“Genocide” (vol. 20 of The World at War (1982) Thames Television
The film will provide a context for you to understand what happened in Germany from 1933-1945. As the documentary makes clear, there was a general plan for eliminating Jews, but each country occupied by the Germans had its own particular features. Wiesel lived in Hungary; he and his family were rounded up and sent to the camps relatively late in the war, in 1944.
The documentary traces the rise of Nazism, its racist ideology, the promotion of Heinrich Himmler, the gradual persecution of Jewish people in Germany, the onset of World War II, and the eventual declaration of the “final solution” to the “problem” of the Jews in Europe.
Dates and events cited in the film:
1933 Nazis rise to official power in Germany
1935 Nuremberg Laws prohibiting rights and activities of Jewish people passed
1938 Kristallnacht “Crystal Night”--Jewish synagogues and shops destroyed in Germany
1939 World War II begins when Germany invades Poland
1942 Wannsee Conference--Nazi administrators and bureaucrats settle on “Final Solution”-- the extermination of European Jewry
In the beginning of the war, SS Einsatzgruppen killed Jews on the Eastern front in land occupied by Germany by shooting them; hundreds of thousands died using this method. However, this method was deemed “inefficient” and too difficult for the soldiers. Another method was sought. The answer was mass killing by poisonous gas in chambers set up just for this purpose and the disposal of the bodies through burning to ashes. Camps were established for the killings.
The documentary shows the process the Nazis used:
•identification of Jews in a city, a region, or a country
•relocation of Jews into a smaller area
•isolation of Jews into separate living quarters or ghettoes;
•separation of able and disable Jews as workers;
•transportation of Jews to camps for work and further transport to death camps;
•extermination of Jewish inmates.