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).

Introduction
Part I. The Context of Christian Antisemitism
1. Excerpts from the New Testament
2. Jewish chronicle of murders in Rhine cities in 1096 during the First Crusade
3. Excerpts from Martin Luther, On the Jews and Their Lies, 1543
4. Papal bull about Jews, ‘Cum nimis absurdum by Pope Paul IV, 14 July 1555
5. Excerpts from article ‘Jewish Morality’ in Vatican newspaper, 10 January 1893
Part II. The Creation of Monsters in Germany: Jews and Others
6. Bavarian petition opposing equality for Jews, 10 January 1850
7. Excerpt from Heinrich von Treitschke, ‘Our Views’, 1879
8. Excerpt from Permission for the Extermination of Life Unworthy of Life, 1920
9. Excerpts from Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
10. 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, 1933–1938
11. Bavarian state report about the murder of a Jewish businessman, 20 March 1933
12. Memoir by Dr Paula Tobias about boycott of 1 April 1933
13. Minutes of a meeting about Jewish “attacks against the race”, 5 June 1934
14. Report of underground Social Democratic Party on persecution of German Jews, August 1935
15. Nuremberg Law against intermarriage between Jews and German citizens, 15 September 1935
16. Form for Jehovah’s Witnesses to renounce their religious beliefs, 1936
17. Speech by Heinrich Himmler to SS leaders on homosexuality, 18 February 1937
18. Excerpts from the Nazi Party training manual for Hitler Youth, About the German People and its Living Space: Handbook for Training the Hitler Youth, 1938
19. Children’s story from Ernst Hiemer, The Poisonous Mushroom, 1938
20. Decree by Heinrich Himmler on “Combatting the Gypsy Plague”, 8 December 1938
Part IV. The Physical Assault on Jews in Germany, 1938-1939
21. Memoir by Walter Grab about persecution of Jews in Vienna after the Anschluss of March 1938
22. Letter urging that Jews be fired from Austrian industry, 29 June 1938
23. Letter resisting the confiscation of a Jewish business, 14 July 1938
24. Letter confirming possession of Chinese visa, 23 September 1938
25. British memorandum on Evian conference, 17 October 1938
26. Report of Darmstadt SA on Kristallnacht, 11 November 1938
27. Transcript of Nazi Party meeting led by Field Marshall Hermann Göring after Kristallnacht, 12 November 1938
28. Letter about finding work in British households for Czech Jewish refugees, 17 November 1938
29. Gestapo report from Bielefeld about Kristallnacht destruction, 26 November 1938
30. Instruction from Foreign Office on eliminating Jews from German life, 25 January 1939
31. Instruction from US Secretary of State on preventing Jewish refugees from entering Shanghai, 18 February 1939
Part V. The Perfection of Genocide as National Policy, 1939-1943
32. Letter from Reinhard Heydrich planning the‘concentration’ of Polish Jews, 21 September 1939
33. War diary of Lt. Col. Helmuth Groscurth about massacres of Polish civilians on 7–8 October 1939
34. Announcement that Jews in the Lódz region must wear yellow armband, 14 November 1939
35. Postwar testimony about the first successful gassing of intellectually disabled people on 4 January 1940
36. Minutes of conference about deportation of Poles, Jews and Roma, 30 January 1940
37. Report of meeting of German mayors concerning murder of disabled people, 3 April 1940
38. Memorandum from US State Department on delaying immigration, 26 June 1940
39. Report of the murder of Jews by Lithuanians in Vilna by Grigorij Schur, June 1941
40. Table of money saved by murdering disabled people, 1941
41. Report of Einsatzgruppen murders in Soviet Union, 2 October 1941
42. German Army orders on the ‘Conduct of the Troops in the Eastern Territories’, 10 October 1941
43. Plan for ‘solution of the Jewish question’ by mass gassing, 25 October 1941
44. Foreign Office memorandum on murder of Jews in Yugoslavia, 25 October 1941
45. German Army report on shootings of Jews and Roma in Yugoslavia, 27–30 October 1941
46. Report on police battalion murder of Jews in Belorussia, 30 October 1941
47. Article by Josef Goebbels on Jews in Das Reich, 16 November 1941
48. Minutes of the Wannsee Conference about the ‘final solution’, 20 January 1942
49. Report on use of trucks to kill Jews with exhaust gas in Soviet Union, 16 May 1942
50. Proposal that several million Jews be sterilized for slave labor, 23 June 1942
51. Letter from Gestapo ordering deportation of Jews in Schwerin, 6 July 1942
52. Report by Gestapo on French-German cooperation on deportation of Jews, 8 July 1942
53. Protest of the Bishop of Montauban against deportations in France, 26 August 1942
54. Report by Himmler to Hitler on mass murder of ‘partisans’ in Soviet Union, 29 December 1942
55. Gestapo report on deportation of Jews from France, 6 March 1943
56. Protest by Bulgarian legislators against deportation of Jews, 17 March 1943
57. Order by Himmler to destroy Ukraine, 7 September 1943
58. Speech by Himmler to SS-Gruppenführer in Posen, 4 October 1943
59. Postwar testimony about exhumation and cremation of corpses in 1943–44
60. Report by Odilo Globocnik on how death camps were financed, December 1943
Part VI. 'Arbeit Macht Frei': Work and Death in Concentration Camps and Ghettos
61. Normal murders at Buchenwald in 1941
62. Speech by Chaim Rumkowski, Chairman of Lódz Jewish Council, 17 January 1942
63. Call for resistance in the Vilna Ghetto by Abba Kovner, 31 December 1941
64. Letter about feeding Soviet POWs working for German industry, 21 February 1942
65. Order to Warsaw Jewish Council to organize deportation ‘to the East’, 22 July 1942
66. Diary of Oskar Singer in Lódz Ghetto, 27 July 1942
67. Diary of Emanuel Ringelblum in Warsaw Ghetto, 14 December 1942
68. Report of SS Concentration Camp Office on mortality of prisoners, 28 December 1942
69. SS report on revolt in Warsaw Ghetto, 13 May 1943
70. Diary of Hanna Lévy-Hass in Bergen-Belsen, March 1945
71. Mauthausen death list, 19 March 1945
72. Report of SS doctor on health conditions in Neuengamme, 29 March 1945
Part VII. Assembly Lines of Death: Extermination Camps
73. Postwar deposition about the use of gas chambers in Belzec in August 1942
74. Memoir by Filip Müller on use of gas chambers at Auschwitz in 1942
75. Memoir by Irene Schwarz of Gestapo office work at Birkenau
76. Memoir by Shalom Kohn of the revolt in Treblinka on 2 August 1943
77. Postwar statement by Arnest Tauber about slave labor at Auschwitz between 1942 and 1944
78. Report on Auschwitz between 1942 and 1944 by escaped prisoners Alfréd Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba, April 1944
79. Letter by British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden about bombing Auschwitz, 7 July 1944
80. Memoir by Judith Isaacson on selection of women in Auschwitz, July 1944
81. List of transports to Birkenau gas chambers during October 1944
Part VIII. The Aftermath
82. London Agreement among Allies about nature of war crimes trial, 8 August 1945
83. Summary of evidence from defense witnesses at Nuremberg Trial, August 1946
84. West German law to compensate victims of persecution, 29 June 1956
85. Statement of Lutherans about Christians and Jews, July 1983
86. Speech by Elie Wiesel about President Ronald Reagan’s planned visit to Bitburg cemetery, 19 April 1985
87. Resolution of the East German Parliament on the Holocaust, 12 April 1990
Part IX. The Holocaust in Contemporary Life
88. Website about memorial Stolpersteine
89. Recommendation of Norwegian government to compensate Jews, 26 June 1998
90. Article ‘In Defense of Hitler’ in Egyptian government newspaper, 27 May 2001
91. International Tribunal judgement against Radislav Krsti_ for Srebrenica massacre, 2 August 2001
92. Joint resolution of Maine legislature on Holocaust remembrance, 13 March 2002
93. Speech by Björn Höcke in Dresden, organized by the Youth Organization of the Alternative für Deutschland, 17 January 2017
Conclusion
Sources
Select Further Reading
Index