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The Jewish University in Cyberspace 19 Nov. 1996
Student and Academics Department
World Zionist Organization
juice@wzo.org.il birnbaum@wzo.org.il
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Contemporary Jewish History
Robert Goldbert bgoldbert@wzo.org.i1
7/12 World War II and The Holocaust, cont.
The last lecture provided a general historical overview of
the Holocaust and the fate of the Jews of Europe during World War
II. I think you all will agree with me that the fact that such
atrocities and on such a large scale could be carried out,
especially in "civilized" Europe, raises a number of questions
about the behavior of the German people, their allies, and the
activities of the rest of the world during the Holocaust.
Therefore, in this lecture I will try to address some of the more
specific (and possibly disturbing) issues of the Holocaust: What
the world knew about the Holocaust and what they did or didn't do
about it, as well as the issue of Jewish resistance (or lack
thereof) during the Holocaust. I want to make one thing clear at
the outset, however: In this lecture, as in my other lectures, I
will be looking at the "Big Picture" and I will be speaking in
generalities- Action or inaction by a country or group of people
that I will be discussing here does not mean that the whole
country or group acted this way or that there weren't individuals
who behaved differently· I will try to paint a balanced picture
of what was going on around the world during the Holocaust, both
the good and the bad. I hope that it will become an interesting
subject for debate.
I. The Behavior of the World During the Holocaust
A. The German People
It seems that bulk of the German people knew about and
acquiesced in the genocide. Let us examine the evidence: From
the beginning, even before Hitler came to power, Germans were
filling stadiums attending Nazi rallies throughout Germany where
banners proclaiming such slogans as "The Jews are our misfortune"
were prominent. These rallies often ended with the cry "Death
to the Jews!" Hitler made no secret of his ideology and his
intentions towards the Jews, as is evidenced by his many speeches
at these rallies, his book "Mein Kampf", and by Nazi propaganda
leaflets and party publications· Thus the Nazi plan for the Jews
was open and well known. It must also not be forgotten that
Hitler and the Nazis were democratically elected to power by the
majority of the German people, knowing full well what their
intentions were.
Once Hitler took power, there was very little active
opposition to the Nazi regime in Germany. On the contrary, many
more flocked to the Nazi banner. Most of the Germans were very
enthusiastic throughout the war and actively participated in the
war effort in one way or another. The number of Germans either
actively involved in or having knowledge of the genocide is
staggering- There were 900,000 Germans in the SS alone. Besides
them, thousands of others played an active part in the
exterminations -- in government offices, in the administration of
Nazi-occupied territories, in the security police and the
Gestapo, in the concentration and death camps and in the
Einsatzgruppen. Tens of thousands of German soldiers, from
field-marshals down to privates, either aided in the murders and
expulsions or at least witnessed them with their own eyes. The
thousands of officials in the various ministries who drew up the
record of plunder, from libraries and works of art to gold teeth,
children's shoes and blood-stained coats, knew what they were
doing and where the booty was coming from.
A further 1·2 million Germans were involved in the railways
that transported the Jews across Europe to the ghettos and to
their deaths. These trains were another giveaway. It would have
been almost impossible not to notice the huge, crowded trains
filled with their human cargo that rattled across Germany day and
night. Many Germans even joked "Those damned Jews, they won't
even let us sleep at night!" The Germans were also the
beneficiaries of the extermination· Scores of thousands of
watches and fountain pens taken from the victims were distributed
among the German armed forces. In one six-week period alone,
222,269 sets of men's suits and undergarments, 192,652 sets of
women's clothing and 99,922 sets of children's clothes, collected
from the victims at Auschwitz, were distributed in Germany's home
front. The recipients must have known where these items came
from.
Because the Germans benefited from the exterminations, and
because protest or resistance usually meant being sent to the gas
chambers oneself, the rank and file German had very little
incentive to protest about what was being done to the Jews or
help them escape. Most of them, therefore, did nothing. There
were some exceptions, however. For example, in Berlin, the very
heart of Hitler's empire, several thousand of the city's 160,000
Jews managed to escape by becoming "U-boats"; that is, going
underground. In each case this involved some connivance and
assistance by non-Jewish Germans. Sadly, such Germans
represented only a small minority of the German people as a
whole. (A new and very controversial book dealing with this
subject, "Hitler's Willing Executioners" by Daniel Jonah
Goldhagen, was published last year and has created quite a stir.
The book, as the name implies, deals with question of German
collective guilt for the Holocaust. It is still being debated by
the academic community and has really re-opened the question of
the role of the typical German in the extermination of the Jews.
Thus I would say that the book is a must for anyone wishing to
explore the topic further)
B. Nazi-occupied Europe
It seems that the reaction in most of the European countries
that fell under Nazi sway was the same as in Germany; that is,
most of the people merely ac4uiesced to what was going on around
them. Many countries were actually worse then the Germans. For
example, the Austrians played a role in the Holocaust out of
proportion to their numbers. Not only was Hitler an Austrian,
but so was Eichmann and Kaltenbrunner, the head of the Gestapo.
Austrians were also prominent in the mobile killing battalions
and provided one third of the personnel of the SS extermination
units. Most of this service was voluntary.
Some of the most active accomplices of the Germans in the
exterminations were the Ukrainians and the Lithuanians, whose
traditional hatred of Jews combined with the political hopes they
pinned on the victory of the Germans and the fulfillment of their
nationalist aims. This accounts for their extensive
participation in the Einsatzgruppen and in the wiping out of the
ghettos.
The Rumanians also actively participated in the
extermination of the Jews. The Rumanian government, one of
Hitler's allies, fully implemented Hitler's policies with a
vengeance. The Rumanians were known for beatings and torture,
and used the prettiest Jewish girls for systematic rape and
orgies (a practice that the Germans refrained from, considering
Jews sub-human and intercourse with them akin to bestiality)
After the Germans and the Austrians, the Rumanians were the
biggest killers of the Jews. It seems that their attitude
towards the Jews became less bellicose, however, from 1944
onwards as they realized that the Allies would win.
Similarly, it was not by chance that Poland was chosen as
the country of the extermination. While the Polish people did
not cooperate with the Nazis, the vast majority of them did not
lift a finger to help the Jews, either. The existence of ghettos
throughout Poland and the transports to and from them was no
secret to the Poles, and many Poles profited from handing over
escaping Jews to the Nazis. Nevertheless, it must be noted that
there were some Poles, mainly in the monasteries, who were
shocked at what was going on and attempted to hide and save Jews,
especially children. Through them, several thousand Jewish
children were saved. Though Poland was notorious for anti-
Semitism, it is a fact that the number of Jews hidden and saved
there by the local population was many times higher then in the
Ukraine and in Lithuania.
In France, too, there was an important section of public
opinion willing to take an active part in the Final Solution. As
in Germany, the anti-Semites included a great many intellectuals,
especially writers. There were no fewer then ten anti-Semitic
political organizations in France calling for the destruction of
the Jews, some of which were funded by the Nazi government.
Thankfully, they failed to form a united front until the puppet
Vichy government adopted an anti-Semitic policy. While most of
the French declined to collaborate with the Nazi extermination,
there were some who willingly participated in it. The Vichy
government actively assisted the Germans in the deportation of
the Jews from France, most of whom did not survive.
The picture was not all bleak, however. Small numbers of
Jews were saved due to the efforts of governments and people who
did not surrender to Nazi pressure. As was mentioned in the last
lecture, in Nazi-occupied Holland many Dutch workers came to the
aid of the Jews after the Nazis sacked the Jewish quarter of
Amsterdam. A workers strike broke out in solidarity with the
Jews which gradually developed into a general strike that had to
be suppressed by military force. In Finland, one of Germany's
allies, not only were the Jews not handed over for transport and
extermination, they even continued to serve in the army. In
Denmark, because of the resolute stand of the government and the
people against Nazi anti-Semitism, the underground succeeded in
smuggling the great majority of Jews to neutral Sweden. Although
in Italy there was a definite anti-Semitic fringe within the
Fascist party and the government, it was much less powerful then
in the French Vichy regime and seems to have had no popular
support at all. Thus while anti-Jewish laws were promulgated,
the Italian government and the army opposed dispatching the Jews
to extermination, despite pressure from Germany. The Vatican
also sheltered 477 Jews and a further 4,238 found shelter in
convents and monasteries throughout Rome. Furthermore, some Jews
from Yugoslavia and the south of France fled to Italy and were
held there under humane conditions and not turned over to the
Nazis. Finally, in Bulgaria, despite the fact that Jews were
sent to death-camps from the Bulgarian-occupied areas of
Yugoslavia and Greece, close to 50,000 Jews of Bulgaria itself
were saved thanks to the firm stand of the majority of the
Bulgarian people and their government against the German
extermination policy. This fact merely demonstrates that by
taking a resolute stand a government and its people could in fact
resist Nazi pressure.
Many individuals also made a difference. We have already
mentioned the efforts of German non-Jews who assisted in hiding
Jews or helping them escape. Indeed, through Western Europe many
Christians, often at the risk of their own lives, extended
protection to their Jewish fellow citizens and refugees. Jewish
children were often taken into Christian homes. When the order
was given for Dutch Jews to wear the yellow Star of David,
numerous Christian Netherlanders appeared in public with similar
badges and a number of clergymen, both Protestant and Catholic,
were among the rescuers of Jews in Holland and throughout Europe.
C. The United States and Britain
The number of Jews saved through the intervention and
assistance of good people amounted to thousands, whereas the
number in danger and eventually murdered amounted to millions.
This fact raises the obvious question: Could the Allies have done
more to save European Jewry from the flames of the Holocaust?
While the British and American governments were in theory
sympathetic to the Jews, in practice they were terrified that any
aggressively pro-Jewish policy would provoke Hitler into a mass
expulsion of Jews, whom they would then be forced to absorb.
Neither power was prepared to save Jewish lives by accepting
large numbers of refugees. This is illustrated by the ill-fated
voyage of the refugee ship "St. Louis" which set sail from
Germany to Cuba in May 1939 with 930 Jewish refugees, all of whom
held Cuban landing certificates and 734 of whom held U.S. entry
visas. When the Cubans refused to allow the ship to dock in
Havana, an appeal was sent to the U.S. State Department to allow
those refugees with U.S. visas to land and enter the U.S. This
appeal was rejected. President Roosevelt himself was asked to
intervene and let the refugees into the U.S., but he refused to
reply and four days later the U.S. government officially refused
to allow the refugees to land. Appeals were sent to countries
all over the world to let the ship in, but all fell on deaf ears.
In the end the ship had no choice but to return to Europe. All
of the refugees came under German rule within a year and most
were killed in the concentration camps.
The U.S. could certainly have accommodated large numbers of
Jewish refugees, but in fact only 21,000 were admitted during the
war years, a figure representing only 108 of the number allowed
to enter under the quota law. When news of the exterminations
began to trickle in, people simply refused to believe the
reports. At the same time, the mood of the American people
remained firmly anti-immigration, It is for this reason that
when a belated Angle-American conference was convened in April
1943 in Bermuda to discuss measures of relief and rescue for
European Jewry, President Roosevelt showed little interest. Like
the conference that had taken place five years earlier at Evian
(see lecture V), the conference gave rise to many hopes but
resulted only in lofty speeches, vague assurances and expressions
of profound regrets. Roosevelt himself claimed that nothing of
consequence could be done. The final resolution of the
conference recommended that "no approach be made to Hitler for
the release of potential refugees." This led one Jewish body,
more outspoken then others, to publicly brand the Bermuda
Conference "a cruel mockery."
Britain was also reluctant to open her doors to large-scale
Jewish immigration. At the same time, it refused to budge from
the 1939 White Paper for Palestine, which, as we have seen,
imposed severe immigration restrictions for Jews to Palestine
(lecture V). Although Winston Churchill favored opening
Palestine to Jewish immigration, his Foreign Secretary, Anthony
Eden, argued that this would alienate Britain's Arab allies and
thus destroy her military position in the Middle East and
endanger the war effort. An example of Britain's policy is
provided by the case of the "Struma", a refugee ship from Rumania
sailing towards Palestine in December 1941. The British refused
to allow the ship into Palestine and it sank off Turkish
territorial waters in February 1942. Of the 770 passengers,
including 70 children, only one was rescued.
The question of bombing the gas chambers was raised in the
early summer of 1944, after what was going on in Europe was
already apparent. Churchill was said to be horrified at the
reports of the exterminations and in July instructed Eden to "get
anything out of the Air Force you can and invoke me if
necessary." But the death camps were never bombed. In a letter
that was only unclassified in 1965, John J. McCloy, U.S.
Assistant Secretary of War, explained to John W. Pehle, the
Executive Director of the War Refugee Board, that "The Operation
Staff of the War Department has given careful consideration to
the proposal that the bombing of these camps be undertaken.
[However], the target is beyond the maximum range of bombardment
and would necessitate a hazardous round-trip flight unescorted of
approximately 2,000 miles over enemy territory. Our strategic
air forces are presently engaged in the destruction of industrial
target systems vital to the dwindling war potential of the enemy,
from which they should not be diverted. The positive solution to
this problem is the earliest possible victory over Germany, to
which we should exert out entire means. [Therefore] the War
Department feels that it should not undertake these operations."
The fact is, however, that an oil-refining complex only 47
miles from Auschwitz was attacked no less then ten times between
July and November 1944. In August 1944, 127 Flying Fortress flew
right over the Auschwitz gas chambers and attacked the Auschwitz
factory area less then five miles to the east. The gas chambers
remained untouched. This belies the War Department's claim that
the gas chambers were "beyond the maximum range of bombardment"
or that such an attack would be to "hazardous", Both the U.S.
and the British air forces hated military operations not directed
to destroying enemy forces or war potential. Throughout the war,
Churchill remained the only real supporter for the bombing of the
camps in either government. Unfortunately, his voice was not
heeded.
II. Jewish Resistance in the Holocaust
There are two main theories regarding the issue of Jewish
resistance during the Holocaust. One is that the Jews basically
went to their deaths passively, "like sheep to the slaughter"
The other is that the Jews acted bravely and heroically, fighting
the Nazis every step of the way. I would tend to say that
neither of these theories are totally wrong or right.
It is true that no united Jewish resistance movement emerged
during the war. There are several possible explanations for
this. One is that due to the centuries of persecution, the Jews
had learned that resistance often costs more lives then it saves.
Our long experience with persecution and anti-Semitism had taught
the Jews how to negotiate, pay, plead or even protest, but not to
fight. Second, the most ambitious Jews had already gone to
America and the most militant to Palestine. The great mass of
Jews who remained in Europe were overwhelmingly religious, which,
it has been argued, tended to encourage passivity. For example,
the Hasidic Jews were ready to accept their fate as G-d's will
and went to the death trains wrapped in their tefillin and
prayer-shawls, reciting the psalms (this, of course, can also be
considered a form of resistance). Third, the Jews were deceived
and self-deceived. The Nazis, precisely to minimize the
possibility of resistance, made pitiless use of Jewish sociology
and psychology and lied to the Jews at every stage of the
process. They told the victims that the deportations were to
"work-sites". The death chambers, disguised as shower-rooms, had
Red Cross markings on the doors. Outside, people received soap
and a towel. The Jews were told to breath deeply because the
'water' contained a good disinfectant and would help prevent
diseases. At the same time, the deception often worked because
people wanted to be deceived. They needed to have hope, thus
they were reluctant to believe the stories of mass death.
Besides, for some the whole idea of genocide and mass gassing was
simply to incredible to believe.
For practical reasons as well, open resistance to the Nazis
was extremely difficult. Isolated from each other by both the
Nazis and the largely indifferent or hostile local non-Jewish
populations, Jewish communities could accomplish little concerted
action. Without support from the general population, open
resistance was not considered feasible. No government-in-exile
or other organized resistance group supported the Jews from
abroad, and the Jews had no access to arms caches. At the same
time, many of the Jews, both in the ghettos and in the camps,
were at the point of starvation and their whole strength was
concentrated on mere survival. Furthermore, it was felt that
resistance would do marginal harm to the Nazis but would bring
massive retribution on the Jews.
However, despite all of these difficulties, there was
actually a surprising amount of Jewish resistance to the Nazis.
Despite the overwhelming military strength of the German forces,
a minority of Jews nevertheless rose up in revolt against the
Nazis, not only in the ghettos but even in the concentration
camps themselves. There was organized armed resistance in 24
ghettos and five death camps. These uprisings, although carried
out by only a small minority of European Jewry, can be considered
among the most noble and courageous episodes not only of Jewish
history but of world history as well, especially when considering
all of the forces mitigating against armed Jewish resistance.
As well as the Jewish revolts in the ghettos and death
camps, many other Jews fought in partisan units throughout Nazi-
occupied Europe. Some fought as individuals within local
partisan groups, while others formed specifically Jewish units.
These Jewish partisan groups were active in the behind the lines
struggle against the German occupation forces, attacking and
harassing German troops, cutting railway lines and forming focal
points for local anti-Nazi resistance. Those who were captured
were usually tortured and shot.
I wish that I had the space to catalogue and describe the
various acts of resistance -- the list is long and contain
stories full of bravery and heroism. Unfortunately, I do not
(this lecture has already exceeded the number of pages that it's
supposed to). Thus, for the sake of brevity, I will briefly
describe two of the most famous accounts of Jewish armed
resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the revolt in
Auschwitz.
In the Warsaw Ghetto, under the pretense of building air-
raid shelters, the Jews constructed dug-outs connected to the
sewer system. They were led by 24 year old Mordechai Anielewicz,
who recruited 750 fighters and contrived to get nine rifles,
fifty-nine pistols and a few grenades. The first clash between
the Nazis and the resistance forces occurred on January 18, 1943,
when Jews earmarked for transport fired on their guards and
succeeded in escaping. While searching for them, the Nazis
encountered armed resistance throughout the ghetto. In revenge,
the Nazis decided to wipe out the ghetto on April 19, 1943
(Passover Eve). At the time, there were only 60,000 Jews left in
the ghetto. In the desperate underground fighting that followed,
17 Germans were killed and 85 wounded, despite the fact that the
Nazis were fighting with tanks, cannons, armored cars and even
airplanes. Anielewicz was killed on May 8, but the fighting
continued and the revolt was not fully put down until mid-Summer.
By this time, most of the Jews were dead in the debris. Some
European countries with well-equipped armies had not resisted the
Nazis for so long. Mordechai Anielewicz's last letter ends with
the following: "The last wish of my life has been fulfilled.
Jewish self-defense had become a fact. Jewish armed resistance
and revenge have become reality. I am happy to have been a
witness to the magnificent, heroic fighting of Jewish men of
battle." (This short paragraph does not do justice to the full
story of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, but information about it
abounds for those interested in further reading. A particularly
exciting historical novel about the uprising is "Mila 18" by Leon
Uris)
In October 1944, a revolt broke out in Auschwitz itself.
Jewish women working in one of the factories were able to smuggle
in explosives to the Jews working in crematoria III and IV, where
they managed to set fire to crematoria IV, blow up crematoria III
and kill three SS men there. Most of the rebels, however, were
killed during the fighting, the others were later caught and
shot. All in all, of the 650 men in the uprising, 450 were
killed. In retribution, the Nazis massacred another 250, but 27
were able to escape. Four of the Jewish girls who had smuggled
in the explosives were tortured for weeks, but gave no
information. Roza Robota, who died under torture, gave her last
message: "Be strong and brave." Two of them survived the
torture, only to be hanged in front of all the women in
Auschwitz, one of them with the cry "Revenge!" on her lips as she
died.
Finally, a discussion of Jewish resistance in the Holocaust
would not be complete without an account of the activities of the
Yishuv in Palestine, probably the only community in the world
outside Europe that made efforts specifically to help save the
Jews. During the early months of 1943, as news of the death.
camps began to reach the Yishuv, pans were made for Palestinian
Jews to be parachuted into the Balkans to help organize Jewish
resistance and establish centers of rescue from which Jews could
be smuggled out of Nazi-occupied territory. Some 32 members of
the Yishuv parachuted into the Balkans in 1944. Eight were
caught and killed, some returned only after being tortured by the
Nazis and escaping. Among the paratroopers was a 23 year-old
woman named Hannah Senesch, who had made Aliyah from Hungary 5
years before and volunteered to return to Hungary to help set up
a Jewish underground railroad. Senesch was dropped into
occupied-Yugoslavia and made her way to Hungary, where she made
contact with local partisan units. Upon discovering that she was
Jewish, however, the anti-Semitic Hungarian partisans turned her
over to the Hungarian police who, in turn, gave her to the
Gestapo. Senesch was held in a Nazi prison in Budapest for five
months, enduring beatings and tortures; however, Senesch refused
to divulge any information to the Nazis. In November 1944 she
was placed before a firing squad, but she refused a blindfold.
Her remains were brought to Jerusalem for burial in 1950, and the
story of her heroism has since become part of Israeli folklore.
Thus, some of the most dramatic episodes of Jewish
resistance in the Holocaust was actually provided by the Yishuv
in Palestine. It was this fighting spirit that helped create the
State of Israel, the subject to which we turn our attention next.
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