“The Holocaust”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

Germany implemented the persecution of the Jews in stages. Following Adolf Hitler's appointment as German Chancellor in January 1933, the regime built a network of concentration camps in Germany for political opponents and those deemed "undesirable", starting with Dachau on 22 March 1933.^[3] After the passing of the Enabling Act on 24 March,{{sfn|Stackelberg|Winkle|2002|pp=141–143}} which gave Hitler plenary powers, the government began isolating Jews from civil society, which included a boycott of Jewish businesses in April 1933 and enacting the Nuremberg Laws in September 1935. On 9–10 November 1938, during Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass"), Jewish businesses and other buildings were ransacked, smashed or set on fire throughout Germany and Austria, which Germany had annexed in March that year. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, triggering World War II, the regime set up ghettos to segregate Jews. Eventually thousands of camps and other detention sites were established across German-occupied Europe.

The deportation of Jews to the ghettos culminated in the policy of extermination the Nazis called the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", discussed by senior Nazi officials at the Wannsee Conference in Berlin in January 1942. As German forces captured territories in the East, all anti-Jewish measures were radicalized. Under the coordination of the SS, with directions from the highest leadership of the Nazi Party, killings were committed within Germany itself, throughout occupied Europe, and across all territories controlled by the Axis powers. Paramilitary death squads called Einsatzgruppen, in cooperation with Wehrmacht police battalions and local collaborators, murdered around 1.3 million Jews in mass shootings between 1941 and 1945. By mid-1942, victims were being deported from the ghettos in sealed freight trains to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, they were killed in gas chambers. The killing continued until the end of World War II in Europe in May 1945.

Terminology and scope

Terminology

The term holocaust, first used in 1895 to describe the massacre of Armenians,{{sfn|Crowe|2008|p=1}} comes from the {{lang-el|ὁλόκαυστος|translit=holókaustos}}; {{lang|el|ὅλος}} hólos, "whole" + {{lang|el|καυστός}} kaustós, "burnt offering".{{sfn|Dawidowicz|1986|p=xxxvii}}{{efn|Oxford Dictionaries (2017): "from Old French holocauste, via late Latin from Greek holokauston, from holos 'whole' + kaustos 'burnt' (from kaiein 'burn')".^[4]}} The Century Dictionary defined it in 1904 as "a sacrifice or offering entirely consumed by fire, in use among the Jews and some pagan nations".{{efn|The definition continued: "Figuratively, a great slaughter or sacrifice of life, as by fire or other accident, or in battle".^[5]}}

The biblical term shoah ({{lang-he-n|שׁוֹאָה}}), meaning "destruction", became the standard Hebrew term for the murder of the European Jews, first used in a pamphlet in 1940, Sho'at Yehudei Polin ("Sho'ah of Polish Jews"), published by the United Aid Committee for the Jews in Poland.^[6] On 3 October 1941 the cover of the magazine The American Hebrew used the phrase "before the Holocaust", apparently to refer to the situation in France,{{sfn|Fischel|2010|p=115}} and in May 1943 The New York Times, discussing the Bermuda Conference, referred to the "hundreds of thousands of European Jews still surviving the Nazi Holocaust".^[8] In 1968 the Library of Congress created a new category, "Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)".{{sfn|Lustigman|Lustigman|1994|p=111}} The term was popularized in the United States by the NBC mini-series Holocaust (1978), about a fictional family of German Jews,{{sfn|Black|2016|p=201}} and in November 1978 the President's Commission on the Holocaust was established.{{sfn|Hilberg|2003|p=1133}} As non-Jewish groups began to include themselves as Holocaust victims too, many Jews chose to use the terms Shoah or Churban instead.{{sfn|Fischel|2010|p=115}}{{efn|The Hebrew word churban is used by many Orthodox Jews to refer to the Holocaust.{{sfn|Fischel|1998|p=46}}}} The Nazis used the phrase "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" ({{lang-de|die Endlösung der Judenfrage}}).{{sfn|Berenbaum|2006|p=xix}}

Definition

Most Holocaust historians define the Holocaust as the enactment, between 1941 and 1945, of the German state policy to exterminate the European Jews.{{efn|name=definition|Matt Brosnan (Imperial War Museum, 2018): "The Holocaust was the systematic murder of Europe's Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Second World War."^[9]{{pb}}

Jack R. Fischel (Historical Dictionary of the Holocaust, 2010): "The Holocaust refers to the Nazi objective of annihilating every Jewish man, woman, and child who fell under their control."{{sfn|Fischel|2010|p=115}}{{pb}}

Peter Hayes (How Was It Possible? A Holocaust Reader, 2015): "The Holocaust, the Nazi attempt to eradicate the Jews of Europe, has come to be regarded as the emblematic event of Twentieth Century ... Hitler's ideology depicted the Jews as uniquely dangerous to Germany and therefore uniquely destined to disappear completely from the Reich and all territories subordinate to it. The threat posted by supposedly corrupting but generally powerless Sinti and Roma was far less, and therefore addressed inconsistently in the Nazi realm. Gay men were defined as a problem only if they were German or having sex with Germans or having sex with Germans and considered 'curable' in most cases. ... Germany's murderous intent toward the handicapped inhabitants of European mental institutions ... was more comprehensive ... but here, too, implementation was uneven and life-saving exceptions permitted, especially in Western Europe. Not only were some Slavs—Slovaks, Croats, Bulgarians, some Ukrainians—allotted a favored place in Hitler's New Order, but the fate of most of the other Slavs the Nazis derided as sub-humans ... consisted of enslavement and gradual attrition, not the prompt massacre meted out to the Jews after 1941."{{sfn|Hayes|2015|pp=xiii–xiv}}{{pb}}

Raul Hilberg (The Destruction of the European Jews, 2003): "At the beginning there was little memorialization. ... Little by little, some documents were gathered and books were written, and after about two decades the annihilation of the Jews was given a name: Holocaust."{{sfn|Hilberg|2003|p=1133}}

Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, UK (2019): "The Holocaust (The Shoah in Hebrew) was the attempt by the Nazis and their collaborators to murder all the Jews in Europe."^[10]{{pb}}

Ronnie S. Landau (The Nazi Holocaust: Its History and Meaning, 1992): "The Holocaust involved the deliberate, systematic murder of approximately 6 million Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe between 1941 and 1945."{{sfn|Landau|2016|p=3}}{{pb}}

Michael Marrus (Perspectives on the Holocaust, 2015): "The Holocaust, the murder of close to six million Jews by the Nazis during the Second World War ...".{{sfn|Marrus|2015|p=vii}}{{pb}}

Timothy D. Snyder (Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, 2010): "In this book the term Holocaust signifies the final version of the Final Solution, the German policy to eliminate the Jews of Europe by murdering them. Although Hitler certainly wished to remove the Jews from Europe in a Final Solution earlier, the Holocaust on this definition begins in summer 1941, with the shooting of Jewish women and children in the occupied Soviet Union. The term Holocaust is sometimes used in two other ways: to mean all German killing policies during the war, or to mean all oppression of Jews by the Nazi regime. In this book, Holocaust means the murder of the Jews in Europe, as carried out by the Germans by guns and gas between 1941 and 1945."{{sfn|Snyder|2010|p=412}}{{pb}}

Dan Stone (Histories of the Holocaust, 2010): "'Holocaust' ... refers to the genocide of the Jews, which by no means excludes an understanding that other groups—notably Romanies and Slavs—were victims of genocide."{{sfn|Stone|2010|pp=1–3}}{{pb}}

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Holocaust Encyclopedia, 2017): "The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators."^[11]{{pb}}

Yad Vashem (2019): "The Holocaust was the murder by Nazi Germany of six million Jews."^[12]}} In Teaching the Holocaust (2015), Michael Gray, a specialist in Holocaust education,^[13] offers three definitions: (a) "the persecution and murder of Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators between 1933 and 1945", which views the events of Kristallnacht in Germany in 1938 as an early phase of the Holocaust; (b) "the systematic mass murder of the Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators between 1941 and 1945", which acknowledges the shift in German policy in 1941 toward the extermination of the Jewish people in Europe; and (c) "the persecution and murder of various groups by the Nazi regime and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945", which includes all the Nazis' victims. The third definition fails, Gray writes, to acknowledge that only the Jewish people were singled out for annihilation.{{sfn|Gray|2015|p=8}}

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines the Holocaust as the "systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators",^[14] distinguishing between the Holocaust and the targeting of other groups during "the era of the Holocaust".{{sfn|Gray|2015|p=4}} According to Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial, most historians regard the start of the "Holocaust era" as January 1933, when Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany.{{sfn|Gray|2015|p=5}} Other victims of the Holocaust era include those viewed as inferior (such as the Roma, ethnic Poles, Russians, and the disabled); and those targeted because of their beliefs or behavior (such as Jehovah's Witnesses, communists, and homosexuals).{{sfn|Gray|2015|p=4}} Hitler came to see the Jews as "uniquely dangerous to Germany", according to Peter Hayes, "and therefore uniquely destined to disappear completely from the Reich and all territories subordinate to it". The persecution and murder of other groups was much less consistent. For example, he writes, the Nazis regarded the Slavs as "sub-human", but their treatment consisted of "enslavement and gradual attrition", while "some Slavs—Slovaks, Croats, Bulgarians, some Ukrainians—[were] allotted a favored place in Hitler's New Order".{{sfn|Hayes|2015|pp=xiii–xiv}}

Dan Stone, a specialist in the historiography of the Holocaust, lists ethnic Poles, Ukrainians, Soviet prisoners of war, Jehovah's Witnesses, black Germans, and homosexuals as among the groups persecuted by the Nazis; he writes that the occupation of eastern Europe can also be viewed as genocidal. But the German attitude toward the Jews was different in kind, he argues. The Nazis regarded the Jews not as racially inferior, deviant, or enemy nationals, as they did other groups, but as a "Gegenrasse: a 'counter-race', that is to say, not really human at all". The Holocaust, for Stone, is therefore defined as the genocide of the Jews, although he argues that it cannot be "properly historically situated without understanding the 'Nazi empire' with its grandiose demographic plans".{{efn|name=Stone2010|Dan Stone (Histories of the Holocaust, 2010): "Europe's Romany (Gypsy) population was also the victim of genocide under the Nazis. Many other population groups, notably Poles, Ukrainians, and Soviet prisoners of war were killed in huge numbers, and smaller groups such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Black Germans, and homosexuals suffered terribly under Nazi rule. The evidence suggests that the Slav nations of Europe were also destined, had Germany won the war, to become victims of systematic mass murder; and even the terrible brutality of the occupation in eastern Europe, especially in Poland, can be understood as genocidal according to the definition put forward by Raphael Lemkin in his major study, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (1944), the book that introduced the term 'genocide' to our vocabulary. Part of the reason for today's understanding, though, is a correct assessment of the fact that for the Nazis the Jews were regarded in a kind of 'metaphysical' way; they were not just considered as racially inferior (like Romanies), deviants (like homosexuals) or enemy nationals standing in the way of German colonial expression (like Slavs). ... [T]he Jews were to some extent outside of the racial scheme as defined by racial philosophers and anthropologists. They were not mere Untermenschen (sub-humans) ... but were regarded as a Gegenrasse: "a 'counter-race', that is to say, not really human at all. ... 'Holocaust', then, refers to the genocide of the Jews, which by no means excludes an understanding that other groups—notably Romanies and Slavs—were victims of genocide. Indeed ... the murder of the Jews, although a project in its own right, cannot be properly historically situated without understanding the 'Nazi empire' with its grandiose demographic plans."{{sfn|Stone|2010|pp=2–3}}}} Donald Niewyk and Francis Nicosia, in The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust (2000), favour a definition that focuses on the Jews, Roma, and Aktion T4 victims: "The Holocaust—that is, Nazi genocide—was the systematic, state-sponsored murder of entire groups determined by heredity. This applied to Jews, Gypsies, and the handicapped."{{sfn|Niewyk|Nicosia|2000|p=52}}

Distinctive features

Genocidal state

The logistics of the mass murder turned Germany into what Michael Berenbaum called a "genocidal state".{{sfn|Berenbaum|2006|p=103}} Eberhard Jäckel wrote in 1986 that it was the first time a state had thrown its power behind the idea that an entire people should be wiped out.{{efn|name=Jäckel|Eberhard Jäckel (Die Zeit, 1986): "Ich behaupte ... daß der nationalsozialistische Mord an den Juden deswegen einzigartig war, weil noch nie zuvor ein Staat mit der Autorität seines verantwortlichen Führers beschlossen und angekündigt hatte, eine bestimmte Menschengruppe einschließlich der Alten, der Frauen, der Kinder und der Säuglinge möglichst restlos zu töten, und diesen Beschluß mit allen nur möglichen staatlichen Machtmitteln in die Tat umsetzte." ("I maintain ... that the National Socialist killing of the Jews was unique in that never before had a state with the authority of its leader decided and announced that a specific group of humans, including the elderly, the women, the children and the infants, would be killed as quickly as possible, and then carried out this resolution using every possible means of state power.")^[15]}} Anyone with three or four Jewish grandparents was to be exterminated,{{sfn|Bauer|2002|p=49}} and complex rules were devised to deal with Mischlinge ("mixed breeds": half and quarter Jews).{{sfn|Friedländer|2007|pp=51–52}} Bureaucrats identified who was a Jew, confiscated property, and scheduled trains to deport them. Companies fired Jews and later used them as slave labor. Universities dismissed Jewish faculty and students. German pharmaceutical companies tested drugs on camp prisoners; other companies built the crematoria.{{sfn|Berenbaum|2006|p=103}} As prisoners entered the death camps, they were ordered to surrender all personal property, which was catalogued and tagged before being sent to Germany for reuse or recycling.{{sfn|Arad|1987|pp=154–159}} Through a concealed account, the German National Bank helped launder valuables stolen from the victims.{{sfn|Fischel|1998|p=167}}

The industrialization and scale of the murder was unprecedented. Killings were systematically conducted in virtually all areas of occupied Europe—more than 20 occupied countries.{{sfn|United States Holocaust Memorial Museum|1996|p=7}} Close to three million Jews in occupied Poland and between 700,000 and 2.5 million Jews in the Soviet Union were killed. Hundreds of thousands more died in the rest of Europe.{{sfn|Crowe|2008|p=447}} Victims were transported in sealed freight trains from all over Europe to extermination camps equipped with gas chambers.{{sfn|Evans|2015a|p=385}} The stationary facilities grew out of Nazi experiments with poison gas during the Aktion T4 mass murder ("euthanasia") programme against the disabled and mentally ill, which began in 1939.^[16] The Germans set up six extermination camps in Poland: Auschwitz II-Birkenau (established October 1941); Majdanek (October 1941); Chełmno (December 1941); and the three Operation Reinhard camps, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, in 1942.^[17] A seventh death camp, Maly Trostenets, was established near Minsk in Belarus, then part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland.{{sfn|Lehnstaedt|2016|p=30}} Discussions at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 made it clear that the German "final solution of the Jewish question" was intended eventually to include Britain and all the neutral states in Europe, including Ireland, Switzerland, Turkey, Sweden, Portugal, and Spain.{{sfn|Gilbert|2001|p=289}}

Historians increasingly view the Holocaust as a pan-European phenomenon, or a series of holocausts impossible to conduct without the help of local collaborators.{{sfn|Stone|2010|pp=14–18}} Over 200,000 people are estimated to have been Holocaust perpetrators;^[18] without them, the Germans would not have been able to extend the Holocaust across most of Europe.{{sfn|Bloxham|2009|p=130}} Some Christian churches tried to defend the Jews by declaring that converted Jews were "part of the flock," according to Saul Friedländer, "but even then only up to a point". Otherwise, Friedländer writes, "[n]ot one social group, not one religious community, not one scholarly institution or professional association in Germany and throughout Europe declared its solidarity with the Jews."{{sfn|Friedländer|2007|p=xxi}}

Medical experiments

Medical experiments conducted on camp inmates by the SS were another distinctive feature.{{sfn|Niewyk|Nicosia|2000|pp=229–230}} At least 7,000 prisoners were subjected to experiments; most died as a result, during the experiments or later.{{sfn|Fisher|2001|pp=410–414}} Twenty-three senior physicians and other medical personnel were charged at Nuremberg, after the war, with crimes against humanity. They included the head of the German Red Cross, tenured professors, clinic directors, and biomedical researchers.{{sfn|Hanauske-Abel|1996|p=1453}} Experiments took place at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Natzweiler-Struthof, Neuengamme, Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen, and elsewhere. Some dealt with sterilization of men and women, the treatment of war wounds, ways to counteract chemical weapons, research into new vaccines and drugs, and the survival of harsh conditions.{{sfn|Fisher|2001|pp=410–414}}

The most notorious physician was Josef Mengele, an SS officer who became the Auschwitz camp doctor on 30 May 1943.{{sfn|Müller-Hill|1999|p=338}} Interested in genetics{{sfn|Müller-Hill|1999|p=338}} and keen to experiment on twins, he would pick out subjects from the new arrivals during "selection" on the ramp, shouting "Zwillinge heraus!" (twins step forward!).{{sfn|Friedländer |2007|p=505}} They would be measured, killed, and dissected. One of Mengele's assistants said in 1946 that he was told to send organs of interest to the directors of the "Anthropological Institute in Berlin-Dahlem". This is thought to refer to Mengele's academic supervisor, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, director from October 1942 of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics in Berlin-Dahlem.{{sfn|Müller-Hill|1999|pp=340–342}}{{sfn|Friedländer |2007|p=505}}{{efn|The full extent of Mengele's work is unknown because records he sent to Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer are assumed to have been destroyed.{{sfn|Müller-Hill|1999|p=348}}{{sfn|Lifton|2000|p=358}}}} Mengele's experiments included placing subjects in pressure chambers, testing drugs on them, freezing them, attempting to change their eye color by injecting chemicals into children's eyes, and amputations and other surgeries.{{sfn|Harran|2000|p=384}}

Origins

Antisemitism and the völkisch movement

Throughout the Middle Ages in Europe, Jews were subjected to antisemitism based on Christian theology, which blamed them for killing Jesus. Even after the Reformation, Catholicism and Lutheranism continued to persecute Jews, accusing them of blood libels and subjecting them to pogroms and expulsions.{{sfn|Jones|2006|p=148}}{{sfn|Bergen|2016|pp=14–17}} The second half of the 19th century saw the emergence in the German empire and Austria-Hungary of the völkisch movement, which was developed by such thinkers as Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Paul de Lagarde. The movement embraced a pseudo-scientific racism that viewed Jews as a race whose members were locked in mortal combat with the Aryan race for world domination.{{sfn|Fischer|2002|pp=47–49}} These ideas became commonplace throughout Germany,{{sfn|Evans|1989|pp=69–70}} with the professional classes adopting an ideology that did not see humans as racial equals with equal hereditary value.{{sfn|Friedlander|1994|pp=495–496}} Although the völkisch parties had support in elections at first, by 1914 they were no longer influential. This did not mean that antisemitism had disappeared; instead it was incorporated into the platforms of several mainstream political parties.{{sfn|Evans|1989|pp=69–70}}

Germany after World War I, Hitler's world view

The political situation in Germany and elsewhere in Europe after World War I (1914–1918) contributed to the rise of virulent antisemitism. Many Germans did not accept that their country had been defeated, which gave birth to the stab-in-the-back myth. This insinuated that it was disloyal politicians, chiefly Jews and communists, who had orchestrated Germany's surrender. Inflaming the anti-Jewish sentiment was the apparent over-representation of Jews in the leadership of communist revolutionary governments in Europe, such as Ernst Toller, head of a short-lived revolutionary government in Bavaria. This perception contributed to the canard of Jewish Bolshevism.^[19]

The economic strains of the Great Depression led some in the German medical establishment to advocate murder (euphemistically called "euthanasia") of the "incurable" mentally and physically disabled as a cost-saving measure to free up funds for the curable.{{sfn|Evans|2004|pp=377–378}} By the time the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazi Party,{{efn|The party was originally formed after World War I as the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or DAP (German Workers' Party) and changed its name in April 1920 to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazi Party).{{sfn|Snyder|1976|p=63}} }} came to power in 1933, there was already a tendency to seek to save the racially "valuable", while ridding society of the racially "undesirable".{{sfn|Peukert|1994|p=289}} The party had originated in 1920{{sfn|Snyder|1976|p=63}} as an offshoot of the völkisch movement, and it adopted that movement's antisemitism.{{sfn|Fischer|2002|p=47}} Early antisemites in the party included Dietrich Eckart, publisher of the Völkischer Beobachter, the party's newspaper, and Alfred Rosenberg, who wrote antisemitic articles for it in the 1920s. Rosenberg's vision of a secretive Jewish conspiracy ruling the world would influence Hitler's views of Jews by making them the driving force behind communism.{{sfn|Yahil|1990|pp=41–43}} The origin and first expression of Hitler's antisemitism remain a matter of debate.{{sfn|Kershaw|1998|p=60}} Central to his world view was the idea of expansion and lebensraum (living space) for Germany. Open about his hatred of Jews, he subscribed to the common antisemitic stereotypes.{{sfn|Bergen|2016|pp=52–54}} From the early 1920s onwards, he compared the Jews to germs and said they should be dealt with in the same way. He viewed Marxism as a Jewish doctrine, said he was fighting against "Jewish Marxism", and believed that Jews had created communism as part of a conspiracy to destroy Germany.{{sfn|Bergen|2016|p=56}}

Rise of Nazi Germany

Dictatorship and repression (1933–1939)

With the appointment in January 1933 of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany, and the establishment of the Third Reich, German leaders proclaimed the rebirth of the Volksgemeinschaft ("people's community").{{sfn|Fritzsche|2009|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=nIUFQGN2y4EC&pg=PA38 38–39]}} Nazi policies divided the population into two groups: the Volksgenossen ("national comrades") who belonged to the Volksgemeinschaft, and the Gemeinschaftsfremde ("community aliens") who did not. Enemies were divided into three groups: the "racial" or "blood" enemies, such as the Jews and Roma; political opponents of Nazism, such as Marxists, liberals, Christians, and the "reactionaries" viewed as wayward "national comrades"; and moral opponents, such as gay men, the work shy, and habitual criminals. The latter two groups were to be sent to concentration camps for "re-education", with the aim of eventual absorption into the Volksgemeinschaft. "Racial" enemies could never belong to the Volksgemeinschaft; they were to be removed from society.{{sfn|Noakes|Pridham|1983|p=499}}

Before and after the March 1933 Reichstag elections, the Nazis intensified their campaign of violence against opponents.{{sfn|Wachsmann|2015|pp=28–30}} They set up concentration camps for extrajudicial imprisonment.{{sfn|Wachsmann|2015|pp=32–38}} One of the first, at Dachau, opened on 9 March 1933.{{sfn|Gilbert|1985|p=32}} Initially the camp contained mostly Communists and Social Democrats.{{sfn|Longerich|2012|p=155}} Other early prisons were consolidated by mid-1934 into purpose-built camps outside the cities, run exclusively by the SS.{{sfn|Wachsmann|2015|pp=84–86}} The initial purpose of the camps was to serve as a deterrent by terrorizing Germans who did not conform.{{sfn|Peukert|1987|p=214}}

Throughout the 1930s, the legal, economic, and social rights of Jews were steadily restricted.{{sfn|Friedländer|1997|p=33}} On 1 April 1933, there was a boycott of Jewish businesses.{{sfn|Friedländer|1997|pp=19–20}} On 7 April 1933, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was passed, which excluded Jews and other "non-Aryans" from the civil service.{{sfn|Burleigh|Wippermann|1991|p=78}} Jews were disbarred from practising law, being editors or proprietors of newspapers, joining the Journalists' Association, or owning farms.{{sfn|Friedländer|1997|pp=32–33}} In Silesia, in March 1933, a group of men entered the courthouse and beat up Jewish lawyers; Friedländer writes that, in Dresden, Jewish lawyers and judges were dragged out of courtrooms during trials.{{sfn|Friedländer|1997|p=29}} Jewish students were restricted by quotas from attending schools and universities.{{sfn|Burleigh|Wippermann|1991|p=78}} Jewish businesses were targeted for closure or "Aryanization", the forcible sale to Germans; of the approximately 50,000 Jewish-owned businesses in Germany in 1933, about 7,000 were still Jewish-owned in April 1939. Works by Jewish composers,{{sfn|Friedländer|1997|p=134}} authors, and artists were excluded from publications, performances, and exhibitions.{{sfn|Evans|2005|pp=158–159, 169}} Jewish doctors were dismissed or urged to resign. The Deutsches Ärzteblatt (a medical journal) reported on 6 April 1933: "Germans are to be treated by Germans only."{{sfn|Hanauske-Abel|1996|p=1459}}

Sterilization Law, Aktion T4

The Nazis used the phrase Lebensunwertes Leben (life unworthy of life) in reference to the disabled and mentally ill.{{sfn|Lifton|2000|p=21}} On 14 July 1933, the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses), the Sterilization Law, was passed, allowing for compulsory sterilization.{{sfn|Hanauske-Abel|1996|p=1457}}{{sfn|Proctor|1988|pp=101–103}} The New York Times reported on 21 December that year: "400,000 Germans to be sterilized".^[22] There were 84,525 applications from doctors in the first year. The courts reached a decision in 64,499 of those cases; 56,244 were in favor of sterilization.{{sfn|Hanauske-Abel|1996|p=1458}} Estimates for the number of involuntary sterilizations during the whole of the Third Reich range from 300,000 to 400,000.{{sfn|Proctor|1988|pp=106–108}}

In October 1939 Hitler signed a "euthanasia decree" backdated to 1 September 1939 that authorized Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler, the chief of Hitler's Chancellery, and Karl Brandt, Hitler's personal physician, to carry out a program of involuntary "euthanasia"; after the war this program was named Aktion T4.{{sfn|Burleigh|Wippermann|1991|pp=142–149}} It was named after Tiergartenstraße 4, the address of a villa in the Berlin borough of Tiergarten, where the various organizations involved were headquartered.{{sfn|Kershaw|2000|pp=252–261}} T4 was mainly directed at adults, but the "euthanasia" of children was also carried out.{{sfn|Bloxham|2009|p=171}} Between 1939 and 1941, 80,000 to 100,000 mentally ill adults in institutions were killed, as were 5,000 children and 1,000 Jews, also in institutions. In addition there were specialized killing centres, where the deaths were estimated at 20,000, according to Georg Renno, the deputy director of Schloss Hartheim, one of the "euthanasia" centers, or 400,000, according to Frank Zeireis, the commandant of the Mauthausen concentration camp.{{sfn|Lifton|2000|p=142}} Overall, the number of mentally and physically handicapped murdered was about 150,000.{{sfn|Niewyk|Nicosia|2000|p=48}}

Although not ordered to take part, psychiatrists and many psychiatric institutions were involved in the planning and carrying out of Aktion T4 at every stage.{{sfn|Strous|2007}} After protests from the German Catholic and Protestant churches, Hitler ordered the cancellation of the T4 program in August 1941,{{sfn|Lifton|2000|pp=90–95}} although the disabled and mentally ill continued to be killed until the end of the war.{{sfn|Niewyk|Nicosia|2000|p=48}} The medical community regularly received bodies and body parts for research. Eberhard Karl University received 1,077 bodies from executions between 1933 and 1945. The neuroscientist Julius Hallervorden received 697 brains from one hospital between 1940 and 1944: "I accepted these brains of course. Where they came from and how they came to me was really none of my business."{{sfn|Hanauske-Abel|1996|pp=1458–1459}}

Nuremberg Laws, Jewish emigration

On 15 September 1935, the Reichstag passed the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, known as the Nuremberg Laws. The former said that only those of "German or kindred blood" could be citizens. Anyone with three or more Jewish grandparents was classified as a Jew.^[25] The second law said: "Marriages between Jews and subjects of the state of German or related blood are forbidden." Sexual relationships between them were also criminalized; Jews were not allowed to employ German women under the age of 45 in their homes.{{sfn|Arad|Gutman|Margaliot|2014|p=78}} The laws referred to Jews but applied equally to the Roma and black Germans.^[23]

Nazi racial policy aimed at forcing Jews to emigrate.{{sfn|Gilbert|2001|p=285}} Fifty thousand German Jews had left Germany by the end of 1934,{{sfn|Fischel|1998|p=20}} and by the end of 1938, approximately half the German Jewish population had left the country.{{sfn|Gilbert|2001|p=285}} Among the prominent Jews who left was the conductor Bruno Walter, who fled after being told that the hall of the Berlin Philharmonic would be burned down if he conducted a concert there.{{sfn|Friedländer|1997|p=1}} Albert Einstein, who was in the United States when Hitler came to power, never returned to Germany; he was expelled from the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and the Prussian Academy of Sciences and his citizenship was revoked.{{sfn|Friedländer|1997|p=12}} Other Jewish scientists, including Gustav Hertz, lost their teaching positions and left the country.{{sfn|Evans|2005|p=16}} On 12 March 1938, Germany annexed Austria. Austrian Nazis broke into Jewish shops, stole from Jewish homes and businesses, and forced Jews to perform humiliating acts such as scrubbing the streets or cleaning toilets.{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|pp=147–150}} Jewish businesses were "Aryanized", and all the legal restrictions on Jews in Germany were imposed.{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|pp=153–155}} In August that year, Adolf Eichmann was put in charge of the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna (Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung in Wien). About 100,000 Austrian Jews had left the country by May 1939, including Sigmund Freud and his family, who moved to London.{{sfn|Evans|2005|pp=659–661}} The Évian Conference was held in July 1938 by 32 countries as an attempt to help the increased refugees from Germany, but aside from establishing the largely ineffectual Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, little was accomplished and most countries participating did not increase the number of refugees they would accept.{{sfn|Niewyk|Nicosia|2000|p=200}}

Kristallnacht

On 7 November 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a Polish Jew, shot the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in the German Embassy in Paris, in retaliation for the expulsion of his parents and siblings from Germany.{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=181}}{{efn|The French had planned to try Grynszpan for murder, but the German invasion in 1940 interrupted the proceedings. Grynszpan was handed over to the Germans and his fate is unknown.{{sfn|Friedländer|1997|pp=301–302}} }} When vom Rath died on 9 November, the government used his death as a pretext to instigate a pogrom against the Jews throughout the Third Reich. The government claimed it was spontaneous, but in fact it had been ordered and planned by Hitler and Goebbels, although with no clear goals, according to David Cesarani; the result, he writes, was "murder, rape, looting, destruction of property, and terror on an unprecedented scale".{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=183}}{{sfn|Evans|2005|pp=581–582}}

Known as Kristallnacht (or "Night of Broken Glass"), the attacks were partly carried out by the SS and SA,{{sfn|Evans|2005|pp=583–584}} but ordinary Germans joined in; in some areas, the violence began before the SS or SA arrived.{{sfn|Bloxham|2009|p=168}} Over 7,500 Jewish shops (out of 9,000) were looted and attacked, and over 1,000 synagogues damaged or destroyed. Groups of Jews were forced by the crowd to watch their synagogues burn; in Bensheim they were forced to dance around it, and in Laupheim to kneel before it.{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|pp=184–185}} At least 90 Jews died. The damage was estimated at 39 million Reichmarks.{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|pp=184, 187}} Cesarani writes that "[t]he extent of the desolation stunned the population and rocked the regime."{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=183}} Thirty-thousand Jews were sent to the Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration camps.{{sfn|Evans|2005|p=591}} Many were released within weeks; by early 1939, 2,000 remained in the camps.{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=200}} German Jewry was held collectively responsible for restitution of the damage; they also had to pay an "atonement tax" of over a billion Reichmarks. Insurance payments for damage to their property were confiscated by the government. A decree on 12 November 1938 barred Jews from most of the remaining occupations they had been allowed to hold.{{sfn|Evans|2005|pp=595–596}} Kristallnacht marked the end of any sort of public Jewish activity and culture, and Jews stepped up their efforts to leave the country.{{sfn|Ben-Rafael|Glöckner|Sternberg|2011|pp=25–26}}

Territorial solution and resettlement

Before World War II, Germany considered mass deportation from Europe of German, and later European, Jewry.{{sfn|Friedländer |1997|pp=224–225}} Among the areas considered for possible resettlement were British Palestine{{sfn|Friedländer|1997|pp=62–63}} and French Madagascar.{{sfn|Browning|2001}} After the war began, German leaders considered deporting Europe's Jews to Siberia.{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=382}}^[24] Palestine was the only location to which any German relocation plan produced results, via the Haavara Agreement between the Zionist Federation of Germany and the German government.{{sfn|Fischel|2010|p=264}} This resulted in the transfer of about 60,000 German Jews and $100{{nbsp}}million from Germany to Palestine, but it ended with the outbreak of World War II.{{sfn|Chase|1999|p=xiii}} In May 1940 Madagascar became the focus of new deportation efforts{{sfn|Browning|2001}} because it had unfavorable living conditions that would hasten deaths.{{sfn|Naimark|2001|p=73}} Several German leaders had discussed the idea in 1938, and Adolf Eichmann's office was ordered to carry out resettlement planning, but no evidence of planning exists until after the fall of France in June 1940.{{sfn|Browning|2004|pp=81–85}} But the inability to defeat Britain prevented the movement of Jews across the seas,{{sfn|Browning|2004|p=88}} and the end of the Madagascar Plan was announced on 10 February 1942.{{sfn|Hildebrand|1984|p=70}}

World War II

Occupied countries

Poland

When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, it gained control of about 2 million Jews in the occupied territory. The rest of Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union, which had control of the rest of Poland's pre-war population of 3.3–3.5 million Jews.{{sfn|Crowe|2008|pp=158–159}} German plans for Poland included expelling gentile Poles from large areas, confining Jews, and settling Germans on the emptied lands.{{sfn|Bergen|2016|pp=136–137}} The Germans initiated a policy of sending Jews from all territories they had recently annexed (Austria, Czechoslovakia, and western Poland) to the central section of Poland, which they called the General Government. There, the Jews were concentrated in ghettos in major cities,{{sfn|Black|2016|p=29}} chosen for their railway lines to facilitate later deportation.{{sfn|Browning|2004|pp=111–113}} Food supplies were restricted, public hygiene was difficult, and the inhabitants were often subjected to forced labor.{{sfn|Black|2016|pp=29–30}} In the work camps and ghettos, at least half a million Jews died of starvation, disease, and poor living conditions.{{sfn|Bergen|2016|p=146}} Jeremy Black writes that the ghettos were not intended, in 1939, as a step towards the extermination of the Jews. Instead, they were viewed as part of a policy of creating a territorial reservation to contain them.{{sfn|Black|2016|p=31}}{{efn|After the invasion of Poland, the Germans planned to set up a Jewish reservation in southeast Poland around the transit camp in Nisko, but the "Nisko Plan" failed, in part because it was opposed by Hans Frank, the new Governor-General of the General Government territory.{{sfn|Black|2016|p=31}}^[25]{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=264}} Adolf Eichmann was assigned to remove Jews from Germany, Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to the reservation.{{sfn|Cesarani|2004|pp=77–79}} Although the idea was to remove 80,000 Jews, Eichmann had managed to send only 4,700 by March 1940, and the plan was abandoned in April.{{sfn|Cesarani|2004|pp=259–260, 280, 288}} By mid-October the idea of a Jewish reservation had been revived by Heinrich Himmler, because of the influx of Germanic settlers into the Warthegau.{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|pp=261–263}} Resettlement continued until January 1941 under Odilo Globocnik,{{sfn|Cesarani|2004|p=266}} and included both Jews and Poles.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=156–159}} By that time 95,000 Jews were already concentrated in the area,{{sfn|Edelheit|1994|p=52}} but the plan to deport up to 600,000 additional Jews to the Lublin reservation failed for logistical and political reasons.{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=262}}}}

Other occupied countries

The Germans invaded the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, and France in May 1940. In the Netherlands, the Germans installed Arthur Seyss-Inquart as Reichskommissar, who quickly began to persecute the approximately 140,000 Dutch Jews. Jews were forced out of their jobs and had to register with the government. Non-Jewish Dutch citizens protested these measures, and in February 1941 they staged a strike that was quickly crushed.{{sfn|McKale|2002|pp=162–163}} After Belgium's surrender at the end of May 1940, it was ruled by a German military governor, Alexander von Falkenhausen, who enacted anti-Jewish measures against the country's 90,000 Jews, many of whom were refugees from Germany or Eastern Europe.{{sfn|McKale|2002|p=164}}

France had approximately 300,000 Jews, divided between the German-occupied north and the unoccupied collaborationist southern areas under the Vichy regime. The occupied regions were under the control of a military governor, and there, anti-Jewish measures were not enacted as quickly as they were in the Vichy-controlled areas.{{sfn|McKale|2002|pp=165–166}} In July 1940, the Jews in the parts of Alsace-Lorraine that had been annexed to Germany were expelled into Vichy France.{{sfn|Zuccotti|1993|p=52}} Vichy France's government implemented anti-Jewish measures in French Algeria and the two French Protectorates of Tunisia and Morocco.{{sfn|Bauer|2001|pp=256–257}} Tunisia had 85,000 Jews when the Germans and Italians arrived in November 1942. An estimated 5,000 Jews were subjected to forced labor.^[27]

Yugoslavia and Greece were invaded in April 1941 and surrendered before the end of the month. Germany and Italy divided Greece into occupation zones but did not eliminate it as a country. Yugoslavia, home to around 80,000 Jews, was dismembered; regions in the north were annexed by Germany and regions along the coast made part of Italy. The rest of the country was divided into the Independent State of Croatia, nominally an ally of Germany, and Serbia, which was governed by a combination of military and police administrators.{{sfn|McKale|2002|pp=192–193}} According to historian Jeremy Black, Serbia was declared free of Jews in August 1942.{{sfn|Black|2016|p=134}} Croatia's ruling party, the Ustashe, killed the country's Jews, and killed or expelled Orthodox Christian Serbs and Muslims.{{sfn|McKale|2002|pp=192–193}} Jews and Serbs alike were "hacked to death and burned in barns", according to Black. One difference between the Germans and Croatians was that the Ustashe allowed its Jewish and Serbian victims to convert to Catholicism so they could escape death.{{sfn|Black|2016|p=134}}

Germany's allies

Romania implemented anti-Jewish measures in May and June 1940 as part of its efforts towards an alliance with Germany. Jews were forced from government service, pogroms were carried out, and by March 1941 all Jews had lost their jobs and had their property confiscated.{{sfn|Black|2016|pp=131–133}} After Romania joined the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, at least 13,266 Jews were killed in the Iași pogrom,{{sfn|Friling|Ioanid|Ionesc|2004|pp=125–126}} and Romanian troops carried out massacres in Romanian-controlled territory, including the Odessa massacre of 20,000 Jews in Odessa in late 1941. Romania also set up concentration camps under its control in Transnistria, where 154,000–170,000 Jews were deported from 1941 to 1943.{{sfn|Black|2016|pp=131–133}}

Italy introduced some antisemitic measures, but there was less antisemitism there than in Germany, and Italian-occupied countries were generally safer for Jews than German-occupied territories. In some areas, the Italian authorities even tried to protect Jews, such as in the Croatian areas of the Balkans. But while Italian forces in Russia were not as vicious towards Jews as the Germans, they did not try to stop German atrocities either. There were no deportations of Italian Jews to Germany while Italy remained an ally.{{sfn|Black|2016|pp=137–139}} Several forced labor camps for Jews were established in Italian-controlled Libya. Almost 2,600 Libyan Jews were sent to camps, where 562 died.^[28]

Finland was pressured in 1942 to hand over its 150–200 non-Finnish Jews to Germany. After opposition from the government and public, eight non-Finnish Jews were deported in late 1942; only one survived the war.{{sfn|Black|2016|p=140}} Japan had little antisemitism in its society and did not persecute Jews in most of the territories it controlled. Jews in Shanghai were confined, but despite German pressure they were not killed.{{sfn|Black|2016|p=141}}

Anti-Jewish measures were introduced in Slovakia, which would later deport its Jews to German concentration and extermination camps.{{sfn|Black|2016|pp=134–135}} Bulgaria introduced anti-Jewish measures in 1940 and 1941, including the requirement to wear a yellow star, the banning of mixed marriages, and the loss of property. Bulgaria annexed Thrace and Macedonia, and in February 1943 agreed to deport 20,000 Jews to Treblinka; all 11,000 Jews from the annexed territories were sent to their deaths, and plans were made to deport an additional 6,000–8,000 Bulgarian Jews from Sofia to meet the quota.{{sfn|Rozett|Spector|2013|p=161}} When the plans became public, the Orthodox Church and many Bulgarians protested, and King Boris III canceled the deportation of Jews native to Bulgaria.{{sfn|Black|2016|pp=136–137}} Instead, they were expelled to the interior pending further decision.{{sfn|Rozett|Spector|2013|p=161}} Although Hungary expelled Jews who were not citizens from its newly annexed lands in 1941, it did not deport most of its Jews{{sfn|Black|2016|p=135}} until the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944. Between 15 May and 9 July 1944, 440,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz.^[29] In late 1944 in Budapest, nearly 80,000 Jews were killed by the Hungarian Arrow Cross battalions.{{sfn|Rozett|Spector|2013|p=274}}

Concentration and labor camps

The Third Reich first used concentration camps as places of unlawful incarceration of political opponents and other "enemies of the state". Large numbers of Jews were not sent there until after Kristallnacht in November 1938.{{sfn|Baumel|2001|p=135}} Although death rates were high, the camps were not designed as killing centers.{{sfn|Fischel|2010|pp=50–52}} After war broke out in 1939, new camps were established, some outside Germany in occupied Europe.^[30] In January 1945, the SS reports had over 700,000 prisoners in their control, of which close to half had died by the end of May 1945 according to most historians.^[31] Most wartime prisoners of the camps were not Germans but belonged to countries under German occupation.{{sfn|Wachsmann|2015|pp=287–288}}

After 1942, the economic functions of the camps, previously secondary to their penal and terror functions, came to the fore. Forced labor of camp prisoners became commonplace.{{sfn|Baumel|2001|p=135}} The guards became much more brutal, and the death rate increased as the guards not only beat and starved prisoners, but killed them more frequently.{{sfn|Wachsmann|2015|pp=287–288}} Vernichtung durch Arbeit ("extermination through labor") was a policy—camp inmates would literally be worked to death, or to physical exhaustion, at which point they would be gassed or shot.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=314–320}} The Germans estimated the average prisoner's lifespan in a concentration camp at three months, due to lack of food and clothing, constant epidemics, and frequent punishments for the most minor transgressions.{{sfn|Black|2016|p=76}} The shifts were long and often involved exposure to dangerous materials.{{sfn|Black|2016|p=104}}

Transportation between camps was often carried out in freight cars with prisoners packed tightly. Long delays would take place; prisoners might be confined in the cars on sidings for days.{{sfn|Rozett|1990|p=1222}} In mid-1942 work camps began requiring newly arrived prisoners to be placed in quarantine for four weeks.{{sfn|Wachsmann|2015|p=347}} Prisoners wore colored triangles on their uniforms, the color of the triangle denoting the reason for their incarceration. Red signified a political prisoner, Jehovah's Witnesses had purple triangles, "asocials" and criminals wore black and green. Badges were pink for gay men and yellow for Jews.{{sfn|Wachsmann|2015|pp=125–127, 623}} Jews had a second yellow triangle worn with their original triangle, the two forming a six-pointed star.{{sfn|Yahil|1990|p=134}}{{sfn|Wachsmann|2015|p=119}} In Auschwitz, prisoners were tattooed with an identification number on arrival.{{sfn|Harran|2000|p=461}}

Ghettos

After invading Poland, the Germans established ghettos in the incorporated territories and General Government to confine Jews.{{sfn|Black|2016|p=29}} The ghettos were formed and closed off from the outside world at different times and for different reasons.{{sfn|Browning|1986|pp=345–348}}{{sfn|Hilberg|2003|pp=216–7}} For example, the Łódź ghetto was closed in April 1940,{{sfn|Black|2016|p=29}} to force the Jews inside to give up money and valuables;{{sfn|Yahil|1990|p=166}} the Warsaw ghetto was closed for health considerations (for the people outside, not inside, the ghetto),{{sfn|Yahil|1990|p=169}} but this did not happen until November 1940;{{sfn|Black|2016|p=29}} and the Kraków ghetto was not established until March 1941.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=161}} The Warsaw Ghetto contained 380,000 people{{sfn|Black|2016|p=29}} and was the largest ghetto in Poland; the Łódź Ghetto was the second largest,{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=167}} holding between 160,000{{sfn|Yahil|1990|p=165}} to 223,000.{{sfn|Bergen|2016|p=148}} Because of the long drawn-out process of establishing ghettos, it is unlikely that they were originally considered part of a systematic attempt to eliminate Jews completely.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=166}}

The Germans required each ghetto to be run by a Judenrat, or Jewish council.{{sfn|Trunk|1996|pp=1–6}} Councils were responsible for a ghetto's day-to-day operations, including distributing food, water, heat, medical care, and shelter. The Germans also required councils to confiscate property, organize forced labor, and, finally, facilitate deportations to extermination camps.{{sfn|Hilberg|1993|p=106}} The councils' basic strategy was one of trying to minimize losses, by cooperating with German authorities, bribing officials, and petitioning for better conditions or clemency.{{sfn|Hilberg|1993|p=170}}

Eventually, the Germans ordered the councils to compile lists of names of deportees to be sent for "resettlement".{{sfn|Bergen|2016|pp=150–152}} Although most ghetto councils complied with these orders,{{sfn|Hilberg|1980|p=104}} many councils tried to send the least useful workers or those unable to work.{{sfn|Bergen|2016|pp=150–151}} Leaders who refused these orders were shot. Some individuals or even complete councils committed suicide rather than cooperate with the deportations.{{sfn|Berenbaum|2006|pp=81–83}} Others, like Chaim Rumkowski, who became the "dedicated autocrat" of Łódź,{{sfn|Hilberg|1993|p=109}} argued that their responsibility was to save the Jews who could be saved and that therefore others had to be sacrificed.{{sfn|Berenbaum|2006|pp=79–81}} The councils' actions in facilitating Germany's persecution and murder of ghetto inhabitants was important to the Germans.{{sfn|Hilberg|2003|p=1111}} When cooperation crumbled, as happened in the Warsaw ghetto after the Jewish Combat Organisation displaced the council's authority, the Germans lost control.{{sfn|Snyder|2010|p=285}}

Ghettos were intended to be temporary until the Jews were deported to other locations, which never happened. Instead, the inhabitants were sent to extermination camps. The ghettos were, in effect, immensely crowded prisons serving as instruments of "slow, passive murder."{{sfn|Berenbaum|2006|p=114}} Though the Warsaw Ghetto contained 30% of Warsaw's population, it occupied only 2.5% of the city's area, averaging over 9 people per room.{{sfn|Dwork|van Pelt|2003|p=239}} Between 1940 and 1942, starvation and disease, especially typhoid, killed many in the ghettos.{{sfn|Dwork|van Pelt|2003|pp=242–243}} Over 43,000 Warsaw ghetto residents, or one in ten of the total population, died in 1941;^[33] in Theresienstadt, more than half the residents died in 1942.{{sfn|Berenbaum|2006|p=114}}

Himmler ordered the closure of ghettos in Poland in mid-July 1942; most inhabitants were sent to extermination camps. Those Jews needed for war production would be confined in concentration camps.{{sfn|Yahil|1990|p=378}} The deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto began on 22 July; over the almost two months of the Aktion, until 12 September, the population was reduced from 350,000 to 65,000. Those deported were transported in freight trains to the Treblinka extermination camp.{{sfn|Yahil|1990|pp=378–380}} Similar deportations happened in other ghettos, with many ghettos totally emptied.{{sfn|Yahil|1990|pp=382–385}} The first ghetto uprisings occurred in mid-1942 in small community ghettos.{{sfn|Yahil|1990|pp=474–478}} Although there were armed resistance attempts in both the larger and smaller ghettos in 1943, in every case they failed against the overwhelming German military force, and the remaining Jews were either killed or deported to the death camps.{{sfn|Berenbaum|2006|pp=175–177}}

Pogroms

Pogroms occurred in several countries occupied by, or supportive of, Germany, attacks that were both encouraged by the Germans and carried out without their involvement.{{sfn|Bergen|2016|p=195}} Thousands of Jews were killed in January and June 1941 in the Bucharest pogrom and Iaşi pogrom in Romania, a German ally.{{sfn|Dwork|van Pelt|2003|pp=267–272}} According to a 2004 report written by Tuvia Friling and others, up to 14,850 Jews died during the Iaşi pogrom.{{sfn|Friling|Ioanid|Ionesc|2004|p=126}} The Romanian military killed up to 25,000 Jews in Odessa, then under Romanian control, between 18 October 1941 and March 1942, assisted by gendarmes and the police.{{sfn|Friling|Ioanid|Ionesc|2004|p=150}} Mihai Antonescu, Romania's deputy prime minister, is reported as saying it was "the most favorable moment in our history" to solve the "Jewish problem".{{sfn|Dwork|van Pelt|2003|p=272}} In July 1941 he said it was time for "total ethnic purification, for a revision of national life, and for purging our race of all those elements which are foreign to its soul, which have grown like mistletoes and darken our future".{{sfn|Dwork|van Pelt|2003|p=269}}

In the Lviv pogroms in occupied Poland in July 1941, some 6,000 Polish Jews were murdered in the streets, on top of 3,000 arrests and mass shootings by Einsatzgruppe C.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=194}}{{efn|Some scholars say the Lviv pogroms were orchestrated by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists,{{sfn|Amar|2015|p=99}} other scholars are less sure.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=194}} }} During the Jedwabne pogrom, on 10 July 1941, a group of 40 Polish men killed several hundred Jews; around 300 were burned alive in a barn. The attack is thought to have been organized by the German Security Police (Sicherheitsdienst).^[34] A long debate about who was responsible for the Jedwabne murders was triggered in 2001 by the publication of Jan T. Gross's book The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland.{{sfn|Gross|2002}} The response to the book was described as "the most prolonged and far-reaching of any discussion of the Jewish issue in Poland since the Second World War".{{sfn|Polonsky|Michlic|2004|p=xiii}}

Death squads

Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941.{{sfn|Evans|1989|p=59}} German propaganda portrayed the war against the Soviet Union as both an ideological war between German National Socialism and Jewish Bolshevism and a racial war between the Germans and the Jewish, Romani and Slavic Untermenschen ("sub-humans").{{sfn|Burleigh|2001|pp=512, 526–527}} Local populations in some occupied Soviet territories actively participated in the killing of Jews and others, and helped identify and round up Jews.{{sfn|Matthäus|2004|p=268}} German involvement ranged from active instigation and involvement to general guidance.{{sfn|Matthäus|2004|p=275}} In Lithuania, Latvia, and western Ukraine, locals were deeply involved in the murder of Jews from the beginning of the German occupation. Some of these Latvian and Lithuanian units also participated in the murder of Jews in Belarus. In the south, Ukrainians killed about 24,000 Jews and some went to Poland to serve as concentration and death-camp guards.{{sfn|Matthäus|2004|p=268}} Military units from some countries allied to Germany also killed Jews. Romanian units were given orders to exterminate and wipe out Jews in areas they controlled.{{sfn|Matthäus|2004|pp=275–276}} Ustaše militia in Croatia persecuted and murdered Jews, among others.{{sfn|Black|2016|p=134}} Many of the killings were carried out in public, a change from previous practice.{{sfn|Matthäus|2004|pp=270–271}}

The mass killings of Jews in the occupied Soviet territories were assigned to four SS formations called Einsatzgruppen ("task groups"), which were under Heydrich's overall command. Similar formations had been used to a limited extent in Poland in 1939, but the ones operating in the Soviet territories were much larger.{{sfn|Browning|2004|pp=224–225}} The Einsatzgruppen{{'s}} commanders were ordinary citizens: the great majority were professionals and most were intellectuals.{{sfn|Hilberg|2003|p=291}} By the winter of 1941–1942, the four Einsatzgruppen and their helpers had killed almost 500,000 people.{{sfn|Fischel|2010|p=67}} The largest massacre of Jews by the mobile killing squads in the Soviet Union was at a ravine called Babi Yar outside Kiev,{{sfn|Bergen|2016|pp=199–200}} where 33,771 Jews were killed in a single operation on 29–30 September 1941.{{sfn|Evans|2008|pp=226–227}}{{efn|The Germans continued to use the ravine for mass killings throughout the war, and the total killed there could have been as high as 100,000.{{sfn|Bergen|2016|p=199}} }} A mixture of SS and Security Police, assisted by Ukrainian police, carried out the killings.{{sfn|McKale|2002|p=203}} Although they did not actively participate in the killings, men of the German 6th Army helped round up the Jews of Kiev and transport them to be shot.{{sfn|Fritz|2011|pp=102–104}} By the end of the war, around two million are thought to have been victims of the Einsatzgruppen and their helpers in the local population and the German Army. Of those, about 1.3 million were Jews and up to a quarter of a million Roma.{{sfn|Bergen|2016|p=200}}

Gas vans

As the mass shootings continued in Russia, the Germans began to search for new methods of mass murder. This was driven by a need to have a more efficient method than simply shooting millions of victims. Himmler also feared that the mass shootings were causing psychological problems in the SS. His concerns were shared by his subordinates in the field.{{sfn|Fischel|1998|pp=42–43}} In December 1939 and January 1940, another method besides shooting was tried. Experimental gas vans equipped with gas cylinders and a sealed compartment were used to kill the disabled and mentally-ill in occupied Poland.{{sfn|Bergen|2016|p=160}} Similar vans, but using the exhaust fumes rather than bottled gas, were introduced to the Chełmno extermination camp in December 1941,{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=74}} and some were used in the occupied Soviet Union, for example in smaller clearing actions in the Minsk ghetto.{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=513}} They also were used for murder in Yugoslavia.{{sfn|Arad|2009|p=138}}

Final Solution

Wannsee Conference

SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Main Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA), convened what became known as the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942 at Am Großen Wannsee 56–58, a villa in Berlin's Wannsee suburb.^[38]^[35] The meeting had been scheduled for 9 December 1941, and invitations had been sent on 29 November, but it had been postponed.{{sfn|Gerlach|1998|p=764}}

In the view of Christian Gerlach, Hitler announced his decision to annihilate the Jews on or around 12 December 1941, probably on 12 December during a speech to the Gauleiters, part of the Nazi Party leadership.^[36] This was one day after the German declaration of war against the United States, which followed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December and the United States declaration of war on Japan on 8 December.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=80}} According to Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, Hitler had trusted American Jews, whom he assumed were all-powerful, to keep their government out of the war in the interests of German Jews. When America declared war, the Jews were blamed.{{sfn|Dwork|van Pelt|2003|p=279}} Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda, noted of Hitler's speech: "He warned the Jews that if they were to cause another world war, it would lead to their destruction. ... Now the world war has come. The destruction of the Jews must be its necessary consequence."{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=80}}{{efn|Goebbels noted: "Regarding the Jewish question, the Fuhrer is determined to clear the table. He warned the Jews that if they were to cause another world war, it would lead to their own destruction. Those were not empty words. Now the world war has come. The destruction of the Jews must be its necessary consequence. We cannot be sentimental about it. It is not for us to feel sympathy for the Jews. We should have sympathy rather with our own German people. If the German people have to sacrifice 160,000 victims in yet another campaign in the east, then those responsible for this bloody conflict will have to pay for it with their lives."{{sfn|Gerlach|1998|p=122}}}}

The 15 men present at Wannsee included Adolf Eichmann (head of Jewish affairs for the RSHA and the man who organized the deportation of Jews), Heinrich Müller (head of the Gestapo), and other party leaders and department heads.^[37] Thirty copies of the minutes were made. Copy no. 16 was found by American prosecutors in March 1947 in a German Foreign Office folder.{{sfn|Roseman|2003}} Written by Eichmann and stamped "Top Secret", the minutes were written in "euphemistic language" on Heydrich's instructions, according to Eichmann's later testimony.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=306}} The conference had several purposes. Discussing plans for a "final solution to the Jewish question" ("Endlösung der Judenfrage"), and a "final solution to the Jewish question in Europe" ("Endlösung der europäischen Judenfrage"),^[37] it was intended to share information and responsibility, coordinate efforts and policies ("Parallelisierung der Linienführung"), and ensure that authority rested with Heydrich. There was also discussion about whether to include the German Mischlinge (half-Jews).{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=84–85}} Heydrich told the meeting: "Another possible solution of the problem has now taken the place of emigration, i.e. the evacuation of the Jews to the East, provided that the Fuehrer gives the appropriate approval in advance."^[37] He continued:

These evacuations were regarded as provisional or "temporary solutions" ("Ausweichmöglichkeiten").{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=307}}{{efn|Wannsee-Protokoll: "Diese Aktionen sind jedoch lediglich als Ausweichmöglichkeiten anzusprechen, doch werden hier bereits jene praktischen Erfahrungen gesammelt, die im Hinblick auf die kommende Endlösung der Judenfrage von wichtiger Bedeutung sind."^[38]{{pb}}

Translation, Avalon Project: "These actions are, however, only to be considered provisional, but practical experience is already being collected which is of the greatest importance in relation to the future final solution of the Jewish question."^[37]}} The final solution would encompass the 11{{nbsp}}million Jews living not only in territories controlled by Germany, but elsewhere in Europe and adjacent territories, such as Britain, Ireland, Switzerland, Turkey, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, and Hungary, "dependent on military developments".{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=307}} There was little doubt what the final solution was, writes Peter Longerich: "the Jews were to be annihilated by a combination of forced labour and mass murder".{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=308}}

Extermination camps, gas chambers

Killing on a mass scale using gas chambers or gas vans was the main difference between the extermination and concentration camps.{{sfn|Jones|2006|p=153}} From the end of 1941, the Germans built six extermination camps in occupied Poland: Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Majdanek, Chełmno, and the three Operation Reinhard camps at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka II.^[17]^[39] Maly Trostenets, a concentration camp in the Reichskommissariat Ostland, became a killing centre in 1942.^[17] Gerlach writes that over three million Jews were murdered in 1942, the year that "marked the peak" of the mass murder of Jews.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=99}} At least 1.4 million of these were in the General Government area of Poland.{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|p=99, note 165}}

Using gas vans, Chełmno had its roots in the Aktion T4 euthanasia program.{{sfn|Montague|2012|pp=14–16, 64–65}} Majdanek began as a POW camp, but in August 1942 it had gas chambers installed.{{sfn|Black|2016|pp=70–71}} A few other camps are occasionally named as extermination camps, but there is no scholarly agreement on the additional camps; commonly mentioned are Mauthausen in Austria{{sfn|Fischel|2010|pp=57–58}} and Stutthof.{{sfn|Fischel|1998|p=81}} There may also have been plans for camps at Mogilev and Lvov.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=282}}

Victims usually arrived at the camps by freight train.{{sfn|Fischel|1998|pp=81–85}} Almost all arrivals at the Operation Reinhard camps of Treblinka, Sobibór, and Bełżec were sent directly to the gas chambers,{{sfn|Black|2016|pp=69–70}} with individuals occasionally selected to replace dead workers.^[40] At Auschwitz, camp officials usually subjected individuals to selections;{{sfn|Fischel|1998|pp=81–82}} about 25%{{sfn|Bauer|1994|p=156}} of the new arrivals were selected to work.{{sfn|Fischel|1998|pp=81–82}} Those selected for death at all camps were told to undress and hand their valuables to camp workers.{{sfn|Dwork|van Pelt|2003|pp=287–288}} They were then herded naked into the gas chambers. To prevent panic, they were told the gas chambers were showers or delousing chambers.{{sfn|Piper|1998b|p=173}} The procedure at Chełmno was slightly different. Victims there were placed in a mobile gas van and asphyxiated, while being driven to prepared burial pits in the nearby forests. There the corpses were unloaded and buried.{{sfn|Montague|2012|pp=76–85}}

At Auschwitz, after the chambers were filled, the doors were shut and pellets of Zyklon-B were dropped into the chambers through vents,{{sfn|Piper|1998b|p=162}} releasing toxic prussic acid, or hydrogen cyanide.{{sfn|Piper|1998b|p=157}} Those inside died within 20 minutes; the speed of death depended on how close the inmate was standing to a gas vent, according to the commandant Rudolf Höss, who estimated that about one-third of the victims died immediately.{{sfn|Piper|1998b|p=170}} Johann Kremer, an SS doctor who oversaw the gassings, testified that: "Shouting and screaming of the victims could be heard through the opening and it was clear that they fought for their lives."{{sfn|Piper|1998b|p=163}} The gas was then pumped out, the bodies were removed, gold fillings in their teeth were extracted, and women's hair was cut.{{sfn|Piper|1998b|pp=170–171}} The work was done by the Sonderkommando, work groups of mostly Jewish prisoners.{{sfn|Piper|1998b|p=172}} At Auschwitz, the bodies were at first buried in deep pits and covered with lime, but between September and November 1942, on the orders of Himmler, they were dug up and burned. In early 1943, new gas chambers and crematoria were built to accommodate the numbers.{{sfn|Piper|1998b|pp=163–164}}

At the three Reinhard camps the victims were killed by the exhaust fumes of stationary diesel engines.{{sfn|Black|2016|pp=69–70}} Gold fillings were pulled from the corpses before burial, but the women's hair was cut before death. At Treblinka, to calm the victims, the arrival platform was made to look like a train station, complete with fake clock.{{sfn|Fischel|1998|pp=83–84}} Majdanek used Zyklon-B gas in its gas chambers.{{sfn|Fischel|1998|pp=84–85}} In contrast to Auschwitz, the three Reinhard camps were quite small.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=330}} Most of the victims at these camps were buried in pits at first. Sobibór and Bełżec began exhuming and burning bodies in late 1942, to hide the evidence, as did Treblinka in March 1943. The bodies were burned in open fireplaces and the remaining bones crushed into powder.{{sfn|Arad|1987|pp=170–171}}

Jewish resistance

There was "practically no resistance" in the ghettos in Poland by the end of 1942, according to Peter Longerich.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=340–341}} Raul Hilberg accounted for this by evoking the history of Jewish persecution: as had been the case before, appealing to their oppressors and complying with orders might avoid inflaming the situation until the onslaught abated.{{sfn|Hilberg|2003|pp=1112–1128}} Henri Michel argued that resistance consisted not only of physical opposition but of any activity that gave the Jews humanity in inhumane conditions, while Yehuda Bauer defined resistance as actions that in any way opposed the German directives, laws, or conduct.{{sfn|Bauer|1997|p=117}} Hilberg cautioned against overstating the extent of Jewish resistance, arguing that turning isolated incidents into resistance elevates the slaughter of innocent people into some kind of battle, diminishes the heroism of those who took active measures to resist, and deflects questions about the survival strategies and leadership of the Jewish community.{{sfn|Hilberg|1996|pp= 126–137}} Timothy Snyder noted that it was only during the three months after the deportations of July–September 1942 that agreement on the need for armed resistance was reached.^[49]

Several resistance groups were formed, such as the Jewish Combat Organization in the Warsaw Ghetto and the United Partisan Organization in Vilna.{{sfn|Black|2016|pp=82–85}} Over 100 revolts and uprisings occurred in at least 19 ghettos and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The best known is the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, when around 1,000 poorly armed Jewish fighters held the SS at bay for four weeks.{{sfn|Black|2016|pp=83–84}}{{efn|According to Polish and Jewish accounts, hundreds or thousands of Germans were killed,{{sfn|Gutman|1994|p=243}} while the Germans reported 16 dead.{{sfn|Bergen|2016|p=269}} The Germans reported 14,000 Jews killed—7000 during the fighting and 7000 sent to Treblinka.{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=616}}—and between 53,000{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=636}} and 56,000 deported.{{sfn|Bergen|2016|p=269}}}} During a revolt in Treblinka on 2 August 1943, inmates killed five or six guards and set fire to camp buildings; several managed to escape.{{sfn|Arad|1987|pp=286, 293–294}}{{sfn|Fischel|1998|p=99}} In the Białystok Ghetto on 16 August 1943, Jewish insurgents fought for five days when the Germans announced mass deportations.{{sfn|Fischel|1998|pp=95–96}} On 14 October 1943, Jewish prisoners in Sobibór, including Jewish-Soviet prisoners of war, attempted an escape,{{sfn|Fischel|1998|p=98}} killing 11 SS officers and a couple of Ukrainian camp guards.{{sfn|Arad|1987|p=337}} Around 300 escaped, but 100 were recaptured and shot.^[50] On 7 October 1944, 300 Jewish members of the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz, who learned they were about to be killed, attacked their guards and blew up crematorium IV. Three SS officers were killed, one of whom was stuffed into an oven, as was a German kapo. None of the Sonderkommando rebels survived the uprising.{{sfn|Langbein|1998|pp=500–501}}

Estimates of Jewish participation in partisan units throughout Europe range from 20,000 to 100,000.{{sfn|Kennedy|2007|p=780}} In the occupied Polish and Soviet territories, thousands of Jews fled into the swamps or forests and joined the partisans,{{sfn|Fischel|1998|pp=100–101}} although the partisan movements did not always welcome them.{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=648}} An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 joined the Soviet partisan movement.{{sfn|Tec|2001|p=546}} One of the famous Jewish groups was the Bielski partisans in Belarus, led by the Bielski brothers.{{sfn|Fischel|1998|pp=100–101}} Jews also joined Polish forces, including the Home Army. According to Timothy Snyder, "more Jews fought in the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944 than in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943".{{sfn|Snyder|2010|p=302}}{{efn|French Jews were active in the French Resistance.{{sfn|Bergen|2016|p=273}} Zionist Jews formed the Armee Juive (Jewish Army), which participated in armed resistance under a Zionist flag, smuggled Jews out of the country,{{sfn|Zuccotti|1993|p=274}} and participated in the liberation of Paris and other cities.{{sfn|Zuccotti|1993|p=275}} As many as 1.5 million Jewish soldiers fought in the Allied armies, including 500,000 in the Red Army, 550,000 in the U.S. Army, 100,000 in the Polish army, and 30,000 in the British army. About 200,000 Jewish soldiers serving in the Red Army died in the war, either in combat or after capture.^[51] The Jewish Brigade, a unit of 5,000 Jewish volunteers from the British Mandate of Palestine, fought in the British Army.{{sfn|Laqueur|2001|p=351}}}}

Flow of information about the mass murder

The Polish government-in-exile in London learned about the extermination camps from the Polish leadership in Warsaw, who from 1940 "received a continual flow of information about Auschwitz", according to historian Michael Fleming.{{sfn|Fleming|2014a|p=35}} This was in large measure thanks to Captain Witold Pilecki of the Polish Home Army, who allowed himself to be arrested in Warsaw and spent 945 days in Auschwitz from September 1940 until April 1943, organizing the resistance movement inside the camp.^[52]

On 6 January 1942, the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vyacheslav Molotov, sent out diplomatic notes about German atrocities. The notes were based on reports about bodies surfacing from poorly covered graves in pits and quarries, as well as mass graves found in areas the Red Army had liberated, and on witness reports from German-occupied areas.{{sfn|Spector|1990|p=158}} The following month, Szlama Ber Winer escaped from the Chełmno concentration camp in Poland, and passed detailed information about it to the Oneg Shabbat group in the Warsaw Ghetto. His report, known by his pseudonym as the Grojanowski Report, had reached London by June 1942.^[43]^[53] Also in 1942, Jan Karski sent information to the Allies after being smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto twice.^[54]{{efn|Some reports have Karski infiltrating Bełżec disguised as a guard.{{sfn|Lukas|2012|p=159}} Other sources say he smuggled himself into a transit camp from which Jews were sent to Bełżec.{{sfn|Niewyk|Nicosia|2000|p=183}} }} On 27 April 1942, Vyacheslav Molotov sent out another note about atrocities.{{sfn|Spector|1990|p=158}} In late July or early August 1942, Polish leaders learned about the mass killings taking place inside Auschwitz. The Polish Interior Ministry prepared a report, Sprawozdanie 6/42,^[55] which said at the end:

The British and American governments were reluctant to publicize the intelligence they had received. A BBC Hungarian Service memo, written by Carlile Macartney, a BBC broadcaster and senior Foreign Office adviser on Hungary, stated in 1942: "We shouldn't mention the Jews at all." The British government's view was that the Hungarian people's antisemitism would make them distrust the Allies if Allied broadcasts focused on the Jews.^[57] The US government similarly feared turning the war into one about the Jews; antisemitism and isolationism were common in the US before its entry into the war.{{sfn|Novick|2000|pp=27–28}} Although governments and the German public appear to have understood what was happening, it seems the Jews themselves did not. According to Saul Friedländer, "[t]estimonies left by Jews from all over occupied Europe indicate that, in contradistinction to vast segments of surrounding society, the victims did not understand what was ultimately in store for them." In Western Europe, he writes, Jewish communities seem to have failed to piece the information together, while in Eastern Europe, they could not accept that the stories they heard from elsewhere would end up applying to them too.{{sfn|Friedländer|2010|p=23}}

Climax, Holocaust in Hungary

Most of the Jewish ghettos of General Government were liquidated in 1942–1943, and their populations shipped to the camps for extermination.{{sfn|Dwork|van Pelt|2003|pp=256–257}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=330–339, 375–379}}{{efn|The only exception was Lodz Ghetto, which was not liquidated until mid-1944.{{sfn|Dwork|van Pelt|2003|pp=256–257}} }} About 42,000 Jews were shot during the Operation Harvest Festival on 3–4 November 1943.^[58] At the same time, rail shipments arrived regularly from western and southern Europe at the extermination camps.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=360–373, 386–389, 390–396}} Few Jews were shipped from the occupied Soviet territories to the camps: the killing of Jews in this zone was mostly left in the hands of the SS, aided by locally recruited auxiliaries.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=345–353}}{{efn|One exception was the area around Bialystok, where over 100,000 Jews were deported to extermination camps, most to Treblinka but a few to Auschwitz.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=352–353}} }}

Shipments of Jews to the camps had priority over anything but the army's needs on the German railways, and continued even in the face of the increasingly dire military situation at the end of 1942.{{sfn|Yahil|1990|pp=376–378}} Army leaders and economic managers complained about this diversion of resources and the killing of skilled Jewish workers,{{sfn|Kwiet|2004|pp=61, 69–71, 76–77}} but Nazi leaders rated ideological imperatives above economic considerations.{{sfn|Kwiet|2004|pp=77–78}}

By 1943 it was evident to the armed forces leadership that Germany was losing the war.{{sfn|Fischer|1998|pp=536–538}} The mass murder continued nevertheless, reaching a "frenetic" pace in 1944.{{sfn|Black|2016|p=108}} Auschwitz was gassing up to 6,000 Jews a day by spring that year.^[59] On 19 March 1944, Hitler ordered the military occupation of Hungary and dispatched Eichmann to Budapest to supervise the deportation of the country's Jews.{{sfn|Evans|2002|p=95}} From 22 March, Jews were required to wear the yellow star; forbidden from owning cars, bicycles, radios or telephones; then forced into ghettos.{{sfn|Braham|2011|p=45}} From 15 May to 9 July, 440,000 Jews were deported from Hungary to Auschwitz-Birkenau, almost all to the gas chambers.{{efn|Braham (2011) and the USHMM give the figure as 440,000, Longerich (2010) as 437,000.{{sfn|Braham|2011|p=45}}{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=408}}^[60]}} A month before the deportations began, Eichmann offered to exchange one million Jews for 10,000 trucks and other goods from the Allies, the so-called "blood for goods" proposal.{{sfn|Fischel|2010|pp=31, 76–77}} The Times called it "a new level of fantasy and self-deception".{{sfn|Löb|2009|p=69|ps=, citing "A Monstrous 'Offer{{'}}", The Times, 20 July 1944.}}

Death marches

By mid-1944 those Jewish communities within easy reach of the Nazi regime had been largely exterminated,{{sfn|Black|2016|pp=107–109}} in proportions ranging from about 25 percent in France{{sfn|Weinberg|2001|p=219}} to more than 90 percent in Poland.{{sfn|Polonsky|2001|p=488}} On 5 May Himmler claimed in a speech that "the Jewish question has in general been solved in Germany and in the countries occupied by Germany".{{sfn|Longerich|2012|p=695}} As the Soviet armed forces advanced, the camps in eastern Poland were closed down, with surviving inmates shipped to camps closer to Germany.{{sfn|Bergen|2016|pp=290–292}} Efforts were made to conceal evidence of what had happened. The gas chambers were dismantled, the crematoria dynamited, and the mass graves dug up and the corpses cremated.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=410–412}} Local commanders continued to kill Jews, and to shuttle them from camp to camp by forced "death marches".^[61] Already sick after months or years of violence and starvation, some were marched to train stations and transported for days at a time without food or shelter in open freight cars, then forced to march again at the other end to the new camp. Others were marched the entire distance to the new camp. Those who lagged behind or fell were shot. Around 250,000 Jews died during these marches.{{sfn|Friedländer|2007|pp=648–650}}

Liberation

The first major camp to be encountered by Allied troops, Majdanek, was discovered by the advancing Soviets on 25 July 1944.{{sfn|Niewyk|Nicosia|2000|p=165}} Treblinka, Sobibór, and Bełżec were never liberated, but were destroyed by the Germans in 1943.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|p=411}} Auschwitz was liberated, also by the Soviets, on 27 January 1945;{{sfn|Hitchcock|2008|p=283}} Buchenwald by the Americans on 11 April;{{sfn|Hitchcock|2008|p=297}} Bergen-Belsen by the British on 15 April;{{sfn|Hitchcock|2008|p=340}} Dachau by the Americans on 29 April;{{sfn|Gilbert|1985|p=798}} Ravensbrück by the Soviets on 30 April;{{sfn|Wachsmann|2015|p=577}} and Mauthausen by the Americans on 5 May.{{sfn|Gilbert|1985|pp=808–809}} The Red Cross took control of Theresienstadt on 4 May, days before the Soviets arrived.{{sfn|Gilbert|1985|p=810}}{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=762}}

The Soviets found 7,600 inmates in Auschwitz.{{sfn|Hitchcock|2008|p=289}} Some 60,000 prisoners were discovered at Bergen-Belsen by the British 11th Armoured Division;^[62] 13,000 corpses lay unburied, and another 10,000 people died from typhus or malnutrition over the following weeks.^[63] The BBC's war correspondent, Richard Dimbleby, described the scenes that greeted him and the British Army at Belsen, in a report so graphic the BBC declined to broadcast it for four days, and did so, on 19 April, only after Dimbleby had threatened to resign.{{sfn|Bell|2017|p=100}}

Death toll

According to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, "[a]ll the serious research" confirms that between five and six million Jews died.^[77] Early postwar calculations were 4.2 to 4.5 million from Gerald Reitlinger;{{sfn|Michman|2012|p=197}} 5.1 million from Raul Hilberg; and 5.95 million from Jacob Lestschinsky.{{sfn|Bauer|Rozett|1990|p=1797}} In 1986 Lucy S. Dawidowicz used the pre-war census figures to estimate 5.934 million.{{sfn|Dawidowicz|1986|p=403}} Yehuda Bauer and Robert Rozett in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (1990) estimated 5.59–5.86 million.{{sfn|Bauer|Rozett|1990|p=1799}} A 1996 study led by Wolfgang Benz suggested 5.29 to 6.2 million, based on comparing pre- and post-war census records and surviving German documentation on deportations and killings.^[65] Martin Gilbert arrived at a minimum of 5.75 million.{{sfn|Gilbert|2001|p=245}} The figures include over one million children.^[66]

The Jews killed represented around one third of the world population of Jews,{{sfn|Gilbert|2001|p=291}} and about two-thirds of European Jewry, based on an estimate of 9.7 million Jews in Europe at the start of the war.^[67] Much of the uncertainty stems from the lack of a reliable figure for the number of Jews in Europe in 1939, numerous border changes that make avoiding double-counting of victims difficult, lack of accurate records from the perpetrators, and uncertainty about whether deaths occurring months after liberation, but caused by the persecution, should be counted.{{sfn|Michman|2012|p=197}}

Almost all Jews within areas occupied by the Germans were killed. There were 3,020,000 Jews in the Soviet Union in 1939, and the losses were 1–1.1 million.{{sfn|Bauer|Rozett|1990|pp=1799–1802}} Around one million Jews were killed by the Einsatzgruppen in the occupied Soviet territories.{{sfn|Niewyk|Nicosia|2000|pp=221–222}}{{sfn|Rhodes|2002|p=274}} Of Poland's 3.3 million Jews, about 90 percent were killed.{{sfn|Polonsky|2001|p=488}} Many more died in the ghettos of Poland before they could be deported.{{sfn|Black|2016|pp=29–31}} The death camps accounted for half the number of Jews killed; 80–90 percent of death-camp victims are estimated to have been Jews.{{sfn|Dawidowicz|1986|p=403}} At Auschwitz-Birkenau the Jewish death toll was 1.1 million;^[41]^[68] Treblinka 870,000–925,000;^[69] Bełżec 434,000–600,000;^[70]^[42] Chełmno 152,000–320,000;^[71]^[43] Sobibór 170,000–250,000;^[72]^[46] and Majdanek 79,000.^[44]

Other victims of Nazi persecution

Roma

The Roma refer to the genocide of the Romani people as the Pořajmos.{{sfn|Huttenbach|2016|p=31}} Because they are traditionally a private people with a culture based on oral history, less is known about their experience than that of any other group.{{sfn|Niewyk|Nicosia|2000|p=47}} Bauer writes that this can be attributed to the Roma's distrust and suspicion, and to their humiliation because some of the taboos in Romani culture regarding hygiene and sex were violated at Auschwitz.{{sfn|Bauer|1998|p=453}} In May 1942, the Roma were placed under similar laws to the Jews. On 16 December 1942, Himmler issued a decree that "Gypsy Mischlinge [mixed breeds], Roma Gypsies, and members of the clans of Balkan origins who are not of German blood" should be sent to Auschwitz, unless they had served in the Wehrmacht.^[75] He adjusted the order on 15 November 1943; in the occupied Soviet areas, "sedentary Gypsies and part-Gypsies are to be treated as citizens of the country. Nomadic Gypsies and part-Gypsies are to be placed on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps."{{sfn|Bauer|1998|p=445}} Bauer argues that this adjustment reflected Nazi ideology that the Roma, originally an Aryan population, had been "spoiled" by non-Romani blood.{{sfn|Bauer|1998|p=446}}

The German view of the Roma as hereditary criminals and "asocials" was reflected in their classification in the concentration camps, where they were usually counted among the asocials and given black triangles to wear.{{sfn|Evans|2015a|pp=378–379}} According to Niewyk and Nicosia, at least 130,000 died out of nearly one million in German-occupied Europe.{{sfn|Niewyk|Nicosia|2000|p=47}} The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum calculates at least 220,000.^[76] Ian Hancock, who specializes in Romani history and culture, argues for between 500,000 and 1,500,000.{{sfn|Hancock|2004|pp=383–96}} The treatment of the Roma was not consistent across German-occupied territories. Those in France and the Low Countries were subject to restrictions on movement and some confinement to collection camps, while those in Central and Eastern Europe were sent to concentration camps and murdered by soldiers and execution squads.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=418–421}} Before being sent to the camps, the Roma were herded into ghettos, including several hundred into the Warsaw Ghetto.^[33] Further east, teams of Einsatzgruppen tracked down Romani encampments and murdered the inhabitants on the spot, leaving no records of the victims.{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=418–421}} After the Germans occupied Hungary, 1,000 Roma were deported to Auschwitz.{{sfn|Bloxham|2009|p=114}}{{efn|The Roma were also targeted by allies of the Germans, such as the Ustaše regime in Croatia, where a large number were killed in the Jasenovac concentration camp;{{sfn|Longerich|2010|pp=418–421}} the total killed in Croatia numbered around 28,000.{{sfn|Bloxham|2009|p=119}}}}

Ethnic Poles

The Nazis regarded the Slavs as subhuman, or Untermenschen,^[77] and their fate was outlined in genocidal Generalplan Ost.^[78] In November 1939 German planners called for "the complete destruction" of all Poles{{sfn|Gellately|2001|p=153}} and resettlement of the land by German colonists.{{sfn|Berghahn|1999|pp=32–33}} In a secret memorandum dated 25 May 1940, Himmler stated that it was in German interests to foster divisions between the ethnic groups in the East. He wanted to restrict non-Germans in the conquered territories to schools that would only teach them how to write their own name, count up to 500, and obey Germans.^[79]{{efn|Himmler's Generalplan Ost (General Plan East), agreed to by Hitler in the summer of 1942,{{sfn|Mazower|2008|pp=204–205}} involved exterminating, expelling, or enslaving all or most Slavs from their lands over a period of 20–30 years, to make living space for Germans.{{sfn|Mazower|2008|pp=208–211}}}} The Polish political leadership was the target of a campaign of murder (Intelligenzaktion and AB-Aktion).{{sfn|Bloxham|2009|p=112}}

Between 1.8 and 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish citizens perished at German hands during the course of the war; about four-fifths were ethnic Poles and the rest Ukrainians and Belarusians.^[74] At least 200,000 died in concentration camps, around 146,000 in Auschwitz. Others died in massacres or in uprisings such as the Warsaw Uprising, where 120,000–200,000 were killed.{{sfn|Piotrowski|1998|p=295}} During the occupation, the Germans adopted a policy of restricting food and medical services, as well as degrading sanitation and public hygiene.{{sfn|Szafranski|1960|p=43}} The death rate rose from 13 per 1000 before the war to 18 per 1000 during the war.{{sfn|Szafranski|1960|p=49}} Around 6 million of World War II victims were Polish citizens; half the death toll were Jews.{{sfn|Kochanski|2012|p=532}} Over the course of the war Poland lost 20 percent of its pre-war population.{{sfn|Kochanski|2012|p=532}} Over 90 percent of the death toll came through non-military losses, through various deliberate actions by Germany and the Soviet Union.{{sfn|Piotrowski|1998|p=295}} Polish children were also kidnapped by Germans to be "Germanized", with perhaps as many as 200,000 children stolen from their families.{{sfn|Lukas|2012|pp=25–27}}

Soviet citizens and POWs

Soviet civilian populations in the occupied areas were heavily persecuted.{{sfn|Bergen|2016|pp=186–192}} Villages throughout the Soviet Union were destroyed by German troops.{{sfn|Fritz|2011|pp=333–334}} Germans rounded up civilians for forced labor in Germany and caused famine by taking foodstuffs (see Hunger Plan).{{sfn|Bergen|2016|pp=214–215}} In Belarus, Germany imposed a regime that deported some 380,000 people for slave labor and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. Over 600 villages had their entire populations killed, and at least 5,295 Belarusian settlements were destroyed by the Germans. According to Timothy Snyder, of "the nine million people who were in the territory of Soviet Belarus in 1941, some 1.6 million were killed by the Germans in actions away from battlefields, including about 700,000 prisoners of war, 500,000 Jews, and 320,000 people counted as partisans (the vast majority of whom were unarmed civilians)".{{sfn|Snyder|2010|pp=250–251}} The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has estimated that 3.3 million of 5.7 million Soviet POWs died in German custody.^[80] The death rates decreased as the POWs were needed to help the German war effort; by 1943, half a million had been deployed as slave labor.{{sfn|Berenbaum|2006|p=125}}

Political and religious opponents

German communists, socialists and trade unionists were among the earliest opponents of the Nazis^[81] and among the first to be sent to concentration camps.{{sfn|Wachsmann|2015|p=125}} Before the invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler issued the Commissar Order, which ordered the execution of all political commissars and Communist Party members captured.^[82] Nacht und Nebel ("Night and Fog") was a directive of Hitler in December 1941, resulting in the disappearance of political activists throughout the German-occupied territories.{{sfn|Fischel|2010|p=184}}

Because they refused to pledge allegiance to the Nazi party or serve in the military, Jehovah's Witnesses were sent to concentration camps, where they were identified by purple triangles and given the option of renouncing their faith and submitting to the state's authority.{{sfn|Milton|2001|pp=346–349}} The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates that between 2,700 and 3,300 were sent to the camps, where 1,400 died;^[83] in The Holocaust Encyclopedia (2001), Sybil Milton estimates that 10,000 were sent and 2,500 died.{{sfn|Milton|2001|p=350}} According to German historian Detlef Garbe, "no other religious movement resisted the pressure to conform to National Socialism with comparable unanimity and steadfastness."{{sfn|Garbe|2001|p=251}}

Gay men

Around 50,000 German gay men were jailed between 1933 and 1945, and 5,000–15,000 are estimated to have been sent to concentration camps. It is not known how many died during the Holocaust.^[96]{{sfn|Harran|2000|p=108}} James Steakley writes that what mattered in Germany was criminal intent or character, rather than acts, and the "gesundes Volksempfinden" ("healthy sensibility of the people") became the guiding legal principle.{{sfn|Steakley|1974}} In 1936, Himmler created the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion.{{sfn|Longerich|2012|p=237}} The Gestapo raided gay bars, tracked individuals using the address books of those they arrested, used the subscription lists of gay magazines to find others, and encouraged people to report suspected homosexual behavior and to scrutinize the behavior of their neighbors.{{sfn|Steakley|1974}} Lesbians were left relatively unaffected;^[84] the Nazis saw them as "asocials", rather than sexual deviants.^[85] Gay men convicted between 1933 and 1944 were sent to camps for "rehabilitation", where they were identified by pink triangles.{{sfn|Steakley|1974}} Hundreds were castrated, sometimes "voluntarily" to avoid criminal sentences.{{sfn|Giles|1992|pp=45–7}} Steakley writes that the full extent of gay suffering was slow to emerge after the war. Many victims kept their stories to themselves because homosexuality remained criminalized in postwar Germany.{{sfn|Steakley|1974}}

Black people

The number of Afro-Germans in Germany when the Nazis came to power is variously estimated at 5,000–25,000.{{sfn|Lusane|2003|pp=97–8}} It is not clear whether these figures included Asians. Although blacks, including prisoners of war, in Germany and German-occupied Europe were subjected to incarceration, sterilization, murder, and other abuse, there was no programme to kill them all as there was for the Jews.^[86]

Aftermath

Trials

The Nuremberg trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the Allied forces after World War II in Nuremberg, Germany, to prosecute prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany. The first of these trials was the 1945–1946 trial of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT).{{sfn|Biddiss|2001|p=643}} This tribunal tried 22 political and military leaders of the Third Reich,{{sfn|Snyder|1976|p=255}} except for Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels, all of whom had committed suicide several months before.{{sfn|Biddiss|2001|p=643}}

The prosecution entered indictments against 24 major war criminals{{efn|Two of the indictments were dropped before the end of the trial. Robert Ley committed suicide in prison, and Gustav Krupp was judged unfit for trial.{{sfn|Biddiss|2001|p=643}} }} and seven organizations—the leadership of the Nazi party, the Reich Cabinet, the Schutzstaffel (SS), Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Gestapo, the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the "General Staff and High Command". The indictments were for: participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace; war crimes; and crimes against humanity. The tribunal passed judgements ranging from acquittal to death by hanging.{{sfn|Biddiss|2001|pp=643–644}} Eleven defendants were executed, including Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Rosenberg, and Alfred Jodl. Ribbentrop, the judgement declared, "played an important part in Hitler's 'final solution of the Jewish question'".{{sfn |Conot|1984|p=495}}

Further trials at Nuremberg took place between 1946 and 1949, which tried another 185 defendants.{{sfn|Biddiss|2001|p=646}} West Germany initially tried few ex-Nazis, but after the 1958 Ulm Einsatzkommando trial, the government set up a governmental agency to investigate crimes.{{sfn|Crowe|2008|p=412}} Other trials of Nazis and collaborators took place in Western and Eastern Europe. In 1960, Mossad agents captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to Israel to stand trial on 15 indictments, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against the Jewish people. He was convicted in December 1961 and executed in June 1962. Eichmann's trial and death revived interest in war criminals and the Holocaust in general.{{sfn|Crowe|2008|pp=430–433}}

Reparations

In March 1951, the government of Israel requested $1.5 billion from the Federal Republic of Germany to finance the rehabilitation of 500,000 Jewish survivors, arguing that Germany had stolen $6 billion from the European Jews. Israelis were divided about the idea of taking money from Germany. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (known as the Claims Conference) was opened in New York, and after negotiations, the claim was reduced to {{nowrap|$845 million}}.^[87]{{sfn|Zweig|2001|pp=531–532}}

In 1988, West Germany allocated another $125 million for reparations. Companies such as BMW, Deutsche Bank, Ford, Opel, Siemens, and Volkswagen faced lawsuits for their use of forced labor during the war.^[87] In response, Germany set up the "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future" Foundation in 2000, which paid €4.45 billion to former slave laborers (up to €7,670 each).^[88] In 2013, Germany agreed to provide €772 million to fund nursing care, social services, and medication for 56,000 Holocaust survivors around the world.^[89] The French state-owned railway company, the SNCF, agreed in 2014 to pay $60 million to Jewish-American survivors, around $100,000 each, for its role in the transport of 76,000 Jews from France to extermination camps between 1942 and 1944.^[90]

Motivation

In his 1965 essay "Command and Compliance", which originated in his work as an expert witness for the prosecution at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials, the German historian Hans Buchheim wrote there was no coercion to murder Jews and others, and all who committed such actions did so out of free will. Buchheim wrote that chances to avoid executing criminal orders "were both more numerous and more real than those concerned are generally prepared to admit",^[91] and that he found no evidence that SS men who refused to carry out criminal orders were sent to concentration camps or executed.{{sfn|Buchheim|1968|p=381}} Moreover, SS rules prohibited acts of gratuitous sadism, as Himmler wished for his men to remain "decent"; acts of sadism were carried out on the initiative of those who were either especially cruel or wished to prove themselves ardent National Socialists.{{r|Buchheim1968_3723}} Finally, he argued that those of a non-criminal bent who committed crimes did so because they wished to conform to the values of the group they had joined and were afraid of being branded "weak" by their colleagues if they refused.{{sfn|Buchheim|1968|pp=386–387}}

Similarly, in Ordinary Men (1992), Christopher Browning examined the deeds of German Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the Ordnungspolizei ("order police"), used to commit massacres and round-ups of Jews, as well as mass deportations to the death camps. The members of the battalion were middle-aged men of working-class background from Hamburg, who were too old for regular military duty. They were given no special training. During the murder of 1,500 Jews from Józefów in Poland, their commander allowed them to opt out of direct participation. Fewer than 12 men out of a battalion of 500 did so. Influenced by the Milgram experiment on obedience, Browning argued that the men killed out of peer pressure, not bloodlust.{{sfn|Browning|1998|p=57}}

Uniqueness question

In the first few decades after the Holocaust, scholars argued that it was unique as a genocide in its reach and specificity.{{sfn|Stone|2010|p=206}} This began to change in the 1980s during the West German Historikerstreit ("historians' dispute"), an attempt to re-position the Holocaust within German historiography. Ernst Nolte triggered the dispute in June 1986 with an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: "Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen will: Eine Rede, die geschrieben, aber nicht mehr gehalten werden konnte" ("The past that will not pass: A speech that could be written but not delivered"), in which he compared Auschwitz to the Gulag and suggested that the Holocaust was a response to Hitler's fear of the Soviet Union: "Was the Bolshevik murder of an entire class not the logical and factual prius of the 'racial murder' of National Socialism? ... Was the source of Auschwitz a past that would not go away?"{{efn|"War nicht der 'Archipel Gulag' ursprünglicher als 'Auschwitz'? War nicht der 'Klassenmord' der Bolschewiki das logische und faktische Prius des 'Rassenmords' der Nationalsozialisten? Sind Hitlers geheimste Handlungen nicht gerade auch dadurch zu erklären, daß er den 'Rattenkäfig' nicht vergessen hatte? Rührte Auschwitz vielleicht in seinen Ursprüngen aus einer Vergangenheit her, die nicht vergehen wollte?"^[93]}}

Nolte's views were widely denounced. The debate between the "specifists" and "universalists" was acrimonious; the former feared debasement of the Holocaust and the latter considered it immoral to hold the Holocaust as beyond compare.{{sfn|Samuels|2009|p=259}} In her book Denying the Holocaust (1993), Deborah Lipstadt viewed Nolte's position as a form of Holocaust denial, or at least "the same triumph of ideology over truth".^[94] Addressing Nolte's argument, Eberhard Jäckel wrote in Die Zeit in September 1986 that "never before had a state, with the authority of its leader, decided and announced that a specific group of humans, including the elderly, women, children and infants, would be killed as quickly as possible, then carried out this resolution using every possible means of state power".{{efn|name=Jäckel}} Despite the criticism of Nolte, Dan Stone wrote in 2010 that the Historikerstreit put "the question of comparison" on the agenda.{{sfn|Stone|2010|p=207}} He argued that the idea of the Holocaust as unique has been overtaken by attempts to place it within the context of early-20th-century Stalinism, ethnic cleansing, and the Nazis' intentions for post-war "demographic reordering", particularly the Generalplan Ost, the plan to kill tens of millions of Slavs to create living space for Germans.{{sfn|Stone|2010|pp=211–212}} The specifist position continued nevertheless to inform the views of many specialists. Richard J. Evans argued in 2015:

See also

Sources

Notes

Citations

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2. ^{{cite book |title=Holocaust Encyclopedia|chapter=Remaining Jewish Population of Europe in 1945 |date= |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |chapter-url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/remaining-jewish-population-of-europe-in-1945|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20180613204721/https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/remaining-jewish-population-of-europe-in-1945 |archivedate=13 June 2018|dead-url=no}}
3. ^For the date, see {{harvnb|Marcuse|2001|p=21}}.
4. ^{{cite web |title=Holocaust |work=Oxford Dictionaries |publisher=Oxford University Press |url=https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/holocaust |accessdate=4 October 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171005101041/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/holocaust |archive-date=5 October 2017 |dead-url=no}}
5. ^{{cite encyclopedia |editor-last=Whitney |editor-first=William Dwight |editor-link=William Dwight Whitney |year=1904 |title=Holocaust |encyclopedia=The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia |volume=4 |p=2859 |publisher= Century |oclc= 222373761 |url=https://archive.org/stream/centurydictio04whit#page/2858/mode/2up}}
6. ^{{harvnb|Crowe|2008|p=1}}; {{cite web |url=http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%206419.pdf |title=Holocaust |publisher=Holocaust Resource Center, Yad Vashem |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180205060512/http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206419.pdf |archive-date=5 February 2018 |dead-url=no}}{{pb}}{{cite web |title=The Holocaust: Definition and Preliminary Discussion |url=http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/resource_center/the_holocaust.asp |publisher=Holocaust Resource Center, Yad Vashem |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150626234806/http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/resource_center/the_holocaust.asp |archive-date=26 June 2015 |dead-url=no}}
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14. ^{{harvnb|Gray|2015|p=4}}; {{cite web |title=What Was the Holocaust? |url=https://www.ushmm.org/learn/introduction-to-the-holocaust |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20190202135845/https://www.ushmm.org/learn/introduction-to-the-holocaust |archivedate=2 February 2019|dead-url=no}}
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17. ^¹²{{cite web | url=https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005145 | title=Killing Centers: An Overview | publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | accessdate=30 September 2017 | work=Holocaust Encyclopedia | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170914220116/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005145 | archive-date=14 September 2017 | dead-url=no}}
18. ^{{harvnb|Bajohr|Pohl|2008|p=10}}, cited in {{harvnb|Stone|2010|p=109}}.
19. ^{{cite web |title=Antisemitism in History: World War I |work=Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007166 |accessdate=1 September 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150909064325/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007166 |archive-date=9 September 2015 |dead-url=no}}
20. ^{{cite web |title=Boycotts |publisher=Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota |work=Educational Resources |url=http://www.chgs.umn.edu/Educational_Resources/Curriculum/Broken_Threads/Boycotts/boycotts.html |deadurl=yes |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070611210724/http://www.chgs.umn.edu/Educational_Resources/Curriculum/Broken_Threads/Boycotts/boycotts.html |archivedate=11 June 2007}}
21. ^{{cite web |url=https://www.ushmm.org/propaganda/archive/poster-neues-volk/ |title=Poster promoting the Nazi monthly publication Neues Volk |work=Artifact Gallery |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |accessdate=5 October 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171006062728/https://www.ushmm.org/propaganda/archive/poster-neues-volk/ |archive-date=6 October 2017 |dead-url=no}}
22. ^Tolischus, Otto D. (21 December 1933). [https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C0CE6DC1531E333A25752C2A9649D946294D6CF "400,000 Germans to be sterilized"], The New York Times.
23. ^¹[https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007902 Nuremberg Laws] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171008080658/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007902 |date=8 October 2017 }}, Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 7 October 2017.
24. ^{{cite web |last=Cesarani |first=David |authorlink=David Cesarani |date=17 February 2011 |title=From Persecution to Genocide |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/radicalisation_01.shtml |publisher=BBC |work=History: World Wars |accessdate=25 September 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121022182910/http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/radicalisation_01.shtml |archive-date=22 October 2012 |dead-url=no}}
25. ^{{cite web |url=http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205965.pdf |title=Nisko and Lublin Plan |publisher=Yad Vashem |work=Holocaust Resource Center |accessdate=19 May 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170307151238/http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205965.pdf |archive-date=7 March 2017 |dead-url=no}}
26. ^{{harvnb|Stone|2010|p=14}}, citing Arne Johan Vetlesen (2005). Evil and Human Agency: Understanding Collective Evildoing. Cambridge University Press. {{isbn|978-0521856942}}
27. ^{{cite web |title=Tunisia |publisher=Yad Vashem |work=Shoah Resource Center |url=http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205892.pdf |accessdate=20 June 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090325211156/http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205892.pdf |archive-date=25 March 2009 |dead-url=no}}
28. ^{{cite web |author=Ochayon, Sheryl |title=The Jews of Libya |work=The International School for Holocaust Studies |url=http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/education/newsletter/25/jews_libya.asp |publisher=Yad Vashem |accessdate=1 September 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130925162551/http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/education/newsletter/25/jews_libya.asp |archive-date=25 September 2013 |dead-url=no}}
29. ^{{harvnb|Braham|2011|p=45}}; {{harvnb|Berenbaum|2002|p=9}}.
30. ^{{cite web |url=https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005144 |title=Nazi Camps |work=Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |accessdate=5 July 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180619040210/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005144 |archive-date=19 June 2018 |dead-url=no}}
31. ^{{cite web |url=https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007387 |title=Concentration Camp System: In Depth |work=Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |accessdate=5 July 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180706032827/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007387 |archive-date=6 July 2018 |dead-url=no}}
32. ^{{cite web |title=Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945 |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum|url=https://www.ushmm.org/research/publications/encyclopedia-camps-ghettos |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20170914214939/https://www.ushmm.org/research/publications/encyclopedia-camps-ghettos |archivedate=14 September 2017}}
33. ^¹{{cite web |title=Deportations to and from the Warsaw Ghetto |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005413 |work=Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |accessdate=27 September 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120921004507/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005413 |archive-date=21 September 2012 |dead-url=no}}
34. ^{{harvnb|Gross|2002}}, cited in {{harvnb|Longerich|2010|p=196}}.
35. ^{{harvnb|Gerlach|1998|p=759}}; {{cite web |title=Wannsee Conference and the 'Final Solution' |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/wannsee-conference-and-the-final-solution |website=Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20170928142922/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005477 |archivedate=28 September 2017|dead-url=no}}
36. ^{{harvnb|Gerlach|2016|p=80}}; for "Gauleiters", see {{harvnb|Dwork|van Pelt|2003|p=279}}.
37. ^¹²³⁴⁵⁶Original: {{cite web |title=Besprechungsprotokoll |url=https://www.ghwk.de/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf-wannsee/dokumente/protokoll-januar1942_barrierefrei.pdf |publisher=Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20190202072647/https://www.ghwk.de/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf-wannsee/dokumente/protokoll-januar1942_barrierefrei.pdf |archivedate=2 February 2019|dead-url=no}}{{pb}}English: {{cite web |title=Wannsee Protocol, January 20, 1942 |url=http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/wannsee.asp |website=The Avalon Project |publisher=Yale Law School |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20180816163214/http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/wannsee.asp |archivedate=16 August 2018|dead-url=no}}{{pb}}German: {{cite web |url=http://eudocs.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Wannsee-Protokoll |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060622052218/http://eudocs.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Wannsee-Protokoll|archive-date=22 June 2006 |title=Wannsee-Protokoll |work=EuroDocs |publisher=Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University|dead-url=no}}
38. ^{{cite web |url=http://eudocs.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Wannsee-Protokoll |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060622052218/http://eudocs.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Wannsee-Protokoll |dead-url=no |archive-date=22 June 2006 |title=Wannsee-Protokoll |work=EuroDocs |publisher=Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University}}
39. ^{{cite web |title= Treblinka |work= Holocaust Encyclopedia |url= https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005193 |publisher= United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20170914220114/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005193 |archive-date= 14 September 2017 |dead-url=no}}{{pb}}{{cite web |url=http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%205724.pdf |title=Aktion Reinhard |work=Holocaust Resource Center |publisher=Yad Vashem |accessdate=29 May 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170311230635/http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%205724.pdf |archive-date=11 March 2017 |dead-url=no}}
40. ^{{harvnb|Crowe|2008|p=243}}; {{harvnb|Arad|1987|p=98}}.
41. ^¹{{cite web |title= Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Camp |work= About the Holocaust |url= http://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/final-solution/auschwitz |publisher= Yad Vashem |accessdate= 2 October 2017 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20171005190544/http://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/final-solution/auschwitz |archive-date= 5 October 2017 |dead-url= no}}
42. ^¹{{cite web |title=Belzec |url=http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%205981.pdf |work=Holocaust Resource Center |publisher=Yad Vashem |accessdate=29 May 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141006110928/http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%205981.pdf |archive-date=6 October 2014 |dead-url=no }}
43. ^¹²{{cite web |title=Chelmno |work=Holocaust Resource Center |url=http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%202494.pdf |publisher=Yad Vashem |accessdate=29 May 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170201234425/http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%202494.pdf |archive-date=1 February 2017 |dead-url=no}}
44. ^¹{{cite web |title=Majdanek |url=http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%206622.pdf |work=Holocaust Resource Center |publisher=Yad Vashem |accessdate=29 May 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071127031515/http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%206622.pdf |archive-date=27 November 2007 |dead-url=no}}
45. ^{{cite web |title= Maly Trostinets |work= Holocaust Resource Center |url= http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%206636.pdf |publisher= Yad Vashem |accessdate= 29 May 2017 |archive-url= https://www.webcitation.org/6H6l4jr9f?url=http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%206636.pdf |archive-date= 3 June 2013 |dead-url=no}}
46. ^¹{{cite web |title= Sobibor |work= Holocaust Resource Center |url= http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%206030.pdf |publisher= Yad Vashem |accessdate= 29 May 2017 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20140123185124/http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206030.pdf |archive-date= 23 January 2014 |dead-url=no}}
47. ^{{cite web |title= Treblinka |work= Holocaust Resource Center |url= http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%205886.pdf |publisher= Yad Vashem |accessdate= 29 May 2017 |dead-url= no}}
48. ^{{cite web |title=Jews captured by Waffen SS soldiers during the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising |url=https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/museum_photos/02/08.asp |publisher=Yad Vashem |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20141009033921/https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/museum_photos/02/08.asp |archivedate=9 October 2014|dead-url=no}}
49. ^{{harvnb|Snyder|2010|p=283}}; {{harvnb|Longerich|2010|p=341}}.
50. ^{{harvnb|Arad|1987|p=341}}; {{harvnb|Fischel|1998|p=98}}.
51. ^{{cite web |title=Jewish Soldiers in the Allied Armies |url=http://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/combat-resistance/jewish-soldiers |publisher=Yad Vashem |work=About the Holocaust |accessdate=29 May 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170330015742/http://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/combat-resistance/jewish-soldiers |archive-date=30 March 2017 |dead-url=no}}
52. ^{{harvnb|Bartrop|2016|p=210}}; {{harvnb|Fleming|2014b|p=131}}.
53. ^{{cite web|title=Grojanowski Report|work=Shoah Resource Center|url=http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%206317.pdf|publisher=Yad Vashem|accessdate=1 September 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120206123556/http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%206317.pdf|archive-date=6 February 2012|dead-url=no}}
54. ^{{harvnb|Crowe|2008|p=354}}; {{harvnb|Niewyk|Nicosia|2000|p=183}}.
55. ^{{harvnb|Fleming|2014a|p=35}}; {{harvnb|Fleming|2014b|p=144}}.
56. ^{{cite newspaper | url = http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00A1FFC3B5D167B93CAA81789D95F468485F9 | subscription = yes | title = 11 Allies Condemn Nazi War on Jews | date = 18 December 1942 | newspaper = The New York Times }}{{pb}}{{cite newspaper | last=Frankel | first=Max | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/news/150th-anniversary-1851-2001-turning-away-from-the-holocaust.html | title=150th Anniversary: 1851–2001; Turning Away From the Holocaust | date=14 November 2001 | newspaper=The New York Times | access-date=20 December 2017 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171223063405/http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/news/150th-anniversary-1851-2001-turning-away-from-the-holocaust.html | archive-date=23 December 2017 | dead-url=no}}
57. ^{{cite news |last1=Thomson |first1=Mike |title=Could the BBC have done more to help Hungarian Jews? |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-20267659 |work=BBC News |date=13 November 2012 |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20180722192836/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-20267659 |archivedate=22 July 2018|dead-url=no}}{{pb}}Also see {{harvnb|Fleming|2014b|p=368, note 4}}, who cites Thomson.
58. ^{{cite web |title= Aktion 'Erntefest' (Operation 'Harvest Festival') |url= http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005222 |work= Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher= United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |accessdate= 29 May 2017 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20170310224217/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005222 |archive-date= 10 March 2017 |dead-url= no}}
59. ^{{cite web |title= Killing Centers |url= http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007327 |work= Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher= United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |accessdate= 29 May 2017 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20170506031425/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007327 |archive-date= 6 May 2017 |dead-url= no}}
60. ^[https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1942-1945/deportation-of-hungarian-jews "Deportation of Hungarian Jews"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171125004028/https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1942-1945/deportation-of-hungarian-jews |date=25 November 2017 }}, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 5 October 2017.
61. ^{{cite web |title=Map of the Death Marches |work=Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_nm.php?ModuleId=10005162&MediaId=382 |accessdate=1 September 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120816055537/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_nm.php?ModuleId=10005162&MediaId=382 |archive-date=16 August 2012 |dead-url=no}}
62. ^{{cite web |title=The 11th Armoured Division (Great Britain) |work=Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10006188 |accessdate=1 September 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120816011400/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10006188 |archive-date=16 August 2012 |dead-url=no}}
63. ^{{cite web |title=Bergen-Belsen |work=Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005224 |accessdate=1 September 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120815232046/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005224 |archive-date=15 August 2012 |dead-url=no }}
64. ^Dimbleby, Richard (15 April 1945). "Liberation of Belsen" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090213180129/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/4445811.stm |date=13 February 2009 }}. BBC News. Retrieved September 2012.{{pb}}"Richard Dimbleby reporting from Bergen-Belsen", [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hLYavpMSFs part 1/2] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180201173903/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hLYavpMSFs |date=1 February 2018 }}, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opn15-59L1I part 2/2] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141009112310/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opn15-59L1I |date=9 October 2014 }}, BBC News, courtesy of YouTube.
65. ^¹{{harvnb|Benz|1996}}{{page needed|date=July 2018}}
66. ^{{cite web |title=Children during the Holocaust |url=https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005142 |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20171009144440/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005142 |archivedate=9 October 2017}}
67. ^{{harvnb|Fischel|1998|p=87}}; {{harvnb|Bauer|Rozett|1990|p=1799}}.
68. ^{{harvnb|Piper|2000|pp=230–231}}; {{harvnb|Piper|1998a|p=62}}.
69. ^{{cite web |title=Treblinka |url=https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005193 |work=Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |accessdate=11 June 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170517185104/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005193 |archive-date=17 May 2017 |dead-url=no}}
70. ^{{cite web |title=Belzec |url=https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005191 |work=Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |accessdate=11 June 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170710035028/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005191 |archive-date=10 July 2017 |dead-url=no}}
71. ^{{cite web |title=Chelmno |url=https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005194 |work=Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |accessdate=11 June 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170828020505/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005194 |archive-date=28 August 2017 |dead-url=no}}
72. ^{{cite web |title=Sobibor |url=https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005192 |work=Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |accessdate=11 June 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170529020902/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005192 |archive-date=29 May 2017 |dead-url=no}}
73. ^¹²³⁴{{Cite web |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-and-nazi-persecution |title=Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum |date=4 February 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190309193501/https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-and-nazi-persecution |archive-date=9 March 2019 |dead-url=no}}
74. ^¹{{cite web |title=Polish Victims |website=Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |url=https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005473 |accessdate=1 June 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160507145904/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005473 |archive-date=7 May 2016 |dead-url=no}}
75. ^{{harvnb|Bauer|1998|p=444}}; also see {{harvnb|Longerich|2010|p=50}}.
76. ^{{cite web |title=Genocide of European Roma (Gypsies) |work=Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005219 |accessdate=1 September 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120902233609/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005219 |archive-date=2 September 2012 |dead-url=no}}
77. ^{{harvnb|Evans|2008|pp=174–175}}; {{harvnb|Snyder|1976|p=359}}.
78. ^{{cite book|author=Michael Geyer|title=Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IcB3oASHnkAC&pg=PA152|year=2009|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-89796-9|pages=152–153}}
79. ^{{harvnb|Longerich|2012|pp=450–452}}; {{harvnb|Fritz|2011|p=23}}.
80. ^{{cite web |title=Nazi Persecution of Soviet Prisoners of War |work=Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007178 |accessdate=1 September 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120822091145/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007178 |archive-date=22 August 2012 |dead-url=no}}
81. ^{{cite web |title=Non-Jewish Resistance |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007332 |work=Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |accessdate=29 May 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111120214424/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007332 |archive-date=20 November 2011 |dead-url=no}}
82. ^{{cite web |title= Commissar Order |url= http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007454 |work= Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher= United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |accessdate= 29 May 2017 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20170729104712/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007454 |archive-date= 29 July 2017 |dead-url= no}}
83. ^¹{{cite web |title=Jehovah's Witnesses |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |url=https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10006187 |work=Holocaust Encyclopedia |accessdate=29 June 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170411222547/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10006187 |archive-date=11 April 2017 |dead-url=no}}
84. ^¹²{{cite web |url=https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005261 |title=Persecution of Homosexuals in the Third Reich |work=Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180612135957/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005261 |archive-date=12 June 2018 |dead-url=no}}
85. ^{{cite web |url=https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005478 |title=Lesbians and the Third Reich |work=Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180612140447/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005478 |archive-date=12 June 2018 |dead-url=no}}
86. ^{{cite web |title= Blacks during the Holocaust |url= http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005479 |work= Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher= United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |accessdate= 29 May 2017 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20170426164033/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005479 |archive-date= 26 April 2017 |dead-url= no}}
87. ^¹{{cite web |url=http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205817.pdf |title=Reparations and Restitutions |work=Shoah Resource Center |publisher=Yad Vashem |accessdate=5 July 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170516212256/http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205817.pdf |archive-date=16 May 2017 |dead-url=no}}
88. ^{{cite web |url=https://www.bundesarchiv.de/zwangsarbeit/leistungen/direktleistungen/leistungsprogramm/index.html.en |title=Payment Programme of the Foundation EVZ |publisher=Bundesarchiv |accessdate=5 July 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181005014933/http://www.bundesarchiv.de/zwangsarbeit/leistungen/direktleistungen/leistungsprogramm/index.html.en |archive-date=5 October 2018 |dead-url=no}}
89. ^{{cite news |author=Staff |title=Holocaust Reparations: Germany to Pay 772 Million Euros to Survivors |date=29 May 2013 |newspaper=Spiegel Online International |url=http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-to-pay-772-million-euros-in-reparations-to-holocaust-survivors-a-902528.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141213061723/http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-to-pay-772-million-euros-in-reparations-to-holocaust-survivors-a-902528.html |archive-date=13 December 2014 |dead-url=no}}
90. ^{{harvnb|Bazyler|2005|p=173}}; {{cite news |author=Staff |title=Pour le rôle de la SNCF dans la Shoah, Paris va verser 100 000 euros à chaque déporté américain |newspaper=Le Monde/Agence France-Presse |url=http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/article/2014/12/05/etats-unis-paris-va-indemniser-les-victimes-de-la-shoah-transportees-par-la-sncf_4535530_3222.html |date=5 December 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141205193821/http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/article/2014/12/05/etats-unis-paris-va-indemniser-les-victimes-de-la-shoah-transportees-par-la-sncf_4535530_3222.html |archive-date=5 December 2014 |dead-url=no}}{{pb}}{{cite news |last=Davies |first= Lizzie |date=17 February 2009 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/feb/17/france-admits-deporting-jews |title=France responsible for sending Jews to concentration camps, says court |newspaper=The Guardian|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171010004913/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/feb/17/france-admits-deporting-jews |archive-date=10 October 2017 |dead-url=no}}
91. ^{{Harvnb|Buchheim|1968|pp=372–373}}.
92. ^{{harvnb|Kershaw|2002|p=277}}; also in {{harvnb|Kershaw|2008|p=186}}.
93. ^{{cite news |last1=Nolte |first1=Ernst |authorlink=Ernst Nolte |title=Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen will. Eeine Rede, die geschrieben, aber nicht gehalten werden konnte |url=https://www.staff.uni-giessen.de/~g31130/PDF/Nationalismus/ErnstNolte.pdf |work=Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung |date=6 June 1986}}{{pb}}"The Past That Will Not Pass" (translation) in {{harvnb|Knowlton|Cates|1993|pp=18–23}}.
94. ^{{harvnb|Lipstadt|1994|p=241}}; {{harvnb|Stone|2010|p=207}}.