203: The Holocaust: Killing Squads, Ghettos, & Gas Chambers

In this podcast, I'm going to have people on to tell unusual and sometimes far-fetched stories about their families.

“I've heard my whole life that she ended at the Margarita.”

And then, we're going to investigate those stories and find out how much of it is true. He gets a patent one month before the ride by this, "Oh my God, please follow and listen to family lore." An Odyssey podcast available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your shows. My friends, it's Professor Greg Jackson, and I'm pleased to announce more live tour dates this spring in celebration of my new book publishing in June. The book is called "Bin There, Done That."

How our history shows what we can overcome.

So, in addition to previously announced tour stops, we're now also coming to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., New York and Boston.

You'll get to see me storytelling live with music in video and all sign books at those June shows. Or, if you're feeling really adventurous, you can join our VIP book launch crew being crews in May.

“So, I look forward to seeing more of you on the road, or maybe at C, to celebrate the launch of my book.”

Get tickets in more info at htdspodcast.com. It's nearly 12 noon on a cold winter's morning, January 20th, 1942. We're in a western suburb of Berlin, Germany, standing before a stunning three-story, neoclassical mansion known as the House of Vanzi. We're going to head inside in just a moment, but before we do, let me explain that we're here to witness a meeting unlike any other I can think of in history. Here, the head of the Reichssecurity Head office, SS Opagopampio, Lainha Hydlish, or Anglicized as Reinhard Hydric.

We'll leave 14 other high-ranking members of the Nazi Party and government. In a discussion, prompted by instructions issued months earlier by the number two man in all of Nazi Germany. Reichsmartial Herman Gurin, about coordinating their various offices and departments to carry out with their calling. Quote them, the final solution to the Jewish question, close quote.

“Now, this quote unquote "solution" or plan is hardly new.”

The anti-Semitic Nazi state has already removed hundreds of thousands of Jews from its expanding empire, forcibly relocating them to cramped neighborhoods called ghettos, or to concentration and labor camps. The Nazis have also begun their mass killings. Early on, their SS led mobile killing squads, or Heinz Atkopen, relied almost exclusively on bullets. But more recently, if begun experimenting with using the exhaust from vans to gas their Jewish victims.

In brief, Breinhard Hydric isn't presenting a new plan as much as aligning everyone's efforts on a systematic, efficient, and economic means of, to quote this meeting soon to be written minutes, forcing the Jews out of the various spheres of life, and the living space of the German people. Close quote. Yes, this is a dark meeting.

One as sinister and purpose as the grounds were standing on are gorgeous. And on that grim note, let's head inside this stately manner. In a magnificent and ornately decorated room, 14 men likely dressed in crisp uniforms, listen attentively as Reinhard Hydric talks. The tall, handsome. 37-year-old Obo-Golden Fuho with blue eyes and a sharp part in his receding blonde hair.

Opens his remarks with a review of Nazi Germany's Jewish policies to date. He tells the men before him that, back in the 1930s, their policy was, quote-unquote, forced emigration, which he claims, removed a combined 537,000 Jews from Germany, Austria, and the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. But as of last year, 1941, they replaced this costly, inefficient and slow process with, the evacuation of the Jews to the east, a policy that came, he notes,

with appropriate, higher authorization from the Fuhrer. That's right. Evacuation has eight off Hitler's express approval. The Obo-Golden Fuhrer continues. This evacuation is one of mass scale. He informs his 14 attendees that, in the course of this final solution of the Jewish question,

hopefully 11 million Jews will be taken into consideration.

You heard that correctly, 11 million. And hair-rine hard-hydric backs that figure with an estimated count of Jews in various European nations.

and he claims 700,000 in what he describes as unoccupied French territory.

“Wait, territory? Yes. In other words, in French North Africa.”

So this isn't just about removing Jews from Europe. It's about making Jews disappear anywhere the Nazi Empire's dark shadow reaches. Period. In fact, he even lists nations not under the control of the Reich, including belligerent nations like the USSR and England. The numbers themselves are wildly inaccurate, but the presentations inclusion of nations beyond their current control.

Speaks to very realistic, expected outcomes, given how well the war is going for the Nazis in early 1942.

“And highlights just how final they intend this solution to be.”

To that end, Reinhardt says they will calm through Europe from West East to to evacuate the continents Jews. They will do so, coup by coup, to so-called transit gatos, from Verzeville be transported onwards to the east. But not all will be sent onward from the gatos. The tall and handsome olbo-gulpum fura explains that, at least one "old age ghetto" likely to be the ghetto interracent stop.

We'll serve as permanent housing for three classes of Jews, those 65 and older, disabled warvets, and war heroes awarded the Iron Cross first class.

The rest, however, will ultimately go to the east.

“A question arises, what about the "Michelinger"?”

That is, those defined by the Nuremberg laws as being of mixed Jewish and Aryan descent. Reinhardt answers that their fate depends on whether they are first degree "Michelinger", those with two Jewish grandparents, and thus deemed half Jewish, or second degree "Michelinger", those with one Jewish grandparent and thus considered a quarter Jewish. Leaning on this division, Reinhardt proclaims, as far as the final solution of the Jewish question is concerned,

first degree "Michelinger" ought to be treated as Jews, so evacuated.

He goes on, second degree "Michelinger" will be as matter of principle, he treated as persons of German blood. He adds that both cases will have their exceptions. For instance, first degree "Michelinger" already exempted will remain so. Conversely, second degree "Michelinger" with two "Michelinger" parents, a criminal record, or, and I quote, "a Jewish external appearance" close quote, will be evacuated. Meanwhile, so-called mixed marriages between "Michelinger" and "Arians" will play out in a myriad of ways, depending on children and other family dynamics.

At this, as Gopemführer, Otto Hoffman, of the race and settlement main office pipes up, extends of use must be made of stocholization. Once "Michelinger" faces a choice between evacuation and stocholization, he will prefer to undergo stocholization. That's probably true, because of course, Jews aren't going to the east to live in a camp on the edge of the Nazi empire. Stocholization passes the Nazi's euphemisms, this "final solution" is a funnel system. One in which Jews are forced to getoes, and from getoes to camps, where the week can be declared, unfit for work, and similarly executed on mass, while the straw can be worked to death.

This isn't about relocation. It's a plan for systematic execution that makes use of its victims in the process. The Secretary of State for Concord Poland's General Government, Dr. Joseph Guda, enthusiastically calls for the final solution to start on his turf,

telling the room that the majority of Poland's 2.5 million Jews are on fit for work. Two others suggest that, "certain preparatory measures"

should start in the territories, or things can be tested more discreetly. And with that, the 90-minute meeting, solidifying and detailing the final solution to eradicate Jewish life in Europe is over. The 15 men had to launch.

If you're wondering how we know the details of the January 1942 meeting at the House of Vanzi, it's thanks to the head of the Gestapo office for Jewish affairs. It off-economic. He took the minutes, and while 29 of the 30 copies in existence disappeared in the aftermath, the allies found copy number 16 after the war in 1947. It's thanks to that singular post-war find that we have the details of the day when a handsome man in a gorgeous location laid out the organization for one of the ugliest and most violent events ever perpetrated by human hands, the final solution of the Holocaust.

As we heard in the previous episode's prologue interview with Sarah Bloomfield, the director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Holocaust, or Shoah, to use the Hebrew word, took the lives of nearly two-thirds of Europe's Jews.

But that in numerical form, out of roughly 9.5 million Jews living in Europe in 1933 on the eve of the war, only 3.5 million were alive in 1950.

“6 million died in the Holocaust. But before we digest that overwhelming number, we have to ask ourselves a key question. How? And the one that almost always follows. Why?”

Today, we're going to begin to answer those questions as we hear the story of the acceleration of the Holocaust in the early years of World War II, or to put that another way, the story of the development and implementation of the so-called final solution. We'll begin what we left off in episode 185. After 1938's devastating night of broken glass, or "Please tell not." Then, as the situation worsens in Europe, we'll watch some families make the excruciating decision to send their children out of Nazi occupied territory to England, especially as more and more Jews are forced into ghados.

As we move into 1941, we'll head to the eastern front, where mass murder of Jews begins at the hands of the INs at Skolpen, Germany's mobile killing squads. But the war intensified in 1941 and 1942.

Nazi higher-ups will realize they need a more efficient solution to their "Jewish problem." Thus leading us to the final solution that we heard about in this episode's opening. We're going to see the advent of the extermination camp in gas chambers, and watch as the rest of the world begins to learn about the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis against European Jewry. It's a steep task, but one we're certainly up for, and one that will best approach if we can set aside our 21st century perspective, from which the horrors to come seem so obvious, and appreciate how slowly this work of death crept up.

To that end, before we dive in, I'm going to ask you to digest this fairly long quote from the pre-eminent Holocaust historian, Raul Hillberg's three-volume work, the destruction of the European Jews.

“This is his key claim, and a useful framework for us to rely on. I quote, "The process of destruction unfolded in a definite pattern. It did not, however, proceed from a basic plan."”

No bureaucrat in 1933 could have predicted what kind of measures would be taken in 1938. Nor was it possible in 1938 to foretell the configuration of the undertaking in 1942. The destruction process was a step-by-step operation, and the administrator could sell them sea more than one step ahead. The steps of the destruction process were introduced in the following order.

At first, the concept of Jew was defined, then the expropriatory operations were inaugurated.

Third, the Jews were concentrated in ghettos. Finally, the decision was made to annihilate European Jewry.

“The chronological development may therefore be summarized as follows, definition, expropriation, and concentration through mobile killing operations,”

and deportations and killing center operations in the rest of Axis Europe. Close quote. In other words, we cannot blame the people for not predicting what would happen. Nazi leaders organized the unthinkable. And with that, let's head back to where we left off with the early Holocaust in Episode 185 to 1930's Germany. Rewind.

Ficking up with European Jewry in the 1930's. Here's where things stand. After centuries of fighting for and eventually gaining emancipation, that is, full legal citizenship in much of Europe.

Citizens. This starts in 1933, and culminates in the 1935 Normberg laws.

“In retrospect, some will say these are the earliest years of the Holocaust.”

Anti-semitism only grows as we get later into the 30's. In 1936, standard curriculum for SS trainees includes the statement that, quote, "The Jew is a parasite, wherever he flourishes the people die. Elimination of the Jew from our community is to be regarded as an emergency defense measure." Close quote. From 1935 to 1938, many Jews tried to leave Germany, but few countries are willing to grant these Jewish refugees asylum.

“The United States included. Meanwhile, European Jews are split on what they should or shouldn't do.”

While some see this increased violence and persecution is merely another hiccup in their long, hard one fight for emancipation,

others have been sounding the alarm for years. To the second group, Hitler's race-based anti-Semitism is on another level.

And the community is nowhere near as worried as they should be. More Jews move into the second group after Christad Knox, or the night of broken glass on November 9, 1938.

“I trust to recall the details of this night from episode 185, a night that resulted in 91 Jewish deaths in the destruction or desecration of thousands of Jewish businesses and synagogues.”

Some historians will argue that this is the point that Germany's anti-Semitism tipped over to become the Holocaust.

But even after Christad Knox, many Jews aren't panicking. After all, they are active contributing members of German society, some even fought in the First World War.

And that, my friends, ends our episode 185 review. This is where we pick up our story and the path to the Nazis so-called final solution. Now, for us in the 21st century, it's pretty clear where things are going, especially when we look at Adolf Hitler's January 30, 1939 speech at the Reichstag, which includes anti-Semitic tropes and a rather transparent promise for violence. If international finance jewelry within Europe and abroad should succeed once more in plunging the peoples into a world war, then the consequences will not be both civilization of the world and they are with evictory of jewelry.

But on the contrary, the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe. Hindsight is 2020 though. Moreover, even after Christad Knox, the thought that Adolf Hitler can muster a regime that will seek the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe is still hard to believe. I mean, the eradication of millions of people sounds insane. Undoable, even. Thus, across Nazi territory, the Jewish community remains split. Robys are debating the future of their people, community leaders are not sure of how to advise their congregations and families are torn over whether to leave or stay.

Even now, in the late 1930s, one country is growing wary enough to soften its immigration rules, frightened by the anti-Semitic state sponsored attacks in Nazi Germany. Britain is granting unaccompanied minors, those under the age of 17, refugee status. And what comes to be known as the Kinder Transport, private citizens and organizations pay for nearly 10,000 children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland to emigrate to Britain. With the understanding that, when the crisis is over, kids will return to their families. And yes, we're talking about various central European nationalities because as we know from episodes 187 through 189,

it off Hitler is rapidly gobbling up neighboring nations between 1938 and 1939. And as he does, Jews and these newly taken countries are subject to the Hysh's anti-Semitic laws. This fact is highlighted by Britain's Sir Nicholas or Nikki, who ultimately saves 669 Czech children through this program. This story will later be told in the 2023 movie One Life. Meanwhile, Norbert Volheim, a British-based Jewish organizer who helps arrange many of these life-saving Kinder Transport voyages, is often tasked with facilitating that last hug.

It's a later recall, quote, "No body of us could foresee, even at this moment. That for most of the children and most of the parents, it would be the last goodbye." That a year and a half later or so, from over the same railways, the train left to take the children to a new country and a freedom. And liberty, the trains would roll towards the east and take the parents to the human slaughterhouses and Auschwitz and other places.

It's the morning of July 1st, 1939, we're in Trestinja, and what was Czechoslovakia before the Nazis carved the country apart, where a 14-year-old Alice Ebeška Kova, and her two sisters, nearly 16 and 10 years old, respectively, far at home, preparing to leave their small rural village for England.

“As the girls pack, Alice hears a noise coming from the other room. Is that crime? Sobby? It is. Alice will later recall.”

"We're all packed to go, and suddenly we had this noise. I mean, from another room, and we looked at each other in horror, because my father was repeat. Now, this would be a lot of sorrow, it's going to be." Traveling by train, the Ebeška Kova family had southwest to brought a slava. Here, they changed to another train and had northwest to Prague. It's a long, tiring journey. Eight even worse by the understanding that, once they arrive in the capital city, their family of five will be split up for, well, no one can say.

Finally, the family is at the station in Prague. Each girl has a new blanket, gifts that their father just bought for them here in town.

And now, well, it's called Alice's 1995 oral history once more. Everything is in a state of... It will bracelet, and my mother said, "It's not a good idea to have this. My father may have said it. Why don't you let us keep it for you?" And they took it off. And they said, "You don't travel with that. It's not a good idea to do it."

“So it took our little jewelry that we had, which is their minor, possibly, I know that we each had a chain, and maybe some of them, I can't remember.”

But they decided to keep it for us and took it off. There were hundreds of people there in some children, long babies.

And we were put on a train and my mother couldn't make the side with it to keep the little one, my youngest sister. So she put on a train, she took her off. She took her off again. And then she brought a train at the last moment. We all waved the by and that was it. The train pulls away from the station, carrying Alice, her two sisters, and 238 other unaccompanied children, away from Prague and away from Nazi terror.

“Their parents can only watch, undoubtedly gutted, horrified and fearful, as the train carrying their children, their babies, their world.”

Disappears into the distance. The three girls make it to London. They live out the war in England. Reflecting later on, Alice will say, "In the fact that my parents agreed to send us will be a mystery for as long as I'm dead." After all, she and her sisters were the only ones who left the village. She has one small consolation. In one of the letter's Alice receives her father rights. "I'm so glad you're not here."

A final letter arrives from her family in March 1942, and after the war, Alice will learn that they were deported to my donic.

Like Alice and her sisters, about 40% of the children who escaped via the Kinder Transport will never see their parents again.

Their lives will be marked by intense survivors guilt, especially since, as Norbert says. Their families later went to their deaths via the very same train stations that granted their escape. But that's a story yet to come. Right now, we're still in 1939, and while Nazi Germany's expanding empire, and therefore anti-Semitic laws and policies now include Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and by the end of next year, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. We aren't ready for that level of death, not just yet.

Still in the early stages of the Nazi's work to destroy European Jewry, let's return to the framework of historian, Raul Hilberg.

First, the Aryanization of Jewish wealth, whether through seizing Jewish business assets, heavily taxing Jewish citizens, or even blocking their access to their money.

Second, starvation measures.

“Since Jews living in Nazi-Ryantary are largely barred from their former professions, their savings are quickly disappearing, as they pay for the heavily marked up, yet municipal rations available to them.”

Third, the concentration of the Jewish community into ghettos, isolating them both socially and physically from non-Jews. Ah, those would be the ghettos we heard about in this episode's opening. Now, the medieval idea of a ghetto as a walled-in area of a city where minority group lives isn't implemented immediately. In greater Germany, Jews' movements are first limited. They are forbidden from certain public areas, not allowed out at night, and German landlords are permitted to evict them.

Then comes the more well-known ghettoization.

It's the first big step in the Nazi solution to their so-called Jewish problem.

And it starts in Poland. With a 10% Jewish population, Poland will come to be the site of many of the most brutal Nazi policies toward Jews. Historian Lucy Davidovich tells us that, as the German army pushes through the Polish countryside, it, quote, reenacted Christenacht, all over Poland, synagogues, wind up and flames. Those spared the fire were desecrated, turned into stables, garages, and publicly trains. Everywhere, the Germans organized pogroms, rounding up the non-Jewish population to witness and learn how to mock abuse, injure, and murder Jews.

Unbridled killing and senseless violence became daily commonplace. The fear of sudden death became normal and habitual, closed-quote. Security police chief Reinhardt Hydric, yes, the same towering Nazi who he heard lay out the final solution in this episode's opening, sees a problem. But it isn't the murder of Jews. It's the chaos of the process, the waste.

On September 21st, 1939, he outlines a solution to the disorganized violence, a, quote, "clean up once and for all," close-quote, a Poland's Jews. That solution, a return to that medieval ghetto, moving Jews from as far off as the countryside, into ghettos in major cities.

The actual implementation of these orders will ultimately be carried out by Jews themselves.

A group of well-respected community elders, including religious leaders, known as the Yuden law. We'll come back to this governing body later, especially as they're tasked with unthinkable orders. But for now, though, let's see what happens when the first ghetto is established. It's May 10, 1940. We're in Weuch, Poland.

We're Jews from the city and suburbs have just moved into an approximately one-and-a-half square mile quarter. In the neighbourhoods of Baloté Stardameyasto, that is the old town. And Maddishin. Every day for the past three months, since February 8th, the city's Hulitsa-Prazident, Hregada-Fuhr Schaefer, hosts a daily moving schedule, systematically forcing the Jews out of their apartments, their homes, and into the ghetto.

“With cards pulled by horses, children weighed down by rucksacks, and parents desperately lugging suitcases with the family's most essential possessions.”

Moving day is not a joyous affair. The last group moved in on April 30th, essentially shutting the ghetto. But now, today, May 10th, the Policite President adds the official element. It's an announcement. The ghetto will be sealed.

Cut off from the outside world. The Jews must not leave the ghetto. As a matter of principle, this prohibition applies to the eldest of Jews and to the chiefs of the Jewish police. Germans and Poles must not enter the ghetto as a matter of principle. Nearly 160,000 Jews are now trapped in the Finston area of Wuch.

They're unable to escape the barbed wire and German order of policemen. Even inside, their movements are restricted. The Jews' new life here is brutal. Parsled into three sections by the intersection of two major roads right outside the walls. The ghetto is connected by bridges running from one section to the next.

It's overcrowded.

“Honestly, overcrowded doesn't even begin to do it justice.”

It's jam packed. The majority of inhabitants don't have running water, but alone a working sewer system. Most residents work in German factories and food rations are slim.

But they can't stop.

“Soon enough, however, the Nazi regime rerbs the street cars.”

No need to let other Poles see what's going on here. And the situation only gets worse as the years pass. Wuch is about to start. More ghettos will spring up in Warsaw, Krakow, Lublin, Rathom, Lviv, and other prominent Polish cities through the end of 1941 and into early 1942.

We'll get a deeper look into life in the ghettos in the next episode. But right now, we need to turn our attention to the next developing stage in the so-called final solution. That means heading both physically and euphemistically to the east. Yes, I trust to recall that phrase from the meeting at the House of Banzi. On that note, let's head to the German border.

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My friends, it's Professor Greg Jackson, and I'm pleased to announce more live tour dates this spring in celebration of my new book Publishing in June. The book is called "Bin There," "Done That," how our history shows what we can overcome.

“So, in addition to previously announced tour stops, we're now also coming to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., New York and Boston.”

You'll get to see me storytelling live with music and video, and I'll sign books at those June shows. Or if you're feeling really adventurous, you can join our VIP book launch crew being crews in May. So, I look forward to seeing more of you on the road, or maybe at C, to celebrate the launch of my book. Get tickets in more info at htdspodcast.com. Returning to historian Raul Hilberg's framework of the Holocaust, 1941 is when the Nazis' destruction process of the Jews accelerates its shift from the expropriation stage into its third and final stage, a annihilation through concentration.

But it doesn't enter this stage from a top down approach. It's more a building zeitgeist. To let Hilberg continue, quote, "The destruction of the Jews was not so much a product of laws and commands as it was a matter of spirit." A shared comprehension of consonants and synchronization. Close quote.

This annihilation will, of course, get organized soon enough. To again touch on that vital story that opened this episode, that organizing will happen under Rhine Hard Hydrics guiding hand when he and 14 others meet at the House of Vancey to discuss the final solution. Intlesum de Yudonfada, in January of the following year. But right now, still in 1941, this annihilation through concentration separates into two phases.

First, the Isatskopen, or mobile killing units, which followed the Nazi army and killed Jews and cities and villages as they continue moving to the east.

And second, the devolution of concentration camps sprinkled across German control territory as they become something even more sinister, death camps. And we'll get to the concentration stages second development, the camp phase, toward the end of this episode, as well as in the next. But right now, let's lock in on that first mobile phase. When Germany invades the Soviet Union on June 22nd, 1941, groups of the paramilitary SS and other police units accompanying the army, instructed, essentially, to kill as many of the USSR's 5 million Jews as possible.

As eight of Hitler instructs, Wilhelm Kaifel. The old and new Reich area is to be clean of Jews, Polaks, and Company. These killing groups become known as Isatskopen. In all, 3,000 men make up 4 battalions for Isatskopen, each of which is split into smaller companies, called Zander Komendol, or Isatskomendol. Importantly, each of these groups has a significantly higher number of officers than a standard military unit.

Since Soviet Jews are spread out across the entire country, the Isatskopen have to adapt their strategy to target nearly 4 million in territory their army plans to conquer.

By the end of 1941, each Isatskopen reports their numbers to the Nazi High Command.

“Group A has killed 125,000. These victims are incorrectly numbered at 45,000.”

C claims 75,000 lives, indeed reports 55,000 murdered. Even with these astoundingly large numbers, Nazi commanders are frustrated. Their mobile killing units still have a lot of work ahead if they're to eradicate the reasons Jews.

So, they implement a second wave of units, opting the number of Isatskopen to 7.

This invigorated effort to kill often puts the local police to work too. The Isatskopen also trigger programs. We heard about these short spurts of violence by a community against a Jewish population back in Episode 185. But now, the Nazis hope to channel centuries of hatred and prejudice against Jews and devolentary aid with mass murder. Soviet Jews who attempted to escape their fate are met with no options.

fleeing into the countryside, Jews are turned away by non-Jews, likely afraid they will be killed if they're found to be harboring their hunted neighbors. Interestingly, many Russian Jews choose not to flee because, historically and broadly speaking, Germany has been better to them than Russia. I trust you we call once more from Episode 185 that German Jews were emancipated long before their Russian counterparts who didn't gain citizenship until 1917.

“Some rural Jewish communities even remember German troops as liberators in the context of the Great War.”

Further, Soviet Jews were kept in the dark about anti-Semitic policies in Nazi Europe. Nazi leaders used these weaknesses to their advantage. They developed bruises to lure large numbers of Jewish victims together, whether through false promises of registration, resettlement, or the simplest of all, waiting for people to flock into the cities after hearing about mass murder in the countryside. It's absolutely brutal.

This first sweep ends with 1941.

The second begins toward the end of 1941 and in early 1942. As we know, throughout the end of 1941, the Nazis are systematically moving Jews into ghettos. This second wave of IZOT's group in violence targets the ghetto communities in 1942.

“And by this point, everyone knows what's going to happen.”

It's Friday morning, August 14th, 1942. 4 for the newly 500 Jewish families in Povost, Zegorovsky and Southern Belarus. It's the first Shabbat of the month of Elu, 5,702. Along with her parents, siblings, little daughter, Marka, and other inhabitants of the Zegorovsky ghetto. In the Nazi captured Soviet city of Minsk, Rheefka-Uselevska has just been instructed to follow the Belarusian policemen out of her home.

At first, Rheefka isn't perturbed.

After all, being heard it to be counted and recounted by policemen is a part of daily life these days. But today, something seems different. Seeing German soldiers present, the young mother is hit with the sinking realization that her lock me of just run out. Standing in the ghetto center, the Jewish residents hear a startlingly blunt announcement. "That is threatening you. You will be shocked. Whoever wants to buy his way out should bring in whatever he owns it, money or jewels that he has hidden."

No one has anything left to surrender. It's all been previously bartered away, but the Nazis leave Rheefka and others standing all day while they search for treasures. By evening, children who have been screaming all day have horse voices. Everyone is utterly exhausted with frustration, fear, and anxiety over what's to come. Amid the chaos, Marka asks,

"Mother, why are you wearing your Sabbath dress? They're going to kill us." The petrified mother doesn't have an answer. As Shabbat is ushered in by the setting sun, the gate of the ghetto opens for a large truck. Under strict instructions, the Zagarodski Jews pile in. Those who can't fit are forced to run behind the moving vehicle.

So, Rheefka does so. She runs with Marka in her arms. She sees someone fall through her side. That person is immediately shot. Arriving at a hill, three kilometers outside the city. He exhausted mother watches. As S.S. Men, guide fellow townspeople in rows of four of the hill. I'm going to let Rheefka tell it from here.

When we stood near the ditch, Marka said, "What are we waiting for? Come, let's escape."

Then came our turn. It was difficult to hold the children. They were shaking.

“We took turns. Parents took the children, took other people's children. This was to help us get through it all.”

To get it over with and not see the children suffer. Mother took leave of their children. We were lined up in force. We stood there naked. Our clothing was taken away. My father didn't want to address completely and kept on his underwear. When he was lined up for the shooting and was told to address he refused. He was beaten. We begged him. Take off your clothes. Enough of suffering. No. He insisted on dying in his underwear.

Then they took mother. She didn't want to go but wanted us to go first.

Yet we made her go first. They grabbed her and shot her.

“There was my father's mother who was 80 with two grandchildren in her arms.”

My father's sister was also there. She too was shot with children in her arms. Then my turn came. My younger sister also. She had suffered so much in the ghetto and yet at the last moment she wanted to stay alive and begged the German to let her live. She was standing their naked holding onto her girlfriend. So he looked at her and shot them both. Both of them fell. My sister and her girlfriend. My other sister was next. Then he got ready to shoot me.

We stood there facing the ditch. I turned my head. He asked, "Whom do I shoot first?"

I didn't answer. He tore the child away from me. I heard her last cry and he shot her. Then he got ready to kill me. Grabbed my hair and turned my head about. I remained standing in her shot but I didn't move. He turned me around, loaded his pistols that I could see what he was doing. Then he again turned around and shot me. I fell down. I felt nothing. At that moment I felt that something was weighing me down. I thought that I was dead but that I could feel something even though I was dead.

I couldn't believe that I was alive. I felt I was suffocating. Bodies had fallen on me. I felt I was drowning. But still I could move and felt I was alive and tried to get up. I was choking. I heard shots and again somebody falling down. I twisted and turned but I could not. I felt I was going to suffocate. I had no strength left. But then I felt that somehow I was crawling upwards. As I climbed up people grabbed me, hit me, dragged me downwards. But I pulled myself up with the last bit of strength.

When I reached the top, I looked around but I couldn't recognize the place. Corpse is strewn all over. There was no end to the bodies. You could hear people moaning in their death agony. Some children were running around naked and screaming, "Mama, Papa, I couldn't get up." When she thinks the Germans have gone, Reeve could stand up, surveying the body-streamed field. But then a few moments, the SS are back. A company by local non-juice will help dig graves. That's really hoping to escape detection in a nearby field. Reeve cut watches in horror as the Nazis fire bolts into the bodies of anyone still moving.

To turn to Reeve cause words once more. When I saw they were gone, I dragged myself over to the grave and wanted to jump in. I thought the grave would open up and let me fall inside alive. I envied everyone for whom it was already over, while I was still alive. Where should I go? What should I do? Blood was spouting. Nowadays, when I pass a water fountain, I can still see the blood spouting from the grave. The earth rose and heaved. I sat there on the grave and tried to dig my way in with my hands. I continued digging as hard as I could.

“The earth didn't open up. I shouted to mother and father why was I left alive? What did I do to deserve this?”

Where shall I go? To whom can I turn? I have nobody. I saw everything. I saw everybody killed. No one answered. Reeve cut will survive. Her harrowing testimony, which we just heard verbatim, will be one of the many that leads to Holocaust architect, Adolf Ickman, receiving the death sentence in his 1961 trial. But once again, we must not get ahead of ourselves. This is but the tip of the iceberg of the Nazis' annihilation work. By the end of 1942, many of Eastern Europe's surviving Jews are in soon to be liquidated ghettos. But that's not to say no resistance takes place. Many manage to escape.

Hiding in the forests, some mount successful attacks on Nazi troops will hear more about these brave fighters in a future episode.

And to complicate that complication, the majority of these testimonies come from later trials. You can do it that which you will.

“Nonetheless, let's explore some examples.”

Order to massacre 1,800 Jews in Josef Fulf, Holland, on July 14, 1942, 53-year-old career policeman, Major Wilhelm Trapp, a reserve police battalion 101 weeps, constantly repeating, "Oh my God, why did I have to be given these orders?" Many of the men in Papa Trapp's battalion can't carry out the task. Others find ways to rationalize their following orders.

A 50-year-old metal worker will later explain, "I made the effort to shoot only children. It's so happened that the mothers led the children by the hand.

My neighbor then shot the mother and I shot the child that belonged to her because I reasoned with myself that, after all, without its mother, the child could not live any longer.

“It was supposed to be, so to speak, soothing to my conscience to release children unable to live without their mothers.”

Interestingly, the German word for release is "alusion", also meaning in a religious context, "tradeem" or "save". How anti-Semitic these men are or aren't, I can't say. The trials that will follow in the years and decades to come don't really address this. The men speak more of their physical revulsion to shooting than any expressly stated rejection of Nazi ideology. Nonetheless, carrying out these orders did require an "othering" on at least some level. As historian Christopher Browning explains, "It would seem that even if the men of reserve police battalion 101 had not consciously adopted the anti-Semitic doctrines of the regime, they had at least accepted the assimilation of the Jews into the image of the enemy.

“The men should remember when shooting Jewish women and children, that the enemy was killing German women and children by bombing Germany."”

Back at Nazi headquarters, the leader of the SS, Ice Fuho, Heinrich Kimler, clearly recognizes that their extermination plans won't sit perfectly with everyone. He decides to take precautions of a public perception. In June, he orders commander Paul Blobel to erase the traces of the Heinzatz Gopen executions in the east. In some, nearly 1,350,000 Soviet Jews are murdered by the Nazi Heinzatz Gopen before the mobile killing units are shut down. To give you a taste of how those numbers break down locally, in July 1941, 7,000 Jews in Biali Stoke are murdered. In Vilna, over 20,000, more than half the Jewish population meet their end in death pits outside the city.

Remarking on eyewitness accounts, Herman Kruk writes in his diary, "How come one right about this? How come one assemble one's thoughts?" And the murders are only accelerated, while roughly 75 to 80% of Holocaust victims are still alive in mid-March 1942, those numbers will be inverted in a years time. What brings about that change? Well, it's a few tweaks to the traditional concentration camp. As Dr. Joseph Gobel writes in his diary, on May 30, 1942, "The Jewish danger must be liquidated."

We've now reached the second phase of annihilation through concentration. The camp phase. But before continuing with that tale in 1942, let me give you a little background.

Contrary to popular belief, concentration camps existed in Germany before the start of the Second World War. We know this, of course, from episode 184, when we learned about the first concentration camp opening in DACA, back in 1933. Six years later, in 1939, the camps expanded from their original purpose of holding political prisoners, so-called "a socials" and the occasional Jewish person, to also include prisoners of war, Polish people, members of the French resistance, and significantly more Jews. Only six camps existed at this time.

As the war progressed, in Nazi Germany absorbed more territory, its leaders realized they needed a more efficient way to solve their so-called "Jewish problem." As we just learned, one of those solutions was the "Insatzgolben." But for SS-Lice Fuhrer, Heinrich Hymler, these mobile killing forces were not nearly as effective as they needed to be.

Tested as a part of a murderous and voluntary youth in Asia program, known as Axion Tafio, or the T-4 program, these mobile units first targeted those with mental and physical disabilities, including ethnic Germans,

before being absorbed into the final solution against the Jews.

“In the spring of that same year, Germany launched a secret operation, another Axion, 14F-13.”

Applying lessons learned with the T-4 program, 14F-13 is a plan to murder prisoners in concentration camps using something new, poisonous gas. Mainly targeting sick prisoners, 14F-13 will continue to run through December of 1944. But we aren't done with our background. This is only the beginning of the killing in the camps.

Indeed, preparing to implement their own final solution between late 1941 and 1942, the Nazi high command builds or otherwise transforms six camps in Poland.

Hell no, belzits, sobibor, Treblinka, Midonic, and Auschwitz-Birkenau into extermination camps. Each is located on or near railway lines, making transportation easier. How do these come about? Well, during the summer of 1941, SS Stombeinfudiova, or Major Rudolf Hess, answered a summons to Berlin to meet Heinrich Kymler.

“Here, the Major was informed that the quickly rising SS officer, Adolf Eichmann, and the Führer himself, would like him to run one of these soon-to-be extermination camps.”

Himmler tells Rudolf Hess, "Vi, the SS must carry out this order. If it is not carried out now, then the Jews will later on destroy the German people." You already know the soon-to-be infamous camp near Auschwitz-Birkenau, that they then assigned to the Major. We're talking about Auschwitz. After a series of meetings with the higher-ups, the Auschwitz assigned to Major began experimenting with mass killing. He soon stumbled upon a Major discovery, somewhere between September 3rd and 5th, 1941. Rudolf Hess and his deputy, Karl Frich, sealed nearly 900 Soviet and Polish prisoners into blocky-loven's crematory.

He then had gas called the Zeichlom B pumped through the holes in the earth and concrete roof, protected by a gas mask. The Major watched. Some shouted gas, but it was no use. Everyone was soon dead. Hess was truly pleased by this bloodless swift means of executing hundreds within minutes. So much easier and far less messy than the mass shootings of the Einstein's Coolpen.

Nonetheless, it was hell, though, not Auschwitz, that became the first operational extermination camp.

It opened December 8, 1941, just 30 miles or so north of Wood.

“Ah, yes. Wood. You undoubtedly remember, witnessing this town's Jewish people being herded into a ghetto earlier in this episode.”

Well, now, as we finish our background in return to 1942, we can see the final solution set up coming to fruition in this city. The Wood's ghetto feeds Jews on mass, engineered by hell in those extermination camp, where they can be murdered. Led by SS officer Herbert Lang, it operates three carbon monoxide gas fans. Victims' bodies are buried in mass graves in the nearby forest, but this is still small scale compared to what's to come. A month after hell, though, opens, at January 1942's Vancey Conference that we witnessed in this episode's opening.

The six in the works, extermination camps, are organized to have stationary gas chambers instead of carbon monoxide bands. The implementation of the previously tested Zyclon B gas has begun. This has to side and disinfectant produced by a German chemical company arrives in crystal pellets that, when aerosolized, released hydrogen cyanide. With a gas mask on, a man can place the pellets into a gas chamber through a small opening. The gas enters the lungs of those sealed inside, and they then suffer intense pain, convulsions, spasms, and eventually die by heart attack.

It's a cruel death for the victims and easy cleanup for the perpetrators. Even though the ions at school open continue to carry out mass murder in the east, the SS is now focused mainly on transporting Jews and prisoners to these newly created death camps. Deportations are accomplished, to quote Lucy Davidovic once more, by strategy, terror, and force, close quote.

After all, Jews are told to take personal belongings, and the offer of food entices many starving in the ghettos to volunteer for resettlement, allegedly to find work in the east. Meanwhile, back at Auschwitz, major Rudolph Hess is preparing to use Zyclon B on a grander scale.

“Key and the SS officer who took the minutes at the Vaughan Sea Conference, Adolf Eikman, transformed two small farmhouses in nearby Birkenau by filling in windows, removing walls, and building airtight doors.”

Beginning in March 1942, the first house, now known as bunker one, is an operation.

It's March 26, 1942. We're in Auschwitz, Poland, or roughly 1,000 Jewish women from Poeprod, Slovakia, are arriving on the train platform of the newly built Auschwitz extermination camp. Tumbling out of the cramped train car, the women are hurried toward the cottage, also known as bunker one. All the while, Auschwitz deputy commander, Hans Almeyer, NCO Gerhard Pollig, and other officers, chat with the prisoners, asking about their backgrounds and skills. Once at the cottage, the women are ordered to undress for disinfection. While some calmly follow orders, others become panic, as they quickly talk amongst themselves about death by suffocation.

“Not wanting plans to go awry, the Nazi leaders shove their meaning prisoners into the chambers, tightly screen the doors shut, and you and I both know what happens next.”

Even Dr. Joseph Govel's acknowledges the brutality of these mechanized killing centers. On March 27, only a day after the murders we just witnessed at bunker one, he rides in his diary.

"The procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here one, definitively. Not much will remain of the Jews. Not the his written acknowledgement of this will change anything. The other former farmhouses conversion is completed by June. It's now known as bunker two. One month later, between July 17th and 18th, 1942, Auschwitz is inspected by none other than Heinrich Kimler. The SS-Hijshfuhe watches the entire proceedings of the camp, from the arrival of a train of prisoners to the removal of their bodies from bunker two's gas chamber, in silence.

Later on, in major Hess's office, Kimler instructs the camp's commander to prepare for aid-off icons, increased a transport by speeding up the sorting process and reducing the number of people allowed to survive.

In this new phase, only Jews capable of work are to live, all Jewish and Romani children, elderly, many women, and weak men are killed immediately upon arrival.

Within a few weeks, word of himler's tour of Auschwitz reaches Allied resistance channels.

“Edward Schulta, the German managing director of the Gisha mining company, and secret informant to Polish, Swiss, and later American intelligence. Here's the Nazi extermination plans and quickly makes his way to Switzerland.”

The information travels through a few sympathetic Swiss businessman, before reaching Gerhard Reigner, Secretary of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva. Founded back in 1936, to mobilize Jews across the world, against the increasing anti-Semitism coming from Nazi Germany, the WJC is now run by American rabbi, Stephen Wise. Armed with Edward's information on August 8, Gerhard arrives at the American consulate in Geneva. He sends a telegram, or a cablegram, rather, to rabbi-wise, but it gets held up by the U.S. State Department.

They don't think they're a port can be true, and don't bother passing it along to rabbi-wise. Gerhard also shares his information with the British consulate, who, after some debate over, "and bear-seen repercussions," if the information is leaked. Forward the message onto their World Jewish Congress representative, Parliamentarian Samuel Silverman, the Brit immediately sends a copy to rabbi-wise. It's received on August 29, 1942, nearly a month after Gerhard's original meeting with the American consulate.

The stillted cablegram reads, in part, "have received alarming report that in Führers headquarters planned disgust and under consideration, all Jews and countries occupied or controlled, Germany number three and a half to four million. Should after deportation and concentration in East, at one blow exterminated, to resolve once and for all, Jewish question in Europe?"

In a few months later, on November 24, 1942, under Secretary of State, Sumner Wells verifies to the American Jewish leader, what UNI already know to be true.

I regret to tell you that these documents confirm and justify your deepest fears.

“For reasons you will understand, I cannot give these to the press, but there's no reason why you should not.”

It might even help if you did. That night, the American rabbi holds a press conference.

It's the night of November 24, 1942.

For a Washington DC, rabbi Steven S. Y. Chairman of the World Jewish Congress and President of the American Jewish Congress is sharing alarming news with local press and in turn, the American public. He begins. The State Department finally made available today, Tuesday, the documents which have confirmed the stories and rumors of Jewish extermination in all Hitler ruled Europe.

“Burious methods are being used in the campaign, and the Nazi doctors have found that one of the simplest and cheapest methods is to inject air bubbles into the veins of the victim.”

One Nazi physician can handle more than 100 men an hour by this method.

Dr. Wise announces that out of the estimated 4 million Jews in German controlled land, nearly 2 million have been murdered.

Continuing on to what I can only imagine is a shocked press corps. The rabbi adds, not only has Hitler ordered the extermination of all Jews in Nazi rule Europe in 1942, but he recently expressed his wrath at the Nazi's failure to complete the extermination immediately. Dr. Wise makes one more explosive claim that the Nazis are, even exhuming the dead for the value of the corpses. He's careful to note that the world Jewish Congress has extensive sources to confirm this harling announcement, but that they've purposely waited until they harbored no doubts before speaking to the press.

“As the press conference comes to a close, rabbi Stephen Wise prepares to head to New York for an emergency meeting with his American Jewish committee.”

The next day, November 25, 1942, American newspapers published the news that Nazi Germany is attempting to murder all of Europe's Jews. Americans are shocked. December 2, 1942 is declared an international day of mourning, with synagogues pulling special services and Jews marching in New York City in order to draw more attention to the systematic and so far rather successful endeavor to eradicate or exterminate them in Europe. This incomprehensible work of death, soon to be known as the Holocaust. American Jews pressure President Franklin D. Roosevelt to do something, to do anything really.

See, even with the increasing transparency of what's going on in Nazi territory, many American and British civilians and leaders still can't believe the reports. On December 8, rabbi Wise and other WJC leaders meet with FDR. The President acknowledges that the reports of Nazi extermination are true, citing confirmation from many sources that the United States is very well acquainted with most of the facts you are now bringing to our attention. He promises to condemn it off Hitler, but not all Americans are as excited about the idea of FDR intervening. After all, to them, it's not like the US can do anything concrete to help European Jews.

A few weeks later, on December 17, 1942, the US, the UK and other allied nations issue a joint declaration by members of the United Nations, officially confirming reports of the extermination of European Jewry and valing to hold German officials accountable for these war crimes. The declaration reads in part, from all the occupied countries, Jews are being transported in conditions of appalling horror and brutality to Eastern Europe, and Poland, which has been made at the principal Nazi slaughterhouse.

The ghettos established by the German invader are being systematically emptied of all Jews except a few highly skilled workers required for war industries. None of those taken away are ever heard of again. The able-bodied are slowly worked to death and labor camps. The infirm are left to die of exposure and starvation, or are deliberately massacred in mass executions. The number of victims of these bloody cruelties is reckoned in many hundreds of thousands of entirely innocent men, women and children.

We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination. We reaffirm a solemn resolution to ensure that those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution, closed-quote.

Rather, 1943 will only bring more horror for the entirely innocent Jewish men, women and children of Europe.

“Our tales of these bestial actions of the Holocaust will only continue in the episode to come.”

History that doesn't suck is created and hosted by me, Greg Jackson.

Episode researched and written by Greg Jackson and the proud descendant of Holocaust survivors, Riley and Evalor. Special thanks to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for audio and transgress of Holocaust survivors telling their stories.

“Production by Eric Shit, audio editing by Mohammad Shazade, sound designed by Molly Vaughn, theme music composed by Greg Jackson, arrangement and additional composition by Lindsey Graham and Bayershire.”

For bibliography of all primary and secondary sources consulted in writing this episode, visit htdspodcast.com.

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