On July 31, 1941, the Vice-Fuehrer of the Third Reich, Hermann Goering, instructed Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the main directorate of imperial security, to develop an action plan "for the final solution of the Jewish question."
It is from this date in modern historiography that it is customary to count the beginning of the organized massacres of Jews in Germany and in the lands occupied by the Nazis.
"Inadequate people"
According to historians, a negative attitude towards Jews and representatives of a number of other peoples began to form among German nationalists back in the 19th century. Against the backdrop of the defeat in World War I, anti-Semitic and xenophobic sentiments in Germany only intensified. Supporters of right-wing ideology tried to explain the problems in the country by the "intrigues" of Jews and foreigners. At the same time, the works of a number of nationalist-minded European philosophers, sociologists and historians were used, who divided peoples into "higher" and "lower". These views were also shared by the supporters of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.
“According to the Nazi racial theory, mankind was divided into races, some of which were considered valuable, others of little value, and others even dangerous.
At the very bottom of this hierarchy, according to the Nazi leaders, were the Jews.
The situation was aggravated by the fact that, within the framework of Nazi ideology, Jews were associated with communism, "Alexander Dyukov, director of the Historical Memory Foundation, recalled in an interview with RT.
As the associate professor of GAUGN Dmitry Surzhik noted in an interview with RT, according to Nazi ideologists, the representatives of the so-called Nordic race - "Aryans", who came from Northern Europe, were most endowed with positive qualities, and negative ones were mainly from Asia and especially Jews.
"The racial policy of the Nazis was formulated in the 1920s, and after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, it became dominant in German life," Alexander Mikhailov, a specialist in the history of the Victory Museum, emphasized in a conversation with RT.
According to Dmitry Surzhik, on April 1, 1933, the Nazis staged a boycott of Jewish-owned enterprises, and a week later "non-Aryans" were banned from being civil servants.
Then the Jews were suspended from work in medical institutions and legal practice, and also imposed restrictions on educational activities.
This was followed by a ban on editorial work and military service.
"Kristallnacht", Berlin, 1938
© collections.ushmm.org
“The racial theory was officially introduced at school, Germans were taught from childhood to believe that Jews and other“ non-Aryans ”are inferior people,” the expert said.
Anti-Semitic politics reached a new level in 1935, when laws on German citizens and on the protection of "German blood and honor" were passed at the "imperial party congress" in the city of Nuremberg.
The Jews were officially deprived of the right to vote and the opportunity to hold any state and public office, and they could no longer enter into marriage or intimate relations with the “Aryans”.
In 1938, the Nazis adopted a policy of ousting Jews from Germany.
On the night of November 9-10, 1938, soldiers of the SA, SS and Hitler Youth staged a pogrom known as "Kristallnacht", during which 91 Jews were killed, hundreds were wounded, and about 30 thousand were sent to concentration camps.
267 synagogues, 7.5 thousand commercial premises and hundreds of residential buildings were looted.
"Kristallnacht", Berlin, 1938
Flickr
© Center for Jewish History, NYC
According to historians, initially the Nazis intended to evict Jews from Europe, but in 1939, plans for their physical destruction began to be discussed.
After the outbreak of World War II, Jews began to be taken to ghettos created on Polish lands - isolated areas of settlements that resembled concentration camps.
According to experts, the date when the decision was made to massacre Jews by the Nazis still provokes controversy in the historical environment.
“I believe that this was due to the development of plans for a war against the Soviet Union.
On May 23, 1941, the Nazis established an economic headquarters and adopted a directive on economic policy in the occupied territories, which implied their plundering and the inevitable death of 20-30 million people from starvation.
The approval of this plan by the Nazi elite removed some psychological barriers to the mass destruction of civilians.
And the decision in principle to carry out the massacres of Jews and Slavs, in my opinion, could have been made at a meeting at the Wewelsburg castle on June 15, 1941, "historian Yegor Yakovlev said in an interview with RT.
Hitler, Goering and Heydrich
globallookpress.com
© Wikimedia
According to Dmitry Surzhik, even before the attack on the USSR, the Nazis created Einsatzgruppen designed to destroy the civilian population and subordinate to the SD security service - Nazi death squads, which, in addition to SD staff, included employees of the Gestapo, criminal police, order police and SS troops.
On July 31, 1941, Vice-Fuehrer and Vice-Chancellor of the Third Reich Hermann Goering sent a document to the Chief of the Security Police and SD Reinhard Heydrich, in which he ordered him to prepare an action plan for the "final solution of the Jewish question."
As historians note, behind this wording was an instruction to begin the mass extermination of the Jewish population.
"Jews became the first victim"
Pogroms, robberies and spontaneous killings of the Jewish population in the occupied Soviet territories began almost immediately after Germany's attack on the USSR. So, a large-scale pogrom, during which several thousand Jews died, took place in late June - early July 1941 in Lvov. Massacres took place in the Baltics. The perpetrators, and often the initiators of the killings and torture, were local collaborators - members of the OUN and Baltic nationalist organizations.
In addition to Poland, the Nazis also began to create ghettos in the occupied regions of the Soviet Union.
According to Yegor Yakovlev, the ghetto prisoners were starved to death: by attracting them to exhausting work, the Nazis allocated them an amount of food that was insufficient to support life.
And in the fall of 1941, in the Auschwitz concentration camp, the first experiments were carried out to kill people with the help of the poisonous gas "Cyclone B".
On January 20, 1942, during a meeting held by Heydrich in Berlin's Wanze district, the technical aspects of the "final solution to the Jewish question" were agreed upon.
Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler became the person responsible for the extermination of the Jews.
The massacres have become systemic.
“The motivation of the Nazis was twofold - ideological and economic. On the one hand, they killed "racial enemies", and on the other, people who consumed food that should have belonged to the Germans, "Yegor Yakovlev emphasized.
As historians remind, not only Jews, but also Slavs, Gypsies, as well as Soviet prisoners of war of any nationality became victims of Nazi criminals.
At the same time, massacres were committed not only in special death camps, but also directly near the settlements in which people lived, or in the ghetto.
Nazis and collaborators shot people, threw grenades at them, killed their victims using gas chambers and cold weapons.
In a number of cases, people, including children, were buried alive in the ground.
One of the most famous places of mass destruction of the civilian population in the territories occupied by the Nazis was the Kiev tract Babiy Yar.
Here the Nazis and collaborators killed about 150 thousand people.
Nazis escort Jewish children to Chelmno concentration camp
© USHMM
According to historians, after the content of the ghetto lost its economic meaning for the Nazis, their inhabitants were taken out of settlements and destroyed.
“It is important to understand that the Holocaust was not an isolated phenomenon.
Jews were only the first victims of the Nazis, but not the only ones.
Slightly higher than them in the Nazi hierarchy were the Slavs, who were also planned to be destroyed en masse.
It was just that Jews began to be massacred immediately, and Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians - a little later, but they were also destroyed by millions, ”Aleksandr Dyukov emphasized.
Nazis lead Jews into gas chambers
© collections.ushmm.org/Auschwitz Album
According to experts, in 1941-1945 in concentration camps, during pogroms, during the liquidation of the ghetto and during mass executions, the Nazis killed at least 6 million Jews, including about 1 million children.
“The Holocaust is an incredible tragedy that all of humanity remembers.
However, we should not forget about the millions of Soviet citizens of other nationalities killed by the Nazis, who, unfortunately, are remembered less often in the world.
But you need to remember all the victims of the misanthropic ideology of Nazism, ”says Dyukov.
Babi Yar
© collections.ushmm.org
According to him, awareness of the crimes of the Nazis changed the post-war world.
“The Nazis brought colonial practices of the 19th century to Europe.
Just like the colonialists killed the natives in distant countries, the Nazis in the twentieth century killed the inhabitants of Europe, ”the expert emphasized.
In his opinion, the reaction to the crimes of the fascists was a fundamentally new attitude towards the protection of human rights and other humanitarian issues at the international level.
“Today, the historical memory of the Holocaust is a shared memory of the victims of the Nazi regime. This is a common pain forcing us to study and suppress the mechanisms of propaganda of hatred and loss of humanity in our days, ”concluded Dmitry Surzhik.