Five Essay Questions Regarding Germany, the Jews, and the Holocaust

Questions

1. Anti-Semitism is not exactly a new concept. In fact, Jews have been discriminated against by one group or another for as long as they themselves have existed. Nevertheless, the face of anti-Semitism is continually changing, and the "modern" face of anti-Semitism is quite a bit different than what people may expect. Modern anti-Semitism actually began its development in the late 60's and early 70's with anti-Zionist debates and protests arising with dissatisfaction with many Middle Eastern countries, especially Israel, whom many believed were demonic, and wanted only to conquer the world together (Lindemann, 1997). From here, scholars attempted to form a distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, especially with World War II and the horrors of the holocaust still relatively fresh in the collective minds of the populace. However, these attempts were squashed by Prime Minster of Israel Abba Eban, who further cemented anti-Zionist and anti-Semite feelings by stating that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism were, in fact, one and the same, and that the fault of the rise of these anti-Semite feelings are the fault of what he referred to as the "new left," whom, he said, identify Israel with the establishment and with the new world order (Shlaim, 2001). Years later, in the 1980's, the belief that Zionists actively collaborated with Nazis during World War II emerged in a speech delivered to the Israeli president himself by a historian named Robert Wistrich (Lindemann, 1997). This belief likely shaped the image of anti-Semitism that continues to persist today, and many theories continue to branch off from this initial belief, such as that the Holocaust never happened, or that Israel and the Jewish people as a culture must be eradicated. In short, whereas anti-Semitism used to be discrimination against Jews as individual people, new anti-Semitism discriminates against Jews as a single, collective unit, and many people continue to believe that this collective unit is working at large to, in some capacity, take over the world (Lindemann, 1997). Through these theories, as well as a general sense of racism against Jews, anti-Semitism remains a sad reality even in the modern day.

2. The development of the Nuremberg laws and the German anti-Jewish policies between 1933-1939 are tied together inseparably. The Nuremberg laws, introduced in 1935, made the German anti-Semitic feelings an actual, concrete ideology (Hecht, 1999). These laws also identified, again, using concrete methodologies, who was and was not Jewish, allowing the Germans to recapture those who had evaded imprisonment due to loopholes in the past. This is where the anti-Jewish policies begin to merge with the Nuremberg laws. In 1933, when Hitler rose to power by becoming Chancellor, the Nazis began a boycott of all Jewish businesses (Hecht, 1999). This boycott arose as a result of the National Socialist German Workers' Party in 1919 disowning Jews as members of their own culture, even though Jews had assimilated themselves into Germany and its culture for over one hundred years prior (Hecht, 1999). Hitler's rise to power also marked the first real example of the Nazis imprisoning those they deemed unable to work or as general leeches to the country, such as gypsies, prostitutes, and other vagrants, placing them in their now-infamous concentration camps (Hecht, 1999). From here, anti-Semitism only continued to grow, as the seeking out and imprisonment of Jewish people in Germany began a sort of snowball effect, eventually leading to virtually all Jewish within Germany being captured, or at least attempting to be captured, and anti-Semitic laws began to gain popularity within Germany, coincidentally around the time Hitler came into power. The reasons for locking up so many Jewish were listed as purely economic by the German government, as they believed Jews to be leeches on the German economy, which had been continually struggling, even while many other Germans urged for the Jews to be allowed to stay due to their strong entrepreneurial skills (Hecht, 1999). In short, Hitler's rise to power lead to a rapid growth in anti-Semitic thinking, and the Nuremberg Laws were a way of cementing these thoughts.

3. Luckily for the Armenians, the Nazis were never able to make it far enough into the Soviet Union to cause any domestic damage to the Armenians. Unfortunately, the Armenians had already had their share of death even before World War II in the form of what came to be known as the Armenian Genocide (Melson, 1992). This genocide of the Armenians is second only to the Holocaust itself in terms of atrocities committed, and, in fact, is the origin of the term genocide, reaching a then-unheard of body count of over 1.5 million Armenians, with many others, mainly women and children, deported or abused (Melson, 1992). The genocide occurred during and shortly after World War I by political forces within the Ottoman Empire as a way of exterminating the unwanted Armenian minority from its homeland (Melson, 1992). Much like the Nazis in World War II, the Ottoman Empire believed that numerous minority groups, including, but not limited to, the Armenians, were responsible for many of the economic and social issues that were plaguing the nation at the time, and the nation decided that genocide of the Armenians in particular was the surest way to ensure that they would not trouble the Ottoman Empire again (Melson, 1992). This is also similar to the genocide that occurred in the Ukraine (known as "Holodomor") because both involved indirect methods of killing, namely, famine, as the Ottoman Empire would frequently leave large numbers of Armenians to fend for themselves in the wasteland of the desert, where most died of either starvation or thirst: a crime many consider to be even more heinous than directly executing them (Melson, 1992). Similarly, the genocide in the Ukraine came about as a result of a man-made famine that is estimated to have killed between 1.8 and 12 million people, largely ethnic Ukrainians (Tottle, 1987). These two genocides actually differ in terms of the actual political causes behind them, since the Ukraine genocide, one study suggests, came about as a result of problems that originated from the Soviet's period of rapid industrialization (Tottle, 1987).

4. The holocaust of World War II, in which the Nazis rounded up and murdered approximately six million Jewish, was actually implemented in a number of stages (Bartov, 2000). The first was the planning of what was referred to at the time as the "Final Solution," which was a plan to irrevocably remove the Jewish communities from Europe once and for all. This stemmed not from the economic motivations that many Germans stressed, but a "irrational racial hatred" of Jews, and a "black hole of historical understanding" (Bartov, 2000). Whatever the actual motivations, the gusto with which the holocaust was implemented caused many to question whether these mass murders were indeed fueled only by money, or by a deep-seeded hatred. Nevertheless, after planning for this final solution, the Nazis brought together their best advisors in order to make the process of removing Jews as quick and easy as possible, and it is likely that the concept of the extermination camps came about as a result of these meetings with advisors (Bartov, 2000). As for the implementation of the holocaust itself, it mainly centers around the six primary extermination camps, which were constructed in both Nazi Germany, where many of the Jews were deported, and Poland, where many Jewish already lived (Bartov, 2000). However, the Nazis had other ways of implementing the Holocaust. For example, after the Nazis invaded Poland, they established a number of ghettos there, which served the same purpose of the concentration camps: confinement. Yet, since the Jewish inhabitants of these Ghettos were never able to be deported out of the country, most of them were instead sent to the extermination camps (Langer, 1991). This is significant because Jews, while naturally unwilling to submit to indefinite confinement, were unaware at the time that they were essentially being led to slaughter, and had they known that, it is likely that Jewish resistance to the Nazi occupation would have been much greater

5. Originally, after the rise of the Third Reich, the concentration camps used to murder the Jews were founded merely as a means to hold them for an unknown length of time. However, these concentration camps were not actually designed for killing, but their use, with a 50% death rate, was one of the first and most important steps toward implementing the holocaust, as these concentration camps came to be used as a means of both incarceration and execution (Langer, 1991). While these concentration camps were both numerous and deadly, the true tools of murder for the Third Reich were the extermination camps, which were designed solely to murder the Jews, and of which there were only six (Langer, 1991). These extermination camps were the primary tool of the holocaust, and represented one of the greatest tragedies implemented by the Nazis, as these extermination camps killed millions of Jewish. This represents another powerful tool implemented during the holocaust: deception. The true horrors of the extermination camps were practically unknown until the end of the war, and before that, the Germans would frequently lie to the Jews, telling them they were merely being deported. This helped to keep the Jews complacent before being sent to their deaths. In terms of the actual methods used to kill these Jewish, there were a number of them, but mass gassing of the Jews via carbon monoxide, which can be difficult to detect, is credited with most of the Jewish fatalities, providing them a slow yet certain death (Bartov, 2000). There were numerous other methods used to kill the Jews as well, such as simple public executions by hanging or shooting, usually to make an example out of a particular inmate (this type of treatment occurred predominantly at the concentration camps, where death was not necessarily a certainty) in order to keep the rest of the Jewish inmates from rioting or being unruly (Bartov, 2000). Lastly, many of the Jews, particularly at the concentration camps, died from either exposure or exhaustion from the extreme conditions they were exposed to. These numerous cruel forms of murder are another reason the holocaust remains one of the greatest tragedies committed by humanity.

References

Bartov, O. (Ed.). (2000). The Holocaust: Origins, implementation, aftermath. Psychology Press.

Hecht, I. (1999). Invisible walls: A German family under the Nuremberg Laws. Northwestern Univ Press.

Langer, L. L. (1991). Holocaust testimonies: The ruins of memory.Yale University Press.

Lindemann, A. S. (1997). Esau's tears: Modern anti-Semitism and the rise of the Jews. Cambridge University Press.

Melson, R. (1992). Revolution and genocide: On the origins of the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust. University of Chicago Press.

Shlaim, A. (2001). The iron wall: Israel and the Arab world. WW Norton & Company..

Tottle, D. (1987). Fraud, famine and fascism: The Ukrainian genocide myth from Hitler to Harvard. Progress Books.