- Massacres of Jews took place in September 1939, when Poland was invaded. Ghettos were created during the year 1940, the best known of which remains that of Warsaw. Since 1941, the Jewish populations of the occupied territories have worn the distinctive sign of the yellow star.
- German intervention groups carried out the first phase of the Holocaust (systematic extermination by Nazi Germany) in 1941. They eliminated Jews, Gypsies and the disabled, as well as Soviet prisoners of war, with the method mass shootings. We then speak of the “Holocaust by bullets”. Traveling gas trucks are subsequently used.
- Faced with the psychological impact that such actions cause on the German troops, and the limits of these methods with a view to generalization, the Nazis wish to think about methods to be suitable for extermination on a larger scale .
1942
Characters
Adolf Hitler
Heinrich Himmler
Reinhard Heydrich
Albert Speer
Procedure
If massacres took place in 1939, the “final solution”, that is to say total extermination, took a new turn on January 20, 1942, during the Wannsee conference. Hitler decides, from the summer of 1941, the execution of all the Jews in the territories under German control. It is Reinhard Heydrich, SS officer, director of the Gestapo, who is in charge of setting up means to overcome the limits of the Holocaust by bullets. Similarly, the evolution of the eastern front no longer allows the Germans to limit themselves to a displacement of the Jewish populations towards the East, far from the German living space.
Heydrich invites the main leaders of the Nazi regime, the heads of various ministries, as well as members of the SS and the Gestapo, to plan the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". It is therefore at the highest level of the State that the extermination of the Jews is decided:it is finally extended to the whole of Europe. This conference then draws a common conception and a rationalization of large-scale extermination methods. It remains the symbol of the bureaucratic implementation of a mass massacre, and of the planning of the Holocaust.
The year 1942 was also characterized by a massive census of Jews in Europe, used during the summer for the arrests and deportations which multiplied (roundup of the Vélodrome d'Hiver in France on July 16-17, known as the "Vél' d'Hiv") arrests and deportations of Jews from the Netherlands in the summer of 1942).
Consequences
- Gas extermination camps become the preferred solution for the Nazis.
- Forced labor is also a reality:industry redeploys itself in the camps to provide war strength. The working conditions are appalling.
- An estimated 6 million Jews were killed in extermination camps during World War II. 500,000 other groups, considered undesirable by the Nazis, such as gypsies or homosexuals, were also executed in the camps.