Holocaust The Destruction Process Essay Research Paper

Holocaust: The Destruction Process Essay, Research Paper

During the period from the early 1930’s to the mid 40’s, the Jews in Germany, Poland, and throughout Europe faced intense discrimination from the Nazis. Starting with boycotts and pogroms, the Nazis proceeded to institute legislation against the Jews with the Nuremberg Laws. Institution of ghettos began in the late 1930’s. A climate of hostility against Jews had been methodically and relentlessly established. The Holocaust was a systematic destruction process, which, in a very rational, bureaucratic and almost scientific fashion, developed the way for expropriation of property, suppression of rights, and ultimately for extermination camps.

From a legal point of view, the first years of the Nazis in power were very important. Nazi propaganda started with the first phase of the destruction process: defamation. Nazis began to erase the rights of Jews and other party enemies soon after Hitler became Chancellor in January of 1933. To be more specific, on March 23, 1933, the Enabling Act was passed, a law authorizing the government to issue legislation, even if that legislation deviated from the Reich constitution. One example of this legislation is a series of laws that were created for banning “non-Aryans” from civil service, the legal, medical, and dental professions, teaching positions, cultural and entertainment enterprises, and the press. (The Law for the restoration of the Professional Civil Service, A Holocaust Reader, Dawidowicz, p. 35). On September 15, 1935, at the party rally, the Nuremberg Laws were announced. .A Reich citizen is only that subject of German or kindred blood. (Reich Citizen Law of 1935). Therefore, Jews no longer were German citizens; they were subjects. In order to protect the .German Blood and German Honor., they were forbidden to marry .Aryans. and forbidden to fly the Reich and national flags (Protection of German Blood and German Honor of 1935). The testimonies of Ruth Kent, a Holocaust survivor, show how these decrees affected her life and changed it right away. She says,

..Every day they came out with different laws and orders, we had a curfew, we could only be seen between 9:00 and 5:00 in the afternoon.. We had to wear a yellow star on the chest and on my back.they took away all our lawyers, our writers, our teachers, our clergy, and I could not go to school anymore.they took away our rabbis and we couldn’t go to synagogues anymore..

Her experiences reflect the systematic succession of steps towards social and economic isolation. This procedure was repeated almost identically in every city that fell under the Nazi control.

Supporting the idea of a rational and systematic process, Dawidowicz holds that the next cycle of anti-Jewish legislation came in 1938 and was synchronized with Hitler.s plans for war (A Holocaust Reader, p. 37). After the annexation of Austria, Jewish children were banned from school, Jewish families were ordered to assess and report their domestic and foreign property. This is the first law (Decree Regarding the Reporting of Jewish Property of 1938) in a law set that is part of the second phase of this destruction process: expropriation. These facts show how in consecutive steps, the Jewish community was separated politically, socially, and legally from the Germans while at the same time they were crowded into ghettos. This is the process that Hilberg calls ghettoization.

The .ghettoization. is also part of the third phase of the destruction process: concentration. Hilberg points out that the ghettoization of the Jewish community (i.e., the isolation from the surrounding German population) was directed, systematically, by the bureaucracy. He identifies five steps by means of which the ghettos were taking shape. These steps were: (1) the severance of social contacts between Jews and Germans, (2) housing restriction, (3) movement regulations, (4) identification measures, and (5) the institution of Jewish administrative machinery (The Destruction of the European Jews, Hilberg, p 41). Anti-mixing decrees constituted the first phase of the ghettoization process aimed to a social separation. Physical isolation (institution of ghettos) did not begin until 1940.

World War II was precipitated by Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939, which brought under the Third Reich’s control a population of nearly 1.3 million Jews. Ghettoization and/or concentration camps were a direct consequence because they needed a way to deal with these new Jews. In addition, according to Dawidowicz, the planning of the Final Solution was synchronized with the plans for the invasion of Poland. Therefore, this leads one to think that ghettoization after the invasion of Poland was a previously planned and logical step towards the Final Solution. Dawidowicz continues . Hitler had already decided that the actual mass murder of the Jews would take place on those territories [Poland and Soviet Union]. (p.55). However, this is controversial among the literature. Hilberg claims that .on November 29, 1941, he [Heydrich] sent invitations to a number of Staatssekret.re and chief of SS main offices for a .Final Solution. conference (The Destruction of the European Jews, p164.) The institution of ghettos was a transitional measure, but the transition did not lead to emigration. It led to annihilation (The Destruction of the European Jews, Hilberg, p 41).