Portrait Reinhard Heydrich in Uniform of SS-Gruppenführers ca. 1940/1941 German Federal Archives via Wikimedia Commons
On 31 July 1941 Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, following instructions by Hitler, sent a letter to SS General Reinhard Heydrich directing him to “to submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution of the Jewish question.” In the instruction, Goering recalled a general outline that had been drafted on 24 January 1939 that called for the emigration and deportation of Jews in the best possible way. The program to be implemented by Nazi Germany was the mass and systemic extermination of Jews in al countries under German control.
Heydrich had already started implementing the strategy by bringing back the medieval ghetto in Poland. Jews were forced to live in cramped walled areas and held as prisoners. Their property was confiscated and given to Germans or local non-Jewish people. The instructions from Goering would lead to the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942 where details on implementing this mass murder scheme would be decided upon.
Young and old survivors in Dachau cheer approaching U.S. troops. 29 April 1945 Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photograph #45075 Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons
Established in 1933, 10 miles northwest of Munich on the outskirts of a town called Dachau, this concentration camp would initially house 5,000 political prisoners. The number of those opposed to the Nazi regime would increase from the original Communists it held. Soon it would include Roma (Gypsies), religious dissenters (Catholic priests and nuns, Protestant ministers, Jehovah’s Witnesses etc.) repeat criminals and homosexuals. In 1938, Jews began becoming a large number of those sent to this camp.
Dachau prisoners were used as forced laborers for German armaments production and was used as a training facility for SS concentration camp guards. Prisoners were also used in hideous medical experiments resulting in many dying or being crippled for life. While many thousands died at Dachau, many were sent to the extermination center near Linz, Austria until a gas chamber and crematorium were added in 1942. Satellite camps supplemented the main camp and were set up near armaments factories. Collectively all these camps were administered by Dachau and part of it.
The situation by April 1945 was dire for Germany with Allied forces closing in. Many prisoners were sent from camps nearer the front to Dachau resulting in epidemics and overcrowding. Over 7,000 mostly Jewish prisoners were forced to March from Dachau to Tegernsee in the south. Most of the camp guards left Dachau and only light resistance was given to the U.S. Army troops that arrived on 29 April 1945. Near the camp, they found 30 railroad cars full of corpses. More bodies were found at the camp but there were 30,000 survivors, many who were emaciated. The scene was appalling to the American troops. Many would write or talk about it later as one of the most horrific things they had ever seen. 30 captured SS guards were killed by American soldiers over what they saw (others claim it is was a lot more). German citizens of Dachau were later forced to bury the 9,000 dead inmates found at the camp.
(Here is a video on the liberation, but you will need to view it on YouTube.)
Sources:
Books
Gilbert, Martin: The Holocaust-A History of The Jews of Europe During The Second World War, Henry Holt & Company, New York 1985
Snyder, Lewis: Encyclopedia of The Third Reich, Marlowe & Company, New York, 1976
United State Holocaust Memorial Museum: Historical Atlas of The Holocaust, Macmillan Publishing USA, New York 1996
Portrait Reinhard Heydrich in Uniform of SS-Gruppenführers ca. 1940/1941 German Federal Archives via Wikimedia Commons
On 31 July 1941 Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, following instructions by Hitler, sent a letter to SS General Reinhard Heydrich directing him to “to submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution of the Jewish question.” In the instruction, Goering recalled a general outline that had been drafted on 24 January 1939 that called for the emigration and deportation of Jews in the best possible way. The program to be implemented by Nazi Germany was the mass and systemic extermination of Jews in al countries under German control.
Heydrich had already started implementing the strategy by bringing back the medieval ghetto in Poland. Jews were forced to live in cramped walled areas and held as prisoners. Their property was confiscated and given to Germans or local non-Jewish people. The instructions from Goering would lead to the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942 where details on implementing this mass murder scheme would be decided upon.
May 1942 photo for passport Anne Frank House, Amsterdam. Public Domain via Wikipedia Commons
“Yeah, Anne Frank had white privilege. Bad things happen to people with white privilege also, but don’t tell the whites that.”(Twitter posting)
Anne Frank, whose diary has become required reading in many schools, was a victim of the Holocaust. Except for Holocaust deniers, this is an unescapable truth. The fact that Nazi Germany was antisemitic is undeniable either. The Nazi’s devised the Nuremberg Laws that codified their antisemitism by denying Jews (considered a race by them and identified by family line) German citizenship. Yet now there are those on the Internet (and elsewhere) that try to posit the notion that what happened was not racism but rather a case of white superiority.
The proponents of this argue that since Jews are not a minority the Nazi’s did not practice racism but white superiority. It was simply one white group trying to dominate another and race had nothing to do with it. Whoopi Goldberg repeated this as well on The View and was put on leave because of the angry response to her claim. Jews, in this view of things, do not qualify as being members of a minority. One poster of this view quipped they were too white to hide their faces.
Antisemites are pleased with this because the posters of this thinking on social media are helping to continue to downplay what happened to the Jews, especially when those promoting it are African American. Antisemites love to point out to African Americans (and there are antisemitic African Americans as well) that Jews helped enslave their ancestors, used racial laws to keep them suppressed, had businesses that took advantage of them, and other nefarious things as well. So, this new tactic of trying to deny Jews being victims of racism is just a newer way to diminish what happened to them in the Holocaust.
It is a form of racial superiority but in a twisted way. Only certain groups, non-white ones, can suffer racism. Jews being white and being classified as a race by the Nazi’s does not count. It was just one group vying for power over the other. And since Anne Frank was born with “white privilege” her status as a victim of a horror is lessened. Thus, everyone equally born with white privilege as well. The mass murder of millions of humans is thus diminished and loses importance in this mindset. And what a dangerous one it is. For you can see the obvious extension of this already being played out. World War II then was just war between white people fighting out who would be in control of Europe.
Of course, those who advance this do have a problem with Japan, since they sought to establish their own rival empire in Asia and toss out the colonial powers. Turns out they had very definite ideas of who was superior and who was not as well. People who had thought the Japanese would liberate them from colonial oppression found themselves in the same position as before, just now it was the Japanese running things. Turns out other non-white peoples have notions of racial superiority as well. The argument of World War II being between two white powers seeking superiority over the others echoes what the Marxists said about World War I as between capitalist powers just being retooled for a new audience.
“Selection” of Hungarian Jews on the ramp at Auschwitz II-Birkenau in German-occupied Poland, around May 1944. Jews were sent either to work or to the gas chamber. The photograph is part of the collection known as the Auschwitz Album. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commo
The woke culture, in doing this, is helping antisemitism. Nazis and the adherents of their racial policies viewed Jews not only as a separate race but believed them sub-human. Through relentless depictions in every media available to them and in schools, Germans were taught to treat the Jews no better than rodents. That is why it was so easy for a German soldier to grab an innocent baby, bash it against a wall to stop it from crying, and hand it back to the mother. Once you dehumanize, it is all too easy to treat them in the most vicious way possible without remorse. Which is what many Germans did and were happy to shove Jews into trains, into the gas chambers, and ultimately into the ovens as well. They were rodents and unfit to live.
The attempt to diminish what happened to Anne Frank and all the Jews killed in the Holocaust to make yourself a bigger victim is despicable. People who peddle this nonsense should be loudly and publicly mocked as a form of antisemitism.
Young and old survivors in Dachau cheer approaching U.S. troops. 29 April 1945 Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photograph #45075 Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons
Established in 1933, 10 miles northwest of Munich on the outskirts of a town called Dachau, this concentration camp would initially house 5,000 political prisoners. The number of those opposed to the Nazi regime would increase from the original Communists it held. Soon it would include Roma (Gypsies), religious dissenters (Catholic priests and nuns, Protestant ministers, Jehovah’s Witnesses etc.) repeat criminals and homosexuals. In 1938, Jews began becoming a large number of those sent to this camp.
Dachau prisoners were used as forced laborers for German armaments production and was used as a training facility for SS concentration camp guards. Prisoners were also used in hideous medical experiments resulting in many dying or being crippled for life. While many thousands died at Dachau, many were sent to the extermination center near Linz, Austria until a gas chamber and crematorium were added in 1942. Satellite camps supplemented the main camp and were set up near armaments factories. Collectively all these camps were administered by Dachau and part of it.
The situation by April 1945 was dire for Germany with Allied forces closing in. Many prisoners were sent from camps nearer the front to Dachau resulting in epidemics and overcrowding. Over 7,000 mostly Jewish prisoners were forced to March from Dachau to Tegernsee in the south. Most of the camp guards left Dachau and only light resistance was given to the U.S. Army troops that arrived on 29 April 1945. Near the camp, they found 30 railroad cars full of corpses. More bodies were found at the camp but there were 30,000 survivors, many who were emaciated. The scene was appalling to the American troops. Many would write or talk about it later as one of the most horrific things they had ever seen. 30 captured SS guards were killed by American soldiers over what they saw (others claim it is was a lot more). German citizens of Dachau were later forced to bury the 9,000 dead inmates found at the camp.
(Here is a video on the liberation, but you will need to view it on YouTube.)
Sources:
Books
Gilbert, Martin: The Holocaust-A History of The Jews of Europe During The Second World War, Henry Holt & Company, New York 1985
Snyder, Lewis: Encyclopedia of The Third Reich, Marlowe & Company, New York, 1976
United State Holocaust Memorial Museum: Historical Atlas of The Holocaust, Macmillan Publishing USA, New York 1996
On 31 July 1941 Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, following instructions by Hitler, sent a letter to SS General Reinhard Heydrich directing him to “to submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution of the Jewish question.” In the instruction, Goering recalled a general outline that had been drafted on 24 January 1939 that called for the emigration and deportation of Jews in the best possible way. The program to be implemented by Nazi Germany was the mass and systemic extermination of Jews in al countries under German control.
Heydrich had already started implementing the strategy by bringing back the medieval ghetto in Poland. Jews were forced to live in cramped walled areas and held as prisoners. Their property was confiscated and given to Germans or local non-Jewish people. The instructions from Goering would lead to the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942 where details on implementing this mass murder scheme would be decided upon.
Anne Frank – 1940 Photographer Unknown Public Domain (United States/Netherlands) Wikimedia Commons
Although neutral, Germany invaded the Netherlands (Holland) in May 1940. Although resistance was very strong, the bombing of Rotterdam by the German Luftwaffe had left its city center in ashes. Although the army wanted to resist, without enough artillery and air support to stop the bombers, the Netherlands surrendered on 14 May 1940. It would remain occupied until 1945.
As would become the norm in countries where Germany invaded, strict rules about Jews were immediately imposed. Jews were dismissed from government held jobs, forbidden from visiting public places, and other restrictions were imposed as well. Deportation of Jews began in 1941 sending many to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. Dutch people opposed the action and organized a two-day strike in February 1941. It did nothing to stop the deportations and by this time every Jew had to wear the Star of David badges on their clothing. There were many atrocities committed against the Jews but one of the worst was the forced eviction of Jews from the Jewish psychiatric institution Het Apeldoornse Bosch. Disabled and mentally ill jews were sent to Auschwitz to be killed.
On 6 July 1942, fearing deportation to a Nazi concentration camp, Otto Frank decided to take his family into hiding along with the Van Pels family. They would later be joined by Fritz Pfeffer. Otto Frank had left Germany when Hitler came into power and settled in the Netherlands selling first pectin and later spices. He had hoped to set up a business in Great Britain, but the plans never came to be. When the Germans invaded and new rules forbade Jewish ownership of companies, he was helped by his employees to keep his business out of German control. Now faced with likely deportation, they decided to go into hiding.
The place that was chose was a Secret Annex above the warehouse of the company he owned. Access was through a bookcase that covered the door. They had to be very quiet in the early morning when workers arrived so as to not attract attention. Usually, some helpers who assisted them came up to join them for lunch (the workers left at this time for their lunches). Johannes Kleiman, Victor Kugler and Bep Voskuijl came up frequently as did Jan Gies. Miep Gies stayed below to keep an eye on things. They were able to learn what was going on through them and listening to a radio. During this time, Anne Frank began writing her diary recording her life and her thoughts about having to hide during this time.
They were able to hide out successfully for two years but on 4 August 1944, the Gestapo discovered the Secret Annex and arrested them along with two Christian helpers. All who hid in the Secret Annex were deported. Only Otto Frank would survive and return home. He would discover the diary written by his daughter, which was published and shared with the world. It would be made into several movies and documentaries.
Lingering questions remain as to whether or not they were betrayed or whether the Gestapo got lucky that day. It is likely that someone, perhaps a known Dutch collaborator, passed on information that Jews were hiding out in the warehouse. It is also possible the raid that occurred had nothing to do with Jews but looking for other things but unfortunately resulted in the discovery of the Secret Annex.
Young and old survivors in Dachau cheer approaching U.S. troops. 29 April 1945 Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photograph #45075 Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons
Established in 1933, 10 miles northwest of Munich on the outskirts of a town called Dachau, this concentration camp would initially house 5,000 political prisoners. The number of those opposed to the Nazi regime would increase from the original Communists it held. Soon it would include Roma (Gypsies), religious dissenters (Catholic priests and nuns, Protestant ministers, Jehovah’s Witnesses etc.) repeat criminals and homosexuals. In 1938, Jews began becoming a large number of those sent to this camp.
Dachau prisoners were used as forced laborers for German armaments production and was used as a training facility for SS concentration camp guards. Prisoners were also used in hideous medical experiments resulting in many dying or being crippled for life. While many thousands died at Dachau, many were sent to the extermination center near Linz, Austria until a gas chamber and crematorium were added in 1942. Satellite camps supplemented the main camp and were set up near armaments factories. Collectively all these camps were administered by Dachau and part of it.
The situation by April 1945 was dire for Germany with Allied forces closing in.. Many prisoners were sent from camps nearer the front to Dachau resulting in epidemics and overcrowding. Over 7,000 mostly Jewish prisoners were forced to March from Dachau to Tegernsee in the south. Most of the camp guards left Dachau and only light resistance was given to the U.S. Army troops that arrived on 29 April 1945. Near the camp, they found 30 railroad cars full of corpses. More bodies were found at the camp but there were 30,000 survivors, many who were emaciated. The scene was appalling to the American troops. Many would write or talk about it later as one of the most horrific things they had ever seen. 30 captured SS guards were killed by American soldiers over what they saw (others claim it is was a lot more). German citizens of Dachau were later forced to bury the 9,000 dead inmates found at the camp.
(Here is a video on the liberation, but you will need to view it on YouTube.)
Sources:
Books
Gilbert, Martin: The Holocaust-A History of The Jews of Europe During The Second World War, Henry Holt & Company, New York 1985
Snyder, Lewis: Encyclopedia of The Third Reich, Marlowe & Company, New York, 1976
United State Holocaust Memorial Museum: Historical Atlas of The Holocaust, Macmillan Publishing USA, New York 1996
SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, 1942 Public Domain (Wikimedia)
On 15 Dec 1961, an Israeli War Crimes Tribunal sentenced Adolf Eichmann to death. Eichmann joined the Nazi SS (Schutzstaffel) in November 1932. The SS were an elite organization that had broad powers of authority (policing and intelligence) and enforcement of antisemitic policies. Eichmann rose within the SS and in 1938 was sent to Austria after Germany annexed it. In Vienna, he was given the task of ridding the Jews. After setting up an efficient deportation system, he was sent to Prague to do the same thing. Then he was sent back to Berlin to help run the Jewish section of the SS central security office in Berlin.
He was also part of the now infamous Wannsee Conference in January 1942. The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior government officials from government ministries and the SS to discuss the coordination of the “total solution of the Jewish question” as ordered by Reichmarschall Herman Göring. This order was given to SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich who headed the Reich Main Security Office. The decision had been made to eliminate Jews and would need the assistance of many government agencies in order for it to be done. Eichmann was given the task to coordinate the major aspects of this program from identifying Jews, assembling them, and transporting them to the Nazi death camps. Eichmann proved to be ruthlessly efficient in carrying out this task.
He was captured by U.S. troops after the war but escaped in 1946 before the Nuremberg trials began. Using an assumed name, he traveled in Europe and the Middle East before arriving in Argentina in 1950. Israel was informed in 1957 by a German prosecutor that Eichmann was in Argentina. Agents from Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, were sent to Argentina and located him in 1960. He was found living in the San Fernando section of Buenos Aires using the name Richard Klement.
Using the 150th anniversary of Argentina’s revolution against Spain in May 1960, the Mossad used this as an opportunity to send more agents to Argentina. Believing that Argentina would not extradite him, it was decided to abduct him and bring him to Israel for trial. On 11 May 1960, Mossad agents abducted him as was walking home from the bus stop to home on Garabaldi Street. He was disguised as an Israeli airline worker who had suffered head trauma in an accident (he was in fact drugged to prevent him from attempting escape). He arrived in Tel Aviv and three days later Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion announced Eichmann was in Israeli custody.
Argentina did protest but Israel charged Eichmann with 15 crimes against humanity. His trial was covered on live television. He claimed he was following orders but the judges disagreed finding him guilty of all counts on 15 December 1961. He would be executed by hanging on 31 May 1962 and was cremated with his ashes thrown into the sea.
Notes
SS-Obergruppenführer was equivalent to Lieutenant General in the American and British armies.
Oskar Schindler 1945 Yad Vashem Public Domain (Wikimedia)
Oskar Schindler (immortalized in the movie Schindler’s List), was a German industrialist and Nazi Party member who saved 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust. He employed them in his enamelware and munitions factories in Poland and in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. His connections to the Abwehr and Wehrmacht helped him protect his Jewish workers from being sent to an extermination camp. He also used bribes to Nazi officials (and also luxury items he procured on the black market) as well. Initially he was more interested in making money and thought the Jews were cheaper to use for labor than the Poles.
With his factories deemed essential to the war effort, he was able to help his Jewish workers. He not only sought exemptions for them but also their wives and children. He was also able to claim Jewish workers with disabilities for exemptions as well. He expanded the Krakow facility to include a kitchen, dining room for workers, and an outpatient clinic. When he learned of the planned deportation of Jews from his Wehrmacht contacts, he had the workers stay at the factory to prevent them from coming to harm. He witnessed the Nazi’s doing this, changing his view forever about them. From that point on, he decided to save as many Jews as he could
Amon Göth mug shot, 29 August 1945 Executed 13 Sep 1946, Krakow, Poland Public Domain (Wikimedia)
With the establishment of the Plaszow concentration camp in 1943, the camp commandant SS-Hauptsturmführer* Amon Göth wanted to move all factories inside his camp. Göth, a sadist and feared by everyone, was convinced by Schindler not to do this. And he allowed Schindler to build a subcamp to house his workers keeping them safe and fed from random executions. With the Red Army approaching in July 1944, Schindler learned of plans to close all factories not related to the war effort. He switched the enamelware factory to making anti-tank grenades and moved it to Brunnlitz. However there were two harrowing episodes for his workers. 700 on his list were initially sent to a concentration camp before being re-routed back to the factory in Brunnlitz. 300 hundred women on his list were sent to Auschwitz and were in danger of being killed. Schindler, since his regular connections did not work this time, had to send his secretary with bribes of luxury items and food so that they could be freed. Schindler would continue to pay bribes and help Jews he found until the end of the war.
Schindler was broke by the end of the war and accepted assistance from Jewish organizations. He emigrated to Argentina in 1949 but his business ventures were unsuccessful. Back in Germany in 1958, he did not have much luck either and went bankrupt in 1963. He also suffered a heart attack as well. He remained in contact with many Jews he had met during the war and received support from them as well. He died on 9 October 1974 and is buried in Jerusalem on Mount Zion. He is the only member of the Nazi Party to be honored in this way.
A tree was planted in his honor in 1962 on the Avenue of the Righteous. In 1993 he and his wife Emelie were named Righteous Among the Nations. This award, bestowed by the State of Israel, is reserved for non-Jews who took active role in saving Jews from the Holocaust. The book Schindler’s Ark (Schindler’s List in US) by Thomas Keneally is a historical novel based on Oskar Schindler. The book was adapted into the 1993 movie Schindler’s List by Steven Spielberg.
*The SS rank and rate structure was different from regular Wehrmacht owing to their origins as a separate unit initially as personal bodyguards to Hitler. The Hauptsturmführer was equivalent of a captain in most armies. In the SS, it meant he was the head storm leader of a company sized unit.
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