"The Myth of Rescue" by William Rubinstein has no doubt been one of the most attacked books by reviewers on this matter of the Holocaust. Rubinstein disagrees with the idea that some scholars supported, that the allies could have done much more to help the Jews, and explains why it was so difficult to assist them. Rubinstein's construction of the situation faced by the Jews of Nazi occupied Europe demonstrates some coherent and thoughtful points about the period of the slaughter of the Jews. His arguments in opposition to the suggestion made by the different scholars were based on the following facts. In 1938-39, from the 10 millions Jews that were in continental Europe, among those, 7 million were in Nazi Territory after the extension of the Nazi territory in 1942, so it would have been very difficult for the allies to reach them. Hitler's plans in 1939 before the invasion of Czechoslovakia were only the creation of a racially "pure" German state in central Europe; the majority of Jews who died were predominantly from Eastern Europe. This is the reason why the majority of the Europeans didn't give enough importance to what was happening to the Jews From November 1940 onwards a new regulation against Jews was issued by the Nazis which restricted them from emigrating from Nazi-occupied Europe. By 1942 the emigration of Jews was completely impossible, which made the rescue more difficult for the allies because they were under Nazi jurisdiction. In the middle of 1941 Britain was fighting alone for one year in the World War II, with the high risk of being occupied and conquered, they had no troops or planes capable to fly beyond Berlin, Ukraine or Belarus. This gave the impression that Britain wasn't prepared to fight against the Nazis. Rubinstein thinks that too much importance was given to a document published by the British colonial secretary Malcolm Macdonald in 1939 which limited to 75,000 the number of Jews legally authorized to migrate to Palestine throughout the next 5 years. This gave the impression that more Jews were able to emigrate than was the case. He argues that this was a proof that the British government showed some collaboration. He also points out that new policies were established by the British to allowed "carte blanche" for the immigration of Jews. Also many German Jews refused to cross the border, because they believe that the crises and tensions would get solve
The Eastern European Jews had many troubles before immigrating to America. Jews are well known for overcoming hardships that are thrown at them. In A Bintel Brief, they weren’t exactly overcoming genocide, but they were having many hardships that would be tough for anyone including love, missing family members, poverty, and different religious problems. Many Jews had nothing but the clothes on their backs when they arrived in America. Few had money to bring along with them, all though some did have money. The majority of the people or families that came to America had to start with nothing, and work from the ground up. Some of the people were working for a measly two dollars a week. The Eastern European Jews at that time weren’t working for themselves most of the time. Most of the time they had whole families to feed, or they had prior obligations they had to fulfill. Many of the Jewish people’s wages were put towards a ship fare, to get their family out of Eastern Europe and into the free America. The majority of the Jews were working in shops all over. Many of the Jews were persecuted. They weren’t allowed to have certain jobs. One instance in the book a mother wrote in for her son, who desperately wanted to be a chemist. The mother was outraged, because many people were saying that they wouldn’t hire a Jewish chemist. A lot of the immigrated Jews were finding partners that weren’t of the same religion. The book mentions Gentile and Jewish relationships a countless number of times. Many of the submitters found their relationship with a gentile was not working, that they started out in love, but the other is teaching the wrong things to their children. On the other hand, many Jews were becoming freethinkers.
...upying Poland in 1939, the policy of forced emigration became untenable for the Nazi regime. It was simply unrealistic to make more than 3 million Polish Jews emigrate. This led to ambitious Nazi plans for a solution to the ’Jewish Question’.” The Nazis wanted to keep their place to themselves, and they disliked the Jews. They tried moving the Jews to another place, but the amount of time it would take was too long. Therefore, they thought of the Final Solution. They sent Jews to concentration camps, where they killed many Jews. They though that this solution would keep their place to themselves, not to share with any other race. This reminds me of the Rwandan Genocide, because both genocides wanted to remove a specific group or race. In the Holocaust, they wanted to remove all Jews, and in the Rwandan Genocide, the Hutus wanted to wipe the whole Tutsis population.
Marion watched the German invasion on May 10, 1940, and as anti-Semitic laws were passed, she told her Jewish friends to escape or to hide. Her father was not Jewish; however, he was disappointed that the Dutch government did not do more to help Jewish refugees.
...of the situation, "The position of the Jews in liberated countries is desperate. The political pressure in Palestine is becoming unbearable. And so is my personal position as President of the Jewish agency. This is the hour to eliminate the British White Paper, to open the doors of Palestine and to proclaim the Jewish state" (Ganin). The British negative attitude gave the militant Zionists who wanted a new policy towards England and for new activist leadership a reason to take action. They felt, "...it's astonishing how fast they forgot about that..." (Silverberg). The Zionist leaders saw that after World War Two, Britain was exhausted economically and psychologically. British power had weakened because of the war. The Jewish community realized that they would not be able to rely on Britain for help and so they turned all their attention to the United States (Ganin).
...how did the Nazi government decide upon a policy of comprehensive extermination of Europe’s Jewish population?” In Bauer’s depiction of the decision, he believed that since “the United states, the only major Western power which was still neutral, had not protested the treatment of the Jews up to that point,” that there seemed to be “no objection from an international point of view to an intensification of Nazi brutality.” Donald L. Niewyk, author of The Holocaust, believed that the decision to exterminate the Jews came from a last-resort decision. That there was a “plan to deport European Jews to Madagascar” which seemed “to have been operative as late as October 1940,” but “was simply not feasible” as the Island was not under German control. This ran the German Nazis out of feasible options, so the only possible option was to exterminate the race entirely.
In March 1938, Nazi Germany invaded Austria. A month after this event came an eruption of anti-Semitism that was the continuation of the Shoah (the Holocaust), meaning thousands of Austrian Jews would be sent to concentration camps such as Dachau and Buchenwald. There was a high demand on visas by Austrian Jews wishing to escape to other countries to avoid being sent to concentration camps. Other embassies had denied Jews the right to leave the country, not wanting to anger the Nazis that now controlled Austria.
Rubinstein, William D. The Myth of Bombing Auschwitz. The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews from the Nazis. London: Routledge, 1997. 157-81. Print.
Examining any issue pertaining to the Holocaust is accompanied with complexity and the possibility of controversy. This is especially true in dealing with the topic of Jewish resistance to the Holocaust. Historians are often divided on this complex issue, debating issues such as how “resistance” is defined and, in accordance with that definition, how much resistance occurred. According to Michael Marrus, “the very term Jewish resistance suggests a point of view.” Many factors, both internal such as differences in opinion on when or what resistance was appropriate, as well as external, such as the lack of arms with which to revolt, contributed to making resistance, particularly armed resistance, extremely difficult. When considering acts of Jewish resistance, it is important to consider both direct and indirect forms of resistance, as well as avoid diminishing what efforts were made at resistance. Despite many factors making resistance difficult, Jews did perform both direct and indirect resistance, often more than historians have credited to them. As a whole, Jews did not accept their death mutely, as sheep to the slaughter.
Jewish people during WW2, like Eliezer and his family from Night, were separated from all other society members and were soon deported to the unknown location, Auschwitz-Birkenau, to be
The text said, "Some British citizens who wanted to make a way for Jewish children to escape Nazi Austria and Germany." This proves that other countries wanted to get the Jewish children away from Hitler. The people in the countries did end up helping by taking the kids in and by feeding them, giving them an education. So the people in the other countries did help out a lot. The evidence from the story supports the claim by stating another reason about how Jewish parents and other countries worked together to save the Jewish children from the
“Many Jews were fleeing Europe from Hitler so that they can reclaim the land they believed was their Biblical birthright, (Document 4 Excepts from the Israeli Declaration of Independence). Leaders were petitioning Great Britain to allow Jewish people to begin migrating into Palestine, then in 194 8the formal state of Israel was formed. “The Balfour Declaration Britain promised a national home for the Jewish people as seen in” (document 2). However, people were already living there so the natives felt like they were getting there home taken away from
In this paper I will be going over the ethical views of the Holocaust. I have taken information from the accounts of surviving Jews of the Holocaust. I have also looked at information from those who believe the Holocaust was not a big deal and deny that many of the events even happened. I will bring up some viewpoints that may change people's perception of the Holocaust. Some of these facts were a shock to me and changed my view a little but some are so profound they make you think twice. The biggest impact from all my research was the real life accounts of those who survived through it. Many of this information are hard to read, but I felt that is was a subject that I would like to learn more about. Doing this paper enlightened me and brought to attention many things to my attention. My hope with this paper is to do the same for those who read it. I want the reader to question what happened and draw a conclusion as to what they feel. I know my feelings on the holocaust and I will express my feelings on it through out the paper.
As World War II was ending, many Nazis were forced to flee their homeland for
Publications by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum discuss how hard it was for so many survivors of the Holocaust to find homes in new countries. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, hundreds of thousands of Jews were left homeless and seeking shelter. It was up to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration to find homes for these people. This was a struggle because Jews feared to go home to the countries they were from, and many other countries would not let them in. Many wanted to go to Palestine, but fewer than one hundred thousand were allowed to enter. Approximately one hundred thirty seven thousand people found homes in the United States, and the rest were sent to France, Canada, and Great Britain (The Aftermath of the Holocaust). For these reasons it could take a long time for survivors to find new homes. Also, after they resettled in new countries they still had to adjust to new cultures and lifestyles there. This long resettlement process made it a struggle for Jews to continue with their lives after the Holocaust. Because of this, getting back to a normal life after the Holocaust was much easier said than
Beginning in late 1941 the Germans started mass transports from the ghettos in Poland to the concentration camps started with people viewed as the least useful like sick people, old people, weak people, and the very young. The first mass gassings started at the camp of Belzec, near Lublin, this was on March 17, 1942 and after that five more mass killing centers were built at camps in Poland like Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, and the largest one, Auschwitz-Birkenau. From 1942 all the way to 1945, Jews were deported to the camps from all over Europe, the most deportations took place during Summer and Fall of 1942, over 300,000 people were deported from the Warsaw ghetto alone.