Please note that the material below is not intended in any way to be a detailed analysis of the Shoah - it is simply an extremely broad overview for general consumption.
1. Overview - Here is a useful historical overview of the Shoah - The Holocaust - Historical Overview.
2. Why Do You Call It The "Shoah" Instead Of The Holocaust? - Here's why:
Shoa (השואה), also spelled Shoah and Sho'ah, Hebrew for "Destruction", is the Hebrew term for the Holocaust. It is used by many Jews and a growing number of Christians due to theological discomfort with the literal meaning of the word Holocaust; it is considered theologically offensive to imply that the Jews of Europe were a sacrifice to God. It is nonetheless recognized that most people who use the term Holocaust do not intend such a meaning. Similarly, many Roma (Gypsy) people use the word Porajmos, meaning "Devouring" to describe the Nazi attempt to exterminate that group.
3. Thing To Remember #1- The Shoah was not a monolithic event. In other words, it did not occur the same way in all countries. For example, compare the situation in Holland, where an extremely high percentage of Jews were deported and murdered, to that of Bulgaria, where the Jewish population after the War was about the same as it was prior to the War - and Bulgaria was an ally of Germany!
4. The Beginning - In my opinion, the Shoah started with the systematic manner in Nazi Germany that resulted in Jews being dehumanized and pushed to, and then beyond, the edges of German society. This was done in strictly legal terms - at least the law as it existed in Nazi Germany. At that point, it became very easy to then proceed to the next step of extermination. This period of time included such infamous laws as:
"The Law For The Restoration of the Professional Civil Service"
The first major law to curtail the rights of Jewish citizens was the "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service" of April 7, 1933, according to which Jewish and "politically unreliable" civil servants and employees were to be excluded from state service. The new Civil Service Law was the German authorities' first formulation of the so-called Aryan Paragraph, a kind of regulation used to exclude Jews (and often by extension other "non-Aryans") from organizations, professions, and other aspects of public life.
The so-called "Nuremberg Laws"
The first law, "The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor", prohibited marriages and extra-marital intercourse between “Jews ” (the name was now officially used in place of “non-Aryans ”) and “Germans ” and also the employment of “German ” females under forty-five in Jewish households. The second law, "The Reich Citizenship Law" stripped Jews of their German citizenship and introduced a new distinction between “Reich citizens ” and “nationals.”
The promulgation of these laws were followed in 1938 by Kristallnacht- the infamous Night of Broken Glass - a full-fledged and Nazi Government inspired pogrom against the Jews of Germany. Here is a link to the USHMM online material about this terrible day in Jewish history.
5. The Middle, Part 1 - In September 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. It routed the over matched and under-armed Polish Army in short order. Under the infamous Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, the Soviet Union invaded the eastern part of Poland and the country was torn in two. The Jews living in the western part of Poland were under Nazis control. As the Wehrmacht moved through Poland, it was followed by "Einsatzgruppen" - special action squads who were to liquidate Jews, Polish intellectuals and other undesirables. When the Nazis in turn invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the Jews in the former eastern part of Poland as well as Jews in the western parts of the Soviet Union were targeted by the same notorious death squads. It is estimated that some 1.5 million people were brutally murdered by mobile killing squads - such as, for example, the Babi Yar massacre of some 34,000 Jews over a 2 day period in September 1941.
6. The Middle, Part 2 - For a variety of reasons - none of which were in any fashion humanitarian - the Nazis found that exterminating the enormous numbers of Jews who had fallen under Nazi control as a result of the initially seemingly endless Nazi victories in the East via the Einsatzgruppen route was taking too long, was inefficient (it used too much ammunition, for example), and negatively impacted the morale of their troops.
This eventually led to the Wansee Conference held in January 1942 in the posh Berlin suburb of the same name. In this brief meeting (lasting about an hour), the fate of millions of Jews was settled as being essentially worked to death, with those unable to work being marked for immediate death. The purpose of the meeting was to coordinate all the various German governmental agencies that were necessary to conduct the Final Solution.
Part of the result of this Conference was the construction of the so-called Operation Reinhard death camps - named in honor of Reinhard Heydrich - chief of the RHSA (the Reich Main Security Office). These camps were Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor. Millions of Jews died in these camps.
And take a moment an consider this - while Nazi Germany is fighting an exhausting 2 front war - in approximately a 2 -3 year period it diverts resources to not only build these extermination camps, but organize and perpetrate the murder millions of Jews. Compare that with the notion that today in Halifax, it takes months to repair two lanes of the Fairview Overpass. This will give one insight into the zeal with which the Nazis pursued the Final Solution.
Oh, and by the way, the despicable Heydrich was assassinated in Prague by two Czechs who had been trained by the British SOE and parachuted into Nazi Europe.
7. The End - By 1944-1945, as the Allies were pressing into Germany from all sides, the extermination of the Jews continued. For example, the deportation and murder of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews occurred within a short period of time starting in the spring and summer of 1944. But even as the death camps were overrun (Auschwitz in January of 1945 for example) - the Nazis herded the surviving Jews back into the Third Reich on notorious death marches.
World War II in Europe ended in May, 1945, though the terrible suffering of the remaining Jews did not cease - whether due to displacement and disease, or to complete indifference on their return to what was left of their homes. There was even an infamous pogrom in Kielce, Poland, in 1946.
9. Thing to Remember #3 - not only was the Shoah a terrible exercise in organized, state-sponsored mass murder - it was also an exercise in organized, state-sponsored plunder of the assets of the victims - for example, see this link. An excellent book on the subject is Hitler's Beneficiaries.
10. Thing to Remember #4 - while I have recited a variety of statistics in terms of numbers murdered etc, - every victim was a individual person - Unto Every Person There Is A Name
Everyone has a name
Everyone has a name given to him by God and given to him by his parents Everyone has a name given to him by his stature and the way he smiles and given to him by his clothing Everyone has a name given to him by the mountains and given to him by the walls Everyone has a name given to him by the stars and given to him by his neighbors Everyone has a name given to him by his sins and given to him by his longing Everyone has a name given to him by his enemies and given to him by his love Everyone has a name given to him by his holidays and given to him by his work Everyone has a name given to him by the seasons and given to him by his blindness Everyone has a name given to him by the sea and given to him by his death.
Zelda
11. Thing to Remember #5 - While many stood by, there were certain righteous gentiles among the nations who risked their lives to shelter and save Jews. There are commemorated in the Garden Of The Righteous at Yad Vashem
12. Thing to Remember #6 - I believe that we all owe a duty to remember the victims of the Shoah and to act strongly to ensure that no such similar event ever happens again. Tragically, that dream is as yet unfulfilled, as since 1945 there have been numerous genocides and attempts at genocide - the most prominent being in Rwanda, Darfur and the Balkans. This does not detract from our duty to speak up. Remember the famous words of the controversial German Pastor Niemoller:
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews, I remained silent; I wasn't a Jew.
When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
13. Thing to Remember #7 - While we must never forget, we must not let our identity as Jews be defined by the Shoah, or any other Jewish tragedy. Read this (written by a former Catholic priest) and you will see what I mean.
14. Thing to Remember #8 - The State of Israel was not given to the Jews as compensation for the Shoah.
15. Books About The Shoah - I have read a large number of books about the Shoah - a sampling of some that struck me the deepest are shown below.
16. Holocaust Denial - In my opinion, some of the most odious "people" on the planet are those who deny the Shoah. This list includes some infamous people as David Irving, Paul Rassinier, Robert Faurisson, Arthur Butz and, sadly, Canadians such as James Keegstra, Ernst Zundel and Malcolm Ross. These people and their despicable views must be fought every inch of the way - not only to ensure the memory of the innocent victims, but also of the millions of Allied service personnel who fought and died to defeat Nazi fascism.
17. Movies About The Shoah - Everyone is familiar with such films as Schindler's List, The Pianist, and Life Is Beautiful. I am sure that there are many other that I am unfamiliar with (please let me know the names of other films). People have varying opinions as to the accuracy of such films. I find them important if only because they bring the whole issue of the Shoah to the fore. An excellent documentary to watch is Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State
18. Conclusion - I try to end my postings with something upbeat or positive. I will not do so today. But I will urge you to do your own research and education about the Shoah - don't take what I said for granted. Learn about the Shoah, and teach your children and your friends. It is the very least that each one of us can do.
"Take heed... lest you forget the things your eyes have seen... and tell them to your children, and their children after them" (Deut. 4:9)
