Responsibility for the Holocaust
Encyclopedia
Historians differ as to where the responsibility for the Holocaust lies. Intentionalist
historians such as Lucy Dawidowicz
argue that Adolf Hitler
planned the extermination of the Jewish people from as early as 1918, and that he personally oversaw its execution. Functionalists
such as Raul Hilberg
have argued that the extermination plans evolved in stages, as a result of initiatives from bureaucrats who were responding to other policy failures.
The Holocaust was indeed characterized by an industrial project of extermination; compared to it, other genocides seemed to lack "professionalism". This led authors such as Enzo Traverso
to argue in The Origins of Nazi Violence that Auschwitz was "an authentic product of Western civilization". Beginning his book with a description of the guillotine
, which according to him marks the entry of the Industrial Revolution
into capital punishment
, and writes: "Through an irony of history, the theories of Frederick Taylor
" (taylorism) were applied by a totalitarian system
to serve "not production, but extermination." (see also Heidegger
's comments). In the wake of Hannah Arendt, Traverso describes the colonial domination during the New Imperialism period through "rational organization", which lead in a number of cases to extermination. However, this argument, which insists on the industrialization and technical rationality through which the Holocaust itself was carried out (the organization of trains, technical details, etc.—see Adolf Eichmann
's bureaucratic work), was in turn opposed by other people. These point out that the 1994 Rwandan Genocide
mostly used machete
s.
Others have presented the Holocaust as a product of German history, analyzing its deep roots in German society: "German authoritarianism
, feeble liberalism
, brash nationalism or virulent anti-Semitism. From A. J. P. Taylor
's The Course of German History fifty-five years ago to Daniel Goldhagen
's recent Hitler's Willing Executioners, Nazism is understood as the outcome of a long history of uniquely German traits", writes Russell Jacoby. Furthermore, while many pointed out that the specificity of the Holocaust was also rooted in the constant antisemitism from which Jews had been the target since the foundation of Christianity
(and the myth of the "deicide people"), others underlined that in the 19th century, pseudo-scientific racist theories
had been elaborated in order to justify, in a general way, white supremacy
. In his works on "biopolitics
", philosopher Michel Foucault
also traced the origins of "state racism
" to the eugenicist policies invented during the 19th century. (One of the few compliments that Foucault accorded to Freud
's psychoanalysis
was that Freud adamantly opposed such a project of "racial hygiene".)
first started and March 1941, orders were approved by Hitler for the re-establishment of the Einsatzgruppen
(the surviving historical record does not permit firm conclusions to be drawn about the precise date). Hitler encouraged the killings of the Jews of Eastern Europe by the Einsatzgruppen death squads in a speech in July, 1941, though he almost certainly approved the mass shootings that occurred earlier. A mass of evidence suggests that sometime in the fall of 1941, Himmler and Hitler agreed in principle on the complete mass extermination of the Jews of Europe by gassing, with Hitler explicitly ordering the "annihilation of the Jews" in a speech on December 12, 1941 (see Final Solution
), by which time the Jewish populations in the Baltic states had been effectively eliminated. To make for smoother intra-governmental cooperation in the implementation of this "Final Solution" to the "Jewish Question", the Wannsee conference
was held near Berlin on January 20, 1942, with the participation of fifteen senior officials, led by Reinhard Heydrich
and Adolf Eichmann
, the records of which provide the best evidence of the central planning of the Holocaust. Just five weeks later on February 22, Hitler was recorded saying "We shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jew" to his closest associates. Nevertheless, no written order from Hitler exists.
). In an entry in the Friedrich Kellner
diary, "My Opposition," dated October 28, 1941, the German justice inspector recorded a conversation he had in Laubach
with a German soldier who had witnessed a massacre in Poland. Other entries in his diary clearly show the people of Germany were aware from the beginning of the atrocities. Churchill, who was privy to intelligence reports derived from decoded German transmissions, first began mentioning "mass killings" in public at the same time. In the summer of 1942, a Jewish labor organization (the Bund
) got word to London that 700,000 Polish Jews had already died, and the BBC took the story seriously, though the United States State Department did not. In the United States, in November 1942, a telegram from Europe which contained word about Hitler's plans was released by Stephen Wise of the World Jewish Congress
, after a long wait for permission from the government. This led to attempts by Jewish organizations to put Roosevelt
under pressure to act on behalf of the European Jews, many of whom had tried in vain to enter either Britain or the U.S.
On December 17, 1942, however, after receiving a detailed eyewitness account from Jan Karski
, the Allies issued a formal declaration confirming and condemning Nazi extermination policy toward the Jews. The US State Department was aware of the use and the location of the gas chambers of extermination camps, but refused pleas to bomb them out of operation. On May 12, 1943, Polish government-in-exile member and Bund leader Szmul Zygielbojm
committed suicide
in London to protest the inaction of the world with regard to the Holocaust, stating in part in his suicide letter:
The death camps were discussed between American and British leaders at the Bermuda Conference
in April 1943. The large camps near Auschwitz were finally surveyed by plane in April 1944, many months after the German air force
ceased to be a serious danger. While all important German cities and production centers were bombed
by Allied forces until the end of the war, no attempt was made to collapse the system of mass annihilation by destroying pertinent structures or train tracks, even though Churchill was a proponent of bombing parts of the Auschwitz complex. Throughout the war, Britain also pressed European leaders to prevent "illegal" Jewish immigration and sent ships to block the sea-route to Palestine
(from which Britain withdrew in 1948), turning back many refugees.
Debate also continues on how much average Germans knew about the Holocaust. Recent historical work suggests that the majority of Germans knew that Jews were being indiscriminately killed and persecuted but they did not know about the Final Solution and the specifics of the death camps. Robert Gellately
, a historian at Oxford University, conducted a widely-respected survey of the German media before and during the war, concluding that there was "substantial consent and active participation of large numbers of ordinary Germans" in aspects of the Holocaust, and documenting that the sight of columns of slave laborers were common, and that the basics of the concentration camps, if not the extermination camps, were widely known.
Other scholars, like Peter Longerich
, have argued that most Germans did not know about the mass-murders as they were occurring. There was an order to keep the Final Solution a secret (under death penalty) among the estimated 300,000 persons involved in implementing the plan. Helmuth James Graf von Moltke
gives an estimation of less than a tenth of the population in 1943. There were rumours of gas chambers.
under Reichsführer-SS
Himmler was the closest. From the SS came the Totenkopfverbände
concentration camp guards, the Einsatzgruppen
killing squads, and the main administrative offices behind the Holocaust, including the RSHA and WVHA
. The Wehrmacht Heer (regular army), directly participated far less than the SS in the Holocaust (though it did directly take part in the massacre of some Jews in Russia, Serbia, Poland, and Greece). However, it supported the Einsatzgruppen, helped form the ghettos, ran prison camps, occasionally provided concentration camp guards, transported prisoners to camps, had experiments performed on prisoners, and substantially used slave labor.
German police units, all under the control of the Nazis during the war, also directly participated in the Holocaust; for example, Reserve Police Battalion 101, in just over a year, shot 38,000 Jews and deported 45,000 more to the extermination camps. Even private firms helped in the machinery of the Holocaust. Nazi bankers at the Paris branch of Barclays Bank volunteered the names of their Jewish employees to Nazi authorities, and many of them ended up in the death camps.
was one of a number of post-war psychologists and sociologists who tried to address why people obeyed immoral orders in the Holocaust. Milgram's findings
demonstrated that reasonable people, when instructed by a person in a position of authority, obeyed
commands entailing what they believed to be the suffering of others. These results were subsequently corroborated by the Stanford prison experiment
, even though both experiments were non-repeatable.
In his book Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Wilhelm Reich
also tried to explain this obedience. The work became known as the foundation of Freudo-Marxism
. Nobel prize winner Elias Canetti
also addressed the problem of mass
obedience in Masse und Macht (1960—"Crowds and Power"), developing an original theory of the consequences of commands both in the obedient person and in the commander, who may well become a "despotic paranoiac". Two recent "experiments", one called The Third Wave
and one conducted by Jane Elliott
, tried to answer the question of: "How can a people be a part of something terrible and then claim at the demise that they were not really involved?"
" theory, which says that an enormous change will not be noticed if it occurs in gradual steps. The other factor is the primal and powerful mechanism of herding
, which has its home in the limbic system
and ensures that individuals conform to the group. This mechanism has evolved through natural selection
to ensure that human groups survive. Together, these factors make conforming to the group a stronger impulse than breaking out, even if the individual does not agree with what the group is doing. So long as the gradual changes in group behaviour are small, herding can eventually take the group towards a state that is far removed from past behavior and is more and more extreme. Thus, participants in the Holocaust may have privately felt horror or disgust at what they were ordered to do but stayed in line with the group. These effects have been exploited many times in history by demagogues and revolution
aries; they are also seen in bullying.
Studies of mass psychology, kick-started by Carl Jung
but currently being developed under various labels, suggest that the causal mechanism for crowd behaviour is the reverse of what is commonly believed. The socionomic perspective says that, rather than persecution making people fearful and downtrodden, fearful and downtrodden people look for someone to persecute.
The Jungian-socionomic analysis says that after the humiliation of World War I, the economic ruin of the Weimar Republic
, being forced to pay war reparations
and the Great Depression, it was natural for the German people to become angry and look for someone on whom to vent their anger; herding
behaviour amplifed this anger and the Holocaust was the result.
has attempted to explain such heinous acts, although Gustave Le Bon
's The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895) was also a major influence of Mein Kampf, in particular relating to the propaganda techniques described in it. Sadistic acts were perhaps most notable in the case of the genocide committed by members of the Ustashe
, whose enthusiasm and sadism in their killings of Serbs appalled Germans, Italians, and even German SS officers, who even acted to restrain the Ustashe. However, concentration camp literature, such as the writings of Primo Levi
and Robert Antelme
, describe numerous individual sadistic acts, including some committed by Kapos.
Martin Luther
(a German leader of the Protestant Reformation) made a specific written call for harsh persecution of the Jewish people, including that their synagogues and schools be set on fire, prayerbooks destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes razed, and property and money confiscated. Luther argued that Jews should be shown no mercy or kindness, should have no legal protection, and that these "poisonous envenomed worms" should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time. "Martin Luther's On the Jews and Their Lies" American historian Lucy Dawidowicz, concluded that the line of "anti-Semitic descent" from Luther to Hitler is "easy to draw," in her book "The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945". Adolf Hitler wrote of his admiration of Martin Luther in Mein Kampf "Mein Kampf".
Some authors, such as liberal philosopher Hannah Arendt
in The Origins of Totalitarianism
(1951), Swedish writer Sven Lindqvist
or French historian Olivier LeCour Grandmaison
have also linked the Holocaust to colonialism
. They argue that techniques put in place during the New Imperialism
period (first of all, concentration camps during the Boer War
), as well as the pseudo-scientific theories
elaborated during this period (e.g. Arthur de Gobineau
's 1853 Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races
) had been fundamental in preparing the conditions of possibility of the Holocaust. Others authors have adamantly opposed these views, on behalf of the "unicity" of the Holocaust, compared to any other type of genocide
. Philosopher Michel Foucault
also traced the origins of the Holocaust and of "racial policies" to what he called "state racism
", which is a part of "biopolitics
".
Finally, many have pointed the ancient roots of antisemitism, which has been present in the Western world since the foundation of Christianity
. Modern efforts at ecumenism
, in particular by the Roman Catholic Church
which has asked the Jews for a pardon, are being made in order to avoid a repetition of such acts.
A major issue in contemporary Holocaust
studies is the question of functionalism versus intentionalism. The terms were coined in a 1981 article by the British Marxist historian Timothy Mason
to describe two schools of thought about the origins of the Holocaust.
Intentionalists hold that the Holocaust was the result of a long-term masterplan on the part of Hitler, and that he was the driving force behind it. Functionalists hold that Hitler was antisemitic, but that he did not have a masterplan for genocide. They see the Holocaust as coming from the ranks of the German bureaucracy, with little or no involvement on the part of Hitler.
Intentionalists such as Lucy Dawidowicz
argue that the Holocaust was planned by Hitler from the very beginning of his political career, at least from November 11, 1918. Other intentionalists, such as Andreas Hillgruber
, Karl Dietrich Bracher
, Gerhard Weinberg
, and Klaus Hildebrand
, have suggested that Hitler had decided upon the Holocaust sometime in the early 1920s. More recent intentionalist historians like Eberhard Jäckel
continue to emphasize the relative earliness of the decision to kill the Jews, although they are not willing to say that Hitler planned the Holocaust from the beginning. Saul Friedländer
has argued that Hitler was an extreme antisemite from 1919 on, but that he did not decide upon genocide until the middle of 1941. Yet another group of intentionalist historians, such as the American Arno J. Mayer
, argue that Hitler first ordered the Holocaust in December 1941.
Functionalists such as Hans Mommsen
, Martin Broszat
, Götz Aly
, Raul Hilberg
, and Christopher Browning
hold that the Holocaust was started in 1941–1942 as a result of the failure of the Nazi deportation policy and the impending military losses in Russia. They argue that what some see as extermination fantasies outlined in Hitler's Mein Kampf
and other Nazi literature were simply propaganda
and did not constitute concrete plans. In Mein Kampf, Hitler repeatedly states his inexorable hatred of the Jewish people, but nowhere does he proclaim his intention to exterminate them.
They argue that, in the 1930s, Nazi policy aimed at making life so unpleasant for German Jews that they would leave Germany. Adolf Eichmann
was in charge of facilitating Jewish emigration by whatever means possible from 1937 until October 3, 1941, when German Jews were forbidden to leave, Reinhard Heydrich
issuing an order to that effect. Functionalists see the SS's support in the late 1930s for Zionist
groups as the preferred solution to the "Jewish Question" as another sign that there was no masterplan for genocide. The SS only ceased their support for German Zionist groups in May 1939 when Joachim von Ribbentrop
informed Hitler of it, and Hitler ordered Himmler to cease and desist, because the creation of Israel was not a goal Hitler thought worthy of German foreign policy.
In particular, functionalists have argued that, in German documents from 1939 to 1941, the term "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" was meant to be a "territorial solution"; that is, the entire Jewish population was to be expelled somewhere far from Germany. At first, the SS planned to create a gigantic Jewish reservation in the Lublin
, Poland
area, but the so-called "Lublin Plan" was vetoed by Hans Frank
, the Governor-General of occupied Poland, who refused to allow the SS to ship any more Jews to the Lublin area after November 1939. The reason Frank vetoed the "Lublin Plan" was not due to any humane motives, but rather because he was opposed to the SS "dumping" Jews into the Government-General. In 1940, the SS and the German Foreign Office had the so-called "Madagascar Plan
" to deport the entire Jewish population of Europe to a "reservation" on Madagascar
. The "Madagascar Plan" was canceled because Germany could not defeat the UK and until the British blockade
was broken, the "Madagascar Plan" could not be put into effect. Finally, functionalist historians have made much of a memorandum written by Himmler in May 1940 explicitly rejecting extermination of the entire Jewish people as "un-German" and going on to recommend to Hitler the "Madagascar Plan" as the preferred "territorial solution" to the "Jewish Question". Not until July 1941 did the term "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" come to mean extermination.
Recently, a synthesis of the two schools has emerged that has been championed by diverse historians such as the Canadian historian Michael Marrus
, the Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer
, and the British historian Ian Kershaw
that contends that Hitler was the driving force behind the Holocaust, but that he did not have a long-term plan and that much of the initiative for the Holocaust came from below in an effort to meet Hitler's perceived wishes.
Another controversy was started by the historian Daniel Goldhagen
in 1997, who argues that ordinary Germans were knowing and willing participants in the Holocaust, which he writes had its roots in a deep eliminationist German antisemitism. Historians who disagree with Goldhagen's thesis argue that, while antisemitism undeniably existed in Germany, Goldhagen's idea of a uniquely German "eliminationist" version is untenable, and that the extermination was unknown to many and had to be enforced by the Nazi apparatus.
There is no "smoking gun" in the form of a document which shows Hitler ordering the Final Solution. Hitler did not have a bureaucratic mind and many of his most important instructions were given orally.
There is ample documentary evidence that Hitler authorized the mass deportations of the Jews to the east beginning in October 1941. He cannot have imagined that these hundreds of thousands of Jews would be housed, clothed and fed by the authorities of the Government-General, and in fact Hans Frank
frequently complained that he could not cope with the influx. Even Holocaust denier
David Irving
concedes that after Heinrich Himmler
's speech at Posen in October 1943, Hitler must have known what was happening.
Historian Paul Johnson writes that some writers, such as Irving, have claimed that because there were no written orders, "the Final Solution was Himmler's work and [...] Hitler not only did not order it but did not even know it was happening." Johnson states, however, that "this argument will not stand up. The administration of the Third Reich was often chaotic but its central principle was clear enough: all key decisions emanated from Hitler." Excerpts from the diary of Joseph Goebbels
and Rudolf Höss also indicate that Hitler gave oral instructions for the extermination of the Jews.
, Reinhard Heydrich
, Ernst Kaltenbrunner
, Adolf Eichmann
, Rudolf Höss, Heinrich Müller, and Oswald Pohl
, head of the Economics and Main Administration Office (WVHA) of the SS. Fritz Sauckel
, Hans Frank
, the Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick
and the Labor Minister Robert Ley
also played key roles. Other top Nazi leaders such as Goebbels, Göring, and Martin Bormann
knew in general terms what was happening.
The Nazi regime operated through vertical hierarchies. Officials carried out orders from above and did not ask questions about what was happening elsewhere. Only those at the very top had a broad view of what was going on across the German empire. But most senior SS officers and many officials of the various Reich ministries must have known in whole or in part what was happening. Millions of people were rounded up, bureaucratically processed and transported across Europe, an operation involving thousands of officials and a great deal of paperwork. This was co-ordinated by the Reich ministries, the police, and the national railways, as well as the SS and the Gestapo, all under the supervision of the Nazi Party. Most of the Party's regional leaders (Gauleiter
s) were present for Himmler's Posen speech. None of these people could plead ignorance after the event, although many did so.
, presided over by an Allied court; the first international tribunal of its kind. Other trials were conducted in the countries in which the defendants were citizens — in West Germany and Austria, many Nazis were let off with light sentences, with the claim of "following orders" ruled a mitigating circumstance, and many returned to society soon afterwards.
An ongoing effort to pursue Nazis and collaborators
resulted, famously, in the capture of Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann
in Argentina
(an operation led by Rafi Eitan
) and to his subsequent trial in Israel in 1961. Simon Wiesenthal
became one of the most famous Nazi hunters. Some former Nazis
, however, escaped any charges. Thus, Reinhard Gehlen
a former intelligence officer of the Wehrmacht, managed to turn around and work for the CIA, and created in 1956 the Bundesnachrichtendienst
(BND), the German intelligence agency, which he directed until 1968.
Klaus Barbie
, known as "the Butcher of Lyon" for his role at the head of the Gestapo, was protected from 1945 to 1955 by the MI5
and the CIA, before fleeing to South America where he had a hand in Luis García Meza Tejada
's 1980 Cocaine Coup
in Bolivia. Barbie was finally arrested in 1983 and sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity in 1987. In October 2005, Aribert Heim
(aka "Doctor Death") was found to be living for twenty years in Spain, protected by ODESSA
.
and Wilhelm Keitel
who were tried and hanged at Nuremberg. Many front-line officers went through the war without coming into direct contact with the machinery of extermination. Others chose to focus narrowly on their duties and not notice the wider context of the war. Relations between the Army and the SS were not friendly, and some officers refused to co-operate with Himmler's forces. General Johannes Blaskowitz
was relieved of his command after officially protesting about SS atrocities in Poland. After learning more of the extermination camps, Erwin Rommel protested the persecution of the Jews directly to Hitler. Other generals and officers, such as Walther von Reichenau
, Hermann Hoth, and Erich von Manstein
, actively supported the work of the Einsatzgruppen. A number of Wehrmacht Heer units provided direct or indirect assistance to the Einsatzgruppen, supplying them with lorries that could be used for roundups. Many individual soldiers who ventured to the killing sites behind the lines voluntarily participated in the mass shootings.
It was nevertheless difficult for commanders on the eastern front to avoid knowing what was happening in the areas behind the front. Many individual soldiers photographed the massacres of Jews by the Einsatzgruppen. Joachim Fest
points out that one of the factors that led Claus von Stauffenberg and other German officers to plot the July 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler was their growing awareness of the crimes that Hitler was committing in Germany's name. Stauffenberg argued that these crimes released German officers from the oath of loyalty they had taken to Hitler. If Stauffenberg and other officers in his circle were aware of the Holocaust, so must many others who did not act on that knowledge as Stauffenberg did, at the cost of his life.
The responsibility of the German people as a whole for the Holocaust has once again become a matter of heated debate since the publication of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's book Hitler's Willing Executioners in 1996. Goldhagen argues that the great majority of Germans (and Austrians) knew and approved of the extermination of the Jews, and that most would have actively participated in it had they been asked to do so. He provides extensive documention of the depth, ubiquity and antiquity of anti-Semitic sentiment in Germany, and of the equanimity with which large numbers of ordinary Germans obeyed orders to kill defenceless civilians, or even volunteered to do so, and how few Germans protested against what was going on. Although critics have found many deficiencies in Goldhagen's book, his compilation of documentary evidence of widespread German responsibility for the Holocaust is hard to ignore.
Most historians are sceptical about Goldhagen's thesis that the majority of Germans subscribed to an "eliminationist" form of anti-Semitism and that they were not only aware of but in agreement with the extermination of the Jews. The most scathing attack on Goldhagen has been Norman Finkelstein
and Ruth Bettina Birn's book A Nation on Trial. Finkelstein and Birn examined Goldhagen's references and concluded that Hitler's Willing Executioners was (in the words of one reviewer) "not worthy of being called an academic text."
Goldhagen's critics point out that the Nazi Party did not advocate killing the Jews before they came to power, and that therefore even the minority of Germans who voted for the Nazis in elections before 1933 were not voting for a holocaust of the Jews. They point out that the regime went to considerable lengths to conceal the truth about what was being done not only from world opinion but from the German public. The official line that the Jews were being "deported to work in the east" was always maintained, partly to deceive the Jews about the fate that awaited them, but partly also to mislead the German public. In the mid 30's there were even groups of German Jews supporting the Nazi regime, e.g. the Association of German National Jews
.
Nevertheless, knowledge about at least some aspects of the Holocaust must have been very widespread among Germans. As Paul Johnson points out, the SS had 900,000 members in 1943, most of whom participated in one way or another in actions against the Jews, and the German national railways, the Reichsbahn, employed 1.2 million people, the majority of whom helped process the lines of cattle-cars packed with suffering Jews being transported eastwards, and the car-loads of clothes, shoes and other goods coming back. Many other elements of the sprawling German civil service, from the Reichsbank which received tonnes of gold from the melted dental work of dead Jews to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture which employed slave labour on German farms, participated in various ways in the pillage and killing of the Jews, and many thousands of middle and low-ranking bureaucrats must have had some awareness of what they were doing.
It is frequently argued that even if ordinary Germans were aware of the extermination of the Jews, there is nothing they could have done to protest or prevent the actions of one of the most ruthless dictatorships of modern times, e.g. with Sondergerichte
that killed 12,000 Germans for their opposition. Most writers have in general accepted this view. Goldhagen, however, raises some objections. He points out that it was not in fact impossible for German civil society
to protest against actions of the Nazi regime. When the Nazis attempted to remove crucifix
es from schools in Bavaria
in 1936, and again in 1941, protests forced them to back down. Strikes by industrial workers on economic issues were common, at least in the prewar period, and were not seriously punished. The best known example of public protest was the campaign against the regime's programme of euthanasia
of people with physical and intellectual disabilities, known as "T4," which had to be abandoned in 1941 due to protests led by the Catholic Church and some parts of the medical profession.
Even more notable, for its uniqueness, was the Rosenstrasse protest
in Berlin in February 1943, led by over a thousand non-Jewish German women against the detention of their Jewish husbands (a category which had hitherto been exempt from deportation). While the event was clearly a courageous act on the part of the wives, historians disagree on both the reasons for summoning the husbands and the effects of the protest.
During the years 1945 through 1949 polls indicated that a majority of Germans felt that Nazism was a "good idea, badly applied". In a poll conducted in the American German occupation zone, 37% replied that 'the extermination of the Jews and Poles and other non-Aryans was necessary for the security of Germans'.
Sarah Ann Gordon in "Hitler, Germans, and the 'Jewish Question'" notes however that the surveys are very difficult to draw conclusions from. Respondents were for example given 3 options to choose from, for example question 1:
To the Question whether an Aryan who marries a Jew should be condemned 91% responded "No". To the question: "All those who ordered the murder of civilians or participated in the murderings should be made to stand trial." 94% responded "Yes".
Sarah Ann Gordon singles out the question "Extermination of the Jews and Poles and other non-Aryans was not necessary for the security of the Germans", which included an implicit double negative to which the response was either yes or no. She concludes that this was confusingly phrased; "Some interviewees may have responded "no" they did not agree with the statement, when they actually did agree that the extermination was not necessary." She further highlights the discrepancy to the 77% percent who responded that actions against Jews were in no way justified. (See: Denazification
)
Regarding German knowledge of the workings of the ordinary concentration camps, it should be noted that "Between 1933 and 1945 more than 3 million Germans had been in concentration camps or prison for political reasons" (See: German resistance
)
Although the Holocaust was planned and directed by Germans, the Nazi regime found willing collaborators in other countries, both those allied to Germany and those under German occupation.
The civil service and police of the Vichy
regime in occupied France actively collaborated in persecuting French Jews. Germany's allies, Italy, Finland, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, were pressured to introduce anti-Jewish measures; with the exception of Romania, they did not comply until compelled to do so. Bulgaria and Finland refused to co-operate, and all 50,000 Bulgarian Jews survived (though most lost their possessions and many were imprisoned), but thousands of Greek and Yugoslavian Jews were deported from the Bulgarian-occupied territories. The Hungarian regime of Miklós Horthy
also refused to cooperate, but after the German invasion of Hungary on March 18, 1944, 437,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz by the newly instated Döme Sztójay
regime, fully knowing that they will be exterminated. The Romanian regime of Ion Antonescu
actively collaborated, but its inefficiency meant that only a half of Romania's 600,000 Jews were killed. The German puppet regime in Croatia
actively persecuted Jews on its own initiative.
The Nazis sought to enlist support for their programs in all the countries they occupied, although their recruitment methods differed in various countries according to Nazi racial theories. In the "Nordic" countries of Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, and Estonia they tried to recruit young men into the Waffen SS, with sufficient success to create the "Wiking" SS division on the Eastern Front, many of whose members fought for Germany with great fanaticism until the end of the war. In Lithuania and Ukraine, on the other hand, they recruited large numbers of auxiliary troops that were used for anti-partisan work and guard duties at extermination and concentration camps. Most of these recruits were peasant boys, who enlisted simply to gain a ration card, but the Germans were able in these countries to appeal to long traditions of local antisemitism.
In recent years, the extent of local collaboration with the Nazis in eastern Europe has become more apparent. Historian Alan Bullock
writes: "The opening of the archives both in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe has produced incontrovertible evidence [of] ... collaboration on a much bigger scale than hitherto realized of Ukrainians and Lithuanians as well as Hungarians, Croats and Slovaks in the deportation and murder of Jews." Historians have been examining the question "Was the Holocaust a European Project?" Historian Dieter Pohl has estimated that more than 200,000 non-Germans "prepared, carried out and assisted in acts of murder." That is about the same number as Germans and Austrians. Historian Götz Aly has concluded that the Holocaust was in fact a "european project that cannot be explained solely by the special circumstances of German history."
It should also be noted that some states, often while decrying Nazism publicly, closed their borders to Jewish immigrants and refugees, usually for fear of attracting the unwanted attention of Germany. These include powerful and influential countries including the USA. Oddly, places such as Shanghai
gave as much help to Jewish refugees as was possible.
en) with Nazi Einsatzgruppen detachments participated in the extermination of the Jewish population in their countries, as well as assisting the Nazis elsewhere, such as deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto.
The Arajs Commando
, a Latvian volunteer police unit, for example, shot 26,000 Latvian Jews, at various locations after they had been brutally rounded-up for this purpose by the regular police and auxiliaries, and was responsible for assisting in the killing of 60,000 more Jews.
In Lithuania the racial principles of the Third Reich were installed after instigating by Nazi forces since June 25. Within the last 6 months of 1941 following the June invasion by Germany, the majority of Lithuanian Jews
were executed. The remnants trapped in ghettos were killed in occupied Lithuania and sent to death German Nazi camps in Poland. Almost all Lithuanian Jews died during the Holocaust. Scholars believe the death rate in Lithuania was 96 percent, making Nazi-occupied Lithuania the European territory with the lowest number of Jewish survivors of World War II. Additionally, Lithuanian auxiliary police
troops assisted in killing Jews in Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. Further, Jews from France, Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia were murdered at the Ninth Fort in Kaunas. Pro-Lithuanian activists decried Soviet trials of collaborators following the war but independent Lithuania following the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 has been slow to prosecute cases against Nazi collaborators since then. To date three men have been tried and convicted, but all were excused from punishment due to health and age. In 2008, Lithuanian prosecutors began investigations into war-time atrocities against civilians allegedly committed by Lithuanian Jews who escaped from the Lithuanian ghettos to take up arms against the Nazis. Targets of the Lithuanian investigation included Yitzhak Arad
, former partisan in Lithuania, Holocaust scholar and founder of the Yad Vashem
institution in Israel, causing a flurry of negative media publicity for Lithuania in Israel and abroad.
About 75% of Estonia's
Jewish community, aware of the fate that otherwise awaited them, managed to escape to the Soviet Union; virtually all the remainder (between 950 and 1,000 people) were killed by Einsatzgruppe A and local collaborators before the end of 1941. There were, prior to the war, approximately 4,300 Estonian Jews. After the Soviet occupation many Jewish people were deported to Siberia along with other Estonians. It is estimated that 500 Jews suffered this fate. With the invasion of the Baltics, it was the intention of the Nazi government to use the Baltics countries as their main area of mass genocide. Consequently, Jews from countries outside the Baltics were shipped there to be exterminated. and an estimated 10,000 Jews were killed in Estonia after having been deported to camps there from elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Seven ethnic Estonians
: Ralf Gerrets, Ain-Ervin Mere
, Jaan Viik, Juhan Jüriste, Karl Linnas
, Aleksander Laak and Ervin Viks have faced trials for crimes against humanity committed during the Nazi occupation in Estonia.
In 2002 the government decided to officially commemorate the Holocaust. In the same year, the Simon Wiesenthal Center
had provided the Estonian government with information on alleged Estonian war criminals, all former members of the 36th Estonian Police Battalion. After investigation, the Estonian government concluded that there was insufficient evidence and deferred on the center's demands to try the veterans. Wiesenthal Center called the Estonian statement "false". In the same year, calls of Simon Wiesenthal Center
to intensify prosecution of the Nazi war criminals were criticized by the Estonian media and the general public, prompting anti-Semitic messages toward the Jewish community. However in 2003 NCSJ (formerly National Conference on Soviet Jewry) has noted Anti-Semitism in Estonia is not a major problem, and the Estonian government has committed itself to a swift and thorough response to incidents.
Estonia and Lithuania (together with Austria, Norway, Romania, Sweden, Syria and Ukraine) have been given the grade Category F-2: Failure in practice by the Simon Wiesenthal Center
Status Report on Investigation and Prosecution of Nazi War Criminals for both 2005-2006 and 2006-2007.
state actively collaborated with Nazi Germany. An official report commissioned by the country's senate concluded that:
The report identified three crucial moments that showed the attitude of Belgian authorities toward the Jews:
However, collaboration is not the whole story. While there is little doubt that there were strong antisemitic feelings in Belgium, after November 1942, the German roundups became less successful as large-scale rescue operations were carried out by ordinary Belgians. This resulted in the survival of about 25,000 people, roughly half of the Jewish population of Belgium.
, mainly through the influence of the Bulgarian East Orthodox Church, saved all of its own Jewish population from deportation and certain death. Civil and military administration for parts of Northern Greece and Macedonia had been turned over to Bulgaria by Germany. Bulgaria and German authorities deported the Jews from those territories to the concentration camps. In all, Bulgaria deported over 11,000 Jews to German-held territory.
n Ustaše
regime killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs (estimates vary widely, but by all sources more than 330,000–390,000, and possibly well over a million), over 20,000 Jews and 26,000 Roma, primarily in the Ustase's Jasenovac concentration camp
near Zagreb
. The Ustase also deported 7,000 more Jews to Nazi extermination camps. According to Nihad Halilbegović at least 103,000 Bosniaks
(Bosnian Muslim Slavs) died at the hands of the Nazis, Croatian Ustaše
, and the Serbian Chetnik's collaborationist regime. According to Halilbegovic, "large numbers of Bosniaks were killed and listed under Roma populations." Croats were also victims of the Nazi regime and those who opposed it ended up in concentration camps. Many Croats risked their lives during the Holocaust in order to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis (see Croatian Righteous Among the Nations
).
, who became premier after Paris
had fallen to the German Army, arranged the surrender to Germany. He then became the head of the Vichy
government, which collaborated with Nazism, claiming that it would soften the hardships of occupation. Opposition to the German occupation of northern France and the collaborationist Vichy government was left to the French Resistance
within France and the Free French Forces
led by Charles de Gaulle
outside of France. The police, the Milice
("militia", which worked as the Gestapo's aid), as well as members of Jacques Doriot
's Parti Populaire Français
(PPF) rounded up 75,000 Jews for deportation to concentration camps. The Vichy regime attracted all of the far-right counterrevolutionary
sectors of French society, monarchists and other pseudo-fascist movements. La Cagoule
, a terrorist group and Eugène Schueller
, the founder of L'Oréal
, are examples of such groups. Antisemitism, as the Dreyfus Affair
had shown at the end of the 19th century, was widespread in France, especially among anti-republican
sympathizers. The Vichy government eagerly participated in the Holocaust, for example with the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup (rafle du Vel' d'Hiv) on July 16 and 17, 1942, in which 13,152 Jews were arrested, including 4,051 children which the German authorities had not asked for. They were held at the Winter Velodrome and Drancy
transit camp, and nearly all were transported by rail to Auschwitz.
Klaus Barbie
, a German member of the Gestapo also known as "the Butcher of Lyon", captured and deported 44 Jewish children hidden in the village of Izieu
, killed Resistance
leader Jean Moulin
, and was responsible for the deportation of 7,500 people, 4,342 murders, and the arrest and torture of 14,311 resistance fighters were in some way attributed to his actions or commands.
Maurice Papon
was the number two official in the Bordeaux
region and supervisor of its "Service for Jewish Questions". In 1997, following revelations from Le Canard Enchaîné
newspaper, he was finally charged with complicity of crimes against humanity. Papon was accused of ordering the arrest and deportation of 1,560 Jews, including children and the elderly, between 1942 and 1944; most of his victims were sent to Auschwitz. As during Adolf Eichmann
's trial, one of the main issue was to determine to what extent an individual should be held responsible
in a chain of responsibility. In 1998, he was given a ten-year prison term. However, he was released on grounds of poor health in 2002. Many people thought both the relatively light sentence and his release were scandalous, especially when it was known to all that following the war, Papon went on to enjoy a civil service career, which led him to be the chief of the Paris police, held by historian Luc Einaudi as being directly responsible for the 1961 Paris massacre during the Algerian War
(1954–1962); Papon even became budget minister of president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
in the 1970s. He was finally arrested because of the Canard Enchaîné 's revelations, which themselves followed a fiscal control ordered by Papon with the aim of intimidating the satirical newspaper.
mainly lived in the area around Thessaloniki
, where a large and influential Sephardi community had lived since the 16th century. When the city became part of Greece in 1912, the Jews formed the single biggest community. In the next decades, there had been occasional conflicts between Jews and Greeks. A minor antisemitic nationalist party called National Union of Greece
(Ethniki Enosis Ellados, EEE) existed from 1927 to 1935, which was revived by Nazi authorities. Members of the EEE assisted the occupying forces in identifying Jews and collaborated on the deportation of local Jews with remarkable efficiency, either for ethnic hatred
or for more prosaic reasons such as obtaining profits from the confiscation and sale of Jewish property. By the time of the German withdrawal from Greece in 1944, nearly 90% of the Jewish community in Thessaloniki had been annihilated.
Percentage of Holocaust victims in Greece were highest in Bulgarian occupied areas of Greece (Western Thrace), where Bulgarian authorities arrested and shipped on Bulgarian trains through Bulgaria to Nazi death camps in occupied Poland upwards of 95% of Jews in those regions.
Jews in Athens
and other parts of Greece, on the other hand, went through a different experience. They were Romaniotes
, who had been present in Greece since Antiquity, spoke Greek and were well-integrated in the Greek society. Many Jews eluded deportation by either being helped by Greeks into hiding or joining the Greek Resistance
in the mountains. This, however, did not exempt Athenian Jews from organized crime against them. Just like the Nazi authorities had restored the EEE in Thessaloniki, in Athens the German occupation authorities created the ESPO
(Ethniko-Socialistiki Patriotiki Organosis), whose members attacked or assisted Germans in locating local Jews. The ESPO's most notorious action was the ransacking of the synagogue on Melidoni Street, Athens. Other ESPO members were recruited as guards in the Haidari concentration camp
, just outside Athens.
In any case, the three quisling
governments headed by Georgios Tsolakoglou
, Konstantinos Logothetopoulos
and Ioannis Rallis
to different extents were unable to stop (or participated) in the deportation or prosecution of Greek Jews. Rallis, for instance, was known to hold the view that the houses of deported Jews in Thessaloniki should be appropriated by the Greek Pontian
refugees who came to Greece after the 1923 population exchange
.
Horthy
regime deported 20,000 Jews from annexed Transcarpathian Ukraine who weren't able to account for Hungarian citizenship in 1941 to Kamianets-Podilskyi
in the German-occupied Ukraine
, where they were shot by the German Einsatzgruppen
detachments. Hungarian army and police units killed 3000 Jews and Serbs in Novi Sad
in January 1942. Horthy resisted German demands for mass deportation of Hungarian Jews until March 1944, when Nazis occupied Hungary. By the beginning of July 1944, 437,000 Jews had been deported to Auschwitz by the Hungarian authorities in cooperation with German Sonderkommando
, including those 20,000 who were refugees from the neighboring countries. The mass deportations stopped in July when world leaders appealed to Horthy, following the escape from Auschwitz of Rudolf Vrba
and Alfréd Wetzler
, whose story about the mass murder taking place inside the camp was published in June by the BBC and The New York Times. In October 1944, the Horthy regime was replaced by the fascist Arrow Cross Party
led by Ferenc Szálasi
. Seventy thousand Jews were forced on a death march to Austria — thousands were shot on the way, and thousands more died of starvation and exposure.
, a law from 1938 restricted civil liberties of Jews. This effectively reduced the country's Jews to second-class status, though Mussolini never made it official policy to deport Jews to concentration camps. After the fall of Benito Mussolini
and his creation, the Italian Social Republic
, Jews started being deported to German camps. The deported numbered about 8,369, and only about a thousand survived. Several small camps were built in Italy and the so-called Risiera di San Sabba
hosted a crematorium; from 2,000 to 5,000 people were killed in San Sabba, only a few of whom were Jews.
Jews, the German occupiers deported about 107,000, of whom 101,800 were murdered. This death toll of 95% is the highest in Western Europe. Reasons that have been suggested to explain this phenomenon are: the occupation regime in the Netherlands was formed by fanatical Austrian Nazis; the degree of efficiency and the high level of administrative organization of the pre-war Dutch civilian administration; the typical Dutch landscape without mountains or woods made it practically impossible to find shelter; the majority of the Dutch Jews lived in the larger cities and thus they formed relatively easy targets for persecution and segregation; the Jewish leaders chose, "in order to prevent worse", a policy of collaboration with the Nazis; the Dutch pre-war society can be characterized as a conglomerate of different groups, which lived separately from another and this fact made it easy for the Germans to segregate and persecute the Jewish section of society; because the Jews were cut off from public life, they lost almost all of the support that could have been provided by other groups in society; active assistance by Dutch collaborators, such as the Henneicke Column
group that hunted and "delivered" 8,000 to 9,000 Jews for deportation. All of these circumstances made it relatively easy for the SS, regularly aided by Dutch police officers, to round up the Jewish population.
Josef Terboven
and the Norwegian Fascist Party leader Vidkun Quisling
. Quisling had attempted to establish himself as the leader of occupied Norway, but the Nazis only used him as leader of a puppet government. The Nazis, as well as some Norwegian police units, managed to round up over 750 Jews, of a total of about 1,800. However, the Nazis and their collaborators were very unpopular in Norway, causing a strong resistance movement
, so the German government's aims for Norway were never fulfilled. Many Jews and other people were saved by the actions of Norwegians, including Norwegian police. Still, detailed lists of Jews existed at the time of the occupation
. This caused the rounding-up of Jews in Norway to be much more efficient than in Denmark
. Quisling and other Norwegians, who collaborated with the Nazis, were executed as traitors after the war
, at least partly due to their involvement in the Holocaust. Also, 245 Sinti and Roma were deported to the Nazi extermination camps, of whom 190 were murdered.
Arab nationalist
and a Muslim
religious leader, the Grand Mufti
of Jerusalem Mohammad Amin al-Husayni
worked for the Nazi Germany as a propagandist and a recruiter of Muslim volunteers for the Waffen SS and other units.
On November 28, 1941, Hitler officially received al-Husayni in Berlin. Hitler made a declaration that after "...the last traces of the Jewish-Communist European hegemony had been obliterated... the German army would... gain the southern exit of Caucasus... the Führer would offer the Arab world his personal assurance that the hour of liberation had struck. Thereafter, Germany's only remaining objective in the region would be limited to the Vernichtung des... Judentums ['destruction of the Jewish element', sometimes taken to be a euphemism for 'annihilation of the Jews'] living under British protection in Arab lands.."
The Mufti spent the remainder of the war assisting with the formation of Muslim Waffen SS units in the Balkans
and the formation of schools and training centers for imam
s and mullah
s who would accompany the Muslim SS and Wehrmacht units. Beginning in 1943, al-Husayni was involved in the organization and recruitment of Bosnian Muslims
into several divisions. The largest of which was the 13th "Handschar" division
of 21,065 men.
In 1944, al-Husayni sponsored an unsuccessful chemical warfare
assault on the Jewish community in Palestine. Five parachutists were supplied with maps of Tel Aviv
, canisters of a German–manufactured "fine white powder," and instructions from the Mufti to dump chemicals into the Tel Aviv water system
. District police commander Fayiz Bey Idrissi later recalled, "The laboratory report stated that each container held enough poison to kill 25,000 people, and there were at least ten containers."
regime was responsible for the deaths of between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews. An official declaration by the Romanian government that denied the existence of Holocaust within the country's borders during World War II led in 2003 to the creation of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania
. The official report of the Commission released jointly with the Romanian government reads:
In cooperation with German Einsatzgruppen
and Ukrainian auxiliaries, Romanian troops killed hundreds of thousands of Jews in Bessarabia
, northern Bukovina
, and Transnistria
. Some of the larger massacres included 54,000 Jews killed in Bogdanovka
, a Romanian concentration camp along the Bug River
in Transnistria
, between 21 and 31 December 1941. Nearly 100,000 Jews were killed in occupied Odessa
and over 10,000 were killed in the Iasi pogrom
. The Romanians also massacred Jews in the Domanevka, Pechora
and Akhmetchetka concentration camps.
The protests of various public, political and religious figures (e.g. Queen Elena of Romania and Prince Constantin Karadja
) against the deportation of the Jews from the Romanian Kingdom contributed to the change of policy toward the Jews starting with October 1942. The result of this change of policy and that of the actions of a relatively small number of individuals was that at least 290,000 Romanian Jews survived.
. The internal affairs of the Serbian occupied territory were moderated by German racial laws, that were introduced in all occupied territories with immediate effects on Jews
, Roma people, as well as imprisonment of left oriented persons. The two major concentration camps in Serbia were Sajmište
and Banjica
. Of 40,000 Serbian Jews around one half lost their lives in Nazi concentration camps both in Serbia and the German Reich, where most of the captured Serbian Jews were transferred. Under Nedić, Belgrade was declared to be Judenfrei
in 1942. Serbs were also victims of the Nazi regime, and most of the victims in Banjica were Serbian. Nazis had a policy of killing 100 Serbs for each killed German soldier and 50 killed Serbs for each wounded, resulting in widespread taking of hostages and executions such as the Kragujevac massacre
. Despite these repressive measures, Serbs rebelled, and most Serbs saw Jews as their fellow victims in World War II, dying together in Nazi repression and genocide in Sajmište
, Banjica
and Jasenovac
. Legends about Serbs saving the Jews in World War II are widespread in Serbia, and 152 Serbs have been honored as righteous Gentiles.
regime deported approximately 57,000 Jews to the German-occupied part of Poland,and even paid the Germans for the Jews that were deported, where almost all of them were killed.
The deportation of the remaining 24,000 was stopped after the Papal Nuncio informed the Slovak president that the German authorities were killing the Jews deported from Slovakia. However, 12,600 more Jews were deported by the German forces occupying Slovakia after the Slovak National Uprising
in 1944. Around a half of them were killed in concentration camps. Some 10,000 Slovak Jews survived hidden by local people and 6,000–7,000 got official protection from the Slovak authorities.
remained silent in regard to Jewish matters, and Spain became an unlikely escape route and haven for thousands of Jews. They were mainly from Western Europe, fleeing deportation to concentration camps from occupied France, but also Sephardic Jews from Eastern Europe, especially in Hungary. Trudy Alexy refers to the "absurdity" and "paradox of refugees fleeing the Nazis' Final Solution
to seek asylum in a country where no Jews had been allowed to live openly as Jews for over four centuries."
Throughout World War II
, Spanish diplomats of the Franco government, as well as diplomats from Switzerland, Sweden, Portugal and the Vatican, extended their protection to Eastern European Jews, especially in Hungary
. Jews claiming Spanish ancestry were provided with Spanish documentation without being required to prove their case and either left for Spain or survived the war with the help of their new legal status in occupied countries.
In the first years of the war, "Laws regulating their admittance were written and mostly ignored." Once the tide of war began to turn, and Count Francisco Gómez-Jordana succeeded Franco's brother-in-law Serrano Súñer as Spain's foreign minister, Spanish diplomacy became "more sympathetic to Jews", although Franco himself "never said anything" about this. Around that same time, a contingent of Spanish doctors traveling in Poland
were fully informed of the Nazi extermination plans by the Gauleiter
Frankel
of Warsaw
, who was under the misimpression that they would share his views about the matter; when they came home, they passed the story to Admiral Luís Carrero Blanco
, who told Franco.
Diplomats discussed the possibility of Spain as a route to a containment camp for Jewish refugees near Casablanca
, but it came to naught due to lack of Free French and British support. Nonetheless, control of the Spanish border with France relaxed somewhat at this time, and thousands of Jews managed to cross into Spain (many by smugglers' routes). Almost all of these survived the war. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
operated openly in Barcelona.
Shortly afterwards, Spain began giving citizenship to Sephardic Jews in Greece
, Hungary
, Bulgaria
, and Romania
; many Ashkenazic Jews also managed to be included, as did some non-Jews. The Spanish head of mission in Budapest
, Ángel Sanz Briz
, may have saved thousands of Ashkenazim in Hungary
by granting them Spanish citizenship, placing them in safe houses, and teaching them minimal Spanish so they could pretend to be Sephardim, at least to someone who did not know Spanish. The Spanish diplomatic corps was performing a balancing act: Alexy conjectures that the number of Jews they took in was limited by how much German hostility they were willing to engender.
Toward the war's end, Sanz Briz had to flee Budapest, leaving these Jews open to arrest and deportation. An Italian diplomat, Giorgio Perlasca
, who was himself living under Spanish protection, used forged documents to persuade the Hungarian authorities that he was the new Spanish Ambassador. As such, he continued Spanish protection of Hungarian Jews until the Red Army arrived.
Although Spain effectively undertook more to help Jews escape deportation to the concentration camps than most neutral and Allied countries did, there has been debate about Spain's wartime attitude towards refugees. Francoist Spain, despite its aversion to Zionism
and "Judeo"-Freemasonry
, does not appear to have shared the rabid anti-Semitic ideology promoted by the Nazis. Certainly, about 25,000 to 35,000 refugees, mainly Jews, were allowed to transit through Spain to Portugal and beyond. About 5,000 Jews in occupied Europe benefitted from Spanish legal protection.
However, while some historians argue that these facts demonstrate a humane attitude of Franco's regime, others point out that Spain only permitted transit and did not wish to increase its own small Jewish population. After the war, Franco's regime was quite hospitable to those who had been responsible for the deportation of the Jews, notably Louis Darquier de Pellepoix
, Commissioner for Jewish Affairs (May 1942 – February 1944) under the Vichy Régime in France
.
Franco's government gave the architect of the Nazi Final Solution
, Heinrich Himmler
, a list of six thousand Jews living in Spain, as requested by Himmler. Jose Maria Finat y Escriva de Romani, Franco's chief of security issued an official order dated May 13, 1941 to all provincial governors requesting a list of all Jews, both local and foreign, present in their districts. After the list was compiled, Romani was appointed Spain's ambassador to Germany, enabling him to deliver it personally to Himmler. Following the defeat of Germany in 1945, the Spanish government attempted to destroy all evidence of cooperation with the Nazis, but this official order survived.
.
While it is true that Switzerland was under strong pressure from the German government, long-standing antisemitism was prevalent in Switzerland and was also reflected in the Swiss government's border policy. The International Commission of Experts
(ICE) set up in 1996 by the Swiss parliament to examine relations between Nazi Germany and Switzerland reported: "Anti-Semitic views were more or less widespread amongst the political classes, the civil service, the military and the church." While such views did not lead to violent persecution, it did provide a barrier to making policies for the protection of Jewish refugees.
Before 1938, Swiss alien and refugee policy was already restrictive toward certain people and groups, notably foreign Roma and Sinti. However, from that date, restrictions were intensified, particularly towards Jews. As part of that policy, the Swiss government requested the German government to mark the passports of German Jews with a "J" as they were not ready to grant asylum on the grounds of racial persecution.
In 1942 Swiss borders were completely closed to all Jewish refugees, which even included Jewish children who were in groups of children coming to Switzerland for holidays.
The ICE wrote: "by progressively closing the borders, delivering captured refugees over to their persecutors, and adhering to restrictive principles for far too long, the country stood by as many people were undoubtedly driven to certain death."
Although accurate statistics are hard to put together, the commission concluded that "It must therefore be assumed that Switzerland turned back or deported over 20,000 refugees during the Second World War. Furthermore, between 1938 and November 1944, around 14,500
applications for entry visas submitted by hopeful emigrants to the Swiss diplomatic
missions abroad were refused."
The conclusions of the ICE report about refugees have been questioned, most notably by Jean-Christian Lambelet who criticises the statistical work and argues inter alia that there was a big gap between policy and actual practice. He believes that the figures of Jews that were sent back were overestimated.
Functionalism versus intentionalism
Functionalism versus intentionalism is a historiographical debate about the origins of the Holocaust as well as most aspects of the Third Reich, such as foreign policy...
historians such as Lucy Dawidowicz
Lucy Dawidowicz
Lucy Schildkret Dawidowicz was an American historian and an author of books on modern Jewish history, in particular books on the Holocaust.-Life:...
argue that Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
planned the extermination of the Jewish people from as early as 1918, and that he personally oversaw its execution. Functionalists
Functionalism versus intentionalism
Functionalism versus intentionalism is a historiographical debate about the origins of the Holocaust as well as most aspects of the Third Reich, such as foreign policy...
such as Raul Hilberg
Raul Hilberg
Raul Hilberg was an Austrian-born American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the world's preeminent scholar of the Holocaust, and his three-volume, 1,273-page magnum opus, The Destruction of the European Jews, is regarded as a seminal study of the Nazi Final...
have argued that the extermination plans evolved in stages, as a result of initiatives from bureaucrats who were responding to other policy failures.
Historical and philosophical interpretations
The enormity of the Holocaust has prompted much analysis.The Holocaust was indeed characterized by an industrial project of extermination; compared to it, other genocides seemed to lack "professionalism". This led authors such as Enzo Traverso
Enzo Traverso
Enzo Traverso is an Italian historian who has been living and working in France for over 20 years and has written on issues relating to the Holocaust and totalitarianism...
to argue in The Origins of Nazi Violence that Auschwitz was "an authentic product of Western civilization". Beginning his book with a description of the guillotine
Guillotine
The guillotine is a device used for carrying out :executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which an angled blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the head from the body...
, which according to him marks the entry of the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
into capital punishment
Capital punishment
Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...
, and writes: "Through an irony of history, the theories of Frederick Taylor
Frederick Winslow Taylor
Frederick Winslow Taylor was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He is regarded as the father of scientific management and was one of the first management consultants...
" (taylorism) were applied by a totalitarian system
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
to serve "not production, but extermination." (see also Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
's comments). In the wake of Hannah Arendt, Traverso describes the colonial domination during the New Imperialism period through "rational organization", which lead in a number of cases to extermination. However, this argument, which insists on the industrialization and technical rationality through which the Holocaust itself was carried out (the organization of trains, technical details, etc.—see Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...
's bureaucratic work), was in turn opposed by other people. These point out that the 1994 Rwandan Genocide
Rwandan Genocide
The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people in the small East African nation of Rwanda. Over the course of approximately 100 days through mid-July, over 500,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate...
mostly used machete
Machete
The machete is a large cleaver-like cutting tool. The blade is typically long and usually under thick. In the English language, an equivalent term is matchet, though it is less commonly known...
s.
Others have presented the Holocaust as a product of German history, analyzing its deep roots in German society: "German authoritarianism
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
, feeble liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
, brash nationalism or virulent anti-Semitism. From A. J. P. Taylor
A. J. P. Taylor
Alan John Percivale Taylor, FBA was a British historian of the 20th century and renowned academic who became well known to millions through his popular television lectures.-Early life:...
's The Course of German History fifty-five years ago to Daniel Goldhagen
Daniel Goldhagen
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen is an American author and former Associate Professor of Political Science and Social Studies at Harvard University. Goldhagen reached international attention and broad criticism as the author of two controversial books about the Holocaust, Hitler's Willing Executioners and...
's recent Hitler's Willing Executioners, Nazism is understood as the outcome of a long history of uniquely German traits", writes Russell Jacoby. Furthermore, while many pointed out that the specificity of the Holocaust was also rooted in the constant antisemitism from which Jews had been the target since the foundation of Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
(and the myth of the "deicide people"), others underlined that in the 19th century, pseudo-scientific racist theories
Scientific racism
Scientific racism is the use of scientific techniques and hypotheses to sanction the belief in racial superiority or racism.This is not the same as using scientific findings and the scientific method to investigate differences among the humans and argue that there are races...
had been elaborated in order to justify, in a general way, white supremacy
White supremacy
White supremacy is the belief, and promotion of the belief, that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds. The term is sometimes used specifically to describe a political ideology that advocates the social and political dominance by whites.White supremacy, as with racial...
. In his works on "biopolitics
Biopolitics
The term "biopolitics" or "biopolitical" can refer to several different yet often compatible concepts.-Definitions:# In the work of Michel Foucault, the style of government that regulates populations through "biopower" .# In the works of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, anti-capitalist insurrection...
", philosopher Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
also traced the origins of "state racism
State racism
State racism is a concept used by French philosopher Michel Foucault to designate the reappropriation of the historical and political discourse of "race struggle", in the late seventeenth century....
" to the eugenicist policies invented during the 19th century. (One of the few compliments that Foucault accorded to Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
's psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
was that Freud adamantly opposed such a project of "racial hygiene".)
Who authorized the killings?
Hitler authorized the mass killing of those labelled by the Nazis as "undesirables" in the T-4 Euthanasia Program. Sometime between late June 1940 when planning for Operation BarbarossaOperation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
first started and March 1941, orders were approved by Hitler for the re-establishment of the Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
(the surviving historical record does not permit firm conclusions to be drawn about the precise date). Hitler encouraged the killings of the Jews of Eastern Europe by the Einsatzgruppen death squads in a speech in July, 1941, though he almost certainly approved the mass shootings that occurred earlier. A mass of evidence suggests that sometime in the fall of 1941, Himmler and Hitler agreed in principle on the complete mass extermination of the Jews of Europe by gassing, with Hitler explicitly ordering the "annihilation of the Jews" in a speech on December 12, 1941 (see Final Solution
Final Solution
The Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust...
), by which time the Jewish populations in the Baltic states had been effectively eliminated. To make for smoother intra-governmental cooperation in the implementation of this "Final Solution" to the "Jewish Question", the Wannsee conference
Wannsee Conference
The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior officials of the Nazi German regime, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. The purpose of the conference was to inform administrative leaders of Departments responsible for various policies relating to Jews, that Reinhard Heydrich...
was held near Berlin on January 20, 1942, with the participation of fifteen senior officials, led by Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich , also known as The Hangman, was a high-ranking German Nazi official.He was SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia...
and Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...
, the records of which provide the best evidence of the central planning of the Holocaust. Just five weeks later on February 22, Hitler was recorded saying "We shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jew" to his closest associates. Nevertheless, no written order from Hitler exists.
Who knew about the killings?
Some claim that the full extent of what was happening in German-controlled areas was not known until after the war. Since the early years of the war, the Polish government-in-exile published documents and organised meetings to spread word of the fate of the Jews (see Witold PileckiWitold Pilecki
Witold Pilecki was a soldier of the Second Polish Republic, the founder of the Secret Polish Army resistance group and a member of the Home Army...
). In an entry in the Friedrich Kellner
Friedrich Kellner
August Friedrich Kellner was a mid-level official in Germany who worked as a justice inspector in Mainz and Laubach. During the First World War, Kellner was an infantryman in a Hessian regiment...
diary, "My Opposition," dated October 28, 1941, the German justice inspector recorded a conversation he had in Laubach
Laubach
' is a town of approximately 10,000 people in the region of Hesse, Germany. Laubach is known as a , a climatic health resort. It is situated east of Gießen. Surrounding are the towns of , , and .-Points of interest:...
with a German soldier who had witnessed a massacre in Poland. Other entries in his diary clearly show the people of Germany were aware from the beginning of the atrocities. Churchill, who was privy to intelligence reports derived from decoded German transmissions, first began mentioning "mass killings" in public at the same time. In the summer of 1942, a Jewish labor organization (the Bund
General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland
The General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland was a Jewish socialist party in Poland which promoted the political, cultural and social autonomy of Jewish workers, sought to combat antisemitism and was generally opposed to Zionism.-Creation of the Polish Bund:...
) got word to London that 700,000 Polish Jews had already died, and the BBC took the story seriously, though the United States State Department did not. In the United States, in November 1942, a telegram from Europe which contained word about Hitler's plans was released by Stephen Wise of the World Jewish Congress
World Jewish Congress
The World Jewish Congress was founded in Geneva, Switzerland, in August 1936 as an international federation of Jewish communities and organizations...
, after a long wait for permission from the government. This led to attempts by Jewish organizations to put Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
under pressure to act on behalf of the European Jews, many of whom had tried in vain to enter either Britain or the U.S.
On December 17, 1942, however, after receiving a detailed eyewitness account from Jan Karski
Jan Karski
Jan Karski was a Polish World War II resistance movement fighter and later scholar at Georgetown University. In 1942 and 1943 Karski reported to the Polish government in exile and the Western Allies on the situation in German-occupied Poland, especially the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, and...
, the Allies issued a formal declaration confirming and condemning Nazi extermination policy toward the Jews. The US State Department was aware of the use and the location of the gas chambers of extermination camps, but refused pleas to bomb them out of operation. On May 12, 1943, Polish government-in-exile member and Bund leader Szmul Zygielbojm
Szmul Zygielbojm
Szmul Zygielbojm was a Jewish-Polish socialist politician, leader of the Bund, and a member of the National Council of the Polish government in exile...
committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
in London to protest the inaction of the world with regard to the Holocaust, stating in part in his suicide letter:
The death camps were discussed between American and British leaders at the Bermuda Conference
Bermuda Conference
The Bermuda Conference was an international conference between the United Kingdom and the United States held on April 19, 1943 at Hamilton, Bermuda, Bermuda Triangle. Discussions included the question of Jewish refugees who had been liberated by Allied forces and those who still remained...
in April 1943. The large camps near Auschwitz were finally surveyed by plane in April 1944, many months after the German air force
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....
ceased to be a serious danger. While all important German cities and production centers were bombed
Area bombardment
In military aviation, area bombardment is aerial bombardment targeted indiscriminately at a large area, such as a city block or an entire city.Area bombing is a form of strategic bombing...
by Allied forces until the end of the war, no attempt was made to collapse the system of mass annihilation by destroying pertinent structures or train tracks, even though Churchill was a proponent of bombing parts of the Auschwitz complex. Throughout the war, Britain also pressed European leaders to prevent "illegal" Jewish immigration and sent ships to block the sea-route to Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
(from which Britain withdrew in 1948), turning back many refugees.
Debate also continues on how much average Germans knew about the Holocaust. Recent historical work suggests that the majority of Germans knew that Jews were being indiscriminately killed and persecuted but they did not know about the Final Solution and the specifics of the death camps. Robert Gellately
Robert Gellately
Robert Gellately is a Newfoundland-born Canadian academic who is one of the leading historians of modern Europe, particularly during World War II and the Cold War era. He is presently Earl Ray Beck Professor of History at Florida State University....
, a historian at Oxford University, conducted a widely-respected survey of the German media before and during the war, concluding that there was "substantial consent and active participation of large numbers of ordinary Germans" in aspects of the Holocaust, and documenting that the sight of columns of slave laborers were common, and that the basics of the concentration camps, if not the extermination camps, were widely known.
Other scholars, like Peter Longerich
Peter Longerich
Professor Peter Longerich is a German historian.In 2002-03, Professor Longerich was the third holder of the Visiting Chair at the Fritz Bauer Institute in Frankfurt. In 2003-04, he was J.B...
, have argued that most Germans did not know about the mass-murders as they were occurring. There was an order to keep the Final Solution a secret (under death penalty) among the estimated 300,000 persons involved in implementing the plan. Helmuth James Graf von Moltke
Helmuth James Graf von Moltke
Helmuth James Graf von Moltke was a German jurist who, as a draftee in the German Abwehr, acted to subvert German human-rights abuses of people in territories occupied by Germany during World War II and subsequently became a founding member of the Kreisau Circle resistance group, whose members...
gives an estimation of less than a tenth of the population in 1943. There were rumours of gas chambers.
Who carried out the killings?
A wide range of German soldiers, officials, and civilians were in some way involved in the Holocaust, from clerks and officials in the government to units of the army, the police, and the SS. Many ministries, including those of armaments, interior, justice, railroads, and foreign affairs, had substantial roles in orchestrating the Holocaust; similarly, German physicians participated in medical experiments and the T-4 euthanasia program. And, though there was no single military department in charge of the Holocaust, the SSSchutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
under Reichsführer-SS
Reichsführer-SS
was a special SS rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945. Reichsführer-SS was a title from 1925 to 1933 and, after 1934, the highest rank of the German Schutzstaffel .-Definition:...
Himmler was the closest. From the SS came the Totenkopfverbände
SS-Totenkopfverbände
SS-Totenkopfverbände , meaning "Death's-Head Units", was the SS organization responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps for the Third Reich....
concentration camp guards, the Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
killing squads, and the main administrative offices behind the Holocaust, including the RSHA and WVHA
SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt
The SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt was responsible for managing the finances, supply systems and business projects for the Allgemeine-SS...
. The Wehrmacht Heer (regular army), directly participated far less than the SS in the Holocaust (though it did directly take part in the massacre of some Jews in Russia, Serbia, Poland, and Greece). However, it supported the Einsatzgruppen, helped form the ghettos, ran prison camps, occasionally provided concentration camp guards, transported prisoners to camps, had experiments performed on prisoners, and substantially used slave labor.
German police units, all under the control of the Nazis during the war, also directly participated in the Holocaust; for example, Reserve Police Battalion 101, in just over a year, shot 38,000 Jews and deported 45,000 more to the extermination camps. Even private firms helped in the machinery of the Holocaust. Nazi bankers at the Paris branch of Barclays Bank volunteered the names of their Jewish employees to Nazi authorities, and many of them ended up in the death camps.
Obedience
Stanley MilgramStanley Milgram
Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist most notable for his controversial study known as the Milgram Experiment. The study was conducted in the 1960s during Milgram's professorship at Yale...
was one of a number of post-war psychologists and sociologists who tried to address why people obeyed immoral orders in the Holocaust. Milgram's findings
Milgram experiment
The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of notable social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that...
demonstrated that reasonable people, when instructed by a person in a position of authority, obeyed
Obedience (human behavior)
In human behavior, obedience is the quality of being obedient, which describes the act of carrying-out commands or being actuated. Obedience differs from compliance, which is behavior influenced by peers, and from conformity, which is behavior intended to match that of the majority. Obedience can...
commands entailing what they believed to be the suffering of others. These results were subsequently corroborated by the Stanford prison experiment
Stanford prison experiment
The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted from August 14th-20th, 1971, by a team of researchers led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University...
, even though both experiments were non-repeatable.
In his book Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Wilhelm Reich
Wilhelm Reich
Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, known as one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry...
also tried to explain this obedience. The work became known as the foundation of Freudo-Marxism
Freudo-Marxism
Freudo-Marxism is a loose designation of several twentieth-century critical theory schools of thought that sought to synthesize the philosophy and political economy of Karl Marx with the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud....
. Nobel prize winner Elias Canetti
Elias Canetti
Elias Canetti was a Bulgarian-born modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer. He wrote in German and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981, "for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power".-Life:...
also addressed the problem of mass
Mass
Mass can be defined as a quantitive measure of the resistance an object has to change in its velocity.In physics, mass commonly refers to any of the following three properties of matter, which have been shown experimentally to be equivalent:...
obedience in Masse und Macht (1960—"Crowds and Power"), developing an original theory of the consequences of commands both in the obedient person and in the commander, who may well become a "despotic paranoiac". Two recent "experiments", one called The Third Wave
The Third Wave
The Third Wave was an experiment to demonstrate that even democratic societies are not immune to the appeal of fascism. It was undertaken by history teacher Ron Jones with sophomore high school students attending his "Contemporary World" history class as part of a study of Nazi Germany...
and one conducted by Jane Elliott
Jane Elliott
Jane Elliott is an American teacher and anti-racism activist. She created the famous “blue-eyed/brown-eyed” exercise, first done with grade school children in the 1960s, and which later became the basis for her career in diversity training.-Origin of the idea:While there are variations of the...
, tried to answer the question of: "How can a people be a part of something terrible and then claim at the demise that they were not really involved?"
Herding and other factors
The Holocaust is a clear example of two factors at work. One is described by the "boiling frogBoiling frog
The boiling frog story is a widespread anecdote describing a frog slowly being boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death...
" theory, which says that an enormous change will not be noticed if it occurs in gradual steps. The other factor is the primal and powerful mechanism of herding
Herding
Herding is the act of bringing individual animals together into a group , maintaining the group and moving the group from place to place—or any combination of those. While the layperson uses the term "herding", most individuals involved in the process term it mustering, "working stock" or...
, which has its home in the limbic system
Limbic system
The limbic system is a set of brain structures including the hippocampus, amygdala, anterior thalamic nuclei, septum, limbic cortex and fornix, which seemingly support a variety of functions including emotion, behavior, long term memory, and olfaction. The term "limbic" comes from the Latin...
and ensures that individuals conform to the group. This mechanism has evolved through natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
to ensure that human groups survive. Together, these factors make conforming to the group a stronger impulse than breaking out, even if the individual does not agree with what the group is doing. So long as the gradual changes in group behaviour are small, herding can eventually take the group towards a state that is far removed from past behavior and is more and more extreme. Thus, participants in the Holocaust may have privately felt horror or disgust at what they were ordered to do but stayed in line with the group. These effects have been exploited many times in history by demagogues and revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
aries; they are also seen in bullying.
Studies of mass psychology, kick-started by Carl Jung
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
but currently being developed under various labels, suggest that the causal mechanism for crowd behaviour is the reverse of what is commonly believed. The socionomic perspective says that, rather than persecution making people fearful and downtrodden, fearful and downtrodden people look for someone to persecute.
The Jungian-socionomic analysis says that after the humiliation of World War I, the economic ruin of the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
, being forced to pay war reparations
War reparations
War reparations are payments intended to cover damage or injury during a war. Generally, the term war reparations refers to money or goods changing hands, rather than such property transfers as the annexation of land.- History :...
and the Great Depression, it was natural for the German people to become angry and look for someone on whom to vent their anger; herding
Herding
Herding is the act of bringing individual animals together into a group , maintaining the group and moving the group from place to place—or any combination of those. While the layperson uses the term "herding", most individuals involved in the process term it mustering, "working stock" or...
behaviour amplifed this anger and the Holocaust was the result.
Religious hatred and racism
The Nazis considered it their duty to overcome natural compassion and execute orders for what they believed to be higher ideals. Crowd psychologyCrowd psychology
Crowd psychology is a branch of social psychology. Ordinary people can typically gain direct power by acting collectively. Historically, because large groups of people have been able to bring about dramatic and sudden social change in a manner that bypasses established due process, they have also...
has attempted to explain such heinous acts, although Gustave Le Bon
Gustave Le Bon
Gustave Le Bon was a French social psychologist, sociologist, and amateur physicist...
's The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895) was also a major influence of Mein Kampf, in particular relating to the propaganda techniques described in it. Sadistic acts were perhaps most notable in the case of the genocide committed by members of the Ustashe
Ustaše
The Ustaša - Croatian Revolutionary Movement was a Croatian fascist anti-Yugoslav separatist movement. The ideology of the movement was a blend of fascism, Nazism, and Croatian nationalism. The Ustaše supported the creation of a Greater Croatia that would span to the River Drina and to the border...
, whose enthusiasm and sadism in their killings of Serbs appalled Germans, Italians, and even German SS officers, who even acted to restrain the Ustashe. However, concentration camp literature, such as the writings of Primo Levi
Primo Levi
Primo Michele Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist and writer. He was the author of two novels and several collections of short stories, essays, and poems, but is best known for If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland...
and Robert Antelme
Robert Antelme
Robert Antelme was a French writer. During the Second World War he was involved in the French Resistance and deported....
, describe numerous individual sadistic acts, including some committed by Kapos.
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...
(a German leader of the Protestant Reformation) made a specific written call for harsh persecution of the Jewish people, including that their synagogues and schools be set on fire, prayerbooks destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes razed, and property and money confiscated. Luther argued that Jews should be shown no mercy or kindness, should have no legal protection, and that these "poisonous envenomed worms" should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time. "Martin Luther's On the Jews and Their Lies" American historian Lucy Dawidowicz, concluded that the line of "anti-Semitic descent" from Luther to Hitler is "easy to draw," in her book "The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945". Adolf Hitler wrote of his admiration of Martin Luther in Mein Kampf "Mein Kampf".
Some authors, such as liberal philosopher Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...
in The Origins of Totalitarianism
The Origins of Totalitarianism
The Origins of Totalitarianism is a book by Hannah Arendt which describes and analyzes the two major totalitarian movements of the twentieth century, Nazism and Stalinism...
(1951), Swedish writer Sven Lindqvist
Sven Lindqvist
Sven Lindqvist is a Swedish author, whose works include A History of Bombing.-Works in English:*China in Crisis *The Myth of Wu Tao-tzu...
or French historian Olivier LeCour Grandmaison
Olivier LeCour Grandmaison
Olivier LeCour Grandmaison is a French historian. He is a professor of political science at the Evry-Val d'Essonne University and also teach at the Collège International de Philosophie, and mainly works on colonialism issues...
have also linked the Holocaust to colonialism
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
. They argue that techniques put in place during the New Imperialism
New Imperialism
New Imperialism refers to the colonial expansion adopted by Europe's powers and, later, Japan and the United States, during the 19th and early 20th centuries; expansion took place from the French conquest of Algeria until World War I: approximately 1830 to 1914...
period (first of all, concentration camps during the Boer War
Second Boer War
The Second Boer War was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State...
), as well as the pseudo-scientific theories
Scientific racism
Scientific racism is the use of scientific techniques and hypotheses to sanction the belief in racial superiority or racism.This is not the same as using scientific findings and the scientific method to investigate differences among the humans and argue that there are races...
elaborated during this period (e.g. Arthur de Gobineau
Arthur de Gobineau
Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau was a French aristocrat, novelist and man of letters who became famous for developing the theory of the Aryan master race in his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races...
's 1853 Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races
An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races
Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines by Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau was intended as a work of philosophical enquiry into decline and degeneration...
) had been fundamental in preparing the conditions of possibility of the Holocaust. Others authors have adamantly opposed these views, on behalf of the "unicity" of the Holocaust, compared to any other type of genocide
Genocides in history
Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. It is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in...
. Philosopher Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
also traced the origins of the Holocaust and of "racial policies" to what he called "state racism
State racism
State racism is a concept used by French philosopher Michel Foucault to designate the reappropriation of the historical and political discourse of "race struggle", in the late seventeenth century....
", which is a part of "biopolitics
Biopolitics
The term "biopolitics" or "biopolitical" can refer to several different yet often compatible concepts.-Definitions:# In the work of Michel Foucault, the style of government that regulates populations through "biopower" .# In the works of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, anti-capitalist insurrection...
".
Finally, many have pointed the ancient roots of antisemitism, which has been present in the Western world since the foundation of Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
. Modern efforts at ecumenism
Ecumenism
Ecumenism or oecumenism mainly refers to initiatives aimed at greater Christian unity or cooperation. It is used predominantly by and with reference to Christian denominations and Christian Churches separated by doctrine, history, and practice...
, in particular by the Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
which has asked the Jews for a pardon, are being made in order to avoid a repetition of such acts.
Functionalism versus intentionalism
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
studies is the question of functionalism versus intentionalism. The terms were coined in a 1981 article by the British Marxist historian Timothy Mason
Timothy Mason
Timothy Wright Mason was a British Marxist historian of Nazi Germany.-Life and work:He was born in Birkenhead, the child of school-teachers and was educated at Birkenhead School and Oxford University. He taught at Oxford from 1971–1984 and was twice married. He helped to found the...
to describe two schools of thought about the origins of the Holocaust.
Intentionalists hold that the Holocaust was the result of a long-term masterplan on the part of Hitler, and that he was the driving force behind it. Functionalists hold that Hitler was antisemitic, but that he did not have a masterplan for genocide. They see the Holocaust as coming from the ranks of the German bureaucracy, with little or no involvement on the part of Hitler.
Intentionalists such as Lucy Dawidowicz
Lucy Dawidowicz
Lucy Schildkret Dawidowicz was an American historian and an author of books on modern Jewish history, in particular books on the Holocaust.-Life:...
argue that the Holocaust was planned by Hitler from the very beginning of his political career, at least from November 11, 1918. Other intentionalists, such as Andreas Hillgruber
Andreas Hillgruber
Andreas Fritz Hillgruber was a conservative German historian. Hillgruber was influential as a military and diplomatic historian.At his death in 1989, the American historian Francis L...
, Karl Dietrich Bracher
Karl Dietrich Bracher
Karl Dietrich Bracher is a German political scientist and historian of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. Born in Stuttgart, Bracher was awarded a Ph.D. in the Classics by the University of Tübingen in 1948 and subsequently studied at Harvard University from 1949 to 1950...
, Gerhard Weinberg
Gerhard Weinberg
Gerhard Ludwig Weinberg is a German-born American diplomatic and military historian noted for his studies in the history of World War II. Weinberg currently is the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has been a member of the...
, and Klaus Hildebrand
Klaus Hildebrand
Klaus Hildebrand is a German conservative historian whose area of expertise is 19th-20th century German political and military history.- Biography :...
, have suggested that Hitler had decided upon the Holocaust sometime in the early 1920s. More recent intentionalist historians like Eberhard Jäckel
Eberhard Jäckel
Eberhard Jäckel is a Social Democratic German historian, noted for his studies of Adolf Hitler's role in German history. Jäckel sees Hitler as being the historical equivalent to the Chernobyl disaster.-Career:...
continue to emphasize the relative earliness of the decision to kill the Jews, although they are not willing to say that Hitler planned the Holocaust from the beginning. Saul Friedländer
Saul Friedländer
Saul Friedländer is an award-winning Israeli historian and currently a professor of history at UCLA.-Biography:...
has argued that Hitler was an extreme antisemite from 1919 on, but that he did not decide upon genocide until the middle of 1941. Yet another group of intentionalist historians, such as the American Arno J. Mayer
Arno J. Mayer
Arno Joseph Mayer is a United States Marxist historian originally from Luxembourg, who specializes in modern Europe, diplomatic history, and the Holocaust, and is currently Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Emeritus, at Princeton University.-Early life and academic career:Mayer was born into a...
, argue that Hitler first ordered the Holocaust in December 1941.
Functionalists such as Hans Mommsen
Hans Mommsen
Hans Mommsen is a left-wing German historian. He is the twin brother of the late Wolfgang Mommsen.-Biography:He was born in Marburg, the son of the historian Wilhelm Mommsen and great-grandson of the Roman historian Theodor Mommsen. He studied German, history and philosophy at the University of...
, Martin Broszat
Martin Broszat
Martin Broszat was a German historian specializing in modern German social history whose work has been described by The Encyclopedia of Historians as indispensable for any serious study of the Third Reich. Broszat was born in Leipzig, Germany and studied history at the University of Leipzig and...
, Götz Aly
Götz Aly
Götz Aly is a German journalist, historian and social scientist.-Biography:After attending the German School of Journalists, Aly studied history and political science in Berlin...
, Raul Hilberg
Raul Hilberg
Raul Hilberg was an Austrian-born American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the world's preeminent scholar of the Holocaust, and his three-volume, 1,273-page magnum opus, The Destruction of the European Jews, is regarded as a seminal study of the Nazi Final...
, and Christopher Browning
Christopher Browning
Christopher Robert Browning is an American historian of the Holocaust.-Education:Browning received his bachelor's degree from Oberlin College in 1968 and his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1975. He taught at Pacific Lutheran University from 1974 to 1999, eventually becoming...
hold that the Holocaust was started in 1941–1942 as a result of the failure of the Nazi deportation policy and the impending military losses in Russia. They argue that what some see as extermination fantasies outlined in Hitler's Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf is a book written by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. It combines elements of autobiography with an exposition of Hitler's political ideology. Volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and Volume 2 in 1926...
and other Nazi literature were simply propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
and did not constitute concrete plans. In Mein Kampf, Hitler repeatedly states his inexorable hatred of the Jewish people, but nowhere does he proclaim his intention to exterminate them.
They argue that, in the 1930s, Nazi policy aimed at making life so unpleasant for German Jews that they would leave Germany. Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...
was in charge of facilitating Jewish emigration by whatever means possible from 1937 until October 3, 1941, when German Jews were forbidden to leave, Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich , also known as The Hangman, was a high-ranking German Nazi official.He was SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia...
issuing an order to that effect. Functionalists see the SS's support in the late 1930s for Zionist
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
groups as the preferred solution to the "Jewish Question" as another sign that there was no masterplan for genocide. The SS only ceased their support for German Zionist groups in May 1939 when Joachim von Ribbentrop
Joachim von Ribbentrop
Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop was Foreign Minister of Germany from 1938 until 1945. He was later hanged for war crimes after the Nuremberg Trials.-Early life:...
informed Hitler of it, and Hitler ordered Himmler to cease and desist, because the creation of Israel was not a goal Hitler thought worthy of German foreign policy.
In particular, functionalists have argued that, in German documents from 1939 to 1941, the term "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" was meant to be a "territorial solution"; that is, the entire Jewish population was to be expelled somewhere far from Germany. At first, the SS planned to create a gigantic Jewish reservation in the Lublin
Lublin
Lublin is the ninth largest city in Poland. It is the capital of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 350,392 . Lublin is also the largest Polish city east of the Vistula river...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
area, but the so-called "Lublin Plan" was vetoed by Hans Frank
Hans Frank
Hans Michael Frank was a German lawyer who worked for the Nazi party during the 1920s and 1930s and later became a high-ranking official in Nazi Germany...
, the Governor-General of occupied Poland, who refused to allow the SS to ship any more Jews to the Lublin area after November 1939. The reason Frank vetoed the "Lublin Plan" was not due to any humane motives, but rather because he was opposed to the SS "dumping" Jews into the Government-General. In 1940, the SS and the German Foreign Office had the so-called "Madagascar Plan
Madagascar Plan
The Madagascar Plan was a suggested policy of the Nazi government of Germany to relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar.-Origins:The evacuation of European Jews to the island of Madagascar was not a new concept...
" to deport the entire Jewish population of Europe to a "reservation" on Madagascar
Madagascar
The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...
. The "Madagascar Plan" was canceled because Germany could not defeat the UK and until the British blockade
Blockade
A blockade is an effort to cut off food, supplies, war material or communications from a particular area by force, either in part or totally. A blockade should not be confused with an embargo or sanctions, which are legal barriers to trade, and is distinct from a siege in that a blockade is usually...
was broken, the "Madagascar Plan" could not be put into effect. Finally, functionalist historians have made much of a memorandum written by Himmler in May 1940 explicitly rejecting extermination of the entire Jewish people as "un-German" and going on to recommend to Hitler the "Madagascar Plan" as the preferred "territorial solution" to the "Jewish Question". Not until July 1941 did the term "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" come to mean extermination.
Recently, a synthesis of the two schools has emerged that has been championed by diverse historians such as the Canadian historian Michael Marrus
Michael Marrus
Michael Robert Marrus is a Canadian historian of France, the Holocaust and Jewish history. He was born in Toronto and received his BA at the University of Toronto in 1963 and his MA and PhD at the University of California, Berkeley in 1964 and 1968...
, the Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer
Yehuda Bauer
Yehuda Bauer is a historian and scholar of the Holocaust. He is a Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.-Biography:...
, and the British historian Ian Kershaw
Ian Kershaw
Sir Ian Kershaw is a British historian of 20th-century Germany whose work has chiefly focused on the period of the Third Reich...
that contends that Hitler was the driving force behind the Holocaust, but that he did not have a long-term plan and that much of the initiative for the Holocaust came from below in an effort to meet Hitler's perceived wishes.
Another controversy was started by the historian Daniel Goldhagen
Daniel Goldhagen
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen is an American author and former Associate Professor of Political Science and Social Studies at Harvard University. Goldhagen reached international attention and broad criticism as the author of two controversial books about the Holocaust, Hitler's Willing Executioners and...
in 1997, who argues that ordinary Germans were knowing and willing participants in the Holocaust, which he writes had its roots in a deep eliminationist German antisemitism. Historians who disagree with Goldhagen's thesis argue that, while antisemitism undeniably existed in Germany, Goldhagen's idea of a uniquely German "eliminationist" version is untenable, and that the extermination was unknown to many and had to be enforced by the Nazi apparatus.
Hitler
Most historians take the view that Hitler was the opposite of a pragmatist: his overriding obsession was hatred of the Jews, and he showed on a number of occasions that he was willing to risk losing the war to achieve their destruction.There is no "smoking gun" in the form of a document which shows Hitler ordering the Final Solution. Hitler did not have a bureaucratic mind and many of his most important instructions were given orally.
There is ample documentary evidence that Hitler authorized the mass deportations of the Jews to the east beginning in October 1941. He cannot have imagined that these hundreds of thousands of Jews would be housed, clothed and fed by the authorities of the Government-General, and in fact Hans Frank
Hans Frank
Hans Michael Frank was a German lawyer who worked for the Nazi party during the 1920s and 1930s and later became a high-ranking official in Nazi Germany...
frequently complained that he could not cope with the influx. Even Holocaust denier
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is the act of denying the genocide of Jews in World War II, usually referred to as the Holocaust. The key claims of Holocaust denial are: the German Nazi government had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews, Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas...
David Irving
David Irving
David John Cawdell Irving is an English writer,best known for his denial of the Holocaust, who specialises in the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany...
concedes that after Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
's speech at Posen in October 1943, Hitler must have known what was happening.
Historian Paul Johnson writes that some writers, such as Irving, have claimed that because there were no written orders, "the Final Solution was Himmler's work and [...] Hitler not only did not order it but did not even know it was happening." Johnson states, however, that "this argument will not stand up. The administration of the Third Reich was often chaotic but its central principle was clear enough: all key decisions emanated from Hitler." Excerpts from the diary of Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
and Rudolf Höss also indicate that Hitler gave oral instructions for the extermination of the Jews.
Other Nazi leaders
The handful of men who actually carried out the extermination of millions of people included Heinrich HimmlerHeinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
, Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich , also known as The Hangman, was a high-ranking German Nazi official.He was SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia...
, Ernst Kaltenbrunner
Ernst Kaltenbrunner
Ernst Kaltenbrunner was an Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany during World War II. Between January 1943 and May 1945, he held the offices of Chief of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt , President of Interpol and, as a Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei und Waffen-SS, he was the...
, Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...
, Rudolf Höss, Heinrich Müller, and Oswald Pohl
Oswald Pohl
Oswald Pohl was a Nazi official and member of the SS , involved in the mass murders of Jews in concentration camps, the so-called Final Solution.-Early years:...
, head of the Economics and Main Administration Office (WVHA) of the SS. Fritz Sauckel
Fritz Sauckel
Ernst Friedrich Christoph "Fritz" Sauckel was a Nazi war criminal, who organized the systematic enslavement of millions from lands occupied by Nazi Germany...
, Hans Frank
Hans Frank
Hans Michael Frank was a German lawyer who worked for the Nazi party during the 1920s and 1930s and later became a high-ranking official in Nazi Germany...
, the Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick
Wilhelm Frick
Wilhelm Frick was a prominent German Nazi official serving as Minister of the Interior of the Third Reich. After the end of World War II, he was tried for war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials and executed...
and the Labor Minister Robert Ley
Robert Ley
Robert Ley was a Nazi politician and head of the German Labour Front from 1933 to 1945. He committed suicide while awaiting trial for war crimes.- Early life :...
also played key roles. Other top Nazi leaders such as Goebbels, Göring, and Martin Bormann
Martin Bormann
Martin Ludwig Bormann was a prominent Nazi official. He became head of the Party Chancellery and private secretary to Adolf Hitler...
knew in general terms what was happening.
The Nazi regime operated through vertical hierarchies. Officials carried out orders from above and did not ask questions about what was happening elsewhere. Only those at the very top had a broad view of what was going on across the German empire. But most senior SS officers and many officials of the various Reich ministries must have known in whole or in part what was happening. Millions of people were rounded up, bureaucratically processed and transported across Europe, an operation involving thousands of officials and a great deal of paperwork. This was co-ordinated by the Reich ministries, the police, and the national railways, as well as the SS and the Gestapo, all under the supervision of the Nazi Party. Most of the Party's regional leaders (Gauleiter
Gauleiter
A Gauleiter was the party leader of a regional branch of the NSDAP or the head of a Gau or of a Reichsgau.-Creation and Early Usage:...
s) were present for Himmler's Posen speech. None of these people could plead ignorance after the event, although many did so.
Legal proceedings against Nazis
The juridical notion of crimes against humanity was developed following the Holocaust. The sheer number of people murdered and the transnational nature of the mass killing shattered any notion of national sovereignty taking precedence over international law when prosecuting these crimes. There were a number of legal efforts established to bring Nazis and their collaborators to justice. Some of the higher ranking Nazi officials were tried as part of the Nuremberg TrialsNuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
, presided over by an Allied court; the first international tribunal of its kind. Other trials were conducted in the countries in which the defendants were citizens — in West Germany and Austria, many Nazis were let off with light sentences, with the claim of "following orders" ruled a mitigating circumstance, and many returned to society soon afterwards.
An ongoing effort to pursue Nazis and collaborators
Pursuit of Nazi collaborators
The pursuit of Nazi collaborators refers to the post-World War II pursuit and apprehension of individuals who were not citizens of the Third Reich at the outbreak of World War II and collaborated with the Nazi regime during the war...
resulted, famously, in the capture of Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...
in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
(an operation led by Rafi Eitan
Rafi Eitan
Rafael "Rafi" Eitan is an Israeli politician and former intelligence officer. Today he leads Gil and is a former Minister of Pensioner Affairs. In the past, he was in charge of the Mossad operation that led to the capture of Adolf Eichmann...
) and to his subsequent trial in Israel in 1961. Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal KBE was an Austrian Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter....
became one of the most famous Nazi hunters. Some former Nazis
Ex-Nazis
The list of notable people who were at some point members of the Nazi Party, before it was declared illegal and disbanded upon the victory of the Allies. After 1945 many former party members had to go through a process of denazification and some were indicted and convicted at the Nuremberg Trials,...
, however, escaped any charges. Thus, Reinhard Gehlen
Reinhard Gehlen
Reinhard Gehlen was a General in the German Army during World War II, who served as chief of intelligence-gathering on the Eastern Front. After the war, he was recruited by the United States military to set up a spy ring directed against the Soviet Union , and eventually became head of the West...
a former intelligence officer of the Wehrmacht, managed to turn around and work for the CIA, and created in 1956 the Bundesnachrichtendienst
Bundesnachrichtendienst
The Bundesnachrichtendienst [ˌbʊndəsˈnaːχʁɪçtnˌdiːnst] is the foreign intelligence agency of Germany, directly subordinated to the Chancellor's Office. Its headquarters are in Pullach near Munich, and Berlin . The BND has 300 locations in Germany and foreign countries...
(BND), the German intelligence agency, which he directed until 1968.
Klaus Barbie
Klaus Barbie
Nikolaus 'Klaus' Barbie was an SS-Hauptsturmführer , Gestapo member and war criminal. He was known as the Butcher of Lyon.- Early life :...
, known as "the Butcher of Lyon" for his role at the head of the Gestapo, was protected from 1945 to 1955 by the MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
and the CIA, before fleeing to South America where he had a hand in Luis García Meza Tejada
Luis García Meza Tejada
Luis García Meza Tejada is a former Bolivian dictator. A native of La Paz, he was a career military officer who rose to the rank of general during the reign of dictator Hugo Banzer...
's 1980 Cocaine Coup
Cocaine Coup
Cocaine Coup is a term that has been applied to* the July 1980 coup in Bolivia of Luis García Meza Tejada* the August 1978 coup in Honduras of Policarpo Paz García...
in Bolivia. Barbie was finally arrested in 1983 and sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity in 1987. In October 2005, Aribert Heim
Aribert Heim
Aribert Ferdinand Heim was an Austrian doctor, also known as Dr. Death. As an SS doctor in a Nazi concentration camp in Mauthausen, he is accused of killing and torturing many inmates by various methods, such as direct injections of toxic compounds into the hearts of his victims...
(aka "Doctor Death") was found to be living for twenty years in Spain, protected by ODESSA
ODESSA
The ODESSA, from the German Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen, meaning “Organization of Former SS Members,” is believed to have been an international Nazi network set up toward the end of World War II by a group of SS officers...
.
The German Army
The extent to which the officers of the regular German Army (Wehrmacht Heer) knew of the Final Solution has been much debated. Political imperatives in postwar Germany have led to the Army being generally absolved from responsibility, apart from the handful of "Nazi generals" such as Alfred JodlAlfred Jodl
Alfred Josef Ferdinand Jodl was a German military commander, attaining the position of Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command during World War II, acting as deputy to Wilhelm Keitel...
and Wilhelm Keitel
Wilhelm Keitel
Wilhelm Bodewin Gustav Keitel was a German field marshal . As head of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht and de facto war minister, he was one of Germany's most senior military leaders during World War II...
who were tried and hanged at Nuremberg. Many front-line officers went through the war without coming into direct contact with the machinery of extermination. Others chose to focus narrowly on their duties and not notice the wider context of the war. Relations between the Army and the SS were not friendly, and some officers refused to co-operate with Himmler's forces. General Johannes Blaskowitz
Johannes Blaskowitz
Johannes Albrecht Blaskowitz was a German general during World War II. He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords...
was relieved of his command after officially protesting about SS atrocities in Poland. After learning more of the extermination camps, Erwin Rommel protested the persecution of the Jews directly to Hitler. Other generals and officers, such as Walther von Reichenau
Walther von Reichenau
Walter von Reichenau was a German Generalfeldmarschall during World War II.-History:Reichenau was born in Karlsruhe to a Prussian general and joined the German Army in 1903. During World War I he served on the Western Front...
, Hermann Hoth, and Erich von Manstein
Erich von Manstein
Erich von Manstein was a field marshal in World War II. He became one of the most prominent commanders of Germany's World War II armed forces...
, actively supported the work of the Einsatzgruppen. A number of Wehrmacht Heer units provided direct or indirect assistance to the Einsatzgruppen, supplying them with lorries that could be used for roundups. Many individual soldiers who ventured to the killing sites behind the lines voluntarily participated in the mass shootings.
It was nevertheless difficult for commanders on the eastern front to avoid knowing what was happening in the areas behind the front. Many individual soldiers photographed the massacres of Jews by the Einsatzgruppen. Joachim Fest
Joachim Fest
Joachim Clemens Fest was a German historian, journalist, critic and editor, best known for his writings and public commentary on Nazi Germany, including an important biography of Adolf Hitler and books about Albert Speer and the German Resistance...
points out that one of the factors that led Claus von Stauffenberg and other German officers to plot the July 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler was their growing awareness of the crimes that Hitler was committing in Germany's name. Stauffenberg argued that these crimes released German officers from the oath of loyalty they had taken to Hitler. If Stauffenberg and other officers in his circle were aware of the Holocaust, so must many others who did not act on that knowledge as Stauffenberg did, at the cost of his life.
The German people
Most historians are sceptical about Goldhagen's thesis that the majority of Germans subscribed to an "eliminationist" form of anti-Semitism and that they were not only aware of but in agreement with the extermination of the Jews. The most scathing attack on Goldhagen has been Norman Finkelstein
Norman Finkelstein
Norman Gary Finkelstein is an American political scientist, activist and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and received his Ph.D in Political Science from Princeton University...
and Ruth Bettina Birn's book A Nation on Trial. Finkelstein and Birn examined Goldhagen's references and concluded that Hitler's Willing Executioners was (in the words of one reviewer) "not worthy of being called an academic text."
Goldhagen's critics point out that the Nazi Party did not advocate killing the Jews before they came to power, and that therefore even the minority of Germans who voted for the Nazis in elections before 1933 were not voting for a holocaust of the Jews. They point out that the regime went to considerable lengths to conceal the truth about what was being done not only from world opinion but from the German public. The official line that the Jews were being "deported to work in the east" was always maintained, partly to deceive the Jews about the fate that awaited them, but partly also to mislead the German public. In the mid 30's there were even groups of German Jews supporting the Nazi regime, e.g. the Association of German National Jews
Association of German National Jews
The Association of German National Jews was a Jewish organisation during the Weimar Republic and the early years of Nazi Germany that eventually came out in support Hitler....
.
Nevertheless, knowledge about at least some aspects of the Holocaust must have been very widespread among Germans. As Paul Johnson points out, the SS had 900,000 members in 1943, most of whom participated in one way or another in actions against the Jews, and the German national railways, the Reichsbahn, employed 1.2 million people, the majority of whom helped process the lines of cattle-cars packed with suffering Jews being transported eastwards, and the car-loads of clothes, shoes and other goods coming back. Many other elements of the sprawling German civil service, from the Reichsbank which received tonnes of gold from the melted dental work of dead Jews to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture which employed slave labour on German farms, participated in various ways in the pillage and killing of the Jews, and many thousands of middle and low-ranking bureaucrats must have had some awareness of what they were doing.
It is frequently argued that even if ordinary Germans were aware of the extermination of the Jews, there is nothing they could have done to protest or prevent the actions of one of the most ruthless dictatorships of modern times, e.g. with Sondergerichte
Sondergerichte
A Sondergericht was a Nazi "special court." After taking power in 1933, the Nazis quickly moved to remove internal opposition to the Nazi regime in Germany. The legal system became one of many tools for this aim and the Nazis gradually supplanted the normal justice system with political courts...
that killed 12,000 Germans for their opposition. Most writers have in general accepted this view. Goldhagen, however, raises some objections. He points out that it was not in fact impossible for German civil society
Civil society
Civil society is composed of the totality of many voluntary social relationships, civic and social organizations, and institutions that form the basis of a functioning society, as distinct from the force-backed structures of a state , the commercial institutions of the market, and private criminal...
to protest against actions of the Nazi regime. When the Nazis attempted to remove crucifix
Crucifix
A crucifix is an independent image of Jesus on the cross with a representation of Jesus' body, referred to in English as the corpus , as distinct from a cross with no body....
es from schools in Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
in 1936, and again in 1941, protests forced them to back down. Strikes by industrial workers on economic issues were common, at least in the prewar period, and were not seriously punished. The best known example of public protest was the campaign against the regime's programme of euthanasia
Euthanasia
Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....
of people with physical and intellectual disabilities, known as "T4," which had to be abandoned in 1941 due to protests led by the Catholic Church and some parts of the medical profession.
Even more notable, for its uniqueness, was the Rosenstrasse protest
Rosenstrasse protest
The Rosenstrasse protest was a nonviolent protest in Rosenstraße in Berlin in February and March 1943, carried out by the non-Jewish wives and relatives of Jewish men who had been arrested for deportation. The protests escalated until the men were released...
in Berlin in February 1943, led by over a thousand non-Jewish German women against the detention of their Jewish husbands (a category which had hitherto been exempt from deportation). While the event was clearly a courageous act on the part of the wives, historians disagree on both the reasons for summoning the husbands and the effects of the protest.
During the years 1945 through 1949 polls indicated that a majority of Germans felt that Nazism was a "good idea, badly applied". In a poll conducted in the American German occupation zone, 37% replied that 'the extermination of the Jews and Poles and other non-Aryans was necessary for the security of Germans'.
Sarah Ann Gordon in "Hitler, Germans, and the 'Jewish Question'" notes however that the surveys are very difficult to draw conclusions from. Respondents were for example given 3 options to choose from, for example question 1:
- Statement...........................................Percentage agreeing
- Hitler was right in his treatment of the Jews: 0%
- Hitler went too far in his treatment of the Jews, but something had to be done to keep them in bounds: 19%
- The actions against the Jews were in no way justified: 77%
To the Question whether an Aryan who marries a Jew should be condemned 91% responded "No". To the question: "All those who ordered the murder of civilians or participated in the murderings should be made to stand trial." 94% responded "Yes".
Sarah Ann Gordon singles out the question "Extermination of the Jews and Poles and other non-Aryans was not necessary for the security of the Germans", which included an implicit double negative to which the response was either yes or no. She concludes that this was confusingly phrased; "Some interviewees may have responded "no" they did not agree with the statement, when they actually did agree that the extermination was not necessary." She further highlights the discrepancy to the 77% percent who responded that actions against Jews were in no way justified. (See: Denazification
Denazification
Denazification was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of any remnants of the National Socialist ideology. It was carried out specifically by removing those involved from positions of influence and by disbanding or rendering...
)
Regarding German knowledge of the workings of the ordinary concentration camps, it should be noted that "Between 1933 and 1945 more than 3 million Germans had been in concentration camps or prison for political reasons" (See: German resistance
German Resistance
The German resistance was the opposition by individuals and groups in Germany to Adolf Hitler or the National Socialist regime between 1933 and 1945. Some of these engaged in active plans to remove Adolf Hitler from power and overthrow his regime...
)
Other states
The civil service and police of the Vichy
Vichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
regime in occupied France actively collaborated in persecuting French Jews. Germany's allies, Italy, Finland, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, were pressured to introduce anti-Jewish measures; with the exception of Romania, they did not comply until compelled to do so. Bulgaria and Finland refused to co-operate, and all 50,000 Bulgarian Jews survived (though most lost their possessions and many were imprisoned), but thousands of Greek and Yugoslavian Jews were deported from the Bulgarian-occupied territories. The Hungarian regime of Miklós Horthy
Miklós Horthy
Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya was the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary during the interwar years and throughout most of World War II, serving from 1 March 1920 to 15 October 1944. Horthy was styled "His Serene Highness the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary" .Admiral Horthy was an officer of the...
also refused to cooperate, but after the German invasion of Hungary on March 18, 1944, 437,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz by the newly instated Döme Sztójay
Döme Sztójay
Döme Sztójay born Demeter Sztojakovich was a Hungarian soldier and diplomat of Serb origin, who served as Prime Minister of Hungary during World War II.- Biography :...
regime, fully knowing that they will be exterminated. The Romanian regime of Ion Antonescu
Ion Antonescu
Ion Victor Antonescu was a Romanian soldier, authoritarian politician and convicted war criminal. The Prime Minister and Conducător during most of World War II, he presided over two successive wartime dictatorships...
actively collaborated, but its inefficiency meant that only a half of Romania's 600,000 Jews were killed. The German puppet regime in Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
actively persecuted Jews on its own initiative.
The Nazis sought to enlist support for their programs in all the countries they occupied, although their recruitment methods differed in various countries according to Nazi racial theories. In the "Nordic" countries of Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, and Estonia they tried to recruit young men into the Waffen SS, with sufficient success to create the "Wiking" SS division on the Eastern Front, many of whose members fought for Germany with great fanaticism until the end of the war. In Lithuania and Ukraine, on the other hand, they recruited large numbers of auxiliary troops that were used for anti-partisan work and guard duties at extermination and concentration camps. Most of these recruits were peasant boys, who enlisted simply to gain a ration card, but the Germans were able in these countries to appeal to long traditions of local antisemitism.
In recent years, the extent of local collaboration with the Nazis in eastern Europe has become more apparent. Historian Alan Bullock
Alan Bullock
Alan Louis Charles Bullock, Baron Bullock , was a British historian, who wrote an influential biography of Adolf Hitler and many other works.-Early life and career:...
writes: "The opening of the archives both in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe has produced incontrovertible evidence [of] ... collaboration on a much bigger scale than hitherto realized of Ukrainians and Lithuanians as well as Hungarians, Croats and Slovaks in the deportation and murder of Jews." Historians have been examining the question "Was the Holocaust a European Project?" Historian Dieter Pohl has estimated that more than 200,000 non-Germans "prepared, carried out and assisted in acts of murder." That is about the same number as Germans and Austrians. Historian Götz Aly has concluded that the Holocaust was in fact a "european project that cannot be explained solely by the special circumstances of German history."
It should also be noted that some states, often while decrying Nazism publicly, closed their borders to Jewish immigrants and refugees, usually for fear of attracting the unwanted attention of Germany. These include powerful and influential countries including the USA. Oddly, places such as Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
gave as much help to Jewish refugees as was possible.
Baltic states
Lithuanian and Latvian auxiliary military units (SchutzmannschaftSchutzmannschaft
Schutzmannschaft or Hilfspolizei were the collaborationist auxiliary police battalions of native policemen in occupied countries in East, which were created to fight the resistance during World War II mostly in the Eastern European countries occupied by Nazi Germany. Hilfspolizei refers also to...
en) with Nazi Einsatzgruppen detachments participated in the extermination of the Jewish population in their countries, as well as assisting the Nazis elsewhere, such as deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto.
The Arajs Commando
Arajs Commando
The Arajs Kommando , led by SS-Sturmbannführer Viktors Arājs, was a unit of Latvian Auxiliary Police subordinated to the Nazi SD...
, a Latvian volunteer police unit, for example, shot 26,000 Latvian Jews, at various locations after they had been brutally rounded-up for this purpose by the regular police and auxiliaries, and was responsible for assisting in the killing of 60,000 more Jews.
In Lithuania the racial principles of the Third Reich were installed after instigating by Nazi forces since June 25. Within the last 6 months of 1941 following the June invasion by Germany, the majority of Lithuanian Jews
Lithuanian Jews
Lithuanian Jews or Litvaks are Jews with roots in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania:...
were executed. The remnants trapped in ghettos were killed in occupied Lithuania and sent to death German Nazi camps in Poland. Almost all Lithuanian Jews died during the Holocaust. Scholars believe the death rate in Lithuania was 96 percent, making Nazi-occupied Lithuania the European territory with the lowest number of Jewish survivors of World War II. Additionally, Lithuanian auxiliary police
Tautinio Darbo Apsaugos Batalionas
Tautinio Darbo Apsaugos Batalionas was organized by the Provisional Government of Lithuania in 1941 as basis for future independent Lithuanian Army, but Nazi authorities soon reorganized the battalion into auxiliary police...
troops assisted in killing Jews in Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. Further, Jews from France, Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia were murdered at the Ninth Fort in Kaunas. Pro-Lithuanian activists decried Soviet trials of collaborators following the war but independent Lithuania following the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 has been slow to prosecute cases against Nazi collaborators since then. To date three men have been tried and convicted, but all were excused from punishment due to health and age. In 2008, Lithuanian prosecutors began investigations into war-time atrocities against civilians allegedly committed by Lithuanian Jews who escaped from the Lithuanian ghettos to take up arms against the Nazis. Targets of the Lithuanian investigation included Yitzhak Arad
Yitzhak Arad
Yitzhak Arad , is an Israeli historian, retired IDF brigadier general and a former Soviet partisan who has served as director of Yad Vashem from 1972 to 1993...
, former partisan in Lithuania, Holocaust scholar and founder of the Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....
institution in Israel, causing a flurry of negative media publicity for Lithuania in Israel and abroad.
About 75% of Estonia's
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
Jewish community, aware of the fate that otherwise awaited them, managed to escape to the Soviet Union; virtually all the remainder (between 950 and 1,000 people) were killed by Einsatzgruppe A and local collaborators before the end of 1941. There were, prior to the war, approximately 4,300 Estonian Jews. After the Soviet occupation many Jewish people were deported to Siberia along with other Estonians. It is estimated that 500 Jews suffered this fate. With the invasion of the Baltics, it was the intention of the Nazi government to use the Baltics countries as their main area of mass genocide. Consequently, Jews from countries outside the Baltics were shipped there to be exterminated. and an estimated 10,000 Jews were killed in Estonia after having been deported to camps there from elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Seven ethnic Estonians
Holocaust trials in Soviet Estonia
A number of Holocaust trials in Soviet Estonia were held in the 1960s.The best-known trial was brought in 1961, by the local Soviet authorities against Estonian collaborators who had participated in the execution of the Holocaust during the Nazi German occupation...
: Ralf Gerrets, Ain-Ervin Mere
Ain-Ervin Mere
Ain Mere was an Estonian military officer. During the World War II, he was an Obersturmbannführer in the Waffen SS and also the head of the Sicherheitspolizei in Estonia following its creation in 1942.He was born in Vändra and fought voluntarily in the Estonian War...
, Jaan Viik, Juhan Jüriste, Karl Linnas
Karl Linnas
Karl Linnas was an Estonian who was sentenced to capital punishment during the Holocaust trials in Soviet Estonia in 1961. He was later deported from the United States to the Soviet Union...
, Aleksander Laak and Ervin Viks have faced trials for crimes against humanity committed during the Nazi occupation in Estonia.
In 2002 the government decided to officially commemorate the Holocaust. In the same year, the Simon Wiesenthal Center
Simon Wiesenthal Center
The Simon Wiesenthal Center , with headquarters in Los Angeles, California, was established in 1977 and named for Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter. According to its mission statement, it is "an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to repairing the world one step at a time...
had provided the Estonian government with information on alleged Estonian war criminals, all former members of the 36th Estonian Police Battalion. After investigation, the Estonian government concluded that there was insufficient evidence and deferred on the center's demands to try the veterans. Wiesenthal Center called the Estonian statement "false". In the same year, calls of Simon Wiesenthal Center
Simon Wiesenthal Center
The Simon Wiesenthal Center , with headquarters in Los Angeles, California, was established in 1977 and named for Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter. According to its mission statement, it is "an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to repairing the world one step at a time...
to intensify prosecution of the Nazi war criminals were criticized by the Estonian media and the general public, prompting anti-Semitic messages toward the Jewish community. However in 2003 NCSJ (formerly National Conference on Soviet Jewry) has noted Anti-Semitism in Estonia is not a major problem, and the Estonian government has committed itself to a swift and thorough response to incidents.
Estonia and Lithuania (together with Austria, Norway, Romania, Sweden, Syria and Ukraine) have been given the grade Category F-2: Failure in practice by the Simon Wiesenthal Center
Simon Wiesenthal Center
The Simon Wiesenthal Center , with headquarters in Los Angeles, California, was established in 1977 and named for Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter. According to its mission statement, it is "an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to repairing the world one step at a time...
Status Report on Investigation and Prosecution of Nazi War Criminals for both 2005-2006 and 2006-2007.
Belgium
The BelgianBelgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
state actively collaborated with Nazi Germany. An official report commissioned by the country's senate concluded that:
The report identified three crucial moments that showed the attitude of Belgian authorities toward the Jews:
- Autumn 1940 when they succumbed to the order of the German occupier to register all Jews even though it was contrary to the Belgium constitution; this led to a number of measures including the firing of all Jews from official positions in December 1940 and the expelling of all Jewish children from their schools in December 1941.
- Summer 1942 over one thousand Jews were deported to the death camps, particularly Auschwitz during the month of August. This was only the first of such actions as the deportations to the east continued resulting in the death of some 25,000 people.
- End of 1945 the Belgian state decided that its authorities bore no legal responsibility for the persecution of the Jews, even though many Belgian police officers participated in the rounding up and deportation of Jews
However, collaboration is not the whole story. While there is little doubt that there were strong antisemitic feelings in Belgium, after November 1942, the German roundups became less successful as large-scale rescue operations were carried out by ordinary Belgians. This resulted in the survival of about 25,000 people, roughly half of the Jewish population of Belgium.
Bulgaria
BulgariaBulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
, mainly through the influence of the Bulgarian East Orthodox Church, saved all of its own Jewish population from deportation and certain death. Civil and military administration for parts of Northern Greece and Macedonia had been turned over to Bulgaria by Germany. Bulgaria and German authorities deported the Jews from those territories to the concentration camps. In all, Bulgaria deported over 11,000 Jews to German-held territory.
Croatia
The CroatiaCroatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
n Ustaše
Ustaše
The Ustaša - Croatian Revolutionary Movement was a Croatian fascist anti-Yugoslav separatist movement. The ideology of the movement was a blend of fascism, Nazism, and Croatian nationalism. The Ustaše supported the creation of a Greater Croatia that would span to the River Drina and to the border...
regime killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs (estimates vary widely, but by all sources more than 330,000–390,000, and possibly well over a million), over 20,000 Jews and 26,000 Roma, primarily in the Ustase's Jasenovac concentration camp
Jasenovac concentration camp
Jasenovac concentration camp was the largest extermination camp in the Independent State of Croatia and occupied Yugoslavia during World War II...
near Zagreb
Zagreb
Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...
. The Ustase also deported 7,000 more Jews to Nazi extermination camps. According to Nihad Halilbegović at least 103,000 Bosniaks
Bosniaks
The Bosniaks or Bosniacs are a South Slavic ethnic group, living mainly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a smaller minority also present in other lands of the Balkan Peninsula especially in Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia...
(Bosnian Muslim Slavs) died at the hands of the Nazis, Croatian Ustaše
Ustaše
The Ustaša - Croatian Revolutionary Movement was a Croatian fascist anti-Yugoslav separatist movement. The ideology of the movement was a blend of fascism, Nazism, and Croatian nationalism. The Ustaše supported the creation of a Greater Croatia that would span to the River Drina and to the border...
, and the Serbian Chetnik's collaborationist regime. According to Halilbegovic, "large numbers of Bosniaks were killed and listed under Roma populations." Croats were also victims of the Nazi regime and those who opposed it ended up in concentration camps. Many Croats risked their lives during the Holocaust in order to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis (see Croatian Righteous Among the Nations
Croatian Righteous Among the Nations
This is the list of Croatian Righteous among the Nations. 102 Croatians were honored with this title by the state of Israel for saving Jews during World War II.* Antunac, Ivan* Bartulović, Olga and Dragica * Bauer, Čedomir and Branko...
).
Denmark
Most of the Danish Jews were rescued by the unwillingness of the Danish government and people to acquiesce to the demands of the occupying forces.France
In France, Philippe PétainPhilippe Pétain
Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain , generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain , was a French general who reached the distinction of Marshal of France, and was later Chief of State of Vichy France , from 1940 to 1944...
, who became premier after Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
had fallen to the German Army, arranged the surrender to Germany. He then became the head of the Vichy
Vichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
government, which collaborated with Nazism, claiming that it would soften the hardships of occupation. Opposition to the German occupation of northern France and the collaborationist Vichy government was left to the French Resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
within France and the Free French Forces
Free French Forces
The Free French Forces were French partisans in World War II who decided to continue fighting against the forces of the Axis powers after the surrender of France and subsequent German occupation and, in the case of Vichy France, collaboration with the Germans.-Definition:In many sources, Free...
led by Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
outside of France. The police, the Milice
Milice
The Milice française , generally called simply Milice, was a paramilitary force created on January 30, 1943 by the Vichy Regime, with German aid, to help fight the French Resistance. The Milice's formal leader was Prime Minister Pierre Laval, though its chief of operations, and actual leader, was...
("militia", which worked as the Gestapo's aid), as well as members of Jacques Doriot
Jacques Doriot
Jacques Doriot was a French politician prior to and during World War II. He began as a Communist but then turned Fascist.-Early life and politics:...
's Parti Populaire Français
Parti Populaire Français
The Parti Populaire Français was a fascist political party led by Jacques Doriot before and during World War II...
(PPF) rounded up 75,000 Jews for deportation to concentration camps. The Vichy regime attracted all of the far-right counterrevolutionary
Counterrevolutionary
A counter-revolutionary is anyone who opposes a revolution, particularly those who act after a revolution to try to overturn or reverse it, in full or in part...
sectors of French society, monarchists and other pseudo-fascist movements. La Cagoule
La Cagoule
La Cagoule , officially called Comité secret d'action révolutionnaire , was a violent French fascist-leaning and anti-communist group, active in the 1930s, and designed to attempt the overthrow of the French Third Republic...
, a terrorist group and Eugène Schueller
Eugène Schueller
Eugène Schueller was the founder of L'Oréal, the world's leading company in cosmetics and beauty.- Career with L'Oréal :...
, the founder of L'Oréal
L'Oréal
The L'Oréal Group is the world's largest cosmetics and beauty company. With its registered office in Paris and head office in the Paris suburb of Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine, France, it has developed activities in the field of cosmetics...
, are examples of such groups. Antisemitism, as the Dreyfus Affair
Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...
had shown at the end of the 19th century, was widespread in France, especially among anti-republican
French Third Republic
The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...
sympathizers. The Vichy government eagerly participated in the Holocaust, for example with the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup (rafle du Vel' d'Hiv) on July 16 and 17, 1942, in which 13,152 Jews were arrested, including 4,051 children which the German authorities had not asked for. They were held at the Winter Velodrome and Drancy
Drancy internment camp
The Drancy internment camp of Paris, France, was used to hold Jews who were later deported to the extermination camps. 65,000 Jews were deported from Drancy, of whom 63,000 were murdered including 6,000 children...
transit camp, and nearly all were transported by rail to Auschwitz.
Klaus Barbie
Klaus Barbie
Nikolaus 'Klaus' Barbie was an SS-Hauptsturmführer , Gestapo member and war criminal. He was known as the Butcher of Lyon.- Early life :...
, a German member of the Gestapo also known as "the Butcher of Lyon", captured and deported 44 Jewish children hidden in the village of Izieu
Izieu
Izieu is a commune in the Ain department in eastern France.It lies on the Rhône River between the cities of Lyon and Chambéry.-History:Izieu was the site of a Jewish orphanage during the Second World War. Most of the children were however only separated from their parents or sent purposely in the...
, killed Resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
leader Jean Moulin
Jean Moulin
Jean Moulin was a high-profile member of the French Resistance during World War II. He is remembered today as an emblem of the Resistance primarily due to his role in unifying the French resistance under de Gaulle and his courage and death at the hands of the Germans.-Before the war:Moulin was...
, and was responsible for the deportation of 7,500 people, 4,342 murders, and the arrest and torture of 14,311 resistance fighters were in some way attributed to his actions or commands.
Maurice Papon
Maurice Papon
Maurice Papon was a French civil servant, industrial leader and Gaullist politician, who was convicted for crimes against humanity for his participation in the deportation of over 1600 Jews during World War II when he was secretary general for police of the Prefecture of Bordeaux.Papon also...
was the number two official in the Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
region and supervisor of its "Service for Jewish Questions". In 1997, following revelations from Le Canard Enchaîné
Le Canard enchaîné
Le Canard enchaîné is a satirical newspaper published weekly in France. Founded in 1915, it features investigative journalism and leaks from sources inside the French government, the French political world and the French business world, as well as many jokes and humorous cartoons.-Early...
newspaper, he was finally charged with complicity of crimes against humanity. Papon was accused of ordering the arrest and deportation of 1,560 Jews, including children and the elderly, between 1942 and 1944; most of his victims were sent to Auschwitz. As during Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...
's trial, one of the main issue was to determine to what extent an individual should be held responsible
Moral responsibility
Moral responsibility usually refers to the idea that a person has moral obligations in certain situations. Disobeying moral obligations, then, becomes grounds for justified punishment. Deciding what justifies punishment, if anything, is a principle concern of ethics.People who have moral...
in a chain of responsibility. In 1998, he was given a ten-year prison term. However, he was released on grounds of poor health in 2002. Many people thought both the relatively light sentence and his release were scandalous, especially when it was known to all that following the war, Papon went on to enjoy a civil service career, which led him to be the chief of the Paris police, held by historian Luc Einaudi as being directly responsible for the 1961 Paris massacre during the Algerian War
Algerian War of Independence
The Algerian War was a conflict between France and Algerian independence movements from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria's gaining its independence from France...
(1954–1962); Papon even became budget minister of president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
Valéry Marie René Georges Giscard d'Estaing is a French centre-right politician who was President of the French Republic from 1974 until 1981...
in the 1970s. He was finally arrested because of the Canard Enchaîné 's revelations, which themselves followed a fiscal control ordered by Papon with the aim of intimidating the satirical newspaper.
Greece
The Jews of GreeceGreece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
mainly lived in the area around Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki , historically also known as Thessalonica, Salonika or Salonica, is the second-largest city in Greece and the capital of the region of Central Macedonia as well as the capital of the Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace...
, where a large and influential Sephardi community had lived since the 16th century. When the city became part of Greece in 1912, the Jews formed the single biggest community. In the next decades, there had been occasional conflicts between Jews and Greeks. A minor antisemitic nationalist party called National Union of Greece
National Union of Greece
The National Union of Greece was an anti-Semitic nationalist party established in Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1927.Registered as a mutual aid society, the EEE was founded by Asia Minor refugee merchants. According to the organisation's constitution, only Christians could join...
(Ethniki Enosis Ellados, EEE) existed from 1927 to 1935, which was revived by Nazi authorities. Members of the EEE assisted the occupying forces in identifying Jews and collaborated on the deportation of local Jews with remarkable efficiency, either for ethnic hatred
Ethnic hatred
Ethnic hatred, inter-ethnic hatred, racial hatred, or ethnic tension refers to feelings and acts of prejudice and hostility towards an ethnic group in various degrees. See list of anti-ethnic and anti-national terms for specific cases....
or for more prosaic reasons such as obtaining profits from the confiscation and sale of Jewish property. By the time of the German withdrawal from Greece in 1944, nearly 90% of the Jewish community in Thessaloniki had been annihilated.
Percentage of Holocaust victims in Greece were highest in Bulgarian occupied areas of Greece (Western Thrace), where Bulgarian authorities arrested and shipped on Bulgarian trains through Bulgaria to Nazi death camps in occupied Poland upwards of 95% of Jews in those regions.
Jews in Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
and other parts of Greece, on the other hand, went through a different experience. They were Romaniotes
Romaniotes
The Romaniotes or Romaniots are a Jewish population who have lived in the territory of today's Greece and neighboring areas with large Greek populations for more than 2,000 years. Their languages were Yevanic, a Greek dialect, and Greek. They derived their name from the old name for the people...
, who had been present in Greece since Antiquity, spoke Greek and were well-integrated in the Greek society. Many Jews eluded deportation by either being helped by Greeks into hiding or joining the Greek Resistance
Greek Resistance
The Greek Resistance is the blanket term for a number of armed and unarmed groups from across the political spectrum that resisted the Axis Occupation of Greece in the period 1941–1944, during World War II.-Origins:...
in the mountains. This, however, did not exempt Athenian Jews from organized crime against them. Just like the Nazi authorities had restored the EEE in Thessaloniki, in Athens the German occupation authorities created the ESPO
ESPO
The ESPO was a collaborationist, pro-Nazi organization created in the summer of 1941 in German-occupied Greece, under the leadership of Dr. Spyros Sterodimas...
(Ethniko-Socialistiki Patriotiki Organosis), whose members attacked or assisted Germans in locating local Jews. The ESPO's most notorious action was the ransacking of the synagogue on Melidoni Street, Athens. Other ESPO members were recruited as guards in the Haidari concentration camp
Haidari concentration camp
The Haidari concentration camp was a concentration camp operated by the German Schutzstaffel at the Athens suburb of Haidari during the Axis Occupation of Greece in World War II...
, just outside Athens.
In any case, the three quisling
Quisling
Quisling is a term used in reference to fascist and collaborationist political parties and military and paramilitary forces in occupied Allied countries which collaborated with Axis occupiers in World War II, as well as for their members and other collaborators.- Etymology :The term was coined by...
governments headed by Georgios Tsolakoglou
Georgios Tsolakoglou
Georgios Tsolakoglou was a Greek military officer who became the first Prime Minister of the Greek collaborationist government during the Axis Occupation in 1941-1942.-Military career:...
, Konstantinos Logothetopoulos
Konstantinos Logothetopoulos
Konstantinos Logothetopoulos was a distinguished Greek medical doctor who became Prime Minister of Greece, directing the Greek collaborationist government during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II.Logothetopoulos was born in Nafplion in 1878...
and Ioannis Rallis
Ioannis Rallis
Ioannis Rallis was the third and last collaborationist prime minister of Greece during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II, holding office from 7 April 1943 to 12 October 1944, succeeding Konstantinos Logothetopoulos in the Nazi-controlled Greek puppet government in Athens.- Early...
to different extents were unable to stop (or participated) in the deportation or prosecution of Greek Jews. Rallis, for instance, was known to hold the view that the houses of deported Jews in Thessaloniki should be appropriated by the Greek Pontian
Pontic Greeks
The Pontians are an ethnic group traditionally living in the Pontus region, the shores of Turkey's Black Sea...
refugees who came to Greece after the 1923 population exchange
Population exchange between Greece and Turkey
The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey was based upon religious identity, and involved the Greek Orthodox citizens of Turkey and the Muslim citizens of Greece...
.
Hungary
One tenth of the Holocaust's Jewish victims were Hungarian Jews, resulting in a total of over 550,000 deaths. The HungarianHungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
Horthy
Miklós Horthy
Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya was the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary during the interwar years and throughout most of World War II, serving from 1 March 1920 to 15 October 1944. Horthy was styled "His Serene Highness the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary" .Admiral Horthy was an officer of the...
regime deported 20,000 Jews from annexed Transcarpathian Ukraine who weren't able to account for Hungarian citizenship in 1941 to Kamianets-Podilskyi
Kamianets-Podilskyi
Kamyanets-Podilsky or Kamienets-Podolsky is a city located on the Smotrych River in western Ukraine, to the north-east of Chernivtsi...
in the German-occupied Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, where they were shot by the German Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
detachments. Hungarian army and police units killed 3000 Jews and Serbs in Novi Sad
Novi Sad
Novi Sad is the capital of the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina, and the administrative centre of the South Bačka District. The city is located in the southern part of Pannonian Plain on the Danube river....
in January 1942. Horthy resisted German demands for mass deportation of Hungarian Jews until March 1944, when Nazis occupied Hungary. By the beginning of July 1944, 437,000 Jews had been deported to Auschwitz by the Hungarian authorities in cooperation with German Sonderkommando
Sonderkommando
Sonderkommandos were work units of Nazi death camp prisoners, composed almost entirely of Jews, who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the disposal of gas chamber victims during The Holocaust...
, including those 20,000 who were refugees from the neighboring countries. The mass deportations stopped in July when world leaders appealed to Horthy, following the escape from Auschwitz of Rudolf Vrba
Rudolf Vrba
Rudolf "Rudi" Vrba, born Walter Rosenberg was a Slovak-Canadian professor of pharmacology at the University of British Columbia, who came to public attention during the Second World War when, in April 1944, he escaped from the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland with the first...
and Alfréd Wetzler
Alfréd Wetzler
Alfréd Israel Wetzler , who later wrote under the alias Jozef Lánik, was a Slovak Jew, and one of a very small number of Jews known to have escaped from the Auschwitz death camp during the Holocaust. Wetzler was born on 10 May 1918, in the Slovak town of Trnava where he was a worker in the period...
, whose story about the mass murder taking place inside the camp was published in June by the BBC and The New York Times. In October 1944, the Horthy regime was replaced by the fascist Arrow Cross Party
Arrow Cross Party
The Arrow Cross Party was a national socialist party led by Ferenc Szálasi, which led in Hungary a government known as the Government of National Unity from October 15, 1944 to 28 March 1945...
led by Ferenc Szálasi
Ferenc Szálasi
Ferenc Szálasi was the leader of the National Socialist Arrow Cross Party – Hungarist Movement, the "Leader of the Nation" , being both Head of State and Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Hungary's "Government of National Unity" for the final three months of Hungary's participation in World War II...
. Seventy thousand Jews were forced on a death march to Austria — thousands were shot on the way, and thousands more died of starvation and exposure.
Italy
In Fascist ItalyKingdom of Italy (1861–1946)
The Kingdom of Italy was a state forged in 1861 by the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which was its legal predecessor state...
, a law from 1938 restricted civil liberties of Jews. This effectively reduced the country's Jews to second-class status, though Mussolini never made it official policy to deport Jews to concentration camps. After the fall of Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
and his creation, the Italian Social Republic
Italian Social Republic
The Italian Social Republic was a puppet state of Nazi Germany led by the "Duce of the Nation" and "Minister of Foreign Affairs" Benito Mussolini and his Republican Fascist Party. The RSI exercised nominal sovereignty in northern Italy but was largely dependent on the Wehrmacht to maintain control...
, Jews started being deported to German camps. The deported numbered about 8,369, and only about a thousand survived. Several small camps were built in Italy and the so-called Risiera di San Sabba
Risiera di San Sabba
Risiera di San Sabba was a Nazi concentration camp for the detention and killing of political prisoners during World War II, located in Trieste, northern Italy. SS members Odilo Globocnik and Karl Frenzel, and Ivan Marchenko are all said to have participated in the killings at this camp. Erwin...
hosted a crematorium; from 2,000 to 5,000 people were killed in San Sabba, only a few of whom were Jews.
Netherlands
Of the 140,000 DutchNetherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
Jews, the German occupiers deported about 107,000, of whom 101,800 were murdered. This death toll of 95% is the highest in Western Europe. Reasons that have been suggested to explain this phenomenon are: the occupation regime in the Netherlands was formed by fanatical Austrian Nazis; the degree of efficiency and the high level of administrative organization of the pre-war Dutch civilian administration; the typical Dutch landscape without mountains or woods made it practically impossible to find shelter; the majority of the Dutch Jews lived in the larger cities and thus they formed relatively easy targets for persecution and segregation; the Jewish leaders chose, "in order to prevent worse", a policy of collaboration with the Nazis; the Dutch pre-war society can be characterized as a conglomerate of different groups, which lived separately from another and this fact made it easy for the Germans to segregate and persecute the Jewish section of society; because the Jews were cut off from public life, they lost almost all of the support that could have been provided by other groups in society; active assistance by Dutch collaborators, such as the Henneicke Column
Henneicke Column
The Henneicke Column was a group of Dutch Nazi collaborators working in the investigative division of the Central Bureau for Jewish Emigration , with headquarters in Amsterdam, during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II .Between March and October 1943 the group, led by Wim...
group that hunted and "delivered" 8,000 to 9,000 Jews for deportation. All of these circumstances made it relatively easy for the SS, regularly aided by Dutch police officers, to round up the Jewish population.
Norway
After Norway was invaded, the Nazis took control of the government and the true government went into exile. Power was given to the German ReichskommissarReichskommissar
Reichskommissar , in German history, was an official gubernatorial title used for various public offices during the period of the German Empire and the Nazi Third Reich....
Josef Terboven
Josef Terboven
Josef Antonius Heinrich Terboven was a Nazi leader, best known as the Reichskommissar during the German occupation of Norway.-Early life:...
and the Norwegian Fascist Party leader Vidkun Quisling
Vidkun Quisling
Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling was a Norwegian politician. On 9 April 1940, with the German invasion of Norway in progress, he seized power in a Nazi-backed coup d'etat that garnered him international infamy. From 1942 to 1945 he served as Minister-President, working with the occupying...
. Quisling had attempted to establish himself as the leader of occupied Norway, but the Nazis only used him as leader of a puppet government. The Nazis, as well as some Norwegian police units, managed to round up over 750 Jews, of a total of about 1,800. However, the Nazis and their collaborators were very unpopular in Norway, causing a strong resistance movement
Norwegian resistance movement
The Norwegian resistance to the occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany began after Operation Weserübung in 1940 and ended in 1945. It took several forms:...
, so the German government's aims for Norway were never fulfilled. Many Jews and other people were saved by the actions of Norwegians, including Norwegian police. Still, detailed lists of Jews existed at the time of the occupation
Occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany
The occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany started with the German invasion of Norway on April 9, 1940, and ended on May 8, 1945, after the capitulation of German forces in Europe. Throughout this period, Norway was continuously occupied by the Wehrmacht...
. This caused the rounding-up of Jews in Norway to be much more efficient than in Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
. Quisling and other Norwegians, who collaborated with the Nazis, were executed as traitors after the war
Legal purge in Norway after World War II
When the occupation of Norway ended in May 1945, several thousand Norwegians and foreign citizens were tried and convicted for various acts that the occupying powers sanctioned...
, at least partly due to their involvement in the Holocaust. Also, 245 Sinti and Roma were deported to the Nazi extermination camps, of whom 190 were murdered.
Palestine
A PalestinianPalestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...
Arab nationalist
Arab nationalism
Arab nationalism is a nationalist ideology celebrating the glories of Arab civilization, the language and literature of the Arabs, calling for rejuvenation and political union in the Arab world...
and a Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
religious leader, the Grand Mufti
Grand Mufti
The title of Grand Mufti refers to the highest official of religious law in a Sunni or Ibadi Muslim country. The Grand Mufti issues legal opinions and edicts, fatwā, on interpretations of Islamic law for private clients or to assist judges in deciding cases...
of Jerusalem Mohammad Amin al-Husayni
Mohammad Amin al-Husayni
Haj Mohammed Effendi Amin el-Husseini was a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in the British Mandate of Palestine. From as early as 1920, in order to secure the independence of Palestine as an Arab state he actively opposed Zionism, and was implicated as a leader of a violent riot...
worked for the Nazi Germany as a propagandist and a recruiter of Muslim volunteers for the Waffen SS and other units.
On November 28, 1941, Hitler officially received al-Husayni in Berlin. Hitler made a declaration that after "...the last traces of the Jewish-Communist European hegemony had been obliterated... the German army would... gain the southern exit of Caucasus... the Führer would offer the Arab world his personal assurance that the hour of liberation had struck. Thereafter, Germany's only remaining objective in the region would be limited to the Vernichtung des... Judentums ['destruction of the Jewish element', sometimes taken to be a euphemism for 'annihilation of the Jews'] living under British protection in Arab lands.."
The Mufti spent the remainder of the war assisting with the formation of Muslim Waffen SS units in the Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
and the formation of schools and training centers for imam
Imam
An imam is an Islamic leadership position, often the worship leader of a mosque and the Muslim community. Similar to spiritual leaders, the imam is the one who leads Islamic worship services. More often, the community turns to the mosque imam if they have a religious question...
s and mullah
Mullah
Mullah is generally used to refer to a Muslim man, educated in Islamic theology and sacred law. The title, given to some Islamic clergy, is derived from the Arabic word مَوْلَى mawlā , meaning "vicar", "master" and "guardian"...
s who would accompany the Muslim SS and Wehrmacht units. Beginning in 1943, al-Husayni was involved in the organization and recruitment of Bosnian Muslims
Bosniaks
The Bosniaks or Bosniacs are a South Slavic ethnic group, living mainly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a smaller minority also present in other lands of the Balkan Peninsula especially in Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia...
into several divisions. The largest of which was the 13th "Handschar" division
13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian)
The 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar was one of the thirty-eight divisions fielded as part of the Waffen-SS during World War II. Its recruits were composed of Muslim Bosniaks. The Handschar division was a mountain infantry formation, the equivalent of the German "Gebirgsjäger" ...
of 21,065 men.
In 1944, al-Husayni sponsored an unsuccessful chemical warfare
Chemical warfare
Chemical warfare involves using the toxic properties of chemical substances as weapons. This type of warfare is distinct from Nuclear warfare and Biological warfare, which together make up NBC, the military acronym for Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical...
assault on the Jewish community in Palestine. Five parachutists were supplied with maps of Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
, canisters of a German–manufactured "fine white powder," and instructions from the Mufti to dump chemicals into the Tel Aviv water system
Water well
A water well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, boring or drilling to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The well water is drawn by an electric submersible pump, a trash pump, a vertical turbine pump, a handpump or a mechanical pump...
. District police commander Fayiz Bey Idrissi later recalled, "The laboratory report stated that each container held enough poison to kill 25,000 people, and there were at least ten containers."
Romania
The Romanian AntonescuIon Antonescu
Ion Victor Antonescu was a Romanian soldier, authoritarian politician and convicted war criminal. The Prime Minister and Conducător during most of World War II, he presided over two successive wartime dictatorships...
regime was responsible for the deaths of between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews. An official declaration by the Romanian government that denied the existence of Holocaust within the country's borders during World War II led in 2003 to the creation of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania
Wiesel Commission
The Wiesel Commission is the common name given to the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, which was established by former President Ion Iliescu in October 2003 to research and create a report on the actual history of the Holocaust in Romania and make specific recommendations for...
. The official report of the Commission released jointly with the Romanian government reads:
In cooperation with German Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
and Ukrainian auxiliaries, Romanian troops killed hundreds of thousands of Jews in Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
, northern Bukovina
Bukovina
Bukovina is a historical region on the northern slopes of the northeastern Carpathian Mountains and the adjoining plains.-Name:The name Bukovina came into official use in 1775 with the region's annexation from the Principality of Moldavia to the possessions of the Habsburg Monarchy, which became...
, and Transnistria
Transnistria
Transnistria is a breakaway territory located mostly on a strip of land between the Dniester River and the eastern Moldovan border to Ukraine...
. Some of the larger massacres included 54,000 Jews killed in Bogdanovka
Bogdanovka
Bogdanovka was a concentration camp for Jews that was established by the Romanian authorities during World War II as part of the Holocaust.- Location :...
, a Romanian concentration camp along the Bug River
Southern Bug
The Southern Bug, also called Southern Buh), is a river located in Ukraine. The source of the river is in the west of Ukraine, in the Volyn-Podillia Upland, about 145 km from the Polish border, and flows southeasterly into the Bug Estuary through the southern steppes...
in Transnistria
Transnistria
Transnistria is a breakaway territory located mostly on a strip of land between the Dniester River and the eastern Moldovan border to Ukraine...
, between 21 and 31 December 1941. Nearly 100,000 Jews were killed in occupied Odessa
Odessa massacre
The Odessa massacre was the extermination of Jews in Odessa and surrounding towns in Transnistria during the autumn of 1941 and the winter of 1942 in a series of massacres and killings during the Holocaust by Romanian forces, under German control, encouragement and instruction...
and over 10,000 were killed in the Iasi pogrom
Iasi pogrom
The Iaşi pogrom or Jassy pogrom of June 27, 1941 was one of the most violent pogroms in Jewish history, launched by governmental forces in the Romanian city of Iaşi against its Jewish population, resulting in the murder of at least 13,266 Jews, according to Romanian authorities.-Background:]During...
. The Romanians also massacred Jews in the Domanevka, Pechora
Pechora
Pechora is a town in the Komi Republic, Russia, situated on the Pechora River, near the northern Ural Mountains. Population: It is served by Pechora Airport and is affiliated with the nearby Pechora Kamenka military air base....
and Akhmetchetka concentration camps.
The protests of various public, political and religious figures (e.g. Queen Elena of Romania and Prince Constantin Karadja
Constantin Karadja
Prince Constantin Jean Lars Anthony Démétrius Karadja was a Romanian diplomat, jurist, bibliographer, bibliophile and honorific member of the Romanian Academy...
) against the deportation of the Jews from the Romanian Kingdom contributed to the change of policy toward the Jews starting with October 1942. The result of this change of policy and that of the actions of a relatively small number of individuals was that at least 290,000 Romanian Jews survived.
Serbia
Serbia was occupied by Germany in 1941. It was established collaborator Government of National Salvation led by General Milan NedićMilan Nedic
Milan Nedić was a Serbian general and politician, he was the chief of the general staff of the Yugoslav Army, minister of war in the Royal Yugoslav Government and the prime minister of a Nazi-backed Serbian puppet government during World War II.After the war, Yugoslav communist authorities...
. The internal affairs of the Serbian occupied territory were moderated by German racial laws, that were introduced in all occupied territories with immediate effects on Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
, Roma people, as well as imprisonment of left oriented persons. The two major concentration camps in Serbia were Sajmište
Sajmište concentration camp
Sajmište concentration camp was a German run Nazi concentration camp located on the outskirts of Belgrade whilst part of NDH . It was established in December 1941 and shut down in September 1944...
and Banjica
Banjica concentration camp
Banjica concentration camp was a quisling and Nazi German concentration camp in occupied Serbia from June 1941 to September 1944 in World War II, located in the eponymous suburb of Belgrade. It started as a center for holding hostages, but later included Jews, Serbs, Roma, captured partisans, and...
. Of 40,000 Serbian Jews around one half lost their lives in Nazi concentration camps both in Serbia and the German Reich, where most of the captured Serbian Jews were transferred. Under Nedić, Belgrade was declared to be Judenfrei
Judenfrei
Judenfrei was a Nazi term to designate an area free of Jewish presence during The Holocaust.While Judenfrei referred merely to "freeing" an area of all of its Jewish citizens, the term Judenrein was also used...
in 1942. Serbs were also victims of the Nazi regime, and most of the victims in Banjica were Serbian. Nazis had a policy of killing 100 Serbs for each killed German soldier and 50 killed Serbs for each wounded, resulting in widespread taking of hostages and executions such as the Kragujevac massacre
Kragujevac massacre
The Kragujevac massacre was the murder of men and boys in Kragujevac, Serbia, by Nazi German soldiers between 20–21 October 1941. All males from the town between the ages of sixteen and sixty were assembled, including high school students, and the victims were selected from amongst them...
. Despite these repressive measures, Serbs rebelled, and most Serbs saw Jews as their fellow victims in World War II, dying together in Nazi repression and genocide in Sajmište
Sajmište concentration camp
Sajmište concentration camp was a German run Nazi concentration camp located on the outskirts of Belgrade whilst part of NDH . It was established in December 1941 and shut down in September 1944...
, Banjica
Banjica concentration camp
Banjica concentration camp was a quisling and Nazi German concentration camp in occupied Serbia from June 1941 to September 1944 in World War II, located in the eponymous suburb of Belgrade. It started as a center for holding hostages, but later included Jews, Serbs, Roma, captured partisans, and...
and Jasenovac
Jasenovac
Jasenovac is a village and a municipality in Croatian Slavonia, in the southern part of the Sisak-Moslavina county at the confluence of the river Una into Sava.The name means "ash tree" or "ash forest" in Croatian, the area being ringed by such a forest....
. Legends about Serbs saving the Jews in World War II are widespread in Serbia, and 152 Serbs have been honored as righteous Gentiles.
Slovakia
Between March and October 1942, the World War II Slovak Republic's TisoJozef Tiso
Jozef Tiso was a Slovak Roman Catholic priest, politician of the Slovak People's Party, and Nazi collaborator. Between 1939 and 1945, Tiso was the head of the Slovak State, a satellite state of Nazi Germany...
regime deported approximately 57,000 Jews to the German-occupied part of Poland,and even paid the Germans for the Jews that were deported, where almost all of them were killed.
The deportation of the remaining 24,000 was stopped after the Papal Nuncio informed the Slovak president that the German authorities were killing the Jews deported from Slovakia. However, 12,600 more Jews were deported by the German forces occupying Slovakia after the Slovak National Uprising
Slovak National Uprising
The Slovak National Uprising or 1944 Uprising was an armed insurrection organized by the Slovak resistance movement during World War II. It was launched on August 29 1944 from Banská Bystrica in an attempt to overthrow the collaborationist Slovak State of Jozef Tiso...
in 1944. Around a half of them were killed in concentration camps. Some 10,000 Slovak Jews survived hidden by local people and 6,000–7,000 got official protection from the Slovak authorities.
Spain
During World War II, Francisco FrancoFrancisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
remained silent in regard to Jewish matters, and Spain became an unlikely escape route and haven for thousands of Jews. They were mainly from Western Europe, fleeing deportation to concentration camps from occupied France, but also Sephardic Jews from Eastern Europe, especially in Hungary. Trudy Alexy refers to the "absurdity" and "paradox of refugees fleeing the Nazis' Final Solution
Final Solution
The Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust...
to seek asylum in a country where no Jews had been allowed to live openly as Jews for over four centuries."
Throughout World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Spanish diplomats of the Franco government, as well as diplomats from Switzerland, Sweden, Portugal and the Vatican, extended their protection to Eastern European Jews, especially in Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
. Jews claiming Spanish ancestry were provided with Spanish documentation without being required to prove their case and either left for Spain or survived the war with the help of their new legal status in occupied countries.
In the first years of the war, "Laws regulating their admittance were written and mostly ignored." Once the tide of war began to turn, and Count Francisco Gómez-Jordana succeeded Franco's brother-in-law Serrano Súñer as Spain's foreign minister, Spanish diplomacy became "more sympathetic to Jews", although Franco himself "never said anything" about this. Around that same time, a contingent of Spanish doctors traveling in Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
were fully informed of the Nazi extermination plans by the Gauleiter
Gauleiter
A Gauleiter was the party leader of a regional branch of the NSDAP or the head of a Gau or of a Reichsgau.-Creation and Early Usage:...
Frankel
Frankel
Frankel is the surname of:* Charles Frankel , American philosopher, known for Charles Frankel Prize* Benjamin Frankel , British composer* Bethenny Frankel, American chef and reality television personality...
of Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, who was under the misimpression that they would share his views about the matter; when they came home, they passed the story to Admiral Luís Carrero Blanco
Luis Carrero Blanco
Don Luis Carrero Blanco, 1st Duke of Carrero Blanco, Grandee of Spain was a Spanish admiral and long-time confidant of dictator Francisco Franco.- Biography :...
, who told Franco.
Diplomats discussed the possibility of Spain as a route to a containment camp for Jewish refugees near Casablanca
Casablanca
Casablanca is a city in western Morocco, located on the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Grand Casablanca region.Casablanca is Morocco's largest city as well as its chief port. It is also the biggest city in the Maghreb. The 2004 census recorded a population of 2,949,805 in the prefecture...
, but it came to naught due to lack of Free French and British support. Nonetheless, control of the Spanish border with France relaxed somewhat at this time, and thousands of Jews managed to cross into Spain (many by smugglers' routes). Almost all of these survived the war. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee is a worldwide Jewish relief organization headquartered in New York. It was established in 1914 and is active in more than 70 countries....
operated openly in Barcelona.
Shortly afterwards, Spain began giving citizenship to Sephardic Jews in Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
, and Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
; many Ashkenazic Jews also managed to be included, as did some non-Jews. The Spanish head of mission in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
, Ángel Sanz Briz
Ángel Sanz Briz
Ángel Sanz Briz was a Spanish diplomat during World War II who helped save many Hungarian Jews from Nazi persecution.After studying law, his first diplomatic posting was to Cairo...
, may have saved thousands of Ashkenazim in Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
by granting them Spanish citizenship, placing them in safe houses, and teaching them minimal Spanish so they could pretend to be Sephardim, at least to someone who did not know Spanish. The Spanish diplomatic corps was performing a balancing act: Alexy conjectures that the number of Jews they took in was limited by how much German hostility they were willing to engender.
Toward the war's end, Sanz Briz had to flee Budapest, leaving these Jews open to arrest and deportation. An Italian diplomat, Giorgio Perlasca
Giorgio Perlasca
Giorgio Perlasca was an Italian who posed as the Spanish consul-general to Hungary in the winter of 1944, and saved thousands of Jews from Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.-Early life:...
, who was himself living under Spanish protection, used forged documents to persuade the Hungarian authorities that he was the new Spanish Ambassador. As such, he continued Spanish protection of Hungarian Jews until the Red Army arrived.
Although Spain effectively undertook more to help Jews escape deportation to the concentration camps than most neutral and Allied countries did, there has been debate about Spain's wartime attitude towards refugees. Francoist Spain, despite its aversion to Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
and "Judeo"-Freemasonry
Freemasonry
Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...
, does not appear to have shared the rabid anti-Semitic ideology promoted by the Nazis. Certainly, about 25,000 to 35,000 refugees, mainly Jews, were allowed to transit through Spain to Portugal and beyond. About 5,000 Jews in occupied Europe benefitted from Spanish legal protection.
However, while some historians argue that these facts demonstrate a humane attitude of Franco's regime, others point out that Spain only permitted transit and did not wish to increase its own small Jewish population. After the war, Franco's regime was quite hospitable to those who had been responsible for the deportation of the Jews, notably Louis Darquier de Pellepoix
Louis Darquier de Pellepoix
Louis Darquier, better known under his assumed name Louis Darquier de Pellepoix was Commissioner for Jewish Affairs under the Vichy Régime....
, Commissioner for Jewish Affairs (May 1942 – February 1944) under the Vichy Régime in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
.
Compiling list of Jews in Spain for the Nazis
Franco's government gave the architect of the Nazi Final Solution
Final Solution
The Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust...
, Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
, a list of six thousand Jews living in Spain, as requested by Himmler. Jose Maria Finat y Escriva de Romani, Franco's chief of security issued an official order dated May 13, 1941 to all provincial governors requesting a list of all Jews, both local and foreign, present in their districts. After the list was compiled, Romani was appointed Spain's ambassador to Germany, enabling him to deliver it personally to Himmler. Following the defeat of Germany in 1945, the Spanish government attempted to destroy all evidence of cooperation with the Nazis, but this official order survived.
Soviet territories
In the German-occupied Soviet territories, local Nazi collaborationist units represented over 80% of the available German forces providing a total of nearly 450,000 personnel organised in so-called Schutzmannschaften formations. Practically all of these units participated in the round-ups and mass-shootings. The overwhelming majority were recruited in the western USSR and the Baltic region, areas recently occupied by the Soviets for which the Jews were typically scapegoated, which exacerbated pre-Nazi antisemitic attitudes. Thus, for instance, Soviet nationalists killed 4,000 western USSR Jews in July 1941, and an additional 2,000 in late July 1941 during the so-called Pogrom. Nazi Einsatzgruppen, together with Soviet auxiliary units, killed 33,000 Central Soviet Jews in September 1941. Soviet auxiliaries participated in a number of killings of Jews, among them in Romanian concentration camps in Western USSR and in LatviaLatvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
.
Switzerland
Although Switzerland was the only land-adjacent neighbor of Germany not occupied, the Swiss government actively cooperated with the Nazi regime, particularly with respect to Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution.While it is true that Switzerland was under strong pressure from the German government, long-standing antisemitism was prevalent in Switzerland and was also reflected in the Swiss government's border policy. The International Commission of Experts
Bergier commission
The Bergier commission in Bern was formed by the Swiss government on 12 December 1996. It is also known as the ICE ....
(ICE) set up in 1996 by the Swiss parliament to examine relations between Nazi Germany and Switzerland reported: "Anti-Semitic views were more or less widespread amongst the political classes, the civil service, the military and the church." While such views did not lead to violent persecution, it did provide a barrier to making policies for the protection of Jewish refugees.
Before 1938, Swiss alien and refugee policy was already restrictive toward certain people and groups, notably foreign Roma and Sinti. However, from that date, restrictions were intensified, particularly towards Jews. As part of that policy, the Swiss government requested the German government to mark the passports of German Jews with a "J" as they were not ready to grant asylum on the grounds of racial persecution.
In 1942 Swiss borders were completely closed to all Jewish refugees, which even included Jewish children who were in groups of children coming to Switzerland for holidays.
The ICE wrote: "by progressively closing the borders, delivering captured refugees over to their persecutors, and adhering to restrictive principles for far too long, the country stood by as many people were undoubtedly driven to certain death."
Although accurate statistics are hard to put together, the commission concluded that "It must therefore be assumed that Switzerland turned back or deported over 20,000 refugees during the Second World War. Furthermore, between 1938 and November 1944, around 14,500
applications for entry visas submitted by hopeful emigrants to the Swiss diplomatic
missions abroad were refused."
The conclusions of the ICE report about refugees have been questioned, most notably by Jean-Christian Lambelet who criticises the statistical work and argues inter alia that there was a big gap between policy and actual practice. He believes that the figures of Jews that were sent back were overestimated.
See also
- Collaboration with the Axis Powers during World War II
- International response to the HolocaustInternational response to the HolocaustIn the decades since the Holocaust, some national governments, international bodies and world leaders have been criticized for their failure to take appropriate action to save the millions of European Jews, Roma, homosexuals and other victims of the Holocaust...
- Command responsibilityCommand responsibilityCommand responsibility, sometimes referred to as the Yamashita standard or the Medina standard, and also known as superior responsibility, is the doctrine of hierarchical accountability in cases of war crimes....
- International lawInternational lawPublic international law concerns the structure and conduct of sovereign states; analogous entities, such as the Holy See; and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond...
Further reading
- See Holocaust (resources)Holocaust (resources)This is a selected bibliography and other resources for The Holocaust.- Historical studies :* Bauer, Yehuda. Rethinking the Holocaust. Yale University Press; New Ed edition, 2002. ISBN 0-300-09300-4....