When, in your view, does 'the period of the Holocaust' begin and end ? Give reasons for your answer

Résumé du document

Although the Holocaust itself occurred during the world war, the period of the Holocaust stretches from the rise of the nazi regime in 1933 to the dissolution of the displaced persons camps in Central Europe after the war (Yehuda Bauer). Is the distinction between the 'Holocaust itself' and 'the period of the Holocaust' helpful in defining what we mean by 'the Holocaust'. When, in your view, does 'the period of the Holocaust' begin and end? Give reasons for your answer

Extraits

[...] There was a gradation of anti-Jewish measures. First Nazi Germany through a vigorous campaign led the German people to boycott Jewish activity in April 1933, that became legally “aryanised” in December 1938. Many legal measures were implemented that aimed at expelling the Jew from political, economic and even civil life, the most important of which were the Nuremberg Laws established between September and November 1935. The climax seemed to have been reached during the Kristallnacht in November 1938. This was in fact a popular anti- Jewish manifestation to burn synagogues and destroy Jewish shops, an ultimate mean to frighten the remaining Jew and force them to flee. [...]

[...] Even if the Enlightenment and the emancipation, that gave to the Jew equal civil rights and citizenship than their countrymen, anti-Semitism was still an important issue as proved the long tradition of pogroms in Russia or such cases as the Affaire Dreyfus in France. The economic situation of the Jew who, partly because of the Church's traditionally forbidding the Christian to rent money, were the major capitalists increased people's unfriendliness toward the Jew. In fact, anti-Semitism was rather an important issue especially in such countries as Poland as proved the non-reactions against deportations of Jews and the massive pogrom perpetrated in 1941[2] against the Jewish community by their own neighbour. [...]

[...] In fact, if understood in its tighter sense, the Holocaust occurred from 1941 to 1945. Yet, it cannot be denied that such a slaughter has to be seen in its context, which is the war, and the Nazi regime even if some former causes should not be minimised. If we define the Holocaust as the massive and systematic killing of Jews on racial principles by the Nazis, and use other terms to design persecutions for political grounds (which is not a will to minimise them but to give clear definitions), then Holocaust itself” does not start with the war in 1939, but with the Einsatzgruppen and the plan “Narcht und Nebel” in 1941. [...]

[...] When, in your view, does period of the Holocaust” begin and end? Give reasons for your answer. It is still rather difficult to reach a generally agreed definition of what the Holocaust was. Some people, like Elie Wiesel, only apply this term, maybe because of its religious connotation of sacrifice through fire, to the murder of the Jewish people. Some other, like the USHMM, consider that this term has to cover all Nazi persecutions. If historians cannot agree on the killed persons who can be designed through this term of Holocaust, many disagreements also oppose historians about the period it has covered. [...]

[...] So in its tighter sense, the Holocaust occurred from the 22nd of June 1941 to May 1945. But the Holocaust has to be understood in the reality of the second world-war, as a radicalisation produced by the circumstances. If Hitler's speeches insist on the strongest hatred toward the Jews, it is rather uneasy to prove that the extermination was an objective decided in the 1920s, as was the conquest of vital space. It seems more accurate to say that his central preoccupation was to make the Jew go away from the sphere of German influence, which is the policy led by his regime until 1941. [...]