Lecture 11

 LECTURE 11    

The Final Solution Part 1:  The Decision to Kill & Aktion Reinhardt

  • National Census (1933 & 1939)

  • Reich Office of Statistics

  • punchcards

  • Hollerith Machine –  Deutsche Hollerrith Machine Gesellschaft (Dehomag) 

  • Reich Registration Order of January 6, 1938
  • Volkskartei  (“people’s registry”)

  • arbeitsbuch

  • Required middle names:  Sara and Israel

    Nazis invented new names for Jews to use:  

    • For males:  Faleg, Feibisch, Feisel, Feitelm Feiwel;  
    • for females:  Scharne, Schneidel, Scheine, Schewa, Schlamche, Semche, Slowe, and Sprinzi.

  •  Decree of September 1, 1941  (“Star” Decree)

  • Hans Frank (1900-1946)

    • Governor-General of the Government General (1939-1945)
      (Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete  (General Government for Occupied Polish Territory)

  • Arthur Greiser  (1887-1946)

    • Reichsstatthalter of Wartheland Gau  (like a Gauleiter)

  • kommisarbefehl (Commissar Order)

  • Einsatzgruppen (einsatzkommando)

  • intentionalism  vs  functionalism

  • moderate intentionalism  vs  ultrafunctionalism

  • Christopher Browning and genocidal consensus:

    • anti-Bolshevik grafting

    • Eugenics model

    • Bureaucratic-technocratic impulse

  • Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski

  • c

    arbon monoxide gas

  • gas vans

  • Łódź, Warsaw, Minsk, Kovno, Riga, Vilna

  • concentration camp vs annihilation camp (extermination camps) 

  • Chelmno

  • Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka

  • Trawniki Camp  Hilfswillige (“Hiwis”)  Auxiliary Volunteers

  • Aktion Reinhardt (Aktion Reinhard)

  • “Reinhard[t] Camps”

  • Wannsee Conference  20 January 1942

  • German Railways Reichsbahn

  • Christian Wirth (The “Savage Christian”)

  • Willi Metz

  • Hackenholt Institute

  • Paul Blobel – Aktion 1005 — Sonderkommando 1005

  • Walther Emanuel Funk ( 1890 -1960)

  • Reichsbank

  • Trieste riseria

  • LINK:  HIMMLER’S SPEECH AT POZNAN (POSEN)

FURTHER READINGS and SOURCES

  • Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985. ( 3 volumes )
  • Gotz Aly and Karl Neinz Roth, The Nazi Census:  Identification and Control in The Third Reich, Philadelphia:  Temple University Press, 2004.
  • Saul Friedlander, Nazi German and the Jews Volume 1:  The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939, New York:  Harper Collins, 1997
  • Marion A Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair:  Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, New York:  Oxford University Press, 1998

  • Isaiah Trunk,  Judenrat:  The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe Under Nazi Occupation, New York:  Stein and Day, 1972.

  • Christopher R. Browning, “Beyond ‘Intentionalism’ and ‘Functionalism’: A Reassessment of Nazi Jewish Policy from 1939 to 1941” in Thomas Childers and Jane Caplan (eds), Reevaluating the Third Reich, New York:  Holmes & Meirer, 1993.

  • Christopher R.  Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution:  The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942,
     (Lincoln/Jerusalem:  University of Nebraska Press / Yad Vashem, 2004.

  • Yaacov Lozowick, Hitler’s Bureaucrats:  The Nazi Security Police and the Banality of Evil,  New York/London:  Continuum, 2000.

  • Richard Rhodes, Masters of Death:  The SS Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust, New York:  Knopf, 2002.

  • Ronald Headland,  “The Eisatsgruppen:  The Question of Their Initial Operations”,  Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp 401-412, 1989.

  • Yitzhak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski and Shmuel Spector (eds)  The Einsatzgruppen Reports:  Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads, New York:  Holocaust Library, 1989.

  • Yehoshua Buchler, “Kommandostab Reichsfuhrer-SS: Himmler’s Personal Murder Brigades in 1941″, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 11-25, 1986.

  • Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka:  The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, Bloomigton and Indianapolis:  Indiana University Press, 1987.

  • Richard Breitman, The Architect of Genocide:  Himmler and the Final Solution, New York:  Knopf, 1991.

  • Shmuel Spector, “Aktion 1005 — Effacing the Murder of Million, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp 157-173, 1990.

  • Jean-Claude Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, New York:  Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1989.
    availaible online:   http://www.mazal.org/Pressac/Pressac0011.htm  [Definitive source on gas chambers.]

  • Michael Tregenza, , The ‘Disappearance’ of SS-Hauptscharfuhrer Lorenz Hackenholt: A Report on the 1959-63 West German Police Search for Lorenz Hackenholt the Gas Chamber Expert of the Aktion Reinhard Extermination Camps,

    http://www.mazal.org/archive/documents/Tregenza/Tregenza01.htm, 2000

  • Document 4024-PS — Lists of Plunder From Aktion Reinhard victims
    http://www.deathcamps.org/reinhard/arloot.htm