203: The Holocaust: Killing Squads, Ghettos, & Gas Chambers

Hi, my name is Lloyd Lockridge, and I'm the host of a new podcast from Odyssey called Family Lore. In this podcast, I'm going to have people on to tell unusual and sometimes far-fetched stories about their families. I've heard my whole life that she invented the margarita. And then we're going to investigate those stories and find out how much of it is true. He gets a patent one month before the Wright Brothers. Oh my God. Please follow and listen to Family Lore, an Odyssey podcast available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your shows. My friends, it's Professor Greg Jackson, and I'm pleased to announce more live tour dates this spring in celebration of my new book, Publishing in June. The book is called Been There, Done That. How our history shows what we can overcome. So in addition to previously announced tour stops, we're now also coming to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., New York, and Boston. You'll get to see me storytelling live with music and video, and I'll sign books at those June shows. Or if you're feeling really adventurous, you can join our VIP book launch, Caribbean Cruise in May. So I look forward to seeing more of you on the road, or maybe at sea, to celebrate the launch of my book. Get tickets and more info at HTDSPodcast.com. It's nearly 12 noon on a cold winter's morning, January 20th, 1942. We're in a western suburb of Berlin, Germany, standing before a stunning three-story neoclassical mansion known as the House of Vanzee. We're going to head inside in just a moment, but before we do, let me explain that we're here to witness a meeting unlike any other I can think of in history. Here, the head of the Reich Security Head Office, SS-Opelgruppenführer Reinhard Heidrich, or anglicized as Reinhard Heidrich, will lead 14 other high-ranking members of the Nazi Party and government in a discussion prompted by instructions issued months earlier by the number two man in all of Nazi Germany, Weischmarschel Hermann Göring, about coordinating their various offices and departments to carry out what they're calling to quote them the final solution to the Jewish question. Close quote. Now this quote unquote solution or plan is hardly new. The anti-Semitic Nazi state has already removed hundreds of thousands of Jews from its expanding empire, forcibly relocating them to cramped neighborhoods called Ghettoes or to concentration and labor camps. The Nazis have also begun their mass killings. Early on, their SS-led mobile killing squads or Einsatzgruppen relied almost exclusively on bullets, but more recently, they've begun experimenting with using the exhaust from vans to gas their Jewish victims. In brief, Reinhard Heidrich isn't presenting a new plan as much as aligning everyone's efforts on a systematic, efficient, and economic means of, to quote this meeting's soon to be written minutes, forcing the Jews out of the various spheres of life and the living space of the German people. Close quote. Yes. This is a dark meeting. One as sinister in purpose as the grounds we're standing on are gorgeous. And on that grim note, let's head inside this stately manner. In a magnificent and ornately decorated room, 14 men, likely dressed in crisp uniforms, listen attentively as Reinhard Heidrich talks. The tall, handsome, 37-year-old Obergruppenführer with blue eyes and a sharp part in his receding blonde hair opens his remarks with a review of Nazi Germany's Jewish policies to date. He tells the men before him that, back in the 1930s, their policy was quote unquote forced emigration, which he claims removed a combined 537,000 Jews from Germany, Austria, and the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. But as of last year, 1941, they replaced this costly, inefficient, and slow process with the evacuation of the Jews to the east, a policy that came, he notes, with appropriate prior authorization from the Führer. That's right. Evacuation has Adolf Hitler's express approval. The Obergruppenführer continues. This evacuation is one of mass scale. He informs his 14 attendees that, in the course of this final solution of the Jewish question, roughly 11 million Jews will be taken into consideration. You heard that correctly. 11 million. And Herr Reinhard Heidrich backs that figure with an estimated count of Jews in various European nations. 131,800 in Germany. Well, pre-1938, orders Germany. 43,700 in Austria. 165,000 in occupied France. And he claims 700,000 in what he describes as unoccupied French territory. Wait, territory? Yes, in other words, in French North Africa. So this isn't just about removing Jews from Europe. It's about making Jews disappear anywhere the Nazi Empire's dark shadow reaches. Period. In fact, he even lists nations not under the control of the Reich, including belligerent nations like the USSR and England. The numbers themselves are wildly inaccurate, but the presentation's inclusion of nations beyond their current control speaks to very realistic expected outcomes, given how well the war is going for the Nazis in early 1942, and highlights just how final they intend this solution to be. To that end, Reinhard says they will comb through Europe, from west to east, to evacuate the continent's Jews. They will do so, group by group, to so-called transit ghettos. From Versailles, they'll be transported onwards to the east. But not all will be sent onward from the ghettos. The tall and handsome Opelkopemführer explains that at least one quote-unquote old age ghetto, likely to be the ghetto in Therese and Stott, will serve as permanent housing for three classes of Jews, those 65 and older, disabled war vets, and war heroes awarded the Iron Cross first class. The rest, however, will ultimately go to the east. A question arises. What about the Mischlinga, that is, those defined by the Nuremberg laws as being of mixed Jewish and Aryan descent? Reinhard answers that their fate depends on whether they are first-degree Mischlinga, those with two Jewish grandparents and thus deemed half Jewish, or second-degree Mischlinga, those with one Jewish grandparent and thus considered a quarter Jewish. Deaning on this division, Reinhard proclaims, As far as the final solution of the Jewish question is concerned, first-degree Mischlinga are to be treated as Jews, so evacuated. He goes on. Second-degree Mischlinga will be as matter of principle, be treated as persons of German blood. He adds that both cases will have their exceptions. For instance, first-degree Mischlinga, already exempted, will remain so. Conversely, second-degree Mischlinga, with two Mischling parents, a criminal record, or, and I quote, a Jewish external appearance, close quote, will be evacuated. Meanwhile, so-called mixed marriages between Mischlinga and Aryans will play out in a myriad of ways, depending on children and other family dynamics. This, SS-Gorpenführer Otto Hoffmann of the race and settlement main office pipes up, Extensive use must be made of sterilization. Once the Mischlinga faces a choice between evacuation and sterilization, he will prefer to undergo sterilization. That's probably true, because of course Jews aren't going to the east to live in a camp on the edge of the Nazi Empire. Wishing past the Nazis' euphemisms, this final solution is a funnel system, one in which Jews are forced to ghettos and from ghettos to camps, where the weak can be declared unfit for work and summarily executed en masse, while the strong can be worked to death. This isn't about relocation. It's a plan for systematic execution that makes use of its victims in the process. The Secretary of State for Concord, Poland's general government, Dr. Josef Bude, enthusiastically calls for the final solution to start on his turf, telling the room that the majority of Poland's 2.5 million Jews are unfit for work. Two others suggest that, quote, certain preparatory measures, close quote, should start in the territories, or things can be tested more discreetly. And with that, the 90-minute meeting, solidifying and detailing the final solution to eradicate Jewish life in Europe, is over. The 15 men head to lunch. Welcome to History That Doesn't Suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and I'd like to tell you a story. If you're wondering how we know the details of the January 1942 meeting at the House of Wanzi, it's thanks to the head of the Gestapo Office for Jewish Affairs, Adolf Eichmann. He took the minutes, and while 29 of the 30 copies in existence disappeared in the aftermath, the Allies found copy number 16 after the war in 1947. It's thanks to that singular post-war find that we have the details of the day when a handsome man in a gorgeous location laid out the organization for one of the ugliest and most vile events ever perpetrated by human hands, the final solution of the Holocaust. As we heard in the previous episode's prologue interview with Sarah Bloomfield, the director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Holocaust, or Shoah, to use the Hebrew word, took the lives of nearly two-thirds of Europe's Jews. But that in numerical form, out of roughly 9.5 million Jews living in Europe in 1933 on the eve of the war, only 3.5 million were alive in 1950. Six million died in the Holocaust. But before we digest that overwhelming number, we have to ask ourselves a key question. How? And the one that almost always follows. Why? Today, we're going to begin to answer those questions as we hear the story of the acceleration of the Holocaust in the early years of World War II, or, to put that another way, the story of the development and implementation of the so-called final solution. We'll begin where we left off in episode 185. The 1938's Devastating Night of Broken Glass, or, Christal Nacht. Then, as the situation worsens in Europe, we'll watch some families make the excruciating decision to send their children out of Nazi-occupied territory to England, especially as more and more Jews are forced into ghettos. As we move into 1941, we'll head to the Eastern Front, where mass murder of Jews begins at the hands of the Einsatzgulpen, Germany's mobile killing squads. With the war intensifying in 1941 and 1942, Nazi higher-ups will realize they need a more efficient solution to their, quote-unquote, Jewish problem, thus leading us to the final solution that we heard about in this episode's opening. We're going to see the advent of the extermination camp and gas chambers, and watch as the rest of the world begins to learn about the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis against European Jewry. It's a steep task, but one we're certainly up for, and one that will best approach if we can set aside our 21st-century perspective, from which the horrors to come seem so obvious, and appreciate how slowly this work of death crept up. To that end, before we dive in, I'm going to ask you to digest this fairly long quote from the preeminent Holocaust historian, Raul Hilberg's three-volume work, The Destruction of the European Jews. This is his key claim and a useful framework for us to rely on. I quote, The process of destruction unfolded in a definite pattern. It did not, however, proceed from a basic plan. No bureaucrat in 1933 could have predicted what kind of measures would be taken in 1938, nor was it possible in 1938 to foretell the configuration of the undertaking in 1942. The destruction process was a step-by-step operation, and the administrator could seldom see more than one step ahead. The steps of the destruction process were introduced in the following order. At first, the concept of Jew was defined, then the expropriatory operations were inaugurated. Third, the Jews were concentrated in ghettos. Finally, the decision was made to annihilate European Jewry. The chronological development may therefore be summarized as follows. Definition, expropriation, and concentration through mobile killing operations and deportations and killing center operations in the rest of Axis Europe. Close quote. In other words, we cannot blame the people for not predicting what would happen. Nazi leaders organized the unthinkable. And with that, let's head back to where we left off with the early Holocaust in episode 185 to 1930s Germany. Rewind. Picking up with European Jewry in the 1930s. Here's where things stand. After centuries of fighting for and eventually gaining emancipation, that is, full legal citizenship in much of Europe, Adolf Hitler's Nazi party is now slowly stripping Jewish citizens of the right to be just that. Citizens. This starts in 1933 and culminates in the 1935 Nuremberg laws. In retrospect, some will say these are the earliest years of the Holocaust. Antisemitism only grows as we get later into the 30s. In 1936, standard curriculum for SS trainees includes the statement that, quote, the Jew is a parasite. Wherever he flourishes, the people die. Elimination of the Jew from our community is to be regarded as an emergency defense measure. Close quote. From 1935 to 1938, many Jews tried to leave Germany, but few countries are willing to grant these Jewish refugees asylum. The United States included. Meanwhile, European Jews are split on what they should or shouldn't do. While some see this increased violence and persecution as merely another hiccup in their long, hard-won fight for emancipation, others have been sounding the alarm for years. To the second group, Hitler's race-based antisemitism is on another level, and the community is nowhere near as worried as they should be. More Jews move into this second group after Kristallnacht or The Night of Broken Glass on November 9, 1938. I trust you recall the details of this night from episode 185, a night that resulted in 91 Jewish deaths and the destruction or desecration of thousands of Jewish businesses and synagogues. Some historians will argue that this is the point that Germany's antisemitism tipped over to become the Holocaust. But even after Kristallnacht, many Jews aren't panicking. After all, they are active contributing members of German society, some even fought in the First World War. And that, my friends, ends our episode 185 review. This is where we pick up our story and the path to the Nazi's so-called final solution. Now for us in the 21st century, it's pretty clear where things are going, especially when we look at Adolf Hitler's January 30, 1939 speech at the Reichstag, which includes anti-Semitic tropes and a rather transparent promise for violence. If international finance juries within Europe and abroad should succeed once more in plunging the peoples into a world war, then the consequences will not be Bolshevization of the world and they are with a victory of juries. But on the contrary, the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe. Hindsight is 20-20 though. Moreover, even after Kristallnacht, the thought that Adolf Hitler can muster a regime that will seek the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe is still hard to believe. I mean the eradication of millions of people sounds insane. Undoable even. Thus, across Nazi territory, the Jewish community remains split. Rabbis are debating the future of their people, community leaders are not sure of how to advise their congregations, and families are torn over whether to leave or stay. But even now, in the late 1930s, one country is growing wary enough to soften its immigration rules. Frightened by the anti-Semitic state-sponsored attacks in Nazi Germany, Britain is granting unaccompanied miners, those under the age of 17, refugee status. In what comes to be known as the Kindertransport, private citizens and organizations pay for nearly 10,000 children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland to emigrate to Britain, with the understanding that, when the crisis is over, kids will return to their families. And yes, we're talking about various Central European nationalities because, as we know from episodes 187-189, Adolf Hitler is rapidly gobbling up neighboring nations between 1938 and 1939. And as he does, Jews in these newly taken countries are subject to the Heish's anti-Semitic laws. This fact is highlighted by Britain's Sir Nicholas, or Nicky, Wynton, who ultimately saves 669 Czech children through this program. His story will later be told in the 2023 movie One Life. Meanwhile, Norbert Wohlheim, a British-based Jewish organizer who helps arrange many of these life-saving Kindertransport voyages, is often tasked with facilitating that last hug. As he later recalls, quote, nobody of us could foresee, even at this moment, that for most of the children and most of the parents, it would be the last goodbye. That a year and a half later or so from over the same railways, with the train left to take the children to a new country and to freedom and liberty, the trains would roll towards the east and take the parents to the human slaughterhouses and Auschwitz and other places, close quote. But in this recollection, Norbert speaks with the benefit of reflection. At the time, no one involved can properly process what's happening, and that makes these departures all the more challenging for the children and their parents alike. It's the morning of July 1, 1939. We're in Trostenja, in what was Czechoslovakia before the Nazis carved the country apart, where 14-year-old Alice Ebershkakova and her two sisters, nearly 16 and 10 years old, respectively, are at home, preparing to leave their small, rural village for England. As the girls pack, Alice hears a noise coming from the other room. Is that... Crime? Sobbing? It is. Alice will later recall. We were all packed to go, and suddenly we heard this noise coming from another room, and we looked at each other in horror because my father was weeping and loud. That's what made it a lot of sorrow for us. It's going to be. Traveling by train, the Ebershkakova family heads southwest to Bratislava. Later they change to another train and head northwest to Prague. It's a long, tiring journey, made even worse by the understanding that once they arrive in the capital city, their family of five will be split up for... well, no one can say. Finally, the family is at the station in Prague. Each girl has a new blanket, gifts that their father just bought for them here in town. And now, well, it's quote Alice's 1995 oral history once more. Everything is in a state of... ...truvical motion. It was very sad, and we were just crying. The kids were crying, the parents were crying. We each had a whole chain, and a little bracelet, and my mother said, it's not a good idea to have this. And my father may have said it. Why don't you let us keep it for you? And they took it off, and they said, don't travel with it. It's not a good idea to do that. So they took our little jewelry that we had, which is their minor, possibly. I know that we each had a chain, and maybe something else. I can't remember. But they decided to keep it for us, and took it off. There were hundreds of people, parents and children, little babies. And we were put on a train. My mother couldn't decide whether to keep the little one, my younger sister. So she put on a train, she took it off. She put on a train, she took it off again. And then she put on a train for the last moment. And we all waved goodbye, and that was it. The train pulls away from the station, carrying Alice, her two sisters, and 238 other unaccompanied children, away from Prague and away from Nazi terror. Their parents can only watch, undoubtedly gutted, horrified and fearful, as the train carrying their children, their babies, their world, disappears into the distance. The three girls make it to London. They live out the war in England. Reflecting later on, Alice will say, quote, And the fact that my parents agreed to send us will be a mystery for as long as I live. After all, she and her sisters were the only ones who left the village. She has one small consolation. In one of the letters Alice receives, her father writes, I'm so glad you're not here. A final letter arrives from her family in March, 1942. And after the war, Alice will learn that they were deported to Mydonok. Like Alice and her sisters, about 40% of the children who escape via the Kindertransport will never see their parents again. Their lives will be marked by intense survivor's guilt, especially since, as Norbert says, their families later went to their deaths via the very same train stations that granted their escape. But that's a story yet to come. Right now, we're still in 1939. While Nazi Germany's expanding empire and therefore anti-Semitic laws and policies now include Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and by the end of next year, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, we aren't ready for that level of death. Not just yet. Still in the early stages of the Nazis' work to destroy European Jewry, let's return to the framework of historian Raul Hilberg. He argues that three concrete steps are taken during these two years. First, the arianization of Jewish wealth, whether through seizing Jewish business assets, heavily taxing Jewish citizens, or even blocking their access to their money. Second, starvation measures. Since Jews living in Nazi-run territory are largely barred from their former professions, their savings are quickly disappearing as they pay for the heavily marked up yet minuscule rations available to them. Third, the concentration of the Jewish community into ghettos, isolating them both socially and physically from non-Jews. Ah, those would be the ghettos we heard about in this episode's opening. Now, the medieval idea of a ghetto as a walled-in area of a city where a minority group lives isn't implemented immediately. In Greater Germany, Jews' movements are first limited. They are forbidden from certain public areas, not allowed out at night, and German landlords are permitted to evict them. Then comes the more well-known ghettoization. It's the first big step in the Nazi solution to their so-called Jewish problem. And it starts in Poland. With a 10% Jewish population, Poland will come to be the site of many of the most brutal Nazi policies toward Jews. Historian Lucy Davidovich tells us that, as the German army pushes through the Polish countryside, it, quote, reenacted Christalnakt. All over Poland, synagogues went up in flames. Those spared of the fire were desecrated, turned into stables, garages, and public latrines. Everywhere, the Germans organized pogroms, rounding up the non-Jewish population to witness and learn how to mock, abuse, injure, and murder Jews. Umbrightled killing and senseless violence became daily commonplace. The fear of sudden death became normal and habitual, close quote. Security police chief Reinhardt Heydrich, yes, the same towering Nazi who he heard lay out the final solution in this episode's opening, sees a problem. But it isn't the murder of Jews. It's the chaos of the process, the waste. On September 21, 1939, he outlines a solution to the disorganized violence, a, quote, clean-up once and for all, close quote, of Poland's Jews. That solution? A return to that medieval ghetto, moving Jews from as far off as the countryside into ghettos in major cities. The actual implementation of these orders will ultimately be carried out by Jews themselves, a group of well-respected community elders, including religious leaders, known as the Judenrat. We'll come back to this governing body later, especially as they're tasked with unthinkable orders. For now, though, let's see what happens when the first ghetto is established. It's May 10, 1940. We're in Łódź, Poland, where Jews from the city and suburbs have just moved into an approximately one and a half square mile quarter in the neighborhoods of Balotę Staromiastów, that is Yoltań, and Maryszyn. Every day for the past three months, since February 8, the city's polizaj prezident, Brigado Fjordzschefer, hosts a daily moving schedule, systematically forcing the Jews out of their apartments, their homes, and into the ghetto. With carts pulled by horses, children weighed down by rucksacks, and parents desperately lugging suitcases with the family's most essential possessions, moving day is not a joyous affair. The last group moved in on April 30, essentially shutting the ghetto. But now, today, May 10, the polizaj prezident adds the official element. It's an announcement. The ghetto will be sealed, cut off from the outside world. The Jews must not leave the ghetto. As a matter of principle, this prohibition applies to the eldest of Jews and to the chiefs of the Jewish police. Germans and Poles must not enter the ghetto as a matter of principle. Nearly 160,000 Jews are now trapped in the Finstin area of Łódź. They're unable to escape the barbed wire, and German-ordered policemen. Even inside, their movements are restricted. The Jews' new life here is brutal. Parceled into three sections by the intersection of two major roads right outside the walls, the ghetto is connected by bridges running from one section to the next. It's overcrowded. Honestly, overcrowded doesn't even begin to do it justice. It's jam-packed. The majority of inhabitants don't have running water, let alone a working sewer system. Most residents work in German factories, and food rations are slim. Interestingly, at first, streetcars for non-Jews are permitted to travel through the ghetto. But they can't stop. Even enough, however, the Nazi regime reroutes the streetcars. No need to let other Poles see what's going on here. And the situation only gets worse as the years pass. Łódź is about to start. More ghettos will spring up in Warsaw, Kraków, Lublin, Radom, Lvivów, and other prominent Polish cities through the end of 1941 and into early 1942. We'll get a deeper look into life in the ghettos in the next episode. But right now, we need to turn our attention to the next developing stage in the so-called final solution. That means heading both physically and euphemistically to the East. Yes, I trust to recall that phrase from the meeting at the House of Wonsi. On that note, let's head to the German border. My friends, it's Professor Greg Jackson, and I'm pleased to announce more live tour dates this spring in celebration of my new book, Publishing in June. The book is called Been There, Done That. How our history shows what we can overcome. So in addition to previously announced tour stops, we're now also coming to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., New York, and Boston. You'll get to see me storytelling live with music and video, and I'll sign books at those June shows. Or if you're feeling really adventurous, you can join our VIP book launch Caribbean Cruise in May. So I look forward to seeing more of you on the road, or maybe at sea, to celebrate the launch of my book. Get tickets and more info at HTDSPodcast.com. Returning to historian Raul Hilberg's framework of the Holocaust. 1941 is when the Nazis' destruction process of the Jews accelerates its shift from the expropriation stage into its third and final stage, annihilation through concentration. But it doesn't enter this stage from a top-down approach. It's more a building zeitgeist. To let Hilberg continue, quote, the destruction of the Jews was not so much a product of laws and commands as it was a matter of spirit, of shared comprehension, of consonance and synchronization. Close quote. This annihilation will, of course, get organized soon enough. To again touch on that vital story that opened this episode, that organizing will happen under Reinhardt-Hydricks' guiding hand when he and 14 others meet at the House of Wonsi to discuss the final solution. Entrezum der Judenfrage in January of the following year. But right now, still in 1941, this annihilation through concentration separates into two phases. First, the Einsatzgulpen, or mobile killing units, which followed the Nazi army and killed Jews in cities and villages as they continue moving to the east. And second, the devolution of concentration camps sprinkled across German controlled territory as they become something even more sinister. Death camps. We will get to the concentration stages' second development, the camp phase toward the end of this episode, as well as in the next. But right now, let's lock in on that first mobile phase. When Germany invades the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, groups of the paramilitary SS and other police units accompany the army, instructed, essentially, to kill as many of the USSR's five million Jews as possible. His Adolf Hitler instructs Wilhelm Keitel, the old and new Reich area is to be cleaned of Jews, Pollacks, and company. These killing groups become known as Einsatzgulpen. In all, 3,000 men make up four battalions, four Einsatzgulpen, each of which is split into smaller companies, called Zonderkommando, or Einsatzkommando. Importantly, each of these groups has a significantly higher number of officers than a standard military unit. Since Soviet Jews are spread out across the entire country, the Einsatzgulpen have to adapt their strategy to target the nearly four million in territory their army plans to conquer. They follow closely behind the advancing German army, moving into recently captured cities before Jewish inhabitants have the opportunity to flee. By the end of 1941, each Einsatzgulpen reports their numbers to the Nazi high command. Gruppe has killed 125,000. These victims are incorrectly numbered at 45,000. C claims 75,000 lives. In D, reports 55,000 murdered. Even with these astoundingly large numbers, Nazi commanders are frustrated. Their mobile killing units still have a lot of work ahead if they are to eradicate the region's Jews. So they implement a second wave of units, upping the number of Einsatzgulpen to seven. This invigorated effort to kill often puts the local police to work too. The Einsatzgulpen also trigger pogroms. We heard about these short spurts of violence by a community against their Jewish population back in episode 185, but now the Nazis hope to channel centuries of hatred and prejudice against Jews into voluntary aid with mass murder. Only Jews who attempt to escape their fate are met with no options. Fleeing into the countryside, Jews are turned away by non-Jews, likely afraid they too will be killed if they are found to be harboring their hunted neighbors. Interestingly, many Russian Jews choose not to flee because, historically and broadly speaking, Germany has been better to them than Russia. I trust you recall once more from episode 185 that German Jews were emancipated long before their Russian counterparts, who didn't gain citizenship until 1917. Some rural Jewish communities even remember German troops as liberators in the context of the Great War. Further, Soviet Jews were kept in the dark about anti-Semitic policies in Nazi Europe. Nazi leaders use these weaknesses to their advantage. They develop ruses to lure large numbers of Jewish victims together, whether through false promises of registration, resettlement, or the simplest of all, waiting for people to flock into the cities after hearing about mass murder in the countryside. It's absolutely brutal. This first sweep ends with 1941. The second begins toward the end of 1941 and in early 1942. As we know, throughout the end of 1941, the Nazis are systematically moving Jews into ghettos. This second wave of Einsatzgolpen violence targets the ghetto communities in 1942. And by this point, everyone knows what's going to happen. It's Friday morning, August 14, 1942. For the nearly 500 Jewish families in Hovost-Zagorotsky in southern Belarus, it's the first Shabbat of the month of Elul, 5,702. Along with her parents, siblings, little daughter, Marka, and other inhabitants of the Zagorotsky ghetto in the Nazi-captured Soviet city of Minsk, Rivka Yusilevska has just been instructed to follow the Belorussian policemen out of her home. At first, Rivka isn't perturbed. After all, being hearded to be counted and recounted by policemen is a part of daily life these days. But today, something seems different. Being German soldiers present, the young mother is hit with the sinking realization that her luck may have just run out. Standing in the ghetto's center, the Jewish residents hear a startlingly blunt announcement. Debt is threatening you. You will be shot. Whoever wants to buy this way out should bring in whatever he owns, if money or jewels that he has hidden. No one has anything left to surrender. It's all been previously bartered away. But the Nazis leave Rivka and others standing all day while they search for treasures. By evening, children who have been screaming all day have hoarse voices. Everyone is utterly exhausted with frustration, fear, and anxiety over what's to come. Amid the chaos, Marka asks, Mother, why are you wearing your Sabbath dress? They're going to kill us. The petrified mother doesn't have an answer. As Shabbat is ushered in by the setting sun, the gate of the ghetto opens for a large truck. Under strict instructions, the Zagorodzky Jews pile in. Those who can't fit are forced to run behind the moving vehicle. So Rivka does so. She runs with Marka in her arms. She sees someone fall to her side. That person is immediately shot. Driving at a hill, three kilometers outside the city, the exhausted mother watches as SS men guide fellow townspeople in rows of four up the hill. I'm going to let Rivka tell it from here. When we stood near the ditch, Marka said, what are we waiting for? Come, let's escape. Some of the younger ones tried to run away. They hardly managed a few steps. They were caught and shot. Then came our turn. It was difficult to hold the children. They were shaking. We took turns. Mothers took the children, took other people's children. This was to help us get through it all, to get it over with and not see the children suffer. Mothers took leave of their children. We were lined up in fours. We stood there naked. Our clothing was taken away. My father didn't want to undress completely and kept on his underwear. When he was lined up for the shooting and was told to undress, he refused. He was beaten. We begged him, take off your clothes. Enough of suffering. No. He insisted on dying in his underwear. Then they took mother. She didn't want to go, but wanted us to go first. Yet we made her go first. They grabbed her and shot her. There was my father's mother who was 80 with two grandchildren in her arms. My father's sister was also there. She too was shot with children in her arms. Then my turn came. My younger sister also. She had suffered so much in the ghetto and yet at the last moment she wanted to stay alive and begged the German to let her live. She was standing there naked, holding on to her girlfriend. So he looked at her and shot them both. Both of them fell, my sister and her girlfriend. My other sister was next. Then he got ready to shoot me. We stood there facing the ditch. I turned my head. He asked, whom do I shoot first? I didn't answer. He tore the child away from me. I heard her last cry and he shot her. Then he got ready to kill me. Grabbed my hair and turned my head about. I remained standing and heard a shot, but I didn't move. He turned me around, loaded his pistol so that I could see what he was doing. Then he again turned me around and shot me. I fell down. I felt nothing. At that moment I felt that something was weighing me down. I thought that I was dead, but that I could feel something even though I was dead. I couldn't believe that I was alive. I felt I was suffocating. Bodies had fallen on me. I felt I was drowning. But still I could move and felt I was alive and tried to get up. I was choking. I heard shots and again somebody falling down. I twisted and turned, but I could not. I felt I was going to suffocate. I had no strength left. But then I felt that somehow I was crawling upwards. As I climbed up people grabbed me, hit me, dragged me downwards. But I pulled myself up with the last bit of strength. When I reached the top I looked around, but I couldn't recognize the place. Corpse is strewn all over. There was no end to the bodies. You could hear people moaning in their death agony. Some children were running around naked and screaming, Mama, Papa, I couldn't get up. When she thinks the Germans have gone, Riva stands up, surveying the body stream field. Both in a few moments, the SS are back, accompanied by local non-Jews who will help dig graves. Desperately hoping to escape detection in a nearby field, Riva watches in horror as the Nazis fire bullets into the bodies of anyone still moving. Riva turned to Riva because words once more. When I saw they were gone, I dragged myself over to the grave and wanted to jump in. I thought the grave would open up and let me fall inside alive. I envied everyone for whom it was already over, while I was still alive. Where should I go? What should I do? Blood was spouting. Nowadays when I pass a water fountain I can still see the blood spouting from the grave. The earth rose and heaved. I sat there on the grave and tried to dig my way in with my hands. I continued digging as hard as I could. The earth didn't open up. I shouted to mother and father, why was I left alive? What did I do to deserve this? Where shall I go? To whom can I turn? I have nobody. I saw everything. I saw everybody killed. No one answered. Riva will survive. Her harrowing testimony, which we just heard verbatim, will be one of the many that leads to Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann receiving the death sentence in his 1961 trial. But once again, we must not get ahead of ourselves. This is but the tip of the iceberg of the Nazis' annihilation work. By the end of 1942, many of Eastern Europe's surviving Jews are ensued to be liquidated ghettos. But that's not to say no resistance takes place. Many manage to escape. Hiding in the forests, some mount successful attacks on Nazi troops. We'll hear more about these brave fighters in a future episode. But to complicate matters, not all of the soldiers carrying out these killings are enthusiastic, willing participants. And to complicate that complication, the majority of these testimonies come from later trials. You can do with that what you will. Nonetheless, let's explore some examples. Ordered to massacre 1,800 Jews in Josefow, Poland, on July 14, 1942, 53-year-old career policeman Major Wilhelm Trapp of Reserve Police Battalion 101 Weeps, constantly repeating, Oh my God, why did I have to be given these orders? Many of the men in Papa Trapp's battalion can't carry out the task. Others find ways to rationalize their following of orders. A 50-year-old metalworker will later explain, I made the effort to shoot only children. It so happened that the mothers led the children by the hand. My neighbor then shot the mother and I shot the child that belonged to her. As I reasoned with myself that, after all, without its mother, the child could not live any longer. It was supposed to be, so to speak, soothing to my conscience to release children unable to live without their mothers. Interestingly, the German word for release is Ellusen, also meaning in a religious context, to redeem or save. How anti-Semitic these men are or aren't, I can't say. The trials that will follow in the years and decades to come don't really address this. The men speak more of their physical revulsion to shooting than any expressly stated rejection of Nazi ideology. Nonetheless, carrying out these orders did require an othering on at least some level. As historian Christopher Browning explains, quote, it would seem that even if the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 had not consciously adopted the anti-Semitic doctrines of the regime, they had at least accepted the assimilation of the Jews into the image of the enemy. The men should remember, when shooting Jewish women and children, that the enemy was killing German women and children by bombing Germany, close quote. Back at Nazi headquarters, the leader of the SS, Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, clearly recognizes that their extermination plans won't sit perfectly with everyone. He decides to take precautions over public perception. In June, he orders commander Paul Blobo to erase the traces of the Einsatzgruppen executions in the East. In some, nearly 1,350,000 Soviet Jews are murdered by the Nazi Einsatzgruppen before the mobile killing units are shut down. To give you a taste of how those numbers break down locally, in July 1941, 7,000 Jews in Bialystok are murdered. In Vilna, over 20,000, more than half the Jewish population meet their end in death pits outside the city. Remarking on eyewitness accounts, Hermann Kruck writes in his diary, How can one write about this? How can one assemble one's thoughts? And the murders are only accelerating. While roughly 75 to 80% of Holocaust victims are still alive in mid-March 1942, those numbers will be inverted in a year's time. What brings about that change? Well, it's a few tweaks to the traditional concentration camp. As Dr. Joseph Goebbels writes in his diary on May 30, 1942, The Jewish danger must be liquidated. Kost vatit me. We've now reached the second phase of annihilation through concentration, the camp phase. But before continuing with that tale in 1942, let me give you a little background. Contrary to popular belief, concentration camps existed in Germany before the start of the Second World War. We know this of course from episode 184 when we learned about the first concentration camp opening in Dachau back in 1933. Six years later, in 1939, the camps expanded from their original purpose of holding political prisoners, so-called asocials, and the occasional Jewish person, to also include prisoners of war, Polish people, members of the French resistance, and significantly more Jews. Only six camps existed at this time. As the war progressed and Nazi Germany absorbed more territory, its leaders realized they needed a more efficient way to solve their so-called Jewish problem. As we just learned, one of those solutions was the Einsatzgolpen. But for SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, these mobile killing forces were not nearly as effective as they needed to be. In 1941, the Nazis took their first step towards systematized murder, gas fans. The verdant exhaust fumes of carbon monoxide into a large, sealed crate in the back of the truck, those stuck inside had no chance of survival. As part of a murderous and voluntary euthanasia program, known as Aktion der Führ, or the T4 program, these mobile units first targeted those with mental and physical disabilities, including ethnic Germans, before being absorbed into the final solution against the Jews. In the spring of that same year, Germany launched a secret operation, another Aktion, 14F13. Applying lessons learned with the T4 program, 14F13 is a plan to murder prisoners in concentration camps using something new, poisonous gas. Mainly targeting sick prisoners, 14F13 will continue to run through December of 1944. But we aren't done with our background. This is only the beginning of the killing in the camps. Indeed, preparing to implement their own final solution between late 1941 and 1942, the Nazi High Command builds or otherwise transforms six camps in Poland, Helno, Belzec, Sobibór, Treblinka, Maidonic, and Auschwitz-Burkenau into extermination camps. Each is located on or near railway lines, making transportation easier. How do these come about? Well, during the summer of 1941, SS Sturmbannfuhrer, or Major Rudolf Hess, answered the summons to Berlin to meet Heinrich Himmler. Here, the Major was informed that the quickly rising SS officer, Adolf Eichmann, and the Fuhrer himself, would like him to run one of these soon-to-be extermination camps. Himmler tells Rudolf Hess, «Vie, the SS, must carry out this order. If it is not carried out now, then the Jews will later on destroy the German people. You already know the soon-to-be infamous camp near Oswiecim, Poland, that they then assigned to the Major. We're talking about Auschwitz.» After a series of meetings with the higher-ups, the Auschwitz assigned to Major began experimenting with mass killing. He soon stumbled upon a major discovery. Somewhere between September 3 and 5, 1941, Rudolf Hess and his deputy, Carl Fritsch, killed nearly 900 Soviet and Polish prisoners into Block 11's crematory. He then had gas called Zyklon B pumped through the holes in the earth and concrete roof. Protected by a gas mask, the Major watched. Some shouted, «Gas!» But it was no use. Everyone was soon dead. Hess was truly pleased by this bloodless, swift means of executing hundreds within minutes. So much easier and far less messy than the mass shootings of the Einsatzgruppen. Nonetheless, it was Helm, though, not Auschwitz, that became the first operational extermination camp. It opened December 8, 1941, just 30 miles or so north of Łódź. Ah yes, Łódź. You undoubtedly remember witnessing this town's Jewish people being herded into a ghetto earlier in this episode. Well, now, as we finish our background and return to 1942, we can see the final solution set up coming to fruition in this city. The Łódź ghetto feeds Jews en masse into nearby Helm, those extermination camps, where they can be murdered. Led by SS officer Herbert Lang, it operates three carbon monoxide gas vans. Victim's bodies are buried in mass graves in the nearby forest. But this is still small scale compared to what's to come. A month after Helm, though, opens at January 1942's Wonsey conference that we witnessed in this episode's opening, the six in the works extermination camps are organized to have stationary gas chambers instead of carbon monoxide vans. The implementation of the previously tested Zyklon B gas has begun. This pesticide and disinfectant produced by a German chemical company arrives in crystal pellets that, when aerosolized, release hydrogen cyanide. With a gas mask on, a man can place the pellets into a gas chamber through a small opening. The gas enters the lungs of those sealed inside, and they then suffer intense pain, convulsions, spasms, and eventually die by heart attack. It's a cruel death for the victims and easy cleanup for the perpetrators. Even though the Einzatzkulupin continue to carry out mass murder in the east, the SS is now focused mainly on transporting Jews and prisoners to these newly created death camps. Deportations are accomplished to quote Lucy Davidovich once more by strategy, terror, and force. Close quote. The term resettlement becomes a euphemism for transportation to gas chambers, but at the beginning many don't know what's in store. After all, Jews are told to take personal belongings, and the offer of food entices many starving in the ghettos to volunteer for resettlement, allegedly to find work in the east. Meanwhile, back at Auschwitz, Major Rudolf Hess is preparing to use Eichlombie on a grander scale. He and the SS officer who took the minutes at the Vonsie conference, Adolf Eichmann, transformed two small farmhouses in nearby Birkenau by filling in windows, removing walls, and building airtight doors. Beginning in March 1942, the first house, now known as Bunker 1, is in operation. It's March 26th, 1942. We're in Oswiecim, Poland, but roughly 1,000 Jewish women from Poprad, Slovakia, are arriving on the train platform of the newly built Auschwitz extermination camp. Tumbling out of the cramped train car, the women are hurried toward the cottage, also known as Bunker 1. All the while, Auschwitz deputy commander Hans Almeier, NCO Gerhard Palic, and other officers chat with the prisoners, asking about their backgrounds and skills. Once at the cottage, the women are ordered to undress for a disinfection. While some calmly follow orders, others become panicked as they quickly talk amongst themselves about death by suffocation. Not wanting plans to go awry, the Nazi leaders shove their remaining prisoners into the chambers, tightly screwing the doors shut. And you and I both know what happens next. Even Dr. Joseph Goebbels acknowledges the brutality of these mechanized killing centers. On March 27, only a day after the murders we just witnessed at Bunker 1, he writes in his diary, The procedure is a pretty barbaric one, and not to be described here more definitively. Not much will remain of the Jews. Not that his written acknowledgement of this will change anything. The other former farmhouses conversion is completed by June. It's now known as Bunker 2. One month later, between July 17 and 18, 1942, Auschwitz is inspected by none other than Heinrich Himmler. The SS Reichfuhrer watches the entire proceedings of the camp, from the arrival of a train of prisoners, to the removal of their bodies from Bunker 2's gas chamber, in silence. Later on, in Major Hess's office, Himmler instructs the camp's commander to prepare for Adolf Eichmann's increased transports by speeding up the sorting process and reducing the number of people allowed to survive. In this new phase, only Jews capable of work are to live. All Jewish and Romani children, elderly, many women, and weak men are killed immediately upon arrival. Within a few weeks, word of Himmler's tour of Auschwitz reaches Allied resistance channels. Edward Schulte, the German managing director of the Giesche Mining Company, and secret informant to Polish, Swiss, and later American intelligence, hears of the Nazi extermination plans and quickly makes his way to Switzerland. The information travels through a few sympathetic Swiss businessmen, before reaching Gerhard Regner, secretary of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva. Founded back in 1936 to mobilize Jews across the world against the increasing anti-Semitism coming from Nazi Germany, the WJC is now run by American rabbi, Stephen Weiss. Armed with Edward's information on August 8, Gerhard arrives at the American consulate in Geneva. He sends a telegram, or cablegram, rather, to Rabbi Weiss, but it gets held up by the US State Department. They don't think the report can be true, and don't bother passing it along to Rabbi Weiss. Gerhard also shares his information with the British consulate, who, after some debate over quote-unquote embarrassing repercussions, if the information is leaked, forward the message on to their world Jewish Congress representative, parliamentarian Samuel Silverman. The Brit immediately sends a copy to Rabbi Weiss. It's received on August 29, 1942, nearly a month after Gerhard's original meeting with the American consulate. The stilted cablegram reads, in part, Rabbi Weiss is shocked and appalled. He asks the State Department if they can confirm or deny the report. A few months later, on November 24, 1942, under Secretary of State, Sumner Wells verifies to the American Jewish leader what you and I already know to be true. I regret to tell you that these documents confirm and justify your deepest fears. For reasons you will understand, I cannot give these to the press. But there's no reason why you should not. It might even help if you did. That night, the American Rabbi holds a press conference. It's the night of November 24, 1942. We're in Washington, D.C., where Rabbi Stephen S. Weiss, chairman of the World Jewish Congress and president of the American Jewish Congress, is sharing alarming news with local press and, in turn, the American public. He begins. The State Department finally made available today, Tuesday, the documents which have confirmed the stories and rumors of Jewish extermination in all Hitler-ruled Europe. Various methods are being used in the campaign. And the Nazi doctors have found that one of the simplest and cheapest methods is to inject air bubbles into the veins of the victim. One Nazi physician can handle more than 100 men an hour by this method. Dr. Weiss announces that, out of the estimated 4 million Jews in German-controlled land, nearly 2 million have been murdered. Continuing on to what I can only imagine is a shocked press corps. The Rabbi adds, Not only has Hitler ordered the extermination of all Jews in Nazi-ruled Europe in 1942, but he recently expressed his wrath at the Nazi's failure to complete the extermination immediately. Dr. Weiss makes one more explosive claim that the Nazis are, even exhuming the dead for the value of the corpses. He's careful to note that the World Jewish Congress has extensive sources to confirm this harrowing announcement, but that they've purposely waited until they harbored no doubts before speaking to the press. As the press conference comes to a close, Rabbi Stephen Weiss prepares to head to New York for an emergency meeting with his American Jewish committee. The next day, November 25, 1942, American newspapers publish the news that Nazi Germany is attempting to murder all of Europe's Jews. Americans are shocked. December 2, 1942 is declared an international day of mourning, with synagogues pulling special services and Jews marching in New York City in order to draw more attention to this systematic and so far rather successful endeavor to eradicate or exterminate them in Europe. This incomprehensible work of death soon to be known as the Holocaust. American Jews pressure President Franklin D. Roosevelt to do something. To do anything, really. See, even with the increasing transparency of what's going on in Nazi territory, many American and British civilians and leaders still can't believe the reports. On December 8, Rabbi Weiss and other WJC leaders meet with FDR. The president acknowledges that the reports of Nazi extermination are true, citing confirmation from many sources that, The United States is very well acquainted with most of the facts you are now bringing to our attention. He promises to condemn Adolf Hitler, but not all Americans are as excited about the idea of FDR intervening. After all, to them, it's not like the US can do anything concrete to help European Jews. A few weeks later, on December 17, 1942, the US, the UK, and other Allied nations issue a joint declaration by members of the United Nations, officially confirming reports of the extermination of European Jewry and vowing to hold German officials accountable for these war crimes. The declaration reads in part, From all the occupied countries, Jews are being transported in conditions of appalling horror and brutality to Eastern Europe. In Poland, which has been made the principal Nazi slaughterhouse, the ghettos established by the German invader are being systematically emptied of all Jews except a few highly skilled workers required for war industries. None of those taken away are ever heard of again. The able-bodied are slowly worked to death in labor camps. The infirm are left to die of exposure and starvation or are deliberately massacred in mass executions. The number of victims of these bloody cruelties is reckoned in many hundreds of thousands of entirely innocent men, women, and children. We condemn in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination. We reaffirm a solemn resolution to ensure that those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution. Close quote. But as 1942 comes to a close, I'm afraid this condemnation won't save any lives. Rather, 1943 will only bring more horror for the entirely innocent Jewish men, women, and children of Europe. Our tales of these bestial actions of the Holocaust will only continue in the episode to come. History that Doesn't Suck is created and hosted by me, Greg Jackson. Episode research and written by Greg Jackson and the proud descendant of Holocaust survivors, Riley Neubauer. Special thanks to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for audio and transcripts of Holocaust survivors telling their stories. Production by Ayrshire. Audio editing by Mohamed Shazade. Sound design by Mollie Bott. Music composed by Greg Jackson. Arrangement and additional composition by Lindsey Graham of Ayrshire. For a bibliography of all primary and secondary sources consulted and written in this episode, visit HTVSPodcast.com. HTVS is supported by fans at HTVSPodcast.com. 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