Page 100 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol III

holocaust 919

Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been
sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful,
rebellious, and immature. • Tom Robbins, (b. 1936)

German empire with a greater population and new ter- program. Patients from hospitals all over the Reich who
ritory to supply food and raw materials. were considered senile, insane, or in some way “mentally
The conquest of Poland, however, brought another 2 defective” were marked for death. Initially people were
million Jews under German authority. These people killed by starvation, then by injections of lethal doses of
needed to be removed to create the German living space. sedatives, and ultimately by gas. The gas chambers, dis-
Toward that end, Heinrich Himmler, the head of all Ger- guised as showers, were first developed for use in the T-4
man police forces, created special task forces within the program, and corpses were cremated, as those of Jews
elite SS, called Einsatzgruppen, which were charged with would later be in the camps.
liquidating all political enemies of the Third Reich. Hitler’s extermination campaign was already nearly
The Einsatzgruppen killed approximately 1.4 million three years old when Reinhard Heydrich, head of the SS
Jews in actions that involved little more than lining Reich Security Main Office, arranged for a conference in
men, women, and children up in front of ditches and the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942.The
machine-gunning them. Ultimately, however, the mass German army had overrun most of Europe, and the
shooting of Polish Jews was not practical, so while the Nazis recognized that it would require greater coordina-
Nazis planned the creation of special camps for the effi- tion among their various institutions and officials to
cient extermination of the Jews, they decided to isolate accomplish the goal of a “final solution” to the Jewish
them in ghettos. question, namely the extermination of the 11 million
Jews Hitler believed to be living in Europe.
Ghettoization From that point until the surrender of Germany, the
The Polish ghettos were enclosed areas—barbed wire at Nazis followed the course laid out at Wannsee and mur-
Lodz, a brick wall in Warsaw and Cracow—guarded by dered approximately 6 million Jews as well as an almost
German soldiers. The Jews tried to live as normally as equal number of non-Jews. The killing continued
possible, but conditions in the ghettos were horrible. unabated even when the tide of war turned against Ger-
Malnutrition was widespread and death by starvation many. When every German was needed to fight, and
and disease was a daily occurrence. when food, oil, and transportation were in short supply,
Each ghetto was administered by a Jewish council resources continued to be diverted to the killing of Jews
(Judenrat) composed of influential members of the Jew- rather than to military use.
ish community who had to decide whether to help the The Germans were determined to find practical ways
Nazis or risk being murdered for their refusal.While the to kill as many people as quickly as possible.They built
Judenrats hoped to improve the plight of Jews in the six camps—Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Maj-
ghettos, they were often forced to choose who would be danek, and Auschwitz/Birkenau—specifically for mur-
deported to the death camps. Ultimately, their coopera- dering Jews. In Auschwitz alone, more than a million
tion did not save them from suffering the same fate as the people were murdered, mostly in gas chambers.
other Jews. In 1942, Hitler decided to liquidate the
ghettos and, within eighteen months, had the more than The Last Stop
2 million Jews deported to death camps. Jews deported from their homes or ghettos were usually
told they were being transferred to another area or sent
The Final Solution to work; they had no idea what to expect when they were
The first people Hitler systematically began to murder packed like animals into boxcars and shipped to their
were not Jews. In September 1939, he gave an order final destination. Before they knew what was happening,
authorizing doctors to grant “the incurably ill a merciful their possessions were seized and they were confronted
death.” The program was based in Berlin at No. 4 Tier- by snarling dogs, armed soldiers, and officials barking
gartenstrasse and became known afterward as the T-4 orders at them.Those taken directly from the trains to the