Introduction to the Holocaust Part III

1. Introduction to the Holocaust Part III Daniel W. Blackmon IB HL History Coral Gables Sr. High

2. The Death Camps • Chelmno • Extermination began at Chelmno one day before the Wannsee Conference began. Victims were locked into gas vans and killed by carbon monoxide. The bodies were buried in pits after gold fillings had been extracted.

3. The Death Camps • Belzec • Operated from March 1942 until December 1942 • .Some 600,000 Jews were killed there.

4. The Death Camps • Sobibor • Operated from May 1942 to October 1943 • .Some 250,000 Jews were killed there • .The commander was Franz Stangl, who was then transferred to Treblinka

5. The Death Camps • Treblinka • .Operated from July 1942 to August 1943 • .Over 700,000 Jews were killed there.

6. The Death Camps • Treblinka • .Jews arrived at a train station at the foot of a hill on which the gas chambers were constructed. They were stripped naked and forced to run up the hill (the guards called it the Himmelstraße.

7. The Death Camps • Treblinka • The reason was that the doctors had determined that Zykon B, the cyanide gas used, would be absorbed into the blood stream faster if the heart rate were elevated and there were a light sweat on the skin.

8. The Death Camps • Testimony from a camp survivor given at Eichmann’s trial: “The people came through the infamous Himmelstraße, which led from Camp 1 to Camp 2

9. The Death Camps • “Standing in the Himmelstraße were SS men with dogs, whips, and clubs. The people walked quietly, that was at the beginning, in the summer of 1942. They didn’t know where they were headed for.

10. The Death Camps • “When they entered the gas chambers, two Ukrainians wer standing by the door. . . . They provided the gas . . . The last people to enter the gas chambers were pricked with bayonets, since they could see what was going on and didn’t want to enter.

11. The Death Camps • “Four hundred people were placed in the small gas chamber . . . so that they barely managed to close the chamber’s outer door. When they did close it, we were on the other side.

12. The Death Camps • “Then we heard only the shouts: ‘Hear, O Israel!’ ‘Papa!’ “Mama!’ Within thirtyfive minutes they were dead. Two Germans stood listening to what was happening inside.

13. The Death Camps • “They told [us] to open the door. We opened the door and removed the corpses.” (Yahil 361)

14. The Death Camps • .Himmler, visiting Treblinka, ordered that corpses be burned and all traces of the mass murder destroyed.

15. The Death Camps • Majdanek • .Majdanek was both a labor camp and a death camp • .Inmates included Jewish and Polish political prisoners, Russian POWs, and Jews from Slovakia, the Protectorate, Belgium, Dutch, French and Greek Jews.

16. The Death Camps • Majdanek • .Soviet investigation described living conditions and food as “vile.”

17. The Death Camps • Majdanek • .“The SS men in Maidanek were particularly sadistic and tortured people for their pleasure; they were especially fond of slaughtering infansts and children before their mothers’ eyes.” (Yahil 363)

18. The Death Camps • Majdanek • .About 200,000 people were murdered at Majdanek

19. Auschwitz • Auschwitz was the camp were inmates were given tattoos

20. Auschwitz • .It was actually a complex of camps. • .Auschwitz I was the original camp • .Birkenau was a large labor camp, spawning three sub-camps. • .Auschwitz III was an industrial center • .Auschwitz-Birkenau was the extermination camp.

21. Aerial View Auschwitz I

22. Aerial View Auschwitz II

23. Auschwitz • .The area was chronically damp and, in winter, brutally cold. • .Deportees were forced to pass by SS doctors, such as Josef Mengele, who waved them to the right or left, meaning either death or hard labor.

24. Auschwitz • .“Those sentenced to death were led into the anterooms of the death chambers where they were ordered to undress, purportedly in order to shower.

25. Auschwitz • “. They were told to tie their shoes together and remember the number of the hook on which they had hung their clothing so that they would be able to find their belongings on emerging from the shower.

26. Auschwitz • .“To complete the deception, each person was given a piece of soap, and the gas chambers were equipped with shower heads.

27. Auschwitz • [Rudolf] Höß [the commandant] took great pride in these arrangements, claiming that they insured a calm atmosphere by avoiding the wave of terror that gripped the victims in the other camps when they were sent running to their deaths.” (Yahil 366)

28. Auschwitz • Zyklon B pellets were then introduced into the chambers, becoming a gas in the chamber. It worked upwards, so children were the first to die.

29. Auschwitz • When everyone was dead, the SS turned on ventilation fans, and washed the interior down with water. Then prisoners were ordered to remove the bodies to an elevator which took them to the crematorium. (Yahil 366)

30. Gas Chamber at Auschwitz

31. Crematorium at Buchenwald

32. Auschwitz • From the diary of SS Hauptsturmführer Dr. Johann Kremer, assigned as a physician at Auschwitz from August 29 to November 18 1942

33. Auschwitz • )2.IX.1942 This morning at three o’clock I attended a special action for the first time. Dante’s hell seemed like a comedy in comparison. Not for nothing is Auschwitz called an extermination camp.

34. Auschwitz • )5.IX.1942 I was present this afternoon at a special action applied to prisoners in the female camp, the worst I have ever seen. Dr. Thilo was right this morning in telling me that we are in the anus mundi.

35. Auschwitz • )5.IX.1942 Tonight at about eight, I was present at a special action on the Dutch. All the men are anxious to take part in these actions because of the special rations they get on such occasions, consisting of one-fifth of a litre of schnapps, 5 cigarettes, 100 grams of sausage and bread.

36. Auschwitz • )6-7.IX.1942 Sunday, an excellent lunch: tomato soup, half a chicken with potatoes and red cabbage, petits fours, a marvelous vanilla ice cream. After lunch I was introduced to . . . [illegible word]. Left at eight in the evening for a special action for the fourth time.” (Pridham and Noakes 1204)

37. Auschwitz • .Survivor physician Dr. Ella Lingens-Reiner asked an SS doctor, "How can you reconcile that [pointing to the chimneys of the crematoria] with your Hippocratic Oath?" The reply was "When you find a gangrenous appendix, you must remove it." (Nazi Concentration Camps 211)

38. Auschwitz • .A workshop in the chamber was used to remove the gold fillings

39. Plunder • After the camp was liberated, the Soviets found six warehouses (which escaped burning by the retreating Nazis) containing 349,820 men’s suits, 836,255 women’s outfits, 38,000 pairs of men’s shoes, 5,525 pair of women’s shoes, and 14,000 rugs. (Yahil 367)

40. Human Hair at Auschwitz

41. Shoes From Maidanek

42. Plunder • .From an account written by SS officer Kurt Gerstein on May 26, 1945 shortly before he committed suicide: “On 8 June 1942 I received a visit form SS Sturmführer Günther of the RHSA . . . .

43. Plunder • . He instructed me to obtain 100 kg. of prussic acid for a highly secret Reich operation and to take it in my car to an unknown destination . . . . We then took the car to Lublin where SS Gruppenführer Globocnek [sic] was expecting us. . . . Globocnet then turned to me and said:

44. Plunder • ‘Your particular task is disinfecting the large amount of textiles. The whole clothing collecction has been carried out to provide an explanation for the origins of the clothing given to the eastern workers etc. and to present it as the self-sacrifice of the German people. . . .

45. Plunder • Your other and far more important task is the conversion of our gas chambers, which at present operate with diesel exhaust gases, to something better and quicker. I am thinking above all of prussic acid.” (Pridham and Noakes 1150)

46. Plunder • .Odilo Gobotcik reported to Himmler that he had forwarded RM 100,000,000 of valuables in 825 railway cars to Germany.

47. Plunder • Report by Globocnik to Himmler on the financial results of Operation Reinhard: (1942 to December 15, 1943):

49. Plunder • The money was deposited in the deutsche Reichsbank. • US troops discovered 2,007 canisters of gold, foreign currrency and other valuables

50. “Medical Experiments” • One theme of Nazi “experiments” was to learn the best ways of sterilizing persons. • Dr. Horst Schumann transferred from the euthanasia program to practice sterilization by X-rays, using doses large enough to cause death in great agony