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The Holocaust in Europe Hitler imagined the post-war Europe in a way that it is ruled by a 250 million German population. The empire would be surrounded by satellite states, but not all of the peoples are good enough: for example the Slavic people would be slaves. And the total Jewish population would be eliminated. In the Nazi ideology, the Jews were an inferior race, from which Hitler wanted to ’clear’ Europe. The Jews were persecuted in the German-influenced territories from the 1930’s on First in Germany: 1. SA soldiers were standing in front of Jewish shops 2. Nuremberg laws in 1935: no marriage or any relationship between Jewish and German and Reich citizenship only for Germans 3. the Crystal Night During the 1930’s they were deprived from their rights and property and way to make their living, or were forced into emigration. After the outbreak of the war, it turned out that Hitler by the ’final solution’ (in German: endlösung) means the extermination of the whole

Jewish population. The way of the endlösung was created in the first two years of the Second World War. As a first step, the Jewish population was forced to move into ghettos, to such terrible conditions, where many of them died. After the attack of the USSR, so called Einsatzgruppes were created. Their task was to collect the people, dig with them large pits and in the end massacred them by machine guns in a way that they fell into the pit - their mass grave. The “final way” developed in 1941-42., on the 20th January in 1942, at a conference in Wannsee, near Berlin. The tasks of the different organisations and offices were organized The number of the Jews in whole Europe was calculated to be 11 million. The chief of the conference was Reinhard Heydrich (among the nazi leaders he was the most similar to the a perfect Arja). On the occupied territories the collecting of the Jews started, and by train (where many times 100 people had to travel in one carriage) they were deported

into concentration camps. Deportations from all over Europe started. The Germans first in Poland met with a large Jewish community (3 million people), in 1939. at that time there was no concrete plan for how to solve the Jewish question. The Jews were put into Ghettos and had to wear yellow star and were deprived of their basic human rights. Brutality was common. After the attack of Russia, again lots of Jews got under German control. But here they were brutally massacred by the Einsatzgruppe: in two days, 100 000 were killed in Kiev. From the opposition of the Jews, the ghetto rebellion in Warsaw was the most important. In Warsaw, approximately 400 000 Jews lived. By April, 1943, only 60 000 remained in the ghettos (the others were taken into Treblinka). When their deportation was ordered, an hopeless uprising broke out-in the end the whole ghetto was destroyed. In some countries the population helped the Jews. In France, because of the pressure of the population the deportations were

suspended. (70-80% survived) In Amsterdam, strike broke out- but unfortunately they couldnt save the Jews. In Denmark, people saved them by transporting them to Sweden in boats. In Italy there was no antisemitism –only some dispositions but no deportations-till the German occupation. Finland also wasnt willing to give her people over. In Central- Eastern Europe the situation was different. Abuot 56 million Jews were killed by 1945. In Hungary, until the German occupation their rights were limited in three anti-jewish laws.and the government refused to force them to wear yellow star The situation became tragic only after March 1944. from that time, they were forced to ghettos and in may, the deportations started. The whole was controlled by Adolf Eichmann First the Jews who lived in the cuonrtyside were collected. There were no enough Germans to do it, so the Hungarian authorities had to help them a lot. Horthy, in July when the deportations would reach Budapest, stopped them.

There are more reasons: the protest of the Vatican, Roosevelt and Sweden, the cognition of the Auschwitz report and the landing of the Allies in Normandy. There were no deportations till October, when Szálasi became Prime Minister. But he agreed on giving over 50 000 Jews to Germany. The others were to be put into ghettos But many times those who were captured were simply shot into the Danube. But there were many people who helped the Jews: hided them or gave them false papers, passports, declared many houses and block to be ’ protected’. The main leaders of it were Angelo Rotta nuncio from Vatican, Friederich Born the representative of the Red Cross, C.Lutz consul from Switzerland, Raoul Wallenberg Swedish diplomat and Carlos Branquinho Portugese diplomat. Not only Jews were taken into such camps, but homosexuals, Gypsies, communists, people who are opposing the system and mentally ills were also assassinated. The camps were led by SS soldiers, whose leader was Himmler, and

another main organiser was Adolf Eichmann. The first concentration camp was built in 1933 already, in Dachau. After the people arrived to the camps, those who were able to work were selected. All the others were killed in the gas chambers. Their clothes and properties, and also their glasses were reused, and the hair of the women was used as plumbing. The dead bodies were burnt in large crematories. But because of the forced, very hard labour (in mines, construction works), the lack of food and the very bad conditions, many people died sooner or later. The camps can be separated according to their function:  labour and prisoners-of-war camps  forced labour camps  collecting and deporting camps  punishing camps  exterminating camps. The first exterminating camp was created in Chelmo (Poland). The largest and most important concentration camps were: • in Poland: Auschwitz (it had three parts: Auschwitz 1, A.-Birkenau, A-Monowitz), Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibór, Treblinka,

Chelmo, Stuthoff • in the Check territories: Theresienstadt • in Austria: Mauthausen • in Germany: Dachau, Buchenwald, Flossenburg, Dora, Gross Rosen, Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück, Bergen-Belsen. Around 5.6-58 million Jewish people were murdered during the war, and 200000 Gipsy The word holocaust is Greek, means ‘burning sacrifise’. In Hebrew, it is Soa (catastrophe) The Gipsy word is Porrajmos. After the war, most of the Germans said that they didn’t know about the massacres. But the SS and the National Railway Company (its workers had a great role in the transportations) altogether had 2 million members, workers. And it is hard to imagine that they had never said a word about it neither to their families. At the same time, the Allies also had to know about the camps through their intelligence during the war already. After the war, the Allied forces sent to the Germans to see the camps to see what had happened. As a result, for decades in Germany nobody denied the

existence of the camps