The Holocaust

Western Europe

Varied from country to country. Three

things determined their fate between
the Rhine River and the Atlantic
Ocean.
1. Degree of control exercised by the
Nazis
2. History of the Jews in that region
3. Behavior of the local population

The way the Germans treated their own

population and the Austrian Jews set the
model.
1. Jews were defined, civil liberties restricted
and property taken
2. Fired from universities and civil services
jobs. Barred from these jobs.
3. Businesses taken over and Aryanized
4. Isolated and forced to wear the Star of
David and prohibited from using public
facilities.
5. Gathered in cities and transit camps.
6. After 1942 taken to death camps in the
east

France

May 10, 1940- invaded. June armistice divided the

country. Part was controlled by Germany and Italy.
Other part by a government in Vichy.
35,000 Jews. Half were from Germany or escaping
Nazism. Resources stretched thin. Need French
help with anti-Semitic policies. No trouble finding it.
For two years the Vichy government implemented
these laws.
1942 deportations began. Could not work without
the French police. Within 6 months 42,500 Jews
were sent to Auschwitz. 77,000 French Jews killed
in the camps. 20% of French Jewry.

Belgium

May 10, 1940 invaded. 66,000 Jews.

One in ten were Belgian citizens.
Within two years 18 anti-Jewish
measures imposed.
Summer 1942 to mid-1944 26,500
Jews deported to Auschwitz

Norway

1,900 Jews out of a 3 million

population.
Minister-president Vidkun Quisling
willing cooperated with the Nazis.
Inventory of holdings made, property
confiscated and passports labeled.
800 sent to Auschwitz and the rest
escaped to Sweden.

Luxembourg

May 10, 1940- invaded. Less than

4,000 Jews. More than 1,000 fled to
France. Forced to abide by Nazi
legislation.
August 1940-October 1941 almost
1500 left and most went to France.
October 16, 1941 more than 330 sent
to Lodz ghetto and then to Chlemno.
1200 from Luxembourg died.

The Netherlands

May 10, 1940- invaded. 140,000

Jews.
Anti-Jewish laws. October 1942
deportations started.
For the next two years 110,000 sent
to the death camps. 5% survived. By
1945 three out of four Dutch Jews
were dead.

Greece

Tried neutrality. Italy invaded in October

1940 but Greeks drove them back. April
6, 1941 Germany invaded along with
Bulgaria.
Greece surrendered and divided into
three zones of occupation among
Bulgaria, Germany and Italy. Fate of Jews
based on location. Jews in Italian section
usually better off. Italian commanders
refused to follow Final Solution.

Belgian authorities agreed in March 1943 to the

deportations to the killing center of Treblinka. In
Bulgaria they were not deported because of
opposition from various groups.
In Salonika under German control on July 11, 1942
more than 9,000 men were registered for forced
labor.
February 1943 put in two ghettos, between May
and August 45,000 Jews were deported to
Auschwitz-Birkenau. 3 out of 4 were gassed
immediately. Survivors worked. Jews who were
Spanish nationals were sent to Bergen-Belsen.

When Italy surrendered on May 8, 1943 the

Germans took over their part. Property was
confiscated, Jews were arrested and sent to
Auschwitz.
Jews arriving from Greece at Auschwitz faced
a language barrier.
Some were chosen to work in the vicinity of
the gas chambers and lived to tell of it.
Killed between 58,000 and 65,000 Greek Jews
of a pre-war population of 70,000 to 80,000.

Ghetto-the word

Throughout history, a ghetto referred to a

street or city section where only Jews lived.
First used in Venice in 1516. referred to the
closed Jewish section of the city, which had
originally been the site of a foundry.
During WWII, the Jews of Eastern Europe
were forced to leave their homes and move
to ghettos where they were essentially held
as prisoners.

Ghettos: 1940-1944

Most of the Jews lived in eastern Europe

and made up the majority of the
population where they lived.
After Poland was divided in 1939 more
than 2 million Jews came under Reich
control.
In Poland ghettos formed quickly and last
until the policy of annihilation was in
place and the method/means of killing
were built.

Goal of closing the Jews in ghettos was not only to

deprive them of their human rights but to deprive
them of their dignity.
Ghetto period referred to as the bypass death for
more than 80,000 Jews died in the Warsaw ghetto.
The ghettos were not established as a way to
confine the Jews before deporting them to
extermination camps. A blueprint for mass murder
did not exist in 1939-1940 when these ghettos
were established.
1941 and the invasion of the Soviet Union changed
this.

In the Soviet areas ghettos were

formed after the German invasion in
June 1941
This followed the first round of
murder by the mobile killing squads
where they rounded up and killed
thousands of Jews.
Vilna ghetto in Lithuania followed the
killing at Ponary and the Riga ghetto
followed after the killing in Bikernieki

Some ghettos were open and others were

closed. Warsaw surrounded by 11 miles of
walls. Krakow was also walled. Lodz was
sealed with barbed wire and wooden
fences. Before the final deportations all
ghettos were sealed.
To the Germans these Jewish residential
quarters were captive city-states, holding
pens for people with no rights. Labor
exploited, goods and property taken.

Warsaw ghetto occupied 2.4% of the

city land but housed 30% of
population. Squalor, hunger, disease,
and despair. Overcrowded.
Daily calorie allotments even with
smuggling hardly ever exceeded
1100. Smugglers motto- eat and
drink, for tomorrow we die.
Epidemic disease a problem

Jews in the ghettos had to wear

identifying badges or armbands and
many made the Jews perform manual
labor.
Ghetto police enforced the rules. Also
enforced the deportations.
Germans did not hesitate to kill
Jewish policemen who did not do their
jobs.

Governed by the Judenrat (Jewish Council)

appointed by the Germans. Go betweens. Tried to
provide the basic services- sanitation, food, ect.
Taxed those they could. Tried to evade decrees.
Families lived in fear.
Ghetto traditionally meant a permanent place of
residence for Jews but Germans viewed it as a
transitional measure. Summer of 1942 started
liquidating ghettos. Late summer 1944 nearly 3
million Jews transported to concentration camps
and killing centers. No ghettos left in Eastern
Europe.

Warsaw Ghetto

Jewish population of 375,000. 30% of

total population. Only New York City had
more Jews.
Jewish Council had to provide for the
needs of almost 400,000. Had to
conscript workers to meet German
demand for labor.
Summer of 1940 tens of thousands
worked for the Germans for long hours,
low pay, and under sadistic supervisors.

November 16, 1940 ghetto sealed. Nazis

practiced clean violence- death by
starvation. Gave food out for all Warsaw
based on priorities. Jews at bottom.
1941- 43,000 people (more than one in ten)
died. Smuggling became vital. Found ways
around the walls. Bribery. Used carts that
carried bodies to cemetery to bring back food.
Political underground grew. Document ghetto
life.

Summer 1942 265,000 Jews rounded up and

transported in cattle cars to Treblinka. Jewish
police force had to round up those for
deportation. Laid siege to the ghetto block by
block, street by street, and building by building.
When the deportations started the Jewish
Fighting Force decided not to resist. Did not
know the fate of those being deported. Fighters
not trained. Had no weapons.
August 6, 1942 took 192 children from the
ghetto and sent them to the camps.

Lodz Ghetto

Industrial center. 665,000. One in

three were Jews.
September 8, 1938 captured. Ghetto
sealed in April 1940. 164,000 Jews
lived in 48,000 rooms with no running
water or sewer. Could be cut off
above or below ground. First Polish
ghetto to be sealed and the last to
remain operating until 1944.

Judenrat controlled all aspects of food,

work and shelter. Determined to save Jews
through making them productive and
indispensable workforce.
Situation worse when 20,000 Jews from
Germany, Luxembourg and Czechoslovakia
arrived. 5,000 Gypsies also sent there.
No smuggling. Isolated. Separated by
barbed wire and open spaces from rest of
population.

Despite productivity in first five months of 1942

55,000 Jews and all the Gypsies were deported and
murdered in the gas vans at Chlemno. 2,000
patients deported to Chlemno from the hospitals
including 400 children and 80 pregnant women.
September 1942 Nazis demand all children and
elderly. 20,000 children and elderly deported to
Chlemno
September 1942-May 1944 when other ghettos were
being emptied there were no deportations. With
90% of starving population working looked more like
a slave labor camp.
June 23, 1944 deportations resumed. 46,000 died in
ghetto; 145,000 deported to Chlemno or Auschwitz.
Liberated by Soviets in January 1945. only 877
emerged.

Kovno Ghetto

40,000 Jews. Lithuania. 25% of population.

Under Soviet control in 1940.
Nazis invaded in June 1941. anti-Semitic
Lithuanians went on a rampage against Jews.
Germans continued it. Within a month 10,000
Jews had been killed.
By August ghetto had been sealed. 3,000 more
Jews killed in a few months. October 28, 1941
9,000 (1/3rd of those left) taken to Ninth Fort
where they were murdered.
3,000 Jews (8% of original population) survived.

Theresienstadt

Ghetto, concentration camp and way

station for western Jews enroute to
Auschwitz between 1941 and 1945.
Population was transient. Deported to
camp from west and then deported to the
east. Of the 144,00 Jews sent there
33,000 (almost 1 in 4) died there and
88,000 were deported to Auschwitz or
other places. At the end there were only
19,000 alive.

Reinhard Heydrich established ghetto 40 miles

north of Prague on November 24, 941. 1942
all non-Jews expelled and ghetto was sealed.
Joined by elderly German Jews, Dutch and
Danish Jews. Odd that the young were being
sent east but the old being kept there.
Conditions were harsh. 90,000 lived in a space
met for 7,000. in 1942 15,891 died. Death rate
was so high they built a crematorium that
could handle 190 bodies a day or 69,000 a
year.

15,000 children passed through. Only a few

hundred survived. September 9, 1944 final
deportations started.
If Auschwitz was hell, Theresienstadt was the
anteroom.
456 Danish Jews sent in the fall of 1943. Danes
persisted in getting the Red Cross to look into
the conditions there. Put on a show. Deported a
bunch and prettied up the place. Hoax worked
so well they shot a propaganda film there.
When it was over most of the cast including all
of the children were sent to Auschwitz.

In Hungary

Ghettoization did not begin until spring of 1944.

In less than 3 months they concentrated 440,000
Jews from all over Hungary, except Budapest, in
short term destruction camps and deported
them to German custody at the border.
Most of the Jews went to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In
Budapest the Jews had to live in marked house.
In October they established an official ghetto in
Budapest.
January 1945 Soviets liberated 90,000 Jews in
the ghetto.

Small acts of defiance

Schools closed, kept teaching

Synagogues closed, kept praying
Underground newspapers, political
parties, many acts of quiet heroism
Documented life in ghettos. Took
determination and ingenuity.
Wrote them down, painted them,
photography.
Smuggling food, medicine, weapons or
intelligence.

Why didnt they escape?

Holocaust created a world of choiceless choices.

While we know the fate of the Jews now, they did not
know they would be sent to the extermination
camps.
They were malnourished and ill. Did not have the
strength to carry themselves around let along rebel.
There was no place to go and they were responsible
for what family they had left.
Non-Jews living outside the walls were not willing to
help them. Hiding Jews was punishable by death.
Jews were trapped in Europe at this time.