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The final solution to the Jewish problem
The Final Solution to the Jewish Problem
The final solution to the Jewish problem
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Adolf Eichmann was born in Solingen, Germany, on March 19, 1906.
Adolf Eichmann was deeply involved with the creation and operation of the "final solution to the Jewish question". He came up with the idea of the deportation of Jews into ghettos and helped to formulate and work the idea of labor camps otherwise known as death camps, and went about concentrating Jews in isolated areas with murderous efficiency. He took great pride in the role he played in the death of around about six million, mainly European Jews.
Involvement in the holocaust:
In 1932 Adolf Eichmann enters the Austrian National Socialist (Nazi) Party and the SS at the suggestion of an acquaintance, Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Only a year before Adolf Hitler, Führer of the Nazi Party, is appointed Chancellor of
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In the same year Eichmann becomes director Jewish Affairs, or Judenreferat. From this position, Eichmann plays a central role in the deportation of over 1.5 million Jews from all over Europe to killing centers and killing sites. In 1941 Eichmann is appointed SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) and takes part in discussions in which Nazi leaders plan the annihilation of the European Jews.
On January 20, 1942
Reinhard Heydrich convenes the Wannsee Conference, presenting his plans to coordinate a European-wide “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” to key officials from Reich Ministries and the Nazi Party. Eichmann, who attends the conference and prepares Heydrich's briefing papers, will play a key role in the implementation of this “Final Solution.”
From 1942-1944 Eichmann and his aides organize the deportation of Jews from the so-called Greater German Reich, Slovakia, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Croatia, Greece, Italy, and Hungary to killing centers in German-occupied Poland, primarily Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Significance of the group/personality:
“Understand Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Mission.” The Holocaust Research Project Home. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Feb. 2014
Adolf Hitler, head of the NSDAP, became Chancellor of Germany on the 30th January 1933. Following the 'legal revolution' of the following months and President Hindenburg's death on the 2nd August 1934, Hitler made himself Führer and Reichskanzler. The Nazi revolution was complete and Germany was subject to a dictatorship of the extreme political right.
Eichmann voluntarily signed order after order to terminate the lives of tens of thousands of Jews with ease and without objection - and yet in his short time from capture to death in 1960-62, he tried to give the sense that he never wanted to do it all along! A member of an organization is representative of that organization as a whole. It's not like the hints of genocide, terror ruling, and dictatorship weren't ominously present from the beginning, anyway. Adolf Eichmann acts as if he just obliviously became a part of a terror party and was just under as much persecution as anyone else to do whatever that respective governing body said.
"World War II in Europe." 10 June 2013. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 18 March 2014 .
Adolf Eichmann was a German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer. He was in charge of arranging the mass deportations of Jews to the extermination camps. After his capture, Nazi war criminal, Eichmann was taken to trial for the mass murders of the Jews. The attorney general in charge of the case signed a bill of indictment against Eichmann on 15 counts, including crimes against the Jewish people as well as crimes against humanity. The Nazi trials provoked international interest, which led to world news. Arendt attended the majority of Eichmann's district court sessions where she recorded what she witnessed and later formed her own testimonials.
What can become the most powerful thing if manipulated and brainwashed at a young age? Well Hitler knew the answer and knew the importance of them for his 1,000 year plan. The youth was a significant part of Hitler's reign, as once the kids have been brainwashed by all the propaganda, they will follow and obey all of his commands without hesitation.
Eichmann was a simple man that thought of himself as always being the law-abiding citizen. Eichmann stated in court that he had always tried to abide by Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative (Arendt,135). Arendt argues that Eichmann had essentially taken the wrong lesson from Kant. Kant’s moral philosophy is so closely bound up with man’s faculty of judgment, which rules out blind obedience. Knowing this, we learn that Eichmann could not have just been going along with the Nazis without knowing anything that was going on or the consequences. Eichmann had not recognized the ‘golden rule’ and principle of reciprocity implicit in the categorical imperative, but had only understood the concept of one man's actions coinciding with general law. Eichmann attempted to follow the spirit of the laws he carried out, as if the legislator himself would approve. In Kant's formulation of the categorical imperative, the legislator is the moral self and all men are legislators. In other words, we are all taking on the roll of the leader. In Eichmann's formulation, the legislator was Hitler. Eichmann claimed this changed when he was charged with carrying out the Final Solution, at which point Arendt claims "he had ceased to live according to Kantian principles, that he had known it, and that he had consoled himself with the thoughts that he no longer 'was master of ...
By explaining the sad, yet undeniably true facts about the concentration camp Treblinka, Wiesel spoke of how far the Nazis were willing to go in order to exterminate the Jewish people. During the year 1942, under the orders of “Operation: Reinhard”, Treblinka opened it doors to the thousands of Jewish masses being crammed inside, su...
Heinrich Himmler was the Reich Leader of the SS of the Nazi party from 1929 until 1945. Himmler controlled a huge ideological and bureaucratic empire that made him distinct for many, both inside and outside the Third Reich, as the second most influential man in Germany behind Hitler himself, during World War II. Given overall responsibility for the security of the Nazi empire, Himmler was the senior Nazi official responsible for conceiving and overseeing execution of the Final Solution, the Nazi plan to rid Europe of Jews. Himmler was born into a middle-class, Catholic family in Munich, Germany, on October 7, 1900. His father, taught at Ludwig high school gymnasium in Munich. In 1913, Himmler's family relocated to Landshut, a town located about 40 miles northeast of Munich, after Himmler’s father took the job of assistant principal of the Gymnasium in Landshut. An intelligent man with good capacity for organization, young Himmler was passionately patriotic. During World War I, he fantasized of service on the front as an officer, left high school to begin training as an officer. On November 11, 1918, however, before Himmler's training was through, Germany signed the armistice that would end World War I. Crushing Himmler’s dream of serving.
Adolf Hitler was born in Austria-Hungary on April 20, 1889, to mother, Klara Hitler, and father, Alois Hitler; a German by blood.
“The modern German anti-Semitism was based on racial ideology which stated that the Jews were subhuman while the “Aryan” race was ultimately superior,” ("Nazi Propaganda"): (Goebbels)“I beg you and particularly those of you who carry the cross throughout the land to become somewhat more serious when I speak of the enemy of the German people, namely, the Jew, ("Nazi Propaganda"). “Streicher declared: "You must realize that the Jew wants our people to perish. That is why you must join us and leave those who have brought you nothing but war, inflation, and discord",” ("Nazi Propaganda"). “We know that Germany will be free when the Jew has been excluded from the life of the German people,” ("Ministry Of Public Enlightenment"). After Goebbels 's started to target the Jew’s with mean propaganda: It made blaming Jews a lot easier for Germany’s
The account of Jedwabne is unique in the fact that it focuses on one mass murder of roughly 1,600 Jewish residents, which occurred in July 1941. The murder occurs during the violent German campaign of anti-Semitism in Poland. The main occurrence seen across Germany and Poland of the anti-Semitism campaign was the killing and justified harassment of Jewish residents. Without a doubt the event in Jedwabne was triggered by Nazi influence. What is interesting is how Gross represents these influences. He shows that the killings of Jedwabne were planned, organized, and enthusiastically conducted by local authorities and citizens of the non-Jewish community. Gross also points out that it is possible that Germans did not participate in this killing and that it is even possib...
Examinations of Hitler's role in the formulation of Nazi foreign policy and his goals of that foreign policy leads to questions of the limits of his goal of Lebensraum. This introduces the debate between 'globalists' and 'continentalists'. Expanding on Trevor-Roper's emphasis on Hitler's goals of Lebensraum, historian Gunter Moltmann argued that Hitler's aims were not confined to Europe but at world domination. Andreas Hillgruber expands on this idea with his concept of a three-stage plan he calls the Stufenplan as the basis for Nazi foreign policy. This plan involved Germany gaining mastery over Europe, followed by the Middle East and British colonial territory, and later the USA and with that the entire world.
In the Eichmann trial, the judiciary in Israel set a substantial and contemporary precedent towards the advancement of universal jurisdiction. The court in a detailed verdict appealed to the idea of the natural law to find universal jurisdiction applied. The accused in this case, Adolf Eichmann was appointed to the Jewish Section of the “Security Services” (SS) in 1934 and later on became extremely involved in Hitler’s’ formulation and operation of the “Final Solution”. At the end of World War II, many top officials of the Nazi Party were tried at Nuremberg Trials. In 1950, Eichmann escaped to Argentina like many other members of the Nazi Party and lived there under assumed name and identity with his wife and children joining him two years later. A decade later in 1960, Mossad, the Israeli Secret Service learned of his presence in Argentina and in May that ye...
A strong will to believe combined with a stubborn, inflexible personality type is then, according to Fischer what drove these men to commit the atrocities of the Holocaust. All these men needed was to be given something to believe strongly about, and Hitler gave it to them. I find this argument plausible, yet leaning toward generalization. Were the mentalities of Himmler and Eichmann that comparable? I think a far more detailed look at their personalities might prove otherwise. Nevertheless, both indeed carried out the orders of one of the most tyrannical governments to come to power during the 20th Century. An exact estimate of how many Jews were killed during the Holocaust has never been calculated, and figures range anywhere from four to seven million. Noakes asserts that the most reliable source comes from Eichmann himself, whose estimate was voiced through one of his subordinates (Wilhelm Hoettl of the RSHA) and calculated at roughly 6 million. Out of these 6 million, four million were killed in the extermination camps.