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Final Solution UNIT four: “Final Solution”: Murder by Bullets and Death Camps TABLE OF CONTENTS learning objectives 5 SURVIVOR BIOGRAPHIES 6 classroom activities • Death by Bullets and Mobile Killing Centers 29 • Deportation 30 • Killing Centers and Operation Reinhard 31 iwitness activities (Internet Access Required) • Einsatzgruppen: The Firing Squads of the Holocaust 34 iwitness activities (downloadable mini lessons) • A Day in Auschwitz 23 • Arrival at Auschwitz 24 • Areyvut 34 • Emunah 34 • Halacha 34 • Prayer 34 • Holidays 34 • Mesorah 34 • Friendship 34 • Chesed 34 text for teachers • Part A: Murder by Bullets – A Historical Overview 8 ® Germany Invades the Soviet Union 8 ® The Mobile Killers 9 2 ® The Wannsee Conference 11 ® Genocide as State Policy 12 • Part B: Death Camps 13 ® Death Camps 16 ® Chelmno 18 ® Belzec 19 ® Sobibor 19 ® Treblinka 21 ® Majdanek 22 ® Erntefest 23 ® Auschwitz 23 ADDITIONAL RESOURCES • The Einsatzgruppen Eyewitness Testimony – Writings 35 • Wannsee Conference 38 3 TEACHING DIFFICULT MATERIAL This lesson contains very difficult and complex subject matter. We teach the “how” of the Holocaust, evoking many emotions and questions in our students. Teachers are encouraged to familiarize their students with this history, and at the same time be sensitive to the students’ reactions, and assure them that experiencing a variety of emotions— anger, sadness, outrage, melancholy, numbness, distancing—are all natural responses. Activities in this unit provide an opportunity for students to express and discuss their feelings with others. They are also designed to be engaging, so that they foster a connection between the students and subject matter. Care has been used in choosing the resources presented to the students. Some of the material is inevitably graphic in nature, authentically reflecting the horrors of this history. Caution should be exercised in using- and most especially overusing- graphic images and texts. Later in this unit we offer primary source documents as examples for use in the classroom. It is important that teachers always preview the materials that they will use in their classes. There is a paradox in implementing graphic material: it is compelling evidence of the deliberate attempt to dehumanize the victims, but it must be used in a way that ensures we do not participate in this dehumanization ,and in a way that ensures that the students do not become numb to what there are seeing. Students should be horrified, but not to the point that they turn away or become desensitized to it because it is “another graphic Holocaust image.” Listening to witnesses’ testimonies humanizes this horrific material, so that students can connect to it in a deeper way. Activities are designed to allow teachers to help students through this process. 4 LEARNING OBJECTIVES UNIT 4 LEARNING OBJECTIVES Through survivor testimonies, students will: 1. Understand how Nazi racial ideology gave rise to the “Final Solution” 2. Learn about deportations – the mass scale transporting of victims to killing centers 3. Comprehend the distinctions between four different types of camps: Transit Camps, Concentration Camps, Slave Labor Camps, Killing Centers 4. Explore survivors’ stories of endurance, resistance, and religious observance in order to deepen the understanding of day-to-day life in the camps 5. Humanize the victims by exploring the role of friendship and community in the camps 5 SURVIVOR BIOGRAPHIES In this unit, students will have the opportunity to watch testimony from: • Zvi Michaeli was born on May 15, 1925 in an Orthodox Jewish family in Ejszyszki, Poland. After the invasion of Poland by Nazi forces, he describes being rounded up with his father and taken to a massacre site outside of the city. Zvi’s father shielded him from bullets by draping his own arm around his son’s neck and head and as a result bullets only grazed him but left him mostly unharmed. After the shooting, Zvi lay beneath the body of his father and describes the weight of his body, the closeness he felt to his father, before managing to escape from underneath him and running away. He survived the war in hiding, by evading roundups, and by joining Soviet resistance groups. Following the war, he returned to his hometown of Ejszyszki, Poland and encountered unprecedented antisemitism and violence from his Polish neighbors who were surprised that they’d survived. He retaliated together with the Russian soldiers that had liberated the region and then fled to Germany where he got married. From Germany, he and his wife boarded the Exodus ship and tried to immigrate to Israel but was denied entry by the British government. In 1948, he finally made it to Israel where he and his wife had two kids. In 1966, he and his family moved to the United States. • Roman Kent, son of Emanuel and Sonia Kniker, was born in Lodz, Poland, on April 18, 1929. He had two older sisters, Dasza and Renia, and one younger brother, Leon. His father owned a textile factory. Roman attended a private Jewish school. At the end of 1939, the family was imprisoned in the Lodz ghetto; Emanuel died there. In the fall of 1944, the ghetto was liquidated, and the family was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Roman survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau, Gross-Rosen, and Flossenberg concentration camps. While Leon, Dasza, and Renia also survived the Holocaust, Dasza and Leon died young. Roman met his future wife Hannah in New York, and they were married in 1957. At the time of Roman’s interview on April 29, 1996 in New York, he and his wife Hannah had two grandchildren, Eryn and Dara, and were expecting a third. • Itka Zygmuntowicz was born in Ciechanów, Poland on April 15, 1926 to an orthodox Jewish family. At the age of fifteen in October 1941, she and her family were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto. In 1942, Itka was deported by cattle car to Auschwitz- Birkenau. Later she was forced on a death march towards Ravensbrück concentration camp and was liberated by the Swedish Red Cross in April 1945. After the war in 1953 Itka migrated to the United States where she was interviewed in Philadelphia, PA on March 3, 1996. 6 • Thomas Blatt was born on April 15, 1927 in Izbica, Lublin, Poland and grew up in a traditional Jewish family. After being sent a ghetto in Stryj, Poland, Thomas was sent to the Sobibor death camp. On October 14, 1943, Thomas participated in the Sobibor uprising. He escaped into the forest and hid on farms. He was liberated in Lublin, Poland by Soviet armed forces. This interview took place on April 4, 1995 in Issaquah, Washington. • Philip Bialowitz was born on November 25, 1929 in Izbica, Lublin, Poland, and grew up in an Orthodox family. On October 14, 1943, Philip participated in the Sobibor uprising; Philip escaped and lived under a false identity in Tarzymiechy, Poland. He was liberated by Soviet armed forces. This interview took place on August 22, 1997 in Little Neck, New York. • Chaim Engel was born on January 10, 1916 in Łódź, Poland and grew up in a traditional Jewish household. After surviving the Sobibor uprising, Philip hid in forests and on farms. He was liberated in Lublin, Poland by Soviet armed forces. This interview took place on October 18, 1995 in Branford, Connecticut. 7 TEXT FOR TEACHERS PART A: MURDER BY BULLETS – A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW The “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” the Nazis’ euphemistic code for the mass murder of European Jewry, was implemented in stages, although the various forms of killing overlapped as primitive methods gave way to what was then considered state-of- the-art technology. Killing by bullets was followed by gassing first in mobile killing vans, which were in turn supplanted by stationary gas chambers of much greater capacity and efficiency. The “Final Solution” began in practice after German soldiers invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 and implemented a policy towards the Jews of murder by bullets; the mobile killing squads that moved with the German army into the Soviet Union and the local units that assisted them in murdering Jews in close proximity to their homes. The effort was consolidated and intensified after the Wannsee Conference was convened in Berlin in January 1942, which enlisted top officials in the government, the Nazi party, the armed and occupation forces push to bring every last Jew from all over Europe to killing centers with the goal of making Europe “Judenrein.” In 1942, the Germans turned to murder by gassing in order to expedite large-scale killing. Victims from all over German-occupied Europe were deported from ghettos such as in occupied Poland and later after April 1944 Hungary or from their homes in Western Europe, via transit camps and brought to death and concentration camps, situated mainly in German-occupied Poland. The death toll from the mobile killing squads and killing centers is staggering; difficult to comprehend in its enormity. Through witness testimony, students will better understand the human faces behind the statistics. They will listen to the voices of those who were teenagers, mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers during this time. In doing so, students will hear a range of experiences under the direst of circumstances. The first section focuses on the experience of those extremely rare few who witnessed, but somehow escaped the “murder by bullets.” The second section explores the experiences of those who endured death camps. The third section highlights the survivors who were in slave labor camps. GERMANY INVADES THE SOVIET UNION: “OPERATION BARBAROSSA” BEGINS On June 22, 1941, in the offensive known by the code name “Operation Barbarossa,” the German army invaded the Soviet Union along a 2,000-mile-long front. Twenty months earlier Germany and the Soviet Union had signed Ribbentrop-Molotov pact that pledged 8 peace and divided Poland.
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