the quest for racial purity - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

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Initially created as a short-term measure, ghettos existed for as long as three years in occupied Poland (and later in the Soviet Union). During that time, German enterprises, including those owned by the armed forces, the SS, the civilian occupation authorities, and private individuals, took the opportunity to exploit the residents for inexpensive forced labor. Some Jewish ghetto administrations sought investment in the ghettos, par- ticularly from the army and the private sector, in the hope of improving conditions and even ensuring survival in return for production of usable goods. The German civilian authorities continued to allot food and supply rations that were just enough to keep alive those able to work, while those who were weakened by exhaustion or illness inevitably died. Hard labor came to dominate the lives of ghetto inhabitants, and they quickly came to see a relationship between their ability to produce—individually and collectively—and their ongoing survival. By 1941, conditions in the ghettos in German-occupied Poland had deteriorated to such an extent that they were places of mass death. The results could hardly have been otherwise, considering the Germans’ deliberate neglect of the residents’ basic needs. Some historians have argued that, had the Germans left the harsh ghetto regime intact, Polish Jewry might well have been annihilated within ten years. Although those ghettos in which both military and private entrepreneurs had invested significantly had advocates for continued existence among the German civilian administrators, the SS and police—who used ideological and security arguments—and German health officials in the occupation bureaucracy—who feared epidemics that might spread to the non-Jewish population—won the debate. German Einsatzgruppen (Mobile Killing Squad) soldiers guard Jewish women and children (right) before massacring them. In the background, other Jews are forced to undress and their clothing is heaped on the ground. This photo, originally in color, was part of a series taken by a German military photographer. Copies from this collection were later used as evidence in war crimes trials. lubny, [ukraine] ussr, october 16, 1941. with permission of the hamburger institut für sozialforschung 136 | nazi ideology and the holocaust
The Nazis, and many other Germans understood the war as a life-and-death struggle between two world views– the “German/Aryan” and the “Jewish/communist”– in which no compromise was possible.
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the quest for racial purity: German
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ideology into practice. The persecu
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conditions were by definition “he
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granted exemptions to people who we
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a distracted population from what t
Page 11 and 12: Doctors marked each name with a red
Page 13 and 14: in white coats and rode along in th
Page 15 and 16: and leadership had moved to other p
Page 17 and 18: scientists, physicians, nurses, aca
Page 20 and 21: and other racial minorities. The la
Page 22 and 23: popular prejudices (in Germany and
Page 24: Many insisted that who did not meri
Page 27 and 28: with “feeblemindedness” and oth
Page 29 and 30: In the camps, Roma were made to wea
Page 31 and 32: German physicians also used Roma co
Page 33 and 34: arracks. The SS refrained from carr
Page 35 and 36: end with Germany’s acknowledgment
Page 37 and 38: he nazis reserved their most viciou
Page 40 and 41: In 1933, the approximately 530,000
Page 43 and 44: marked the beginning of a pattern t
Page 45 and 46: this a “racial” definition for
Page 47 and 48: the army; and, in early 1934, forba
Page 49 and 50: Most German Jews who managed to emi
Page 51 and 52: - Close relatives of the prospectiv
Page 53: instigated and carried out by Nazi
Page 56 and 57: Night of Broken Glass,” German Je
Page 59 and 60: context of the do-or-die struggle b
Page 61: The ghettos were conceived ... as a
Page 65: police officials and, in particular
Page 68 and 69: The tactics used by the German auth
Page 70 and 71: forced the inhabitants into certain
Page 72 and 73: the war, the Germans had deported a
Page 75 and 76: Unlike the Operation Reinhard camps
Page 77 and 78: their efforts could not save Jewish
Page 79 and 80: Auschwitz-Birkenau until November 1
Page 81 and 82: Despite Nazi efforts to hide their
Page 83 and 84: epilogue | the aftermath of the hol
Page 85 and 86: The Nuremberg Trial brought major N
Page 87 and 88: viduals—from all religious backgr
Page 89 and 90: polish and soviet civilians, and so
Page 91 and 92: Morse, Arthur. While Six Million Di
Page 93 and 94: Dalliare, Roméo, 161-62 Darfur, Su
Page 95 and 96: Jewish resistance, 150-52 Jewish st
Page 97 and 98: Polish civilians, 54, 55 children,
Page 99: design Studio A, Alexandria, Va. ww
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the quest for racial purity - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

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