The Final Solution

• The journey to the 'Final Solution'

  • In January 1942, a group of leading Nazis gathered in the elegant Berlin neighbourhood of Wannsee
  • Hitler didn't attend, but had given clear instructions
  • Those who attended the 'Wannsee Conference', as the meeting became known, were informed of the plan to kill all the Jewish people left in Europe - an estimated 11 million people - by working them to death, using poison gas or shooting
  • This plan became known as the 'Final Solution'
  • No one at the table objected to the plan, they simply discussed how it would be carried out
• The historical persecution of Jews

  • Antisemitism has been common inn Europe for many centuries
  • Among other things, Jewish people have been blamed for the death of Jesus Christ and the outbreak of the Black Death in the 1300s
  • From the Middle Ages, Christian culture associated Jews with wealth and power - this false antisemitic belief was accepted widely around Europe
  • At one time or another, Jews have been persecuted in nearly all European countries and many nations today have a record of antisemitic violence in their history
  • In 1290, for example, King Edward I expelled all Jews from England, and they were banned from returning for over 350 years
• The historial persecution of Jews pt. 2

  • The persecution of Jewish communities continued in Europe after the Middle Ages
  • Jews were often treated as outsiders, and had few civil rights
  • In the late 1800s, a German writer named Wilhelm Marr wrote that he thought Jews would soon illegally take control of all of Germany's highest political positions
  • It was Marr who first used the term 'antisemitism'
  • In Russia at this time, false documents were published that told of a secret Jewish plot to take over the world
  • Although the documents were proven fakes, they were distributed worldwide
  • There were several massacres of Jews in Russia in the late 1880s and early 1900s
  • By the turn of the twentieth century, antisemitism was widespread in many European countries, and Jews - who had no state of their own - were viewed with suspicion and mistrust
• The rise of Nazism

  • When Hitler came to power in 1933, he made Jews the convenient scapegoat for Germany's problems
  • He introduced laws and rules that made Jewish lives very difficult
  • Non-Jewish Germans were bombarded with speeches, news articles and even films showing how evil, selfish and damaging Jewish people were to the German nation
  • One Nazi-owned propaganda newspaper in 1934 had a headline that read 'Jewish Murder Plan Against Non-Jewish Mankind Uncovered', with a sub-heading that read 'The Jews Are Our Misfortune'
  • Jews were banned from having government jobs or careers in medicine, teaching or journalism
  • They were banned from public spaces like swimming pools and cinemas
• The rise of Nazism pt.2

  • In September 1935, came a series of laws called the Nuremberg Laws: the Reich Citizen Act said that no Jew could vote, whilst the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour banned marriage between Jews and non-Jews
  • In November 1938, under orders from Goebbels, SS troops carried out a nationwide campaign of terror against Jews
  • On Kristallnacht, or the 'Night of Broken Glass', around 10,000 Jewish shops had their windows broken
  • Around 100 Jews were killed, 20,000 were sent to concentration camps and nearly 200 synagogues were burned down
• The impact of war

  • Lots of Jews left Germany to live in nearby countries such as Holland and Belgium, but found themselves back under Nazi rule when Germany invaded and occupied those countries during the Second World War
  • As the war went on, and Hitler invaded more countries, more Jews became trapped under Hitler's rule all over Europe - 3 million Jews in Poland, up to 3 million in Russia and over 1 million in France, Denmark, Norway and the Balkans
• Ghettos and execution squads

  • Hitler's methods of dealing with Jewish people under his control were brutal
  • In some countries Jews were bricked into ghettos in the major cities, or sent to work in labour camps
  • Execution squads even went out into the countryside and shot or gassed as many Jews as they could find
  • But for some Nazis, the destruction of Europe's Jews was not happening quickly enough, and by the end of 1941 leading Nazis had begum working on plans for what they called 'a final solution to the Jewish question'
• The 'Final Solution'

  • At the Wannsee Conference in 1942, Nazi leaders discussed how to murder Europe's Jews - around 11 million people - either by working them to death or by killing them in poison gas chambers
  • 6 large death camps were built for this purpose - Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka
  • Soon Jews from all over German-occupied Europe were being transported to them
  • At the largest camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Jews were joined by thousands of Roma and Sinti, gay people, political opponents, disabled people and other 'undesirables'
  • Other camps were designed specifically for the extermination of Jewish people
• Fighting back: Jewish resistances

  • The Nazis tried to destroy Jewish life and culture - but Jewish people fought back in several ways
  • For example, secret schools, theatres and places of worship were set up in some ghettos
  • Also, some Jews violently rebelled against what was happening to them
  • In 1943, in the Warsaw ghetto in Poland, Jews rebelled against the German soldiers there
  • It took 43 days for the Germans to regain control
  • They then arrested and executed all those involved and burned down the ghetto
  • There were sometimes rebellions in death camps too
  • The best-known of all was in Treblinka in 1943
  • One of the prisoners managed to get into the weapons store when he handed out guns and grenades
  • After setting the camp on fire, 150 prisoners managed to escape, killing 15 guards in the process
  • However, the Nazis soon regained control and many escapees were killed
• Who knew about the final solution?

  • Around 6 million Jews were killed by Hitler's Nazis, and around 3 million of these deaths took place in death camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec and Treblinka
  • Thousands of people, not only loyal Nazis, helped with the 'Final Solution', including railway workers who loaded Jews onto cattle trucks bound for the camps, office clerks, typists, telephone operators, policemen and soldiers
  • Around 150 German companies used Auschwitsz-Birkenau prisoners as slaves to build their goods
  • Other firms competed for the contract to design and build the gas chambers and ovens in which people were murdered and burned
  • Many ordinary people, not only in Germany, knew what was going on too
  • In 1943, a newspaper in one of Germany's largest cities even carried the headline 'Jews to be exterminated'
  • Some people collaborated with the Nazis to gain an advantage for themselves or their families
• Who knew about the final solution?

  • For many years, there has been controversy over how much governments in other countries, such as the USA and Britain, knew about the Nazi death camps
  • Today, most historians agree that they knew what was happening, but decided against any action
  • In fact, when it was suggested to the Allied governments that they should bomb the death camps, the idea was rejected because they decided bomber planes should only be used to bomb German military targets, such as factories