Why did Hitler decide to destroy all the Jews of Europe. Why didn't Hitler like Jews? Reasons for hatred, historical facts
Continuation.
Starts at No. 828
“The crime of the Germans is the most disgusting thing that has happened in the history of the so-called civilized nations. The behavior of the German intellectuals was no better than the behavior of the mob."
Albert Einstein,
Letter to Otto Hahn, 1949
“The Germans do not belong to the rotten civilization of the West, but are its enemies and gravediggers.”
Goebbels, recording
“We didn’t know anything (about the extermination of Jews),” says the widow German officer- the heroine (Marlene Dietrich) in Stanley Kramer’s film “The Nuremberg Trials”, 1961. This is an obvious lie: 900 thousand Germans served in the SS, they knew, they could not help but know. They talked about this in letters and showed photographs of how the Jews dug their own graves and how the living laid row after row on the corpses of the dead. More than a million Germans were railway workers, trains with Jews went east day and night, they could not help but know. And tens of thousands of pairs of men's and women's watches, millions of units outerwear adults and children, sets of linen that the Fuhrer gave to the German people, where did they come from? Finally, 400 thousand Germans were in mixed marriages with the Jews, each of them had relatives, friends, just acquaintances, how could they not know? Let us remind you: Hitler divided all mixed families into 2 categories: “privileged” - an Aryan and a Jew, and “ordinary” - a Jew and a German. Jewish women from “privileged” families and their children were persecuted to a lesser extent and did not wear the Star of David. Jews from “ordinary” families and their children were practically equated with “ordinary” Jews. Their German wives were forced in every possible way to divorce, after which the Jewish half of the broken marriage, along with their children, was immediately sent to extermination camps. What about those who lived near camps such as Buchenwald and Dachau? They understood perfectly well what was happening there, they could not help but understand, because they constantly saw trains arriving there, filled with half-dead people and leaving empty. They were silent, afraid to end up in the camp themselves.
Nobel laureate writer Elie Wiesel, a former death camp prisoner, once said in Germany: “When I see an elderly German, I always ask myself: “What did he do during the war?” (I refer the reader to Ion Degen’s brilliant short story “Pluskvaperfect”, published in “Notes on Jewish history", No. 10 (59), Oct. 2005).
“Hatred of Jews was for Hitlerism the drug with which Nazi functionaries fooled their people so that they would not think about their conscience or their own situation,” wrote the famous Jewish writer Sholom Asch. With the adoption of the “Final Solution” plan at Wannsee on January 20, 1942, the people were told that “this is a racial war. It comes from the Jews and, in its meaning and plan, has only one goal - destruction, the extermination of our people,” Goebbels wrote in the article “War and the Jews” (weekly Das Reich, May 9, 1942). “We confront the Jews as the only obstacle on their path to world domination. If the Axis powers lose the fight, there will no longer be a barrier that could save Europe from the Bolshevik flood."
“German people,” Goering said in a speech on October 5, 1942, “you must know: if the war is lost, you will be destroyed. The Jew, with his inexhaustible hatred, is behind these plans of destruction... Everything that is purely racial, that is Germanic, German - he wants to destroy all this...” “You need to at least once recognize the Jew in his Old Testament hatred,” he said in speech 30 January 1943, “to understand what... will happen to your wives, daughters, brides... how this devilish hatred, this atrocity will be poured out on the German people.” “The Fuehrer of the Reich, Adolf Hitler, has the absolute unanimous support of the entire German people,” Goebbels said in November 1943.
Of course, not all Germans participated in the Final Solution, but everyone knew about it, although they may not have fully realized the scale of the destruction. And yet, “the Germans as a people are responsible for mass murder and as a people must be punished for it... Behind the Nazi party stands the German people who chose Hitler after he made his shameful intentions unequivocally known in his book and in speeches,” Albert Einstein wrote in 1944 in “Address to the Heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto.”
Even before Hitler, the Germans did not love Jews, did not recognize them as equal citizens, but did not experience the animal hatred for Jews that Nazism endowed them with. “Words are like tiny doses of arsenic, they are swallowed unnoticed... and after a while the poisoning is obvious,” wrote Victor Klemperer, a famous philosopher, a Jew, a Holocaust survivor, and the author of the famous “Diaries.”
Hitler transformed centuries-old German anti-Semitism into exterminating one. “I free man from the humiliating chimera called conscience... I am not held back by any theoretical or moral considerations,” Hitler proclaimed. And millions of Germans shouted back: “Heil Hitler!” National Socialism entered everyday life. The Germans have learned well that the Jews are poisoning and corroding the Aryan race. “If Germany had not been cleansed of Jewish poison, it would not have been able to wage war for so long,” argued Hitler’s short-term successor, Admiral Doenitz. Not only the SS and SD, the entire Wehrmacht officer corps was anti-Semitic.
Harvard professor Daniel Goldhagen, in his book “Hitler's Willing Accomplices: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust,” 1996, showed through a number of examples that Hitler had hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic executors who willingly participated in the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.”
Here is one example. In November 1942, when soldiers of one of the Sonderkommandos were preparing to execute a party of Polish Jews, artists came to them from Berlin. Having learned about the impending action, they asked to be allowed to shoot Jews. They were met halfway.
More than a million children were tortured by the Germans in ghettos and death camps. How many of them were future cultural figures, scientists, future Nobel laureates?
Here are the names of three Nobel laureates who passed through ghettos and death camps in childhood or youth: Elie Wiesel, prisoner of Birkenau (Auschwitz) and Buchenwald, Nobel Peace Prize laureate; Georges Charpak, prisoner of Dachau, Nobel Prize winner in physics; Rold Hofmann, who found himself in the ghetto at the age of four, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Swedish professor Erzsi Eyhari, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Biology and Medicine, in childhood was a prisoner of the Częstochowa ghetto. Israel's Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau was released from Buchenwald at the age of seven. The famous film director Roman Polanski was 7 years old when he managed to escape from the Krakow ghetto.
Simon Wiesenthal said that while a concentration camp prisoner, he worked for some time in an SS hospital. One day he was called to see a wounded, blind SS man, who, among the bandages on his head, had only one slit for his mouth. He told Wiesenthal that “In Dnepropetrovsk, a group of Jews were driven into a house, giving each a canister of gasoline. Then we started shooting from machine guns,” said the German. — People were jumping from windows. I saw a father close his child’s eyes before jumping.” “I listened to the confession of the criminal,” said Wiesenthal, “but it was not regret. I got up and left the room without saying a word.”
Well, and those who were not executioners, who stood aside and silently watched what was happening, did they understand that they were, at the very least, accomplices? Pastor Niemöller understood:
“First they came for the Jews,
And I didn't say anything -
I was not Jewish.
Then they came for the communists,
And I didn't say anything -
I was not a communist.
Then they came for the dicks
Trade unions,
And I didn't say anything -
I was not a union member.
Finally they came for me.
But there was no one left
Put in a good word for me."
Pastor Martin Niemöller was by no means a friend of the Jews. In 1935 he said: “We speak in our sermon about the “Eternal Jew” and see the image of a restless wanderer, without a homeland and finding no peace. And we see the image of a highly gifted people, generating ideas after ideas. But everything he starts turns into poison. And what he reaps is contempt and hatred again and again, and as soon as the deceived (by him - S.D.) world notices the deception, he takes revenge (on him - S.D.) in his own way.”
To be continued
When Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor on January 30, 1933, no one doubted that an ardent anti-Semite had come to power. Hateful attacks against Jews occupied much space in Mein Kampf, and the Nazi Party program prohibited the admission of Jews into it.
The anti-Semitism of the National Socialists had its traditional reasons: Jews were accused of controlling a disproportionately large part of economic and spiritual life in Germany, using this power exclusively for their own interests. In addition, the Nazis saw the Jews as the vanguard of the Communist Party. At the same time, they referred to the fact that Jews played a leading role in the October Revolution, and in the short-lived regime of Bela Kun in Hungary, and in the even more short-lived Bavarian Republic.
The coming to power of the NSRPG in Germany was an unpleasant blow for German Jews, who for the most part were assimilated and considered themselves good patriots. For some time they hoped that by taking on the burden of state responsibility, the National Socialists would become more moderate. After all, anti-Semitism did not play a leading role during the election campaign. They voted for the NSRPG not out of hatred of Jews, but because they thought that Hitler would give the Germans jobs and bread.
After the arson of the Reichstag on February 27, 1933 and the triumph of the National Socialists on March 5 of the same year in the elections, repressions were not long in coming, but their victims were almost exclusively leftists, primarily communists. The first concentration camp appeared in Dachau at the end of March, followed by other camps. There were also Jews among the prisoners, but not as Jews or Jews, but as left-wing activists (or criminals).
At this time, only individual fanatics or hooligans indulged in acts against Jews, but the government did not approve of them.
Hitler took the first measures against Jews on April 1, 1933, calling for a boycott of Jewish stores. Various paragraphs of the law on the legal profession, issued six days later, as well as the decision to restore professional bureaucracy, became more serious and comprehensive. Most of the Jewish officials were dismissed, often under the guise of retirement. The regulations against the Jews were not as harsh as the Nazis wanted, because Hitler had to reckon with his partners in the conservative camp.
With the help of these resolutions, the number of Jewish lawyers and notaries was greatly reduced. Shortly thereafter, a 1.5 percent rate was introduced for Jews in medical and law faculties. In the following months, many Jews who served in government institutions or educational institutions, were fired, retired or were prohibited from practicing their profession. Then, for a time, the storm seemed to subside, and 10,000 of the 60,000 Jews who had left Germany after Hitler came to power returned to Germany.
But those were illusory hopes. In September 1935, the “Nuremberg Laws” came to the Reichstag, prohibiting marriages and extramarital affairs between Jews and “Aryans,” but then there was a pause again, partly due to the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. 1937 brought large-scale "Arization" of the German economy, which meant Jews were forced to sell their businesses and firms for mostly less than the real price.
In 1938, the National Socialist regime tightened the screws even tighter. In June, Jews sentenced to imprisonment for more than a month were sent to concentration camps. In November, Polish Jew Herschel Grünszpan assassinated a German diplomat in Paris, leading to the famous Kristallnacht.
Excesses took place throughout Germany, during which many synagogues were desecrated, Jewish shops were looted and burned, from 36 to 91 Jews were killed and many were wounded. In Germany itself and Austria, which became part of the Reich in March, 31.5 thousand Jews were arrested and placed in four camps: Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Dachau and Mauthausen. True, most of them were soon released, but the shock of Kristallnacht and the subsequent arbitrary measures taken by the government - for example, a fine of one billion marks was imposed on the German Jewish community - dispelled all hopes among the Jews of improving their situation. Before October 1941, when the order to stop emigration was issued, two-thirds of German Jews had left Germany, and among those who remained, already in 1939, more than half were over 65 years old.
The same process, but at a faster pace, occurred after the Anschluss in March 1938 in Austria and in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia after the partition of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. Within a short time, most of the Austrian and significant number Czech Jews.
This mass exodus fully corresponded to the plans of the National Socialists and then they supported it with all their might. Jews were driven to emigrate by various oppressions to which they had been subjected since 1935. To strengthen it the Nazis collaborated closely with the Zionist circles interested in the resettlement of as many Jews as possible to Palestine. This collaboration, which these days is largely hushed up, is very well told in the book Death's Head Order by Heinz Hoehne, a classic study of the SS, which is based on the following facts.
In the fall of 1934, Leopold Edler von Mildenstein, who later became an SS Unterscharführer, published an article in the Nazi organ Angrif on the prospects for a Jewish state in Palestine. As a regular participant in Zionist congresses, Mildenstein saw the solution to the Jewish question in the emigration of Jews to the British Mandatory Territory, where the state of Israel later actually emerged. This article drew the attention of Reinhard Heydrich, head of the SD (security service), who liked the idea. All German Jews must go to Palestine, if possible voluntarily or under pressure. Of course, a minority of Jewish emigrants chose Palestine as their new homeland, while the majority preferred to go to other countries, mainly to the United States.
Mildenstein's plan included the "dissimilation" of assimilated Jews and their transformation into Zionists. On Himmler's orders, he organized a "Jewish Sector" to encourage emigration. This sector supported retraining camps where young Jews received agricultural training to work on Palestinian kibbutzim. In August 1936, at least 37 such camps were operating in Germany. One of them is mentioned in Neudorf even in March 1942!
One of the most active employees of the mentioned sector was SS man Adolf Eichmann, who on February 27, 1937 met in Berlin with the Zionist leader Feivel Polkesh, who held the position of commander of the Jewish Hagan militia in Palestine. Polkesh told Eichmann that he wanted with all his might to promote the emigration of Jews to Palestine, so that over time there would be more Jews than Palestinians. In October of the same year, Eichmann met in Cairo with Polkes for negotiations for a second time. After them, SS man Herbert Hagen, who accompanied Eichmann, declared greater satisfaction with which Jewish nationalists perceived the radical policy of the Germans towards the Jews, because it contributed to an increase in their number in Palestine.
However, the described plan soon encountered difficulties, as it caused unrest among the Arab population of the mandated territory and the British decided to slow down emigration. In December 1937, the first corresponding orders were issued, and in May 1939 the White Paper appeared, according to which only 75 thousand Jews were allowed into Palestine in the next five years, although illegal immigration, naturally, went on its own. The outbreak of war in September 1939 dealt a crushing blow to the SD's Palestinian plans, because the Germans did not really want to alienate the Arabs, their potential allies in the war with the British.
After the United States and other countries took measures to reduce Jewish emigration, Germany began to think about relocating Jews to Madagascar. A proponent of this idea was Franz Rademacher, head of the Jewish sector in the German department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The implementation of this project became real after the defeat of France, whose colony was this huge island. However, Petain opposed it, but even if he agreed with the plan, it would be difficult to implement it, since there were few ships for transportation and the British controlled the sea routes.
After the Germans captured large territories in the East at the beginning of the war with the USSR, an idea arose in Berlin to create a zone inhabited by Jews there. On July 31, 1941, Goering wrote to Heydrich:
“In addition to the task set by the order of January 24, 1939, the possibility of favorably solving the Jewish question in the form emigration and evacuation in accordance with the circumstances of the time, I instruct you to make all the necessary preparations of an organizational, business and material nature for general solution Jewish question in the German zone of influence in Europe. Other competent central authorities may be involved. I further instruct you to submit to me in the near future a general plan of preliminary measures of an organizational, business and material nature to implement the envisaged final solution to the Jewish question.”
Holocaust supporters cite this letter all the time, interpreting it as the beginning of the extermination of the Jews. Since the words “in the form of emigration or evacuation” are confusing, sometimes they are simply omitted. When correctly quoted, for example, by Raoul Gilberg, these words are presented as a disguised “extermination”. Gilberg also concludes that, having received the letter, Heydrich firmly took control of the process of genocide. True, he does not explain why the second-ranking National Socialist had to resort to allegory in his informal letter to the chief of the Nazi police. Since not a single written order for the extermination of Jews has been found, adherents of the Holocaust myth have to speculate on what is not in the text. Speaking about the emigration and evacuation of Jews, Goering meant only this and nothing else. And indeed, starting in 1941, Jews from Germany and the occupied regions were transported to the East, first to Poland, and then to all more in Russia. Since hundreds of thousands of Jews were taken to the camps, their fate was unenviable even without an extermination plan.
There were three reasons for the behavior of the Nazis. Firstly, they urgently needed labor at a time when the majority of combat-ready men were at the front, and generally well-trained Jews were especially suitable as such. The transport of elderly people and children to the camps is simply explained by the fact that families did not want to be separated. Secondly, the Jews were considered unreliable, for they undoubtedly always stood on the side of the enemy. As already indicated, the percentage of Jews in the occupied countries of the Resistance fighters was very large. Third, the Nazis thought to use favorable circumstances to hasten the "Final Solution" of the Jewish Question, by which they meant - contrary to the legend of the physical extermination of the Jews - their emigration or resettlement to territory on the eastern fringes of the German sphere of power.
Although, as stated, emigration was officially prohibited in the fall of 1941, the law was not strictly enforced, and Jews were able to leave Europe during the war. The ban on emigration was, of course, aimed at preventing combat-ready and technically educated Jews from entering the service of the enemy. That is why Jews began to be deported to the East from the end of 1941. Below we will return to the fate of the deportees.
IN European countries occupied by Hitler, Jews in varying degrees had to suffer deportation. Unexpectedly, it greatly affected Dutch Jews, most of whom were deported, while the Jews of Belgium and France were little affected - mainly foreign Jews were deported from these countries. Since the National Socialists' goal was to drive the Jews out of Europe, they naturally began where there were least difficulties. In France and Belgium, they had to reckon with local governments that opposed the deportation of Jews, their fellow citizens. After the German attack, the government fled from Holland and therefore the Nazis could do whatever they wanted.
By the way, the deportation and internment of Jews in Hitler's Reich has a historical parallel: the USA and Canada interned most of the Japanese, even holders of American and Canadian passports. And this despite the fact that - as Reagan admitted decades later - not a single case of espionage or subversion on the part of Japanese Americans was identified!
Now let us risk touching on a very delicate topic - the question of how consciously the Zionists, especially the American ones, provoked the persecution of Jews in Germany and the occupied countries and what is their responsibility - if not legal, then at least moral - for the plight of the Jews.
American Jew Edwin Black describes in his sensationally frank book “The Transfer Agreement,” published in 1984, the stages of the economic war unleashed by Jewish organizations against Germany immediately after Hitler came to power, i.e. even before the first anti-Semitic decrees. On March 27, 1933, a large rally took place in Madison Square Garden in New York, the participants of which demanded a complete boycott of Germany until the day the National Socialist government was overthrown. McConnell, one of the speakers, stated in part:
“... Even if persecution in Germany weakens for a while, we must continue protests and rallies against the Nazis until they are removed from power.”
And Stephen S. Wise, president of the Congress of American Jews and one of the organizers of the rally, warned that:
At the same time, a boycott began in other countries. In Poland "... at mass rallies, in unison with the rally of the Congress (American Jews), it was decided to extend the boycott that began in Vilnius to the entire country. In Warsaw, the three largest Jewish trading firms pledged to “take the strongest measures of protection by boycotting goods imported from Germany. In London, almost all the Jewish shops in the Whitechapel area slammed their doors on the German merchants.”
The consequences of this economic boycott were disastrous for Germany:
“Trade unions took action against particularly important areas of industry that brought primarily foreign exchange earnings, such as fur dressing. According to estimates, total losses Germans in this area alone amounted to 100 million marks in 1933.”
It seemed that the words from the article “Jews Declaring War on Germany”, published on March 24 in the Daily Express, were indeed beginning to come true:
“Jews all over the world are uniting in order to declare financial and economic war on Germany... All tensions and contradictions are forgotten in the face of one common goal... force fascist Germany stop your terror and violence against the Jewish minority."
Black justifies this economic war by the German government's ruthless suppression of Jews:
“The Nazis started a war with the Jews, mobilizing all of Germany. For their part, the Jews launched a war against the Nazis, exciting the whole world. Ahead are boycotts, protest marches, rallies against Hitler. Germany had to be isolated politically, and even economically and culturally, until the Nazi leadership fell. So, Germany was again being taught a bitter lesson.”
The author’s mistake is only that at that time there was simply no “war unleashed against the Jews with the mobilization of all of Germany,” no “terror and violence against the Jewish minority,” “gratuitous murders, starvation, extermination and diabolical persecution.” (these are the words of Samuel Untermeyer, government adviser and chairman of the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League). There were only isolated incidents of anti-Semitic hooligans, against whom the new regime took all possible measures, as is clearly evidenced by the statements of German Jewish organizations. On March 31, Max Naumann, honorary chairman of the Union of National German Jews, responded in the Neue Wiener Journal:
“First of all, I want to tell you that I oppose this anti-German persecution through inciting horrors. This campaign reminds me of the recent persecution of the Germans and their allies during the war. Even the details and methods are exactly the same when it was written about severed children's hands and gouged out eyes and about the use of corpses to obtain fatty substances. In this context fit the current statements that dismembered corpses of Jews are lying in cemeteries, that as soon as a Jew goes outside, he is attacked. There were, of course, isolated incidents, but that was all... And I know that in these cases the authorities acted without ceremony. We German Jews are, in any case, convinced that the government and the leadership of the NSRPG really want to maintain peace and order.”
Everyone understood that the Nazis, unable to reach the instigators of the boycott campaign, would unleash their wrath on German Jews. In vain, however, Dr. Loewenstein, chairman of the “Imperial Union of German Front-line Soldiers,” in a letter to American Jews sent to the US Embassy in Berlin, called for a stop to this madness:
“We think it’s time to distance ourselves from the irresponsible persecution that is being carried out abroad by the so-called. Jewish intellectuals. The arrows that you throw from your protected shelter, although they harm Germany and German Jews, still do not bring honor to the shooters themselves.”
The terrible abuse of German Jews in 1933 existed only in the imagination of propagandists, which is confirmed by such an absolutely impeccable eyewitness as the Jewish historian Arno Mayer, describing the situation of that time:
“Among the first prisoners of the Third Reich there were relatively few Jews and, characteristically, they were arrested as politicians, lawyers or left-wing writers.”
One thing is obvious - no one was arrested at that time just because he was a Jew. Elsewhere, Mayer talks about the reason for the boycott:
“On March 20, a committee of prominent American Jews, concerned about the ominous instructions in Streicher’s Stürmer, decided to call a mass meeting in Madison Square Garden on March 27.”
The reason, or rather the pretext, for the unprecedented boycott campaign was the “sinister instructions” in an unofficial leaflet, which, due to its primitiveness and pornographic nature, was despised even by many Nazis!
Hitler responded to the international boycott with the aforementioned one-day boycott of Jewish shops, which, by the way, was carried out on Saturday, when most of them were already closed. A huge number of school textbooks contain a photograph taken that day: outside a Jewish store, SS men point to a poster “Don’t buy from Jews!” The textbooks, however, do not say how long this boycott lasted or what caused it. This is how history is falsified.
Subsequently, Jewish organizations in the United States and other countries did not hesitate to do anything to provoke new measures against German Jews. In August 1933, Untermeyer said in a speech broadcast nationwide:
“Each of you, whether he is a Jew or a non-Jew, who has not yet become a participant in the holy war, must become one today... Not only do you not buy German goods, you should not associate at all with merchants or shopkeepers selling German products, or with using German ships... - To our shame, there are several Jews among us - fortunately, they are few - who have so little pride and self-respect that they sail on German ships... Everyone should know their names. They are traitors to our nation."
In January 1934, when in Germany no one - with the exception of some criminal fanatics - laid a finger on a single Jew because of his religion or nationality, the radical Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky wrote:
“All Jewish communities and every Jew individually, all trade unions at every congress and at every congress have been fighting against Germany for months all over the world. We will launch a spiritual and physical war against Germany from the whole world. Our Jewish interests require complete destruction Germany."
In Berlin, such statements were taken literally. German Jews had to pay for them, and no one asked whether they agreed with the chatter of the Untermeyers, Wises and Jabotinskys. The Zionists knew what they were doing. As always, they used German Jews as bargaining chips in the struggle to create their state. During the war, bullying intensified even more. On December 3, 1942, Chaim Weizmann, head of the World Zionist Organization, stated:
"We - Trojan horse in the enemy camp. The thousands of Jews living in Europe are the main factor in the destruction of our enemies.”
It was these phrases that the National Socialists referred to when giving orders for the deportation of Jews to camps and ghettos.
Even before the United States entered the war, the American Jew Nathanael Kaufman published a book entitled “Germany Must Perish,” in which he demanded the complete extermination of the German people through sterilization:
“If we remember that vaccinations and serums bring benefits to the population, then the sterilization of the German people should be treated as a wonderful hygienic measure on the part of humanity in order to forever protect ourselves from the bacteria of the German spirit.”
Although Kaufman's book went almost unnoticed in the United States, Goebbels and Streicher skillfully took advantage of this craft, ordering it to be immediately translated into German and published in large quantities. In this regard, the German Jew Gideon Burg correctly noted:
“It looks as if the urchins at the circus began throwing stones at the lion, into whose mouth the tamer had put his head. There would be nothing for the urchins - between them and danger there is an ocean, that is, the bars of an animal cage.”
Frivolity or naivety? Hardly. It should not be forgotten that the Zionist strategy was to incite Hitler to increasingly harsh anti-Semitic measures to oppress the Jews. On the one hand, this pushed German Jews to emigrate to Palestine, on the other hand, the Zionists argued to the governments of Western powers that there was a need for a national home for Jews. The propaganda of “horrors” about the extermination of Jews, which began in 1942, was aimed at the same thing. This is not difficult to judge from statements such as those made by Weizmann in the New York Times on March 2, 1943:
“Two million Jews have already been exterminated... The task of democracies is obvious... they must negotiate through neutral countries, seeking the liberation of Jews in the occupied areas... May the gates of Palestine open to all who wish to see the shores of the Jewish Fatherland.”
It is a lie that two million Jews were exterminated in early 1943, but by this time tens of thousands had met their end in the camps.
I think everyone knows Hitler's plans for nations. For those who do not know, it is worth especially noting four of them: the “true Aryans,” the Slavs, the Jews and the Gypsies. Let's start with the fact that the very basis of these plans were the ideas of racism - highest degree Nazism (Nazism is the doctrine of superior and inferior races).
The above nations can be divided into three groups.
- The first, “ruling” group of nations includes, as you might guess, only the “true Aryans” themselves.
- The second group includes the Slavs. They were promised almost complete destruction. And those who were “lucky” to survive would become slaves. "Elite" slaves.
- A worse fate awaited the Jews and Gypsies. They, as "inferior" races, had to be destroyed.
The answer to the question why Jews and Gypsies were considered inferior races is simple
They did not have their own states. They were bugs on globe", as one of Hitler’s close associates said. Why, in fact, did death await them? Why not make them the same slaves as the rest? I think the truth is impossible to know now. The world is divided into several camps, each of which have their own version.
- First and the most common version is that the very idea of Nazism, as understood by Hitler, implied the division of nations into these three groups. This is a completely reasonable version, since it is no secret that Hitler was a fanatic in his cause. “Performing in front of his soldiers was akin to making love for him,” adherents of this version are sure, which is also not without logic. To see this, you should watch one of the recordings of Hitler’s speech.
- The second version is that Hitler’s people, quite a few of whom, as is known, were pumped full of drugs and special medications. They were bloody, they felt almost no pain and wanted only one thing: to kill. An order that as soon as possible more people leaving (after all, the more slaves, the better) could greatly undermine the authority of such troops, which would lead to a significant weakening of the army due to the loss of the “elite” and, most likely, to riots by these madmen. It turns out that they had to give them someone to tear to pieces. These doomed were the Jews and Gypsies.
- Third version implied fear. Hitler's fear of danger. According to the version, Hitler was afraid that the people of one of these nations could destroy him great army. There is no reasonable evidence for this version.
On my own behalf, I can add that, whatever Hitler’s motives, he was not going to leave the Jews any chance of survival. Genocide, complete destruction - that's what awaited them.
But why Jews?
After all, in Hitler’s own family, among his closest relatives there were representatives of a race he hated.
Firstly were an “inferior” race according to Nazi ideas.
Secondly, they say that Hitler greatly disliked his Jewish relative.
Third The reason can be considered that Jews and Gypsies are very few in number, and morally this was very positive for the army. Like, “We are destroying entire nations! That’s how powerful we are!” (Basically, this reason fits the second version of hatred, but does not contradict the others).
Actually, the term “Holocaust” itself is not new to anyone. You can even say that it is commonplace, understandable and accepted by all normal people as a fact. The systematic extermination of Jews throughout Europe by the German fascists does not require any evidence and was an international crime
And the Germans do not deny this. It would be difficult. But it turns out that there are some nuances in this matter.
I’ll start with the definition on Wikipedia as a publication that cannot be accused of anti-Semitism in any way.
Holocaust (from English holocaust, from ancient Greek ὁλοκαύστος - “burnt offering”):
In a broad sense, the persecution and mass extermination by the Nazis of representatives of various ethnic and social groups(Soviet prisoners of war, Poles, Jews, gypsies, homosexual men, Freemasons, hopelessly sick and disabled people, etc.) during the existence of Nazi Germany.
In the narrow sense - the persecution and mass extermination of Jews living in Germany, on the territory of its allies and in the territories occupied by them during the Second World War; the systematic persecution and extermination of European Jews by Nazi Germany and collaborators during 1933-1945. Along with the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Empire is one of the most famous examples of genocide in the 20th century.
And another moment from the same place:
In modern English with capital letter(Holocaust) the word is used to mean the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis, and with lowercase (holocaust) - in other cases.
That is, the Holocaust is written with a capital letter in the narrow sense, when we're talking about about Jews. With a small letter - when in a broad letter, which includes everyone else.
This seemed very strange to me.
Yes, today for the majority of ordinary people, “the Holocaust is when the Jews were exterminated.” And, to be honest, the Jews themselves are vigorously promoting this term, actually monopolizing it.
Meanwhile, there is something to think about here.
For example, that of the 5.7 million Red Army soldiers who ended up in German captivity, 3.3 million died.
In principle, every German soldier knew that an enemy who surrendered voluntarily could not be killed. Nevertheless, they killed. Filtering out the same Jews, political workers and commanders. And they did it in no way at will, both the Wehrmacht and the SS had a number of orders from the Supreme High Command (OKW) and the top of the SS, which clearly spelled out “new methods of warfare.”
And the new methods prescribed not only to defeat the Jewish-communist enemies, but also to destroy them.
Just look at the “commissar's order” dated June 6, 1941, signed by Warlimont and Brauchitsch (addition).
“...These commissars are not recognized as soldiers; they are not subject to the international legal protection in force for prisoners of war. After sorting, they must be destroyed.”
What do the “truth tellers” say about Stalin about non-compliance with the Hague Convention?
And the brave officers of the Wehrmacht, although they muttered in their memoirs (like, for example, Manstein), they shot. Proven at the Nuremberg Tribunal in relation to parts of the same Manstein.
What other conventions are there...
No, the Wehrmacht remembered these conventions. The first of the ten rules of war for German soldiers, written on every military identification card, read:
“The German soldier fights nobly for the victory of his people. Cruelty and senseless destruction are unworthy of him.”
It is clear that this did not concern the Soviets, who were either communists or Jews, and often both.
Yes, Hitler really wanted to make the Wehrmacht his political instrument. And he did it perfectly. On March 30, 1941, Hitler gave a speech at a general meeting in his Reich Chancellery.
The meeting was attended by more than 200 generals, who, in fact, were to command the troops of the Eastern Front during Operation Barbarossa. Moreover, these were not some specially selected, ideologically literate and extremely reliable leadership, but the most ordinary Wehrmacht generals. The core of the German army.
And what, gentlemen generals did not understand that Hitler demanded that they wage war using methods that contradicted the generally accepted norms of warfare? Of course they understood. But no one wanted to seek adventures for their support, so they condemned them behind the scenes and went to fight.
And here are the consequences for us: of the 5.7 million soldiers of the Red Army who were captured by Germans, 3.3 million died, which amounted to 57.5% of their total number. Many of them were shot, but most died in numerous prison camps.
In the winter of 1941-1942 alone, the number of Red Army soldiers killed was about two million. In fact, we can say that a soldier who fell into the hands of the Wehrmacht in 1941 had virtually no chance of survival.
The number of dead Soviet prisoners of war and the number of dead Jews in numbers is terrifying. 3.3 million and 5.8 million people are huge numbers.
Holocaust? Holocaust. Or at least the Holocaust. Lower case.
But for some reason, the first loss figure does not attract such attention, unlike the second.
The fact that the Jews set things up this way and made the Holocaust a common Holocaust for their own people is an honor to them, by the way. And there is a lot to learn, it’s worth recognizing it.
But why did things turn out differently for us? Not in the Soviet Union, not in the bunch independent states After the collapse, for some reason no one in Germany decided to draw attention to the crimes against the soldiers of the Red Army.
Complete memory loss? Why?
Largely because after the end of the war many facts were not published. First of all, it was kept silent that the death of such a huge number of Red Army soldiers was initially planned by the Nazi leadership during the preparation of the attack on the USSR. And it was conscientiously executed not only by SS executioners, but also by “honest” representatives of the Wehrmacht.
Of course, the beginning of “ cold war" The communists have not gone away, they just turned from allies into enemies, which means why feel sorry for them? I am sure that many archives that came to the allies were either destroyed or are still lying quietly somewhere.
Many people today talk about some kind of “compensatory effect”. I agree, a large number of German soldiers were also captured by the Soviets, and many of them died there. But the numbers are completely incomparable!
Of the 3.5 million German and Allied prisoners of war, just over half a million died in captivity. That is, 14.9%. These are official numbers. And how can they be compared with 57.5% of our losses? No way.
The criminal actions of the Wehrmacht and the SS towards our prisoners of war in 1941-1945 are a shame. But this shame lies not only with the Wehrmacht and the German people. We also bear responsibility for the fact that our Holocaust remained “behind the scenes.”
Yes, more than seven decades have passed. However, today is not too late to raise this issue. The question of the correct Holocaust. This is memory. It's an honor.
The correct term Holocaust is the one with a capital letter that includes everyone: Jews, Poles, Gypsies and fighters of the Red Army: Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Jews, Moldovans, Tatars, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Georgians, Bashkirs, everyone, who fought under the red banner.
This is the correct understanding. Everything else is usurpation for the sake of one nation, and not very correct. However, the Holocaust against the Jews has taken place to be recognized by the world community. Is it worthy of capitalization? Don't know.
I know that we will have enough opinions on both sides. But before expressing them, I ask you to simply think about one thing: a Pole from Warsaw, a Jew from Dresden, a Russian from Yaroslavl, breathed the same air and their blood was all scarlet.
And this is not “their” Holocaust. This is our common tragedy, this is our common Holocaust.
Let's look at why the genocide of the Jewish people occurred during World War II. This question has always aroused people's interest. For what reasons specifically the Jews, what could they do so terrible that they would be exterminated en masse? Many people still do not understand why the Jews were exterminated. After all, they are exactly the same people and have the right to life. In order to understand this issue, let's turn to history.
What is genocide
This concept is relatively new, but it has its place in human history. Genocide is a crime directed against people differing in nationality, religion or race. The word “genocide” was first used by the Polish lawyer Rafael Lemkin. He mentioned it in his writings, in which he described the massacres of Jews. After this, lawyers began to use this term at the trial in Nuremberg, where the issue of war criminals was resolved.
Holocaust in Germany
Before Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, about half a million Jews lived on its territory. They, just like the Germans, had equal rights. Jews took an active part in the life of their country and did a lot for its prosperity. Why were the Jews destroyed if they had the same right to exist?
Everything changed dramatically with the arrival of Hitler. He had a plan related to the Jewish people, and gradually he began to implement it. The main goal of the plan was to separate the Jews from German society. Hitler wanted to blame the Jews for the problems that arose in the country because of them, and to expose these people to far from better light. At first they tried to evict Jews from Germany and deprive them of citizenship. To achieve this, people were fired from their jobs and their property was taken away. But it didn’t come down to murder. Then there were periods of calm, and the Jews believed that everything they had experienced was in the past.
During the event in Germany Olympic Games all anti-Semitic signs disappeared. Hitler had to show the world that in his country everyone lived in peace and friendship and honored their leader. Everything returned to normal; after the end of the Olympics, Jews began to leave the country en masse. The whole world treated the tragedy of the Jews only with regret and did not try to extend a friendly helping hand. Everyone was confident that the Jews would cope with their problems on their own.
But Hitler decided that there were still many Jews left in the country, and this problem needed to be solved somehow. The policy towards them has changed dramatically. All Jews over 6 years of age were required to wear a distinctive badge in the form of a yellow star. They also had to hang a star at the entrance to their houses and apartments. Jews were prohibited from appearing in shopping centers and near administrative buildings. It was taken from them winter clothes, which was transported to the front. They were given only one hour a day to buy food. And later they were prohibited from buying milk, cheese and other necessary products. Everything was done to ensure that they had no chance of survival.
In September 1942, the eviction of Jews from the German capital began. Jews were sent to the East, where they were used as work force. Death camps began to be built in the country. And the purpose of their creation was the destruction of Jews and people of other nationalities. The Nazis took all measures to destroy the Jews forever and prevent the continuation of their family. They were brutally abused, after which they were killed and even their remains were burned. Only because Hitler imagined himself to be God, who has the right to decide the fate of people. He believed that such a nation had no right to exist and they must be destroyed.
