English language, we mean the implementation of the "Final Solution" program that culminated in the mass extermination camps, ultimately exterminating 6 million European Jews during World War II.
The uniqueness of the Holocaust
The Holocaust of the Jews is the greatest crime of the 20th century and the greatest collective crime in human history. Its sad uniqueness in history comes not only from the large number of victims who perished during the realization of an insane "racial" ideology. The Holocaust is unprecedented in world history in conception, planning, method, execution. The extermination of the Jews was not just a series of deviations and atrocities, it was not a sudden persecution or pogrom, it had no political causes, it was not about territorial claims. The "Final Solution" was a fully orchestrated plan, implemented with cold calculation at the behest of an official state and by members of a self-proclaimed "racially pure" nation in the history of civilization.
This chapter aims to explain what the Holocaust was, how it was created, how it developed and how it ended, in the midst of the Second World War, in the annihilation of millions of people for the sole reason of their religion.
Historical path of the escalation of the Holocaust
In September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by the German Army, (and after the annexation of Austria, the arbitrary occupation of the Sudetenland and then the Czech Republic had preceded it), the Second World War began, which was declared by England and France in Germany. By 1941 Germany had occupied almost all of Europe and had opened the Soviet Front.
The war gave the Nazis the opportunity they were looking for, and the conquered countries of Europe offered a suitable field of action for the extermination of the Jews. As can be seen below all the details for the implementation of the "Final Solution" plan were organized to perfection:
Registration of Jewish communities and looting of property: The initiation of the extermination plan initially required the detailed registration of the Jewish Communities of Europe (personalities, institutions, businesses, properties). This project was undertaken, from 1940, by "Commando Rosenberg", which owes its name to Nazi theoretician Alfred Rosenberg, head of the Foreign Policy Office of the Nazi Party from 1933, founder of the Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question from 1939 and Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories from in 1941. The "Commando Rosenberg" groups, breaking into Jewish homes, Synagogues, libraries, banks, shops, systematically looted and looted works of Art, archaeological treasures, religious objects, holy books, rare manuscripts and property, which they sent in Germany.
The yellow Star of David: By special Decree, all Jews of the Reich and the conquered countries, over the age of six, were obliged to wear on their lapels, as a badge, the Star of David, of specific dimensions and of a specific yellow color. The same Decree also prohibited them from moving from their place of residence.
Persecutions, arrests, establishment of ghettos: Jews were herded into specific fenced and guarded areas (the ghettos), which functioned as transit stations. From there the gradual shipments to the concentration camps began. (eg, in 1940 in Poland: Łódź ghetto is sealed with 230.000 Jews, Warsaw ghetto is sealed with 400.000 Jews, Krakow with 70.000. In 1941 and 1942 the ghettos of Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Czechoslovakia are sealed. In 1943 ghettos are becoming of Thessaloniki).
Pogroms and mass executions Jewish, by special SS battalions, with the cooperation of local organizations and governments, often in front of pits that the victims themselves had previously been forced to dig (eg, Iasi, Romania, 29 & 30.6.1941: 10.000 Jews, Kovno, Lithuania, 25.7 .& 28.10.41: 12.800 Jews, Lviv Ukraine, 3.6.41 & 25.7.41: 6.000 Jews, Kamenets-Podolsk Ukraine, 27 & 28.8.41: 23.000 Jews, Babi Yar Kiev, Ukraine 29.9.41: 33.771 23.10.41 Jews, Odessa Ukraine, 39.000: 30.11.41, Riga Latvia, 20.000: 41, Crimea USSR, from October ΄42 – April ΄60.000: 1942, Bialystok West Belarus, November 170.000: 1941). To carry out this type of "special operations", the General Headquarters of the German Army, at the beginning of XNUMX, established the "Raid guilds" (Einsatzgruppen) of the SS Special Security Services. From the Spring of 1941 they carried out executions that by 1943 exceeded one million victims.
Killing in gas chambers initially by vaporization of carbon monoxide or hydrocyanic acid (eg, Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor), and killing in mobile gassing units, i.e., in trucks driven in the open and hermetically sealed, into which carbon monoxide was pumped. (eg, Chelmno-Lodz, Poland, 1941, Riga, Latvia, 1942, Sazmist, Yugoslavia, 1942).
Deportations to concentration camps. Jews were loaded onto merchant trains and in periodic, escalating shipments, deported to concentration camps. The whole "broom" operation, carried out regularly and gradually until 1944, "cleanses" the ghettos and completely "disappears" the Jewish population (Judenrein) from European cities. The deportations develop as follows (chronologically): 1941: beginning of the transfer of German Jews, 1942: Jews of Lublin (Upper Poland), Slovakia, France, Poland, Croatia, Norway, 1943: Jews of Greece, Belgium, Italy, Austria, 1944: Jews Hungary and Greece.
Since 1942, the plan to exterminate the Jews has intensified. The "Assault Squads" of the SS, which carried out the mass executions in the rear of the Eastern Front, were judged ineffective and unprofitable (although their operational activity continued), while the "direct contact" of the executioners with the victims had a psychological effect on the German soldiers . Thus other, new and more effective, extermination methods were sought.
In January 1942, high-ranking SS officers, ministry and Nazi party officials met in Wannsee (a suburb of Berlin) and worked out the details of the "Final Solution", organizing the extermination of 11 million European Jews. The meeting was chaired by Reinhard Heinrich, head of the Reich Central Security Office (RSHA). Also present was Adolf Eichmann, responsible for "Jewish affairs" at the RSHA. (A. Eichmann was arrested after the war, tried in 1961 in Israel, convicted of crimes against humanity and executed. At his trial he also testified about the Wanze meeting).
Concentration / extermination camps
The concentration camps, to serve the requirements of the "Final Solution", with the help of special techniques, were constantly increasing in number and developed by category: in political prisoner camps, which were in operation as early as 1933 (Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen), hundreds of other camps were added forced labor (e.g., Dora Nordhausen - arms factory, Neuengam - brick factory, Gross Rosen - quarry, Gussen - quarry, Mauthausen - quarry), in Germany and the conquered territories (up to North Africa where between 1941 and 1942 they operated 14 labor camps, in Algeria and Morocco, for the construction of a railway crossing the Sahara).
Later some camps added gas chambers, and then crematoria, making them exclusively mass extermination camps (Auschwitz, Birkenau, Majdanek, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor).
The operation of the death camps began in 1941 and peaked in 1943 - 1944. Initially in gas chambers the Nazis used carbon monoxide and the bodies were buried or burned outdoors in pits.
Then the gas ZyklonB replaced carbon monoxide. It was first used, on a trial basis, at Auschwitz in September 1941, and was highly effective. Easy to use and transport while also reducing the time it took to kill victims, qualities useful to the Nazis, who established and generalized the use of Zyklon B in the extermination camps.
With the constant increase in the number of corpses, the Nazis had to deal with the problems arising from this new situation. Mass graves in open space were dysfunctional (caused bad smell, there were risks of transmission of infections, contamination of water from the subsoil), also, burning in pits was considered time-consuming. The problem was solved by building the crematoria for the immediate cremation of the dead. The solution was ingenious, created no ecological problems and guaranteed the secrecy the Nazis wanted to maintain. From the middle of March to the beginning of April 1943, three gas chambers and three crematoriums had begun to operate in Auschwitz (the camp that will be characterized by post-war history as a symbol of the Holocaust), dramatically increasing the "production" of death and the removal corpses. By June one more gas chamber/crematorium unit had been added to Auschwitz. All four units of death together exterminated 4.756 corpses daily that quickly turned to ashes. In the summer of 1944, six full chamber/crematorium units were in operation, the daily destruction of corpses exceeded 9.000, the crematoria were insufficient and cremation was extended to pits in the open air of the camp.
The operation of the concentration and extermination camps was organized at all levels. Displaced persons arrived by train and followed, with order and speed, the sorting process. Those selected for death (elderly, sick, children) arrived at the gas chambers within three hours of their arrival. The younger ones would labor in forced labor and factories until their death, either from hardship or in the gas chambers - when they would be deemed unfit for work and replaced by the new arrivals.
Upon their arrival in the camps, the Jews were indelibly stamped with a number on their arm that would now form their name. With shaved heads, in blue-gray striped uniforms, with the yellow Star of David on the lapel as an insignia, they were piled into stone shacks, with wooden bunk-beds. From that moment they began a new "life", away from the eyes of the rest of the world, about the inhumanity of which humanity would learn after the end of the War. By being brought into the camps, the hostages were effectively starting a march to death, during which they would work from 5 am in quarries, construction sites, railway lines, public works, with only potato soup as their only food.
The Nazis left nothing to chance and nothing unexploited: the personal belongings of the hostages were sorted and channeled by type according to the needs of the Germans: gold teeth and valuables, metal objects (eyeglass frames, razors) that were melted down, clothing, hair from shaved heads which were used in spinning, the very ashes of the corpses which became fertilizer and the fat a raw material for soap, etc.
The camps were now considered "part of the national economy of the Reich". Heavy industry showed great interest in the hostages of the camps, who constituted a constantly renewed, cheap and expendable labor force.
The hostages became laborers as well as human test animals for scientific medical research and the pharmaceutical industry. (The medical experiments on twin brothers, the surgical operations of sterilization of women and castration of men are well known). Unspeakable hardships in the camps and forced labor were also a planned part of the extermination plan. Those unfit for work were killed in the next selection process (Selektion) and young people would take their place.
The gas chambers and crematoria were in full operation until the end of November 1944. Soon after, the Germans themselves ordered the destruction of the crematoria in an attempt to eliminate all traces and evidence of the enormity of their crime. For the same reason the Germans evacuated the camps, as the Allies (landing in Normandy June 6, 1944) and the Soviets (from the east) advanced. The skeletal hostages, a few thousand survivors, under the threat of Nazi weapons, from November 1944 to January 1945, were forced to leave the camps, on foot, in endless marches (which historians later called "death marches"), in the snow of the Polish countryside, where most of them breathed their last.
The extermination camps (indicatively mentioned: Majdanek 350.000 dead, Selmno 300.000, Sobibor 200.000, Belzec 550.000, Treblinka 750.000, Auschwitz-Birkenau 1.500.000) were a unique criminal innovation wholly owned by the Nazis political status and differentiates them from any other historical precedent , writing the blackest page in human history.