St. Joseph Church
Bristol, Connecticut

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.
Pastoral Minister

Roman Catholics Confront the Shoah, Part I

The Terror Begins, 1933-1939

The Shoah, or what has been termed the Holocaust, began almost immediately after the Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933. On January 30, 1933 the aged President Hindenberg named Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany, the most powerful position in the German government. Hindenberg appointed Hitler to this position with the advice and support of the German industrialists. These people believed that they could control Hitler and the excesses of the Nazi program. They were wrong! Hitler moved quickly to consolidate his power by a ruthless campaign of liquidation of all enemies and all those perceived as threats to his power. Hitler himself shot his SA comrade, Ernst Rohm, during a nationwide purge that became known as the "night of the long knives."

In 1933 the German government passed the Enabling Act. This Act led to the establishment of the concentration camps and marks the beginning of the Nazi reign of terror that would last until 1945 and claim 11 million lives. (1) The Nazi program directed against the Jews can be divided into two phases. The first phase of the terror lasted from 1933-1939. The second, and most deadly, phase lasted from 1939-1945.

The Extent of the Nazi Terror

In 1939 almost nine million Jews lived in the 21 countries of Europe that would be occupied by Germany during the war. By the end of World War II it is estimated that two-third’s of the Jews of Europe has been killed by starvation, disease, mass executions and mass gassings. The Nazis also turned its wrath on the Gypsies of Europe killing hundreds of thousands of them. Those German citizens deemed mentally and physically disabled were either sterilized or "euthanized" in such places as Hadamar. This resulted in the deaths of 250,000 German citizens. (2)

As the victorious German Wehrmacht stormed across Eastern and Western Europe millions of innocent people were persecuted and murdered. More than three million Soviet prisoners of war were killed. Poles and other Slavic peoples were used as slave labor, which resulted in death for over 2 million people. Groups such as homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses were subject to persecution and sent to concentration camps. Any members of dissenting groups such as communists, socialists and trade unionists were often imprisoned and killed as well.

The Approaching Night, 1933-1939

Most Shoah scholars place the beginning of the persecution of the Jewish people on April 1, 1933. On this date the Nazis initiated a boycott of Jewish businesses and shops in cities and towns throughout Germany. The Star of David was painted in yellow and black across thousands of shop doors and windows. Wherever one went signs could be stopped saying, "Germans! Defend yourselves! Don’t Buy from Jews," "The Jews Are Our Misfortune" or simply "Jude." (3)

The boycott was Hitler’s response to foreign criticism of Germany’s treatment of the Jews. The Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels described Hitler’s instructions:

We must…proceed to a large-scale boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany. Perhaps the foreign Jews will think better of the matter when their racial comrades in Germany begin to get it in the neck. (4)

The "approaching night" continued with the May 10, 1933 burning of books. Nazi students, along with many professors set bonfires to burn books that they thought were subversive to Nazi power. This burning of books was another ominous sign of things to come. Many did not know what to expect of the Nazis. Would this pogrom be over soon? Would it continue? How bad would it get? In the previous century the writer, Hienrich Heine, wrote these words:

Where one burns books, one will, in the end, burn people. (5)

This Nazi terror took another and more sinister turn with the promulgation of the Nuremburg Laws. (6) These laws stripped German Jews of their citizenship even though they retained limited rights. These laws defined Jews not by their religion but by the blood of their grandparents. Between 1937 and 1939 new anti-Jewish regulations segregated Jews further and made life very difficult for them: Jews could not attend public schools, vacation resorts and other public facilities.

The Terror Begins in Earnest: The Night of the Broken Glass.

On the night of November 9, 1938 a nation-wide riot broke out directed by Nazi Storm Troopers against Jewish shops and synagogues. The enormous amount of broken glass from shattered Jewish shops windows led to this event to be named the "Night of Broken Glass" or Kristallnacht. At this time some 30,000 Jews were arrested ad sent to German concentration camps like Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen. Fifty years after "Crystal Night" a survivor, Sigmund Tobias, recalled what it meant to be a Jewish child then:

Our family stayed at home and ventured outside only on the day after Kristallnacht. As we passed the entrance to the Ryke Strasse Synagogue, we saw a mound of simmering, smoking ashes in the center of the courtyard. To our horror, we realized that the smoldering mound consisted of the synagogue’s prayer books. From the center of the mound the blackened charred handles of the sacred Torah scrolls protruded.

I had been taught great reverence for the Torah. If the Torah was dropped during services—even accidentally—the whole congregation would have to fast for 40 days. Yet the Nazis had brazenly destroyed the most holy, the most awesome objects of our faith.

I will never forget how terror struck this six-year-old at the realization that there was no safety for us anywhere. (7)

Notes

Michael Berenbaum, The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Boston, Toronto, London: Little and Brown, 1993), pp. 18-22; Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York and London: Homes and Meier, 1985), pp.27-38; Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck, eds. The Holocaust and History: The Known, The Unknown, The Disputed, and The Reexamined (Washington, D.C., Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1998), PP.41-55. For an excellent historical survey of Nazi Germany cf. Klaus P. Fischer, Nazi Germany: A New History (New York: Continuum, 1995).

Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press. 1995), pp. 1-22; Michael Berenbaum, The World Must Know, p. 22-50.

Berenbaum, p. 21

Berenbaum, p. 24

Berenbaum, p. 25

Hilberg, p. 43-47

Berenbuam, p. 56

 

Copyright © 2000 Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, M.A., D.Min.
Pastoral Minister
St. Joseph Church
Bristol, CT.
All Rights Reserved

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Compiled by Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.
Created 02/19/2000