The Holocaust was an inconceivable historical event, which forever robbed Western culture of its innocence. As civilized human beings, we fail to understand how events of such horror could have taken place, and how an idea so inhumanly warped could have spread like wildfire through an entire continent, instigating the systematic annihilation of millions of Jews. This free online course was produced jointly by Tel Aviv University and Yad Vashem – the World Holocaust Remembrance Center. This course is the second of the two courses and covers three themes in its three weeks: Week 1: The Final Solution We’ll look at the cultural and mental processes that paved the way to the comprehensive and systematic mass murder of Jews in Europe – that is, the Final Solution. As part of this hard lesson we will discuss the various characteristics of the murder sites and death camps, and reveal selected aspects of the horror that occurred in them. Week 2: Jewish and Non-Jewish Responses to the Holocaust We will try to explore questions regarding knowledge about the application of the Final Solution, as well as a variety of responses and annihilation of victims, local populations and perpetrators. Week 3: The End of the War We will dedicate this lesson to the events that occurred in the last years of the Holocaust, as well as questions of memory, commemoration and future research. We strongly recommend that you register for "The Holocaust - An Introduction (I): Nazi Germany: Ideology, The Jews and the World" as well (https://www.coursera.org/learn/holocaust-introduction-1/home/welcome). Taking both parts of the course would enable you to obtain a fuller and more comprehensive knowledge about The Holocaust. This online course is offered in an innovative, multi-level format, comprising: Comprehensive lectures by leading researchers from Tel Aviv University and Yad Vashem. A wealth of voices and viewpoints presented by guest lecturers Numerous documents, photos, testimonies and works of art from the time of the Holocaust. Novel learning experience: Crowdsourcing – involving the learners themselves in the act of collecting and shaping information, via unique, exciting online assignments.
Did the world remain silent?
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The Holocaust - An Introduction (II): The Final Solution
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從本節課中
The Free World, the last months, the Aftermath and the Implications
This lesson will describe the steps taken by Nazi Germany, with the Allied advance across Europe, to increase efforts to exterminate the Jews and to destroy all evidence of their crimes. We will deal with questions of memory and commemoration, examine the significance of the Holocaust for different audiences, and present the latest research in the field of Holocaust studies.
與講師見面
Professor Havi Dreifuss, PhDProfessor
Havi Dreifuss is a historian of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe; senior lecturer in the Department of Jewish History at TAU; heads the Center for Research of Holocaust History in Poland, Yad Vashem.
Dr Na'ama Bela Shik, PhDDirector, Educational Technology Department, The International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem
The International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem
Welcome to our last lesson of the course
The Holocaust - An Introduction
So did the world remain silent?
Information regarding the repression of the Jews,
first in Nazi Germany, later in the Greater Reich, occupied
Poland, Western European countries, and all over Europe,
was described in press and radio coverage as of 1933.
Though the Jewish plight was different
in its ideological origins, in its enormous extent,
and its radical implementation, it
was understood, by many at the time,
at least until 1942, as being part
of the so-called regular war atrocities,
not demanding any exceptional attitude.
Even after the systematic mass murder began,
long months would pass until what the Allies grasped
as valid information would arrive,
and the true destructive meaning of the final solution
would be understood.
The German radio communication reports
of mass shootings of the Jews, in the summer of 1941,
were intercepted by the British, who decoded the German enigma
transmission code, the full terrifying meaning
was not clearly understood, and didn't
provoke any practical measures.
More could've been understood by the end of 1941,
and the beginning of 1942.
As part of the Soviet counter-offensive,
some territories were recaptured,
in which Germany's special atrocities towards the Jews
were very evident.
Yet, while making those crimes public,
the Soviets concealed the fact that the Jews
had been the major target.
In May 1942, a detailed report, written
by a Polish Jewish worker, part of The Bund,
reached the Polish government in Exile in Britain,
and its main themes were broadcast over the BBC World
Service, saying hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews
were murdered.
Yet as research has shown, those who heard them
in the free world, saw them as part of the propaganda war,
not really to be believed.
First shifts toward comprehension
and internalisation of the total annihilation of European Jewry
can be observed only in the summer of 1942
with the so-called Riegner telegram sent
on August the 8th, 1942, from Geneva, by Gerhart Riegner,
to the World Congress in New York.
"Received alarming report that in the Fuehrer's Headquarters,
plan discussed, and under consideration,
all Jews in countries occupied or controlled by Germany,
numbering 3 1/2 to 4 million, should after deportation
and concentration in East, at one blow be exterminated,
to resolve, once and for all Jewish question in Europe.
Stop.
Action reported planned for autumn;
methods under discussion including prussic acid.
Stop.
We transmit information with all necessary reservation
as exactitude cannot be confirmed.
Stop.
Informant stated to have close connections with highest
German authorities, and his reports generally
speaking reliable."
Although this information, coming from the German
industrialist, Edward Schulte, contained some inaccuracies,
especially the very fact that, at this stage,
the mass murder of the Jews was already in full force,
it was grasped by Jewish organisations as reliable.
Yet, at the same time, it was hindered and disbelieved
by the Allies.
The British Foreign Office delayed forwarding it
to the intended Jewish recipients,
and the US State Department rejected its credibility,
and asked Jewish leaders not to make its contents public
until it could be verified.
Significant reinforcements for this terrifying information
came, among other things, at the end of November, 1942,
from Jan Karski, a Polish underground courier
to the Polish government in Exile in London.
Karski had left occupied Europe after, among other things,
entering the Warsaw ghetto and visiting, what he thought,
was a death camp.
He carried with him the sights, and the sounds,
and became one of the clearest voices, which
made public the murderous character of the Holocaust.
Thus, it was only on the 17th of December, 1942,
a year and a half after the beginning of the murder
campaign, that an authoritative joint statement on behalf
of the Allies was declared.
"The attention has been drawn to numerous reports
from Europe that the German authorities are now
carrying into effect Hitler's oft-repeated intention
to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe."
As you can see, the full version of the declaration below,
the estimated number of victims was very low,
and the declaration ended in a condemnation of the atrocities,
a promise to end them by defeating Hitler,
and a threat to those responsible for them.
But no concrete action was mentioned.
Following the Allied Joint Declaration of December 17th,
1942, in which the Allies condemned the Nazis
for the murder of the Jews, tremendous public pressure
grew within the United States and in the United Kingdom
on the Allied governments.
And this was not only Jewish pressure.
And that pressure, public and internal, within the government
led President Roosevelt to create a new agency
in the government that would be a rescue agency, the War
Refugee Board, which he created in January 1944.
And according to most historians,
the War Refugee Board, during the last year of the war,
contributed to the rescue of tens of thousands of Jews
in Europe, particularly in Hungary, and particularly
in Budapest.
And that brings us to a related subject-- the controversy
around the bombing of Auschwitz or the lack
of the bombing of Auschwitz by the Western Allies.
As we know, on April 7th of 1944,
two Jews from Slovakia escaped from Birkenau,
the murder centre of Auschwitz, and succeeded in making
their way to Slovakia.
They wrote a detailed report about Auschwitz.
This was translated and sent out to the West.
It reached the Allies in mid-June of 1944,
arriving together with a request from those who were passing it
on to bomb the rail lines leading
from Hungary to Auschwitz-- Hungarian Jews were then being
deported to Auschwitz-- and also to bomb
the crematoria at Birkenau.
The Allies consistently, over the following months,
refused to bomb either the rail lines or the camp.
They argued that bombing rail lines, from Allied experience,
was inefficient as a war tactic, and therefore they
would not do that.
And they argued that bombing the camp
itself was, first of all, technically not
possible because Allied airplanes could not
reach Birkenau from where their bases were
in Italy or in other parts of Europe,
which we know today was actually not true.
They could reach them.
They were actually in the vicinity at the time.
But they also argued-- the Allies argued-- that bombing
the camp would be only a symbolic gesture
and would not really rescue the Jews
because after all, the Nazis had many methods for killing Jews,
and this would therefore not really rescue people.
How could they rescue people, they argued.
Only by a speedy Allied victory.
And hence, the Allies argued, the only way to really rescue
the Jews would be to pour all Allied energies into the war
effort, meaning no diversion from the war effort.
And this policy was consistent by the Allies right
to the end of the war.
We could conclude by asking what would've happened
had the Allies said yes to bombing the camp.
Of course, we have no idea what would've happened.
Yet at the same time, we know that had they
said yes, it would have taken them many weeks at the very
least to organise the operation, by which time
the camp was already beginning to be dismantled by the Nazis.
In other words, they could not have rescued most of the Jews
in this camp.
But by the same token, they did not know that.
They also did not offer any alternatives to the Jews.
If the free world was mainly occupied with ending the war,
what was done or known by other influential factors,
such as the Holy See, that is the Pope, the head
of the Catholic Church, regarding
the mass murder of millions of innocent victims?
What did the Vatican know, and what
was the reaction to the extermination of the Jews?
Pius the XII became a very controversial pope
because of these questions.
Information about the systematic murder of the Jews,
reached the Vatican quite early, and in the fall of 1942,
the Allies asked the Vatican to join
the declaration of December.
Yet the Pope decided not to join.
And he talked indirectly about these crimes in his Christmas
speech.
In there he spoke about the hundreds
of thousands of innocent people who,
because of their origin or race, were consigned to death.
So it did refer to a genocide, but he
failed to mention the victims, meaning
the Jews, or the murderers, meaning the Germans.
And yet we can find people who listened to it
and understood it as a condemnation
of the Nazi atrocities.
Research and documentation that only recently was open,
prove that previous claims of some historians that Pius
was pro-Nazi were inaccurate.
Pius saw Nazism as a heresy that was dangerous to Christianity
and to all manhood.
And some historians believe that the reason was actually
anit-Semitism or fear of communism,
which brought the Vatican to prefer Nazi Germany,
and therefore to avoid any conflict with it;
even at the cost of ignoring the systematic murder of the Jews.
Others suggest that the Pope kept silent and vague enough
since he feared a split within the church
as Europe was riveted with anti-Semitism.
As most of the material is still inaccessible to scholars,
we still can give only very partial explanations
and answers.
But hopefully, when documentation
will be available, we will be able to reach
a better understanding of this very controversial topic.
Those questions regarding actions and reactions cannot be
limited only to the non-Jewish circles.
What about the Jews of the world--
did they know?
Did they act?
Could they have acted?
True, Jewish communities were not independent states
and it goes without saying that their actual abilities were
much more limited.
And yet two Jewish communities should be discussed.
The Jews in the United States, almost five million,
and those in what would become Israel, about half a million.
For many reasons, Russian Jewry under Stalin's regime
was very much limited in its abilities.
Yet during the war, American Jewry faced many challenges.
First, a rising wave of anti-Semitism,
including an accusation for dragging the US
into a foreign war, even though it
had entered the war after having been attacked by Japan
and with an intention to defend American interests in Europe.
Second, since entering the war, all American connections
with occupied countries were forbidden, including passing
money for philanthropic needs.
The most important American Jewish aid organisation,
The Joint, like almost all Jewish organisations halted its
activity in occupied Europe in order not to break federal laws
or be accused of doing so.
Only a few small Jewish American groups
claimed that the total shattering
of all human moral conventions demands
using all available tools, including
breaking local laws in order to save lives in far away
and attacked countries.
And what about the Jews of the Yishuv, the Jewish community
preceding the establishment of the state of Israel?
Today, looking back with hindsight
from a reality of a state that can help Jews in distress,
the activities of the Yishuv during the Holocaust period
seem little and inappropriate regarding the terrible events.
But one should take into consideration
the situation from at least three major angles.
The first is that the Yishuv, that numbered less than half
a million Jews living among a million Arabs
and was politically under the British mandate, the Yishuv
had no army, no navy, or airplanes.
It had no natural resources, such as oil.
It did not have financial resources.
And not any geographic way to get closely, or directly,
into Europe, and itself was struggling with difficulties,
doing everything voluntarily.
The second angle was the Allies.
The Allies were determined definitely
to fight and get unconditional surrender from the Germans.
And anything else, any other plan,
looked to them as a disturbance that they did not want.
Third, the Germans were determined
to kill the Jews of Europe.
And if possible, the Jews of all the world.
And they cut out every possibility of rescue,
of coming close, of bringing anything
for the Jews of Europe.
Therefore, only after more information
got in from a number of sources, the Jewish Agency,
then the political leader of the Yishuv,
announced that there is a systematic extermination going
go on.
And it was done on November 23, 1942.
Since that moment, it served as a watershed.
A long line of rescue plans, such as exchange, ransom,
paratroopers, taking multitudes of Jews
out to the Sahara Desert, collecting money,
sending parcels, falsified documents.
All this began, perhaps not enough was done,
but a lot was done compared to the possibilities.
Could Jews in the USA or the Yishuv save European Jews?
Could more powerful entities in the Holy See or the Allies
save them?
Unfortunately, hardly.
The aforementioned understandings
matured when most of the Jews were already dead.
And the practical steps which could have been taken
were very limited.
Yet, should they have done more?
Should they have at least tried to do more,
as making the end of the mass murders their top priority?
Historians don't deal with if's.
We just don't have the tools to analyse imagined situations.
Maybe Nazi Germany's ability to commit the mass murder,
of Hungarian Jews in 1944, as an example,
would have been compromised.
Maybe the murders would have been sped up.
Or maybe, a determined position of the world, of the Church,
would have caused individuals or large systems
to hesitate regarding participation in mass murders.
We simply don't know.
Yet, what can be said is that if anything of this sort
would have happened, the burden of the Holocaust
on post-1945 world might have been easier.
