In what ways did the Nazis try to eliminate all Jews in Europe in the years from 1941 onwards?

HOLOCAUST COURSEWORK ASSIGNMENT

3. In what ways did the Nazis try to eliminate all Jews in Europe in the years from 1941 onwards?

The Nazis used many methods to eliminate all the Jews in Europe from 1941 onwards. They used concentration camps, Ghettos, Death camps, Einsatzgruppen (murder squads) and the Final Solution.

The Final Solution was the plan to annihilate all the Jews out of Europe. This was also known as the mass murder of the Jews (Genocide). The persecution of the Jews was applied in stages. After the Nazi party achieved power, state enforced racism resulted in anti-Jewish legislation, boycotts, “Aryanization,” Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) programme, all of which was aimed towards the Jewish population, specifically to isolate them from the German society and to drive them out of the German area. After the June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) began killing operations aimed entirely at the Jewish communities. The SS, the Elite Guard of the Nazi state, soon regarded the mobile killing methods, mainly shooting and/or gas vans, as inefficient as psychological trouble on the killers. In the autumn of 1941, Heinrich Himmler assigned SS General Odilo Globocnik (SS and police leader for Lublin) to take out the operation of systematically murdering the Jews of the general government. This operation was then given the codename Aktion Reinhard after Heydrich (who had been tasked with implementing the final solution and who was assassinated by Czech partisans in May 1942). Three extermination camps were established in Poland as a part of Aktion Reinhard, these were called Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. On arrival at the camps, Jews were sent directly to gas chambers. Globocnik assistant, SS Major Hermann Hoeffel, was in charge of organising the deportation to the Aktion Reinhard camps. The Nazis also gassed Jews in other extermination camps in Poland: Auschwitz Berkenau (the largest of all camps), Majdanek and Chelmno. At Majdanek, groups of Jews who were considered incapable of doing the work required were gassed. In Chelmno all of the Jews were gassed in mobile gas vans. The Nazis systematically murdered over three million Jews in extermination camps. In its whole, the “Final Solution” called for the murder of the Jews of Europe by gassing, shooting and other ways. Up to six million Jews lost their lives, and that’s the same amount of Jews that were living in Europe in 1939.

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There was a Ghetto in every major city. A Ghetto was designed to keep the Jewish population of that city in a confined area. The largest Ghetto held one hundred and sixty five thousand people in a space of 1.6 square miles. Warsaw housed over 350 thousand Jews. The Germans occupied Warsaw on September 29, 1939. The order of establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto came in 1940. The Ghetto was sealed on November 15, 1940, and ultimately contained 500 thousand people. It was surrounded by a ten-foot high wall, which on top was lined with barbed wire. In February of 1940, all of the “undesirable” in the Lodz were forced into the northeastern part of the Lodz to form a Ghetto. The Ghetto was sealed on May 7, 1940. The Ghetto was separated from the rest of the community by barbed wired fences. Streetcars were allowed to pass through the streets of the Ghetto but they were not allowed to stop in any circumstance. Most of the community did not have any running water or a sewer system. The Lodz and Warsaw Ghettos are just two examples of the torture that was put up with throughout the Holocaust. The memory of these Ghettos has survived despite constant denial of the Holocaust. It is important to recognize the pain and suffering of the Jewish community in order to assure us that the past cannot and will not repeat itself, or be forgotten.

Concentration Camps, also known as work camps, work centres or prison camps, were camps set up by the Nazis to house political prisoners or people they considered to be “undesirable”. Prisoners were made to work like slaves and many died as a result of starvation, disease or beatings. When in a concentration camp, you were expected to work in order to survive. If you were unable to work, you were killed as soon as you entered the campsite. The people who were mainly killed were the elderly, disabled, mentally disabled and the children. If you survived this terrible experience in the concentration camps, you were then moved off to the Death Camps.

Death camps were also used to kill the Jews if they already survived the Concentration Camps. They used Zyklon B pellets. This produced a deadly poisonous gas when it reacts with the oxygen in the air. But if there were too many Jews in the camp they were shot. But if there weren’t enough bullets, they will be burnt alive using a flamethrower.

Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) were squads of German SS and police. They were under the command of security police (Sipo) and security service (SD) officers. The Einsatzgruppen had a task to murder any racial or political enemies found behind the front lines in the occupied Soviet Union. These were people like Jews, (men, women, and children) Roma’s (Gypsies) and also officials of the Soviet State and Communist Party.

The Einsatzgruppen also murdered thousands of people who lived in the homes designed specially for the mentally and physically disabled people.

During the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Einsatzgruppen followed the German army as it advanced deep into Soviet Territory. The Einsatzgruppen, often drawing on local support, carried out mass-murder operations. In contrast to the process of deporting Jews from Ghettos to camps, Einsatzgruppen came directly to the home communities of the Jews and slaughtered them.

The German army provided vital support to the Einsatzgruppen, including supplies, transportation and housing. At first the Einsatzgruppen shot mainly Jewish men. Soon, wherever the Einsatzgruppen went, they shot all Jewish men, women and children without thought for their age or sex. They were all buried in a massive grave nearby. Late in July 1941, a troop of order police, under the command of higher SS and police leaders recently chosen for the occupied Soviet Union, engaged in systematic annihilation operations against larger Jewish communities.

By Marcus Wright