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Non-German Perpetrators, Jewish Cooperation, and Bystanders Week

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Non-German Perpetrators, Jewish Cooperation, and Bystanders Week WEEK 8 Collaboration and Compliance: Non-German Perpetrators, Jewish Cooperation, and Bystanders Prepared by Tony Joel and Mathew Turner Week 8 Unit Learning Outcomes ULO 1. evaluate in a reflective and critical manner the consequences of racism and prejudice ULO 4. recognise important linkages between the Second World War and the Holocaust, and question Hitler’s role in these events Introduction A complex question hovers over this learning module: could Nazi plans for the deportation and extermination of Jews have been realised without the assistance of sympathetic régimes and individual antisemites at a local level right across Europe? Non-German perpetrators and collaborators proved critical to the success of the Nazi program of Jewish extermination throughout Europe. Admittedly, degrees of cooperation and collaboration in the killing differed markedly — for both states and individuals. Some murdered Jews on their own initiative, others willingly complied with German orders to deport Jews, while others put up little more than token resistance to such plans. This learning module raises two further vexed issues: Jewish collaboration/compliance; and the role of bystanders in the Holocaust. Section 1 examines the role of non-German collaborators in the form of both states and, to a lesser extent, officials. Section 2 focuses on the roles that Jews played in cooperating with the Nazis to enable the destruction of their own people, particularly from the perspective of Jewish ghetto councils and Jewish ghetto police. Finally, section 3 probes the role of bystanders in the Holocaust: the people who had knowledge of what was happening to Jews but took no action to prevent — and in some instances, benefited from — the deportation and killing of Jews. In completing this learning module, you will continue to evaluate, in a reflective and critical manner, the consequences of racism and prejudice. You will also recognise linkages between the Second World War and the Holocaust, and question Hitler’s role in these events. LEARNING MODULE 8. Section 1: Non-German Collaborators 2 Section 1. Non-German Collaborators Some of the most perplexing and problematical contributions to the implementation of the Holocaust were made by non-German collaborators and accomplices. Already in this unit, we have come across a number of countries allied to Nazi Germany who actively persecuted and murdered their own Jewish populations, often with little encouragement from Berlin. This section of the learning module examines more closely the actions of non-German states and officials who collaborated with Nazi Germany in implementing the “Final Solution.” a) Nations/Governments Adopting typological terms coined by Raul Hilberg, collaborationist régimes included: • the semi-autonomous collaborationist state of Vichy France; • the “opportunistic states” allied to Germany while Axis Powers (Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria) whose implementation of anti-Jewish policies was tempered by their perceptions of self-interest; • the “satellites par excellence” including Croatia and Slovakia whose rulers, installed by the Nazis, pursued radically antisemitic policies in accordance with Nazi ideals; • the Vatican, the closeness of whose relationship with Nazi Germany and knowledge of the Holocaust both remain contentious. Vichy France The collaborationist state that has attracted the most controversy in Holocaust historiography is Vichy France. READING EXCERPT: Please read the piece by Philippe Burrin entitled “No Knife was being Held to Vichy’s Throat.” In Burrin’s view, by trying to differentiate between those in France who deserved the state’s protection and those who did not, the Vichy leadership travelled down a slippery slope to renouncing any claims to moral behaviour. Whether the régime knew that Jews were being deported to death camps essentially remains irrelevant to assessing the ethics of its actions. LEARNING MODULE 8. Section 1: Non-German Collaborators 3 Burrin also makes a critical point that is relevant to the assessment of collaboration in any form. Without collaboration, the Germans (in the case of France, specifically the SS) would not have had sufficient resources to capture and exterminate as many Jews as they did. In this sense, then, collaboration by non-Germans made a significant contribution to the Nazis’ overall implementation of the “Final Solution.” PRESCRIBED TEXT: Please revisit Saul Friedländer’s chapter entitled “Vichy France: ‘Our’ Jews and the Rest,” pp. 570-85, which you first read in week four. Friedländer, as you might recall, largely agrees with Burrin’s position that French complicity was essential in carrying out the deportations of “foreign” Jews residing in wartime France. Since the Nazi occupiers did not boast sufficient armed forces in France to detain and deport Jews, they had to rely on the “full participation” of the French police force to carry out this work. Italy Italian collaboration in the Holocaust is a complex topic. Italy, under the fascist dictatorship of Hitler’s close ally Benito Mussolini, had approximately 46,000 Jews — of whom some 9,000 were “foreigners” — residing within its borders in 1938. Most Jews in Italy lived in large cities and were assimilated. In your reading for this topic, Susan Zuccotti contends that there existed a “paradox” in Italy’s treatment of Jews within its own borders, and those within German-occupied territories. PRESCRIBED TEXT: Please read Susan Zuccotti’s chapter entitled “The Italian Paradox,” pp. 588-97. LEARNING MODULE 8. Section 1: Non-German Collaborators 4 As you will note from Zuccotti’s reading, Italy itself was an occupying force during the Second World War. While still an Axis Power in 1941-42, argues Zuccotti, Italian military forces deliberately protected Jews within their own occupied territories in Greece and Croatia, obfuscating or ignoring German orders to take action. It was a tricky balance between saving Jewish lives, and protecting the often tenuous alliance between Germany and Italy. The fall of Mussolini’s régime in July 1943 resulted in German forces occupying Italy — a development that had deadly implications for Italian Jews as Germans seized the genocidal initiative.1 Jewish refugees escape over the Alps to Italy from the Italian-occupied zone in France following the signing of the Italian armistice with the Western Powers, September 1943. Sources: USHMM. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1123199 https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1123195 [Accessed 26 April 2017] Romania As we learnt in week five, Romania was a German ally led by the virulent antisemite Ion Antonescu. Some of the most brutal acts of violence against Jews were committed by Romanian perpetrators without any pressure or backing from Nazi Germany. PRESCRIBED TEXT: Please read Jean Ancel’s chapter entitled “Romania: Annihilation Aborted” (from the subheading “Toward the Implementation of the Final Solution”) pp. 557-61. 1 After Mussonili’s fall in July 1943, Italy descended into civil war between pro-fascists and anti-fascists. In September 1943, Italy surrendered to the Allied forces. The following month, on 13 October 1943 Italy declared war on its erstwhile partner Nazi Germany. LEARNING MODULE 8. Section 1: Non-German Collaborators 5 Ancel, an Israeli historian, was born in Iași, Romania, to Jewish parents in 1940. He was only a year old when the Iași pogrom was conducted, but was hidden in a basement and survived (his father was sent on one of the Iași “death trains” following the pogrom, but managed to survive). In his chapter in your set text, Ancel notes on page 465 that “Romanian authorities were responsible for the disappearance of at least 400,000 Jews,” about half of whom were deported to and murdered by German mass shooting squads in the East, while many tens of thousands were murdered by fellow Romanians. After seizing the initiative and encouraging the killing of hundreds of thousands of Jews (not only Romanian but also Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Soviet Jews suddenly trapped in Romanian-controlled territory), later in the war the Romanian government thwarted German endeavours by refusing to hand over its remaining Jewish population. Presumably this was a pragmatic move after deciding that Jews could serve as potential bargaining chips at a time when the war had turned against the Axis Powers and Romania was in line to be overrun by the advancing Red Army (indeed, like Italy before it, in August 1944 Romania switched sides and fought against Hitler’s Germany). Even so, such an about-face raises a perplexing question: if a state such as Romania was willing to protect its Jews from the Nazis when it was considered potentially expedient from a military-strategic perspective, why had it been so keen to actively participate in the extirpation of hundreds of thousands of Jews earlier in the war? Hungary As we read in last week’s learning module, one of the last groups to be exterminated in Auschwitz-Birkenau were Hungarian Jews. As a military ally of Nazi Germany, and as was the case with both Italy and Romania, the fate of Hungarian Jews largely rested on the fortunes of the war. As the military campaign in the East began to turn against Hitler, by March 1944 the Wehrmacht had started to occupy parts of Hungary. PRESCRIBED TEXT: Please read Randolph L. Braham’s chapter entitled “The Hungarian Paroxysm,” pp. 599-601. While the Hungarian leader Admiral Miklós Horthy attempted to protect wealthy and assimilated Jews from deportation, as Braham observes this course became less tenable as German leaders began to exert more direct pressure for greater action against Hungarian Jews. This came at a time when demands for slave labour to complete urgently needed German war projects were becoming desperate (indeed, the lateness of LEARNING MODULE 8. Section 1: Non-German Collaborators 6 their deportation and the need for increased numbers of slave labour late in the war accounts for why such a large percentage of Auschwitz survivors were Hungarian Jews).
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