The Holocaust în Europe

By the mid-19th century a new social theory had emerged in Europe: the theory of race. According to this theory, humanity was divided into “higher” and “lower” races. In the view of those who believed in this theory, the Jews were a mongrel race—and a mortal threat to the “purity” of the “higher” races.

The appearance of anti-Jewish parties and organizations, whether they were based on economic, religious, or racist principles, or a combination of all of these, constitutes the most important distinguishing feature of modern political anti-Semitism. Such parties came to the fore especially in Germany in the 1880s. In the Russian Empire anti-Semitism became an official policy of the government, which in 1881 and 1882 encouraged anti-Jewish mob attacks, or pogroms. The first international congress of anti-Semites convened in 1882 in the German city of Dresden. By the start of the 20th century there were many committed anti-Semites throughout Europe, particularly in France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Romania. Although anti-Semitic parties did not receive many votes, anti-Semitism was not only widespread but also socially acceptable.

On January 30, 1939, Hitler delivered a chilling threat in an address to the Reichstag: “In my life I have often been a prophet and … today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will be not the Bolshevization of the world and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”

After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, the Nazis searched for what they termed a “final solution to the Jewish question.” The top leaders contemplated a “territorial solution” for European Jews. Leaders of the SS, an elite section of the Nazi Party, were put in charge of solving the “Jewish question.” They proposed two options. The first option was the establishment in southeastern Poland of a reservation to which Jews would be deported. The second option, which was proposed as the Germans anticipated an imminent victory over Britain following their defeat of France in July 1940, was the deportation to the island of Madagascar of all 4 million Jews in the countries then occupied or controlled by Germany. At that time, Madagascar, off the southeastern coast of Africa, was a colony of France.

Neither of these proposals was adopted. In late 1940 the Nazis began planning an invasion and conquest of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). That planning led them to abandon the idea of a reservation in Poland, because such a reservation would be in the center rather than on the periphery of an enlarged German empire. The Nazis abandoned their Madagascar plan because Britain did not surrender, and continued British control of the Suez Canal closed the route to Madagascar to German ships.

Before these plans were dropped, however, the Germans carried out a preliminary step to future deportations to concentration camps or to the planned Jewish reservation. Jews in Poland were forced to move into ghettos, where they were ordered to set up Jewish councils that would carry out German orders. They were also forced to wear a yellow Jewish star on their clothing and to perform forced labor. Atrocious living conditions, such as overcrowding, lack of proper sanitation and health services, and meager food rations, resulted in a high mortality rate among the inhabitants of the ghettos. In the Warsaw ghetto, for example, 20 percent of the population died in 1941.

While Polish Jews were sealed in ghettos, Jews in western European countries occupied or controlled by the Nazis faced ruthless anti-Semitic measures. From Norway to North Africa all Jews lost their rights and property. They were forced to live in designated neighborhoods or were imprisoned in closed camps.