Chapter 2: a volatile climate, then and now

Nazi Germany in the 1930s leveraged centuries of existing antisemitism to cultivate an irrepressible climate of discrimination and hate against Jews. Their government-led, nationalist propaganda disguised these measures as protection for German families and their racially pure heritage. Jews were wrongly targeted as people who, left unchecked, would control Germany’s economy and compromise the safety of their homeland (Friedberg, Erbelding, & Kelly, 2021).

In 1933 once Hitler had been elected chancellor to lead the Nazi Party, discriminatory rules were enacted against Jews. These included tactics such as preventing Jewish children and young adults from attending schools and universities, and boycotting Jewish-owned businesses. The Nazis exercised humiliation and dehumanization regularly in an attempt to devalue Jews as people, which fed the mob mentality of antisemitism. Jews were excised from their successful lives as doctors, lawyers, educators, and musicians, or from their simple, happy lives as homemakers and shop owners, stations in life no different from working class people of other nationalities or religions. Their communities of other parents and play yard friends were ripped away leaving them shell-shocked at the changes in their once normal world. In 1935 these discriminatory ideologies were further defined and passed as the Nuremberg Laws and made into a political reality. Jews not following these racial laws in Germany were immediately arrested and sent to a concentration camp. Germans showing sympathy for Jews could be declared insane by psychiatrists and also sent to concentration camps (Fogelman, 1994).

Hitler’s power grab progressed across Europe as his Nazi Party collected political collaborators and occupied weaker governments to reconstruct the landscape into a Third Reich domination. This new ruling power implemented the German racial laws in every country under their control. Across Europe, Jews met expulsion from the life and rich culture they had known for almost 1,000 years as their governments rounded them up into crowded city ghettos, labor camps, and inevitably to their deaths (Batalion & Walker, 2021).

Italy background

Italy was being ruled by another fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, who came to power after World War I. He promised a strong, powerful Italy in the wake of WWI, and the nationalists eagerly lined up behind him to literally take over the government in Rome and abolish its parliament in 1922. Proclaimed as “il Duce” (the leader), his methods for obtaining government power were said to be an inspiration to Hitler (Holocaust Encyclopedia, 2021). In 1939, Mussolini and Hitler formed a military and economic alliance, with Italy primed as the Axis power to take control of the Mediterranean region and forge a second Roman Empire.

Like Hitler with the Germans, Mussolini saw Italians as part of the superior race. It was a source of pride for the fascists to present Italian men as “beautiful, healthy, and great athletes.” (Jacoby, 2014). This was not, however, what the most famous cyclist in the world and noted anti-fascist had in mind. If anything, Bartali was an athlete devoted to God and Catholic leaders presented him as an alternative to the fascist culture of “violence and machismo” (McConnon & McConnon, 2012).  At the 1938 Tour de France, Bartali was under immense pressure from the Italian leaders to win and prove their racist agenda. He did win the grueling three-week race, but at the finish line in Paris in front of his adoring fans and the press, he declined any adulation to the Italian regime. The reticent Bartali “mumbled” an apolitical statement, which was a statement in of itself. The next day he visited a church in Paris dressed in his best suit and laid his Tour de France bouquet of flowers at the feet of the Virgin Mary in what was seen as a gesture of thanks to the Madonna for his win (McConnon & McConnon, 2012).

Despite the fascist stronghold of the government and its citizens, Italy’s attitude toward Jews before 1943 was exceptionally open and accepting. In 1933 there were approximately 50,000 Italian Jews and they were considered fully assimilated into the Italian culture and society. The antisemitic laws adopted by the Italian fascists in 1938, such as barring Jews from many jobs and jailing foreign Jews, were rarely enforced by local authorities who were accustomed to looking the other way (Holocaust Encyclopedia, 2021).

As the German racial laws became more enforced in other countries in the late 1930s and early 1940s, foreign Jews discovered they could enter Italy on a tourist visa and find a rare haven of acceptance. Somewhat paradoxically, the fascist government readily accepted foreign Jews. Historians believe that Mussolini did not want to “damage Italy’s international image” or potentially receive backlash with the millions of Italians living abroad. They also believe that foreign Jews were seen as a much-needed injection in the national economy (Primo Levi Center). The DELASEM (Delegation for the Assistance of Jewish Emigrants) Jewish refugee relief agency in Genoa became well known across Europe for helping Jewish refugees. After they arrived, foreign Jews were sent to one of the many internment camps throughout Italy that DELASEM supported. These were more like small villages where families could live as normal a life as possible together, with regular meals, schools, and synagogues.

Italy formally entered the war with Germany in 1940 by declaring war against England and France, and invading Greece and Egypt to begin laying claim to the Mediterranean. Bartali was enlisted in the Italian army in 1940, but a medical condition prevented him from active duty and he was assigned as a courier and allowed to continue racing and training (Holocaust Encyclopedia). In September 1943, however, everything changed. The Allies finally took control of southern Italy and Mussolini was removed from power. The Germans were not ready to lose this strategic peninsula and countered by retrieving Mussolini from his jail cell and fully occupying major cities in the north such as Rome, Florence, and Milan. Italy was split into the occupied Italian Social Republic north of  Salerno, and the Allied territory to the south.

This occupation by Germany meant immediate deportation of all Jews. While they had hidden in relative safety in the country, mountains, and camps, now there were ghetto round ups and trains with one-way path to Poland extermination camps. Noted writer and Holocaust survivor, Primo Levi, had been captured and taken to an internment camp near Modena, but when it was taken over by the Nazis, he and the others were transported to Auschwitz. Out of 650 Italian Jews from this camp, only 20 of them survived (Primo Levi Center). The DELASEM and its supporters went underground in desperate attempts to help the thousands of Jews who were hiding in Italy. The action necessary to protect and save the Jews went into effect immediately.

The Netherlands background

The entire eastern border of The Netherlands is shared with Germany and the Nazis wanted to annex a population they considered their “Aryan brothers” (Strobos, 1988) and bring them back to their “kindred Germanic tribe.” The Dutch government tried to negotiate changing from a neutral country to an independent Nazi state, but Hitler wanted them under the Reich as quickly as possible (Paldiel, 1993). In May 1940, the small coastal country was invaded by the German military. The Dutch military’s aging artillery left it out-classed. On the fourth day, German bombs dropped on Rotterdam, destroying the city and leaving 80,000 people homeless. The Dutch surrendered in five days and their leaders went into exile in London.  

In other countries invaded by Germany, such as France and Denmark, a military-led government was set up with German military leaders. It was common knowledge that they did not always rule with such authority as Nazi Gestapo commanders in an installed civil government. Unfortunately, The Netherlands had this new civil government led by ruthless Nazi leaders devoted to Hitler and ready to implement his agenda. There was no hesitation enacting Hitler’s racial laws and there were ample Dutch civil servants and citizens willing to cooperate (Paldiel, 1993).

Tina Strobos of Amsterdam was 19 years old when she joined the Dutch Resistance. In her testimony, she remembers that the Nazis at first tried to win her country’s trust, but over time they slowly began to reveal their ruthlessness. Jews were required to register, and some were sent to forced labor camps or gathered into ghettos. By the fall of 1942 they were required to wear yellow “Jewish Stars” to segregate them from the non-Jewish Dutch citizens. There were curfews and raids, and Jews were being shot in the streets. Nazis stood on rooftops surrounded by barbed wire and with machine guns pointed below looking for anyone to shoot. Strobos was left stunned by “the effort and time and manpower these Gestapos employed to catch Jews” (Strobos, 1992). The dense urban areas were rife with Nazi collaborators, and they thought nothing of sending thousands of troops to small villages to arrest or kill Jews. The North Sea to the west and Germany to the east made escape nearly impossible.

Jews had lived in The Netherlands for centuries. They found a Dutch tradition for tolerance and little antisemitism that allowed for generations of families to assimilate easily into the population (Paldiel, 1993). However, there was a Dutch right-wing movement that began aligning with Hitler’s racist agenda in the 1930s and resented the influx of Jewish refugees from other countries. When the Nazi occupation was in full swing, the Netherlands was full of collaborators. Special police units were formed by the Nazis to hunt for Jews, resistance workers, and rescuers, filling their days with terror (Paldiel, 1993). Jews tried to row to England or kill themselves. The person next door thought nothing of betraying his or her neighbors merely by noticing an increase in the amount of garbage being thrown out (Fogelman, 1994).

The Netherlands’ geography is mostly flat with vast open fields for agriculture. There were no mountains or dense forests for Jews or partisans to hide like they would in most other European countries. To the west likes the North Sea, and their other borders were Germany and occupied Belgium (Fogelman, 1994). Anyone trying to escape was trapped by the geography of their surroundings.

At the beginning of the war, there were approximately 140,000 Jews in the Netherlands, half who lived in Amsterdam. When the deportations began in summer 1942, many registered Jews embarking for the Westerbork transit camp believed they would be sent to a labor camp in Germany or Poland with their family, and that this was a better option than trying to hide and split up. Strobos said that as connected as they were in the underground, no one knew how bad it was for the Jews once they left Westerbork. They assumed Jews were treated badly in labor camps and never seen again, but they only learned of the gas chambers after the war. Over 107,000 (75%) of 140,000 Dutch Jews were sent through Westerbork to Auschwitz or Sobibor camps never to survive (Holocaust Encyclopedia, 2021).

Denmark background

Like The Netherlands, Denmark was also occupied by Germany in the spring of 1940, but it was a far different situation. The Danes were allowed to maintain their own government and police forces because Germany wanted to keep good relations with their “fellow Aryans” to obtain food from their farms and use their ports for transportation of wartime materials. They never went to war, and this came to the Danes’ advantage later.

Denmark also had very few Jews in its population, around 7,500 (0.2%). Knud Dyby, a police officer and rescuer working for the Danish Underground, describes Jews in Denmark as mostly merchants and farmers who were well-liked and accepted by the otherwise homogenous society. The Danish government did not require their Jews to register or relinquish any of their businesses or property. It wasn’t until 1943 when the Danes engaged in more active sabotage against their occupiers that Germany declared martial law and finally struck out against Jews and any resisters.

Poland background

The Germans sought to expand their empire and redeem themselves after World War I. They invaded Poland in 1939 from the west and the south in a military blitz, while in a coordinated effort, Russia invaded from the east a few weeks later. The Polish army was brave in its fight, but ultimately overpowered in a few days. World War II had officially begun. The western Poland provinces were annexed to the German Reich; the eastern ones given to Russia and Lithuania; and the middle was called the “General Government.” Their plan was to extinguish Jews and other minorities and make Poland expanded “living space for Germans” (Yad Vashem).  Only Poles with German blood were treated fairly and welcomed into the fold. The rest of the native Poles faced their own racial injustices and deportations. They were removed from their villages and replaced by Germans, the towns were given German names, the Polish language was banned, and any German could shoot a Pole for almost no reason. They were rounded up like the Jews and sent to labor camps to support the war and Germany’s expansion, but these were not meant as long-term living conditions. By the end of the war, two million native Poles were killed (Paldiel, 1993).

Jews living within the annexed areas were sent to the General Government to live in ghettos. Those already living in the region were removed from their businesses and homes, and publicly humiliated as they transferred to their new destinations. Nazis would taunt them in the street, make them shave the beards of Orthodox Jews as public shaming, and have public hangings. They were ordered to wear “Jewish Stars” to distinguish them from other citizens and easily target them for abuse (Yad Vashem). As the horror of their new lives took shape, in 1941 the first extermination camp within the General Government began its function at Chelmno. A few months later, Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka opened and Auschwitz and Majdanek added assembly line killings to their camps (Yad Vashem). These six camps are where millions would be sent for the Nazis’ ruthless annihilation of innocent people.

Leaders of Allied countries, including U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, were aware as far back as 1938 of the plans for Jewish persecution, but despite causes for concern, they would not lift their tightening immigration quotas (Karn, 2012). Even though alarms by European officials grew louder with mounting evidence of ghettos, round ups, and dead-end railways to concentration camps, the Allied leaders did not see the oppression of Jews as a priority. Once the U.S. officially joined the Allied war effort in December 1941, winning the war was the only thing in their sights and the Jews suffered for it.

 Jan Karski of Poland became one of the most courageous diplomats of World War II. Tall and lean from a youth full of outdoor activity, he grew up in a socially privileged Catholic family in Lodz and spent his summers traveling around Europe and skiing its mountains. His adventures dialed in his command of multiple languages and nurtured his curiosity for government diplomacy. His family instilled in him a sense of social justice and tolerance for others from different backgrounds (Yad Vashem). At school his classes in government included other teens from different backgrounds, including Jews, with whom he developed strong friendships. His education at Lwow University launched his career as a multilingual civil servant in Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When Germany invaded in 1939, his love for his country led him to join the Polish army, but it was easily overpowered by the Germans invading from the west and then by the Russians from the east. After escaping capture by the Russians, the 28-year-old fled to Warsaw and joined the underground (Kaufman, 2000).

Karski’s new identity was as a crucial courier and spy between the Polish government-in-exile in Paris and London, and the Polish underground. His legendary photographic memory was a blessing and a curse. To bear witness to the atrocities and report back to Allied leaders, the underground arranged to sneak Karski into the Warsaw ghetto through a newly dug tunnel. What he saw horrified him and was burned into his memory:

Next, the underground bribed Ukrainian guards to take him into an Izbica concentration camp:

Karski risked his life traveling in and out of German-occupied Poland with microfilm hidden in hollowed-out keys to report to his Polish government-in-exile in London (Kaufman, 2000). His diplomatic status bought him meetings with Allied leaders in England and the United States to report what was happening to the Jews. He found, however, that while the Allied leaders were sympathetic, their priority was militaristic. Their strategy was to win the war and Joseph Stalin’s confidence, preventing Russia from collapsing, and then fold it into the United Nations.

In meetings with intelligence officers, Karski proposed they draft an official declaration to the German citizens with his information of the camps, ghettos, data, and statistics. The German people could put pressure on their government to stop the Holocaust, or they would otherwise be held accountable by the Allies. Karski also recommended bombing important German infrastructure such as railroads and military camps. An official he spoke with countered that these non-military actions would give the appearance that the war was provoked by the Jews and was being managed by international Jewry. Countries like France would wonder why this effort on the Jews, but not other oppressed people. This lack of support from military leaders set the Jewish people up to fight on their own, which they did mightily as individuals and underground or partisan groups, but they were never destined to succeed without intervention or their own government identity (Karski, 1988).

Despite Karski’s efforts, Germany took control of western and eastern Europe and their Final Solution to the so-called “Jewish Question” became pervasive and accepted. While the Holocaust began as antisemitic legislation and persecution of Jews in an attempt to rid them from German territories in the 1930s, the Final Solution was the last stage of the Holocaust (Holocaust Encyclopedia, 2021). From 1941 to 1945, the Nazis worked with inhumane efficiency to operate five camps in occupied-Poland as assembly line-style killing sites: Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The deportation of Jews from across Europe to ghettos and then to camps went unquestioned by government officials and citizens. Millions became complicit.

The Third Reich fully occupied countries such as Poland to the east and the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia to the south in their quest to expand their German empire (Holocaust Encyclopedia, 2021). To the west, they infiltrated governments in the Netherlands, France, Belgium, and Denmark. They swayed countries bordering Russia, from to Hungary to Bulgaria, to join their Axis alliance, which also led to the deportation of Jews and minorities from their native lands. Inconceivable in hindsight, Allied countries, Europeans, and even Jews were often in denial about the extent of the atrocities until it was too late. By the time Germany surrendered in May 1945, the Nazis’ unchecked disregard for human life left six million Jews of all ages and social status murdered, in addition to another 3 million non-Jewish “undesirables,” such as the disabled, homosexuals, gypsies, and those who disagreed with their policies (Yelich-Biniecki & Donley, 2016).

Our society today is bristling with racial and ethnic divisions and religious conflicts similar to those in 1930s Europe. While not the ethnic cleansing of Nazi Germany’s Final Solution, today’s level of hate and intolerance is a new enemy stylized for the 21st century. It is fed endlessly by cable news and streaming podcasts that host alt-right provocateurs as legitimate commentators, unregulated social media platforms where conspiracy theories and fake news seek out vulnerable users, and white nationalists who have gained as much normalcy as khaki-wearing, suburban middle-class neighbors. Their messages seep into every dark corner of the country and anyone open or gullible enough to listen. Their calls to action, however farfetched the conspiracy theory may be, will invariably capture the attention of a few circling even further out on the fringe with nothing to lose. They continue to be emboldened by a former American president who lifted the Proud Boys to mainstream lexicon and ensured the public that there were “very fine people” at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia (Coaston, 2019). During a 2021 online discussion with other Holocaust educators, Lauren Bairnsfather, Ph.D., of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh observed after watching the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill insurrection that at a national level “people seem emboldened in their antisemitism” (Bairnsfather, Myers & Schamis, 2021).

Bairnsfather’s concerns are far too real. In 2018 on a gray October morning with rain puddling on treelined streets, her peaceful Pittsburgh neighborhood became the location of the largest killing of Jews in the United States. A white nationalist armed with an AR-15-style assault rifle and at least three handguns stormed up the stairway and through the entrance of the Tree of Life Synagogue during a peaceful Saturday morning service. He killed 11 innocent worshippers (Robertson, Mele & Tavernise, 2018).

The shooter eventually surrendered after battling with SWAT teams who immediately answered the calls of an active shooter and bravely fought to save as many lives as possible. Subsequent investigations found that on an alt-right social media site, the shooter had discussed his hatred for Jews and a non-profit group, HIAS, which helps refugees of many nationalities and religions coming to the U.S. He blamed the HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) for bringing “hostile invaders” into the country and that he was “going in,” presumably to take matters into his own hands (Robertson et al., 2018). Ironically, HIAS is a 137-year-old refugee aid agency that assisted DELASEM’s efforts to help Jews in Italy during WWII.

The Tree of Life shooting was a grave episode in what the Anti-Defamation League civil rights group has been tracking for years. In 2019 they reported a 12% rise in antisemitic incidents from the year before, the most since it began tracking incidents over forty years ago (Diaz, 2020). In the past five years, 63% of Jews in the United States have experienced or witnesses an antisemitic incident (Anti-Defamation League, 2021). These include assault, harassment, and vandalism. This tense environment is compounded by younger generations who seem unaware and cannot recall facts of the Holocaust.

A 2018 survey of 1,350 Americans on the Holocaust provided distressing results, particularly from the generation with ages 18-34. The New York Times reported:

• 31% of Americans, and 41% of millennials, believe that two million or fewer Jews were killed in the Holocaust; the actual number is around six million.

• 41% of Americans, and 66% of millennials, cannot say what Auschwitz was.

• 52% of Americans wrongly think Hitler came to power through force.

Other surveys show:

• One in 10 thinks that the Jews actually caused the Holocaust.

• Nearly 25% said they thought it was a myth or had been exaggerated (Sherwood, 2020).

A board member of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, who commissioned the 2018 survey said, “As we get farther away from the actual events…it becomes less forefront of what people are talking about or thinking about or discussing or learning.” He adds, “If we wait another generation before you start trying to take remedial action, I think we’re really going to be behind the eight ball.”

These alarming trends have Holocaust survivors, researchers, educators, and even state legislators raising the importance of including Holocaust studies in all levels of education. Whether and how they are implemented, however, varies state to state, township to township, and teacher to teacher. Some schools actively prioritize Holocaust education that includes visits from the few living survivors, taped testimonies, carefully led discussions, and vetted readings that provide essential context of this complex time in history. However, as these surveys indicate, this level of attention is not the norm across the country. For millions of students, the Holocaust is taught as a brief, 45-minute, uncomfortable chapter when reviewing World War II history. Holocaust remembrance leaders question whether there are consequences to this lack of commitment to Holocaust education.

Ivy Schamis from Parkland, Florida, was teaching her Holocaust studies class at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school when a 19-year-old shooter hunted down and killed 17 people in her school. Schamis and her class huddled behind the classroom door fearing the worst. If the shooter had broken through her door, she decided that her last words to him would be, “I love you.” Fortunately, she never had to face him. Later, she learned that the shooter’s gun magazines were stickered with swastikas. Trying to reconcile why someone could live with so much hate, Schamis has given a lot of thought on whether education could have been reversed his views. At a round table discussion on Holocaust education, she says (Bairnsfather et al., 2021):

In response, Rabbi Jeffrey Myers from the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh considers the shooter from the event that he survived and the absence of Holocaust education in our country (Bairnsfather et al., 2021):

Today’s youths are a third generation distant. They no longer see the direct effects of World War II from family who served as soldiers or were survivors. For many American students it has become an abstract event they see remade in a Hollywood film or in a history book. Far removed from the European theater where the war occurred, it was an event that happened “over there.” For disadvantaged families and students, Europe is often a place that will remain unknown and inaccessible during their lives. Even in Europe, the memories fade. Heavily bombed areas have been rebuilt to fit the modern world, or they have become a memorial or museum to visit once on a school field trip. Some locals see the historic sites as places to avoid because they are considered tourist destinations.

The brazen nationalist and antisemitism movements locally and around the world have troubled and unnerved those who lived through the Holocaust. According to Dr. Marie Baird of Duquesne University, survivors feel a strong commitment, especially in the Jewish community, to keep their stories going. Their children are also dedicated to these memories because they grew up with the stories and know the lifelong impact these stories have made. They know the effects of the war and the expectation that we cannot allow the Holocaust to happen again.

In her classes and at speaking events about the Holocaust, Dr. Baird has found that the key for younger generations to connect to the atrocities of history is to make it personal and relevant; otherwise, it becomes another myth. As Dr. Baird emphasized, it is important to keep the stories of survivors and rescuers going and also to make the story personal to the reader.

First-hand stories told by Holocaust survivors, rescuers, and those who lived through World War II are becoming more distant with each passing year as these original voices are lost at the end of life. Over 75 years after World War II, each person who dies becomes one less voice to tell their unique experience from this time. A direct relationship has been identified by researchers between those who are two and three generations removed from these survivors’ stories and society’s lack of understanding the severity of the Holocaust (M. Baird, personal communication, March 11, 2020). Putting a face and voice to a story transcends the student’s barrier to grasp “6 million lives” and an array of historical statistics (Lindquist, 2011b). Researchers and educators have found that one of the most effective teaching methods is for students to learn a story with such specific details of the person’s experience, and even their personality, that they are able to identify themselves in the story. This connects students with the importance and significance of the Holocaust. (M. Baird, personal communication, March 11, 2020).