The statement was issued by a precursor to the United Nations, not the organization that bears that name today, which was established in Write to Lily Rothman at lily. By Lily Rothman. Get our History Newsletter. Put today's news in context and see highlights from the archives. Please enter a valid email address. Please attempt to sign up again. Sign Up Now. An unexpected error has occurred with your sign up. Please try again later.
Another factor linked with how much Americans know about the Holocaust is whether respondents have ever visited a Holocaust memorial or museum.
By comparison, those who have never visited a Holocaust memorial or museum answer 2. The survey included a question that asked respondents whether they personally know someone who is Jewish. Compared with those who say they do not know anyone who is Jewish, Americans who know a Jewish person answer about one additional question right, on average 2.
There are modest differences in levels of knowledge about the Holocaust based on gender, race and ethnicity, age, and region. For example, men correctly answer 2. In addition, Americans ages 65 and older correctly answer an average of 2. And U. Politically, Republicans and those who lean toward the Republican Party 2.
The four multiple-choice questions about the Holocaust also were included in a recent Pew Research Center survey of U. On average, teens correctly answer slightly fewer questions than U. This may reflect disparities in education. Among adults, those with a college degree correctly answer about one question more than those with a high school degree or less. Of course, teens between the ages of 13 and 17 have not yet had a chance to pursue post-secondary education.
Overall, U. However, one difference between teens and adults is the relationship between gender and Holocaust knowledge. While adult men answer slightly more questions right than women, teen boys and girls correctly answer a similar number of questions about the Holocaust 1.
The Pew Research Center survey is not the first research conducted to assess how much American adults know about the Holocaust. Even though some of the questions asked on the new survey are similar to those asked on previous surveys, these questions were not always asked in the exact same way. Moreover, the Nazis set out to exterminate the entire Jewish people. The only other group they intended to wipe out as a whole were the Roma and Sinti, although the Nazis were slightly less fanatical in their persecution.
They murdered The Roma and Sinti call this massacre porajmos , 'the devouring'. The main perpetrators of the Holocaust were the Nazis who planned and carried out the mass murder. Still, they could never have done this without the support and help of millions of Germans and others. Virtually all government agencies were complicit to some extent. There was little protest from the population, although it should be noted that the Third Reich was a dictatorship without free speech.
The allies of Nazi Germany were often guilty of killing Jews themselves or of deporting them to Germany. In some cases, they succumbed to German pressure, in others, they did not deport their own citizens, but only Jews with foreign passports.
Throughout the occupied territories, there were numerous collaborators, who reported Jews to the Germans or helped the Germans to find Jews in hiding. Government agencies often followed the orders of the Germans and cooperated in the arrest and deportation of Jews.
Sometimes they did so in order to prevent worse from happening, but their actions often had fatal consequences for the Jews. In Eastern Europe, some people sided with the Germans to join them in the fight against the hated Soviet regime. The Germans sometimes recruited personnel for the extermination camps among Soviet prisoners of war, for whom this was their only chance to escape death. People collaborated with the Germans for a variety of reasons.
Antisemitic ideas often played a role, but not always. Some people had personal scores to settle. Others reported Jews out of greed, hoping that they would be able to seize their possessions. Fear of the Germans sometimes kept people from helping the Jews. It is difficult to determine how many people knew that the Jews were being murdered during the war. Few will have realised the full extent of the Nazi crimes.
Yet in many cases, the population was aware of what was going on, at least to some extent. In Germany, the plan to murder all Jews was officially a secret, but due to the enormous number of people involved, rumours started circulating before long. Soldiers stationed in the east wrote about the executions in their letters home and took photographs.
Many others were involved in processing the Jewish possessions that were left behind after the deportations. The Germans did not know as much about the extermination camps.
Their existence was deliberately kept secret from the outside world. Still, the local population near places of execution, ghettos, and camps knew what was happening. Besides, the Nazi crimes were so inconceivable that few could believe that the reports were not exaggerated. Only when the Allies liberated the concentration and extermination camps did the world fully realise the extent of the crime that had taken place.
Holocaust or Shoah? Causes of the Holocaust The Holocaust has a number of causes. Expelling the Jews from Germany Between and , the Nazis made life in Germany increasingly impossible for the Jews. The decision to resort to genocide Historians disagree about the moment when Hitler decided that all European Jews should be killed. Among the programs launched were the "Transfer Agreement" between the Jewish Agency and the German government whereby immigrants to Palestine were allowed to transfer their funds to that country in conjunction with the import of German goods to Palestine.
Other efforts focused on retraining prospective emigrants in order to increase the number of those eligible for visas, since some countries barred the entry of members of certain professions. Other groups attempted to help in various phases of refugee work: selection of candidates for emigration, transportation of refugees, aid in immigrant absorption, etc.
Some groups attempted to facilitate increased emigration by enlisting the aid of governments and international organizations in seeking refugee havens. The League of Nations established an agency to aid refugees but its success was extremely limited due to a lack of political power and adequate funding. The United States and Great Britain convened a conference in at Evian, France, seeking a solution to the refugee problem.
With the exception of the Dominican Republic, the nations assembled refused to change their stringent immigration regulations, which were instrumental in preventing large-scale immigration. In , the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, which had been established at the Evian Conference, initiated negotiations with leading German officials in an attempt to arrange for the relocation of a significant portion of German Jewry. However, these talks failed. Efforts were made for the illegal entry of Jewish immigrants to Palestine as early as July , but were later halted until July Large-scale efforts were resumed under the Mosad le-Aliya Bet, Revisionist Zionists, and private parties.
Attempts were also made, with some success, to facilitate the illegal entry of refugees to various countries in Latin America. The key reason for the relatively low number of refugees leaving Europe prior to World War II was the stringent immigration policies adopted by the prospective host countries. In the United States, for example, the number of immigrants was limited to , per year, divided by country of origin. Moreover, the entry requirements were so stringent that available quotas were often not filled.
Schemes to facilitate immigration outside the quotas never materialized as the majority of the American public consistently opposed the entry of additional refugees. Other countries, particularly those in Latin America, adopted immigration policies that were similar or even more restrictive, thus closing the doors to prospective immigrants from the Third Reich.
Great Britain, while somewhat more liberal than the United States on the entry of immigrants, took measures to severely limit Jewish immigration to Palestine. In May , the British issued a "White Paper" stipulating that only 75, Jewish immigrants would be allowed to enter Palestine over the course of the next five years 10, a year, plus an additional 25, This decision prevented hundreds of thousands of Jews from escaping Europe.
The countries most able to accept large numbers of refugees consistently refused to open their gates. Although a solution to the refugee problem was the agenda of the Evian Conference, only the Dominican Republic was willing to approve large-scale immigration. The United States and Great Britain proposed resettlement havens in under-developed areas e.
Guyana, formerly British Guiana, and the Philippines , but these were not suitable alternatives. Two important factors should be noted. At that time, there were no operative plans to kill the Jews. The goal was to induce them to leave, if necessary, by the use of force. It is also important to recognize the attitude of German Jewry. While many German Jews were initially reluctant to emigrate, the majority sought to do so following Kristallnacht The Night of Broken Glass , November , Had havens been available, more people would certainly have emigrated.
He considered this area the natural territory of the German people, an area to which they were entitled by right, the Lebensraum living space that Germany needed so badly for its farmers to have enough soil. Hitler maintained that these areas were needed for the Aryan race to preserve itself and assure its dominance. There is no question that Hitler knew that, by launching the war in the East, the Nazis would be forced to deal with serious racial problems in view of the composition of the population in the Eastern areas.
Thus, the Nazis had detailed plans for the subjugation of the Slavs, who would be reduced to serfdom status and whose primary function would be to serve as a source of cheap labor for Aryan farmers. Those elements of the local population, who were of higher racial stock, would be taken to Germany where they would be raised as Aryans.
In Hitler's mind, the solution of the Jewish problem was also linked to the conquest of the eastern territories. These areas had large Jewish populations and they would have to be dealt with accordingly. While at this point there was still no operative plan for mass annihilation, it was clear to Hitler that some sort of comprehensive solution would have to be found.
There was also talk of establishing a Jewish reservation either in Madagascar or near Lublin, Poland. When he made the decisive decision to invade the Soviet Union, Hitler also gave instructions to embark upon the "Final Solution," the systematic murder of European Jewry.
Was there any opposition to the Nazis within Germany? Throughout the course of the Third Reich, there were different groups who opposed the Nazi regime and certain Nazi policies. They engaged in resistance at different times and with various methods, aims, and scope.
From the beginning, leftist political groups and a number of disappointed conservatives were in opposition; at a later date, church groups, government officials, students and businessmen also joined. After the tide of the war was reversed, elements within the military played an active role in opposing Hitler. At no point, however, was there a unified resistance movement within Germany. Despite the difficult conditions to which Jews were subjected in Nazi-occupied Europe, many engaged in armed resistance against the Nazis.
This resistance can be divided into three basic types of armed activities: ghetto revolts, resistance in concentration and death camps, and partisan warfare. The Warsaw Ghetto revolt, which lasted for about five weeks beginning on April 19, , is probably the best-known example of armed Jewish resistance, but there were many ghetto revolts in which Jews fought against the Nazis.
Jewish partisan units were active in many areas, including Baranovichi, Minsk, Naliboki forest, and Vilna. While the sum total of armed resistance efforts by Jews was not militarily overwhelming and did not play a significant role in the defeat of Nazi Germany, these acts of resistance did lead to the rescue of an undetermined number of Jews, Nazi casualties, and untold damage to German property and self-esteem.
What was the Judenrat? The Judenrat was the council of Jews, appointed by the Nazis in each Jewish community or ghetto. According to the directive from Reinhard Heydrich of the SS on September 21, , a Judenrat was to be established in every concentration of Jews in the occupied areas of Poland. They were led by noted community leaders. Enforcement of Nazi decrees affecting Jews and administration of the affairs of the Jewish community were the responsibilities of the Judenrat.
These functions placed the Judenrat in a highly responsible, but controversial position, and many of their actions continue to be the subject of debate among historians. While the intentions of the heads of councils were rarely challenged, their tactics and methods have been questioned. Among the most controversial were Mordechai Rumkowski in Lodz and Jacob Gens in Vilna, both of whom justified the sacrifice of some Jews in order to save others. Leaders and members of the Judenrat were guided, for the most part, by a sense of communal responsibility, but lacked the power and the means to successfully thwart Nazi plans for annihilation of all Jews.
Its activities can basically be divided into three periods: 1. September, - June 22, The IRC confined its activities to sending food packages to those in distress in Nazi-occupied Europe. Packages were distributed in accordance with the directives of the German Red Cross.
Throughout this time, the IRC complied with the German contention that those in ghettos and camps constituted a threat to the security of the Reich and, therefore, were not allowed to receive aid from the IRC. June 22, - Summer Despite numerous requests by Jewish organizations, the IRC refused to publicly protest the mass annihilation of Jews and non-Jews in the camps, or to intervene on their behalf.
It maintained that any public action on behalf of those under Nazi rule would ultimately prove detrimental to their welfare. At the same time, the IRC attempted to send food parcels to those individuals whose addresses it possessed. The IRC did insist that it be allowed to visit concentration camps, and a delegation did visit the "model ghetto" of Terezin Theresienstadt. The IRC request came following the receipt of information about the harsh living conditions in the camp.
The IRC requested permission to investigate the situation, but the Germans only agreed to allow the visit nine months after submission of the request. This delay provided time for the Nazis to complete a "beautification" program, designed to fool the delegation into thinking that conditions at Terezin were quite good and that inmates were allowed to live out their lives in relative tranquility.
The visit, which took place on July 23, , was followed by a favorable report on Terezin to the members of the IRC which Jewish organizations protested vigorously, demanding that another delegation visit the camp. Such a visit was not permitted until shortly before the end of the war. In reality, the majority were subsequently deported to Auschwitz where they were murdered.
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