4º British: Online World War II lesson. Stage 2: Meanwhile in Germany...

The following link will show you the second chapter of my classroom presentation. This part starts by the Aktion T4, a German euthanasia program (but not volunteer!).

This program existed in Nazi Germany prior to the Holocaust and essentially served as practice for the mass killing of Jews during World War II. The T4 Aktion program killed the physically-mentally-emotionally ill, the disabled and elderly people throughout Germany. In total, over 200,000 people were killed under this program. 

The T4 Aktion program killed members of society who, according to Hitler, were unfit to live. Hitler justified this program by saying that this was a wartime measure that gave mercy to those people whose life wasn't worth living. This program came down to their ability to contribute economically to society: if a person required more government assistance than they created by working, they were marked as someone that would be murdered.

Even in Nazi Germany, a political regime literally and deliberately defined by its inhumanity to other humans, leaders knew that a program that targeted sick, elderly, and disabled people would not be taken well. For this reason, the program remained a secret and was given a codename that gave no clues to its actions. The program started in 1939 (actually started before World War II began). Its official name, T4 Aktion, was created after the street address of the building it was run from, with the name Tiergartenstrasse 4.

As said, the experiments of Aktion T4 were used later to develop the “Final Solution”, that is, the extermination of Jews. This is called by the Jweish people as Shoah or Holocaust.

More than six million Jewish people were killed in a systematized genocide. Five million more people died in the same time frame as a result of Nazi persecution. In addition to the Jews, Roma people (=Romaní, that is, gypsies), homosexuals, political dissidents, Polish people, Slavic people, black people, and many other perceived enemies were imprisoned and killed by the regime.

John Green, from Crash Course European History, has a very well explained video (13 minutes, in English) about this issue.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial has created 3 virtual tours of the Auschwitz-I and Auschwitz-II-Birkenau death Camps. As you can see on my presentation, near those camps there were several German industrial areas (the biggest one belonged to IG-Farben, in red on my map) who were using the prisioners as slave-workers until they were to weak or ill to go on working, so they were finally sent to the crematory.

You can read an interview with Rainer Höss, one the grandchildren of Rudolf Höss, Commander in charge of the Nazi Concentration Camp in Auschwitz from 1940 to 1943. After discovering the secret of his family, Rainer has become an activist for Human Rights. In "Historias de la Historia" you can read a very interesting interview to him (in Spanish).

If you are really interesting in this particular topic, I can reconmend you the following books (for a totally volunteer and independent reading). Primo Levi was a survivor from Auschwitz (his books are available in Avila's public library), meanwhile Laurence Rees is a journalist from BBC (his book has been also transformed into a 5-episode documentary film, available on youtube)

Many people were against this Nazi policy: as you can see on the presentation, several diplomats created passports to save Jews (Germans could not kill someone under the nationality of a neutral country!). And they were also some others, less famous but also very important, such as Adolfo Kaminsky, who as a teenager saved thousands of lives by forging passports to help children flee the Nazis. He spent his life helping others escape atrocities around the world. You can watch his full story in the New York Times documentary The Forger (16 minutes, originally in French with English subtitles).

Now, to show that you have really revised all that information (if necessary, you can also do a quick online search), send the answers to the following questions to blogeducativo08@gmail.com before Tuesday, 28 April:

Question 1: What was the aim purpose of Aktion T4?

Question 2: When did it start?

Question 3: What is Anti-semintism?

Question 4: What is genocide?

Question 5: What was the Wansee conference?

Question 6: What happened in 1943 in the Warsaw guetto?

Question 7: Were there other attempts of rebellion? Where? When?

Question 8: Why was Adolfo Kaminsky choosen for became a forger? What were his proffessional skills?

Question 9: What other people did he help in postwar conflicts?

Question 10: What is his hope for the world?

That’s all for this week. If any doubt, just ask me, ok?