Sources of the Holocaust

Steve Hochstadt is Professor Emeritus of History at Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois, USA. He is the author of Mobility and Modernity (1999), Shanghai Geschichten (2007) and Death and Love in the Holocaust (2022).

Sources of the Holocaust assembles a powerful record of the Holocaust’s long incubation and Nazi-led implementation in the 1930s and 1940s. Supporting commentaries on the language which normalized discrimination and manifested murder, the defiant responses of its victim groups, and postwar societal resonances, further embed the Holocaust’s centrality in European and global history. Highly recommended.

• IntroductionPart I. The Context of Christian Antisemitism1. Excerpts from the New Testament2. Jewish chronicle of murders in Rhine cities in 1096 during the First Crusade3. Excerpts from Martin Luther, On the Jews and Their Lies, 15434. Papal bull about Jews, ‘Cum nimis absurdum by Pope Paul IV, 14 July 15555. Excerpts from article ‘Jewish Morality’ in Vatican newspaper, 10 January 1893Part II. The Creation of Monsters in Germany: Jews and Others6. Bavarian petition opposing equality for Jews, 10 January 18507. Excerpt from Heinrich von Treitschke, ‘Our Views’, 18798. Excerpt from Permission for the Extermination of Life Unworthy of Life, 19209. Excerpts from Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler10. Court judgment in the murder of a Polish laborer by SA men on 10 August 1932 Part III. The Nazi Attack on Jews and Other Undesirables in the Third Reich, 1933–193811. Bavarian state report about the murder of a Jewish businessman, 20 March 193312. Memoir by Dr Paula Tobias about boycott of 1 April 193313. Minutes of a meeting about Jewish “attacks against the race”, 5 June 193414. Report of underground Social Democratic Party on persecution of German Jews, August 193515. Nuremberg Law against intermarriage between Jews and German citizens, 15 September 193516. Form for Jehovah’s Witnesses to renounce their religious beliefs, 193617. Speech by Heinrich Himmler to SS leaders on homosexuality, 18 February 193718. Excerpts from the Nazi Party training manual for Hitler Youth, About the German People and its Living Space: Handbook for Training the Hitler Youth, 193819. Children’s story from Ernst Hiemer, The Poisonous Mushroom, 193820. Decree by Heinrich Himmler on “Combatting the Gypsy Plague”, 8 December 1938Part IV. The Physical Assault on Jews in Germany, 1938-193921. Memoir by Walter Grab about persecution of Jews in Vienna after the Anschluss of March 193822. Letter urging that Jews be fired from Austrian industry, 29 June 193823. Letter resisting the confiscation of a Jewish business, 14 July 193824. Letter confirming possession of Chinese visa, 23 September 193825. British memorandum on Evian conference, 17 October 193826. Report of Darmstadt SA on Kristallnacht, 11 November 193827. Transcript of Nazi Party meeting led by Field Marshall Hermann Göring after Kristallnacht, 12 November 193828. Letter about finding work in British households for Czech Jewish refugees, 17 November 193829. Gestapo report from Bielefeld about Kristallnacht destruction, 26 November 193830. Instruction from Foreign Office on eliminating Jews from German life, 25 January 193931. Instruction from US Secretary of State on preventing Jewish refugees from entering Shanghai, 18 February 1939Part V. The Perfection of Genocide as National Policy, 1939-194332. Letter from Reinhard Heydrich planning the‘concentration’ of Polish Jews, 21 September 193933. War diary of Lt. Col. Helmuth Groscurth about massacres of Polish civilians on 7–8 October 193934. Announcement that Jews in the Lódz region must wear yellow armband, 14 November 193935. Postwar testimony about the first successful gassing of intellectually disabled people on 4 January 194036. Minutes of conference about deportation of Poles, Jews and Roma, 30 January 194037. Report of meeting of German mayors concerning murder of disabled people, 3 April 194038. Memorandum from US State Department on delaying immigration, 26 June 194039. Report of the murder of Jews by Lithuanians in Vilna by Grigorij Schur, June 194140. Table of money saved by murdering disabled people, 194141. Report of Einsatzgruppen murders in Soviet Union, 2 October 194142. German Army orders on the ‘Conduct of the Troops in the Eastern Territories’, 10 October 194143. Plan for ‘solution of the Jewish question’ by mass gassing, 25 October 194144. Foreign Office memorandum on murder of Jews in Yugoslavia, 25 October 194145. German Army report on shootings of Jews and Roma in Yugoslavia, 27–30 October 194146. Report on police battalion murder of Jews in Belorussia, 30 October 194147. Article by Josef Goebbels on Jews in Das Reich, 16 November 194148. Minutes of the Wannsee Conference about the ‘final solution’, 20 January 194249. Report on use of trucks to kill Jews with exhaust gas in Soviet Union, 16 May 194250. Proposal that several million Jews be sterilized for slave labor, 23 June 194251. Letter from Gestapo ordering deportation of Jews in Schwerin, 6 July 194252. Report by Gestapo on French-German cooperation on deportation of Jews, 8 July 194253. Protest of the Bishop of Montauban against deportations in France, 26 August 194254. Report by Himmler to Hitler on mass murder of ‘partisans’ in Soviet Union, 29 December 194255. Gestapo report on deportation of Jews from France, 6 March 194356. Protest by Bulgarian legislators against deportation of Jews, 17 March 194357. Order by Himmler to destroy Ukraine, 7 September 194358. Speech by Himmler to SS-Gruppenführer in Posen, 4 October 194359. Postwar testimony about exhumation and cremation of corpses in 1943–4460. Report by Odilo Globocnik on how death camps were financed, December 1943Part VI. 'Arbeit Macht Frei': Work and Death in Concentration Camps and Ghettos61. Normal murders at Buchenwald in 194162. Speech by Chaim Rumkowski, Chairman of Lódz Jewish Council, 17 January 194263. Call for resistance in the Vilna Ghetto by Abba Kovner, 31 December 194164. Letter about feeding Soviet POWs working for German industry, 21 February 194265. Order to Warsaw Jewish Council to organize deportation ‘to the East’, 22 July 194266. Diary of Oskar Singer in Lódz Ghetto, 27 July 194267. Diary of Emanuel Ringelblum in Warsaw Ghetto, 14 December 194268. Report of SS Concentration Camp Office on mortality of prisoners, 28 December 194269. SS report on revolt in Warsaw Ghetto, 13 May 194370. Diary of Hanna Lévy-Hass in Bergen-Belsen, March 194571. Mauthausen death list, 19 March 194572. Report of SS doctor on health conditions in Neuengamme, 29 March 1945Part VII. Assembly Lines of Death: Extermination Camps73. Postwar deposition about the use of gas chambers in Belzec in August 194274. Memoir by Filip Müller on use of gas chambers at Auschwitz in 194275. Memoir by Irene Schwarz of Gestapo office work at Birkenau76. Memoir by Shalom Kohn of the revolt in Treblinka on 2 August 194377. Postwar statement by Arnest Tauber about slave labor at Auschwitz between 1942 and 194478. Report on Auschwitz between 1942 and 1944 by escaped prisoners Alfréd Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba, April 194479. Letter by British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden about bombing Auschwitz, 7 July 194480. Memoir by Judith Isaacson on selection of women in Auschwitz, July 194481. List of transports to Birkenau gas chambers during October 1944Part VIII. The Aftermath82. London Agreement among Allies about nature of war crimes trial, 8 August 194583. Summary of evidence from defense witnesses at Nuremberg Trial, August 194684. West German law to compensate victims of persecution, 29 June 195685. Statement of Lutherans about Christians and Jews, July 198386. Speech by Elie Wiesel about President Ronald Reagan’s planned visit to Bitburg cemetery, 19 April 198587. Resolution of the East German Parliament on the Holocaust, 12 April 1990Part IX. The Holocaust in Contemporary Life88. Website about memorial Stolpersteine89. Recommendation of Norwegian government to compensate Jews, 26 June 199890. Article ‘In Defense of Hitler’ in Egyptian government newspaper, 27 May 200191. International Tribunal judgement against Radislav Krsti_ for Srebrenica massacre, 2 August 200192. Joint resolution of Maine legislature on Holocaust remembrance, 13 March 200293. Speech by Björn Höcke in Dresden, organized by the Youth Organization of the Alternative für Deutschland, 17 January 2017ConclusionSourcesSelect Further ReadingIndex