Michael Gray, a specialist in Holocaust education. The full extent of Mengele's work is unknown because records he sent to Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer are assumed to have been destroyed. [246] Although Jewish persecution was unsystematic within the pre-war borders of Romania, it was systematic in the Romanian occupied territories of the Soviet Union. [292][x] The final solution would encompass the 11million Jews living in territories controlled by Germany and elsewhere in Europe, including Britain, Ireland, Switzerland, Turkey, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, and Hungary, "dependent on military developments". Paramilitary death squads called Einsatzgruppen, in cooperation with the German Army and local collaborators, murdered around 1.3million Jews in mass shootings and pogroms from the summer of 1941. [34] As prisoners entered the death camps, they surrendered all personal property,[39] which was cataloged and tagged before being sent to Germany for reuse or recycling. [345] Polish and Jewish accounts stated that hundreds or thousands of Germans had been killed,[346] while the Germans reported 16 dead. [347] The Germans said that 14,000 Jews had been killed7000 during the fighting and 7000 sent to Treblinka[348]and between 53,000[349] and 56,000 deported. [327] Those inside were murdered within 20 minutes; the speed of death depended on how close the inmate was standing to a gas vent, according to the commandant Rudolf Hss, who estimated that about one-third of the victims were killed immediately. [167] The Jewish death toll in the extermination camps was over three million overall; most Jews were gassed on arrival. Web11 million, not 6 million, died in the Holocaust The scrapbook of Margaret Gruenbaum, who with her two children was imprisoned in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, is now [224], Germany first used concentration camps as places of terror and unlawful incarceration of political opponents. p.171. Inflaming the anti-Jewish sentiment was the apparent over-representation of Jews in the leadership of communist revolutionary governments in Europe, such as Ernst Toller, head of a short-lived revolutionary government in Bavaria. We cannot be sentimental about it. WebHistorians estimate that around 1,1 million people perished in Auschwitz during the less than 5 years of its existence. According to Hayes, dealers in currency and jewellery set up shop outside the Treblinka extermination camp (near Warsaw) in 19421943, as did prostitutes. [15] In 1968 the Library of Congress created a new category, "Holocaust, Jewish (19391945)". He warned the Jews that if they were to cause another world war, it would lead to their destruction. Civilians killed in reprisals during the Soviet partisan war account for a major portion. [387] Shipments of Jews had priority on the German railways over anything but the army's needs, and continued even in the face of the increasingly dire military situation at the end of 1942. [141] A perception among ethnic Poles that the Jews had supported the Soviet invasion[142] contributed to existing antisemitism,[143] which Germany exploited, redistributing Jewish homes and goods, and converting synagogues, schools and hospitals in Jewish areas into facilities for non-Jews. [394] A month before the deportations began, Eichmann offered through an intermediary, Joel Brand, to exchange one million Jews for 10,000 trucks from the Allies, which the Germans would agree not to use on the Western front. [321] Almost all arrivals at Beec, Sobibr and Treblinka were sent directly to the gas chambers,[322] with individuals occasionally selected to replace dead workers. [266] Officers from RSHA IV B4, a Gestapo unit, began deporting Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau. [281], SS-Obergruppenfhrer Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Head Office (RSHA), convened what became known as the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942 at Am Groen Wannsee 5658, a villa in Berlin's Wannsee suburb. [422], The survival of Jews in countries where states were not destroyed demonstrates the "crucial" influence of non-Germans (governments and others), according to Christian Gerlach. After the war this program came to be known as Aktion T4,[82] named after Tiergartenstrae4, the address of a villa in the Berlin borough of Tiergarten, where the various organizations involved were headquartered. [227] After war broke out in 1939, new camps were established, many outside Germany in occupied Europe. [v] According to Browning, eight of the 15 had doctorates: "Thus it was not a dimwitted crowd unable to grasp what was going to be said to them. [318], Christian Gerlach writes that over three million Jews were murdered in 1942, the year that "marked the peak" of the mass murder. [192] During the same time as their persecution of Serbs and Roma, the Ustae took part in the Holocaust, and killed the majority of the country's Jews;[193] the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates that 30,148 Jews were murdered. In the course of the practical execution of the Final Solution, Europe will be combed through from west to east. [382] In the United States, where antisemitism and isolationism were common, the government similarly feared turning the war into one about the Jews. According to Dan Stone the Holocaust was a pan-European phenomenon, a series of "Holocausts" impossible to conduct without local collaborators and Germany's allies. [271], On 7 December 1941, Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor, an American naval base in Honolulu, Hawaii, killing 2,403 Americans. [12][f], On 3 October 1941 the American Hebrew used the phrase "before the Holocaust", apparently to refer to the situation in France,[14] and in May 1943 the New York Times, discussing the Bermuda Conference, referred to the "hundreds of thousands of European Jews still surviving the Nazi Holocaust". [151] Jewish women were stripped, beaten, and raped. Israelis were divided about the idea of taking money from Germany. [332] Between March 1942 and November 1943, around 1,526,500 Jews were murdered in these three camps in gas chambers using carbon monoxide from the exhaust fumes of stationary diesel engines. The second [315] The vans were also used in the occupied Soviet Union, for example in smaller clearing actions in the Minsk ghetto,[316] and in Yugoslavia. [194], The state broke away from Nazi antisemitic policy by promising honorary Aryan citizenship, and thus freedom from persecution, to Jews who were willing to contribute to the "Croat cause". [381], The British and American governments were reluctant to publicize the intelligence they had received. [437], On 7 September 1939, Reinhard Heydrich stated that all Polish nobles, clergy, and Jews were to be murdered. The following day, the United States declared war on Japan, and on 11 December, Germany declared war on the United States. [3] The British government's view was that the Hungarian people's antisemitism would make them distrust the Allies if Allied broadcasts focused on the Jews. [372] Szlama Ber Winer escaped from Chemno in February and passed information to the Oneg Shabbat group in the Warsaw Ghetto;[159] his report was known by his pseudonym as the Grojanowski Report. [479][480], Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, 2016. [359] In the occupied Polish and Soviet territories, thousands of Jews fled into the swamps or forests and joined the partisans,[360] although the partisan movements did not always welcome them. Germany, Italy and Bulgaria divided Greece into occupation zones but did not eliminate it as a country. [169] By June 1940 Norway was completely occupied. Consequently, the Danish government stayed in power and the Germans found it easier to work through it. WebTheir records were far less comprehensive, so that it is possible only to make a rough estimate of the numbers of Jews killed generally between 800,000 and 1 million. [205] The latter was known as Sardinenpackung ("packing sardines"), a method reportedly started by SS officer Friedrich Jeckeln. [197], Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, a day Timothy Snyder called "one of the most significant days in the history of Europe the beginning of a calamity that defies description". [405] Buchenwald was liberated by the Americans on 11 April;[406] Bergen-Belsen by the British on 15 April;[407] Dachau by the Americans on 29 April;[408] Ravensbrck by the Soviets on 30 April;[409] and Mauthausen by the Americans on 5 May. [438] On 12 September, Wilhelm Keitel added Poland's intelligentsia to the list. [146] Despite the dangers, thousands of Poles helped Jews. NDH leader Ante Paveli and the Ustae accepted Nazi demands. Although other European countriesBulgaria, Independent State of Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Slovakia, and Vichy Francepassed similar legislation,[91] Gerlach notes that "Nazi Germany adopted more nationwide anti-Jewish laws and regulations (about 1,500) than any other state. [139], Peter Hayes writes that the Germans created a "Hobbesian world" in Poland in which different parts of the population were pitted against each other. [i] In total, 165,200 German Jews were murdered. WebHow many people died during the Holocaust? [252] Within the city of Odessa, Jews were segregated to ghettos where they were later deported en masse, with the majority dying from disease, hunger and murder. [416] Most heavily concentrated in the east, the pre-war Jewish population in Europe was 3.5million in Poland; 3million in the Soviet Union; nearly 800,000 in Romania, and 700,000 in Hungary. [373] Also in 1942, Jan Karski sent information to the Allies after being smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto twice. Many men and women were also involuntarily sterilized. [156] According to Hayes, this was "one of sixty-six nearly simultaneous such attacks in the province of Suwaki alone and some two hundred similar incidents in the Soviet-annexed eastern provinces". [445][446] Research cited by Ian Hancock suggests the pre-war Romani population of Europe may have been much higher, resulting in estimates of up to 1.5 million Roma deaths. About 42,000 Jews in the General Government were shot during. [400] Already sick after exposure to violence and starvation, they were marched to train stations and transported for days without food or shelter in open freight cars, then forced to march again at the other end to the new camp. [456] Between 2,700 and 3,300 were sent to the camps, where 1,400 died. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes. EuroDocs. The rest of the country was divided into the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), an Italian-German puppet state whose territory comprised Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, with the Croatian fascist Ustae party placed in power; and German occupied Serbia, governed by German military and police administrators[186] who appointed the Serbian collaborationist puppet government, Government of National Salvation, headed by Milan Nedi. [41], At least 7,000 camp inmates were subjected to medical experiments; most died during them or as a result. At the end of the war, approximately 380,000 Polish Jews remained alive, the rest having been murdered, mostly in the ghettos and the six death camps: Chelmo, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. [474], The government of Israel requested $1.5billion from the Federal Republic of Germany in March 1951 to finance the rehabilitation of 500,000 Jewish survivors, arguing that Germany had stolen $6billion from the European Jews. [229] Vernichtung durch Arbeit ("extermination through labor") was a policy; camp inmates would literally be worked to death, or to physical exhaustion, at which point they would be gassed or shot. [231] The shifts were long and often involved exposure to dangerous materials. [440][441] An estimated 1.81.9million non-Jewish Polish citizens were killed by Germans during the war. [236] Prisoners in Auschwitz were tattooed on arrival with an identification number. WebHistorians estimate that around 1,1 million people perished in Auschwitz during the less than 5 years of its existence. [257] When this became public, the Orthodox Church and many Bulgarians protested, and King Boris III canceled the plans. [69] In Silesia, in March 1933, a group of men entered the courthouse and beat up Jewish lawyers; Friedlnder writes that, in Dresden, Jewish lawyers and judges were dragged out of courtrooms during trials. Laqueur, Walter; Baumel, Judith Tydor (2001). [68] Jews were disbarred from practicing law, being editors or proprietors of newspapers, joining the Journalists' Association, or owning farms. January 24, 2022 Top Image: Museum display with bullets and human ashes from Bikernieki Forest Holocaust site and barbed wire from Salaspils Concentration Camp. [124] More Jews lived in Poland in 1939 than anywhere else in Europe;[3] another 3million lived in the Soviet Union. [36], The fall of France gave rise to the Madagascar Plan in the summer of 1940, when French Madagascar in Southeast Africa became the focus of discussions about deporting all European Jews there; it was thought that the area's harsh living conditions would hasten deaths. Smaller groups were also victims of deadly Nazi persecution, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Black Germans, disabled people, communists, and homosexuals. [196], In the Bulgarian annexed zones of Macedonia and Thrace, upon demand of the German authorities, the Bulgarians handed over the entire Jewish population, about 12,000 Jews to the military authorities, all were deported. Companies such as BMW, Deutsche Bank, Ford, Opel, Siemens, and Volkswagen faced lawsuits for their use of forced labor during the war. [226] Large numbers of Jews were not sent there until after Kristallnacht in November 1938. Groups of Jews were forced by the crowd to watch their synagogues burn; in Bensheim they were made to dance around it and in Laupheim to kneel before it. [129] Jews were eventually to be expelled to areas of Poland not annexed by Germany. WebAbout six million Jews and some five million others, targeted for racial, political, ideological and behavioral reasons, died in the Holocaustmore than one million of those who In February 1941, non-Jewish Dutch citizens staged a strike in protest that was quickly crushed. the evacuation of the Jews to the East, provided that the Fuehrer gives the appropriate approval in advance. Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz. A range of methods were used, with [33] In contrast, according to historian Dan Stone, Hitler regarded the Jews as "a Gegenrasse: a 'counter-race' not really human at all". [234] Prisoners wore colored triangles on their uniforms, the color denoting the reason for their incarceration. They included the head of the German Red Cross, tenured professors, clinic directors, and biomedical researchers. Read More Testimonies Video Lectures Instead, it was a question of "a process of increasingly radical interpretations of orders". [386] Rail shipments of Jews were still arriving regularly from western and southern Europe at the extermination camps. [213] In the Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre (Soviet Ukraine), nearly 24,000 Jews were killed between 27 and 30 August 1941. [460] In 1936, Himmler created the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion. The gas chambers were dismantled, the crematoria dynamited, and the mass graves dug up and corpses cremated. [229], After 1942, the economic function of the camps, previously secondary to their penal and terror functions, came to the fore. Grynszpan was handed over to the Germans and his fate is unknown. The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as the seed of a new Jewish revival. [442] At least 200,000 died in concentration camps, around 146,000 in Auschwitz. [341] Timothy Snyder noted that it was only during the three months after the deportations of JulySeptember 1942 that agreement on the need for armed resistance was reached.[342]. [242][243] Romania was the only country other than Germany itself that "implemented all the steps of the destruction process, from definitions to killings. [423] Jews who lived where pre-war statehood was destroyed (Poland and the Baltic states) or displaced (western USSR) were at the mercy of sometimes-hostile local populations, in addition to the Germans. | DW | 30 July 2017", "Persecution of Homosexuals in the Third Reich", 'Elsa Conrad Margarete Rosenberg Mary Pnjer Henny Schermann', Homophobie und Devianz: weibliche und mnnliche Homosexualitt im Nationalsozialismus, "Elsa Conrad (18871963) Constellations Brises", "Payment Programme of the Foundation EVZ", "Holocaust Reparations: Germany to Pay 772 Million Euros to Survivors", "Pour le rle de la SNCF dans la Shoah, Paris va verser 100 000 euros chaque dport amricain", "France responsible for sending Jews to concentration camps, says court", "How Americans Described Evil Before Hitler", "Appendix 6: Estimated Losses in the Holocaust", Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 19331949, "The Wannsee Conference, the Fate of German Jews, and Hitler's Decision in Principle to Exterminate All European Jews", "Not a slippery slope or sudden subversion: German medicine and National Socialism in 1933", "Bibliographic Classification of Documents Dealing with the Subject 'Holocaust', "Operation Barbarossa and the Onset of the Holocaust, JuneDecember 1941", "Psychiatry during the Nazi Era: Ethical Lessons for the Modern Professional", "Auschwitz: Drone video of Nazi concentration camp", "150th Anniversary: 18512001; Turning Away From the Holocaust", Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, Persecution of Jews during the Black Death, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Bay Area Holocaust Oral History Project (BAHOHP), Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), National Socialist German Doctors' League, National Socialist League for Physical Exercise (NSRL), Bulgarian National Socialist Workers Party, German National Socialist Workers' Party (Czechoslovakia), Finnish National Socialist Labor Organisation, German National Movement in Liechtenstein, National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands, National Socialist Workers' Party of Denmark, Nationalist Liberation Alliance (Argentina), South African Gentile National Socialist Movement, Interminority racism in the United States, Persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire, Decline of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent, Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent, Persecution of Muslims during the Ottoman contraction, Persecution of Christians in the Eastern Bloc, Canadian Indian residential school system, Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia, Violence against Hindus in independent India, Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries, Attacks by Islamic extremists in Bangladesh, Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, Rape during the Soviet occupation of Poland, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Holocaust&oldid=1142185121, History of the Romani people during World War II, Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from July 2020, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia extended-confirmed-protected pages, Wikipedia indefinitely move-protected pages, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from August 2022, Pages using Sister project links with hidden wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Deaths caused by the result of direct, intentional actions of violence, Deaths due to famine and disease in the occupied regions.