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Terms & Names

MAIN IDEA

•Holocaust

•Kristallnacht

•genocide

•ghetto

•concentration

camp

During the Holocaust, the

Nazis systematically

executed 6 million Jews and

5 million other “non-Aryans.”

After the atrocities of the

Holocaust, agencies formed to

publicize human rights. These

agencies have remained a force

in today’s world.

WHY IT MATTERS NOW

748 C

HAPTER 24

One American's Story

The Holocaust

Gerda Weissmann was a carefree girl of 15 when, in September

1939, invading German troops shattered her world. Because

the Weissmanns were Jews, they were forced to give up their

home to a German family. In 1942, Gerda, her parents, and

most of Poland’s 3,000,000 Jews were sent to labor camps.

Gerda recalls when members of Hitler’s elite Schutzstaffel, or

“security squadron” (SS), came to round up the Jews.

A PERSONAL

VOICE GERDA WEISSMANN KLEIN

“ We had to form a line and an SS man stood there with a little

stick. I was holding hands with my mother and . . . he looked at

me and said, ‘How old?’ And I said, ‘eighteen,’ and he sort of

pushed me to one side and my mother to the other side. . . . And

shortly thereafter, some trucks arrived . . . and we were loaded

onto the trucks. I heard my mother’s voice from very far off ask,

‘Where to?’ and I shouted back, ‘I don’t know.’

”

—quoted in the ﬁlm One Survivor Remembers

When the American lieutenant Kurt Klein, who would later

become Gerda’s husband, liberated her from the Nazis in 1945—just

one day before her 21st birthday—she weighed 68 pounds and her hair

had turned white. Even so, of all her family and friends, she alone had survived

the Nazis’ campaign to exterminate Europe’s Jews.

The Persecution Begins

On April 7, 1933, shortly after Hitler took power in Germany, he ordered all “non-

Aryans” to be removed from government jobs. This order was one of the ﬁrst

moves in a campaign for racial purity that eventually led to the Holocaust—the

systematic murder of 11 million people across Europe, more than half of whom

were Jews.

ESCAPING THE

FINAL SOLUTION

Kurt Klein

and Gerda

Weissmann Klein

Remember the

Holocaust

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Page 1 of 8

World War Looms 749

JEWS TARGETED

Although Jews were not the only victims of the Holocaust,

they were the center of the Nazis’ targets. Anti-Semitism, or hatred of the Jews,

had a long history in many European countries. For decades many Germans look-

ing for a scapegoat had blamed the Jews as the cause of their failures. Hitler found

that a majority of Germans were willing to support his belief that Jews were

responsible for Germany’s economic problems and defeat in World War I.

As the Nazis tightened their hold on Germany, their persecution of the Jews

increased. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their German citizen-

ship, jobs, and property. To make it easier for the Nazis to identify them, Jews had

to wear a bright yellow Star of David attached to their clothing. Worse was yet

to come.

KRISTALLNACHT

November 9–10, 1938, became known as Kristallnacht

(

krGsPtälPnächtQ), or “Night of Broken Glass.” Nazi storm troopers attacked Jewish

homes, businesses, and synagogues across Germany. An American who witnessed

the violence wrote, “Jewish shop windows by the hundreds were systematically

and wantonly smashed. . . . The main streets of the city were a positive litter of

shattered plate glass.” Around 100 Jews were killed, and hundreds more were

injured. Some 30,000 Jews were arrested and hundreds of synagogues were

burned. Afterward, the Nazis blamed the Jews for the destruction.

A FLOOD OF JEWISH REFUGEES

Kristallnacht marked a step-up in the Nazi

policy of Jewish persecution. Nazis tried to speed Jewish emigration but encoun-

tered difﬁculty. Jews ﬂeeing Germany had trouble ﬁnding nations that would

accept them. France already had 40,000 Jewish refugees and did not want more.

The British worried about fueling anti-Semitism and refused to admit more than

80,000 Jewish refugees. They also controlled Palestine (later Israel) and allowed

30,000 refugees to settle there. Late in 1938, Germany’s foreign minister, Joachim

von Ribbentrop, observed, “We all want to get rid of our Jews. The difﬁculty is

that no country wishes to receive them.”

Vocabulary

scapegoat:

someone who is

made to bear the

blame of others

On November 17, 1938, two

passersby examine the

shattered window of a Jewish-

owned store in the aftermath

of Kristallnacht.

Jewish men holding a “star of David”

are rounded up and marched through

the streets on their way to a

concentration camp.

▼

MAIN IDEA

Analyzing

Issues

What

problems did

German Jews face

in Nazi Germany

from 1935 to

1938?

A. Answer

Loss of employ-

ment and prop-

erty; harrass-

ment, humilia-

tion, and physi-

cal harm; death

threats and

murder.

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Page 2 of 8

Although the average

Jew had little chance of

reaching the United States,

“persons of exceptional

merit,” including physicist

Albert Einstein, author

Thomas Mann, architect

Walter Gropius, and theolo-

gian Paul Tillich were

among 100,000 refugees the

United States accepted.

Many Americans wanted

the door closed. Americans

were concerned that letting

in more refugees during the

Great Depression would

deny U.S. citizens jobs and threaten economic recovery. Among Americans, there

was widespread anti-Semitism and fear that “enemy agents” would be allowed to

enter the country. President Roosevelt said that while he sympathized with the

Jews, he would not “do anything which would conceivably hurt the future of pre-

sent American citizens.”

THE PLIGHT OF THE ST. LOUIS

Ofﬁcial indifference to the plight of Germany’s

Jews was in evidence in the case of the ship St. Louis. This German ocean liner

passed Miami in 1939. Although 740 of the liner’s 943 passengers had U.S. immi-

gration papers, the Coast Guard followed the ship to prevent anyone from dis-

embarking in America. The ship was forced to return to Europe. “The cruise of the

St. Louis,” wrote the New York Times, “cries to high heaven of man's inhumani-

ty to man.” Passenger Liane Reif-Lehrer recalls her childhood experiences.

A PERSONAL VOICE LIANE REIF-LEHRER

“ My mother and brother and I were among the passengers who survived. . . . We

were sent back to Europe and given haven in France, only to ﬁnd the Nazis on our

doorstep again a few months later.

”

—Liane Reif-Lehrer

More than half of the passengers were later killed in the Holocaust.

Hitler’s “Final Solution”

By 1939 only about a quarter million Jews remained in Germany. But other

nations that Hitler occupied had millions more. Obsessed with a desire to rid

Europe of its Jews, Hitler imposed what he called the “Final Solution”—a policy

of genocide, the deliberate and systematic killing of an entire population.

750 C

HAPTER 24

B. Answer The

United States

refused to

loosen immigra-

tion restrictions

to allow more

Jews to immi-

grate to the

United States.

MAIN IDEA

Analyzing

Effects

How did the

United States

respond to Jewish

refugees?

Image not available

for use on CD-ROM.

Please refer to the

image in the textbook.

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Page 3 of 8

THE CONDEMNED

Hitler’s Final Solution rested on the

belief that Aryans were a superior people and that the

strength and purity of this “master race” must be preserved.

To accomplish this, the Nazis condemned to slavery and

death not only the Jews but other groups that they viewed

as inferior or unworthy or as “enemies of the state.”

After taking power in 1933, the Nazis had concentrated

on silencing their political opponents—communists, social-

ists, liberals, and anyone else who spoke out against the

government. Once the Nazis had eliminated these enemies,

they turned against other groups in Germany. In addition to

Jews, these groups included the following:

• Gypsies—whom the Nazis believed to be an

“inferior race”

• Freemasons—whom the Nazis charged as supporters

of the “Jewish conspiracy” to rule the world

• Jehovah’s Witnesses—who refused to join the

army or salute Hitler

The Nazis also targeted other Germans whom they found unﬁt to be part of

the “master race.” Such victims included homosexuals, the mentally deﬁcient,

the mentally ill, the physically

disabled, and the incurably ill.

Hitler began implementing

his Final Solution in Poland with

special Nazi death squads. Hitler’s

elite Nazi “security squadrons”

(or SS), rounded up Jews—men,

women, children, and babies—

and shot them on the spot.

FORCED RELOCATION

Jews also

were ordered into dismal, over-

crowded ghettos, segregated

Jewish areas in certain Polish

cities. The Nazis sealed off the

ghettos with barbed wire and

stone walls.

Life inside the ghetto was

miserable. The bodies of victims

piled up in the streets faster than

they could be removed. Factories

were built alongside ghettos

where people were forced to work

for German industry. In spite of

the

impossible living conditions,

the Jews hung on. While some

formed resistance movements

inside the ghettos, others resisted

by other means. They published

and distributed underground

newspapers. Secret schools were

set up to educate Jewish children.

Even theater and music groups

continued to operate.

World War Looms 751

Background

The ﬁrst person to

use the term Final

Solution was

General George

Custer. He was

referring to the

execution of

Native Americans.

Skillbuilder

Answer

Over 65 percent

ANOTHER

DENMARK’S RESISTANCE

King Christian X became an

important symbol of Danish

resistance in World War II. In

1942, he rejected the Nazis’

demand to enforce the

Nuremberg Laws against the

Jews in occupied Denmark. In

August 1943, the king spoke out

against the German occupying

forces, an act that led to his

imprisonment for the remainder

of the war.

SKILLBUILDER Interpreting Charts

Approximately what percentage of the total Jewish population

in Europe was killed during the Holocaust?

Pre-Holocaust Low High

Population Estimate Estimate

Austria 191,000 50,000 65,500

Belgium 60,000 25,000 29,000

Bohemia/Moravia 92,000 77,000 78,300

Denmark 8,000 60 116

Estonia 4,600 1,500 2,000

France 260,000 75,000 77,000

Germany 566,000 135,000 142,000

Greece 73,000 59,000 67,000

Hungary 725,000 502,000 569,000

Italy 48,000 6,500 9,000

Latvia 95,000 70,000 72,000

Lithuania 155,000 130,000 143,000

Luxembourg 3,500 1,000 2,000

Netherlands 112,000 100,000 105,000

Norway 1,700 800 800

Poland 3,250,000 2,700,000 3,000,000

Romania 441,000 121,000 287,000

Slovakia 89,000 60,000 71,000

USSR 2,825,000 700,000 1,100,000

Yugoslavia 68,000 56,000 65,000

TOTALS 9,067,800 4,869,860 5,894,716

Source: Columbia Guide to the Holocaust

Number Killed

Estimated Jewish Losses

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752 C

HAPTER 24

CONCENTRATION CAMPS

Finally, Jews in communities not reached by the

killing squads were dragged from their homes and herded onto trains or trucks for

shipment to concentration camps, or labor camps. Families were often sepa-

rated, sometimes—like the Weissmanns—forever.

Nazi concentration camps were originally set up to imprison political oppo-

nents and protesters. The camps were later turned over to the SS, who expanded

the concentration camp and used it to warehouse other “undesirables.” Life in

the camps was a cycle of hunger, humiliation, and work that almost always

ended in death.

The prisoners were crammed into crude wooden barracks that held up to a

thousand people each. They shared their crowded quarters, as well as their mea-

ger meals, with hordes of rats and ﬂeas. Hunger was so intense, recalled one sur-

vivor, “that if a bit of soup spilled over, prisoners would converge on the spot, dig

their spoons into the mud and stuff the mess into their mouths.”

Inmates in the camps worked from dawn to dusk, seven

days a week, until they collapsed. Those too weak to work

were killed. Some, like Rudolf Reder, endured. He was one of

only two Jews to survive the camp at Belzec, Poland.

A PERSONAL VOICE RUDOLF REDER

“ The brute Schmidt was our guard; he beat and kicked us

if he thought we were not working fast enough. He ordered

his victims to lie down and gave them 25 lashes with a

whip, ordering them to count out loud. If the victim made a

mistake, he was given 50 lashes. . . . Thirty or 40 of us

were shot every day. A doctor usually prepared a daily list

of the weakest men. During the lunch break they were

taken to a nearby grave and shot. They were replaced the

following morning by new arrivals from the transport of

the day. . . . It was a miracle if anyone survived for ﬁve or

six months in Belzec.

”

—quoted in The Holocaust

On May 9,

1945, inmates

at the

Ebensee

concentration

camp in

Austria were

liberated by

U.S. soldiers.

After stripping their victims of life and dignity,

the Nazis hoarded whatever articles of value

the victims had possessed, such as wedding

rings and gold ﬁllings from teeth.

▼

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Page 5 of 8

The Final Stage

The Final Solution reached its ﬁnal stage

in early 1942. At a meeting held in

Wannsee, a lakeside suburb near Berlin,

Hitler’s top ofﬁcials agreed to begin a new

phase of the mass murder of Jews. To mass

slaughter and starvation they would add a

third method of killing—murder by poi-

son gas.

MASS EXTERMINATIONS

As deadly as

overwork, starvation, beatings, and bullets

were, they did not kill fast enough to sat-

isfy the Nazis. The Germans built six death

camps in Poland. The first, Chelmno,

began operating in 1941—before the

meeting at Wannsee. Each camp had sev-

eral huge gas chambers in which as many

as 12,000 people could be killed a day.

When prisoners arrived at Auschwitz,

the largest of the death camps, they had to

parade by several SS doctors. With a wave

of the hand, the doctors separated those

strong enough to work from those who

would die that day. Both groups were told

to leave all their belongings behind, with a

promise that they would be returned later.

Those destined to die were then led into a

room outside the gas chamber and were

told to undress for a shower. To complete

the deception, the prisoners were even

World War Looms 753

Prisoners were required to wear color-coded

triangles on their uniforms. The categories of

prisoners include communists, socialists,

criminals, emigrants, Jehovah’s Witnesses,

homosexuals, Germans “shy of work,” and other

nationalities “shy of work.” The vertical

categories show a variation. One for repeat

offenders, one for prisoners assigned to punish

other prisoners, and double triangles for Jews.

Letters on top of a patch indicate nationality.

▼

C. Answer

Extermination of

European Jews

in death camps.

MAIN IDEA

Summarizing

What was the

goal of the Nazis’

Final Solution, and

how was that goal

nearly achieved?

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Page 6 of 8

754 C

HAPTER 24

given pieces of soap. Finally, they were led into the cham-

ber and poisoned with cyanide gas that spewed from vents

in the walls. This orderly mass extermination was some-

times carried out to the accompaniment of cheerful music

played by an orchestra of camp inmates who had tem-

porarily been spared execution.

At ﬁrst the bodies were buried in huge pits. At Belzec,

Rudolf Reder was part of a 500-man death brigade that

labored all day, he said, “either at grave digging or empty-

ing the gas chambers.” But the decaying corpses gave off a

stench that could be smelled for miles around. Worse yet,

mass graves left evidence of the mass murder. Lilli

Kopecky recalls her arrival at Auschwitz.

A PERSONAL VOICE LILLI KOPECKY

“ When we came to Auschwitz, we smelt the sweet

smell. They said to us: 'There the people are gassed,

three kilometers over there.' We didn't believe it.

”

—quoted in Never Again

At some camps, to try to cover up the evidence of

their slaughter, the Nazis installed huge crematoriums, or

ovens, in which to burn the dead. At other camps, the

bodies were simply thrown into a pit and set on ﬁre.

Gassing was not the only method of extermination

used in the camps. Prisoners were also shot, hanged, or

injected with poison.

Still others died as a result of horrible medical experi-

ments carried out by camp doctors. Some of these victims

were injected with deadly germs in order to study the

effect of disease on different groups of people. Many more

were used to test methods of sterilization, a subject of

great interest to some Nazi doctors in their search for ways

to improve the “master race.”

RIGHTEOUS PERSONS OF

WORLD WAR II

In the midst of the world’s over-

all indifference to the plight of

Jewish refugees, thousands of

non-Jews risked—and in many

cases lost-—their own lives to

save Jews from the Nazis. In

recognition of such heroic

efforts, the Israeli Parliament,

the Knesset, bestowed on these

individuals the title of Righteous

Gentiles (or Righteous Persons).

As of the year 2001 more than

18,269 individuals were recog-

nized for their courage and

morality.

Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a

Portuguese diplomat stationed in

France, deﬁed his government’s

orders and issued some 10,000

visas to Jews seeking entry to his

country. The Swedish diplomat

Raoul Wallenberg issued “protec-

tive passports” that allowed

thousands of Hungarian Jews to

escape the Nazi death camps.

Even citizens of Germany lent a

hand. And Sempo Sugihara,

Japanese consul in Lithuania,

helped over 6,000 Jews to

escape the Nazis’ clutches, an

act that cost him his career.

Children taken

from Eastern

Europe and

imprisoned in

Auschwitz

look out from

behind the

barbed-wire

fence in July

1944.

▼

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Page 7 of 8

World War Looms 755

THE SURVIVORS

An estimated six million Jews died in the

death camps and in the Nazi massacres. But some miraculously

escaped the worst of the Holocaust. Many had help from ordi-

nary people who were appalled by the Nazis’ treatment of Jews.

Some Jews even survived the horrors of the concentration camps.

In Gerda Weissmann Klein’s view, survival depended as

much on one’s spirit as on getting enough to eat. “I do believe that if you were

blessed with imagination, you could work through it,” she wrote. “If, unfortu-

nately, you were a person that faced reality, I think you didn’t have much of a

chance.” Those who did come out of the camps alive were forever changed by

what they had witnessed. For survivor Elie Wiesel, who entered Auschwitz in

1944 at the age of 14, the sun had set forever.

A PERSONAL VOICE ELIE WIESEL

“ Never shall I forget that night, the ﬁrst

night in the camp, which has turned my life

into one long night. . . . Never shall I forget

the little faces of the children, whose bod-

ies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke

beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I for-

get those ﬂames which consumed my faith

forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal

silence which deprived me, for all eternity,

of the desire to live. Never shall I forget

those moments which murdered my God

and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.

Never shall I forget these things, even if I

am condemned to live as long as God

Himself. Never.

”

—Night

•Holocaust

•Kristallnacht

•genocide

•ghetto

•concentration camp

1. TERMS & NAMES For each term or name, write a sentence explaining its signiﬁcance.

MAIN IDEA

2. TAKING NOTES

List at least four events that led to

the Holocaust.

Write a paragraph summarizing one

of the events that you listed.

CRITICAL THINKING

3. EVALUATING DECISIONS

Do you think that the United States

was justiﬁed in not allowing more

Jewish refugees to emigrate? Why

or why not? Think About:

• the views of isolationists in the

United States

• some Americans’ prejudices

and fears

• the incident on the German

luxury liner St. Louis

4. DEVELOPING HISTORICAL

PERSPECTIVE

Why do you think the Nazi system of

systematic genocide was so brutally

effective? Support your answer with

details from the text.

5. ANALYZING MOTIVES

How might concentration camp

doctors and guards have justiﬁed to

themselves the death and suffering

they caused other human beings?

Cause Effect

The Holocaust

“ Survival is both an

exalted privilege and

a painful burden.”

GERDA WEISSMANN KLEIN

Elie Wiesel, 1986

▼

p0748-755aspe-0724s3 10/17/02 9:09 AM Page 755

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