Par 2.4 The mass murder of the Jews - Factory-like slaughter

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§2.4 The mass murder of the Jews

Factory-like slaughter

Program

• Solving the 'Jewish problem'
  
• Final solution
• Deportation
• Concentration / extermination camps
• The end result
• Quotes from Auschwitz-Birkenau

After today...

... You will be able to explain how the Germans organized the Holocaust

Solving the 'Jewish problem'

• 10 million Jews now live in the Reich (because of the war)
  
• No place for Jews in Hitlers paradise on earth 
• Operation Barbarossa fails, so...
• ... The other mission has to succeed: end Judaism 

Final Solution

• All Jews must be deported to Eastern-Europe / to camps
• There, camps are build for the Jews. 2 kinds of camps:

1.  Concentration camps (forced labour)
2. Extermination camps (gas chamber)

• Decisions are announced at the Wannsee Conference (Jan 1942)

Deportation

• Starts after the Wannsee Conference
• E-Europe: from the ghettos to 'labour' camps (5000 each day)
• W-Europe: from W-EU to E-EU
• How? The Jewish Councils had to take care of the deportations of their Jewish members

Why would the Jewish Council and Jewish Police collaborate with the Germans?

Why did the Germans announce their measures through the Jewish Council?

Concentration / extermination camps

• Arrival: divide the group of Jews into 2 groups:

1. People who were fit enough to work (mostly men)
2. Women and children, weak and old people

• Second group was send to 'the showers'  (= gas chamber)
• Dead bodies were buried in mass graves, later burned in crematoria
• Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest extermination camp (over 1 million deaths)

The result...

• 6 million out of 10 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust (= mass murder of Jews)

Quote from: This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowksi (1946)

"The heaps grow. Suitcases, bundles, blankets, coats, handbags that open as they fall, spilling coins, gold, watches; mountains of bread pile up at the exits, heaps of marmalade, jams, masses of meat, sausages; sugar spills on the gravel. Trucks, loaded with people, start up with a deafening roar and drive off amidst the wailing and screaming of the women separated from their children, and the stupefied silence of the men left behind. They are the ones who had been, ordered to step to the right—the healthy and the young who will go to the camp. In the end, they too will not escape death, but first they must work." 

Camp: Auschwitz-Birkenau

Quote from: This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowksi (1946)

"The wave of people flows on and on, endlessly. They think that now they will have to face a new life in the camp, and they prepare themselves emotionally for the hard struggle ahead. They do not know that in just a few moments they will die, that the gold, money, and diamonds which they have so prudently hidden in their clothing and on their bodies are now useless to them. Experienced professionals will probe into every recess of their flesh, will pull the gold from under the tongue and the diamonds from the uterus and the colon. They will rip out gold teeth. In tightly sealed crates they will ship them to Berlin. "

Camp: Auschwitz-Birkenau