Transcripts For CSPAN3 Studying The Holocaust 20240713

Dr. Alexander richie, who serves as the convener of our president ial councillors, to lead dr. Gerhardt wineburg and dr. Jeff mcgargy. Alex has been involved with our museum since the first appearance at our 2014 international conference. And in those five years, we have kept her quite busy. Many meetings, committees. And, also, as you heard this morning, leading a lot of our educational travel tours. She she has been has a deep and personal connection to the holocaust, as her fatherinlaw, who im sure shes going to explain more about, was, himself, in auschwitz during world war ii. So to hear the latest in holocau holocaust scholarship and to look at what was going on in june 1944, its my pleasure to ask dr. Richie to come up. Thank you so much. This is, indeed, a topic very, very close to my heart, as most of you know. I live in warsaw in poland, as just heard my fatherinlaw was in auschwitz when a Founding Member of which was an organization to try and save jews from the ghetto. Then aided the warsaw uprising. The warsaw uprising was immediately put into prison for his pains. Later was in solidarity. Then when the wall collapsed, became foreign minister of poland a couple of times. But his great passion in life was talking about what had happened. Not just in poland but in germany and the soefviet union d central europe. To make sure that this history was not just remembered but that it was understood. That it was constantly scrutinized and that new research was also listened to and and scholarship was always encouraged. Holocaust research has constantly been changing since the war began with the horrors of the revelations of the camps. And then, of course, the nuremburg trials also revealed the extent of nazi crimes. A member of the american Prosecution Team coined the term genocide. There were initiatives to remember the tragedy right away. Things like the the creation of the warsaw ghetto memorial. The rediscovery of the archives and many other things right after the war. But Public Interest tended to wane and academic and intellectual interest also until really the ikeman trial in 1961. And really exploded since the 1980s and now there are many, many new directions. First of all, examining the sheer scale and complexity of the of the holocaust, which i know that jeff will be talking about. Jeffs work, which points to the tens of thousands of camps and killing sites in the in the holocaust. And theres new focus from everything from looking more at perpetrators. At collaboration. At the genesis of antisemitism. At geography. Many, many other things besides, which i know well hear a little more about today from our two mag s magnificent speakers. Im deeply honored and very pleased indeed to be asked to introduce these two magnificent speakers. Jeff, Senior Applied Research scholar and the Mandel Center for advanced holocaust studies and the United States Holocaust Memorial museum where he served since 2000 as project director and editor in chief for the museums sevenvolume encyclopedia of the camps and ghettos between 1933 and 1945. The first volume, which appeared in june 2009, received National Jewish book award and judaica referenced award amongst other distinctions. Jeff received his doctorate from from ohio state university. And is recipient among other honors. Work upon which he based his work inside hitlers high command. Which was also the winner of the society for military histories 2001 distinguished award. He is also the author of annihilation and many other things as well. I am also deeply, deeply honored to have gerhardt wineburg, who we consider to be the dean of historians. Internationallyrecognized authority on nazi germany and origins and courses of world war ii. He is a Professor Emeritus of history at chapel hill. He is the author or editor of so many books and articles, its almost impossible to start to list them or wed be here till midnight. I just wanted to say that i used gerhardts work when i was starting out as a historian. And i have well found companies of most copies of most of his works on my bookshelf. Just looking one out of the world at arms, which is so extraordinary and really encapsulates gerhardts work because not only is it scholarly and discusses the war and so on. But it brings his incredible life experience. Born in hamburg. Working in japan after the war. And really being to understanding, learning about, the entire world. And so the history of world war ii is seen, from a military perspective, political perspective, social, economic, and many other perspectives. And he manages to weave all of these things into this Extraordinary International global perspective, which is extremely rare. So its with great, great gratitude and honor that i welcome gerhardt, first, to the stand. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you. Can you hear me . Thats a big help. For some time, there was a scholarly debate that attracted a good deal of attention. Between those who called themselves or were called intentionalists and functionalists. The former argued that the systematic killing of jews was planned and organized from the top. While the latter held that the process was one of steady radicalization. Pushed forward, over time, by those involved as they engaged in evermore radical procedures culminating, at some point, in systematic mass killing. The careful attention to local detail and initiatives that characterize the work of those who called and considered themselves functionalists has certainly contributed greatly to our ability to follow the technical developments of mass murder. And the extent to which individual police, military, and administrative personnel could and did exercise their own judgment about the procedures to be followed. Whatever the prior developments and the making of local decisions, state of formal decision at the very top. Even some of those writing about the hurricane still prefer to ignore the relevant evidence and continue to advocate something of a functionalist interpretation. We know, from the romanian record that was determined to be accurate by the german official who checked it at the time, that when adolf hitler met romainnia dictator on june 12th, 1941, he asked hitler what was to be done about the jews in the soviet territory that their armies were about to invade . An important issue for antanescu, since the area that would be seized initially was known to contain a very large number of jews. Hitler told them that they were all to be killed. An instruction that the evidence indicates he had earlier orally given. We also know now, we have a clear confirmation of the meeting before the invasion, at which a high ss official told the commanders, the murder commandos, that were to follow the german armies into the soviet union, that a major part of their assignment was to be to kill all the jews. Ill come back to the source for this resolution of a subject that was once quite controversial. When i get to another point. All the evidence we now have leaves no doubt that the commanders of the battalions of the order police, units with members more than ten times as numerous as the famous, were similarly instructed before the invasion of june 1941. Hitlers own telling. The minister of war in croatia in 1941 that all jews in europe were to be killed. And his telling the grand of jerusalem in november 1941 that all jews in the middle east and the rest of the world were also to be killed. Both recorded in the german documents published decades ago. Although, these very clear and explicit records are still ignored by many scholars. A trend in the literature that has not moved as far and widely as this speaker thinks is needed is that of the very close interrelationship of the war as a fight between germany and those it attacked on the one hand. And the holocaust on the other. Its only quite recently that those writing on the wall, other than myself, include any references to the holocaust at all. And, similarly, those who write on the holocaust pay very much too little attention to the realities of the fighting. Let me illustrate this issue with some examples. The murder commandos, in many cases, killed men, not whole families. In the first weeks of the german invasion of the soviet union. This is occasionally as evidence for a first step, that would be followed by radicalization, subsequently. What is missing here is any reference to the reality of the early fighting on the Eastern Front. The german assault surprised the red army that stalin had held back as he disregarded all warnings from his own Intelligence Service and from the british and American Governments. The German Forces, under these circumstances, advance very rapidly. And the german armys chief of staff, general holda, was sure on july 3rd, 1941, that the campaign had succeeded. And that the rapid advance of German Forces showed that a quick victory was certain. This matter is a practical matter. That a murder commander had to follow an advancing German Military unit through some of the most densely jewish settled part of europe at the rate of about 30 miles a day. They were simply not in a position to do anything else. The members of the unit would shoot the local men and come back when the front slowed down to kill the women and children. The units members did what they could in the circumstances of the moment. And had no need either for new orders or the personal supervision of himla, who as we know, repeated went to the east in the summer of 41 to watch the progress of his new program. Just as subsequently, he would visit auschwitz in the summer of 1942 to observe the killing procedure implemented there. Neither hitler, nor antonescu cared. That was indeed a subject left to local initiatives and preferences. A most critical point about the fighting, namely, that the allies first contained, and then ended, the holocaust also rarely receives the attention it deserves. Please, do not be offended if i suggest that if the germans had won and obtained control of the 47 of the then48 states of the usa, that the japanese were willing for them to have, there would surely have been, in any american group, some themselves, or their parents or grandparents, would have been killed because they were jewish. Some in this audience would have been killed as jews. Some nonjews would have been killed because of some handicap. And some would have contracted polio. And either died as a result or have been crippled and then killed because the two doctors whose discovery conquered that disease in the 1950s would both have been killed because they happened to be jewish. On the other side of the relationship between the course of the fighting and the holocaust, those who written endlessly about field Marshal Rommel and his campaigns in north africa, generally ignore a critical part of his assignment. He was, indeed, originally sent there in 1941 to salvage italys colony, libya, lest the italian people dump mussolini. When that colony was lost to british forces. A point that was a major worry for hitler. But why push the africa corps, as it was called, into egypt and the middle east in 1942 . And do this at a time when the primary military for germany was the Eastern Front where things in the had obviously had not gone the way hitler and his generals had confidently anticipated. The germans intended italy to have egypt and the middle east for its oil. While germany would get its oil from the caucuses. Caucuses. In spite of these realities. In spite of the necessities for a renewed offensive against the soviet union. The moment in the summer of 1942, it looked as if the africa court might get to cairo and beyond. This was not done because hitler wanted the members to get a good tan or that hitler expected them to dismantle one of the pyramids so that it could be redirected next to the altar in berlin. The whole point was that all the jews in the middle east, about 1 million at the time, were to be killed before the area was turned over to italy because hitler and hymnal are for good reasons of Prior Experience did not trust the italians to do so, but did trust ronald to direct the murder commander to do what hitler had personally promised a grandma fuchsia of jerusalem a little bit more than half a year earlier. In recent decades, there have been significant and positive developments in the study of the holocaust as a result of several trends and especially important trends that have been the declassification of very important irrelevant records. The agreement of the British Government in 1996, to the opening of their interception and decoding of the reports of the German Order Police has transformed our understanding of the early stages of the holocaust in 1941. It is now clear that these Police Battalions included not only about ten times as many man as the murder commandoes, over 25,000 has compared with close to 3000. Also, undoubtedly killed far more jews than the commandoes whose reports because of their far earlier availability for research has been a central piece of evidence in all prior studies of the subject and remain of great importance. The recent publication by the german city of breman, on the participation of the holocaust of two Police Battalions from that city both supplements what we already knew about such. Also provides vivid details about their participation and such specific operations as the notorious september 1941 mass murder of over 30,000 jews in the ukraine in kyiv. As well as their guarding of transports of jews from the rest transit camp in the netherlands to auschwitz beginning in the summer of 1942. Perhaps other german cities will follow the example of breman and facilitates first the research and then the publication of the activities of Police Battalions that originated in vienna. Additional Important Information has come to light with a declassification that came out of the 19 and 1998 nazi war crimes disclosure and japanese record has passed by the american congress. A major feature of that role was that it lifted the automatic exclusion from the classification with you and from the implementation of freedom of information requests up two categories of american rebels. Those relating to intelligence sources and methods and those called Foreign Government information, a general name utilized by u. S. Government for material provided by the United States by a Foreign Government that had a security classification at the time it was given to our government. While records in the former category could now be subjected to systematic declassification review, and the latter case, the government that had provided that information, in general great britain, would be asked for its consent for declassification the procedure and the former category promptly led to massive deep classifications, and work on these newly opened records has just begun. In the process of requesting permission to declassify in the latter category, it turned out that the british were unusually cooperative. As chair of the Historical Advisory Panel advising the Interagency Working Group that had been established to implement the new law, i was told by several of those at the working end of the declassification process that this rather dramatic break with all of their Prior Experience in dealing with the british in declassification records was most likely due to the widely known personal interest of then president clinton and the general topic. If there were a hold up, he might telephone his friend pray minister tony blair at 10 downing street. Those in the relevant offices in and near london did not want the rocket from 10 downing street. Since by definition the records in question were at least half a century old, the highly unusual rapidity of the agreement to be declassified was unlikely to cause any real problems for british security. An important byproduct of the declassification of american intelligence records was the publication of books by Richard Brightman and others about the postwar american recruitment of nazis. Some with exceedingly dubious records by american intelligence agencies. One significant product of the declassification of Foreign Government information, with the consent of the British Government is the collection of summaries of british interrogations of murder commando leader oldendorf in the summer of 1945, before he was turned over to the americans in december of that year in which hillary earl could therefore utilize for rural her goal on the trial of commando leaders. It is reasonable to expect that in the coming years, other researchers will find Important Information in the material that the british allowed the American Government to open up. Obviously, the American Government could ask for declassification of only those british documents of which copies had been given to it at the time. That left open the question of british records, especially their Intelligence Services, of which no copies were to be found in american archives. That process also has been moving forward slowly but steadily in recent years, and scholars have been making good use of these newly opened records, we can expect important publications based on these declassified records in the coming years. There is also now a clearer perspective on two quite different passage of the events. A way in which some type to profit on the murder of their former neighbors is illustrated quite dramatically by the 2012 book of janet gross, Golden Harvest events at the periphery of the holocaust. Which offers insight into the digging up of both the dead and related materials for profit by substantial nobles numbers of diggers. On the other site, the way a few jews try to protect themselves and their families by aiding the nazis is described by peter whines 1992 book which recounts the activities of the notorious jewish woman who assisted the nazis in catching jews trying to survive with false identities, or in hiding in wartime berlin. If the descendents of the woman who betrayed jews to the nazis, have problems engaging their situation with this ancestry, it is worth considering those of the woman who as an adult makes the discovery that her mother was the daughter of the murderer who is shown shooting jews as a form of morning entertainment, in the movie schindlers list. She now does speaking at the Holocaust Museum about her experiences and findings may i suggest that a significant issue we all need to confront and engage in is this divergence between a clearer and more thoroughly published scholarship about the holocaust on one hand, and the general mental distance from it, and the war of which it was a central part on the other. Another Significant Development in the field holocaust studies has been its inclusion in other genocides in centers, programs and courses. This is a development that should not, in this offices opinion, should not be opposed paired it is essential that in the process, there not be any gliding over distinctive features of the holocaust that have not been a part of any of the other horrors that we call genocide. Im not suggesting that the holocaust is worse than other genocides, but that there are significant differences between it and the other genocides that the courses and programs engage. The most obvious of these features are fundamental differences i would suggest is the geographic one. All other genocides have a specific geographic focus. Those who killed others invariably did so to remove a hated population element from a specific area. The Armenian Genocide who was a terrible event in the ottoman empire. Those who ordered, and those who perpetrated in it were not interested in armenians who had settled in the United States, latin america, or anywhere else outside the ottoman empire. Those were busy murdering eastern Orthodox Christians in the world war ii puppet state of croatia were not planning to kill eastern Orthodox Christians who had moved to chicago, or lived anywhere else in europe. The holocaust was a project to kill all jews from the globe, regardless of location. The allies were successful in containing it, and thereby saving approximately two thirds of the intended victims. But that was most certainly a great disappointment to those who initiated and implemented that particular genocide. Another difference is the routinized preparation and up implimintation of vast numbers of professionals, soldiers and others over the. Period of four years. This development in holocaust studies makes even more important than the historical concerns of historians and other scholars the major issues of direct access to records on one hand, and the preservation of records on the other. The american records relating to the holocaust have been systematically declassified. Relevant german records in germany, and any still held in the United States, britain and france, are also, as far as we know, accessible or in the process of being opened. The germans have been working hard to observe permission to microfilm german records that work half. But the advancing red army, and are scattered and archives all over the Russian Federation in exchange for giving the russians a set of the films. The extent to which these provide Additional Information on the holocaust is largely unknown at this time. It suggests an important collection of material to be utilized in future investigations. As i mentioned earlier, the british have been declassified their holdings of intelligence files from world war ii, and it is reasonable to expect that before too long, that process will be completed. In other european countries, the process differs from state to state. A complete survey of that issue remains to be prepared and publicized. This situation leads to consideration the two major types of relevant records of the existence of which we know, but that are not as yet fully accessible for research. These are some of the files of the president ial archive of the soviet union, and a world war ii intelligence files of the soviet union, both held and kept closed by the current regime in moscow. As noah needs to be reminded, the soviet union dissolved over two decades ago. At first, there was thereafter a very substantial opening of access to records. Over the years, there has been under the Russian Federation something of a reversal. Ironically, precisely in the years in which in other countries there has been an increasing willingness to open records. Certainly there has been more access both to russian scholars, and those to other countries than was true in the former soviet union, but the reality remains that the access has been for some years, and is currently behind that of all other major world war ii allies. I point to the next portion of this talk, the current restrictive policy is like do to keep those even who insist on locking up parts of the record from ever being able to benefit from reading it themselves. The issue of access is very closely related to the issue of preservation. In world war ii, all religions deliberately utilized paper in order to use their resources for more important things. The paper is in the process of disintegration. Some of it is already no longer readable. This is not micrafilmed that will be permanently accessible, this is an aspect of the still closed records that has not received the attention that both in my judgment and my experience it deserves and desperately needs. Closely related to the issue of deteriorating paper, though rarely mentioned, is the issue of inaccessible electronic records. No one wants to hear this, but it happens to be a case. An American Government Advisory Committee in the late 1990s, members were informed that our government could no longer access very substantial portions of its own records of the vietnam war. This is certain to be a continuing problem. People refuse to engage the reality of ideological change. Digitization is fine, as long as all involved recognize that this is a format that facilitates access from widely scattered and distant locations, but only for a short time. Perhaps 15 years, at the most 15. The point that i want to stress is that this issue of technological change and deteriorating paper mean that unless records are microfilmed, and those microfilms are reproduced after 75 years, a great rate of information is something going to disappear from access. We must remember in our libraries, there are risks of books by manuscript collections, and journals also deteriorating overtime and being subject to technological changes that will affect not only the particular subject of the holocaust, but all research in the history of the recent past. Thank you. Applause] good afternoon everyone. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you this afternoon. We all know now how pivotal the month of june, 1944 was in the european theater. With the success of overlord and the destruction of Army Group Center by the soviets, the third reichs ultimate fate was clear. Unfortunetely, the germans did not read the memo. They would fight on from a fear of panic to and coercion. Millions of prisoners suffered and died in the camps, but still functioned in the territory of the germans control. For nearly 20 years, i have been the project director and editor general of the United States Holocaust Memorial museum encyclopedia of camps and ghettos. That project is focused on the individual camps. How many do you think if you think of all the different kind of camps you there were . Know about, concentration camps, extermination centers, pow camps, forced labor in the encyclopedia, we camps, prisons, whatever. How many do you think are going to cover about there were . In the encyclopedia, we 45,000 individual sites. Are going to cover about i will give you a moment 45,000 individual sites. To think about that. I will give you a moment to think about that. I will tell you that that i will tell you that that is a low figure. Is a low figure. That is less than half of that is less than half of what really existed. A lot of documentation is missing. Some categories are too big for us to put into the encyclopedia. The numbers themselves are significant. The key point about the camps is how central they were to the whole nazi program. The nazi regime had four overlapping goals. Ensuring the dominance of the socalled aryan and race, creating a Peoples Community which also had a racial component, living space to guarantee germanys selfsufficiency, and defeating germanys enemies internal and external. The camps were a set of practical tools with which the nazis tried to achieve those goals. This is how we can make sense of a collection of so many different camps with different kinds of prisoners under different conditions run by differing agencies. They capture a system. The camps were a system, not like a computer, but as a group of organizations that acted independently to achieve related goals. I would to examine the purposes the caps on the camps served, that way we can get a sense of how the system worked. We will start with the tension. Control of prisoner space and time was the fundamental goal for every site. The attention was not a goal in and of itself, attention facilitated other purposes. For example, there were internment camps for foreign nationals commit especially westerners per these were people who were just on the wrong side of the border when the war broke out. It seems like a case of short attention. Little was demanded of these people. They were not being punished. There were not targeted for illimination, but there was a connection to the war effort. They were potential spies or saboteurs, and they had to be detained and observed. This was common in every country that took part in the war. In other countries, we can talk about the ghettos. There were about 1150 ghettos created on an ad hoc basis to detain jews, but eventually labour and extermination became a part of their purpose. Inmates were put to work, and they were denied food and medicine. By june of 1944, the ghettos were pretty much all gone. That was also true for the socalled forced labor camps, these were linked with the ghettos very often people were taken out of the ghettos and put into these caps, worked until they were too weak, and thrown back into the ghetto. Prisoner of war camps. Detention was a main goal there. You did not want enemy soldiers wandering around. Labor soon became very important the germans wanted to put these people to work. Tens of thousands of sub camps spring up at labor sites all over germany. Some pow camps were also defective killing sites. Soviet pows were condemned for race and politics, they suffered a 50 death rate. That is about 3. 3 million soviet soldiers died in german captivity through shooting, starvation, exposure, disease and overwork. You can compare that to a 2 3 death rate for most other pows. You can see how detention worked, and you can start to see how these purposes overlap, as we will talk about more we just talked about labor at ghettos and pow worksites, now we are going to focus on it as a main purpose for the camps. It is hard to find a camp that did not use labor. Labor fulfilled two objectives, productive and punitive. The productive objective was making up for a labor shortage, and producing military surprise supplies at minimal cost. Most german men were fighting a war, so the germans had to pull other people in to perform labor. The largest category of camps for the camps were foreign forced laborers, nonjews. There were more than 36,000 of these camps. How many more we do not know. The prisoners who were in them were simply there to work in every conceivable sector of the economy. Agriculture, manufacturing, retail, social services. Individual firms and factories had their own camps. When there was demand for small numbers of workers, say in a farming committed he come of the germans often put together Community Camps where the prisoners would sleep at night, and during the day they would go out to perform work. The punitive objective was to establish punishment and control. The nature and the pace of work could be adjusted to exhaust, humiliate commit oppressed, and even kill. The work itself could kill. Prisoners who became too weak to work were often murdered. There were 24 main concentration camps and about 900 sub camps as worksites. There were penal units and camps for soldiers. There were Justice Ministry prisons, police camps, and lots of other sites that used punitive labor. This could be a tool for reform for the very small number of prisoners whom the nazis wanted to refor and release. It was a matter of establishing so much harsh work for them that you broke their spirit and they would never give you trouble again. There were also camps that for workeducation camps. There were about 235 of these. They show you the links between some of the types of camps. If you are a forced laborer, and you refuse to work or you were not working hard enough or you broke some regulation, you could be sent for up to eight weeks and would be forced to work under harsh circumstances. After eight weeks, if your attitude improved you could go back to your forced labor camp which would seem like a garden party in comparison. If it was judged that your attitude had not improved, you would be sent to a concentration camp which was going to be considerably worse. Note that there was a gray area between productive and punitive labor. Ghetto inmates for supposed to be performing productive work, even while they were being worked to death. Ordinary forced laborers from Eastern Europe who theoretically were not being punished for often starved, beaten, and tens of thousands died. This gives us our segue into punishment, the next objective. This was central to many parts. It was a tool for reform, a means of control, and a deterrent to people outside. Germans knew that if they misbehaved, and people in occupied europe as well, if they misbehaved they were going to wind up in someplace that was going to be unpleasant. Punishment could take many forms. We have talked about labor already. Detention was another form of punishment. Every normal part of camp life could be adapted for punishment. Food, housing, closing clothing. Much of this occurred without cause or justification. There were excesses, even though brutality was supposed to be regulated there were supposed to be rules, but there was plenty of room for gratuitous cruelty. To the nazis, some people just deserved to be punished because of who they were or how they behaved. These included jews, gypsies, criminals, homosexuals, the chronically unemployed, drunks, slobs, wehrmacht soldiers who defied the regime. These people were a danger to the community. Their punishment could be whatever the authorities decided upon. Next, racial policy. Nazi is him was based on the idea that there are races. Races compete for resources the way animals compete in a darwinian sense. Some races are better than others and deserve to take with a neat, lesser races can be enslaved or a limited appeared this ideology created realworld consequences for the camps. Laborers who were beaten and starved, russian pows were among the victims whose experiences were harsher and fatal. There were places that preterm german eyes asian facilities. Germanization facilities. Young people with plot hair and blue eyes would be put in these places and evaluated. If they were found valuable they would be given to german couples to be raised as germans. Then there were euthanasia centers. We are careful in how we talk about this phrase. This is not euthanasia as we debate it today. As we debate it today. This is how germans dealt with children and adults with disabilities and congenital diseases. There were about 170, though we suspect more euthanasia centers. These were the first places that the germans used poison gas on human beings. They killed up to 300,000 people in these places. Of course there were extermination camps that were an outgrowth from the euthanasia centers. We count five of them. They were the ultimate expression of nazi racial theory. The sites that placed the nazi regime, in my estimation most firmly apart from any other. Most of the extermination camps had shut down and had been illiminated by june of 1944, but auschwitz was still in operation. Murdering the jews of hungary. Racial superiority was also central to the plant to reorder the map of the Eastern Europe in order to provide germany with resources. Those resources would be useful in the short term to fight the war, and in the long term to support the area and race. That and that ends the camps for oole linepoles. The poland were such harsh places that they became defective death camps. Finally, fighting a total war. I have often heard it asked, why did the germans waste so much effort and resources to imprison and kill people when they had a war to fight . The short answer is this was not a waste. The camps served a central purpose as part of the war effort. Labor camps contributed through production. The destruction of the jews was certainly not in distraction or a waste. This was one of the reasons they were fighting to begin with, to rid the world of the jewish race. In a lesser sense there were other efforts. A total war acquired the control or elimination of anyone who weakened society or threatened the nations ability to fight. Civilians in the east were incarcerated, screened and executed as communists, partisans or jews. The army used hundreds of thousands of people for forced labor, working on roads and fortification. It sent more of those people back to germany for forced labor there. This was part of their antipartisan campaign. Give me a show of hands if you have heard of the socalled comfort women . I bet most of you dont know that the germans did the same thing. They set up a network of what they called field brothels. The women who worked in those bubbles, the vast majority were not there voluntarily. They were rounded up in the streets, taken out of concentration camps, sometimes they were put in there because they were be planning they were being punished. From all of this, i think you can see just how pervasive, dominant, and significant the camps were. They were a central part of the nazi regime the nazis aspire to control every aspect of german lives, ostensibly for their own good. Anyone who is not a member was a target. Racial and political enemies, outcasts and military opponents all faced attention, abuse and death. This was total war. The germans forced millions of people to sacrifice their freedom, health and lives. The camps were tools in that effort. They were centers of production, a means of combating weakness all for the benefit of the socalled aryan race. In the end, they achieved none of those things and became the most visible reason why much of the world banded together to defeat the nazi regime. Thank you for listening. applause [applause] thank you you to our panelists. Before our hard end 3 30. Please raise your hand. We will start in the front. Thank you for your presentation. Perhaps you folks can answer a question i have posed as a i have posts to military experts with regards to the normandy campaign. In the summer of 1944, from a military standpoint field marshals rommel and others felt the war was lost and the answer was for germans to settle with the west and combine forces to combat communists. My question is, could they really expect to settle with the west if, in light of the final solution my question is, at least on the wehrmacht, who knew that all of this was going on especially in light of your explanation of how pervasive and scattered like a web of intrigue is to just how terrible and awful this is . I want to make sure i understand, you are talking about who knew in germany . Yeah. At what level i am sure the ss, but in the general army, who knew about it . Wehrmacht, who knew about it . Wehrmacht soldiers were taking pictures of shooting. The concentration camps were supposed to be secret, though word got out quickly too. Word got out about all of this. Especially when new get to the last year of the war, the last half of the war, the number of camps, the number of prisoners who were doing all kinds of things you could not turn a corner in any german city or town without running into people who were being held against their will, forced to work, abused. There was no secret about this bird there was no secret about the concentration camps from the very start because the German Government wanted people to know about these places are they wanted the deterrent effect from people knowing that these places existed. There is a another aspect of this that i think it is important. That is, enormous participation of enormous participation of the military in the killing program. There is a by which deals with the german army in belarus. When the shooting of jews becomes a part of standard procedure for german soldiers so that while, obviously, they do not know the details and coverage and so on, this is in general very well known at the time. For those higher up in normandy, they are told that the reason the german army cannot send as much ammunition to the german soldiers fighting the british, americans and canadians in normandy is that in march of 1944, germany occupied hungary, and there are lots of trains now running from the Rural Communities to auschwitz, carrying jews, and they cannot simultaneously while carrying jews to their death at auschwitz, to carrying ammunition from german factories to northern france. A quick end note to the delusional germans, just to say, himmler, on the day after hitlersss birthday meets with the representative of the World Jewish Congress in sweden the first time he has met a jewish person in the house. He shakes his head and says lets say bygones be bygones. [laughter] himmler, crazy. I would like to know what was the extent of the role of german women, particularly ss wives, in this extermination of jews. To what extent did that happen . There were substantial numbers of women guards in the caps. There were all stashed guards in the camps, there were also those who performed duties for the killing units. The participation in the killing program was predominantly male, but there was a very substantial female participation. There were also wives of senior ss personnel at cities in the east, or at camps. I will recommend a book by wendy lower. If i could remember the name. Fury. The right. I think i speak for everyone in this room when i say what an honor it is to hear you speak again mr. Weinberg. We had a discussion the other day about auschwitz and white was not bombed by the allied forces. I go running out to the table to find your book that was mentioned of course i do not have the title perhaps you could give us some indication of your opinion about why the allies did not bomb auschwitz and what was in the chapter in your book that i am missing . The allies had a general idea of what was going on, but they prioritized the military side of the war. It was the military side of the war that saved two thirds of the worlds jews are but the allies knew. What the allies knew is that if you bomb auschwitz, germans find another way to kill jews. What one has to remember is that the holocaust had a high priority for the regime. There is substantial literature a recent book about how the holocaust interfered with the daytoday conduct of the war by the germans. What we tend to overlook is that, from the perspective of hitler and his immediate show she its immediate associates, at times the war might make the holocaust more difficult, and at other times the holocaust might make the fighting more difficult. From their perspective, please remember they were always they always act on their views. Not yours, not mine, theres. Theirs. They were not trying to conquer the globe for entertainment purposes. The conquest of the globe was to be for a demographic revolution. That demographic revolution would include the disappearance, not disappearance, not only of jews, but of slavic peoples, roma gypsies, the killing of all the handicapped, etc. You therefore need to keep in mind that a regime that is in the process of killing its own disabled world war i veterans finishes that in the fall of 1944, and has started on the systematic killing of its disabled world war ii veterans. It is putting its ideological objectives high and on roughly the same level. In our front row. A few weeks ago in the st. Louis jewish , an article was printed arguing that president roosevelt his response will for the death of jews because he refused to bomb Railroad Lines. I have read this repeatedly. What is your reaction to that . I think it is a lot of nonsense. The reality is that a president is bound by the constitution of the United States. Roosevelt took that very seriously. The one time, on the basis of the rules under which a president could temporarily bring prisoners of war to the United States german, italian, japanese the president decided at one time to bring just short of 1000 refugees into this country. This is the famous oswego experiment. Immediately, impeachment procedures begin in the congress. I do not think it is a coincidence that two things happen within 24 hours of each other. The white house announces there will be no further such experiments, and the impeachment procedures are dropped. I think we have to see this in terms of the political realities of the time, where there were limitations on the president , which the president adhered to, on the other hand, when it was possible and where it was, he assisted jewish refugees. I will add one point. You can repair a Railroad Line in a day. You would have to hit them again and again. It has to be a sustained attack. Again, as gerhard pointed out, the u. S. Was more interested in winning the war. That was the best way they thought to stop the killing. [applause]