Throughout the 1930s and the subsequent early years of World War II, the Nazis attempted in various ways to "solve the Jewish question." The terrible final solution ("Final Solution"), as the Holocaust came to be known in the Nazi bureaucracy, did not come about overnight. The road to Auschwitz, in other words, is not 'straight' but 'twisted'.
One of Adolf Hitler's goals was a so-called "racial realignment of Europe." In Hitler's worldview, the Germanic race was superior. All other races - but especially Jews and Slavs - were Untermenschen . Hitler's dream was to unite all ethnic Germans - and in particular those who had ended up abroad after the disastrous Treaty of Versailles for Germany - into a new, great German Empire. There was no place in that Empire for inferior races.
The annexation of Poland
In 1939 Hitler, along with the Soviet Union, conquered Poland. The country was divided in two, after which large parts of western Poland were annexed to the German Empire. Towns and villages were given new German names, universities were closed and only 'limited primary education' was allowed. Heinrich Himmler wrote:"The sole purpose of the schools is simple arithmetic up to the number 500, to be able to write one's own name and to teach that one should obey Germans, be honest and productive. I don't think it's necessary to learn to read'.
The Jews living in the area (some 350,000) and many ethnic ('non-Germanizable') Poles were either executed on the spot or deported to the General Government, a large area in southeastern Poland that had been planned by the Nazis. as a reserve, or dumping ground, for Untermenschen had to serve.
Jews from other parts of the Reich were also deported to make way for ethnic Germans. In Polish cities such as Lublin, Kraków and Warsaw, overcrowded ghettos – hermetically sealed Jewish districts – soon arose, where malnutrition and infectious diseases were the order of the day.
Physical extermination:'un-German and impossible'
After Hans Frank, Hitler's representative in the Government General, indicated in May 1940 that he did not want to accept new Jews, makeshift ghettos and concentration camps arose in the rest of Poland, in which the conditions were downright unlivable. The 'Jewish question' cried out for a solution.
Himmler wrote about this time that he would prefer to ship all the Jews to an African colony, preferably the island of Madagascar. The Madagascar plan is seriously considered in the summer of 1940. When in October 1940 it became clear that the Nazis had lost the battle for England, the Madagascar plan was also shelved. After all, that was based on a German dominance over the ocean.
Finally, Himmler writes something remarkable about the possibility of genocide:"However tragic each individual case may be, this method is still the best, if one considers the Russian method of physical destruction as un-German and impossible."
When the invasion of the Soviet Union began in July 1941, people still hoped for a "territorial solution to the Jewish question." It was expected that large parts of the Soviet Union would be quickly conquered, so that the Jews - especially those who were unable to perform forced labor - could be deported somewhere behind the Ural Mountains.
Relentless Death Squads
However, the invasion soon proved to be the start of a revolution in a completely different direction. The attack was to become a veritable war of destruction. Behind the front so-called Einsatzgruppen on. Motorized death squads that, even after the German attack stalled in the Russian winter, wreaked havoc in the conquered areas.
Near Kiev, more than 30,000 Jews were horribly massacred in two days. A group was forced to undress and lie down at the bottom of Babi Jar's ravine. There they were shot one by one. A new group had to descend into the ravine and lie on top of the corpses, after which the same fate awaited them.
Until recently, it was assumed that these Einsatzgruppen were preset by Reinhard Heydrich. However, research by Ian Kershaw recently showed that this was not the case. Heydrich and his superior Himmler asked for clarification about the Einsatsgruppen. only after a few weeks.
Diesel engines
The brutal massacres of the Einsatzgruppen made that the solution to the Jewish question and the overcrowded Polish ghettos was slowly being sought in the direction of genocide. Jews from all over Germany were deported to Poland, from where they would be deported further east, facing certain death.
However, the many executions demanded a heavy psychological burden on these executioners. Therefore, more efficient and less burdensome ways of exterminating the Jews were quickly sought. And preferably without lengthy and expensive transport.
In Serbia and in the Government General, among others, experiments had already been carried out with gas vans. Prisoners were placed in the cargo area of a truck, after which the 'euthanasia assistant' started the diesel engine and the exhaust gases were blown in. In December 1941, thousands of Jews were gassed in this way in Chełmno, an old castle about 50 kilometers from the city of Łódź.
Around the same time, the Auschwitz concentration camp was the first to experiment with Zyklon-B poison gas. It turned out to be cheap and efficient. In underground gas chambers, many more people could be killed at once than in the gas vans. In addition, the soldiers who operated the gas vans could often hear the terror cries of the victims, which was experienced as very incriminating.
The 'Final Solution'
On January 20, 1942, a few Nazi leaders led by Heydrich gathered in a villa in Wannsee, just outside Berlin. Those present agreed to the use of gas as the 'final solution to the Jewish question'. This meeting is often seen as the starting signal for the Holocaust, but was in fact a formality, because the systematic gassing had already started.
In March 1942 the first extermination camp Bełzec was operational. The other extermination camps Treblinka and Sobibor, all located in the Government General, followed later that year. The already existing concentration camp Majdanek was expanded with several gas chambers. Near Auschwitz, the gigantic extermination camp Auschwitz II (Birkenau) was built by Russian prisoners of war.
After Jews from the overcrowded ghettos were gassed in the camps, transports of Jews from all over Europe followed. Most camps were closed in 1943 and most traces of the massacre were carefully erased. However, Auschwitz-Birkenau continued to exist until the end of the war. More than a million people died in that camp alone. A large part were Jews, but also gypsies, prisoners of war and political opponents were deported there.
Since the late 1930s, the 'solution to the Jewish question' has been sought in 'deportation to the east'. However, it only became clear in the course of 1942 what exactly this would entail. The road to Auschwitz may have been winding, but in total more than ten million people died in the German extermination camps, of which about six million were Jews.
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