Week 10: The Final Solution

Graph: Decline of the German-Jewish Population, 1933-1945
Graph: Killing Centers in Poland, 1942-1944
Graph: Sites of Death in the Holocaust
Graph: The Killing Process: Operation T4 and Operation Reinhard



I. Deportation
A. Agencies: The RSHA IV-B-4, the Reichsbahn
B. Decision Flow and Local Implementation
C. Deportation as Public Event

II. The Killing Process
A. From Operation T-4 to Operation Reinhard
B. Concentration Camps and Killing Centers

III. Technologies of Genocide

IV. War, Armaments, and Slave Labor  

V. Who Knew What, and When?

Image: Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962), Head of Bureau IV-B-4 of the RSHA
Image: Odilo Globocnik (1904-1945), SS- and Police Leader, Lublin District, Generalgouvernement
Image: Albert Ganzenmüller (1905-1996), Head of Operations for the Reichsbahn
Image: Arthur Nebe (1894-1945), Commander of Einsatzgruppe B, Head of the Reich Criminal Police
Image: Christian Wirth (1885-1944), Commandant of Belzec Death Camp

Map: Ghettos in Poland, 1941-1944
Map: Concentration Camp Systems, 1942-1945

Map: Chelmno, 1941
Chart: Floorplan of the Chelmno "Castle"
Aerial Photo: Chelmno, 1941
Photo: Chelmno Gas Van, 1945
Photo: "Saurer" Van
Image: Zyklon B cannister

Map: Belzec, December 1942
Map: Sobibor, June 1943
Map: Treblinka, ca. August 1943
Map: Auschwitz-Birkenau, August 1944
Aerial Photo: Auschwitz-Birkenau, 13 September 1944
Aerial Photo: "Krematorium II" and "Krematorium III," 25 August 1944
Photo: "Selektion" in Birkenau, ca. June 1944
Photo: "Selektion" in Birkenau, ca. June 1944
Photo: "Selektion" in Birkenau, ca. June 1944

Image: The "White Rose"

Image left, top: The deportation of Jews from the city of Hanau, near Frankfurt-am-Main, on May 30, 1942. This photograph was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; the donor, Simon Strauss, reports that the deportation was from a little village Ruechingen in the vicinity of Hanau. In the middle of the photograph is Ludwig Gernsheimer (donor's uncle) holding his two sons. They all perished. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.  Image left, bottom: An inspection tour of the Mauthausen concentration camp in April 1941 by Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, visible in the center. To his left is Oswald Pohl, whom Himmler would appoint a year later to head the Economic and Administrative Main Office of the SS, which oversaw the concentration camp system. Bundsarchiv Deutschland. Image left, bottom: A chart showing the identifying badges that concentration camp inmates wore, indicating their category ("Political," "Professional Criminal," "Emigrant," "Jehovah's Witness," "Homosexual," and "Asocial") and whether or not the wearer was Jewish (indicated by the downward-pointing yellow triangle). Source: Wikimedia Commons.



Image: A map of the major deportations of Jews from Germany and German-occupied Europe during the most intensive period of genocidal killing, 1942-1944. Source: Wikimedia Commons.