(1) The Axis Powers’ concentration camp network extended past the borders of Europe.
The Nazis and the Axis powers created a network of 17 concentration camps in North Africa. Some prisoners were also taken to concentration camps in West Africa. Jews were forced into slave labor, starved, tortured, and murdered. Many died from diseases. Many prisoners in North African labor camps were tasked with the completion of the Trans-Saharan Railroad, a project that was never completed. Though it was a French project, the Nazis were highly supportive of it.
(2) The Mountain Jews of the Caucasus were ultimately saved from extermination because the Nazis considered them “religious,” rather than “racial” Jews.
When the Nazis occupied the North Caucasus in 1942, the Mountain Jews of Na’alchik, Russia, were quick to think on their feet. With the help of their Muslim neighbors, with whom they had good relations, the Mountain Jews promoted the lie that they were ethnic Tat converts to Judaism.
The Nazis took the issue to the Reich Genealogical Office, which ultimately ruled in their favor, and thus the Mountain Jews were left alone.
That said, before the Reich Genealogical Office reached their final verdict, the Mountain Jews were treated just as poorly as their Ashkenazi counterparts. On August 19 and September 20, 1942, a total of 850 Jews were executed point-blank with machine guns in Menzhinskoe and Bogdanovka.
(3) The Catholic Church could’ve possibly put an end to the Final Solution. Instead, Pope Pius XII chose silence – and, at times, complicity.
In August of 1941, the Nazis put an end to their Aktion T4 “euthanasia” program – a euphemism for “eugenics” – in response to public uproar. The Catholic Church, in particular, was at the forefront of the protests against the Aktion T4 program. The effect of these protests was enormous, especially within Germany. In Hof, Germany, an angry crowd openly jeered at Hitler over his eugenics policies, the only time this ever happened during 12 years of Nazi rule.
By contrast, the Catholic Church refused to publicly condemn the German persecution of Jews, even after the Nazis’ plans for the Final Solution had long become public knowledge. Claiming “neutrality,” Pope Pius XII rejected the desperate pleas of the Jewish community and even refused meetings with rabbis. This despite the fact that the Vatican was well-aware of the Nazis’ plans for the Final Solution as early as 1942.
(4) The Nazis primarily targeted the Scientific Humanitarian Committee because Magnus Hirschfeld was Jewish.
There’s recently been an attempt to reframe trans individuals as the “first victims” of the Holocaust because the Nazis burnt down the library and archives of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee in 1933. The Scientific Humanitarian Committee provided a plethora of medical services for LGBTQ folks, including contraceptive treatment, gynaecological examinations, treatment for STDs, marital and sexual therapy, and other treatments, such as treatment for alcoholism. Most significantly, the organization pioneered gender-affirming surgeries, including one of the earliest sex-reassignment surgeries in 1931. Other surgical and medical services included facial feminization and masculinization surgery and early forms of body hair removal.
What’s imperative to understand is that the Committee was targeted, above all, both because Hirschfeld, its founder, was Jewish, and because the Nazis associated homosexuality and “sexual deviance” with the “Jewish race.”
(5) The Nazis devised of the gas chambers because Nazi soldiers found it too “psychologically taxing” to execute millions of Jews face-to-face.
Early during the Holocaust, Jews were predominantly murdered via machine gun execution. However, the Nazis considered the method too slow and inefficient. Frustrated with the “inefficiency” of shooting Jews, the Reich Security Main Office soon ordered the use of gas vans for murder on a mass scale. The first extermination camp to use gas vans was Chelmno; by June of 1942, there were 20 gas vans in operation, with many more being prepared. Some gas vans could hold up to 60 people, while others held around 30.
Soon the Nazis found that gas vans, too, were not efficient enough. A big problem was that gas van operators experienced high levels of mental distress due to their proximity to the victims. Sometimes gas vans broke down due to bad roads. Ultimately, they simply couldn’t exterminate Jews quickly enough, so the Nazis built permanent gas chambers.
(6) Before the Nazis’ rise to power, Jews in Germany were the best-integrated in continental Europe.
One of the most historically shocking facts about the Holocaust is that it was devised of in Germany as opposed to somewhere like Eastern Europe, where Jews were much less assimilated into general society. Before World War II, Jews elsewhere in Europe often joked that German Jews were “more German than the Germans.”
In 1929, for example, Dr. M. S. Melamed wrote for The Jewish Criterion, “The German antisemites have a much deeper hatred against the Jew than the Russians, but the German antisemites do not pogrom the Jew. They write articles and books to prove that the Jew has no right to live, that he is wicked, that he is dishonest, and that he should not enjoy any rights and privileges but it would not enter his mind to embark upon a policy of murder, loot and rape.”
Yet by 1945, the German antisemite had exterminated 2 out of every 3 Jews in Europe.
(7) The international community did not assign a day for Holocaust remembrance until 2005.
The Jewish community began memorializing the Holocaust yearly as early as 1949. The Israeli Knesset officially observed a Holocaust remembrance day for the first time in 1951; by 1958, the observance of Yom HaShoah had been codified into Israeli law.
By contrast, the United Nations did not assign a day to Holocaust remembrance until 2005, when it passed Resolution 60/7, establishing International Holocaust Remembrance Day to coincide with the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27th.
(8) There was one group of Jewish partisans that sought revenge after the Holocaust.
As the Allies closed in on Germany, the German population listed “Jewish revenge” as their biggest fear, owing largely to over a decade of Nazi antisemitic propaganda about how Jews were a threat to Germany. In reality, Jewish acts of revenge in the aftermath of the Holocaust were extremely rare, especially in comparison to vengeful acts from other groups like Poles and even the Allied forces. Jews were far more concerned with finding family members and rebuilding their lives.
There was one group of Jewish partisans, however, that did devise a plan for revenge. The group was named “Nakam,” meaning revenge in Hebrew. Their plan? To murder six million Germans.
In the end, the plan was obviously entirely unsuccessful. Only about 2000 SS members got ill with food poisoning, but none died. Many Nakam members reflected many years later and were thankful their plan failed, calling it “a Satanic concept” and “an utterly lunatic idea.” Simcha Rotem said in hindsight that he guilt of murdering so many children would've driven him to suicide.
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