ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE HOLOCAUST - …



ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE HOLOCAUST

There is a long tradition of anti-Semitism in Europe:

• It has its roots in religion - in the assertion that the Jews murdered Jesus.

• The most notorious anti-Semitic practices in the 19thc were the 'pogroms' in Russia.

• It also stems from cultural differences - by culture, by religion, by rituals and dress.

• In the 19thc Jews became prominent in the professions and active in industry and commerce - this often led to envy and criticism.

• At the same time, Jews became increasingly associated with liberalism, radicalism, socialism and communism - the idea took root in anti-Semitic circles that to do away with Jews would also do away with capitalism and socialism.

The Nazis and race theory:

Central to Nazi thinking was the belief in the superiority of the Aryans - the white Europeans of the blond, Nordic type. It was argued that assimilation of Jews would result in a tainting of Aryan stock through racial mixing of blood. Social Darwinism transferred Darwin's idea of the 'survival of the fittest' to the human world. The 'master race' would become the Volkgemeinschaft, and the inferior and weak would become victims. The theory of eugenics (which argued that society should discourage 'unfit' members from breeding) was also influential. Mein Kampf developed Hitler's ideas. He blamed the Jews for Germany's troubles, claimed they were responsible for the invention of Marxism, for Germany's defeat in WWI and for the subsequent humiliation of Versailles.

The historical debate:

Did Hitler plan the Holocaust from the moment the Nazis took power? There has been an important debate on this subject. On the one hand there are those who believe that it was the Nazis’ constant and unwavering intention to destroy European Jewry; these historians are called the intentionalists. On the other side there are those that argue that the Holocaust was reached by a 'twisted road' and that many forces within the German state as well as without helped to bring it about. They are known as functionalists.

The large historical frame:

The eminent historian of the Holocaust, Raul Hilberg in The destruction of the European Jews says that there were three main steps in the road to genocide:

• The process begins with Christianity's ghettoisation of the Jews after failing to convert them.

• The process continues in secular Europe when the Jews are perceived as an economic threat and liberal assimilation fails.

• The Final Solution arrives with the 'scientific' theory of the Jews as racially inferior and a menace to the purity of Aryan blood.

“The German Nazis, then, did not discard the past; they built on it. They did not begin a development; they completed it. In the deep recesses of anti-Jewish history we shall find many of the administrative and psychological tools with which the Nazis implemented their destruction process. In the hollows of the past we shall also discover the roots of the characteristic Jewish response to an outside attack”, Raul Hilberg.

The persecution of the Jews:

Limited persecution included:

• April 1933: Hitler sanctioned a one-day boycott of Jewish shops and businesses. A law was enacted banning Jews from the civil service. Hitler restrained the worst Jew-haters at the beginning of his regime because their businesses were important for his economic plans.

• The Nuremberg Laws of 1935: during the famous Nuremberg rally of 1935, Hitler announced Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour. The resulting laws became known as the Nuremberg laws. By 1935, Nazi activists were frustrated by the lack of action against the Jews; the SA was particularly active in their demonstrations against Jewish ‘contamination’. The new laws were proclaimed in 1935 and they stated: marriages between Germans and Jews were forbidden, relations between Jews and Germans outside marriage were forbidden, Jews were not to employ Germans under the age of 45, Jews were deprived of citizenship.

In 1936 there was a respite in the anti-Semitic campaign because of the Olympic Games – a myth has since developed that Hitler was unable to hide his displeasure when Jesse Owens, a black athlete, won four gold medals. However, in 1936, the Jews lost the right to vote. They had to wear the yellow Star of David. Many Jewish firms had remained in business, but in 1937 a series of decrees ‘Aryanised’ Jewish businesses when Jews were forced to sell or liquidate their businesses at ridiculous prices. In 1938 Jews were barred from law, business and medicine.

Kristallnacht, 1938:

The persecution culminated in Kristallnacht (Broken-glass night). Goebbels had ordered this in reprisal for a Jewish attack on a German embassy official in Paris. More than 8,000 Jewish homes and shops were attacked. 100 Jews were killed and 20,000 arrested. Goering blamed the Jews for the violence and they were fined one billion Reichmarks. Many Jews, including Albert Einstein, emigrated at this time. The world was shocked and so were many Germans who could not speak out openly.

Exodus:

About one half of the 500,000 German and the 200,000 Austrian Jews contrived to emigrate; they lost about 30 - 50% of their capital on doing so. The UK had no quota system and took about 80,000 Jews, but there was resistance and later the British government limited the numbers able to go to Palestine. Other countries were also hostile to immigration

Europe under Nazi occupation:

It was the German takeover of areas in the east of Europe as well as countries in Western Europe that encouraged the Nazis to think in more radical terms. There was a plan to settle 4 million Jews on the French island colony of Madagascar but this was abandoned because of British control of the seas. As an interim solution, Jews were shipped to German controlled areas of Poland.

The Jews of Poland:

In Poland, 10% of the population was Jewish. With the German occupation of Poland the old pattern of pogrom and anti-Semitic abuse was encouraged. New decrees were published almost daily limiting the freedom and activities of the Jewish population.

The ghettoes:

Ghettoisation under the Nazis was a gradual process. The first main ghetto was set up in Lodz in April 1940, with the Warsaw ghetto created later that year. Jews were forced to live in squalid conditions, wracked by disease. The process was carried out by the Einsatzgruppen, the SS Special Action Groups, which murdered national leaders as well as confining Jews to ghettoes. Each ghetto had its own council, consisting of members of the Jewish community. The question was whether the councils would make it easier to persecute the Jews or to cushion the effects of persecution. Some leaders of the Councils believed in a policy of ‘salvation through work’ – this fitted in with the economic strategy of the SS.

About half a million people were crammed into 1.3 square miles of Warsaw and the population toiled in ghetto industries. The death rate in the ghettoes was terrifying and by 1942 over 100,000 Jews had perished because of the conditions. In that year the Nazis ordered all ‘non-productive’ Jews to be ‘resettled’. The Judenrat, or council, did not resist because there was a belief that as long as Jews were productive, they would be safe. By September 1942, there were only 70,000 left in the ghetto and they were killed after the Warsaw ghetto rising.

The final solution:

It seems that Hitler, and the prominent Nazi leaders Goering and Heydrich, came to the conclusion that the ‘final solution to the Jewish question’ was genocide – the extermination of all Jews. The SS would enter towns and villages, order all Jews together and take them to a place of execution. The corpses would be disposed of in prepared pits. In January 1942 a high level meeting of leading Nazis took place at Wansee, a suburb of Berlin. The assembly was told that Hitler had agreed that Jews would be transported to extermination camps in Poland. Adolf Eichmann was made responsible for the programme of genocide.

Death in the camps:

The extermination camps were built in Poland; some historians have felt that the Nazis felt that they could hide the terrible secret of genocide in Poland better than on German soil. Jews from all over Europe were transported by train to Auschwitz, Belsen, Chelmo, Treblinka, Maianek, Sobibor and Stitthof. The established concentration camps, such as Belsen, Dachau and Buchenwald, also had to take a number for extermination. The extermination camps were industrial killing centres, processing deaths on a massive scale. Some had work camps attached which used slave labour, like the huge IG Farben camp at Auschwitz which employed 15,000 Jews on average at any time.

The sites of the extermination camps were remote but they were accessible by train. Auschwitz was the most modern and advanced extermination centre, using Zyklon B hydrogen cyanide tablets in the gas chambers. 2 million Jews were killed here, often within an hour of arrival. About 10% of each transport was selected for work. The Jews were robbed of their possessions and their bodies were cremated.

The Holocaust was the first genocide totally dependent on modern science and industrial techniques, and the whole process was perfected with the help of German industry – Jewish slaves were literally worked to death. The life expectancy of a Jewish slave was three months. The camps were self-financing – financed from the wealth stripped from the Jews.

Jewish resistance:

In most countries occupied by the Nazis there was little resistance. As each new measure of persecution was introduced, Europe’s Jews hoped that the worst had come and by the time the horrific reality arrived, it was far too late to escape. Jews had little access to arms or explosives or military training. In the ghettoes, resistance was seen as suicidal. There are some cases of rebellion. The most prolonged resistance was the Warsaw ghetto uprising, this lasted about four weeks.

Hitler’s role:

For historians trying to explain the Holocaust, Hitler remains the key. David Irvine expresses the view that Hitler was not responsible - there is no written evidence that Hitler ordered the Final Solution. Hitler was not at Wansee and there is no evidence that he visited the extermination camps. Yet there is evidence to suggest that Hitler knew what was going on. Nazi policies were firmly based on Hitler’s racial theories, which were a central theme of Mein Kampf. Hitler may have ordered his followers to ease persecution between 1933-37 because he was an astute politician who was consolidating his position, but he continued to speak in violent terms about Jews and he supported notorious Jew-haters such as Goering, Heydrich and Streicher. He was responsible for the use of the Einsatzgruppen in the murder of Russian Jews from 1941. The genocide practised in the Nazi extermination camps was the logical conclusion of Hitler’s policy of ‘racial cleansing’.

Collective Guilt:

The traditional interpretation presented by historians is that most Germans took no direct action against the Jews and were unaware of the Final Solution. This view has been challenged, most notably by Daniel Goldhagen, in his book Hitler’s Willing Executioners. The title suggests that Germans were willing participants in the mass killings. Most historians reject this claim but there are some questions to be answered.

When the Germans voted for the Nazis in 1932 and 1933 they were not voting for the extermination of the Jews. They were disillusioned by the Weimar politicians, feared the Communists, had lost their savings and jobs and were worried about the violence in their country. Some were anti-Semitic, many were impressed by Nazi propaganda but most did not see the laws against Jews as applying to their own neighbours and friends.

The country was under a dictatorship where there was control over every aspect of life. Hitler and his followers were in charge of information and through the Gestapo had the power to intimidate and terrorise. Many Germans simply kept their heads down. The extermination camps were constructed outside Germany. The language of extermination was sanitised. War breeds rumour and stories of extermination could be dismissed. Even the Jews sometimes co-operated in their own transportation.

However, the scale of extermination was such that it could not be fully concealed. There was apathy and indifference. A survey of Nazi party members after the war reveals that a majority were indifferent to the fate of the Jews. Many of those involved were fanatics and sadists; others were doing their duty as they saw it. But, not all Germans remained cowed; some resisted Hitler – Sophie Scholl and the White Rose movement, Count von Staffenberg and, most famously, Oskar Schindler.

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