Portal to Destruction
Read for discussion in class: Bergen, War & Genocide, chapter
6 ; and
• The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Lódz
Ghetto [entire]
I. Deportation and Concentration
A. The Contradictions of Military Expansion
B. The Pattern of Deportation
Image: Hans Frank (1900-1946), Governor General of Occupied Poland
Image: Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962), Head of Bureau IV-B-4 of the RSHA
Image: Albert Ganzenmüller (1905-1996), Head of Operations for the Reichsbahn
Map: German Territorial and Military Expansion to 1942
Map: Poland under German Occupation, 1939-1945
Map: France under German Occupation, 1940-1944
Map: Major Deportations to Extermination Camps, 1942-1944
II. Discussion: The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak
Video: The Lodz Ghetto | Yad Vashem
III. The Ghettos: Organization and Functions
Image: Chaim Rumkowski (1877-1944) conversing with Hans Biebow (1902-1947)
Image: Adam Czerniakow (1880-1942), Chairman of the Warsaw Jewish Council
Map: Ghettos in Eastern Europe, 1939-1944
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Image: An example of ghetto money, this ten-mark bill was issued by the ghetto administration in Lodz on 15 May 1940 and bears the signature of its presiding officer, Chaim Rumkowski. Image source: DHM Berlin N 90/4130. |
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Image: A model of the Lodz ghetto fashioned by ghetto resident Leon Jacobson, a shoemaker, in 1940.The model is shaped according to the outline of the ghetto walls and shows the locations of footbridges, ruined synagogues, factories and cemeteries. Inside the model cover are official ghetto seals, currency and a ration card. The scale is 1:5000. Before his deportation to Auschwitz in August 1944, Jacobson buried this model in the basement of the building he lived in. He survived the war and and recovered the model. The model is now on display in the USHMM permanent exhibition. Photo by Arnold Kramer, USHMM. |
IV. War and Barbarization
A. Operation Barbarossa as Race War
B. The Treatment of Soviet POWs
Image: A street scene in the Warsaw ghetto taken by Tomasz Praznowski, c. 1941. The men wear white armbands bearing a blue Star of David, identifying them as Jews. In November 1940, the ghetto was sealed off from the rest of the city; over 350,000 Jews were confined within its walls. Image source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Image: A footbridge that connected two parts of the Lodz ghetto across an "Aryan" street. Lodz was sealed off in the spring of 1940 and contained around The photograph was taken by Liselotte Orgel-Köhne. Image source: DHM Berlin Orgel-Köhne 4762/12.
Image: Soviet POWs, taken prisoner in the battle for Bialystok in July, 1941. The photograph was made by Gerhard Gronefeld. Image source: DHM, Berlin, GG 428/6a.