Lesson 13
Lesson Objective:
As a result of this lesson, students will:
Key Glossary Terms:
The following glossary terms are used in Lesson 13.
Instructional Material:
Teaching Sequence:
Collect Homework, Reading 12C, “Juror’s Ballot”
Video: “The Rescuers,” pt. 1 (6:51)
Video: “The Rescuers” pt. 2 (8:30)
Reading:
Hans Frank, Governor General of Nazi-occupied Poland, issued his Order of October 15, 1941: “All persons hiding Jews outside (any) ghetto will be punished by death.”
Poles, Germans and Jews all knew that this was no empty threat. Punishment for even the slightest help to Jews was quick and brutal. This punishment often took the form of public hangings or shootings.
On October 1, 1942, SS Commander Rauter, military commander of Amsterdam, sent the following message to Reichsfuehrer Himmler: “Every Jew anywhere in Holland and non-Jews who help Jews will be rounded up and shipped to (Auschwitz).” Himmler wrote in the margin of this note, “Sehr gut,” which means very good.
Reading 13A
SALONIKA, GREECE: After Greece was occupied by the Germans in 1941, the Nazis requested the head Greek Orthodox priest to hand over a list of Jews in that city. The priest told the SS he could identify only Greeks, without any religious distinction.
What do you think happened?
Suggestion for discussion:
Results: there were no reprisals, no punishments. Later, the 60,000 Jews of Salonika were, nevertheless, identified by someone else and sent to Auschwitz where approximately 55,000 died.
MINSK, RUSSIA: Wilhelm Kube {kew-beh}, Nazi Generalkommissar of White Russia (central, western district of Russia), repeatedly refused to allow mass murders of Jews who had been deported from Germany to Minsk. Although Kube protected German Jews, he had fewer qualms about killing Russian Jews. While he did not vigorously object to the murder of Russian Jews, he objected to any brutal and inhumane treatment of the Jews while they were alive.
What do you think happened?
Suggestion for discussion:
Results: There were discussions between Kube and SS officials but no reprisals or punishments.
AUSCHWITZ, POLAND: Several SS physicians refused to participate in medical experiments on Auschwitz prisoners.
What do you think happened?
Suggestion for discussion:
Results: The doctors were reassigned to other duties like the “infirmary.” No reprisals, no punishments.
EUROPE: There are many examples of Nazis who refused to participate in the killing process; some members of the SS would not be a party to mass shootings; some Nazi Party members would not engage in anti-Jewish activities.
What do you think happened?
Suggestion for discussion:
Results: In no known cases were these people punished, probably because the SS could not afford to turn moral choices into controversial debates. The SS leaders simply reassigned those who refused to play a role in the destruction of the Jews.
NOTE TO TEACHER: These are examples of people who refused to participate directly in the murder of the Jews. By refusing, they made moral choices and indirectly rescued Jews. They are not to be confused with people, including soldiers and some Nazis, who actively helped the Jews by hiding them, aiding in their escape or providing false documents or protection of any sort. When discovered, these people were punished swiftly and mercilessly by the SS.
A LABOR CAMP NEAR AUSCHWITZ, POLAND: Seeing that a 15-year-old boy had been badly beaten while working on a cement detail, a German civilian engineer, who was an I.G. Farben supervisor, detoured him from his way to the infirmary where he would have died. The engineer hid the boy each day for the next three days so that the boy could rest.
What do you think happened?
Suggestion for discussion:
Results: Pretending to use the boy for his assistant, the engineer brought the boy food and medicine until his wounds could heal. He then secured the boy a job in the kitchen of the camp, saving the boy’s life. They never met after that. The boy survived and knows that, had the engineer been caught, they both would have been killed.
WARSAW, POLAND: A Polish girl was visited one night by a Jewish friend who pleaded to be hidden from the Nazis. Although the Polish girl knew that hiding Jews might mean death for her and her family, she took her in.
What do you think happened?
Suggestion for discussion:
Results: The Polish girl hid her friend for several weeks until the Jewish girl could escape to the partisans in the forest. The Polish girl and her family hid other Jews later and were finally caught by the Nazis. She and her father were sent to Auschwitz—she survived, but her father did not.
UKRAINE: In 1941, an old farmer discovered a family of four Jews hiding in his barn. His young wife was extremely superstitious and anti-Semitic, but he was a devout Christian and believed it was a sin to murder Jews. He offered the family refuge in the loft of his barn. He told his wife to say nothing to anyone - not even his young children.
What do you think happened?
Suggestion for discussion:
Results: The Jewish family hid in the loft for two and a half years. They had to remain silent and still for the days and through most of the nights for fear that the farmer’s wife or his children would turn them over to the Germans. When the Russian Army approached the Ukraine, the terrified farmer fled with his family. The Jewish family was found by the Russians who gave them medical care and food. The Jews never saw the farmer again.
DENMARK: Although the German Army occupied Denmark from 1940 on, Danish officials from King Christian X to railroad employees to police officers all refused to cooperate with the Gestapo. They would not identify Jews and refused to introduce anti-Jewish measures of any kind.
What do you think happened?
Suggestion for discussion:
Results: There were no reprisals, no punishments. Even the German Army began to falter in its duty, refusing to help the SS round up Jews. Conscience was contagious and Himmler had to send new recruits to attempt to round up Danish Jews. Of the approximately 7,800 Jews in Denmark, over 7,200 were saved through a massive national effort to transport Jews by boat to Sweden where they were given sanctuary.
RAOUL WALLENBERG: Raoul Wallenberg (1912-?) was a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews in Hungary during the Holocaust. He prevented their deportation to concentration and death camps during the German occupation of Hungary in the spring and summer of 1944.
Wallenberg was born in Stockholm Sweden. His family was wealthy and included bankers, diplomats and industrialists. He traveled widely as a youth and could speak several languages. He studied architecture and city planning at the University of Michigan and graduated from there in 1935. He then worked for a business firm in South Africa and for a Dutch bank in Haifa, Palestine, where he met Jewish refugees from Germany in the late 1930s.
In 1944, he was working with the Swedish consulate in Budapest, Hungary. As a neutral country, Sweden could offer refuge for those who claimed Swedish citizenship. Wallenberg placed thousands of Jews in buildings under Swedish government authority where they were protected from the Nazis. He also distributed counterfeit passports and identification papers to thousands more who were scheduled for deportation to Auschwitz. With the forged papers secured by Wallenberg, these Hungarian Jews were given legal status as Swedish citizens, and thereby saved.
What do you think happened?
Suggestion for discussion:
Results: Wallenberg’s assistance to Jews was known by German authorities. Because of the war and confusion in Hungary and because the SS could prove nothing, Wallenberg narrowly escaped being arrested and sent to a concentration camp or executed. He became the hero of those Hungarian Jews who knew that this aristocratic non-Jew, who could easily have avoided danger, was risking his life for them. (Wallenberg disappeared in January 1945, when left Budapest in the custody of two Russian officers. He is presumed to have been arrested. The reason is unclear. In 1957, the Soviet government, which had refused to acknowledge Wallenberg’s presence, reported that he had died in prison of a heart attack in 1947. Yet, some former Soviet prisoners testified that they had seen him as late as 1976 in a labor camp. On October 5, 1981, the U.S. Congress made Wallenberg an honorary U.S. citizen.)
OSKAR SCHINDLER: Oskar Schindler was a member of the Nazi Party and a German businessman. Prior to the war, he had a reputation as a womanizer and heavy drinker. During the war, he was put in charge of a German factory near Krakow, Poland, to produce utensils for the German Army. In 1940, he employed 150 Jewish workers; by 1942, he employed 500. As the SS began to deport Jews to death camps, Schindler worked to protect them. He brought and kept whole families together, including old and “unproductive” people. He would often socialize with SS Commandant Goeth {get}, one of the most sadistic and murderous of the camp commanders. Through this socializing, however, he was able to save Jews, once even playing cards with Goeth for the life of a Jewish woman who worked in Goeth’s house. Through his connections with high-ranking SS officials and businessmen, Schindler was able to secure extra food and medical supplies for his workers.
By 1944, Schindler was able to provide over 1,000 Jews with work cards that saved them from deportation to Auschwitz. He called them “his” Jews, and they all recognized that it was his personal courage that was keeping them alive. He continued to bribe SS guards and buy extra rations through illegal channels. When the Germans retreated from Eastern Poland in 1944, they took apart their factories and killed Jewish workers. Schindler managed to save his workers by transferring them as a group to another factory in Western Czechoslovakia.
What do you think happened to him?
Suggestion for discussion:
Results: He was questioned by the Gestapo several times and even imprisoned for short periods. He always managed, however, to use his influence or his money to bribe his way out of trouble. He and his wife Emilie, are credited with saving over 1,000 Jewish lives.
WARSAW, POLAND: In October 1942, a group of non-Jewish fighters in the Polish underground led by Colonel Henryk Wolinski and a Jew, Adolf Berman, formed the organization known as Zegota. It was devoted to rescuing Jews in Warsaw and Kracow
What do you think happened?
Suggestion for discussion:
Results: By smuggling people out of the ghetto, Zegota was able to save between 4,000 and 6,000 Jews, most of whom were children.