The Final Solution 1941-1945

Genocide as a State Policy Holocaust is unique in history It was intentional and premeditated No political or territorial purposes Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, Irish Total and all encompassing – ALL the Jews in Europe including Great Britain & Ireland

The policy involved every level of German society and Nazi bureaucracy Parish churches & Interior Ministry provided birth records that defined and isolated Jews Post Office delivered notifications Finance Ministry confiscated Jewish wealth German industrial & commercial firms fired Jewish workers Universities refused to admit Jewish students, dismissed Jewish faculty Government transports handled billing and arrangements with the railroads for transport

German corporations profited Pharmaceutical firms tested drugs without any regard of side effects, toxicity, etc. Companies bid for contracts to build ovens and supply the gas used for extermination Even as the Nazis were fighting a world war on two fronts, the mass killing of Jews continued and profited It continued even though there was a labor and transportation shortage

Deportations Railroads were essential to the killing process Forms: From towns & cities to transit camps or ghettos From smaller ghettos to larger ones 1942 on: to one of the major killing centers Auschwitz-Berkenau, Majdanek, Chelmno, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor

Map – deportations to death camps 1942-1944 page Artifacts page Personal histories page Jews from Subcarpathian Rus await selection on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau Jews from Subcarpathian Rus undergo a selection on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Concentration Camps Three purposes: More than 15,000 camps Detention centers Labor source Liquidation More than 15,000 camps Transit camps, POW camps, private industrial camps, foreign-labor camps, camps for orphans (300 for women only)

Implementation Stage 1: mobile killing squad, 1941 Stage 2: mobile gas vans, December 1941 Stage 3: gas chambers, March 1942

Killing Centers Link Located near major railroad lines Zyklon B Cheap and effective 2,000 in less than 30 minutes

Selection

Mauthausen rock quarry Forced labor for no purpose

Rescue “Whoever (shall) save a single life, saves an entire world” The Talmud Danish Rescue (p. 159) Link

Death Marches Winter 1944-45 Nazis knew the war was lost Soviets closing in from the east, British & Americans from the west Nazis wanted no eyewitnesses, worked to conceal evidence Auschwitz (66,000) one in four died

Liberation Soviets were the first to enter camps July 23, 1944 Majdanek (80,000 pairs of shoes) Found the living dead