Wikipedia

Final Solution: Difference between revisions

Browse history interactively
← Previous edit
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
Unsourced
 
(15 intermediate revisions by 13 users not shown)
Line 11:
| location = [[German-occupied Europe]]
| date = 1941–1945
| incident_type = [[Incitement to Genocide]]
| perpetrators = {{ubl|[[Adolf Hitler]]|[[Nazi Germany]]}}
| participants = {{ubl|[[Schutzstaffel]] (SS)| [[Sicherheitspolizei|Security Police]] (SiPo)| [[Gestapo]]| [[Kriminalpolizei]] (Kripo)| [[Sicherheitsdienst|SD]]| [[Order Police battalions]]| [[Waffen-SS]]| [[Wehrmacht]]}}
Line 24:
| notes = <!-- Notes -->
}}
The '''Final Solution''' ({{lang-langx|de|die Endlösung}}, {{IPA-|de|diː ˈʔɛntˌløːzʊŋ|pron|De-Endlösung.ogg}}) or the '''Final Solution to the Jewish Question''' ({{lang-langx|de|Endlösung der Judenfrage}}, {{IPA-|de|ˈɛntˌløːzʊŋ deːɐ̯ ˈjuːdn̩ˌfʁaːɡə|pron|De-Endlösung der Judenfrage.ogg}}) was a [[Nazi Germany|Nazi]] plan for the [[genocide]] of individuals they defined as [[Jews]] during [[World War II]]. The "Final Solution to the [[Jewish question]]" was the official [[code name]] for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not restricted to the European continent.<ref>{{cite book |last=Browning |first=Christopher |year=2007 |title=The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942|publisher= University of Nebraska Press |quote=In a brief two years between the autumn of 1939 and the autumn of 1941, Nazi Jewish policy escalated rapidly from the pre-war policy of forced emigration to the Final Solution as it is now understood—the systematic attempt to murder every last Jew within the German grasp.}}</ref> This policy of deliberate and systematic genocide starting across [[German-occupied Europe]] was formulated in procedural and geopolitical terms by [[Government of Nazi Germany|Nazi leadership]] in January 1942 at the [[Wannsee Conference]] held near Berlin,<ref name=Wannsee>{{cite web |title=Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005477 |access-date=30 March 2015 |publisher=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] }}</ref> and culminated in [[the Holocaust]], which saw [[The Holocaust in Poland|the murder of 90% of Polish Jews]],<ref name="Wyman">{{cite book |title=The World Reacts to the Holocaust |author1=David S. Wyman |author2=Charles H. Rosenzveig |publisher=JHU Press |year=1996 |page=99 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=U6KVOsjpP0MC&q=%2290+percent%22 |isbn=0801849691}}</ref> and two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe.<ref name=Museum>{{cite web |title='Final Solution': Overview |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005151 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130302130042/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005151 |archive-date=2 March 2013 |access-date=5 February 2016 |publisher= United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |author=Holocaust Encyclopedia}}</ref>
 
The nature and timing of the decisions that led to the Final Solution is an intensely researched and debated aspect of the Holocaust. The program evolved during the first 25 months of war leading to the attempt at "murdering every last Jew in the German grasp".{{r|Browning424}} [[Christopher Browning]], a historian specializing in the Holocaust, wrote that most historians agree that the Final Solution cannot be attributed to a single decision made at one particular point in time.{{r|Browning424}} "It is generally accepted the decision-making process was prolonged and incremental."<ref name=Browning213>{{harvp|Browning|2004|p=213}}.</ref> In 1940, following the [[Fall of France]], [[Adolf Eichmann#Transition from emigration to deportation|Adolf Eichmann]] devised the [[Madagascar Plan]] to move Europe's Jewish population to the French colony, but the plan was abandoned for logistical reasons, mainly [[Blockade of Germany (1939–45)|a naval blockade]].<ref name="CRB/Path"/> There were also preliminary plans to deport Jews to [[Palestine (region)|Palestine]] and [[Siberia]].{{sfn|Niewyk|Nicosia|2000|p=76}} In 1941, [[Raul Hilberg]] wrote that, in 1941, in the first phase of the mass-murder of Jews, the [[Einsatzgruppen|mobile killing units]] began to pursue their victims across occupied eastern territories; in the second phase, stretching across all of German-occupied Europe, the Jewish victims were sent on [[Holocaust trains|death trains]] to centralized [[extermination camp]]s built for the purpose of systematic murder of Jews.{{r|Hilberg273}}
 
==Background==
Line 34:
From gaining power in January 1933 until the [[World War II|outbreak of war]] in September 1939, the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany was focused on intimidation, expropriating their money and property, and encouraging them to emigrate.<ref name=MRo12/> According to the [[Nuremberg Laws|Nazi Party policy statement]], Jews and the [[Romani people]]{{r|Browning181}} were the only "alien people in Europe".<ref name="Hancock">{{cite book |title=The Routledge History of the Holocaust |author=Ian Hancock |editor=[[Jonathan C. Friedman]] |publisher=Taylor & Francis |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vsrJLASVC3QC&q=Menace+Bureau |page=378 |year=2010 |isbn=978-1136870606|author-link=Ian Hancock }} ''Also in:'' {{cite book |title=The Gypsies of Eastern Europe |author1=David M. Crowe |author2=John Kolsti |author3=Ian Hancock |publisher=Routledge |year=2016 |isbn=978-1315490243 |page=16 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jyC3DAAAQBAJ&q=Nuremberg+anti-Gypsyism|author1-link=David M. Crowe }}</ref> In 1936, the Bureau of Romani Affairs in [[Munich]] was taken over by [[Interpol#History|Interpol]] and renamed the Center for Combating the Gypsy Menace.<ref name="Hancock"/> Introduced at the end of 1937,<ref name=Browning181>{{harvp|Browning|2004|loc=(2007 ed.: pp. 179, 181–12}}). [https://books.google.com/books?id=d9Wg4gjtP3cC&q=Gypsy+question+final "The Gypsy question"].</ref> the "[[Porajmos|final solution of the Gypsy Question]]" entailed [[Roundup (history)|round-ups]], expulsions, and incarceration of Romani in concentration camps built at, until this point, [[Dachau concentration camp|Dachau]], [[Buchenwald]], [[Flossenbürg concentration camp|Flossenbürg]], [[Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp|Mauthausen]], [[Natzweiler]], [[Ravensbruck]], [[List of subcamps of Buchenwald|Taucha]] and [[Westerbork]]. After the [[Anschluss|Anschluss with Austria]] in 1938, [[Central Office for Jewish Emigration|Central Offices for Jewish Emigration]] were established in [[Vienna]] and [[Berlin]] to increase Jewish emigration, without covert plans for their forthcoming annihilation.<ref name=MRo12>{{harvp|Roseman|2002|pp=11–12}}.</ref>
 
The outbreak of war and the [[History of Poland#World War II and its violence|invasion of Poland]] brought a population of 3.5 million Polish Jews under the control of [[Gestapo–NKVD Conferences|the Nazi and Soviet security forces]],<ref name="Lukas">{{cite book |last1=Lukas |first1=Richard |author-link1=Richard C. Lukas |url=https://archive.org/details/outofinferno00rela |url-access=registration |quote=Nazi terror. |title=Out of the Inferno: Poles Remember the Holocaust |publisher=[[University Press of Kentucky]] |year=1989 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/outofinferno00rela/page/5 5], 13, 111, 201|isbn=0813116929 }}; also in {{cite book |orig-year=1986 |year=2012 |last1=Lukas |first1= Richard |author-link1=Richard C. Lukas |publisher=University of Kentucky Press/Hippocrene Books |isbn=978-0-7818-0901-6 |title=The Forgotten Holocaust: Poles Under Nazi Occupation 1939–1944 |location=New York |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Lv1mAAAAMAAJ&q=editions:lC7HhINUjXIC}}</ref> and marked the start of [[the Holocaust in Poland]].{{r|Browning213}} In the German-occupied zone of Poland, Jews were forced into [[Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland|hundreds of makeshift ghettos]], pending other arrangements.<ref name="HEnc">{{cite web |title=German Invasion of Poland: Jewish Refugees, 1939 |author=Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |location= Washington, DC |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005593}}</ref>

In TwoApril years later1941, with the launchGerman [[Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture|agriculture]] and [[OperationReichsministerium Barbarossades Innern|interior]], ministries designated the invasion[[Schutzstaffel|SS]] as an authorized applier of [[Zyklon B]], which meant they were able to use it without any further training or governmental oversight.<ref name=hayes>{{cite book | last = Hayes | first = Peter | author-link=Peter Hayes (historian) |title = From Cooperation to Complicity: Degussa in the SovietThird UnionReich | year = 2004 | publisher = Cambridge University Press | location = Cambridge; New York; Melbourne | isbn = 0-521-78227-9 }}</ref> The launch of [[Operation Barbarossa]] in June 1941, coincided with the German top echelon's newfound beganintent to pursue [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler's]] new anti-Semitic plan to eradicate, rather than expel, Jews.<ref>{{cite book |title=God, Greed, and Genocide: The Holocaust Through the Centuries |first=Arthur |last=Grenke |publisher=New Academia Publishing |year=2005 |isbn=097670420X |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iBaGO8Ue2NMC&q=eradication+rather+than+expulsion |page=92}}</ref> Hitler's earlier ideas about forcible removal of Jews from the German-controlled territories to achieve ''[[Lebensraum]]'' were abandoned after the failure of the [[Battle of Britain|air campaign against Britain]], initiating a [[Blockade of Germany (1939–45)|naval blockade]] of Germany.<ref name="CRB/Path">{{cite book |last=Browning |first=Christopher R. |author-link=Christopher Browning |title=The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution |year=1995 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=L1O2ZvS29DYC |via=Google Books |isbn=978-0-521-55878-5 |pages=18–19, 127–28}}</ref> ''[[Reichsführer-SS]]'' [[Heinrich Himmler]] became the chief architect of a new plan, which came to be called ''The Final Solution to the [[Jewish question]]''.{{sfnp|Browning|2004|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=d9Wg4gjtP3cC&q=Lebensraum+1941 pp. 35–36]}} On 31 July 1941, ''[[Reichsmarschall]]'' [[Hermann Göring]] wrote to [[Reinhard Heydrich]] (Himmler's deputy and chief of the [[Reich Security Main Office|RSHA]]),{{sfnp|Roseman|2002|pp=14–15}}{{sfnp|Hilberg|1985|p= 278}} authorising him to make the "necessary preparations" for a "total solution of the Jewish question" and coordinate with all affected organizations. Göring also instructed Heydrich to submit concrete proposals for the implementation of the new projected goal.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d9Wg4gjtP3cC&pg=PA315|title=The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942|last=Browning|first=Christopher R.|year=2007|publisher=University of Nebraska Press|isbn=978-0803203921|page=315|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ghwk.de/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf-wannsee/engl/goering.pdf |title=Authorization letter of Hermann Göring to Heydrich, 31 July 1941 |last=Göring |first=Hermann |date=31 July 1941 |access-date=3 June 2014 |publisher=House of the Wannsee Conference |archive-date=19 February 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180219024305/http://www.ghwk.de/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf-wannsee/engl/goering.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>
 
Broadly speaking, the extermination of Jews was carried out in two major operations. With the onset of [[Operation Barbarossa]], mobile killing units of the [[Schutzstaffel|SS]], the ''[[Einsatzgruppen]]'', and [[Order Police battalions]] were dispatched to the occupied Soviet Union for the express purpose of murdering all Jews. During the early stages of the invasion, Himmler himself visited [[Białystok]] at the beginning of July 1941, and requested that, "as a matter of principle, any Jew" behind the [[German-Soviet Frontier Treaty|German-Soviet frontier]] was to be "regarded as a partisan". His new orders gave the [[SS and police leader]]s full authority for the mass-murder behind the front lines. By August 1941, all Jewish men, women, and children were shot.{{sfnp|Longerich|2012|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=GBQchepZ-7EC&q=Bialystok%2Bprinciple&pg=PA525 525–33]}} In the second phase of annihilation, the Jewish inhabitants of central, western, and south-eastern Europe were transported by [[Holocaust trains]] to camps with newly built gassing facilities. [[Raul Hilberg]] wrote: "In essence, the killers of the occupied USSR moved to the victims, whereas outside this arena, the victims were brought to the killers. The two operations constitute an evolution not only chronologically, but also in complexity."<ref name=Hilberg273>{{harvp|Hilberg|1985|p=273}}.</ref> Massacres of about one million Jews occurred before plans for the Final Solution were fully implemented in 1942, but it was only with the decision to annihilate the entire Jewish population that [[extermination camp]]s such as [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz II Birkenau]] and [[Treblinka extermination camp|Treblinka]] were fitted with permanent [[gas chamber]]s to murder large numbers of Jews in a relatively short period of time.{{sfnp|Browning|2004|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=d9Wg4gjtP3cC&q=gas+chambers pp. 352–56]}}<ref name=Feig8112/>
 
[[File:Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz 02-2014.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|The villa at 56–58 Am Großen Wannsee, where the [[Wannsee Conference]] was held, is now a memorial and museum.]]
The plans to exterminate all the Jews of Europe were formalized at the [[Wannsee Conference]], held at an SS guesthouse near Berlin,{{sfnp|Longerich|2012|p=555}} on 20 January 1942. The conference was chaired by Heydrich and attended by 15 senior officials of the Nazi Party and the German government. Most of those attending were representatives of the [[Ministry of the Interior (Germany)|Interior Ministry]], the [[Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Germany)|Foreign Ministry]], and the [[Ministry of Justice (Germany)|Justice Ministry]], including Ministers for the Eastern Territories.{{sfnp|Roseman|2002|pp=65–67}} At the conference, Heydrich indicated that approximately 11,000,000 Jews in Europe would fall under the provisions of the "Final Solution". This figure included not only Jews residing in Axis-controlled Europe, but also the Jewish populations of the United Kingdom and of neutral nations (Switzerland, Ireland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and European Turkey).<ref name=Wannsee/> Eichmann's biographer [[David Cesarani]] wrote that Heydrich's main purpose in convening the conference was to assert his authority over the various agencies dealing with Jewish issues. "The simplest, most decisive way that Heydrich could ensure the smooth flow of deportations" to death camps, according to Cesarani, "was by asserting his total control over the fate of the Jews in the Reich and the east" under the single authority of the [[RSHA]].{{sfnp|Cesarani|2005|pp=110–11}} A copy of the minutes of this meeting (later called the Wannsee Conference Protocol) was found by the [[Allies of World War II|Allies]] in March 1947;<ref>{{cite web |title=Protocol of Conference on the final solution (Endlösung) of the Jewish question |url=https://www.ghwk.de/fileadmin/Redaktion/PDF/Konferenz/texte/English_translation_wannsee_protocol_2020.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230409112828/https://www.ghwk.de/fileadmin/Redaktion/PDF/Konferenz/texte/English_translation_wannsee_protocol_2020.pdf |archive-date=9 April 2023 |access-date=7 August 2023 |publisher=House of the Wannsee Conference}}</ref> it was too late to serve as evidence during the first [[Nuremberg Trials|Nuremberg Trial]], but was used by prosecutor General [[Telford Taylor]] in the [[subsequent Nuremberg Trials]].{{sfnp|Roseman|2002|pp=1–2}}
 
After the end of World War II, surviving archival documents provided a clear record of the Final Solution policies and actions of Nazi Germany. They included the Wannsee Conference Protocol, which documented the co-operation of various German state agencies in the SS-led Holocaust, as well as some 3,000 tons of original German records captured by Allied armies,<ref name=Feig8112>{{cite book |first=Konnilyn G. |last=Feig |title=Hitler's death camps: the sanity of madness |year=1981 |publisher=Holmes & Meier |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CNqEAAAAIAAJ&q=soldiers%2C+railroad+and+factory+workers%2C+chemists%2C+pharmacists%2C+foremen |pages=12–13 |isbn=0841906769 |quote=Hitler exterminated the Jews of Europe. But he did not do so alone. The task was so enormous, complex, time-consuming, and mentally and economically demanding that it took the best efforts of millions of Germans.}}</ref><ref name="evidence"/> including the [[Einsatzgruppen reports|''Einsatzgruppen'' reports]], which documented the progress of the mobile killing units assigned, among other tasks, to murder Jewish civilians during the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. The evidential proof which documented the mechanism of [[the Holocaust]] was submitted [[Nuremberg trial|at Nuremberg]].<ref name="evidence">{{cite web |title=Combating Holocaust Denial: Evidence of the Holocaust Presented at Nuremberg |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007271 |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |access-date=8 November 2013}}</ref>
Line 64 ⟶ 66:
===''Bezirk Bialystok'' and ''Reichskommissariat Ostland''===
{{see also|Reichskommissariat Ostland}}
Several scholars have suggested that the Final Solution began in the newly formed district of ''[[Bezirk Bialystok]]''.<ref name="M2004">{{cite journal |first=Marcin |last=Markiewicz |journal=Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej |department=Komentarze Historyczne |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110611232035/http://www.ipn.gov.pl/download.php?s=1&id=3922 |archive-date=11 June 2011 |access-date=9 February 2016 |url=http://www.ipn.gov.pl/download.php?s=1&id=3922 |at=68/96 in PDF |publisher=Biuro Edukacji Publicznej IPN |title=Bezirk Białystok (in) ''Represje hitlerowskie wobec wsi białostockiej'' |trans-title=Bezirk Białystok (in) Nazi repressions against the Białystok countryside |via=direct download 873 KB from the Internet Archive |volume=Nr 35-36 (12/2003–1/2004) |issn=1641-9561 }} ''Also in:'' {{harvp|Roseman|2002|p=111}}: "During the Wannsee meeting, the number of Jews in Białystok (i. e., in ''Bezirk Bialystok'')—subject to Final Solution—was estimated by Heydrich at 400,000. In Lithuania: 34,000. In Latvia: 3,500. In [[Belorussia|White Russia]] (excluding Bialystok): 446,484, and in USSR: 5,000,000. Estonia was listed in the minutes as being already ''[[Judenfrei]]'' (see ''[http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/wannsee.asp Wannsee Protocol]'', Nuremberg)."</ref> The German army [[Białystok Ghetto|took over Białystok]] within days. On Friday, 27 June 1941, the [[Orpo battalions|Reserve Police Battalion]] 309 arrived in the city and set the Great Synagogue on fire with hundreds of Jewish men locked inside.{{sfnp|Browning|1998|p=12}} The burning of the synagogue was followed by a frenzy of murders both inside the homes around the Jewish neighbourhood of Chanajki, and in the city park, lasting until night time.<ref name="bialystok1">{{cite web |url=http://www.sztetl.org.pl/en/article/bialystok/5,history/?action=view&page=6 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131017013243/http://www.sztetl.org.pl/en/article/bialystok/5,history/?action=view&page=6 |url-status=dead |archive-date=2013-10-17 |title=Białystok – History |publisher=[[Virtual Shtetl]] [[Museum of the History of Polish Jews]] |via=Internet Archive |page=6, paragraph #3 |id=According to records, about 5,000 Jews died at that time.<sup>[7.2]</sup> ''See:'' {{harvp|Browning|1998|page=12}} – Weis and his officers subsequently submitted a false report of the events to [General] Pfugbeil ... 2,000 to 2,200 Jews had been killed.<sup>[8]</sup>}}</ref> The next day, some 30 wagons of dead bodies were taken to mass graves. As noted by Browning, the murders were led by a commander "who correctly intuited and anticipated the wishes of his [[Führer]]" without direct orders.{{sfnp|Browning|1998|p=12}} For reasons unknown, the number of victims in the official report by Major Weis was cut in half.<ref name="bialystok1"/> The next mass-shooting of Polish Jews within the newly formed ''Reichskommissariat Ostland'' took place in two days of 5–7 August in [[Pińsk Ghetto|occupied Pińsk]], where over 12,000 Jews were murdered by the [[Waffen-SS|''Waffen SS'']],<ref name=Boneh>{{cite web |title=The Holocaust and the Destruction of the Jews of Pinsk (4 July 1941 – 23 December 1942) |publisher=The Jewish Community of Pinsk |url=http://www.pinskjews.org.il/eng/history03.asp |first=Nachum |last=Boneh |work=The Book of Pinsk. Chapter 3: The Oppressors in Action |access-date=20 September 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170912192040/http://www.pinskjews.org.il/eng/history03.asp |archive-date=12 September 2017 |url-status=dead }}</ref> not the ''Einsatzgruppen''.<ref name="YV1941"/> An additional 17,000 Jews perished there in a [[ghetto uprising]] crushed a year later with the aid of [[Belarusian Auxiliary Police]].<ref name="En5">{{cite web |url=http://www.sztetl.org.pl/he/article/pinsk/5,-/?print=1 |title=Pińsk |publisher=[[Virtual Shtetl]] |work=Elektroniczna Encyklopedia Żydowska |id=English version |at=Translation: המאמר לא זמין בשפה זו, נכון לעכשיו |access-date=20 September 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170912191757/http://www.sztetl.org.pl/he/article/pinsk/5,-/?print=1 |archive-date=12 September 2017 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
 
An Israeli historian [[Dina Porat]] claimed that the Final Solution, i.e.: "the systematic overall physical extermination of Jewish communities one after the other—began in Lithuania" during the massive German chase after the Red Army across the ''Reichskommissariat Ostland''.<ref name="Porat159">{{Cite book |author-link=Dina Porat |first=Dina |last=Porat |chapter=The Holocaust in Lithuania: Some Unique Aspects |editor-first=David |editor-last=Cesarani |title=The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation |publisher=Routledge |year=2002 |isbn=0-415-15232-1 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1LeGAgAAQBAJ&q=80%2C000 |via=Google Books |page=[https://archive.org/details/finalsolutionori0000unse/page/161 161] |url=https://archive.org/details/finalsolutionori0000unse/page/161 }}</ref> The subject of [[the Holocaust in Lithuania]] has been analysed by Konrad Kweit from [[USHMM]] who wrote: "Lithuanian Jews were among the first victims of the Holocaust [beyond the eastern borders of occupied Poland]. The Germans carried out the mass executions [...] signaling the beginning of the 'Final Solution'."<ref name="Kwiet">{{Cite journal |first=Konrad |last=Kwiet |title=Rehearsing for Murder: The Beginning of the Final Solution in Lithuania in June 1941 |journal=[[Holocaust and Genocide Studies]]|volume=12 |issue=1 |pages=3–26 |year=1998 |doi=10.1093/hgs/12.1.3}} and {{cite conference |first=Konrad |last=Kwiet |title=The Onset of the Holocaust: The Massacres of Jews in Lithuania in June 1941 |type=Annual lecture |conference=J. B. and Maurice Shapiro Senior Scholar-in-Residence at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |date=4 December 1995}} Published under the same title, but expanded in {{cite book |title=Power, Conscience and Opposition: Essays in German History in Honour of John A Moses |editor1-first=Andrew |editor1-last=Bonnell <!-- et al.--> |location=New York |publisher=Peter Lang |year=1996 |pages=107–21}}</ref> About 80,000 Jews were murdered in Lithuania by October (including in [[Wilno Voivodeship (1926–39)|formerly Polish Wilno]]) and about 175,000 by the end of 1941 according to [[Einsatzgruppen reports|official reports]].<ref name="Porat159"/>
Line 70 ⟶ 72:
===''Reichskommissariat Ukraine''===
{{see also|Reichskommissariat Ukraine}}
Within one week from the start of [[Operation Barbarossa]], Heydrich issued an order to his ''Einsatzgruppen'' for the on-the-spot execution of all Bolsheviks, interpreted by the SS to mean all Jews. One of the first indiscriminate massacres of men, women, and children in [[Reichskommissariat Ukraine]] took the lives of over 4,000 Polish Jews in [[Łuck Ghetto|occupied Łuck]] on 2–4 July 1941, murdered by ''Einsatzkommando'' 4a assisted by the [[Ukrainian People's Militia]].<ref name="jz193">{{cite book |first=Joshua D. |last=Zimmerman |author-link=Joshua D. Zimmerman |year=2015 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w4dsCQAAQBAJ&q=%22%C5%81uck+ghetto%22 |title=The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939–1945 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |via=Google Books |page=193|isbn=978-1107014268 }}</ref> Formed officially on 20 August 1941, the ''Reichskommissariat Ukraine''—stretching from prewar east-central Poland to Crimea—had become operational theatre of the ''Einsatzgruppe'' C. Within the Soviet Union proper, between 9 July 1941 and 19 September 1941 the city of [[Zhytomyr]] was made ''[[Judenfrei]]'' in three murder operations conducted by German and Ukrainian police in which 10,000 Jews perished.<ref name="YV1941"/> In the [[Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre]] of 26–28 August 1941 some 23,600 Jews were shot in front of open pits (including 14,000–18,000 people expelled from Hungary).<ref name="YV1941"/><ref name=RLB>{{cite book |title=The Politics of Genocide |first=Randolph L. |last=Braham |author-link=Randolph L. Braham |publisher=Wayne State University Press |year=2000 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ATpHs6fgr_YC&q=Kamenets+Report |isbn=0814326919 |page=34}}</ref> After an [[1941 Bila Tserkva massacre|incident in Bila Tserkva]] in which 90 small children left behind had to be shot separately, [[Paul Blobel|Blobel]] requested that Jewish mothers hold them in their arms during mass shootings.<ref name="WLo">{{cite book |title=Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine |first=Wendy |last=Lower | author-link=Wendy Lower | publisher=Univ of North Carolina Press |year=2006 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UwDmUJWdcJkC&q=Radomyshl%27+Bila+Tserkva+Ukrainians |isbn=0807876917 |page=253}}</ref><ref name="ESt">{{cite book |title=Life In The Ghettos During The Holocaust |first=Eric |last=Sterling |publisher=Syracuse University Press |year=2005 |isbn=0815608039 |page=127 |via=Google Books |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ywZG1TwqHwoC&q=Bila+Tserkva+4a%2C+Ukrainian}}</ref> Long before the conference at Wannsee, 28,000 Jews were shot by SS and Ukrainian military in [[Vinnytsia]] on 22 September 1941, followed by the 29 September massacre of 33,771 Jews at [[Babi Yar]].<ref name="YV1941">{{cite web |title=Goering orders Heydrich to prepare the plan for the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem |work=The Holocaust Timeline 1940–1945 |author=Yad Vashem |year=2016 |publisher=The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority |url=http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/timeline/timeline_40.asp |access-date=26 January 2016 |archive-date=15 July 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180715001155/http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/timeline/timeline_40.asp |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref name="Desbois">{{cite web |title=Places of Massacres by German Task Forces between 1941–1943 |year=2009 |publisher=TOS Gemeinde Tübingen |location=Germany |first=Patrick |last=Desbois |author-link=Patrick Desbois |url=http://www.marchoflife.org/fileadmin/data/_TOS-info/2010/downloads/map_ukraine_english.pdf |access-date=26 January 2016 |archive-date=9 October 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161009213903/http://www.marchoflife.org/fileadmin/data/_TOS-info/2010/downloads/map_ukraine_english.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref> In [[Dnipropetrovsk]], on 13 October 1941 some 10,000–15,000 Jews were shot.<ref name=AEi92/> In [[Chernihiv]], 10,000 Jews were murdered and only 260 Jews were spared.<ref name=AEi92/> In mid-October, during the [[Kryvyi Rih|Krivoy-Rog]] massacre of 4,000–5,000 Soviet Jews the entire [[Ukrainian Auxiliary Police|Ukrainian auxiliary police]] force actively participated.<ref name=MBer>{{cite book |title=The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined |author-link=Michael Berenbaum |first=Michael |last=Berenbaum |publisher=Indiana University Press |year=2002 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zkZC6bp3upsC&q=Krivoy-Rog |isbn=0253215293 |page=257}} ''Also in:'' {{cite book |title=The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust: K-Se |author1=Shmuel Spector |author2=Geoffrey Wigoder |publisher=NYU Press |year=2001 |isbn=0814793770 |page=679 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MZzY8sG8yNsC&q=KRIVOY+ROG}}</ref> In the first days of January 1942 in [[Kharkiv]], 12,000 Jews were murdered, but smaller massacres continued in this period on daily basis in countless other locations.<ref name=AEi92>{{cite book |title=The trial of Adolf Eichmann: record of proceedings in the District Court of Jerusalem |isbn=0317058401 |id=Volume 1 |author1=Adolf Eichmann |author2=Bet ha-mishpaṭ ha-meḥozi |author3=Miśrad ha-mishpaṭim |publisher=Trust for the Publication of the Proceedings of the Eichmann Trial, in co-operation with the Israel State Archives, and Yad Vashem |year=1992 |pages=522, 93 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=i-7zAAAAMAAJ&q=Dnepropetrovsk}} ''Also in:'' {{cite book |title=Stalin and Europe: Imitation and Domination, 1928–1953 |author1=Timothy Snyder |author2=Ray Brandon |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2014 |isbn=978-0199945573 |page=194 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fZBtAwAAQBAJ&q=Dnipropetrovsk+15%2C000 |quote=Quoted 15,000 dead at [[Dnipropetrovsk]] and 12,000 Jews murdered in [[Kharkiv]].}}</ref> In August 1942 in the presence of only a few German SS men over 5,000 Jews were massacred in Polish [[Zofjówka]] by the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police leading to the town's complete sweep from existence.<ref>{{cite web |author=Beit Tal |year=2010 |title=Zofiówka |publisher=[[POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews]] |url=http://www.sztetl.org.pl/pl/article/zofiowka/5,historia/ |access-date=27 November 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141230081456/http://www.sztetl.org.pl/pl/article/zofiowka/5,historia/ |archive-date=30 December 2014 |url-status=dead }} Also in: {{cite web |author=Beit Tal |year=2014 |title=Truchenbrod – Lozisht |publisher=The Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora |url=http://www.bet-tal.com/index.aspx?id=2421 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140810091732/http://www.bet-tal.com/index.aspx?id=2421 |archive-date=10 August 2014 }}</ref>
 
===''Distrikt Galizien''===
Historians find it difficult to determine precisely when the first concerted effort at annihilation of all Jews began in the last weeks of June 1941 during Operation Barbarossa.<ref name=JWe/> Dr. Samuel Drix (''Witness to Annihilation''), Jochaim Schoenfeld (''Holocaust Memoirs''), and several survivors of the [[Janowska concentration camp]], who were interviewed in the film ''Janovska Camp at Lvov'', among other witnesses, have argued that the Final Solution began in [[Lviv|Lwów]] (Lemberg) in ''Distrikt Galizien'' of the [[General Government]] during the German advance across [[Territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union|Soviet-occupied Poland]]. Statements and memoirs of survivors emphasize that, when Ukrainian nationalists and ''[[ad hoc]]'' Ukrainian People's Militia (soon reorganized as the [[Ukrainian Auxiliary Police]]) began to murder women and children, rather than only male Jews, the "Final Solution" had begun. Witnesses have said that such murders happened both prior to and during the [[Lviv pogroms|pogroms reportedly triggered by the NKVD prisoner massacre]]. The question of whether there was some coordination between the [[Lithuania]]n and Ukrainian militias remains open (i.e. collaborating for a joint assault in [[Kaunas|Kovno]], [[Vilnius|Wilno]], and Lwów).<ref name=JWe>{{cite book |first=Jakob |last=Weiss |title= The Lemberg Mosaic |contribution=Introduction |location= New York |publisher= Alderbrook Press |year= 2011 |page=397|title-link=The Lemberg Mosaic |isbn=978-0983109105 }}</ref>
 
The murders continued uninterrupted. On 12 October 1941, [[Stanisławów Ghetto|in Stanisławów]], some 10,000–12,000 Jewish men, women, and children were shot at the Jewish cemetery by the German uniformed SS-men and Ukrainian Auxiliary Police during the so-called "{{ill|Bloody Sunday of Stanislau|lt=Bloody Sunday|de|Blutsonntag von Stanislau|uk|Кривава неділя у Станіславі}}" ''[[:de:Blutsonntag von Stanislau|(de)]]''.<ref name="stanislawow">{{cite web |first=Andrea |last= Löw |date=10 June 2013 |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007236 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140520064011/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007236 |archive-date= 20 May 2014 |title=Stanislawów (now Ivano-Frankivsk) |publisher=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] |access-date=29 January 2016 |quote=From ''The USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945''.}}</ref> The shooters began firing at 12 noon and continued without stopping by taking turns. There were picnic tables set up on the side with bottles of vodka and sandwiches for those who needed to rest from the deafening noise of gunfire.<ref name="yadvashem-Pohl">{{cite book |first=Dieter |last=Pohl Pohl| title=Hans Krueger and the Murder of the Jews in the Stanislawow Region (Galicia) |url=http://yad-vashem.org.il/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%202292.pdf |via=Yad Vashem.org |pages=12–13, 17–18, 21 |quote=It is impossible to determine what [[Hans Krueger|Krueger's]] exact responsibility was in connection with 'Bloody Sunday' [massacre of 12 October 1941]. It is clear that a massacre of such proportions under German civil administration was virtually unprecedented. |access-date=29 January 2016 |archive-date=14 March 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150314220019/http://yad-vashem.org.il/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%202292.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref> It was the single largest massacre of Polish Jews in ''[[General Government|Generalgouvernement]]'' prior to mass gassings of ''Aktion Reinhard'', which commenced at [[Bełżec extermination camp|Bełżec]] in March 1942. Notably, the extermination operations in [[Chełmno extermination camp|Chełmno]] had begun on 8 December 1941, one-and-a-half months before Wannsee, but Chełmno—located in ''[[Reichsgau Wartheland]]''—was not a part of Reinhard, and neither was [[Auschwitz-Birkenau]] functioning as an extermination center until November 1944 in [[Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany|Polish lands annexed by Hitler]] and [[Provinz Oberschlesien|added to Germany proper]].<ref name="yadvashem-Pohl"/><ref name =Reinhard>{{cite web |url=https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005195 |title=Operation Reinhard (Einsatz Reinhard) |access-date=15 August 2016 |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum}}</ref>
 
The conference at Wannsee gave impetus to the so-called ''second sweep'' of the Holocaust by the bullet in the east. Between April and July 1942 in [[Volhynia]], 30,000 Jews were murdered in death pits with the help of dozens of newly formed Ukrainian ''[[Ukrainian Auxiliary Police#Battalions|Schutzmannschaft]]''.<ref name=Die>{{cite book |title=The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization |first=Dieter |last=Pohl|editor1=Ray Brandon |editor2=Wendy Lower |editor-link2=Wendy Lower | publisher=Indiana University Press |year=2008 |isbn=978-0253001597 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hyYGOyX1IQUC&q=Final+Solution+Volhynia |page=97}}</ref> Owing to good relations with the Ukrainian ''Hilfsverwaltung'',<ref name="Eikel">{{cite book |first=Markus |last=Eikel |chapter=The local administration under German occupation in central and eastern Ukraine, 1941–1944 |at=pp. 110–22 in PDF |title=The Holocaust in Ukraine: New Sources and Perspectives |quote=Ukraine differs from other parts of the Nazi-occupied Soviet Union, whereas the local administrators have formed the ''Hilfsverwaltung'' in support of extermination policies in 1941 and 1942, and in providing assistance for the deportations to camps in Germany mainly in 1942 and 1943. |publisher=Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, [[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] |year=2013 |chapter-url=http://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/20130500-holocaust-in-ukraine.pdf}}</ref> these auxiliary battalions were deployed by the SS also in Russia Center, Russia South, and in Byelorussia; each with about 500 soldiers divided into three companies.<ref name="MW">{{cite web |title=Schutzmannschaft Bataillone |url=http://www.axishistory.com/books/137-germany-military-other/foreign-volunteers/9065-schutzmannschaft-bataillone |publisher=Axis History Books |date=9 June 2013 |first=Marcus |last=Wendel |at=Internet Archive, 6 January 1914 capture |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140106075125/http://www.axishistory.com/books/137-germany-military-other/foreign-volunteers/9065-schutzmannschaft-bataillone |url-status=live |archive-date=6 January 2014}}</ref> They participated in the extermination of 150,000 Volhynian Jews alone, or 98 percent of the Jewish inhabitants of the entire region.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Soviet Counterinsurgency in the Western Borderlands |first=Alexander |last=Statiev |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2010 |isbn=978-0521768337 |page=69 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YIRSwRDVqu4C&q=auxiliary+150%2C000+Jews}}</ref> In July 1942 the Completion of the Final Solution in the General Government territory which included ''Distrikt Galizien'', was ordered personally by Himmler. He set the initial deadline for 31 December 1942.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Diary of Samuel Golfard and the Holocaust in Galicia |first=Wendy |last=Lower |publisher=Rowman Altamira |year=2011 |isbn=978-0759120785 |pages=17, 154 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RmdnnIlS-6cC&q=Final+Solution+1942}}</ref>
Line 86 ⟶ 88:
Construction work on the first killing centre at [[Bełżec extermination camp|Bełżec]] in occupied Poland began in October 1941, three months before the Wannsee Conference. The new facility was operational by March the following year.<ref name="M/MPwB">{{cite web |title=Historia Niemieckiego Obozu Zagłady w Bełżcu |trans-title=History of the Belzec extermination camp |publisher=Muzeum-Miejsce Pamięci w Bełżcu |author=National Bełżec Museum |url=http://www.belzec.eu/articles.php?acid=77 |language=pl |access-date=24 January 2016 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151029003413/http://www.belzec.eu/articles.php?acid=77 |archive-date=29 October 2015}}</ref> By mid-1942, two more death camps had been built on Polish lands: [[Sobibór extermination camp|Sobibór]] operational by May 1942, and [[Treblinka extermination camp|Treblinka]] operational in July.<ref name="JVL-Reinhard">{{cite web |url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/reinhard.html#5 |title=The Construction of the Treblinka Extermination Camp |publisher=Jewish Virtual Library.org |work=Yad Vashem Studies, XVI |year=1984 |access-date=3 November 2013 |author=McVay, Kenneth}}</ref> From July 1942, the mass murder of Polish and foreign Jews took place at [[Treblinka extermination camp|Treblinka]] as part of [[Operation Reinhard]], the deadliest phase of the Final Solution. More Jews were murdered at Treblinka than at any other Nazi [[extermination camp]] apart from [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz]].<ref name="Berenbaum">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Berenbaum |first=Michael |title=Treblinka |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |year=2016 |publisher=Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. |location=Chicago }}</ref> By the time the mass killings of Operation Reinhard ended in 1943, roughly two million Jews in German-occupied Poland had been murdered.<ref name =Reinhard/> The total number of people murdered in 1942 in [[Majdanek concentration camp|Lublin/Majdanek]], [[Bełżec extermination camp|Bełżec]], [[Sobibor extermination camp|Sobibór]], and [[Treblinka]] was 1,274,166 by [[Höfle Telegram|Germany's own estimation]], not counting [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz II Birkenau]] nor ''[[Chełmno extermination camp|Kulmhof]]''.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Holocaust Encyclopedia |author1=Walter Laqueur |author2=Judith Tydor Baumel |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2001 |isbn=0300138113 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nPbr0XzlTzcC&q=Chelmno+graveyard |page=178 |author1-link=Walter Laqueur }}</ref> Their bodies were buried in mass graves initially.{{sfnp|Arad|1987|p=640}} Both Treblinka and Bełżec were equipped with powerful [[crawler excavator]]s from Polish construction sites in the vicinity, capable of most digging tasks without disrupting surfaces.<ref name="ushmm-belzec">{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005191 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120107184303/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005191 |archive-date=7 January 2012 |encyclopedia=The Holocaust Encyclopedia |title=Belzec |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |access-date=24 January 2016}}</ref> Although other methods of extermination, such as the cyanic poison [[Zyklon B]], were already being used at other Nazi killing centres such as Auschwitz, the ''[[Aktion Reinhard]]'' camps used [[carbon monoxide poisoning|lethal exhaust gases]] from captured tank engines.<ref>{{cite book |first=K. |last=Carol Rittner, Roth |title=Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t2AjlkSlMa8C&q=captured-soviet+tank+engines+holocaust&pg=PA2 |publisher=Continuum International Publishing Group |year=2004 |page=2 |isbn=978-0-8264-7566-4}}</ref>
 
The ''Holocaust by bullets'' (as opposed to the ''Holocaust by gas'')<ref>{{cite AV media |url=http://natgeotv.com/ca/world-war-ii-the-apocalypse/videos/the-holocaust-by-bullets |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100309133810/http://www.natgeotv.com/ca/world-war-ii-the-apocalypse/videos/the-holocaust-by-bullets |url-status=dead |archive-date=9 March 2010 |author=[[National Geographic Channel]] |title=The Holocaust by bullets |publisher=NGC Europe Limited |year=2013 |work=Excerpt from episode "Apocalypse: The Second World War"}}</ref> went on in the territory of occupied Poland in conjunction with the [[ghetto uprising]]s, irrespective of death camps' quota. In two weeks of July 1942, the [[Słonim Ghetto#The revolt|Słonim Ghetto revolt]], crushed with the help of Latvian, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian ''[[Schutzmannschaft]]'', cost the lives of 8,000–13,000 Jews.<ref>{{harvp|Longerich|2010|pp=198, 238, 347}}. See also {{cite web |author=Lawrence Bush |date=28 June 2010 |title=June 29: The Slonim Massacres |website=Jewish Currents |url=http://jewishcurrents.org/june-29-the-slonim-massacres/ |access-date=1 May 2017 }}</ref> The second largest mass shooting (to that particular date) took place in late October 1942 when the insurgency was suppressed in the [[Pińsk Ghetto]]; over 26,000 men, women and children were shot with the aid of [[Belarusian Auxiliary Police]] before the ghetto's closure.<ref name="stats">{{cite book |editor1=Ray Brandon |editor2=Wendy Lower |editor-link=Wendy Lower |url=https://wwwbooks.google.com/searchbooks?qid=%22PinskhyYGOyX1IQUC&dq=Pinsk+massacre+in+the+RKU%22 &pg=PA290|first=Karel C. |last=Berkhoff |title=The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization |date=28 May 2008 |publisher=Indiana University Press |page=290 |isbn=978-0-253-00159-7 }} Also in: {{cite web |author1=Barbara N. Łopieńska |author2-link=Ryszard Kapuściński |author2=Ryszard Kapuściński |work=Interview |date=2003 |url=http://kapuscinski.info/czlowiek-z-bagna.html |title=Człowiek z bagna |trans-title=A man from the marshes |publisher=[[Przekrój]] nr 28/3029. Reprint: Ryszard Kapuściński.info }} Further info: {{cite web |url=http://www.sztetl.org.pl/en/selectcity/ |title=Glossary of 2,077 Jewish towns in Poland |author=Virtual Shtetl |publisher=[[POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews]] |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160208215116/http://www.sztetl.org.pl/en/selectcity/ |archive-date=8 February 2016 |author-link=Virtual Shtetl }} {{cite web |url=http://www.izrael.badacz.org/historia/szoa_getto.html |title=Getta Żydowskie |author=Gedeon }} {{cite web |url=http://www.deathcamps.org/occupation/ghettolist.htm |title=Ghetto List |author=Michael Peters |publisher=Deathcamps.org }}</ref> During the suppression of the [[Warsaw Ghetto Uprising]] (the largest single revolt by Jews during World War&nbsp;II), 13,000 Jews were killed in action before May 1943.<ref name="stroop">{{cite encyclopedia |url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/nowarsaw.html |title=Stroop Report |author=SS [[Gruppenführer]] Jürgen Stroop |encyclopedia=Jewish Virtual Library |date=May 1943}}</ref> Numerous other uprisings were quelled without impacting the pre-planned Nazi deportations actions.<ref name="ushmm4">{{cite web |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005407 |title=Resistance in Ghettos |author=The Holocaust Encyclopedia |work=Jewish Uprisings in Ghettos and Camps, 1941–1944 |date=2013 |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum}} Notable examples include the [[Łuck Ghetto#Jewish uprising and the ghetto liquidation|Łuck Ghetto uprising]] quelled on 12 December 1942 with the help of the [[Ukrainian Auxiliary Police]], ''see:'' [[Yad Vashem]], {{YouTube |id=1k7v0VPOKnw |title=Łuck, December 1942}}; testimony of {{cite web |url=http://www.berdichev.org/the_forgotten_december.html |archive-date=22 July 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150722232607/http://www.berdichev.org/the_forgotten_december.html |url-status=dead |title=The forgotten December |author=Shmuel Shilo|author-link=Shmuel Shilo }} The [[Łachwa Ghetto#Uprising and massacre|Łachwa Ghetto uprising]] was suppressed on 3 September 1942, the [[Częstochowa Ghetto uprising]] on 30 June 1943, the [[Sosnowiec Ghetto#The uprising|Sosnowiec Ghetto uprising]] on 3 August 1943, and the [[Białystok Ghetto uprising]] on 17 August 1943.</ref>
 
About two-thirds of the overall number of victims of the Final Solution were murdered before February 1943,<ref name="GHDI">{{cite journal |publisher=German History in Documents and Images, GHDI |volume= 7. Nazi Germany, 1933–1945 |title=Statistical Report on the "Final Solution", known as the Korherr Report of 23 March 1943 |author=Paula Lerner |year=2007 |journal=Die Endlösung by Gerald Reitlinger |url=http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English42.pdf}}</ref> which included the main phase of the extermination programme [[Military Administration in Belgium and Northern France|in the West]] launched by [[Eichmann]] on 11 June 1942 from Berlin.<ref name="Yahil389">{{cite book |title=The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932–1945 |author=Leni Yahil |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1991 |isbn=0195045238 |page=389 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=e_aRvKpLUf0C&q=West+European&pg=PA389}}</ref> The [[Holocaust trains]] run by the [[Deutsche Reichsbahn#Holocaust|Deutsche Reichsbahn]] and several other national railway systems delivered condemned Jewish captives from as far as Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Moravia, Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, and even Scandinavia.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WRFG-HKoBgEC&q=Reichsbahn+Railways&pg=PA57 |author=Ronald J. Berger |year=2002 |title=Fathoming the Holocaust: A Social Problems Approach |publisher=Transaction Publishers |isbn=0202366111 |pages=57–58 |quote=Bureaucrats in the Reichsbahn performed important functions that facilitated the movement of trains. They constructed and published timetables, collected fares, and allocated cars and locomotives. In sending Jews to their death, they did not deviate much from the routine procedures they used to process ordinary train traffic.}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |first1=Ben|last1=Hecht|first2=Julian|last2=Messner|date=31 December 1969 |url=http://www.aish.com/ho/o/48970811.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140222020235/http://www.aish.com/ho/o/48970811.html |archive-date=22 February 2014 |title=Holocaust: The Trains |publisher=Aish.com Holocaust Studies}}</ref> The cremation of exhumed corpses to destroy any evidence left behind began in early spring and continued throughout summer.{{sfnp|Arad|1987|pp=300–01}} The nearly completed clandestine programme of murdering all deportees was explicitly addressed by Heinrich Himmler in his [[Posen speeches]] made to the leadership of the Nazi Party on 4 October and during a conference in Posen ([[PoznanPoznań]]) of 6 October 1943 in occupied Poland. Himmler explained why the Nazi leadership found it necessary to murder Jewish women and children along with the Jewish men. The assembled functionaries were told that the Nazi state policy was "the extermination of the Jewish people" as such.<ref>Letter written by [[Albert Speer]] who attended Posen Conference.{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/mar/13/secondworldwar.kateconnolly |title=Letter proves Speer knew of Holocaust plan |last=Connolly |first=Kate |date=13 March 2007 |access-date=29 May 2014 |newspaper=The Guardian |location=London}}</ref>
 
{{blockquote|We were faced with the question: what about the women and children?–I have decided on a solution to this problem. I did not consider myself justified to exterminate the men only—in other words, to kill them or have them killed while allowing the avengers, in the form of their children, to grow up in the midst of our sons and grandsons. The difficult decision had to be made to have this people disappear from the earth.|Heinrich Himmler, 6 October 1943<ref>Bradley F. Smith & Agnes Peterson (1974), ''Heinrich Himmler. Speeches'' Frankfurt/M., pp. 169 f. {{OCLC|1241890}}; {{cite web |url= http://holocaustcontroversies.yuku.com/topic/1825/Himmlers-Speech-in-Posen-on-6-October-1943 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20160127090051/http://holocaustcontroversies.yuku.com/topic/1825/Himmlers-Speech-in-Posen-on-6-October-1943 |archive-date=27 January 2016 |title=Himmler's Speech in Posen on 6 October 1944 |date= 12 March 2012 |access-date=28 February 2015 |publisher=Holocaust Controversies Reference Section }}; also (with differing translation) in {{cite web |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007407 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131214192421/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007407 |archive-date=14 December 2013 |title=Heinrich Himmler |access-date=28 February 2015 |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum }}</ref>}}
Line 120 ⟶ 122:
Browning describes the creation of the extermination camps, which were responsible for the largest number of murders in the Final Solution, as bringing together three separate developments within [[Nazi Germany]]: the [[Nazi concentration camps|concentration camps]] which had been established in Germany since 1933; an expansion of the gassing technology of the [[Action T4|Nazi euthanasia programme]] to provide a murder technique of greater efficiency and psychological detachment; and the creation of "factories of death" to be fed endless streams of victims by mass uprooting and deportation that utilized the experience and personnel from earlier population resettlement programmes—especially the [[SS and Police Leader|HSSPF]] and [[Adolf Eichmann]]'s [[RSHA]] for "Jewish affairs and evacuations".{{sfnp|Browning|2004|p= 354}}
 
[[Peter Longerich]] argues that the search for a finite date on which the Nazis embarked upon the extermination of the Jews is futile, in his book ''Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews'' (2011). Longerich writes: "We should abandon the notion that it is historically meaningful to try to filter the wealth of available historical material and pick out a single decision" that led to the Holocaust.{{sfnp|Longerich|2010|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=cxYqYIn73SgC&q=abandon%2Bnotion&pg=PA6 6]}}<ref name=NYRB>{{cite journal |author-link=Timothy Snyder |last=Snyder |first=Timothy |title=A New Approach to the Holocaust |url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jun/23/new-approach-holocaust/ |access-date=30 March 2015 |journal=The New York Review of Books |date=23 June 2011 |volume=58 |issue=11 }}</ref>
 
[[Timothy Snyder]] writes that Longerich "grants the significance of [[Arthur Greiser|Greiser's]] murder of Jews by gas at [[Chełmno]] in December 1941", but also detects a significant moment of escalation in spring 1942, which includes "the construction of the large death factory at [[Treblinka]] for the destruction of the Warsaw Jews, and the addition of a gas chamber to the concentration camp at [[Auschwitz]] for the murder of the Jews of Silesia".{{r|NYRB}} Longerich suggests that it "was only in the summer of 1942, that mass killing was finally understood as the realization of the Final Solution, rather than as an extensively violent preliminary to some later program of slave labor and deportation to the lands of a conquered USSR". For Longerich, to see mass-murder as the Final Solution was an acknowledgement by the Nazi leadership that there would not be a German military victory over the USSR in the near future.<ref name=NYRB/>
Line 201 ⟶ 203:
[[Category:Holocaust historiography]]
[[Category:Ethnic cleansing in Europe]]
[[Category:EuphemismsMilitary-related euphemisms]]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution"