Holocaust

Holocaust

From Hitler’s rain of terror came the Holocaust and the extermination of the Jews. It began with the first assault against the Jews to the beginning of ghettoization to Hitler’s plan to exterminate the Jews; and then the Nuremberg laws. The horror of the holocaust can never be justified. Hitler was to blame for this act against Humanity.

After the boycott of Jewish business came the laws and views that deprived the Jews of their personal benefits and livelihood. The reason of the boycott was that Jews weren’t from Aryan decent, as the German population seems to be. There were two laws passed: 1) the law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service and 2) the law against the Overcrowding of German Schools and the Institutions of Higher Learning. With these laws the Jews that served in the war where allowed exception. This law divided the Jews who served in the army and proved themselves to the German people and those Jews who didn’t serve in the war. The number of Jews was one hundred thousand, or one in six Jews of the population that served during the war. Of those who didn’t serve in the war; their children were not allowed to attend school. Those Jews who did serve intermarried; their children were allowed to attend school. When the Nuremberg laws were passed in 1935 everything changed. The fall of 1933 announced the expulsion of the Jews from the 3rd Reich. Jewish guilds were crushed.

The Orthodox Jews will not want it and will not listen to us. They will suffer and

go hungry rather than defile themselves by eating meat slaughtered by the method decreed by the wicked ones….. The Jews of Germany must stand up to the trail for

the sake of our holy law. We must show the entire world that we are ready to

sacrifice ourselves for the sanctity of Israel… (Witness to the Holocaust, 1997, p. 19)

The Jews stood up to their beliefs and were going to sacrifice themselves for it. With the two laws (Nuremberg laws), the law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor and the Reich Citizenship law, no Jew were to be citizens, but just state subjects. A marriage between Jews and German people of Aryan decent was prohibited. No Aryan woman under the age of forty-five was to be employed in a Jewish household. The Jews were not allowed to fly the Reich flag. “Though these laws may seem innocuous and merely the work of bureaucrats, categorization had deadly consequences. Definition was the first step toward destruction.” (Witness to the Holocaust, 1997, p. 24). The Jews that converted to be priests were stripped of that title or position and declared as Jews. No longer were Jews or half-Jews allowed to be a citizen; and this divided Germany. From the Evian Conference of the refugee crisis, Hitler said:

I can only hope that the other world which has such deep sympathy for these criminals (Jews) will at least be generous enough to convert this sympathy into practical aid. We on our part are ready to put all these criminals at the disposal of these countries, for all I care, even on luxury ships. (Witness to the Holocaust, 1997, p. 32)

In the end Germany gloated. If each nation had agreed to take in seventeen thousand Jews at once, every Jew in the Reich would have been saved but they failed, as no single nation would accept Jewish refugees. The November pogroms became the start of the destruction and killing of Jews in Germany. This started from the assassination of a German embassy official in Paris by a Jewish teenager. With the burning of 1,300 synagogues along with Torah scrolls, Bibles and prayer books, Aryan buildings were to be watched so that they would not go up in flames. 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps, and 7,000 businesses were destroyed; merchandise was stolen. Jewish cemeteries, schools, hospitals, and homes were destroyed also, and 236 Jews were murdered. All this happened in 48 hours.

The November pogroms were the last occasion for the street violence against Jews in Germany. While Jews could thereafter leave their homes without fear of attack, a lethal process of destruction that was more effective and more virulent was set in place. (Witness to the Holocaust, 1997, p.42)

The Beginning of Gettoization came after the November Pogroms. A council of Jewish elders was established on the soul purpose of being responsible for the evacuation of the Jews. The council of elders saw that orders are carried out and the Jews were to obey the Jewish council. For the policy on schooling, Himmler writes:

For the non-German population of the East there must be no higher school that the four-grade elementary school. The sole goal of this school is to be simple arithmetic- up to five hundred at the most; writing of one’s name; the doctrine that it is a divine law to obey the Germans and to be honest, industrious, and good. I don’t think that reading is necessary. (Witness to the Holocaust, 1997, p. 70-71)

From this no leadership class could emerge, and later on a difference would emerge. Jews are to be killed; all Jews, and Jewish labor is to be devalued. The behavior of Jews during the Holocaust is more controversial than that of the role of the Judenrat, or Jewish council, who were the leaders over the ghetto population. The Judenrat was subject to criticism from the ghettoized Jews. To the ghettoized Jews the Judenrat were the representatives and enforcers of the German orders the ones who did the dirty work. It is said that if the Jews had been unorganized and leaderless, then there would have been chaos, and the victims would not be between four and a half to six million people. The Judenrat leaders soon refused to let their Jews be sent to death or be brought to near-death or deportation. From this act, the leaders were shot. Others committed suicide rather than to participate in Jewish deportation or to turn over Jews to the Nazis. As a result there was a mass killing of Jews by the Nazis which caused the fall of the Judenrat council. Throughout Nazi rule, the Jews where the central target. Though Jews were not the only target of the Nazis, other groups targeted were: political opponents, socialists, liberals, trade unionists, dissident clergy, those who didn’t fit in with the racial theories, mentally retarded, physically handicapped, emotionally disturbed Germans, Gypsies, and also Jehovah Witnesses. When the German Army captured Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, a number of German buildings were destroyed by the Soviet Secret Police. The Germans sought retaliation and the Jews of Kiev were targeted. An outdoor office