HINDSIGHT

NICOLAS KINLOCH

THE FINAL SOLUTION

• Can you think of anycountries in the world

today in which people arepersecuted because of

their race or religion? Tryto find out more aboutthem. When you. havedone so, design a gridwhich shows in what

ways they are similar toNazi Germany and in

what ways different.

L ook at the source below. It was written byHermann Graebe in 1947, who by chancewitnessed a mass execution of Jews at Dubno

in the USSR on 5 October 1942.

I walked round the mound and found myself facing atremendous grave. People were wedged closely togetherand lying on top of each other. Nearly all had bloodrunning over their shoulders from their heads. The pitwas already two-thirds full I estimated that it held athousand people. I looked for the man who did theshooting. He was an SS man who sat at the narrow endof the pit, his feet dangling into it. He had a machine-gun on his knees and was smoking a cigarette.

Hermann Graebe, 1947

What you may find hard to understand is just whatkind of people it was who could bring themselves to dothe sort of thing that Hermann Graebe described: tokill first thousands, and then millions, of ordinarypeople, simply because they were Jews. You shouldhave a better idea when you have finished this article.

The mass-murders in Eastern Europe did not beginuntil 1941, although Jews were persecuted from themoment Hitler came to power in 1933. WhenGermany conquered Poland in 1939, however, shefound that she now controlled a Jewish population ofalmost 3 million. These Jews were then confined tolarge enclosed areas within Poland's major cities,known as ghettoes. This obviously made it easier tocontrol them, and the Germans were not unhappyabout the fact that over the next two years hugenumbers of ghetto inhabitants died from hunger, coldand disease. But the solution in Poland was clearly onlya temporary one.

The Einsatzgruppen

On 22 June 1941 German troops invaded the SovietUnion. This helped to bring about what the Nazileadership sought — a 'Final Solution' to the Jewishproblem. First, the Germans would control an evenlarger number of Jews if they managed to defeat Russia.This made some sort of permanent solution even moreessential. Second, the vast spaces of Russia meant thatthere was less chance for news of what was going on toescape to the outside world. Third, it made earlier

Jewishwomen and children

stripped and awaitingexecution

SEPTEMBER 1990

plans, such as deporting all Jews to the African islandof Madagascar, unnecessary. This was greeted withrelief by Nazi leaders, who had begun to see theMadagascar Plan as impractical in wartime.

Accordingly, when the German armies crossed theborder into Russia, they were accompanied by foureven more sinister groups — the Einsatzgruppen(Special Action Groups). One of their leaders describesthe purpose of an Einsatzgruppe.

The next source comes from a survivor of a later mass-execution. She was wounded but not killed, andmanaged to dig her way out of the mass grave of 500other Jews in Zagrodski, USSR.

In June 1941 I was appointed by (SS Leader) Himmlerto kad one of the Special Action Groups which werethen being formed to accompany the German armies inthe Russian campaign. Himmler stated that an importantpart of our task consisted in the extermination of Jews— women, men and children — and of communistleaders.

When the German Army did invade Russia, I wasleader of Action Group D in the Southern sector. Itliquidated approximately 90,000 men, women andchildren in carrying out this extermination programme.The Group would enter a selected village or city andorder the most important Jewish citizens to call togetherall the Jews so that they could be resettled. They weretold to surrender all their valuables and shortly before theexecution to strip off their clothing. The peopk were ledto a place of execution which in most cases was locatednext to an anti-tank ditch. Then they were shot.

Otto Ohlendorfs statement made at the EinsatzgruppenTrials, 1948.

We turned towards the grave and then (an SS man)asked, 'Whom shall I shoot first?' 1 did not answer. Ifelt him take my child from my arms. The child cried outand was shot immediately. And then he aimed at me.First he held on to my hair and turned my head around:I stayed standing. I heard a shot, but I continued tostand. Then he turned my head again and aimed hisrevolver at me and ordered me to watch. Then he shotat me. I fell to the ground into the pit amongst the bodies;but I felt nothing.

Rita Yosselevska testifying at the trial of Adolf Eichmannon 8 May 1961, describing the events of 14 August 1942.

An SS man describes a similar scene.

We go into the woods and look for a spot suitable formass executions. We order the prisoners to dig theirgraves. Only two of them are crying, the rest showcourage. Whit can they all be thinking? I believe eachstill has the hope of not being shot. I don't feel the slighteststir of pity. This is how it is, and has got to be.

Diary of SS Sergeant Felix Landau, 14 July 1941.

• Why do you think thatthe SS used expressionslike 'Special Action' todescribe the massexecutions of Jews?

• Read Source D. Do youthink that the fact thatRita Yossekvska wastestifying in a trial twentyyears after the events thatshe describes makes thesource unreliable ashistorical evidence?Explain your answer.

Members ofan Einsatzgruppe arrivein Russia, autumn 1941.

• Use all the sources todescribe what kind ofpeople joined theEinsatzgruppen. Whatsort of character wasneeded for these units?

• Reinhard Heydrich wasassassinated in May 1942

by a group of Czechcommandos armed and

trained by the British.Some have argued that

this should not have beendone, as two wrongs

never make a right. Whatis your view? Help your

teacher to organise aclassroom discussion.

• Do Sources G and 'Hprove that Meydrich aridHimmler were basically

ordinary, decent people?Explain your answer.

• Some people say that theFinal.Solution never

happened and that all theevidence for it has been

faked or is in some wayunreliable. Which of trie.

sources here do'youregard as the best evidence

for the existence of theextermination camps, and

what reasons do youhave?

• Which of the sources do. you think could mosteasily be faked? What

reasons might there be fordoing this?

I An aerialview of the giant

Auschwitz-Birkenauextermination complex,

1944.

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The two people most responsible for these massexecutions were Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS,and Reinhard Heydrich, head of the SD (the SSintelligence service). Neither of them carried out anykillings themselves. Look at these sources.

HINDSIGHT

The Extermination Camps

From many discussions I had with Heydrich, I knowwhat it cost this man to be outwardly so hard and severe,despite the sufferings and struggles of his heart.

Heinrich Himmler, speaking at Heydrich's funeral, June1942. (Heydrich had been assassinated in Prague on 27May 1942.)

On 20 January 1942 a conference took place in theBerlin suburb of Wannsee. All those who attended itheld senior positions in the Nazi Party; most were SSmen. They included Gestapo chief Heinrich Muellerand Reinhard Heydrich; another participant was thehitherto unimportant Adolf Eichmann (see biography).

Himmler had never seen dead people before and he. stoodright at the edge of this mass grave. While he was lookingin, he had the bad luck to get a splash of brains on hiscoat, and he went very green and pale; he wasn'tactually sick, but he was heaving and turned round andswayed and then I had to jump forward and hold himsteady.

SS General Karl Wolff describing a visit to Russia byHimmler, 1941.

Richard Glazar, a Czech Jew, describes his arrival atTreblinka extermination camp:

I saw men with blue armbands on the platform. One ofthem carried a leather whip — not like any whip I'd everseen, but like something for big animals. These men [whowere Ukrainian guards working for the Germans] spokevery strange German. There were loud announcements,but nobody did anything to us. I followed the crowd:'Men to the right, women and children to the left', wewere told. The women and children disappeared into abarrack further to the left and we were told to undress.One of the SS men told us in a chatty sort of way thatwe were going to a disinfection bath and that afterwardswe would be given work. Clothes, he said, could be leftin a heap, on the floor, and we'd find them again later.

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The conference discussed more efficient ways ofcarrying out mass exterminations. None of thoseinvolved made any protests about the proposal to killmillions of innocent people.

Within a few weeks of the Wannsee Conference thefirst of a number of camps had been set up. These werenot the concentration camps for political and socialcriminals that had existed in Germany since 1933.These were extermination camps. The vast majority ofthe Jews who were sent to them from all over Europedied within hours or even minutes of their arrival. Itbecame Eichmann's job to organise the deportation ofEurope's Jews from their countries of origin andtransport them to the extermination camps.

The sources below show how those who ran the

Franz Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka, converseswith a journalist in 1971, while serving a life sentence inprison:

Would it be true to say that you finally felt the Jewsweren't human beings?

Cargo. They were cargo.

When did you begin to think of them as cargo?

I think it started the day I saw the death-camp inTreblinka. I remember Wirth (a senior SS official)standing there, next to the pits full of blue-black corpses.It had nothing to do with humanity — it couldn't have;a mass of rotting flesh. Wirth said, 'What shall we dowith this garbage?' I think that started me thinking ofthem as cargo.

There were so many children — did they ever makeyou think of YOUR children, of how you would feelin the position of those parents?

No, I can't say I ever thought that way. I rarely sawthem as individuals. I sometimes saw them in the tube(the path leading to the gas-chambers) but — they werenaked, being driven with whips . . .

It was pointless to tell the truth to anyone who crossedthe threshold of the gas-chamber. You couldn't saveanyone there. One day, a prisoner on the 'special detail'[prisoners who were forced to work in the gas-chamber]saw a woman who was the wife of a friend of his. Hecame right out and told her: 'You're going to beexterminated. In three hours you'll be ashes.' Shebelieved him because she knew him. She ran all over andwarned the others: 'We're going to be killed. We're goingto be gassed.' Mothers carrying their children didn't wantto hear that. They decided the woman was crazy. So shewent to the men. It made no difference. They did believeher — they'd heard rumours. But who wanted to hearthat? So everyone was gassed. The woman was torturedhorribly until she'd pointed out the man who'd told her.They threw him alive into the ovens. We were told:'Whoever tells anything will end like that.'

Filip Mueller, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau, talkingto Claude Lanzmann, director of the documentary filmShook, 1985.

camps felt about what they did, how the processof killing was undertaken and what its victimsexperienced.

Finally, let us look at one man — Adolf Eichmann.Perhaps Eichmann's career will help us to understandwhat kind of people made the decisions which resultedin the Final Solution.

ADOLF EICHMANN1906-1962

Adolf Eichmann was bom in 1906 in Solingen, inthe Rhineland. After a poor record at school, heobtained a job as a salesman for an electricalcompany in Austria. In 1932 he joined the NSDAP(Nazi Party) and a little later he became a memberof the SS. In 1934, when the Nazis had come topower, he joined the SD, the SS intelligenceservice. Here he specialised in 'the Jewish question'and from 1938 he worked in Vienna, where his jobwas to organise Jewish emigration from Germany.By October 1941 he had risen to the rank of SSObersturmbannfuehrer (lieutenant-colonel).

Once the war had broken out, Eichmann workedon the plan for relocating Europe's Jews to Mada-gascar. When this was shown to be unworkable, hehelped to organise the deportation of Germany'sJews to Poland. In 1941 he was appointed byHeydrich to assist him in the 'Final Solution' of theJewish question. In January 1942 he attended theWannsee conference which planned the organisedextermination of European Jewry. From then untilthe end of the war Eichmann's task was to organisethe deportations to the extermination camps.

At the end of the war Eichmann lived in hidingas a forester near Hamburg until, in 1950, hemanaged to get away to Argentina. Under the nameRicardo Klement he worked in the Mercedes-Benzfactory in Buenos Aires. On 11 May 1960 he wascaptured by an Israeli Secret Service squad andflown to Jerusalem. His trial lasted 18 months. Hestated that he was innocent; that he had not,personally, killed anyone and therefore felt no guilt.On 31 May 1962 Eichmann's appeal against thedeath sentence failed, and he was hanged the sameday. His body was cremated and the ashes scatteredin the Mediterranean.

• Read Source Kcarefully. Now unite outten additional questionswhich you would havewished to ask FranzStangl if you had beeninterviewing him. Youmay find other sources inthe article helpful.

• What sort of man doyou think Source Kshowed Franz Stangl tobe? Explain your answer.

• Design a 'WANTED'"poster of the sort that theIsraeli government mighthave issued for AdolfEichmann before hiscapture in Argentina.The poster should includea list of the crimes forwhich Eichmann waswanted, as well as a .physical description.

• 'It is pointless for theIsraelis to go on arrestingold men for what they ",might have done duringthe war. It was a kingtime ago, and we shouldforgive and forget.' Doyou agree with this view , .in Eichmann's case? Givereasons for whatever yousay. •

• A writer namedHannah Arendt said thatEichmann's early life hadbeen so ordinary that itproved that anyone couldbecome a mass-murderer.Do you-think this is true?Explain your answer.

• Do you agree thatEichmann was innocentof murder because he hadnot kiUed anyone?Explain your answer.