[364], A 1995 paper published by M. V. Filimoshin, an associate of the Russian Defense Ministry, put the civilian death toll in the regions occupied by Germany at 13.7million. Known as Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass"), the pogrom on 910 November 1938 saw over 7,500 Jewish shops (out of 9,000) looted and attacked, and over 1,000 synagogues damaged or destroyed. Germany proper, including the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, will have to be handled first due to the housing problem and additional social and political necessities. [408], Around 100,000 gay men were arrested in Germany and 50,000 jailed between 1933 and 1945; 5,00015,000 are thought to have been sent to concentration camps. In February 1941, non-Jewish Dutch citizens staged a strike in protest that was quickly crushed. [324] The Polish government-in-exile's response to the Holocaust has polarized historiography, with some historians arguing that it did more than any other Allied government and others criticizing perceived indifference to the Jewish plight. [180][181], Holocaust victims of Germany's allies[182], Romania ranks first among Holocaust perpetrator countries other than Germany. The courts reached a decision in 64,499 of those cases; 56,244 were in favor of sterilization. Sunday, April 30th 2023, 9:45 PM EDT. [208] In September 1943, Germany occupied the northern and central areas of Italy and established a fascist puppet state, the Italian Social Republic or Sal Republic. According to Haaretz, the writer Yehuda Erez may have been the first to describe events in Germany as the shoah. "The Holocaust: Definition and Preliminary Discussion". [51] The camps served as a deterrent by terrorizing Germans who did not support the regime. Enemies were divided into three groups: the "racial" or "blood" enemies, such as the Jews and Roma; political opponents of Nazism, such as Marxists, liberals, Christians, and the "reactionaries" viewed as wayward "national comrades"; and moral opponents, such as gay men, the work-shy, and habitual criminals. [336] Publication of the VrbaWetzler report halted Hungarian government cooperation with Jewish deportations for several months and sparked international interventions that saved tens of thousands of lives. [40], Early antisemites in the Nazi Party included Dietrich Eckart, publisher of the Vlkischer Beobachter, the party's newspaper, and Alfred Rosenberg, who wrote antisemitic articles for it in the 1920s. [323] On 26 June 1942, BBC services in all languages publicized a report by the Jewish Social-Democratic Bund and other resistance groups documenting the killing of 700,000 Jews in Poland. Calculating the numbers of individuals who were killed as the result of Nazi policies is a difficult task. [430][431], Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, 2016. [282] At Auschwitz, the bodies were at first buried in deep pits and covered with lime, but between September and November 1942, on the orders of Himmler, 100,000 bodies were dug up and burned. [227] The meeting had been scheduled for 9 December 1941, and invitations had been sent between 29 November and 1 December,[228] but on 8 December it had been postponed indefinitely, probably because of Pearl Harbor. [274] At Auschwitz, about 20 percent of Jews were selected to work. [288] This included individual collaboration as well as state collaboration. [179], The allies of Nazi Germany comprise the independent states that aligned themselves with the Reich. An additional 542 respondents were sampled from the Ipsos KnowledgePanel all of them Jewish, Mormon or Hispanic Protestant, to bolster the samples for these subgroups. And a similar share (45%) know that approximately 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. The Times of London stated on 11 November 1938: No foreign propagandist bent upon blackening Germany before the world could outdo the tale of burnings and beatings, of blackguardly assaults upon defenseless and innocent people, which disgraced that country yesterday. The Jews of Germany were a mere one percent, but to Hitler and his followers, that was one percent too many. [147] The point of the attacks was to destroy the local Communist Party leadership and therefore the state, including "Jews in the Party and State employment", and any "radical elements". Once the invasion was underway, however, about 100,000 Jews fled Kyiv or were conscripted into the Red Army. [5] Gold fillings were pulled from the corpses before burial, but unlike in Auschwitz the women's hair was cut before death. [313] An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 joined the Soviet partisan movement. [19][g] The Nazis used the phrase "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" (German: die Endlsung der Judenfrage). [334] On 19 March 1944, Hitler ordered the military occupation of Hungary and dispatched Adolf Eichmann to supervise the deportation of its Jews. [18] As non-Jewish groups began to include themselves as Holocaust victims, many Jews chose to use the Hebrew terms Shoah or Churban. Though fragmentary, these sources provide essential figures from which to make calculations. [154] Each Einsatzgruppe numbered around 6001,000 men, with a few women in administrative roles. Forty-one percent of millennials believe 2 million or fewer Jews were killed in the Holocaust. [377] At least 200,000 died in concentration camps, around 146,000 in Auschwitz. A stab-in-the-back myth developed, insinuating that disloyal politicians, chiefly Jews and communists, had orchestrated Germany's surrender. By the end of the war, they had killed around two million, including about 1.3million Jews and up to a quarter of a million Roma. By the end of World War II, in 1945, the Jewish population of Europe had shrunk to 3.8 million, or 35% of the world's 11 million Jews. ET. [41] Central to Hitler's world view was the idea of expansion and Lebensraum (living space) in Eastern Europe for German Aryans, a policy of what Doris Bergen called "race and space". [84], Before World War II, Germany considered mass deportation from Europe of German, and later European, Jewry. Sources: U.S. [392], Although not ordered to take part, psychiatrists and many psychiatric institutions were involved in the planning and carrying out of Aktion T4. The rest of Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union, which invaded Poland from the east on 17 September 1939. Nearly three-in-ten Americans say they are not sure how many Jews died during the Holocaust, while one-in-ten overestimate the death toll, and 15% say that 3 million or fewer Jews were killed. Hence, total estimates are calculated only after the end of the war and are based on demographic loss data and the documents of the perpetrators. Of this total, nearly 1.1 million were Jews, 960,000 of which died in the camp. [275] Those selected for death at all camps were told to undress and hand their valuables to camp workers. [202] When this became public, the Orthodox Church and many Bulgarians protested, and King Boris III canceled the plans. By fall 1941, most Jews were confined to a ghetto, the largest one in Minsk, where about 70,000 Jews were interned. An additional 18% mention concepts that are more loosely associated with the Holocaust, including the general idea of death (6%), the persecution (but not murder) of Jews (4%), or just something about Jewish people (4%). Overall, the teens display lower levels of knowledge about the Holocaust than their elders do. [85] Among the areas considered for possible resettlement were British Palestine and, after the war began, French Madagascar,[86] Siberia, and two reservations in Poland. [328] Rail shipments of Jews were still arriving regularly from western and southern Europe at the extermination camps. One-in-ten decline to answer the question. Consequently, the Danish government stayed in power and the Germans found it easier to work through it. [425], The government of Israel requested $1.5billion from the Federal Republic of Germany in March 1951 to finance the rehabilitation of 500,000 Jewish survivors, arguing that Germany had stolen $6billion from the European Jews. Between the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 and the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, Nazi Germany and its accomplices strove to murder every Jew under their domination. [407] Between 2,700 and 3,300 were sent to the camps, where 1,400 died. Copy no. [178] Although most Holocaust victims were never imprisoned in a concentration camp, the image of these camps is a popular symbol of the Holocaust. Just 3% of Americans mention something else, and an equal share say they dont know. [345] Buchenwald was liberated by the Americans on 11 April;[346] Bergen-Belsen by the British on 15 April;[347] Dachau by the Americans on 29 April;[348] Ravensbrck by the Soviets on 30 April;[349] and Mauthausen by the Americans on 5 May. Current estimates might change as new documents are discovered or as historians arrive at a more precise understanding of the events. Archived from the original on 26 June 2015. [62] The second law said: "Marriages between Jews and subjects of the state of German or related blood are forbidden." Seven percent were not sure, and 3 percent denied that it happened. The population data ranges from 1937-1941 so, for example, the countries where the figures came from 1937 may not accurately reflect the number of Jews at the time the war began. So many died that the marches were stopped. [329] Shipments of Jews had priority on the German railways over anything but the army's needs, and continued even in the face of the increasingly dire military situation at the end of 1942. The, Germany after World War I, Hitler's world view, Dictatorship and repression (January 1933), German annexation of Austria (12 March 1938), Invasion of the Soviet Union (22 June 1941), Pearl Harbor, Germany declares war on the United States. Some Ukrainians went to Poland to serve as guards in the camps. It deported 7,500 Jews in 1938 on its own initiative; introduced anti-Jewish measures in 1940; and by the autumn of 1942 had deported around 60,000 Jews to Poland. We must destroy the Jews, wherever we encounter them and whenever it is possible, in order to preserve the entire structure of the Reich. Using an unusual dataset originating from railway transportation records, this study identifies an extreme phase of hyperintense killing when >1.47 million Jewsmore than 25% of the Jews killed in all 6 years of World War IIwere murdered by the Nazis in an intense,100-day (~3-month) surge. Thirty-one percent of Americans, and 41 percent of millennials, believe that two million or fewer Jews were killed in the Holocaust; the actual number is around six million. [34] German troops destroyed villages throughout the Soviet Union,[360] rounded up civilians for forced labor in Germany, and caused famine by taking foodstuffs. By mid-1942, victims were being deported from ghettos across Europe in sealed freight trains to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, they were gassed, worked or beaten to death, or killed by disease, starvation, cold, medical experiments, or during death marches. [198] In July 1941, Mihai Antonescu, Romania's deputy prime minister, said it was time for "total ethnic purification, for a revision of national life, and for purging our race of all those elements which are foreign to its soul, which have grown like mistletoes and darken our future. [330] Army leaders and economic managers complained about this diversion of resources and the killing of skilled Jewish workers,[331] but Nazi leaders rated ideological imperatives above economic considerations. [305] Around 300 inmates escaped (out of 600 in the main camp), but 100 were recaptured and shot. [78] Attacks took place in Austria too. They also destroyed physical evidence of mass murder. [125] Several Polish, French and British leaders had discussed the idea in the 1930s, as did German leaders from 1938. [197] Within the city of Odessa, Jews were segregated to ghettos where they were later deported en masse, with the majority dying from disease, hunger and murder. The United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union have used most of these documents at one time or another as exhibits in criminal or civil proceedings against Nazi offenders. EuroDocs. [237][w] The final solution would encompass the 11million Jews living in territories controlled by Germany and elsewhere in Europe, including Britain, Ireland, Switzerland, Turkey, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, and Hungary, "dependent on military developments". [401] He adjusted the order on 15 November 1943 to allow "sedentary Gypsies and part-Gypsies" in the occupied Soviet areas to be viewed as citizens. Sexual relationships between them were also criminalized; Jews were not allowed to employ German women under the age of 45 in their homes. [102] Although the Warsaw Ghetto contained 30 percent of the city's population, it occupied only 2.4 percent of its area,[103] averaging over nine people per room. The commandos described them as "Bolshevist functionaries" and similar. The General Government must become just as free of Jews as the Reich.". See also: Austria-Hungary, Hungary in World War I, Treaty of Trianon, and Kingdom of Hungary (1920-1946) In the 1941 census, the population of Hungary was 14,683,323. [69] Around 7,000 Jewish businesses were "Aryanized", and all the legal restrictions on Jews in Germany were imposed in Austria. The gas chambers were dismantled, the crematoria dynamited, and the mass graves dug up and corpses cremated. While the survey cannot answer this question directly, the data suggests that relatively few people in this group express strongly negative feelings toward Jews. [203] Instead, Jews native to Bulgaria were sent to the provinces. [383][384] The New York Times reported on 21 December that year: "400,000 Germans to be sterilized". [268] Apparently, as with the mass shootings, the vans caused emotional problems for the operators, and the small number of victims the vans could handle made them ineffective. Nearly half of Americans get at least three questions right, including one-quarter who correctly answer all four questions (24%). Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University. Between 58,000 and 66,260 Jews remained in the country. Germany implemented the persecution in stages. "[27], Roland Freisler (Ministry of Justice); Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger (Reich Cabinet); Alfred Meyer (Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories-German-occupied USSR); Georg Leibrandt (Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories); Martin Luther (Foreign Office); Wilhelm Stuckart (Ministry of the Interior); Erich Neumann (Office of Plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan), Josef Bhler (Office of the Government of the Governor General-German-occupied Poland); Gerhard Klopfer (Nazi Party Chancellery). Washington, DC 20024-2126 [121] Vichy France's government implemented anti-Jewish measures in Metropolitan France, in French Algeria and in the two French Protectorates of Tunisia and Morocco. Their percentage among the general population - about 10% - was also the highest in Europe.After the conquest of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union in September 1939, most of the Jews remaining within the area occupied by Germany - approximately 1 Murder of the Jews of Poland Skip to main content Accessibility High contrast On 15 March 1940, SS chief Heinrich Himmler stated: "All Polish specialists will be exploited in our military-industrial complex. Of these, 725,005 regarded themselves as Jews (4.94 percent) and another 100,000 were Jewish by descent who identified as Christian. NDH leader Ante Paveli and the Ustae accepted Nazi demands. According to Dan Stone, only nine survived the war. This perception contributed to the canard of Jewish Bolshevism. [418], During and after World War II, many European countries launched widespread purges of real and perceived collaborators that affected possibly as much as 23 percent of the population of Europe, although most of the resulting trials did not emphasize crimes against Jews. Forced to retreat on 19 April from the OB and ZW fighters, they returned later that day under the command of SS General Jrgen Stroop (author of the Stroop Report about the uprising). [312] Jews also joined Polish forces, including the Home Army. As German forces captured territories in the East, all anti-Jewish measures were radicalized. [429] The French state-owned railway company, the SNCF, agreed in 2014 to pay $60million to Jewish-American survivors, around $100,000 each, for its role in the transport of 76,000 Jews from France to extermination camps between 1942 and 1944. Various factors combined to create a different reality than in the other countries under German occupation. Eva Kor, Auschwitz survivor and Jewish activist, voices her experiences in the concentration camps and how these persecutions forever changed . On that day, Hitler gave a speech in his apartment at the Reich Chancellery to senior Nazi Party leaders: the Reichsleiter and the Gauleiter. [416], There were 5,00025,000 Afro-Germans in Germany when the Nazis came to power. Under the coordination of the SS, with directions from the highest leadership of the Nazi Party, killings were committed within Germany itself, throughout occupied Europe, and within territories controlled by Germany's allies. After Nazis murdered 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, the future of Germany's remaining Jewish community was in doubt. [325], During the war the Joint Distribution Committee raised $70 million and in the years after the war it raised $300 million. [306] On 7 October 1944, 300 Jewish members, mostly Greek or Hungarian, of the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz learned they were about to be killed, and staged an uprising, blowing up crematorium IV. [157], Notable massacres include the July 1941 Ponary massacre near Vilnius (Soviet Lithuania), in which Einsatgruppe B and Lithuanian collaborators shot at least 70,000 Jews, 20,000 Poles and 8,000 Russians. From among 1.3 million Auschwitz deportees, at least 1.1 million were murdered: 900 thousand Jews murdered in the gas chambers immediately on arrival at the camp; Of the 400 thousand prisoners registered in the camp, 200 thousand people died there. [38] The Nazi Party (the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or National Socialist German Workers' Party) originated as an offshoot of the vlkisch movement, and it adopted that movement's antisemitism. [70] The vian Conference was held in France in July 1938 by 32 countries, to help German and Austrian Jewish refugees, but little was accomplished and most countries did not increase the number of refugees they would accept.