The term “Final Solution” is significant because it represents the start of the Holocaust, a tragic event that led to the loss of loved ones. This genocide took place from January 30, 1933 (when Adolf Hitler became Germany’s Chancellor) until May 8, 1945 (the end of war in Europe). During this time, Jewish people in Europe faced unprecedented persecution, resulting in six million Jewish deaths and the destruction of five thousand Jewish communities.
The majority of Europe’s Jewish community, approximately two-thirds, and about one-third of the global Jewish population did not perish because of the conflict in Europe during World War II. Instead, their deaths were a consequence of Germany’s strategy known as the Endlosung or Final Solution, which aimed to eliminate Europe’s Jewish residents. It is important to recognize that anti-Semitism has persisted throughout Europe for centuries.
Throughout the Middle Ages, different countries experienced varying levels of Anti-Semitism. In the 19th century, Jews in imperial Russia and Hungary faced pogroms, government-sanctioned riots, and physical assaults. These acts of violence stemmed from Anti-Semitism based on religious disparities as well as economic factors such as wealth and power. The Nazi party subsequently capitalized on these same fundamental elements to build their anti-Jewish crusade.
After being defeated in World War I, Germany faced humiliation through the imposition of severe conditions by the Versailles Treaty. These conditions encompassed reductions in armed forces, acknowledgment of responsibility for the war, and payment of reparations to the allied powers. As a result, the Weimar Republic was established as a new parliamentary government. However, Germany suffered from economic instability, inflation, and high unemployment during this time. Additionally, the worldwide depression worsened these problems further by amplifying social inequalities and eroding government support.
On January 30, 1933, Adolph Hitler was appointed chancellor by president Paul von Hindenburg, marking his rise to power as the head of the Nazi Party. Alongside his supporters, Hitler engaged in conflicts with communists and staged protests that disrupted the government. Additionally, a notable aspect of their strategy involved launching an aggressive propaganda campaign against political opponents, while attributing Germany’s problems to both the Weimar government and Jews. Following his appointment, Hitler swiftly called for new elections in order to secure absolute control over the Reichstag for his party. Exploiting their position within the government, the Nazis employed intimidation tactics against other political parties.
Leaders were arrested and meetings banned during the election campaign. On February 27, 1933, Marinus van der Lubbe was arrested after the Reichstag building burned down. Van der Lubbe maintained that he acted alone. Although there were suspicions of Nazi involvement in the incident, they managed to shift blame onto the Communists and gained support from disenchanted communist followers.
The fire in Germany served as a representation of the erosion of democracy. The government took advantage of it to suppress Communism and, in turn, curtail several individual rights and safeguards like freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, and the right to privacy. Consequently, in the subsequent elections held on March 5th, the Nazis secured 52 percent of the vote, enabling them to seize control over the government. Subsequently, they promptly transformed their newfound power into a dictatorship.
On March 23, Hitler gained full control and legal authority by the enactment of the Enabling Act. The Nazis established a powerful police and military force called the Sturmabteilung (S.A.) to aid in subverting German democracy. Furthermore, they formed the Gestapo as a clandestine police force with unlimited arrest powers and unwavering allegiance to Hitler’s commands.
Initially serving as Hitler’s personal bodyguards, the Schutzstaffel (S.S.) later assumed control of concentration camps and the Gestapo. As of 1934, Hitler held complete authority over Germany, commencing his persecution of Jews.
Nazi propaganda depicted Jews as wicked and fearful, while depicting Germans as industrious, brave, and sincere. The Nazis alleged that Jews, who held influential positions in finance, the press, literature, and theater, had eroded Germany’s economy and cultural legacy. State-sponsored propaganda introduced a novel form of racial anti-Semitism distinct from conventional Christian anti-Semitism. Hitler enforced legal measures and campaigns of terror to persecute Jews which included burning books authored by Jewish writers, prohibiting their access to certain professions and public schools, seizing their businesses and properties, and excluding them from public gatherings.
The Nuremberg Laws, enacted on September 15, 1935, were the most significant of the anti-Jewish laws and provided the basis for excluding Jews from society. This led to violence specifically targeting the Jewish population on November 9 and 10, 1938. During this time, Hershel Grynszpan, a devastated 17-year-old Jewish boy whose family had been deported, fatally shot Ernst vom Rath, the third secretary at the German Embassy in Paris. Nazi officials then used this assassination as a perceived justification for inciting Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass), a night of widespread devastation.
During the Holocaust, Jewish homes were destroyed and vandalized, synagogues and businesses were set on fire, and many Jews faced physical violence, death, imprisonment, and deportation to concentration camps. The Nazi policy towards the “Jewish problem” changed significantly on October 23, 1941 when Heinrich Himmler, the head of the S.S., issued an order that modified their approach. Before this date, the Nazis had been encouraging Jewish emigration; however, they faced difficulties as several countries rejected Jewish refugees.
The Madagascar Plan was developed as a means to transfer Jews from Germany and its occupied territories, ultimately resulting in their deportation to camps and ghettos in the East. This policy eventually evolved into the notorious “Final Solution,” which entailed their systematic extermination. In 1940, the Nazis strategized to relocate all Jews under their authority to Madagascar, an island located in the Indian Ocean.
In 1941, the term “Final Solution” (Gesamtlosung) was introduced by Nazi officials to denote genocide rather than a “Territorial Final Solution” (territoriale Endlosung). The Wannsee Conference, which took place on January 20, 1942, served as the forum for discussing the precise particulars of this Final Solution. Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the S.S. main office, and S.S. Chief Heinrich Himmler were responsible for organizing this conference.
During World War II, the Nazis had two key objectives: managing transportation for the war effort and expediting the deportation of Jews to concentration camps. Adolph Eichmann was a significant figure in coordinating the logistics of Jewish deportation. He played a crucial role in organizing train schedules, facilitating the transportation of Jews from ghettos to camps, and even contributing to advancements in transportation technology.
Deportation was the first step in implementing the “Final Solution.” Jewish individuals were informed that they would be moved for work reasons and given specific items to pack, including clothing, blankets, shoes, utensils (excluding knives), a bowl, and money. They were then transported either by trucks or on foot to the railway station. The rail cars were often situated away from regular passenger terminals to avoid any negative reactions from the local community.
The onlookers opted not to protest as the deportees were compelled to enter rail cars. These cars, for the most part, lacked windows and heating, resembling cattle cars. The deportees were packed in so tightly that standing was the only option. Once inside, the doors were sealed from the outside, depriving them of drinking water and sanitary facilities.
During the journey to the camps, each car held over 120 people, some of whom froze, suffocated, or died from disease. The bodies were not taken out of the cars along the way as the Nazi bureaucracy required a record of every body upon arrival at the destination. Adolph Eichman, a Nazi officer, was responsible for transporting the Jews to the camps in this massive operation.
In his systematic planning of the deportation of local Jewish populations to camps, Eichmann traveled to countries occupied by Germany. The level of cooperation he received from occupied governments varied. However, in Holland, Belgium, Albania, Denmark, Finland, and Bulgaria, sympathetic individuals and government officials took actions that saved some Jews from death. Conversely, in Poland, Greece, France, and Yugoslavia, the government’s cooperation facilitated the deportation of Jews to death camps.
Although the Nazis successfully socially and economically isolated Jews, it was not until December 1939 that they started physically segregating the population from Eastern Europe. The primary aim of creating ghettos was to completely confine the Jewish community, turning entire neighborhoods into prisons. Inside these ghettos, people were provided with only a quarter of the food ration given to Germans, which barely met their survival needs. Moreover, numerous ghettos had tainted water supplies, resulting in widespread outbreaks of tuberculosis and typhoid fever, as well as infestations of lice.
Over 70,000 people died in the Warsaw ghetto during the first two winters. They suffered from exposure, starvation, and disease. Many who survived later perished when the ghetto was destroyed in 1943 or in death camps. On November 24, 1941, the Nazis turned an old fortress in Czechoslovakia into the Theresienstadt ghetto. Over four years, more than 150,000 Jews were forced through this ghetto.
Theresienstadt operated as a temporary stop for individuals who would later be transferred to Auschwitz. These ghettos served as interim holding areas for survivors awaiting transportation to the camps. The Nazi concentration camps were initially established in 1933 to imprison political opponents, but control was handed over to the S.S after the “Night of the Long Knives.” This change led to an expansion of the camp system and the detention of other groups considered undesirable, including hundreds of thousands of Jews. Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen were among the original concentration camps built. When prisoners arrived at a camp, their belongings and clothing were typically confiscated.
All body hair was eliminated, followed by disinfection, showering, numbering, and issuance of ill-fitting prison attire. This procedure aimed to strip the prisoners of their humanity and crush their spirit, knowing that a broken person is easier to control. Existence within the camps was abhorrent. A common routine for concentration camp prisoners commenced at daybreak.
The inmates in the barracks, which could hold up to 800 prisoners, were woke up. Each bed was made of slatted wooden planks and stacked two or three high, leaving very little room for the occupants. Often, three or four prisoners had to share one bunk, resulting in insufficient space for adequate sleep. The inmates endured physical beatings and faced continuous physical and mental harassment.
The meager rations of the inmates quickly resulted in malnutrition and starvation, while those who defied the guards’ orders were promptly shot. Frequent roll calls were conducted to prevent any escape attempts, and if anyone did try to escape, all inmates were subsequently punished.
Death camps, in contrast to concentration camps, solely provided barracks for the camp workers. The objective was to mislead the victims about their impending fate, as a means of efficiently handling the processing of thousands of individuals. Consequently, those transported from ghettos and concentration camps to the death camps were oblivious to the impending horrors and, even if they had suspicions, were unlikely to resist. The prisoners were informed that their relocation was for labor purposes and were even granted work permits.
The individuals were instructed to bring their tools and convert their German marks into foreign currency. To entice hungry Jews, food was provided as bait for them to board the trains. At the camps, trucks were ready to transport those who were too feeble to walk to the gas chambers. The remaining individuals were informed that they would undergo delousing and disinfection before entering the baths.
The prisoners at Auschwitz were separated by gender and told to remove their clothes. However, these bathing facilities were actually gas chambers, which enabled the camp to efficiently “process” about 12,000 people daily. After the bodies were removed and incinerated in the crematoriums, their teeth were inspected for any gold fillings. These fillings would be extracted and melted down before sending the resulting gold back to Germany for sale.
Rumors circulated during World War II about the Nazis using gas chambers to annihilate a large number of Jews, and concerns arose regarding the difficult living conditions in the ghettos, which presented survival challenges. As part of a propaganda campaign, certain areas within the ghetto were modified to create an illusion by planting flowers, setting up shops and schools, and even opening a café. The objective was to deceive the visiting International Red Cross commission and hide the actual situation within the ghetto.
In July 1944, the Nazis produced a documentary propaganda film to depict life in the ghetto during World War II. Unfortunately, after completing the film, most of the Jewish individuals who participated in its production were sent to Auschwitz. This was done by the Nazis to quell resistance from Jews and limit knowledge about the ongoing atrocities. Throughout the war, German forces swiftly gained substantial territories.
The German advance during World War II often resulted in the presence of Jewish populations in various territories that the concentration camps could not accommodate in a timely manner. As a result, measures were implemented to manage the Jewish communities on-site. For instance, the S.S. brought together the Jewish residents of Kiev.
Resettlement in September of 1941 saw thousands of Jews brought to the outskirts of the city and executed by troops using machine guns. Many, including thousands of children, were thrown in with the dead and buried alive. Records from the S.S. unit involved in the killings indicate that 33,771 Jews were killed at Babi Yar on September 29-30. Overall, the Nazis executed over 100,000 people at Babi Yar between 1941-1943, with the majority being Jews. Although the Final Solution primarily targeted Jews, the Third Reich’s policy of mass murder extended beyond them.
The Nazi regime inflicted severe damage on various non-Aryan communities as well. They caused the deaths of around 20 million Soviet citizens, 5 million Germans, and 3 million non-Jewish Poles. Out of the six million Polish individuals murdered by the Nazis, half were Polish Christians. The Nazis viewed the Poles and other Slavic groups as being destined to be enslaved by the “master race.”
The Polish intellectuals and political leadership were targeted for execution, while other Polish civilians were killed without discrimination. Over 2,600 Catholic priests were among the deceased. Out of the estimated 1.6 million Gypsies residing in Europe at the time, around half a million were eliminated.
The Gypsies in Germany and its occupied territories experienced similar persecution to the Jews. They were subjected to restrictive and discriminatory laws, isolation and internment, mass executions, and execution in labor camps as well as death camps. In total, almost four million Ukrainians died, primarily due to combat and starvation caused by the S.S. Among the victims, 900,000 were Jews.
The Nazis persecuted and killed thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and people deemed mentally ill during the Holocaust. Homosexuals were identified by wearing pink triangles, similar to how Jews were identified with yellow Stars of David. While the Nazis transported many to death camps for execution, mentally ill individuals were often killed on-site using gas vans sent directly to the sanitorium.
In order to efficiently carry out the Final Solution, the Nazis designed various devices and processes to expedite the process. They adapted mass production methods to meet cost and time objectives. Two types of gas chambers, delousing chambers for clothing and extermination chambers, were constructed for effective ethnic cleansing.
At the death camps, there were extermination chambers that could accommodate up to 2,000 people. Two agents were employed for killing purposes: Zyklon B and carbon monoxide. Zyklon B functions as a carrier for the gas hydrocyanic acid, also known as HCN, and is commonly available in the form of small pellets or disks.
The commercially sold form of Zyklon B contains a trace scent that serves as a warning to humans. However, a unique version was specifically requested by the S.S., and in this version, the trace scent was removed. This removal was likely done to ensure that the victims would remain unaware of the imminent danger they were about to face. It is essential to note that Zyklon B is highly toxic to humans. Even in small concentrations of 300 parts per million (as opposed to the 16,000 p.p.m. used for delousing purposes), it can cause death within just five to fifteen minutes. This potent substance has proven to be incredibly effective and has even been used in gas chambers within United States prisons.
The extermination chambers were furnished with either hollow columns where the Zyklon was deposited or with shower heads that could be used to release the gas. Certain chambers utilized carbon monoxide, which is an invisible and scentless gas obtainable as a byproduct of gasoline engines. Carbon monoxide attaches to red blood cells that typically transport oxygen.
The cell will remain bonded with carbon monoxide until death as it forms a stronger bond with the cell compared to oxygen. Normally, only a few cells would bond with carbon monoxide and the rest would receive oxygen. However, when exposed to pure carbon monoxide without oxygen, all cells form bonds with carbon monoxide causing the victim to asphyxiate due to lack of oxygen reaching body tissues. Additionally, carbon monoxide was also utilized in specifically designed vans known as Gaswagen.
These vehicles, equipped with sealed compartments connected to the exhaust system or a carbon monoxide canister, were commonly employed in the German-occupied regions of Russia. Their primary purpose was to exterminate mental patients, under the pretense of being delousing vans to avoid suspicion. Additionally, the Nazis exploited prisoners from ghettos and camps for forced labor.
Within the concentration camps, certain prisoners would assist in building the camps or labor in factories. In some ghettos, factories were even situated within the confines of the perimeter walls. Meanwhile, other prisoners took on the task of removing deceased individuals from the gas chambers and transporting them to the crematorium. In Auschwitz, about 10 percent of new arrivals were selected to work instead of facing death. Those who were spared were only allowed to continue living if they endured the physical and emotional suffering imposed upon them.
During the winter of 1943, Germany witnessed a shift in the course of war as Soviet forces initiated their advance into Nazi territory. In a bid to cover up the evidence of their heinous acts, the Nazis dismantled or destroyed crucial structures like the gas chambers. Additionally, they burned records that contained detailed information about the victims and the methods of execution. Moreover, as they retreated, the Germans coerced all remaining prisoners in Auschwitz to embark on a forced march towards Germany.
Around 20,000 out of the total 58,000 prisoners perished during their journey. Their deaths were caused by various brutalities such as exhaustion, starvation, dehydration, exposure, beatings, and execution. Furthermore, even the corpses buried in Kiev were dug up and incinerated. The implementation of the final solution led to the loss of millions of lives. These individuals were not killed in retaliation or as a result of being conquered by an invading army; rather, they were purely targeted because of their ethnic background.
Claiming that a person is unfit to live because of their birth is both absurd and insane. It is also appalling that this occurs in civilized nations without any intervention from foreign powers. It is crucial for us to remember these events so that we can educate future generations about what has transpired. Ignorance may bring temporary happiness, but it ultimately leads to foolishness.
The events that make up our history are the foundation for our future; thus, forgetting the past implies erasing the future. There is a well-known phrase that suggests if we do not learn from our past, we are destined to repeat it. Kosovo serves as an example where this saying has proven true, but at least this time there was an effort to prevent it. Fascists and fanatics like Adolph Hitler will continue to rise to power throughout history. As human beings, it is our responsibility to denounce injustice and oppression. We must remember the cliché that we are all living on this Earth together and strive to coexist harmoniously.
