The Holocaust

The Holocaust is the name applied to the systematic state-sponsored persecution and genocide of various ethnic, religious and political groups during World War II by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. Early elements of the Holocaust include the Kristallnacht pogrom and the T-4 Euthanasia Program, progressing to the later use of killing squads and extermination camps in a massive and centrally-organized effort to murder every possible member of the populations targeted by the Nazis.

Features of the Nazi Holocaust

There were several characteristics to the Nazi Holocaust which, taken together, distinguish it from other genocides in history.

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Premeditation

In 1904, Alfred Ploetz founded the German Eugenics Society. Sixteen years later, a work seminal to the development of the German eugenics movement, The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life, was published. Written by Karl Binding, a widely respected judge, and renowned psychiatrist Alfred Hoche, the work was key to the formulation of Nazi ideology, rhetoric and practice:

Related Topics:
1904 - Alfred Ploetz - German Eugenics Society - Eugenics - Karl Binding - Psychiatrist - Alfred Hoche

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defended the theory which stated that the elimination of "worthless people" should be legalized. Thus the concepts of "worthless life" or "life unworthy of life" used by the Nazis come from that book. Binding and Hoche speak in that book about "worthless human beings". plead for "the elimination of those who cannot be saved, ... whose death is an urgent need" ... about those who are below the beast "neither the will to live nor to die". to those who are "mentally dead" and who form "a foreign body to the human society".{{ref|trdd}}

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The work of Ploetz and the words of Binding and Hoche were the foreshadowings of Hitler's "final solution" two decades later.

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The Holocaust was an intentional and meticulously planned attempt to entirely eradicate the target groups based on ethnicity. It is estimated that die Endlösung der Judenfrage (the Final Solution of the Jewish Question), as the Nazis called it during the Wannsee conference of January 1942, saw the murder of 60 percent of all the Jews in Europe, which represented 35 percent of the world's Jewish population.

Related Topics:
Final Solution - Wannsee conference - 1942

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In a speech in October 1943, Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (SS), told a group of senior SS men and Nazi party leaders: "What about the women and children? I decided to find an absolutely clear solution here too. I regard myself as having no right to exterminate (ausrotten) the men—in other words, to kill them or have them killed—and to let the avengers in the form of the children grow up for our sons and grandsons to deal with. The difficult decision had to be taken to make these people disappear from the earth."

Related Topics:
1943 - Heinrich Himmler - Reichsführer - Schutzstaffel - SS - Nazi

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The Holocaust was justified by claiming that the victims were Untermenschen, i.e., 'underlings' or 'subhumans', who were seen as both biologically inferior and (in the case of Jews) a potential challenge to the superiority of the 'Aryans'. Its perpetrators saw it as a form of eugenics—the creation of a better race by eliminating the designated "unfit"—along the same lines as their programs of compulsory sterilization, compulsory euthanasia, and "racial hygiene".

Related Topics:
Untermensch - Aryan - Compulsory sterilization - Compulsory euthanasia - Racial hygiene

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Efficiency

The Holocaust was characterized by the efficient and systematic attempt on an industrial scale to assemble and murder as many victims as possible, using all of the resources and technology available to the Nazi German state.

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For example, detailed lists of potential victims were made and maintained using Dehomag statistical machinery, and meticulous records of the killings were produced. As prisoners entered the death camps, they were made to surrender all personal property to the Nazis, which was then precisely catalogued and tagged, and for which receipts were issued. In addition, considerable effort was expended over the course of the Holocaust to find increasingly efficient means of killing more people; for example, by switching from carbon monoxide poisoning in the Aktion Reinhard death camps of Belzec, Sobibór, and Treblinka to the use of Zyklon B at Majdanek and Auschwitz.

Related Topics:
Dehomag - Carbon monoxide - Aktion Reinhard - Belzec - Sobibór - Treblinka - Zyklon B - Majdanek - Auschwitz

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In his book Russia's War, British historian Richard Overy describes how the Germans sought more efficient ways to kill people. In 1941, after occupying Belarus, they used mental patients from Minsk asylums as guinea pigs. Initially, they tried shooting them by having them stand one behind the other, so that several people could be killed with one bullet, but it was too slow. Then they tried dynamite, but few were killed and many were left wounded with hands and legs missing, so that the Germans had to finish them off with machine guns. In October 1941, in Mogilev, they tried the Gaswagen or "gas car". First they used a light military car, and it took more than 30 minutes for people to die. Then they used a larger truck exhaust and it took only eight minutes to kill all the people inside.

Related Topics:
Richard Overy - 1941 - Belarus - Minsk - Asylum - Dynamite - Mogilev

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Alleged corporate involvement in the Holocaust has created significant controversy in recent years. Rudolf Hoess, Auschwitz camp commandant, said that far from having to advertise their slave labour services, the concentration camps were actually approached by various large German businesses, some of which are still in existence. IBM also played a role in the categorization of prisoners, through the use of index machines.

Related Topics:
Rudolf Hoess - IBM

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Scale

The Holocaust was geographically widespread and methodically conducted in virtually all areas of Nazi-occupied territory, where Jews and other victims were targeted in what are now 35 separate European nations, and sent to labor camps in some nations or extermination camps in others.

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Documented evidence suggests that the Nazis planned to carry out their 'final solution' in Britain, North America, and Palestine if these regions were conquered. The murders continued in different parts of Nazi-controlled territory until the end of World War II, only completely ending when the Allies entered Germany itself and forced the Nazis to surrender in May 1945.

Related Topics:
Britain - North America - Palestine - World War II - 1945

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Cruelty

The Holocaust was carried out without any mercy or reprieve for children or babies, and victims were often made to suffer before finally being killed. Nazis carried out cruel and deadly medical experiments on prisoners, including children. Dr. Josef Mengele, medical officer at Auschwitz and chief medical officer at Birkenau, was known as the "Angel of Death" for his sadistic and bizarre medical and eugenics experiments, e.g., trying to change people's eye colour by injecting dye into their eyes. Many of these experiments were intended to produce 'racially pure' babies and as research into weapons and techniques of war. Many of these prisoners did not survive. Day to day life in the concentration camps was also brutal, with the Nazis regularly carrying out beatings and acts of torture.

Related Topics:
Medical experiments - Josef Mengele - Birkenau - Eugenics - Concentration camp

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