Holocaust during Years 1938 - 1944 - Term Paper Example

THE HOLOCAUST DURING YEARS 1938-1944 INTRODUCTION: REMEMBERING HOLOCAUST By the end of the War, Hitler’s National Socialism had killed most of Germany’s Jews and severely damaged the few survivors of the death machinery. The Holocaust as historical atrocious phenomenon caused the creation of more documents than any other historical event. Yet most stories of those in the camps could not have been written; six million Jewish people lost their lives, and with them we lost the possibility of hearing die stories of the horrors they had to endure. As Irving Howe points out, the fundamentally unintelligible nature of the Holocaust leaves anyone concerned with Holocaust testimony disarmed and helpless (Howe, 175). Even the survivors, who should know the most about the horrors they endured, acknowledge the inexplicability of the Holocaust. Robert Lifton quotes a survivor as saying, “the professor would like to understand what is not understandable. We ourselves, who were there and who have always asked ourselves the question, and will ask it until the end of our lives, we will never understand it because it cannot be understood” (Lifton, 1). If the survivors themselves cannot explain what has happened to them or how the Holocaust could have happened, how then can the listeners and readers of their testimonies or anyone else ever come to such an understanding? Yet we cannot leave this dilemma as it stands. Silence or withdrawal from these questions cannot be an option; something so fundamentally horrifying as the Holocaust demands attention and engagement. Roger Gottlieb asserts: “As difficult as it is, finding the meanings of the Holocaust is an essential task. If we do not seek its meanings we cannot begin to understand how it occurred or how to integrate it into our moral, political, and spiritual visions” (Gottlieb, 2). According to Gottlieb, one needs to allow for emotional as well as intellectual response to the Holocaust. Emotions are needed to access the very nature of the Holocaust, but if these emotions are not intellectually processed, one will remain overwhelmed by them. It is vital to understand that Holocaust was about complete annihilation of Jewish population. However, not everyone and not every scholar realizes completely the magnitude of Holocaust and Nazi strategies that stood behind this tragedy. From the critical perspective, Hitler’s murderous death machinery aimed to achieve the complete destruction of Jewish people through targeting its most vulnerable and vital members – women and children. SURVIVING SELEKTION AND HOLOCAUST: EVIDENCE AND STATISTICS ON WOMEN AND CHILDREN In her famous book Auschwitz and After Charlotte Delbo describes what has been the first and last impression of Auschwitz for most arriving Jews: “Women and children first, they are the most exhausted. After that the men. They are weary too but relieved that their women and children should go first. For women and children are made to go first” (Delbo, 4-5). The guards, without any consideration for friends and families, separated men and women and sent to immediate death the old or weak, women with small children, and older children and adolescents. This scenario held true not only for Auschwitz; the rigorous Selektion resulted in the murder of 80 to 90 percent of Jews shortly after they arrived at concentration camps that also functioned as extermination camps. Survival chances for women were considerably less than those for men. As an example, a document by the Obersturmfuhrer Schwarz quotes the following extermination rates (under the code name of “special treatment”) for October 5, 1943 in Auschwitz: Transport from Berlin. Arrivals 5 March 1943. Total 1,128 Jews. 389 men were selected for work (Buna). 151 men and 492 women and children were given special treatment. Transport from Breslau. Arrival 5 March 1943. Total 1,405 Jews. 406 men and 190 women were selected for work (Buna). 125 men and 684 women and children were given special treatment (Noakes and Pridham, 1184). Although the Nazis considered most women capable of work, they chose not to separate mothers from their young children, fearing that such separations would cause too much of a disturbance. Therefore, motherhood was directly linked to extermination; fatherhood was not. For Jewish children, survival chances in Nazi Germany were minimal. While around 18,000 children were able to leave Germany because their parents had placed them on the so-called childrens transports heading abroad, younger children usually stayed with their mothers (Kaplan, 189). If not gassed together with their mothers upon arrival at the death camp, they succumbed to starvation, infection, and disease. As Delbo notes, the Nazis played a perverted game: by separating men from women and mothers from women without children, they seemingly operated fully within Nazi ideology, an ideology which honored family values and therefore reserved special care for the “weak” and “helpless” but highly valued mothers. Given this context, men were willing to leave their wives at the Selektion, believing them to be in good hands, while mothers willingly stayed with their young children. But as far as Jewish mothers were concerned, the Nazis inverted their own values. Whereas German mothers were awarded the Mutterkreuz, Jewish mothers were sent to the gas chambers. In the same way that Hitler valued womens ability to bear “Aryan” babies for his Germany, he feared that Jewish women would perpetuate the Jewish race. Thus, Jewish women and children were not protected but particularly vulnerable to discrimination and persecution. Estimates of the total number of Jews killed during National Socialism are generally between 5.5 and 6 million (Rummel, 87). Approximately 4 million perished in the camps, the remaining 2 million murdered by other means, mostly by the Einsatzgruppen (Rummel, 29). There is a dearth of statistics on the number of women who survived the Holocaust, even though the Nazis themselves segregated men and women into different camps or camp subsidiaries and kept meticulous death lists according to gender. In his work, Perpetrators, Victims. Bystanders, Hilberg devotes a brief chapter to this topic, remarking that “women were a majority in the Jewish population of German-dominated Europe” and that “possibly a third of the Jews who survived were women” (Hilberg, 127, 130). From the critical perspective, no actual statistical data on women’s survival rates is available and perhaps historians may never obtain such data. However, some statistics exist on Jewish children because research on survival rates did consider age differences while neglecting gender differences. Several sources estimate that from a prewar population of about 1.6 million Jewish children, approximately 1.5 million were killed. This amounts to a survival rate of only 6 to 7 percent as compared to 33 percent of the general Jewish population (Tec, 281). An extreme example is Poland, once home to the largest population of Jews. Of about one million Jewish children under the age of fourteen, about 5,000 survived - one half of one percent (Tec, 281). Most children who survived did so in hiding because their parents had placed them in gentile families, convents, monasteries, or orphanages for gentiles. However, there are no statistics on how many children survived the camps. Generally, children who looked older had a somewhat better chance of survival. Since no binding rules identified a cut-off age, the Selektion for death differed from camp to camp and depended on times of arrival. But even for children who passed the initial Selektion, the chances of survival were minimal; starvation, disease, and beatings claimed almost every child under age ten. DESTRUCTION OF A NATION THROUGH EUTHANASIA AND STERILIZATION PROGRAMS In the camps, the singling out of those fit to work and the elimination of those unfit was undoubtedly aimed at exploiting the Jewish labor force. Yet this distinction was made only in certain times and situations and was never strictly observed. In orchestrating the “final solution,” economic considerations played only a minor role (Noakes and Pridham, 1098 ). It may at first glance seem plausible to explain the murder of old and/or weak people, children, pregnant women, and mothers with small children solely because of their diminished capability to work. However, it is evident that these issues are even more deeply embedded in National Socialist ideology. When Hitler in his speech to the Reichstag (30 January 1939) promised the “annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe,” it was clear to him that he would reach his goal most effectively by destroying the Jews’ reproductive capabilities and their young generation. Hitler was also aware that Jewish tradition regards being Jewish as maternally determined. By killing Jewish mothers, he could erase any possibility of perpetuating the Jewish race. Thus, the so-called euthanasia program implemented violence primarily against women and children. Although the program was initially directed against mentally disabled persons, not Jews, it ultimately proved to be the first step toward Hitler’s chilling prophecy of 1939. The “euthanasia” project began in 1934 with forced sterilization of mentally disabled women and expanded after 1939 into the killing of over 70,000 people by gassing and by lethal injection until a wave of protest among the German people, particularly from the churches, brought the program to a halt in August 1941. It should be noted, however, that the program continued in a different form and under better camouflage. Mentally disabled people were no longer gassed but killed by other means. The “Reich Committee,” a euphemism for child infanticide, also continued. Most importantly, the program shifted to the liquidation of concentration camp inmates, among them Jewish prisoners. The “euthanasia” program introduced measures aimed directly at women and children. For women, this involved forced sterilization, Himmler’s special interest. Himmler sought to develop a means of cheap mass sterilization that would restrict the birth rates of the Reich’s enemies. In 1941, there was still discussion about sterilizing all Jewish women, a subject which became irrelevant a year later with Hitler’s “final solution.” But the Nazis nevertheless sought to make use of sterilization. At the infamous Wannsee conference on January 20, 1942, participants not only determined to annihilate all Jews but also discussed the fate of Mischling (crossbreed). Noakes and Pridham indicate: The Mischlinge of the first degree who are exempted from evacuation will be sterilized in order to forestall any offspring and to resolve finally the Mischling problem. The sterilization will be voluntary. It will, however, be a precondition for remaining in the Reich. The sterilized Mischling will then be freed from all restrictions to which he has hitherto been subjected. Only because conference participants did not reach a final decision on the fate of the Mischlinge, many of them could later escape deportation and elimination. However, as it became evident later sterilization experiments continued in the concentration camps. The “euthanasia” operation also included a special liquidation program for handicapped children (“Reich Committee”), who had to be reported at birth and who were subsequently transferred to special "clinics," where they were starved to death. The "euthanasia" program, similar to later concentration camp selection, chose children as the first to be eliminated. Robert J. Lifton points out, “it began with children. It seemed, as some observer said, a little easier to kill children than adults at the beginning” (Lifton, 6). In this statement, utter perversity becomes chilling logic. According to Lifton, the “euthanasia” program prepared for the Jews’ murder in three ways: (1) the direct transfer of personnel; (2) the systematic use of gas in the killing process, which led to camouflaging gas chambers as showers; and (3) the establishment of ideological doctrines: the term unwertes Lehen, which was applied first to mentally disabled persons and later extended to include Jews. In addition, the program introduced euphemisms such as “special treatment” and “special action” that would serve as the future vocabulary for mass murder (Lifton, 22). Lifton stresses the link between sterilization and mass extermination, stating that “in the sequence of medicalized killing, one can see a direct medical link between the official compulsory sterilization programs of 1933, the so-called euthanasia programs beginning in 1939, and the subsequent Final Solution, or concentration camp exterminations” and that “no country, before or since, had ever imposed on its people so extensive and systematic a program of forced sterilization” (Lifton, 22). While Lifton offers a fascinating analysis of the “euthanasia” program, he fails to see it in the context of violence against women. The Nazis used compulsory sterilization as a measure directed against the female body. Although mentally disabled men were also sterilized, the majority of victims were women. Likewise, sterilization experiments in the concentration camps were aimed at destroying women’s reproductive capabilities - even though from a purely medical standpoint, it is certainly easier to sterilize men. CONCENTRATION CAMPS FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN The first camps were built mainly for (male) political prisoners and held relatively few women. This may have been influenced in part by masculinist Nazi ideology that assigned women to a secondary role. As the womens sphere was considered apolitical, women were also excluded from political persecution and violence. Although in 1933 the Nazis had already established Moringen, the first concentration camp for women, it held only twenty-five to seventy prisoners. Moringen was disbanded in 1938, and its prisoners were transferred to a new camp, Lichtenberg, where the inmate population consisted of few political prisoners but many criminals, prostitutes, and religiously persecuted women such as Jehovahs Witnesses. In the 1930s, Jews were not sent to concentration camps permanently but encouraged to emigrate. Even after the Kristallnacht in 1938, women were generally not held as prisoners. This changed with World War II. In May 1939, the Nazis opened Ravensbriick, a much larger camp exclusively for women, and transferred there the remaining prisoners from Lichtenberg. After the invasion of Poland, more and more Jewish women were imprisoned permanently; Ravensbriick and its satellite camps eventually housed over 42,000 women. Medical experiments involving bone transplants and sterilization killed around 100 Polish and Gypsy women at Ravensbriick. Shootings, lethal injections, or transportation to Auschwitz murdered other prisoners. In February 1945, Ravensbriick received its own gas chamber, in which around 2,250 prisoners were killed by the end of April. The Nazis evacuated Ravensbriick in late March 1945. When the Soviets liberated the camp on April 30, 1945, they discovered about 3,500 sick women remaining. Ravensbriick was the first major camp to house not only female prisoners but also women who helped with camp operation and maintenance. Although administrative and supervising control remained in the hands of the male SS, for the first time, about 150 female guards were hired. Ravensbriick also served as a training base for about 3,500 female concentration camp supervisors who were subsequently transferred to other camps. In 1942, the SS constructed a separate section for women in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Many of its new female guards had been “trained” at Ravensbriick. Known for its extremely inhumane living conditions, Auschwitz, the “largest graveyard in human history” (Buszko, 117), was divided into three sections: Auschwitz I, the Stammlager (main camp) and oldest part; Auschwitz II (Birkenau), the most populated and harshest of the camps; and Auschwitz III (Buna-Monowitz), a forced labor camp directly next to the I.G. Farben synthetic oil and rubber factory. Auschwitz II housed the womans camp as well as the Theresienstadt family camp, a section for entire Jewish families from the Theresienstadt ghetto who, while not separated from each other, were all murdered after six months. The gas chambers and crematoria were located in Auschwitz II, where the trains arrived and the infamous Selektion took place. Most people were taken straight to the gas chamber and never registered as inmates. The men and women selected for work were robbed of personal belongings, taken to a shower, shaved, and tattooed. These prisoners were Jews from the liquidated ghettos in Poland, political prisoners, Jews and Gypsies from Eastern Europe and occupied territories in northern and southern Europe, and Russian prisoners of war. Despite rigorous Selektion and an extremely high mortality rate for working prisoners due to camp conditions, the camp population increased constantly. After Himmler expressed interest in sterilizing Jewish women at Auschwitz, Professor Carl Clauberg, who had already played a role in sterilization experiments in Ravensbriick, was assigned similar experiments in Auschwitz I. The infamous Josef Mengele, also called the “Angel of Death,” assisting to Carl Clauberg was frequently present at the Selektion and especially interested in using infants and young twins for his experiments. An estimated 1.5 million men, women, and children were killed at Auschwitz, most of whom were never registered. A total of 405,000 people were selected for work and registered as prisoners; of these, about 65,000 survived (Buszko, 117). Following Auschwitz’ example, other camps established separate sections for women so that finally “every main camp had both male and female subsidiaries” (Friedlander, 11). With the exception of the few “family camps,” the Nazis enforced strict separation between men and women in the camps. One might think that, in keeping with Nazi ideology, this policy would ensure special consideration for women, such as lighter workload, but the murders of mothers and children at the Selektion already reveals that the Nazis did not apply their own doctrines to so-called community aliens. Far from displaying a special regard for women, the separation of men and women - often husbands and wives, siblings, or mothers and children - was aimed at destroying any existing bonds between families and friends. Psychologically, this separation caused a situation similar to infantile trauma, that of a newborn being deserted by its mother. The attitude towards work in the camps changed over time. At first, prisoners were either killed immediately or punished by being forced to complete senseless and humiliating tasks. When Hitler later realized that the war machinery would benefit from exploiting Jewish labor, prisoners were selected to work in the armament industry. Industrial centers were purposefully constructed next to concentration camps (such as IG Farben’s rubber factory Buna next to Auschwitz). However, this fact did not change the policy of genocide; Hitler’s priority was still to erase the Jews from the world. If winning the war had taken precedence, Hitler could have made extensive use of Jewish talent - ironically, the scientists trained in Germany helped the Americans create nuclear weapons. Instead, Jews were literally worked to death - the life expectancy of a working Jew in Auschwitz was a few months. CONCLUSION Anyone confronted with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust either in reality or as a part of history course is bound to have a strong emotional and intellectual reaction, and from personal perspective such confrontation crosses national, religious, or any other boundaries. This confrontation provokes crisis and breaks with existing frames of reference. Practically, while this confrontation does not promise redemption or closure, it offers a point of departure. One of the pivotal challenges in our century is how we, as human beings in the world, deal with the legacy of the greatest horror of the twentieth century. Horror of the Holocaust lies not only in historical facts and statistics, but also in new evidence and patterns emerging with time. For instance, historical evidence suggests that destruction of Jewish nation by Nazi regime was meant to be achieved through elimination of women and children. Implemented programs like Selektion, euthanasia and mandatory sterilization were aimed at annihilating women, because without women nation cannot reproduce. WORKS CITED Josef Buszko, "Auschwitz," Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, ed. Israel Gutman (New York: Macmillan, 1990) Charlotte Delbo, Auschwitz and After. Trans. Rosette C. Larnont, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995 Friedlander, Saul, ed. Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the "Final Solution". Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992. Gottlieb, Roger S., ed. Thinking the Unthinkable: Meanings of the Holocaust. New York: Paulist, 1990. Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators. Victims. Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945, New York: Harper Collins, 1992 Irving Howe, "Writing and the Holocaust," Writing and the Holocaust, ed. Berel Lang (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1988) Marion A. Kaplan, "Jewish Women in Nazi Germany: Daily Life, Daily Struggles, 1933-1939," Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust, eds. Carol Rittner and John K. Roth (New York: Paragon House, 1993) pp. 187-212. Robert Lifton, "Life Unworthy of Life: Nazi Racial Views," The Psychological Perspectives of the Holocaust and of Its Aftermath, ed. Randolph L. Braham (New York: Columbia UP, 1988) Jeremy Noakes and G. Pridham, eds., Nazism 1919-1945: A Documentary Reader. Vol. 3, Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1988 Rummel R.J., Democide: Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1992 Nechama Tec, "A Historical Perspective: Tracing the History of the Hidden-Child Experience," The Hidden Children: The Secret Survivors of the Holocaust, ed. Jane Marks, New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1993 Read More