...On October 5, 1942, by accident, Hermann Graebe, a German engineer and manager of a German construction firm in the Ukraine, and his foreman, came upon an Einsatz execution squad killing Jews from the small town of Dubno in the Ukraine. He gave the following eyewitness account: "My foreman and I went directly to the pits. Nobody bothered us. Now I heard rifle shots in quick succession from behind one of the earth mounds. The people who had got off the trucks - men, women and children of all ages - had to undress upon the order of an SS man who carried a riding or dog whip. They had to put down their clothes in fixed places, sorted according to shoes, top clothing and undergarments. I saw heaps of shoes of about 800 to 1000 pairs, great piles of under-linen and clothing. Without screaming or weeping these people undressed, stood around in family groups, kissed each other, said farewells, and waited for a sign from another SS man, who stood near the pit, also with a whip in his hand. During the fifteen minutes I stood near, I heard no complaint or plea for mercy. I watched a family of about eight persons, a man and a woman both of about fifty, with their children of about twenty to twenty-four, and two grown-up daughters about twenty-eight or twenty-nine. An old woman with snow white hair was holding a one year old child in her arms and singing to it and tickling it. The child was cooing with delight. The parents were looking on with tears in their eyes. The father was...
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...The Einsatzgruppen were four groups of ruthless, savage killers. They killed anyone who Nazi Germany did not see “fit” or worthy to live. Instead of taking them to concentration or death camps, they did one of two things. They either killed everyone in their own village then burned it to the ground or made huge pits, lined them up and shot them so the bodies would stack up on each other. These gruesome methods proved useful since they killed over a million Jews in the 5 years they were organized. After a while, the shootings took a psychological toll on the Einsatzgruppen. One leader came up with a solution of mobile gas chambers. A car would carry a trailer. The victims would be forced in thinking they were on their way to a concentration...
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...The Holocaust was an act of genocide that claimed the lives of many innocent people in many cruel ways. The victims’ fates were chosen by Nazi doctors through a process called selection. The Schutzstaffel (SS men) would take victims from their homes and families and put them into concentration camps where they would find out if they were to live or die. There were two main options in the concentration camps: labor or gas chamber. If the fate of the prisoner wasn’t labor or the gas chamber then they were likely shot or died because of the harsh conditions that they had to live in. That’s mainly how the victims were murdered. Another way their lives were taken was by the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units). These killing units would...
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...Many as one million Jews were killed by the Einsatzgruppen, this approach to solving the Jewish problem was soon perceived as inadequate. Nazis opted for the systematic annihilation of the European Jewish population in specially built death camps. Jewish were packed like cattle into freight trains, and shipped to poland, where six extermination centers were built for this purpose. The largest and most infamous was Auschwitz - Birkenau. This was responsible for 80,000 alleged racially unfit mental and physical defectives in Germany between 1938 and 1914. As the most effective gas for quickly killing large number of people in gas chambers. After gassing, the corpses would be burned in specially built crematoria. To inform the party and state officials of the general procedures for the final solution...
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...West (lecture 1/8/16). The blockade started on June 1948 to May 1949. The whole idea behind the Blockade was to force the western allies out of “Berlin by blocking all ground access to the city” (lecture, 1/8/16). This was possible because getting into Berlin you had to travel through Soviet occupied East Germany. The allies were able to get around the blockade by airlifting massive amounts of supplies to Berlin (lecture, 1/8/16). This was significant because it showed how the relations between the Soviet Union and the Allies have deteriorated. It also showed the Allies logistical capabilities to keep the city of Berlin running during a blockade. The Soviets considered the blockade a failure and opened up the roads again in May 1949. Einsatzgruppen The...
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...The Holocaust: Suggested Reading There is a wealth of information about the Holocaust. So much has been written, in fact, that it can be difficult to determine where to start. This reading list is collected from recommendations from other members of The Holocaust History Project. It is not a complete bibliography but represents our opinion as to what are the most useful starting places for research. Since this list concentrates on works that are easily available and useful to a person unacquainted with the history of the Holocaust, many excellent books which are rare or out of print are not listed. Another class of books that are not included is works that are controversial because of their contents or the unusual theories they propose. Some of these are excellent works, others are not. But we feel that the reader for whom this list was compiled would not have the knowledge needed to evaluate these discussions of the legitimate controversies about the Holocaust. Just as a medical student must learn anatomy before he or she is taught surgery, someone studying the Holocaust must know the factual background before some of the more technical studies can be understood. As well as general works we have included books of specialized interest concerning the matters about which we at The Holocaust History Project are most frequently asked. Many of these books deal with more than one subject, but in the interest of brevity we have not cited a book more than once. General history of the...
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...As mentioned in class, a Nazi-Soviet Pact, also known as the nonaggression pact, was signed between the Nazis and Soviets. In the act, it mentions how Poland would be divided in two separate sections between the two parties if a war were to break out. Russia would have eastern Poland and Baltic states while the Nazi’s would have western Poland. After the pact was created Germany invaded Poland which caused World War II to occur. Thus, Britain and France declared war on Germany a few days later. While the Nazi’s were invading Poland it brought up the question on what should be done to the three million Jews who resided there. So, the Einsatzgruppen was created, which was a paramilitary division whose task it was to execute Jews, Communists,...
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...cold blood are being perpetrated by the German Police-troops upon the Russian patriots who defend their native soil. Since the Mongol invasions of Europe in the Sixteenth Century, there has never been methodical, merciless butchery on such a scale, or approaching such a scale. And this is but the beginning. Famine and pestilence have yet to follow in the bloody ruts of Hitler's tanks. We are in the presence of a crime without a name. " Churchill's information about the mass executions which followed the German invasion came directly from a German source. Six weeks before on July 9 British cryptographers broke the "enigma" code used by Berlin to communicate with the Eastern Front. Regular reports from mobile killing squads (the Einsatzgruppen which Churchill called "Police-troops") gave detailed accounts and specific numbers of 'Jews' and 'Jewish Bolshevists' killed in mass at locations throughout the occupied territory of the Soviet...
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...The Judenrat was a Jewish Council that was established by German orders in the Jewish Communities of Nazi occupied Europe. The Judenrat was called “Aeltestenrat” which meant “Council of Elders.” Nazi authority eventually created a Judenrat in every single ghetto there was in Nazi occupied Europe (Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team, 2007). As the Nazis liquidated Eastern Europe’s ghettos during 1942 and 1943, the Judenrat led doomed communities. In 1944, the Germans destroyed the Aeltestenrat and deported all the remaining members (The Holocaust Chronicle: A History in Words and Pictures, 2005). Samuel Zygelbojm served in the Warsaw Ghetto’s First Jewish Council. He fought for resistance when the Nazi authorities demanded that Warsaw’s...
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...The Final solution evolved because of the chaotic nature of the Nazi regime in the years1939-42 - How far do you agree with this opinion. 1942 - 1945 = three years of systematic extermination. what was the major turning point which led to a policy of systematic extermination? * The systematic programme for the annihilation of Europe's Jews was formed by spring 1942. (Wansee conference) LONG TERM FACTORS OF THE FINAL SOLUTION * History of Anti-semitism - a tradition accross Europe embedded in societies for hundreds of years - Hitler did not invent anti-semitism he adopted it. e.g. Russian pogroms - example of anti-semitism in Western Europe. The first concentration camp for Jews was in London under the rule of Elizabeth I. * Linking of A race (Judaism) and an ideology (Communism) * Resentment against Jews: = SCAPEGOATS. 'November Criminals' / 'stab in the Back' - Treaty of Versailles - Ebert was Jewish - Hitler manipulated these events and portrayed the Jews as the plague of Society. * The Great Depression of the 1930's - provided the opportunity for extremist parties to rise to power. - Hitler also blamed this on the Jews. * Lebensraum (living space) ideology - dominant in Hitler's World View - tied in with the extermination of Jews. * The Chaotic nature of the Nazi party = Working towards the fuhrer - Gauleiter left to their own devices - implemented their own rules over their areas. SHORT TERM FACTORS OF THE FINAL SOLUTION *...
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...The twelve trials that were held were (1) the medical case, (2) Milch case, (3) Justice case, (4) Pohl case, (5) Flick case, (6) I.G. Farben Case, (7) Hostage case, (8) RuSHA case, (9) Einsatzgruppen case, (10) Krupp case, (11) Ministries case, and twelve the High Command case (Simon Adams, 32).The first trial, the Medical case, was held on December ninth, 1946 (Angela Wood, 169). The case had criminal proceedings against twenty-three German physicians and administrators They were held against criminal proceedings for their participation in war crimes and crimes against humanity. After about forty days of proceeding, eighty-five witnesses, and one thousand-five hundred documents the judges announced their verdict on August 20, 1947. Sixteen doctors were guilty and seven were sentenced to death. The second case, Milch case, was held on December 14, 1946. This case was for former field Marshal Erchard Milch. Milch had three counts;...
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...issue was addressed again at conference held in Geneva under the League of Nations on 1–16 November 1937, but no practical results followed. The United Nations states that the General Assembly first recognized the need for a permanent international court to deal with atrocities of the kind committed during World War II in 1948, following the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals. At the request of the General Assembly, the International Law Commission drafted two statutes by the early 1950s but these were shelved as the Cold War made the establishment of an international criminal court politically unrealistic. Benjamin B. Ferencz, an investigator of Nazi war crimes after World War II and the Chief Prosecutor for the United States Army at the Einsatzgruppen Trial, one of the twelve military trials held by the U.S. authorities at Nuremberg, later became a vocal advocate of the establishment of an international rule of law and of an International Criminal Court. In his first book published in 1975, entitled Defining International Aggression-The Search for World Peace, he argued for the establishment of such an international court. The idea was revived in 1989 when A. N. R. Robinson, then Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, proposed the creation of a permanent international court to deal with the illegal drug trade. While work began on a draft statute, the international community established ad hoc tribunals to try war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, further highlighting the...
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...seven minutes in the gas chambers (Margret and William 232). After the victims were eliminated in the gas chambers, the bodies were then taken to crematory ovens. The bodies burned for about twenty minutes and the ashes would then be taken elsewhere (Margret and William 232). The Nazis treated the Jews inhumanly during the Holocaust. The Nazis(Perpetrators) were a political party(1933-1945) that used totalitarian methods, and it was led by Adolf Hitler. The Nazis hated the Jews the most,killed over 6 million Jews. The Nazis did not only kill Jews, but also those against Adolf Hitler's beliefs (Holocaust). The Nazis were very cruel and evil, the Nazis were not about fun games, they were about the extermination of races A group called the Einsatzgruppen killed about one million Jews very quickly, from going from town to town (Holocaust). Horror had struck on the day of the Heydrich Reinhard assassination and it gave much more of a powerful killing motivation for the Nazis. The Nazis then killed the assassinators and the Ludic population (Holocaust). The Jewish Victims perspective on how they were treated was horrid. The Jews experienced extreme hatred and segregation by the Nazis. The Jews were at the mercy of the Nazis,and had to do whatever the Nazis told them to do. The Nazis did not have any mercy upon the innocent Jews, they cruelly wanted them gone. The Night of Broken Glass was a frightening time for the Jews, it occurred on November 9-10, 1938. The Nazis destroyed religious...
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...In the article it states, “The Nazi’s began a large-scale massacre of Soviet Jews using mobile killing units called Einsatzgruppen, which they had tried out earlier in Poland” (“Death Camps”). This illustrates how Nazi soldiers, and the German army, made a negative impact on the Holocaust because they put the Jews and other people into the camps and murdered them in brutal ways. The Nazi and German army treated the Jews inhumanly by doing harmful things to them. For example, “Members of the German military murdered or were complicit in the murder of Jews” (“The German military and the Holocaust”). This information reveals that the Nazi soldiers and German army were the ones who carried out the execution of the Jews and had the blood on their hands. In other words, Nazi soldiers and the German army were also responsible for the tragedies that occurred during the...
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...discriminate against the Jews were highly tolerated. All of this combined with Hitler’s radical nature set the stage for the slaughter of the Jewish people. Legal discrimination against the Jewish people began immediately after the Nazis took power in 1933. However, the mass slaughtering of all the European Jewish people were widely kept a secret until after the war. These highly topped secret death camps were first coordinated and discussed at the Wannsee Conference held in Berlin. This conference was between all of the highest ranking Nazi officials and its purpose was to have a plan set in place to effectively exterminate the Jewish population. As the Germans advanced on both fronts of the war, they began using mobile units known as SS Einsatzgruppen (action squads) to round up all of the Jews, which would either send them to camps or murder them in mass graves. At these concentration camps, the most advanced technology was used in order to effectively...
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