Holocaust Notes
 
Lawrence F. Glatz
 
As genocide, the Holocaust is unique. Why?
 
1) It was industrialized, it was mechanized, and it was institutionalized; to a unique extent. The images we have show this aspect: the tall smokestacks and ovens, the trains and railroad cars, the use of numbers as labels, tatooed on people. The German author Heinrich Böll, a private in the war, called it the “Administration of Death” (die Verwaltung des Todes).
 
2) The Holocaust came from Germany, which one can argue was in the period between the world wars, the most civilized, advanced, intellectual and scientific land in the world. Yet, by May of 1933, people were scared to protest when German students and some professors publicly burned books by Jewish authors and others deemed inferior.
 
3) Germany was also the one country in the world where Jews where truly integrated, large numbers also assimilated. Jews were Germans. An example is the large number of Jewish officers in the German military in the First World War. In 1933, Germany had 80 million citizens, 500 000 were Jewish.
 
4) The Holocaust was the largest robbery in history. From 1933 to 1945, the property, wealth and possessions of Jewish people was confiscated, or taken by forced sale. In 1933, the Jewish holders of academic degrees were informed that their earned degree was now null and void. A lawyer or physican was now effectively stripped of their profession. They became the first to leave, when possible.
 
5) The education of the major Nazi figures yields important evidence of what type of people were (and are) attracted to this ideology. A common factor among the Nazis was a severe anti-intellectual bent. These men were almost all academic failures in a system of harsh standards. The Jewish minority of Germany, on the other hand, was a group which highly valued learning and academic achievement. One can conclude a deep inferiority complex which manifested actions of severe compensation, blaming Jewish people for economic failure. The book burnings are testimony to the twisted version of what education should do.
 
6) The Holocaust happened in this age of documentation and because of the vast number of records, images, and notably, preserved locations, the Holocaust cannot be denied if one reviews the evidence. Gas was manufactured and used in the seven death camps. Germany had some 500 concentration camps, where slave labor and politcal prisoners and prisoners of war were starved and brutalized. A ecent article states: "...researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945." The death camps were in the East, in Poland and the Ukraine.
 

Timeline for Nazi Extermination Camps

(Kulmhof) Chelmno _________

December 7, 1941

Gas Vans

 

_________

Killed 320,000

Auschwitz- Birkenau _________

September, 1941

Zyklon-B


_________

Killed 1,200,000

Belzek

________

March 17, 1942

Carbon Monoxide gas

________

Killed 600,000

Sobibor

________

March, 1942

Carbon Monoxide gas

________

Killed 250,000

Treblinka

__________

July 23, 1942

Carbon Monoxide gas

__________

Killed 700,000

Majdanek

_________

October, 1942

Carbon Monoxide and Zyklon B gas _________

Killed 1,380,000

Stutthof

_________

June, 1944

 
Zyklon-B gas


_______

Killed 65,000

 

7) The fact that such evil could occur is a testimony to the banality of complicity. Not all Germans were Nazis, but not enough did do something against the Nazis. The Nazis never had election results which placed their party in the majority; they only had the largest of all the numerous parties in 1932. After 1933, in a ruthless dictatorship, the means to challenge the Nazis were even more limited and dangerous.

8) A point that also must be made is that the actions of the Nazis in implementing the Final Solution did not occur without the knowledge of the Allies during the war. The bombing of the death camps and destruction of crucial railroad bridges would have slowed the death toll significantly. People in death camps did pray for bombs.
 
9) The prosecution of war criminals, at Nuremburg and then in trails over four decades, from guards to such as Adolf Eichmann, did not bring justice, as that is due to the scale and the horror impossible, but it did serve the greater good of education. Sadly, too few who did support the Nazis were punished, and too few who opposed and suffered are known and honored.
 
10) What I find encouraging and extremely important is the effort of the German state since 1949 to work with Israel, to preserve information, to educate in the school system, and to pay for preservation and interpretation of locations of terror and death, both in the country and in the East. Germans of today have a burden which I feel is well carried, but to an extent not recognized.