Example Of The Evolution Of The Holocaust Research Paper

The Holocaust did not simply happen overnight. There was a long evolution that ultimately led to the gas chambers and the death camps. Initially, efforts were focused on forcing Jews to emigrate. For example, a “Central Office for Jewish Immigration”, led by Adolph Eichmann, was formed to coordinate efforts to force the Jews out. But many countries did not want to take them. The United States even turned back a ship, the M.S. St. Louis, packed with Jewish refugees that had been bound for Cuba but was denied entry there as well. This hindered the ability for many Jews who otherwise would have emigrated to leave.
For Hitler and the Nazis, separating and concentrating the Jews somewhere inhospitable had always been a more desirable plan anyway. Then they would be limited in their ability to “control” things globally through the “Jewish Conspiracy” that so many believed in. Early plans involved resettlement to Madagascar, a plan that was simply unfeasible since Madagascar was a French colony and, at least in peacetime, not open for this possibility.
After the invasion of Poland and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, vast territories of relatively unpopulated land came into German possession, such as the Pripyat Marshes. Still desiring a “reservation” for the Jews, several thousand were deported there during the winter of 1939 and 1940. However, there was no way for the Jews sent there to make a living in the deserted marshes in winter, and the Nazis provided them little aid, causing many to starve or freeze to death. The Nisko plan, as it was called, was ultimately abandoned in favor of other “solutions”.
Around this time as well, Jews were being rounded up into ghettos, the most famous being the large urban ghettos in Poland such as the Warsaw Ghetto or Lodz. These ghettos varied greatly, ranging from simple areas surrounded by barbed wire in smaller towns to elaborate, walled-off sections in larger cities. Many local Jews, but also Jews from the Reich, were deported to these ghettos. There was still a limited degree of Jewish autonomy, though, with Jewish Councils, or Judenräte, able to administer many day-to-day activities within the Ghettos, as long as they ultimately were in accordance with what the Germans wanted.
As the ghettos became more and more overcrowded and filthy, a new solution had to be found. The camp system was slowly evolving, starting from the concentration camps packed at first mostly with political prisoners from 1934 on, including Dachau, Sachenhausen, and Buchenwald (within the Reich itself). Labor camps began to pop up as well, such as the camp at Plasow made famous in Schindler’s List. And finally, after the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, a decision was made to carry out the systematic extermination of the Jews, leading directly to the death camps and to the mass shootings of the Jews held in the ghettos. The key players at the Wannsee Conference included Reinhard Heydrich, representing SS leader Heinrich Himmler, and Adolph Eichmann. While most of the principle decision makers in the party, such as Himmler and von Ribbentrop, were not directly involved, they were represented at the conference by close confidants.
The camps varied greatly in structure and purpose. As mentioned, the camps within the Reich had been set up mainly for political prisoners, and indeed, were often in full public view. Early on, they had been shown to the media. They had not been shrouded in secrecy. The German public in general were told that those prisoners were “criminals”. The Nazis were not the inventors of the concentration camp; they had been used by the British in the Second Boer War, and the term was coined there. The labor camps that were set up, such as Mauthausen and Theresienstadt, were designed to contribute to the extermination by working the Jews to death. The death camps, such as Sobibor, Belzec, and Majdanek, were set up with the express purpose of extermination, and nearly everyone sent to them was killed by gas. Only a handful of Jews were kept alive to staff the camp, and these were “switched out” fairly regularly for new arrivals. Chances of surviving in a death camp were basically zero. Auschwitz itself was a type of hybrid between the labor and death camps; basically, it housed both, and selections were made directly at the gate as to who would be sent to work and who would be gassed. Of course, the entire camp structure underwent significant changes in 1942 as a result of the Wannsee Conference, the escalation of the war, and the need to administer vast amounts of new territory after the invasion of the Soviet Union. It was in 1942 that the death camps were added. It was also in 1942 that the Police Battalions and the SS began the concentrated executions of the Jews in ditches, etc., as well, in support of Operation Reinhard.
These camps had a massive impact on human psychology. For the Nazis, the institutionalized brutality became the norm, as long as someone else was giving the orders. Christopher Browning explores this in his book “Ordinary Men”, based on the accounts of one police battalion unit from Hamburg that was mobilized to commit mass executions and roundups of Jews. It also apparently got “easier” for most over time, as there was a standard procedure and they knew what to expect. In Auschwitz, prisoners were tattooed with numbers, symbolically taking away their human identity. Indeed, due to the conditions, the uniforms, and the malnourishment, the prisoners no longer even had the appearance of humans to their captors. For many prisoners, language barriers also ensured that they were unable to express their humanness in any way whatsoever. On the part of the prisoners, they also felt dehumanized, and often succumbed to various physical and psychological disorders such as depression, anxiety, hypoglycemia, and other conditions which certainly only added to the misery and despair. In H.G. Adler’s fictionalized account of his time in Theresienstadt, translated into English by Peter Filkins as The Journey, for example, Zerlina, a fictionalized character representing his sister, dies in the aftermath of a severe mental breakdown causing hallucinations and a lack of will to continue to live. In recent years, more and more attention has now been given to the instances of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder amongst Holocaust victims, the incidence of which is undoubtedly incredibly high. Journalis Howard Reich recently made a documentary about his mother, Sonia Reich, a Holocaust survivor, who he believes has suffered from PTSD due to her experience in World War II. Ruth Klüger, in her book Still Alive, also explores the topic of mental illness in the camps. Unfortunately, there are now so few survivors left alive that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to know for certain the true extent that these mental disorders were spawned by the camps.
There were some, but not many, examples of Jewish resistance. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April and May of 1943 is one example. The Jews also formed an organization, the Jewish Fighting Organization, known as the ZOB (its acronym in Polish). Many were also able to escape into the hinterland and form or join partisan groups. There were also uprisings at Treblinka, Sobibor, and Auschwitz.
One reason for the scarcity of examples of resistance, though, was that many Jews simply did not believe the extent of the camps or that they would be exterminated. The Nazis portrayed the deportations as though they were creating a Jewish reservation. Many prisoners sent to Theresienstadt (where most prominent Jews were sent) were told to bring skis and hiking boots. Prisoners were encouraged to send fake postcards from the “resort” to friends and family back in the Reich. By the time prisoners saw the true horror, they had little opportunity to obtain weapons that could compete with those of their captors. Also, within the Jewish community, many still chose to hold out hope that something could be done to change things. Many of these people found ways to preserve Jewish culture and language. At Theresienstadt, for example, some women got together and made a “cookbook” of all the foods they wished they could eat. In Theresienstadt as well, plays were performed, concerts were held. Children were educated. Works were composed; plays were written; poems were crafted. While Teresienstadt was certainly an exception among the camps, it demonstrates one way in which the prisoners were able to resist, by continuing to contribute to global culture. Many of these works are still read, performed, and listened to today.