Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

Was the Holocaust managed? Of course, and how...

I have heard from relatives who were in Germany during the war that there was a substantial "managing" of the holocaust, and it's lead-up, over a long period of time, from a number of perspectives.

1. The Jews were portrayed through media articles and political speeches as the root of all evil in the failing German economy in the 1930's

2. "Flash-Mob" events such as KristallNacht were staged and managed by the Nazis as a way to persuade the general populace that the tide of feeling was rising against the Jews. Jews were paraded through the streets on the way to the various assembly points en route to the death camps, and party-antagonists incited the crowds to abuse them, making them scapegoats for all the economic misfortunes of post-Depression Germany.

3. The concentration camp system itself was managed to portray an image that was untrue. Over the gates of Dachau, Auschwitz and Buchenwald a huge wrought-iron sign carried the words "Arbeit macht frei" (Hard labor makes you free) - was that put there to make the inmates work harder? Or as a cruel joke, to give hope where none could be held?

4. The secrecy with which the extermination operation was run was profound. Allied soldiers had no idea what they had encountered when the liberating forces came across the first camps. It was as if they had no intelligence or feed-back about the extermination camps.

5. German use of tabulation methodologies provided by Hollerith and (indirectly?) IBM was a critical factor in the ability to pinpoint Jews in Germany and adjacent occupied nations. And remember Jews, although they were the biggest "target segment" for the extermination, were not the only segment. Gypsies, people with Downs Syndrome, in fact any genetically imperfect non-Aryan people were also targeted. My (Gentile) mother was living with her family in Jersey, in the German-occupied Channel Islands, and they were all told one day to pack one small suitcase and wait at the bus stop to be picked up and taken away. That was in early June, 1944, and luckily for me, the bus never came.

6. The general population of Germany were led to believe through media management that Jews were fundamentally different, evil and flawed people whose sole aim in life was to bring Germany down. Even long after WW2 these beliefs persisted, so deeply were they ingrained into the culture. As a result the subsequent generations suffer deeply from inherited guilt over what happened, while some older, war-generation Germans still hold pro-Nazi views originally formed 70 years ago.

7. There are still elements that are trying to manage the aftermath of the Holocaust. David Irving, a British academic and historical reformist has attempted to prove the Holocaust was wholly fabricated by the Jews and even provides detailed explanations for the "true and innocuous" purpose behind some of the death camp infrastructure.

Horrific though it is, I prefer to believe the Wiesenthal version of events.

In my view, it's wrong that it happened, but even wronger to deny it happened.

We must never let this happen again


ChrisB