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Showing posts with label Aryanization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Aryanization. Show all posts
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Historical Anti-Semitism & Hitler's Rise to Power
http://www.history.com/topics/the-holocaust
http://www.history.com/topics/the-holocaust
Towards the "Final Solution" , 1940-1941 Holocaust Death Camps, 1941-1945 Nazi Rule Comes to an End, as Holocaust Continues to Claim Lives, 1945 Aftermath & Lasting Impact of the Holocaust American Response to the Holocaust Oct 10, 1944: Eight hundred children are gassed to death at Auschwitz Jun 1, 1942: News of death camp killings becomes public for first time Dec 15, 1961: Architect of the Holocaust sentenced to die Before the Holocaust: Historical Anti-Semitism & Hitler's Rise to Power Anti-Semitism in Europe did not begin with Adolf Hitler. Though use of the term itself dates only to the 1870s, there is evidence of hostility toward Jews long before the Holocaust--even as far back as the ancient world, when Roman authorities destroyed the Jewish temple in Jerusalem and forced Jews to leave Palestine. The Enlightenment, during the 17th and 18th centuries, emphasized religious toleration, and in the 19th century Napoleon and other European rulers enacted legislation that ended long-standing restrictions on Jews. Anti-Semitic feeling endured, however, in many cases taking on a racial character rather than a religious one. The roots of Hitler's particularly virulent brand of anti-Semitism are unclear. Born in Austria in 1889, he served in the German army during World War I. Like many anti-Semites in Germany, he blamed the Jews for the country's defeat in 1918. Soon after the war ended, Hitler joined the National German Workers' Party, which became the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), known to English speakers as the Nazis. While imprisoned for treason for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, Hitler wrote the memoir and propaganda tract "Mein Kampf" (My Struggle), in which he predicted a general European war that would result in "the extermination of the Jewish race in Germany." Hitler was obsessed with the idea of the superiority of the "pure" German race, which he called "Aryan," and with the need for "Lebensraum," or living space, for that race to expand.In the decade after he was released from prison, Hitler took advantage of the weakness of his rivals to enhance his party's status and rise from obscurity to power. On January 20, 1933, he was named chancellor of Germany. After President Paul von Hindenburg's death in 1934, Hitler anointed himself as "Fuhrer," becoming Germany's supreme ruler. Nazi Revolution in Germany, 1933-1939 The twin goals of racial purity and spatial expansion were the core of Hitler's worldview, and from 1933 onward they would combine to form the driving force behind his foreign and domestic policy. At first, the Nazis reserved their harshest persecution for political opponents such as Communists or Social Democrats. The first official concentration camp opened at Dachau (near Munich) in March 1933, and many of the first prisoners sent there were Communists. Like the network of concentration camps that followed, becoming the killing grounds of the Holocaust, Dachau was under the control of Heinrich Himmler, head of the elite Nazi guard, the Schutzstaffel (SS), and later chief of the German police. By July 1933, German concentration camps (Konzentrationslager in German, or KZ) held some 27,000 people in "protective custody." Huge Nazi rallies and symbolic acts such as the public burning of books by Jews, Communists, liberals and foreigners helped drive home the desired message of party strength. In 1933, Jews in Germany numbered around 525,000, or only 1 percent of the total German population. During the next six years, Nazis undertook an "Aryanization" of Germany, dismissing non-Aryans from civil service, liquidating Jewish-owned businesses and stripping Jewish lawyers and doctors of their clients. Under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, anyone with three or four Jewish grandparents was considered a Jew, while those with two Jewish grandparents were designated Mischlinge (half-breeds). Under the Nuremberg Laws, Jews became routine targets for stigmatization and persecution. This culminated in Kristallnacht, or the "night of broken glass" in November 1938, when German synagogues were burned and windows in Jewish shops were smashed; some 100 Jews were killed and thousands more arrested. From 1933 to 1939, hundreds of thousands of Jews who were able to leave Germany did, while those who remained lived in a constant state of uncertainty and fear. Beginning of War , 1939-1940 In September 1939, the German army occupied the western half of Poland. German police soon forced tens of thousands of Polish Jews from their homes and into ghettoes, giving their confiscated properties to ethnic Germans (non-Jews outside Germany who identified as German), Germans from the Reich or Polish gentiles. Surrounded by high walls and barbed wire, the Jewish ghettoes in Poland functioned like captive city-states, governed by Jewish Councils. In addition to widespread unemployment, poverty and hunger, overpopulation made the ghettoes breeding grounds for disease such as typhus Meanwhile, beginning in the fall of 1939, Nazi officials selected around 70,000 Germans institutionalized for mental illness or disabilities to be gassed to death in the so-called Euthanasia Program. After prominent German religious leaders protested, Hitler put an end to the program in August 1941, though killings of the disabled continued in secrecy, and by 1945 some 275,000 people deemed handicapped from all over Europe had been killed. In hindsight, it seems clear that the Euthanasia Program functioned as a pilot for the Holocaust.
Towards the "Final Solution" , 1940-1941
Throughout the spring and summer of 1940, the German army expanded Hitler's empire in Europe, conquering Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France. Beginning in 1941, Jews from all over the continent, as well as hundreds of thousands of European Gypsies, were transported to the Polish ghettoes. The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 marked a new level of brutality in warfare. Mobile killing units called Einsatzgruppen would murder more than 500,000 Soviet Jews and others (usually by shooting) over the course of the German occupation.
A memorandum dated July 31, 1941, from Hitler's top commander Hermann Goering to Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the SD (the security service of the SS), referred to the need for an Endlösung (final solution) to "the Jewish question." Beginning in September 1941, every person designated as a Jew in German-held territory was marked with a yellow star, making them open targets. Tens of thousands were soon being deported to the Polish ghettoes and German-occupied cities in the USSR. Since June 1941, experiments with mass killing methods had been ongoing at the concentration camp of Auschwitz, near Krakow. That August, 500 officials gassed 500 Soviet POWs to death with the pesticide Zyklon-B. The SS soon placed a huge order for the gas with a German pest-control firm, an ominous indicator of the coming Holocaust.
Holocaust Death Camps, 1941-1945
Beginning in late 1941, the Germans began mass transports from the ghettoes in Poland to the concentration camps, starting with those people viewed as the least useful: the sick, old and weak and the very young. The first mass gassings began at the camp of Belzec, near Lublin, on March 17, 1942. Five more mass killing centers were built at camps in occupied Poland, including Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and the largest of all, Auschwitz-Birkenau. From 1942 to 1945, Jews were deported to the camps from all over Europe, including German-controlled territory as well as those countries allied with Germany. The heaviest deportations took place during the summer and fall of 1942, when more than 300,000 people were deported from the Warsaw ghetto alone.
Though the Nazis tried to keep operation of camps secret, the scale of the killing made this virtually impossible. Eyewitnesses brought reports of Nazi atrocities in Poland to the Allied governments, who were harshly criticized after the war for their failure to respond, or to publicize news of the mass slaughter. This lack of action was likely mostly due to the Allied focus on winning the war at hand, but was also a result of the general incomprehension with which news of the Holocaust was met and the denial and disbelief that such atrocities could be occurring on such a scale. At Auschwitz alone, more than 2 million people were murdered in a process resembling a large-scale industrial operation. A large population of Jewish and non-Jewish inmates worked in the labor camp there; though only Jews were gassed, thousands of others died of starvation or disease. During the summer of 1944, even as the events of D-Day (June 6, 1944) and a Soviet offensive the same month spelled the beginning of the end for Germany in the war, a large proportion of Hungary's Jewish population was deported to Auschwitz, and as many as 12,000 Jews were killed every day.
Holocaust Death Camps, 1941-1945
Beginning in late 1941, the Germans began mass transports from the ghettoes in Poland to the concentration camps, starting with those people viewed as the least useful: the sick, old and weak and the very young. The first mass gassings began at the camp of Belzec, near Lublin, on March 17, 1942. Five more mass killing centers were built at camps in occupied Poland, including Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and the largest of all, Auschwitz-Birkenau. From 1942 to 1945, Jews were deported to the camps from all over Europe, including German-controlled territory as well as those countries allied with Germany. The heaviest deportations took place during the summer and fall of 1942, when more than 300,000 people were deported from the Warsaw ghetto alone.
Though the Nazis tried to keep operation of camps secret, the scale of the killing made this virtually impossible. Eyewitnesses brought reports of Nazi atrocities in Poland to the Allied governments, who were harshly criticized after the war for their failure to respond, or to publicize news of the mass slaughter. This lack of action was likely mostly due to the Allied focus on winning the war at hand, but was also a result of the general incomprehension with which news of the Holocaust was met and the denial and disbelief that such atrocities could be occurring on such a scale. At Auschwitz alone, more than 2 million people were murdered in a process resembling a large-scale industrial operation. A large population of Jewish and non-Jewish inmates worked in the labor camp there; though only Jews were gassed, thousands of others died of starvation or disease. During the summer of 1944, even as the events of D-Day (June 6, 1944) and a Soviet offensive the same month spelled the beginning of the end for Germany in the war, a large proportion of Hungary's Jewish population was deported to Auschwitz, and as many as 12,000 Jews were killed every day.
Holocaust Death Camps, 1941-1945
Beginning in late 1941, the Germans began mass transports from the ghettoes in Poland to the concentration camps, starting with those people viewed as the least useful: the sick, old and weak and the very young. The first mass gassings began at the camp of Belzec, near Lublin, on March 17, 1942. Five more mass killing centers were built at camps in occupied Poland, including Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and the largest of all, Auschwitz-Birkenau. From 1942 to 1945, Jews were deported to the camps from all over Europe, including German-controlled territory as well as those countries allied with Germany. The heaviest deportations took place during the summer and fall of 1942, when more than 300,000 people were deported from the Warsaw ghetto alone.
Though the Nazis tried to keep operation of camps secret, the scale of the killing made this virtually impossible. Eyewitnesses brought reports of Nazi atrocities in Poland to the Allied governments, who were harshly criticized after the war for their failure to respond, or to publicize news of the mass slaughter. This lack of action was likely mostly due to the Allied focus on winning the war at hand, but was also a result of the general incomprehension with which news of the Holocaust was met and the denial and disbelief that such atrocities could be occurring on such a scale. At Auschwitz alone, more than 2 million people were murdered in a process resembling a large-scale industrial operation. A large population of Jewish and non-Jewish inmates worked in the labor camp there; though only Jews were gassed, thousands of others died of starvation or disease. During the summer of 1944, even as the events of D-Day (June 6, 1944) and a Soviet offensive the same month spelled the beginning of the end for Germany in the war, a large proportion of Hungary's Jewish population was deported to Auschwitz, and as many as 12,000 Jews were killed every day.
Holocaust Death Camps, 1941-1945
Beginning in late 1941, the Germans began mass transports from the ghettoes in Poland to the concentration camps, starting with those people viewed as the least useful: the sick, old and weak and the very young. The first mass gassings began at the camp of Belzec, near Lublin, on March 17, 1942. Five more mass killing centers were built at camps in occupied Poland, including Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and the largest of all, Auschwitz-Birkenau. From 1942 to 1945, Jews were deported to the camps from all over Europe, including German-controlled territory as well as those countries allied with Germany. The heaviest deportations took place during the summer and fall of 1942, when more than 300,000 people were deported from the Warsaw ghetto alone.
Though the Nazis tried to keep operation of camps secret, the scale of the killing made this virtually impossible. Eyewitnesses brought reports of Nazi atrocities in Poland to the Allied governments, who were harshly criticized after the war for their failure to respond, or to publicize news of the mass slaughter. This lack of action was likely mostly due to the Allied focus on winning the war at hand, but was also a result of the general incomprehension with which news of the Holocaust was met and the denial and disbelief that such atrocities could be occurring on such a scale. At Auschwitz alone, more than 2 million people were murdered in a process resembling a large-scale industrial operation. A large population of Jewish and non-Jewish inmates worked in the labor camp there; though only Jews were gassed, thousands of others died of starvation or disease. During the summer of 1944, even as the events of D-Day (June 6, 1944) and a Soviet offensive the same month spelled the beginning of the end for Germany in the war, a large proportion of Hungary's Jewish population was deported to Auschwitz, and as many as 12,000 Jews were killed every day.
Holocaust Death Camps, 1941-1945
Beginning in late 1941, the Germans began mass transports from the ghettoes in Poland to the concentration camps, starting with those people viewed as the least useful: the sick, old and weak and the very young. The first mass gassings began at the camp of Belzec, near Lublin, on March 17, 1942. Five more mass killing centers were built at camps in occupied Poland, including Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and the largest of all, Auschwitz-Birkenau. From 1942 to 1945, Jews were deported to the camps from all over Europe, including German-controlled territory as well as those countries allied with Germany. The heaviest deportations took place during the summer and fall of 1942, when more than 300,000 people were deported from the Warsaw ghetto alone.
Though the Nazis tried to keep operation of camps secret, the scale of the killing made this virtually impossible. Eyewitnesses brought reports of Nazi atrocities in Poland to the Allied governments, who were harshly criticized after the war for their failure to respond, or to publicize news of the mass slaughter. This lack of action was likely mostly due to the Allied focus on winning the war at hand, but was also a result of the general incomprehension with which news of the Holocaust was met and the denial and disbelief that such atrocities could be occurring on such a scale. At Auschwitz alone, more than 2 million people were murdered in a process resembling a large-scale industrial operation. A large population of Jewish and non-Jewish inmates worked in the labor camp there; though only Jews were gassed, thousands of others died of starvation or disease. During the summer of 1944, even as the events of D-Day (June 6, 1944) and a Soviet offensive the same month spelled the beginning of the end for Germany in the war, a large proportion of Hungary's Jewish population was deported to Auschwitz, and as many as 12,000 Jews were killed every day.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
January 4, 1938 Application of Anti-Semitic Laws Intensified
http://archive.jta.org/article/1938/01/04/2840750/application-of-antisemitic-laws-intensified
A WALL OF NO ESCAPE BUILT AROUND THE JEWS
AMSTERDAM, Jan. 3 (JTA) –
The suffering of German Jewry, caught in the vise of the nazi anti-Jewish program, has grown worse lately owing to the increasing intensity with which its captors are turning the screw, according to a survey of the situation by a J.T.A. Special correspondent.
There have been no new laws and regulations affecting the Jews of the Reich during the last three months. Nor have there been any spectacular anti-Jewish activities, for the anti-Jewish work has gone under cover, unreported in the press and conducted under guise of the legal forms provided by the anti-Jewish legislation enacted in the past.
What has been and is happening in Germany today is the intensified application of every anti-Jewish measure provided by nazi legislation and decree to a point unequalled in the previous history of the regime and to an extent permitting no single Jew to escape. What is happening to the Jews in Germany today effectively disposes of any belief that the Nazis, after realizing the major part of their policy with regard to the Jews, would permit some stabilization of the Jewish question.
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THE CONSPIRACY OF THE CREATION OF THE STATELESS JEW
PLIGHT OF 30,000 STATELESS JEWS HOPELESS
Lately, the estimated 30,000 "stateless" Jews in the Reich have been receiving the attention of the police. The usual procedure is to notify the stateless Jew that his labor permit has been cancelled and that his residential permit has also expired and he must leave the country within fourteen days.
As no European country today admits stateless persons, the stateless Jew has, in most cases, only two alternatives -- the concentration camp in Germany for failure to obey the deportation order, or jail in a neighboring country for entering it illegally.
The German-Jewish emigration organizations are able to do little in these cases. Emigration possibilities today are very slight and exist only for qualified individuals. The organizations in Berlin are now receiving as many as 200 requests a day for advice and assistance in emigration work.
It is in the industrial and commercial fields that the Nazis are meeting with their greatest success and are securing the "Aryanization" of one firm after another. These activities are now being concentrated in the textile fields with the large Jewish-owned houses as the principal targets.
The Jews are being rapidly forced out of industry by the withholding of raw materials (or foreign exchange to purchase them), and from trade by the refusal to supply finished products to Jewish agents and retailers. A vigorous campaign is being conducted among dealers not to buy from Jewish manufacturers. Anti-Jewish propaganda activities are especially noticeable in the export branches of industry.
It is significant to note that the loudest demands for action on the Jewish question are being voiced by the Schwarze Korps, the mouthpiece of the S.S. guards and the secret police; for it is the secret police who are chiefly responsible for the increased pressure felt by the Jews today.
One of the chief goals has been the isolation of German Jewry by depriving it of contacts with the non-Jewish world in Germany and with the Jews abroad. German Jews, with some exceptions, are no longer given passports, unless to emigrate. Those receiving passports, find them valid for only six months.
German-Jewish organizations are not permitted to receive visits from representatives of foreign Jewish organizations without permission of the Gestapo. German-Jewish newspapers may not even accept subscriptions from non-Jews without special permission from the authorities in each case. An increasing interest in the activities of Jewish organizations, particularly those engaged in emigration work, is being shown by the police, who do not hesitate to attempt to dictate policies.
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HELPLESS AGAINST POLICE PRESSURE
The Jews have been able to hold out against these tactics to a certain extent, not only in the textile but in other industrial and commercial fields, but they are helpless to oppose police pressure to sell out and emigrate. This police pressure, now being applied to an increasing degree, is having a marked effect in liquidating the Jewish position.
Today there is only one large department store left in Berlin in Jewish hands. It is rumored that it will be pulled down for municipal purposes early this year. A Jewish owner of a large shop in Berlin was ordered to install separate cloak rooms for his "Aryan" and Jewish employes. He himself cannot take any action against nazi employees in his own shipping department who wrap leaflets urging the boycott of Jews with purchases made in his own shop.
In general, the policy is to make things as difficult as possible for the Jewish manufacturer or merchant until -- in the words of a nazi official to a Jewish businessman -- he realizes that "there is no future for the Jew in Germany." There is no great reluctance to use persuasive methods to bring about this understanding, particularly in the provinces, with the result that the Jewish businessman takes the best offer he can get and clears out.
One result of this has been a further weakening of the Jewish communal structure, the financial basis of which weakens steadily as increasing numbers of members of the Jewish community become financially unproductive and unable to maintain their share of the communal burdens. What these are may be seen from the fact that one in five of the Jewish population in the cities is dependent on the community while in the smaller towns the proportion is larger.
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MIDDLE-AGED NOW SEEK TO EMIGRATE
Another result has been the development of a new emigration problem. A large class of middle-aged people, with a small amount of capital, is now seeking to emigrate. Most of them have no vocational experience except. Commercial activities and are of an age where they cannot easily master new vocations or languages. The great majority of them are also beyond the age which countries of immigration consider suitable.
Existence of this class, which continues to grow daily, provides another contradiction to the Nazi dictum: "Young Jews, overseas; old Jews, Weissensee (the Jewish cemetery)."
Jewish emigration from the Reich now proceeds by the estimated average of about 1,500 a month under steadily mounting difficulties. The German Jews considered from the viewpoint of age and training as most suitable for immigration, have already gone from the Reich and it becomes increasingly difficult to place those remaining. The number of German Jewish girls emigrating has not been in proportion to men and efforts are now being made to further the emigration of young women.
In spite of the fact that women emigrants find it easier to get employment abroad than men, there has been some reluctance on the part of the Jewish girls to emigrate, chiefly because they prefer to remain with their families as long as it is economically possible for the families to remain together. Once they leave Germany, they know that they may return to the country only under special circumstances and with special permission of the police. In many cases, emigration means separation for life and this they naturally prefer to delay as long as possible.
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http://archive.jta.org/article/1946/05/28/2745244/nazi-youth-leader-charged-at-nuremberg-trial-with-deporting-50000-jews-to-death-camps
May 28, 1946
Nuremberg, May. 27 (JTA) –
Nazi Youth Leader Charged at Nuremberg Trial with Deporting 50,000 Jews to Death Camps
U.S. Prosecutor Thomas Dodd today confronted Baldur von Schirach, former gauleiter of Vienna and one-time Nazi youth leader, with documents proving that he had arranged for the deportation of 50,000 Jews to extermination camps in Poland. Dodd submitted to the International Military Tribunal the minutes of a meeting of Hitler, Hane Frank, then gauleiter of Poland, and Schirach, at which Schirach asked Frank to accept 50,000 Viennese Jews.
Schirach denied that he knew what had happened to the deportees, stating that he believed the older people were sent to Theresienstadt, while the younger ones were sent to Poland. Dodd interrupted, declaring: "You know that the Jews were taken to Riga and Minsk and annihilated."
Dodd quoted from 55 reports submitted to Schirach in 1942 by Reinhard Heydrich, who was at the time deputy chief of the Gestapo, giving full details of the massacre of he deported Jews. The prosecutor remarked that "your memory is very bad today," when the former youth leader said that he could not remember having seen the reports.
The Russian prosecutor following Dodd, submitted excerpts from an affidavit by Ida Wassotom, a Jewish resident of Lemberg, relating how members of the Hitler youth groups, which Schirach directed, had participated in the murder of hundreds of Jews in that city. Uniformed youths, armed with knives and pistols, she said, reamed the streets, breaking into homes to search for hidden Jews and killing Jewish men and women on the streets.
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http://archive.jta.org/article/1946/07/22/2745874/ss-leader-who-commanded-ghetto-hanged-in-czechoslovakia-for-crimes-against-jews
July 22, 1946
S.s. Leader Who Commanded Ghetto Hanged in Czechoslovakia for Crimes Against Jews
Prague, Jul. 21 (JTA) –
An Austrian S.S. leader named Knollmayer, who was vice-commander of the concentration camp at Sered, was hanged today following his conviction by a People's Court at Bratislava. Knollmayer, 24, achieved notoriety in 1944 when he shot and killed the rabbi of Piestany and other Jews.
Meanwhile, the long-drawn-out trial of Anton Vasek, Slovak puppet official, is nearing an end, with the prosecution demanding the death penalty and the defense pleading for clemency on the grounds that not all the Jews in Slovakia were killed.
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http://archive.jta.org/article/1944/02/08/2863008/200-gestapo-men-killed-by-jews-during-battle-in-polish-extermination-camp
February 8, 1944
200 Gestapo Men Killed by Jews During Battle in Polish “extermination Camp”
LONDON, Feb. 7 (JTA) –
More than 200 Gestapo agents and Ukrainian guards in the "Jewish extermination camp" of Sobibor, in occupied Poland, were killed during a revolt of the Jewish internees organized with the aid of the underground movement, the Polish Government-in-Exile reported today.
The revolt, which is the second largest Jewish uprising against the Nazis, surpassed only by the "Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto," started in the so-called "penal huts" of the camp where Jews are tortured for various alleged offences. Jewish prisoners attacked the huts and released the tortured Jews who joined them in disarming the guards, and in resisting the Gestapo units which rushed to the scene to crush the revolt. Aided by armed members of the underground movement who came to their assistance, the Jewish prisoners succeeded in killing many of their tormentors. Many of the Jews were also killed in the battle.
The Polish Government's report states that the Gestapo "liquidation" of the remnants of the Jewish population in various Polish towns continues. Five hundred Jews were recently executed in Przemysl and a large number were killed in Rseszow, the report declares, adding that the "Jewish" labor camps in Trawniki and Poniatowka have been completely "liquidated" by the Germans.
Citation - Click to see see this article's citation
"200 Gestapo Men Killed by Jews During Battle in Polish “extermination Camp”." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 8 Feb 1944.
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http://archive.jta.org/article/1944/08/17/2864684/germans-raze-all-traces-of-the-jewish-extermination-camps-before-leaving-poland
August 17, 1944
Germans Raze All Traces of the “jewish Extermination Camps” Before Leaving Poland
MOSCOW, Aug. 16 (JTA) –
Correspondents of the Moscow press now visiting the liberated area in Poland today reported from Lublin that the Germans have razed to the ground all buildings in the extermination camp of Treblinka, including the gas chambers where tens of thousands of Jews were suffocated to death. The Moscow papers, however, assert that there are people who survived the massacres in Treblinka and who testify in details as to the mass-murder which the Germans carried out systematically on Jews brought from all parts of occupied Europe.
Similar steps to remove all traces of their crimes have been taken by the Germans in the Sobibor, Trawniki, Poniatow and Majdanek. All these places are now in the hands of the Red Army, but it is not easy to find the exact location of the "death factories."
An investigation made by Soviet officials in the Lublin district established that in the Trawniki concentration camp the Germans had established a special section for Jews who were caught fleeing from the Warsaw ghetto after the anti-Nazi revolt there. The torture of the Jews in this section of the camp was especially brutal, neighboring peasants testified.
Citation - Click to see see this article's citation
"Germans Raze All Traces of the “jewish Extermination Camps” Before Leaving Poland." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 17 Aug 1944.
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http://archive.jta.org/article/1945/06/24/2867482/german-plan-to-kill-all-jews-in-theresienstadt-thwarted-by-rapid-advance-of-red-army
June 24, 1945
German Plan to Kill All Jews in Theresienstadt Thwarted by Rapid Advance of Red Army
London, Jun. 22 (JTA) –
A German plan to kill all Jews in Theresidenstadt in special "gas chambers" was foiled almost at the last minute, the London Times reports today in a letter from Theresienstadt.
The letter reveals that "bathing establishments" for gassing the interned Jews had already been prepared, but the doors for these chambers were returned three times because they did not fit, In the meantime, Russian troops reached Theresisnstedt.
The letter confirms earlier reports with regard to the number of Jews who passed through Theresienstedt, and estimates that during the years 1942-43 an average of 150 Jews died there each day. Only Rabbi Leo Neuhaus and four Jewish women remained alive from the first transport of 1,197 Jews brought to Theresienstedt from Frankfurtan- Main, the letter reported.
(Rabbi Ralph Nehaus, who is rabbi of Congregation Chab Shalom in New York, told the JTA that he last heard from his father over four years ago and did not know were he was or whe ther he was alive. The younger Rabbi Neuhaus came to the United States in 1941.)
Eva Bart, an official of the Joint Distribution Committee in Warsaw, is among the Jews liberated in Western Germany, Dr. Emanuel Szerer, Polish-Jewish leader reported today. She lived in the Warsaw ghetto until its "liquidation" by the Germans and passed through the notorious camps of Oswiecim, Majdanek and Ravensbruck.
Citation - Click to see see this article's citation
"German Plan to Kill All Jews in Theresienstadt Thwarted by Rapid Advance of Red Army." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 24 Jun 1945
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http://archive.jta.org/article/1945/06/03/2867290/antisemitism-widespread-in-liberated-czechoslovakia-surviving-jews-not-wanted
June 3, 1945
Anti-semitism Wide-spread in Liberated Czechoslovakia; Surviving Jews Not Wanted
Frague, Jun. 1 (JTA) –
Jews returning to Czechoslovakia are not being welcomed home with open arms and, in Slovakia particularly, have encountered a great deal of hostility. Dr. Inrich Resenberg, deputy chief of the repatriation department of the Crechoslovak Government, disclosed today.
Dr. Rosenberg told a Jewish Telegraphic Agency correspondent that while some terns have welcomed Jews returning from Theresienstadt as martyriz the more typical reaction has been one of surprise that any Jews were still alive, and discomfit at the thought that they will want their jobs and property back.
He estimated that only about 15,000 of the country's 350,000 Jews survive, and Eest of these, he said, desire to emigrate to Palestine as a result of the increased anti-Semitism here. According to Stefan Engel, former secretary-general of the Prague Jewish community under the occupation, who is now a member of the committee to liquidats the Nazi commissariat for Jewish affairs, the Communist newspaper here has been the only one thus far to advocate returning jobs to Jews.
The situation in Prague is complicated by the fact that it has become a center for Jewish survivors from Germany and Poland seeking remnants of their families. Nearly 10,000 have wandered in from slave camps hoping to pick up news of their kin. The presence of German Jews is already being used by anti-Semites, who are attacking them as German nationals. Some were arrested, but have since been released.
The government, itself, is very friendly to the Jews, recognizing the zealous service rendered by many during the period of exile. Returning Czech Jews, like re turning political prisoners, are being housed in the apartments of Nazis or collaborators, but, naturally, this does not apply to non-Czechs, such as Poles, Germans and Eungarians. These latter require clothes and other forms of assistance.
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A WALL OF NO ESCAPE BUILT AROUND THE JEWS
AMSTERDAM, Jan. 3 (JTA) –
The suffering of German Jewry, caught in the vise of the nazi anti-Jewish program, has grown worse lately owing to the increasing intensity with which its captors are turning the screw, according to a survey of the situation by a J.T.A. Special correspondent.
There have been no new laws and regulations affecting the Jews of the Reich during the last three months. Nor have there been any spectacular anti-Jewish activities, for the anti-Jewish work has gone under cover, unreported in the press and conducted under guise of the legal forms provided by the anti-Jewish legislation enacted in the past.
What has been and is happening in Germany today is the intensified application of every anti-Jewish measure provided by nazi legislation and decree to a point unequalled in the previous history of the regime and to an extent permitting no single Jew to escape. What is happening to the Jews in Germany today effectively disposes of any belief that the Nazis, after realizing the major part of their policy with regard to the Jews, would permit some stabilization of the Jewish question.
____________________________________________________________________________
THE CONSPIRACY OF THE CREATION OF THE STATELESS JEW
PLIGHT OF 30,000 STATELESS JEWS HOPELESS
Lately, the estimated 30,000 "stateless" Jews in the Reich have been receiving the attention of the police. The usual procedure is to notify the stateless Jew that his labor permit has been cancelled and that his residential permit has also expired and he must leave the country within fourteen days.
As no European country today admits stateless persons, the stateless Jew has, in most cases, only two alternatives -- the concentration camp in Germany for failure to obey the deportation order, or jail in a neighboring country for entering it illegally.
The German-Jewish emigration organizations are able to do little in these cases. Emigration possibilities today are very slight and exist only for qualified individuals. The organizations in Berlin are now receiving as many as 200 requests a day for advice and assistance in emigration work.
It is in the industrial and commercial fields that the Nazis are meeting with their greatest success and are securing the "Aryanization" of one firm after another. These activities are now being concentrated in the textile fields with the large Jewish-owned houses as the principal targets.
The Jews are being rapidly forced out of industry by the withholding of raw materials (or foreign exchange to purchase them), and from trade by the refusal to supply finished products to Jewish agents and retailers. A vigorous campaign is being conducted among dealers not to buy from Jewish manufacturers. Anti-Jewish propaganda activities are especially noticeable in the export branches of industry.
It is significant to note that the loudest demands for action on the Jewish question are being voiced by the Schwarze Korps, the mouthpiece of the S.S. guards and the secret police; for it is the secret police who are chiefly responsible for the increased pressure felt by the Jews today.
One of the chief goals has been the isolation of German Jewry by depriving it of contacts with the non-Jewish world in Germany and with the Jews abroad. German Jews, with some exceptions, are no longer given passports, unless to emigrate. Those receiving passports, find them valid for only six months.
German-Jewish organizations are not permitted to receive visits from representatives of foreign Jewish organizations without permission of the Gestapo. German-Jewish newspapers may not even accept subscriptions from non-Jews without special permission from the authorities in each case. An increasing interest in the activities of Jewish organizations, particularly those engaged in emigration work, is being shown by the police, who do not hesitate to attempt to dictate policies.
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HELPLESS AGAINST POLICE PRESSURE
The Jews have been able to hold out against these tactics to a certain extent, not only in the textile but in other industrial and commercial fields, but they are helpless to oppose police pressure to sell out and emigrate. This police pressure, now being applied to an increasing degree, is having a marked effect in liquidating the Jewish position.
Today there is only one large department store left in Berlin in Jewish hands. It is rumored that it will be pulled down for municipal purposes early this year. A Jewish owner of a large shop in Berlin was ordered to install separate cloak rooms for his "Aryan" and Jewish employes. He himself cannot take any action against nazi employees in his own shipping department who wrap leaflets urging the boycott of Jews with purchases made in his own shop.
In general, the policy is to make things as difficult as possible for the Jewish manufacturer or merchant until -- in the words of a nazi official to a Jewish businessman -- he realizes that "there is no future for the Jew in Germany." There is no great reluctance to use persuasive methods to bring about this understanding, particularly in the provinces, with the result that the Jewish businessman takes the best offer he can get and clears out.
One result of this has been a further weakening of the Jewish communal structure, the financial basis of which weakens steadily as increasing numbers of members of the Jewish community become financially unproductive and unable to maintain their share of the communal burdens. What these are may be seen from the fact that one in five of the Jewish population in the cities is dependent on the community while in the smaller towns the proportion is larger.
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MIDDLE-AGED NOW SEEK TO EMIGRATE
Another result has been the development of a new emigration problem. A large class of middle-aged people, with a small amount of capital, is now seeking to emigrate. Most of them have no vocational experience except. Commercial activities and are of an age where they cannot easily master new vocations or languages. The great majority of them are also beyond the age which countries of immigration consider suitable.
Existence of this class, which continues to grow daily, provides another contradiction to the Nazi dictum: "Young Jews, overseas; old Jews, Weissensee (the Jewish cemetery)."
Jewish emigration from the Reich now proceeds by the estimated average of about 1,500 a month under steadily mounting difficulties. The German Jews considered from the viewpoint of age and training as most suitable for immigration, have already gone from the Reich and it becomes increasingly difficult to place those remaining. The number of German Jewish girls emigrating has not been in proportion to men and efforts are now being made to further the emigration of young women.
In spite of the fact that women emigrants find it easier to get employment abroad than men, there has been some reluctance on the part of the Jewish girls to emigrate, chiefly because they prefer to remain with their families as long as it is economically possible for the families to remain together. Once they leave Germany, they know that they may return to the country only under special circumstances and with special permission of the police. In many cases, emigration means separation for life and this they naturally prefer to delay as long as possible.
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http://archive.jta.org/article/1946/05/28/2745244/nazi-youth-leader-charged-at-nuremberg-trial-with-deporting-50000-jews-to-death-camps
May 28, 1946
Nuremberg, May. 27 (JTA) –
Nazi Youth Leader Charged at Nuremberg Trial with Deporting 50,000 Jews to Death Camps
U.S. Prosecutor Thomas Dodd today confronted Baldur von Schirach, former gauleiter of Vienna and one-time Nazi youth leader, with documents proving that he had arranged for the deportation of 50,000 Jews to extermination camps in Poland. Dodd submitted to the International Military Tribunal the minutes of a meeting of Hitler, Hane Frank, then gauleiter of Poland, and Schirach, at which Schirach asked Frank to accept 50,000 Viennese Jews.
Schirach denied that he knew what had happened to the deportees, stating that he believed the older people were sent to Theresienstadt, while the younger ones were sent to Poland. Dodd interrupted, declaring: "You know that the Jews were taken to Riga and Minsk and annihilated."
Dodd quoted from 55 reports submitted to Schirach in 1942 by Reinhard Heydrich, who was at the time deputy chief of the Gestapo, giving full details of the massacre of he deported Jews. The prosecutor remarked that "your memory is very bad today," when the former youth leader said that he could not remember having seen the reports.
The Russian prosecutor following Dodd, submitted excerpts from an affidavit by Ida Wassotom, a Jewish resident of Lemberg, relating how members of the Hitler youth groups, which Schirach directed, had participated in the murder of hundreds of Jews in that city. Uniformed youths, armed with knives and pistols, she said, reamed the streets, breaking into homes to search for hidden Jews and killing Jewish men and women on the streets.
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http://archive.jta.org/article/1946/07/22/2745874/ss-leader-who-commanded-ghetto-hanged-in-czechoslovakia-for-crimes-against-jews
July 22, 1946
S.s. Leader Who Commanded Ghetto Hanged in Czechoslovakia for Crimes Against Jews
Prague, Jul. 21 (JTA) –
An Austrian S.S. leader named Knollmayer, who was vice-commander of the concentration camp at Sered, was hanged today following his conviction by a People's Court at Bratislava. Knollmayer, 24, achieved notoriety in 1944 when he shot and killed the rabbi of Piestany and other Jews.
Meanwhile, the long-drawn-out trial of Anton Vasek, Slovak puppet official, is nearing an end, with the prosecution demanding the death penalty and the defense pleading for clemency on the grounds that not all the Jews in Slovakia were killed.
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http://archive.jta.org/article/1944/02/08/2863008/200-gestapo-men-killed-by-jews-during-battle-in-polish-extermination-camp
February 8, 1944
200 Gestapo Men Killed by Jews During Battle in Polish “extermination Camp”
LONDON, Feb. 7 (JTA) –
More than 200 Gestapo agents and Ukrainian guards in the "Jewish extermination camp" of Sobibor, in occupied Poland, were killed during a revolt of the Jewish internees organized with the aid of the underground movement, the Polish Government-in-Exile reported today.
The revolt, which is the second largest Jewish uprising against the Nazis, surpassed only by the "Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto," started in the so-called "penal huts" of the camp where Jews are tortured for various alleged offences. Jewish prisoners attacked the huts and released the tortured Jews who joined them in disarming the guards, and in resisting the Gestapo units which rushed to the scene to crush the revolt. Aided by armed members of the underground movement who came to their assistance, the Jewish prisoners succeeded in killing many of their tormentors. Many of the Jews were also killed in the battle.
The Polish Government's report states that the Gestapo "liquidation" of the remnants of the Jewish population in various Polish towns continues. Five hundred Jews were recently executed in Przemysl and a large number were killed in Rseszow, the report declares, adding that the "Jewish" labor camps in Trawniki and Poniatowka have been completely "liquidated" by the Germans.
Citation - Click to see see this article's citation
"200 Gestapo Men Killed by Jews During Battle in Polish “extermination Camp”." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 8 Feb 1944.
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http://archive.jta.org/article/1944/08/17/2864684/germans-raze-all-traces-of-the-jewish-extermination-camps-before-leaving-poland
August 17, 1944
Germans Raze All Traces of the “jewish Extermination Camps” Before Leaving Poland
MOSCOW, Aug. 16 (JTA) –
Correspondents of the Moscow press now visiting the liberated area in Poland today reported from Lublin that the Germans have razed to the ground all buildings in the extermination camp of Treblinka, including the gas chambers where tens of thousands of Jews were suffocated to death. The Moscow papers, however, assert that there are people who survived the massacres in Treblinka and who testify in details as to the mass-murder which the Germans carried out systematically on Jews brought from all parts of occupied Europe.
Similar steps to remove all traces of their crimes have been taken by the Germans in the Sobibor, Trawniki, Poniatow and Majdanek. All these places are now in the hands of the Red Army, but it is not easy to find the exact location of the "death factories."
An investigation made by Soviet officials in the Lublin district established that in the Trawniki concentration camp the Germans had established a special section for Jews who were caught fleeing from the Warsaw ghetto after the anti-Nazi revolt there. The torture of the Jews in this section of the camp was especially brutal, neighboring peasants testified.
Citation - Click to see see this article's citation
"Germans Raze All Traces of the “jewish Extermination Camps” Before Leaving Poland." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 17 Aug 1944.
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http://archive.jta.org/article/1945/06/24/2867482/german-plan-to-kill-all-jews-in-theresienstadt-thwarted-by-rapid-advance-of-red-army
June 24, 1945
German Plan to Kill All Jews in Theresienstadt Thwarted by Rapid Advance of Red Army
London, Jun. 22 (JTA) –
A German plan to kill all Jews in Theresidenstadt in special "gas chambers" was foiled almost at the last minute, the London Times reports today in a letter from Theresienstadt.
The letter reveals that "bathing establishments" for gassing the interned Jews had already been prepared, but the doors for these chambers were returned three times because they did not fit, In the meantime, Russian troops reached Theresisnstedt.
The letter confirms earlier reports with regard to the number of Jews who passed through Theresienstedt, and estimates that during the years 1942-43 an average of 150 Jews died there each day. Only Rabbi Leo Neuhaus and four Jewish women remained alive from the first transport of 1,197 Jews brought to Theresienstedt from Frankfurtan- Main, the letter reported.
(Rabbi Ralph Nehaus, who is rabbi of Congregation Chab Shalom in New York, told the JTA that he last heard from his father over four years ago and did not know were he was or whe ther he was alive. The younger Rabbi Neuhaus came to the United States in 1941.)
Eva Bart, an official of the Joint Distribution Committee in Warsaw, is among the Jews liberated in Western Germany, Dr. Emanuel Szerer, Polish-Jewish leader reported today. She lived in the Warsaw ghetto until its "liquidation" by the Germans and passed through the notorious camps of Oswiecim, Majdanek and Ravensbruck.
Citation - Click to see see this article's citation
"German Plan to Kill All Jews in Theresienstadt Thwarted by Rapid Advance of Red Army." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 24 Jun 1945
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http://archive.jta.org/article/1945/06/03/2867290/antisemitism-widespread-in-liberated-czechoslovakia-surviving-jews-not-wanted
June 3, 1945
Anti-semitism Wide-spread in Liberated Czechoslovakia; Surviving Jews Not Wanted
Frague, Jun. 1 (JTA) –
Jews returning to Czechoslovakia are not being welcomed home with open arms and, in Slovakia particularly, have encountered a great deal of hostility. Dr. Inrich Resenberg, deputy chief of the repatriation department of the Crechoslovak Government, disclosed today.
Dr. Rosenberg told a Jewish Telegraphic Agency correspondent that while some terns have welcomed Jews returning from Theresienstadt as martyriz the more typical reaction has been one of surprise that any Jews were still alive, and discomfit at the thought that they will want their jobs and property back.
He estimated that only about 15,000 of the country's 350,000 Jews survive, and Eest of these, he said, desire to emigrate to Palestine as a result of the increased anti-Semitism here. According to Stefan Engel, former secretary-general of the Prague Jewish community under the occupation, who is now a member of the committee to liquidats the Nazi commissariat for Jewish affairs, the Communist newspaper here has been the only one thus far to advocate returning jobs to Jews.
The situation in Prague is complicated by the fact that it has become a center for Jewish survivors from Germany and Poland seeking remnants of their families. Nearly 10,000 have wandered in from slave camps hoping to pick up news of their kin. The presence of German Jews is already being used by anti-Semites, who are attacking them as German nationals. Some were arrested, but have since been released.
The government, itself, is very friendly to the Jews, recognizing the zealous service rendered by many during the period of exile. Returning Czech Jews, like re turning political prisoners, are being housed in the apartments of Nazis or collaborators, but, naturally, this does not apply to non-Czechs, such as Poles, Germans and Eungarians. These latter require clothes and other forms of assistance.
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